The Hollow Bone Power

The eyes and ears, tongue and skin, nose, teeth, heart, brain and breath, all are made of the same stuff as the things of the outside world, and that is why they can speak to one another and understand one another. We couldn't see or hear anything if what we saw and heard were not of the same nature as the eyes and ears.

This great lake of power is one thing- stuff "out there", stuff "in here"- all one pool- and that makes sense for beings like we humans who came out of this collective power, out of this world. Evidence of our belonging here lies in how identical to the world we are. Of course, there is another element of us- the spirit of us- that is not a thing of earth or water, but there is something about the earth and water and air that is likewise not just material and the spirit of us is the same as the spirit of them.

All of those spirits originally came out of Great Power and are kept from moment to moment by it even now; the spirits of humans particularly, like those of other animals, came from the unseen world, long ago, to join with the other stuff of this world. Some say those spirits came from the sky world, others from the world below the earth. I think it may be the same regardless- from beyond the boundaries of the earth-world, shape-changing beings came. I think that maybe they can get back to their origins if they desire it, or if there is a need to. When the spirit moves away from the earthy remains of the body during the power-change we call “death,” that spirit has to move through the ghost world, and perhaps beyond, depending on the spirit.

To use the Hollow Bone power is a way of becoming pure and sane, of becoming aware of one's sacredness, a thing people often forget due to the wild, distracting powers flowing through this world and through the senses and mind. I don't think the powers mean to be distracting, although the most wicked ones certainly do. But the vast majority of powers are not naturally disturbing, just vibrant, energetic, intense, or fast. Those kinds of natural presences, especially a lot of them, can distract or sweep away an un-centered person, or a person that just lives within the boundaries of the skin, cut off from the Greater power.

A person has to get purified in hot or cold water, or in the smoke of powerful plants- sage and sweetgrass are the unfailing pair of friends that I've always used. When you're pure, you need to get to a quiet place where you can see the sky and earth, and you should start by taking some time to really identify how similar all of your senses and body parts are with the ground and sky and trees and winds out there in the world around you. This is how I like to get "out of my skin"- by seeing how all of my stuff "in here" is the same as that stuff "out there".

If you see no real difference between the flesh on your arm and the brown dirt under your feet, you start to "expand" a bit, or flow out of yourself. The same goes for the heat in your heart and the heat of the sun, or the saliva in your mouth and the dew on leaves or water in a pond. You always have to "give up" a little- give up on the constant "I'm me in here" attitude you have for your mind and body, and let yourself flow out of that trap, and into the world.

This doesn't take a lot of effort, just a little. Mostly, you have to let it happen, and you'll see that it naturally occurs if you step aside and allow it. It’s like the powers in us are tired of being stuck in a human form, and want to get back "out there", want to expand. This greater “extended body of unity” is really a great truth about us; it's a great joy to really get into it and flow out there.

Once you're feeling the power I'm discussing, the next step, which should naturally arise in you, is to feel the immensity of the great lake or ocean of power that you're a part of. You can feel that by just closing your eyes, opening your heart, and really "opening your feelings"- and without fail, it will eventually be there to your awareness, because the Great Power is always there. This is where you have to accept that you are standing in the midst of forces that are very much greater than your small self. We are all particularly small compared to the Great Power that is our origin. Of course there's no part of you that isn't part of that Great Power, just like there's no part of you that isn't part of the whole world, But when we deal with the Great Power, we're also dealing with the "spirit" part of you.

The center of the Great Power is your center, too. This kind of talk has been repeated by many spiritual teachers, and some people may find it bland or cliché by this point, but it's actually a pretty layered observation. The Greatest Sacred thing isn't far away, outside the universe somewhere, but everywhere there is elemental material, or a being with a mind, like a spirit, a squirrel, a dog, or a person. Every thing is a vessel for sacredness in the most extreme form, and if you become aware of this about yourself, you begin to radiate a sort of light. Spirits will recognize that light and be well-disposed to you, and wicked spirits will fear it.

For now, when trying to use the Hollow Bone power, it's enough to give yourself up to the Great Power, literally offer your small self to this Greatness that you can sense around you and deep within everything, as well as (in a sense) beyond it all. So, after you've "flowed out" a bit, as I described before, you should turn your senses to "full open" until you can naturally feel the Great Infinity that stands behind and within all things. That infinity, our real and mysterious origin, is what you must give yourself over to. This is about recognizing and loving the power greater than yourself.

We’re dealing with an offering here; this process is a heartfelt opening and offering of self and everything about you to the sacred incomprehensible, to infinity. It can be done with or without words, eyes open or closed, hands spread out or at your side, however you feel it at the moment. Whatever you do, understand that it is the heart of this work. It is the most profound of all religious or sacred offerings. When you feel what you need to feel, or are meant to feel here, then you are ready for the Hollow Bone.

Your body is the hollow bone- or should I say, all of you is the hollow bone. Consciousness and body and anything else that might be a part of you, like the strange and mysterious spirit, is the hollow bone. Whatever “it” is, if it is part of you, then it is the hollow bone, or it should be.

Every being and every thing is meant to be a channel for the Great Power, and most things are, without even thinking about it. Humans, like some other beings, can get confused and distracted; instead of letting the natural power of life and mystery flow through them, flow through their minds and bodies totally unimpeded, they trap power and let it spin around in them and settle and stagnate. I don't guess any power can ever be "still" but it can certainly seem to get stuck in persons and seemingly stagnate. It goes from being a strong flow of forces that can make someone healthy and powerful, to being something that can kill them or drag them down to disorientation and angst.

So when you've done the two things I've talked about before, you're ready to let go of the power you've mindlessly trapped. You're ready to go back to what you were when you were born- a hollow bone, a free channel for power. You do this starting with your will- you have to will to let go of all the power you have trapped in you. That power takes many shapes, like bad memories, good memories, worries, fears, frustrations, hatreds, and sometimes, just feelings. You have to realize that the Great Power wants nothing more than to naturally pass through you and out of you, back into itself and everything else, and then into you again, forever. If you let it, you get strong, clean, and healthy. You become joyful, in place, and powerful. If you stop it, you become torn up by the tension.

Once you will to make it happen, you use your body to make it happen- stand up, straighten your spine, tilt your head back and imagine your body hollow. Let all that power flow quickly up your spine and out of your forehead, and way up into the sky. Will it to happen. Visualize it, if you want, but visualization is a little lame, when real power is involved. It's better to feel it than to visualize it. It may take some effort (but never too much) to really let go- let go- let go- and let all of it fly out of you. All the angst, worry, depression, hurtful memories, and even happy concerns and preoccupations- all of it goes out. Even your sense of self can go.

This won't be hard to accomplish, because you've already flowed out into the world of which you're a part, and you've already given yourself over to the infinite sacred. This last step is simple if you have those other two perspectives helping you let go. Many people have problems with “letting go”, especially of the hard things, the things that bother them the most or torment them the most- misery is a habit.

But not letting go is like grasping tight to a piece of heated iron that’s burning into your fingers, and letting go is always possible- it does take an act of trust, however, in the infinitely Greater Power and in the world of which you are a part. When you’ve exhausted every other means of trying to find relief from the things that have become stuck and tangled up in you, you risk nothing with that great trust, and the act of letting go, and you might indeed gain everything. Unbalanced things that flow out of you are destroyed by being forced back into balance, or dissolved in the greater flow altogether.

Some people can’t let go of the things they consider “good” and want to keep, but I always feel that we can’t really lose those things- they flow out of you and become a larger part of the world, of the greater power, and thus a greater, deeper part of your “extended self”- the “self” beyond the boundaries of flesh. By letting the Great Powers have these things, you aren’t just making a great offering of wisdom, and you aren’t just balancing yourself well; you’re living up to your sacred function in the unfolding of life itself. The best way to have the things you want the most is to let them go, and let them become a greater part of things, a deathless part of the all. You’re part of the all, so you always share, in some way, in the things you give away with a good spirit.

You practice letting go, but never with too much effort, and you'll finally feel the flow happening naturally. You need to realize that we all hold on to too much; it's okay to let everything, including the good things, go. These are powerful offerings of yours to the Six Worlds, to the earth-world, which absorbs them and to the world below the earth, which takes them away, and to the world above the earth, and the world above the sky, which takes them up to infinity. And the flow of life never stops, through you. Even when you're "running clear", cleanly flowing, you’ll see that a flow keeps coming.

I find that something even more powerful happens here, when I flow clean- my mind is also clean. I feel the part of me that forever knows, that "knowing" spirit in me, sitting there, feeling and observing this flow, purified and attentive. Attention- clean, open attentiveness to everything, is the real end of this power-work. Always cultivate attention; powers can't reach you or guide you if you can't be open, clean, and attentive.

That spirit, that “clean mind” that you discover sitting on the back of the hollow bone, watching the river go by, has always been there, journeying along through the world, from its source in Great Power, to this stand of woods I happen to be in right now, to wherever it'll be going after I die- when it moves with power into the ghost world, and maybe beyond. I know that if I'm all tangled up and not letting my whole being become a hollow bone daily, doing this power-practice until it becomes a part of my daily life, (something that I am more than something that I do) that my journey into the ghost world will be just as tangled up.

As a healer and power-worker, this is one of the sources of my strength. I don't pray or do anything with power until I've used the hollow bone to get clean and open. The hollow bone flow takes away stress and confusion and all of the harmful forces that kill us. It has great value for all who can find the time, ease, and attention to do it, until they become it.

I could spend all night listing the benefits of the Hollow Bone power-practice, beyond just cleansing and purifying oneself, and fulfilling one’s sacred role as a channel of power; if for some reason hostile spirits or curses were to attempt to lodge themselves in your very being, they could find no resting place in the tangles of power they require to stop and take up residence- they would be swept away in the flow through the Hollow Bone.

A Treatise on Natural Truth

A Treatise on Natural Truth:
Organic Truth Perspectives on the "Nature of Nature" and All of Nature's Many Parts

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"When I say "organic truth" or "natural truth", I am referring to those truths that we can see demonstrated to us by Nature herself, and which we can reason out or infer based on the appearance of nature's forces and their activities.

Natural truth is both experiential and empirical/demonstrable, and we experience it in the nature of our interactions with other persons in our natural environment, and the environment itself. Some aspects- the very deepest aspects- of natural truth are mediated to us in a personal, intuitive form through the sacred stories and spiritual metaphors utilized by primal peoples worldwide, past or present, in their various sacred and organic cultural expressions."

See this essay here

The Five Principles of the Way of Life

I've finally edited and made available a short essay regarding a synthesis of primal and animistic worldviews and conceptions of the sacred, to be found here.

Loneliness and Speaking with Spirits

Cousin, after years of treading a spiritual path, and working to condition myself such that I was able to be consciously aware of the sacred and incomprehensible things, I have reached a point that I feel that I can speak of a certain mystery that intrigues both of us.

I get the idea that most human beings feel quite alone. Not always alone in the sense of lacking human contact, but alone in a broader spiritual sense. Where are the "spirits" of the natural world, the Gods, the unseen beings that so many sacred stories and myths talk about? The ancient humans don't appear to have been alone.

Aside from living in close, intimate harmony with one another, within family groups, their stories present us with adventures alongside animals that walk and talk like humans: the master-spirits of those animals, perhaps. Gods descend to marry human brides; the dangerous powers rear their heads and speak and act- the reaches of extra-sensory reality seem to have been closer, in those days.

You can't doubt the spiritual aspect of human life when the spirit world is walking and talking alongside you. Where have these powers gone? Naturally, I'll tell you they haven't gone anywhere; I can say that we have forgotten much about experiencing in that special way that gives us access to them- but such a statement can be unsatisfying. Dreams and visions are still real, and nearly everyone has had some hints of those- but we have enough reasons now to doubt our dreams and visions. Their sanctity has been greatly diminished because of the doubters and the materialists.

Certainly we have a destiny in this world, a purpose for living, a reason. This is my belief. Aside from the aid one can gain in discovering their path through life, there is another good reason to reach out to the Unseen and talk to the powers there: it will cure the human sense of loneliness- spiritual loneliness, which makes us mad in many ways. When we can't see the tree next to our window as a non-human person, all we are left with is some bark and leaves. When we can't see the river as a non-human person, we are left with some water.

Bark, leaves, and water don't make good conversation partners. They don't cry out to us to be respectful and treat the world well- if they did, we might have a hard time dumping waste into our water, or destroying our trees in our blind, money-motivated, and imprudent manner. A vegetarian once told me that "carrots didn't scream as loud as cows", as a justification for why she felt better killing plants for her food, rather than animals.

Even though I think she was wrong to prefer one sort of killing over another (plants are still living beings; they are non-human persons, sacrifice is sacrifice, and death is death) I think this principle applies to spiritual ecology and spiritual life as well. If we could speak to the unseen powers, or hear them and sense them, we would be encouraged through whatever shreds of decency we have left in us to live more harmonious lives with them- and you cannot separate them from this sacred, natural world.

If we didn't feel so alone in the forest- if we felt the reality of our situation- we would walk through the trees just as we walk through a human neighborhood, with a mind to respect and wary of offending others; with a sense of familiarity and a sense of community. We would be aware of how surrounded we are by other persons, persons who enjoy being well-treated and respected just like we do.

Our sense of "human aloneness" can be broken many ways; it must be broken, or we will go crazy (perhaps I should say "more crazy") and finish destroying ourselves. Our slow species suicide has already begun; maybe something I'll say here can reverse the trend, at least in the minds of individuals.

I would like to present a procedural framework for contacting spirits- for having a conscious experience of contact with non-human persons. There are countless ways and methods for this activity, born in every historical human culture; even in non-animistic Western christian culture, prayer and meditation is suggested for having a conscious experience of contact with God. But this is something very different.

This is a five-step procedure for contacting non-human persons of a more immediate variety; the kind that live unseen right next to you, pretty much wherever you are. I am speaking of the non-human persons of trees and stones, of rivers, the land itself, of springs or mountains, or hills. This would work for the spirits of animals as well, though it might be better to begin with the spiritual presences associated with things that don't fly or run quite so much- like trees or rivers.

This procedure was correlated by me from many experiences of my own, but it was the spirit of the river near me that taught it to me in its final form. There are understandings here that are purely sacred, and strong.

The five steps are as follows, along with a short explication for each:

1. Gaining proximity to a phenomenon related to the non-human person you wish to engage in direct communication with

2. Cultivating a sense of the non-humanness of this spirit or person

3. Cultivating a respectful attitude and heart towards this spirit or person

4. Formally gaining the attention of the spirit or person

5. Going into a passive mode of openness.


Gaining proximity

Not all non-human persons have a perceptual "outward form" associated with them- one good example would be the spirit of the wind. Wind is invisible, but when outdoors, one is nearly always in contact with the wind in some way- one is in proximity- so long as the wind is blowing that day, wherever you are. This procedure is more favorably and easily used with the powers associated with spirits that can be experienced in an easy way- trees, mountains, bodies of water, and the like.

Going to the tree, river, hill or mountain (and one really need only be at least in sight of it, though the closer one gets, the better) is the first step in this process. The "journey" to the place, no matter how short or long, is actually a powerful and venerable part of this process. One goes to this power's tangible presence with a reverential attitude. Before the approach to the place, one should wash oneself into purity, with hot water, steam, ocean or spring water, or some other wash, and/or smudge with a sacred herb that has the force of purification assigned to it by tradition.

Cultivating a sense for non-humanness

This portion of the procedure is one of the most neglected aspects of spiritual communion that I have encountered- and my personal realization of it represented quite a leap and evolution of my own ability to complete this work.

When we are attempting to speak with non-human powers, we forget often that they are, in fact, not human. This sounds trite, but from the perspective of a human mind and heart, it is a crucial fact. We aren't used to communicating intellectually and consciously with entities that aren't humans, that don't look and think like us, and use our language. We can communicate in various ways with our animal friends or pets, but in general, the vast majority of our conscious communication is with other people.

This fact conditions us to think of "real" communication only in human terms. It makes us consider the theoretical existence of any intelligent non-human power only in human terms- humans get angry; so what could anger a spirit? Humans have preferences- what does a spirit prefer? Humans look lustfully upon other humans- do spirits lust after the same things?

Sacred stories of spirits interacting with humans are also framed in human terms, though sometimes, the more powerful the story, the stranger you'll find spirits acting- the more ambiguous, the more mysterious.

Those who desire communication with spirits must focus themselves intently on the fact that these non-human persons are, in fact, not human; they have to let human-like preconceptions about the spirit go and open themselves to what it really means and feels to approach what is (from our perception) an alien being. I don't mean "alien" in the sense of being from another planet; I mean alien to our human thinking, motivations, and sensibilities- and the more powerful the spirit, the more this will be true.

Some things will always unite us to our brothers and sisters in the non-human range of life; that sacred stories present spirits with sometimes human-seeming motivations is not a mistake or a superstitious limitation. But to imagine the unseen powers as simply "humans writ immortal and insubstantial" is an extreme error. It limits the possibilities that a spirit-seer must remain open to.

My procedure is to look within, and sense a large distance between me and the spiritual power, and, distant from me, is the power itself, which I never visualize. I only know that it is there- after all, I can "feel" it by virtue of being near the physical phenomenon that I believe it is associated with- and I let it be a non-human, mysterious thing. I concentrate on the strangeness of non-human persons, how they must feel at least a bit strange or even disturbing from the human perspective, owing to our limitations as human beings. We see the world as we are- that is an unavoidable truth. Now, at this step in the procedure, we can break with that habit just a bit and let the powers out there be what they are.

Too many people go out to find "spirits" and forget that "us going to them" is an approach that is only half complete. One must realize that spiritual powers will respond to those they wish to respond to, and that they "come to us", as well. You can go as far as you like and try many things, but without certain key perspectives and ingredients in place, spirits aren't likely to just "come to you", thus making the contact whole.

You will discover that meditating on the strangeness of non-human persons, their mystery, and letting your human-shaped notions about them fall away, opens you up immediately to subtle levels of possibility for communication that you may never have engaged. The strangeness of non-human persons doesn't mean that they are not intimately connected to us, on the deepest levels; it does not mean that they are hostile, though some can be dangerous.

Cultivating a sense of respect

Once you have accomplished the first two stances of this procedure, this central third step may be the most important. One must make it clear, on the heart level, that one comes in a sense of total solidarity and respect for the spirit one wishes a communion with. You make this clear by filling the heart with respect and awe, a sort of admiration born in the fact that your hoped-for communication partner is another living being like yourself, but having a life-experience very much unlike you, and its life-experience is no less crucial than your own.

The more beings and persons that exist, and the more we can integrate consciously into our network of relationships, the more sacred power we will personally collect and manifest, and the closer we will come to our own destinies- for a part of every destiny is learning to live in harmony with all powers.

A note of caution here is, of course, required: there are powers who spend their existence being harmful to other living beings, including humans. This procedure really isn't for communing with them, nor should a communion really be an issue for them- they are best respected for their sacred necessity, but avoided or left alone, and at most, sealed out of near proximity to human minds and dwelling places.

Offering your heart in respect to the spiritual power that you are communicating with is the first of the two things you will do to gain its direct attention. This activity need not be complicated; if one has the necessary poetry in their heart for the sacred powers, it won't be hard to feel respect and awe and even veneration- the strong sense of sacred worth- for the spirits as a whole, and the spirit whose communion you wish.

Then, you let this feeling extend from your chest and middle-body to the direction of the physical, tangible phenomenon whose proximity you went into.

Formally gaining attention

At this point, one must make an outward demonstration of sound and offering to gain the attention of the spirit. Drums and rattles are the best, but the addition of burning sweet grass or other fragrant herbs makes a far more powerful demonstration.

Without drums or rattles (or alongside them) one may softly whistle, play some instrument, or sing. The real point and power here is in knowing that you are making these offerings of sound and herbs with the intent of gaining the spirit's attention.

At this stage, one may wish to speak ones intentions for the conversation or communion. One may speak them in the heart, but I find that they are more effective if they are spoken aloud on some level.

Going into a passive state of openness

The final phase of this procedure is the setting of the stage upon which this sacred drama can finally be consummated. You, as a human being, have gone as far as you can "towards" the spirit- coming, purified, into the presence of some item or phenomenon associated with it, losing ones' preconceived notions of it, allowing it to be the mystery that at heart, it truly is; emanating respect and kinship towards it, and calling it formally and traditionally. Now, if the contact is going to occur, it will be because the mysterious entity comes to you- and even if it did, if you are not passively open to its approach, you will not encounter it on any level.

At this point, the chest and middle-body must be opened to the power, and one must spiritually "watch" for the approach of the being. Watching in this way doesn't mean looking, though one may also look, if they like. It means being in touch with the "chest" sight, and with how one feels. One must not make an attempt to strain to "feel" this approach; one becomes passive, open to whatever arises. The spirit can come in many ways- as an animal, even; it can manifest as winds or sounds, as a vision or a feeling. The "feeling" of the presence of the spiritual power is normally one of the most profound aspects of this experience. But it can go much deeper.

An internal conversation can begin in some cases; these are more than just the classic "I'm talking to myself" quandaries; this natural and mystical internal conversation takes place as readily and actually as your communion with my words here on this paper- an "outside source" of intelligence and personhood speaks to you, shaping feelings and knowledges in yourself of its lore, responses, or intentions. Another "layer of sight" may open up near you or in you, "strong eyes" opening to show you something of the spirit in an inner-sight. Only those who have gained such an experience can understand what I am trying to say.

The greatest problem with these sorts of experiences is the degree to which our hearts can deceive our heads. If we wish for spiritual contact very fondly, we put ourselves in danger of "making it up"- and fooling ourselves. But real openness to spiritual contact only comes when we accord spirits the final and greatest respect we can give them: the option not to communicate with you. You cannot assay this procedure if you are obsessed, singlemindedly, with talking to spirits. You must go into it with the attitude that "if it happens, good, if not, fine. All is well either way."

If you know that you will be disappointed at failing to gain a communication-experience, do not try this procedure. If you intend to use this procedure as part of a vision-seeking, you must extend this attitude all the more. There is nothing wrong with working hard and trying multiple times, but you cannot let yourself slip into the state of obsession with result. This would not be respectful, and it will lead to self-deceit.

For those who are seeking a vision, this procedure can be used in conjunction with sleep- once the spirit is called, going "open" and going to sleep can allow a stage for a dream-vision to arise from the power. One must be open to any and all visions that arise in sleep, and have no expectation of outcome.

It is no accident that this procedure for speaking to non-human persons also outlines a very wise way of approaching and communicating with human persons as well: to let our preconceived notions of other humans fall by the wayside, to be respectful to them and cultivate a sense of our kinship, and to not be obsessed with the outcomes of our relationships with others- allowing them to be who they are. These stances in communication can help things between people immensely.

Good and Wild

Good and Wild
A Letter from Hinhan about Dualism, Freedom, and Wholeness

"In wildness is the preservation of the World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plough and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind. Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a she-wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source."

-Henry David Thoreau, Walking

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The Dualistic Conflict

All my life, I've been battered by the dominant paradigmatic metaphysical perceptions of my society. I say "battered" because in a world divided harshly between extremes of "good and evil" or "right and wrong", the sheer speed and motion of the simple binary mental machine, the back-and-forth dualism, can do nothing other than bruise and smash the skulls and brains of those who are sensitive enough to grasp moral subtlety.

I've said this for years- a world divided between "good and evil" will necessarily generate evil alongside its good- and in my experience of it, it seems to generate more evils than goods. The binary moral system is self-perpetuating, and, in the end, self-defeating, because it creates conflict only to continue conflict. The "good guys" of my society are only good insofar as they have fresh evils to face and defeat, or at least to sermonize against. Would a policeman ever want all crime to be done and gone? Of course not; the venerable Lao-Tzu was right to quip "a bad man is a good man's job."

In a strange sense, the whole root of the problem with neverending philosophical/dualistic conflict is found in the same tainted perception that gives rise to capitalism- the notion that people should be taught to prefer competition to cooperation. We are taught that good and evil have to compete, and taught to look forward to the day that good "wins"- just as we are taught that businesses have to compete, and taught to look forward to the day that the business you've invested in wins and absorbs the competition or drives them out of the market.

But what happens when a business finally out-competes all the others? A monopoly is created- the one thing that capitalism cannot allow, and cannot abide by. This paradox lives at the heart of the capitalist system, and a metaphysical equivalent exists at the heart of the "good versus evil" spiritual paradigm. A Buddhist prayer to wisdom states "If you abide in dualism, you live in the right and wrong country." What humor!

Defining Organic Evil

When people such as myself begin to rack on "moral dualism" or religions that teach absolute value-differences between what they call (and define as) "good" and "evil", there is a typical reaction from the "other side"- they love to toss pictures of raped women or dead, murdered children in your face and say "so you think this isn't evil?"

In no manner do I believe that naked, inexcusable violence against other beings to whom we are bound in a social contract of restraint, cooperation, and benevolence is "good"; I might even say it is "evil", so long as you allow me to define "evil" as "a situation, occurrence, condition, or rationale which threatens and/or destroys the healthy continuity of the mind or body of a person or persons, or the good, healthy continuity of a family or community."

If you give me that definition, I'm on board for the use of the word "evil". If you want "evil" to include talk about biblical devils, demons, or some failure to abide by the Christian God's rules that were supposedly given to the ancient Hebrews, or some other "godly law" that was passed down to some people somewhere, then I'm not on board. I'm not on board even if those laws seem pretty decent. They are still culturally encapsulated, and carry with them the prejudices and limitations of that particular culture, and cannot suffice to speak meaningfully to all of mankind.

I once tried to belong wholly to a culture, and later, other "cultures". I realized my folly when the sacred powers to whom I am kin made me realize that the world was different now- cultures and nations had made their transition into rivers of power, no longer mountain peaks and stones and pools. The powers of mankind, vital, living, flowing, had always been interacting in the past, changing one another, learning from one another, fighting, loving, and exploring with one another- but they had more distance then, both physical and mental distances.

Now, that was over. We are citizens of a planet now. The forms of ancient cultures that stand behind us are not useless; they contain beauty, wisdom, and usefulness, in most cases- and they certainly help us to understand our ancestors better, and this is important, because the ancestral powers also still exist. They can help us if we understand who they were and who they still are.

But "culture" is no longer a battle-standard, despite the fear that drives others to think so. Cultures have become shared songs of power, songs of memory, and songs of inspiration to help us as we go about in our new world. Our loyalty to them must necessarily take new forms. So many of our ideas of "good" and "evil" in the past were absolutely culturally defined- but what do we do when we encounter the massive variations of culture, and all their differing ideas of evil and good?

My answer is: "return to a simpler, more organic way of seeing." In the past, the most basic organic and spiritual realities, is found the future- when past and future meet, a circle is formed, and this world, this nature, this sublime spiritual field, is a circle, including all.

I seek an organic definition of evil, one that includes natural process for humans and communities, and the land itself. We need reason and wisdom to see precisely what each individual, family, or community requires with respect to "health" or "goodness"- we must have reason to see that there is no possibility of health or goodness without access to the basic necessities of life; but we have to have wisdom to see that there is no health or goodness without leaving people and communities their own private, sovereign space, a space in which to explore themselves without undue interference from others, or undue pressure to assimilate into a larger "meta-society" that may be far out of step with the natural rhythms established by nature herself in the lives of those individuals, families, or communities.

We have to be willing to "give room", to give respect, and not just give "necessities". Of course, in my way of thinking, room- or private, sovereign space of mind- and respect are necessities. Without them, we cease to live, and begin to just survive. These precious things should only be interfered with when there is a clear and present danger to the health of others, once again pursuant to the typical idea of a social contract.

We can have a social contract that includes many societies. But it will take respect- it will take a final admission on the parts of many that other people, different people, are not (as Wade Davis said) "failed attempts at being them"- that other people with all their differences are unique manifestations of the human spirit, deserving of the same care in preservation that we'd accord to an endangered animal species or a rare piece of artwork.

Good and Wild

What I have been talking about- our ability to recognize the uniqueness in other people, individuals, families, and cultures- and to restrain ourselves in a social contract which allows us to become self-sacrificing and sharing to aid in supporting a common welfare- this is my definition of "good". This is something that the true "wild" beast cannot and will not do- they do not see the "others" of the forest (beyond their mates or offspring, and even then, only conditionally) as beings that they must sacrifice to care for. They may look upon their own kind and see, in whatever instinctive social arrangement nature guides them to band into, some hope for survival, but this is not the same as human benevolence. It is a deeper, wilder law.

This is not to say that the wild is flawed somehow. It is marvelous and sacred, every bit as marvelous and sacred as the human style of socializing. What we humans must do is a monumental feat of spirit- to restrain the wild and embrace the good. By saying this, introducing this new dichotomy, I am not trying to start a new dualism. Wild is not in opposition to good. Wild is wild, and wild is good in its own way, serving its own valuable, sacred function for those beings who are immersed in it without choice, and (human) good is good in its own way, serving a valuable, sacred function for those beings whose destiny was to enter into it. Those beings are us.

And there is no need for competition between the "wild" and the "good". In fact, as ancient human societies all knew, their own good and the well-being of the wild, were tied together. They went hand-in-hand. Those societies- like ours- that have allowed "wild" to become associated with "evil" and "civilization" to become associated with "good"- have strayed into a deadly, fast-moving propeller of dualistic confusion. They have become blinded to the goodness in wildness, and the need to have a acceptance of, and even a measure of, the wildness in goodness.

"Good and evil" has now given way in my thinking to "good and wild". There is the good of social grace, whether it be the brutal social instinctiveness of the pride of lions, or the contrived social restraint and self-sacrifice of human beings for other beings, and there is the wild which is its own sacred, higher law- a law of non-restraint, of vital energy flowing defiant, of instinctive celebration of life, of no boundaries. In the wild, no being apologizes for being powerful, magnificent, faster than others, or vicious, and no Godly judge stands over them to punish them for pride. All wild power flows as far as it can, before it is checked by another, and the sun sets and rises as it always has.

In the human world, the wild must be restrained, true. But it cannot, like some evil demon, be hated or lined up for "final defeat" one day. The good and the wild must be seen as cooperating sacred forces, dwelling in their own specific metaphysical locations, thriving as they must alongside one another, but never as mortal foes.

It is certainly true that the most brutal crimes seen within human groups have everything to do with the "breaking loose" of the wild in us. I have no doubts of it; but this alone does not vilify the wild, or take away its sacredness or appropriateness. It merely highlights the point that the sacred powers require their own sacred manner of acceptance and handling, or they will, (like fire that is mishandled) burn all those around them, and, in the case of our wars, will burn down the forest.

We cannot wall ourselves off emotionally from the wild, as though it were some bogey-evil. It is the vital source of our lives, the wellspring of our passions and our creativity, even. Its raw power must be channeled with wisdom into a context of human good. Like fire it is sacred but neutral- capable of great benevolence and great destruction. The wild and the good must be loved, both; this is wholeness.

The great naturalist Henry David Thoreau has the single most powerful and beautiful thing to say about the good and the wild. He wrote, in his great work "Walden":

"As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented. Once or twice, however, while I lived at the pond, I found myself ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound, with a strange abandonment, seeking some kind of venison which I might devour, and no morsel could have been too savage for me. The wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good."

Thoreau was blessed to live in tranquility and so close to the wild- and he was visited by the powers of the wild- true spirits- who appeared to him in the forms of these impulses and ideas that arose in him. He communed with the powers of the wild, and learned so much. May we all do the same, and find our way.

Pte-Oyate

An old story says that men and women were created to serve the sacred powers. "Therein lies your happiness..." go the words of the chief guiding power of the creation: Skan, the sky-father and creative power of the world-order. It was the spirit called Wisdom that he set to the task of bestowing upon the first humans intelligence, and teaching them language, and how to live wisely, to please the sacred powers.

The first men and women, it is said, lived in the regions under the world, and ate the white fruits of those places. The sacred powers that combined to become the mystery of their true origin were many; Nothing comes to be without the combination of many sacred powers. Nothing persists without the participation of many sacred powers, in the present; when powers diverge, they are still sacred and they move back into new combinations of mystery or the incomprehensible (wakan). The system of life is sacred, and it is all. It is what we have and what we are.

The true nature of all things is wakan or sacred, incomprehensible. Is there a more liberating idea, born in the truest of all organic traditions, that of the animistic well of life? We are free to enjoy the experiences of our senses and minds without burdening ourselves with endless argument, labeling, and fruitless categorizations and discussions. To embrace the incomprehensible is to become flowing and alive- not trying to capture anything with words, but being flexible and in touch.

If you can melt the ice that often comes to cover your heart, you will re-enter the stream of warm, living incomprehensible forces that flow, rage, create, vanish, arise, fall away, destroy, endure, and love. We are all part of a true dance of powers, and none can deny this who understand. Is there any need for anything else? What religion could add to this sacred way of being?

The following story is true: it is a prayer of honor for the Sky.

* * *
Great Skan, Father first and foremost,
You have placed Sun very high,
Made Sun the Great Above,
Placing him above the blue dome of yourself.
Sun governs the two times; you have made it so.
You are the source of power and spirit;
You keep this authority through all time.
You are with the superior wakan,
The four powers that are Great Wakan:
Rock, who was first;
Earth, ancestress of all things on the world,
Sun, light and warmth,
Sky, father and shaper.
Many wakan relatives exist
Alongside you and the sacred powers.
In the regions under the earth,
The sacred powers were gathered by you, Skan
To create a servant fit for the mysterious kin.
For yourself and for all the sacred powers
Were man and woman made, the Pte-oyate!
From Rock, you took the substance of bone,
From Earth, you took what was needed for flesh,
From the waters you took what was needed for red blood,
The power of Beauty,
Who carries all prayers to you and the sacred powers,
She brought the white fruits of the world below
And from them, you made the entrails of men and women.
Two figures you created from these things,
Sacred mother and father,
The mother of mothers was made in the image of Beauty,
The father of fathers in the image of the Cunning one.
To each you gave a spirit
That is like that of the Great powers, but lesser in force;
From within yourself you took a spirit
And made of it a gift, a spirit to guide all men
And women through life and to the afterlife.
To each of your good shapes you gave a living power.
Sun you commanded
To give the gift of warmth to the people you made:
Thanks to Sun, each of us is warm.
Wind you commanded
To breathe into each of them the breath of life,
Thanks to Wind, each of us has that ghost of breath.
Without understanding the first living people were,
Until you commanded Wisdom to bestow intelligence,
And teach to them language-
A gift we have never forgotten.
The Great Thunder-powers who give increase and growth,
They were there in the below:
You commanded them to give to man and woman the gift
That makes them healthy and growing,
And drives them to make offspring.
To Moon, you gave the task
Of planting in man and woman affection for each other,
And it was so-
Men and women still seek warm embraces.
To Beauty, you entrusted the task
Of placing a longing in men and women
To cherish and love their offspring.
That longing has grown in us ever since!
And it was so, from that time to this,
Before the first people and their offspring
Came to live in this world above.
Before they came
From the great below to this world,
This is how they were made,
And how all the wakan powers are still part of us.
No power dwells alone; all are kin.
To serve the sacred powers is to recognize them;
To wisely recognize what we receive,
To wisely recognize what we owe, and what we can give back.
All my relations.

* * *
The story given above is written by me, with information drawn from James R. Walker's "Literary Cycle", from Lakota Myth. It illustrates well in mythical language what the wise of the world, from every part of the world have always known- we are one with all things, made by all things, for all things, and one another.

Fire in the Mountain

Love is the name given to our experience of the sacred connection between ourselves and all other things, places, times, and beings. Experience it just a little through the mind and body of another person- all their appearances, words, emotions and actions- and you'll feel great love for them. Experience it just a little through the rolling shapes of the land around you, and you'll feel great love for that place. Experience the entirety of your connection to all things, and you'll love everything.

If you can relax secure in the knowledge of your connection while you are alive, death will let you have it all. Death will strip away the blinders and let you have it all. If you can't relax in this truth during life, then death won't be near as grand. We all have to die. Go to your death as far more than you ever imagined you were. Let your death be the ultimate act of love and the experience of love. You can do that by letting your life be the ultimate act of love and the experience of love. Then, there won't be any "life" or "death" at all.

Love is the death of death.

By Your Life, I Will Serve

I had need.
I have dispossessed you of
beauty, grace and life
I have taken your spirit
from its worldly frame.
No more will you run in freedom
because of my need.

I had need.
You have in life served
your kind in goodness.
By your life, I will serve
my brothers and sisters.
Without you I hunger and grow weak,
Without you I am helpless, nothing.

I had need.
Give me your flesh for strength.
Give me your covering for protection.
Give me your bones for your labors.
And I shall not want.

-Ojibwe Prayer to a Slain Deer


* * *

"Shoot your four-legged brother in the hind area, slowing it down but not killing it. Then, take the four-legged’s head in your hands, and look into his eyes. The eyes are where all the suffering is. Look into your brother’s eyes and feel his pain. Then, take your knife and cut the four-legged under the chin, here, on his neck, so that he dies quickly. And as you do, ask your brother, the four-legged, for forgiveness for what you do. Offer also a prayer of thanks to your four-legged kin for offering his body to you just now, when you need food to eat and clothing to wear. And promise the four-legged that you will put yourself back into the earth when you die, to become the nourishment of the earth, and for the sister flowers, and for the brother deer. It is appropriate that you should offer this blessing for the four-legged and, in due time, reciprocate in turn with your body in this way, as the four-legged gives life to you for your survival."

-Instruction to Sioux Hunters on Hunting in a Sacred Manner

The Story of a Place: Religion Doesn't Travel

You cannot bring a "religion" to a new land. Each land is different and sacred, and has its own powers, its own stories. A set of customs and Gods from somewhere else simply cannot and will not thrive as it did back where it came from. Over time, it can become integrated with the powers of a new place, of this I have no doubt. But it will necessarily be changed if the integration is done properly. To fail at the integration is to invite disaster and loss of spiritual power. To succeed at the integration is to accept a new sacred story, complete with its own secret history and its own powers, into your way of seeing. This changes a lot about you, as well as your "religion", if you happen to carry one of those around.

Some things, to me, are not "native" to any place- they can travel anywhere because they belong everywhere. The belief in the spirit, the belief in sacred powers, the belief in the need for respect or inter-connection between all things; these ways of seeing are parts of a universal truth about our existence here in the middle-world. They are not the "religion" I am talking about. You can't carry The river-God of one people into a land of rivers that is thousands of miles away, which has its own river-Gods; to do so is at the very least rude, rude to your new hosts- and at most dangerous. I think that the river God of the distant country might still be able to "see" or "hear" you in some extraordinary way, especially if you make the effort to contact it, but the local river-Gods in whose presence you immediately dwell certainly are aware of you. Just as you wouldn't think to enter a person's home and ignore them as they try to speak to you, so you shouldn't ignore the beings of the sacred story that is embedded in whatever land you come to inhabit, should you move across the land and change your home.

Coming to live in a new place always entails learning new stories, new secrets, and learning to interact with new powers. I can go so far as to say that each place has its own "religion" naturally carved into it, in many ways seen and unseen. Keeping your old religion means integrating it with the voice of your new place, and that means that it may change. But life is water, not rock- change is no evil thing. Perhaps the religion you were born in has undergone many changes long before you knew it, or your ancestors knew it, and so who can say what "it" really is supposed to be. I think our respect for our ancestors is the only and best reason to keep a religion you know they cherished, but no one- our ancestors included- can make life into rock. We have to live as they did, and engage places and powers with flexibility and wisdom. Living respectfully demands no less.

When I come to a new place- at some point, I set about opening my mind to "learn the story" of that place. That story, learned piece by piece over time, learned through visions and dreams, must become the basis of my "religious" practice in that place. Religious practice is really just a formal way of showing respect to a story- whether the story of a place, the story of your ancestors, or what have you. There are many ways to show respect; some ways are shared by many people, formed into traditions over time, and others are personal, but no less important.

I bring my seven basic beliefs- described in my last post here (and in other places) everywhere I go. To them, I add some things I know my ancestors believed, but always- now more than ever- I set about learning the story of a place, to add to the mix. That is my way. When I leave this place, this place that I have lived in for years, and whose story is still being revealed to me slowly, I will find a new story. Discovering that is part of life's enjoyment. Life and religion is water, not stone.

The Still-in-Danger Gray Wolf

Published: January 28, 2008
This editorial was found here from the New York Times.

* * *

One of the great wildlife management stories of our time is the reintroduction of the gray wolf to the Rocky Mountains. From a few dozen animals released in Yellowstone in 1995, the wolf population has grown to about 1,500 in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. This remarkable comeback means that later this year the gray wolf will be removed from the list of endangered species, at which point its fate will be entrusted to federally approved state management plans that conservationists warn are unacceptably weak.

Yet the wolves could find themselves in trouble even before they are removed from the endangered list. At the same time it was negotiating the state management plans, the Bush administration was quietly revising an important rule in the Endangered Species Act. The purpose of the rule is to give states flexibility in managing reintroduced species. As revised by the administration, it would require only that each state protect 20 breeding pairs and 200 total wolves. That could allow as many as 900 recently protected wolves to be slaughtered.

The revised rule is aimed not at protecting cattle or sheep but at protecting elk and deer for hunters. In our view, hunters would be wise to oppose this. The question for them is whether they want to hunt in what passes for nature, complete with a predator like the wolf, or in what passes for a game farm.

Since the gray wolf was reintroduced, studies have shown its importance to the balance of nature. What matters isn’t just the presence of wolves in the landscape, though that is profound in itself, as anyone who has seen a wolf pack crossing Yellowstone can attest. What matters is the effect they have on their ecosystem: suppressing coyotes, changing the behavior of elk and benefiting grizzly bears, which routinely take over the kills wolves make. The wolf has had to wait eons for humans to become wise enough to coexist with it. That can’t happen until this cynical loophole in the Endangered Species Act is closed.

Wolf Kills To Begin Again

A Yahoo! news story today has spelled out some distressing news about the Gray Wolf.

Gray wolf hunts planned after de-listing

In a remarkable and oft-repeated example of how much the United States Government doesn't care about the sacredness of life, and how much people do care about money, Gray Wolves- once on the endangered and protected list, are now off, and an army of morons is preparing to hunt them back onto the list.

In the Yahoo! story I linked to, there is a pretty telling quote. It reads:

Wildlife biologists estimate there are now 41 breeding pairs in Idaho, in 72 packs. If that number falls below 10 breeding pairs, or 15 during a three-year period, the wolves could be brought back under federal protection.

It's outrageous to me that 15 breeding pairs in Idaho is considered "endangered" for the Gray Wolf, but 41 isn't. One would imagine that they'd be taken off the protected list only after they had expanded in population a bit more. But before these (and many other) perplexing questions are asked, we might as well level the playing field and just say what's really going on: these proud and powerful creatures, whose spirit has been part of the continent of North America since time immemorial, are a danger to the contrived and overblown hunting industry. The myth is that they depopulate elk and deer populations, thus preventing bored idiots from hunting them for sport, and from bringing revenue to the states.

How terrible that doctors and lawyers from the city might have their hunting vacations trod upon by other creatures that actually need to hunt to live, and who never kill for sport! Imagine it!

It goes deeper- how people are choosing to deal with this "problem" is reflective of the distance people have grown from the simple animistic duty we all have to respect life, and to respect the well-being of the animal nations that live alongside us. Farmers claim (as they have always claimed) that wolves destroy and harass their farm animals, and indeed, the government has given farmers a free pass to shoot as many wolves as they can claim are "stalking" their livestock.

So money and guns once again take the center stage of human thinking on these matters of spiritual importance. Why not just get dogs? Since very early times, humans have used herd dogs and sheep dogs and just dogs in general to protect their livestock from wolves. It worked then, it would work now. Instead of going straight to bullets, why not re-engage the rules of nature, and have these canine creatures place each other in check, as they will? Why not consider better ways to contain and protect livestock?

These people are really wrapped up in the myth that they "own" land and that they have the moral ground to decide life and death for other creatures that have been living on this land far longer than they. We may have papers saying that we have the legal right to stay in a place, but we don't "own" land in any sense beyond the shallow perceptions of our ownership-obsessed society. And we certainly don't have the right to hunt creatures onto endangered lists, when the real issue is our lack of flexibility and creativity for learning to co-exist with them.

Farmers were the original cause of the wolf exterminations of the last three centuries- to "protect livestock", wolf populations were excoriated as "pests" and "intruders" and hunted to near nothingness.

The Master Spirit of Wolves will not be an advocate for humanity on the day that our species is represented before the powers of life. If humans can't think more systemically and ecologically about how they approach this matter (and don't get me started on the other animal nations that have suffered at our lack of wisdom) then perhaps we don't deserve the friendship or advocacy of the spiritual powers that we refuse to live in harmony with.

If you want to find out more about this travesty, and find out what you can do to help, EarthJustice has an excellent informative article about it, and lots of contact numbers for environmental protection groups that are fighting for the wolves. You can see it all here:

EarthJustice Press Release

And long live the fighters!

You do not have to be good

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of rain
are moving over the landscapes
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese
high in the clear blue air
are heading home again.
Whoever you are
no matter how lonely
the world offers itself to your imagination
calls to you like the wild geese
harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-Mary Oliver

Tasteless: Towards a Food-Based Approach to Death

Here I have an excellent article, written by a late environmental philosopher who died in her home in the Australian wilderness of a snakebite. My friend Kangi showed me this; it is yet another thing I am indebted to him for. This article certainly brings an interesting new angle to an old perspective: our need to consciously situate ourselves in the ecological story that we all naturally belong to.

The name of this article is "Tasteless: Towards a Food-Based Approach to Death" and it is by Val Plumwood. It can be found here:

Tasteless: Towards a Food-Based Approach to Death

I hope to snare your interest by posting the first three paragraphs of this excellent and important work here:

“Tasteless: Towards a Food-Based Approach to Death” by Val Plumwood

Food/Death
Two encounters with death led to my becoming radically dissatisfied with the usual western selection of death narratives -- both Christian-monotheist AND modernist-atheist. I think both major traditions inherit the human exceptionalism and hyper-separation that propels the environmental crisis. However, there are encouraging signs of a developing animist consciousness and mortuary practice that challenges exceptionalism and grasps human of death in terms of reciprocity in the earth community.

Some years ago, as an already established environmental philosopher, I had a close encounter with food/death, death as food for a large predator. I was seized by a Saltwater Crocodile, largest of the living saurians, heirs to the gastronomic tastes of the ancient dinosaurs. By a fortunate conjunction of circumstances I survived – slightly tenderized, but basically set aside for another occasion. Since then it has seemed to me that our worldview denies the most basic feature of animal existence on planet earth – that we are food and that through death we nourish others. The food/death perspective, so familiar to our ancestors, is something the human exceptionalism of western modernity has structured out of serious comment. Attention to human foodiness is tasteless. Of course we are all routinely nibbled both during and after life by all sorts of very small creatures, but in the microscopic context our essential foodiness is much easier to ignore than in one where we are munched by a noticeably large predator.

Modernist liberal individualism teaches us that we own our lives and bodies, politically as an enterprise we are running, experientially as a drama we are variously narrating, writing, and/or reading. As hyper-individuals, we owe nothing to nobody, not to our mothers, let alone to any nebulous earth community. Exceptionalised as both species and individuals, we humans cannot be positioned in the food chain in the same way as other animals. Predation on humans is monstrous, exceptionalised and subject to extreme retaliation. Horror movies, stories and jokes reflect our deep-seated dread of becoming food for other forms of life : horror is the wormy corpse, vampires sucking blood and sci-fi monsters trying to eat humans ("Alien 1 and 2"). Horror and outrage greet stories of other species eating live or dead humans, various levels of hysteria our nibbling by leeches, sandflies, mosquitoes and worms. Dominant concepts of human identity position humans outside and above the food chain, not as part of the feast in a chain of reciprocity. Animals can be our food, but we can never be their food. Human Exceptionalism positions us as the eaters of others who are never themselves eaten.

From Surviving to Living: The Animistic Life-Way

Chief Seattle is said to have spoken these words in a speech to the United States Government:

"Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by the talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is it to say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival."

I was always struck by the last line in this paragraph. Whether or not the old chief made these speeches (and there is a controversy there) means little to me; the words have powerful meaning. It comes home to me clearly that most people today- myself included, for the longest time- have a way of falling victim to a "slow burn" life which isn't really worthy of the term "life". We associate eating, sleeping, and making money directly with "living", and we associate the mere fact of respiration, heartbeat, and blood pressure with "living" in the same way, but "life", for people who have seen more clearly, is more than survival; it's more than the accumulation of wealth or the prolonged operation of organs and brains.

"Life" in the truest and best sense of the word is firstly about knowledge. Knowing the truth about one's place in the world, knowing the truth of one's firm and unbreakable connectedness to all things, and celebrating this fact makes simple survival into true living. It is not enough to have some shallow ideas about some "biological" reality you share with other animals or with some nebulous term like "nature"; that is not what I mean by "knowledge of one's place".

Neither we human beings nor any other creature can be reduced to a few scientific-sounding "rules" or diagrams. It isn't what we "are" that joins us to other things, but what we do, how we participate in life. What joins us all are sacred processes- processes by which we seek out our own kind, share love, come into the world, grow, learn, take chances, feel passions, search the world, become wise, and die. Everything in its own way joins us in this way of life's unfolding. It's a high mystery and a most sacred thing. Even those parts of our experience that we have long ago written off as "inanimate"- such as rocks or mountains or rivers- join us in the great vision of interaction, and they are no less related to us and no less necessary to this world as any thing we call "animate" or "living".

When we encounter so-called "inanimate" things in the context of non-ordinary reality, such as in sacred moments of trance or vision, we see that they can be experienced as non-human persons in their own right, and if you believe like me, the non-ordinary context is far more important, when it comes to human understanding and behavior, than what we have come to call the "ordinary".

Our place is within the great web of life itself, with all its boundless activity, and our connectedness to things is obvious to those who have to do things like find water, grow food or hunt it, build fires to protect from the cold, rely on others for companionship or well-being, raise a child, learn from teachers, create art or crafts, encounter the wisdom and stories of the past, or suffer from the misdeeds of other people. There are many more examples of connectedness, but these few will suffice for now.

It isn't enough to intellectually know about our place in this great realm of powers we call "nature", nor to comprehend how inter-connected we all are only with our thoughts; if one does not actually feel the awe of it, feel the beauty and joy of it, then one has not experienced it in its fullness. When one does so, one celebrates the wonder of it all, the joy, the fear, and the mystery of it- and that raises us from the simple and well-worn "mundane" experience of our daily grind into real life.

In real life there is a sacred context there for any experience we may have- it is more than just a hunger pain or a drive for food; it is more than a tear or a laugh; it is part of the great mystery of things, sacred and inexhaustible. For people who understand the sacredness of experiences, their every breath is an awesome thing, an expression of the sacred. For those who do not understand, their every breath is a clock ticking down to the time when they breathe no more.


"Life" in the deeper sense of the word is also about wisdom- and what is wisdom? I've heard many fine definitions for the word, but "wisdom" for me flows from the special sort of knowledge I discussed above- when we know our place in things and our interconnections, then wisdom is born, and wisdom is nothing more (or less) than the internal guidance and voice that leads us to live well. Wisdom leads us to live as we should live- and living as we should, we find that the web of life- both the web of our own lives, and to an extent, the greater web that touches us, flourishes and becomes healthy.

What is wisdom's great guidance? How do the wise treat the world, themselves, and others? I have heard many fine answers to this question as well, but the best I have ever heard is this: "With respect". The wise live according to the idea of respect for the web of life and all its sacred powers, including oneself and other human beings. All are equal and sacred in the round of life; there is no first or last, no weak or strong. Wisdom leads us to wholeness and equality, but it only does so if we give ourselves to the idea of "respect" and give ourselves to it fully.

This is what it means to "live in a sacred manner". Whatever one must do, one does it respectfully and with full awareness. One lets their actions be guided by necessity and moderation, but always with respect in the forefront of their mind. One treats life- all life- with respect. Some wonder at how warriors in the old days (or now) can kill others, people or animals, if they believe in such a way; but death is not the evil that immortality-obsessed western societies often take it for; death is, in fact, unavoidable, and how we live- REALLY live- is far more important than our eventual deaths. That being said, when one must kill for one's survival or the survival of family and friends, one must never be cruel. That is respect, even in such a situation.

This same idea leads us to what "evil" really is- for humans, as well as for sentient non-human persons (such as spirits), evil is a lack of respect which is born in a selfish turning away from the truth of our inter-connectedness and the sacredness of things. Evil is not the self-existing opposite of some force called "good"; it is just a lack of respect; it is a poverty of goodness.


People's doubts about death have a way of fading swiftly if they can open their hearts to nature's simple teachings on the subject. We are an inseparable part of a system of sacred ecology, and no amount of ignoring this fact will ever change it. There is fear and pain in ignoring this fact, and joy and peace in accepting it. Accepting this means accepting our deaths every bit as much as we accept our lives, but as the old stories tell us, death is hardly the beast we've long considered it: the dead live on in other ways. The dead must live, for while the web of life includes events and occasions that we describe as "death", it always remains a web of life. What is good for us is to live well, and not think that we can control the outpouring of life's many processes and interactions, nor life's ends.

John Muir said:

"Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life."

When a person touches such wisdom and when they let it lodge in their heart, they stop surviving from day to day and they begin living the way they should live. A joy of belonging settles on them, alongside a joy of fearlessness, and these joys transform survival into life. The powers of knowledge and wisdom awaken us from our dazed, drugged, or zombie-like stumbling of day to day survival, and they shake us awake into real participatory living, real sacred living.

This is why I have taken the slogan "The End of Survival and the Beginning of Living" as my personal motto; for too long I was sleepwalking through life, and just surviving. When I opened my heart to the sacredness of things and the connectedness of things, I felt the true life that was asleep in me awaken. With my own vocation of shamanic healing, I hope to impart this same idea to as many people as I can, because I believe that these very ideas are the heart of any successful healing, on any level.

I find that the process of "opening oneself" is not as simple as it sounds, and yet, it isn't really hard- it so happens that many of the "calcifying powers" that trap us in the modern day have a way of covering our bodies and minds with a weight, a dense darkness that can make us feel like our efforts to "open" are useless.

I have discovered that the only way to combat this dense feeling, this spiritual anesthesia, is to try to open yourself anyway, and believe in the goodness of things. Strive on, despite the initial lack of feeling or excitement, and you will see the light through the darkness; the greatness of life and the Great Mystery is far older and far more powerful than the comparatively recent negative changes in human society and the recent losses of wisdom that have created the cobwebbed nightmare of global materialism and greed that affects all of us so profoundly.

In that nightmarish world, people only survive. I want to live. I want you to live. Our real inheritance from this sacred world, along with the possibility of our greatest peace, is being wasted every moment that we forget about life and let ourselves be satisfied with survival.