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.