Transcript How Your Graduate Education Can Change the World

What Does It Mean to
be ‘Spiritual’?
For the Multicultural Resource Center
and
Religious and Spiritual Life
University of North Carolina, Charlotte
March 22, 1010
Definitions of
‘spirituality’
Personal, inner, goal-directed
(enlightenment, awareness,
Godliness, subjective,
otherworldly focus)
Within a religious context
(church, mosque, synagogue)
Outside established religion
(nature, dreams, sacred sites)
Contemplation

On a sacred text or revealed teachings
(the Bible, Koran, Torah, Baghavad Gita,
Visuddhimagga )
Teresa de Avila,French mystic:
“It will be as well, I think, to
explain these locutions of
God, and to describe what the
soul feels when it receives
them.”
Tree of Practices
Bearing witness
 Movement
 Creation process
 Martial arts
 Music

Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
http://www.contemplativemind.org
Sacred Images and Icons
Action in the world
M. K. Gandhi
“What is faith if it is not
translated into action?”
Physical and mental
self-exploration
Ritual for prayer, reflection and
connection
“Every image of every power was
majestically danced with in their
respective feasts. It was this dance,
these words spoken with tears, these
offerings ingeniously made and
given, that renewed the spirits
behind the images, bringing them
back to consciousness, reanimating
them out of their swoon of
exhaustion after having worked so
hard for us humans here in the
Umbilicus of the World.”

Martin Prechtel, Long Life, Honey in the
Heart: A Story of Initiation and Eloquence
from the Shores of a Mayan Lake. London:
Thorsons, 1999.
Healing
“A mystic is someone who has direct cognition of God beyond
thought or image. A mystic is one whose eyes have been opened
through purification, discipline and grace to the living mystery and
lives consciously in the divine presence. …All cultures at all times
have had their mystics who have known the supreme secret that
God is in us and we are in God as a part of God and who have
owed their spiritual health to the reality of wisdom and love which
the mystic directly awakens”
ANDREW HARVEY, DIALOGUES WITH A MODERN MYSTIC,
QUEST BOOKS, 1994, PP. 21-22.
Purification
Silence
Prayer
Sacrifice
Discipline
Practice
Rachel Mann
“Shrine of Healing”
The Art of Surviving
http://www.artofsurviving.org
“In many ways disease and episodes of sickness remind people that
meaning is an achievement. The notion that human beings live
meaningful lives is both a problem and a promise. In the face of
disease and other challenges that becloud meaning or disclose it in
painful glimpses, you are impelled to try to discover, clarify, or
achieve meaning through creative expression.”
Lawrence Sullivan, “Images of Wholeness: Interview with
Lawrence Sullivan, Parabola, p. 13.
Lloyd, “Dawn”
The Art of Surviving
http://www.artofsurviving.or
g
“At first, we cannot see beyond the path
that leads downward to dark and hateful
things--but no light or beauty will ever
come from the man who cannot bear this
sight. Light is always born of darkness”
Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul
MettaKnowledge for Peace,
LLC
“Ecstatic bliss arises when [the Bushmen] throw
themselves into spirited shaking and dancing, which
serves to open their hearts. Shamans help bring forth
the spirited interactions that open the doors to circular
absorptive relations with others.”
BRADFORD KEENEY, SHAKING MEDICINE: THE HEALING
POWER OF ECSTATIC MOVEMENT. DESTINY BOOKS, P. 39.
Cave Paintings of Laas Gael, Swaziland
9,000-8,000 to 3,000 B.C.
“The collective element is
communitas, fellowship or
friendship….arising in times
of illness, danger, or change;
when new and exciting
things are going on; and
during sacred events….In
these circumstances, odd
thingsnot to be simply the
happen. People are somehow freed
result of social norms and their childhood conditioning. In
these circumstances, they know each other as full human
beings. People recognize this feeling and like it.”
Edith Turner, Among the Healers Stories of Ritual and Spiritual Healing
Around the World, Praeger, 2005.
“The survivor is a scholar of his or her
own experience.”
Roberta Culberton
Director, Center for Violence and Community
http://www.virginiafoundation.org/research/violence/ind
ex.html
Cold War Consciousness
The USSR and the US hold one another’s shadows
Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols
We are the cause
of our own suffering
MettaKnowledge for Peace,
LLC
Christopher Hedges, War is a Force That
Gives Us Meaning, New York: Public Affairs,
2002, 13.
The American Holocaust
Understanding the Impact of First
Contact
The Major Players
Christopher Columbus lands on the shores of San Salvador in
the Bahamas, 1492
The Explorers
Norse, Newfoundland, 1000
• John Cabot, Newfoundland, 1497
• Amerigo Vespuci, South America, 15th
century
• Giovanni da Verrazzano, North America,
1524
• Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro,
Mexico, the Aztecs, 16th century
•
Delivering the Dark Ages
The Black (Bubonic) Plague spreads through
Europe in the 15th c. and continues through the
17th:
“The Spain that Christopher Columbus
and his crews left behind just before
dawn on August 3, 1492 as they sailed
forth from Palos and out into the
Atlantic, was for most of its people a
land of violence, squalor, treachery, and
intolerance. In this respect Spain was no
different from the rest of Europe.”
--David Stannard, American Holocaust
(1992). NY: Oxford Univ. Press, p. 57.
European Famine


While the rich and aristocrats
lived high, tens of thousands
lived “on the margins of
perpetual hunger”
An average increase in the price
of wheat or millet killed a
proportion of the French
population equal to nearly twice
the percentage of Americans
killed in the Civil War
European Filth
European Filth
No bathing
 Rotting offal of butchered animals in the
streets
 Roadside ditches w/stagnatn water used
as public latrines
 Open pits of the deceased
 Skin diseases

Witchcraft Accusations

In many towns on the Continent, as many
as 1/3rd were accused of witchcraft
Malnutrition, Disease, and
Slavery




Homeless poor sold
themselves as slaves
Most children died by
the age of 15
Abandonment of
children and babies
Children sold into
slavery by parents
Violence
Robberies, murder and revenge
 Among earldoms, republics, duchies and noble
families there was kidnapping, torture,
mutilation, fratricide, patricide, assassination

The Holy War
Christianity seeks world
domination from the 11th
through the 13th centuries
 Other wars wage between
nations and feudal states

Pre-Conquest America

Estimated population 145,000,000

Beautiful, clean, disease-free, gold-encrusted cities
Lack of emphasis on warfare in most areas
Children encouraged to be independent, yet responsible
to the community
Egalitarian political structures (Iroquois Confederacy)
Elaborate social and cultural characteristics
“Affectionate and fearless cordiality towards strangers”





The Figures
By the time the 16th century had ended, 200,000
Spaniards had moved to the Indies, Mexico and
Central America
 By the same time, 60,000,000 to 80,000,000
were dead
 By the middle of the 19th century, 1/3rd of one
percent of America’s population—250,000 out of
77,000,0000—were natives
 By the end of the 19th century, 100,000,000
natives dead

Death Marches
Cherokee Trail of Tears, 8000 died
• Seminoles, Chikasaw and Chocktaw
• By the end of these forced marches, as many Natives had lost their lives
as the deaths of Jews in Germany, Hungary and Rumania between 1939
and 1945
•
Policies of genocide in the
century
th
20
Forced removal of children into white boarding
schools until the 80s and early 90s
 A federal program resulting in the involuntary
sterilization of 40% of all native women of
childbearing age in the U.S. in the 1970s
 Native Americans forced out of their reservations
into the city in California in the 70s
 Imprisonment of Native Americans due to
racism, such as Leonard Peltier

Racism
“European thinkers were certain, there lived creatures
who may have seemed bestial, but who were humans,
with souls, and who even might become the holiest of
saints if treated with Christian care. However, in that
indistinct, borderline, substratum of life, there also
existed human-like creatures whose function in God’s
scheme of things was to be nothing more than what
Aquinas called ‘animated instruments of service to
civilized Christian humanity. That is, slaves.”
David Stannard, American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New
World, Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 173.
The Legacy Lingers
1490s to the 1890s: An unbroken string of genocidal campaign
against the Native peoples of the Americas
Environmental and Human
Destruction
One and a half acres of rainforest are lost
everyday
 137 species of animals, plants, and insects
lost everyday due to rainforest destruction
(50,000/year)
 10,000,000 Indians lived in the rainforest
5 centuries ago
 Today, only 200,000 remain

Rainforest Facts: http://www.rain-tree.com/facts.htm
“The Spain that Christopher Columbus
and his crews left behind just before
dawn on August 3, 1492 as they sailed
forth from Palos and out into the
Atlantic, was for most of its people a
land of violence, squalor, treachery, and
intolerance. In this respect Spain was no
different from the rest of Europe.”
David Stannard, American Holocaust
(1992). NY: Oxford Univ. Press, p. 57.
Healing
“Healing always points toward a renewal
of creative powers, toward a condition
that is vital, stirring, strong and whole, as
befits a creative beginning….One reason
why people are so creative in relation to
disease is because it is there that they
face elementary forces that both
constitute and decompose them.”
”Interview with Lawrence Sullivan”, Parabola Magazine
Shamanism
and Neo (new)-Shamanism
“[Shaman] refers to communal leaders and
religious practitioners who might otherwise be
called by very different, more local names, such
as bornoh, yadgan, mudang, angakoq, or
referred to only adjectively as, for instance, paye
people…Last but not least, shaman also refers to
practitioners within various therapeutic, spiritual
and cultural movements in ‘the West’.”
Harvey, Graham. Shamanism: A Reader. London: Routledge,
2000.
Putting
Practice onto
Paper:
The Literary and
Spiritual Legacy of
Black Elk Speaks
Black Elk Speaks
“ Grandfather, Great Spirit, you have been
always, and before you no one has been. You
yourself, everything that you see, everything has
been made by you. The star nations all over the
universe you have finished. The four quarters of
the earth you have finished. The day, and in
that day, you have finished. Grandfather, Great
Spirit, lean close to the earth that you may hear
the voice I send.”
A prayer by Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks (first
printing, 1932; second printing, 1959.)
The Story of Black Elk
• Born 1863 into a band headed by
his father, a medicine man related to
Crazy Horse
• Civil War ended and the US drove
westward building roads and railway
lines
• The original inhabitants of the lands
were forcibly removed into a
reservation under the terms of the
Fort Laramie Treaty in 1868
• The official religion of the
reservation was Christianity and all
Lakota religious ceremonies were
illegal
Joseph Epes Brown
“ I am fortunate in having met at least
some of those men of the old days who
possessed great human and spiritual
qualities. But Black Elk had a special
quality of power and kindliness and a
sense of mission that was unique, and I
am sure it was recognized by all who
had the opportunity of knowing him.”
Joseph Epes Brown, Preface to the The
Sacred Pipe, 1953.
The Sacred Pipe
“ Most people call it a ‘peace pipe,’ yet now there
is not peace on earth or even between
neighbors, and I have been told that it has been
a long time since there has been peace in the
world. There is much talk of peace among
Christians, yet this is just talk. Perhaps it may
be, and this is my prayer that, through our
sacred pipe, and through this book in which I
shall explain what our pipe really is, peace may
come to those peoples who can understand, and
understanding which must be of the heart and
not of the head alone. Then they will realize that
we Indians know the One true God and that we
pray to him continually.”
Black Elk in his introduction to The Sacred Pipe, 1953.
Sun Bear
“This book is not written by an anthropologist. It is not about one
tribe, but a composite of many. It is knowledge I have learned
about my people. It belongs to them, and credits are to the
American Indians.”
–Sun Bear in the Introduction to Buffalo Hearts (1970)
Sun Bear published 8 books
between 1969 and 1994
Lame Deer Seeker of
Visions
“For us Indians there is just the pipe, the earth
we sit on and the open sky. The spirit is
everywhere. Sometimes it shows itself through
an animal, a bird or some trees and hills.
Sometimes it speaks from the Badlands, a stone
or even from the water. That smoke from the
peace pipe, it goes straight up to the spirit
world. But this is a two way thing. Power flows
down to us through that smoke, through the
pipe stem.”
–Lame Deer from Chapter 1, Lame
Deer Seeker of Visions (1972)
Fools Crow
by Thomas Mails
“ Dallas and I were astonished when
[Fools Crow] suddenly changed the
conversation and said that in his last
vision quest at Bear Butte in 1965, his
god, Wakan-Tanka had told him that
although he was a humble man with
little to offer, the time had come for
him to tell certain things about
himself and his Teton people to a
person who would be made known to
him. This way the record would be
kept and the world would know about
it.”
Thomas Mails, in Chapter 1 from
Fools Crow, 1979
Voices of Our Ancestors:
Cherokee Teachings from the Wisdom Fire
“ This book is written with the hope of bringing to
fruition peace and harmonious relationships for all
beings….In 1969, after generations of secrecy, it
was decided to share the teachings of the Tsalagi
tradition with non-native people, so that our
children would have water to drink and a place to
walk. The intention is to strengthen individuals’
relationships with their families, communities,
nations and the land, the Earth itself. We do not
invite people to become Indians. We invite people
to be in good fellowship and to respect the
teachings of the their family of origin. Thus may
we all cooperate in manifesting a vision of peace.”
Dhyani Ywahoo, from the Preface to Voices of Our
Ancestors (1987).
Fools Crow:
Wisdom and Power
“ At first, Wakan-Tanka had all of the spiritual
power inside Himself. But He loves to share
things so He gave some power to Grandmother
Earth and some to each of the Persons He placed
in the Cardinal Directions…Then He told them
that when faithful human beings or other
creatures called upon them for help they must
send them their powers and save the
people…Wakan-Tanka taught each tribe to believe
in ways that work best for them. It depended on
where they lived nad the way they thought about
spiritual things.”
Fools Crow as said to Thomas Mails, in Fools Crow:
Wisdom and Power (1991)
The Way of the Shaman
Michael Harner
Anthropologist Michael Harner
publishes The Way of the
Shaman about his experiences
with the Jivaro people of the
Amazon and creates “the
shamanic method” in 1980
Island of the Sun
Anthropologist Alberto Villoldo publishes Island of
the Sun in 1994 about his experiences as a student
of a Peruvian shaman named Don Manuel and
founds the Four Winds Society
Bushman Shaman
Psychologist Bradford
Keeney publishes Bushman
Shaman in 2005 about
meeting the Bushmen of
the Kalahari and finding
the ancient traditions of
“shaking medicine”
Secrets of the Talking Jaguar
Half-Indian, half-white Martin
Prechtel publishes Secrets of
the Talking Jaguar and two
other books in a triptych about
his training as a Mayan shaman
and village leader in Santiago
Atitlan in Guatemala (19992002)
Shamanism in a New Age
Exploring Suffering
The Four Noble Truths
There will be suffering in life.
 Suffering arises due to attachment.
 Freedom from suffering is attainable.
 There is a path the end suffering.

Transformation
Community Building
MettaKnowledge for Peace,
LLC
Spontaneity and play!
MettaKnowledge for Peace,
LLC
Connection
MettaKnowledge for Peace,
LLC
The Path of the Wounded Healer
We Heal and are Reborn in
Every Moment
MettaKnowledge for Peace,
LLC
To contact me:
[email protected]
434-227-0538
http://www.mettaknowledge.com