Cristine Takuá, Living Schools Coordinator, Selvagem
Spirituality has been going through a process of mutation that Carlos Papa, my husband, calls a mutation of consciousness. We live in a sick society. We no longer know how to eat, we take medication for everything. This sickness is a reflection of the dumbing down of the spiritualities that move us.
There is a very violent movement of capitalist shamanism to commercialize the sacred. The elders know, they are the holders of a deep secret that dwells within the sacred. The secret of the sacred cannot be revealed to just anyone. But some people access some knowledge through a power plant, and today everyone has become a "paje" (spiritual guide). For you to be recognized as a guide, it's a very deep study, and a gift linked to a lineage in each family, in each cultural context. You can't become a “paje” overnight. Capitalism has captured spiritualities, not just indigenous ones. It's disrespectful to the other spirits around us.
We are praying for all beings, not just humans. These are dimensions that often Western science, which is very limited in its systematization of the visible, doesn't understand. Western medicine can't see the dimensions of the invisible. It hasn't been able to create a remedy for the illnesses of our soul. Indigenous spiritualities, which are very much connected to the invisible world, power plants, are able to access very deep layers within us, which put us in touch with the past, the present, and the future. So the science of the forest is a very sophisticated science, and within it dwells the spiritualities of the many indigenous peoples who live in the forest.
So it's very delicate to think about "spiritual innovation" within this context of the commercialization of the sacred and this tendency to turn everything into a product. Perhaps "innovation" isn't the word; it's better to talk about transformation. Spiritualities are changing, which is natural. Everything changes over time. If you have a holder of knowledge who guides your practice as it should be, you end up realizing that it's actually all the same, it's just the contexts of a time that are different.
Today we live in the age of technology, with the invisible thread of the internet connecting the world. A long time ago, the great spiritual leaders had other technologies: intuition, telepathy, dreams, plants that allowed them to send messages to anyone in the world. These communications, these technologies also existed and still exist today within ancestral technologies, but we are no longer practicing them because of modern internet technology. We need to be very attentive to realize how positive these transformations can be, and at the same time how they can be traps because they end up putting memories to sleep.
We need to activate the power of prayer, activate the collective willingness to keep the fire burning every day so that we can dialogue with the spirits around us and balance them out. We see that the spirits of the forest are very angry with us because our humanity has damaged the sacred dwelling place of many beings. Everyone, from all lineages, if we all keep praying, dialoguing with the spirits, we can balance this pain that the earth is feeling.
It's the power within the invisible that makes healing possible. The earth can no longer bear these footprints. And the great challenge of our humanity is for us to be able to speak and do. Because speech is the breath of true love, which connects what is inside us and we blow it out into the world. If this breath of love that is our speech reflects our thinking, if it is not connected to the footprint of our steps, why do we speak? Spirituality is speaking AND doing. Otherwise, we're lying. But the spirits know everything, all our lies.
Nature is going to blow in a very strong way, because of everything we've done against it. So we need to access this knowledge and see the womb of our mother earth bleeding. And we need to stop and be silent, because it is only by being silent that we will be able to hear what the spirits are saying.
Read More Definitions of Spiritual Innovation
- Ristina Gooden, Spiritual innovation leader and scholar focused on Black women
- Sandy Hong, Spiritual innovation trainer and practitioner focused on the US and Korean diaspora
- Edina Leković, Muslim thought leader and community builder
- Noosim Naimasiah, Pan-African scholar-activist
- Sid Schwarz, Jewish thought leader and convener of spiritual innovators
- Susumu Shimazono, Japanese sociologist of religion
- Brandon Vaidyanathan, Catholic sociologist and spiritual innovator
