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# 2020-12-31 - Of Water And The Spirit by Malidoma Patrice Somé | |
My partner recommended this book to me. The author took great pains | |
to tell a very personal story in plain language. | |
Many ideas in this book resonate with other indigenous writings that | |
i have read. I especially appreciated the part about learning when | |
it is appropriate to use analytical parts of the mind, and when it is | |
not. I also appreciated the repeated point about human language | |
being inadequate to represent meaning and convey universal knowledge | |
between people. This clearly implies that we are capable of learning | |
and receiving knowledge beyond the limitations of language, and this | |
bolsters the value of the individual. | |
I once attended a Dagara-inspired grief ritual and i did not react | |
well. With one exception, there were no people of color. What i | |
perceived was a bunch of liberal, wealthy, and white people | |
performing in pretentious ways in front of each other. In other | |
words, their emotional displays seemed unreal to me. Part of my | |
resistance has to do with the ritualistic container. It reminds me | |
of the bad parts of church where a leader tells everyone else what to | |
do. "And now we will grieve. Everybody let's cry on cue!" | |
Likewise, when i visit the author's web site at malidoma.com, i feel | |
judgmental of the American side of the relationship. For example, i | |
see an offering to travel with the author to Burkina Faso for $3,500 | |
per person. While this cost is in line with other meditation | |
retreats, i perceive the whole project as an ego-centric form of | |
vanity. White people are throwing their money around and trashing | |
the environment [with jet flight emissions], just so they can get | |
their African-styled kicks. This behavior seems to contradict | |
Malidoma Patrice Somé's writing about finding our center and the | |
fact that important, universal knowledge can only be found within. | |
# Introduction | |
My elders are convinced that the West is as endangered as the | |
indigenous cultures it has decimated in the name of colonialism. | |
There is no doubt that, at this time in history, Western civilization | |
is suffering from a great sickness of the soul. The West's | |
progressive turning away from functioning spiritual values, its total | |
disregard for the environment and the protection of natural resources; | |
the violence of inner cities with their problems of poverty, drugs, | |
and crime; spiraling unemployment and economic disarray; and growing | |
intolerance toward people of color and the values of other | |
cultures--all of these trends, if unchecked, will eventually bring | |
about a terrible self-destruction. In the face of all this global | |
chaos, the only possible hope is self-transformation. | |
One of my greatest problems [in writing this book] was that the | |
things I talk about here did not happen in English; they happened in | |
a language that has a very different mindset about reality. Modern | |
American English... seems to falter when asked to communicate another | |
person's worldview. I have had to struggle a great deal in order to | |
be able to communicate this story to you. | |
When I was four years old, my childhood and my parents were taken | |
from me when I was literally kidnapped from my home by a French | |
Jesuit missionary who had befriended my father. For the next fifteen | |
years I was in a boarding school, far away from my family, and forced | |
to learn about white man's reality... | |
At the age of 20 I escaped and went back to my people, but found that | |
I no longer fit into the tribal community. I risked my life to | |
undergo the Dagara initiation and thereby return to my people. ... So | |
I am a man of two worlds, trying to be at home in both of them--a | |
difficult task at best. | |
It seems obvious to me that as soon as one culture begins to talk | |
about preservation, it means that it has already turned the other | |
culture into an endangered species. | |
I deeply respect the story I have told in this book. I respect it | |
because it embodies everything that is truly me, my ancestors, my | |
tribe, my life. It is a very complicated story whose telling caused | |
me great pain; but I had to tell it. Only in this way could I | |
ultimately fulfill my purpose to "befriend the stranger/enemy." | |
Every day we get closer to living in a global community. With | |
distances between countries narrowing, we have much wisdom to gain by | |
learning to understand other people's cultures and permitting | |
ourselves to accept that there is more than one version of reality. | |
To exist in the first place, each culture has to have its own version | |
of what is real. | |
As in the case of "Star Trek," Westerners look to the future as a | |
place of hope, a better world where every person has dignity and | |
value, where wealth is not unequally distributed, where the wonders | |
of technology make miracles possible. If people in the West would | |
embrace some of the more positive values of the indigenous world, | |
perhaps that might even provide them with a "shortcut" to their own | |
future. | |
For those who do not know what colonization does to the colonized, | |
Frants Fanon's "Black Skin, White Masks" and "The Wretched of the | |
Earth" are a good starting place. When they are done, I would | |
suggest they [the hypothetical readers] go further into reading Chin | |
Weizu's "The West and the Rest of Us." Alienation is one of the many | |
faces of modernity. The cure is communication and community--a new | |
sense of togetherness. | |
# Chapter 1, Slowly becoming | |
Collecting wood is essentially the work of women, but it is also the | |
work of boys. Bringing dry wood to your mother is a sign of love. | |
There was a reason for my mother's unwillingness to discuss this | |
[spiritual] experience with me or to have me discuss it with others. | |
The Dagara believe that contact with the otherworld is always deeply | |
transformational. To successfully deal with it, one should be fully | |
mature. Unfortunately, the otherworld does not discriminate between | |
children and adults, seeing us all as fully grown souls. Mothers | |
fear their children opening up to the otherworld too soon, because | |
when this happens, they lose them. A child who is continually | |
exposed to the otherworld will begin to remember her or his life | |
mission too early. In such cases, a child must be initiated | |
prematurely. Once initiated, the child is considered an adult and | |
must change her/his relationship with the parents. | |
Unlike modern Christianity, which links cleanliness to godliness, | |
Dagara culture holds the opposite to be true. The more intense the | |
involvement with the life of the spirit, the more holy and wise an | |
individual is, the less attention is paid to outward beauty. | |
He [Grandfather] always said that the good in a service has little to | |
do with the service itself, but the kind of heart one brings to the | |
task. For him, an unwilling heart spoiled a service by infecting it | |
with feelings of resentment and anger. | |
When Grandfather started speaking, he did not particularly care | |
whether someone was listening or not. Speaking was a liberating | |
exercise for him, an act of mental juggling. He would sometimes | |
speak for hours, as if he had a big spirit audience around him. He | |
would laugh, get angry, and storm at invisible opponents, and then | |
become quiet once more. | |
My father genuinely feared going to hell. As he confided to me much | |
later on, the white priest had told him that the Almighty God would | |
take good care of his newborn twins and that He could do it better | |
than the ancestors. According to the priest, our ancestors had been | |
condemned to eternal hell and were busy burning. They had no time to | |
enjoy sacrifices. | |
# Chapter 2, A Grandfather's funeral | |
Grandfather died while I was still completing the fourth rainy season | |
of my life. ... Since my strange experience in the bush, my mother | |
had kept her word and never taken me along with her when she went in | |
search of dry wood. So on those days my only companion was | |
Grandfather. | |
[Malidoma's Grandfather gave him a prophetic reading with instruction | |
and blessing. A Jesuit priest takes Malidoma's Grandfather to the | |
dispensary, a missionary hospital. Malidoma's father goes and | |
Malidoma insists on going too.] | |
"The war against our enemy must now begin with a peace treaty. I am | |
offering you an intelligent way to confront a problem we do not yet | |
understand the exact nature of." | |
# Chapter 3, Grandfather's funeral | |
At Dagara funerals, it is always necessary that the members of the | |
immediate family be accompanied by a group of friends in order that | |
they not injure themselves in the paroxysms of their grief. And it | |
is these very paroxysms that are necessary if one's grief is to be | |
purged. | |
Public grief is cleansing--of vital importance to the whole | |
community--and people look forward to shedding tears the same way | |
they look forward to their next meal. An adult who cannot weep is a | |
dangerous person who has forgotten the place emotion holds in a | |
person's life. | |
Though funerals are a group activity, there is also space within them | |
for individual initiative: the container created by ritual is big | |
enough to satisfy everyone's needs. | |
When activated, an emotion has a ceiling it must reach. At its apex, | |
grief turns the body into a vessel of chaos. But it is just such a | |
climactic chaos that can cleanse both the person and her or his | |
spirit. | |
During a Dagara funeral ritual, all kinds of grief are released--not | |
just regret for the departed, but all the pain of everyday life. | |
Certain tribal situations oblige one by law to shed tears. Funerals | |
are one of them. Adult men, however, have a more difficult time | |
expressing public grief, for they are forbidden to [express public | |
grief] except on special occasions. In fact, it is generally | |
believes that if a man weeps outside of ritual context, the day will | |
end in disaster. | |
[This challenges my notions of individual liberty. Men being legally | |
forbidden to grieve in one context, and legally obliged to grieve in | |
another, as though they were puppets play-acting someone else's | |
wishes.] | |
To the Dagara, the esoteric is a technology that is surrounded by | |
secrecy. Those who know about it can own it only if they don't | |
disclose it, for disclosure takes the power away. | |
For those of you who have begun to construct a romantic picture of | |
indigenous life, let this be a warning, for the indigenous world is | |
not a place where everything flows in harmony, but one in which | |
people must be constantly on the alert to detect and to correct | |
imbalances and illnesses in both communal and individual life. | |
Grandfather told me they [the Kontombili, highly evolved space | |
aliens] are part of what he called "the universal consciousness," but | |
even though they are immeasurably intelligent, like us they too do | |
not know where God is. They come from a world called Kontonteg, a | |
fine place, far bigger than our Earth, yet very difficult to locate | |
in time and space. They make their homes in illusory caves that | |
serve as portals between our world and theirs. | |
# Chapter 4, A sudden farewell | |
Mother was always impatient and sometimes brutal when it came to | |
waking my sister and me. She thought that we lived more in the | |
spirit world than in the village world. She often used the word | |
witch to refer to us--me because of my meeting with the little man in | |
the bush, and my sister because of the deepness of her sleep. My | |
mother thought my sister's spirit went flying off at night, as is | |
customary with witches, leaving her body behind, sound asleep, and | |
that is why mother was so violent when she tried to awaken her. | |
In Dagara culture, elders don't care about cleanliness or | |
affectations that young people think they have to put on. The nature | |
of the otherworld is pink, so the elders dye their boubous that | |
color. The aura of disgust that elders love to create around | |
themselves is the result of their having let go of certain social | |
pretenses, and especially of their unyielding concentration upon the | |
spirits. They don't have any spare energy to invest in being polite. | |
"Our health is linked to our capacities to manage our | |
responsibilities. A weary mind in a restless body is likely to | |
forget what he must do and with whom. That is why our fathers say | |
one man needs the eyes of another man to see what the shadow of the | |
tree hides." | |
... But the more you know, the more obligated you are to serve the | |
community; the more you own, the more you must give. Consequently, | |
it is easy to understand why people are reluctant to embrace | |
spiritual secrets and their attendant responsibilities. ... One does | |
not jump enthusiastically into being big: status can swallow every | |
bit of your life energy. | |
[Father Maillot physically abducted Malidoma while his parents were | |
out doing some ritual. Malidoma resisted and yelled, but that did | |
not stop Father Maillot, who drove him away on his motorcycle.] | |
# Chapter 5, In the white man's world | |
I began to think that my rough journey to the hill was not so bad, | |
since I was learning so many new things. It would even be great fun | |
to tell Mother about them when Father Maillot took me home. Poor | |
Mother! If I had only known that I was not going to see her again | |
for a long, long time, I would have them the opportunity right then | |
to run away. | |
There were about ten other boys at the mission, most of whom had been | |
kidnapped as I had. The first time I got the chance to ask Father | |
Maillot why he had taken me away from my family, he locked me in a | |
room with concrete walls and a metal door and walked away, speaking | |
in a foreign language. His mood had become arrogant and | |
intimidating, but I did not care. I wanted to go home. [Malidoma | |
raised a ruckus. Then they beat him with a whip until he lost | |
consciousness.] | |
To this day I remember him telling me that he was my mother now, and | |
that I should never call for her again. In my confusion the | |
gentleness of his voice even sounded like my mother. It would be | |
years before I understood that tenderness is the weapon used by the | |
torturer to win over his victim. | |
When I woke in the morning, I was lying in the dispensary on my | |
belly, covered with bandages. I didn't dare turn over. ... How many | |
days I was kept there and treated for the wounds I sustained, I never | |
knew. ... There was not one of us who did not bear the scars of | |
Father Maillot's rage. | |
I became submissive, though that meant losing all my enthusiasm and | |
spontaneity. Our days were lived in fear, fear of being beaten for | |
the things we did, or the things we neglected to do. None of us knew | |
what was really going on or what was expected of us. Over and over | |
we asked ourselves the same questions. Why were we here? Why | |
couldn't we go home? | |
Religious colonialism tortures the soul. It creates an atmosphere of | |
fear, uncertainty, and general suspicion. The worst thing is that it | |
uses the local people to enforce itself. Our teachers were Black, | |
from the tribe, yet they were our worst enemies. | |
Once I learned to read, it became a wonderful escape. Books were a | |
world in which we were authorized to escape--though we always had to | |
come back to reality. | |
My life had been taken away from me because during the years I was | |
there, this institution assumed that its goal was my goal. The | |
result was, of course, the slow death of my identity and the | |
understanding that I was in exile from everything I had ever held | |
dear. | |
# Chapter 6, Life begins at Nansi | |
The boarding school was a fortress--a state within a state, bursting | |
out of nowhere, a garden of order within the chaos of the African | |
jungle. In all, the institution contained well over five hundred | |
children, aged twelve to twenty-one. | |
Thanks to the one freedom we had--to daydream--it was possible to | |
endure the lecture. If for the most part we looked attentive, the | |
priest did not care very much what we did as long as there was | |
silence. | |
One thing was certain: this coming together of all of us--not just | |
strangers from the same tribe but strangers from many different | |
tribal communities--demonstrated the possibility of unity amid tribal | |
diversity. Suddenly French became useful far beyond its power to | |
introduce us to literacy. It became a means of linking us to each | |
other. | |
The seminary of Nansi had appropriated the name and the land of a | |
nearby village occupied by a tribe whose members watched the whole | |
maneuver astonished and speechless, horrified at being politely asked | |
to quit their own land. But in the eyes of the Jesuits, how could | |
such a theft be considered a crime? Who would dare question the | |
divine need for land? | |
My first two years in the seminary were ones of intense nightmares | |
and deep psychological trauma for one important reason. I was shaped | |
like a girl. At age 13, my breasts were the size of apples. This | |
condition was attributed to the starchy food we ate, and the doctor | |
said it would melt away as I grew older. But, while waiting for | |
that, I discovered that I had become an object of desire. One of the | |
priests, Father Lamartin, had taken a special liking to me... | |
Similar things happened, not just with Father Lamartin, but with | |
older students... | |
# Chapter 7, The rebellion begins | |
The first three years in the seminary were lived almost outside my | |
body. There are certain wires in the psyche that must be cut under | |
certain abusive circumstances in order to survive. Unlike the school | |
at the mission hill, here it could come from any direction, students | |
included. Among the boys secret anarchy reigned, and the fear of | |
being tormented, sexually or physically, kept me in a state of | |
strained vigilance and emotional numbness. In the boarding school at | |
Nansi, one had to grow up fast. | |
I channeled most of my rage into my studies, which all of a sudden | |
took off. Studying hard was a way to feel vindicated and at the same | |
time keep myself busy. Every new subject came with a book that | |
opened up a strange new world into which I could escape. It was | |
easier to stay there in that imaginary freedom than to go out and | |
face the boring reality of the sanctified realm. But though | |
fascinating, the world of the book was an alien place altogether. | |
History focused on the white man's deeds, and was a tale of violence | |
and death. | |
I came to realize that wherever the white man went, he brought | |
trouble because he had no scruples. He brought a kind of meanness | |
that no one could face because it made no sense to anyone, and | |
eventually he took over because no one loved blood and killing more | |
than he did. | |
... there are times when disobedience heals a very ailing part of the | |
self. It relieves the human spirit's distress at being forced into | |
narrow boundaries. For the nearly powerless, defying authority is | |
often the only power available. | |
# Chapter 8, New awakenings | |
When I first came to the seminary, I sincerely tried to believe and | |
pray, but any spiritual grace I found gradually dissolved in the face | |
of continued and repeated brutality. There came a time when I | |
rebelled against God. ... Consequently, my last three years in the | |
seminary were devoted to the cultivation of dissidence, ego, and | |
intellectual pursuits. | |
So, when given an assignment to write a piece about a figure of | |
authority, I wrote a play about him [Malidoma's Grandfather]. As the | |
play ended, Grandfather and the French general were initializing a | |
new era in which tribal wisdom was taught to white people and nothing | |
else. | |
"I heard Father Pascal talking with Father Michael about loosening | |
the rules here because of the end of colonialism. ... It means we are | |
free." | |
"Free from what?" | |
"From this religious colonialism. Isn't that great?" | |
"It isn't that easy," I said. "Don't you see that the conditions | |
under which we've been living for so many years aim at imprisoning | |
everybody? The freedom you're talking about is impossible. You | |
can't get rid of your own shadow. You, me, Father Joe, we can never | |
be free again. For one thing, the church obliterated our past. Now | |
we may as well all be Europeans, only we're the wrong color." | |
I knew I wanted to be a priest, but not the kind I was being asked to | |
be. I knew I could be one who placed dynamite in the middle of the | |
whole system and explode it. That was what I wanted to do. | |
"I will allow no one to hit me without reason," I said, feeling | |
stronger and stronger, as if I were avenging years and years of | |
silent submission. Father Joe swung at me again, but I ducked. ... | |
While he struggled for balance, I pushed him hard. He crashed | |
against the window, which shattered as he yelled, and went through it | |
backwards. ... I slowly became aware that the entire class had leaped | |
to its feet in horror over what had happened. It was then I realized | |
I had made a terrible mistake. | |
# Chapter 9, The long journey begins | |
In an instant I had lost one identity and acquired another. And I | |
felt as alone as I ever had before. In a moment of excess I had | |
inadvertently ceased to belong to the seminary. | |
My first taste of freedom made me wish that I had never wanted to be | |
free. I was frightened by the immensity of the jungle--its silent | |
and cold invitation. ... To have nothing to do and no one to answer | |
to is a frightening thing. Here I was, facing the world and yet | |
incapable of assuming my own freedom. All I knew was that home was | |
east. How far east? I could not tell. ... I walked steadily east, | |
as if trying to complete one of those assignments we were given in | |
the seminary every morning before 8 o'clock, which we had to do | |
without any thought. | |
Why had I ever left? What could possibly replace the life I had | |
grown accustomed to over the last sixteen years? I felt like a | |
domesticated beast abruptly released into the jungle. I had lost my | |
vital instincts. I realized that I had walked the whole day without | |
eating. I finally decided that the need for rest was more urgent | |
than the desire for food, and more easily available. | |
My progress slowed as I moved into the mountains. As I reached the | |
top of the first one, I realized that I was close to a town. | |
On the map it [the town of Bobo] is nearly a hundred kilometers from | |
the seminary. I had walked that distance in about two days. | |
[Malidoma needed five hundred francs for bus fair back home.] | |
# Chapter 10, The voyage home | |
Since I had no way to get five hundred francs, I had no choice but to | |
keep going on foot. But that did not see so unpleasant, for in these | |
circumstances one does not think distance or speed when facing a | |
journey: the focus is on the process. | |
When I woke up the sun had disappeared. There were half a dozen | |
naked people around me, all speaking Dagara, which I could no longer | |
comprehend. | |
Suddenly the woman screamed, "Malidoma, Patere, Malidoma!" She | |
released her grip on her load of dry wood and tilted her head, | |
sending the wood crashing to the ground. Then she rushed toward me. | |
She knelt in front of me, grabbed my hands, and began wailing as if | |
someone had just died. ... My mother called my name again and cried | |
more than ever. My sister held me from the opposite side. Thus, | |
sandwiched between women, I entered the house the Jesuit priest had | |
taken me away from some fifteen years ago. | |
# Chapter 11, Hard beginnings | |
The Bible spoke of love and goodness, but all around me I had seen | |
vanity, deception, and cruelty. I could no longer accept the | |
sacrament from such unclean hands. So I did not come home because I | |
was homesick, but because I could not become a priest. | |
When that day came I understood that the taming of my anger was a | |
task assigned to my male mother. [Malidoma's mother's brother.] | |
After my ordeal, I had to be softened, quieted, sobered, and made to | |
feel supported. A father cannot provide this for his son, especially | |
when there is already a serious problem between them. There is a | |
natural need for a transfer of reference. The feminine in the | |
male--the mother in the man--is an energy that can be triggered into | |
wakefulness only by a male directly associated with the mother. The | |
male mother is therefore thought of as someone who "carried water," | |
the energy of peace, quiet, reconciliation, and healing. | |
Despite the care and love around me, my life still felt unresolved. | |
... Guisso was there each time, even though his presence in my life | |
was mostly silent. I grew attached to him, as if he were my own | |
mother. | |
My homecoming had produced a crisis in the village as a whole, but | |
more particularly in my own family. ... As an educated man I had | |
returned, not as a villager who worked for the white man, but as a | |
white man. | |
It all boiled down to the simple fact that I had been changed in a | |
way unsuitable to village life, and that this transformation needed | |
to be tamed if the village were to accept me as I was. | |
# Chapter 11, Trying to fit back into village life | |
Indigenous life is a constant physical exercise. It is not | |
surprising that my people don't have weight problems. | |
Among the Dagara, darkness is sacred. It is forbidden to illuminate | |
it, for light scares the Spirit away. The one exception to this rule | |
is a bonfire. Though they emit a powerful glow, they are not | |
prohibited because there is always drumming around them, and the beat | |
of the drum cancels out the light. | |
Villagers are expected to learn how to function in the dark. | |
"... knowing what you know is not common. It means you have received | |
the white man's Baor. His spirit lives in you. In a way you are not | |
here yet. It's as if the real you is somewhere else, still trying to | |
find the route home... You carry something in you, something very | |
subtle, something that comes from your contact with the whites... | |
All these white people that came here to make trouble for us are | |
possessed by the troubled ghosts of their ancestors. This is because | |
where the white men come from, people don't grieve. Because their | |
dead are not at peace, the living cannot be either. These people are | |
empty inside. Someone who does not have an inside cannot teach | |
anyone anything. The problem we are facing with you is not about an | |
individual. It is about a community trying to learn from the past. | |
The white man is not strong--he's scared. His whiteness is made of | |
terror, or otherwise he would not be white. He is consumed by his | |
terror and wrestles with it to stay alive. Until he is at peace with | |
himself, no one around him ever will be. The elders want to quiet | |
the white man in your soul. They do not know how, but they would | |
like to try something... Baor--initiation. ... experiencing Baor | |
will bring your soul back home and you will stop being a stranger to | |
yourself and to us." | |
In other words, according to the council I had not yet arrived home. | |
I did not know myself yet, nor did I understand the extent of the | |
fragmentation within my psyche. | |
"There is a ghost in you; something dead that does not like to | |
confront anything having to do with life. This thing will be on the | |
defensive each time you try to come alive. For you to live as one of | |
us, that one is going to have to die." | |
Protection is toxic to the person being safeguarded. When you | |
protect something, the thing you are keeping safe decays. | |
# Chapter 13, The meeting at the earth shrine | |
[The council debated and decided to give initiation to Malidoma.] | |
# Chapter 14, My first night at the initiation camp | |
Nakedness is very common in the tribe. It is not a shameful thing; | |
it is an expression of one's relationship with the spirit of nature. | |
To be naked is to be open-hearted. | |
The initiation camp was a rudimentary clearing in the center of the | |
bush, hidden in the midst of a grassy savanna by the protective walls | |
of the surrounding mountains and foothills. | |
When the darkness fell that first night, our coach roared at us to | |
prepare for the circle of fire. He communicated with his hunter's | |
Wélé, whistling the words rather than singing them. The Wélé | |
looks like a five-inch flute, with two holes at the right side and | |
one hole at the left side. The Dagara language is a tone language, | |
that is to say, it is spoken like a chant. It is customary to | |
important ritual occasions to blow words through this flute. Each | |
sound has a code meaning, and people take this kind of message more | |
seriously. | |
The place where he was standing was the center. Each one of us | |
possessed a center that [we] had grown away from after birth. To be | |
born was to lose contact with our center, and to grow from childhood | |
to adulthood was to walk away from it. | |
The center is both within and without. It is everywhere. But we | |
must realize it exists, find it, and be with it, for without the | |
center we cannot tell who we are, where we came from, and where we | |
are going. | |
No one's center is like someone else's. Find your own center, not | |
the center of your neighbor; not the center of your father or mother | |
or family or ancestor but that center which is yours and yours alone. | |
I became conscious of an overwhelming urge to analyze and | |
intellectualize everything I was seeing and experiencing. This | |
impulse to question was cold and purposeless. | |
I also understood that this was the kind of knowledge I was going to | |
gradually become acquainted with--not by going outside of myself, but | |
by looking within myself and a few others. | |
How acquiescent one becomes when face to face with the pure universal | |
energy! | |
# Chapter 15, Trying to see | |
"The night of your education has begun," he said. "It will be a | |
sleepless night until the dawn of your awakening. You will live more | |
wonders, see and feel different things, and be changed from them on." | |
"Tomorrow we will begin working with your sight," the coach | |
continued. "You must learn to see. Without good sight, you can't | |
continue with the other sessions. When you have learned to see well, | |
you will journey one by one to your respective places in this world | |
and find every piece of yourself." | |
The second elder was clearly exasperated. He did not seem to be | |
speaking to my supervisor anymore, but wrestling with a theoretical | |
challenge. For him too I was obviously a riddle. There was | |
something about me, something about the way I was not assimilating my | |
lessons and the way my body was not reacting properly to the most | |
important instructions, that attracted the curiosity of these old | |
scholars. | |
# Chapter 16, The world of the fire, the song of the stars | |
Suddenly I knew I had failed that day, not because of the coach's | |
remarks, but because I felt failure from the depths of my being. I | |
still did not know what I was supposed to see, or what was preventing | |
me from seeing [it]. | |
Primal language is the language of the spirit, and of creation. When | |
uttered under certain circumstances it has the power to manifest what | |
is uttered. Primal language is also dangerous because of the | |
potential it has to be lethal. | |
# Chapter 17, In the arms of the green lady | |
The next day I was ordered to resume my gazing exercise. As I took | |
up my position in front of the tree, I realized that I was not as | |
restless as I had been the day before. There was, however, a greater | |
number of curious elders watching me than the day before. | |
When I looked once more at the yila [tree], I became aware that it | |
was not a tree at all. How had I ever seen it as such? I do not | |
know how this transformation occurred. Things were not happening | |
logically, but as if this were a dream. Out of nowhere, in the place | |
where the tree had stood, appeared a tall woman dressed in black from | |
head to foot. She resembled a nun, although her outfit did not seem | |
religious. | |
Human beings are often unable to receive because we do not know what | |
to ask for. We are sometimes unable to get what we need because we | |
do not know what we want. If this was happiness that I felt, then no | |
human could sustain this amount of well-being for even a day. You | |
would have to be dead or changed into something capable of handling | |
these unearthly feelings in order to live with them. The part in us | |
that yearns for these kinds of feelings and experiences is not human. | |
It does not know that it lives in a body that can withstand only a | |
certain amount of this kind of experience at a time. If humans were | |
to feel this way all the time, they would probably not be able to do | |
anything other than shed tears of happiness for the rest of their | |
lives--which, in that case, would be very short. | |
Human beings never feel that they have enough of anything. Ofttimes | |
what we say we want is real in words only. If we ever understood the | |
genuine desires of our hearts at any given moment, we might | |
reconsider the things we waste our energy pining for. If we could | |
always get what we thought we wanted, we would quickly exhaust our | |
weak arsenal of petty desires and discover with shame that all along | |
we had been cheating ourselves. | |
Love consumes its object voraciously. Consequently, we can only | |
experience its shadow. Happiness does not last forever because we do | |
not have the power to contain it. | |
I cannot repeat the speech of the green lady. It lives in me because | |
it enjoys the privilege of secrecy. For me to disclose it would be | |
to dishonor and diminish it. The power of nature exists in its | |
silence. Human words cannot encode meaning because human language | |
has access only to the shadow of meaning. | |
# Chapter 18, Returning to the source | |
My experience of "seeing" the lady in the tree had worked a major | |
change in the way I perceived things as well as my ability to respond | |
to the diverse experiences that constituted my education in the | |
open-air classroom of the bush. This change in perspective did not | |
affect the logical, common-sense part of my mind. Rather, it | |
operated as an alternate way of being in the world that competed with | |
my previous mindset. | |
What we see in everyday life is not nature lying to us, but nature | |
encoding reality in ways that we can come to terms with under | |
ordinary circumstances. Nature looks the way it looks because of the | |
way we are. We could not live our whole lives at the ecstatic level | |
of the sacred. Our senses would soon become exhausted. There does, | |
however, come a time when we must learn to move between the two ways | |
of "seeing" reality in order to become a whole person. | |
Enlarging one's vision and abilities has nothing supernatural about | |
it, rather it is "natural" to be a part of nature and to participate | |
in a wider understanding of reality. | |
Overcoming the fixity of the body is the hardest part of initiation. | |
As with the seeing exercise, there is a lot of unconscious resistance | |
taking place. There is also a great deal of fear to overcome. ... | |
This kind of education is nothing less than a return to one's true | |
self, that is, to the divine within us. | |
After my intense experience with the green lady, I began to | |
understand when it was useful to analyze what I was learning and when | |
it was better to discontinue analysis. | |
In the Dagara culture the drum is a transportation device that | |
carries the listener into other worlds. | |
"Our ancestors survived because they knew how to keep things | |
unspoken. If you want to survive, then learn from their wisdom." | |
"The dream world is real," he said. "It's more real than what you | |
are observing now. Why? I'm not going to give you the answer to | |
this. I'll let you find out yourself. You are your own best | |
evidence, your own best witness; but you must be aware that we have | |
no knowledge or maps of the frontier between these worlds. So when | |
one of you gets lost in one of them, neither I nor any one of my | |
colleagues can do anything to retrieve you." | |
# Chapter 19, Opening the portal | |
I had heard that we usually come to Earth from other planets that are | |
more evolved and less in need of meditation. Our errand on this | |
planet is informed by a decision to partake in the building of | |
Earth's cosmic origin, and to promote awareness of our celestial | |
identity to others who are less evolved. Our elders taught that some | |
of the universe's inhabitants were as much in need of help as others | |
had the need to help them. This Earth was one of the many places | |
where those who craved to help could find this desire easily | |
satisfied, and where those who needed help could easily become | |
recipients of it. | |
The light hole was a gateway to an alternate world. Access to it | |
required conversion of the body cells into a form of energy that is | |
light. ... So far we had survived the tricks of these old men. This | |
time, however, we were being sent somewhere wholesale: body and soul | |
together, with the possibility of never returning. | |
The light hole was circular, with a diameter no bigger than a meter. | |
When the chanting and drumming ended, the elders were holding a | |
window into the world the chief had spoken about earlier. In | |
objective time, each passage took from one to three minutes, but this | |
short time appeared infinite [to the person traveling through the | |
light hole.] | |
# Chapter 20, Through the light hole | |
For the first time I feared death. Things that I had once thought | |
important were now becoming insignificant in the face of the real | |
issue: death. A merciless avenger was demolishing things inside me | |
as if they had become irrelevant. | |
"Where," I asked myself, "is my fear coming from? Have I waited this | |
long to receive my real education only to doubt my ability to survive | |
it?" | |
As he [Nyangoli] walked away, our eyes met and in a flash we | |
communicated. This brief contact was all that I needed at the | |
moment--it was powerful enough to lift a mountain. | |
There are moments when no mind is capable of putting certain kinds of | |
feelings into words, when speech is a meager instrument for | |
communicating the reality of a situation. Words, by their very | |
nature, are limited, merely representations of the real, human-made | |
pieces of utterances. Reality exists independent from language. | |
# Chapter 21, The world at the bottom of the pool | |
Why should anyone be allowed to risk his life just for the sake of | |
becoming oversensitive? For I was becoming more and more aware of my | |
extreme sensitivity to everything surrounding me. There were so many | |
details flooding my senses that I could not possibly handle them all. | |
"He who does not know where he comes from cannot know why he came | |
here and what he came to this place to do. There is no reason to | |
live if you forget what you're here for. ... There are details about | |
your identity that you alone will have to discover, and that's what | |
you have come to initiation to go and find out. To come to this | |
planet you first had to plunge into the depths of a chasm. In order | |
to return to where you came from, you will have to do the same thing. | |
Something odd was going on inside of me. ... The sense that I might | |
die was not as strong as it had been in the beginning. This time I | |
felt certain I would survive. | |
"Our minds know better than we are able and willing to admit the | |
existence of many more things than we are willing to accept. The | |
spirit and the mind are one. Their vision is greater, much greater | |
than the vision we experience in the ordinary world. Nothing can be | |
imagined that is not already there in the outer and inner worlds. | |
Your mind is a responder; it receives. It does not make things up. | |
It can't imagine what does not exist. | |
In the world of my people there is nothing but reality alone without | |
its opposite. ... When we resist expansion, we foster the unreal, | |
serving that part of our ego that wants to limit growth and | |
experience. In the context of the traditional world, the geography | |
of consciousness is very expansive. Consequently, in the mind of a | |
villager, the unreal is just a new and yet unconfirmed reality in the | |
vocabulary of consciousness. | |
The power of quiet is great. It generates the same feelings in | |
everything one encounters. It vibrates with the cosmic rhythm of | |
oneness. It is everywhere, available to anyone at any time. It is | |
us, the force within that makes us stable, trusting, and loving. It | |
is contemplation contemplating us. Peace is letting go--returning to | |
the silence that cannot enter the realm of words because it is too | |
pure to be contained in words. | |
# Chapter 22, Burials, lessons, and journeys | |
I could not fully understand the meaning of most of the trials we had | |
been put through, nor could I contain them in words. ... Only what | |
has been integrated by the human aspect of ourselves can be shared | |
with others. I have also come to believe that things stay alive | |
proportionally to how much silence there is around them. Meaning | |
does not need words to exist. | |
Shamans tell us that, were meaning to come to us fully unveiled, it | |
would turn us into it; that is, it would kill us. This is why we | |
must content ourselves with whispers and glimmerings of meaning. The | |
closer we get to it, the wiser we become. | |
[Malidoma described being buried alive in a shallow grave as part of | |
initiation.] | |
The heat from a naked body, unable to dissipate, gets trapped in the | |
dirt and so comes back to you. When you begin to sweat and itch, | |
there is no remedy because you can't move. Slowly your sweat turns | |
the dirt immediately surrounding your body into a layer of scalding, | |
sticky mud. As the heat increases with the weight of the dirt, the | |
mind cannot tolerate being in the body any longer, so it leaves. | |
When I began hallucinating, that was better because it didn't include | |
the pain anymore. | |
The Dagara [person] refrains from asking questions when faced with a | |
riddle because questioning and being answered destroys one's chance | |
to learn for oneself. Questions are the mind's way of trying to | |
destroy a mystery. | |
# Chapter 23, Journey into the underworld | |
In silence, meaning is no longer heard, but felt; and feeling is the | |
best hearing, the best instrument for recording meaning. Meaning is | |
made welcome as it is and treated with respect. | |
# Chapter 25, Returning from the underworld | |
Initiation is an extremely individualistic, self-centered activity. | |
The camaraderie you feel with the elders and the other boys may try | |
to hide that, but ultimately no one will save you if you fail to | |
remember what you need to survive. No friend will do for you what | |
you are supposed to do for yourself in order to further your own | |
process. We, as a group, do not constitute a "village" where people | |
support one another spontaneously. Our purpose is not to save one | |
another if the need arises, but to learn. | |
The community is a body in which every individual is a cell. No | |
harmful or inappropriate cell is allowed to remain in the body. One | |
way or another, it will be ejected. [Ah yes, medical analogies, also | |
used by fascists to demonize human beings.] One must learn how to | |
function as a healthy cell in order to earn the privilege of staying | |
in the body and keeping it alive. | |
What I have shared with you here is very potent and special | |
information. Before I sat down to write this book, I first had to | |
get permission from my council of elders. The episodes I have been | |
able to present in this book are the ones Guisso thought I could | |
speak about. There are others that I am not at liberty to ever write | |
about. They constitute the bulk of the initiatory experience and its | |
most secret parts. | |
During the Dagara initiation process, I grew into myself. The | |
problems I had [, they] became resolved as I entered into my own true | |
nature. ... At the outset, initiation had appeared like a set of | |
weird, unconnected events, but their result was a state of surrender, | |
and, much later, contentment. | |
# Chapter 26, Homecoming and celebration | |
A chameleon, symbol of adaptability and compatibility, stood beside | |
the ancestral shrine... | |
The final component of this ensemble was a hat, much simpler in | |
design. It resembled a crown. The seven cones at the top | |
represented the seven secrets of the medicine of our clan. The image | |
of the chameleon was embroidered on either side. A star, symbol of | |
leadership, was embroidered on the front. ... With the hat on, I felt | |
like an elder. | |
The memory of fifteen years of brainwashing in the seminary, an | |
institution that claimed the supremacy of knowledge, stood timidly in | |
a corner of my mind, as if afraid of competing with what I now knew. | |
... No one can tell us who we are or how we must live. That | |
knowledge can be found only within. | |
Part of me felt amused as I listened to these elders while another | |
part of me struggled to stay calm. The part that wanted to stay calm | |
was fighting the urge to say something nasty to Fiensu. I wanted to | |
tell him that I could never be his son, but I did not succumb to this | |
urge. Instead, I tried to show discipline by avoiding open conflict, | |
and I did not really have to go out of my way to do that. I was a | |
different person now than I had been, and it was easy to stay silent. | |
My silence seemed to have spoken louder than words, for Fiensu looked | |
at me, baffled. Kyéré nodded, the kind of nodding that | |
acknowledges the proximity of wisdom. I overheard Dazié say | |
something to Gourzin to the effect that it takes the special | |
knowledge I possessed to maintain this quiet on a day like this. | |
[I will take that to be knowledge of something greater than one's | |
self, and the skill to use words for the benefit of everyone.] | |
# Epilogue: The fearful return | |
"The white man needs to know who we really are, and he needs to be | |
told by someone who speaks his language and ours. Go. Tell him." | |
My enduring passion for magic, rituals, and ceremonies reassured me | |
that I was resisting the white world--or maybe I had grown to be a | |
man trapped between the white and traditional worlds. Because I was | |
alone in my efforts, I had no basis by which to explain to anyone the | |
kind of world I was living in. | |
See also: | |
Dagaaba people @Wikipedia | |
What A Shaman Sees In A Mental Hospital | |
author: Somé, Malidoma Patrice, 1956- | |
detail: https://malidoma.com/ | |
LOC: DT555.45.D35 S667 | |
tags: biography,book,non-fiction,spirit | |
title: Of Water and the Spirit | |
# Tags | |
biography | |
book | |
non-fiction | |
spirit |