Rock Wallabies

When it comes to propagating ideas, I like to think of the rock wallaby - a cute little Aussie marsupial, a bit like a small kangaroo, that loves steep, complex rocky terrain.

These guys are incredibly agile - like bouncing mountain goats. The amazing thing about them is that they can jump up sheer cliffs by finding a spot with two opposing walls, like a crevice, and then they bounce off each side until they get to the top.

In my experience, ideas are a bit like this - as they bounce from one person to another, they gain in elevation and energy.

Books: Desert Flower and Desert Dawn by Waris Dirie

Waris Dirie's books tell the story of her upbringing as a Somali nomad before being thrust into the limelight in the West as a top fashion model.

These books are important in the context of human innovation in that they provide an insight into a completely different way of living which is much simpler and closer to Nature. Similarly to Ten Canoes, a movie about the Indigenous Australian Yolngu people well before western colonisation (website; see my review - coming soon), you get a feel for what a simple nomadic life is like, fully immersed in Nature and part of the land. Waris often talks of how finely tuned her senses and her intuition were, and that of her mother and others, in that environment - not just in terms of being able to tell the weather and read the land, but also intuition for the wellbeing of others or of looming trouble. There is something about a raw and basic connection to the land that strips away many of our superficial worries and distractions and brings us back to our essential nature, the place from where true creativity emerges.

Of course, this life was no bed of roses - certainly not a pleasant stroll in the desert. It was a tough life of very hard work and often hunger. Even today her feet still bear the scars from walking barefoot over sharp rocks and thorns, some of which even went right through her foot. In many aspects it was also a brutal life, especially as a girl and woman. Waris is outspoken about the horrific practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) which is so common, mainly on the African continent.

Yet in spite of all of this hardship, Waris feels blessed by her rich and colourful childhood and especially the incredible family closeness that she experienced. As we hear so often, in spite of all our material wealth in the West, we still often lead lives that miss out on many of these treasures of a simpler life. She often contrasts her African ways with Western ways - from family and community structures to how to carry a child. This serves as a useful reminder to all of us that much of what we take for granted as reality is actually only cultural convention and that we can learn so much from meaningful interaction with other cultures and recognising that just because we have running water, plasma TVs and particle accelerators, it most certainly doesn't mean that we know everything. In fact, our preoccupation with these things often means that we miss the most basic and obvious aspects of life.

Our challenge then is to learn and benefit from our amazing diversity and to be able to have that innate connection to Nature, strong intuition and strong community and family bonds at the same time as good health and living conditions, personal safety and the ability for intellectual and spiritual growth.

Desert Flower - The Extraordinary Life of a Desert Nomad (1998)
Details: Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk
This is the story of Waris' life from her time looking after goats in Somalia, to running away into the desert at a young age and dodging lions, to being 'discovered' in London and becoming an international supermodel.


Desert Dawn (2002)
Details: Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk
In her second book, Waris returns to Somalia to look for her mother nearly 20 years after running away from home with no contact at all.





Desert Children (2005)
Details: Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk
This book focuses on the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), especially its prevalence by immigrants in Europe. (I haven't yet read this book.)





To finish, here are two poems that introduce Desert Dawn:

To You

To sit and dream, to sit and read,
To sit and learn about the world
Outside our world of here and now---
Our problem world---
To dream of vast horizons of the soul
Through dreams made whole,
Unfettered, free--- help me!

All you who are dreamers too,

Help me to make

Our world anew.
I reach out my dreams to you.

Langston Hughes

Africa You are Beautiful

Has anyone told you

you are beautiful
Africa?

Your full body
and sensuous lips

have kissed my soul
and Africa, I am bound to you

by the drumbeat of
my heart that pumps the

blood of my birthright
and you are mine.

Rashidah Ismaili

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog!

I'm always struck by the amazing capacity for people to create and achieve anything that we set our hearts and minds to.

This is best summed up by Danah Zohar in her book Spiritual Capital - Wealth We Can Live By (p.98)

Indeed, this is my personal understanding of what it means to have a soul in the first place - to be a living channel through which life's deeper dimensions and potentialities can rise to the surface and enter the world.  

To me, this is the ultimate joy of being human - our ability to tap into the field of the possible and bring it to reality.  Some composers and musicians say that all music is already written and all that is required is for one to tap into that level and manifest it in the world.  The same is true of all possibilities - they are waiting there for us to open ourselves to them and to recognise that anything is possible and anything can be.

I look forward to sharing in this wonder with you!