African (Part 1)
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
“You
always carry within yourself the very thing that you need for the fulfillment
of your life purpose.”
—Malidoma Some’
The Dagara, a tribe indigenous to Burkina Fosa in West Africa, believe
that every child is born with a life purpose. In the village, that purpose
is revealed by the elders before the child is born through a process of
divination. The community then supports each person throughout life in
order to keep that person on a clear path, aligned with his or her purpose.
People in many other parts of the world are fortunate enough to have the
opportunity to receive the wisdom of the Dagara people through the teachings
of Malidoma Some’, who lives in his village part of the year but
travels much of the time, bringing these teachings to share with the world,
writing books, lecturing and creating global community. Malidoma has several
degrees from universities in France, and has written several books, including
Healing Wisdom Of Africa, Of Water And Spirit, and Ritual: Power, Healing,
And Community (1998). He is also an initiated tribal elder and shaman,
whose life purpose was divined to be that of sharing the well preserved
Dagara wisdom with the world. The elders predicted, “The village
will be reborn in the heart and soul of the culture that is destroying
the village.” And Malidoma was preordained as the bridge between
the different cultures. He has a vision of a new global tribe, of people
all over the planet awakening to what indigenous peoples have never forgotten:
“community” includes all beings, plants and trees, earth and
stones, rivers and oceans, stars and planets, animals and birds, and the
unseen ones as well, the ancestors.
In his teachings, Malidoma speaks eloquently about community, and what
it really means to be connected deeply and intimately to your environment
and the beings around you. He also communicates about the desire for home,
and what this means at a deep level. He compares our hunger for land and
resources in the west with our great desire for home, and our unguided,
unconscious expression of this longing. A major part of his teaching is
the importance of ritual in community and personal life. He teaches the
language and flow of ritual, as well as the underlying purpose and energy
of ritual. He tells us that there are basically two kinds of ritual, and
he calls them “radical ritual,” and “maintenance ritual.”
Radical ritual is enacted for life passages, including birth, death, illness,
grief, depression, or other major times of change. Maintenance ritual
is often more private, and reinforces direction, life purpose, and the
changes implemented through radical ritual.
At http://www.malidoma.com/Malidoma/ritual.html, there is an excerpt from
a workshop given by Malidoma and Sobonfu Some’, in which they describe
the difference between radical and maintenance ritual: “A radical
ritual is a ritual that has something in it that is extremely demanding
emotionally, physically, and you name it. The purpose of a radical ritual
is to replace one state of the self with another state. For instance,
a person who is suffering from a major emotional problem or disorder requires
a radical ritual. How you can give a radical ritual is to put that person
into a massive emotional experience. What that does is momentarily disconnect
the person from the problem he or she has. The issue is to take that moment,
to fill that space that is left because of the disconnection between the
person and the problem and fill that space with something else. That way
when that problem returns to the familiar place it will find it occupied,
and so it is going to have to fight. After a radical ritual I have heard
people saying things like, ‘I notice something new is happening
to me. My life has changed. I don’t know what is going on, but something
is new.’ Yes, of course! That’s what radical ritual does.
It is for a person who is in need of reconciliation with a big issue such
as “can’t enter into a relationship. It’s a pain in
the neck; it’s scary. First of all, that person needs to be confronted
with the reconciling element, like water, in a radical way. What is radical
water, for instance?”
“Sobbing is a result of radical water. If you dump that person into
very cold water… Like in the snow. Lay her down in snow and cover
her up with snow for two days or something. Or at least a few hours. Whatever
is going to come out of there will feel really weird. At that time, if
there is a whole circle of people to hold that person and then lift that
person out, sing lullabies, tell that person that she or he is the best
in the whole world…
“A maintenance ritual is where you make sure that whatever you have,
for instance a car, is subject to the three months or 3,000 miles regular
revision change of oil, filters and so forth. You recognize the fact that
something is going on in you, and with water you just cleanse yourself
again. It is not the same as radical cold water. It’s maintenance
water or regular water. Splash yourself with it or something like that.
That will do. These two rituals are different but related in a way. They
are related because maintenance rituals are a derivative of radical rituals.
They are appropriate only after a radical ritual has happened. Maintenance
rituals can be done individually as opposed to a radical ritual that is
done in community. More often than not, a community that gets together
should be mostly concerned with radical ritual.”
The power and importance of ritual is central to the teachings of Malidoma,
and he tries to communicate how ritual weaves the people of his village
together, and how there is no distinction between everyday life and spirituality.
All activities are approached with intention and care. The ancestors are
always considered, as are all life forms. He emphasizes that most of the
time, the people are engaged in some phase of ritual, and this is why
this culture is so resilient. Here is another excerpt from his workshop
on ritual, found at http://www.malidoma.com/Malidoma/ritual.html: “In
tribal communities and in villages, what supports life is not the economy.
It is not the mass production or lack thereof. It is basically rituals.
How can rituals support a community? That’s a big question. To comprehend
it you have to get out of the economic thinking that is common to capitalistic
cultures. Ritual can support a community because it nourishes a part of
the self that is very important for the nourishment of the physical body.
There is something in us that if it is not nourished; no matter what you
eat you are not going to be full. What you need in order for your body
to be feeling full even with the lightest meal or the smallest dish is
something that you can find in ritual. If it is well done, whatever you
eat thereafter is only a completion of the nourishment cycle. This is
one of the reasons why 70% of village time is spent either preparing for
or doing or recovering from ritual. This large amount of time says something
quite interesting. It has something to do with the fact that maybe they
are placing a very large importance on feeding the soul as a condition
to feeding the body. This is also why they can survive in the middle of
tremendous, serious scarcity. In a context in which you have no supermarket
and no grocery stores, and you have to wait every five days for a market
day to occur so that you can buy something (if you do have some coins
in your pocket), how do you conceive of filling up your refrigerator which
you don’t have over there because there is no electricity, no running
water, no nothing? What happens is that the whole idea of nourishment
is conceived totally differently. There is a certain meal that the body
and the soul can share together which is not available in supermarkets
or grocery stores or department stores or catalogs or in anybody’s
house. I have come to notice that it feels to me that maybe the consumer
society has replaced soul nourishment with the spread of chains [franchises]
or supermarkets. It feels to me that any person who is interested in matters
that have spiritual content to it should therefore reconsider seriously
the whole business of ritual.”