Four-Fold Path of the Indigenous Soul

Francis Weller

I. An experience of belonging through village life

• full range of reflections from masculine and feminine
• progressive level of initiation to accompany people throughout their lives
• ritual life to keep the emotional terrain fluid and expressed
• elders and youth in continual exposure to one another
• structure for mediating conflicts
• collective support for families, couples, children
• communal relations with extended families, unrelated uncles and aunts
• village connected to surrounding land, integrity to the system of life
• celebratory acts of kinship and communal renewal, world renewal
• teaching via stories, oral traditions
• awareness of illness and suffering as communal, no private pain
• transmission of tradition, inherited wisdom
• confirmation of value and belonging
• established means for peacemaking
• acknowledgement of interdependency based on social model of achievement
• protection, life promotion through collaborative attention to basic elements of life
• rich, textured world for childhood development
• council of elders to deliberate direction of village
• authority based in merit and contribution to community
• fulfillment of primary satisfactions: touch, friendship, support in times of pain, grief and loss, play, intimacy, etc.

II. An intimacy with Nature

• exposure to the others, animals, plants, rocks, etc. through which a rich interior world is shaped
• totemic identification
• place as event, story, mythic presence
• gifting cosmos - food, clothing, companionship
• nature as regulator of the soul, rhythms learned over eons
• tracking, listening, attention as crafts of inner/outer life
• spirit medicine of plants and animals
• sensual surround of sound, taste, texture, image, fragrance
• world of cycles, seasons, inner/outer rhythms
• animal teachers and guides: trickster, courage, stealth, wisdom, loyalty
• the presence of the wild, the renewing quality of wildness
• ecology of the spirit: mutuality, reciprocity, model of human society
• place as healing/holding environment
• identity remains fluid, expressive, inclusive of more-than-human world
• time is rhythmic, slow, elastic

III. An abiding connection with the Sacred

• participatory cosmos
• mythically alive universe
• presence and care of the ancestors
• ongoing creation, creativity as expression of sacred dimension (no word for art)
• dreamtime and deep time reality sustaining this world
• ritual systems for mutuality and reciprocity with the sacred
• arts as conversation with the other
• non-linear, non-dual, non-rational modes of experience: trance, altered states of consciousness through dance, ritual, plant spirits, etc.
• healing as component of sacred intervention
• a spirituality of experience, direct relationships with numinous cosmos

IV. A Knowledgeable awareness of one's life purpose

• sense of meaningfulness
• gift to offer community
• cosmological significance
• mentoring of youth
• ongoing sense of generativity/contribution to community
• soulful context for gift/purpose
• purpose as principle confirmation of value, dignity (everyone has a purpose and is needed in the community)
• Deep Story to keep us moving towards authentic self-expression
• craft-making, creativity as expression of psychic, soulful value