Come Together as One

In the U.K the way I see it is we have several sub cultures/ tribes that flow out from a similar source.

We have the drum/ shamanic community, who’s influence coalesces around core shamanism and a heavy dose of North American Indian spirituality, though it branches out in several directions.

We have the Medicine family, who attend ceremonies with visiting indigenous teachers and often travel out to visit the communities themselves.

We have the large umbrella of the Pagan community, who focus a lot on re-membering and restoring the old ways of these lands.

We have the Bushcraft/ nature awareness community who practise ways of our forebears.

We have the psychedelic community, who explore altered states of consciousness, both for medicinal and non medicinal purposes.

And we have the general ecological movement seeking to bring consciousness back to our interaction with the land.

I’m sure there’s more as well that I haven’t mentioned. For me, these subcultures flow out from a similar source, an ancient, ancestral memory that is seeking to be re-membered now.

And yet, in my experience these different movements don’t spend that much time actually communicating with each other. I know for people new to all this, it can get very confusing. Now I get it’s very human to separate off into tribes or cliques, and to sometimes think your tribe are the only really authentic ones, but I sense that in these times of chaos collectively, these groups would be much more powerful if they interacted more with each other.

I remember back in the late 90’s early 2000’s there was a great collective protest movement, which encompassed so many different political, social and spiritual groups, who would come together for these huge anti G8 and other protests. The protests themselves became like festivals of different belief systems and approaches, all united under a similar cause of wanting to change the system from within.

I wonder if it’s possible to bring the different tribes who are exploring ancestral wisdom together in the UK in a different way now. Being an island, I think we are very tribal here. A Mexican friend once said to me when he first came over sharing medicine here that ‘you guys don’t talk to each other or come together so much.’ I also think in our ancestral memory is the wound of how in fighting let us be overthrown by powerful empires- something we then used as a tactic across the world as the classic colonial divide and rule.

I’m not sure how I see this happening, it’s more of a vision or dream I’d like to share. And I may be way off track anyway, and that actually everyone is communicating and working together, that this coming together is already happening. I’d be interested to hear if anyone feels the same or ideas you have for bringing these different approaches closer together? Because we live in times of such divisiveness, I really feel it is in togetherness we become strong.