chanupa pejuta

The voice or sound or whatever mechanism was utilized to invoke symbols in my being, told me the story of what had happened to this island of GAIAN crust, crushed between the great oceans, called by its conquering heros, the United States. The symbols told of the Indian, who was in harmony with this land and with all the things that lived in this land. Visitors came to the Indians and made the Indians unconscious of their relationships with all things and the order and peace they once had. These visitors then took the land from the Indians and left the Indians to suffer for their unconsciousness. These visitors did not know the land nor did they know the proper relationship between men and all the things of this land. They ignored their ignorance of this and proceeded to fight against all things. They destroyed the relationships like they destroyed the Indian. They created for themselves a universe and an environment that did not relate at all to any natural reality. They have now gone so far as to control the powers of the Thunder Beings, the Wakinyan, and the white gift of purity. These visitors, who were welcomed as brothers by all things, now kill all things, because they have created new non-living, non-spirit things that walk the Black path. This new reality is backward and frozen, and it will eventually lead to the end of both the Red and the Black Paths.
The symbols showed the end of the relationship between the animal beings and the plant beings. To end this relationship is to kill everything; it is done everyday by the visitors, not only on the land they claim to possess, but also in the spaces they want to control and dominate. All plants and animals share a fundamental gift that must always be. The plants give to the animals what they need and the animals give to the plants what they need most. This giving away brings new freshness to the Whole Earth. Without this giving the air would become stale and die.
The visitors forget this. They take from the plants and they take from the animals, but they never give back life. They only give poison, and that is given not as a gift but as a result of discarding waste, the byproduct of their behaviors. These visitors have days that they are to give to one another. These days are special to them, but even then, the gifts they give are perceived only as trading for what they receive in return. The Indian does not know this way, nor do all the living sentient beings.

The red spirit path is a giving path. The Indian lives this giving path, sharing everything with everything, never owning or possessing anything. Above all, the Indian never possesses the land. The earth and all the living things are the greatest gift ever given, and in the spirit of this gift, the Indian gives it all back and shares it with all. The visitors do not understand this. To them the land, like the plants, is there to do with whatever they want. They own it, fight over it, rape it, kill it, pollute it, but they never know it, nor share with it, nor find harmony with it or all of the relations living through it.

These visitors do not even understand the need to communicate with all nature, rocks, trees, birds, insects, animals, fish. If a visitor is seen communicating with any of these, outside the privacy of his own little environmental shell, the visitor is considered crazy. The more the visitor attempts to find harmony and oneness with all things, the crazier he/she is called. If the controllers of the visitors, those visitors that have the power to keep the new reality in order and to assure its continuation, deem a visitor crazy, they lock him away and use him for play. To all nature and the Indian, there is no craziness; there is only the harmony of all living beings. Behavior that may have been seen as eccentric by visitors is seen by the natives as merely another relationship of the whole circle. The natives understand that each being and spirit has a center, and that each must find that center. When it is found, order will be had, and harmony and peace will reign.

The visitors believe that harmony and peace can only be maintained as a by-product of conformity, competition and gamesmanship. It is rather amusing to know that the shamen, the holy men of the natives, undergo life experiences that the visitors would call very sick and very crazy. These men must pass through this phase because they have great power, and it is a a great ordeal to center oneself with so much power. But when they are centered and know the Truth, these men can perform healing and can make rain and are one with the great powers of the universe, the Wakinyan, the Thunder Beings, the healing plants, the calming waters, and Wakantanka, the Great Mystery. If visitors show signs of this experience, they are removed from the rest of the masses of citizens and are dealt with as misfits and wrong, sick, crazy, people.

As all of these symbols danced in my being my spirit beheld the urgency of the message. It is becoming too late to teach the visitors the ways of the land that they are visiting. They merely ignore these attempts anyway. They even play games at it. Muir believed in preservation of natural lands and environments, yet the followers of his teachings, the Sierra Club, confess faith only in conservation. To most Americans the notions of setting aside large bio-regions as laboratories for observing the raw processes of the natural world are unthinkable and obscene. Conservation is merely a delaying technique to give special interests first chance at special ripoffs. Ecology is a game to play, simply to understand what health foods and homeopathic techniques will apply to individuals, while still retaining the overwhelming economic benefits for the greedy ‘hippies.’

I cursed my own involvement in the visitors’ games and swore to fight against the destructive systems. The cloud and its voice bade me to calm down and showed me patience and serenity. I was carried to a creek and my anxiety was washed out of me. My temper, cooled by the chattering stream, flew away on the wings of a blowing leaf. The cloud then carried me above the stream and showed me some beautiful cottonwood trees. The cloud touched the trees and they lived through their seasons before my eyes. From deadness in winter to rebirth in spring, from adolescence and young adult in summer to middle and old age in fall, and back to death and rebirth.

The cloud said to me that a human is like the cottonwood tree. He/she is born from a small seed and grows over years, dying and being reborn as the seasons go round and round. We grow until we get too old to grow anymore, then we degenerate and return to the elemental form from which we aroze. During this life-time, encompassing many rebirths, humans have a multitude of experiences. Our experiences are like the branches and twigs and leaves of the sacred cottonwood; blooming in climax, they fall off, to only have been. Each new branch and new twig symbolize a new experience connected to the previous experiences as a twig proceeds from a branch, supporting the next seasons growth of foilage and experience. The experiences are only connected together by the roots. But the roots are at the center; the trunk, as the core which holds, supports, and ‘establishes’ the tree, serves as the medium of communication between the leaves and the roots. The tree grows from the roots, spreading into other experiences and to other relationships with the earth. Roots also signal the tree to grow up from the ground, reaching into the sky spreading into other experiences and to other relationships with the earth. The leaves, like the roots, contact between the wholeness of the air, the wholeness of the earth, and the breathing of all life on the GAIAN planet. The tree is the same either up or down--lifeflowing, spirit breathing. This is the way of the indigenous peoples too. Their experiences connect at the roots in the center. Life flows through the peoples from the sky, to the earth, and back again.

As the cottonwood stands by itself, it reaches in many directions above and below the ground. These are the many experiences of the tree. The tree is flowing with life. If we were to live alone in the diverse natural realm, we too would be whole beings flowing with life. If we put the tree in a very crowded forest it cannot reach out and experience so much. It must live in a smaller space, occupying and experiencing only a little in comparison to being allowed to grow in a freer, more spacious place. Likewise humans, if crowded by other people, can only live a little and not as fully. The tree, though, will still be in harmony with the whole while the man will only regret his smallness and not allow himself to live his whole and complete being.

This is what the visitors have done to themselves and America. They have made themselves too dense and have found that they do not know wholeness do not know wholeness. It is not that life of the forest tree is simpler; no, in fact, it is much more complex and difficult, but it knows the whole circle and relates in harmony with the nature around it. Thus it lives in the spirit way. The visitors do not know the spirit way nor the whole circle--they do not live in harmony with their neighbors because they resent existence.

The cloud also explained to me the connection of all things. The visitor's scientists have revealed that everything in the universe is comprised of energy and matter. These are arranged atomically. A being is merely a particular arrangement of atoms, as is all the matter which is apparent. These atoms have rhythmic pulses and movement as part of their existence. The electrons flow around them, and in certain elements these electrons move about the atoms at great distances. These electrons come into contact with electrons from all over the universe, yet they retain their connection to their original atom. In this way, we, as masses of atoms, are always in contact with all things atomically. Every movement, every electron shell change, every breath, is felt by all the atoms in the universe. It is our limits of perception that keep us from seeing these relationships. The energy that powers us comes from the operations of our atoms and is guided by our spirits. Our spirits are also in relation to all spirits and are one with all. The Great Mystery Spirit, Wakantanka, is the oneness of all spirits. Our brother spirits, the wakan beings, are those arrangements of atoms and energy and spirit that complement us and maintain our continuation in the universe. The shamans know the keys to these relationships and can transcend these boundaries and merge into different configurations. This is the ultimate revelation of Truth, and is accessible to those beings that are truly centered in their grace-filled existence.

The visitors must ask themselves what they are doing here, before they continue doing. Their scientists must understand their gifts and the powers of these gifts, before they allow the leaders to use them. In this way, these gifts will not become bent things to have. The visitors must seek the wisdom of the natives to know how to live in this land in peace and harmony. The visitors seem to show some concern about peace and harmony in the world, but they don't even know what it is all about.

They must stop playing games and realize that they have lost their visions. They must be made to quest for new visions as the native indigenous people have done for centuries. They must be made to see the way to the Red Path and unfreeze their own Medicine Wheel. If they do not do this, then they will die, but not alone. They will kill Maka, they will kill the skies, they will kill all of their space. To not see this is blind ignorance. To assume that everything will be alright, that the leaders know what they are doing, or to feel that it doesn't really matter anyway, that we are all going to die eventually so let us play happily with out care --these are all the Begging Way, the frozen path of tradition and dying visions. They are poisons in the minds and death to the hearts, as are money and the whole economics game. These visitors have brought disease with them, and they have infected the American land with their mind virus of "use and destroy." The natives are dying from this, and soon all living things will die too. When they are gone, there will only be the virus and the Void.