Healing In Two Worlds

Information line: THIN. February 9, 2009

Healing In Two Worlds

…Outside the different features and into the true heart of being.

What the traditional world offers to the modern world centers around the understanding of concepts of healing, ritual and community. Indigenous communities have since time immemorial focused their lives and their existence on these issues.

Healing is central, because it was learned very early that human beings are vulnerable to physiological and biological breakdown, and that all this general instability touches all aspects of their existence. They have also learnt that the natural environment in which they live is made up of crafty invisible things that, if manipulated in certain ways, can affect the conditions that they intend to heal. Ritual technology is the technology that allows the manipulation of these subtle energies. Community is important because there is an understanding that human beings are collectively oriented. The general health and well-being of an individual are connected to community and are not something that can be maintained alone or in a vacuum. The Concepts of Healing, ritual and community are virtually linked.

Healing, ritual, and community, the goods that the indigenous world can offer to the west are the very things that the modern world is struggling with. Ritual in the indigenous world is aimed at producing a healing, and the loss of such healing in the modern world might be responsible for the loss of community that we see. Perhaps, the problems experienced in the west, from the pain of isolation to the stress of hyper activity, are brought on by the loss of community.

The west is struggling with a confusing notion of ritual, for the world usually refers to some sort of dark, pagan, and archaic practice that has no place in the modern society. Although the problems that come from the loss of ritual are less clear, but, it is the absence of ritual that the west are struggling with, the loss of connection with the unseen aspects of the natural world that have the ability to bring the needed healing. The only accepted rituals are ceremonial practices with clearly predictable content and outcome, such as what can be seen in the Sunday Church Service of one of the organized religions. When we talk of ritual here we are talking about something much deeper. We are talking about WEAVING of individual persons and gifts into a community that interacts with the forces of the natural. We are talking about a gathering of people with a clear healing vision and a trusting intent towards the forces of the invisible world.

What villagers bring to a ritual are trust that the invisible forces will heal and knowledge of what needs healing. These are the only things they know a head of time, the rest, shape and outcome of the ritual, is put in the hands of the Great ones. The road from the felt need for healing to the healing itself is proved with gestures, touch, sound, melody, and cadence, and most of these are spontaneous activities, unpredictable in their outcomes. When villagers act together on their need for healing and engage in such spontaneous gestures, they are requesting the presence of the invisible forces and are participating with those forces in creating a harmony of symbiosis. This partnership replenishes each person by restoring his or her relationship to nature, for among indigenous people the natural world and the spirit world are closely related. Ritual is an art, an art that weaves and dances with symbols, and helping to create that art rejuvenates participants. Everyone comes a way from a ritual feeling deeply transformed. This restoration is the healing that ritual is meant to provide. Ritual is the principal tool used to approach that unseen world and bring about material transformation.

That we connect with unseen realities, the realities made visible in our symbols, is crucial to the well being of our psyches. A person who walks through a ritual and ends up feeling changed and invigorated is a blessed recipient of healing waves of energy that no one can see but everyone can benefit from. The full heart of a person blessed in this manner overflows into the needy souls, igniting the healing fire most wanted for self-replenishment. Ritual is central in village life, for it provides the focus and energy that holds the community together, and it provides the kind of healing that the community needs to survive.

Nature is the foundation of indigenous life. Without nature, concepts of community, purpose, and healing would be meaningless. The idea of a person born with a purpose, a purpose that needs to be supported by an active community presence, and the idea of working with subtle energies for balance and healing would be only grandiose notions in the absence of nature as the playground, as the school where children can play and study.

Our relationship to the natural world and its natural laws determines whether or not we are healed. Nature therefore is the foundation of healing, and the type of nature that surrounds a community at the time of doing a ritual determines the types of ritual that are appropriate and the content of these rituals. We are talking about a way of dealing with an energetic world and energetic issues that borrows from what already exists, not what has been invented, manufactured or created by humans to satisfy some material purpose. In other words, every tree, plant, hill, mountain, rock, and each thing that was here before us emanates or vibrates at a subtle energy that has healing power whether we know it or not. So if something in us must change, spending time in and with nature provides a good beginning. That means that within nature, within the natural world, are all of the materials and tenets needed for healing human beings. Nature is the textbook for those who care to study it and the storehouse for remedies for human ills. Nature is still the greatest chemist.

The cycle of conflict, ill health, drought, hunger can be broken with application on cutting-edge science and technology. THIN and partners are exploring and testing peoples science and natures’ libraries to ensure the latter’s sustainability, environmental health, medicines, nutritional and food security.

DR. ANDREW CHAPYA
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & CHIEF SCIENTIST
THIN.