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.

Pure and Without Any Darkness

Becoming a father, and being allowed the great opportunity to observe in detail the growth and development of human beings- my precious daughters- has been the greatest blessing and privilege of my life. These years of being a father have brought me more joy than any other years- but it also brought up many personal challenges. These challenges are chiefly tied into how a father or a parent feels he is best able to guide and protect his children, as they slowly prepare to be launched into the world to live on their own.

Adults know the world- insofar as anything can be "known" when filtered through the lens of opinion and preconception. They know that the world is beautiful and wonderful (or at least most might use those words from time to time) and they know that it is full of perilous dangers, as well.

We were all children once, and we grew into adults- learning of the world's perils and gradually assimilating ourselves into the risky venture of human life. We adults have all come to grips, in some way, with what we face- as much darkness as the world contains, we find a way to rationalize it; we find a way to cope and survive and to sideline thinking about the darkness too much. We know the pitfalls of the world, but few of us go too far into addressing them directly.

We have all become used to "things as they are"- and this is not an entirely bad position to take, accepting as it does that some darkness must exist, and integrating that into a (more or less) stable condition of mind.

Becoming a father changed the extent to which I was content to accept "things as they are"- while I, like nearly all adults, have come to see threats and dangers to myself as acceptable and unavoidable on some level, I cannot tolerate the idea of threats and dangers to my children. My situation is further compounded by the understanding I have that I am not the author of Fate, nor the author of my children's lives and destinies. As much as I would like to protect them perfectly, I know that I cannot. I can only go so far- perceptually- towards fulfilling my fatherly desire to see to my children's well-being.

I can't make the world better for my children, in the way that it would need to be "better" to assure their safety and well-being perfectly. In our world, we have many religious traditions that cluster about and preach ways to understand darkness and light, to understand salvation and redemption. Many preach and teach about the real goal of an essential human's life, the "true" story of mankind, and the moral truths they say we should embrace, if we wish to be assured of lasting happiness. With so many voices raised to teach and guide, a din exists, a confusing din of fear and hope and conflict.

This is another danger for the world- the danger of being lost and confused. I worked for years to lift myself above this particular confusion- the lonely battle of the soul- and what success I achieved has also been brought into question by my children's young, innocent lives.

I say this because the world of religion and philosophical paths also poses its own array of dangers and risks. Who has the "right" way to live? I've studied and learned of so many- some threaten us with eternal hells; others with endless cycles of confusion and grief if we don't find the clarity they promise. People say, and have always said, many things. I was (and am) willing to "take the risk" of the soul with myself- I can and always have ignored the dire warnings of the hysteriarchs and fear-mongers, and chose the path of conscience and inner guidance- something I was dissuaded from doing at nearly every point. But I did it.

And I am willing to live as I live amid the confusion. If I fail, then it is my detriment. But my children? What can I tell them, how can I guide them, when it is their own metaphysical risk at stake? How I guide them now will influence them greatly in the future; what can I do for them? In the middle of the din, it is hard to know. My children are my flesh and blood, but they are not me- they have a path to walk that is not mine, life experiences to have that I may not have.

Any attempt on my part to truly impart my deepest values may harm them, in unexpected ways. This doesn't mean that I will leave them without guidance, or simply defer them to whatever random encounters they meet, to learn as they will; I will do my best to be honest, and to be intrusive to the smallest degree that I can be.

I want so much to shield them from the dangers and the traps of the world, but I have been left feeling helpless in the face of the sheer immensity and complexity of this world. I am not the sort of person who dulls out his feelings with the opiate of repetitive labors, or of "cheap good deeds", nor do I take shelter in the herds of people who gather to behave repetitively in the name of spirituality or to smile about the good deeds they have done for others.

All of that, as Nietzsche said, is contrary to the truly healthy person. I face my sense of helplessness and accept it as part of my destiny unfolding; I wait for it to change, on the tides of its own natural cycles, into something else, for change it must. While it is here, I endure and feel, and discuss my feelings, as I am doing now.

So I'm not writing this to lessen my distress; I am writing this, in a sense, to celebrate it- and to celebrate what places it led me to, this very day. For without it, some important understandings that I won today never would have come to me.

* * *

Like all of the many complex phenomena of this world, a precious insight or understanding is compounded of many parts- many threads of force drawn from many other experiences. We stand on the backs of our own histories and experiences when we move perceptually "forward" in our own minds. Many things that I have read before came together for me today, and it all began when I picked up a book from my local library called "The Vision Keepers" by Doug Alderson.

Doug's a guy who, like me, felt a calling back to the primal spiritualities of the "first nations" peoples of this planet- those people who still maintain some sense of what I have come to call "primordial sanity". Flipping through the book, I noticed a chapter about his time with Lakota Sioux peoples, in which he took part in two important ceremonies- "Releasing the spirit" and "Throwing the Ball". I was familiar with both ceremonies from reading "The Sacred Pipe" many years ago.

However, something had changed since the last time I had read them- especially the ceremonial throwing of the ball- I was a father now. It is because of this that I was able to see something in it that I never saw before.

The ceremony, like all Lakota ceremonies, is geared towards the goals of their community, and towards the supreme spiritual reality of their religion: Wakan Tanka. Wakan Tanka, despite the easy mental shelf that most whites try to put him on today, is not "God" in the usually accepted sense of the word. Wakan Tanka, before missionaries came and tried to change this into a monotheistic conception of "God", was the "sacred incomprehensible"- a mysterious power formed of the totality of all sacred powers that existed, and all forces.

In the throwing of the ball, a four-year-old girl is placed in the center of a large ring of participants, and given a buffalo skin ball, which is red and blue. The red symbolizes the earth, the blue symbolizes the sky. Together, it represents "earth and sky"- all powers, the world, the universe, and totality. She throws the ball to each of the four directions, and the people gathered around in that direction fight like mad to catch the ball or get their hands on it- it is quite a competition. The person who catches it, is symbolically catching "everything"- gaining his or her Wahupa, or enlightenment.

Thought many try to catch the ball, few do- which symbolizes how many people in life try to gain a special conscious relationship with Wakan Tanka, and how few actually succeed. If you are standing there, trying to catch the ball, you have a lot of competition- and the people around you, struggling against you to prevent you from getting the ball, represent the ignorance and delusions that stand against you. Because of the state of things today, the odds are always against any single person who strives for this special closeness. We are all beset by many opponents and contrary powers.

But why a little girl to throw the ball? Alderson recounts Black Elk's words on this matter:

"Black Elk said "It is a little girl, and not an older person, who stands at the center and who throws the ball. This is as it should be, for just as Wakan Tanka is eternally youthful and pure, so is this little one, who has just come from Wakan Tanka, pure and without any darkness. Just as the ball is thrown from the center to the four quarters, so Wakan Tanka is at every direction and is everywhere in the world, and as the ball descends upon the people, so does his power."

* * *

Something began to change in me when I read this. Memories came back to me of many things I had read throughout my life- all dealing with the concepts of "the sacred" and "youth". In the last months and years, I have watched my daughters explore the world- watched how they were able, with fresh, new eyes, to take in what they encountered- without malice or prejudice, with simple, open curiosity.

A father sees these things, and if he is a man of any depth, he greatly admires them. Because there is a connection between youth and the sacred that has been recounted to me all my life, from many sources, that only this day came to dawn in me, like the bright morning star.

In my Catholic upbringing, the typically cryptic statements of Jesus were tossed about like popcorn. I find that as the years pass, every now and again, something I was told that Jesus said suddenly falls into place- not in the sense of some "verification of the faith", but in the sense that these words attributed to Jesus had to come from somewhere- and the source of those words sometimes- but not always- clearly shares a root with the same pure core of ancient wisdom that Black Elk's words (given above) came from, or from the same place that the teachings of other sages came. In the gospel attributed to "Matthew", it is written:

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

The entire notion of becoming childlike to approach the kingdom of heaven also came back to me- and it was a Catholic saint- St.Therese of Lisieux- who said "Perfection seems simple to me. I see it is sufficient to recognize one's nothingness and to abandon oneself as a child into God's arms."

This theme of the relationship between the child-like and the sacred or the divine keeps coming up, from all points. The Catholic Church has long taught that children, if they die, go directly back to God, or to heaven, or what have you. Interestingly enough, there is a spiritual (and formally, a theosophical and even Buddhist) explanation for that statement. Black Elk said it best when he said "...just as Wakan Tanka is eternally youthful and pure, so is this little one, who has just come from Wakan Tanka, pure and without any darkness."

In the theosophical sense, when people die, their bodies die, and their minds awaken in an astral/etheric body, and continue on in a conditioned state, very perceptually similar to the world that their bodies inhabited, and which conditioned their astral and ethereal form. Some may not even be aware that their bodies have died, but they become aware, eventually.

From this point, the ethereal and astral bodies begin the process of decay and fading- just as the body had been doing all their lives. At some point, these subtle bodies are intended to fade, so that the mindstream can move into the mental and spiritual planes of experience, which is the theosophical equivalent of "heaven".

But this process- of passage into the higher planes- can be traumatic for those who are entrenched in the astral- it represents a "second death" of types, to fade from the astral level, and go on to a further unknown, because the mental and spiritual worlds are extremely subtle, and most people, in life, stay involved in the physical and astral/emotional realms almost entirely. Thus, this "between" state, this astral state after death, is "purgatory"- a person must be purged of their attachments to this life, their emotional entanglements, and entrenched habits, before they can let go and "move on".

But two categories of people do not arise to become "stuck" astrally- realized, spiritual adults, and children. Why? For two different, but similar reasons: truly spiritual people have already released themselves from attachments and entanglements in this life; they were already turned and open to the unknown spiritual reality before they died. Thus, they fade and move on quickly.

Children are "naturally spiritual" in a sense- not so imprisoned in physical and astral cages of long habit- they do not have deeply imprinted and entrenched opinions and ideas and attachments to things, in the harmful sense that adults tend to. Like my daughter seeing new blossoms for the first time in her life, or airplanes, or cars, or animals, they take what comes before them as it is- it is we adults who decide whether or not what comes before us is acceptable, good enough, ugly, evil, or the like.

This is totally in line with Mahayana Buddhist sutras regarding the Bardo or afterdeath state- those with strong attachments and preferences, who lack the openness of sages or children, will struggle against the strange visions of the afterdeath transition, and create causes for more suffering, as opposed to simply "going into" the Dharmakaya, the infinite and timeless Body of Reality.

In ancient Greece, initiates into the Mystery cults were given the title "Kouros" (if male) and "Kore" if female- both names indicating a "youth". Even old men and women were "youths", if they had been initiated- something that is no longer a mystery to me. In Greek Mythology, when Heracles immolated himself on his pyre, his body is shown dying (in ancient art) but his Kouros- the eternally youthful part of himself- goes up to Olympus, to be with the Gods, because the Eternally Youthful part of all of us is a divine, undying thing.

Black Elk says that the spirit of humans and Wakan Tanka share the same center- wakan Tanka, the sacred incomprehensible power that somehow is reality, is described as "eternally youthful"- and so, by virtue of that powerful statement, is the Wakan Tanka of each of us.

In line with the Theosophical perspectives I was discussing above, the Lakota have an interesting and similar model of death and the journey after death- they believe that, after death, the ideal is for a spirit to move on to "union with Wakan Tanka"- harmony with all that is. However, the spirit in a conditioned state cannot do this, and must walk a long journey to the point where they may either fulfill that union, or be pushed "off to the side" by the guarding power of the sacred road, and have to stay in a conditioned state.

The Lakota ritual of the "Releasing of the Spirit" helps to ensure that the spirit of a recently deceased person will find that sacred union. A child, however, probably would not need that sort of help.

* * *

While reading "Steps to an Ecology of Mind" by Gregory Bateson- one of the greatest books I have ever read, by one of the wisest men this world has ever seen- I found, some months back, this discerning passage in his essay entitled "Style, Grace, and Information in Primitive Art":

"Aldous Huxley used to say that the central problem for humanity is the quest for grace. This word he used in what he thought was the sense in which it is used in the New Testament. He explained the word, however, in his own terms. He argued- like Walt Whitman- that the communication and behavior of animals has a naiveté, a simplicity, which man has lost. Man's behavior is corrupted by deceit- even self-deceit- by purpose, and by self-consciousness. As Aldous saw the matter, man has lost the "grace" which animals still have.

In terms of this contrast, Aldous argued that God resembles the animals rather than man: He is ideally unable to deceive, and incapable of internal confusions. In the total scale of beings, therefore, man is as if displaced sideways and lacks that grace which the animals have and which God has."


This passage struck me, and strikes me to this day. I see a great support in it for my contention that the sacred is not entangled with paltry purpose and the deep, deluded ranges of self-consciousness. And I see this in my children, every day.

Those of you who are parents will likely feel tempted to point out that children, even very young children, seem capable of deceit and manipulation. You may wish to give me the “bad child” speech, or engage the tired, bitter “children don’t stay young for long” line (to which I might say “they lose their natural grace quickly thanks to adults and their warped notions of “maturity” and the extent to which they seem hostile to childhood, or dismissive of it”) or you may wish to say that I am setting my self up for some “fall” when my children lose the innocence of this state they now maintain.

You may wish to be sagely and “balance me out”, strip the stars from my eyes here- but you would only be showing the extent to which you have fallen from the subtle realization that I am now enjoying. Any adult who had this reaction would be showing how little of the child was left in them. Unlike the Jesus of the New Testament who bade the children to come to him, saying that the kingdom of heaven belonged to them, my sagely tutors would be taking the position of the Old Testament patriarchs and misery-mongers who described “maturity” as “putting aside childish things”. I don’t normally quote the bible this much- nor will I again, likely- but the comparison is good, in my way of seeing. I see now that real maturity- spiritual maturity- is eternally youthful and child-like.

I know that children grow up. It is my intention here to discuss “youth” in a different manner, the occurrence of youth that we are all- child or parent- temporarily blessed with. I have seen how ancient and wise cultures and wise people of all ages have noticed the relationship between youth and the sacred- and it is worth pointing out. As crucial as I see it now, it is worth shouting from mountaintops- “Do not lose your youthful sense of wonder!”

My ultimate point rides higher than any worn-out parent’s dim perceptions: my point is that my children- as I have experienced them up to this point- evidence a grace that I certainly lack at most times, and which most people I know lack. My children are happy and content at play, even with simple things like sticks or rocks. They are enthralled and open to strangers, not immediately suspicious of them, as I am. They do not harbor prejudices against others, as I was taught to.

They do not make the judgments I make- all of these things that I know lead to my unhappiness and stress, and certainly which cause everyone I know to be unhappy, ill at ease, and unsatisfied with many aspects of their lives. When my children see blooms, they see beauty and simply enjoy it; I am fortunate if I am having the “good sort of day” that lets me just smile at it. Normally, I wonder at what species it might be, try to dig through a field guide to find out, or worse yet, I don’t notice its beauty at all.

I see the sacred operating through my children in a way that I know it must have operated through me once, and through all of us- but we have forgotten, and grown, and found our "darkness" as adults. Because of that darkness, and because of our entanglements and deceits (especially our self-deceits) we will face a hard road into the afterlife, just as we face a hard road now, in our everyday lives- but it is the pure minds of the very young that still enjoy a special closeness with the sacred incomprehensible.

* * *

I can share an interesting personal insight that I had recently that goes to relevance here. As an adult, I feel- I know- that I have a responsibility to the sacredness of life not to needlessly destroy life. This includes not needlessly hurting or disfiguring life and living systems- and that includes plant life. If I were to walk into a forest, and see a bush covered with beautiful blossoms, and tear the blooms off haphazardly, leaving them on the ground, I know that the spiritual power of that plant-brother or sister would be rightly angry with me; I know that it would be worse for me, lessening my connection with the spiritual community of wholeness, of which I am a part.

But my three year old daughter will grab a flower and yank it from a bush or the ground, to show it to me and glance at it, and eventually just abandon it to the ground. And as I watched her doing it one day, I realized something- looking with my other senses, I saw that the spiritual power of that plant was not upset by her taking of its body as she did- and I was confused about why this was the case. Before this, I had encouraged her not to destroy blooms or plants, and she mostly does not. However, when she does, she does not enrage the powers in the same manner that an adult would.

Then I realized it- the sacred is resonating purely from her; there is no failing on her part, no underhandedness or viciousness in her action, no treason or disrespect in her, when she plucks the flowers, that the other powers perceive it and understand. This has nothing at all to do with my daughter being "previous to the age of reason"- it has to do with her natural closeness with the divine. That is why the sacred powers do not look askance at her, as they would at me.

* * *

These experiences and understandings which coalesced in me in the last few days have left me at a new place on my spiritual path- a place that is both old and new, perhaps would be a better description. Looking at the world, inside and out, whole and one, and at the sacred powers, including the sacred incomprehensible that is the totality of all, in terms of youthfulness, has helped me to connect to this world in a way I never could before in my adult life.

The supreme spiritual power that is there, within and without all things, is not like a stern adult judge; it is not a blind, careless force. It is not best described as a loving mother or a strict father. It is like a young child, exuberant, free, honest and open. W. B. Yeats said it best when he described the Goddess of Ireland as "your mother... who is forever young." The sacred in the land and sky is eternally young- our experience of youth is an insight into what “eternity” may mean.

All of this has helped me to understand how I could help my children as they walked the path of a human life. I could help them in the same way that I was helped: I can help them to never lose touch with the eternal youth inside them. I can avoid chiding them and telling them to "grow up" in some scornful way, and never make light of their youthful insights into things.

I must always stay aware of what I have said many times before, but which never lacks a necessity to repeat: children are not just "adults waiting to happen"- childhood is every bit as needful and appropriate as adulthood, just as powerful and crucial to the causes of humanity, and spirituality. It is wrong to write off children as "not yet fully developed"- they are in a stage of development which has its own values and power, and should be honored as complete in its own way.

We adults should always look to see what the sacred power of youth has to teach us. I know, as most parents know, how the youth of my children has made me find parts of my own youth that I had forgotten about.

I can be a better father and spiritual journeyman by striving to find the youthful eyes inside this adult head; I can try to learn to give up my adult prejudices and preferences for things that really don't matter; I can try to re-appraise what it means for something to "matter". I can realize the extent to which my own darkness, self-deception, and opinions have walled me off from the direct experience of the world of the sacred. I can try to let those things go.

And I can do this, because the eternally youthful power of the sacred is everywhere around me and with me as it always has been- and now I have my children to remind me of it, to mediate it to me directly every day, with joy and love. My adult dullness needed a child to show me, to my face, what I was missing. My children have become my teachers, the bridge-builders for me, and I am thankful.

My guidance for them, from this day forward, will be to encourage them not to lose the fresh eyes and ears that they have now. When I was growing, opinions were given to me and sold to me as absolute, immutable facts. It took me years to realize that these perspectives were not facts, after all, and to return to some shadow of the flexibility that was once mine, when I had just come from Wakan Tanka.

I will help my children to remain flexible, as best I can. I hope that they will help me in the same way, as I begin the journey back to Wakan Tanka, here and beyond.

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

* * *
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.

When They Realize

"Peace... comes within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the Universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us."

~ Black Elk

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.

Ecstasy is the real "Old Time Religion"

Q: "What can Christianity learn from other religions?"
A: "That God is not a Christian."

-Archbishop Desmond Tutu


"Shamanic ecstasy is the real "Old Time Religion," of which modern churches are but pallid evocations. Shamanic, visionary ecstasy, the mysterium tremendum, the unio mystica, the eternally delightful experience of the universe as energy, is a sine qua non of religion, it is what religion is for! There is no need for faith, it is the ecstatic experience itself that gives one faith in the intrinsic unity and integrity of the universe, in ourselves as integral parts of the whole; that reveals to us the sublime majesty of our universe, and the fluctuant, scintillant, alchemical miracle that is quotidian consciousness. Any religion that requires faith and gives none, that defends against religious experiences, that promulgates the bizarre superstition that humankind is in some way separate, divorced from the rest of creation, that heals not the gaping wound between Body and Soul, but would tear them asunder... is no religion at all!"

-Jonathan Ott

Seven Sacred Things

I practice seership, and perform the rituals of an ancestral faith, but at heart, I'm really a seeker of stories and songs- and a person who seeks respectful, harmonious relationships with the many powers in this world. I seek for simpler things, too- but things no less important; the safety and happiness of my family, and my own peace of mind.

That might sound lackluster to some people, but I've come to find that a great and holy power dwells in such simplicity, almost as if this world itself orients us towards those sorts of ends, and sanctions a sacred path to them. When we're living right, living on the heart, we know it, we just know it, though many people have learned to doubt such thinking.

If life is a power-story, then here is what I bring to the story- the bare bones of a personal epistemology. I have seven basic beliefs: a belief in the natural goodness of humankind; a belief in a lasting spirit for each person and an unbroken communion with other powers who are also lasting spirits; a belief in the interconnectedness of things and the need for respect; a belief in the sacred powers, the three worlds and their ongoing contact between one another, a belief in the importance of dreams and visions, and in the purifying power of certain plants and other powers which are helpful to man.

I've been a part of many spiritual traditions, and what I always found, at the end of my days with them, is that life is water- not stone. Ideas and perspectives came and went, had their seasons with me, but eventually faded. But these seven beliefs of mine never left me; they became refined over time, and remain with me now, hovering about, healthy in their power but always ready to undergo a revision here or there. Still they are always with me, my seven primary beliefs.

I don't even "call" myself anything anymore; everyone loves those names and titles, but I'm just a guy looking for stories, looking to hear stories from the land itself. I sometimes do healing, and sometimes look for visions, and I sometimes get visits from my helping spirit, but that's it. I don't know what that makes me; just a guy who focuses on strange places and things, I guess. There's help there, power there, and it's what I have to do to be on my heart's road, and so off I trot.

I give details on each of my seven primary beliefs here, now- and I say pretty much all I have to say about them. The rest you'd have to be me to know, or experience as I do, and well, that can never happen. No one can live another's life. So here is more clarification, for myself (for I like to spell things out for "me" every now and then) and for you, if you're interested.


* * *


1. I have a belief that humankind is not a foreign power to the world, not a temporary visitor, nor an exiled, accursed species, suffering from the spiritual transgressions of mythical ancestors, nor in need of some redemptive grace from spiritual powers. Humankind is a natural and normal part of this world, and of the cosmological schema of nature as a whole. It bears no innate flaws or unavoidable wickedness.


2. I have a belief that humanity, like the other animals who share our common world, are not beings that vanish utterly into oblivion at death; the idea of "non-being" is refuted due to the impossibility of "being" arising from "non-being". "Being", whether in the general sense, or in the "embodied" sense of a human or animal life, is seen as perpetual, and continues on through many times, phases, and worlds, as marked by transitions like birth or death.

Each person, like every other part of nature, has a "non-ordinary" aspect, a "non-ordinary body" which is similar to the idea of "soul" in mainstream religions, but different in other ways- my concept of "personal identity" is more fluid ("life is water, not rock") and I believe that this "non-ordinary aspect" of a human being is at the core of what we call the "mind".

Neither mind nor personality has a "fixed" state which never changes, though I believe that the wholeness of things- the wholeness of sacred reality- is at heart unchanging, despite the paradoxical appearance of change. For me, this "sacred stillness" is also part of the mystery of silence, encountered by indigenous spiritual workers in many cultures, and used by them as a route to spiritual insight. This "sacred silence" ties into both the experience of isolation and quests through night or darkness.

Just as a person is conditioned by many occasions and experiences in life to "be" one way or another, to develop personality in one way or another, or believe one way or another, this process of personality is always changing and in motion, and even in death, there is no firm or fixed "identity" for the fluid power that resides with each human person. I also believe that human beings communicate with and interact constantly with sacred powers- seen and unseen- via the "non-ordinary" aspect of themselves. I believe that the results of these ongoing communions- most of which are normally unconscious- arise in terms of intuition and dreams.


3. I have a belief in the necessary interconnectedness of all beings- human or otherwise- and of all ecological systems, and powers, whether seen or unseen, all acting together as a sacred and natural whole. We rely on so many others, and so many others rely on us; the implications of this belief necessitates for us human beings a sense of respect, first and foremost, as the central guideline for our interaction with any other part or parts of the whole. I believe that those who disrespect others enough to needlessly hurt or kill, or disrespect the world enough to damage it cannot rest in death. Living in harmony is living respectfully, and harmony follows a person in death.

If life were to have a "purpose", it would be (to my way of thinking) to find a state of lasting harmony, through a lifelong negotiation of power between those things we experience as "self", "other", and "world". One quick road to the proper state of mind needed to successfully make that life-long negotiation is to overcome our idea that we are ultimately "divided" away from those "other things", accept our full sacred participation in the unity of things- and accept it without reservation of any kind. You don't get to be even a bit "separate" from this world and this universe. It's home; its our natural environment, our source, our origin, and our eternal stage of activity. It always was and always will be.


4. I have a belief in "sacred powers"- some of whom are experienced directly as natural phenomenon or creatures, or as the non-ordinary aspect of those same phenomenon or creatures, and some which are experienced only in terms of non-ordinary reality, but who are just as real as those who are more immediate to human perceptions.

These powers are, like humankind, natural and necessary to the world; all of these powers are non-human persons, with will, volition, memory, and reason; some are benevolent to human beings and other creatures; some are not. Some played a large role in the shaping of the world as we see it or in the early development of humanity and other beings in our world; some did not. All are worthy of respect and have a lot of wisdom to share. The dangerous powers should be avoided, but not hated.

All sacred powers can be approached, or conceived of as a "collective" of great spiritual presence/totality, further conceptualized as a "Great Power", though without the usual limited associations given to such an idea by monotheistic religions in the west.


5. I have a belief in a "three layered" cosmological schema- that this "middle world" is below an "upper world" which is populated by spiritual powers, and above an "underworld" which is also populated by spiritual powers, as well as the spirits of departed human beings and animals.

There is a webwork of power-transactions between all three "layers" of this basic cosmological schema, including places and events that can be conceptualized as "connecting points" between the worlds- tunnels, holes, and caves in the earth giving access to the Underworld, or rainbows and the rising smoke of fires giving access to the Upper World. The "power transactions" between the three worlds also include communications like prayer. Power-transactions also occur within each world (of course), making a horizontal and vertical web-work of communication, which is ongoing.


6. I have a belief that human beings can have visionary experiences of a sacred character- including experiences of the other worlds above or below this one- under the influence of certain things like repetitive drum beats, rattle shaking, certain vision-inducing natural substances, or extremes of pain, hunger, or exposure.

The idea of a "mere hallucination" is not valid to my worldview; all non-ordinary states of consciousness or subjective experiences falling outside of the range of what is called "normal" are still experiences of some aspect of this sacred reality and can be taken within a sacred context of understanding. Dreams are likewise important as conduits of non-ordinary experience.

Guidance can be sought for a people or a group of people through such experiences. It can come from the synchronicities of natural phenomenon (whether experienced normally, when walking and "seeing" in a sacred manner or in a non-ordinary way, in dreams or visions) or from interactions with sacred powers or spiritual beings who act as tutelary powers, protectors, guides, or helpers to human beings.


7. I have a belief that fire, sunlight, and water are three sacred powers that are also sacred gifts to human beings, and that they can do more than just slake thirst, cook food, or drive away cold- they can also purify a person if they are approached with the proper respect. The sacred powers of sage, sweetgrass, cedar, and other aromatic plants and woods can purify a place when burned, keeping away dangerous powers. Living respectfully is the best way to keep dangerous powers away. Acceptance of wholeness, perpetual life, and all-around sacredness is the greatest healing power there is.

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.