A Gathering of the tribe

A Gathering of the tribe.
By Charles Eisenstein on Reality Sandwich
Once upon a time a great tribe of people lived in a world far away from ours. Whether far away in space, or in time, or even outside of time, we do not know. They lived in a state of enchantment and joy that few of us today dare to believe could exist, except in those exceptional peak experiences when we glimpse the true potential of life and mind.

One day the shaman of the tribe called a meeting. They gathered around him, and he spoke very solemnly. "My friends," he said, "there is a world that needs our help. It is called earth, and its fate hangs in the balance. Its humans have reached a critical point in their collective birthing, and they will be stillborn without our help. Who would like to volunteer for a mission to this time and place, and render service to humanity?"

"Tell us more about his mission," they asked.

"I am glad you asked, because it is no small thing. I will put you into a deep, deep trance, so complete that you will forget who you are. You will live a human life, and in the beginning you will completely forget your origins. You will forget even our language and your own true name. You will be separated from the wonder and beauty of our world, and from the love that bathes us all. You will miss it deeply, yet you will not know what it is you are missing. You will only remember the love and beauty that we know to be normal as a longing in your heart. Your memory will take the form of an intuitive knowledge, as you plunge into the painfully marred earth, that a more beautiful world is possible.

"As you grow up in that world, your knowledge will be under constant assault. You will be told in a million ways that a world of destruction, violence, drudgery, anxiety, and degradation is normal. You may go through a time when you are completely alone, with no allies to affirm your knowledge of a more beautiful world. You may plunge into a depth of despair that we, in our world of light, cannot imagine. But no matter what, a spark of knowledge will never leave you. A memory of your true origin will be encoded in your DNA. That spark will lie within you, inextinguishable, until one day it is awakened.

"You see, even though you will feel, for a time, utterly alone, you will not be alone. I will send you assistance, help that you will experience as miraculous, experiences that you will describe as transcendent. For a few moments or hours or days, you will reawaken to the beauty and the joy that is meant to be. You will see it on earth, for even though the planet and its people are deeply wounded, there is beauty there still, projected from past and future onto the present as a promise of what is possible and a reminder of what is real.

"You will also receive help from each other. As you begin to awaken to your mission you will meet others of our tribe. You will recognize them by your common purpose, values, and intuitions, and by the similarity of the paths you have walked. As the condition of the planet earth reaches crisis proportions, your paths will cross more and more. The time of loneliness, the time of thinking you might be crazy, will be over.

"You will find the people of your tribe all over the earth, and become aware of them through the long-distance communication technologies used on that planet. But the real shift, the real quickening, will happen in face-to-face gatherings in special places on earth. When many of you gather together you will launch a new stage on your journey, a journey which, I assure you, will end where it began. Then, the mission that lay unconscious within you will flower into consciousness. Your intuitive rebellion against the world presented you as normal will become an explicit quest to create a more beautiful one.

"In the time of loneliness, you will always be seeking to reassure yourself that you are not crazy. You will do that by telling people all about what is wrong with the world, and you will feel a sense of betrayal when they don't listen to you. You will be hungry for stories of wrongness, atrocity, and ecological destruction, all of which confirm the validity of your intuition that a more beautiful world exists. But after you have fully received the help I will send you, and the quickening of your gatherings, you will no longer need to do that. Because, you will Know. Your energy will thereafter turn toward actively creating that more beautiful world."

A tribeswoman asked the shaman, "How do you know this will work? Are you sure your shamanic powers are great enough to send us on such a journey?"

The shaman replied, "I know it will work because I have done it many times before. Many have already been sent to earth, to live human lives, and to lay the groundwork for the mission you will undertake now. I've been practicing! The only difference now is that many of you will venture there at once. What is new in the time you will live in, is that the Gatherings are beginning to happen."

A tribesman asked, "Is there a danger we will become lost in that world, and never wake up from the shamanic trance? Is there a danger that the despair, the cynicism, the pain of separation will be so great that it will extinguish the spark of hope, the spark of our true selves and origin, and that we will separated from our beloved ones forever?"

The shaman replied, "That is impossible. The more deeply you get lost, the more powerful the help I will send you. You might experience it at the time as a collapse of your personal world, the loss of everything important to you. Later you will recognize the gift within it. We will never abandon you."

Another man asked, "Is it possible that our mission will fail, and that this planet, earth, will perish?"

The shaman replied, "I will answer your question with a paradox. It is impossible that your mission will fail. Yet, its success hangs on your own actions. The fate of the world is in your hands. The key to this paradox lies within you, in the feeling you carry that each of your actions, even your personal, secret struggles within, has cosmic significance. You will know then, as you do now, that everything you do matters. God sees everything."

There were no more questions. The volunteers gathered in a circle, and the shaman went to each one. The last thing each was aware of was the shaman blowing smoke in his face. They entered a deep trance and dreamed themselves into the world where we find ourselves today.

****

Who are these missionaries from the more beautiful world? You and I are surely among them. Where else could this longing come from, for this magical place to be found nowhere on earth, this beautiful time outside of time? It comes from our intuitive knowledge of our origin and destination. The longing, indomitable, will never settle for a world that is less. Against all reason, we look upon the horrors of our age, mounting over the millennia, and we say NO, it does not have to be this way! We know it, because we have been there. We carry in our souls the knowledge that a more beautiful world is possible. Reason says it is impossible; reason says that even to slow -- much less reverse -- the degradation of the planet is an impossible task: politically unfeasible, opposed by the Money Power and its oligarchies. It is true that those powers will fight to uphold the world we have known. Their allies lurk within even ourselves: despair, cynicism, and resignation to carving out a life that is "good enough" for me and mine.

But we of the tribe know better. In the darkest despair a spark of hope lies inextinguishable within us, ready to be fanned into flames at the slightest turn of good news. However compelling the cynicism, a jejune idealism lives within us, always ready to believe, always ready to look upon new possibilities with fresh eyes, surviving despite infinite disappointments. And however resigned we may have felt, our aggrandizement of me and mine is half-hearted, for part of our energy is looking elsewhere, outward toward our true mission.

I would like to advise caution against dividing the world into two types of people, those who are of the tribe and those who are not. How often have you felt like an alien in a world of people who don't get it and don't care? The irony is that nearly everyone feels that way, deep down. When we are young the feeling of mission and the sense of magnificent origins and a magnificent destination is strong. Any career or way of life lived in betrayal of that knowing is painful, and can only be maintained through an inner struggle that shuts down a part of our being. For a time, we can keep ourselves functioning through various kinds of addictions or trivial pleasures to consume the life force and dull the pain. In earlier times, we might have kept the sense of mission and destiny buried for a lifetime, and called that condition maturity. Times are changing now though, as millions of people are awakening to their mission all at the same time. The condition of the planet is waking us up. Another way to put it, is that we are becoming young again.

When you feel that sense of alienation, when you look upon that sea of faces mired so inextricably in the old world and fighting to maintain it, think back to a time when you too were, to all outside appearances, a full and willing participant in that world as well. The same spark of revolution you carried then, the same secret refusal, dwells in all people. How was it that you finally stopped fighting it? How was it that you came to realize that you were right all along, that the world offered to us is wrong, and that no life is worth living that does not in some way strive to create a better one? How was it that it became intolerable to devote your life energy toward the perpetuation of the old world? Most likely, it happened when the old world fell apart around your ears.

As the multiple crises of money, health, energy, ecology, and more converge upon us, the world is going to collapse for millions more. We must stand ready to welcome them into the tribe. We must stand ready to welcome them back home.

The time of loneliness, of walking the path alone, of thinking maybe the world is right and I am wrong for refusing to participate fully in it... that time is over. For years we walked around talking about how wrong everything is: the political system, the educational system, religious institutions, the military-industrial complex, the banking industry, the medical system -- really, any system you study deeply enough. We needed to talk about it because we needed to assure ourselves that we were not, in fact, crazy. We needed as well to talk about alternatives, the way things should be. "We" should eliminate CFCs. "They" should stop cutting down the rain forests. "The government" should declare no fishing zones. This talk, too, was necessary, for it validated our vision of the world that could be: a peaceful and exuberant humanity living in co-creative partnership with a wild garden earth.

The time, though, for talking merely to assure ourselves that we are right is coming to an end. People everywhere are tired of it, tired of attending yet another lecture, organizing yet another discussion group online. We want more. A few weeks ago as I was preparing for a speaking trip to Oregon, the organizers told me, "These people don't need to be told what the problems are. They don't even need to be told what the solutions are. They already know that, and many of them are already in action. What they want is to take their activism to the next level."

To do that, to fully step into one's mission here on earth, one must experience an inner shift that cannot be merely willed upon oneself. It does not normally happen through the gathering or receiving of information, but through various kinds of experiences that reach deep into our unconscious minds. Whenever I am blessed with such an experience, I get the sense that some benevolent yet pitiless power -- the shaman in the story -- has reached across the void to quicken me, to reorganize my DNA, to rewire my nervous system. I come away changed.

One way it happens is through the "gathering of the tribe" I described in this story. I think many people who attended the recent Reality Sandwich retreat in Utah experienced something like this. Such gatherings are happening now all over the world. You go back, perhaps, to "real life" afterwards, but it no longer seems so real. Your perceptions and priorities change. New possibilities emerge. Instead of feeling stuck in your routines, life changes around you at a vertiginous pace. The unthinkable becomes commonsense and the impossible becomes easy. It may not happen right away, but once the internal shift has occurred, it is inevitable.

Here I am, a speaker and a writer, going on about how the time for mere talk has ended. Yet not all words are mere talk. A spirit can ride the vehicle of words, a spirit that is larger than, yet not separate from, their meaning. Sometimes I find that when I bow into service, that spirit inhabits the space in which I speak and affects all present. A sacredness infuses our conversations and the non-verbal experiences that are becoming part of my events. In the absence of that sacredness, I feel like a smart-ass, up there entertaining people and telling them information they could just as easily read online. Last Friday night I spoke on a panel in New York, one of three smart-asses, and I think many in the audience left disappointed (though maybe not as disappointed as I was in myself). We are looking for something more, and it is finding us.

The revolutionary spark of our true mission has been fanned into flames before, only to return again to an ember. You may remember an acid trip in 1975, a Grateful Dead concert in 1982, a kundalini awakening in 1999 -- an event that, in the midst of it, you knew was real, a privileged glimpse into a future that can actually manifest. Then later, as its reality faded into memory and the inertial routines of life consumed you, you perhaps dismissed it and all such experiences as an excursion from life, a mere "trip." But something in you knows it was real, realer than the routines of normalcy. Today, such experiences are accelerating in frequency even as "normal" falls apart. We are at the beginning of a new phase. Our gatherings are not a substitute for action; they are an initiation into a state of being from which the necessary kinds of actions arise. Soon you will say, with wonder and serenity, "I know what to do, and I trust myself to do it."

Torch

I read this on an internet entheogen forum the other day. It is quite amazing that these conversations go on over such great distances. Human beings are so amazing.At times I am just flattened by the reality that so many people have access to so much medicine, and how this is effecting people. I trust that spirit guides these people in ways I cannot imagine, and i know that it guides them in ways that helps the world, and i think you can feel that from the words below.


Question: Greetings to all,
A friend has been tempting me to try the sacred cacti (peruvian torch), but Im a little resistant because of the duration and since Aya has worked so well as an ally thus far. So I would appreciate any comments and advice.
What I mainly want to know is how the healing compares with Aya. The day after Aya I always feel thoroughly healed and extremely mood elevated. Is that aspect present in the cacti?
Any admonitions are welcome.


Answer: If you feel depleted or tired after working with the cactus it means its not done working with you, and you must go back to it to get more work done. Then you do, and you still might be tired or exhausted the next day... you may have seen the sun rise and this may have brought the power of the cactus to you for a few more hours giving you a look at what more you must do to get cleaned up and clear. So then you go back... this time you give more to the cactus then it gives to you, and you bloom, you flower, and after that you are no longer tired, you are well and you are well for a long time. there is no next day feeling fine healing... it goes on for the rest of your life, but for months after words you have this strong glowing inner power that attracts others that need healing, some people who you never have met or will meet again, think of you as holy, and this is the first time that had ever crossed their minds.
you are changed and you can feel it...
it requires perseverance and patience, much like the cactus it self needs to grow and finally bloom.

Shamanry vs Shamanism

Lets look for a moment at then suffix after the world shaman.... ism... this designates that the term shaman is a belief system. Indeed is is not a belief system and there never was of will be a real shamanism. Which is quite the thing to say in the face of multiple books, workshops, and new age mystics talking about it, even college text books... but there is no such thing as shaman'ISM'. There are animists and there are shamans... but I want to get to that in a second...
The etymology of the word shaman means some one who knows... whats the difference between one who knows about basket weaving and the one who knows about say spirits and the cosmology of their people. They are both ones who know... but the basket weaver is not going to be called a shaman. So what do we mean when we say that someone is one who knows? What we are talking about is that someone knows perhaps more then us about life as an animist.
the term shamanism has in some ways really held us back. It has prevented us from seeing the forest from the trees... we see shamans instead of the cultures and belief systems they emerge from. We see them divorced from animism. In honesty we cannot have shamans with out animism, for an shaman is one who knows much or enough to be said they know some something ( and any one that knows more then you is an expert) about being an animist!

In some ways this demystify's the role of shaman a bit, it also rids us of the notion that the role of shaman is a belief system and redirects our attention from the bells and bone whistles to the actual belief system that shamans participate in.it also places animism as well as knowing much about animism into our laps... this to me is empowering, and takes us out of the fraudulent messiness we have found ourselves in with silly new age neo-shamanism and disjointed psychotheraputic practices. We can all be one who knows as much as we motivate ourselves to know, and those that know more become teachers, guides and helpers. Knowing this allows us to cultivate our own relationship dynamics with nature and spirit, life and death, and inspires creativity, co-creating new emergent forms of being in "relationship" with life. We can find inspiration from other animist, learn from those that know more then we do about their own relationship, but seeing full well that our relationship is ultimately very much up to us to create, cultivate, and nurture.
This also places the relationship in our hands... and right "smack" in front of us, as they say. If animism is a relational ontology and shamans are those that know much about relational ontology then we can see that there cannot be a lack of relationship between this cosmology and its integration in how we live our lives... weekend warriors and office space practitioners of shamanic arts in the middle of the urban landscape don't make as much sense as they once did, the relationships seem unstable and shaky and ineffectual.
You start want to have a relationship with your food, with your housing, and clothing... all of the other than human persons that give you life and a sense of meaning and purpose have a relationship with us... taking the 'ism' out of shamanism forces us to take a deper harder look at those relationships.
It is perhaps the need to do just that that draws modern western minds to shamans and animists, and why we find people rediscovering that one can just be an animist by developing respectful relationships with life again. They don't need to culturally appropriate or imitate the relationships of others to be an animist. They do not need workshops and sage burning gurus and they don't need to line the pockets of coyotes to establish these relationships if they don't want to.
Some academics have pointed at shamanry as being a better coinage for the work of a shaman or "animist that knows much about being an animist". I prefer this word. It makes a good point... since when has there been carpenter-ism, teacher-ism, dentist-ism and doctor-ism. Because the word shaman is etymologically unknown to many folks... it would only make sense that we would botch this one up fairly good. My hope though is that we begin to see the difference between shamanry and shamanism, the interconnected relationship between shamans and animists and we start being able to cultivate a more grounded and integrated shamanry and animism then what the new age profiteers and misled academics have provided us...
http://backyardshamanry.blogspot.com/
http://www.bioregionalanimism.com/

Synergy

Synergy is Shamanry

syn·er·gy (snr-j)

n. pl. syn·er·gies

1. The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.

2. Cooperative interaction among groups, especially among the acquired subsidiaries or merged parts of a corporation, that creates an enhanced combined effect.

---

[From Greek sunergi, cooperation, from sunergos, working together; see synergism.]
[New Latin synergismus, from Greek sunergos, working together : sun-, syn- + ergon, work; see werg- in Indo-European roots.]

Years ago, sitting in my bedroom with my very good friend Eric, we passed back and forth Eagles and crows feathers... and we discussed the relationship between Law and Freedom. At one point I handed Eric a handful of eagle feathers... over a dozen I believe. They were to many eagle feathers for him to hold so he handed them back to me. I sat above him for a moment, and I wished that he would understand how to hold and work with an eagles feather. Spirit moved through my words at that moment and eagle filled the room as well as wolf. I told Eric that when he smudged some one with an eagle feather he was not "using" the feather, controlling it, but instead the eagle was there still a part of the feather and that all he must do is hold the intention in his mind to cleanse with the feather and smoke. The feather started to move his hand and arm on its own, and his face turned to a look of pure amazement. I could feel the insight and the excitement that comes from realization, at that moment spirit and I shared with him that shamanry is not using nature or spirit to our own end, but holding a larger intention that nature holds as well and WORKING WITH NATURE to accomplish what is truly needed. Eric bowed and was grateful to learn this, and I sat down next to him on the floor once more, just as much a holy fool as he.

Tonight I discovered that the definition of the word synergy is what was being communicated through me from the whole that evening. It was eagles message and wolfs message to both of us that night. I had never known that that was how I worked or the insight that spirit was gestating within me for so many years until I had had an opportunity to teach it to my beloved friend. This point of view on shamanry and animism is what I try to share so much in my work... SYNERGY... In so many ways animism is the spiritual practice of natural synergy.
I will be contemplating synergy through out this winter time... this long cold deep dark in the PNW. I will contemplate synergy and ask bear to help me to understand the role of synergy in relationships more deeply as we dream through this long winter.

the importance of communion

Many years ago now, I moved my friend to New Mexico. He was a buddy, brother and a cohort, a teacher to me in many ways, and when he left it was a big transition for me to be with his friendship and guidance. I drove all his worldly possessions, his dog and his cat and his soon to be future wife and mother of his child from the PNW to New Mexico in a U-haul and before I left him there to start his new life in a new bioregion, I felt some what over whelmed, like a cloud was surrounding me and I couldn't see past it... I kept thinking, now what am I going to do with out my best friend? He called me up stairs and held out in front of him a hawk feather ( hawk being one of his personal medicines) and handed it to me say. " What your going to do now is go back to the PNW and teach people about the importance of communion."
So since that day this is what I have been doing via bioregional animism. If I could further simplify what bioregional animism is to some one I would perhaps say it is communion with nature, or perhaps it would be the art of conversation with nature, or communication with nature where you live for mutual benefit. WOW I could just keep going... but really its communing, its communion, or as Graham Harvey would say a relational ontology which is place based or locally-centric.

What is communion? What does it mean to commune?

- sharing thoughts and feelings
- a sharing of thoughts, emotions, or beliefs
- communion with strong feelings for: private communion with nature
- a religious group with shared beliefs and practices
- the act or an instance of sharing, as of thoughts or feelings.
- religious or spiritual fellowship.

as well as to commune... from Old French communer, to make common, share...
- to be in a state of intimate, heightened sensitivity and receptivity, as with one's surroundings
- to experience strong emotion for: communing with nature
- to talk intimately with
- communicate intimately with; be in a state of heightened, intimate receptivity; "He seemed to commune with nature"

and ironically...

Noun
1. a group of people living together and sharing possessions and responsibilities
HAHA!

For me these words commune and communion are KEY to really being animist. Quite possibly the very foundation of cultivating animist relationship dynamics. They were certainly

Recently I posted a short piece on a ceremony I had with my partner and my friend and I spoke about the communing people experienced with other than human persons. This has felt like the real basis and focus of Bioregional animism. Having respectful relationships with the living world requires communication and not just communication but communing with each other... to talk intimately with another, with an open heart and an open mind so that we do not harm each other out of carelessness. It takes real communing to have that authentic respect for the living world we seek to manifest through our being animist.
To commune with other than human persons and many time each other it often requires an approach I have called transrational or an intuitive approach that may require some slight shift of awareness or a drastic shift in awareness via an altered state. Animist people traditional embrace some form of transrational practice. For me personally and the people I generally associate with this is done with the aid of visionary plants and substances, though not relied upon to do so. This communion with these visionary people aid in communion and communing with other than human persons, just as any altered state of awareness will do so, though in some times subtle and not so subtle ways.

So how are you communing, how is this communing shaping how you live your life? Who have you been communing with and what messages have been received and given?

Being a bioregional animist I have focused on communing with the land I live upon and those that live around me so that we might live well together. Currently my life ha been changing in very big ways because of this communion and I am in awe of it.
I would love to hear from others who have been changed by such communion.
blessings
LLB

Green man

I had a dream of the green man the other night... its a classic image the green man being driven out of a village out of fear of his wildness by the people... it was a sad scene...
it makes me wonder about deforestation, habitat loss, the destroying of large areas of land to create housing developments.
People do not build or create their communities with nature or with any mindfulness to the wild... natural communities, wild communities of other-than-human-persons are destroyed to make room for homo-domesticus. The green man is most definitely driven out of these areas.
I was also thinking of a faun that comes and enters into my body from time to time... it often feels that Cernunnos, the green man and the faun share a common ethereal body manifesting as either or depending on what is needed of them. The faun was of a large wild wooded area near my home I had given offerings to him and asked for him to share space with me so I could learn from him... and he did... it was an amazing process... at any rate his level of mischievousness was intense... bordering on a sick sense of humor, and a wrathful sense of justice. What made this faun sick? The forest was nothing compared to the size it used to be that he was one with. The level of respect payed there was higher then most however trash was to be found all over. The forest itself was chopped up into islands with pavement roads and developments tearing it apart.


The other night my grrrrl friend pointed out how dangerous and mischievous forest spirits can be, I know to well how much this is so... and she pointed out how much more mischievous and dangerous they are when threatened, we discussed how important it is to make them our allies if possible, to be wild and a part of the forest again in our communities and ways of life.
I look at the forests destroyed by housing developments and i see that none of it is necessary at all! That its all poor planning and life style decisions as well as ecological and social apathy brought about and perpetuated by those first colonized European Christan’s driving the green man from the village.

How can we invite the green man back into our communities again? What offering and ritual action is needed to invoke him into our communities? What will bring the faun back to health, to make him seem less of a demon to those who see him as such out of ignorance? How can we honor the horned god where we live?

We can start by looking at how we consume the bounty of nature, how we live our lives daily, where we get our food. We can invite the green man back into our village by including the wild into the village again. Creating bio-swales instead of draining street water into the sewer system, creating green roofs on our houses, building with natural materials like cob, straw bale, and renewable resources, getting rid of pavement and the need for mass transit by re-designing our communities around COMMUNITY, so we can walk to all the places we need to go. Or we can create our own villages as a permacultured part of the wild forest... human beings have the ability to actually aid ecosystems with their presence as well as bio-remediate the areas that have been damaged. What would the psyche of a people be like if they lived not in civilization but in and with the wild again, not beside it but a part of it?
The joy of the green man and the growth and balance of his dancing feet would be in our hearts, the masculine stereotypes and gender roles would change and no longer would men be seen as symbols of oppression. Art and beauty would be just another natural expression like a birds song, simple and humble and to be found in the artifacts we create for daily living.
To invoke these beings of nature, these spirits and powers the ritual is a change in the way we live our lives. The new magical training is skill building in eco-design, whole systems design, permaculture, renewable resources, sustainability, and alternative energy. The circle that is cast is the recognition of our interdependence, and the chants are the affirmations and oaths that we will change the way we live and no longer participate in this driving of the green man from our village. We invite him back and give offerings to him, by create the pace for him to exist in our village and in our actions.

DOR DAY!

This Oct. 10th Have A HAPPY DOR DAY!

In honor of A(lfred) Irving Hallowell
(source)
Died 10 Oct 1974 (born 28 Dec 1892) American cultural anthropologist who was an authority on the Northern Ojibwa Indians. He used tests of perception, and particularly favoured the Rorschach ink blot test to assess individual Ojibwa personalities. Hallowell collected a series of 266 Rorschach records from various Ojibwa communities, and although he never prepared an over-all summary of the results in the form of a sketch of typical Ojibwa personality structures, he used the data in a number of papers. All of Hallowell's field work was undertaken among American Indians. He published many studies of the tribes and made important contributions to culture- and- personality theory. His book Culture and Experience appeared in 1955.« The Ojibwa of Berens River, Manitoba: Ethnography into History, by A. Irving Hallowell, et al.



October 10th is DOR day! What is DOR day you might ask?

A day of respect, or DOR DAY!
OK... so here is either a holiday for Bioregional Animists, a cognitive challenge, or a weekly or even daily practice... I guess it depends on you!
But here is the idea...
Find time to, just for the heck of it, think like an animist all day. Take the whole day to do it too...
by this I mean RELATE to every thing around you as a person ( an other than human person, NOT an anthropomorphised person, for you newbs to new animism) see how relating to every thing around you as a person changes your perception and your actions. Ask your self questions, ask other than human persons questions. Be mindful and respectful in your relations, but do this all day, and just see what happens.
It can be easy for us to take on the animist practice in theory and it can be easy to have relationships with powerful beings in nature like bears and cougars etc... but to extend animist thought and behavior into everything that we do for a day will be a hard rewiring for many of us not raised in a traditional animist home, and might even be hard for those of us who were!
This is a Day Of Respect to other-than-human-persons and of cultivating respectful relationships. It forces us to reevaluate of indoctrinated assumptions and behaviors and form new healthier ones...deepening our roots to our life place through the cultivation of new ways of thinking and acting in our life place... its a time of transformation and change, honor and respect... communication, acknowledgment, and celebration!
Especially CELEBRATION!!! Focus this on this day in ways we can cultivate new celebratory relationships with natural cycles and other-than-human-persons ( who might be a natural cycle as well... hmmm....), maybe ask the land how it celebrates its birthday, or the coming of winter, or how it honors its dead? DOR day is a day of communion and discovering how we might celebrate and honor our lives as animists.

Have a Happy DOR DAY!
Thanks Irving for opening a Door...