Let’s get Simorqanized!

سيمرغالنظم شويم

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by Rezwan on 12/18 at 08:28 PM
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Persian (a.k.a. Iranian) mythology is filled with fantastical bird stories. These stories are elaborate metaphors that have transcendental, universal implications and are relevant to our post-modern world. Here is a look at the mythic bird, Simorq.

• The story of Simorq
• The Conference of the Birds
• Coining a New Phrase
• Simorq-anizing in practice
• Simorq...kind of sounds like "Cyborg"

The story of Simorq

Simorq (transliterated by others as Simorgh, Simurgh, Simorg, Simurg) is a legendary bird in Persian mythology. Check out this link to read a story about Simorq compiled from six different versions.


The picture below is of a mural near the shAh cherAq Mosque in shirAz, Iran. It shows a bird and the inscription says "Aqebat simorqeshAn simorq shod" which means "In the end, their thirty birds became Simorq."

This is, of course, a reference to the Sufi story of a flock of thirty birds that set out in search of a mythic bird called "Simorq." At the end of many adventures and spiritual steps, they discover that they themselves, collectively, are the "Simorq" which means, literally, "thirtybird".

The Conference of the Birds

This story, told by the poet Farideddin Attar, in "Conference of the Birds", is usually considered a metaphor/parable about spiritual awakening in an individual.

It also works very well as a metaphor/parable for the power of a diverse community. Each bird represents a different ethnic or religious group or type of person. Individually they have their strengths and weakenesses, but when they unite in a collaborative effort, they reach their highest good.

We think this is a very useful myth-story-philosophy around which to celebrate and leverage diversity in a community. We are therefore promoting a "Let's get Simorg-anized" campaign!

You may have noticed that countries often try to use political myths of some sort to define themselves and to promote unity in nationalism. An article in Iranian.com, entitled "On the Aryan Trail" discusses this phenomenon.

The article points out that the two dominant organizing myths for Iran are the somewhat racist "we're Aryans" story which looks towards a monarchic past of glorious empire and excludes a considerable portion of the population who aren't Indo-Iranian; and the religiously exclusive "we're Muslims" story, which excludes religious minorities and secularists. Both of these approaches are also rather patriarchal.

In contrast, the handy "Simorq" myth includes all these groups and asks that they be the best whatever type of entity they are. Unity through diversity. Each group works to better itself in its own spiritual path, as the whole group of misfit birds migrates to a greater home, better future, more enlightenment.

This myth is also handy on a fractal level: The individual simorqanizes the conflicting forces within themselves. The family simorqanizes so that each family member is supportive of the others and yet each one reaches their highest good. And you keep going: groups of friends, associations, ethnic groups, every possible group is a variation of the Simorq. And we move up to the country, to a region, to many countries. Like the American Eagle, which has been harrassing Iran for so long, is part of the migration of souls as well.

Once you start thinking in terms of a migration of diverse entities who all have something useful to contribute, it might free your mind to work on problem-solving from a more fluid, expansive and collaborative perspective. It's not such a zero-sum-game anymore. All the people around you, no matter how different, are part of a larger movement.

Might need to meditate on that for a while.

Simorq-anizing in Practice

What does Simorqanizing look like in practice? Do we have to actually DO anything here? The first part, of course, is awareness. We just start recognizing the people around us as fellow migrants in a larger spiritual, social, economic, environmental journey. We are already migrating, always have been, always will be.

And let's expand the awareness to include other entities, not just people. Things like other species, the environment, the oceans, the atmosphere, clouds of plasma and stardust. All of life is a vibrant, interconnected collection of diverse entities, ever migrating throughout the universe in perpetuity. That's just the reality of existence. Get in touch with it.

The next step is to start thinking about ways to improve the connections, the energies, to get things done that propel us all forward. Once we get in the practice of collaborating with one another (within families and homogenous groups and across diverse groups), we'll see how much less strain there is. Put another way, when you get in touch with the energy of many people and work it to your advantage, things become, paradoxically easier. This sentiment is captured by the Dare to slack poster at Despair.com. Of course, what they call "laziness", we call "transcendental laziness" and think of as a very good thing.

OK, so assuming we all get aware and collaborative with each other, then what? What's the point?

Exactly!

Where is this migration going? What is the greater home to which it aspires? Perhaps just getting in touch with one another and being supportive is an end in itself. This is just another thought in an ongoing conversation.
Simorq...kind of sounds like "Cyborg"

Yes, "Simorq" does sound like "cyborg". A cyborg is a cybernetic organism. That means that, like Juju the Cage-Bird, it's part biological and part cyber-mechanical-electronic. Simorq is definitely a cyborg. After all, our communities are now all linked by cyberspace. It's like an extension of our own nervous system connecting us to one another. The technical elements are all in place to empower this migration. These are the means, we are the actors, what is the end? Again, where is this migration going? That's what we need to be discussing. Contact us to add your thoughts here.

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