American Indian Spiritual and Pagan alternative belief systems - an answer to the consumer society

Reconnecting with nature recharges the spirit

So, if you are not into organised religion, you are not necessarily disenfranchised. Indeed, many are finding organised religion a turn off and are leaving it.

We often hear of dwindling church congregations of half a dozen stalwarts, the phrase 'when two or three are gathered together,' may be how organised religion eventually ends, when it is unviable to provide.

So where have all of these followers gone? why has organised religion declined? The stance by many schools to dispense with formal and religious based assemblies has been the biggest driver of a lack of following in recent times along with trendy left-leaning teachers. Communists despise religion.

A general malaise from the 1950's onwards has led people who were constrained by the strictures of wartime rationing and observance of regulations like the blackout, to rebel. Even after the war, rationing stayed in force, longer indeed than the war itself lasted.

When that was repealed, they found a new freedom, then came rock n roll and the swinging sixties. The grip of organised religion became ever more tenuous with the goings on of the Haight-Ashbory set and the New Age generation setting new standards and pushing the boundaries of acceptability.

The Green Man

a spiritual symbol thought to originate from the Greek God of Nature, Dionysis

Life became busier from the 1960's and the people became richer, but not spiritually.

A spin off of the New Agers of late 60's America was the resurgence of the Pagan and Spiritualist belief systems. In fact these have many shared traits with the American Indian people who have a spiritualist type of existence. I have come to see I have more in common with the American Indian beliefs than than the organised religion I was spoon fed.

People have become cynical, they have been lied to too many times by politicians supposedly acting in their best interests, when they are often clearly not.

The prevalence of UFO sightings has no doubt come to mind and the pat and frankly childish denials of the subject and convenient explanations fools no one. The people can see through the illusions.

The recent Brexit campaign was one example that the game is up, protestations of forthcoming Biblical-dimension doom and gloom if we voted to leave the EU were laughable.

The politicians severely underestimated the people's ability to see through the veiled threats, the desperate pleas to remain were ignored. The political arena changed, with people supporting in the past the major parties only, crossing the floor to vote with people from other parties for what they all thought was right for the majority and country, not just themsleves.

Even church leaders frantically and desperately tried to shore up the remain vote, a symptom of the present is that people made up their own minds.

An over 300 foot wide Mayan / Hopi Indian symbol appeared in crops at Silbury Wiltshire

This sort of instance has driven people to ask questions, questions about where we are going, where we are being led and who is leading us, do they actually know what they are doing?

A way of thought is developing and people are less accepting of dogma and rhetoric, they can see through the bullshit. The game has changed and so have people's need to find something else to follow, a true path and a true way of their own.

People are finding they need to re-evaluate their lives. They are often very busy running around with very busy lives that they are becoming ill with all the pressures that face them. 'New age' retreats allow people to find themselves, where they find people that help them redefine what is actually important in their lives.

Some then connect to nature, they find as the American Indians have, that going back to the forests reconnects them to a better place in their own minds. I have found that the countryside is always best for me to be in, just to stand in a forest, take in the air and enjoy the calmness does amazing things for you. It is like a warm rippling energy permeates you.

And this is why the Pagan and Spiritual beliefs have come back as a rejection of the modern consumer society by some people who have seen the light.

Go and read some American Indian wisdom, you will find for yourself that they have a great wealth of wisdom and knowledge. You will spiritually enrich yourself if you do so and go out into the forests and soak up the natural vibe. Then look for a way out, off the treadmill.