SPIRITUALITY AND HEALTH Julio Monsalvo altaalegremiayahoo com ar

SPIRITUALITY AND HEALTH Julio Monsalvo alta_alegremia@yahoo. com. ar

Testimony of gratitude • I owe my gratitude to the Native Peoples from Northern Argentina, my country, because from them I have learnt the most beautiful and important things of my life. • I learnt to teach not through their speeches but from sharing day-to-day life with them

What do I feel are the most important things? • The list I would write to express another way of seeing and changing the world would have to be long. • In this International People’s Health University course, to all of you, the People’s Health activists, I am only going to address one thing that truly refers to spirituality. • It is about a sense of belonging to the Earth. • To belong to the Earth is to feel she is our Mother, the giver of live. • The Native Peoples taught me that everything has a spirit. The Earth, water, air, plants, animals… everything has a spirit.

How did they teach me? • Through dialogue, intercultural dialogue. Intercultural dialogue has allowed me to grasp the values, the essence, of these cultures. • To discover another culture is to discover one’s own. • And this is how, through learning the value of feeling part of the Earth, the value of a sense of belonging, I discovered the lack of value in the culture I was born into, which on the contrary, sees itself as “the owner of the Earth”. • It is not only the sense of ownership, but something deeper which has created this sense of domination: the feeling of being outside Nature. • From seeing Nature as a “resource department store”, the descent into exploitation, accumulation and profiteering is but a short step way. • It is lunacy not to ask oneself “who are we? ” Nature is present in the trees, the rivers, the animals, the seas… and us, the human beings, who are we?

Anthropocentric Paradigm or Biocentric Paradigm?

Anthropocentric Paradigm • The western paradigm is centred in Man. • Our entire belief system says that it is Man, macho, as this culture has subjugated Woman: this is called an anthropo-centric paradigm. • A paradigm is a group of values, ideas, and conducts accepted by a community. “This is fine and is not discussed. ” This is why young generations grow up surrounded by a “landscape” that is “normal”, which we don’t question, and we blindly follow. • And this is the most beautiful thing that I unlearnt thanks to my time living alongside the Native Peoples: I unlearnt the anthropocentric paradigm and now feel the biocentric paradigm as my own.

Biocentric Paradigm • A paradigm centred in Life, in respect for life and all ways of living. • This means a different way of feeling and thinking. To feel and to think that I am part of the local ecosystem where I am at any moment and where I am in my life. • I am as important as a fish, a bird, a tree, a shrub, a four-footed friend. • The feeling that everything has a spirit grants us a different relationship with ourselves, with other human beings and with all life forms. • Feeling this Life-centred paradigm as my own brings me Peace and Happiness in my internal surroundings. • “Happiness” is the feeling of joy boiling in my blood; the joy of being protagonists in a World Revolution in Protest for Life, for this other, centred paradigm. • The People of the World who resist the dominant culture which exploits, excludes and extinguishes, reveal a spirit of celebration for life. • With internal Peace and Happiness, we have the energy to continue with this World Revolution in Protest.

For the Health of All the Planet (including humans) • People’s Health Activists: the message of spirituality that I share with you is what I unlearnt and learnt living alongside the Native Peoples. • The Health of the People is the Health of the Planet. • I feel the same strong passion about the deaths caused by social injustices, by wars, by the ecocide that our dwelling has been subjected to. Here is just one example; the fierce deforestation that so much damage causes. • A powerful warning is the accelerated loss of species; the loss of biodiversity. • Our beautiful Blue Planet is a living organism and we are living inside its life.