FUTURE VOICE Magazine VIII | BE HUMAN
The eighth magazine for our series HUMAN RIGHTS | Voices is online now!
Finding a Good Path, a Path with Heart
Introduction
Freedom is a valuable asset that we human beings can attain on the path of knowledge and the heart.
Although human rights once guaranteed us this asset, recent events make us realise that these are just words on paper; and how indispensable it is to develop a deep understanding of the meaning of freedom and to truly carry it in our hearts and souls.
Freedom means autonomy on the basis of taking responsibility for one's own thoughts and actions, in respect for one's own being and that of others.
Freedom is gained in the struggle, in the struggle with ourselves, our weaknesses, our fears. It is not given to us, and life tests us again and again to see if we are worthy of it.
But once we have truly understood its fundamental meaning and integrated it into our being, it can no longer be taken away from us, even by the most adverse circumstances.
This magazine is dedicated to truly walking a path of knowledge and heart, for only on this path do we realise how unique the human being really is as part of the magnificent creation. And only this realisation leads us to true freedom.
We are describing a knowledge that is in danger to fade into oblivion.
For many centuries, this knowledge and its bearers have been suppressed and eradicated by the most brutal means in order to give way to an abnormality that the Cree Indians call Wétiko. A disease of the mind that uncompromisingly cuts people off from their true being and makes them slaves to an evil force that despises people and creation.
Man, nature, creation are thereby exploited with a boundless lack of conscience. Everything that serves this power is squeezed out of creation, used as if it had no value whatsoever; everything that is true is polluted without any respect and disposed of like waste.
This mindset says nothing about the true value of creation, but speaks volumes about those who feel at home in the Wétiko attitude.
We are now so widely surrounded by the Wétiko epidemic and, in exchange for the true knowledge of what really makes us human beings, we hardly have any contact, so that many people accept this abnormality as a desirable goal.
The following text by Jack D. Forbes is taken from his book: 'Columbus and Other Cannibals' and represents the last chapter in it.
The book is also primarily devoted to a description of Wétiko psychosis and its functioning, which has undoubtedly afflicted the world and is currently approaching a climax.
We recommend the study of this book for a deeper realisation of what is going on in the world.
Finding a Good Path, a Path with Heart
HOW DOES one get on a good path? Gotama tried in his teachings to help his listeners discover their path by understanding that pain and misery arise from self-centered craving. Native American teachers often begin with helping others to understand their relationship to the entire world. It is interesting that the methods used by both Gotama and Native American teachers are essentially empirical, that is, are based upon observation or direct perception (either in the form of ‘common-sense’ direct experience by way of the senses or by means of dreams, visions, and other non-ordinary experiences).
For example, the fact of our absolute, utter, complete dependence upon the earth is used by native teachers as a part of self-understanding. It is empirically obvious that we are not only children, sucking at our earth- mother’s breast all of our lives, but that we are also mixed with, and part of, that which Europeans choose to call the environment. For us, truly, there are no ‘surroundings’.
I can lose my hands, and still live. I can lose my legs and still live. I can lose my eyes and still live. I can lose my hair, eyebrows, nose, arms, and many other things and still live. But if I lose the air I die. If I lose the sun I die. If I lose the earth I die. If I lose the water I die. If I lose the plants and animals I die. All of these things are more a part of me, more essential to my every breath, than is my so-called body. What is my real body?
We are not autonomous, self-sufficient beings as European mythology teaches. Such ideas are based upon deductive logic derived from false assumptions. We are rooted, just like the trees. But our roots come out of our nose and mouth, like an umbilical cord, forever connected with the rest of the world. Our roots also extend out from our skin and from our other body cavities.
“I live in a universe. I am a point of awareness, a circle of consciousness, in the midst of a series of circles. One circle is that which we call the body. It is a universe itself, full of millions of little living creatures living their own separate but co-dependent lives. They live, fight, make love, split, and die independent of my consciousness, most of the time. If some of them get disturbed or get hurt they might tell me about it so that I can help them, so that I can get them some food, or scratch them, or get rid of their left-overs.”
“Another circle is all of the other things which I am completely dependent upon – Gishux, the sun, the air, the water, and so on. Another circle is all of the things that fill my consciousness – the things I see, smell, hear, and so on. Another circle is the source of my dreams, consciousness, insights, gifts or powers, ideas, and ‚intuitions’.”
But all of these ‘circles’ are not really separate – they are all mutually dependent upon each other, they are all mixed up with each other, they all overlap and move in, and out, of each other.
And that mutual dependence blurs into the circle of love, that mystery, that glue that holds all of this together. Scientists may call it attraction, or affinity, or magnetism, or gravity, as well as affection, symbiosis, kinship, community, family, compassion, or whatever. But there is that circle, that mysterious circle, that makes life possible.
But Europeans of modern times, and other materialists or dogmatists, seldom undertake this kind of analysis, an analysis based upon empirical frankness and an honest desire to learn. Instead they allow myths and dogmas to distort or predetermine their conceptions. (I do not pretend that my thoughts as such, are ‘true’, but merely that they express my feelings and perhaps point in a direction which others might find helpful.)
Maybe it’s this: many Europeans cannot tolerate mystery, especially mystery in the ‘real world’. Native People, on the other hand, admit that there is mystery, and accept joyfully the task of living in such a wonderful world.
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