we are already saved

est-amo-vojo: the path of loving-being; a project about choosing faith in the absurd cosmos

[estamovojo]

If we could ask the cosmos what the meaning of life is, It wouldn’t understand the question. It’s like asking someone what the point of breathing is— as if it needs justification! Existence is the point of existence. Every grain of sand, every breeze, every cough, every atom, every pointless forgotten little void of the universe exists in the exact same moment as the Big Bang and final heat death. Life is neither meaningless or meaningful; it is both. “Meaning” is meaningless and significance is insignificant. All the cosmos knows is that It is many, It is one, and It enjoys this. To suggest that the meaning of life requires an explanation, is to suggest that existence needs to be justified. That it is anything other than priceless. So the cosmos itself is our benevolent force. It moves us from frustrated desire to existential resolution and relief, and It does this through being so absolute and equal that our desire for meaning is rendered absurd. Our desire was sated the minute we started to be; it has always been sated; we have already been saved, and we need only remember.

Read We Are Already Saved on substack.

[metamorphesque]

Piranesi, Susanna Clarke

[nevver]

Magic forest, Jean Mallard

[estamovojo]

There is a Quaker saying: If God has ever spoken, then God has never stopped speaking.

There has never been a world where human subjectivity does not fundamentally shape spirituality. If any spirituality has ever had any meaning or power or use, then it has never been reliant on spirituality being “pure” of human influence. So much of religion has sought to overcome the divide between the lover (the worshipper) and the beloved (the Divine); so why are we shocked that religion itself emerges from that unity?

What would it look like to be conscious and self-possessed in our spirituality? To be invigorated by the active role we all could take in our spiritual choices? To sing the glory of that choice itself, to engage with doubt and stories, to be honest about what we need from our cultures and our communities and ourselves? What if the human body and mind is a spiritually valid source of faith?

Read Part Two of How to have a hot gay love affair with God on substack.

Read Parts One here.

[estamovojo]

There is a quote that has become popular online, a page from an internal IBM training: “A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.” The tragic thing is that we do not need computers to have accountability be zapped into a puff of smoke. The miracle of systemic racism, for example, is that the root cause of the harm is the system, and no one person is in control. Of course, those who benefit the most from the system will wield the most power. But even if they die, the system does not. Even if every billionaire and up died right now, the systems would not dissolve with their last breath. They could destabilize, but work would still have to be done to disassemble them before they reform themselves. Social systems, from an animistic perspective, are living beings which we create but do not directly control; they are immaterial yet impact the world profoundly, unseen yet they can be felt everywhere. I get the same sense thinking of capitalism or imperialism or white supremacy as I do the image of a single appendage from a giant Lovecraftian horror descending from the sky, an incomprehensible giant of pure unfeeling harm, fueled by greed and hatred and fear, that cannot be killed by mortal means. These are spirits of a most horrifying and apocalyptic nature. [...]

Resisting white supremacy, patriarchy, imperialism, capitalism, this is not about the powerful being simply “mean” nor the powerless simply being treated “bad”; it is a natural struggle to find a better way to live. It is simply the desire to be able to care for each other and ourselves. God, imagine a world where the social systems incentivize compassion. I am not merely saying capitalism but with good billionaires—I mean the whole thing is rearranged from the bottom up to make the world run on community. I mean an explosion of systems that we can barely dream of right now. It’s not just about finding one way to do things better than we do right now, but a dozen, a hundred, a million ways, dreamed and fed and acted out through the combined effort of all of our neighbors. Envision a world where each person is unthinkingly compelled by systemic forces beyond their control or even total understanding, yet towards justice and solidarity and love. The same way we have created these spirits of horror, we can create angels.

🔗 Read we can create angels here.

[estamovojo]

Queer people have a complicated relationship to desire. It is for our desires—for the wrong gender, to be the wrong gender—or our lack thereof that we are labeled deviants and made cultural outcasts. Spirituality is no different. Many of us have been taught that love for God is an obligation, synonymous with one’s obligations to love the rich and the police and the state and the patriarch, and this is an obligation that cannot be fulfilled by a body or a soul possessed by queerness. We are told that our queer desires are inherently at odds with any potential love for the Divine, because the Divine resides first and foremost in the bodies and souls of the earthly powerful. And then, when we enter queer-leftist spaces, we are confronted with the message that desire for God is antithetical to a truly liberated and authentic queerness. Our real experiences with what we have been taught to name as “God” are vandalized. Even as we struggle to free certain desires from social restraints, we teach each other to restrain other desires, to interpret all lust and love for something greater than the self as false consciousness. Knowingly or not, we concede the grounds of faith to the patriarchy. Yet, we have a right to desire God. We have a right to desire soul and spirit and awe and holy justice and mystical ecstasy . The grounds of faith stretch over our entire species, and we have just as much a claim to them as everyone else. The desire for God is well at home within the queer body—it is more at home in us than we are taught to feel.

Read Part One of How to have a hot gay love affair with God on substack.

[estamovojo]

Love can easily become harmful when we act through the lens of division. Much of the harm that comes from love, comes from people who think that their feelings of affection mean their self can or should dominate the self of others. It is the “father knows best” attitude of abuse. Love becomes a struggle between two opposing forces, one or both seeking to dominate and replace the other with itself—not truly distinguishable from how hatred can lead us to act.

But we can often mistake this divisive love for something good, because it is, in a sense, unifying. It is a love which says: I will dominate you, remove what makes you you and replace it with what makes me me, and so “we” are one. It is the love of the conqueror, the slave owner, the empire.

Estamo is not a feeling. It is a state of being and a mode of action and a force and a result. It, too, seeks unity, but not through domination.

Read One From Many on substack.

[estamovojo]

We can say that there are two generalized origins commonly ascribed to religions. Either they are divinely inspired, and its existential power, authority, and meaning comes from its objective, extra-human origins; or, they are entirely arbitrary human inventions and so lack existential power, authority, or meaning.

For Estamovojo, the Divine reaches down at the same time humans reach up, and religion emerges in the space where our fingers brush. We are co-creators. There are parts that come more from the Divine encounters, and others that come more from human invention. But all of it is sacred.

So religion, and gods, are always attentive to the unique needs of both the individual and their culture/s. This is not an accident. It is not due to some corruption or failing on the part of either humans or the Divine to properly communicate the “true religion.” Religion uses symbols and metaphors that are familiar to us so that we understand how intimate the Divine is with every individual part of the world.

Read Naming of God on substack.

[estamovojo]

The Murder of Medo Halimy

On August 26th, 2024, Mohammad 'Medo' Halimy was murdered in an Israeli drone strike. At 20 years old, he had become known for his humanizing presentation of life in Gaza over TikTok and Instagram. Medo was the caretaker of plants, and dedicated himself to care for others suffering in this genocide. He used his skills with editing, as well as his charming personality, to create an image of Gaza defined by humanity. Not just tragedy-porn, though never softening the suffering. One young person living his life in the most anti-life circumstances. He teased secret plans and loved life— openly pined for an escape to a better one. He has just been grieving the death of his baby cousin. Now his family, his friends, and his many fans grieve him.

His sister wrote: "May God have mercy on you, my beloved. May God accept you as a martyr."

Medo himself wrote, on the nature of Palestinians: "We're going to survive and live no matter what happens, in whatever circumstances. We can't be defeated. We're very strong people, and we're going to live no matter what.”

Just three days earlier, on August 23rd, attendees at the North Carolina Democratic Party Convention mocked protestors on behalf of Palestine, dancing and waving a sign to their chants about the thousands of victims of genocide. This violence is financially endorsed by the United States, which continues to support injustice out of greed.

This cruelty is saddening. These behaviors goes against the core values of Estamovojo. Medo Halimy, on the other hand, dedicated himself to keeping each fire that they neglect. He lived with an open heart, seeing opportunity and life amidst destruction and death. He was a good neighbor to others, human and plant. He raised awareness of the injustice he was facing and promoted his people's cause, the cause of the oppressed, and the cause of Estami. He revered life, his people, and himself, and acted with estamo. He is missed. He is remembered. 🕯️✴️

The reader can be a good neighbor by donating to Medo's family.

"You will become part of the supernova- you will become the supernova, the inciting event of God. You will become part of God's creation, God's light, God's existence. And you will be wrapped in God's wings- God's arms- the folds of God's existence. In absolute luxury and exhilaration and acceptance, and freedom and heavenly rest and delight, and love and beauty and hope, and your dreams; And that will be God. When you die you will become God- part of God- wrapped in God in exhalation." (12:4:20 D)

"They will have to be torn apart when they die, have their internal self exposed and released before they can be free." (12:4:20 G)

"I love you. You are your deceased. They live in you. Estami! The union of One binds us forever. Be free- your deceased will return to Me. They will be free. You will see them, you will know them. Nothing dies; life is an illusion. Nothing dies, and everything is dead. I love you. Remember this. Listen to me: Trust, everything around you is Estami. Rest and know peace. The ones you lose will be fine. I love you. Estami is all. Goodnight." (6:4:23 A-D)

Medo Halimy is dead, but not gone. He was robbed of his right to life, but he has returned to the safety and love of Estami. He is Estami. He is in our blood and we breathe him in as air. He, and all martyrs of Palestine, are saved in estamo. Estami unites us with them, and they flow through us now as every life flows through the world. They are in the gravity which turns the Earth. When Estami calls us to neighborliness and to justice and to reverence, It calls with the chorus of Their voices.

Estami.

Dio - Ekvilibro - Vero