Decolonization as a Spiritual Practice
Rested and connected to the generations of wisdom held in our bodies, we can find our way through this collective dark night of the soul
Decolonization is the inheritance and generosity of Indigenous Peoples. It is through their toil and self-liberation process that we can learn how to engage our own undertaking. Fundamentally, decolonization means LAND BACK. In Indigenous world-view, humans are not the owners of land but rather the caretakers of its resources.
We are endowed with special mental and intellectual abilities that are the gift of our ancestors. It was through their lived experiences, both positive and constructive, that hundreds of thousands of years of data has been condensed in our cellular zip-drive and inherited by the living ancestors of today. It is because of their experiences of success and failure that we have this knowledge endowment.
We know which plants can heal and which trees are toxic. We migrated in different climates and found food sources because of ancestral knowledge. We learned of the power of the minerals and gems because of them. We continue to curate ancestral wisdom stories based on their observations of the natural world, cycles and seasons.
In the grand count of the timeline, it is fairly recent that humans began to deviate from a caretaker's role to a consumptive one. Our current civilizational model began around 3000 BCE. Land was no longer stewarded but rather divided, fenced and owned. Simple trade systems became the impetus for war - why not just take what we need for our community’s survival?
Our theos, our divinity concepts, moved from fertility/feminine modes (parallel matriarchies and patriarchies) to masculine/authoritative ones. In the new Sky God forms, doctrine was dictated by self-appointed human representatives. They demoted those who live in bodies that have the capacity to give birth to mere objects in the wealth-accumulation paradigm. The precious commodities of humans that can give birth were now products to be bought, sold, traded and stolen alongside cattle, land, food resources and human labor capital in the form of slaves.
All over the world, this paradigm shift spread in the human consciousness. Call it Kali Yuga (South Asian traditions) or the Fourth World of Separation and Control (Seneca/Haudanausanee tradition) this new rulership/economic model produced kings, autocrats, dictators, genocides, famines and war. Where we find ourselves today is in the inheritance of the good, the bad and the ugly of the ancestors.
The walls are cracking, the foundations buckling and those who hold power in this broken system are hanging on for dear life. The majority of humans are asleep and oblivious to the historical workings of the lives they live. We have a small amount of the population waking up to the ghastly nightmare and looking for a way through.
Let us consider that Decolonization praxis presents us with a path. As a praxis, decolonization is both a theory and a practice. Forged in the imagination of Indigenous Peoples who strive to liberate themselves from settler-colonialist systems, engaging decolonization is like putting on a pair of glasses whose lenses allow you to see the landscape before you in a level of detail not previously observed.
What does Decolonization praxis allow us to see?
The reality of existence is in the language of binaries/dualities. In this way, decolonization is more than an academic exercise or social justice rallying cry. It is more akin to a spiritual practice.
Historically, the domain of religion and spirituality has encompassed the following things:
Connecting to the Divine
Asking big questions like Who am I? What is my purpose?
Cultivating a spiritual view vs a material world view
Instruction for moral/ethical material world actions
Training the mind to access maximum human potential, superpowers, insight and prophecy
Encourage commitment to service of others needs vs sole purpose of being as accumulation of material wealth, strength and power
In the current civilizational model, the institution of organized religion has been used to suppress and control, steal and enslave. Intrinsically intertwined with dominant economic models evolving from trade and war, one can no longer assume religious spaces are a refuge from the material world. Rather, they too are confronted with the same need to survive under the exploitative capitalist model and are used as tools of indoctrination and enforcement of dominant cultural narratives.
The capitalist-imperalist paradigm is choking humanity and surviving amongst its shifting ranks has become humans main occupation. This is all a distraction while the main actors hoard wealth. Wealth hoarding is directly related to the toxic belief at the center of capitalism: the scarcity model. It simply states: we live in a world with unlimited needs and limited resources.
The psychology that created the scarcity model is not Indigenous. Its origins are in the Imperialist imagination of Western Europe of the 1600’s. This was a time of nation-building on the stolen resources of Asia, Africa and the Americas. A narrative was built over several hundred years that justified the genocidal actions of Western Europeans. Through the core elements of this narrative, humans today have inherited a thorny social construct of difference that creates identity classifications and defines which of those identities get to hold power, those that do not get access to power and those that uphold power by being proximate to it.
Intersectionality, as coined by law professor Kimberley Crenshaw (1991), speaks to the dynamic experience of living in the social construct of difference where we can experience privilege and the absence of privilege at the same time through our amalgam of identities. Most of these constructs such as race, class, gender and heterosexualism are made up ideas that are enforced through systems of prize and punishment. Again, who gets power and who doesn't? Whose body is exploitable and whose should be preserved?
Gone are the days where a spiritual practice could simply be about the cultivation of other-wordly experiences and aspirations of ascension. Our spiritual journey is here in the muck of a world stuck in the imagination of 1600’s Western Europeans that ultimately serves no one. Rooted in fear, scarcity and tribal survival, our only way out of this hell is to wake ourselves up to its realities and liberate our minds from its programming.
Decolonization is the spiritual framework of the present day. Here is a brief outline of it’s steps:
Rematriation - A radical act of returning this body to the land to rest and heal. Here we reconnect to active body listening and allow the cognitive mind to rest.
Hear the stories of how we got here. We need a deeper understanding of the current civilization model and its historical underpinnings.
Dissection of core elements and narratives of the social construct of difference and learn how existence is designed in the language of dualities.
Learn how the identity is constructed in humans through social interaction, key moments of individuation in the developmental timeline and through engagement with the cultural other
Deconstruct the identity through meditative activity and interplay of object-subject and eventually dual-nondul constructs
Return to the collective identity (individual and collective at the same time)
There are some simple truths being spoken here. If we deconstruct the identity we are less exploitable. If we are rested we are less exploitable. Being connected to our imaginations means we can be dreaming new ways to solve our collective challenges. Understanding the scarcity belief at the heart of capitalism means we can be engaged in a healing process of this ancestral wound and reconnect to the collective Indigenous consciousness that lives within - we are all indigenous to this Earth.
Abundance is our reality and our birthright. It is because of the imposition of the social construct of difference and economic scarcity model that we are fighting amongst the mob for the scraps. Decolonization is our triage response to the disaster of a social system built on supremacies. If we walk a path of deconstructing identity, we remove human mind-capital from the exploitable resources of economic capitalism.
Rested and connected to the generations of wisdom held in our bodies, we can find our way through this collective dark night of the soul.
Resources:
A whole Yoga Nidra playlist for your embodied decolonization that is a gift from the BIPOC folks who co-created them: Yoga Nidra Playlist on YouTube
A DEIcipher Podcast on Decolonization & Ethics: E3 DEIcipher Podcast
Upcoming course starts September 8th - Decolonization & The Goddess - Through conversation, Yoga Nidra, development of intuitive capacity, iconography and lineage teachings, we will move beyond the dualities of our own identity constructs in order to generate third space within. In this fresh understanding of the non-dual mind-state, the possibility of our liberation lies in a rich firmament, ready for activation.
"If we deconstruct the identity we are less exploitable. If we are rested we are less exploitable. Being connected to our imaginations means we can be dreaming new ways to solve our collective challenges. Understanding the scarcity belief at the heart of capitalism means we can be engaged in a healing process of this ancestral wound and reconnect to the collective Indigenous consciousness that lives within - we are all indigenous to this Earth."
This is SO well articulated - every single sentence of this entire essay. I am saving this for my own resource and summary, this sums it all up so perfectly - everything! Thank you for taking the time to write this and to share it. You are a gift! I will be sharing this essay around, as I practice the process of decolonisation myself... I think about this every day, the work of de-programming the mind from these narratives is immense... lifelong work... as we exist and survive within systems of oppression that have only ever benefitted few humans... I dream of our collective liberation. Thank you, again, for sharing your wisdom and your concise and articulate summary of how we got here. I delight in your work, it fortifies hope.