Thursday, March 25, 2010

Liminal Living- Borderlanders

In my search for an explaination to unusual phenomena such as the premonitions I have before some natural disasters, I read a lot of material. Below is a quote from a fascinating book by a Jungian analyst who spent many years among the Navajo, just listening. Living in the Borderland, by Jerome S. Bernstein.

"Borderland people personally experience, and must live out, the split from nature on which the western ego, as we know it has been built. They feel (not feel about) the extinction of species; they feel (not feel about) the plight of animals that are no longer permitted to live by their own instincts, and which survive only in domesticated states to be used as pets or food. Such people are highly intuitive. Many, if not most, are psychic to some degree, whether they know it or not. They are deeply feeling, sometimes to such a degree that they find themselves in profound feeling states that seem irrational to them. Virtually all of them are highly sensitive on a bodily level. They experience the rape of the land in their bodies, they psychically , and sometimes physically, gasp at the poisoning of the atmosphere. Often they suffer from "environmental illness". This psychic identity with the animate and inanimate objects of nature is a phenomenon that anthropologist Lucien Levy-Bruhl (Levy-Bruhl, 1966) recognized among native cultures, and which he called participation mystique. It is a psychic identification from which , up until recently, westerners have been totally alienated." -Jerome S.Berstein Living in the Borderland (page 9)

3 comments:

  1. Wonderful post. This books goes onto my list. A book for you, d. Downloaded at Xmas a book onto my kindle - caroline myss's defy gravity. Shje has been using a new technique in eh workshops based on the teachings of the mystic, Theresa de Avila - and people attending the workshop have experience spontaneous healings. One woman, 20 years of arthritic pain - gone by the end of the workshop. Another woman, diagnosed as terminal with brain cancer, was cured within weeks of attending the workshop.

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  2. Rob & Trish,thanks for the suggestion of Caroline Myss "Defying Gravity". I will order it. :-)

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  3. Fascinating post. I will definitely add this to my list.

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