User:Malpagai

WELCOME - this is taffy seaborne's user page

About Taffy:

Taffy(Robert) Seaborne was born in Cardiff Wales and raised in nearby Penarth. After "groping" his way through school and an engineering apprenticeship on the Treforest industrial estate he sailed the high seas for a year, then in 1967 at the age of 23 he emigrated to Australia.

Taffy's life long learning made what was for him a radical change in direction during an eight year period (1990-98) of living and working with the Anangu traditional owners of Uluru (Ayers Rock), Australia's most popular indigenous icon. In his position as Manager of this World Heritage property Taffy was involved in the successful re-nomination of Uluru as a World Heritage Area on the basis of its cultural values (1993-94). In taffy's own words "on reflection, my Uluru experience turned out to be a desert pilgrimage that has profoundly changed my mind".

It is Taffy's personal experience of deepening into the phenomenon of sacred sites, of ritual seasonal celebration and his Welsh awareness of the power of myth that has inspired MY STORY STONE. Taffy now lives in the Blue Mountains of his 'New' South Wales, with his beloved Glen'Ys Livingstone PH.d, - author and fellow practitioner of their "PaGaian Cosmology" - a collaborative re-inventing of Earth based religion through a contemporary understanding of what it means to dwell in "country" or "cynefin".

These stone stories are dedicated to my mother Dilys the first and loveliest face I ever saw, to my uncle Wallace who was a modern day Welsh wizard, to Anangu tjilpi pampa traditional custodians of Uluru, to Marian my rescuer and fellow desert pilgrim and last but not least to Glen'Ys my beloved who receives my beauty and makes me shine. These are my favourite kin-dom, my PaGaian inspiration.

My partner at a crucial decision making time in 1990 was Marian Hill who encouraged our move to the 'red centre' when things were fairly cushy for us on the Mornington Peninsula of Victoria. I will always remember and celebrate the way Marian helped me make the transition into other ways of knowing and being, she was not only my rescuer but also my main source of hope and inspiration throughout our pilgrimage to Uluru. Being able to visit Anangu and live in their 'country' with them for eight years (1990-1998) was like starting school all over again only this time my teachers were far superior to those of my primary school days. It wasn't until I had left my job at 'the rock' and enjoyed the relative freedom that came with my role as Senior Project Officer for the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands that I was able to regularly visit and seriously deepen into and re-create at one of our planets most sacred of places Uluru. It was during this returning period that I got to know ‘Place’ for the first time.

Ngayulu puli tjukur(pa) - My Story Stone, appeared to me within the sacred north face of Uluru decades after my mother Dilys first initiated me into stone consciousness using fossils on Penarth beach. I want to share my story with others in the firm belief that the first act of ngapartji-ngapartji is that of receiving. As such I receive my story stone as an act of cosmic generosity that could not have been made available to me by anything less. The following song from Ruth Bebermeyer (1978) expresses how I feel about the ancient Australian principle known among traditional pitjantjatjara speakers as ngapartji-nnngapartji - I never feel more given to than when you take from me — when you understand the joy I feel giving to you. And you know my giving isn’t done to put you in my debt, but because I want to live the love I feel for you.

To receive with grace may be the greatest giving. There’s no way I can separate the two. When you give to me, I give you my receiving. When you take from me, I feel so given to

For me, Uluru and its Anangu traditional owners represent a spiritual centre that literally oozes cosmic creativity and consciousness in its own unique and relatively unspoiled way. I share My Story Stone with you in the hope that it may encourage you to make your own pilgrimage to this most sacred of places.

Taffy, Samhain 2007.