From The Healing Wisdom of Africa
-Malidoma Patrice Some

The geography of human consciousness is very expansive, almost without limit. A shaman in my village once told me, "Our minds know better than we are able and willing to admit, and we are witness to many more things than we are willing to admit, and we are witness to many more things than we are willing to accept. The spirit and the mind are one. Their vision is greater, much greater than the vision we experience in the ordinary world." If something comes into out lives and we deny it by labeling it impossible, an indigenous elder would interpret this way of thinking as a manifestation of our own rigidity in the face of new possibilities. In the mind of the villager, the unreal is just a new and yet-unconfirmed reality in the vocabulary of consciousness. It is brought to us by the ancestors. A little hospitality toward it will suffice to make it part of us. In short, the indigenous mind does not admit impossibility. It defines itself by not rejecting the unfamiliar, and it therefore thrives on mysteries and magic. Such a mind gives ample space to the invisible because the invisible holds the key to the wisdom of the universe.