Can the knowledge and wisdom of living lineages help to heal individuals and a society being devastated by addictions?  This recent article (below) points to a growing awakening, led by the scientific community, over the causes of addiction.  While we often associate addiction with afflictions such as substance abuse or gambling, it is clear that addictive behavior is wide-spread in western society, extending to include areas such as food, material consumption and information (internet).  The emerging realization is that “addiction” may stem more from our human need to bond than a particular pathology, and without perceived opportunities for positive bonding, this innate impulse can lead to vicious cycles of destructive behavior.

Professor Peter Cohen argues that human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. It’s how we get our satisfaction. If we can’t connect with each other, we will connect with anything we can find — the whirr of a roulette wheel or the prick of a syringe. He says we should stop talking about ‘addiction’ altogether, and instead call it ‘bonding.’ A heroin addict has bonded with heroin because she couldn’t bond as fully with anything else.

Our modern society is driven from a basis of disconnection, from people, environment, and cosmos.  This is required in order to sustain the levels of extraction upon which our systems are built, enabling the concentration of resources.  This disconnect has fostered the “war on drugs” which has not only created further separation for those suffering from addictive behavior, but has had immense impact in separating many of the communities where the healing potential of living lineages reside.

But we have created an environment and a culture that cut us off from connection, or offer only the parody of it offered by the Internet. The rise of addiction is a symptom of a deeper sickness in the way we live — constantly directing our gaze towards the next shiny object we should buy, rather than the human beings all around us.

We are not the first civilization to face this challenge, and living lineages have worked at individual, communal and societal levels to both connect a sense of meaning and purpose while awakening our potential to bond in healthy ways that create virtuous cycles at all those levels.

A quick example, with the living lineage of the Maya: It has always been a fundamental aspect of Maya society that individuals understand their purpose in this life, and be supported to fulfill their potential in harmony with that purpose.  Thus, when a child was born, they were immediately brought to an Ajq’ij (spiritual guide) to understand that purpose, primarily through the tools of the Cholq’ij.  For example, a child born under the Nawal (day sign) Tz’i (law, justice) was, at the appropriate age, brought to learn from the judges of the community, to deepen their understanding of the connection between cosmic, natural and human law, to uphold their responsibility to ensure its seamless integration.  We can also use the Cholq’ij as a tool to help break unhealthy bonds and replace them with healthy ones.  For example, we can light purple candle’s on Tijax days to help cut away our (or others) attachments to things that do not serve our purpose, connect with Nawal K’at to free us from those things that trap us and to gather those things that help us on our path, and Nawal Kawoq to connect us with a healthy family and community.  If we work with the tools of these lineages through a sustained effort with an increasingly clear intent, tremendous healing becomes possible.

Many of these lineages emphasize the space between, rather than the object, focusing upon the importance of creating harmonious relationships as a key to ensuring a healthy path.  And their are tools within these traditions to help us re-awaken these connections, shifting our perspective as we have an opportunity to move from a reductive/ separated cosmology towards reclaiming an integrated/ interconnected view that can bring us back towards a path of healing and development.  In this way, perhaps we find hope that the addictive behaviors we suffer through, supported by our cultural context, can be transformed through healthy bonding connected to our true sense of purpose and relationship.

What potential do you see for living lineages in helping us to heal addictions and other afflictions?

Read the article by Johan Hari here:

The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think

I often think about living lineages as adapting and changing form as they move across time and space.  What is essential, however, is that as these traditions bud into forming new – and sometimes flourishing branches, they must always remain connected to and nourish (and be nourished by) the roots.  The modern day mindfulness movement, particularly in the US, provides an interesting example of various lineages moving across time and space, seeking to integrate into modern life in a meaningful way.  What appears to be happening is that an aspect of different traditions (mindfulness) has been extracted from the context within which it developed, as secularization efforts aim to make the practice more accessible into a modern culture that strongly favors safety and knowing over the mystery (and potential) of the unknown.

My hunch is that without connecting and feeding its roots, mindfulness will wither on the vine within this society.  When I think about our work here with Saq’ Be’, both our challenge and opportunity lies in finding ways to integrate powerful living lineages into our modern life in ways that feed and nourish the roots of those traditions.  This is why we are working simultaneously to bring the stories and experiences of these lineages into contact with a modern-focused world while also working towards supporting the vitality of those traditions in their homelands through various rescue and preservation efforts.  This reflects a natural law of reciprocity and will ultimately help to bring the transformative potential of these lineages to bear more fully on both the modern and traditional worlds.

This article in Salon.com presents an interesting reflection on modern mythology creating a condition that has led to a reduction and sterilization of rich traditions into functional components that wind up reinforcing that existing mythology.
Mindfulness’ “truthiness” problem: Sam Harris, science and the truth about Buddhist tradition

Take a look at the latest Saq’ Be’ Newsletter, and share with your friends!

Here we go!

Transformation+ Living Lineages: SacredRoad Runner

Living Lineages are an essential component in catalyzing the opportunities of our individual and collective potential by re-integrating on ecological, social and spiritual levels.  In order to truly engage with these lineages, we must first enable ourselves to be transformed by them, not simply understand them.  It is with much gratitude to Kosmos Journal that we share their publication of my article on the subject.

How do you engage with living lineages?  What are the opportunities and places where you see these lineages transforming modern life?

Communities around the planet are dealing with crises resulting from the complicated and complex web of problems that have emerged out of our modern society.  Whether viewed through the lens of climate change, wealth disparity, food security or any other inter-related issue, we have an opportunity to address the fundamental cause: the disconnect  between our human designs and the wisdom of nature.  The scale, complexity, and global nature of these problems require a transformation at a proportionate level of depth, simplicity, and local-rootedness to create the conditions for appropriate solutions to emerge. Living Lineages are experienced in the translation and application of natural wisdom, providing an essential key so that we may reintegrate, individually and collectively, at ecological, social and spiritual levels.

 

Living Lineages: Simplicity, Complexity and the Deepening Eco-Social-Spiritual Integration

As we celebrate Indigenous People’s Day, we have an opportunity to recognize the immense sacrifice that has been made by Indigenous Peoples around the world to retain their identity, sacred places, languages, knowledge and wisdom.  Here we will focus for a moment on the wisdom of Indigenous Peoples, and its immense importance at this time.

True knowledge and wisdom can not be bought, nor can it be sold.  It can not be owned or patented, it is a gift of the creator that comes to us, lives within us, passes through us.  But it can be respected an honored.  To do this, we can honor the source of this wisdom, and the lives it has traveled through to reach us.  We must care for it, take responsibility to do the best we can with it, to make the lives of those around us better by fulfilling our purpose in this life.  With this, we can not look to extract knowledge and wisdom from a people the same way we have extracted land, resources and lives from them.  We can not take the gifts we have received and look to sell them for profit, as it will turn this gift of wisdom into dust.

Today, let us remember the sacred knowledge, the wisdom that has been bestowed upon us, and be grateful for what we have received.  Let us honor the path this knowledge has taken, and those that have sacrificed to keep the lineages alive.  Let us remember that not long ago, we all lived as Indigenous people in all parts of the world, and by supporting the Indigenous people of today’s world to remain vital in their lands, with their languages, cultures, knowledge, and wisdom we help to keep alive hope for our collective future.

Please take a moment to read this excellent piece by Naomi Klein interviewing Leanne Simpson in YES! Magazine:
Dancing the World into Being: A Conversation with Idle No More’s Leanne Simpson