The voice of the tundra in the socio-economic maelstrom repeats itself in bio/re-generational continuums in sequential cycles of repetitive memory as reduced through planetary absolution of rendered carbon diodes suppressed by multi-visual angst such is vanity in the pathos of removable enumeration of focused patterns of completion whereas the discord disintegrates into dynamic dissonance of fading echoes as we stand at the portals of intense departures in the manner that ice begets ice and where the melting overlaps the sweating we discharge co-genital mesmerizing liquidation fluidity such is the status of plasticity merging with layered frequencies that denote static alignment in the receptor section of parallel stellar encoding as the planets shift and the rhythm of hiss induces extra-sensory elongation between the moment of arrival and the awareness of purpose left at the edge of fruition after leaving the train station and experiencing extreme dislocation but that wasn’t the point of motion after all while we stand at the portals and scream of not getting the picture/this is no picture/ and walking up past Broadway and cutting over to Vine where the Candy Man jams to the sonic blast of universal energy incoming constantly near the flux of continental plates that rub up against each other like wolves in a pack hunting elk across the sub-tundra as the gain degrades and the music fades and we’re left with substandard recordings of Jim Morrison recounting the vintage waves of heat patterns across the Great Divide layered with acid in the midnight sun where ice slowly regains dominance over sweat and it starts all over again in a fast forward reeling of tundra memory re-membered.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Identity dissolving into the fog
In the
Old Ways
in order to have an identity a young person has to have a dream (vision) that shows them who they are. This dream comes from the Ancient Ones, those relatives of the spirit world who have taken on the role of sticking around and serving as a bridge between those of us in the material world and the Great Mystery that dwells in the Great Beyond. There are different ways to connect with the Ancient Ones in order to get the dream, and when you get your dream, we don’t tell you, you have to tell us. No one comes between a person and their relatives of the spirit world. The only concern would be if a person attempted to make up a good story and relate it as though it was given to them by the Ancient Ones and then it would be taken into question, as this happens sometimes.
There are many ways we visualize our relationship with the Ancient Ones, and most of these images are nature-based as they relate to the world around us in a spiritual manner. In the spiritual journey throughout life the first dream-vision is the foundation for all other dreams that follow and build upon the first vision. For some, the journey through this life is going to be fairly basic and they get a good vision to start with that guides them for many years. Others might have new challenges that come along in the journey that requires a bit of an upgrade. Each person has an individual relationship with the Ancient Ones with respect to whom they are, but as a general rule, one needs to step out into isolation from the normal social life for a short time in order to pay attention fully to the awareness so there are no distractions or interruptions while accessing the connection with the Ancient Ones. This is referred to in the
Old Ways
as a Vision Quest, and it is generally the most important ritual that a person might do in life. Each tribal people have their own customs and I can’t cover every tribal custom from all over the world and I mean no disrespect towards any people or culture when speaking in a brief manner about what little I know on the topic.
As the Mother is in transition and a lot of things have happened here on Turtle Island
At some point a person might get ripe enough in spirit to attempt the journey into the mystery. Some stories tell of a man or woman crossing into the spirit world in a dream or vision via the rainbow. This journey into the Rainbow Nation is one of the most difficult challenges a person can attempt, as it requires that the person leave behind their identity as defined by that first vision. They become dependant upon the ancient identity for distinction of self which is invisible to them but visible to others who have the gift of spiritual sight. A person has a sense of being a drop of water in the morning mist and all sense of self dissolves into the fog of nothingness. They make the journey into the spirit world across the Rainbow Bridge Rainbow Bridge
I love the stories of how a young woman with a pure heart was able to walk across the Rainbow Bridge
 |
| "Bear Walks Through a Dream" March 25, 2011 Collection of Lisa DeVos, Saginaw MI |
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Ego Death Personified
The Vader Gators don’t want folks to know this. The spiritual axiom is that it takes a healthy ego in order to experience ego death. In the random curve of eventuality all spiritual journeys lead to the healthy ego. Some just take the long way around. Some people get addicted to pain and really do have to take the longest possible path to that destiny. Any and all spiritual journeys bring the person to that point wherein they arrive at the state of a healthy ego. At that point it is up to them to make the leap of faith into ego death. All the rest of us can do is show the way for those that come behind us.
The discipline of unification towards a healthy ego is short-tracked through several approaches which involve engaging with a mentor. As related in the past, the spiritual warrior chooses a discipline and uses that discipline to control fear rather than letting the fear control the warrior. The warrior tradition evolves from a universal non-gendered function of self integrated into the whole (Holy) experience of total consciousness as an observer of both internal and external stimuli that allows the person to become aware of all forces at play from within the observable reality. Everything else is mystery. The encodement of disciplinary observation is imparted through the teachings provided by one’s mentor which is going to transfer an understanding that one’s self has the indelible mark of identity that no power in the Universe can alter. It is through the awareness of cause and effect that one arrives at the knowledge that they “reap what they sow” and no force in the Universe can alter or block that process. Once that fear has been addressed and resolved, then each person will step forward in their journey towards arriving at a healthy ego.
In the teachings of the spiritual warrior it is presented as a challenge of preparing for ego-death that the warrior becomes competent in the discipline of creativity. It is through the function of creativity that the warrior steps outside the pre-defined ego status and encounters the mystery and derives some manner of expression from that effort that can be communicated to others. The general manner by which one does this in tribal culture is via ritual. The healthy ego will manifest through the process of practicing all expressions of creativity. All spiritual disciplines integrate the creative process into the work.
As it has been expressed in this passage that “all spiritual disciplines lead to a healthy ego”, and that this is true in the knowledge that each individual will be given many opportunities to work through the dysfunction of an unhealthy ego until they are ready to unify all the efforts into an integrated-self as a healthy ego and arrive at the point where the leap of faith into ego-death will happen. That being said, there is no need to make the distinction between “good medicine” and “bad medicine” or “white magic” and “black magic” because it has been stated implicitly that the Universal Law of Causality means that each person gets back what they put out, so whatever effort is made becomes a method of feedback that informs the person about the merits of their effort towards arriving at a healthy ego. Therefore, all paths eventually lead to a healthy ego. It is just a question of how much pain a person has to put themselves through before having enough and merging onto the path of total unification of self wherein all selfish desires and expectations will be addressed through the discipline of the chosen path. The unhealthy ego harbors aspects of selfish intent while the healthy ego arrives at a point of acceptance that perfection is an expression of unification through total awareness.
The Vader Gators are good teachers if the information one is seeking is a good reason to turn around and go in the other direction in their spiritual journey. Knowing that all paths lead to the same destiny frees all pilgrims from pride, a major spiritual barrier, and gives us the ability to support each other in our journey, even if that person is heading full steam ahead towards the Vader Gators. After enough pain and suffering has been gleaned, they’ll do the same thing we did back there somewhere. Know what I mean, Vern?
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
The Ego Cage
The problem with the Euro-centric (aka Western Culture; aka white man’s world) concept of ego is how constrictive it becomes. It is impossible to remain within the parameters of the construct of “ego” as identified by Western Culture and function as a healthy individual. While the word is derivative of Ancient Greek culture, it has gone through a transformative redefinition process in order to reflect the cultural ideals of the time and place that has rendered it an ineffective term with respect to the human psyche.
The dilemma is borne out of the empirical need to generate a system of “otherness” that allows the King of the Empire to be considered a person chosen by the unseen spiritual guidance (reductively referred to as “God” in the Euro-centric construct of the hour) to hold dominion over all subjects under him. The King is perfect and the subjects are imperfect, and that is how it will be forever and ever. As such, the ego, that definition of “self” within the subordinate subject in the Kingdom, is an imperfect ego. This model of “self”, that has been distorted from the original concept in order to impose dominance over society, implies that all those under the King suffer from some imperfection and can never achieve the state of perfection because God will only choose one and that one is the current King. (Most Kings came into power through physical prowess or under-handed treachery, but details are always irrelevant in matters such as subjecting subjects to subjection.)
A few centuries after the Order of the Sacred King had been well established throughout Europe , along comes a group of people with the bigger, bolder plan that redefined the ego into an even greater dysfunction of humanity. The deification of Jesus of Nazareth is well documented in historical sources not readily available to the general public (subjected subjects don’t need to know the facts) wherein a similar model of a God-appointed human being becomes the King over all, As that person is no longer resident in the physical realm, it is up to others to define the role and manner with which the subjects are to follow as members of that “Kingdom of God”. Unlike the small tribal groups that functioned in Europe for a few eons before all of this happened, where the King became King because he was a leader of warriors (which meant he was out in the front line of battle when such an event occurred) those in charge of ruling over society were well entrenched in secure quarters. Should a battle break out, they gave orders from the safety of their secure quarters and men on the battle field, less worthy of the blessing of safety during battle, had to carry out those orders. This became the model for the “sacred order of society” as well as the secular (or profane).
Thus a society evolved out of the notion that regular humans are imperfect and incapable of achieving the status of perfection that only God could award to one person and one person only. This negative feedback from a dominate force rendered those of that society into servitude to that dominate force which was also made up of mere mortals. It’s a great power grabbing scheme. Unfortunately, it also suggests, as a dogmatic religion, that human beings can achieve perfection in the spirit world after their demise by way of giving up their will and lives to the control and power of the dominate human persona. The philosophy of the imperfect ego suggests that the person is not good enough, will never be good enough, and the best that person can hope for is to sacrifice their life and compromise their integrity as a human being in order to, perhaps, no way to tell for sure, achieve perfection in the next world. This gives the warrior great motivation to fight to the death on the battle field. The leader isn’t there to die first, as things once were in the manner of tribal culture, so the spoils of victory come with very little pain on the part of the supposedly God-appointed leader.
The human ego as a function of the warrior in battle, is the will to survive. Diminishing that construct in any way diminishes the warrior’s will to survive and becomes a model of fatalistic defeatism as a function of “self”, no matter what the outcome for society or the enrichment of the (non-warrior) leaders. When the construct of the fatalistic imperfect self is imposed upon society at large, there is a constant anxiety of not being good enough, which leads to fear-based behavior that explodes into materialistic efforts to possess enough stuff so that the person takes on the appearances of Godly features. The person is never going to be good enough within this construct, so the focus is futile, while the true human nature issue of being a person whose first goal is to survive and thus after that is to develop spiritually in order to further the ability to survive and pass on the teachings of survival to the offspring is thwarted. The ego that is always going to be imperfect, no matter what, becomes the ego that is fear-based. That gives those who dominate others the power to reap the rewards those under them achieve while the subordinates live and die in order to do this. This yields into societies that praise suicide bombers and support drug addiction to the point of fatal behavior because the feedback from that society is that attempting to do anything else is futile, so why bother.
A philosophy that garners a positive approach to the survival of a person in the role of a warrior, who is willing to sacrifice their life in order to protect the lives of others within their society, would avoid defining “self” or “ego” as an imperfect function of a human being. A better option would be to define the person, in whatever manner or terms, as constantly mutating into a new persona with the ultimate goal of achieving the status of humanly achievable perfection. The first order of business is the survival of the person, after which options can be defined wherein they go through various roles as warrior, parent, spouse, teacher, or grandparent no longer viable enough to provide knowledge or resources to their social group, so the ego arrives at a point of accepting the need to take a walk in the blizzard so that others may have the limited amount of food available. That model of an ego is life-affirming function of a person. It genders the idea that a person can seek to enrich their life and the lives of others through spiritual discipline with the time not spent addressing survival issues, whether this is the protection of the whole social group of people within that society, or the work of parenting as a mother, in what has always been and always will be a life-threatening experience of which humans have to endure in order for the species to survive. A model of “life-affirmation ego” expands beyond “self” to include others as a function of a healthy ego. The model of the imperfect ego subjected to the will and power of a dominate force is the model of an unhealthy ego that has other agendas at stake other than the survival of the person being subjected to the dominate control of other human beings. As such, the current term of “ego” implies that my human spirit is in imprisoned in a reality imposed upon me from outside forces who seek to have me align myself with that philosophy so as to enrich those in control. I systematically reject the definition of ego as defined by those with ulterior motives and embrace the function of ego that is life-affirming and spiritually dynamic in a manner that makes me feel good about whom I am as a healthy, well-balanced person.
Not only do human beings make terrible deities, but they also make terrible spokespersons for deified human beings. So long as I remain human in function and accept that others function as human beings my life remains a lot healthier. I reject the “ego cage” the white man continually attempts to impose upon my human spirit and embrace the model of “one step beyond….” A-ho!
Friday, April 27, 2012
Eating peanut butter and crackers in the middle of the night
There’s an adjustment to be made here in this process of reintegration into domestication after going through the gauntlet of post-materialistic realization. I am awake. I have awakened. I feel the gnawing of hunger and remember that there is peanut butter and crackers in the kitchen. At 4:30 am I rise up from a night of restless sleep and get these and the cup of cold coffee left over from the previous day. As I sit and eat and sip I reflect back on my reality two years ago. I was sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag. I had no money. I would walk an hour from where I was staying to the community kitchen for food on the days they would serve free food. On those days they didn’t serve, I would try to have something to eat, but sometimes that didn’t happen. I was staying with a friend who considered it irresponsible if I wasn’t employed and earning a living, so he refused to help out with food. He had a jar of peanut butter and crackers by his recliner. He would sit and eat these for a snack while watching television. At night I would get up when the pain of hungry got to be too much and go eat some of his peanut butter and crackers. I would try to do it so he couldn’t tell that I had taken any.
There are indications that it takes time to overcome obstacles and recover from hardships. Living in survival mode took me past my usual sense of self. I can endure. I will endure. I have endured. I have been enduring to the point where endurance is a function of everyday life. I don’t have to lay there and be hungry at night any longer. I have been disciplined to endure so I forget. It is a reality I never forget. Lying there at night knowing that if I try to sneak in and get something to eat my father will hear me, and we all know what happens next; that memory. I endure.
The need to survive emanates from chosen stature. Others would attempt to impose cellular re-modification in an effort to disrupt the ability to endure. The knowledge that survival is ego-based and a healthy ego survives best ensures that I keep focused on the goal beyond post-materialistic dis-unification. Reunification integrates that achievement. The reintegration process utilizes all aspects of self and self is defined by cosmological vision, not constrictive societal constructs. Society would have it otherwise. The paradigm of behavior modification is that if enough pain is imposed upon a person they will yield to societal demands. Endurance and the will to survive with the understanding that reunification and reintegration are self-regenerative processes that supercede non-irreparable damage makes it possible to persevere. Beyond irreparable damage is the knowledge that regeneration will occur anyway, transcending time and space through incarnate behavior.
Nothing is lost. Nothing is gained. It is all the same. “I don’t miss the crumbs/I do miss the crackers” was recited as verse in the appeal to White Feather. Now some crackers are missing. Now some crumbs are revealing. After the deluge the idea remains intact. We are Holy as One/and more/and more/and more.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Singing across the spider strands
Singing across the spider strands
For several years there had been these dreams. I didn’t know what to make of them, really. I had tried to seek understanding by going to a teacher, a wise man, a medicine man, but that wasn’t my path. My journey kept taking me back home to the mountains and hills, rivers, streams, rocks and springs where water flowed up from the rocks. I walked amongst my people like a stranger in a strange land. They were as alien to me as I was to them.
And these dreams. They would show me how to do these activities that would alleviate physical problems others endured. I would wake up and wonder why I was being shown these things. I wasn’t a medicine man. I am an artist, poet, singer, dreamer, and lover who loves the
Old Ways
and wants to feel a part of the tribal mind that once was here. Finally in November, 1991, my oldest sister died of cancer. I had dreams about how to help her if she ever asked. She never did. I felt anger because she would rather die than ask for help through the
Old Ways
. To her it was evil. I didn’t know what to do with my anger. I vowed to Sun Dance for four years and pray. I went to a friend and asked for help to do this, as it is a Plains Indian ceremony and I am Cherokee. He agreed to help. I felt the need to go on the hill and pray for a vision as well. I wanted to ask spirit if I was supposed to use these dreams, this information, even though I did not consider myself a medicine man. I went on the hill during dogwood winter for three days and nights. I stood there in the wind on the top of a mountain with nothing but a pair of shorts on and a quilt my grandmother had made when she was still a young woman. I would raise up the Sacred Pipe and asked the Creator to take pity on me. “I am a child down here in this world. I don’t know what I am doing. Please forgive me and let me live in spite of my mistakes today. I mean no disrespect. I only wanted to ask for understanding about this one thing, these dreams.” I prayed hard. It was hard. It was cold. Several mornings there was frost. The wind blew all the time. In the middle of it a thunderstorm came all day and all night. I would watch from the mountain as the clouds come over the horizon, and then they would split and go to the north and south of me moving east. All night that night they would flash from the north and south. I got a little shower a few times. I prayed hard.
There is a little I can say about what I experienced up there 20 years ago. I’ve said just a little already along the way. It is who I am, so I really don’t need to talk about it that much, just do it. It became obvious real quick that I was supposed to be using the information that was coming through in dreams to help others, including my family. There was more information while I was up there, although I wasn’t praying for it. I got it anyway. Then one day of it up there things shifted into a strange sort of theme. It was like a dream of the future. I saw waves and layers and patterns of information about communicating with others across a web. I didn’t know much about the internet yet. It was still being invented. Over time I came to understand what all of this was about. I thought spirit would reveal things in vision like birds and animals in nature. It appears like spirit knows all about technology and will challenge a person to utilize all aspects of reality to help make this a better world to live in. I survived. That was the real answer to all my prayers. I was glad to be off that mountain and back amongst family and friends.
That summer I danced for four days at Sun Dance. I prayed for the spirit of healing that comes forward through various humans to help the People. I could tell that what I was doing was a little off the mark, but I prayed anyway. I knew the effort would result in my becoming aligned with what was most important in all of this. I kept asked that the Creator take pity on my and look the other way when I messed up. I am a child in this world. I know nothing. The next year was different. A new family member was in my life, my daughter, Margaret Olivia (Maggie) Loveday, born June 14, 1992. Other family matters disrupted my plans and I was only able to dance for one day that year. Family comes first. That is how it is in the
Old Ways
. It was okay. The next year I had to go to a different circle and friends and ask for help to honor my commitment. It was hard. Afterwards a friend told me that it was hard because I had to make up for missing three days the previous year. I also understood that praying for the healing energy and for my sister who had passed away was not helping anything. The most important thing I could do was pray for family. Always, no matter what, pray for family. From then on I prayed for family. I can’t make someone ask for help. I can only pray for them in that sacred manner related in the dreams if they ask for help. Otherwise, I need to leave them alone and let them walk their own journey and accept that it is their journey. But I can always pray for family, no matter what. It is a duty. It is what is in my heart. Honor the heart. Honor the Red Path, which is the path of the heart. The last year of my four year commitment my wife and daughter were beside me during part of the ceremony. My daughter fell asleep and had a child’s dream in the circle with me. That is who she is. That is her journey. I prayed.
Twenty years later it still hurts. The woman who had stood beside me many times from the “Stick Holding” ceremony, my sister’s funeral, ceremonies and other life events chose to walk a different path. Others who had asked for help and agreed to give back over time as part of their expression of gratitude gave back the least they could if at all, and most kept taking more than they gave from that point on until their journey took them in other directions as well. I worked hard to accept this and not become cynical or let it harden my heart. I still pray for acceptance every day. Some did great harm on their way out to other paths. In the fall of 2003 I entered into the 7th Challenge of the Seven Challenges a medicine man faces, as related to me by Rolling Thunder in the spring of 1991. For almost seven years the process went on where I lost everything. My marriage failed. I was unable to generate funds from my work. I lost the property I had taken ownership of in the manner of “white man’s law” after a breach of contract. I spent 15 months staying with my father and watching his health decline. Through it all I kept the altar I had been using to help other with through ceremony and I prayed for my family, especially Maggie. In January, 2010, I had an experience and knew that I had completed the 7th Challenge. I was homeless and sleeping on the floor of a back bedroom in a friend’s house trailer. I had no way to earn money and he wasn’t feeding me. I had to walk several miles to a community soup kitchen for free food twice a day except Sunday. On Sunday I could fast or come up with other ways to eat.
For the past nine years there have been many dreams but there are very few about information on how to help others with physical problems. I have enough information on that topic already. I could forget most of it and still have more information than I could ever use. Today the dreams are about the young people that will be coming to seek help in understanding their dreams. Unlike me, there will be someone they can go to. I had no one. That person I was seeking back in 1976 after my first vision to help me understand it and make sense of it and possibly use it in my life now looks back at me in the mirror. I am the person I was always seeking.
Today I don’t have the energy I had twenty years ago. Nor does anyone else my age. So what. In the
Old Ways
it is said that if someone asks for help and I have a reason to say “no”, then I can say “no”. If I don’t have a reason to say “No”, then I have to answer “Yes”. I have more reasons to say “No” today. Few ask. Last summer a friend whom had asked for help in the past came from Spain
I watch many people suffer but I’ve learned my lesson, as much as it hurts. I can’t help them unless they ask for help and all signs indicate a positive situation. It is more important now that I prepare to pass on this information to the young people and get them started in how to use the
Old Ways
to help others. I have enough energy to do that. I have very little time or interest in relating this information to older people. The effort has already indicated that it is a process of diminishing returns. Most of my own generation feels that it is acceptable to take and not give back and there is nothing I can do for them. There are a few exceptions and they are a joy to have around. Of the rest, the sooner they are dead and gone the easier my life will be. That is a sad thought but they have chosen to make that their reality. It hurts. I tried to wish it into being some other way but that is adverse to the universe and the law of free will. So be it.
 |
| The creek downstream from Buffalo Springs, Grainger County, Tennessee. |
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Colors become sounds
This was in a dream some 20 years ago or more after working on a painting late into the night and in the dream I was standing in a museum and a group of children on a class trip to the museum walked up to a painting of mine and became very quiet as they all looked at it and even the tour guide stopped talking and just looked and finally one of the students looked up at the teacher and said “I can hear the music in this painting…” and that is when I started hearing the music also and remembered the dream when I woke up and got up and went into the room where the painting I had finished the night before lay on the table and still waking up from the dream I sensed the music and knew that it is humanly possible to hear music from visual elements inside there and the dream stuck with me and the painting they were looking at in the dream remained in my head so that I had to paint it also and I can remember the dream and in the recall I can hear the music of each work of art that I do as I work so that it is like creating a song and in the Old Ways of the Native American tribal cultures it is said that when a potter makes a pot from clay that there is a song that goes into the pot and you can feel the song come through your skin when you touch it or maybe even hear it when you hold the opening of it to your ear like hearing the ocean inside a sea shell but when the pot is broken the song is released back into the universe but not all of the song goes away because I’ve found broken pieces of pottery near an old village and held it in my hand and a little bit of the song was still in there singing through my skin so I could hear the song and have a bit of insight into the place and time of the clay as it became pottery and pigment that goes into painting comes from clay as all the colors come from the earth even it they are created in a paint factory like some of the man-made pigments but it was earth transformed into pigment so it makes sense in that strange manner of tribal mind that making a painting is like making a piece of pottery only with a thin skin of clay on canvas or pottery so I take this idea and seek ways to transform the experience into sound as well so that the sounds I’m “hearing” inside my head can become audible sounds in the air as guides to others so they can learn to hear the sounds that come from colors or clay or earth and expand that sense of knowing the songs that rise up from the earth that are the vibrations of creativity that transform us as we grow spiritually in the dance of dreaming a new life into each moment
 |
| 7th Street Sunrise (close-up) pencil, ink, pastel, oil pastel 11 x 15 inches February 2, 2012 |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)