Indigenous Wisdom

God is...

In my seeking, helpful books have found their way into my life.  One such book was “Seven Arrows” by Hyemeyohsts Storm who told of the native People of the Plains’ spirituality through story.  I think I first read it in the late 1970s after my husband died.  I found comfort in the stories’ steeped in nature.  I recently picked it up again to review the Medicine Wheel that holds the four directions to which I sometimes remember to pray while holding my prayer feathers.  I found deeper meaning in the intervening years from my first reading.

Since my earlier reading of Storm’s work I have taken classes and done some reading on the wisdom of the Enneagram and Carl Jung’s shadow work.  I now see and understand those teachings are also within the Medicine Wheel.  It represents the Universe into which we each enter through a particular direction as a unique self with gifts to share with others along with a balancing need to learn from others’ gifts.  Different totem animals (and people) come to us throughout our life bringing teachings to grow and balance us.  Storm writes:  “The Medicine Power is within all People, and in all the things of the Universe.”  I also reread his telling of the Peace Shields, worn by native women on their belts, and displayed on animal hides by the men, depicting an individual’s gifts along with what they need to learn from others to grow. 

Now when I remember to hold my prayer feathers and pray to each direction, I will give thanksgiving for my gifts and ask to see where I need to grow for balance.  When facing East, the direction of Illumination and the high flying Eagle, I will be mindful of the need to balance farsightedness with the need to stay close to life.  When facing South, the direction of Innocence and the close to the earth Mouse, I will pray for Trust and discernment in the vision of others.  When facing West, the place of Introspection and the hibernating Black Bear, I will be aware of my need to balance reflection with decisive action.  When facing North, the place of Wisdom and the White Buffalo, I will pray for wisdom and the ability to live life with warm feeling and touching others. 

After recently watching the movie, “Twelve Years a Slave,” I became keenly aware of the dominant culture I come from, the utter cruelty of slavery, and past native genocide.  There has been some progress in laws, and some change in hearts, but the continuing unsustainable pursuit of wealth at the expense of others, and the acquisition of stuff, now threatens every culture and the planet itself. 

What if there were no dominant cultures and we valued other’s different gifts.  What if we each thought about the gifts we bring to the Universe and what help we need to grow and stay balanced?  What would your Peace Shield look like?              

Ask, Seek, Find

God is...

In last week’s post titled Balance I concluded with:  “What if we daily asked our darkness what it wants from us?”  So this past week I tried it and although I may have missed a day or two, I am impressed with how my shadow informed me, made priorities apparent, and smoothed out my week.  I also reviewed my notes from Dr. Philip Sternig’s 1997 class, “The Shadow Knows,” and found good reasons to keep an on-going dialog with my shadow.

Clarifying definitions and quotes from class handouts deepened my understanding.

The Shadow:

-       It is not an entity.  It is more like a quality, a condition, an influencing force, a “coloring” element within the ego.

-       Those elements, feelings, emotions, ideas, beliefs, with which we can’t identify, which are repressed due to education, culture, or value system.

-       Contains psychic energy—constructive and destructive.

-       Edward Whitmont:  “When we can’t see it, it’s time to beware!”

-       It is 90% pure gold.  It keeps the Ego true to the Self.  But when repressed it emerges first in a violent, bizarre, distorted form.       

-       Maintains the essential balance inherent in all that is.

I now better understand the deep struggle I suffered over my aging parent’s care needs was really a struggle with my shadow.  My nightly writing during that difficult time slowly surfaced my real problems and eventually brought the grace to overcome them.  The following from “God Never Hurries” is the dawning of my understanding. 

“ A secret of life is suffering for profit.  The profit in suffering comes in the grace in knowing something inside me needs to die so I can experience new life.  What needs to die is the once easier submissiveness to tyranny.  It is so odd to feel I must learn to do more for myself and die to denial.  It is the opposite of all I’ve been taught.  I should be rejoicing, but so much darkness has been masquerading as light, making this a truly ugly struggle.  But this difficulty with myself I can offer up.”

And I finished re-reading Carolyn Baker’s “Reclaiming the Dark Feminine” where she writes of the importance of ritual and how returning to our indigenous selves reclaims our connection to all things and one another.  I wrote “God Never Hurries” to always remember the sacred ritual times I spent in the natural world where I experienced Oneness.  Baker also writes, “…the transformational process is never finished and the completion of one initiation is organically linked to the beginning of another.”  What’s next? 

What if we could all come to befriend our shadow?

Balance

God is...

Balance is not easy to achieve or describe and yet it is probably the most critical element of successful living, loving, means to world peace, and environmental wholeness.  It is women and men coming to balance their shadow and light—their anima and animus—their male/female light and darkness. Darkness sheds light on needed change.  Too much darkness over powers the light. Too much light denies change is needed.  Imbalance in either leads to destruction.  Creativity flows from balance.

In Carolyn Baker’s “Reclaiming the Dark Feminine” she writes:

 “When women can develop a relationship with their feminine shadow, they are invariably empowered.  When men dare to explore the negative and positive aspects of the anima, the courage to be vulnerable evolves, along with intention to protect and serve the vulnerability of all beings.  Northern California author and soul-centered psychotherapist, Francis Weller, emphasizes that the darkness wants us to ask it what it wants from us.  If we can actively, consciously engage with the darkness, we are transformed from victims into vital, autonomous human beings.”

Transpersonal psychology forms the basis for Carolyn Baker’s book that integrates psychology with spirituality.  In looking up transpersonal psychology I learned it has only been around since the 1960’s.  Outside of taking a class in 1997 titled “The Shadow Knows” given by Philip Sternig, a Transpersonal Psychotherapist, I can’t say I’ve heard much about it lately.  It seems the learning it promotes would be of such value to the human race and our planet we would want to incorporate it in our teaching from grade school through college.  It also seems it would be the basis of any religion worth its salt.

We have all inherited some imbalance.  For me it came to a crisis with my aging parents’ care needs.  After watching a video tape of my parent’s 50^th wedding anniversary I wrote in God Never Hurries: 

“But most amazing was seeing and hearing myself on the tape and how unaware I was.  I began to realize the critical need to embrace my shadow.  It is there to keep me balanced.  But it was scary and hard to sort out because of the many bright masks my shadow had been made to wear.  I understood it was those masks that help make abuse so systemic.  And it seemed a clue to becoming aware of a mask is when there is only one answer or one way.  I felt hope that if I continued to work on myself, someday I could come to honor both my mother and father.”

Life can be hard.  There are choices to be made.  Writing my story helped me figure some things out and pointed me toward more balance.  Life is relational.  We learn from our own light and darkness and the light and darkness of others.          

What if we daily asked our darkness what it wants from us?        

Nature is...

God is...

I attended a Schlitz Audubon Nature Center, Spiritual World of Nature program this past week where we were invited to briefly share what nature means to us.  I said, “Nature is where God talks and I listen.”  After speaking those words I began to appreciate again the gifts accompanying the suffering that led me into the natural world where I found a unique solace and answers to many of life’s toughest questions. I am grateful for having recorded the comfort and insights I experienced in my memoir “God Never Hurries.”  Now I can remember and relive them, and share with others.

Nature is—where the morning sun beamed through the trees and whispered, “Be not afraid;” where I came to know a caring Presence to whom I belong; it is celebrating freedom at dusk that was like a trip to the moon on gossamer wings; it is a magnificent, warm, soul soaking rain; it is a huge oak tree where I sometimes took my troubles and always parted with a sense of communion and strength; it is a blue moonlit snow drift where I played with my late son Joe and dog Lydia; it is a bright, fall, moonlit night that called me outside to write one night; it is the smell of wood smoke in my sweatshirt and the rustle of dry leaves in dark trees above that gave me respite from my troubles; it is a curious deer that encouraged my curiosity and later another deer that showed me all is Eucharist; it is tall gray herons wading in a thick gray blanket of fog that let me sense the seamlessness of the world’s soul; it is a sunlit fog that showed the church of my birth in a rusting old car buried upside down on the beach; it is water running under a milky cascade of ice on the bluff that sounded like a happy, vibrant church where everyone has a voice; and peddling my bike past a swamp, where I heard frogs talking, I was reminded to talk more and share myself with others.  I could go on and on but I think you can understand why I listen when God talks.    

A common theme from others who shared what nature meant for them at last week’s program was a sense of balance and centering.  And then our competent instructor led us to see how the interdependency of diverse natural communities is the source of their strength and order. 

We too are a part of the natural world.  Could valuing the interdependency of our diverse human communities lead us to strength and order?  What if we all prayed toward that end?         

My Spider

God is...

Who among you reading this would like a spider as your totem helper?  You might want to think about that for a while as I did this past weekend while on a Women Gathering retreat sponsored by Way of the Willow.  We were told we would journey with a drumbeat, our breath, and come to know our totem animal.  I wondered how that might happen.  I had some preconceived notions of animals that hold special meaning for me and I wondered if it might be a wolf, deer, coyote, fox, or armadillo.  But no, it was none of those.  With my eyes closed in the shaded room, and the steady beating of the drum, a spider showed up.

I didn’t want to believe it at first, but there it was just a darker shade of the dark, plump and fuzzy, suspended from a thin dark thread. I asked myself what it could possibly teach me and then began thinking:

Suspend judgment of others and myself.

Suspend anxiety for things undone.

Suspend the need to be perfect or right.

Look around and know that all is good.

When the exercise was over I eagerly sought out a book in the room, “Animal Speak--The Spiritual and Magical Powers of Creatures Great and Small” and began to fall in love with my spider as I read:  “Spider is the keeper of primordial alphabet.  Spider can teach how to use the written language with power and creativity so that your words weave a web around those who would read them.”  Spiders were also said to be a combination of gentleness and strength, and part of spider’s medicine is to maintain balance between life and death, waking and sleeping.  Who wouldn’t love that?

Each woman attending this retreat had a different totem animal come to her with unique and appropriate gifts and medicines.  It was a serious, but also very fun weekend, as we shared pieces of our lives and helped heal one another through our laughter and tears.

In a Saturday evening ceremony we each put on our wise woman shawls and spoke words that told what was important for us to remember.  I prayed, Dear God, Thank you for the gift of these women.  I know my serenity will be subject to forgetting so may I always remember the way back to it.  Help me trust what comes, comes because it needs to; show me ways I can celebrate what doesn’t get done so I can enjoy the present; help me let go of feeling too responsible; help me hold the questions with infinite patience and learn from them; may I find joy and new ideas in the accomplishment of others; remind me there is always a choice versus the victim role.  Thank you for being my power within and reminding me to “Be not afraid.”  And thank you for my spider.

What if everyone had the opportunity for a fun and healing time and could remember the way back to it when it fades?  I think we would all heal our planet.