THE FORCE OF THE PRIMAL 

Lessons from the hunter-gatherers and other indigenous wisdoms

WHAT HAVE WE LOST #1

(My personal experiences are derived mostly from the San Bushmen of the Kalahari and the Bantu peoples of Southern Africa as well as the teachings of the Ancestors and others.)

“Nature understands no jesting. She is always true, always serious, always severe. She is always right and the errors and faults are those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her, she despises and only to apt, the pure, the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets.” Goethe

 

How much have we lost on the altar of our amazing technology?

The primal model embraces intuition, rites of passage and initiations, accessing nature's secrets and learning Her language. 

Love or an unconditional positive regard for others comes naturally to them - their healers say that if you want to be an effective healer you must love everyone no matter what you think of them. They understand, and can cure spiritual diseases unknown to allopathic medicine but just as real and devastating. These are also applicable to us in the West. They believe in the power resident in tricksters or coyote, the play of light and dark and how this can affect their (and our) lives.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” A. Einstein

Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.” A. Einstein

We on the other hand rely on intellect, data, science. We have been evicted and have evicted ourselves from the power of the natural world. We discount many indigenous wisdoms, labelling it ignorant and superstitious. Hopefully we are slowly regaining some of the knowledge that we once had.

"The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow." William Osler

“Nature hides her secrets with consummate modesty and speaks usually in an unintelligible tongue”
Charles Huggins

“The reality we can apprehend with the senses is only one percent of the universe.” The Zohar

 

Today’s astronomers agree that this is so, explaining how nature has hidden most of the matter in the universe and hidden it in a form that cannot be readily detected. Most of the "Field" is unknowable.

"Out there beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there is a Field. I will meet you there." Rumi 

The primal mind could speak this language and access some of the other 99% of the Unknowable, across the veil between the worlds. The Bushmen especially could, in their out of body, spirit trance dance. Some could shape shift, many were animal whisperers. Without these abilities it would have been difficult for them to hunt successfully with primitive weapons. They could see what seeing eyes could not and hear what hearing ears could not. They lived beyond the five senses and still do to this day even though now to a lesser extent, having lost their habitat.

"It was only when the white man came that wilderness existed'"  Luther Standing Bear

When we go out into wild places we make preparations and use technology for our comfort as well as to make up for our lack of wilderness skills. When we return we are thankful to be back to the comforts of civilization.

The Bushmen could walk out into wild places with all the things in a small skin bag they needed for survival; a digging stick, a bow and poisoned arrows and a fire stick. 

"Wilderness is an area where earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man; where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” 

Our approach is well defined by this Wilderness Act of North America whose intention was to protect certain wild areas that should remain wild. At the same time the act confirmed the power of this Sacred Space where as "civilized" people - few could or would want to remain. For indigenous peoples it was their home.

The Israelites were also once a nature bound people as were we all.

"Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness…” Isaiah

”Ask of the wild animals and they shall teach you and the birds of the sky shall tell it to you or speak to the earth for she shall guide you and the fishes of the sea will declare it to you.” Job

“We cannot today recreate the original wilderness man in shape form or habitat. But we can recover him because s/he exists in us. S/he is the foundation in spirit or psyche on which we build and we are not complete until we have recovered him..." 

“Those of us who have spent time in wilderness are aware of the fact that there is something more to wilderness than we ourselves can express. Wilderness is an instrument for enabling us to recover our lost capacity for religious experience.”

L. Van der Post

Western technology has given us tremendous gifts but we should never forget the huge price we have paid for losing contact with our primal selves. The indigenous mind is closer to the real Self. There is less "stuff" in the way. The primal Self is closer to its Creator. Re-encountering our original, indigenous or primal self apart from our religion, culture, education, and conditioning - this “self” can be closer to the real Self, the Higher Self, the Soul. 

The force of the primal-Self manifested as love is the glory of God. 
Those who awaken it in others and nurture the nurturers glorify Him.

The times I spent with the San Bushmen felt like I had dropped into an advanced spiritual community. They had an unconditional positive regard for each other, an unconditional love for the children, they lacked judgmental attitudes and were extremely humble in the light of their amazing wilderness and spiritual skills. 

It was all for one and one for all among their small clans.

“Blessed are the meek, for the meek will inherit the earth.” 

 

I believe that Jesus was referring to the humble, the innocent and the non-acquisitive. The San Bushmen of the Kalahari especially fit this description well, as I am sure do many other indigenous tribes, more notably those that have remained hunter-gatherers. Their scriptures were nature and all the magic contained therein – their god – the Great Spirit – not the bottom line. They were nature bound, living in the archetype of the Garden of Eden before we arrived and made them eat of the fruit of ego and acquisitiveness. They too now will have to eventually find their way back to a new Eden as we are doing. 

When we immerse in nature with as little as us as possible between us and the Earth Mother we are able to experience some of their profoundness. With the right intention of going inward rather than outward we can attain equanimity, an alfa state of consciousness and a feeling of oneness with nature and each other. Moreover, our dreams and our connection with the Field intensify.

It is vital that we adopt more of an indigenous consciousness for ourselves. The demise of the primal self in the West has resulted from our upbringing, education, religion, culture, and the allure of materialism, technology and the innumerable commodities that tempt us. We have lost our indigenous, root, core or primeval self and our inherent wholeness because of “civilization.”  Our children are even more at risk as the hypnosis of technology becomes more pervasive. We have paid a price for the benefits accrued.