“Reason sets the boundaries far too narrowly for us, and would have us accept only the known — and that too with limitations — and live in a known framework, just as if we were sure how far life actually extends. As a matter of fact, day after day we live far beyond the bounds of our consciousness.” (Carl Jung)
Many years ago a group of us visited a village market spread out over several cobbled streets that radiated, spoke-like, from a central square. As lunchtime approached, all but one of us managed to meet up at the appointed hour and place. Not wanting to keep hungry grandchildren waiting, I embarked on the seemingly futile errand of finding Sarah, our missing person. There were so many people milling about and possible routes to search that I more or less froze on the spot where we’d last seen her a couple of hours earlier. With no better idea of how to find Sarah, all I could think to do was concentrate on ’beaming her in’ telepathically (though not holding out much hope for success). Imagine my surprise when, mere minutes later, she wandered right up to me!
How did that happen? Yes, coincidence is a possible explanation. Perhaps even likely. But so is telepathy, a psychic phenomenon that has gained credibility thanks to relatively recent neurological studies that I won’t go into at this moment.
Ever since that day at the market I have been curious about what can be achieved through the power of intention and, corollary to that, the other means through which humans can gather and exchange information outside those channels recognized by modern science and technology. Over the years of peripheral exposure to its language and lore, I have developed an appreciation for the spiritual and mystical aspects of Hawaiian culture, and how, as in other indigenous societies, important knowledge has been passed down orally, through songs, symbols and “talking story”. Among other legendary Hawaiian exploits, the journey of the outrigger sailing canoe “Hōkūle’a” is a tale that captured my imagination:
“Hōkūleʻa, our Star of Gladness, began as a dream of reviving the legacy of exploration, courage, and ingenuity that brought the first Polynesians to the archipelago of Hawaiʻi. The canoes that brought the first Hawaiians to their island home had disappeared from earth. Cultural extinction felt dangerously close to many Hawaiians when artist Herb Kane dreamed of rebuilding a double-hulled sailing canoe similar to the ones that his ancestors sailed. Though more than 600 years had passed since the last of these canoes had been seen, this dream brought together people of diverse backgrounds and professions. Since she was first built and launched in the 1970s, Hōkūle’a continues to bring people together from all walks of life. She is more than a voyaging canoe — she represents the common desire shared by the people of Hawaii, the Pacific, and the World to protect our most cherished values and places from disappearing.” (Polynesian Voyaging Society website)
One of the more intriguing aspects of Hōkūle’a’s story was the revival of almost-extinct navigational skills that ancient Polynesians developed to cross vast swaths of the Pacific Ocean without the aid of such ’modern’ instruments as Captain Cook used when he sailed from Europe to Hawaïi. We know that Polynesians used natural navigation aids such as the stars, ocean currents, and wind patterns, but it is also told that they communed with the spirits of their ancestors — their aumakua — to aid in their “wayfinding”:
This manner of communing with ancestral spirits is also discussed in a book I discovered recently, called: “Other Ways of Knowing: Recharting Our Future With Ageless Wisdom”. In his introduction the author, John Broomfield explains:
“At a time when many despair about the fate of the earth, my purpose with this book is to bring you the good news that the necessary wisdom is readily available from many sources: From the sacred traditions of our ancestors. From the spiritual lives of our own and other cultures. From spirit in nature. From the deep knowledge of healthy processes embedded in our own bodies. From feminine ways of being. From contemporary movements for personal, social and ecological transformation. Unexpectedly, even from the apparent source of our current crisis: science itself.”
I’m not entirely in agreement with Broomfield’s comment about science being the apparent source of our current problems. Think COVID vaccines. But I can imagine, as Jung said, that a balance needs to be restored between that which is deemed scientifically valid or worthy and that which led an artist to dream up a sailing canoe such as his ancestors used. And then use it to generate dialogue and cooperation between a widely scattered — and not always friendly — Pacific island chain.
Why is any of this relevant to me? To us? As one who is prone to overthink things, I have used much of the “time-out-of-time” that was imposed by COVID to ponder what might have brought our culture closer to the brink of extinction. This may sound extreme, but, in a conversation about what we learned from the pandemic, and how we might go forward more intentionally, our thirteen year old grandson observed somewhat fatalistically, “The Delta variant is probably just one of many that’ll wipe us all out, eventually. So what’s there to discuss?”
This thought has also occurred to me. It seems to me that the ’need and greed’ mentality that pervades Western society, the attitude that the physical or natural environment is separate from us and designed to serve our every need, is as much a disease as any virus could be. As with the creators of Hōkūle’a, I sense a great need to protect our most cherished values and places from disappearing. And I agree with John Broomfield that at least some of the answers to our current crises are embedded in a spiritual dimension that has always existed. I’d like to believe that the spirit of exploration, courage and ingenuity that carried the ancient Polynesians across vast, uncharted territory could be harnessed, and enhanced by modern science and technology, to find solutions to our current global issues.
Oops! I think my soap box just broke…