Cultured

What the heck does "cultured" actually mean? In gardening terms it means to help to grow or to cultivate. And we all know what "culture" means when it is in a test tube or petrie dish. I don't even know how to spell that kind of dish let alone use one!

In modern society, to be "cultured" is something similar to being "bred" or "molded" into something more "refined" than the average person. In shamanic terms this is called "brain washed". We need to look very long and hard at the ways in which we have become cultured. When we do we often find that it was a means of taking away our innocence and our intuitive processes in order to make us conform.

I remember first going to school and finding that this was not a happy place. It was not nearly as much fun as my back yard and definitely not as fun as being with my grandmother when everyone else in the whole world (or so it seemed) was in school. It didn't help that my grade 1 teacher was a tyrant who enjoyed beating (especially boys) with a yard stick over the head. Don't ever be caught gazing out the window to the great outdoors, man! That was a sure fire instant death wish! She also liked to not let little girls go to the washroom during class time. So there were a lot of mortified girls with wet pants and skirts at the end of the day. In this day and age the woman would have been sent to prison for child abuse. Back then, Nazis like her ruled the day.

So that was my first introduction to culture. From there it continued to show its ugly head in terms of peer pressure, then social programming from the television and I won't even go into the whole church thing! Yikes!

So when I reached my early twenties I decided to say goodbye to much of that programming. That was my first step in my male liberation. Many women have thanked me for that because, unlike other men in their lives, I don't think a woman's place is to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. I had three older sisters who were women's libers and I think that this helped me a lot to see things from an entirely different perspective than the one that was being shoved down my throat by "culture".

My most liberating moment though, was when I realized that, even though it had been a long time since preschool, the birds and animals and trees were quite willing to still talk with me. They never forgot me. I had forgotten them because I was told to. But they never forgot me. So now my revenge on culture is that no matter where I go, I have friends in nature as well as in the two legged variety. And I can inspire others to reconnect with their own natural way of being and with who they truly are, instead of who they "ought" to be!

Blessed Be
Trent

www.deerhornshamanic.com