THE FORCE OF THE PRIMAL

WHAT SOUTHERN AFRICAN WISDOMS HAVE TO OFFER THE WEST #2

“People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind – imagination and intuition.” W.B. Yeats

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” A. Einstein

“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

IN EACH GENERATION THERE IS AN ONGOING DILUTION OF INDIGENOUS WISDOM AND TRUTH

The San Bushmen, hunter-gatherers especially could access "non-local information" with their out of body, spirit flight, trance dance as well as 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 force of the primal-Self manifested as love is the glory of God. 
Those who awaken it in others and nurture the nurturers glorify the Creator.

The Ancestors, I believe in this teaching, are stressing that because of the West's primary focus on cognitive, left brain activities we have somewhat lost the way. 

San healers say that to be a good healer we must love everyone no matter what we think of them. This is not necessarily an emotion or a sentiment but a commitment. Many members of the clan seemed to embrace this tenet.

When Jesus taught - "The meek will inherit the earth" - maybe he was saying the same thing. We may be masters of technology but the San were masters of the Garden of Eden archetype and many of her secrets which gave them access to the Field, the Creator and their spirit guides.

"Out there beyond ideas of wrongdoing and righting-doing, there is a Field. I'll meet you there." Rumi

"Whatever being comes to be, be it motionless or moving, derives it's being from Field and Knower of the Field. Know this!" Bhagavad Gita

The times I spent with the San Bushmen - especially in 1987 when some were living in the old way - 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. They had no chief, everything was done by consensus and the women had an equal say.

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. 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 "Garden" before we arrived and made them eat 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 by the laws of nature, only to those laws we ourselves have contrived as to how nature works. Those 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.

"There are two ways to live your life. One is that everything is a miracle and the other, that nothing is." A.Einstein

“A human being is like two doves 

sitting in a tree. 

One bird is eating the fruit 

while the other silently looks on.” Upanishads

The one "bird" cannot see the spiritual fruits that the other bird is enjoying because that bird is confined to the five senes alone and has no idea there are also intuitive senses.

When we observe the intuitive abilities of primal peoples we see magic. When they look at our technology they see magic. We need both. How to integrate them is a challenge. The Bantu peoples of Southern Africa have similar abilities as do other indigenous tribes. This blog is about their wisdom and this magic.

 

“The consciousness of the seer is a greater power of knowledge than the consciousness of the thinker. The perceptual power of inner sight is greater and more direct than the perceptual power of thought.”

Sri Aurobindo

 

The primal mind was able to commune intimately with nature as well as obtain non-local information from the Field of spirit. These primal medicine men and women and their shamans were the original seers. Genomic studies have shown that the San Bushmen were the first people. Humans first arose out of Africa. There is rock art in the Apollo cave in Namibia going back 25,000 years showing evidence of shape shifting (therianthropes, human figures - part animal part human) which occurred during trance dancing. We were able to attain advanced states of consciousness millennia ago not easily achieved today. 

 

"It was only when the white man came that wilderness existed."  

Luther Standing Bear

 

When we go out into wild places we make elaborate 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 come back to the comforts of civilization.

The San Bushmen could walk out into the wilderness with all the things in a small skin bag that they needed for survival; a digging stick, a bow, poisoned arrows, a quiver, a fire stick, and a sipping straw to suck water out of hollow tree reservoirs or from sip wells in the desert sand. The women provided the bulk of the food and medicine with their amazing plant knowledge. Their purity in nature enabled a profound spiritual expertise. They could not have survived easily without access to non-local information.

 

"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, at best, is well defined by the Wilderness Act of North America which 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.

 We were all once nature bound people and we can regain these abilities.

The indigenous mind can be closer to the real Self. There is less "stuff" and cognition in the way. The primal Self has the potential to be closer to the 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 solution is to expose ourselves more to pristine nature, as well as preserve what still remains of the Creator's masterpiece. 

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

 WHAT SOUTHERN AFRICAN WISDOMS (and other Indigenous Wisdoms) HAVE TO OFFER THE WEST

These wisdoms arose out of a nature bound existence!

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

 

“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

 

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. These have enlarged with the help of the Ancestors or Guides from three genres of spirit; African, Celtic/Druid and Hebrew all of whom are or were at one time nature bound. 

Sadly this too is now being lost in many indigenous populations on account of Western education and its materialism.

 

“We cannot today recreate the original wilderness wo/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 ..."

 

"Somewhere beyond the walls of our awareness, the Esau side, the hunter side, the seeking side of ourselves is waiting to return." 

 

 “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. 

 

“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, especially as in our Higher Selves,) the Still, Growing and Wild Beings. The Gaia hypothesis was from the outset seminal to their being.

The San Bushmen and their Bantu neighbors could and still can understand, and cure spiritual diseases unknown to allopathic medicine but just as real and devastating. They heal with love and forgiveness, ask to receive with gratitude and depend on faith, belief and humility for their power. They believe in the power resident in sacred plants but also in tricksters or dark forces, the play of light and dark and how this can affect their (and our) lives. 

We should strive to go back to what we once knew without trying to change or pollute it with our own convenient projections. My sangoma mentor taught me that this was the original medicine and it will never change

 

“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 Energy and Dark Matter. Most of the "Field" is unknowable. 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. 

"Whatever Being (Talking, Wild, Growing or Still), comes to be, be it motionless or moving, derives it's being from Field and Knower (the Creator) of the Field." Bhagavad Gita

We 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.

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

  My biggest lesson attained from times spent with the San was that the less one had between oneself and nature the more powerful the spiritual affect. Dreams would change and intuitive powers would sharpen.

THE INNER HEALER #6

All healing is mediated through universal healing energy (love) from the Creator. Some are chosen more powerfully to do this. 

 

The healer  can have a big part to play in healing even without giving medications. For healing of severe diseases to occur the healer should be a pure channel. The healer must know they are just the messenger and the healing is coming through them.

"God cannot be realized if there is the slightest trace of pride"  Upanishads

 

It will be given to you according to the measure of your humility, the measure of your love and the measure of your faith.

 

To channel divine healing energy which is the Creator’s love, the ego must step aside and one needs to love the person no matter what one thinks of him or her. This is love as a commitment, not necessarily a sentiment or an emotion.

The ancestors and our guides are the mediators between us and the Great Spirit and can help.

 

 Spirit guides are not subject to time and space. They are always around but not always to be known, always within call but not always to be heard, always present but not always to be sensed, always holding us but not always to be felt.

 

However, free will is the cosmic law and we must ask to receive and ask as specifically as we can. Since they exist in the present moment where there is no time and free will is in the present moment, the request can be broad but as precise as possible in context - then imagined, affirmed, maintained and sustained. The more the will and passion the stronger the effect.

 

The healing outcomes we see in modern medicine today include:

1.   Remission – balancing the scales between the disease and the Inner Healer.

2.   Relapse when this harmony becomes unbalanced.

   3.   Progression and possible death. Because of the amazing advances in medicine, more and more sufferers today are living with a slowly progressive illness with temporary remissions and relapses and either earlier or later demise. Many will die with and not from their diseases.

4.   Spontaneous remission of diseases that have defied the best of what allopathic medicine has to offer. The key factors operating here are a strong spiritual belief or faith that all would be well and loving support in and outside of the healing team. “Shamanic like” rituals can help. Physicians call these events anecdotal but they are more common than reported and monumental for that lucky person concerned.

5.   Being healed but not been cured. Everyone can be healed. Some are cured but not healed in a true sense. Not everyone can be cured, 

"For every ailment under the sun there is a cure or there is none. If there be one try to find it. If there be none try not to mind it." Mother Goose

Modern medicine is indeed miraculous and many patients are outliving deadly diseases and dying with their illness and not from it.  However, if we can invoke and pay attention to some of these non-allopathic principles the chances of cure, remission and or healing is heightened considerably.

The Sacred Tools of the Healer

Insight to diagnose, prescribe, instruct and guide.

Opening the patient up to their own empowerment - facilitating the Inner Healer by invoking placebo but never nocebo.

Revealing the hidden and stirring the energies that heal by any means possible and especially with imagination, centered rituals.            

Instilling faith and hope. 

Counciling wisely.

Ensuring positive message using their voice, words, body language, eyes and healing touch. 

Always finding something of Divine essence in every being which also resides in their Inner Healer and which has incredible potential. 

Opening the space for them to be who they were truly meant to be. 

Focusing on the good in a person has the power to heal and lift them up. 

“Tipping the scales toward the side of merit.” Rev Nachman.

The healer has the potential to wound or heal depending on their thoughts, words and actions.

The true healer of spirit  alerts, instructs, demonstrates, shares, guides, blesses and reminds the sufferer to refocus and commit. S/he medicates with faith, dispenses hope and prescribes positive and practical suggestions.

The healer does not empower any more than the spiritual master bestows talent to his student. S/he makes them aware of their own empowerment - their gifts - and teaches them to develop their own empowerment. 

Reassuring them that ultimately they may also be able to fulfill their gift to humanity once they are well. This is also a way of facilitating help from the Field (getting one's-self out of the way.)

Providing them with rituals to connect them with the spiritual help that empowers. Using sacred plants which share the same Divine root source enhances placebo and serves as a password to the spirit world for a healing outcome. 

Asking to receive - manifesting the power of one's will with strong intention. 

All these methods can help in providing faith in a Divinely inspired outcome.

The symbol of the heart chakra is the hexagon. We can find this sacred geometry in nature and notably in three powerful entheogens; Ayahuasca on the left, San Pedro cactus on the right.and Peyote below which has a semblance of a six pointed star. They have the ability to open up our heart chakras so that energy can flow all the way up to the Crown chakra taking us beyond our limited, so called "normal" realities. These experiences have the power to neutralize a negative subconscious as well as the polluting affects of a compromising Store Consciousness. They also conform to the healing Law of Similars or Signatures. 

"When things resemble one another they can effect one another."

The Kundalini energy flows in a spiral  up the D.N.A. which is plastic, malleable and can be changed. We also see  the spiral in the way the Ayahuasca vine sometimes grows like two snakes mating. The Caduceus also represents this sacred geometry. This may be the route for the miracle of spontaneous remission of diseases.

 

 

 

THE INNER HEALER #5

 

Shamanic rituals or “magical” energetic techniques that take the patient out of his or her normal mind set can be very powerful in changing an underlying negative thought process to that of; 

anything being possible. 

We should not be limited by the dogma that the medical profession has created about how our bodies and especially our Inner Healers work.

“The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life seems to arise from overrating the difference between one permanent situation and another…” Adam Smith

Guided imagery and imagination are powerful tools that can be invoked in healing, curing and anything else. 

No matter what we think may happen, what will ultimately manifest will usually be determined by what resides in our subconscious. The subconscious can be primed positively around sleep or in a meditative state with sensory driven stimulation and affirmations (usually music plus or minus relaxing visuals, especially of nature.)

As you think it so it can be. As you imagine and believe it so it will be.

To think like God is to think with imagination.

 Optimists are likely to be more successful than pessimists because of the positive thoughts that reside in their subconscious. Pessimism can be changed with imagination, belief and especially faith which is stronger than belief. It is best not to use negative words like, never or not, in our imaginatings (such as never doubt, nothing and never, in the quotes below.) Affirmations should always have positive wording to support the subconscious.

"Know what you want, decide when you want it, figure your plan of action, follow through on it, and never doubt. 
Unless an action is rightly thought out and its steps rightly planned, every stage of its performance will probably remain vague and therefore unsatisfactory for the doer and all those concerned.” Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

“What you put your attention on grows strong in your life. 

What you see (imagine) you become. 

If we think of defeat that is what we will get. 

If we are undecided then nothing will happen for us. 

Never think of failure at all. 

We must pick something great to do and then do it. 

Doubts are death. Doubts are the dry rot of life.” 

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

 

Use the mind, do not let the mind use you.

The mind must mind what the mind minds best.

 

Spacious or Big Mind rather than Monkey or Narrow Mind!

Monkey or Narrow Mind is constantly chattering unhelpful messages of delusion to us. Spiritual practice or relaxation techniques can help us to subordinate Monkey Mind to Spacious Mind.

Magical rituals - and entheogens used by shamans especially in North and South America and increasingly in the West - can help us get out of a negative mind-set that inhibits the Inner Healer from rising to its full potential. 

The healing or curing effect - apart from the patient's belief - can be enhanced by the healer’s abilities to channel divine healing energy from the "Field" to the sufferer. 

 

These qualities can also empower the Inner Healer: 

Being flexible, creative, resilient, adaptable, accepting and committing to the challenge, taking control, having a sense of humor and using comedy for healing, being congruent with whom we truly are and not being a pleaser. Some who survived could even be cantankerous and difficult – their main objective being their wellness.

So-called “cathartic conversion experiences” or transcendental, Kundalini occurrences can occur such as:

An experience of heat especially in the area of the disease such as a burning fire in the chest or pelvis where the illnes is, vibrational or electricity or lightning like energy moving in the body, peak (oneness) experiences, feelings of transcendence, being transported beyond oneself, sensations of intense love, empathy or compassion, out of body experiences, shamanic-like states and connecting with spirit guides or ancestors in dreams or real time.

These properties contrast strongly compare to a head down, hopeless, helpless, anxious, apathetic, depressed and dejected attitude. 

Viktor Frankl was a holocaust survivor who never relinquished his grasp of life’s meaning nor his sense of equanimity in the death camps as did those who had goals like wanting to write a book or seeing a loved one again. The way prisoners imagined their lives had a lot to do with their outcomes. The physically stronger ones did not necessarily prevail over the seemingly weaker ones.

 

 

THE INNER HEALER #4

FAITH

The saddest and most impoverishing notion humans cling to is that we are limited by the laws of the natural world that we ourselves have contrived in order to try and understand or misunderstand the Unknowable.

There is a crucial difference between being subject to, and being constrained by. 

Spontaneous remission of a fatal disease is a miracle tantamount to seeing water running uphill. It should not happen. Noetic Sciences published two books which described devout Christian patients studied by physicians appointed by the Vatican that had spontaneous remission of deadly diseases after visiting Lourdes in France. These doctors had all the pre and post curing data following the remission which lead them to ascribe the event of spontaneous remission in 67 patients. 

Spontaneous remissions, which according to the medical profession are anecdotal, are more common than one may think and can occur with shamanic techniques, psychic healing, with chi gong masters as well as many other techniques. 

These are the variables below, gleaned from the Noetic Sciences publications that seem to portend this amazing outcome. Controlling fear was a big part of them.                               

“Fear itself is not a foe but acquiescing to fear empowers it to be a formidable one.” Hillel

 

“S/he who sees life as a process of spiritual perfection
 does not fear external events.” Tolstoy

 

Factors Facilitating Spontaneous Remission of Diseases 

that have defied the best of what allopathic medicine has to offer. 

 

The will to live, a fighting spirit, taking control and having unfulfilled goals that they were intent on realizing. Some had lofty goals to achieve and were committed to getting well in order to realize them.

Accepting the truth of the diagnosis and committing totally to the medical team as well as any other meaningful integrative methods of healing. Moreover, having a team that were supportive of these alternative methods.

Being knowledgeable both intuitively and intellectually but yet trusting that the challenge could be beaten.  

Being fearless, avoiding stress, saying no to anything that could disrupt their focus and expressing their needs to their supporters. Not being subject to anything that would interfere with the healing process -  having a one minded focus. 

(Release yourself from what you are not accountable.)

Having love and support and not being reticent to involve any others that could help. 

Making good choices and regarding their physicians and healers as partners not controllers in the challenges ahead. 

Finding new meaning in the predicament, such that it led to major life changes and transformation. 

Those who had had a prior rite of passage seemed to have an easier time of it. 

The main factors mitigating towards a successful outcome were a spiritual belief (not necessarily religious) and an overwhelming feeling that all would be well - Faith.

 

The measure of your faith is the only limit to realizing God's potential for you.

 

It will be given to you according to the measure of your faith.

 

“Faith in the gods or spirits cures one, faith in little pills another, hypnotic suggestion a third, faith in a plain common doctor a fourth… 
The faith with which we work has its limitations such as we find it but faith is the most precious commodity, without which we would be very badly off.” William Osler M.D.

Many said that they would not have chosen to have the disease but yet were extremely grateful for the changes it brought that they had to make in order to get well.