On the Reclamation of Indigenous Values: the Path of the Sacred Heart...

There is much talk these days about the fact that the world is not as it should be. Climate change, financial market collapses, earthquakes, tsunamis, terrorism, alienation and loneliness are but a few prevailing themes that serve to make it clear that there needs to a radical transformation of how everything works. Something has to give and we all feel that change is in the offing...

What is sorely lacking from the discussion is a clear sense of where we need to go; a clear vision that carries within it the purity and essence of something deeper. There is a sense in which we do understand what the future must look like. It needs to be sustainable; we need to live more communally; we need to localize, we need to view the world holistically; we need to care more for each other and not be slaves to corporate interests and so on. Technically speaking we have some idea, but this idea is devoid of real soul. It is devoid of the resonance that will capture the heart of a generation. It is devoid of history and context... it is but science.

It is time for us to acknowledge that all of the strategies described above represent the way that indigenous people the world around lived prior to ‘contact’... yes, the alien invasion... Prior to invaders who brought with them rigorous scientific analysis, linear thinking, the Protestant work ethic (a penchant for 60 hours a week in a cubicle), a predisposition towards efficiency at the expense of direct connection; a reverence for productivity at the expense of intimacy... and of course guns... yes many guns...

It is time to acknowledge that the colonialists were, roughly speaking, wrong!

It is time to acknowledge that everything that gives rise to the need for a massive shift in global culture and commerce is the result of the colonial value system as currently represented by individualism as the primary orientation and capitalism as an economic paradigm.

It is time that we acknowledge that if we are to right the ship, a radical shift in perspective will be necessary. We will need a perspective that shifts our focus away from ourselves towards something greater; something more important; something sacred. We will need to shift our focus back to what matters; life, love and health... not the accumulation of material goods!

It is time to recognize that the process that we are undergoing is merely a reclamation of indigenous values. We are turning back the clock as we must!

It is time to recognize that any sense that the indigenous people of this world were less advanced was mere delusion... delusion grounded in our capacity to exercise force... delusion that was the result of might becoming right.

We have not progressed in the last 200 years as a species...

It is time to recognize that we need to move from the head to the heart!... away from purely intellectual approaches to decision making to trusting that we are all connected... most importantly to Mother Earth and the Spirit with which it is imbued.

It is time to reinstate Mother Earth as the source of sacredness; the source of life and therefore the source of love and all that truly has meaning. There is no need from abstract conceptions of the divine... it is right in front of us... Let us not be blind any longer.

It is time to move away from selfishness... to focus on our higher purpose as servants of Spirit of the greater good. Do we not have enough evidence that our incessant focus on getting more, making more and ensuring that we are only providing for ourselves is a recipe for unhappiness, loneliness, alienation and discontent? This is sufficiently bad if it were not for the fact that we are simultaneously destroying the planet.

When is enough enough?

It is our time... let us please wake up...