Amanda Yates Garcia

Amanda Yates Garcia writes:
In his book, “The Spell of the Sensuous,” ecological philosopher David Abram talks about how Western anthropologists misunderstood what indigenous oral cultures meant by “spirits.”
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In the West, we have this idea that spirit is somehow separate from nature and the material world. Spirit shines in heaven or is tortured in hell, our spirit is something separate from our body.
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But in indigenous/oral cultures, spirit is in everything, it is not, and can never be, disembodied.
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Stones, mountains, trees and oceans have spirits.
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And spirits are people, more-than-human people, and people have will and agency. People can speak and listen and are always in relationship.
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This ocean speaks, its voice is the wave, the clicking of the sand and the singing of the whales.
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It sees with a thousand eyes, hermit crabs and surfers and sharks. It welcomes, it casts out, it is sanguine and attacks.
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We are not alone. We are surrounded by spirits that we are already in relation with, if we can get out of our own heads and show up enough to notice.
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