Rewild

I wonder if people ever ask themselves, "why am I alive in this time?" Maybe people feel cursed by the time they find themselves in - at least, those people who can see. For there are a few people left with hearts big enough to see and feel what is happening to our home: Earth. We see the extinction level events as they unfold before us. We weep. We are angry. We feel hopeless in the face of it. Even while our own species will be included in the die-offs. We don't care. Because we love Her, and all of Her children. Be they the smallest plants, or the most regal animals.

We yearn to return to the balance of what it was when humans were a part of nature, when we were entwined in life with all of the other animals. There was a wisdom then that has long vanished. We struggle to find ourselves, to rewild ourselves because we hear that song of long ago, when life made sense. When existence was peace. There is a re-integration of self when one steps off the concrete and returns to the soil. It takes time, but the body, the mind, the emotions, and then the soul - all re-align and harmonize in a way that leaves no doubt about where it is we, as humans, really belong.

But there is a lot that has been forgotten. Humans are pack animals. We call these packs tribes, and this was our evolutionary legacy. Those who seek to use and control us in their global factory farms attacked that legacy first and foremost. We can see it on a small scale when we look at recent history at how the Europeans decimated what is now known as the First Nation's Peoples in North and South America. The tactic is always the same, though. Destroy the cohesion of family and tribe. Remove the children. Put the males and females at odds with one another. Destroy any sense of hierarchy within the tribal unit. Undermine, and watch the people fall and become dependent upon the masters that seek the land, and view all upon it, human, and animal, and plant as resources. The modern term for this is exploitation. Modern governments are resource departments that manage everything: Human resources, land resources, energy resources, and you, who read this, do not get a say. You are a commodity. You are expendable. You are a tool for chemical and radiation sequestration, a cheap way for industry to dispose of toxic waste. They will advertise you into wanting to consume whatever they put before you. You will actually pay to do it. And that is Capitalism.

How far away are we, as a species, from our packs, our tribes? In modern terms, it is called indigene. Every race, creed, color, type of people come from an indigene. Most only think of this term when referring to people who have more melanin in their skin than I do. But there are a few pockets that still exist of indigenes with skin like mine: The Sami people, for one, though they, too, are being forced out of the wilderness. When people read text books about indigene, they read about the spiritual leaders of the different tribes. It seems to be an abstract and quaint concept; a medicine man, or a shaman. Now most people think this means that they take some strange hallucinogen and say magic words. It is a tourist attraction at best. Even people who seem to be drawn to the ideas of fighting for the Earth seem to have a very skewed look at people of spirit, not seeing them as spiritual leaders and even spiritual resources. What people have failed to understand is that there has also been a decimation of the human's innate connection to the spirit realms. This ability has been labeled at best as superstitious, and at worst as madness.

What people also do not seem to understand is how necessary it is for the system of global factory farming in the name of Capitalism to keep Atheism as the dominant, indoctrinated mindset. The first thing that a conqueror does when suppressing a people is to remove them from their land base. Land base is the same as spirit base. Because every people, every tribe, every indigene has what is called a genus loci - a spirit of a place. There are many, many types of spirits. People think that spirit means ghost, or god. Everything is alive, or the product of life. Ghosts, or shades, are the spiritual memory of the persona of a human when that human passes on. It is one level, one aspect of the soul of a person. It is a shade, or shadow of what lived before. A shade only knows what came before. It cannot know what occurs after the death of that person. But there is the presiding spirit of a person, and that spirit is continuous and reincarnates.

I speak of spirit from an animistic perspective, much like other indigenous people do. Because we recognize the spirit of a thing, and in a thing. We see it, we feel it, we know it. A genus loci, or the spirit of a place, can be made up of an overall spirit energy of a location, as well as individual spirits that reside there. Our ancestors cared for and honored these spirits in a symbiotic way, knowing the importance of giving as well as taking from a land. We all come from the land. We are born in flesh, and in order to be alive and stay alive, we consume food from the land. When we die, we feed the land our bodies. Earth spirits come in many forms and types, each with their own purpose and functions. Some may be shades of animals, plants, other life. Some may belong to the hierarchies of the Earthen spirits: the system of angels, or elementals, or even the elements. For people who are not familiar with these things, they may seem fanciful or imaginary. But for people who have a relationship with land, they will at least occasionally have sensed a presence there that they could not see.

I believe it is essential to truly understand all aspects of ourselves as creatures of this Earth that we learn to use all of our senses. Science has now come to understand the role of the Pineal Gland (the third eye), and through Quantum Physics has begun to learn about spirit and the levels of existence. Never mind that any Shaman could have taught them what they want to know. In my tribe, I am the spiritual leader. We use the term Priestess. I am a woman of spirit. I was born this way, able to see into multiple Realms. We used to not be as rare as we are today. I find many do not take me seriously. I am not a man, and I am not brown. Most people of spirit that are recognized as indigenous leaders are male, and are brown. I do not think that people are aware that they have such biases.

I was taught from a very young age to interact with the spirit realms, by spirits, not humans. I have never feared spirits. This is not a new job for me. But this time is not a good time. It is a very troubled time. I wonder, how many people that read this have stopped to ask, "why am I alive now? At this time? I know that there are opportunities now that have never existed before. Many people burn with a passion for the Earth, for Her. To help Her, in any way that they can. They sense Her pain. They can feel it. Her cries, they can hear them. They have within them the desire to be a steward, a guardian of life. This is the nature of man, all but forgotten. I do not know how many of you who will read this will understand my perspective, or will see what it is that I am "getting at." The further that I progress down my road in the wild, the harder it is to connect with others who are not in this place, or at least familiar with the concepts of it. I have been labeled as "dangerous" and as someone "selling something" by people who find me a threat to their status quo, either in the way they live, or in their spiritual indoctrinations. But I have nothing to sell anyone. I am a voice in the wild. I am a voice from spirit.

I will relate one thing that was told to me by an angel of the Earth: Give to the Earth, take from the Earth, feel the joy of it.

This is a simple statement, but it contains much wisdom, and much insight. We must, in order to live, take from the Earth. But in the modern world, people take, but do not give. What we give to the Earth is more than our bodies when we die. The joy in being alive is not in the taking, but in the giving. We, as humans, impact the Earth more than any other species. We have the ability to give all that we are to nurture the Earth in how we live our lives, just as we have the ability to kill Her by taking all that She has. We must, as indigenous people, give to the Earth as we take. This is why we plant. This is why we propagate life. This is why we feed the creatures of the soil if we take nutrients in our gardens. The joy is on a soul level. Never in my life did I have the sense of peace that I have now, living on my land base. I have only been here eleven years. It takes time to decompress, and to begin to really live in the ways of our ancestors. It is a process. A long one.

Why are you alive now? I imagine that you have a lot to give.