Awakening Consciences

By Baby Garroux

Almost all of mankind in its most intimate moments, searches for the awakening of the human conscience. In moments of silence and reflection, even the most alienated of societies certainly wants to rescue something that has been lost in our historical past. For millions and millions of years humans have tried to find dignity in their lives confronting powers, not only those of a darker nature, but also the cultural and socio-economical powers. I would like to point out that humans are eternal “searchers”. He searches for happiness, for joy, peace, and a better condition not only for himself, but for all of his selves.

The way man found out how to resist to the adversities of life and find answers for what has been lost or is forgotten is through religion, spirituality, concentration and the studies, searching for the knowledge against the ignorance forced and subliminally forged by the Power. In this sense of things, those who search ended up meeting with a phenomenon: the awakening of the conscience.

Shamanism is a term that designs the philosophy of the fusion of mental, spiritual, physical and psychological worlds. It isn’t a religion. It’s a way of existing on the planet. Groups of people who contradict the imposed religions adapted to this state of being in the world throughout the times. Ancient civilizations already practiced this philosophy. In the modern days beings with a conscience acquired the feeling of love for the Mother-Earth and understood the need to practice the conservation of the Planet. For this, we can say that every Shamanic creature is also an holistic being. Those that are really into these patterns are visionaries. Those who lie and make a commerce out of the faith won’t last. In Brazil hundreds of indigenous organizations look for same goal: the defense of the ancestral knowledge, of the cultural legacy.

The Brazilians are a very mystical people. They’re intuitive and worried about the dreams. They’re religious and bring inside themselves the heritage of the Indians, Black, White and Yellow people – as it can be seen through the many kinds of religions and spiritualities. The beautiful thing is the respect shared by all creeds, faiths and doctrines. The shamanism and the “pajelança” are different things and that’s why a shaman is a shaman and a pajé is a pajé. Just as a father or a priest are just themselves.

I would like to point out that humans are eternal “searchers”

Every person has his own specific pace for working and formation. The exchange is marvelous and ecumenism should be more common in Brazil. In the indigenous traditions the pajé is the maximum human represented expression for cure and spirituality. His gift is innate to his nature because it goes from father to son. No pajé goes to the “pajé’s school”, he acquires his knowledge through tribal ancestrally, and since his early days watching his grand and grand grandfathers practicing their prayers and cures for the safety of the community.

The pajé is a man with absolute no regard for material possessions. He’s a visionary by nature. His biggest possession is the gift received with all the honors by the Creator. He is always in connection with the extemporal world, with focused and well observed attitudes.

The pajé is a wise man and he’s always ready to help his people, donating his cure in solidarity. There’s no capitalism involving a pajé and the sick, between the pajé and the community.

What pajé and “pajelança” represent, in fact, is the biggest natural born expression of the traditional knowledge: which is considered the Indian intellectual property even if he has absolutely no scientific basis to understand the defense of his indigenous rights. On the other side every pajé belongs to a specific Indian ethnic group, with its own values, habits and creeds. A pajé from a certain ethnic group can act in a different way from one that comes from another group. He can have, if he wants to, a capitalist relation with his urban counterparts because his work is basically the same of a doctor among us.

In the African traditions it’s the ialorixá or babalorixá that represents this knowledge. It’s he who keeps the resistance alive. The pajé, the shaman, the ialorixás, the babalorixás, the fathers, the priests awaken our conscience, and make us remember that we are all the same.