“We are the gods of the atoms that make up ourselves,
but we are also the atoms of the gods that make up the universe”
-Manly P. Hall
*******
I was still on the hook to cook, the dancers may not be eating for a few days, but everyone else brought their Lakota appetites. Most of them brought some kitchen contributions too. Sun Dance is for prayer, not for profit, this is not a festival, so there’s no food truck or hired catering. Instead, the community will come together in a good way, sharing resources as they reconnect to what’s really important. Makes the concrete menu tough when new stuff keeps showing up, which is exactly why I prefer one with wings.
Although some at home may think that we’re at some kind of indian dance party, there was certainly no cover here, you don’t have to pay to pray. Harvey doesn’t collect a salary. Not for this ceremony, or for the rest of his medicine manning. He understands the disconnection between a walk of prayer and a path of profit. He relies on the support of the people, those that he selflessly offers his spiritual guidance to. And without a mandatory weekly fee for God to hear them, they are more than eager to contribute to the frequency of the ceremony. He also leads a humble way of life. No frills. Just some coffee and smokes and medicine, and maybe a little ancient aliens, but I’d imagine his possessionless path is checkered with plenty of adventure, mystique, and certainly good fortunes along the way.
He’s no saint. He’s had to face his own demons on the hill. He wouldn’t be as strong of a leader if he hadn’t. He had his own bout with the bottle, but that’s in the past, and because of his experience, he has an intimate understanding of the sickness plaguing his people, which helps him to bring healing to its victims. Hard to imagine any good coming from indiscretion as he strayed from the Red Road, as he forgot to walk in prayer, as he set down the chanupa and picked up his old habits, as he went through a period of darkness, disconnection, an adversity that pushed him to grow spiritually strong in order to survive, back towards the light, bringing healing to himself and to the people, preparing him for the work ahead, returning to the Sun Dance way of life with a new perspective of the suffering of his family, as he rejoined his center with a more complete understanding of life. Sounds like another cyclical journey of self-improvement to me, a wavelength that I’m not gonna be able to hear, so I’ll just assume that his buzz was part of the universal underscore. Everything happens for a reason.
*******
Oh does it now? Everything? All the things? Do go on. If you flipped through my first attempt at clever quippery, then you couldn’t have missed the overstatement, the author of that cold mess wholeheartedly believed in the reasons for the things. He’s also as open minded as he is wholehearted.
Recently, a friend challenged the philosophy and pointed out the logical fallacy. She was with me in my sentiment, but had seen the adage used in an unhealthy way. I use it as I attempt to fathom the unfathomable, to put finite words to the complexities of the Great Mystery, Wakan Tanka, to understand my understanding of the intricate interconnectedness of even the most minute details of our cosmic egg. I use it to get through upsetting times, a reminder of the bigger picture turns a setback into an evolution, and I often assume the reason to be a much prayed for lesson in something or other. I use it to grow, to evolve, but it could just as easily be used as a cop out.
Oh, everything happens for a reason, remember, so I’m not really to blame for all that stuff that happened. I’m pretty much free to run wild without consequence, I can break whatever (and whoever) and know that there must be some reason out there, otherwise it wouldn’t have happened. Guilt erased. Or there’s the ones who need to know the reason, or those who want to find the signs in everything, not stopping until they’ve found the meaning of tacos, or projecting their own delusions into the illusion of a world around them.
I see the conundrum. The way in which an english translation of an unspoken Lakota understanding, is unable to properly convey the true philosophy intended by the phrase. I’ve seen my own past in such a way that I became aware of a guided path, things had happened for a reason, coincidental details and synchronistic encounters all leading to the same conclusion. Now.
I can’t quite describe how it felt, but I know in my heart that my life was woven with purpose. There is a reason. For me. For my journey. For my family. For my friends. For my sacrifice. But that’s far from everything. I think that even if you blindly believe in this deluded daydream, a divine roadmap of my own timeline, the best we can confirm so far is that “some things happen for a reason." Or even “lots of things happen for a reason”, this would be enough to explain the uncanny connection of events throughout my own life. The big stuff all mattered, some small stuff too, but if every single thing was for a reason, then every single footprint would affect the encompassing world. Hmm...
I don’t get caught up looking for reasons, the whole point is that it’s too cosmically complex to figure out, instead, I trust that the universe has it under control and I’m free to go with the flow. I don’t need to know the reason behind everything, that would be way too much information that I really don’t care to keep up with, plus it might not even have anything to do with me. It’s pretty self-involved to assume that every detail of the infinite idea has to have something to do with you, or even to do with your species. Perhaps a reasonable footprint is just the cause to affect change on the living paths around you.
And it’s no excuse. Assuming no responsibility for your fated fouls, chocking your wrongs up to some mysterious reason and thinking it’s all good, it might just be that you need to experience the consequences of those actions in order to learn valuable lessons of growth, to gain the insights that would have saved you the trouble in the first place. If I feel like I messed up, then obviously I have something to learn yet, even if it’s that I’m not perfect. It’s no escape from guilt, but it is a path to push personal evolution, and even if your little humility lesson wasn’t the reason for the season, that doesn’t make it any less real in your heart.
I’ve messed up in the past, hurt people, burned bridges, destroyed relationships with loved ones, things to regret as they weigh on my heart. I know that beating myself up over the past is not a healthy way to deal with the guilt, nor is it doing anything on a cosmic energy level to spread good into the world, but it was my fault. Unless everything happened for a reason and this is just the way it is supposed to be, nobody to blame, because this is God’s will. Well that certainly doesn’t sound right, how could we have free will to do anything, if every step is preprogrammed with precision? I know that I can’t change the past, nor that I’d ever want to, even after knowing all the pain I’ve caused. I’ve seen enough time travel snafus to know that what’s done is done, I’m so very grateful to be where I am today, so there’s no way I would jeopardize this path with a hope that I could do any better the second time around.
The past is the past, for whatever reason it worked out that way, even if the reason was something I could have prevented. But I didn’t, this is how it is, I can’t kick myself as I wish for a redo, I can only move on from here with the lessons that this experience has given me. I can’t erase the negative energy I’ve left in my wake, but I can live every moment with love in my heart as I spread healing everywhere that I go. I can’t change the past, it happened that way for a reason, the reason may have been my action (or inaction), or maybe the reason was a longer term strengthening of relationships through cyclical adversity, all I can really do is change the future, by living in the now.
What can I do right now to repair the damage I’ve done to the universal scale of light vs dark? If I can actually heal the wounds I’ve personally created, great, do it, sounds like a plan, but not every upset can be turned around with words. Plus, I’m not even in contact with everyone I’ve crossed on my path, possibly out there paying forward the pain to another, so the best I can do is to carry that experience in my heart as I try to live today in a good way. I remind myself of the lessons I’ve learned, the ways in which I’ve grown, which have evolved my perspective to a point that I understand my impact on the world around me, and I am unwilling to perpetuate the negative energies which have allowed me to hurt others in the past. Whether we’re on the highway to heaven, or just a bunch of random space dust spiraling into chaos, if you assume that the reason for everything is to prepare you for anything, then you might just be ready for the next thing.
*******
Next thing I know, the Sun Dance is in full swing, steps synchronized with the hilltop heartbeat, Harvey extends his Eagle staff to the tree, the Sun rains down, the dancers persevere, their prayers carry them beyond their body’s limitations, their connection grows as their ego fades, they humble themselves to the tree of life as they find this way of walking with strength in their hearts, and some can see the energy starting to build around the prayer covered Cottonwood in the center of their sunwise orbit.
Charlie’s turn to pierce. I’ve already been dancing under the shaded arbor behind him in support, backing him up with my own vibrations, back and forth between praying and cooking, and it just so happens that I am present for this moment of living in the now with my brother. He surrenders as his rope grows taut, his skin gives way as his prayers take him to another place, here he may very well receive a vision from the spirit world.
He prays for the people, this way of life is one dedicated to servitude, and his sacrifice strengthens his contributions to this ceremony of universal healing. The Eagle dancer’s energy is multiplied by their fortitude, as they endure four days of adversity. The strongest of the spiritual warriors will also perform one of the most sacred rites of the ceremony, the pulling of the Buffalo skulls, and look ma, no hands. May take a few rounds before the skulls have pulled them through it, that part’s up to the spirits, and their commitment to prayer has made their connection to heart even stronger.
The Buffalo skull is sacred, houses its own spirit, so we carry it in a sacred manner. We have one of the skulls from the inipi at Standing Rock, we also have a new one down by the cook shack. They’re not something that should be bought or sold. Like most sacred elements of Unci Maka, they should be given freely with a personal exchange of unifying energy. You can’t pay to pray, and anyone who asks you to, is only commoditizing your heart vibrations. You can’t buy in, that’s the easy way and this is a hard road, but if you commit to a path of praying in this way, then once your journey has prepared you to protect, a skull might just coincidentally come into your care.
*******
So don’t go ebaying a Buffalo skull, you really oughta do that kinda thing in person. That goes with most things though, a nice local face-to-face interaction should always be preferred, a personal exchange of energy, but we’ve devolved into an isolated state of disconnection. We’d rather order it online, save from having to speak to another human, let alone share energy with them. Burns a little midnight oil to get the instant gratification of overnight shipping, but not to worry, now they have drones capable of delivering payloads to the people.
Local stuff just feels better really, seems to have a little more love in it, a stronger connection to the surrounding landscape, a more vibrant vibration that poured out as whatever it is, was on its short path to you. Especially the food. Big time. Wild, obviously, that’s the cream of the non-crop, but even if you’re still stuck in the machine, the shared microbiology of local produce is better for you. Unless of course you live in a farmland food desert, lost in a Corn maze as you struggle to find anything to eat that’s not poisonous.
Eating local is also way healthier for Unci Maka, who happens to be a little under the weather right now - your mother is sick of all this nonsense. It’s not even just the gas that it takes to transport a tropical delicacy to a privileged porch step, the entire concept of export is just a way for the takers to pilfer and plunder another land’s essence. To commoditize a piece of Unci Maka and market it worldwide, from the spice trade to the blood soaked conflict minerals in your cell phone, it’s simply not sustainable.
That original Mango grove was plenty to sustain the web of life entangled with its own vibration, a perfectly fit component of a locally balanced breakfast, as it fortifies against the ailments of that particular bioregion. And then some white guy on a boat shows up and just falls in love with the fruit, they just must try these back home, so he starts up Mango madness and it’s a hit.
We’ll assume that he didn’t simply murder the Mangonese people and steal the fruit, that could never happen in a civil society, why maybe he even offered them a fair exchange of currency, a piece of paper that someone somewhere says is worth something, enabling them to wake up and join the developing world of debt. Even with colonial compensation, every export brings further devastation to homelands around the globe. The Mango grove evolved hand-in-hand with its neighbors, it's biological relatives, they all grew up together and they each play a vital role in the community. One of the Mango’s roles is to feed the tropical teenagers of thousands of hungry species, providing vibrational vitamins to a vibrant variety of life.
So what happens if some guy shows up and starts shipping them to your local grocer? Well, there’s no longer gonna be enough to go around. Animals are gonna die. From Bugs to Baboons, these trees supported a complex web of interwoven ecology, which just lost its primary energy source, as this creature called ‘human’ proclaimed their ultimate superiority and birthright to every morsel of food on their privatized planet. If Mangoes disappear, so do their customary consumers, who no longer benefit the other trees of the tropics, who then start to feel the impact of export.
And even people lose out. If we ship all of the fruit to the privileged, there’s a whole human community who has to go without, luckily americans were born the most supreme of the upper echelon and that all seems to sound fair to us. Plus, we like them so much that we’re gonna send over a crew to plant even more, now maybe you’ll have a chance to survive, if you can climb a fence. No empty farmland available, so we’ll just have to make some, and the Mango thrives as it seems to takeover the island by overtaking his neighbors, his buddies, those that understand him the most, his needs, his strengths, those that put the very nutrients into the ground that are necessary for a Mango’s complete breakfast.
Now our mango monocrop is king of the world, successfully conquered the entire kingdom, but it’s lonely at the top, everyone he could depend on has fallen under his own footprint, but at least our footprint includes a barrage of chemical nutrition, so that should be about the same as a supremely diverse circle of life.
We’re so smart. And just look at all this money we’re making. Sure, it’s completely devastating an entire ecosystem, but we did give a few of them a few dollars to make up for the desolation brought to their entire way of life. The povertization of the people. The land no longer able to provide, like she has forever, so now the poor Mangonese people must rely on some other system of sustenance, like getting a job harvesting Mangoes, so that they can purchase a minimal menu of processed poison, a refined colonial diet from the same elite exporters who stole the Mangoes. Commoditizing pieces of Unci Maka is like selling off your mother’s organs, kinda makes me sick too.
*******
So what if there’s no money then? What about the barter system? When I speak to people about a no money way of life, I usually get one of a few reactions: lots of those that don’t buy it, capitalism or bust; tons that agree, but that’s just the way it is; the few that have joined me on a moneyless manifestation; and plenty that think we should be back on bartering. Trading stocks among our peoples, gotta be better than figuring out the dollars, but I do kinda see the downside of trading up.
It’s just like if we outsource our employment to an unregulated competitor, if I remove the food supply from the local ecology, then the local ecology won’t have enough food. If I harvest more Mangoes than I need, so that I can swap them for Coconut oil, well, now I’m living in excess as others are denied access. I’ve just converted an ecosystem’s livelihood into frybread for one. And I still have all these Mangos, I get to have my fruit and trade it too. I’ve simply exchanged currency for Mangoes, that I can now use to trade the world, still a commoditization, but at least we don’t have the pollution of dirty money.
Or then there’s my way, the gifting economy, sharing with your brothers and sisters as you live a loving heart vibration, but even that financial advice could flatten the bottom line. If I harvest extra food in order to give it to out-of-towners, wouldn’t it have the same negative effect on my neighborhood? Would I not be gifting away something that simply wasn’t mine to give? Selfless indeed. If a Squirrel collected the acorns she needed for winter and then traded the rest for a flat screen, well, how am I gonna bake bread? One species claiming the entire food supply is not an ecosystem, it’s an extinction event.
But there’s got to be some kind of trick to the trade, plus I have to be able to freely give from my heart as I am compelled to share with my family. I have no property, what’s mine is theirs is yours, anything that I can give, I will, right up until I’ve got nothing left to give.
Ahh... well there’s your answer. Plain as a dakota day. I can only give as much as I have. I can only trade what is rightfully mine. I can harvest my fair share, enough to get my family through the winter, and now if I just can’t live without an exotic fruit, I think I’m free and clear to pull a swaparoo. I have a personal backstock of calories, which I’m pulling from to swap the roos, but I’ll be bringing in a new source of caloric intake, so it should maintain our Goldilocks equilibrium. And I can give my love to my heart’s content, out of my own stash, not somebody else’s, what kind of gift would that be anyway?
Or I could give the gift of service, a helping hand, some spirals of time that I can dedicate to another. Back at the farm, I used my mechanical inclination to fix the neighbor’s planer, zero charge for my minimal labor, and a much welcomed break from droning away on the computer. He wanted to repay me, but I don’t accept major credit cards, and I was already living inside an organic cornucopia, guess a hug will have to do. At least until he found out that I love a good cup of coffee, which doesn’t organically brew in those parts, so he provided me the fuel to finish typing.
Not quite a trade, though we both benefited from the friendship, but we each would have loved to help a buddy out, regardless of any reciprocity rendered. Now, of course the coffee was imported from some exploited land, and I’ll be cutting that out of my diet soon enough, but for now, I’m happy to accept this token from a neighbor who appreciates my path in this world. A gift of doing something nice without expectation, is certainly a more personal present than a stolen Mango, and far more vibrations shared along the way, which might be why there were so many eager volunteers to help out with the ceremony.
*******
The energy inside the circle continued to build, we encompassed the arbor as we supported their prayer, but we were not as connected as the dancers were becoming, so an inner circle of Tobacco ties insulated the growing movement from outside interference. And we smudged, often, every few minutes a little one carried around a can of Cedar and coals as we cleansed the energy around our bodies. I made friends with a lot of the kids through their curiosity of campfire cooking, so I always got a special smirk or something, but they understood the sacred component of ceremony that they were performing.
Especially the Erenbrook children, they’d spent the time since Standing Rock fully engulfed in the Lakota way of life. No possible amount of letters or words will ever properly describe the magic of this family, a fairy tale fantasy of modern day Swiss Robinsons, balancing the most amazing family circle in a round tipi, with our continued mission of saving the world.
We’d begun getting much closer, connecting on so many levels with each of them, their way of life was the most closely aligned with the worldview that was coming together in my own heart. Conversations of agriculture and capitalism that convinced me that I was not alone, for once I’d connected with someone who not only shared my beliefs, but had found a way to live them. And to raise children in modern america with a mindset not of excess and convenience, but a mindful headspace of love and sharing and connection to our home. As well as a dedication to heal her.
They shared one story of their recent travels, an inspiring tale that quenched my thirst for the motivation to mend our mother, they had quite literally protected the water. While spending time on a nearby reservation, they ran across an old spring, a still functioning water source, but it had been grown over by years of forgetting that water comes from somewhere other than the tap. Especially tough to swallow since the tap water is severely polluted on most reservations, up to and including intentional uranium dumping along primary water sources. Yum.
So the Erenbrooks spent a couple of hours making the spring accessible, a free and clear water source for the community, and about that time four boys came running over the hill. Out of breath from a game of tag, they pleaded for water as they approached the good-doers. The athletes were expecting a bottle or something, conveniently candy coated in plastic by the nestle corporation, but unfortunately for them, the CEO of nestle publicly stated that access to water is not a fundamental human right. That’s more messed up than lead pipes in a city that’s still forcing residents to pay poisonous water bills, yet they’ve stopped supplying the victims of the municipality with bottled water, while a hundred miles away nestle continues to pump 400 gallons a minute, for free.
Luckily for our boys, some superheroes just happened to have fixed this revolutionary new type of water source, what, you can get water out of here? Out of the ground? They tipped it up and proclaimed that it was the best water they’d ever tasted. It was actual water. Not the obviously impure impostor they’d known their entire life. They were energized, actual water propelling their bodily functions, they felt alive, water is life, mni wiconi.
*******
So they were doing it. Like actually doing it. I’d been locked away writing about doing it, literarily saving the planet, while they’d been out there physically doing it. Healing our own human community so that we will be able to heal those around us. Breaking us free from the chains of capitalism meant to control the human rights that are inherently yours because of your citizenship on this planet. You should not have to pay for water. That is despicable. Gross. And so is the purchased water, dirty from the tap or refined sewage from the store, plus, fluoride guarantees that your vibration remains disconnected as your endocrine system is calcified.
Water is literally life, you are water, it drives you. I know the feeling of drinking water from a mountaintop spring, it’s like eating the wild Buffalo, it connects you. It’s real, it aligns your vibration with the wavelength of the planet, you feel it pulse through your body as it empowers your mind. Water is life.
And you don’t get that feeling from a bottle. You can’t buy the vibration of living in a good way. Money can’t replace the vibratory connection to your home that is gained through aligning yourself with her local vibrations. Can’t replace prayer either. Couldn’t have bought my way in here even if I hit the lottery, only through my connection with Unci Maka, was I on the path that brought me here to pray.
And sacrifice, made ‘em before and I’ll make ‘em again, like right now, the Erenbrooks and I are walking to the west side of the arbor to give flesh. To sacrifice a piece of our own skin, cut free and added to the prayers covering the tree, an offering of ourselves to our mother, a commitment to this way of living in harmony with the rest of the Great Mystery. Several Sun Dancers armed with scalpels are performing the ritual, they pinch small pieces of upper arm skin and sever the flesh. It’s up to the individual to determine how much flesh to give, how many circular scars they will don on their forward journey. I choose two.
*******
Duality has been at the front of my mind lately, on many levels, good vs evil, us vs them, man vs God, a yin yang spiral that as it spins, grows closer and closer to a complete oneness of gray area. Our ego has separated us from the all inclusive mind of God, the complete works of universal wisdom, but it is only a filter through which we are able to experience the act of evolving back into completeness. Back into God. You are God, we all are, but that’s clouded so that you can experience a life of learning, and free will, but it’s all right there inside you. We only use a tiny fraction of our brains, what do you think the rest of that stuff is?
The entire universe is the mind of God, expanding consciousness beyond the boundaries of our dream state. And Unci Maka, our all powerful planet, look at her functions and see that they mirror our own, from her worldly cycles to her animal inhabitants, who seem to teach us how to be the best we can. All of this, the complexity of our planet’s inner workings and the infiniteness of our cosmic web, that’s all inside you. You were made in God’s image, not our silly Monkey suits, but our inner workings are scale models of the entirety of everything. We’re just one small piece of the fractal Fibonacci sequence that is evolving nothing into all.
The piece of universal spirit inside you, is now subject to the free will of your human body. A human body which is supremely susceptible to conditioning, to environmental conditions that affect the experience that the spirit within will have during this journey into the material. A genetic code lays the framework, then celestial orbits put another spin on it, and from there, the version of you experiencing right now, has come to read this book through a lifetime of decisions based on whatever sensory input you had accumulated at any given time.
We are all the same spirit, the same energy, but depending on the geographic location and socioeconomic standing of your birth parents, we have all lived drastically different lives here on Earth. And that’s the point really - to experience - the good and bad, up and down, love and hate, both extremes of the vibration as we find the way to our center, but just imagine how less privileged it would feel to be a syrian refugee living a war-torn life of loss.
We are all the same, but somehow vastly different, even twins with the same parents, stars, and bedroom, still miles apart as their own unique path into this material dimension takes them for a ride that only they will experience. The more journeys to Earth we make, the more complete of a picture we can paint. We should grow stronger because of our differences, but instead, we grow further divided. We only see those who struggle on the other side of the wave, as foreigners, a statistic on the world news, something to fear because they’d never fit into our cookie cutter subdivisions.
Imagine for a second that you are no longer one of 'us,' but one of 'them,' the same spirit you have now, but with an entirely different set of situations guiding the person you grow into. Another language and traditions and family and hardships and friends and catastrophic loss at the hand of the US government. You wouldn’t grow into the person you are now, you would grow into someone much more like 'them.'
They are us. We ar