Toni Petrovich
speaks in her Ancient Text Researcher about linking us with the
knowledge and sciences of the Gods. She refers us to ancient texts
that wait our translation and understanding. I completely agree
with this vector of research. Another one of our round table participants
described how the new physics doesn't contradicts the laws of
physics - just the misconceptions people have about them. If we
can also apply this attitude and understanding to our unexamined
cultural perceptions and look at these ancient texts in fresh
ways, with virgin eyes, I believe we will find many answers to
the very things we are so desperately seeking for today.
One of the
best ways to make this leap is to simply and respectfully ask
those people who have lived within these traditions since they
were written down so many thousands of years ago what they are
about. Although this sounds so obvious once it's stated, you'd
be surprised how rarely it happens. Often-perhaps too often- those
who bring us interpretations of these ancient texts have come
through the academic forge with their minds smelted and cast into
a pre-defined mode of inquiry. The academic model is a paradox
in that it enforces a particular style of thinking that can only
perceive what it beholds within a limited set of boundary conditions.
The answers to what we're looking for don't lie within those boundaries.
Moreover,
there's a kind of arrogance that this style of thinking perpetrates
upon everything around it. It attempts to define everything in
the environment in terms of itself and what it already knows.
This is like learning the first letter of the alphabet and believing
that you can read. This attitude can actually push away the truth
as we search for it.
The Aztec
teachers I've worked with have encouraged me to understand the
value of another kind of inquiry that they call Omeyollohualiztli:
The act of guiding one's heart through the portals of duality.
It is on the one hand a process of intense questioning similar
to our own academic inquiry. It continues to a stage beyond, however,
in that once the period of questioning has passed, there is then
a period of reflection, and then an even deeper period of silent
meditation. When we successfully pass through each of these stages
of Omeyollohualiztli we often arrive closer to the truth than
where we were before. At the very least, our relationship with
the subject of inquiry will improve- and this is how we get closer
to the truth of anything, isn't it?
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