Teachings 2
I heard it said, “We are not only first nations people, we are all people.” We live within the medicine wheel and the medicine wheel exists within us; we are a mirror reflection of it. There are four colors; there are four races represented within the medicine wheel: White, black, red and yellow. Yellow is the first color and is related to the East. White is situated in the North, red in the south, and black in the west. A red man sits in the south, but within him are all of the colors. The entire medicine wheel is within his spirit and soul. His physical being corresponds to his color in the world. The spirit and soul are transcendent, having all the powers within them. And these powers must be balanced if we are to be holy person. Few ever reach that perfect harmony; they are powerful like the angels.
The message of Indigenous America is connection, relationship, and unity. All people are one. One of the direct, living descendants of Chief Joseph says, “We have no qualms about color. It has no meaning. It doesn’t mean anything.” “When we are together we are one. Nothing can break it.” This is the same message Chief Sitting Bull conveyed when he said, “The heart knows not the color of the skin.” This is an ancient traditional teaching. It still lives among our true traditionalists everywhere. The lineage of the ancient ones has not yet been broken. this lineage has born the test of much suffering, even two hundred years of genocide, and cultural erasure. The power of forgiveness is greater than hate; love vanquishes condescension and discrimination. That is the power our elders, our true traditionalist hold. They are treasures; they are the most beautiful people on Earth.
Nonetheless, the pain has been almost unbearable. It is like a canoe in a tsunami. Few are as strong as our traditionalists; and so you see, they are living miracles. They are the angels of humanity. They can save our planet; if only we give them our support. There is enough space on our planet for our world and theirs. It isn’t right for one people to take up all the room; all to themselves. Leave a little bit, give something back, live and let live. They are being forced out of existence; many have no support, no hope; yet they persist. And they will, except that just after them the generational chain has been broken in the majority of cases.
The medicine wheel is many things. It is birth, youth, maturity, and old age and death. The East is birth, south is youth, north is maturity and the west is old age. Some say our spirits travel toward the south where youth and fresh growth live. At its center it is holy; this is the heart of the good red road; it is balance and understanding of life. Our children who are our purpose and priority are there. We cannot forget them; we must look to them first. Our elders who are our most important people, our guidance and wisdom; the keepers of our dreams, are there in it too. All things are within the medicine wheel. It is our life, our careers, our talents and gifts, our spirituality, our whole beings. Religion and Earthly life join to be one with ourselves, our families and our relations. Everything we need is there. The way to live in balance and according to the sacred order of things is all there. We need nothing more. We need to learn it and how it works, and that is where our elders come in.
In Native gatherings, the medicine wheel is present. The way things are done socially and communally, is seen, noticed, known, and experienced. It feeds us, it is our medicine. We feed each other. It is greater than us, than any of each of us are; that is what our elders know. They make it work, come about, be real to us. By medicine I mean spiritual life; I mean contentment and happiness; I mean true life. Our heart is the keeper of those things. We live through love and trust, through expression in an open and respectful way. We live to be heard, to be included. We need each other to survive, to hear each other, each piece of the puzzle or medicine wheel. And everyone, hearing each other, knows, knows itself, know themselves, knows each other. That is spiritual beauty and power and love. That is belonging and happiness and assurance. That is finding the sacred creation within yourself, from those who live it, and are it themselves. No one can be any greater than any other; yet there is respect for the order of things. The women are worshiped as life givers whom without, we would have no medicine people, no leaders, no craftsmen, no hunters, no warriors. They men were given the ceremonies to remember this. The women gave them to the men so that they could remember. The men need help. The women are already in synch with the rhythms of nature through their wombs. They men are honored by honoring the women. The men therefore, conduct the ceremonies.
The medicine wheel varies in its arrangement from tribe to tribe. The meaning regardless, is the same. For example the Lakota nation places white in the south and red in the north. the variation is only a thing of variety. I heard the story of a half Indian and half Saami man who visited the Sami in the Netherlands. When he stood up to tell a story, he was told to sit down so as not to be above the people. He understood what they were saying even though his other relations did things differently. The meaning was well known to him; it was another way of communicating that ‘we are indigenous’. We live according to community and respect of one another. No one is higher or greater than any other. We are one; we are the same. The variations in the medicine wheel are no more than that. The Saami are bleach blonde and pink skinned. They have nearly albino coloration. His other side was red brown from America. The colorations are only colorations. The garden is the more beautiful for its variety; the forms and colors captivate us with the life that creates them. We are of God’s garden. We are of the Spirit of the Holy Wilderness of Mystery.
This message has affected the world. Before Europeans left Europe, no one dared enter into that country. The last indigenous people were being martyred. The Basque and many other indigenous nations were under genocide. Any outsiders were imprisoned and tortured. They were captured and abused. They were owned and killed at will. They were Asian and African. They were middle Eastern. They were non-Europeans who had no rights; no right to even exist. No right to claim a soul even, for themselves. This how bad it was. That land of Europe was feared like a headhunting territory by the entire world.
After Europeans landed in America, things began to change. Women eventually were considered to have souls like men. They could leave their homes, and even develop a career. They eventually gain rights to their own children and could not be killed with legal impunity any longer. They live the other colors of humanity, began to be considered ‘human’. It all began on paper, with the constitution. A collaborative work between the founding fathers and the Hode no Shawnee or Iroquois confederacy and republic. It took almost two hundred years for that document to begin to resemble an actual system of rights. Native people have been fighting for its implementation for the duration of that time; many times dying for it. Now things have changed, Native people became American citizens in 1921 and gained religious freedom in 1978. Women are nearly considered equal in status to men. Native people here, are still working hard to complete the maturity of that document. Only now it can be accomplished through penmanship and legal education, and public awareness campaigns. Had people only listened to the voices that the founding fathers heard; Or the Chiefs that Matilda Cage, mentor of Susan B. Anthony, visited; much suffering could have been avoided. These traditionalists deserve a lot of recognition for what they and their ancestors have accomplished and fought for. they fight not only for the land but for the spirit as well. They know this land. They are this land. It lives as long as they do.
They are educators by example; their lives teach the sacred ways of the Earth and spirit world that we live in and belong to, and are a part (a component, a fractal, a reflection of) in our bodies and minds, and in our spirits. They are story tellers, teachers, historians, healers, and leaders. The are the keepers of ancestral traditions of their tribe.
It could be no other way for them; since this is the world as they take the world to be; it is Reality. They don’t have a choice, it is their belief; the only truth they see; they inhabit another ‘world’. What they believe in, is an order of sacred reality that offers the only way to honestly approach life; it is the law, the only way ‘that works’, has ever, or will ever, ‘work’. Any other way, of being and behaving, is foolish only because it fails; all other ways are incorrect because they lack beauty and harmony—blessings that the Spirit intended for humans—and break laws that God set in motion at the creation of the Earth.
We are part of the creation of God, and children of the Spirit; that spirit is immaculate; we should not defile it by busying ourselves with the ‘world of men’. The world is but a distraction, a deception; an illusion with no more value than a trash-heap. The artificial world that breaks the Law of God and Nature is but a dung heap. There is something very comical in watching people racing after a shiny tinsel and curious trash; at least in the eyes of the Traditionalists.
Our elders sometimes put it this way, “The white man makes his laws on a paper so he can tear it up and write a new one whenever he feels like it. He makes that paper say whatever he wants it to say. Our Indians laws are written in Nature. They are easy to believe in because they have always been here. No one can change them; they are something that everyone has to obey. If you don’t want to, you still have to obey them; you can’t get out of it, because they are God’s laws. The white man’s law is confusing because you always have to look at that piece of paper to see if he changed it. (To see if it says the same thing again today or tomorrow as yesterday): Those are man-made laws. We follow God’s Laws and Nature’s laws. Sometimes white men make mistakes with their laws, but they don’t see it. They command everyone to follow it; they don’t understand it themselves; they don’t see that it has some mistakes in it. Everyone has to follow Nature’s laws. If you break them you will get hurt. If white men make a mistake then a lot of people might get hurt. We don’t want to worry about that. We don’t like to follow the paper laws because they might go against the laws God put down here on Earth for us. Those Laws are the only real laws; man’s laws are just made up.”
Our elders teach us what is important here on the Earth; ‘we’ are what is important. We would do well to look after each other. We make our own best good by making things right for the children. We live right when we look out for the children. The children put us beside our bad nature and correct us. We create a good world to live in when there is room for the children to be a part of it; when it is designed with them in mind. We would make their world in kindness. We would create a kind way of things for them to grow up in. And if we did this, we would be making again ‘an ancient indigenous world’ for ourselves. It might look different, but it would live and breath with the same spirit; and harmonize with the rest of the indigenous world.
We find our enjoyment in learning ourselves and each other; we have to figure out ‘who’ and ‘how we are’, because we don’t know yet. We need to search out and reveal ourselves to our own selves: ‘how we work’, and ‘what makes us happy, and complete within ourselves’. Then we need to share these great insight with our little people, the children; so they learn to start thinking like this too. Then after some generations, the world will heal and become more human and less machine; it will start to live and breath, along with the whole creation, and harmonize with God’s Law and Nature’s Law. And the two worlds, modern and indigenous, will have merged to become a single reality. Because, if we give them time, to grow and learn, they will assimilate us as well; in their ‘own way.'
We believe in them. We believe what Traditionalist are trying to tell us. We believe that the Indigenous World is, and will be, our future—if the world is to survive this age. Our Traditionalists are what the future generations will have to grow into, and become of a similar heart and mind. This will require great self-respect, self-discipline, love; and a lifetime of work and a deeply penetrating, contemplative life. There is no greater achievement on this earth. And we need their help to get there!
Even as they need our help.
How you can help
Some teachings from what I’ve seen, heard, been told; and my reflections and personal interpretations on it. Indigenous peoples keep a set of practices that allow them to stay in touch with the spiritual realm of life. It is important to attend diligently to each of the four primary aspects of our human reality for health, wholeness, balance and personal growth. Human development begins with awareness or attention of ourselves and our environment, including those with whom we share our lives.
We each have an emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual or mystical element, and these elements combine to create our human condition. In North America, Canada and the United States, many Native people use the image of the medicine wheel to convey this truth. There are many teaching and stories associated with the Medicine Wheel which vary from tribe to tribe but express the same essential understandings.
A balanced human being remains centered, consciously alert to each aspect of his or her being, like a mother keeping watch over her 4 children. It is out of these 4 aspects of ourselves that access and construct our relationships within the world.
These aspects are not static, they grow and develop throughout the course of our lives. As we develop we begin to encompass greater reach within the natural and human worlds beyond our center and discover our influence of power. Ultimately we find that we are shaped and defined by our relationships; these relationships permeate the whole creation, as does our intention and influence. We affect life even as it in turn affects us in its own course.
We see that we are a component of our communities, our families, our nation, and our Mother the Earth, the Spirit of all life. As we grow these relationships have a greater and more profound effect on us and we begin to know our own identity and that of our loved ones as simple, equally weighted elements within the greater scheme of things; the forces of the Ultimate Wholeness affect us more and more powerfully so that our individual needs matter less and less to us. In the long run, we are best served by serving Humanity.
Life unless lived for others is not worth living Mother Teresa and Albert Einstein. Eventually ,detached from personal desires, we see ourselves impartially, creatures equivalent to all other creatures that exist within our universe. Each creature is sacred, is a form and expression of the Holy Formless Essence. We come to care for life beyond the confinement of our senses; we begin to live through our hearts.
This is seeing with the eyes of the Spirit. Our mind and emotions begin to witness our surroundings through the Lens of God. Through God’s eyes, we are no important than are our other human relations, or the Earth who gives birth to all beings. We are blessed in an inestimable way; born of Love, we are the Beauty of God, as are all God’s Creation. Emanations of God, no point or ray of light, no human being is of more or less value than any other. To know this is to love. It is also to forgive.
Love is the ultimate light, it has the power to unify the entire Creation and spur Life toward a common destiny: That destiny favors all. The blessings that lie within such a destiny could never be gained except along that One path; all other paths are but a shadow whose goals are illusory.
When we develop, our reality becomes capable of encompassing a larger, more complete sphere of Reality. We become more of Everything, and less of ourselves. Our Intellect grows through Right Experience and becomes Wisdom which relates to all of Life. Our Emotions grow to become our Social Function which joins us to each other and connects us to the Nature of which we are born; to our living relations and to Mother Earth. It is volition. Our physical form reflects our emotional function in an external way and generates action to positively better our world. Our intellect gives us the tools to achieve our means. Our Spiritual Function gives us the power to sense our destiny.
A medicine man once shared a medicine wheel teaching with me that awoke me to new understanding. He had pondered something I found perplexing but was not able to resolve on my own. His meditations allowed him to see into it and find this understanding that he shared with me. Due to so much abuse suffered by Native people, deep social wounds remain unattended on many reservations. On these reservations we may see very powerful healers and medicine persons who are themselves afflicted with these social illnesses or alcoholism. It can be confusing to see a medicine man heal someone from cancer one day and do wrong to his own family the very next day. Of course, the question arises, “how can God’s spiritual power move through this person in such a strange and miraculous way when he is so sick?” or “God’s Spirit is Harmonious and so how can there exist such a connection between this disturbed man and God? Why are not these blessings associated with healthier individuals?” In fact, they often are associated with healthy individuals, but the question still perplexes.
And so this medicine man shone a brilliant light of understanding through me that has helped me see more clearly and helped me be a bit more ‘human’. What he said was this: “There are many medicine persons who have great power but are very ill socially. Just as there are great scientists who have no sense of the divine nature of things and athletes who are mentally challenged. These medicine men have developed the mystical side of their beings enormously, but they are handicapped emotionally. Their spirit can tap into other realms, and energies that heal, but still their emotional state is dwarfed and maybe their mind is imbalanced. A person that has developed all of the aspects of a human being to great degree, is called a ‘holy person’.
These people, that we call holy people, are ‘walking prayers’. They are prayers of good-will for all people and all living beings; prayerful intentions resonate through every fiber of a holy person’s being. They are instruments of great love and power and the Spirit plays Its heavenly music upon and through them. They are Eagle bone whistles, or hollow bones without pithe, that cry with the spirit of the Eagle. The Eagle is God’s sacred messenger who carries our prayers into the heavens above.
The closer that a person becomes to reaching this place the more that he or she is likely to be chosen for leadership by traditional cultures. That is because their prayers are heard by the Great Spirit. That is the One that the people want to hear them and give them strength. The prayers of holy people are very pure, altruistic, and powerful. These are the kind of leaders that appeal to Indian people, or used to; at least do to the old timers and traditionalists among Indians today.
These few, rare persons who have been considered holy people, or who were known to be very near to that condition, are widely known in their time. There are four who I have heard of and two of these four survive today. They near the eclipse of life, being very, very old. Such persons are known across the reservations by all common Indians. They may not be visited much, or necessarily asked for help often, but everyone knows who they are. Mostly we leave these blessed persons alone. Unless we want to help them out, it is better not to burden them but instead let them go their own way; they know where to go and what to do a lot better than we do. Also it would be cruel to make them like celebrities so I guess we kind of have to protect them; and stay quiet about them.
I may not be the best person to talk about these holy persons and spiritual leaders among native traditionalists; but until someone else can get them the help they need, and they gain World recognition for the contributions they have to offer humanity, it will be my job. Please see How you can help.
I’ll share here some of the little understanding I’ve been able to pick up of ways that can help us become whole persons. As I mentioned we have to give time to the development of each of our 4 aspects: the Intellectual, Emotional, Spiritual or Mystical, and Physical dimensions of what we are.
Of course, the development of our intellects depends on education, understanding, and comprehension of our world. We need to learn to listen, be inquisitive, and exercise our mental powers to do this. Modern and Indigenous Education both give us the tools that we need to develop our minds. Imagination, memorization, and reasoning skills that empower us to deduce, induce, compare, contrast, and integrate knowledge are all necessary to build our intellectual capacity.
The better educated we are, the happier and more confident we become. Our sense of intrigue rewards us with moments of natural rapture as we set our heart deeply into our newest investigations. The more we find the more we our drive escalates ambition to learn more; to be fed more mentally. Fun, curiosity, enthusiasm, excitation, and appeasement of discovery, are life giving vibrations that wean us of dependence on unhealth-ful patterns of triviality or wrongful interference into the lives of our families and relatives. These vibrations, these jewels, give us alternatively, gifts to share; novel unravelings of truth, in a reality insearchable in its depth and breadth. Revelations magnetize and fuel contagious thrill in passive audiences. Giving mental energy embolsters social solidarity; because we will always defend what matters to us; because we love someone who cares enough to share with us. We can all be that child who, upon finding a special stone or a baby turtle, runs vigorously to share new excitement with her mother. Intelligence stirs and multiplies in an enlivening atmosphere; knowledge is food for our minds; it resuscitates, sharpens and concentrates our powers; if well tended, a nurtured intellectual faculty satisfies our precious soul with spiritual sustenance, competence and harmony.
Emotionally, we need to learn to become aware of our feelings and allow others to experience theirs in healthy, helpful ways. We also need to learn appropriate ways of acting upon them that are positive and productive. Emotion fortifies, actuates and activates social power. It is colorful, artistically captivating, communicative energy; emotion is the music of the soul. We must build emotional relationships with other healthy persons that allow for us to express and experience vulnerability and build strength of character. Emotional conviction is social defense; it is solidarity and consolidation. Responsible emotional respons-ivity generates dignity and personal power; true personal power is not intimidating but silent, harmonious, comforting and encouraging. We need to seek out healthy mentors who have emotional genius just as we need intellectual teachers. It is truly difficult to live and perform well without emotional stability; ultimately it must come from within, but we need help learning to build it unless we were very fortunate as children. Love and respect for ourselves and others serve like a guiding site to direct us in building healthy emotions. Experiencing our own emotions in a confident and mindful way is the first step toward mastery. Awareness of ourselves is always the crucial begining of progress. We must recognize our reactivity so as to not be overtaken by ourselves and others. Observation allows us not to be overwhelmed; we learn to see and sense our inner constitution and how it works. Getting in touch with ourselves allows us to learn to direct our emotional being to positive ends. Communicating our feelings with others in a respectful way is beneficial in defining the nature and boundaries of our relationships with others, and in identifying and clarifying and reinforcing our spiritual value systems to ourselves and others. Our emotional journey is a lifelong adventure. It is one of the more beautiful parts of our human life on earth. We must be careful not to treat it trivially. We should never make a plaything of ourselves. Our emotions constitute a large part of our relationship with God. Spending time alone in nature opens up our faculty for intimacy by quieting our mind and connection us to our own feelings and innermost nature.
Physically, we need to start with our bodies. Each of us is a living mirror of Holiness; within the reality of man is enfolded the entire cosmos; the whole universe is contained within each person in a most mysterious way. Our bodies are a reflection of the spiritual realm; as above, so below.
It is said that the spiritual realities are each and all reflected throughout the material universe; for everything that exists in the divine essence there is a component or equivalent in this physical world that we live within. The physical world is the place of our spiritual development; it is the training ground for the growth and perfection of our souls. For this reason it needs to be carefully dealt with, and respected. Our food comes from the earth and binds us to the land. Through our food we know that we rely on Mother Earth to forever nurture us; we cannot live on our own without her.
Through the land we are bound to all things, all our relatives, all that lives. We feed and drink from the same source. We breath the same air. There is only one air, one water, one earth; there is only one food, the earth is our one food. There is only one fire, the first fire. In the Navajo language we say, Shi Hajinee’ko’ dee’ which means I come forth from the original fire. The energy of that first fire moves within all things. We see it in the sun. It is also the electricity inside our own bodies. This is part of what we are physically, so it lets us know how sacred we really are.
Our DNA reads and speaks the same language as all the earth’s creatures; whether derived from a microscopic bacteria, a whale, a butterfly or a human being, our bodies know how to exactly translate each other creatures’ DNA into what biological machinery that DNA encodes in secret chemical scripts. The cells of the wholly mammoth or dinosaur of yester eon would also have understood our DNA and been able to make sense and use of it. In fact, lying within our DNA are ancient silenced sequences that code for bird blood, full body hair, and other genes that we no longer use today as human people. So it is apparent that we are related to the relatives of the Earth and Nature.
We are composed of the soil that we walk upon. This soil holds us up even as it supports the roots of a mighty tree. All of life cycles through the Earth; it comes from out of the earth and returns back into the earth again in the end. We feed from the earth and our waste is returned back into earth. Life enters into us and, after passing through our bodies, it reenters other organisms and plants. The Nitrates and nitrites in our waste become proteins and nucleic acids. They are incorporated into DNA in the leaves of towering cedar trees or taken up in earthworms to enter the DNA in songbirds.
We are the children of stardust, composed of the original hydrogen that issued forth from the big bang. That combustive force of heat and light will collapse and expand again and again in the rhythm of the universe: the heartbeat of God. We are stardust of the original Sun, and the dung of the earth. We are heavenly and we are hellish; to be holy we must balance the totality of our instincts, and let the spirit like the wind direct our course; we must hear through justice and find courage in love; we must be servants to be kings; must be last to be first; for we have to serve the great, great, great, grandchildren to gain our souls and the pearl of great price--else no matter what the preacher assures you, we loose all. The only one we cannot deceive or fool is God. We must be honest within ourselves first; it is there that we meet God emotionally. Honesty allow us to attain emotional equilibrium in the relationships that define us; this includes our relationship with nature herself. Nature is the embodiment of the Spirit.
Heaven and hell are neither good nor bad in any real sense; they exist as extreme components of the holy. We derive form from heaven and force from hell. It is through harmony that we reverberate and attune ourselves to the receptiviness of holiness. It is through harmony that the spirit is able to direct us and create a blessing through us.
When we become a blessing, we enter harmony within ourselves and, within the relationships that interconnect us all, to one another. We are then, an instrument of the Holy One; one of His ingredients, a key by which the spirit accesses this world. For this purpose we must eat. For this reason, we must sleep. We must balance the stresses of our lives with happiness and tranquility. We can do this through dance, gardening, or any number of physical engagements. Generosity through charity and humor are two ingrained cultural ways that help native people maintain tranquility and well-being. We must listen to our bodies to know where we are at and how we have been affected. We must maintain our bodies that we may become vehicles of the spirit.
All dimensions of our being conjoin in the physical realm. We must take care of this sacred physicality that acts as our instrument of action in this creation. The physical aspect of our Higher selves is the Earth’s ecology. We are part of the greatness of the immensity of the earth; and through her we are part of all things. We must take care of her. Should she grow ill and die, nothing else will live either. Her health is our health, her beauty is our beauty. She reflects the human spiritual condition for us in a perceptible way. She acts as an exacting reflection of the spirit and mind of man. The material world is interwoven within our spiritual reality, there is really no absolute separation, no disconnect, no dissociation. Reality Itself is a Holism. That is why we must be grateful for the food we eat. It is life, our life; we must respect it. We must respect what died for us so that we might live another day. These are some of the ways that the earth teaches us beauty and appreciation. The earth leads us back to the spirit and the spirit leads us into the nature of the earth. On earth we must rely on each other to live and the one we must ultimately rely on is the Earth herself; so the earth teaches us unity and cooperation. The scientists teach us that in forests the larger taller trees feed the small saplings and plants through a web work of fungi that entwines about and within the roots of trees and plants. The fungi are called mycorhyzal fungi. Although the food sap travels both ways, the net transfer is from the large sunlit trees to the plants and smaller trees. Of course, when the saplings or small trees reach the sunlight they will become more generous themselves. This is cooperation and mutual benefit; without it, the forest as a whole would not develop to be what it becomes at it height of being: A thousands upon thousands of years, stable, Climax community forest. That is the power of cooperation--as nature does things.
The spiritual aspect of our being is our intuitive faculty and our relationship to the energies that lie hidden within our soul. This aspect is mysterious and mystical. It does not easily translate into words but lends itself better to parable and metaphor and stories that convey it indirectly. He who speaks of it does not know, and he who knows does not speak of it. Indigenous people use ceremonies to access this realm; dreams and trance states are vehicles able to carry and communicate elements of this reality within the soul. The major problem we have in treating this subject is that it is largely a subjective experience. A spiritual awakening uses all of the other human faculties to impress otherwise imperceptible realities. How can a recovered alcoholic describe his moment of clarity; the circumstances surrounding the event may prove adequate, in fact have to prove adequate, because the actual something that made that moment ‘clear’ is ineffable. The fact is, it will sound no different than a million similar situations following and preceding that moment; except that we take her/his word for it that that was the situational moment of clarity when he woke up. Science can use mathematics and conceptual frameworks to communicate knowledge of the physical world but spiritual reality, best conveyed through poetry, fails to be recognized except to those who have been there, down the same trail. In fact if visible imagery, voices or tactile touch, were present within the ‘mystical painting’, which they often are, the speaker will only sound the madder for it.
The way that native people learn to access spiritual realms is by way of ceremony; and these, unlike simple ritual mimicry, must be experienced personally to be known. Ceremony is but a vehicle to conduct spiritual energies and alter the condition of the world for ceremonial participates, or a patient distant from the ceremony temporally. The personal transformation is said to affect, change, or heal the world since a change in one thing effects a change in all other things. Ceremony is usually used to bring harmony, restore imbalance, beautify and bless. Thus healing is caused to appear for an individual or balance is regained within the earth.
Ceremonies draw upon known but unseen forces, spirits of nature or the Earth, ancestors, and ultimately the Creative Force of life, to awaken us to sensibilities otherwise unknown to man. Traditional native people have a science for working within this environment, and know how to seal spiritual portals afterwards, so that the world can be returned to its ‘ordinary’ sacred state of affairs once again. Typically such powers are called in through ancient chantway ceremonies, and the energies are conferred on participants through induction.
Induction is a gathering of energy as when a coil is conferred power indirectly through a high voltage transformer; the electricity flows through a source that conducts the current directly. A small amount of energy radiates onto the coil through induction without ever contacting it directly. A ceremonial altar, it is said, becomes endowed with powerful spiritual energy directly, through conduction. As we work with them we become illumined through induction. That is how powerful these altars are.
A medicine man I know has a habit of explaining this to me periodically. He says, “You cannot go directly to God, that’s like going up to a high voltage wire. You can’t take in that kind of power by connecting to it. You would just blow up! That’s why we use these instruments, and these altars. We have to step it down a few notches to get to where we can use it. When we can handle it, its like the 120 volt current that runs through a house. If you just go straight to the main wire everything would explode.”
The vibration of songs and the resonance of the drum is induction; the little healing spirits that come and heal with baby hands are induction; the appearance of a sacred animal or angelic being is induction; the sand paintings of holy persons, whose sand painted body images are touched to our own bodies, hands to hands, head to head, feet to feet, are induction; the use of sacred instruments is induction. In Siberia, the Shamans (Oodaganka) channel the current directly through their own spirit being; they go unconscious when the current crosses a threshold. They then deliver the energies to the collective unconscious of the land and people of the area. The land and people absorb it through induction. This is very dangerous profession; they are often killed or loose sanity and utilize ancestor spirits to guard them from injury.
The spirit is moved through a medium or vehicle that confers blessings that our senses collect through induction. Rhythm and meaning, spirits, divine apparitions and images allow for the conveyance of divine power. We cannot go to the Holiest of Holies directly anymore than we can visit the sun. Yet we bath in its light and see by its power. We gather its energy from plants that have converted its energy to carbohydrate form; that we do eat. We utilize the power of the sun through reflection and absorption of its transformed power.
