Crowmanic

In his book ReEnchantment: The New Australian Spirituality (2000), David Tacey states:

“We must have symbolism of a cosmic or transpersonal kind, and we must add public depth and dimension to our lives. We must try for a new dreaming, a new cosmology, a new pact with the invisible forces that move through and beyond us. Australian society needs something more than common sense and rational economic goals to make it work.” (p.57)

Though I do not disagree with this, I would like to enhance and expand on this by saying:

“We must rediscover the symbolism of a cosmic or transpersonal kind that is Australia. Then those of us who are in positions of influence and who have great compassion for life and all that it encapsulates can only but be compelled to reintroduce this discovery, this meaningfulness, into the public depth, arena, and dimension of our lives.

We must strive toward defining a renewed Dreaming, a renewed cosmology, and a renewed pact with the invisible forces — the morphic resonance of this land, its field of experience, and that of its ‘Ancestral Beings’ and heritage — the life-forces that move through and beyond us. Australians and Australia now need something more than just too common sense and rational economic goals to make it work.”

I believe it should not be about creating something new in isolation and separate from the genealogical history of what has been “sown” before. I believe that it is our shared challenge and perhaps even the ‘invisible calling’ of an apparent misplaced memory that engages us to go back and take a closer look at what we all have inherited from the very heart of this nation — the land — It-Self. A call to uncover and rediscover the cornerstones and the foundations wherever and whenever possible, to reintroduce our Selves to the essential core and cosmology on which we all now choose to build.

If the “foundational stones” on which modern Australia is built, are continually and consistently ignored or derided, then surely we cannot but be willing to accept short-lived outcomes of negligible worth. Such outcomes are now seen by many as creations derived from limited and oft times bigoted views and understandings. Therefore is it little wonder that the so-called “great Australian dream” now more often than not has become no more than a house of cards built on shifting sands by adolescent thinking, political posturing and the self-interests of the few?

For me, and hopefully more to come, it is what underpins the very nature of our contemporary situation that must be considered and understood. Our very teachings, both pre and post-colonialist should be reviewed, reassessed and reintroduced, dare one say reconciled, into the context of now, so that that their worth and value (meaning) can be carried forward into the renewed dreaming of our collective lives at all levels. Such meaning, essence and substance from our “seeding” can thus be actualised into the very fibre of the fabric we are weaving for the futures of our children’s inheritance.

This is what I understand as seed dreaming — and what Tacey and others of his ilk are referring to as the “new Dreaming” — what I call the Tjukurritja Tjukurrpa (Sacred Story), the one and only, absolute original, evolving Dreamtime History.

Well-come to Country — Gondwanaland — this sacred sight.