BLOG 33: THE COLLECTIVE SOUL

 

Blog 33:    31st  March 2010

The Collective Soul

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

Think of it logically.  Earth has a surface area of billions of square miles Continents like North America and Africa occupy many of these millions. There are countries like Australia and Greenland that are significant slabs of planet earth.  The peoples of these countries and continents have a rich tapestry of collective memories that weaves a blanket of national histories. The footprints of national psyche leave indelible impressions that school children dust off to discover their forbears’ courage and heroism.  Time and history intertwine in a mysterious experience of space, soul, and infinity.

Each national tribe has a profound spiritual connection to the earth it occupies. This connection is expressed in the intangibility of pride and belonging. It is reflected in the songs, the ballads, the narratives, and the dance of feet that twirls the dust of the soil and extends the head beyond the sky.

Planet Earth has one tiny fulcrum – a land mass of mere metres in comparison. It’s spatial insignificance is in remarkable contrast to its historical impact on the denizens of world societies. It has featured in the history of all major religions, empires, and continues to dominate the headlines of contemporary media. The utter illogicality of its historical centrality is breathtakingly absurd. This global and historical anomaly is Israel.

It is erev Pesach – the eve of the festival of Exodus – a festival that celebrates the pre-birth of the Jewish nation and its first national pilgrimage and settlement of the holy land. This was the first reading, the Haggadah, of and by the people of the book. I am sitting on a bus looking at Bedouin skin tents dotting a seemingly barren sandy, rocky hilly terrain. And just as suddenly I see the green oasis and date palms of Jericho. The contrast is magical. The illusion of lifelessness and listlessness belies a frenetic and energetic fertility one layer below – a metaphor for the indomitable human spirit.

Suddenly my subconscious memory arouses collective memories. I see camel trains patiently crossing invisible desert routes wending their way to cities of old. I sense the feeling of excitement and expectancy as the caravan children chatter their imaginative colorations of the next watering hole. My pre-birth mind envelopes the deep-seated strength of many generations of pioneers who set their compass to unknown cross-hairs of a tiny country that boasts climatic differentials true of the largest continents and the consequent flora and fauna of huge land masses.

In this moment I am those people, those fields, those trees and those shifting sands.  I am the paved stones trodden on by centuries of warring armies, of generations of Jewish pedestrians, by traders from the most distant shores of the known and unknown world. I blend into time and space and my collective unconsciousness invades my being. I am yesterday’s person, living today and yet apprehending a prescient knowing of a pre-ordained tomorrow. 

My words could be the words of an American Indian binding with his Americas. Or the dreamtime walkabout of Australian aborigines. But my words are those of a Jew whose soul is intertwined with a biblically recorded rootedness with a tiny tract of intractable real estate – the biblical land of Israel.

The minute hand rises to the fullness of an hour. Radio headlines spit out images of a fleeting now. The facile comments of talking heads reduce to mere background static, white noise, that loses its audibility in the vibration of eternal words. My soul’s roots intertwine with the collective soul of a people that transcends history and politics.

I am who I am. And I am home.

 (Your comments are invited: Click on reception@spiritgrow.org and let me have the benefit of your insight) 

Laibl’s web site: www.laiblwolf.com                                                                                                                                                                      - Laibl’s blog site: www.laiblwolf.com/blog/                                                                                                      – Spiritgrow – The Josef Kryss Wholistic Center, Australia site    www.SpiritgrowJosefKryssCenter.org