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Mental Illness

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Messenger: ShivaJiva Sent: 7/11/2015 8:44:06 PM

I'm not aware of any of his books. He seems like a knowledgeable person and I don't mean to disenfranchise him. But his claims about living with and learning from the Dagara people are false and have been debunked. While he did spend a short period of time with them when he was very young, he was never initiated as an elder or a healer. He lived in the village of his birth for 4 years before he was allegedly captured by Jesuit priests, whom he lived with and learned from for 15 years. When he returned to the Dagara he had a hard time assimilating with the culture and so it was decided that he should undergo Baor, or initiation. Baor is a month-long process in which a boy becomes a man by spending time away from the village, in nature, to survive by himself. It's a standard practice for all young men in the culture and has nothing to do with becoming an elder or healer. Shortly after this initiation he voluntarily left the Dagara for the West and has lived here ever since, which is the vast majority of his life. Malidoma might be a good teacher in many ways, and his books might be great--but he is exploiting the Dagara people by charging large amounts of money to "initiate" non-Dagara people, including Whites, under false pretenses that he is some kind of initiated healer. He's telling a half-truth at best. He might be very knowledgeable when it comes to healing and I don't doubt that, but he is profiting off of Dagara culture at their expense.

Messenger: RastaGoddess Sent: 7/11/2015 8:55:41 PM

WHOA!!!!!! I had no idea! Will have to look into it. How disappointing...his book was so inspirational!

Messenger: Humble one Sent: 7/12/2015 2:17:15 AM

What do you have against Mr Some? He is the principle teacher of African spirituality in the US. Note the word "teacher" and not "making someone become a dagara" 1) He doesn't pretend to "make" someone a dagara. This WOULD be stealing the culture. What he claims is to use the teaching of African spirituality to HELP people heal that are brought up in Babylon. Why should this ancient African knowledge not be used for the benefit of all people, (noting that he is not saying by seeing me you are becoming a Dagara)? "One does not become a teacher of Dagara wisdom on the basis that one has partaken in an Indigenous African Spiritual Technology (IAST) training. The vulnerability to distortion or misrepresentation is too great. In actuality, these trainings have a principal goal to help participants find a path to their own healing. They provided a means to connect with the basic elements of the cosmology, access to their imaginal selves, and connect with THEIR Ancestors." quoted from http://malidoma.com/dagara-apprenticeship-program-certification/ 2) Malidoma was born into the dagara culture, and as you have said, he was forced by his father to leave at the age of 4 to pursue a western education. He returned, later in his life, back to the dagara people, who said that he had had his soul stolen from him (soul loss) ---------------------------------------- Soul loss is the most integral part of becoming a shaman, because the healer to be must first acquire the same sickness as people around them (in this case in the west) and then learn to heal it themselves. Once they have been able to do this, then they can point the way for others to heal themselves. So this period of being traumatized in Babylon is actually key. Malidoma means "he who helps strangers", and the Dagara elders THEMSELVES said that he was destined to help people in the west heal, not by making them "dagara", but by using the helpful teachings on spirituality to help people heal themselves (see quote earlier). Without the period in Babylon, he would not have the insight on how to help people trapped in Babylon. ---------------------------------------- I mean, it is completely your choice on whether you trust the man or not. But I just wanted to dispute some of the things you said, or rather put them into context of his personal path. All the best, Joe

Messenger: ShivaJiva Sent: 7/13/2015 12:12:33 AM

I'm not saying he's a bad person, don't get me wrong. But he is considered an outsider by the Dagara, for one. He might identify with African culture but he was molded by Western culture. His experience is vastly different from the Dagara people. There's no problem with educating others about African culture and spirituality, but he makes large sums of money by selling sacred Dagara ceremonies which he does not have the authority to perform. He also charges upwards of $5,000 to participate in his self-designed course in which he "initiates" you into traditional "traditional African culture" (whatever that means....Africa is a big place). He offers this to rich black people, and increasingly white people. After you complete his "course", you can supposedly claim apprenticeship under a traditional Dagara healer. There are White people who are making money as " traditional Dagara priests" because they spent 6 months with Malidoma, regardless of the claims on his website. All of this info is available through the link I provided in my last post. Anyways, I didn't mean to disrupt the thread which is about mental illness and not Malidoma.

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