Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Ropes to God: the bushman spiritual universe

I've been reading a book about Bushman spirituality and it has reminded me of my own spiritual life which I don't think should be something that I keep to myself. Even if its misunderstood or dismissed I think my own experiences were given to me with the agreement that I would pass them on to other people. So I'm going to make an attempt to share more of my "spiritual" beliefs and experiences.

Whenever I read about indigenous spirituality I see trends and similarities to stories from other native people and also nature connected people. For instance in this Bushman book they talk about the trance dances and that when they are a strong dancer they start to see lines of different colors that connect things. One of the lines connect them to the animals and they run all over the ground to different animals and when they need meat the "Big God" shows them a line to an animal and they follow it to hunt. I've heard trackers in North America talk about these lines that they follow and the feeling of being pulled along a trail of an animal even when they can't see any tracks.

There is something about all of the primitive skills that makes me feel very spiritual. The reason that I do them isn't because its fun or because I want to be an indian. It is because they make me feel like I'm growing closer to God. I don't know why they do this and it doesn't really matter to me why it makes me feel that way but it does. And all of those feelings kind of get stuck if I'm not passing on what I learn to other people. That's something the Bushmen talked about too.

My next several posts will be about some of my "spiritual" experiences. I put quotes on spiritual because I don't want my experiences to be lumped in with some other definition of spirituality. To me they are just things that happened that seem to be connected to things greater than what goes on in every day life.

No comments:

Post a Comment