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Original Wisdom
Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing
by Robert Wolff
Recommended by Tamarack Song

      Deep in the mountainous jungle of Malaysia the aboriginal Sng'oi exist on the edge of extinction, though their way of living could ultimately teach us all to survive. The Sng'oi are pre-industrial, pre-agricultural, semi-nomadic; they live without cars or cell phones, without clocks or schedules, in a lush green place where worry and hurry, competition and suspicion are not known. Yet these indigenous people - like many other aboriginal groups - possess an acute and uncanny sense of the energies, emotions, and intentions of their place and the living beings who populate it, and trustingly follow this intuition, using it to make decisions about their actions each day.

      Original Wisdom explores the lifestyle of indigenous peoples of the world who exist in complete harmony with the natural world and with each other. It reveals a model of a society built on trust, patience, and joy rather than anxiety, hurry, and acquisition. The author shows how we can reconnect with the ancient intuitive awareness of the world's original people.

      Psychologist Robert Wolff lived with the Sng'oi, learned their language, shared their food, slept in their huts, and came to love and admire these people who respect silence, trust time to reveal and heal, and live entirely in the present with a sense of joy. Even more, he came to recognize the depth of our alienation from these basic qualities of life. Much more than a document of a disappearing people, Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing holds a mirror to our own existence, allowing us to see how far we have wandered from the ways of the intuitive and trusting Sng'oi, and challenges us, in our fragmented world, to rediscover this humanity within ourselves. Paperback. 208 pages. Inner Traditions. 2001. ISBN: 0892818662.