The Highest Stages of Conscious Development

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My deep dive into the world of decolonization, anti-racism, gender theory, etc. was occasioned by the mandate for screening for knowledge of these topics among candidates for a technical teaching position. My initial reaction to the job posting was WTF does any of that have to do with technical education? Using a more '80s vintage of multi-culturalism, I had been working (successfully) with very diverse students for a long time. Now I was trying to grapple with post-structuralist CRT and figure out how to align that with STEM. Institutionally, women of color now constitute the majority of administrators in my supervisory chain and the office of equity is extremely prominent in setting the tone for everything. So I faced the existential choice of putting cotton in my ears or trying to find some legitimate synthesis. Went with door #2 …

What rocked my world was the emotional impact of this body of literature. Not the impact the authors were looking for, to be sure. I gave up guilt- and shame-based consciousness in therapy 30 years ago, so not going there. What bugged me was the way this literature plays on my preferred turf, meta-historical analysis. But why did it feel so personal? Eventually, I realized there was some classic transference-counter transference going on. Both in me and in the authors I was reading. It was the sort of co-dependent fandango I thought was over for me decades ago. Although my developmental psychology was quite rusty last year (much more updated now), I knew enough to realize that sort of mutual shadow projection is the stirrings of something bigger wanting out.

I revisited some of the authors again, and this time resolved to read not with the head and only with the heart. The social science claims may or may not have been BS, but I listened to them like a parent listens to his kids - proud of their efforts, not so critical about the results. What clicked for me was the realization that this was meaning making in action. They were thoroughly trashing my preferred world view, true, but they were also creating their own incipient world views in the process. It was like beaks cracking through egg shells. The upshot of all that is I needed to find a new equilibrium that would restore my own intellectual coherence while making room for the developmental processes of others around me who were clearly on parallel, but also different, tracks.

So a couple things about this … going all angry white guy on the Intellectual Dark Web was never an option for me. My legit multiculturalism from way back when prevents that. (Dare I say, my old school greeness). So what happened for me was like what happens when teenagers start getting too close to the mark with their passive aggressive probing. You need to become a clearer, more definitive sort of adult. One with a more robust structure that can hold the emerging energies of those who challenge you for all the right reasons. The challengers don’t really want you to fail as a role model. They want you to convince them 1) that you really do care and 2) that you are worthy of emulation when they come into their own. (Understand, the CRT authors in question are in fact adults. But I’m a generation older and not ready for scrapping just yet. The personal challenge was - what do I still have to offer to this coming generation?)

All this makes me want to keep looking harder at first tier to second tier transition. There is a definable process in there. Can’t quite articulate it yet, but it’s like a statue in the block of marble wanting to be freed from the stone. Also, there is now on my desk an outline treatment of “the horizontal dimension within each altitude”. Breaking news: people of color aren’t following white male developmental pathways, at least not in some literal way. There are different civilizations out there and there are diverse people of all types in what used to be known as western civilization. When you disaggregate developmentalism by geography, class, and culture, you can find a bunch of parallel tracks. That’s the new world view I needed to articulate to restore personal order - a Piagetian accomodation allowing for the smooth assimilation of globally scaled diversity and equity.

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One thing that is so difficult for me to convey to White people is that our stories are not all the same. It’s not an emotional annoyance I have really. It doesn’t have an emotion except a kind of dry humor. But I do get a bit annoyed and want to roll my eyes up by the simple inconvenience when talking to white people who have only recently begun examining these issues. By recently I mean within the past 30 years. I mean, any white person who didn’t look at these issues around 1992 or so and projects onto me that I have not already owned these Issues I just want to roll my eyes at.

The interesting thing is I tend to not get the same thing with minorities. There must be some kind of subtle subconscious messaging that newly aware White people are still oblivious to.

Then there is the darker aspect of white people - again - exploiting minority issues to give them yet another “one up” status and privilege and yet another opportunity to speak down to others. The problem with wokeness is when white people wear it as a merit badge and use it to talk from a pedestal, down to other white people but are so tone deaf they don’t see their own absurdity.

I’m not going to give woke bonafides or a woke resume for myself, lol. That also is an aspect of white fragility. My words either speak true or they don’t and the color of my skin or whatever exraneous matters I have become aware of or not isn’t relevant to whether or not the words are valid.

The issue in my pet peeve this year isn’t whether or not white people can “crash” a ceremony. That’s kind of a straw man. Obviously they (we) can’t. Events are generally held on private property or have some other restriction of attendance that is established by the organizers. The issue is whether or not it is ok for - as an example - for Native Americans to show up or threaten to show up on my property and disrupt my ceremony and harass my guests because they feel that us sweating in a steam-filled domed structure is harming them spiritually. Or because they feel non-Native Americans burning sage is harming Native Americans spiritually. Or because they feel that other Non-Native Americans in other venues are harming Native American’s spirits because Non-Native Americans are doing any other ceremony. It even goes down to Native Americans wanting to forbid Non-Native American organizations from using certain colors as symbolism in ceremonies. Not unique colors, but universal colors like red, yellow, white and black. So because Native Americans use black, white, yellow and red as symbiology in their spiritual ceremonies, some Native American Organizations claim that people using those universal colors in spiritual ceremonies are harming their spirituality - and therefore they feel it is legitimate to threaten and forbid any use of what they perceive as “their” symbology.

I just think it’s all absurd but unfortunately the majority of the woke population seems to want to cave to the absurdity, and yes attempt to project something onto me.

This hasn’t yet reached the Indian community yet (South Asian Indian). Fortunately Indians are not threatening to protest outside Kundalini Awakening Workshops or Tantra Sex Festivals (lol), or dox organizers and attempt to get them fired from employment and so forth. Yes, Yoga has been completely misappropriated and Tantra ridiculously so. But the answer is not to forbid mention of Chakras by non-Indians, nor to forbid use of Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Blue-Indigo in ceremonies attended by Non-Indians and threaten physically or economically any who organize such events.

This is the spiral that the awakened community is headed toward. We are going to have to decide this now or later. How ridiculous do we let it get before we just say “no”.

I would say that this will impede “The Highest Stages of Conscious Development”

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Understood. Racialized categories in general conceal as much as they reveal. That’s why I’m not in love with constructions like “BIPOC”, “Asian”, “Latinx”, or even “white”. All of those are hugely diverse within themselves, not to mention everyone mixed race (which is most us on some level).

Apologies. Just a metaphor for boorishness. I have a few alternative metaphors in mind, but in the interests of being less boorish myself, those metaphors can remain unspoken.

Understood again. I’m used to thing sort of thing from the French, for example. (Be careful what you call your cheese!). Or Donald Trump ('nuff said). It’s a clear case of overly broad, litigious overreach. Actually, it sounds like “cultural appropriation” to me. Ridiculous, non-sensical, harassing, extortional lawsuits are MY native culture. How dare they!

Don’t get too comfortable with that! Seattle just passed anti-discrimination legislation to protect the Dalit. Can reparations for authentic Tantric practitioners be that far behind?

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It’s a terribly tangled ball of yarn. Let me try to untangle it, lol.

I think as a society and as people aspiring to be “Integral”, we have to make clear distinctions.
Protecting people from discrimination based on their genetics is what America is supposed to do. So I see protecting Dalit from discrimination as actually covered under the Constitution. We shouldn’t actually need more elaboration, but if another law is passed saying a specific group is protected that already should be protected - I see that as one thing. It is only making the 14th amendment more clear.

On the subject of appropriation, I think we have to reconcile Green altitude desire for equity with Orange laws, and it’s completely possible to do this I think. Under trademark laws, it’s completely legal to claim ownership over names and terminology, but not universal things like colors. I can copyright a logo colored a specific way, but not the color itself. It’s also not possible to copyright a process, like a breathing method. So Wim Hoff is completely within his legal rights to take Tummo breathing methods and call it the “Wim Hoff Method” - and I can in turn take his method and call it the “Ultimate XXX Breath Method” - or whatever. It is not possible to copyright ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, or discoveries. It is possible, however to copyright terminology used in these. Going back to cheese, you can make whatever kind of cheese you want - but there is strict control over what you call it. You can call your creation swiss cheese because that is a category, for example - but not Emmenthal because that is a brand.

So I would make the case that the name “Tantra” could be controlled and people could be forbidden from using that term without permission. And also, the specific term “Sweat Lodge” could also be controlled, but the case seems a bit weaker because both those are very common words. It would be a stronger case to strictly control a Native American term for Sweat Lodge (Let’s say in the Lakota language, for example). But the actual process of sweating in a steamy room cannot and should not be forbidden to people.

The subject of Tantra also brings up another very dark topic, and that is a back door legalization of prostitution - which those who are privileged are allowed to pursue without being arrested. This comes in two different flavors. The first is rich old men can pay an incredibly high fee to attend a Tantra seminar or festival and during these events be assured a stead stream of sex, while pretty young women are offered “scholarships” and “internships” in exchange for learning the mystical art of f-ing and how to make a spiritual happy ending. Thus, they learn a trade and as a bonus, which is the second part of this - their trade of Tantric Massage is seen as a spiritual practice with a happy ending implied in the term, while their Asian counterparts will constantly have their massage parlors raided.

So we have to look at three things simultaneously here. The first - what is the legal aspect? The legal aspect is that no, nobody can legally nor should they be able to legally have exclusive control over a process. Whether it’s breathing or sweating or “sacred sex”. On the other hand, terminology can and should be controlled. In extreme (but common) cases fewer people would go into an exploitive environments just because the venue has taken a name that means something completely different from what it actually is. Or, yes - even a minimally deceptive act like going to an exercise studio to exercise because you believe it is an ancient practice from the East when in fact it’s probably just exercise 90% of the time. Third, in the case of Tantra - are actual laws being broken and / or people being exploited in ways that are clearly illegal but they get away with it because they are economically and racially privileged?

The way I see things - and I know and recognize that people do feel very strongly in opposition to my view, but this is where I do stand on the issue, and what I will say when I speak on the issue:
Nobody has a right to exclusivity on any spiritual practice either from a legal standpoint nor from a Metaphysical standpoint. As an example, I completely support a man like Wim Hoff taking practices, making a trade name and selling those practices. And also, anyone can take those practices and pass them on without paying Wim as long as they do not say “Wim Hoff” when they do pass it on. I think the same thing should be the case with Yoga and Tantra - go ahead and do contortions but the term Yoga should mean what it is supposed to mean, or go ahead and have “sacred sex” but don’t use the word Tantra because that word meant something completely different for 20,000 years. Tantra can and should be a controlled term, especially in light of the exploitation and actual illegal activities that are rampant in the Western corruption of the term. Then back to Native Americans - they do not “own” sweating, dancing, Jungian Archetypes, universal symbolism or all primary colors along the visible spectrum of colors.

I think all these issues will need to be resolved and reconciled before we begin to presume that we are approaching “The Highest Stages of Conscious Development”.

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Thanks much! I learned a lot. Very lot.

Here is a musical example that runs parallel to your analysis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ytoUuO-qvg&t=1s

Niall Ferguson lists “property” as one of the 6 “killer apps” that allowed the West to colonize the world. If colonized peoples “appropriate” Western property law for their own empowerment, that is certainly fair enough. In fact, I would argue it is both appropriate and essential that everyone everywhere has access to levers of power like lawyers, contracts, deeds, copyrights, trademarks, etc. I would argue that these are no longer strictly “western” ideas but have become globally distributed. The Integral civilization of the future will require a lot of sharing like that.

As for the details of your analysis, I bow to your considerable expertise. The Adam Neely link above can serve as metaphorical confirmation that I feel what you are saying.

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Yes - what’s interesting in that case to me is that what I see as the absurd position initially won but then was later reversed on appeal (if one of the comments is correct). The path forward isn’t linear but meandering with lots of back and forths. Fortunately Katy Perry could afford the lawyers to defend the reasonable position.

I also read a bit of Niall Ferguson’s biography on Wikipedia. I wasn’t familiar with him .

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Niall Ferguson is a well-published historian with a generally conservative bent. I am inviting those with liberal and radical leanings to get more integral by incorporating a different point of view (or at least considering it).

I’m citing Ferguson’s book Civilization: the West and the Rest. This is an exploration of WHY the West came to dominate. Ferguson acknowledges that there was plenty of dark side to the colonial era, although for many tastes, perhaps Ferguson does not paint that picture quite darkly enough. My citation of Ferguson is in the interests of larger questions such as - is the West over already? Is the world really westernizing? Will the global South and East be absorbed into the West? And perhaps most pertinently, at a species level, which civilizational techniques are “best of breed” and most suitable for our future sustainability, regardless of provenance?

Ken Wilber absolutely has been key to making Eastern spirituality more available to serious people in the West, and he is to be thanked and honored for that. The discussion we are conducting here is framing appropriate methods and boundaries for incorporating indigenous experience into a larger Integral vision. The contribution of shamanism, for example, needs to be handled differently than the contribution of Buddhism, for a contrasting example. That’s why we are worrying questions like “who owns the idea of a sweat lodge”. It’s a serious question that needs a serious answer. In my view, a certain type of indigenous sensibility is vital to us all, but how we journey to find that sensibility matters quite a bit.

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I like reading different perspectives on history. There is what happened, and there are many different lenses to view each event through.
But my financial background drummed into me “past performance does not guarantee future returns”.
I don’t think we can evaluate the future in terms of East and West - those are terms left over from a prior epoch when the world was flat. The next step in evolution or invention is always unimaginable to the previous step. The “best of breed” of the future will be a quality we cannot currently conceive.

On the topic of Indigenous, I might bring up the Hawaiians - who are going in the opposite direction, and I feel in a good way. They are opening up schools for all children to teach anyone who wants their children to receive their culture, and encouraging the parents of those children to also learn with their children. More and more I see blond haired blue eyed parents teaching their children Hawaiian language and culture. This was a conscious decision by the Hawaiian community after discussions, disagreements and power struggles over many decades, and yes some still oppose it. But the momentum is headed in that direction. My personal opinion is that there is actually something Metaphysically different about each Island in the Island chain, but that’s woo-woo talk, lol.

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Yeah. I’m pretty skeptical about long range projections about the trajectory of history. But, we have serious matters to attend to right now (climate, war, pandemic, poverty), so “best of breed” to get things done in the short- to intermediate-term - what other choice is there? My interest in the indigenous is specifically on the matter of climate. We need an approach that involves circular economic flows and co-participation with nature. My perspectival view is “we are all indigenous” to this planet. To make that stick however, now comes the hard work of realizing what that means procedurally and propositionally.

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Yes, the 1960-70’s sci fi Oddesey of colonizing the Solar System is now obviusly not going to happen in 2001. I completely agree with the need to find a new economic system.

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Wow, you guys have really been going to town with this conversation; feel I’ve missed the party :slightly_smiling_face:.

I have a few things to add. First, a link to a recent article on the word “woke,” FWIW. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/woke-is-just-another-word-for-liberal/ar-AA18U8uo?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=1fa8fddb235148949c80e798a3b52b52&ei=22.

Secondly, I wanted to speak to the situation of some American Indians and groups excluding non-indigenous people from particular native ceremonies or practices, and the anti-social types of behavior that may accompany this. While this is not my way, nor the way of many native spiritual leaders, it does indeed occur, and if I were to identify any “positive intent” behind this, it would be something along the lines of these particular people trying to communicate (in very inappropriate and separatist and even, according to Ray’s statements, intimidating or violent ways): “we’re not over it yet”–“it” being the historical happenings for which there is still a lot of pain and anger, that pain and anger and indeed, grudge, passed from generation to generation through stories. The hard-core stance could be something along the lines of these people saying: “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

My words are in no way meant to condone the anti-social behavior; I do not. While I have not witnessed the types of behavior Ray has described, I have no reason to doubt him, and, I have myself personally wrangled with a few Indians about the separatism and exclusion of non-indigenous people from certain ceremonies. But I do think it’s important to try to see what’s at the bottom of the behavior, and while we could just dismiss things as “wokeness” or regressive (and transgressive) consciousness, a little more depth is usually called for if we want to better understand motivations and people.

I can also look at the behavior in different (stage) lights. Is there not something akin to “animal territoriality” involved? Is there not a false perspective on time, i.e. the past = future? Is the doxxing or cancelling and other such behaviors simply war paint and war dances in new forms? Are these behaviors an Indian version of “the vengeance of the Lord is mine”? Is the separatism not based on the idea that because non-indigenous people look different on the outside, they must be different on the inside? How does the American idea of ‘ownership’ and ‘personal property’ enter in? And is the separatism/exclusion an attempt at personal/tribal/cultural empowerment (through decolonization)? All of the stages live inside us.

As sociologist James Davison Hunter (who popularized the term “culture wars”) has said, culture is about what is sacred to us and what is pure and what is polluted, and each person, collective, even each mini-culture, has its ideas of what is transgressive of boundaries and a violation of the sacred. So we have (Christian) bakeries that refuse to make a cake for a gay wedding, based on their idea of what is pure in their sacred culture, and what is polluted. The Supreme Court has upheld their right to do so. And we have some Indians who exclude non-Indians from their sacred culture, based on their idea of what is pure and what is polluting, and what is, to their minds, perhaps akin to the processes of colonization: “We’re not over it yet.” “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Everything gets politicized these days.

According to Daniel Mengara, using works written by Chinua Achebe on the early colonization in Africa, the colonization process has 5 steps or stages: exploration, expropriation (taking away land, property, culture, etc.), appropriation (without consent, putting to use what has been taken for one’s own purposes), exploitation, and justification. What is called “cultural appropriation” is viewed as ominous by some people/groups because appropriation is in the context of the larger process of colonization, and as I said, some people truly are not over it yet.

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Of course there is! As there should be. For the same reason I have exhibited classic “Get off my lawn!” reflexes from time to time.

Looking very meta-theoretically at all the granular content you and @raybennett have shared, my understanding of the “indigenous” (related to Gebser’s “magical”) is a consciousness that is hyper-localized and hyper-participatory with nature in a very specific biome. The lifeworld of the indigenous is rooted in a way most of us can only imagine. Against the backdrop of the global climate crisis, then, indigenous consciousness becomes a precious resource that is “best of breed” for any sort of deep ecological awareness. Now … we all know what Western culture does with “resources”. So I’m not really asking anyone to “get over it.” Really, rather the opposite. We all need rooted, traditional peoples of various types to create structure in the maelstrom of high-tech globalization. I don’t want to appropriate anyone’s anything. But I do want to network with all of them. If indigenous peoples are willing to open ports on their cultural firewalls and provide APIs for the rest of us to interact with content of their choosing, I consider that a service to greater humanity. And in the interestsof circular economics, there should be flows of valuable contributions back to the rooted indigenous to make these sorts of relationships sustainable.

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@LaWanna
I want to clarify my point a bit. It’s not exclusion that I am opposed to. I think it’s perfectly acceptable for a group to draw a line somewhere to be exclusive. Well, most of the time. I’m not in favor of keeping people out of neighborhoods or restaurants based on race - but 90% of the time I’m ok with exclusivity of most varieties.

What I am specifically opposing is when people say they own a practice or part of a practice and no one else may do it, even if they go somewhere else - or no one else may use symbolism that they believe they own. Even when there is archaeological evidence to suggest that Europeans did these very same practices before Christianity.

Here are some links to what I am talking about.



https://www.spiritprotection.org/take-action
https://ictnews.org/archive/looking-horse-proclamation-on-the-protection-of-ceremonies

All this would be well and good if not for one thing: They are encouraging people to actually physically show up and try to physcically confront anyone doing these things anywhere.
I don’t have a link for actual violence. It’s just in my awareness of reading about it 20 or so years ago.
I’d also have to do a bit of digging to find anything about the doxing and trying to get people fired fromt their jobs. I think that was a verbal pass-down.

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That’s my angle on these matters. Step 1 - local Native American tribes have some cool looking ways of relating to our regional environment, which I also love. Step 2 - not interested in coming off like a “wannabe”, so keeping respectful distance from the tribes themselves. Step 3 - researching deep archeology of Eurasia to figure out what my own ancestors were up to. Step 4 - a lot of things that look pretty similar to what Native Americans do.

To me, this shows that Eurasia just added a bunch of cultural layers that obscured a sort of pan-human indigenous approach to life that ruled everywhere till about 10,000 years ago, give or take. Native American tribes do us all a service by showing us what humanity in general used to be like. A true and authentic spirit quest for white folks involves a whole lot of self-excavation, IMO. Purchasing product in a cosmetics store might be part of that journey, but it’s a poor substitute for the journey itself.

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That’s pretty much a summary of what I do as well, but more with East and South Asian practices and less so with Native American. Several of my friends are quite a bit more invovled though.

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Dug into the history of “woke” and “stay woke”. Very interesting. The phases started with very organic connotations to particular life experiences and have traveled far since then.

My play on words between “woke” and “waking up” comes out of my own lifeworld of academia. Basically, I’m borrowing the current conservative pejorative use of “woke” to describe a very smug attitude on the part of people with college degrees who think they have all the answers to matters of social justice and have taken it upon themselves to establish their version of the ideal society through meticulous language policing. Essentially, to be an acceptable person in this world, certain opinions are de rigueur. Whereas as “woke” originally came from a life experience of struggle against oppression, the language police posse are more interested in setting up a new system of oppression with themselves at the top of the pecking order. So the Jacksonian MAGA rebellion against “wokeness” at its bottom is good old-fashioned anti-elitism. Not sporting a MAGA hat … but I can feel where that energy is coming from.

To me, “waking up” in an Integral sense, means among other things, getting beyond opinions. Having taken “unconscious bias” training 6 or 7 times now, I have fallen under the guidance of the likes of John Vervaeke and have learned quite a bit more about what both the unconscious and bias really are. There is a depth dimension to all that. The correctly-opinionated academic left are invited to explore those depths as well, but step one on that journey involves dumping some excess ideology over the rail.

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Hey Ray, I haven’t read the second article you linked to, but I did read the Beauty Independent article, and what I would say is Indians: 1, Non-Indians: close to 0 :slightly_smiling_face: While the woman of Smudged may have good intentions by commodifying the sage packets, a couple of things stood out to me. One, she justifies by speaking of her grandmother having burned plants, so yes, as you say, this is a common practice throughout the world. But why sage for this woman, given her grandmother burned wild rue? Rue can be cultivated and also grows wild in the US, so why not rue? Particularly given that there is a concern with the loss of the white sage plant in this country, California specifically, due to development and fires. (And also a concern with the extinction of abalone, the shell of /in which people often burn sage/herbs, near-extinction due to ocean acidification, overfishing, and disease.)

Secondly, the woman states she has been “trained” in how to use plants for sacred purposes by healers from Peru and Ecuador, and yet she could not name the tribes these people were from. So as the article states, there is a tendency to group all indigenous people into a “pan-Indianism,” which doesn’t set well with specific tribes, is seen as disrespectful. While there are many similarities and an overall similarity, there are also differences; a Huichol sweat is different from an Apache sweat or a Navaho sweat or a Lakota sweat; everything from language to songs to prayers to how the rounds are conducted to what herbs are burned (Huichols prefer copal, Lakotas prefer sweetgrass and cedar and prairie sage, Apache and Navaho desert sage.).

All that said, I get what you are saying, and wonder if society’s desire and emphasis on private property and ownership is being extended from physical personal property and intellectual property rights into the domains of religion/spirituality? We revolt against that perhaps, thinking of the ‘formless’ aspect of spirituality as being equally ‘available’ to all, but it’s in the forms, the ‘things’ of the spirituality, where we tend to get attached, claim ownership. Given the rampant consumerism you often speak to, who knows? some non-Catholics may begin to package and sell ashes to remind people in general of their mortality and the need to ‘get right’ with God. People have marked their bodies with mud and paint and ash in practically every culture. Would this be okay with Catholics, do you think? (For all I know, it already is happening, and is alright with Catholics :slightly_smiling_face:).

There’s obviously a need for further conversation and understanding between the different camps on this issue.

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Yes, I can feel where that energy is coming from too, and yet, I think the right-wing conservative flock have proven themselves to also be “woke” (if we’re using the pejorative sense of the word), so it seems a wash-out to me, and I prefer to think of the word in accordance with its more original meaning, when it had more integrity. It has little integrity now, imo.

“Rigged election, witch hunt, hoax, lock her up, legitimate political discourse (to describe J6), and yes, white Christian nation” are all terms that embody the attitudes on the part of some conservatives or Republicans who think they (to use your words) “have all the answers to matters of social justice and have taken it upon themselves to establish their version of the ideal society.” Attempts to suppress free speech and a moral authoritarianism are evident not just in left-leaning academia–witness what is happening in Florida and spreading in terms of book bans, laws to prohibit teaching or speaking of certain things, including the fact that Rosa Parks was black. This seems like language policing to me, and a form of oppression with these conservative folks placing themselves at the “top of the pecking order.”

Identity politics, a victim mentality and aggrieved entitlement is evident in both “woke” groups, so as I say, to me, the pejorative use of the word is sort of a wash-out.

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If we take just the white sage issue, There are all kinds of things completely off about the narrative that is becoming popular now under the guise of “Green”.

So, Wild White Sage is becoming endangered and some people are picking it and selling it, making the problem worse. This is a specific problem that certain Native Americans and Green allies are pointing to in order to make an absurdly universal all-out ban on smudging.

  • It’s illegal to collect Wild White Sage from public lands in the State of California.
  • Not all White Sage is wild. It’s incredibly easy to grow and it’s a plant I recommend in any garden. Although full sun is recommended, I had a bush thriving on the East side of a house in Central Europe.

Although I’ve never asked about the sourcing of the White Sage I buy - I just assume it’s factory farmed. You can’t form a reliable supply chain with gathering a near endangered plant illegally from public lands. Especially when it is so easy to reliably grow anywhere. So I see this as a kind of red herring.
Doesn’t this look easier and more reliable than driving into the Desert and foraging by hand?
https://wikifarmer.com/how-to-grow-common-sage-for-profit-commercial-common-sage-production/

Similarly with Abalone shells - 95% of Abalone is factory farmed. Personally I just use whatever inscense container.

So now with those things in mind - I really do not see the argument being made makes much sense except for a very narrow micropopulation.

Then there is the very real fact that I was introduced to sage as a medicine in Europe and it had absolutely nothing to do with anything Native American. My father in law made a Poultice made of lots of things, but the primary ingredients were plum brandy, royal jelly and sage. It healed really nasty and dirty or infected wounds with hardly even a scar.

Sage around the world is commonly infused into oils for massages, for example. It’s not much of a stratch from ointments and ingesting to burning, especially when the results are so clear and obvious. Sage is even a traditinal European component in European Steam Saunas.
https://finnmarksauna.com/products/dried-hand-made-sauna-whisk-sauna-vihta-birch-sage

White Sage has been used globally for centuries. I will continue to use it and think it’s absurd for anyone to tell me I shouldn’t. I’m going to use it as a spice, as an oitment, infused in oil, in a steam sauna, burn it quarterly where I live, and as an ingredient to build a “space” for specific purposes.

I’m no more going to give up using sage as anyone else is going to give up the land their house is built on. I mean - the land was stolen. That’s just a fact. Nobody’s giving it back though. Sage might be a way for some Non-Indigenous people to feel some degree of self righteousness all the while sitting on stolen lands, or for Indigenous people to “own” a spiritual practice by denying it to others.

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I read the second article you linked to. It’s very political and 30 years old, and representative of some of the Indian “uprising” during that time against non-Indians leading Indian ceremonies, or Indians including non-Indians in traditional ceremonies. Two things came to mind: the historical fierceness of Lakota “warriors” being carried over into today’s (or that 1990s) world, and also, that these Lakotas, Dakotas, Nakotas being out of touch with a big part of Sioux tradition: there’s a term for it which I don’t remember, but it’s about welcoming the stranger into one’s life and home if they show a willingness to adapt to the ways of the tribe.

But I also can understand their “anti” perspective. And understanding is what it’s all about, I think.

Funny story: I have sweated with various tribes, and only once did I participate in a sweat lodge ceremony led by a non-Indian. It was at an Earth Day event I attended in Carmel, California, an event which publicized a Chumash elder/medicine man and a sweat lodge as the main event, so to speak. He was somebody I wanted to connect with, and I did, but not in the sweat; he was no where around. The sweat was led by a white very New-Agey woman, and it was the most horrendous, pathetic actually, silliest affair one could imagine. The intentions were good; the people were nice, loving actually, but this was so far removed from any “sacredness” and it wasn’t even bodily purifying–there was no heat! I’m sure other people have had different experiences, but this was mine that one time. Flash forward a couple of decades, and I’m telling this story to a dear, dear friend, only to find out she had organized that event and was in the sweat lodge, co-leading! We both had a good laugh.

As for the sage conversation, more power to you Ray in using it. I don’t object. I too grew my own white sage when I lived in California and people were always giving me sage that I didn’t know where it came from. I also have gathered plenty of wild sage, both white and other forms. And yes, sage has been used in other cultures in all the ways you say, and also as a tea, which I still use occasionally.

I do see both sides of the issue, but did feel that in that particular article, the Indian speakers made better arguments :slightly_smiling_face: We can disagree on that; I still understand your point of view, and frankly, this is all such ridiculous stuff, but here we are, in a ridiculous time and culture.