Mists of the Ancestors
(A Photographic Narrative)
 

Introduction

A year has past since my departure from the Continent of Africa. Although I spent most of my time in Southern Africa, I feel connected and close to the whole of Africa. It feels like Africa is in my blood and bones. I was born Caucasian, American and female from Irish and Scottish lineage of the most recent ancestry. I say the most recent because today there are genetic studies sponsored by National Geographic that tell us all human beings descended from a small group of people out of the continent of Africa approximately 60,000 to 150,000 years ago.* Only now do I feel I can begin to share the experiences of the rich mysterious tapestry called Africa that helped alter my view of life forever.

Cultural Anthropology tells us that the view of the world is defined differently in different cultures. People have different customs, believe in different gods and goddesses, have different expectations and perception of life and different after life fates. What would be considered a psychological diagnosis of mental illness here in the west would be considered a spiritual awakening or calling somewhere else in the world. The problems of poor health and bad luck in another culture would take into account that a spiritual healing or an offering to appease the ancestors or perhaps an environmental cleansing would be necessary. The resident medicine person makes decisions like these. Knowledge and values shared by a society may view space and time in arcs, waves and circles rather than linear as in western thought. Cause and effect are not always rational or logical but governed by energetic dimensions. Mankind viewed as an equal not superior to any sentient being is common among indigenous peoples. The earth is seen as alive and all creation a network of energy that communicates and responds to us, as we do it. We here in the west know something of these worlds because of stories, myths and legends. However, until one dives into these experiences, they simply remain enigmas, theories and mysteries driven by fear and doubt to the western mind.

The main reason for me to have looked carefully at a different perception of life other than the view, into which I was born, lies in the fact that my life experiences were not making any sense to me. Poor health and confusion dominated my existence. Western medicine, psychology and theology could not give me the relief that I needed from the condition for which I suffered. I learn much later that my malady was termed “soul sickness.” I came to understand with help that I had inherited this condition from past generations, “from those that came before.” It seems that family lines pass on iniquity for all, no matter the culture of origin. The children inherit the “sins of the fathers.”

Our inheritance can be seen in many ways. For example, talents, physical stature, hair color, longevity or proclivity to certain diseases, both physical and emotional i.e. Schizophrenia, manic depression and suicidal tendencies. These conditions and others have been proved genetically. Based on that premise, if it is true that all of us have inherited genes, DNA, chromosomes, etc. from those that came before us, then surely we have been bequeathed social conditioning, physical, emotional and behavioral patterns as well. We may think our bodies are ours, our mind is ours and all of our thoughts are ours, but many of them were possibly handed down through generations of family lines and lives. With this awareness we can now make decisions based on present time information. We can make different decisions than our mother or grandfather made.

* www.nationalgeographic.com  Click on the Genographic Project

In order to do this we need to focus our attention on something other than mere survival. For example if violence runs in the family without conscious attention, violence will repeat. This type of “soul sickness” is simply not recognized here in the west and someone that had my symptoms might be diagnosed, hospitalized, medicated and forgotten. This easily happened to me. All I had to do was follow the ones in authority. They told what me to do, what medications to take, what to eat, where I could live and my abilities. I did just that for over 20 years. All the while, there was a small constant voice deep inside me that kept repeating “there is more”. I felt the tiny voice stirring, but was unable to act on it, because of my fear and confusion. I clung to that “inner knowing. ”as if my life depended on it and it did.

Eventually, I slowly recovered some of my health. At that point traveling became a way of life and a means of escape from my internal torment. Traveling was healing, disorienting and wonderful. One of the many places to which I traveled was Africa . When the giant 747 of South African Airlines touched down in Johannesburg, I began to feel strange, almost as if skeletons were stirring in the cupboards of my psyche. Visions, memories and body sensations overwhelmed me. I managed to silence my internal chaos and remember that the origins of humanity are centered deep in the belly of this vast land. My intuition told me that the healing I so desperately wanted was here, somewhere in Africa.

Today I understand that the western way of life is also a cultural view. By experiencing other world views I have been able to see the western world for what it is, a construct, an indoctrination. This has allowed me to get a glimpse of the world between my perceptions and those of another.

In order to better understand, my story, I would like to begin by telling you a little bit about myself. I was raised in the southern United States. Some people might call where I was raised the “ Bible belt”. I have heard others refer to it as the “buckle of the Bible belt. ”In the religious sense, I was raised Methodist. When I was a child I was either in church or school. My mother is still today, as then, a devout Methodist with definite views and opinions. My deceased father was a man of his own mind. He was an inventor, businessman, adventurer, naturalist and a philosopher. As a child I was torn between these two very different perceptions and concepts of life. One a religious protestant with firm attitudes about how things are and should be in the world and the other a inventive mentality of creativity with a sense of exploration and wonder.

What really occupied me growing up was an interest in helping others, who were ill injured or suffering. Therefore I specialized in science and health in my studies. I went to nursing school at the age of eighteen. However, as I proceeded in my endeavor, a great gulf opened between my idealistic impressions and what I was being taught. People were referred to as the “gallbladder” or the “cardiac patient.” They became numbers and statistics that got funding from various donors or research projects. The physicians and staff always seemed grouchy, irritated and stressed. 

I wanted a more humanitarian approach to my life and the lives of others. I was determined to find it. I graduated from nursing school. I then enrolled at the local university to begin my studies in psychology. I felt psychology was a more personal and humanistic approach. Over the next fours years I learned that psychology was struggling to become accepted as a true science. It was after all only about 100 years old. The types of psychological study that were available were Jungian, Freudian, Experimental, Radical, Gestalt, Trans-personal and Humanitarian. The field of psychology was flourishing with “pop” movements during this time. Group encounter therapy was in vogue and so was hugging.

During my studies at the university, my priorities began to shift for me. I am not sure when it was or what caused it, but psychology lost its’ allure. Instead of embracing the beauty and newness of the current trends, psychologists aligned themselves with illness and disease. They began to join the ranks of the scientists and medical practitioners. Diagnosis became the norm and so did hospitalization and medication.
Many people felt research was the only valid path. The attitude seemed to be, if it couldn’t be objectively proven, then it wasn’t worth very much. In my humble opinion, research does give clinical application validity and without it there would be no standards. Without clinical application research would be useless. I am still very interested in valuable research. However, there are times when you just can’t beat experience. I graduated from my class “Suma Cum Laude”. I was more confused than ever. As a result of student loan debt and my confusion, I felt I needed to make money. I went into business. I became a real estate agent, then I became an investor in real estate. The interest rates climbed to 22% that year and ended my aspirations of becoming a land baron. My next attempt at succeeding with money came when a friend invited me to learn to become an investment advisor with a major wall street firm, I accepted.

For the next ten years, money and prestige became all important to me. I became successful in my economic gain. However, my health started to decline. As I awoke one morning I had trouble getting up and dressed. The next day I couldn’t get out of bed. I had lost my energy and my passion for living. Thus began my inner journey toward wholeness.

Since those early days of church and school, I have studied Business, Conventional Medicine, Psychology, Hypnotherapy, Naturopathic Medicine, Traditional Medicine, Acupuncture, Religions, Cultural Anthropology and many other healing arts. I have traveled to Tibet, India, Indonesia, Africa, Europe, Arabia, Egypt and the United Kingdom. These explorations were due to my own search for completion and wholeness. I felt that my perception of life was limited from the indoctrination of my childhood conditioning and my professional training.
Due to my experiences, I have been forced to synthesize and understand a great variety of truths. As a result, I have expanded my idea of who I am. I have come to realize that within me there is something “that knows”. Even as a seed given time, space and the right conditions will grow into a tree, I now perceive that within each of us there is an, integrity, a True Essence. If we remain consciously in touch with that integrity and give it time, space and the right conditions we evolve into our full potential and destiny as human beings. When we break a bone, there is a blue print within the body that knows how to knit a bone. When we cut ourselves, there is a template that comes to our assistance to mend our wound. This body knowledge is with us 24 hours a day. This integrity remains in tact ready to serve us even if we lose touch with it from stress, inherited patterns of living or preoccupation with life.

As a child I was taught who and what I are suppose to be. I erroneously began to identify myself as the lens through which I had learned to perceive the world rather than as the True Essence that shines through that lens. I define True Essence as the knowing deep inside that is our potential and destiny. True Essence is there before all the layering of social conditioning. By repetitiously experiencing the world in the restricted way in which I had been conditioned I ignored the vast variety of other ways I could look at myself, others and the world at large. This in effect limited the amount of my True Essence that I was able to express and restricted my contact with life. By the time I became an adult I had fixated my attention into the thinking patterns that I was taught so many times that the possibilities of life became limited. My vitality and health became dimmed from overuse of the same patterns. My thinking became “stuck in a rut” and I developed a narrow band of awareness.

This book is about my own awakening to my True Essence and retrieving my soul and destiny. This awakening opened the possibilities of my potential as a upgraded evolving human being. I had to understand both the personal and cultural patterns that I inherited through generations of ancestors before I could grasp the enormity of the influence of generations of patterns. I have participated and experienced first hand the depths of African spirituality and mystery. I have grown to understand and become familiar with concepts and terms as Sangoma (Shaman, Diviner, Healer), Nyanga (herbalist), Ancestors, bush medicine, ritual and community.

It is my hope that by reading this book a spark of realization might occur in you and within that realization an awareness that might help weave together some of the frayed threads in the tapestry of the mystery of life. Perhaps the tapestry of your own True Essence and the life in which you are living will begin to from a pattern. A pattern that you can recognize as the one” that knows”.