Wild Mind. Bill Plotkin
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rapture with sunshine, flowers, ocean, trees, fragrance, breeze, and land shapes. More on this later.
NATIVE TO EARTH
From the perspective of the Wild Indigenous One, we are wild not in the sense of being out of control, deranged, or barbaric but in the sense that we are terrestrially natural, as a wildflower is wild — native to its particular place, surviving and thriving in its ecosystem without deliberate introduction or manipulation by others. When animated by the South facet of our Self, we know in our bones and bellies that we emerged from this world and were shaped in body and mind through interaction with the other creatures. From the vantage point of the Wild Indigenous One, we know that each thing on this planet has become what it is by virtue of its ever-evolving relationships with all other things; instinctively we know we’re not an exception.
There are at least three ways in which someone can be indigenous: culturally (of a particular people or tribe), ecologically (of a particular ecosystem or geographical place), and terrestrially (of Earth), each kind having an essential relationship with the other two.
Most Americans — in fact, the majority of contemporary humans worldwide — have lost touch with the cultural traditions, wisdom, and mode of consciousness of their ancestors, those who were psychospiritually rooted in the place they lived: their particular river valley, mountain range, desert canyon, seacoast, forest, island, or savanna. In this sense, most people today are neither culturally nor ecologically indigenous.
But the Wild One within us preserves and sustains our more general terrestrial indigenity, a resource of the greatest significance and potency, especially now in the twenty-first century. Our being native to Earth is, after all, foundational to our ever having been culturally or ecologically native. What enabled our indigenous ancestors to truly and fully belong to their geographic place and to generate life-enhancing cultures there was the fact that their physical and psychological capacities were shaped by the terrestrial world that we have in common with them. They emerged from this world in a specific place and lived accordingly. And by living accordingly, they engendered particular cultures — ways of living — that were inherent elements of their more-than-human community. Their cultures were organic fruitions of their place: indigenous. Human culture and environment were interdependent: mutually shaping and mutually enhancing.
By learning to access and cultivate our Wild Selves, we can once again become indigenous to the place we live — our valley, watershed, or bioregion — and collectively engender ways of life fully resonant with and integral to our local ecosystem, cultures that harmonize with the songline of our place. This will take a good deal of time — likely several generations. All the more reason to celebrate the small but growing number of communities throughout the Western world that are now two or three generations into this process of relocalization, of returning home to place.
CAPTURED BY THE MAGIC AND UTTER MYSTERY OF EACH THING
From the perspective and experience of the Wild Indigenous One, we are enchanted, and in two ways. First, the South Self is utterly moved by, deeply touched by, the things of this world — its creatures, greenery, landforms, weather, and celestial bodies — and recognizes that each thing has its own voice and presence. It’s as if we’re under a spell — enchanted — captured by the magic and utter mystery of each thing. And when we’re alive in our South facet, all that we do, even “work,” becomes play. The world fills us with wonder and awe. Sometimes we’re terrified by the deadly potential of terrestrial forms and forces such as tornadoes, grizzlies, and hornets, sometimes simply exhilarated, sometimes both at once.
We’re also enchanted in a second, reciprocal sense: The things of the world are allured by us and to us! We ourselves, individually and as a species, are a magical power or presence in this world. The other-than-humans recognize in us a form of mystery no less stunning than their own. We, too, place other beings under a spell (including each other).
Enchantment, most fundamentally, is about how a thing belongs to its world. To thoroughly belong to a place is to experience both it and ourselves as enchanted. Through the consciousness of our Wild One, we’re allured by our terrestrial place and, through that allurement, come to experience how we were made for that particular place. We cannot experience our own magic without experiencing the world’s. Each requires the other. Conversely, the world becomes disenchanted when we no longer feel and act on our deep and innate belonging to it. To reenchant the world requires us to rediscover, reclaim, and embody our sacred and interdependent relationships with all things. We must learn again to experience and treat each thing and the world itself as alive and ensouled, each being as having its own interior life. As Thomas Berry regularly reminded us, the world is not, in fact, a collection of objects but a communion of subjects.
Enchanted derives from the French enchanter, which means “to be sung.” The Wild One is enchanted because it has been sung into the world by the world and knows this. And the Wild One’s song harmonizes fully with the grand song of the world itself.4 Indeed, the world’s symphony cannot realize its fullness without each thing — including each human — joining in with its own life melody, each of which is one note in the composite song of the world. Industrial dominator societies have been damaging and destroying Earthly biomes, but domination is not our natural or instinctive tune. The Earth needs humans to be healthy and mature if it is to be fully itself and if it is to evolve and fulfill its destiny. David Whyte writes,
…As if your place in the world mattered
and the world could
neither speak nor hear the fullness of
its own bitter and beautiful cry
without the deep well
of your body resonating in the echo….5
IN SENSUOUS COMMUNION WITH THE WORLD
The Wild Indigenous One is sensuous and body centered. We are embodied in flesh and are in communion with the world through our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin, as well as through our indigenous heart and wild mind. When animated with the Wild One’s sensibilities, we live this corporeal reality in every moment. We delight in playful contact with the flesh and fur of fellow living animals, with bark and seed, husk and fruit, wind and water. We’re thrilled by the scent of jasmine, the taste of honey, the spectacle of elk or eagle, the roar of thunder or the buzz of bees, or by full-bodied immersions in ocean, storm, or the final dazzling rays of sunset.
Our sensuous communion with the world sends shivers of seductive appreciation through our limbs — the visceral, blossoming experience of the Southerly Indigenous One aroused within us.
EMOTIONALLY HOLY
In addition to being enchanted and sensuous, the Wild Indigenous One is wholly emotive and emotionally holy. Within our embodied wild consciousness, we live and breathe the sacredness and pleasure of all the emotions. All of them. To the Wild One, there are no toxic emotions, not even shame.6 Each emotion is an experience alive in our bodies. The Wild One is exhilarated by each tremor, moan, or howl of feeling. Every emotion is a valued experience of assimilating the vicissitudes of life, of social, corporeal, and spiritual existence.
Through our South subpersonalities, however, we experience our emotions quite differently. As we’ll see in chapter 7, when we react to events through the filter of our woundedness, our emotions often seem unpleasant, and we may then end up acting on our emotions in ways that harm ourselves or others.
It bears emphasizing that the mature human — the human Self — is not a dispassionate, merely logical functionary. We do not do well in any domain of life — even (or especially) in government, business, religion, or education — without the free flow of our feelings. “Emotional intelligence” is as essential to our humanity as any other mode of intelligence, including intellectual, imaginative, sensory, ecological, and musical, to name just a few. Individual humans burn out and human organizations self-destruct without emotional aliveness.
Some people believe we’d be better off without emotions because “emotions are irrational.” But,