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Today's Mastodon thoughts on Spirituality
Sep. 14th, 2024 11:22 am One difficult thing I find about reading spiritual books by white American or even some European authors is that in catering to the "wider" audience, the western audience - they start developing this style of extracting what looks like foreign to make it accessible to some readers.
You -as a person not of that culture or discipline or apprenticeship where the spiritual practice was born - shouldn't be trying to explain things to an audience who has no interest in that cultures, who views that culture as an other or who exotifies the culture.
It always gives "let me make this palatable for the civilized reader" and more condescending than the author thinks. That may not have been the original intention but the road to hell is paved with good intentions so...you did that. You wrote exactly that. When people of that culture read that writing it always sounds so forced and like something is being sanitized that doesn't need to be sanitized. It has happened in nearly everything from Hatha Yoga to lucumi.
A spiritual practice from African, Indigenous or Eastern culture is not difficult for people of those cultures, and for students outside of the culture that come prepare to do the work or learn while doing due diligence. The people who have inherited these practices, all we have to do is go to the ancestors. Real students of these practices get to know the ancestors, their descendants and inheritors and seek kinship in apprenticeship.
These are beautiful, healing, spiritual practices. These practices are medicine. They don't need to be made accessible. They just are.
You -as a person not of that culture or discipline or apprenticeship where the spiritual practice was born - shouldn't be trying to explain things to an audience who has no interest in that cultures, who views that culture as an other or who exotifies the culture.
It always gives "let me make this palatable for the civilized reader" and more condescending than the author thinks. That may not have been the original intention but the road to hell is paved with good intentions so...you did that. You wrote exactly that. When people of that culture read that writing it always sounds so forced and like something is being sanitized that doesn't need to be sanitized. It has happened in nearly everything from Hatha Yoga to lucumi.
A spiritual practice from African, Indigenous or Eastern culture is not difficult for people of those cultures, and for students outside of the culture that come prepare to do the work or learn while doing due diligence. The people who have inherited these practices, all we have to do is go to the ancestors. Real students of these practices get to know the ancestors, their descendants and inheritors and seek kinship in apprenticeship.
These are beautiful, healing, spiritual practices. These practices are medicine. They don't need to be made accessible. They just are.
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