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Sobonfu Some – Part 1: Welcoming the Soul Home Through Initiation
Appreciations:
“Thank you Duncan for all the ways that you are enabling people to share their wisdom, and also for holding the torch for everybody to know how to find their way, and for just having a golden heart. I just so appreciate you. It is always so great to talk to you and to see the bright light you always shine on so many different subject matters. So thank you.” - Sobonfu Some
“For all that you’ve done Sobonfu I just want to honor you and just thank you. It’s been such a pleasure just to get to know you. And what I really appreciate about you is your ability to feel the depth of all of this range of challenges and sorrow and isolation, and as you put it loneliness and boredom, that are part of our world and yet find this beautiful sunny brilliance of spirit and humor especially to share with the world as you have.” - Duncan Campbell
“Living Dialogues are transformative! The very best "interviews" you will ever hear. Duncan Campbell, a world-class 'interviewer,' is sufficiently fascinating and well educated himself that he would make a good subject for an interview. His talent is to first, choose the great thinkers with whom to dialogue. He is then able to somehow not only 'see' the brilliance in each one, but to bring that out in his fantastic dialogues, which are more like a cosmic dance than an interview. Blessings are the result of experiencing the Living Dialogues. I highly recommend them. Five Stars!” - May 12, 2008, Sunshiny from Clarksville, Arkansas
Episode Description:
Part 1 of a 3-Part Dialogue:
Let me begin by introducing my great friend Sobonfu Some. Sobonfu was born and raised in Burkina Faso, the former Upper Volta in Africa, and she is an initiated member of the Dagara tribe of West Africa. Her voice was one of the first in recent times to bring African spirituality to the West. She continually travels the world, conducting seminars and workshops that offer her perspective on birth, pregnancy, community, healing, intimacy, rituals, the sacred quality of everyday life and much more. She is the founder of Ancestors’ Wisdom Spring, and her books include Welcoming Spirit Home: Ancient African Teachings to Celebrate Children and Community; The Spirit of Intimacy:
Ancient Teachings in the Ways of Relationships; and Falling out of Grace.
As I mentioned in the last of the three dialogues on this site with myself and Coleman Barks (listen to Program 54 and see its Episode Description), we in modern industrial cultures “need to balance both the modern mind’s excessive emphasis on the mental (which can leave us feeling, in the poet Rumi’s words, “empty and frightened” in our fragmented, specialized culture, often lacking a rich, nourishing sense of community), with our indigenous heritage of appreciating the embrace of the earth...We need to develop this dynamic equipoise of spirit and soul in order to develop our own elderhood, as Rumi did in his time, in order to meet the challenges of the 21st century, to create not just a localized sanity, but a planetary civilization which can communicate with and within all of its component parts so we don’t just self-destruct”. In imparting her birth tradition’s ancient teachings, often through the intimate and (to us) amazing yet accessible details of her own lived experience that we describe and situate in these dialogues, Sobonfu, in the words of Alice Walker, is a teacher that “can help us put together so many things that our modern Western world has broken”.
In this first Dialogue we explore the extraordinary (to those of us in modern cultures) initiations which welcomed Sobonfu’s spirit into this world and prepared here for her soul’s unfoldment and revealed to her her life’s purpose and mission. As I mention in this dialogue, the “hearing ritual” which took place while Sobonfu was still in her mother’s womb and which she describes in this dialogue, is evocative of the recent work in the West of the brilliant Jungian James Hillman in his book The Soul’s Code and Caroline Myss in her Sacred Contracts (see Programs 17 and 18 on this site) in how we might discover our soul’s purpose. In Sobonfu’s words: “We had this ritual in my tribe and village because as a human being you always want your life to be a reflection of what you think you are creating and you are forgetting that there is something that the greater universe has in place for you.”
Here are some excerpts from this Part 1:
“Duncan: And I think now that its part of a whole process that seems to be awakening in different countries all over the world, where elders are being called forward from many indigenous cultures at this time. Organizations are being formed spontaneously as it were, as in the fulfillment of ancient prophecies that there would come a time when having lost something really essential in the human soul, we are now having to work together at an international transnational level with many different gifts coming from many different cultures to in a sense put it all back together again, that which has been broken. And some cultures to heal ourselves requires even going beyond our own culture.
Sobonfu: Yes, right! And as you know, many people say, the time is right, I agree. Especially with many indigenous communities that have held on to their own wisdom for so long and the world is changing. And the young people in those communities are not necessarily going to be the ones to unfold this wisdom. And so there is a need to have it be alive somewhere. And also because people are really ready for this kind of wisdom and are willing to receive them in the forms that they come without wanting to change them, dissect them, or make them look like something else. And that is the beauty in it, and of course, you know, each one of these tribes coming have wisdom, it is a conversion of all that bring together the truth. That the human soul and spirit is so craving. Because not just one way is going to make it work for us.
Duncan: And I think that’s the point, yes, for all of us…that we are all of us going through an initiation in a sense of being forced out of the comfort zone of whatever our particular village may be, literally or metaphorically as you were. And in a sense obliged to go out into a wider world and learn another language or several other emotional languages and to begin to weave a real planetary consciousness because it’s the only way that we are going to be healed. And I think of dialogue as an essential element of this. The dialogue between elders and youth in terms of age. The dialogue between elder cultures and you, younger cultures in terms of time on the planet. The dialogue between men and women. Because everyone in this participation has a particular wisdom and a particular knowledge to give including the younger cultures and young people. Things are changing so fast on the planet that elders don’t have all of the pieces of the puzzle, no matter how long they have been on the planet. And so they themselves need this revitalizing rejuvenating connection with the young who carry certain knowledge within them. And the young in turn need a certain kind of mentoring and embrace and respect in being seen by the elders in order to realize their full potential. So it’s such a beautiful but also very challenging initiation that we are being called to.
Sobonfu: Right. Absolutely. And it is an initiation that we have to go through if we are all going to survive. Now, there is no way of going around it.
Duncan: Well and that’s it. There is no way of going around it and so we go through it like a birth canal. We really can’t short circuit it in any way and we come as you put it so beautifully, to find the wisdom and the humor in failure, to find yourself in your core essence when you as you entitled one of your books, you fall out of grace. To find the way the children can be celebrated in community and the ongoingness of life even when you feel the most alienated, lets say, even from your own tradition. For all that you’ve done Sobonfu I just want to honor you and just thank you. It’s been such a pleasure just to get to know you. And what I really appreciate about you is your ability to feel the depth of all of this range of challenges and sorrow and isolation, and as you put it loneliness and boredom, that are part of our world and yet find this beautiful sunny brilliance of spirit and humor especially to share with the world as you have.
Sobonfu: Thank you! I feel the same. I am very honored to have you and the people who are really good and sincere friends, which is something to cherish these days when you find one. So thank you for being there with your golden and welcoming heart.
Duncan: I agree. When you do find a friend, and you find a friendly community it is something to be valued and cherished. And the community that we find that we find in your books, Sobonfu, is one such friend.”
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by clicking on the Episode Detail button at the top left of this program description, and by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey there (or click on the Listener Survey icon to the left of this column).
SUBSCRIBE HERE FOR FREE TO LIVING DIALOGUES AND IN THE COMING WEEKS HEAR DUNCAN CAMPELL’S DIALOGUES WITH OTHER GROUND-BREAKING TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKERS LISTED ON THE WEBSITE WWW.LIVINGDIALOGUES.COM. TO LISTEN TO PREVIOUS RELATED DIALOGUES ON THIS SITE, SCROLL DOWN ON THE LIVING DIALOGUES SHOW PAGE HERE -- OR CLICK ON THE NAME OF A GUEST ON THE LIST AT THE RIGHT -- TO HEAR DUNCAN’S DIALOGUES WITH DR. ANDREW WEIL, BRIAN WEISS, COLEMAN BARKS, RUPERT SHELDRAKE, LARRY DOSSEY, JUDY COLLINS, MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, MATTHEW FOX, JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE, DEEPAK CHOPRA, BYRON KATIE AND STEPHEN MITCHELL, CAROLINE MYSS, GANGAJI, VINE DELORIA, JR., MICHAEL DOWD (THE UNIVERSE STORY OF THOMAS BERRY AND BRIAN SWIMME), STEVE MCINTOSH, FRANCES MOORE LAPPE, STANISLAV GROF, RICHARD TARNAS, MARC BEKOFF AND JANE GOODALL, RICHARD MOSS, PAUL HAWKEN, PAUL RAY, JOSEPH ELLIS, DUANE ELGIN, LYNNE MCTAGGART, ECKHART TOLLE, MICHAEL MEADE, ANGELES ARRIEN AND OTHER EVOLUTIONARY THINKERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD.
The best way to reach me is through my website: www.livingdialogues.com. Many thanks again for your attentive deep listening in helping co-create this program. All the best, Duncan.
View all episodes
By Duncan CampbellAppreciations:
“Thank you Duncan for all the ways that you are enabling people to share their wisdom, and also for holding the torch for everybody to know how to find their way, and for just having a golden heart. I just so appreciate you. It is always so great to talk to you and to see the bright light you always shine on so many different subject matters. So thank you.” - Sobonfu Some
“For all that you’ve done Sobonfu I just want to honor you and just thank you. It’s been such a pleasure just to get to know you. And what I really appreciate about you is your ability to feel the depth of all of this range of challenges and sorrow and isolation, and as you put it loneliness and boredom, that are part of our world and yet find this beautiful sunny brilliance of spirit and humor especially to share with the world as you have.” - Duncan Campbell
“Living Dialogues are transformative! The very best "interviews" you will ever hear. Duncan Campbell, a world-class 'interviewer,' is sufficiently fascinating and well educated himself that he would make a good subject for an interview. His talent is to first, choose the great thinkers with whom to dialogue. He is then able to somehow not only 'see' the brilliance in each one, but to bring that out in his fantastic dialogues, which are more like a cosmic dance than an interview. Blessings are the result of experiencing the Living Dialogues. I highly recommend them. Five Stars!” - May 12, 2008, Sunshiny from Clarksville, Arkansas
Episode Description:
Part 1 of a 3-Part Dialogue:
Let me begin by introducing my great friend Sobonfu Some. Sobonfu was born and raised in Burkina Faso, the former Upper Volta in Africa, and she is an initiated member of the Dagara tribe of West Africa. Her voice was one of the first in recent times to bring African spirituality to the West. She continually travels the world, conducting seminars and workshops that offer her perspective on birth, pregnancy, community, healing, intimacy, rituals, the sacred quality of everyday life and much more. She is the founder of Ancestors’ Wisdom Spring, and her books include Welcoming Spirit Home: Ancient African Teachings to Celebrate Children and Community; The Spirit of Intimacy:
Ancient Teachings in the Ways of Relationships; and Falling out of Grace.
As I mentioned in the last of the three dialogues on this site with myself and Coleman Barks (listen to Program 54 and see its Episode Description), we in modern industrial cultures “need to balance both the modern mind’s excessive emphasis on the mental (which can leave us feeling, in the poet Rumi’s words, “empty and frightened” in our fragmented, specialized culture, often lacking a rich, nourishing sense of community), with our indigenous heritage of appreciating the embrace of the earth...We need to develop this dynamic equipoise of spirit and soul in order to develop our own elderhood, as Rumi did in his time, in order to meet the challenges of the 21st century, to create not just a localized sanity, but a planetary civilization which can communicate with and within all of its component parts so we don’t just self-destruct”. In imparting her birth tradition’s ancient teachings, often through the intimate and (to us) amazing yet accessible details of her own lived experience that we describe and situate in these dialogues, Sobonfu, in the words of Alice Walker, is a teacher that “can help us put together so many things that our modern Western world has broken”.
In this first Dialogue we explore the extraordinary (to those of us in modern cultures) initiations which welcomed Sobonfu’s spirit into this world and prepared here for her soul’s unfoldment and revealed to her her life’s purpose and mission. As I mention in this dialogue, the “hearing ritual” which took place while Sobonfu was still in her mother’s womb and which she describes in this dialogue, is evocative of the recent work in the West of the brilliant Jungian James Hillman in his book The Soul’s Code and Caroline Myss in her Sacred Contracts (see Programs 17 and 18 on this site) in how we might discover our soul’s purpose. In Sobonfu’s words: “We had this ritual in my tribe and village because as a human being you always want your life to be a reflection of what you think you are creating and you are forgetting that there is something that the greater universe has in place for you.”
Here are some excerpts from this Part 1:
“Duncan: And I think now that its part of a whole process that seems to be awakening in different countries all over the world, where elders are being called forward from many indigenous cultures at this time. Organizations are being formed spontaneously as it were, as in the fulfillment of ancient prophecies that there would come a time when having lost something really essential in the human soul, we are now having to work together at an international transnational level with many different gifts coming from many different cultures to in a sense put it all back together again, that which has been broken. And some cultures to heal ourselves requires even going beyond our own culture.
Sobonfu: Yes, right! And as you know, many people say, the time is right, I agree. Especially with many indigenous communities that have held on to their own wisdom for so long and the world is changing. And the young people in those communities are not necessarily going to be the ones to unfold this wisdom. And so there is a need to have it be alive somewhere. And also because people are really ready for this kind of wisdom and are willing to receive them in the forms that they come without wanting to change them, dissect them, or make them look like something else. And that is the beauty in it, and of course, you know, each one of these tribes coming have wisdom, it is a conversion of all that bring together the truth. That the human soul and spirit is so craving. Because not just one way is going to make it work for us.
Duncan: And I think that’s the point, yes, for all of us…that we are all of us going through an initiation in a sense of being forced out of the comfort zone of whatever our particular village may be, literally or metaphorically as you were. And in a sense obliged to go out into a wider world and learn another language or several other emotional languages and to begin to weave a real planetary consciousness because it’s the only way that we are going to be healed. And I think of dialogue as an essential element of this. The dialogue between elders and youth in terms of age. The dialogue between elder cultures and you, younger cultures in terms of time on the planet. The dialogue between men and women. Because everyone in this participation has a particular wisdom and a particular knowledge to give including the younger cultures and young people. Things are changing so fast on the planet that elders don’t have all of the pieces of the puzzle, no matter how long they have been on the planet. And so they themselves need this revitalizing rejuvenating connection with the young who carry certain knowledge within them. And the young in turn need a certain kind of mentoring and embrace and respect in being seen by the elders in order to realize their full potential. So it’s such a beautiful but also very challenging initiation that we are being called to.
Sobonfu: Right. Absolutely. And it is an initiation that we have to go through if we are all going to survive. Now, there is no way of going around it.
Duncan: Well and that’s it. There is no way of going around it and so we go through it like a birth canal. We really can’t short circuit it in any way and we come as you put it so beautifully, to find the wisdom and the humor in failure, to find yourself in your core essence when you as you entitled one of your books, you fall out of grace. To find the way the children can be celebrated in community and the ongoingness of life even when you feel the most alienated, lets say, even from your own tradition. For all that you’ve done Sobonfu I just want to honor you and just thank you. It’s been such a pleasure just to get to know you. And what I really appreciate about you is your ability to feel the depth of all of this range of challenges and sorrow and isolation, and as you put it loneliness and boredom, that are part of our world and yet find this beautiful sunny brilliance of spirit and humor especially to share with the world as you have.
Sobonfu: Thank you! I feel the same. I am very honored to have you and the people who are really good and sincere friends, which is something to cherish these days when you find one. So thank you for being there with your golden and welcoming heart.
Duncan: I agree. When you do find a friend, and you find a friendly community it is something to be valued and cherished. And the community that we find that we find in your books, Sobonfu, is one such friend.”
After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by clicking on the Episode Detail button at the top left of this program description, and by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey there (or click on the Listener Survey icon to the left of this column).
SUBSCRIBE HERE FOR FREE TO LIVING DIALOGUES AND IN THE COMING WEEKS HEAR DUNCAN CAMPELL’S DIALOGUES WITH OTHER GROUND-BREAKING TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKERS LISTED ON THE WEBSITE WWW.LIVINGDIALOGUES.COM. TO LISTEN TO PREVIOUS RELATED DIALOGUES ON THIS SITE, SCROLL DOWN ON THE LIVING DIALOGUES SHOW PAGE HERE -- OR CLICK ON THE NAME OF A GUEST ON THE LIST AT THE RIGHT -- TO HEAR DUNCAN’S DIALOGUES WITH DR. ANDREW WEIL, BRIAN WEISS, COLEMAN BARKS, RUPERT SHELDRAKE, LARRY DOSSEY, JUDY COLLINS, MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, MATTHEW FOX, JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE, DEEPAK CHOPRA, BYRON KATIE AND STEPHEN MITCHELL, CAROLINE MYSS, GANGAJI, VINE DELORIA, JR., MICHAEL DOWD (THE UNIVERSE STORY OF THOMAS BERRY AND BRIAN SWIMME), STEVE MCINTOSH, FRANCES MOORE LAPPE, STANISLAV GROF, RICHARD TARNAS, MARC BEKOFF AND JANE GOODALL, RICHARD MOSS, PAUL HAWKEN, PAUL RAY, JOSEPH ELLIS, DUANE ELGIN, LYNNE MCTAGGART, ECKHART TOLLE, MICHAEL MEADE, ANGELES ARRIEN AND OTHER EVOLUTIONARY THINKERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD.
The best way to reach me is through my website: www.livingdialogues.com. Many thanks again for your attentive deep listening in helping co-create this program. All the best, Duncan.