https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=DYuZAdsCn1E
Another aspect which is important to understand is clothing, for example. And so, one of the things that you hear, you know, especially in certain kind of non-denominational Christian context, is that, no, no, like, you know, they would never want their person in front to be wearing a vestment, to be wearing a, you know, like, oh, who does he think he is? You know, he’s trying to separate himself from the others, he’s trying to wear this thing that separates him. No, the pastor just dresses like everybody else, you know. He wears a shirt and ripped jeans and, you know, he’s got his hair kind of messy and sits on the side of the stage. And it’s like, do you think that that’s not a ritualized behavior? Do you think that, do you think that rebellion, it doesn’t have a pattern? Rebellion has a pattern. Informality also has a pattern. Even, even as you move towards the informal, it’s part of the meta-pattern. Just like, that’s why I keep talking to you guys about monsters and death and all of this. It’s all part of the meta-pattern. And so, if you think that being informal isn’t, doesn’t have a structure, it totally has a structure. You know, because we recognize someone who is acting informal, we recognize them right away. I keep joking about how it’s like, I can recognize a punk from a mile away, you know. And he’s being a rebel, but he’s following those rules, he’s following that, he’s following the pattern of what it means to be a rebel, what it means to be a punk. And so, to sit on the stage with a ripped shirt, with a t-shirt and ripped jeans, is also ritualized behavior. The question is, what is it patterning? Like, what reality is it patterning? Is it patterning something which is there? It depends why you’re in church. Like, are you in church to worship God? Are you in church to recognize that there’s something above you? That we’re all going to gather together in reverence and in honor of the thing which is above us in order to unify us? If that’s what you’re doing, then maybe wearing ripped jeans and a t-shirt and sitting on the side of the stage and having your hair all messy, maybe that is not symbolizing that. Maybe the ritual you’re engaging in is not the right ritual, you know. But it’s still a ritual, you can’t avoid it. And like I said, if you are a pastor and you’re the center of attention, and everybody’s looking at you, what you do and what you wear is going to be meaningful by the very fact that you are the center of attention. You cannot avoid it. You cannot avoid manifesting meaning if you are the person towards which everybody is turned. Now the question is, what meaning are you manifesting? What ritual are you participating in? What pattern are you engaged with? If you engage in a pattern which tries to negate the reality of what you’re doing, which is that everybody’s there, everybody’s there and everybody’s looking at you because you’re in the front, you’re the one who’s supposed to interpret the Bible or speak the word of God, but you want to act in a manner which denies that, it’s a kind of schizophrenia, it’s a kind of… The worst thing that it… It’s not always, but the worst thing that can happen is that you are actually eliciting that in people, like you are going to be just like the rock star also as everybody’s attention, but then their behavior, as everybody patterns their behavior on the rock star, is to elicit the lower side of our patterns. We could call them the more libidinal dancing, the more libidinal patterns, rather than a walls, rather than something which is beautiful and elegant and which manifests how the world can fit together.