What if the happiest humans who ever lived had no money, no government, and no ambition?
I know that sounds like a provocation. But stay with me, because over the last two weeks something has been quietly dismantling my understanding of progress — and I think it might dismantle yours too.
It didn’t come from a book. It didn’t come from a billionaire on a stage at Davos. It came from a group of people who have lived on this land for longer than any culture on Earth. People that most of the West has never heard of. And people who have heard of them have called them “primitive.”
They are the San people of Africa.
And what I learned from them might be the most important thing I write this year.
The thought experiment that changes everything
Before I get to San, I want you to try something. It’s a thought experiment, and it’s not a light one. It’s the kind of question that, if you sit with it long enough, starts to rewire how you think about civilization itself.
Here it is.
If you could go back in time and be born into any culture, in any era of human history — but you had to come back as a random person. Not the king. Not the nobleman. Not the person with the right gender or the right skin color. Just a random human being in that society. You could come back as a woman. As a slave. As a member of a persecuted minority. As anyone.
Which civilization gives you the best odds of actually being happy?
Think about it.
Ancient Greece during the age of Pericles? Maybe — if you came back as a wealthy male citizen. But there were tens of thousands of slaves who built the Parthenon, and women had no legal rights. Roll the dice wrong, and your golden age is somebody else’s nightmare.
America in the 1950s? Sure — if you happened to be white, male, and straight. Otherwise, you’re drinking from a separate fountain.
The advanced Muslim Abbasid Empire in 12th-century Spain? A genuine golden age of science, art, and tolerance. But still, constant wars and battles with Christian Spain.
I started asking this question to historians, to thinkers, even to multiple AI systems. And the answers were fascinating. Modern Scandinavia kept coming up. The Abbasid Caliphate. Periclean Athens. But then there was one unlikely candidate that surfaced again and again.
The San people. Anytime before the 21st century. In three different AI models (Claude, OpenAI, Kimi), the San Culture came in the Top Ten.
Of all the cultures that have ever existed on this planet — cultures that built pyramids and parliaments and empires — the one where you could come back as anyone and almost surely live a dignified, equal, and connected life… was a group of hunter-gatherers roaming the savannahs of southern Africa.
That stopped me cold.
Because here’s the fascinating thing. This culture is the longest unbroken culture we have, dating back tens of thousands of years. And mostly unchanged.
Writing this from Namibia & Botswana
I’m writing this from a hotel room in Botswana. Over the past two weeks, I’ve been traveling across Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe — watching wildlife that feels almost mythological, standing in landscapes that look untouched by time, and learning about a continent that many of us in the West have come to severely misunderstand. Or worse — to underestimate entirely.
Last week, I wrote to you about what female elephants taught me about leadership. About how the matriarch leads not through force but through memory. About how nature, across species, keeps arriving at the same answer: wisdom over dominance.
This week goes deeper.
This week gets uncomfortable.
Because the San don’t just challenge how we lead. They challenge how we live. They challenge what we call progress. And they hold up a mirror to the modern world that, honestly, I wasn’t prepared for.
The oldest culture you’ve never heard of
If you haven’t heard of the San, you might know the term “Bushmen.” That’s what the West has called them for centuries. But that word carries the stench of colonialism — it comes from the Dutch bossiesman, meaning “bandit” or “outlaw,” a name given to them by the very people trying to destroy them.
The San have their own identity. And it goes back further than almost anything.
We’re not talking about a few hundred years. We’re not even talking about a few thousand. Genetic evidence suggests the San lineage diverged from other modern humans somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. Their culture has been continuous for at least 20,000 years. Some scholars argue it’s the oldest living culture on Earth.
Let me put that in perspective. The ancient Egyptians built the pyramids about 4,500 years ago. Ancient Greece peaked around 2,500 years ago. The Roman Empire rose and fell. The Renaissance came and went. The industrial revolution, the digital revolution — all of it — and the San were already ancient when those civilizations were young.
We built progress. And lost happiness.
They never had what we call progress. And may never have lost what we’re desperately trying to find.
6,000-year-old maps of the mind
In Damaraland, Namibia, I stood in front of rock paintings left by San ancestors over 6,000 years ago.
I expected something crude. Stick figures. Basic hunt scenes.
That’s not what I found.
These were sophisticated. They depicted animals and watering holes, yes — but they also depicted something far more startling: altered states of consciousness. Shamans in trance. Humans transforming into animals. Maps of inner worlds that were as real to the San as the physical landscape around them.
See the Lion at the bottom with the extended tail. That’s not representing a physical lion. It represents the Shaman entering the consciousness of the Lion to gain insights on the world around him. This was breathwork and trance states 6,000 years ago.
The San didn’t just survive in the desert. They built a civilization of the mind. While we were still millennia away from writing our first philosophical texts, they were already exploring the architecture of consciousness — and painting what they found on rock walls.
The moment I didn’t expect
A few days later, I visited a small San school in Namibia. I sat down to greet the children, expecting maybe a few shy smiles. Some polite curiosity.
Instead, the children rushed toward me.
They surrounded me — laughing, reaching out, completely unafraid. And then they started touching my beard. Gently. Carefully. Almost reverently, like they were discovering a new texture that didn’t exist in their world.
Image shared with respect and permission from the Ombili Foundation that runs this school in Namibia
It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. About a dozen kids, all stroking my chin, giggling, fascinated. And in that moment, it clicked:
They had never seen a beard before.
What a beard might reveal about violence
Now here’s where things get genuinely fascinating.
There’s a hypothesis in evolutionary biology — still debated, but compelling — that beards may have evolved partly as protection. Studies have shown that facial hair can absorb and distribute the force of a blow to the jaw, reducing the chance of a fracture by as much as 30%. In environments where male-to-male violence was common, this would have been a significant survival advantage. Over thousands of generations, men in violent cultures would have been selected for thicker facial hair.
So think about what it means when an entire culture barely has beards.
The San are known to be one of the least violent societies in human history. No wars. No armies. No glorification of dominance. Anthropologists who have studied them describe them as “fiercely egalitarian” — not passively peaceful, but actively committed to preventing any individual from rising above the group.
And possibly — even at a biological level — they carry the evidence of tens of thousands of years without the kind of violence that shaped the rest of the human family.
Some evolutionary biologists suggest that their faces may be telling a story their culture has been living all along.
An operating system that actually works
If you’ve read my book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, you know I think about human behavior in terms of operating systems. Every civilization runs on one — a set of models of reality and systems for living that determine how people think, act, and organize themselves. I call the outdated, unquestioned rules in these systems Brules — bullsh*t rules. And most of the Brules we carry about what makes a “successful” society come from civilizations that lasted a few hundred years at best.
The San operating system has been running for tens of thousands of years. And it breaks almost every rule the modern world takes for granted.
No hierarchy. The San have no chiefs, no permanent leaders, no one who accumulates power over others. Leadership is fluid and contextual — whoever has the knowledge the moment requires takes the lead. A skilled hunter leads during the hunt. A healer leads during the ceremony. Then they step back into the group. No pedestals. No thrones. No corner offices.
Men and women are genuinely equal. Not in the performative way modern societies talk about equality — where we write policies and still pay women less. In the San world, men and women hold distinct roles that are equally vital and equally respected. The men hunt. But the women are the navigators. They know where the water sources are hidden beneath dry riverbeds. They track the movement of game across vast stretches of savannah. They know which plants heal, which nourish, which kill. When the tribe moves — and they move constantly, following the game — it’s the women’s knowledge that keeps everyone alive.
If you read last week’s newsletter on female elephants, you’ll recognize the pattern. In elephant herds, the matriarch leads because she remembers where the water is. Among the San, the women carry the same knowledge. Nature keeps arriving at the same answer, across species, across millennia: memory and wisdom over force and dominance.
Everything is shared. When a hunter makes a kill, the tribe moves its portable shelters to the site. They feast together. Then they move again. They’ve been doing this for 10,000 years. There is no accumulation. No identity tied to what you own. No hoarding. This isn’t poverty — it’s a design choice. The San solved an equation that modern economists are still struggling with: beyond a certain point, more stuff doesn’t make you happier. They figured this out before the wheel was invented.
Insulting the meat
Now here’s the part that really broke something in me.
The San have a practice that anthropologist Richard Lee documented called “insulting the meat.” It is, without exaggeration, one of the most brilliant social technologies I’ve ever encountered.
Here’s how it works. A hunter goes out. He tracks an animal — sometimes for days. He makes the kill. He comes back to camp. And instead of being celebrated, instead of anyone saying you’re incredible — everyone, including the hunter himself, downplays the kill.
“That? That skinny old thing? Barely worth eating.”
“Look at that pathetic animal. You call that a hunt?”
And the hunter joins in. He laughs about his mistakes. Jokes about how the giraffe nearly trampled him because he tripped over his own feet. He makes himself small — on purpose.
This isn’t cruelty. It’s not false modesty. It’s a social technology designed to prevent the most destructive force any community can face: unchecked ego.
An elder from the group explained it like this: “When a young man kills much meat, he comes to think of himself as a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his inferiors. We can’t accept this. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. In this way, we cool his heart and make him gentle.”
We cool his heart and make him gentle.
Forty thousand years of social cohesion. Built on a single insight: ego is the enemy of community.
Now hold that in your mind. And think about the kind of leaders we celebrate today.
The ego problem we refuse to see
We are living in an era that glorifies the opposite of everything the San built.
We amplify ego. We reward dominance. We build pedestals for individuals who speak about power as though volume equals vision. We have world leaders who threaten to wipe out entire civilizations and face no consequence.
In the San culture, this doesn’t stand. It can’t stand. Their entire social operating system is designed to prevent exactly this — the elevation of any single ego above the group.
Last week, I wrote about female elephants and how nature chose wisdom over dominance. This week, the San are showing me the same pattern, but in human terms: civilizations that glorify ego eventually collapse under the weight of it. Civilizations that regulate the ego endure.
So I keep coming back to the same uncomfortable question: What if we have this fundamentally wrong? What if the future of humanity isn’t in glorifying certain individuals, but in equality? What if the world needs less of the strongman archetype and more of the leadership model that nature — and the San — arrived at independently?
Less ego. More community. More women in positions of power. More leaders who foster connection rather than division.
The San figured this out before the Bronze Age. And we still haven’t caught up.
The fire, the dance, and the oldest technology of consciousness
One evening in Namibia, a San guide walked me through their shamanic healing rituals. And it felt like stepping into another dimension of human experience. I didn’t witness the healing, but my guide explained it to me via a mural on the wall of a San School in Namibia.
The San have healers — both men and women — who enter altered states of consciousness through what’s known as the trance dance. Women sit in a circle around a fire, clapping and singing medicine songs that they’ve known since childhood. The healers dance around the periphery, sometimes for hours, until a spiritual energy the San call n/om rises through their bodies. It starts in the belly, rises through the spine, and then the healer crosses over into what they describe as another reality.
My guide described a ritual where…as the “patient” goes into a trance, the healer heats a knife in the fire until it’s red hot. He then plunges the knife into the patient and pulls it out. When the knife is pulled out, there is no scar, there is no wounding. The patient also experiences no pain. The illness is then healed.
You will see this in the mural above. One shaman gently caresses the woman while the shaman behind her is about to plunge a knife into her.
In this state, healers touch the sick and draw illness from their bodies. They mend disputes. They restore the social fabric of the group. The San describe it as “arrows of sickness” being pulled from the community and flung into the darkness.
My guide explained to me that his grandfather, a San shaman, still performs this healing ritual today.
By the time San adults reach maturity, roughly half the men and a third of the women have become healers. This isn’t a priesthood reserved for the elite. It’s distributed. Communal. Available.
The rock paintings I saw — 6,000 years old — depicted exactly this. Shamans in trance. The boundary between human and animal is dissolving. Consciousness expanding beyond the body.
We in the West tend to dismiss this as superstition. But I’ve spent two decades studying consciousness, meditation, and human performance. I’ve built Mindvalley on the premise that transcendent practices — the Silva Method, meditation, altered states — are not fringe experiences but essential human technologies. And what the San developed isn’t primitive. It’s the original technology of consciousness. It’s been running, unbroken, for longer than any other system on Earth.
We think we invented mindfulness. The San have been practicing it for 20,000 years.
What I learned building Mindvalley
This brings me to something personal.
When The Code of the Extraordinary Mind hit number one globally in 2017, I had a choice. I could lean into being “the guru.” Build the personal brand. Become the center of the platform. Every incentive in the modern world pointed that direction — because our systems reward exactly that kind of ego amplification.
I chose to break the model.
Instead of positioning myself as the singular voice, I opened Mindvalley to hundreds of teachers. Different perspectives. Different modalities. Even ideas that conflict with my own. Because I believe that truth doesn’t belong to one person. It emerges from many.
Compare this to the guru model that dominates the personal development world — where a single personality becomes the brand, the doctrine, the untouchable center. Some of those gurus built grandiose names for themselves and then turned up in the Epstein files. That’s what happens when ego goes unchecked. The San would have seen it coming.
That decision to distribute authority rather than concentrate it changed everything — not just for the company, but for me. Because the moment you remove ego from the center of leadership, you create space for something the San have always known is more powerful: community.
I am because we are
There’s a word that echoes across southern Africa. In Botswana, they call it botho. In South Africa and much of the Bantu-speaking world, it’s ubuntu. The translation sounds simple, but it contains an entire philosophy of what it means to be human:
I am because we are.
Not “I think, therefore I am” — the Cartesian formula that built the entire Western model of selfhood on the isolated individual mind. But something fundamentally different: I exist because of my connection to you. My humanity is not mine alone. It is something we create together.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it like this: “Ubuntu is not ‘I think therefore I am.’ It says rather: ‘I am a human because I belong. I participate. I share.'”
The San embody this more deeply than perhaps any culture in history. When a healer enters trance to draw out sickness, they’re not treating an individual — they’re healing the community. When the tribe insults the meat, they’re not putting down the hunter — they’re protecting the collective from the cancer of ego. When men and women share leadership based on who holds the right knowledge for the moment, they’re not being “progressive.” They’re running an operating system that’s been tested and optimized across more generations than any civilization on Earth.
The future is moving toward them
Now layer something else onto all of this.
AI.
Over the next decade, we are heading toward a world where work becomes optional for many. Where universal basic income shifts from theory to inevitability. Where ownership starts to lose its meaning because access becomes abundant, and the cost of goods approaches zero. Where the game we’ve built our identities around — accumulation, status, dominance — begins to dissolve.
In other words, whether we realize it or not, the future is starting to look less like modern capitalism and more like a campfire in the Kalahari.
Shared resources. Fluid roles. Community over status. Identity rooted not in what you own, but in who you are to others.
We are drifting — some of us kicking and screaming — back toward something ancient.
And the most important thing I can tell you for the next ten years is this: be careful who you follow. Avoid egocentric leaders. Vote for people who foster community rather than division. The world doesn’t need more strongmen on pedestals. It needs more leaders who understand, at a bone-deep level, that their power belongs to the group.
The San knew this before they had a written language. We’re going to have to re-learn it with all of ours.
The question that won’t leave me
So I sit here in Botswana, about to fly home. And one question keeps looping through my mind, and I can’t make it stop.
What if the most advanced civilization in human history wasn’t the one that built the tallest buildings, the fastest computers, or the most destructive weapons?
What if it was the one that figured out how to keep every single member of the group — regardless of gender, regardless of role — fed, healthy, equal, and connected? For longer than any other culture on the planet?
What if we didn’t evolve forward, but sideways — gaining technology while losing something essential about how to be human together?
We optimized life. And forgot how to live.
But the blueprint for something better has been here all along. In a place where children have never seen a beard, because they’ve never needed protection from each other. Where a hunter comes home with a kill and the first thing his people do is laugh at him, because they know that the moment his ego grows, the community dies. Where healers dance themselves into another dimension to keep their people whole. Where the oldest woman in the group holds more authority than any king, because she remembers where the water is.
I am because we are.
Maybe it’s time we remembered that.
If this sparked anything in you, take a moment to leave a comment below—I read them all.
Vishen
PS: Everything I wrote about in this newsletter – community over ego, shared learning over guru worship, the idea that human beings thrive when they grow together rather than alone — that’s exactly what Mindvalley U was built to be.
Every year, we bring together people from over 100 countries to live, learn, and grow side by side for two full weeks. Not in a lecture hall. Not behind a screen. In person. Families, entrepreneurs, artists, seekers, all eating together, learning together, raising their kids together in a pop-up community that, honestly, feels closer to how humans were designed to live than anything the modern world typically offers.
There are no pedestals at Mindvalley U. No single guru on a stage telling you what to think. There are hundreds of teachers, dozens of perspectives, and a community that operates on the same principle I saw in the Kalahari: I am because we are.
This year, we’re in Tallinn, Estonia, from July 20 to August 2, 2026. If anything in this newsletter stirred something in you, this is where you come to live it.
Featured image shared with permission from the Ombili Foundation (instagram: @ombili_foundation_namibia) that helps preserve San Culture.
264 Responses
A lovely, great piece -thank you. ‘ A gentle heart’ resonated.
Quite a goal to put into one’s own life and practice.
Many thanks
Thanks Vishen I hope you can find the emotions experienced and shared in your touching email message in these poems inspired to me during a similar experience 1 year ago “where the All began”…
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11o3IQ4dncvNYbuF5OUenZXLKyMjmbzCr/view?usp=drivesdk
Vishen are you in cahoots with the ambitions ofworld economic forum?
I manifested you.
As a retired female engineer, a widow & childless, I have spent a lifetime trying to find better answers to this thing called life. You embody those answers. You are truly a remarkable human to have sought answers for humanity, not just for yourself. Please create a virtual version of Mindvalley U so that we can all learn & create a new paradigm for living and loving well.
Dear Vishen, thank you so much for sharing this, your experiwnce, all the wisdom you gained from it…its so true. I feel very grateful for all that you share and post with all of us…it really shift something inside me everytime. Thank you. Wishing you all the best, wonderful happy day…and: I AM BECAUSE WE ARE
As you think about what you learned, how do your perspective on the use of AI within Mindvalley shift? You have talked about the extensive use of Eliza to both free up your time and its interaction with your employees. I am very interested in ensuring that the human experience of AI moves us to a more heart connected model and away from being in our heads. How can we incorporate the insights from the San people into what AI does going forward?
This is the most meaningful thing you have written about. But it is funny that you say mind valley is all about that, when most of what I see on this site is ego driven. How successful you can become, how you can use a non human energy sucking concept like AI with what an open heart, really. Trust me I am not above all this, but we have made the all mighty dollar more important than human existence. I think we can take many lessons from this tribe that are so far from our concept that it is hard to grasp for most, but feels so rich in the heart. They will outlast us again, because the present system is not sustainable.
I feel with you! Thinking similar ❤️
This was beautiful. Normally I scroll through very fast newsletters like this but for some reason was compelled to read through to the end. I feel something deeply shifting and transforming within me from this article. Learning about the San people and their way of living. Thousands of years of being who they are – equals. Thank you! It has inspired me more than I can say.
I am no ones slave and no ones master – I cannot predict the future and the past made me a chattel as a child and as a married woman.
We speak of love – not sex. Love that is unconditional – not conditional on schooling or knowledge – knowledge is the biggest variable next to language and understanding isn’t about verbs and metaphors or any grammatical term. The knowledge of today will not be the same tomorrow, nor will we understand any better.
Don’t groom your children with your understanding either.
I am not perfect and I make mistakes – I don’t want people hanging on my every word. I do my best to keep my integrity in a society that is dependant on money. I say No; and mean it. No more past paid forward. Be a trustworthy being. Do not copy me as I could be mistakenly misleading you.
I came across the word Ubuntu 5 years ago and it started to change my life. We live in a society that is so separate everyone has their own everything including families. I was moved to create a podcast with Ubuntu as the main theme it’s called “let’s laugh and share podcast”because I wanted and still want to foster the model of community, sharing ideas and resources helping people to grow in community. I also started sharing my home with someone from Cameroon and I’ve learned so much. My dream is to live in Africa 6 months out of the year. Thank you for your blog post, I hope to travel to Africa soon.
I so appreciate this thoughtful post and the idea to hold on to that “I am because we are”!
I love the question of “what society would you choose if you were being put into a random body in it? Or, in your words, ‘Which civilization gives you the best odds of actually being happy?'” I plan to share this thought experiment with everyone I know.
The only worry I just had about the San culture is that they probably have no way of keeping a special needs child alive, though it seems likely that being born with significant physical or mental challenges will make life more difficult and less happy no matter what society you are in. (So, what haven’t we figured out yet about supporting all humans in living their best life?)
Dear Vishen,
Thank you for sharing this evocative essay. Your writing brings me joy!
I’ve lived and worked intermittently in Africa since 1986. You’ve captured the essence of the communitarian spirit I have found in most (less) developed societies. Early this year I worked in Lesotho where the San people migrated into the “Mountain Kingdom.” It was marvelous to see people expressing joy in being connected to others and to nature. Our DNA and evidence from human evolution remind us that all human beings have African roots. This is where humans emerged.
Last week I returned from New Zealand where I learned more about the Maori culture. Their hongi greeting includes two people pressing their noses and foreheads together, breathing each other’s breath, and chanting “We are one.” In my experience, many indigenous cultures have a strong sense of community and a closer relationship to the natural world.
These are precious cultural practices that remind us of our interconnection.
Thank you for helping us remember who we are, and where we have come from.
Thank you so much for the blog post and the subsequent email. I believe personally what you’re uncovering can all be traced back to God‘s story that’s in the Bible. I have been learning from a better eastern perspective more of what the Hebrews were trying to teach and their writings of the Old Testament and New Testament. It goes back to trusting God‘s story, knowing what is enough, not only enough production, but enough destruction, and that all ties in with much of what you are discovering is outlined in these people that you were introduced to. I truly believe you’re definitely onto something and I pray that you continue to see it in the matter that you’re seeing it.
I would love to work toward my community living like the San people. I’m loving your recent posts. Thanks for sharing your travels and insights. Safe travels.
Im glad I came across your article and I’m happy to comment on this not because you are speaking about the San people of my country but because you 100% correct . Your article really touched me . Sometimes money can’t bring happiness,I have seen poor families in my own country having a strong family bond and being happy, It all Start with Botho !
mmm, this email almost put me to tears..
not in a sad way, like an ancient memory
resurfacing, a remembrance of the Truth
something deep..about humanity.
in a world that is seemingly connected to the infinity and beyond..
and yet humanly so disconnected ..
it made me think about this human design
sleeping phenix era coming in 2027
going through mental beings to more emotional beings..
remembering we are emotional, sensory, alive beings
….something AI could never, ever FEEL…
even if we are more than just mind or emotions…
as the San tribe already deeply knows and experiences daily.
About this “insulting the meat” philosophy you mention…
I found it so interesting
it reminds me of japanese culture in a way
this humility, this way of not putting the self above everything
but valuing harmony in the community.
So who knows if your next program or quest would not simply be
yet not so easy:
learning or rather remembering **how to be human..**
Vishen: your experience so resonates to me! Intuitively, throughout my life ,I have experimented this feeling and in a way, not quite fitting in with the “norms” expected by society. Thank you for sharing your experience. In a way I feel we are likeminded souls. Be blessed!
Vishen,thank you for recording, decoding, putting it all here for us to bounce off ideas. I appreciate Your Path as it’s making Mine and Ours Richer. Thank you. May The Force Be With You.
Vishen, what a beautiful piece of writing! It’s wonderful that had the sensitivity to capture the essence of the planet, of how we human beings should be with one another. Twenty years ago, I went backpacking around the world alone. During one of my stops in Polynesia, I was lucky enough to stay in a village like the one you just visited. The children laughed all the time; they were naturally curious and wanted to know everything about me, my country, my way of living… The village was a community where every man and woman had a role that was completely respected. They lived happily, content all day long. They grew food, bathed, and washed their clothes in the river… I’m not idealizing it; it was a community where joy and harmony were palpable. As my stay was ending, I ran into a French girl. She looked at me and said, “Poor people, they have nothing.” I thought, “Poor thing, not in a peyorative way, but more in a compassionate way, because I have realized she didnt understand anything, she was still mesuring everything in a materialistic way.
Vishen you have a so much power to create a new society, to start changing people’s mind about creating a better society, making the planet a better and fairer place. If someone in the world can do it its you!! If you need any help you let me know 😉
Hi Vishen! Thank you so much for sharing this information. It’s the synchronicity. Now I’m experiencing my personal transformation and discovering a new me. It’s a very interesting period, sometimes it’s too hard, dark and scary, but I’m confident I’ll handle it, because I’m no longer “I”, but WE. The new me is arising, totally connected to others. I wish we all live in the equal community where ego can’t arise. And it’s so important to stay in the community, because trying to “kill the ego” or at least calm it by your own is hard. You gave me an answer how to be saved and how we can help each other. Thank you so much!
I wish I would participate in your event one day!
I live in a small town in Mexico called Jalcomulco. Here, the people believe in “nahuales”, which is a select group of elders who have been entrusted with the power of becoming animals at night. It is believed that while they sleep, they are able to enter the consciousness of an animal (armadillo, possum, and even a hen) and experience the world at night through this alternate body. Not every night, only when there is something to be gained from these “extra set of eyes”. You might call it a practical trance.
There are only a few members of the town who are still considered nahuales, as this trait has not been passed on to the younger generations, who live a normal modern life. If you visited Jalcomulco, which is a very touristic place, you might not even notice that this myth of the nahuales still exists, because it isn’t something advertised. I had never really sat down to think about what this implicates, until I read David Abrams’ book “Becoming Animal”, and couldn’t help but notice this recurring motif of blurring the line between the animal and human body through expanded consciousness, as something that exists across continents and cultures.
To say that I was moved by your blog post would be an understatement, It’s something I’ve been grappling with on my own and agree with you that this is the only way forward. Remembering and coming back to our human power, not only in what we are able to manifest on the outside, material world, but how far we have yet to evolve on the inside.