Hi, I wonder if we could see each other as family, even though I may not know you, somehow we are related..
I was born in Australia, and so was my father. His father came from the UK and was part Irish and Welsh and my mother came from Holland. She’s Dutch with a touch of Romany Gypsy. I’m connected to many different lands, but by default can only be called an Earth citizen. I live in an age where this is common and yet it’s only in very recent human history that this could be possible.
My family tribal roots go back to the very beginning. As do yours. Just think about it. With a line of mothers and fathers going all the way back to the very source, you genetically remember them all. You are them all. We have genetically journeyed through our own making, multiplying along the way and we are now more than 7 Billion, quite suddenly, blending cultures, races, languages, religions and blood.
I’m a musician/singer/songwriter and lead people in co-creative chanting circles all over the world.
Driven by a strong vision to make a positive difference in the world, I realised that it was a disconnection from our true self, our heart and each other that was the root of the problems we face today in modern society. By singing universal, heart based songs together, I found a way that could reconnect us quickly, easily, effectively and in a way that is inclusive, blissful, infectious and fun.
I have seen and experienced that when we feel connected to our hearts we naturally become our ideal person and are essentially good. We are peaceful, loving, compassionate, kind, respectful, happy and harmonious human beings, without effort! I believe this is our natural state of being. It became obvious to me that the more disconnected or separate we feel, the more destructive we become, to ourselves, others and the world. This is the ‘dis’ ease we experience in all aspects of our lives. I wanted to understand why, after chanting, the connection we felt didn’t last. Why do we go back into the unconsciousness of ego and separation when it causes us and the world so much grief? Was there a reason? Was it us as individuals, addicted to ego? Or was it our society, our culture influencing us again, or both? With the direction we are heading in, it seems to me to be a do or die situation for humanity.
After being asked to write a song for Uncle Bob Randall (Yankunytjatjara first peoples elder from central Australia) in relation to a documentary film he featured in called “Kanyini” I awoke early one morning, pregnant with a vision that I felt compelled to write down. I’m not a historian or a formally educated man. I don’t proclaim the truth in the words below, but I know this is something that makes a lot of sense to me and I hope it will point to the truth within you as it has done in me and help us all expand and move forward in a positive direction. With the help of the profound ancient wisdom from possibly the oldest tribal culture on the planet, I realised that we need more than to just sing together to stay connected to our hearts and find harmony again.
KANYINI
In Australia, we have a stain on our history that most of us feel helpless about and hope that if we ignore it long enough, it will go away. The truth is, most of us don’t really know exactly what happened as we were not alive to see it. So for us, the next generations, it has simply been covered up. What we can see is the impact of Western culture on the state of the first peoples of what we call Australia. Understanding the power of words, I refuse to call these people Aboriginal. To me “Ab” means “not” and there couldn’t be anything further from the truth. There is a problem here in Australia, and problems are not separate from solutions, but maybe we need to look back a lot further?
All of us, indigenous and non-indigenous were once tribal people, living off the land and close to nature. We were Animists. We all had what Uncle Bob Randal and the first peoples of Australia call “Kanyini.” Kanyini was the basis of their (very grounded) spirituality and without it you were in their opinion, a lost soul…It was all about connection. This connection was based on four basic principles:
Tjukurrpa (Chook-oor-pa): A connection to a common belief system that was handed down to us from our ancestors and is accepted and unquestioned as the truth.
Kurunpa (koor-oon-pa): A connection to our spiritual self beyond our physical form. This is developed and maintained through ceremonies, songs and rituals that are practiced together and believed wholeheartedly.
Walytja (Waal-chyah): A deep connection to our friends and family or tribe. A sense of belonging to something greater than our individual self, a feeling of being unconditionally loved and respected, living our whole lives with this strong support system, we had very little contact with strangers.
Ngura (Ngoor-ah): We lived our entire lives and were familiar with the land we walked on. Beyond this was unknown to us. We all shared a complete connection to home. We had a sense of belonging to the land.
A long time ago, our ancestors had this connection, Kanyini, and were living as the first peoples of Australia had done before white settlement. They lived in harmony, in the moment and were connected, sustainable and happy. At some point however they started to move and explore. This was possibly due to changes in the environment creating a lack of food, or from the developments of transportation. For whatever reason they left their tribal land and in doing so initiated a massive change in the consciousness of humanity.
They soon came across different tribes with different belief systems, different rituals, new people and new land. They encountered belief systems that conflicted with their own and for the first time, their belief systems were questioned. (Tjukurrpa). Their ceremonies were practiced less and less as survival took priority, and their connection to their spiritual self or soul started to break down. (Kurunpa). They were now coming into contact with people who were strangers and sometimes defensive. The sense of family and trust for their fellow man began to collapse. (Walytja). And they were moved on to new lands that they were not familiar or connected to. (Ngura.)
They gradually lost their Kanyini.
In the attempt to preserve their Tjukurrpa, they developed the idea that their belief system was superior to the others. The time and energy that originally went into Kurunpa (ceremony) now was focused on survival as they started developing weapons of defence and tools to adapt to the new environments. This gave them the ‘edge’ on other tribal cultures. They became masters of war as their connection to the spiritual world dwindled. They slowly became more identified with the world of form and lost their connection to their spiritual, non-physical self. Their consciousness gradually became imprisoned in the physical aspect of their being, the memory or ego. Disconnected from the source of reality, they were no longer in the moment. Falling into an unconscious dream. Condemned to either the past or an imaginary projection of the future. This naturally corrupted their Tjukurrpa, their belief system.
Their disconnection from Waltcha, (Kinship, family, and the feeling of being unconditionally loved) created a suffering inside and they began to loose their own identity, hopelessly seeking it from each other but able to give it. They reduced their unconditional love to only their children or immediate family. Their love for the tribe became conditional. They sought for their identity in the eyes of others but it could never satisfy their urge for the real thing. They began to turn on each other and lost the very essence of tribe…Sharing.
They developed money to measure love (not things) which developed into a love of money. Yet love was not returned by money, only things. They were loosing love, the most basic of human needs.
Rather than feeling like a part of the land (Ngura), they began to see it as a thing they could possess. They carved it up into squares, put up fences, borders and boundaries and called it mine.
They became the force we now call the Western consumer culture. Lost souls, adapting as best they could to a domination of ego, separated from the land, each other and nature. Disconnected from the basic principles of human health and happiness, their consciousness became trapped in a mind that could only see the world in duality, subject and object, points of view, black and white, right and wrong, good and evil and lost the connection with “what is”. They naturally began to see others as more or less. They developed Kings and Queens, servants and peasants. In an attempt to imitate they’re connected self, they created external laws, rules and police forces to govern themselves from the chaotic dysfunctional ego they had become.
They fell into a dark world, the relentless nightmare of unconscious thoughts became their reality and because this diss-ease was common place, they began to believe they had no choice, that it was normal. Their belief system turned into religion that offered hope, and the idea that they were essentially bad and could only be saved by an external God if they followed its rules in a book.
Otherwise you were threatened by this God with the worst possible punishment punishment they could think of, burning under ground… Maybe this was reflecting what they were going through inside themselves?
Their internal world became empty and their disconnection created an unquenchable thirst. Identification with only the physical left them seeking fulfilment in possessions, land and money. This could never satisfy the emptiness inside and left them always wanting more, only consuming and not conscious of giving back. They began to take over, impose their religion and destroy nature everywhere they went. They became a culture of destruction, and this is still continuing today.
Their power was not their own. Just to be exposed to this culture would eat away the Kanyini of other cultures like a cancer. This was evolution; out of control of any individual. It was the simple outcome of the movement of people from around the globe over thousands of years. Life itself, was making a huge sacrifice.
Yet Australia remained isolated from the rest of the world, possibly the oldest culture of the human race, protected by vast oceans. Until we developed sailing ships. When our ancestors arrived in Australia they had no choice but to impose their way of life on the first peoples. Western culture destroyed their Kanyini in just one generation. They took it away piece by piece. Beyond certain individual acts, Western culture’s behaviour towards the first peoples could only be described as devastating and even psychopathic.
If this is evolution then we must look at how evolution happens. Things develop and expand but also die and get reborn. Is this calling of Uncle Bob Randal from the first peoples, in what seems to be a hopeless or unsolvable situation, actually a key to our evolution and survival as a species? Could this be the beginning of us understanding why this has all happened? Is this the evolution of Kanyini? Breaking itself down to reform? To evolve, like the caterpillar, consuming everything in it’s path only to eventually turn into a butterfly?
Let’s think in terms of the whole consciousness of humanity. On our insane destructive path we have managed to do something our tribal ancestors could not do. We have broken down the old Kanyini, and in doing so, connected all the tribes of the world through transport and communication technology. Perhaps for the Kanyini to evolve, this had to happen. Imagine the Kanyini taking an evolutionary leap, through us and our unconscious actions.
Has not evolution always worked that way?
If we could listen and learn from the first peoples of Australia, we could all make steps to finding out how the Kanyini could return. An evolved Kanyini. A global Kanyini that has merged into one. It appears to me that we are in the process of this happening and weather you are with it or against it, it’s a reality we all have to face. If you are with it, you will enjoy the flow of it in your life and if you are against it you will be swimming up stream.
Tjukurrpa: A global belief system based on natural feelings of respect and compassion where everyone shall commune with the truth of their own heart. A global acceptance of all nationalities, religions and tribal cultures as different aspects of the One and acknowledges that we are all essentially good with a healthy connection to our self (unconditional love) through Kanyini (which, by the way is interpreted as unconditional love).
Kurunpa: A connection to our spiritual self beyond the physical through the freedom to practice any or multicultural ceremonies rituals and prayers of our own choice. Free from the dogma and the agenda of the dysfunctional ego. To be one with God.
Walcha: Our evolved connected being would allow us to see and treat all as friends, family and feel part of a global tribe. We would feel respected, loved and connected to an earth family all of the time. We would be connected to our heart and discover a whole new way of interrelating without the need for police, guns, prisons and wars. We would find our spirit. We would automatically become sane and treat each other with respect.
Ngura: We would see the whole planet earth as home; a place where we are welcome, and can move around freely without borders and boundaries. Feeling a complete connection to the whole earth and the land under our feet. We would have a constant feeling of home.
Even to this day you can see the developing butterfly in sub-cultures around the world. Birthed in the sixties, we have searched to find new ways to reconnect to the four basic principles of Kanyini. Yet at the same time, the technology of smart phones and the Internet is finishing off the work of destroying the old Kanyini in even the most remote places on the earth.
If Australia has the oldest uninterrupted culture on earth, then we are likely to be distant relations. Perhaps we separated a long time ago to fulfil a destiny. We found a power we could not control and returned only to destroy our own people. We now face the reality that we are about to destroy the earth and ourselves.
Uncle Bob’s call could be our distant past, calling us to remember.
In order to make this evolutionary leap we need to come full circle. We will do this together but first we must view our own innocence, in order to find true forgiveness and move forward. We must see that we are part of something much bigger than our own individual lives and stories. To find our spirit again we need to sit in circle and sing together with open hearts beyond external belief and dogma. To break free from the ego we must remember the Kanyini.
I have a saying, “You can take the people from the tribe but you can’t take the tribe from the people.” We are all tribal people by nature and the Kanyini is our way and connection to our true identity and home. We need to join together in heart and soul to call for the Kanyini to return.
We are one and we are many. Carrying the light of eternity through the darkest of times only to find, through our suffering and pain, that we are unconsciously creating heaven on earth like we could never have imagined…Our dreaming.
In faith and spirit…Kevin James Carroll.
For contact, more information on the chanting and the Kanyini song visit my website www.kevinjamesheartsongs.com
Watch the documentaryfilm Kanyini…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwuJbJaCLtc
To learn more about Uncle Bob Randal http://kanyiniunclebobrandall.wordpress.com/about/
