THE FORCE OF THE PRIMAL

“Wilderness holds the answers to questions we do not yet know how to ask.” David Brower

What  Southern African and other Indigenous Wisdoms have to Offer the West # 1

“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

 

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

My personal experiences are derived mostly from the San Bushmen hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari and the Bantu peoples of Southern Africa as well as the teachings of the Ancestors and others. I have enlarged my understandings with the help of the Ancestors from three genres of spirit; African, Celtic/Druid and Hebrew all of who are or were at one time nature bound.

 

“We cannot today recreate the original wilderness man in shape form or habitat. But we can recover him because s/he exists in us. 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. ...” 

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" and cognition 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.

 

“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 human incapable of appreciating her, she despises and only to apt, the pure, the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets.” Goethe

 

The primal model embraces intuition, rites of passage and initiations, accessing Nature's secrets and learning Her language. Their scripture was nature and the Four Beings of nature; The Talking Beings (our-Selves as in Higher Selves,) the Still, Growing and Wild Beings. The Gaia hypothesis was from the outset seminal to their being.

They and their Bantu neighbors understand, and can cure spiritual diseases unknown to allopathic medicine but just as real and devastating. They heal with forgiveness, ask to receive with gratitude and depend on faith, belief and humility for their power. They believe in the power resident in tricksters or dark forces, the play of light and dark and how this can affect their (and our) lives. Hopefully we are going or will go back to what we once knew without trying to change or pollute it.

“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 such as Black Holes and Dark Matter. Most of the "Field" is unknowable.

We on the other hand rely on intellect, data, science. We have been evicted and have separated ourselves from the power of the natural world. We often discount many indigenous wisdoms, labelling it ignorant and superstitious. We can regain some of this knowledge that we once had.

The primal mind could speak the language of nature and access some of the other 99% of the Unknowable resident in the "Field" beyond the veil between the worlds. 

The San Bushmen especially could access "non-local information" in their out of body, spirit flight, trance dance as well and in dreams and with divination. They could connect not only with the cosmic, but also the terrestrial and water spirits. Some were able to shape shift and many were animal whisperers which was essential for skillful hunting. They loved the Wild Beings and had gratitude for what they gave that enabled them to survive. They relied on plants for sustenance and for healing. They had abilities beyond the five senses otherwise 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.

 

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, and an unconditional love for the children. They seemed to lack 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.

Many other indigenous tribes, also fit this description especially the few that  have remained hunter-gatherers. This purity arising out of nature enabled their high levels of spiritual sophistication.Their magical abilities were gleaned from the wild and the power resident in their unique habitats. 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 type of Eden, as many of us are doing. 

The saddest and most impoverishing notion human beings cling to is that we are limited by laws of the natural world.
There is a crucial difference between being subject to, and being constrained by.

 

“Miracles happen not in opposition to nature but in opposition to what we know of nature.” Augustine of Hippo

Miracles do occur within the natural world but are outside our meagre understanding of its workings and so we discount, trivialize, rationalize or forget them. We are not restricted to the laws of nature, only to those laws we ourselves have contrived as to how nature works. Our laws are limited. The hunter-gatherer mind was not subject to information and knowledge acquired through education or captivated by technological wonders. Hence, they could access information not confined to the space-time continuum which escapes most of us Western beings. During sleep they received vital information in scripted dreams which assisted them.

When we observe the intuitive abilities of primal peoples we see magic. When they look at our technology they see magic. The Bantu peoples of Southern Africa have similar abilities as do other indigenous tribes. This blog is about their magic.