#apologies for typos i'm very tired and it took hours to type this

[premakalidasi]

In defense of spiritual  eclecticism, syncretism, innovation, human spiritual evolution, multiculturalism, even the dread “Neo-.”

This is going to be long, because just like my rant from the other day, this involves many, many things that have been boiling inside of me for months and months. And seeing as nobody seems to be addressing them thoroughly, and there being far too much mud-flinging and superiority and kneejerky extremism on all sides, people only seeing one side of the issue, I can’t keep it in any longer. Bear in mind this comes from someone with three decades-long lived experience with *both* “the East” and “the West,” both Western Paganism and Tantric/Bhakta “Hinduism,” from someone who’s female (yes, this makes a big difference, as you’ll find out), someone who’s lived in various European countries (some of them whiter than white, some of them very multicultural) for far too long, and someone who’s an extreme nondualist Goddess-devotee. (Yes, paradoxes abound. Such is Nature.) But let us begin.

It’s about this whole culture of who has the right to do what, and how-- while it’s understandable that people have their traumas and their personal prides and traditions and whatnot--it’s still deeply flawed. 

It’s about the fact that the more this ridiculous anti-innovation, anti-evolution culture in spirituality bullies people into "traditional" practices, the more falsely or poisonously "authentic" stuff people will come up with to claim legitimacy. And the more the “authentic” thing is associated with dogmatism and conservativism, the more conservative that tradition will get.

If "neo-" is used as a swearword, a badge of shame, the more dishonest and the more delusional people will get about their own "traditions." The more the fallacy of "authenticity" (there’s no such thing; it’s all subjective) is thrown around, the more people will chase after and cling to initiations--claiming, of course, that they were initiated by a master in the Himalayas or a grandmother passed on an ancient lineage, etc. The more they are told that Modernity and Innovation and Western Progressiveness is Bad, the more they will seek out authority figures in the name of Tradition, authority figures of all colours of the rainbow. In Islam, you get anything from loopy and shallow Sufis to fanatical terrorist preachers; in Hinduism you get anything from far-right nationalist groups like Hindutva to cash-making cosmopolitan gurus; in Paganism you’ll get reconstructionist Pagan groups run by Neo-Nazis all over the place because the most liberal yet intelligent, the most eclectic Wiccan-type hippies (the nicest and wisest “spiritual” people I’ve known in the West, BTW, comparable to the most chilled-out and brainy nondual/universalist folks in other religions) are shamed underground. 

Teachers, teachers! Everybody wants teachers because you have to be a part of a ~lineage!~ And the lineages will, magically, pop up to meet the demand (sorry, I mean “emerge from thousands of years of hiding”). The teachers will include “self-realised,” selfish, repressive masters who will proceed to suffocate everything "stubborn" in the disciple who could've experienced something incredibly insightful if allowed to do things her own way, could've brought something new and beautiful to the world--but she’s more valuable to the guru as a kitchen maid in his ashram because that’s her ~dharma~. The ancient way, you know. Chop veggies and repeat your mantra, it’s great meditation (and free labour for the organisation). Or, on the other hand, you get the sorts of teachers who have had a legitimate, 100% real, lineage-bound empowerment from those Zen masters who’ll initiate anyone for laughs, and who’ll allow the student anything and everything, freedom to the point where the poor buggers will actually not get any guidance whatsoever (they’re there only to stroke the teacher’s narcissism). However, these teachers will happily charge you 750 euros for a weekend intensive and all you end up doing is a most basic level chakra meditation and an “secret initiation rite” copypasted from a text the teacher found somewhere on the Internet. 

So much for your hallowed initiations and traditions; people have always abused them and always will, and there are always people who will not even be able to access “legitimate” teachers and lineages, due to being born into the wrong country/caste/sex/you name it, so are they to just sit there quietly and wait for a new lifetime; better luck next time? Bullshit. They’re the ones who can speak from a point of view that’s outside the tradition exactly because they’ve been excluded, and bring fresh blood to it, or *gasp* start a whole new tradition on their own. And this is *vital*--so many of the world’s greatest religious movements have sprung exactly from the voices of the dispossessed; those who didn’t speak Sanskrit or Latin and who were barred entry to places of worship because they were, shock, horror, fertile. You will, and should, always have people who bring something new to the table, for they are the life and soul of the ever-evolving experience of human beings on this planet--and these are the dread newbies you bash!

Spirituality, religion, beliefs, traditions, holy books--they have always evolved and continue to evolve, because evolution is Nature's law. In trying to stop innovation, you are trying to stop Life itself; from plants growing, from genes mutating, from species evolving, from human beings becoming more conscious and enlightened.

There always have been and always will be inventors, innovators, self-initiated adepts, solitary practitioners, cultures that pick and mix from one another in perfectly happy non-abusive exchange and you can't do shit about that because it happens, just like Nature happens. All the great spiritual figures were innovators, all of them--we wouldn’t have known about them if they just shut up and knew their place. Moses revolutionised Hebrew belief; Jesus revolutionised Judaism; Mohammad revolutionised Arabian religion. Gautama looked at all of the world’s bullshit and laughed his arse off. We wouldn’t have had two of the biggest female Hindu gurus of the past century had they waited for someone to initiate them. 

Had they done the right thing and followed stridharma, been the good little wives Hinduism expects all women to be, millions would never have known their grace, the grace of God as Mother.

Think of what brought you here: to what you're thinking and doing today, and just how many innovations and borrowings and syncretisms created it. *Whatever* it is that you are now thinking and doing springs from an innovation that was made somewhere down the line--several innovations and modifications, in fact. The clothes and accessories you wear, the tools you use, the food you eat, the language you use *all* contain elements from several different times, traditions, cultures, individual insights, inventions. Because someone thought “no, that old way of doing the thing sucks; here’s a better way of doing it.”

Now, I absolutely do not dismiss the power of a tradition or mean to say teachers or holy books are useless. They help--but in the end, that's what they are, *help.* They’re walking sticks, visual aids, audio descriptions for the stumbling, clumsy soul. They provide frameworks, structures, language, guidance to understand what’s going on; they’re passing on a cumulative stream of learning and experience. They’re there to help you grow, sometimes by pruning, but that’s where the benefit ends. But when they become ends in and of themselves, tradition for the sake of tradition, when they begin to destroy human beings' capacity for something new, begin to stagnate by sticking to outdated rules simply because they're ~traditional and therefore better~, when they operate only to limit the uses of human power by rigid hierarchies (in which only a couple of people have access to God), they stop from helping the individual and the human race to evolve. How many potential mahatmas have these structures suffocated, how many mystic poets? When they turn to crushing, erasing of the spirit instead of cultivating it, into blocking access to divinity unless you have thing Y or X (read: happened to be born in the wrong country/culture/ethnic group/sex), they turn lethal. These things do not make humans better; they do not make the world a better place, to put it mildly.

And the more you apply this old vs. new rubbish, the more you fall into the trap of dualism. And in dualism, you will always be a loser, even if you think you’ve reversed the positions of the oppressor and the oppressed. This happens on social media every day, and it’s ridiculous how people can’t see it’s just the same thing, only reversed, and the fighting and the pain will never end. If you fall into the trap of group X versus group Y, culture Z versus A, you are yourself perpetuating the divisions that screwed you over in the first place: the exact same thinking that devalues you if you are a woman, not white, gay, of the wrong caste, et cetera. Bitching and moaning about white people, straight people, men, posh people, whoever you think is the oppressor today, and practicing cultural isolationism, superiority and separatism does not do a thing for you; it's starting a new war. In this war, for any group who clings to a victim identity, a martyr identity, there will never be an escape from victimhood. 

No, really, think about it. 

If you choose to base your entire life, your entire way of thinking, solely in opposition to whoever you think is oppressing you (in effect, letting yourself be defined by the enemy), the pain will never end. There will never be a day on which it is again ok to tell a woman she's beautiful without it being objectification, to have heterosexual sex without it being normative, to have an interracial marriage without it being slavery, to learn a language without it being exploitation, to read another religion’s holy book without it being an act of stealing, to be happy with your body without it being sinful, to lose yourself in the beauty of a work of art from the other side of the world without it being an act of subjugating and tearing that country apart. If it's assumed that heterosexual desire is always objectification and abuse, the pain will never end. If having breasts means that they will always and forever be a target of abuse and belittling assumptions about you, and if it’s accepted as fact that only hiding breasts or not having them at all makes you worthy of respect, the pain will never end. If it's always assumed even the most respectful of cultural interactions, the very act of empathising with someone from another culture and trying to understand them, feeling love and affection for something that’s outside the small world you were born into is somehow colonialism and appropriation and exploitation, the pain will never end.

It’s exactly because you, yes, you, disgruntled person on social media, go on and on about Muslims or straight white guys always being villains, that you are leaving them no choice to be anything else. They’ll believe this, take pride in this, base their lives on opposition to you in turn and the pain, the violence, the sheer bloody idiocy will. Never. End.

The most annoying, most frustrating thing is that yes, you do have to give people a chance. Sorry. 

I've had elements of my culture irrevocably associated with only person-less, heartless sex; I've been hypersexualised and feared because I am what I am. I have been told time and time again I don't belong in the country I feel is my home because I wasn’t born in it; I do not feel at home in the country of my ethnic origin because of its crushing, dehumanising culture of suffocating, belittling and abusing all who live in it. If I play with language in a poetic way, it’s seen as a mistake, a typo, a grammatical error because I’m seen as The Foreigner. I am far too much of the East for most white people and they only associate that with barbarism and abuse; yet I'm too fair-skinned to be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the "authenticity" of my spirituality and my work--ironically, on the same community where native Bengali charlatans advertise their hotlines for solving astrological problems, using a picture of Kali to sell their mumbo-jumbo, the very same picture these guys would object to on a Western tote bag (because no white person carrying it could ever know more about the deity than the charlatan). 

I'm speaking from the side that's never fucking fit in anywhere simply because the artificial rules for who's ~valid~ are a huge load of shit.

And I don't want others to experience that. I don’t want others to be judged simply because of where they were born and what they have access to; I don’t want other people��s agency to be questioned by people who don’t know anything about what led them to choose their own values. You know what I think when I see a young Greek-American woman talking about her having found the Divine through the Marvel Loki because she could relate to him better than any of the rapists on Olympus? (Those guys the militant male reconstructionists say are the only ~proper~ gods to revere?) “You have budding knowledge and a great amount of passion in you,” I think, “and your ability to recognise your own fannish love and enthusiasm as a great reservoir of love and of power, despite everyone belittling it and shaming it, shows great strength and insight.” She’s got it. She’s pragmatic. She’s felt alienated from so many places, but now, having turned within, having cast off shame, she has found something that works for her, and does so beautifully. Despite all the shame heaped upon her, she stands strong and knows that whatever works, works and that nobody has the right to tell her that her own experience is somehow wrong. 

It’s easy to be a traditionalist if the tradition values you; it’s easy if it’s been built for you in the first place. It’s no problem at all. However, if you’re not an upper-class male, it’s an altogether different story. Women, queers, mentally ill people, poor and dispossessed people, people from those groups whose native religions have been destroyed by the dominant religions, *have* no religion left to speak of. They *have* to create something new. They *have* to excavate whatever little there is left and to build a practice that suits their needs from scratch. This is exactly what drove the Bhakti movement, what drove nondualist Sufis, what drove certain Protestant denominations, until they, too, became stagnant and overly obsessed with rules, becoming exactly that which their founders had fought against. But if you don’t know what it’s like to be in one of those groups, in the West in particular, where there is absolutely *no* spiritual niche for so many things and where a mahatma experiencing divine visions would be thrown into a madhouse--then you have to listen. 

Which brings me to my next point, something I’ve seen incredibly hateful posts about recently on this site--and since I’ve got a foot in both sides of the argument, I feel like someone needs to say something to clarify even the basics. Let me explain what it’s like in the West.

First of all, my global friends: Westerners aren’t all stupid, and if they belong to the group that calls itself Pagan in particular, they do a *lot* of reading. Pagans are the most well-read people I know; often they are lifelong Renaissance people with massive bookshelves. They may fumble around, and quote from books that don’t know everything, but slagging them off for that is like beating up a baby of 14 months for pronouncing a word wrong. They have a thirst for knowledge, and they are capable of respect. Trust that. They don’t swallow everything without chewing it; they chew quite a fair bit--almost too much, really. So this whole idea of Westerners all being dumb and thinking yonis and lingams are naughty and not understanding anything, and only being obsessed with sex does not gel at all with the Western yogis and Pagans I know. The Western yogis, if anything, are often very puritanical to prove their chops, observing more fasts and more rigorous vegetarianism and meditative practices than some Hindu men I know. 

As for the car crash that’s Kripal--I have literally not met a single person who thinks Kripal is anything except a complete fucking nutter and an embarrassment, BTW. So the whole idea many, many Indians seem to have of Westerners being like him... er? No? He’s laughed at. Headdesked about. The Westerner who’s Done The Research is going to be the *first* one to slag off sex manual “Tantra” (pick up any academic book on the topic in the last 20 years and you’ll find a section doing that) and is going to be far more likely to have a really good and balanced idea of what lingams and yonis are, far less repressed than some Hindus, actually--at least the sorts who deny there’s any sexual connotations to it at all. The Western yogis I know are perfectly capable of understanding the abstract nature of the lingam in the yoni, and don’t titter like the schoolgirls some Hindu writers present them as. They’ll be the first to shrug and say “it’s just the life force; there’s nothing to be ashamed about it.” Whereas it’s Indian writers in Wikipedia who are furiously censoring anything they might find unsavoury, destroying parts of their own heritage by erasing passages about, say, animal sacrifice in the Vedas, blaming it all on the Westerners. It’s a massive mess.

But back to my experiences with the Westerners. I don’t think a lot of Hindus who slag off Western Neo-Pagans, belittling it and thinking it little more than roleplay, understand at all where these people are coming from, because they’ve been born into a world where you can--at least to some extent--choose your own personal deity and where the amount and variety of religious imagery and practice is enormously rich. They’ve been born into a world where the Divine can have faces, shapes, stories with variety and colour and detail, all these things that, I’d argue, the human mind naturally leans towards. Not so in the West. Westerners, and to a certain extent the children of immigrants, have been born into a world where all that multitudinous, rich expression, all those different ways of seeing the Divine have been crushed, wiped out by Christianity, and only abstractions have been allowed. 

The word “Pagan” there is something that’s been used as a slur, and that’s something that Hindus carry deep scars from thanks to Muslim and Christian rhetoric and all kinds of oppression and conversion attempts. But in the West, it’s used to denote anything pre-Christian, anything where the face of the Divine is not (ultimately) an abstraction. In Protestantism, people are constantly told that the Catholic saints and all the paraphernalia around them are pagan remnants (and they are), and are told that that’s wrong and that’s not allowed.  

When the Westerners choose the word “Pagan,” they are siding with the indigenous religions in that they refuse the Christian missionaries’ view of Christianity being better. Let that sink in. They aren’t belittling non-Christian practices, like their entire culture does. They’re abandoning their own culture in favour of the side they see you’re on, the side they see as healthier, even if they’ve been told that this side is backwards and primitive.

In the West, in Protestant countries in particular, people are  religiously *starved.* It’s all blanched, dead, abstracted. They’re starved of the full depth of  human religious expression, starved of religious imagery, are (for the most part) starved of ecstatic practices like singing and dancing; they are starved of truly colourful festivals. They may have been brought up with no religion at all, or perhaps something that’s only observed during weddings, funerals, at the birth of a baby. Children have rituals, even animals have rituals, yet Protestantism has tried to strip them from humanity. Protestants have precious few rituals, dance, music; the further up Northern Europe you go, even the buildings are ugly and bare--mere boxes. Have you ever been to a Scandinavian Lutheran service? It’s probably going to be in a big, abstract, blocky building, clean white walls with hard angles, with no ornament even on the cross, and there’s maybe one candle burning if it’s an advent day. Ornament is sin; ornament is crime. So whenever these people catch glimpses of a past that was more colourful and had shape and form instead of mere abstractions--perhaps a folk dance, a ring of standing stones, a note in a magazine article saying a celebration has a pre-Christian origin, allowing them a peek into the incredible rich mythologies of the past, a lightbulb goes off on the tops of their heads and they recognise its *naturalness.* This is why so many Pagans say, whispering at the edge of a misty lake with a garland in their hands to offer to the deities, “it’s what I’ve always felt anyway; I’ve returned home.” 

And what do the Westerners, the Pagan sorts in particular, see in Hinduism? They see that these traditions that they’ve themselves rediscovered have never died out in India! Oh, wow! They still do this bit! And that bit! They see that there’s still a part of the world in which God can still be seen as a woman, as with having an elephant head, in which God can move through human beings, and it’s *natural* to them, it makes sense, and they weep bitterly at these images having been taken from them. That’s all. They’re not out to rob temples: actually, they’re acting against *everything* their Christian, racist masters have told them to do; they’re *sinning* by saying “this makes sense” of a culture that’s been deemed barbarian, backward. In short, they’re practicing the exact opposite of the belittling kind of “orientalism” they’re being accused of. They’re respecting, even preferring that which their culture has told them is primitive. 

So, to expand the view of these so-called cultural bandits that are Westerners studying cultures not their own: they aren’t out to rob anyone. They’re marvelling, feeling a deep ache in their guts because they’ve recognised something inherently real and true, something deeply human. They might be reading about Hinduism to learn what it was like in their own country before Christianity; finding parallels with, say, Roman religion. It doesn’t mean that they will necessarily be drawn to Hindu deities; they simply want to read more. They want to experience different ways of looking at the world--it can be an expression of empathy.

And have you any idea how difficult this is for women in particular to process, when they know for a fact that women receive even worse treatement outside the West? They are told, literally, that if they even so much as touch an “Eastern” culture they must be accepting the burning of widows, genital mutilation and veiling. How in the absolute fuck is that any kind of subjugating of a “foreign” culture, when you yourself, by even going there, would be victimised by it, literally groped and raped by it, the way Western women devotees are on a daily basis? Saïd completely fails to see that side of Western interest in the East, himself blinded by his own male perspective, just like the Orientalists he so loathes--he only sees women as objects of desire instead of independent thinkers with agency, not even pausing to think what might lead a Western woman to revere one of the few forms of the Goddess still worshipped in this world. When a Western woman goes Eastwards, she is seen to enslave herself. It takes guts for her to even peek inside. Let alone travel on her own, leaving her culture behind, to a temple where the Goddess’s gift of giving life to the world is celebrated in the form of her yoni, torn by the irony of the groping, violent fools trying to grab hers when they’re supposed to be revering a female deity.

The most natural of human impulses, of seeing the Divine power in many forms and shapes, is so deeply penalised and repressed that for a Westerner brought up Protestant, it’s a radical departure to declare herself a Pagan.  

Yes, you heard me right. These people face discrimination from relatives, from countries that refuse to give a legally sanctioned status to any religion without a holy book (which is what a lot of indigenous religions, nature religions don’t have). They choose this path (whatever deities/traditions they end up associating with) out of a deep conviction in their hearts, based on deep knowledge they’ve gathered over the years--and they lose jobs, lose custody, get beaten up by fundamentalist Christians over it. It’s a serious, radical departure that means severing many ties; if one refuses Communion in Protestant churches, one will not be able to be married in a church, one might not be able to name one’s kids after non-Christian names because the state won’t allow “heathen” names. They will have relatives who will no longer talk to them, neighbours who treat them with hostility and may smoke them out of the area you live in. They will have great difficulty in accessing basic services, down to how they will be treated in the hospital to arranging for their burials. In the whitest of the white, small European countries, it means being harassed on public transport if you’re wearing a suspicious symbol or something non-Western; it means having a glass pint thrown at your head by a drunken Pentecostal at a rock festival (I saw this happen). A Western yogi was  evicted by a fundamentalist Christian landlord for having a statue of Nataraja on his mantlepiece (which he’d garlanded and worshipped accordingly, BTW). Does that not change your idea of these people blithely ripping something off without a care, just having fun with these images, at all? 

It’s not fucking roleplay. It’s not just a little bit of hippie or hipster dipping into something that’s cool--if someone’s truly chosen that path, especially if they are over 30, they are serious about it. There are idiots everywhere, of course; on Tumblr in particular, it seems that the dumbest people of *any* group are the loudest and the most visible, especially because the place is so full of poorly educated and entitled American kids (like they can help it).

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of intelligent Western people out there. You know why they’re quoting from those books that you scoff at? It’s because they’re doing their research. They quote from all these books because they *read.* They *study*. They are under tremendous, tremendous pressure from the Internet, especially from all the above militant guilt-tripping and hate speech against innovation and cultural interaction and Neo-anything to Do Their Research. They probably know more than most average people do, in any culture. I’ve met Western Hare Krishnas who can recite long Sanskrit stotras with better pronunciation than your average, lazy Brahmin priest whom the pious family grandmother has to correct. There’s no such thing as automatically being good at something when you’re born into a particular group or culture, just like a gay man isn’t necessarily good at designing clothes. 

And this is before I even get into non-dualist Hindu gurus who welcome Westerners. They’re welcomed with open arms, quite literally in Amritanandamayi’s case, listen to all these universalist sermons preaching how humanity should not be divided by race, religion, caste, etc. (post-Vivekananda Advaita Vedanta versions of Hinduism, of course), and then get a rude awakening when they get slapped in the face by all these people who tell them that their devotions, their studies are a ripoff. So they bathe in the nectar of these spiritual insights, feel loved and go and do good work, and then some git on the Internet comes and kicks them in the face, saying they don’t know shit. And when they ask the gurus or the swamis about what they should do about accusations of cultural appropriation, the renunciates are so busy with their own work (making the world a better place) that they will just shrug and say “just block them.” Yeah, block an entire movement of hate spewed at them when they’re trying their best to be decent people and evolve, and to serve the world. (*Marriage problems*Jyotish*Black Magic*Love Marriage*Call 666-666-99 NOW*)

Not at all a schizophrenic situation, oh no. Constant tugging between conservativism and liberalism; people who don’t do their research blaming other people for not doing their research (even if they have). And vice versa; 14-year-olds on this website thinking they know all about cultural differences and how to solve them, because doing a chakra meditation, given to you personally by a Hindu guru who endorses it for the whole world is actually wrong if you’re white, and we should all just lock ourselves up in tiny little boxes and never interact.

So. This was a rant on two topics, really. But they are intertwined. On one side, you’ve got people obsessed with traditionalism, obsessed with the idea of only certain people having the right to do certain things, and on another, an endless ocean of nonduality, of a commitment towards humanity and evolution reaching out across all borders. I know which side I choose, and let me tell you, it’s not easy when you don’t want to be a sanctimonious tosspot but don’t want to be an extremist either. The Internet fuels extremism of all kinds; it throws the worst examples of the group you think is your enemy at you (and the agitators  underline them, using this to serve their own purposes). If I were at complete peace and abiding in the Self, I wouldn’t be writing rants. I wouldn’t be an angry woman yelling at the screen when someone’s completely misinformed and a hypocrite. 

What it boils down to--my anger included--is that people keep telling each other that they don’t trust them. And people don’t trust themselves. Hence the blind faith in traditions, gurus, social justice movements to the point where they override all reason. We are supposed to think that everyone on that other side is an idiot, because it’s easier that way. It’s so much easier to reduce someone to a degenerate Westerner or a primitive Hindu, or a backwards Pagan (or a shrieky SJW, for that matter). And people behaving in an extreme, reactionary manner give reality to these stereotypes, these reductionist ideas. Above all, we are told that we shouldn’t trust our intuitions, that we shouldn’t trust our learning, that we shouldn’t trust our knowledge and sense of right and wrong--that we need an adult to guide us. And to an extent, that’s right--you need help sometimes, when you’re too young to know how to wipe your own arse--but you have to grow up sometime and move on. You have to start your own path, and it’s going to be different from your friend’s even if you’re in the same congregation--you don’t like me telling you this, but we *are* all individuals and there’s no such thing as an absolute, perfect example of a Lutheran or a Bhakta or an Asatru or whoever because those are all propaganda. That’s dualism again--the concept of there being a right way of doing something and the wrong way of doing something, and that’s how wars start. 

Whether on the Internet or outside of it, dualism is what starts wars. Not giving people a chance starts wars. Not trusting that spiritual innovation to be perfectly sound and good for a person or a group of persons is what starts schisms, more wars--all of this because people simply can’t stand being different from one another. It’s a bizarre form of extreme empathy, actually--feeling a horrible dissonance when someone is different from you, and a lot of religious people have the kinds of neurological structures that support that. They feel physical pain when someone Does It Wrong, simply because their pleasure at doing something right--which you or I can never imagine--is *so* intense. But the truth remains that the only way we can get along on this planet is to put up with each other, respect each other (sounds so bland, dunnit?), respect difference, plurality because it’s essential to evolution, and to give people the benefit of the doubt. The most radical thing to say is “maybe that person I don’t like is doing it right after all”--try *that* for a headfuck, a zen koan! 

But without that, there’s nothing. The West needs to respect the East and not think it's all stuck-up and to see the people and things they can relate to (there are thousands); the East needs to stop being stuck-up and pretending there are no Westerners who respect the East (there are thousands). Traditionalists need to stop being so bloody crushing and oppressive and smug; super-liberals need to stop being so bloody lazy and smug as well and have a look at the good things those traditionalists have done. 

You need to give that respect if you wish to be respected in turn. You need to take that deep breath when one of those idiot kids goes off on one again. You need to give others that space and not *assume*, but watch. The people you find most grating may very well teach you more than the people who think you’re just splendid and fabulous.

Evolution is Nature’s Law. 

Evolution is Nature’s Law.

Evolution is Nature’s Law.

And you may not like it, I may not like it, but it happens--Life will find a way. 

[bill-y]

INURE

Peeta Mellark x male reader

[ We all know who Katniss Everdeen is, but what if Primrose hadn’t been chosen but another boy from another unfortunate family? YOUR family. ]

Info: This is basically a reader insert and I’ve changed a few rules, not ground breaking though. The reader is a bit bland for now but I plan for his actions to be different. Because he has different moral grounds from Katniss and such. Would appreciate feedback! FEEL FREE TO POINT OUT TYPOS. GRAMMARLY SOMETIMES DOESN’T DO MY DYSLEXIC ASS JUSTICE

Part five: Click here, butters, elpacho, last meheecan.

Part six: You're here, dumb!

Part seven: Finally here!

Wattpad account: L0calxDumbass

Peeta and I end up helping Haymitch to his compartment, the reek of vomit and alcohol wasn't exactly pleasant.  Since we couldn't set him down the bed, we ended up hauling him to the bathtub, setting the shower on him. 

Peeta gave me an odd look when I laughed awhile ago; there was no humour in the situation after all. Forming a good impression wasn't really on my agenda. "It's alright; I can take it from here," he said.

I nodded, "Okay," I nodded, putting my lips together. "Do you—need me to call those Capitol people?" I asked, stumbling over my words. My confidence seemed to have been drained at some point.

He shook his head "No, I don't want them," he responded. I nod for the last time and head to my own room, relieved that I don't have to wash putrid vomit off Haymitch's chest hair, or something. Though it would be the perfect "revenge" for the people working here, I get why he doesn't want to see them. 

I wonder, why does he want to help such a wreck? Was he simply kind like the time he gave me bread? Or was he using this to gain Haymitch's favour? A feeling of nervousness bubbled up within me, a kind Peeta Mellark was way more dangerous than an unkind one. Not everyone in the district can afford to be kind, so kind people make such a mark on me.

I looked at the packet of cookies at the table beside the fancy bed—a lump formed in my throat. Kindness would've been nice, but not in this situation. I sighed, taking my attention to the window instead. 

There stood a lonely yellow flower, a dandelion. It took me back to the schoolyard, all those years ago. My eyes had just left Peeta's bruised face when I saw that dandelion; hope rose within me that moment, I plucked it gently from the ground and hurried home. I grabbed a small, broken bucket and grabbed Nal's hand and headed to a meadow. It was filled with the same flowers.

It was the first moment where Nal smiled after our Father's death. He loved the way the flowers smelled and looked. However, he was quite upset because we had to eat them, with the rest of the bakery bread. My father loved his plants, maybe a bit too much. 

I remember countless hours we spent in the woods looking for a specific type of plant, whether for eating or for medicine. He had me memorize them by heart, which took a couple of years because I got distracted halfway through. 

The next day, we were off to school. I hung around the edge of the meadow after, contemplating whether I should jump the fence. My mother couldn't get a job, well, she didn't want to. She thought the whole District would shame her the moment she stepped out of our crumbling home. It made no sense to me; we had nothing to lose anymore.

Which is exactly why I went under the fence, retrieved the old, leather-bound daggers my father made from scraps and wood. It was pretty frail, but if you handle it carefully and throw it properly, it won't break—most of the time.

I didn't go beyond twenty yards that day; I didn't feel confident enough to go deeper, fearing I'd get lost in the forest. I took home a small rabbit that day, we hadn't had meat for months, so it honestly looked like a full course meal, like the one we were served in the tribute train.

My mother isn't the greatest cook, so she burnt a couple of bits, mainly the thighs. But it still filled us. The woods became my second home, escaping the sad atmosphere my mother gave off and the pressure the Peacekeepers would regularly make us feel. 

The hunting started slow, but each time I went under, I went deeper. I stole eggs from nests, jumped from tree to tree and managed to shoot a squirrel or two down. I struggled with the fish; my father would always throw his dagger to the fish with little to no effort. Whenever I'd throw mine, it would miss. It took me a couple of times to figure out the water distorts my vision.

The plants were no effort; I knew which one to pick, which ones were poisonous. The signs of danger used to terrify me back to the fence until I gathered enough courage to climb the tall trees, then I stuck with it, not liking the feeling of being chased. The wild dogs would always leave me alone after a while.

On July 15th, I finally signed up for the tesserae, carrying the first batch of grains and oils in the same broken bucket I used to gather those dandelions. I patched it up with some scrap bark. On the 15th of every month, I would put my name once again. I still had to hunt; grains weren't enough. We still needed soap, milk, thread and many more things we used to have. I began to trade in the hob, learning how to hold my tongue in the process. My father used to trade there as well; he used to do all the talking while I watched, stayed silent. 

And so I simply tossed the game I had to their tables. They caught on fairly quick; I'd only speak up when it came to bargaining or when I'd change what'd I'd buy. Or when I would insult wild dog soup. My father was a charismatic man, always able to persuade people to buy whatever. Not me, though, I was like a sore thumb. Painful, to talk to at least.

My mother wasn't very enthralled with the fact that I had been hunting, too much like my father, she said. That's when we argued, "Don't be stupid like your father!" she shouted. I remember my face contorting to anger, how my fists clenched as she continued to scream. 

I finally exploded, "Why don't you go out and get a job if you don't want me hunting, then? You'd rather we starve?!" I said, slamming the table. "I won't die, I won't end up like father! I won't be Capitol's pig, neither was he!" 

"But if you do die?" She argued back, tears flowing down her cheeks as she gripped both my shoulders. "I'm only thinking of you, Y/n!"

I scoffed, glaring at her, "If you're thinking of us so much, then why aren't you helping us?! If I don't die being accused of rebellion, then I'll die because of those stupid games because of you!"

"Don't blame me for this! It was your father's fault for being brash—" She reasoned, but I cut her off by pushing her off me. I stared at her as if she grew three heads. "They asked you," I whispered, "All you did was nod, you could've lied."

Her green eyes shook at my words, "Lie to the Peacekeepers? The Capitol? And get us killed as well?! I only what your father wanted," 

"They didn't have anything on father! It was your voice that gave it away! It's your fault that he's dead, now we're over here starving because you can't get over yourself—"

Then there was a sting on my cheek. She had slapped me. My eyes landed on a crying Kunal; guilt surged through me, so I ran. I ran to the woods and slept on top of a tree, humming a soft tune to the mockingjays next to me. They listened and sung back. I fell asleep to their lullaby, surprisingly, not falling off.

I found my hand on the same cheek my mother slapped that day. I was going to die the same way I said, how ironic. I won't be able to apologize or tell my mother I loved her anymore. A sigh left my lips as I continued to stare out the window. 

I clenched my fists, punching the wall as my breath hitched. I let out a groan, holding the stinging part of my hand. I glared at the wall, grumbling under my breath before I decided to fall asleep, not wanting to think of my regrets and what I could've done. As I closed my eyes, I only hoped my dreams would be pleasant. 

"Up! Up! Up! It's a big big day!"

Effie Trinket's voice awoke me from my dreamless slumber. I groaned, muttering profanities as she left my compartment. I tried to imagine what it was like in that stupid wig--- well--- head of hers, it made my head hurt.

I had fallen asleep in the green shirt, causing it to become wrinkled, the. Not that I cared, there will be some stylist stripping me anyways. I shuddered at the thought of Capitol people touching me, what a nightmare. My eyes landed on the packet of cookies on my bedside table. I decided to grab it.

I entered the dining compartment, still half-lidded and yawning. Effie Trinket brushes me with a cup of black coffee. She was muttering obscenities, probably because of Haymitch. Peeta held a roll, looking somewhat embarrassed  "Sit down! Sit down!" Haymitch said.

Peeta flashed me a smile, amused by how dishevelled I look. To be fair, I wasn't a morning person, I find waking up to be a tiring task. I rubbed my eyes, the packet of cookies still in my hands as I slid down the chair.

They served an enormous platter of food. I'd hate to admit it, but I was starving. So for the first time, I decided to stab it with the fork, not sure what to do with the cookies so I pocketed them. I figured I'd eat them much. . . much later.

I chewed slowly, glare on my face as my eyes struggled to remain open. I didn't even notice the orange juice next to me because of it. Peeta nudged me, handing me a cup of brown, rich liquid. It was quite warm. "They call it hot chocolate," he said. "It's quite good,"

My green eyes moved from him to the cup, then back to him. As if asking for permission. I sniffed, muttering a "thank you," before I took the cup from him. The moment the hot chocolate touched my lips I felt awake.

Not only was it hot, but it was also amazing. I've never tasted anything like this before. Coffee was a luxury, this I cannot even fathom. After I've drained my cup, I put it down and muster a sheepish smile. "Is there more?" I asked, my voice hoarse.

Effie seemed to be excited by my sudden interest. "Glad you're finally appreciating the finer things," she quipped as another cup was passed to me. "Right," I responded, gripping the cup tightly.

I stopped eating when I felt somewhat full, only asking for more hot chocolate. Peeta is still eating, breaking off bits of roll and dipping them in his hot chocolate.

Haymitch hasn’t paid much attention to his platter, but he’s knocking back a glass of red juice that he keeps thinning with a clear liquid from a bottle. Judging by the fumes, it’s some kind of spirit. I don’t know Haymitch, but I’ve seen him often enough in the Hob, tossing handfuls of money on the counter of the woman who sells white liquor. He’ll be a mess again by the time we reach the Capitol.

"So, you're supposed to give us advice," I said, taking a sip of the hot liquid. He grinned, "Here's some advice, stay alive," then he burst out laughing.

My brows furrowed, "Ha. Ha." I let out, unamused. I glanced to Peeta, surprised to see Hardness in his eyes. Usually, he looked mild. "That's very funny," he said as if adding to my remark. He suddenly lashed out at the glass in Haymitch's hands. It shattered, spilling the blood-red liquid on the floor. "Only not to us,"

Haymitch took this opportunity to punch Peeta straight in the jaw, knocking the boy out of his chair before turning around to reach for more spirits. I stopped him, driving a knife into the table, between his hand and the bottle, barely missing his fingers.

I expected some sort of retaliation, but that didn't come. "Oh, well what is this?" he said. "Did I actually get a pair of fighters this year?"

Peeta rose from the floor and scoops up a handful of ice from under the fruit tureen. He started to raise it to the red mark on his jaw.

"No," Haymitch stopped him. "Let the bruise show. The audience will think you’ve mixed it up with another tribute before you’ve even made it to the arena."

"That’s against the rules," said Peeta. "Only if they catch you. That bruise will say you fought, you weren’t caught, even better," said Haymitch. He turns to me. “Can you hit anything other than the table?"

I shrugged, pulling the knife off the table. "Your head or. . ." I said, before tossing the knife in between the seams of two panels. If I was confident at one thing, it's my aim. But not so much with a bow.

"Stand over here. Both of you," ordered Haymitch, nodding to the middle of the room. We obey and he circles us, prodding us like animals at times, checking our muscles, examining our faces. “Well, you’re not entirely hopeless. Seem fit. And once the stylists get hold of you, you’ll be attractive enough.”

Peeta and I don’t question this. The Hunger Games aren’t a beauty contest, but the best-looking tributes always seem to pull more sponsors. Though I do enjoy the fact that the stylists are likely going to have a hard time styling me.

"All right, I’ll make a deal with you. You don’t interfere with my drinking, and I’ll stay sober enough to help you," said Haymitch. "But you have to do everything I say,"

Of course, there's a catch. "Fine," Peeta said while I shrugged carelessly, sipping on my hot chocolate. "In a few minutes, we’ll be pulling into the station. You’ll be put in the hands of your stylists. You’re not going to like what they do to you. But no matter what it is, don’t resist," Instructed Haymitch

Oh, well there goes my plan on being a general nuisance. Damn you, Haymitch.

He takes the bottle of spirits from the table and leaves the car. As the door swings shut behind him, the car goes dark. There are still a few lights inside, but outside it’s as if night has fallen again. I realize we must be in the tunnel that runs up through the mountains into the Capitol. The mountains form a natural barrier between the Capitol and the eastern districts. It is almost impossible to enter from the east except through the tunnels. This geographical advantage was a major factor in the districts losing the war that led to my being a tribute today. Since the rebels had to scale the mountains made them easy targets for the Capitol's air forces.

Peeta and I stood in silence. My finger raised, mouth opening but I decided it wasn't worth it and awkwardly shuffled to one of the windows. He seemed to have caught on, however. "Nice view, isn't it?" he joked.

"I guess if you're blind," I answered dryly, raising the warm cup to my lips. "Sophisticated darkness, my favourite type," I finished.

He chuckled, walking next to me, the train slowing on cue. My muscles tensed as the sunlight entered the compartment. It was blinding. After my eyes adjusted I finally saw the Capitol.

I would be lying if I said it wasn't beautiful. Rainbow hued buildings that tower to the sky, possibly beyond. Shiny cars rolling on the fancy, clean pavement streets. The cameras failed to capture its beauty. It would've been perfect if not for the fact that the oddly dressed colours, wearing blizzard wigs and painted faces exist.

They looked painfully artificial. I much prefer the natural tones of district 12. "Eugh, how do they look at themselves?" I muttered, catching the attention of Peeta, who chuckled at my comment.

Huh, I forgot that he was there.

The same disgusting people began to point at us, enthralled. I was sickened, they couldn't wait to watch us kill each other like wild wolves. I suppose that's better than ending up at soup.

I stepped back, a scowl on my face. No longer able to stand the obnoxious attires and the mocking smiles of scums. Peeta held his ground, smiling and waving at them.

He only stopped when the train stopped at the station, blocking up from their view. "Who knows?" he said. "Some of them may be rich."

My body seemed to freeze as I took one last sip of the now-luke warm hot chocolate. That's when I realized, I had misjudged him. Not that I can read people well.

Which made sense, if I could I would've known that his father visiting me, offering to help Haymitch only to challenge him and now, waving and smiling at those slugs. He had a plan in mind.

He hasn't accepted his death yet. Peeta Mellark, the boy who gave me bread was fighting hard.

And that terrified me.

word count: 2.8k

Hey guys! sorry for the long wait! Had to take a break!

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@nin3s