Bridging Worlds

Pathways to Indigenous Sensibilities

Tayria Ward, Ph.D.

"Eco-theologian Thomas Berry writes of our species that we have tragically become autistic, listening and speaking only to ourselves, that we have lost 'the great conversation' with the river, mountain, plant, bird, wind, water, fire. The rest of life is carrying on in vibrant communication, but humans have lost the senses that would hear and make of ourselves integral participants in the dialogue. In the thrust toward modernization, a severe condition of anthropomorphic hubris seems to have developed, and humans in general have stopped believing that plants or trees or the non-human world have much of anything useful to say to us."

 
"In the years since beginning to investigate the processes involved in reawakening indigenous sensibilities in the Western psyche, I have become increasingly convinced that as humans we are, each and every one, endowed with phenomenal equipment with which to know and to sense worlds within worlds, realms inside of realms. Primal peoples used to detect easily from the smell of the wind or the dirt what weather patterns would be arriving; they understood messages imparted by the calls of birds; they communicated with tree, plant, rock, river. These and a vast array of similar skills were not magical to them; they were utterly natural. Children learned them from the time they were born. The civilizing process over the last centuries has caused humans to defer to technologies outside of our own original equipment for information, and to forget that we ever even had such capabilities. It seems so much more sophisticated to look to the TV, computer, or newspaper to figure out the weather than to smell the wind or dirt. Though we are fully equipped to carry out uncountable functions that would astonish and seem like magic to the modern mind, we have for some reason chosen to stop developing and utilizing these capacities. By closing down in this way, we have separated ourselves from the world we live in, from the community of life, from each other and from our own selves. Our autism, as Thomas Berry refers to the current state of the human, is profound and tragic, and its damaging consequences reach into the very genes of humanity and the cell structures of the earth."
"I have learned that a reunion with the indigenous self is a journey of recovery of wondrous senses, sensations of aliveness and engagement in an on-going and fascinating conversation with kingdoms and realms that humans have generally lost touch with. Like programs in a computer that are completely available if one only understands that they are there, what they can do, and how to boot them up, these senses await our attention and willingness to revive them. However the effort requires a strong commitment to the necessity of the awakening, and the processes it activates. The shadow of who we have become must be faced and individually owned before these innate capabilities can be reinvigorated. Like Love itself, because in the end it is Love itself, the process asks for everything. But it gives everything in return."
 
"Like any great work, it begins with the individual. One, one, one at a time. We cannot wait for presidents and collective bodies to create change. Change begins when one person commits to the processes of change."
 
Articles by Tayria Ward, Ph.D,
Reawakening Indigenous Sensibilities A Skill for Life: The Dialogue method for individuals and organizations Dialogue As Ritual
 
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*All text is copyrighted by Tayria Ward. Do not copy without permission.