Why do I feel drawn to non technological shamanic or mystic tribes?

Question

Why do I read about these people living in the forest, or jungle, or desert and feel like they are the closest thing I can get to having a brother or sister of humanity? How come their smiles seem so much more sincere in the pictures I see and how can they have happiness with nothing at all? Nothing meaning a civilized world full of toys?

Answer 1

Ah, what a profound question this --how can they be happy with nothing at all? Because they are free from the distractions and constraints and --well--burden of civilization.

Because they are not plugged in electronically and technically they engage at a far deeper level with the world around them-- they have knowledge of creatures and processes and states of the earth that come from direct observation as well as intuitive knowledge. Among all of us on the face of the earth, who knew the Indonesian tsunami was coming? It was the animals and the tribal people (See http://www.naturesync.org/tsunami1.htm).

For all the knowledge that fills our libraries, we fail to understand deep processes within nature that the shamanic cultures have access to.

Why do you feel drawn to these cultures? I suspect that you have some wisdom inside of you which you are not yet consciously aware of --a wisdom that recognizes the shortcoming of technology and material culture.

Perhaps this is an area you should explore...you might study shamanism, anthropology or even just find ways to become more in tune with both the natural world and the world that lies beyond our five senses.

Answer 2

Not sure

shamanism
The core word, etymologically speaking, of shaman is sramaNah, a word from the Siberian Tungusic language meaning a "religious exercise."

Scholastically the definition is: members of tribal societies who act as doorways between the ordinary world, the totality, and the extraordinary world, the unseen. Such beings practice magic or sorcery for a distinct, well-defined purpose: to heal, to divine, or to exert control over natural events.

The first shamanistic enclaves developed in northern Asia, but it is only within the last 300 or so years that shamanism has had a universal usage in spoken language - coming into lexicographic usage in the 1780s.

A contemporary definition of shamanism is: "a religion of the Ural-Altaic peoples of northern Asia and Europe that is characterized by the belief that the unseen word of gods, demons and ancestral spirits is responsive only to the Shaman" or: "a religious practice similar to the shamanism of the Ural-Altaic peoples of northern Asia and Europe followed especially among Indians of North America and characterized by the use of mediumistic trances."

A simpler definition might be: "The animistic religion of certain peoples of northern Asia in which mediation between the visible and spirit worlds is effected by shamans."

mysticism
Mysticism can refer to either the religious desire for a union between the human and god or a philosophical system which grows out of such a desire. Such a philosophical system is concerned with both the actual act of such a union and the process of arriving at it.

Answer 3

i have the utmost respect for these people but do not have that interconnected feeling with them. Sounds like you have some type spiritual connection. If you would believe in reincarnation maybe in a past life you were part of one of these tribes. Maybe at some point you are destined to interact with them somehow.