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“Many years ago, a scientist from France came over [to our Aboriginal Australian community] and said, “Do you realize that Le Meuse is the oldest river in the world?” and he wondered why the elders did not get excited or challenge him.
When I went back to them that night, they said, “You are going back to France next week aren’t you?” Yes, I said. “That white man, he said that Le Meuse in France is the oldest river in the world — is that true?” I said, well from a science point of view, it may be at the time.
And they said, “Well what we want you to do is take some water from the Mardoowarra and you must walk and you must find the head waters of Le Meuse and you most go to Le Meuse and kneel and say that you have come, and that we have heard that you are the oldest river in the world, and so if you are the oldest river in the world, you will know what the humans have done. And we would like to ask you if you would like to share some of your memory
So I got some of the Mardoowarra and brought it to Le Meuse and wrote a play about the two rivers talking.”
— Australian Indigenous Elder Anne Poelina
There is memory stored in the land, in country, in place itself.
Song is our map.
“Dreamtime is not just a memory of the dawn of time when the ancestors sang the world into existence, it’s like an entire parallel universe so that you actually have a group of people – the aboriginals – who believe that there are two realities. And they lived in the phenomenological world but they also recognized that this phenomenological world only existed because it was going through their imagination.
And so when they walk the songlines, which were the trajectories walked at the dawn of time by the primary ancestors as they sang the world into being, they’re both walking across the Earth, but the Earth itself is also being formed just even as they see it. So everything is a constant act of creation. So if a stone exists as a stone but it’s also, they really believe it, it’s still being formed. It’s being formed even as you look at it.”
There are songs and dances for this land; the land itself is real and alive.
Ley lines
“Ley lines, then, form the matrix of energy which is the dynamic physical principle of the geological body of Earth. Ley lines are the essential structure of the etheric body of the Earth Spirit. To appreciate this, it can be helpful to imagine Earth as having no dense physical existence, but being only a globe of interconnected lines of electric energy, a sphere made up of webs of energy.
These lines vary in length from five miles to approximately two thousand miles; they are straight, but not dead straight and may over distance undulate gently. They also vary in width and in intensity of energy.”
— William Bloom Leylines and Ecology
The land holds memory
“The land holds memory
Because it’s a living system
And when you start to have ceremony and start to communicate with the land, secrets will be revealed and things will come to you
Because there is a connectivity between the energy systems
I have been working with Victor Steffensen (author of Fire Country)
We actually brought him the Kimberley when we were given our land back
We thought that when we got our land back that because of the intensive pastoralism we had to start to plant things.
But he said No, you dont do that.
When you start to burn in the right way, country can feel that
And country will evoke its own memory
And the plants that were there before extensive pastoralism will come back
Because the land is alive
And the memory of the land…
The birds are part of it; the insects; all of the elements — fire, wind, water, land, stars, all inter-entwined
Because this is the balance of our law
We have to do as our old people say:
Read the signs
The land can teach us.”
— Australian Indigenous Elder Anne Poelina of Regenerative Songlines Australia and many other projects
If we realize, “I am a human being. A human being can do anything,” this determination, courage, and self-confidence are important sources of victory and success.
Without will power and determination, even something that you might have achieved easily cannot be achieved. If you have will power and reasonable courage —not blind courage but courage without pride — even things that seemed impossible at a certain stage turn into being possible because of continuing effort inspired by that courage. Thus, determination is important.
How can this be developed?
Not through machines, not by money, but by our own inner strength based on clear realization of the value of human beings, of human dignity.
For, once we realize that a human being is much more than just material, much more than just money, we can feel the importance of human life, from which we can feel the importance of compassion and kindness.
Human beings by nature want happiness and do not want suffering.
With that feeling everyone tries to achieve happiness and tries to get rid of suffering, and everyone has the basic right to do this.
In this way, all here are the same, whether rich or poor, educated or uneducated, Easterner or Westerner, believer or nonbeliever, and within believers whether Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and so on.
Basically, from the viewpoint of real human value we are all the same.”
— Tenzing Gyatso Kindness, Clarity, and Insight
