BOOK GUIDE
by Mike

ORIGINAL WISDOM BY ROBERT WOLFF

Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing is a a catchy and inspiring real-life journey of Robert Wolff, a psychologist who spent a lifetime with the indigenous people from many parts of the world, including the Sng’oi in Malaysia. During this time, he learned their language, shared their food, slept in their shelters and came to love and admire the indigenous people who respect silence, trust time to reveal and heal, and live entirely in the present with a sense of joy. Even more, Robert Wolff came to recognize the depth of our alienation from these ways of living.

Original Wisdom presents stories that hold a mirror to our very own existence, allowing us to see how far we have wandered from the ways of the Sng’oi. And ultimately they challenge us, in our fragmented world, to rediscover within ourselves humanity, trust, and the sense of connection to all creation.

GIVEGROWGO selected an incredible passage from the first chapter of Original Wisdom:

My life has spanned what must be a unique period in the long history of humankind: a period of immense changes worldwide. The human population of the world has more than doubled in the last forty years; we have pumped more oil out of the ground after World War II than in all history before then.
In the last fifty years, the millions of cars and millions of miles of roads we have built, and that have become commonplace, have changed the face of the planet forever. An ever-growing number of humans has access to facilities and luxuries kings could not have dreamed of even fifty years ago.

Westerners, who are in the vanguard of these changes, see them as progress, an assumption rarely questioned.

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Perhaps, because my perspective includes memories of a kinder, gentler world, I have become acutely aware of what we have lost. In our haste to create a world entirely based on artificial – that means man-made – things, we have thrown away much that is part of our heritage as creatures of this planet. By divorcing ourselves from Nature we have also removed ourselves from the wisdom that comes from living as part of What Is.

In this age it is not unusual anymore to visit and even live in faraway lands. We travel halfway around the earth for a week’s vacation or for an assignment of a few months. Where French was the language of diplomacy not all that long ago, English has become the language of world trade. Tourists travel to outlying islands to find the perfect beach, or to an exotic big city for bargains.

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GIVEGROWGO highly recommends Original Wisdom!