Who Are the Wisdom Keepers
Throughout the world and across time, earth’s peoples have recorded and shared universal and eternal teachings. These teachings are essentially the timeless philosophy and practices of living in harmony with the Earth and each other.
A name for the people who have preserved and shared this knowledge may be wisdom keepers.
4-min video, Wisdom Keepers – Are You Listening?
Why is Indigenous Knowledge Important?
The Destruction & Preservation of a Continuity of Knowledge
Wisdom keepers rely upon the cultures and traditions of indigenous peoples.
“Indigenous” in this use refers to peoples who have been able to preserve some historical continuity with pre-colonial and pre-settler cultures.
The reason this hard-won continuity is so powerfully important is because access to knowledge has been repeatedly co-opted by war victors and colonial powers. Many victors engaged in violence and cruelty to wipe out the culture and wisdom of conquered peoples, endeavoring to overwrite the culture with laws and narratives that serve and conserve the victor’s power. One of dozens of examples is the violent, forced assimilation (“civilization”) of American Indian children.
As a result, the mainstream presentation of history and humanity’s knowledgebase is unimaginably incomplete and manipulated. (This is called narrative control or propaganda.) The manipulation is verifiable, as you can assess for yourself via the links below, in the 1995 book, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Lowen, and in investigation of other sources outside the purview of controlled narratives.
Survival Against Harsh Odds
The history of planet Earth is dominated by violence and oppression. Those seeking power over others have destroyed unfathomable amounts of recorded history and knowledge, and the people who guarded or used it. Humanity has faced unfathomable losses from:
- Barbaric violence in the name of empire-building
- Colonial devastation of mind-boggling consequence
- Genocide after genocide after genocide (and so many more)
- Devastation of sacred sites
- Burning libraries
- Stolen art
- Savage eradication of cultures
A modern-day example of the ubiquitous practice of conquer-and-suppress is the Dalia Lama’s escape from his home country of Tibet while the occupier (in this case, the Chinese government,) suppresses any writings from the spiritual teacher.
Tibetans can still be arrested if caught with the writings or a picture of the Buddhist leader and recipient of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize.
– Time Magazine, 2019
Still, the compassionate, healing and empowering wisdom has been preserved by such cultures and traditions as you’ll find below.
The oppressor and the oppressed carry the same wound from different angles… Build relationships with Mother Nature, become an offering yourself. Go sit by that mountain; she enjoys your company. Sit by the river; she is your teacher.
– Mandaza Kandemwa, Zimbabwean peacemaker and healer
What Do They Teach?
Wisdom teachings are essentially the timeless philosophy and practices of living in harmony with the Earth and each other.
These are teachings about how to prevent and address imbalance within individuals, among people, and in people’s relationship with the Earth. There are teachings related to what might be called Natural Law — observable, systematic order — as deriving from the source of all creation.
At the heart of wisdom teachings is a compassionate desire to support all beings to heal and to thrive.
The worldview of indigenous peoples the provides great contrast to — and context for — the materialist paradigm and other perspectives promoted by the controlling power systems.
What if instead of seeing all of us as separate material objects from one another, we saw each other as fragments of ourselves and truly acknowledged that deep within our being? Well, if you grew up in an indigenous culture, this would likely be your worldview already.
– Joe Martino, The Pulse
Wisdom keepers teach being in harmony with Mother Earth, and making decisions that ensure abundance for future generations. More Universal or Eternal Truths are taught in many ways by many cultures and teachers.
Aaron Abke has dug deep into many of the ancient teachings and found these “5 Laws of Illumination” to be consistently addressed: non-resistance, mindfulness, timelessness, oneness and desirelessness. These are subjects that the mind cannot understand in reading about them, which is why modeling and inspiration from various wisdom keepers has been so helpful to so many. Uncountable teachers and teachings address these subjects from every conceivable angle in an attempt to help their fellow humans to find relief from suffering.
For those willing to engage with an open mind, guides from indigenous cultures throughout the world offer mentorship, teaching ways to honor and remember the great truths that free hearts. The following video provides a glimpse into a ceremony, a common technique of wisdom keepers.
The following 3-min audio is from Frank Waters’ 1963 book entitled, Book of the Hopi. This excerpt is from Part 3 – The Mystery Plays: The Ceremonial Cycle and is the opening to the chapter entitled, Elemental Symbols. It speaks to the power of ceremony that is woven into the Hopi worldview.
Quantum Physicists Find Exactly What Wisdom Keepers Have Been Teaching for Eons
The visible world around us exists because an underlying field of invisible forms defines the potential of the world … Everything that exists in the visible world has first existed as a state in the cosmic field of potentiality. Nothing comes out of the blue; everything emerges out of the cosmic potentiality. We build our dreams, hopes, and visions on what is possible: finding perfect love, ending war and violence, feeling the presence of God. What would be important to learn, if it can be done, is how to use our mind to tap into the cosmic field of possibilities, in order to make our dreams a reality.
– Lothar Schafer, What Quantum Physics Reveals About How We Should Live
In the following 12-min video, anthropologist Elizabeth Lindsey shares indigenous, cultural stories, explaining that these are not quaint stories but the history and wisdom for all humanity. “It’s been said that when an elder dies, it’s as if a library is burned.”
See also: the series of lessons on Quantum Mechanics & The Science of Oneness
Surviving Cultures & Traditions
If you have links to more, please email them to us.
- Alaska Natives, Eyak People
- Australian Aborigines
- Buddhists
- Bushmen
- Celts
- Cree
- Dogon
- Druids
- Hindus (and here)
- Huni Kuin
- Inuits
- Mayans
- North American Indians
- Ojibwa
- Polynesians & Hawaiians
- Q’ero
- Quechua / Kichwa
- Sami / Saami
- Sangomas
- Toltec
- Yogis
Is Older Better?
Highlighting various cultures does not imply that they were (or are) perfect societies or that everything they taught (or teach) is wise and valuable. Some societies practiced animal sacrifice or social hierarchies, for example.
But it isn’t wise to disparage or discount entire cultures or vast time periods with sweeping judgments. To do so is the equivalent of rejecting quantum mechanics because its founders came from societies with government corruption and extreme wealth inequality.
In other words, in all cultures we can find gifts and we can find devastation. The distinguishing factor of note here is that these traditions preserved wisdom of use to humanity despite the extreme efforts of conquering powers to suppress and destroy such knowledge.
Likewise, acknowledgement of indigenous wisdom is not meant to imply that people with no connection to it aren’t capable of coming up with knowledge on their own.
Rather, the point is that these cultures have preserved wisdom through many generations, some of which has been desperately saved as gifts for humanity who may not have had access to it. Without access to such wisdom, we waste valuable energy “reinventing the wheel,” making the same mistakes over and over again, and missing opportunities for creating more enlightened societies.
A key example is our relationship with nature. Inherent in indigenous wisdom traditions across the world is a reverence for Mother Nature and a profound respect for her complex and diverse ecosystem that is the source of our water, food, medicine and shelter. Conquering societies suppressed this wisdom, fostering an increasingly disconnected approach to living, with a reliance on profit-driven corporations to meet our needs.
In today’s mainstream societies, for example, neither elders nor children have been taught to obtain medicine from the forests, and only a small fraction can feed themselves from the bounty of the earth. People have allowed our waters to be polluted and hoarded for profit, and have outsourced the care of the planet to power systems.
In a different type of example, many western scientists were (and still are) deeply perplexed by the findings from quantum mechanics. But for those familiar with eastern traditions based on the Vedas (among others), the scientific results align perfectly with wisdom passed down for thousands of years. Meanwhile, mainstream western researchers still approach science using materialist assumptions, even now, 100 years after quantum mechanics showed the factual existence of nonlocality and entanglement, thus exposing materialism as a flawed and outdated belief system.
Indigenous wisdom keepers, on the other hand, have never doubted that what we see with our physical eyes arises from aether or Spirit (the “cosmic web” or “Indra’s net”) and that everything is, thus, connected.
If This is Important, Why Isn’t it Taught in School?
Societal indoctrination is so strong that most people find it hard to believe that they can’t find all the knowledge they could ever need in school, on the news, from their doctor, and in their social media feed. Because they weren’t told about it in school, it doesn’t occur to them that throughout Earth’s history, wisdom keepers have had to hide their knowledge in order to survive and that much of how this occurred has been written out of mainstream history.
Nevertheless, some of the written records have survived, including the Vedas, Mayan texts, I Ching, Sutras, Emerald Tablets, Essene scrolls, and so on. And some of the knowledge and the ability to translate and interpret the ancient texts was handed down through lineages of wise ones and elders.
Much of the suppressed wisdom is being revived, and with the help of the Internet, is arising to such a degree that those who seek such knowledge can now find it.
Still, there are many hindrances to accessing the deep truths inherent in ancient wisdom. We are faced with systemic narrative control, suppression and censorship, limiting societal norms, and resulting confusion about what is true and what is misinformation.
More Considerations
Over time, different cultures have kept written records using different languages and symbols. As such, translation can be challenging because of cultural and language differences. To minimize the potentially confusing effects of such obstacles, it’s advisable to:
- Choose sources carefully. Bias and lack of understanding severely limit a source’s ability to share the teachings. In addition, Wikipedia and the most common results from a typical google search are under the control of corporations with profiteering agendas. They actively suppress independent sources (that empower individuals to meet their own needs instead of relying on corporations).
- Seek people who have direct experience with people and cultures that have descended from the ancient traditions. When you find people who have direct experience plus knowledge of modern world and cultural differences, they can serve as a bridge for the knowledge.
- Be aware that writings often presume the reader’s familiarity with norms at the time of writing, but that may no longer be common knowledge. In some cases, it’s necessary to learn about the built-in assumptions regarding symbols, nature, sciences, communities and so on.
- Presume that we can easily misunderstand what was intended to be taken literally, and what is symbolic. Of course, there has been a long debate over teachings that some take literally and others presume should be taken symbolically. But just as important is how common it is for researchers to call something mythology, implying the teaching is symbolic, when the information may well have been a literal telling. This is exemplified in multiple renaissance paintings as shown here indicating flying craft that many now have concluded was literal.
- Be aware that mention of “gods” in ancient writings usually does NOT imply a society that denies the existence of one supreme creator or God. Rather, “gods” typically refer to beings with abilities beyond the capability of humans at the time. These gods in ancient records are often described or artistically presented as larger in stature or different from earth humans in some way. While there is extensive evidence that many of the gods spoken of were beings visiting from off-planet, it’s of course not necessary to believe this possibility in order to learn from the cultural wisdom. The key point is that it can be helpful to understand that the term “gods” as it appears in ancient texts is usually not synonymous with – nor a dispute of the existence of – a one infinite creator or “God.”
Where to Go From Here
You can offset some of the devastation wrought by the suppressors of knowledge and honor those who have given their lives to keep wisdom alive.
You have the power to do this by simply seeking information that is outside mainstream sources, especially by consulting knowledge from indigenous wisdom keepers.
The links in the list of indigenous cultures and traditions above can help you get started in finding traditions that intrigue or inspire you to learn more.
Consider supporting individuals and communities that have protected and shared indigenous wisdom. And most importantly, make decisions in your life based not upon what the mainstream has told you, but upon your personal experience with increasing awareness and growing wisdom.
