That the meaning of life is to become what Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this intended you to be. Every other being already knows this: an oak tree is trying to be the best oak tree it can be, and a wolf the best wolf. Humans are the ones who get lost, and the animist answer is to come back and grow, as fully as possible, into the unique human being each of us was meant to be, by descending to our roots rather than trying to rise above being human.
Why do humans ask what the meaning of life is? #
Because we are the ones who forget. Every animal, plant and stone just knows what it is meant to be: once they have learnt from their mother, bears just get on with being bears, turtles hatch knowing how to be turtles, oak trees get on with being oak trees and rivers with being rivers. Humans have a unique ability not to know who we are or how we are meant to be, a unique ability to become lost.1
Part of the reason is that, amongst the PeoplesThe Peoples. The Animal People, Plant People, Standing People (the Trees) and Stone People: our elder kin, of whom the Human People are the youngest and least wise. A family, not a hierarchy. Read the full answer, we are the children: the Stone People are the oldest and wisest, then the Plant People, then the Animal People, and then us. This is not a hierarchy but a family, and like children we need regular guidance and have a lot to learn.1 So when we ask “What is the meaning of life?”, what we are really asking for is a story to guide us and live by, and the question underneath is “How shall I live my life?” What makes us unique is not that we are better than the other Peoples, but that we forget how we are meant to live.2 See Who are the Animal, Plant and Stone People?
What answer does animism give? #
That the meaning of life is to be what Mother Earth intended you to be. Rocks, trees and cats know exactly that, which is why shamans say the other Peoples are wiser than us: we are literally surrounded by beings who know the meaning of life.3 When Paul Francis once asked his own Human Lower-World GuideHuman Lower-World Guide. A face put on the human Oversoul: the Ancestors met through an individual form, genuinely other than us, chosen from pre-Fall hunter-gatherer humanity. Related to as a teacher, never a master. Read the full answer the question, she answered “Ask that rock”, then “Ask that tree”, and finally “Ask your cat”.3
Everything around us understands that its purpose is to be the best version of itself it can be. The animist answer for us is the same: to become, as fully as possible, the unique human being each of us was meant to be, and to really do it, so that by the time we die we have become the best version of that human being we could possibly have been in this life. There is nothing wrong with being human. The trouble is only that we get lost, and the answer is to come back to being the thing we are meant to be and grow into it.
Isn’t the ability to ask the question what makes us special? #
That is the usual story, and animism turns it the other way round. The dominant culture’s spirituality, shaped by the myth of human supremacy, is full of stories in which humans are more spiritually ‘evolved’ than other animals, much more so than plants, with stones not even alive; in which we alone are close to God and made in his image, and so alone have the consciousness needed to discover the meaning of life. From a shamanic point of view this is “complete and utter nonsense”.4
The other beings are not lesser for not asking. They are not puzzling over the question because they are already living the answer. Thousands of years of spiritualities built on rising above the rest of nature have not brought us closer to it; looking at where they have led, more of the same is unlikely to. See What is the myth of human supremacy?
What does ‘the being we were meant to be’ mean? #
In Therapeutic Shamanism it means our Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer Soul. Unlike the middle-world selfMiddle-world self. The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer, which is built from the stories we tell about who we are, the Soul is our truest self, wild and free and part of nature, and it is both who we truly are and the blueprint for what we are meant to grow into and become in the world.5 All beings have a template like this, a seed of what they could become, and a drive to grow into it, which the founder of counselling, Carl Rogers, called the “actualising tendencyActualising tendency. Carl Rogers’s term for the drive in every living thing to grow into the best version of what it is meant to be. In animist terms, this is the drive of the Lower-World Soul. More about this”. Whether a being succeeds depends on its surroundings too: a healthy seed in good conditions grows into a healthy plant, and in poor ones into a sickly plant still trying to be the best it can be.5
For most of human history, cultures were designed to help children grow into what they were meant to be, through initiation and by showing them what a fully authentic adult looked like. Modern societies are generally not designed to do this, and most people live and die never knowing who they really are.5 Finding the Soul is the beginning of a process, not the end of one: the Soul then brings answers about how to live and who to be in the world, and the middle-world self becomes the channel through which it flows into everyday life.6 See What are Soul, Spirit, the middle-world self and the body? and What is a calling?
Isn’t the point to transcend this life and rise above it? #
Not in animism. A lot of contemporary spirituality is about transcendence, and part of the reason is that we are lost and it is painful: most people are wandering around lacking purpose and meaning, and rising above it all looks like a way out. The animist answer is not more ascent. It is to descend again, to remember the roots.
That does not mean ignoring Spirit. The Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer is all about Spirit, and Upper-World practices help us move beyond our limited self. Lower-World practices are the equally spiritual journey to dig down and discover the true nature of our Soul, so that we become the greater, less limited being we were meant to be and take our unique and sacred place in the web of life. Our Soul is both our gift to the world and our service to it, and a whole life draws on both realms, ascending rooted, as the Plant People do, nourished equally by sky and earth.7 See Why does Therapeutic Shamanism begin with the Lower-World? and What is spiritual bypassing, and how can psychotherapy help prevent it?
Does a single life matter, if everything is part of something so vast? #
On one level nothing much does, and on another everything does, and a good life holds both. Some of the later stories carry this well, even though they come from Taker cultures. In the Hindu tale of Indra and the ants, the king of the gods is humbled when he learns of countless universes, each with its own Indra, and of the procession of ants that were once Indras whose pride got the better of them. He abandons the world to become a hermit, until a priest teaches him that whilst in the greater scheme of things nothing really matters, on another level things do, and that the two truths have to be kept in balance. Indra takes his place in the world again, this time with humility.8
Taking our place matters beyond ourselves, too. By growing into who we are meant to be and taking our rightful place in the world, we become whole ourselves, and help the Earth herself become whole.9 See Is animism the same as ‘all is one’?
