Latin American Community/Comunidad Latino Americano

This is the text i adapted from Coming back to Life (page 138)

 

 

Instructions

Walking process – walkabout or nomadic journey, like our ancestors, and the first people of this land, we'll be revolving around a central point, so find a place to start, we'll be like spokes on a wheel.

Explaining part :

 

Start by walking backward through time, part way through we'll stop and move forward. Listen for my verbal cues as we go along.

 

This is a journey, a physical activity that reminds us of the expanse of time we occupy, our journey as a species, on earth

It helps us remember that the industrial growth society is simply a blip on the grand scale of our experience on earth.

 

As you walk, keep your eyes half open, to allow you to see enough but also to allow your imagination to give you a different type of vision.

 

If you bump into other, it's ok, we're not alone on this journey, we're always together, simply find a space to relocate yourself.

 

Joanna tells people that this process originated here in Australia, so let's dedicate it to the healing of our world.

 

Verbal cues

From this present moment on August 17 2008, here at commonground in central victoria, australia, you begin to slowly walk backwards in time, move back throug the events of the day ... to your waking up this morning, keep walking back through this last week, ... the last month, ... times at home, at work, ..in your wider community, ... move back through the months to the start of the year, ...now you ware walking back through the last year, through it's seasons and encounters...

 

Keep walking backwards through the decades of your life, see the jouney, perhaps the loss of someone close, perhaps the birth of a child, or children,... Encounter again the relationsihps, the passions, adventures...

 

Your are moving back through your young adulthood, teenage years, their hopes & heart aches... You are entering your childhood, seeing the places and faces you knew, sensing the radiance of the child you were. You are growing smaller, being carried in arms, ...You are back in your mothers womb, approching the point of your conception in this life...

 

What is alive in you did not being at conception ... so step back into the lives of your parents, that man and that woman, who found eachother, whose union gave you life,... Move back through their lives, the work they did, the struggles they faced, the mistakes they made, joys they knew. You are moving through their teenage years, childhood, infancy, their birth, back to the wombs that bore them.

 

Continue walking back, back into the lives of your grandparents and your great-grand parents, back through this century of wars and explosions of technology, back before the automobile, before telephones & electricity...

 

See the shadows of candles, into the lives of ancestors whose names you no longer know, but of whom a gesture, a smile, turn of the head lives on in you,

moving back along this river of life, back through the industrial revolution, through the factories, and teeming city streets, into lives of your people, some uprooted from the land into sweatshops and mines and armies...

 

You're moving back into harsher, simpelr times, marked by the seasons, Walking back through the lives of men and women, peasants and scribes, philosophers, artisans, theives, beggars, convicts, prison guards, servants, royals,... even then they carried you within them like a seed, they are your ancestors...

 

Back through times of torment, plagues, burnings, millions of women and men tied to stakes, your ancestors perhaps both victims and percecutors.

 

Enter as well the lives of ancestors versed in the ancient healing arts, .. with eyes like yours, hands like yours, baking bread, gathering herbs, ministering to others...

 

You are passing back through the rise and fall of entire civilizations, thoudsnds of years passing, the first cities emerging from our activity on earth. You move back before the days of empire, before the land was tilled in parcles that were owned...

 

Back to earlier nomadic times, tribes in forest dwellings, you are walking back through the thousands of years when earth provided wild boar, berries, roots, through a time unmarked by wars,

 

Entering to the long treks, migrations of our ancestors crossing continents, voyages on rafts, long marches in the ages of ice, ... Back through the millenia you walk with them to your beginings, 80 thousand years ago, here on this continent, and a million years ago, in the heartland of africa, can you remember, looking out over the savannah?

 

And now you stop, with the very first ones, you stand at the edge of the forest. Pause now, looking out over the horizon, the journey of your people lies ahead. You can not imagine what it will bring or the challenges you will face as a human species.

 

Begin to walk forward on that journey now, retracing your steps, returning through time. You came from an unbroken line of survivors and each has gifts to bestow. Open your arms and hands to reveive these gifts, gather them in (it may be helpful to make physical gestures to receive these offerings)

 

These people are giving you the texture of your skin, the shape of your back, the marrow of your bones. They give to you courage and strength and endurance as they travel through the land, hunting, playing, making babies, dying...

 

Take these gifts, take the joy of children splashing in a stream 30 thousand years ago, coming forward through the years, harvesting the gifts of your ancestors, receivng what they offer, recieving all that you need...

 

Walkign up through the centuries, see the trust in the eyes of the children, the passion in they eyes of the young, See the wisdom in the eyes of the elders, Receive these gifts.

 

Receive the creativity of you ancestors, making tools, weaving cloth, buildilng homes.

 

The compassion of your ancestors, caring for the injured, praying with the dying, that too is for you.

 

Know their love of beauty, music of a flute coming from the hills, hands carving jewelery, feet dancing to the rythms of drums. Receive that celebration as their gift to you.

 

Know the intelligence of your ancestors as they tack the movements of the starts, learn the ways of the plants and animals, share their dreams and hold councils to chose the wisest action, receive this as their gift to you.

 

Can you sense the love that burns in your ancestors? Their devotion to their families, their land, Receive this love of kin and earth as their gift to you.

 

Relish their wit and humor, your ancestors jokes and jibes as they work together, the banter of young couples, the merriment of festivals, receive their laughter, see them passing this on to you.

 

Your ancestors have gifts from their suffering too, courage, resillience, stubborn perserverence, Receive these gifts from your ancestors...

 

moving forward through the centuries, receiving all the gifts they offer you,

 

You are now entering the 20^th century, and the lives of your grand parents,... and your parents, receive the gifts of the faces familiar to you, that strength of your parents and especially the greatest gift they gave you, your own life to live.

Move forward through the years of your own life accept the gifts of your own experience, your appetites, your sorrows, your fierce caring for the world,

 

Coming now to this present moment, you stop, you are once again on a brink of time, you can not see clearly the way ahead or imagine what will be asked of you. But you do not go forward empty handed, the ancestors who loved and tended this earth, and cared for eachother, suvived together, they offer you the strength you need now to do what needs to be done, so that their journey and yours may continue.

 

 

Long pause, sit if they choose, a few moments of inner reflection

 

if you feel moved, when you're ready, open your eyes, and see the people around you your fellow humans on this journey, if you want, you can gather with a few others to share verbally or non-verbally how this journey was for you, what it meant to you. If you want to be alone, that's ok too. Do what feels natrual.