The World is Upside Down

A New Perspective Series on the Classic Tale as Old as Time

Photo by Tsavo Trust

I’m so glad to be here today! I won’t belabor the details of how this post got delayed because I nearly got locked out of my Substack account this week. For a minute, I thought I was going to have to start over. 😰

I’m super excited to start a new series on the most important part of religious deconstruction: reconstruction! Nobody tears down an old, tattered, barren house (or philosophy) without replacing it with something much better (and nicer to look at). Yet I have noticed in deconstruction circles how people get stuck in the mud. They don’t know where to go, why they should go there, or if it’s safe to go anywhere! I mean, if they (we) fell for such egregious, disempowering, fear-mongering lies before, what’s to stop them from falling for similar lies again? (Pointing out the subtle problem here that fear of questioning or exploring spirituality from any or all angles remains as evidence that the lies are still working on their minds).

Spiritual liberation, post a religious dogma-certainty paradigm, initially feels like stepping out onto the ice on a lake after a first freeze.

*Where is it safe to step?
*What is solid (true) enough to hold me up?
*How far out there do I have to go?
*Are there any certainties or guideposts I can now rely upon to keep me from falling through, or to walk me safely home on the other side?
*Do I need certainties, or was that part of the programming?

These and many other questions arise in the newfound, often uncomfortable, unbounded freedom to think and question for ourselves.

Together we are going to explore a beautiful path of twists and turns along the safe journey home—from learning about what has been stolen from us, to what is rightfully ours. Kind of like a Pilgrim’s Progress 2.0. 😇

Do you ever look at the state of this world (or your life circumstances) and think to yourself, “How in the world did a ‘good God’ create such chaos and suffering? And how can I ever trust such a God?”

We are going to delve into some of these prolific mental and spiritual conundrums and obstacles later. But first, we are going to look at what we’re up against and why “awakening” is so difficult for most people.

The Root of Slavery is all a Mind Game
An adult African elephant weighs about 12,000-14,000 pounds, more than any other land animal, and is also arguably the most powerful of animals. They have been known to effortlessly lift buffalo and even tourist trucks off the ground when provoked, or to push over full-grown trees to access food. According to one website, their trunks have 40,000 muscles.

Have you ever heard how these sensitive beings are stripped of their power so they can be used, abused, and controlled? As babies, they are staked in place with chains or ropes that are too strong for them to escape. As they struggle to get free, the chains inflict painful wounds on their legs that cause physical and emotional trauma, resulting in their ceasing to attempt getting free. They bow their little wills to helpless, hopeless despair. This form of mind control is so effective on a young elephant, that they grow up into massive giants who could otherwise destroy an entire village but are too afraid to make an effortless attempt running away to freedom. At this point in their mental construct, a simple small rope will do with no resistance.

The same has been happening to most people for centuries, with many different yet similar techniques. Think of the powerful African kings and other royalty who were subdued and forced onto slave ships, stripped of their titles, dignity and known lives. Once they landed on new soil, enduring atrocities of dehumanizing abuses and deprivations, it only took one or two generations for their offspring to have no recollection or embodiment of their royal descent. They became mental, physical, and emotional slaves through and through, believing themselves to be powerless.

Enter the modern world, 2024. Thank goodness we don’t have to contend with slave traders, colonizers, and all the atrocities of the mental, spiritual, and political controls of the dark ages (crusades, witch trials, Holocausts, book burnings, etc.), right? Our world has finally (mostly) been liberated into peaceful domesticated behaviors by the evolution of consciousness and advances of civilized modern culture.

Um, wrong. The world is as full of violence, suppression of information, oppression of people, stealing of dreams, stripping of power, and all such enslavement tactics as much as ever. Only now it is conducted with a bit more cunning. The powers that be changed their game plan to be a little less in your face (e.g. rape, pillage, and burn at the stake) for a more subtle, subversive tactic of turning the world and our perception of reality upside down. It was a brilliant plan, really. In this way, they have been able to obtain our consent and our cooperation toward our own enslavement, rather than our resistance.

In her book Krivda: The Godtrix Against the Matrix, Enna Reittort refers to the lightbulb moment she had when she came across an old Russian word, krivda. “Krivda” is an ancient Russian word that means ‘deceit' with a twist—the subtler, more pernicious connotation of 'reality made crooked.' This word, and its meaning, underpins the discovery of how machineries of 'religion' operate over a long historical arc of six thousand years… Lies are a direct expression of un-truth, and can be easy to sniff out by discerning humans. But krivda is when the ‘straight’ becomes ‘crooked,’ when truth becomes distorted. It is much more powerful than lies. It has fooled humankind for millennia.”

Reittort even confronts one of the krivdas in her title by differentiating the Godtrix from the Matrix. In our modern culture, the word Matrix has been negatively associated with the controlling illusion of “The System” keeping humanity enslaved. As one website elaborates, “The Matrix is referring to structures in society that keep us bound to the traditional ways of living and working. …These systems can include societal norms, cultural expectations, educational institutions, and corporate structures that often prioritize profit over people. Essentially, the Matrix is the status quo that many people feel trapped in, making it difficult to break free and live life on their own terms. …The matrix can also be seen as a way of exerting control over individuals and maintaining the status quo. By defining what is considered ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable,’ the matrix can discourage people from questioning the system and pursuing alternative paths.” This concept was reinforced by the famous movie of the same name which is now a household reference.

However, Reittort expounds on the subversion of the word Matrix (Mother) itself, informing readers that the Matrix is in reality the representative of the Divine Feminine archetype, which is completely antithetical (a crooked truth) to the way the word is used today. This is why she coined the word, “Godtrix,” to differentiate that it is the Godtrix, a toxic masculine system, created by corrupt religious hierarchies who are implementing the patriarchal control systems in place today.

I might add that even though we have a generalized reference to patriarchy as the negative version of toxic masculine domination energy, we are rarely presented with the alternative beauty of the benevolent, highest functioning masculine energy that is balanced within Divine Source. Source is a perfect blend of pure, loving energies of both Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine. Our perceptions of masculine and feminine have been tainted, and have lost the essence of what they truly represent within Divine Order.

A lie is still a lie, even if everyone believes it.
One massive obstacle I had to face when deconstructing the global scale lie of hell was the question, could most of the world really be deceived/wrong about such a cornerstone religious doctrine, yet this one little person investigating it from the comforts of her living room, without formal seminary training, might somehow be enlightened/right? Could so many intelligent, educated, sincere people the world over really be that misled? Shouldn’t God be revealing the truth to them? It felt weird and impossible!

If the truth could be so easily discerned with a small amount of effort, it would imply that there were a lot of people in on the deception from the beginning, shaping Scripture and our perceptions of reality. Translators were dishonestly translating words and concepts. Pastors who had access to Greek and Hebrew Scriptures and who were supposedly taught how to study (therein lies the problem!) were going along with rife mistranslations and evolved doctrines with no basis, enforcing them on their congregations. The old telephone game. But the more I looked at the “evidences” for a concept of hell, the more convinced I was that it was a total con. Other than fantasy or imagination, there was no historical, scriptural, or empirical evidence!

When you begin to wake up out of the illusion and distortions, the world looks so bright and strange (while other people think you are the one who is strange). It causes you to continuously doubt yourself for a while. But one day you begin to meet other people (or you already have) who have also figured this out, and you want to jump for joy that you’re not some unicorn who singlehandedly saw the world right side up. Suddenly, the journey of life feels less lonely.

“The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.” ~Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

I want to briefly touch on where we’re going with this series. The why we have been so deceived with clever, crooked truths.

I recently felt compelled to look up the word, “sacrilege” in the etymology dictionary. You know, the word we use to shame good Christians into their proper position as inferior “slaves to an untouchable, holy God.” The meaning of sacrilege is in essence, the crime or sin of stealing what is consecrated to God, a stealer of sacred things (that which is associated with divinity), making profane—obsolete, mundane, wicked—that which is sacred.

Here is an opportunity for you to let a little light seep in. You can see krivda in action, which might present a treasure map to the jewels we’re after. All our lives we have been taught to categorize the sacred from the profane, two opposite extremes. One is holy, set apart, pure, admirable, unreachable. The other is, at best, benign (powerless), not worth our time and attention, obsolete as noted above. At worst, profane is worldly, temporal, wicked, contaminating, untouchable. Since the onset of religious indoctrination in our lives, we’ve been taught that we are unquestionably in the profane group. By nature, they tell us, we are born wicked, deceitful, and of no value except by the grace of God. And even if forgiven, we are never in the sacred category!

Yet even the Bible calls us image bearers of the divine, coheirs, and brothers and sisters of Christ (not that we need a Bible to figure this out). The buried jewel within each of us, is that we are the kings (“you are kings and priests, a royal priesthood”), we are the little gods who emerged from out of the One Big God. Like the elephant who forgot, we have the power within us. We are the wise ones, the gurus, the teachers. We have all we need right inside us: “the kingdom (reign) of God is within you.”

Do you see? Sacrilege was a concept used against us to hijack our divine identity as offspring of God by flipping the script of Who We Are. We weren’t the ones guilty of sacrilege (stealers of sacred things); the controllers and developers of the narrative who shaped our perception of God and ourselves were the sacrilegious stealing ones!

In the coming weeks we are going to explore the krivdas—the crooked truths—that have stolen our power and our identities. Beyond that, we will lean into the beauty and magic who we really are. It’s going to be super exciting as we unfold a much bigger Story that really feels like a true happily ever after for all.

Waking Within an Upside Down World
~By Julie Ferwerda (who is not by anyone’s standard, a poet!)

Most see the world as perfectly fine,
Creatures of habit, creatures of fate,
Keeping life’s pace at the mercy of liars
Never an inkling to think, lest they be late

Learn a single story of you, contrived in classrooms and books,
Behave, good grades, blend in—these prepare you for show!
Fall in line, don’t question authority, stay inside orthodoxy,
Yet we are made of endless stories, though many don’t know.

Most are content to see the world upside down,
Never to challenge what isn’t working or growing,
But here you are, trying to see the world right side up;
Waking to a River of Life that is no longer flowing.

Good News! You’re not a creature of fate!
Come with me, fellow traveler, to behold the glory,
There’s no end of the road for those with eyes opening,
The truth that you embody divinity is a much bigger Story!

See you next week.