So, let’s talk about babies. You’re probably like, “Wait, what? This is supposed to be a channel on Nonduality. What do you mean, babies?”
Well… this is actually a series on the intersection between Nonduality and Native wisdom. Native wisdom would always include babies, particularly if women are involved. And women were always involved. Right? So let’s talk about babies.
In our series we’ve done a week where we talked about language and how language creates the thoughts. All the thoughts that are in our minds are created by the language that we know. We talked about how the particular language we know, English, is a divisive language because it divides things into independent objects that are separate and not interconnected to each other. This is inherent in the very concepts we use every day.
Then we talked about history and how history has helped create this language and how the only history we have heard is from conquering cultures. We have erased so much reality with our history and created a narrow point of view of divisiveness.
Once we bring these things back into our consciousness and worldview, then we can start using the tools of Nonduality to lift us into a natural state where we can, and need to be, living.
One of the things that I’m pointing to is a series of books that are important to read, and I have them listed here on this website.
I want to talk about one called ‘Sand Talk.’ This is a fascinating read by an Aboriginal man from Australia. Several important things. Australia is very far away from the larger continents. What’s so interesting about Australia is that human beings managed to get over there, just a small little tribe of us, 80,000 years ago. Maybe it was 60,000 years ago, but one way or the other it was a long time ago. We ended up isolated there… until finally the conquering white man came along.
So, this was a super, super isolated group of people. Yet, when you hear their native stories, it’s the same worldview we hear from everywhere else. Not the same exact stories, but the same worldview: the view that everything is interconnected and we are part of it all. The place they are talking from is the same place we hear in Native American stories, or South America, or the Sami tribes up with the reindeer.
‘Sand Talk.’
There is one part of the book I’d like to retell. Definitely read the book because he tells this way, way better than I can. I’m going to give just a little snippet of this story, just enough to pass on the flavor.
He says that in the Aboriginal worldview the center of the universe is the baby. We know this if we pause for a minute and remember. When there’s a baby, you can feel the magnetism. All attention goes to the baby. It’s a irresistible force. Look at a baby and you literally wake up to joy and connection from the sheer magnetism of looking at the baby.
Think of a circle of energy. All the energy of the tribe, and therefore the center of the universe, is the baby.
Around that magnetic circle is the mother holding the baby and telling stories. The stories that the mother is telling is the next ring of this circle in the center of the universe.
And the circle grows into everyone in the tribe. Each person starts in the center of that circle and then grows outwards to become the caretakers of the circle, the universe itself. Circles and circles and circles that everybody is participating in.
The thing I want to paint here is how everyone is integrated into the tribe like this. Everyone starts as a baby, the pure center of attention. This was literally, physically, true. A baby in a native community would never be sat down on the floor, or put in a carseat. They are also not the responsibility of, or possession of, just one person, the mother. They would be handed from person to person to person.
As the baby gets a little bit older and then another baby is born. As the simple, natural process of growing older that child’s attention goes to the center, giving care and also receiving care. The growing child hasn’t completely come out of the circle yet. They are still revolving in the center. And so, the child grows slowly out of this circle, learning to give and receive care. Tons of attention is still being focused on them but their attention naturally starts to flow inward to the center of the universe where the next being is born.
When you grow into an adult, you grow into a fully functioning adult with no residual need to be the baby, or to be the center of attention anymore. And now what you are is you are the support of this center of the universe. Circles, circles, circles. All the way up to the oldest grandparents.
What’s really cool about this story in ‘Sand Talk’ is that seven generations later, you are born back into the center again. And so, you grow out and become the support of this center. And then you’re back in. Everything between humans is connected when the baby is the center of the universe.
Imagine growing up in this field of care: cared for by everyone and then receiving the blessing of getting to live your adult life returning the care.
There was recently just an article, I think it was in the Atlantic by David Brooks, about how the ‘nuclear’ family is such a disaster. Mom and Dad raising the baby all alone. We know this! There is way too much involved in raising a baby for two people to do it on their own, much less one.
But imagine a baby whose every need is filled. A baby who never has to cry for attention because attention is just given. This is the ripe, ripe fullness of the world that this child lives in. Then as they grow older they’re strong and able to be part of the constant giving and giving and giving to everyone.
This is the reality that human beings used to live in until we started having a written word, until civilization happened, and everything started falling apart. This is the world we need to recreate.