sacrifice

There’s always something to master. I embarked upon a spiritual path about 14 years ago and I have answered the majority of the questions that I wondered about. I am cautiously proud of myself for seeing the journey through, for forging onwards when the journey got very difficult, and for not falling into any of the myriad of pitfalls placed along the path. Always having something to master is frustrating. I would have thought spiritual mastery and seeing through the game would be the ultimate achievement. I’m pretty much at this point, yet I am incredibly frustrated at my inability to master some basic life skills. My otherworldly teachers must shake their heads as never before have they had a student that could complete the spiritual journey like I did considering my starting point as a beta male in a western material world. Worldly power and rewards did not capture me. Cultural pitfalls sure to trip anyone up, I sidestepped. Heavy doses of fear, I overcame. Threats of death I ignored and soldiered on. Many magicians posing as teachers reached out for me however I stuck to the dead teachers of yesteryear and ignored the parasites that attached themselves to their teachings. Ha ha I did it! I won! I see with a clarity like no other how it all works. Yet, my life isn’t perfect. Desires and thought patterns I know I can break free of I remain a slave to. I think I should turn my attention towards them much like I did with the spiritual path. I need to quell the frustration within.

Liberation involves sacrifice. When you are ready to go full on into freeing yourself from all that holds you back then you have to start giving up some things that will cause you suffering or in some cases it’s sacrificing some pleasure to forego that subsequent pain. Ice cream will give you some immediate mouth pleasure however the obesity and diabetes may not be worth it in the end!

I wanted to write a blog post about sacrifice in order to better understand it. My knowledge concerning sacrifice immediately leads me to stories in the Bible concerning sacrifice for ablution of sin and the story of Abraham’s obedience to Yahweh concerning sacrificing his firstborn son Isaac. In that case, it’s a pretty good study of what was valued the most in that period of time and to Abraham it was his son Isaac who would inherit his worldly possessions gained by his accomplishments. The test was to see if he would give that up for his god. Similarly, the idea of sacrificing your best bullock to your god is a big deal. We’d all prefer to give up the small and sickly animal and the idea of ancient sacrifice involved paying a heavy price. A nice reward from your chosen deity isn’t free.

What is the limit of credulity? What can you get humans to do in order to obtain power? Do they have a limit as to how far they will go? For some, there doesn’t seem to be a line they wouldn’t cross. Is that the lesson of the absurdity of the backbone of some religions? If you give up what is the most valuable to you, besides your own life, then you will be rewarded. The sacrifice is a symbol of your depravity and the extremes you would go to get what you want. Would you sacrifice your firstborn to gain favour with your god? When the bastions of power within society come for your children for profit and the subsequent power it brings, do you let them have your children or do you stand up at great risk to life and livelihood?

Sacrifice of life in order to go on living is a necessity. Daily involuntary slaughter of life so that we survive. That reality is something I don’t like thinking about. What is survival and why do I have to take life to live? Why do I trap myself in a belief that in order to attain my spiritual bona fides I need to become a vegan and not take animal life? What is the reward that is sought? Are you not upsetting the god of the plants? Why this paradox and this question I can’t satisfactorily answer? For animal life forms, the game is designed so you have to eat others or perish and eventually in turn be eaten. Them the parameters of the game, if you choose to play. Limit the suffering, move on towards the next level, and don’t get caught.

This kind of answers the question about ancient practices of taking life as ritual and sacrifice. Since there was no way out of the trap, in turn it was made holy. The life was offered to the god, including the best fat of the animal, and in turn you got your fill.

There’re also stories, not only in the Bible, but throughout antiquity of sacrificing the firstborn with a prohibition concerning this practice in the Bible confirming that it was practised in ancient times to gain favour with a chosen god. Ultimately, the substitute sacrifice for the firstborn is transferred on to the Lamb and reaches its fruition in the New Testament crucifixion and sacrifice of Christ to save humankind from its sins. The backbone of Judeo-Christianity is sacrifice of the firstborn.

I could go on and on about this and have even written a book about this very idea however it’s not the scope of this post. What I’m really trying to get at is the concept of sacrifice. At its core, sacrifice seems to be the idea that in order to gain something from your god or perhaps gain favour there has to be a transactional exchange. This struck a chord with me because it sounds like the concepts of reciprocity and reconciliation. We are playing a zero-sum game and for every gain for someone there is a loss for others. In a community where resources are all shared, if someone suddenly has way more material goods than another then somewhere along the line someone had to suffer a loss in order for the wealthy to have acquired their goods.

Spiritual paths of antiquity all had elements of sacrifice in them. You gave something up of value to the gods in exchange for a boon or forgiveness. In a way, it speaks to reconciliation and reciprocity where in essence you are trying to even out your karma so the evil eye of others’ jealousy does not cast a spell on your good fortune.

The concept of reciprocity as found in pre-Columbian South America was called ayni and operated on the simple concept that for everything you take you must give back an equal amount. I’ve seen it at work in my exploration of plant medicines. You can ask for a favour or a healing from a plant however there is an offering to be made. In other words, a sacrifice. It’s an honour system where the plant medicine will give you the boon you asked for and then await fulfillment of what you promised in return. This is where reconciliation comes into play. If you work with plant medicines enough you will see that if you do not fulfill your promises, eventually they leave you. The internet is rife with stories of selfish humans claiming the plants abandoned or turned on them; all said in earnest without a clue that the problem may lay with you and the fact you are all take and no give.

So, what I’m getting at is the concept of sacrifice parallels with the idea of reciprocity. Giving up something to get something. Reciprocity and reconciliation. The ultimate sacrifice was when you originally gave up knowledge of self for a ticket to the carnival of life. To return, I must sacrifice the rewards and pleasures of this life I have earned and grown accustomed towards. It’s such an interesting wheel of fortune. Give it all up to advance on the big game board. Give it all up for a new roll of the dice. Start over with nothing and play that earth game until you accumulate a new-found fortune. And then to return home, you once again give it all away. The ticket to ride always involves sacrifice.

You sacrifice omnipotence in order to play the game of life. Finally, you sacrifice the self and everything you accumulated in order to return to what it was you originally sacrificed. Therein lies the rub: Do you wait until the catastrophic full stop of death or do you beat the game and do it now?