REFLECTIONS ON THE SACRED

What do you reckon on this?

 

Uluru climbing ban: Tourists scale sacred rock for final time

Like most things, it has at least 2 sides to it, though overall they're probably right to stop people climbing Uluru. Cultural appropriation is just one side of a complex issue. Some indigenous people want to share their traditions with us uprooted secular moderns, others say that is selling out and disrepecting the traditions. I'm more in sympathy with the former, but both have a point. I think we are one world, one earth now. We have our local allegiances perhaps, but we also belong to the whole earth. I am a strong believer in letting yourself be claimed by some piece or pieces of land where you live - and it is that way round, you do not do the claiming. But you can also be claimed by a place far from home. The whole earth is our home.

And Uluru occupies an important place in our modern, perhaps 'new age', mythology, even though we may never have been there. And let us not do down the New Age too readily. Yes it can be silly, yes it can be in denial of the shadow. But it fundamentally involves a quest for meaning that is heartfelt in our muggled world. Always look to the good in what people are trying to do, it is easy to make fun and sneer.

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I offer Shamanic consultations, usually by skype, in which we can talk over anything you want to talk over. I may use the Medicine Wheel, Journeying, Astrology, Tarot or anything that works. And it centres around listening to ourselves in a deep way. I work on a donation basis, and I am happy with whatever is easy for you: I love this work. Contact: BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk

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Like in the film Dreamkeeper (recommended) where the youthful Indians encounter a young white man who deperately wants an Indian name, and they make fun of him as a 'wannabe' Indian, and the Indian elder steps in and says yes, he wants to be connected. Brilliant.

So Uluru - Ayers rock - is in our own way the sacred. The sacred is something we feel that connects us to what we feel to be most important in life, that which gives value to life. And in our utilitarian, scientific age, the sacred is easily made fun of. And those of us who seek it don't always know what we are doing, but we are having a go. And for some climbing Uluru, it is just a rock, and maybe this news item is a reminder that it is not just a rock. But for others, it is maybe their way of experiencing the sacred and they have had it taken away from them. Even though the Aboriginal traditon is not to actually climb it.  As I said, I think there are at least 2 sides to this. And indigenous people can understandably want to protect their traditions from the grasping white woman (and man - let's be gender neutral :) ) But are they also being selfish, some of them? If some white people have a genuine experience of the sacred through climbing the rock, is that something to be denied to them?

The point about Shamanism is that Sacredness is everywhere. The point about religion is that it removes sacredness to certain places and beings and makes them special, and certain people end up controlling access to those special beings and places. It is more complex than that, however. All traditions have holy people. Black Elk was a holy man. And it is right that there are such people, and it is right that there are holy places (holy=whole, that which makes us whole) such as Uluru. And it is right that we treat them as holy.

But really, they are a reminder. BLACK ELK WAS NO MORE HOLY THAN YOU OR I, the difference is that he was more awake to the sacredness of everything than you or I. That is the difference. And people or objects acquire the power to remind us of the sacred because they have been treated as such for generations. This power of the collective to imbue itself is objective, it is not just a fantasy. And it is the same with my medicine objects: it is right that I treat them in a special way, because they remind me of the sacred, they have that power within them. But their deeper message, like the message of holy people and places like Uluru, is to remind us that the sacred is everywhere, equally, if our hearts are awake to it.

What is this life if the sacred is not at the core of it? It is eviscerated, it is unthinkable from the point of view of probably every human who lived until a few thousand years ago. And yet for us it has become the norm. And there has always been that human tendency, particularly for adults who may be consumed by practical demands. And that is why there are ceremonies such as sweatlodges: to melt us out of the everyday and into our metaphysical foundation. Yes, our foundation is metaphysical or we are not properly human.

And Uluru is there also to remind us of that foundation, which is something felt, not thought. It is sacred for all of us. Whether we should be able to climb it or not - I think that is ultimately a political question. But remember that the sacred is to be found everywhere.