The Sacred Flight, The Feeling of Tribe

Uniting the Modern, the Premodern and the Postmodern

“Free-thinkers are difficult to unite, whereas followers are easy to unite.”

A Well Driven Humanity

Premodernity, Modernity and Postmodernity co-exist in the world today -

often in the same city.

Imagining civilization as a car:

Modernity has the accelerator pressed to the floor.

Premodernity and Postmodernity are vying for the brakes.

Modernity wants to convert human civilization into an AI-driven machine,

and conquer the cosmos.

Premodernity wants to bring back Truth, and The Only Way.

Postmodernity wants the freedom to be superficial, and the freedom to be deep.

The God of Modernity is Control.

The God of Premodernity is God.

The God of Postmodernity is Freedom.

Can they be united?

Or, more precisely:

can God and Freedom unite

to bring Control under control?

I believe they can be united.

Will they be able to slow the modernist juggernaut down – enough?

I don´t know.

So first:

how to unite the Premodern and Postmodern?

By forming Conscious Tribes.

Why?

Because Conscious Tribes honour the Sacred Unity experienced in Premodern Cultures,

while also honouring Postmodern relativism, individualism and anti-authoritarianism.

And the Conscious Tribe is not opposed to a degree of control.

After all, who wants their car to be out of control?

In summary:

The Conscious Tribe drives with (moderated) Modern control,

through a Premodern sacred landscape,

in Postmodern individual freedom.

It is a vehicle to take us into a Unified Human Furture.

The Baby and The Bathwater

In terms of our rejection of Premodernity...

In terms of our rejection of its rigid insistence on obedience...

In terms of our affirmation of logic over dogma...

In terms of our rejection of hierarchies and our affirmation of equality:

we threw out the baby with the bathwater!

Was there a baby in the dirty bathwater of dogma and obedience?

Yes. It was Sacred Unity.

What is Sacred Unity?

It is the feeling of sharing a journey of homecoming.

In Premodern Cultures people feel united on a collective pilgrimage -

whether towards God or Nirvana,

or of learning to live, here and now, in the Goddess or the Tao.

And this sense of a shared existential journey

is held in place by holy books, by hierarchies, by customs and codes,

and by conformity and obedience.

This journey of homecoming is the sacred context of premodern people´s lives.

For them, nothing is more important.

It informs everything – from economics and politics to diet and sex.

In a Premodern Culture people fly, together,

as one -

like a flock of birds -

and the journey of homecoming is the air they fly in.

This feeling of flight,

of united flight,

is exquisite and ecstatic.

But we could no longer bow to unquestionable dogma,

or submit to inauthentic authority,

that sustained that Sacred Flight.

The dogmatism and authoritarianism had to go!

And with the bathwater, went the baby.

Uniting The Premodern, The Modern and The Postmodern

Can we get it back?

Can we get The Premodern Flight back -

the unified flight -

the feeling of belonging, the sense of direction,

the ecstatic sense of homecoming to ourselves -

to something deeper than ourselves?

Can we get it back without sacrificing our dignity,

without betraying our equality,

without betraying our honesty

and faking certainty?

Can we have the baby back without the bathwater?

Is it possible to travel in Sacred Unity

without imposed, inherited superstitions and beliefs,

without institutionalized authorities -

as absolute equals -

and include the diversity of our individualities?

To do so would be

to honour Premodern Sacred Unity,

to honour Modern scientific (evidence-based) enquiry and equality,

and to honour the Postmodern freedom of indivdual experience.

Can it be done?

Yes!

How?

By living the fundamental perspective of Conscious Tribes.

Which is:

“I only ever experence my own, unique experience of any given moment”.

Is there an objective present moment?

One that everyone experiences?

One that all animals, fish, insects and trees experience?

I couldn´t say!

All I can say is that I have my own experience of each moment.

Since I am sitting where I am sitting,

and others are where they are -

even my visual experience of this moment is unique.

As is my emotional, mental and energetic experience.

This is my intellectual honesty.

But then, as I deepen into my own, unique felt-experience of the present moment -

I discover that I am inside a reality beyond definition -

that my body is woven into an elemental world -

a world of breath and death, and food and floods, and moutains and sunshine and wonder.

As I deepen into my own, unique experience of the present moment

I discover I belong.

I discover a reality I can only describe as sacred -

that I am a sacred creature among sacred creatures

in a wondrous, intelligent universe I cannot fully comprehend.

By entering my own, unique experience

I enter the sacred dimension so familiar to the Premodern mind,

I enter the absolute equality, and freedom from hierarchy, so valued by Modernity -

(because, obviously, there is no way to evaluate my unique experience

as above or below anyone else´s unique experience) -

I enter the freedom from arbitrary absolute beliefs of Modernity,

I enter the quintessetially scientific approach of Modernity -

(because I am facing the naked facts of my experience) -

and I enter the respect for our unique individualities

so ardently defended by Postmodernism.

And then -

in this ever-deepening, lived, experiential, continuous, daily meditation -

I meet others

who are also living in their own, unique experience -

who are also living in presentness and freedom...

I meet the other members of my Conscious Tribe.

And there it is:

the Flight -

the Sacred Unity.

The lost baby!

Without denying all of the evolutionary advances of Modernity and Postmodernity

we have reclaimed the heart of the Premodern.

Now we can share the driving!

Now we can set out towards a Unified Human Future!

Premodernity, Modernity and Postmodernity are all in reactive conflict with each other.

But we have found a unificatory way!

Realistically,

the implementation of this insight would mean:

Conscious Tribes weaving themselves into Conscious Communites -

and Conscious Communities weaving themselves into Conscious Cultures -

and becoming popular and influential enough

to persuade Modernity to slow down

its program of bio-digital convergence:

the conversion of humanity into an augmented transhumanity

confined to synthetic urban environments,

and virtual realities.

Baby, What Baby?

Is there anything stopping us from forming Conscious Tribes?

The fact we´re all so busy -

that we have no time?

The fact that we moved away to get a better job,

and that we lost touch with our childhood friends?

The fact that we don´t get on with our family,

or that we don´t even know our neighbours´ names?

Yes, all of the above, perhaps.

But the most fundamental obstacle to co-creating Conscous Tribes

is that we have forgotten the feeling of Sacred Unity -

the feeling of the shared flight -

The Feeling of Tribe.

We have become so accustomed to social fragmentation,

so accustomed to individualization -

we just don´t miss it.

We don´t long for it.

We don´t long for each other.

We don´t long to be close to each other -

to travel as-a-community through life.

We agree, intellectually, on the need

for decentralised, nature-based, conscious, caring community -

but we don´t feel it!

Our guts aren´t churning with longing.

We are not desperate for it.

And revolutions aren´t driven by the intellect,

they are driven by guts that churn!

We visualise disenfranchised, indigenous peoples,

addicted to alcohol, meths and glue -

uprooted from the deep soulfulness of their ancestral traditions -

rotting on reservations.

We don´t understand that we are those indigenous peoples -

that we ourselves have been separated from the land,

and each other -

from our own ancestral stories and songs and seasonal celebrations -

separated from our own Sacred Flight.

It is somehow unclear to us that we have been domesticated,

and set to work on tasks without meaning -

that we have been individualized -

that we have been addicted to superficial escapism -

and that the cities are our reservations.

We don´t miss the birdsong at dawn,

because we haven´t heard it for generations.

We don´t miss the unbreakable bond of brotherhood and sisterhood,

because it´s been shattered for generations.

We don´t feel the need to make a passionate stand for all that says "yes!" to life,

because we´ve been comfortably numb for generations.

And yet, and yet -

here I am writing about it!

Despite it all -

echoes of The Feeling of Tribe reach us nonetheless.

Odd, long-forgotten, familiar smells reach us,

reminding us of something we can´t quite place...

Sometimes it´s on the dance floor...

Sometimes we feel the music moving us all -

and for a while, we know -

we are one.

Sometimes we attend a self-development workshop.

People are so open, transparent, vulnerable...

We see ourselves in each other -

and we are a tribe,

for a weekend.

You will, of course, have your own memories

of moments of Sacred Unity -

times when you too, for a while, felt and knew

The Feeling of Tribe...

Yet whether because of the exhaustion of the everyday,

or the impersonality of city life,

or the pressure to attend to other priorities -

we don´t yearn for the flock.

We don´t miss that depth of existential intimacy.

We´ve become accustomed

to shallow and separate lives.

We have forgotten the beauty of deep belonging.

We have forgotten the gloriousness -

the freedom.

We have forgotten the togetherness, the love.

We have forgotten the joy of shared meaning and purpose...

So how do we remember?

By co-creating Conscious Tribes!

By committing to our own, unique experience of each moment -

and to relating from our own, unique experience of each moment -

and by associating with others who are doing the same.

And together -

becoming a Conscious Tribe!

How else to awaken The Feeling of Tribe -

other than to become one?

Talking about the importance of tribe

won´t give us the feeling.

Conscious Tribes are a beautiful, radical possibility

that could bring the sacredness of Premodernity and the freedom of Postmodernity

to the mechanical mind of modernity -

that could bring soulfulness to its heartlessness -

and support humanity´s journey towards a Unified Future.

At the same time, my advice is always to start small -

to treasure our own moments of remembrance -

those small echoes of the Sacred Flight.

To see them as intuitions of our birthright -

and to follow them -

and be open to a forgotten joy.

Mark the Mystic Activist

Aragon, Spain

Spring 2024

Image by Igor Morski

www.igormorski.pl