Tag Archives: indigenous

Two-Eyed Seeing: Gift & Privilege

Culture, Decolonising, Indigenous Science, , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

The word gift has a very interesting etymology. I remember being surprised as a child to learn that Gift meant ‘poison’ in German. Turns out it means ‘poison’ in modern Dutch, Danish and Swedish too. The story goes that the proto-Germanic verb geftiz (to give) led to German’s geben (to give), and Gift (poison), the latter coming from dosis (a giving) in Greek (dose in English) being used to describe a portion (potion) of medicine given to a person who is sick. That this supposed medicine came to mean poison perhaps says a lot about how Germanic people felt about foreign medicines being brought in, but anyway.

Fungi - Wikipedia

This dichotomy got me thinking about gifts and how they differ from privileges. The etymology of privilege is from Latin meaning ‘private law’ – it is inherently an individualistic concept. The word privilege sure is thrown around a lot, and I do mean thrown – it often feels like it’s sent to people by throwing a word-spear with a poisonous arrow on the end. I can speak truthfully about painful gifts I’ve received in my life – familial betrayal, sexual violation, maternal abandonment, social rejection – and I can relate to both the English meaning of ‘gift’ and the germanic ‘poison’ meaning. In some parts of our lives we are all called up on to turn shit into fertiliser, to be like bacteria and fungi and allow the natural process of decay to enrich us and create space for rebirth.

The current mainstream social story around ‘privilege’ is to label people with certain perceived privileges from a Western materialist, capitalist, Euro-centric, Judeo-Christian (dare I say white supremecist) worldview, and expect people to be aware of them. From this perspective, I am privileged because I grew up middle class, in the U.S., I have light skin, received high-level formal Western education, have strong English language skills, etc. Yet from my Indigenous East Frisian worldview, this concept is an imposition – the only word that relates to this idea of privilege refers to whose turn it is to go when two people (or wagons) are at a crossroads. And from my Jewish-American worldview, the idea that Jews are accepted as ‘Western’ and ‘white’ is so new it feels incredibly insecure and desperate to consider myself part of that story, and I see many Jews become the neurotic caricatures outsiders expect them to be within a larger Western story. (Woody Allen anybody?)

I find the concept of Two-eyed Seeing by Mi’kmaw Elder Albert Marshall is very useful here. It focuses on seeing the strengths of Western and Indigenous worldviews and making space for multiple perspectives and consciousnesses. (Image from here.)

Guiding Principles (Two Eyed Seeing) | Integrative Science

There are different ways that we can practice two-eyed seeing. For example, the Mi’kmaw model sees their cultural worldview and the Western worldview as somewhat overlapping and somewhat distinct, as in this Venn diagram showing room for knowledge-sharing and learning from each other:

twoeyed

Another approach is the Braided Rivers approach that sees Maori and Western knowledges as distinct streams that need to be woven together to create a new system of knowledge based on the strengths of both worldviews.

maoririvers

As Indian psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar said:

A degree of alienation from one’s culture, a deep exposure to other worldviews and even a temporary period of living ‘as others’ may indeed be necessary for heightening one’s perceptions about the culture and society one is born into.

poverty

By all means let’s confront our Western privilege, and while we’re at it, let’s reflect on what we privilege in our lives (and what we want to be privileging). For example, I privilege peace and balance. And when I think about the Western material privilege I grew up with, I also think about the imbalances that went along with it – spiritual desolation, mental illness, and physical and emotional pain – and to rebalance and find peace, my healing journey included many years of renouncing material privilege to strengthen other aspects of my being. The imbalance was a gift, to be sure, but a privilege? I’m not sure. I see that distinction as cultural. In closing, I am reminded of this photo from a small town in the Amazon that encapsulates my two-eyed seeing approach to gifts and privileges (translation: The poverty is in your head and not in your pockets…).

giveheart If you value this content, please engage in reciprocity by living, sharing and giving.

Reciprocity & the Resentment-Denial Dance

Culture, Healing, Indigenous Science, Relationships, Values, , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

This week I am moving through some grief. I had known that a friendship would end had been observing it fade away for a while, and I was hoping it would just fade and drift gracefully into nothingness, but that was not what occurred. Not only was there a calling out of disrespectful behaviour that resulted in denial, blame, and spite being projected onto me, but following that was additional denial about the state of the relationship. I felt resentment that my former friend was so in denial that she needed me to explicitly spell out that we had already co-created the ending of our relationship, and this resulted in even more blame and spite being projected onto me. What a mess of pain we were in.

It reminded me of Torres Islander writer Nonie Sharp‘s concepts of mateship and in-mateship, where in-mateship creates feelings of worthlessness, self-hate, denial. She says that the very presence of superiority creates shame, and a fear of shame causes people to oscillate between seeking revenge and prestige, resulting in psychic bullying, social violence, and denying reciprocity; if you judge someone as an inmate, you control & define social and existential boundaries. I see this as narcissistic…

lotusIn processing this resentment, I realised that when there is a lack/denial of reciprocity in a relationship, we dance between resentment and denial — resentment within the person who feels stifled/unseen because the other person isn’t holding them in wholeness, and lack/denial/not good enough within the other person who feels cut off from their wholeness (and may or may not want to heal that rift inside themself). Those of us who live with an Earth Ethos embody a knowing that we are all interconnected, and we are not lost playing out myths of superiority and inferiority based on existential judgement.

In some people’s minds I “cut off” this friend, but I have not experienced this. I can no more cut her off than I can cut off the air I breathe; she has become part of me and the space she has in my heart and mind will remain throughout my life in a linear sense of time, and is always there in a nonlinear sense of time. Thoughts and feelings related to her will emerge, and I will pray and send love and feel pain whether we are actively engaged in our relationship or not. It was and it is, and through time and space relationships move through various forms, or trans-form.

Reciprocity is a core Earth Ethos value. As Potowatami writer Robin Wall Kimmerer says:

In the old times, individuals who endangered the community by taking too much for themselves were first counselled, then ostracized, and if the greed continued, they were eventually banished… It is a terrible punishment to be banished from the web of reciprocity, with no one to share with you and no one for you to care for.

My view is that such punishment/banishment on a mass scale underlies the current mainstream Western culture and results in the extreme levels of narcissistic wounding we are witnessing. Aboriginal writer Tyson Yunkaporta explains:

In Dreaming stories, Emu is often a narcissist who damages social relationships. These stories teach us about the protocols for living sustainably, and warn us about unsustainable behaviours. The basic protocols of Aboriginal society, like most societies, include respecting and hearing all points of view…Narcissists demand this right, then refuse to allow other points of view…They destroy the basic social contracts of reciprocity (which allow people to build a reputation of generosity based on sharing to ensure ongoing connectedness and support), shattering these frameworks of harmony with a few words…They apply double standards and break down systems of give and take until every member of a social group becomes isolated, lost in a Darwinian struggle for power and dwindling resources that destroys everything…

Australian Indigenous Astronomy: July 2011Yet in Aboriginal cultures in Australia, the Emu is so highly regarded that people traditionally organised their lives around following the wisdom of the Dark Emu in the sky, which is the constellation of darkness within the Milky Way. The image is from here and shows the Dark Emu during one season of the year, and corresponding rock carving honouring the Emu in Sydney.

Something that I continually find challenging in embodying reciprocity is moving through a world where so many people around me believe in individuality and are lost in saviour complexes that convince them they are working for the collective good. I live on land my ancestors are not indigenous to, and I do not yet know what lands my mother’s family is interconnected with. And when I move through the dance of denial and resentment in an intimate relationship, it helps to remember that once I fully see the Dark Emu I will be wiser and more capable of orienting myself in my centre; and as this unfolds, it helps to have compassion and keep strong in my convictions of the worthiness of this healing journey, as Rumi reminds me. Wuradjuri healer Randal Ross said that we don’t realise how free we are until we see that freedom disintegrate; and I feel that correspondingly, those of us who have been abused and denied are re-membering how free we are through calling it out with compassion and creating healthy, whole lives in the midst of collective wounding.

Exercise: Consider this Robin Wall Kimmerer quote and how you might apply it in your life: “Restoration is imperative for healing the earth, but reciprocity is imperative for long lasting, successful restoration… We restore the land, and the land restores us…The land is the real teacher. All we need as students is mindfulness. Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart…For all of us, becoming indigenous to a place means living as if your children’s future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depend[] on it.”

giveheart If you value this content, please engage in reciprocity by living, sharing and giving.

Outliers

Indigenous Science, Values, , , , , , , ,

Most of us are familiar with outliers from mathematics, as illustrated by this image:

OUTLIER DETECTION AND TREATMENT

I have always felt like an outlier. Outliers can be inspiring leaders, and can also be absolutely crazy. Most outliers, in my experience, embody a bit of brazen madness that carries us outside the mainstream. Others have written about the challenges of honouring a multi-cultural identity, and of digging deeply into their roots to claim their full identities. I will write about something else. About the outlier as a leader and a madman.

To me, leadership must create an opening, which shows that it is alive. It may open someone up to joy or to pain, open up space between people or open up connection, but it creates opportunities to become more fully embodied and alive. Much of what we call leadership I feel leads us to dead ends. A leader unwilling to step aside and help someone else into their place, who clings to their standing, is not a leaders but a childish dictator in my eyes. Leaders know there is always somewhere else to go. To me, true leadership is a pioneering into unknown, lost, forsaken, and forgotten spaces. Aboriginal scholar Tjanana Goreng Goreng defined sacred leadership as people:

  • Embodying humility & being a model of respectful behaviour;
  • Leading through bottom-up empowerment & mentorship;
  • Sharing wisdom, holding initiation rites, and sharing culture in layers when people are of a strength of character;
  • Who are chosen by a community, not self-selected;
  • Carrying specific knowledge, lore, beliefs who ensure the safety & security of the teachings.

Ultimately, the difference between an outlier who goes mad and one who becomes a leader is one who is able to move beyond personal self-interest and live with a heart of service. This means balancing self-care with asking for support and taking risks, sometimes putting oneself Mad Hatter Lewis Carroll Quotes. QuotesGrampurposely into trauma or danger, but not to the point of becoming a martyr and building resentment. It can be a challenging line to walk. It requires very high personal standards along with loads of compassion for self and others. It can be isolating and incredibly fulfilling. Instead of being outraged about whatever stupid action Trump did this week, I was in awe to learn that fish underwater sing the water and reefs awake at dawn, just like birds on land.

I have struggled to connect with many people around me, and I’ve worked really hard to understand Judeo-Christian, Western, and Anglo worlds. But I don’t innately understand them, and they don’t innately understand me. There must be something that makes each of us feel like an outlier, even in a small way. What if we focus on enjoying that breadth of our diversity, on learning from each other, and on exploring the outer limits of our inner worlds? We may just find, like these side-by-side images of Western microscopic art and Aboriginal Australian art that we outliers are redefining social structures in ways that align with Mother Earth better and can inspire others through our own leadership into owning our outlier statuses. (Image: Gum leaves under a microscope & Gathering Bushtucker painting)

Gum Leaf and Gathering Bush Tucker.

giveheart If you value this content, please engage in reciprocity by living, sharing and giving.

On Climate Change

Culture, Healing, Indigenous Science, Values, , , , , , ,

Prof. Dan Cziczo discusses Climate Change - Belmont Public ...Blog by Lukas

Dear Greta,

I admire your fire and passion, and your courage to take on so much of the world’s attention. Whether this attention be loving, ambivalent, or hostile, the sheer weight of it is no doubt burdensome, in a way you may not yet even realise.

I am writing to suggest that you are missing something profound about life in the modern Western world. You admonished adults, both those of us alive now and our collective ancestors, for stealing your dreams. And indeed this is so. But with respect, the true theft has only peripherally to do with climate change. (Image from here). Here is a quote from Aboriginal Australian scholar Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta:

Every human child is born the same. We are born with innate structures. And those structures all steer us towards living and loving and learning in cooperative groups, and in being profoundly connected to a habitat, and being very curious about that habitat…I believe that every child is born as what we now call indigenous. It just takes quite a rigorous program of indoctrination to twist somebody and turn them into a civilized person.

It is your indigeneity that has been stolen. A life of profound connection with fellow human beings, with spirit, and with the earth. In the world both you and I grew up in “civilised” is seen as an unambiguous virtue. It has given us much in the form of transcendence of material challenges, but destroyed so much more. It has blocked our growth as beings. I see the civilising force of Western modernity as turning the children we were at birth into beings that are unbalanced in the mental, floating above the rest of existence in a state of separation. It has turned us into beings who know only one way to cope with suffering, which is to fix it with our minds. But this idea of “fixing it” is a myth that fails us, born of hard and false boundaries like “self” and “other”, “right” and “wrong”, and “good” and “evil”. As Dr. Yunkaporta says:

The war between good and evil is in reality an imposition of stupidity and simplicity over wisdom and complexity.

And so I put it to you that this applies to the scientific orthodoxy on anthropogenic climate change as much as anything else. To say that it is an unambiguous cataclysm or “evil” requiring our “fix it mind” to go into full swing is potentially just living in the same delusions, and repeating the same fundamental errors of our recent ancestors. The reality requires a deeper wisdom than just the capacity to power the world from renewable energy. Renewable energy in and of itself will not fill the hole inside us, nor reconnect us to the sacred, and to the Earth. For this we need tools that Western science does not know about, but indigenous scientists and mystics of many faiths and traditions around the world have known about for thousands of years. (Image from here)

I do not fix problems. I fix my thinking. Then problems ...We don’t need to fix the world, rather we need to learn to flow in it, and be in deep relationship with it. I have no doubt that from such a stance we’ll look at open pit coal mines and the internal combustion engine, not to mention countless other inventions and lifestyle choices, as being fundamentally out of flow, a desecration of something sacred that severs us from the Earth. Western science will play a role in helping us work out what to do next, but the truth of our modern desecration of the Earth does not need facts and figures, and positivist experimentation for us to experience. If you don’t believe me, go and sit on a chair in a forest near where you were born for a few minutes and watch your mind. If you are anything like me, you will experience a lot of discomfort and dis-ease from being with the craziness of your undistracted modern mind. Can you “fix” that with your mind alone? Can Western science offer you any help? There is as much to learn about why we face climate disasters from that one simple activity as there is from any number of bore holes dug into the Antarctic ice.

Carbon as a building block of life (video) | Khan AcademyWe need to question more than our use of carbon. We need a new and bigger dreaming.  We need a dreaming of lived interconnection to immortal oneness. Such a dreaming is bigger than our daily struggles, and even our comprehension of existence itself. Certainly much bigger than our worries about three degrees of global mean temperature rise. You might say, “Well that is easy for you to say, it is not your daily sustenance under threat, or your island about to be swallowed by the sea”, and this may be true. But my reply is that these ideas I am telling you are not mine. They come from the wisdom of people who did indeed face and transcend such hardships. Islands have disappeared before, and life went on. Regardless of what we do and don’t do, life will go on this time around too. The only real question is what kind of life it will be. (Image from here)

Yours sincerely,

Lukas

giveheartIf you value this content, please engage in reciprocity by living, sharing and giving.

Earthly nourishment

Culture, Decolonising, Healing, Indigenous Science, , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

All Law-breaking comes from that first evil thought, “I am greater-than,” that original sin of placing yourself above the land or above other people.

Tyson Yunkaporta

The above quote is the definition of “unsustainable” to me. I see this wisdom enshrined in the biblical story of the Tree of Knowledge that some of our ancestors were advised not to eat from before their curiosity and the trickiness of a snake got the better of them and taught them this lesson. I facilitated a workshop last weekend for healing professionals called “Space for Spaceholders” in order to create space for their nourishment. The embodied metaphor for nourishment that came to me was the placenta. The placenta is responsible for nourishing and protecting babies in the womb. It connects the mother to the baby by supplying blood through the umbilical cord to the developing child, secretes hormones that are required for pregnancy and for preparing the mother’s body for breastfeeding, and provides babies with antibodies of for protection for the first few months of their life.

The placenta is a symbol of a sacred life support system. There are so many cultural beliefs, stories and practices that honour this primal nourisher. Many Aboriginal Australians see the placenta as a person’s hologram that provides a map for their life. It is buried in the Earth to provide direction for the person once they reach puberty. The Navajo (Diné) in the Southwestern US bury the placenta in sacred ancestral ground so the person grows up with a strong cultural identity. Similarly, among the Maori in New Zealand the words for “land” and “placenta” are the same. In Hmong culture in Laos, people believe that a spirit will wander the Earth and not be able to join their ancestors in the spirit world without returning to the place their placenta was buried and collecting it, so it is the same word as “jacket” in their language. In Korea and China, many people burn the placenta and keep the ashes, then sprinkle them into a person’s food when they are sick to provide profound nourishment. In Indonesia the placenta is seen as a person’s older sibling or twin, and in Iceland as a person’s guardian angel. The Ibo of Nigeria and Ghana treat the placenta as the dead twin of the live child and give it full burial rites. And the Baganda of Uganda believe that the placenta is actually a second child. Not only is it the child’s double, but the placenta also has its own spirit that resides in the umbilical cord.

And then there’s modern Western culture that incinerates placentas in hospitals without honouring them whatsoever. This says a lot to me about the depth of desecration and unsustainable thinking that has permeated our lives. Thinking about honouring the tree of life, did you realise the art in the image above was a placenta print?

We miss so much when we are in a space of separation… A couple of months ago I symbolically reclaimed my placenta and its connection to Mother Earth. I used a work of art that symbolised my placenta and ceremonially thanked it and planted it in the Australian bush. It was a simple act and its effects have been gently rippling through my life ever since. About five or six years ago I took a short course in Vedic astrology. Reading the map of the stars and planets for the place and time I was born, the teacher told me that my life was never going to work until I was in my 30s after I went through a huge transition. She showed me a split in certain energies that would not align until then in my life. I felt moved, like she had given me permission not to blame myself for things being so difficult. And after symbolically planting my placenta recently, I came across the following quote that sums up how I see things today:

For many years I sensed my own darkness, my own Otherness, and the many ways in which I am an outlier in this world. I thought this was what was wrong with me. It took me a long time to recognise that this is what I have to bring to this world.

Mary Mueller Shutan

giveheart If you value this content, please engage in reciprocity by living, sharing and giving.

Earth Ethos child development

Culture, Indigenous Science, Relationships, Values, , , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

Some studies of newborns suggest that humans’ most fundamental need is to be part of a culture, to engage with their social environment and try to make sense of their surroundings. It can be helpful to conceptualise culture as a “cognitive orientation” instead of dividing people into racial or ethnic groups (Brubaker et. al, 2004), because “the most significant features of any child’s environment are the humans with whom they establish close relationships” who these days are often multi-cultural (Woodhead, 2005). Raising children is a process by which “we try to achieve cultural goals and well-being for ourselves and our children,” through pathways “determined by cultural activities organised into routines of everyday life” (Weisner, 1998). Children learn cultural models of living through relationships with parents, close kin and social institutions, during which time their young minds develop interdependently within their cultural context. This graphic shows elements of Yolgnu (Australia) child-rearing:

Connections surrounding the child image 11June191

The developmental niche theory provides a framework for connecting culture with childrearing (Super & Harkness, 1994). A child’s physical and social settings, cultural customs of childcare, and psychology of caretakers form a “developmental niche”, and the eco-cultural niche theory identifies five areas of child development: (1) health and mortality; (2) food and shelter; (3) the people likely to be around children and what they are doing; (4) the role of women and mothers as primary caretakers; and (5) available alternatives to cultural norms (Harkness & Super, 1983). Some years ago I worked with social worker Amy Thompson to develop the following model:

childdevelopment.png

In modern Western culture, there’s a lot that is broken, out of balance, and unwell. To intervene in any of the bubbles above will alter a child’s (or inner child’s) cultural identity and autonomy. And there’s a lot of wisdom in Indigenous childrearing.

Unlike the paternalistic culture many of us are familiar with, Earth Ethos parenting respects children’s agency. Autonomy is the freedom “to follow one’s own will” (Oxford English Dictionary). It’s important to note that autonomy is not the same as agency, or a child’s capacity for intentional, self-initiated behaviour. In “central Africa children are trained to be autonomous from infancy. They are taught to throw spears and fend for themselves. By age three they are expected to be able to feed themselves and subsist alone in a forest if need be” (quoted in Rogoff, 2003). Aka Pygmy children in Africa have access to the same resources as adults, whereas in the U.S. there are many adults-only resources that are off-limits to kids, and Among the Martu people of Western Australia, the worst offence is to impose on a child’s will, even if that child is only three years old” (Diamond, 2012). Yet Western children tend lack much autonomy and agency until they turn 18. One scholar suggests that four main ideas have shaped Western civilisation’s parenting practices:

  1. The young child is naturally wild and unregulated, and development is about socialising children to their place within society (e.g. Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1699);
  2. The young child is naturally innocent, development is fostered by protecting the innocence and providing freedom to play, learn and mature (e.g. Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778);
  3. The young child is a ‘tabula rasa’ or blank slate, development is a critical time for laying the foundations that will enable children to reach their potential (e.g. John Locke, 1632-1704);
  4. The young child is shaped by nurture and nature, development is an interaction between potential and experience (e.g. Emmanuel Kant, 1724-1804) (Woodhead, 2005).

European American (mostly middle class) mothers have been extensively studied, and their parenting practices dominate popular culture and academic literature, yet a study across twelve countries found their beliefs and behaviours abnormal in an international context (Woodhead, 2005).  Common conflicts between Western and other cultures were:

  1. Emphasis on the individual versus emphasis on the family;
  2. Autonomy versus interdependence;
  3. Youth culture versus respect for elders;
  4. Unisex versus gender differences;
  5. Individualism versus communal; and
  6. Competition versus cooperation (Friedman).

In most Indigenous cultures child development is not led by parents but is seen to naturally emerge through a network of kinship care. Children are seen as autonomous and encouraged to learn through experience rather than explicit instruction and rules (Sarche et. al, 2009). Parents avoid coercion and corporeal punishment, instead using storytelling and role modelling to discipline. This teaches natural consequences and allows parents to avoid imposing punishment. For example, this article shares a story of a preventive parenting practice by which an Inuit mother who asks her two-year-old son to throw rocks at her on the beach. He hits her leg, and she says, “Ow! That hurts!” to show him the consequence of hitting someone. And even if he kept throwing rocks after she showed the pain it caused, traditional Inuit still do not yell at children: “yelling at a small child [is seen] as demeaning. It’s as if the adult is having a tantrum; it’s basically stooping to the level of the child.” Child attachment differs from Western culture as well:

It isn’t just about attachment to the mother or the biological parents, but attachment to all of my relations. Practices and ceremonies were meant to build attachments to all parts of the community and the natural world, including the spirit world.–Kim Anderson, Métis (Canada)

Winter Medicine for Rooting Down and Healing Burn Out

An Anishinabe (Canada) woman explains the development of her attachment to Country through bush socialisation:

The absence of fences, neighbors and physical boundaries led way for the natural curiosities of a child to grow and be nurtured…I learnt to search for food, wood, plants, medicines and animals. Trees provided markers; streams, rivers and lakes marked boundaries, plants indicated location, and all this knowledge I developed out of just being in the bush…My bush socialization has taught me to be conscious of my surroundings, to be observant, to listen and discern my actions from what I see and hear. Elements of the earth, air, water and sun have taught me to be aware and move through the bush accordingly. (Image from here)

Ceremony is modelled from a young age. In this video, a Yolgnu (Australia) boy is barely walking and already learning traditional dances to connect with his community and his ancestors, and by the end of the video at age 7 is participating in a funeral dance:

This medicine wheel from a childrearing manual for First Nations Canadians further demonstrates that in an Earth Ethos, children are seen as autonomous and interconnected, and shown how to live in balance with all my relations.

relationshipwheel

Exercise: What parenting perspective or childrearing practice would you like to improve in your life? Using suggestions from this post, researching on your own, or your own insight and intuition, what step could you take today to move further towards balance?

giveheartIf you value this content, please engage in reciprocity by living, sharing and giving.

Boundaries & integrity

Decolonising, Healing, Indigenous Science, Relationships, Values, , , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

There’s a lot of rhetoric about boundaries, and setting healthy boundaries, and crossing boundaries, but in essence, we’re talking about integrity, or wholeness. From google, the etymology of integrity is:

When we are in integrity, we are boundaried. We do need to assert our boundaries at times, but most of the time they just are and don’t require work or thought. I find asserting boundaries arises quite involuntarily and naturally–if someone stomps on my foot, I say OW! or HEY! without thinking; and if someone is behaving disrespectfully repeatedly (3 times for me), my voice usually rises in volume and the words emerging from my mouth become harsher.

Boundaries and Confidentiality - ppt download

I see a lot of confusion around boundaries, and a lot of misguided effort to “set” them resulting in drama, mind games, and power plays. We can’t bypass healing through intellectual knowing. I see people deny themselves healing opportunities with justifications like “they know better” or they “don’t deserve” the pain they’re feeling.

Deserving has nothing to do with it; that’s a victim mentality that’s totally disempowering. And pretending we know better than to walk through the experiences life is presenting is an arrogant way to avoid reality. If you’re carrying pain or emotional charge, take the opportunity to free yourself by experiencing the pain fully, healing, and embodying its medicine. Boundaries will flow through your healing process the more you trust; you will realise when you are called to walk through an ordeal, which battles are not yours, and ‘yeses’ and ‘nos’ will flow.

In the medicine wheel, it’s easiest to agree on physical boundaries and integrity, though concepts such as consent and personal space differ by individual and culture. Spiritual integrity bounded by our faith, beliefs, and ritual and ceremonial practices, at individual and cultural levels. Emotional integrity has to do with self-knowledge and expressing our feelings fully in honest, healthful ways. Many people find psychological boundaries challenging to maintain, and many of us don’t think about psychological integrity because we are so used to our super busy minds. The more contemplation/meditation, grounding, and ancestral trauma healing work I do, the more integrous and embodied I become, and the lighter and more prescient my thoughts are.

Inspirational Quotes On Boundaries. QuotesGram

Traumas in our lineages, lives, and on our lands disconnect us from integrity, and we carry a lot of that trauma in our minds. Everyday tasks such as buying groceries can feel like minefields. Are we buying organic? local? from exploited workers? plastic packaging? We are all indigenous to this Earth and can experience profound interconnection and belonging with ourselves, other people, plants and animals, and even landforms.

Paul Young, a medicine man in Sydney, suggests a three-step healing model for mental integrity: (1) de-colonise and increase receptivity, (2) culturally strengthen and ground, and (3) alter your state to experience indigenous inter-connection through ceremony, meditation, prayer, etc. Similarly, in a conversation with Dr. Apela Colorado last week she suggested a healing process based on contemplating the following three questions:

  1. What were your traditional cultural ceremonies?
  2. How did you lose them?
  3. What losses do you need to process to stop perpetuating colonisation?

Exercise: What does integrity mean to you (spiritual, emotional, physical & psychological)? How would you start to answer Apela Colorado’s questions? Consider your answers in light of this quote from a Rwandan man:

“We had a lot of trouble with Western mental health workers who came here immediately after the genocide, and we had to ask some of them to leave. They came and their practice did not involve being outside in the sun where you begin to feel better, there was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again, there was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy, there was no acknowledgement of the depression as something invasive and external that could actually be cast out again. Instead they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them. We had to ask them to leave.”

giveheart If you value this content, please engage in reciprocity by living, sharing and giving.

Anglo-Celtic Australian identity

Culture, Decolonising, Healing, , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Lukas

One of the hardest things about being an Anglo-Celtic Australian is not having a culture that gives deep meaning, context, and guidance to the struggles of my life. The stories of Anglo-Celtic Australian resilience I was fed as child just don’t do the job.

I acknowledge the grit, courage and determination of the first settlers and the diggers, but it all seems built on a foundation of lies, denial and disassociation, the best examples being Terra Nullius, the dehumanising British class system, the occupation of Ireland, and the power hoarding structure of the Church.

Subjugation and shame lie at the heart of so much of what makes us who we are as a collective consciousness. We cling to things like our egalitarianism, but elect a Prime Minister who openly espouses ideas like “a fair go for those that have a go”. It’s bullshit. (Image from here.)

Australia_a-fair-go
Don’t get me wrong. I’m fond of Australia, and Australians. More than fond. For all our peccadillos, I love us. And by us I’m speaking most about me, the Anglo-Celtic Australian. My tribe, my people. My connection to a nebulous post-white Australian multicultural identity feels so often forced, and hidden behind euphemism and untruths. It has to be, because what came before it has not healed enough to make space for anything real to replace it. It’s pure aspiration, often based merely on the fleeting winds of social convention and social shaming.

I don’t want any of this to sound like I endorse being ashamed of who we are. For me this can only lead back around to denial and anger. But of course this shame is there whether we like it or not. It’s something we must heal. Perhaps it’s THE place to start our work; unconditional love and grace for all that went before, warts and all.

What is the alternative? ANZACS, the grizzled farmer, a game of beach cricket next to the barbie, or even our supposed egalitarian cosmopolitan multiculturalism? To me, they just don’t cut it. Smoking ceremonies and welcome to country? Window dressing. There’s just so much flagrant bullshit at the heart of it all. We need more truth.

Here’s a truth. I’m envious of people who identify as indigenous. I envy the power of their stories, their connection to this land, and their feeling of belonging to something real and carnal. My material and societal privilege feel like a big bag of shame that I am supposed to pretend isn’t there. I envy those who can talk about their burden openly with dignity and without ridicule.

If I’m honest, when I look around at most Australians, and within myself (I am in this as much as anyone), I see scared, subjugated and exploited children, without a solid cultural foundation, without real connection to the land. I see bullies, and the bullied. I don’t see a deep sense of purpose and meaning. I don’t see unfettered spirit in flow. I’m sorry if his hurts to read. It hurts to say.

Wrapped up in all of this for me personally is an overwhelmed, listless, elderless masculinity, and an absent relationship with unconditional feminine love as embodied by a relationship to the earth. The feminine in us all of us seemingly seeks so much to be just more masculine.

I wish I knew more about my own ancestors, and their personal stories and struggles, where they came from, and what that really meant for who they were. Why is everything that they are largely forgotten, and mostly not talked about in my family? Why is the richness of their cultural heritage and diversity reduced to “whiteness”? How can I possibly heal from wounds my kin have picked up on their journey, like their pain of leaving tribal indigenous land, if I don’t know anything about them?

It seems to me that one of the greatest injustices in the modern world is the labelling of only some people as “indigenous”. Different people are indigenous to different places, but we are all from somewhere, originally. And building from that, everyone needs the opportunity to becomes indigenous to the place that nourishes and shelters them, physically and spiritually. (Image from here.)

INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIA[2]

But we’re here now. We have to be indigenous HERE if we’re going to thrive on any kind of deep level. Fortunately, from what I have seen, the original indigenous Australians have nothing but grace and generosity for us Anglo-Celtic Aussies if we’d but commit to truth, and real healing. And that MUST start inside.

I don’t know why I ought to be, and I know reasons why I ought not to be, but I am an Anglo-Celtic Aussie, and I am choosing to be proud of that. I commit to truth and healing. I commit to grounding myself here on this land. I commit to creating for my future ancestors a rich healthy culture that I never had.

Walking the talk of a commitment to creating a healthy culture, Lukas had an opinion piece published today on gambling addiction.

giveheart If you value this content, please engage in reciprocity by living, sharing and giving.

Power, Force & Corruption

Healing, Spiritual Skills, Values, , , , , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

Building on some previous posts about power objects and healing unjust power dynamics, I realised it would be wise to define power and related terms. Energy is defined in physics as the ability to do work, and spiritually I have been taught that work is worship. The ways we work/worship result in beautifully diverse e-motion (energy in motion) reflecting our culture, values, and worldviews. Power is the strength of our work over time. We can use a lot of strength to express a lot of power in an instant by screaming, or we can repeatedly use a little strength and practice our singing for a few years to build a powerful voice.

yallforceWhen energies interact, we get a force, which is a relationship or co-creation. When we think about forces of nature, like a tornado, we can feel awestruck by the immense power of energy the elements of air (wind) and water can co-create. The Force in Star Wars aligns with good/evil, right/wrong binary thinking, so I find it helpful to consider force on a spectrum:

Trust/Acceptance ←——→ Conflict/Struggle ←——→ Traumatic Aversion/Repulsion

dogshame

Forces can change direction depending on emotions expressed. For example, your dog ripped the head off your child’s baby doll. You feel angry (TraumaticAversion/Repulsion), give your dog an annoyed look, and yell, “NO! Bad boy!” Rover looks upset, lowers his head and seemingly expresses remorse (Conflict/Struggle). You sigh, pat him, and take the baby doll head from him to see if you can repair the doll (Trust/Acceptance). From an Earth Ethos perspective, forces that place us in traumatic aversion/repulsion are opportunities to experience profound death/rebirth energy, which often results in a process of struggling to let go and experiencing internal and/or external conflicts, and resolves when we are able to sit in trust and acceptance.

In the example above, if we had come home and seen the dog and laughed, we would have started with emotions of acceptance and trust and had a much easier time. Our initial response and our power to resolve a trauma or conflict into acceptance defines our character. We’re probably all familiar with the famous Lord Acton quote about all power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely; I don’t find that to be true. Some of the quotes below I find to be more accurate. As I see things, we are humans, we are not God/Spirit/Creator/The Force. We can suffer from a psycho-spritual virus that deludes us into believing that we are alimghty Gods/Creators instead of humble human co-creators. This is when abuses of power occur, when we try to live above, or be stronger than, something or someone else.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I have witnessed moments in which multiple organsiational leaders become corrupt, when the power flowing through their beings overwhelms their strength of character and their moral compasses fail. In that corrupt space we put ourselves above social agreements and laws of nature. I see this as a lack of grounding with deep-rooted judgments and traumas surfacing that are seeking healing. I feel that it brings shame to us all when corrupted people remain in leadership roles while lost in Traumatic Aversion/Repulsion forces. This seems to happen less in social systems with simpler or no hierarchies, and affecting a limited number of people and resources. When I consider the strength of character necessary for someone to wield the power available in certain roles such as being CEO of Amazon or President of the US, I think we are incredibly foolish and insanely ambitious to imagine that one human can embody that much power while carrying values such as grace and humility. To me, indigenous structures of governance with layers of leadership councils who unanimously share decision-making reflect much more wisdom about the nature of power than individual kings, emperors, presidents or CEOs.

Our collective delusions about human’s place in nature has resulted in the social system of capitalism we know is very destructive (well described in this article). At the root of these individual and collective beliefs and behaviours I see existential judgments and wounds that can be healed. We can re-member our connections and acknowledge God/Creator/The Universe/The Force/Nature/ Energies much bigger than us, experience humility and awe, and become more grounded to allow deep healing. Magic is possible:

In that real place the knowledge and the power comes from the ancestors to heal bones through touch within a few minutes, to heal the environment, to travel to the stars. If we are not in this reality, we are not in our indigenous mind.–Apela Colorado

Exercise: Contemplate these quotes about magic and nature and how they apply to your life. Where in your life can you enter into a state of acceptance, or ease towards such a state?

giveheartIf you value this content, please engage in reciprocity by living, sharing and giving.

Deep Grounding/Earthing

Healing, Indigenous Science, Spiritual Skills, , , , , , , ,

Blog by Valerie

I’ve written about ways to integrate earthing/grounding into everyday life, but what’s come up recently is how to take that to a deeper level through ritual or ceremony. If you are an immigrant, or your ancestors were within the last 7 generations (depending how you define a generation), then your connection with land is energetically split between the land where you live, the land(s) of your blood ancestry, and land(s) where you have lived or otherwise feel a strong connection with. Indigenous people who are deeply connected with specific lands and places have a strength and purity of connection with the land that is quite powerful. As one Anglo-Australian writer put it:

In my own experiences with original Australians who are deeply connected to country, I have felt that they are so grounded it’s almost as if the land itself is listening to you, through them.

For those of us who do not have such a depth of connection with land where we live, we can still drop into spaces of earth energy flowing through us when we’re deeply grounded wherever we are. This work heals the places we live now, as well as places we’re connected with through our ancestry. Given all the wars and violence on land in Europe, for example, we can help heal that land from America or Australia while not asking it to physically support us.

There are many rituals and ceremonies to deepen our relationship with the Earth. Here are a few that I have found to be powerful tools:

  • Create an outdoor altar and leave offerings of gratitude to the Earth, a tree, stream, rock, landform, tree grove, tree stump–the options are endless.
    • You can symbolically bury power objects to represent something you wish to heal or ground an energy in your life. You can also hang prayers on ribbons or flags or with chimes or bells so the wind spreads your prayers far and wide. Buddhist prayer trees use wind in this way. buddhistprayertree
    • Note: A maypole is an outdoor altar, and so is an outdoor Christmas tree, but once you cut or pot it and bring it inside, you are honouring a tree for giving you its life, which is different to you being generous and honouring the Earth. (Images are from uncredited images on pinterest, and from here.) 
  •  Without creating an altar, you can build a relationship with a place, tree, rock, etc.
    • Pick a place you regularly visit and start to build a relationship. Like building a relationship with a person, this requires giving of yourself and takes time.
    • For example, there is a grove of trees in a park near my home that I felt drawn to a couple months ago. Once a week or so, I go say hi. I either literally say hello to each tree, nod and direct my gaze at each one in turn, or stand at each tree and put my hand on the trunk and take a breath. I stay there for a while and meditate to see what messages and insights they want to share with me, and I psychically share some messages or prayers with them. I also leave offerings, such as flowers or crystals at their base or tucked into their bark, or I do a dance or sing a song, or I leave something of myself that is useful such as my urine or or spit, which brings me to the next example.
  • Share of your body with the Earth, a tree, plant, rock, etc.
    • Sharing may involve simply dancing barefoot) outdoors. Your feet drumming into the Earth and your body performing for a place is a beautiful way to do a ritual or ceremony to deepen your connection with a place. You can try deep breathing to start, let go, and see what movements the Earth inspires your feet to do. You can add in chanting or drumming, but I suggest starting simple so you don’t get lost in your head and stick with a state of flow.
    • Your “waste” is literally fertiliser to many earthly beings. Your urine creates nitrogen-rich soil. Giving your spit may sound strange but with intention, it is a way to physically leave a piece of yourself, and can feel like a better energetic exchange if you are, for example, taking a piece of bark or leaves from a plant or tree.
    • bloodroseI have heard of many magick menstrual rituals, but I prefer to honour the Earth by giving my blood to a flowering plant. This is a very powerful ritual women can do to ground menstrual energy as well as connect with the Earth. (Sorry, guys!) I have also heard of some fertility rituals where men ground their semen and symbolically plant their seeds in the Earth, but I have not tried this myself for obvious reasons! (Image from here.)
  • Do a burial ceremony in the Earth.
    • If you want to do something by yourself, or feel like trying a less intense ceremony, do a lower body burial ceremony.
      • First, choose a place for the ceremony, and ask the land if it’s okay to plant yourself there.
      • If it feels okay, then dig a hole big enough to plant your feet, or your feet and lower legs, into the Earth. Make sure you are barefoot so you feel what it is like to be grounded in that way, and pick a spot where you feel comfortable standing for a while like a tree or plant in the soil.
      • Try keeping your eyes open and closed, or do the ceremony at sunrise or sunset so you can experience the difference in natural light.
      • Do the ceremony somewhere with a view in the wilderness, and somewhere more urban like in your backyard, or in wet and sandy soil, and see how you feel being planted in different environments.
        • Last year, I received dream visions and moved to facilitate this ceremony at a sacred site whose traditional custodians welcome non-Aboriginal people to access the place respectfully, and it felt like ceremony to welcome my husband back home to Australia.
    • If you are called to do some deep body and Earth healing, an incredibly powerful ceremony is a full body burial. This is a death/rebirth ceremony that is timed with the cycle of the moon and ideally takes place at night. For this ceremony, you do need someone to support you. It is physically not possible nor safe to do alone. (Read this for one man’s experience.)burial.jpg
      • First, you and your support person/facilitator choose a place for the ceremony, leave offerings, and ask the land to support your healing. You may get a vision of a place to do the ceremony, or you may do it somewhere practical like a backyard.
      • Once you commit to the ceremony, you and your support person will start to receive guidance around timing and how to prepare yourself and the land. (Image from here.)
      • The day before or the day of the ceremony, you will dig a hole that is almost as big as a grave/cradle for your whole body, piling the dirt to one side.
      • When it is time for the ceremony, you will want to wear clothes that you don’t mind getting dirty and are a bit tight, unless you are okay with insects crawling underneath them! I have done this once wrapped in a blanket lying in the grave/cradle with dirt over me, and I have done it once just in clothes with dirt over me. I prefer the latter, because it feels more intimate.
      • Your support person will sit behind you so you do not see them, but they are able to watch you and hold space, and get you a drink of water, a hat or tissue if you need something like that. There may initially be prayers or music played for you, but most or all of the ceremony will be silent so you can go deep within yourself.
        • The first time I did this ceremony in the U.S., it was a very cold winter night with a waning moon (so emotions could be released/a death ceremony). Initially, I got images of my ancestors from Germany who had been fighting in World Wars, how many people they saw die, and how many of them died on the land. It was painful, and I cried. I then got images of my Jewish ancestors fleeing for their lives while their houses were being burned. It was scary, and my body shook and felt cold. Finally, I got images of Native Americans being slaughtered on the land where I was doing the ceremony. It was sad. My heart was heavy, and I sent them prayers. I lay underground for hours until my whole body was cold and numb and it felt like I was done. It was so deeply healing —  I had no idea I was carrying so much in my body even after years of doing other intense healing ceremonies!

Exercise: Inspired by this post, do something new to deepen your relationship with the Earth and the places around you!

giveheart If you value this content, please engage in reciprocity by living, sharing and giving.