This is a Dreamtime story from the Wathaurong People. The traditional boundaries of the Wathaurong people span the coastline from the Werribee River to Lorne peninsula and traverse inland in a north-westerly direction towards Ballarat.
‘Long time before today…
The sky covered the earth making everyone crawl around in the dark. The Magpies, being proud and industrious, gathered and worked to raise the sky so everyone could move about freely.
They gathered some long sticks and fighting hard they lifted the sky up. They placed the long sticks on small and big rocks;
they fought to lift the sky even higher.
The sky split open, showing the beauty of the first sunrise. They were so overjoyed to see the light and feel the warmth of the sun’s heat, they burst into song. As they sang, the blanket of darkness broke and drifted away like clouds.
To this day the Magpies greet the sunrise with their joyful song.’
Re-told by Uncle David Tournier
I read this story many years ago and had an interesting experience afterwards. I’d read it just before going to sleep. The next morning I woke and was still in between dream space and waking when I heard a magpie sing.
Immediately I felt my 3D mind – my everyday mind – clear and I felt a spaciousness in my mind that I hadn’t felt before. I have since come to know this spaciousness through meditation and many years of spiritual practice.
So the story to me, reflects this process of clearing the dense material mind and opening to the spacious divine mind.
Many people see these stories as myths. But they are far from that. You see these stories are told to children and people grow up with them. When a person is ready to understand the wisdom in the story, it will show itself. I believe that is what happened to me.
So the wisdom is not communicated in language but by experience. This is the only way true wisdom can be ‘learnt’. If you are a ‘teacher’ in this field it’s not about inculcating people with theory and concepts, it’s about trying to awaken the wisdom within each person. It is already there, we just have to allow it to surface.
In a way it’s more unlearning than learning, because in order to allow the wisdom to arise within, we often need to deconstruct the ‘normal’ thinking that is instilled in us from childhood.
I hope this gives the reader a better understanding of Aboriginal Dreamtime stories and how profound they are. And I’d just like to mention also that the term Dreamtime was the nearest the English translators could come to translate the concept of the parallel realities – time without time – that this term seeks to describe.
Magaer Lennox