Destined to Fail
on purpose
Your gods are supposed to fail you. It’s by design.
The human infant is helpless when it is born. It depends on its parent, or caregiver, to feed it, shelter it, clothe it, and protect and provide for it for most of its developing years.
To a child, that parent or caregiver is god because their survival is dependent on them. Children are born dependent on purpose.
Now, it’s important to understand that the word ‘god’ is not a name. God is a classification. The English word“god” traces back through the Germanic languages to an ancient Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root. In other words, God’s name, whoever that is for you, is not god. One theory suggests it comes from the root *ǵʰeuə-meaning “to call” or “to invoke” (related to the Sanskrit hūta, meaning “invoked”). In this case, a “god” would be “that which is invoked”. It isn’t known how many gods have been worshipped throughout history, but some sources estimate that number to be at least 18,000. But I am going to challenge that and say that there are many more than that, and that our parents, or whoever we see as caregivers, are the first ones to play that role in our lives. And are by no means the last.
Sometimes the parent, in the child’s eyes, is a good god, and sometimes they are not. Nonetheless, ‘good god’ or ‘bad god,’ a small child naturally pedestalizes the parent who is simply human, just like them. Children see their parents as all-powerful and all-knowing. This projected idea is born from the instinct to survive. It’s human to worship, whether we acknowledge it or not. We are born doing it. When we believe we are helpless, we must have our needs met by something or someone that we see as more powerful than ourselves, outside ourselves.
However, something happens right around adolescence. Or should. When we become adolescents, we start to notice our parents’ humanness, their imperfections, and we break with the idea that they are infallible deities. In some cases, this happens much earlier or later, or not at all, but when it does, it is a very natural and normal, largely unconscious occurrence.
Our gods must fail us for us to mature and individuate as human beings. Ancient cultures celebrate this realization by ushering in adulthood with meaningful rites of passage that were empowering and liberating. This process contributed to and supported the individual’s individuation in many of those cultures. They learned to in-source their connection to the divine and understand their own embodiment of divinity, rather than continue to outsource that role to another imperfect human being.
In modernity, and especially in the West, for many, rather than this time being a rite of passage to celebrate, it is a devastating occurrence for the individual. It is a crisis. They are not ready to let go of the image they have created, nor do they understand that they should. In our society, individuals are conditioned to select another object to project the role of deity onto. This is due to relentless societal conditioning that depends on our remaining fearful, powerless, and co-dependent. Yes, like infants. Society wants you to be helpless and dependent.
God might be a government, a political party, a politician, an ideology, a religion, or a religious leader. It could take the form of an intimate or familial relationship. It could be one’s job or role in society. It could be a thousand other things, but one thing is for sure: individuals believe they are powerless without it. Somewhere deep in the subconscious, they truly believe that without it, they could not survive. That’s a terrifying way to live.
The natural adult human, in tune with their nature, is empowered and equipped not only to survive but to thrive on this earth. They know, deep within themselves, that their connection to Ultimate Reality is already within them, and live in inherent trust in Life itself, and in themselves.
We have been tricked, folks, deeply. For thousands and thousands of years, rather than journey into the world as sovereign, natural, adult human beings, we replace our parents with that which is akin to a parasite when we reach adulthood. Institutions and situations that are more than ready to feed off our life force energy, with the promise to meet our needs, which they never actually do, by the way. We are not meant to live like domesticated pets, but that is the case for most of humanity now.
That is changing, and in the coming years, that change will accelerate. Strangely, we human beings can get awfully comfortable with suffering and subjugation. I hear a lot of people long for what was or for some utopic future with a ‘perfect’ subjugator. I don’t want either. I am not enjoying the breakdown of this projected reality. It’s difficult to watch. It’s uncomfortable. It’s all we have known, and change is hard, I get it. We don’t know what is ahead and what the dismantling of this sick system is going to bring. But it’s the path we must walk to return to our inherent nature, regain our power, and claim our birthright to live as free natural humans on this beautiful planet! As much as I’d like the easy button, there isn’t one. For a new epoch to emerge, the old one must go. And it certainly seems that it is, albeit violently, as it clings to what remains of its grip.
Yes, our gods have failed us, but perhaps they were always supposed to. All that we need is already within us.
April