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Day of the Dead
Letter from Mexico | November, 2001
Day of the Dead
For two weeks, a cluster of mom-and-pop vendors in the Plaza Civica, three blocks from our house, have been selling human skulls, fruit, bones, plates of food like tamales and enchiladas and chicken molé, and skeletons in coffins -- all in pastel colors and made of sugar, and all no larger than the palm of your hand. These are tokens of Day of the Dead, one of the most solemn and, paradoxically, one of the most cheerful fiestas on the Mexican calendar.
The candied food goes onto home altars; real food, tequila, Coca-Cola, candles, and armloads of orange marigolds are taken to the family plot at the cemetery the night before la Dia de los Muertos. They are placed on gravestones with pictures of the departed, and everyone sits and reminisces about -- and with -- the dead person. All that night, and all the next day, with candles blazing, children running around, and people quietly chatting and laughing, the dead come alive again.
The pervasive religion of Mexico teaches that one lives a good life, and then one goes to heaven to be with God and the angels. But Day of the Dead is about the dead returning to earth and gathering with the living in, what one writer has called "the most complete of family reunions."* Its sensibility is pre-Christian, perhaps prehistoric. This is ritual rooted in a tradition that transcends religion, and goes to a kind of "earth spirituality."
DEATH AND REBIRTH
Today, along with twelve retreatants who are here this week, I made my way through the rows of flower-strewn graves at our local camposanto. My thoughts were about my own death, of course, but also about the death of the world as we have known it -- and the birth of a new world. The Event of September 11 (what is now being called, like a global alarm, simply Nine-One-One) signaled for all of us the start of a new way of thinking, and a new way of being. We are just beginning to understand how things are different.
Something has died, and something new and exciting is being born. And what is emerging out of this Great Shift appears to be about our very definition of ourselves: We are coming awake from the slumber of believing that we are separate from one another.
RELIGION AND SEPARATION
One of the most revealing insights that we are gaining from The Event is that Religion, which we had thought was our path back to the Divine, has actually been serving the opposite purpose. Far from bringing us together as a species, religion has been keeping us apart. Organized religious systems begin from this position: WE are "of God" -- everyone else is an infidel.
Etymology: Middle English religioun, from Latin religion-, religio supernatural constraint, sanction, religious practice, from religare to restrain, tie back. The word has the sense of harnessing unruly human nature and binding one to a set of beliefs. Since the beliefs are about a person's connection to the Divine, they hold tremendous power. If your beliefs are different from mine on this momentous issue, we surely are separate and apart from one another. If I believe that my connection to the Divine is the only true connection, then you are evil, worthy of punishment, and even, ultimately, eradication.
The Event, executed in the name of God by passionate adherents of Islam, unmasked the separating principle of religion itself. Andrew Sullivan, writing in the New York Times Magazine, says Islam, not religious fanaticism, is to blame for the brutal attacks in September: "Most interpreters of the Koran find no arguments in it for the murder of innocents. But it would be naive to ignore in Islam a deep thread of intolerance toward unbelievers, especially if those unbelievers are believed to be a threat to the Islamic world."*
So, it may not be just the crazies like Osama bin Laden or the nutballs like Pat Robertson who are inciting havoc across the land, but mainstream religion itself. The roots of hate may lie in one religion's overtly separate self-designation as "the chosen people" -- and in another's anthem of "no salvation outside the Church," which has sanctioned bloody crusades, inquisitions, and persecutions.
'NEW TIME' CHANGES
Everywhere, now, we may begin seeing the collapse of organized religion. The Event, fueled by religion, was the last straw. In New Time, religion will be replaced by personal spirituality. We thought we had to join a group and be led by a priest, minister, or rabbi to get to "heaven." But now we are learning that we may have projected our Inner Priest onto people outside of us. We are finding that we can reach our Creator perfectly well on our own, without rules, without guilt, and without having to believe that we are special or separate.
In this venture, we have been prepared by two decades of what Caroline Myss calls "spiritual narcissism." But even that will give way as we redefine ourselves. "A philosophical shift of historical importance is occurring throughout the world," says Marianne Williamson. "Yes, we know that we are rational beings. Yes, we know that the physical world is based on the laws of science. And we also know -- or remember at last -- that in fact we are spiritual beings."* She is echoing the philosopher paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin who, fifty years ago, observed, "We are not human beings making a spiritual journey; we are spiritual beings making a human journey."
ON THE CUSP
The stars, also, are helping us. Astrologers are telling us that we are on the cusp of the Age of Aquarius. Astrological ages go "backwards" around the Zodiac very slowly -- each age is around 2160 years in duration. We are leaving the Age of Pisces, where organized religion was born, and entering the Age of Aquarius, which will emphasize personal responsibility in matters of spirituality, and a passionate humanitarianism.* In New Time, national boundaries will evaporate, cultures will mingle, and all of us will be in the service of our mother, this planet.
I thought of this as I watched families conversing with their dead relatives tonight at the cemetery. What they were doing was as ancient as the earth, and came from the intuitive mystical understanding that not even death can separate us from one another.
Our whole species appears to be moving inexorably, and now, with deliberate speed, in that direction. Let's hope we will do so peacefully, and with awareness.
All of us at the retreat center send you our affectionate regards,
Joseph Dispenza
LifePath
San Miguel de Allende
Mexico
NOTES
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