THE WAY OF AFFIRMATION
ECO-SPIRITUALITY AND NATIVE TRADITIONS
PSYCHOTHERAPY TODAY
SUFI METHODS AS ARCHETYPES OF TRANSFORMATION
By Jabrane Mohamed Sebnat. Oslo March 1994.
Today our talk is about the healing aspect in the native traditions. Native traditions and native people are those oriented towards following the natural way. The knowledge which native people have about the natural world may be of good interest to us. We know that there is more and more interest in the world about ancient healing traditions and native people.
We also know that part of this interest is purely material. Another part of it is supported by the false perception of the primitive as in total harmony with the universe. Yet another part of it is an open desire by many people to reach out and gain new insights from native traditions and natives. We define a Native as opposed to a Tourist. A native belongs to the Earth. A native cares for discovering, understanding and integrating the original teachings of nature.
In this talk I will use with the same meaning the words:
Native, original, tribal, primitive on one side.
Tourist, illusionist, image maker on the other side.
Today natives are those caring locally and thinking globally for the survival of life in our planet.
Let us together explore a certain number of beliefs that underline the basic perception that natives have about the universe, their place in it and what is happening in it.
Tribal people view the world as a place of possibilities. The universe is there to be experienced. They are interested in finding the proper road which will help them to experience nature. This road is called the straight way, the straight path, the Tao, Asha, the wheel of the universe, Themis, and many other names.
The real interest of natives is to find the proper road to walk on.
The underlying beliefs behind this quest are:
- There is a right way to live in the universe.
- There is a direction to the universe.
- The universe is alive and it has a purpose. Our task is to understand the right direction and to follow it.
- We are co-creators of our realities with the help of the divine powers. What we do has immediate influence on the rest of the universe.
- Nature is a thinking organism and our own thinking is just one reflection of the thinking of nature.
- All things are related in a living universe. Responsibility for maintaining the harmony of life falls equally on all creatures. The Indians say: "All my relations". It is an opening invocation. It is also a closing benediction for ceremonies.
All my relations means respect for life, fulfilment of our work
in the universe, gathering of information.
Today we know that the nature of the physical body is made up of atoms. The atoms are in turn made up of subatomic particles moving at lightning speed around huge empty spaces. These subatomic particles are fluctuations of energy and information in a huge void or emptiness and nothingness.
Einstein wrote: "We live in a universe that has no beginning in time, that has no ending in time, that has no outer edges in space."
If we live in a universe that has no beginning in time and no end, how can we then speak about evolution?
The tourist commitment to the theory of evolution has made many people believe that primitives represent an earlier stage of the cultural evolution of humans.
Native methods for gathering information and energy are believed to be "pre-scientific" or "non-scientific" or "emotional". It is a big stereotype.
Western science holds that ideas and concepts must be capable
of repetition in order to be valid. If they are emotional, mystical
or psychic, they are discarded as unsuitable for scientific use.
They are pushed to the periphery.
Last summer, I was meeting with a group of native healers from several traditions. We were quite amused to see the revival over whether or not the planet is a living organism. The earth for centuries have been nurturing all kind of forms of life. Small and big, people, plants, insects, dinosaurs, animals, volcanoes and we are still discussing if it is a living organism or not.
Because the universe is alive we believe there is a choice for all things and creatures and this living universe requires a certain number of principles.
Among them are
AFFIRMATION
A strong sense of individual identity and self is important. This
sense of individual identity is developed through self knowledge
and self discipline. The process of self knowledge is a permanent
search. We are not just static anatomical mechanical structures.
We are rivers of information and energy. Every minute our body
is new. Can you step in the same river twice? We know now that
we renew 98% of our body in less than one year.
We are not only physical matter. We are thoughts, impulses, emotions, dreams, desires and pure consciousness.
Our body is a field of ideas. The way of affirmation is to know that we are consciousness. And through our consciousness we are creators of our physical bodies. We are co-creators of our minds. And we create our realities.
Monotheist models of spirituality made a huge mistake when they putted mankind as the crown of the creation. For natives we are a final product of life force. Human beings are the "younger brothers" of other life forms and we have to learn almost everything from other creatures.
This brings us to the next principle in the original traditions.
RESPECT
Respect is the attitude to honour and relate to other forms of life. The living universe requires mutual respect among its members. We have to learn to allow other entities to fulfil their purpose; their destiny. We have to stop intruding in the life process of other creatures. It is self knowledge that will give us the ability to respect other creatures.
Respect here does not mean worship and fear. Respect involves three basic attitudes:
- acceptance by humans and their communities of other forms of life.
- openness to communicate with other forms of life that are sharing the universe with us
- the power of the strong swallowing up the weak and unprotected
has to change. We have to learn that life is like a symphony
in which each player has a specific part to play. We must learn
to play our role and let others play theirs.
Finally mutual respect is what helps us to develop the sense of our own personal and communal identity. You and your partner are different. You are different because you have had different life experiences. You are of the same essence, of the same material, but you have heard different songs, you walked in different places, you went to different marriages, you met different people. It is experience that makes us different not essence. Stories explaining us how people came to hunt the deer, the salmon, the buffaloes, how feathers were incorporated in ceremonies show us there existed an early interspecies communication in which all forms of life agreed to allow themselves to be used by each other in ceremonial and economic ways. It is time for us to realise that obtaining benefits from the physical world at the expense of other forms of life, at the expense of the earth is a short term destructive politic. It will lead us to our own extinction, because we are disrupting the balance of life. We humans, we are pretentious and arrogant when we think that plants and animals and other forms of life are becoming extinct. They are simply going away and they will not come back until their places and locations are being treated correctly. This is being verified today in ecological restoration projects. Lands and places abused for a long time, if restored and treated properly and with respect will see plants return, animals and birds and insects related to those plants will also return.
One year ago, I started a tree planting project in Morocco and
I decided not to use insecticides. One year later I have seen
new plants coming out, new worms, new creature developing. My
neighbours were alarmed and predicted that my trees will soon
be eaten by all these dangerous plants and insects. I can tell
you that my trees seem to me more healthy than anywhere else in
the region. This leads us to the third principle of the native
tribal traditions.
EXCHANGE
Exchange is a basic law in the universe. When you take you have to give back in order to keep the cosmic balance - And you have to give not what you think is appropriate but what is really needed.
In fact the practice of exchange extends to all aspects of life in the native cultures. In order to learn something back.
AND one important aspect of exchange is listening - deep listening happens when you enter the silence.
An example:
The tree project and the strange bacteria that was eating the leaves and turning the trees to a yellow colour. I went into meditation and asked the trees what they needed. They answered me incense and dried cow shit.
People went into retreats, they went into vision quests in order to be given basic outlines of their lives. They were told how to walk on earth. They were told how to heal. They prayed and asked for guidance to other entities - They received information from trees, stars, spirits, stones, birds and signs. They made an offering and thanksgiving ceremonies when they gave back.
A healer will not start his/her practice until they were instructed to do so. Today all what a therapist needs to do is to follow a form of training and get a licence for the work. Healers and shamans were told when and how to move into their role. At times they were urged to hurry or to wait until the right time and right conditions were there for them to play their particular role.
First they needed to receive instructions through a healing vision.
- a dramatic dream like experience
- a series of visions.
The vision calls the person to the healing work to the new way of being, to the new way of working.
Then they will start a long learning process with their teachers. They will learn from their patients and from their continual practice of healing in their communities.
What I am wanting to convey to you in this talk is the ancient wisdom about life. Today science says that if you understand the mechanisms of disease, then you will get rid of it. If you understand the mechanism of the trauma, then you will get rid of your trauma. If you understand the mechanism of negative thinking then you will get rid of it.
If you understand how bacteria develop and you interfere by using the right antibiotic, then you should be able to be free of infections.
If you use the right chemotherapy to kill the cancer cells, then you will get rid of it. The mechanism of the disease is not the same as the origin of the disease. The origin of the disease has to do with how we live, where we live, how we think, how we understand the essence of life itself - that is to understand our own spiritual nature.
I met recently with a woman, in the Sahara retreat. She told me that 10 years ago she had a metastatic cancer. You know what she did to get rid of it? NOTHING.
Nobody wants to hear her story because she did nothing. Our culture is not interested in stories about nothing.
Let us go further in understanding the dynamic of healing and exchange.
Today many people in the New age community believe that if they could straighten themselves and learn how to repeat positive affirmation their diseases will go away.
Somehow we all believe that if we really straighten ourselves spiritually and psychologically, if we eat the right food, the diseases will never occur.
This is linear thinking - guilt based thinking; black or white.
We all know that life is full of mysteries. We know that reality is more complex.
We also know that there are many people who do not respect the most basic common sense rules of health and diet and they rarely get sick.
We also know that we have a lot of unhealthy saints and mystics. They seem to do everything right spiritually and psychologically, and still they often get sick.
Krishnamurti died of pancreas cancer
Suzuki Rosh died of liver cancer
Ramana Moharski stomach cancer
Buddha poisoned food
Saint Bernadette bone cancer at the age of 35
Osho Rajneesh asthma and heart failure
The list is endless.
I was reading in the last issue of Newsweek magazine that Stuart Berger the guru of celebrity nutrition died at the age of 40. He wrote that he knew how to live over 100 and to stay young.
His Southampton diet made him rich and famous among professional athletes, musicians, intellectuals and members of ruling families of several countries. Among the diseases he claimed to cure in his famous "Dr Berger's Immune Power Diet" were cancer, high blood pressure, arthritis, pre-menstrual syndrome and many other diseases.
The journalist reporting wrote: if you cannot trust the N.Y. Post columnist, where are you going to turn for advice? The biggest Diet Doctor of the world, dead at 40.
It is clear that Diet achievement or spiritual achievement and physical health do not always go hand in hand. It is possible to be highly enlightened and yet get awfully sick. Let us continue believing in the mystery of life and death.
Some of us die earlier than others, some live longer than others.
It is important to say we do not know why. This leads us to one
of the main principles underlying the healing native traditions.
VULNERABILITY
The native healer is aware about his/her vulnerability. That is part of why he/she is healing. He knows he is not in control. He/she hurts, forgets, makes mistakes. There is a wisdom in admitting that we are vulnerable. We are in charge. Deep inside myself I laugh when I hear people saying; this leader is real powerful. He can heal cancer. They all go running to him to learn methods to heal cancer. Of course it works sometimes and they think by repeating the methods they will obtain the same results. It is rarely the case.
Let us remind the world that healing is a process, a movement, a dance, a transition towards balance and connectedness. Healing is not an outcome. There is no emphasis on the result. What we need is not healers but healing communities based on people patting together and working with each other, warmly supporting each other. That way healing becomes a part of everyday life in the ancient healing models. There is no boundary between the healer and the one being healed. Each of them is suffering and each needs the healing ceremony.
Today our main problem is relational. We do not know any more how to relate to God, to our partners, to our families and our communities.
We lost the sense of conscious community. We lost intimacy, warmth and mutual support.
I believe anything that promotes intimacy and close contact is healing.
Anything that promotes separation and isolation leads to chronic stress in the individuals and in the community.
What can we then do to heal the sense of isolation; Many things:
1. - to promote love;
2. - to practice meditation and prayer;
3. - to develop conscious communities.
Deepak Chopra tells about a research published in the Journal of Paediatric Sciences at the University of Miami school of Medicine.
"They divided premature infants into two groups. One investigator
would reach in and stroke each baby in one group about three times
a day for five minutes. The babies in this group gained on average
of 49,5% more weight per day, fed exactly on the same formula
as the control group. The investigators concluded that tactile
Kinaesthetic stimulation (simply said love) is a positive affective
strategy.
Practice meditation and Prayer:
Meditation:
Prayer: What kind of prayer strategy works? directed or non-directed.
Probably both.
- use germinating seeds as transmitters
- use archetypal symbols.
- Animals. Ancestors as transmitters.
- praying for the Earth. World events.
Conscious communities and circles:
We live in times where we have to discover new ways of praying,
sharing and coming together. The old traditional structures of
community are dying.
As a child I remember people relying on each other, doors were
open, as children we learned from uncles, relatives, neighbours.
People helped each other to have birth at home. Now the dream
of the giant has all but destroyed this idyllic vision of my childhood
community.
Houses start having doors. People take care of their own problems themselves.
Today we have to learn to pursue community anywhere we find ourselves to be.
People move, divorce, travel, new connections are taking place, roles are mixing. The same Dallas you see in Oslo is channelled in Casablanca.
We have to start creating communities based more on common shared
values.
The circles and communities of today have to
- honour diversity
- encourage change
- support individual expression
- develop flexible adving structures.
We need to learn to create new skills and attitudes for being together.
- promote communication
- conflict solving techniques.
Selected Bibliography.
William C. Chittick: The Sufi path of love. The Spiritual teaching of Rumi. State University of New York Press 1983.
Deepak Chopra:
Ageless body. Timeless mind. Harmony Books 1993.
Larry Dossey:
Healing words: The power of prayer and the practice of Medicine. Harper Collins 1993.
Assad Ali:
Happiness without death. Desert Hymns. Threshold Books 1991.
Richard Katz: The straight path: A story of Healing and transformation
in Fiji. Addison Wesley 1993.
Vine Deloria Jr.: in The metaphysical foundation of modern science. (ed. W. Harman and J. Clark). Institute of Noetic Sciences 1994.
Claude Addas:
Quest for the Red Sulphur: The life of Ibn Arabi. Islamic Text Society, Cambridge, England. 1993.
Tweedie Irene:
Daughter of fire. Blue Dolphin press 1987.
Schimmel, Annemarie:
Mystical Dimensions of Islam. University
of North Carolina Press. 1975.
Llewellyn Vaughan Lee:
The Bond with the Beloved. the mystical
relationship of the lover and the beloved. Golden Sufi center.
1993.
Migene Gonzàles-Wippler:
Santeria The religion. Harmony books, New York. 1989