My friend Karin Saks lives in the natural environment of South Africa. I want to share her experiences: Enjoy!
Love, Carol
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Karin Saks |
A few years ago, I had the honour of sharing my life with both humanised and wild baboons while I lived in the wilderness attempting to establish a natural habitat sanctuary for orphaned baboons (whose mothers had been shot by farmers). Here follows an excerpt of my writing which attempst to describe the
inter-species bridge I believe I crossed – albeit with all the limitations of our human legacy. It took some time before I was able to translate what I had internalised into what we know as our human language – words; because at first I recognised it all on an intuitive level that didn’t easily reconcile itself with verbal understanding.
Once I’d decided to try and communicate all these messages brought to me through the baboons and our natural surroundings, I discovered through my research that there were a number of people writing about inter-species communication. Such is the strength of interconnectedness!
Below this piece, I’ve added more on the subject by Penelope Smith from her book “Animal Talk”:
The main reason I’ve written all of this here is largely because of the role that meditation has to getting in touch with our non-verbal selves. Meditation hastens the process of relating with other species and teaches us valuable lessons about our relationship to the natural world.
The Hidden Human;
Something was different. It didn’t really matter that I was suspended above the ground – ungrounded – a transitory sky person. The outside world seemed surreal - remarkably distant and tuned far out of my mind’s personal radio station. Long grass dappled by ochre and wheat highlights winged perpetually across the Magaliesberg landscape, interrupted occasionally by sharp-edged Acacias. Warm air held a hint of breeze as the sun’s rays danced with all in it’s destined path. This was the land that had imperceptibly slipped into my blood during the last tempestuous decade. Seventy kilometres away, Jo’burgs chaotic existence – it’s crime, noise and pollution, was hard to imagine.
The Acacia’s thorns gripped deeper, unrelenting spiky fingers digging into yielding flesh. Shivering and undressed, balanced precariously between two shaky branches, I took a moment to look around; the bizarre situation zoomed into clarity. Reaching for my jeans, I screamed at the excited young baboon who was gecking with blatant mirth at what must have seemed like apparent helplessness.
“Ah-ah-ahah-ahah”, her tooth covered grin had little effect on calming me.
Karma was nearly one year old – a provocative female baboon intent on gaining points for her big brother Darwin. One day he would provide better protection for her than myself, her substitute mum. Already she knew how to please him; they both looked annoyingly happy.
Earlier, after chopping some dry pine, I had laboriously put the fire together in the kind of detached manner that is the way of one who is distracted; I still had one foot in baboon life and the other forever trapped in civilisation - this is an interesting but confusing place to be as both have their seductive pros and their unwanted cons. Then I had heated water for a much needed outdoor bath (outside was where most cleaning activities occurred due to the absence of a suitable enclosed structure); daily living happened amongst the long tawny grasses, smoky-seeped sunsets, snakes, raptors and soul shattering call of the Jackal. It was a lifestyle that owns you – mind body and willing spirit. Living outdoors with naughty baboon kids demanded constant alertness, you simply had to be mentally awake, you even learnt to do this after bedtime.Before climbing into welcome water, I had quickly shoved my clothing into the child-proof cage, but Karma had forced it open, taking all belongings off into thorny branches that had swiftly attached themselves to willing fabric. Once out the bath, there was no alternative but to climb naked up the rough trunk – and here, barely aware of torn skin amidst the transparent infinite space, observing undressed emotions subside, words scrambled to make sense of things. I noticed the extent of the shift. The voice inside that watches - as if from a distance - spoke;
What is it that has changed?
Events of recent years appeared to have culminated in this cathartic expulsion of buried emotions. Liberation stared.
Privately I thanked them, the troop with whom I share my life, kin whose emotional language is uncannily similar to ours. The inner shift clearly had something to do with them.
Abel’s burly presence appeared from behind a bush propelling me back into human language. Fortunately I was on the ground, dressed and expressing uncontrolled emotions intent on a journey without brakes. The juveniles had hidden.
The large frame of the man had stopped as if in frozen trance, his dark glistening skin omitting the salty odour of heavy physical labour and his stance claimed exhaustion. He seemed pensive after a day of cutting down alien vegetation and searching the diverse mountain for poacher’s traps and their tortured innocent victims. I regretfully noticed an impulsive quickening of his footsteps as if to escape the emotional landscape.
“They are just animals” he muttered so softly I barely heard him.
Not part of the close circle of friends, family. Not part of the species; less than human strangers; just monkeys.
I noted my language; the staring eyes, the waving arms, one foot stamping the ground – “ah! NO!” - now facing the two guilty ones head on - unconsciously speaking an intuitive language that had become second nature over time.
Years of living close to non-human primates has revealed a lost self.
And then I remembered the dream.
PREPARING FOR COMMUNICATION
From Penelope Smith’s book, ANIMALTALK;
“ To regain the telepathic connection requires that you dismantle learned, culturally conditioned obstacles to your native ability to connect, communicate, and understand animals. Allow yourself to open the door and move along the path to your own potential for rec
onnection.
Traffic, crowding, crimes, television, and advertisements all jam our senses, our receptive equipment, so that we shut down our sensitivity to the world around us just to survive.
Because we’re so overwhelmed with incoming information, we build psychic walls. We cease to hear, see, feel smell, much of what’s around us. We listen to no-one, often including our own inner selves and feelings.
Animals are naturally able to tune in telepathically with each other and with other species. They can receice thoughts,mental images,emotions, and messages when they are willing and attentive. What about humans? How can we restore our birthright, lost through social conditioning – the ability to telepathicaly communicate, to send and receive communication outside the confines of human language.
Human language, as removed as it may be from direct thought transmission, requires reception of thoughts and feelings to be complete. Whether we realise it or not, we all, to some degree, telepathically communicate with each other.
We lose or cover up our telepathic commuication skills to the degree we consider it impossible or undesirable.
So the first step to learning to communicate with anyone is to calm the buzzing of thoughts in our own heads. We need to slow down, let the thoughts run through their course, and become calmly aware of the environment and the beings in it.
Whatever helps you to relax and be aware – exercise, meditation, music – can start you on the road to receptivity.”
--Karin Saks
P Bay, AA, South Africa
Environmentalist/baboon rehab/education. Writer and Artist
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Carol |
BEAUTIFUL! Wow Karin, that was amazing! The world we have come accustom to is so far off from our natural self. We have manufactured and manufactured and built over the natural until it is almost obsolete. We are losing touch with our natural state of our humanity and this wonderful connection we have with the earth and world around us. We have forgotten how to just be...to just sit and listen to the crickets or breathe the cool night air while we are able to see a dark sky with brightly lit stars. The closer to the city we get, the dimmer our stars become. That is kind of like our spirit. The more we come accustom to living in the noisy world...we forget the stars and we can't see them through the city lights...we actually forget they're there...a whole galaxy...an entire universe of natural wonder and here we are confined in this bubble where everyone is yelling and talking at the same time. The only concern seems to be "Hey I am right and you are wrong" Getting caught up in this petty cycle of creating chaos between ourselves sucks us further in and we become more detached from our natural world. We become lost in the hype, noise & drama and this is why we can't even help half of the world that is starving...because we are so caught up in the petty cycles of our indifferences. Finding our way back has to begin within ourselves. We can learn a lot from animals. Animals do not waste like the humans do. Animals do not take more than what they need. We are destroying this earth, the resources and each other. Let us begin to find our way back home. The center of light within each of us that is non-discriminating and is filled with reverence for all life. We first need to stop and look at ourselves and we need to shut up and just shhhh...listen...