Calling Our Spirits Home: Gateways to Full Consciousness
Chapter Three
Cultivating Mindfulness
People flock to the Colorado mountains in the winter for activities designated as winter sports. For the small towns that swell by the thousands during those months, that economy keeps them going the rest of the year. I’m grateful for the winter run because by the time I’m ready for the lushness of the western range, most of the people have returned to their homes and left the beauty and serenity to me.
During the summer months, these particular mountains are all clothed in rich green, identically flowered dresses. The invitation they issue is the one that says: Come as you are. Come sit on my skirts and be comforted by all that surrounds you. Drink in the nourishment of my primeval nature. Come to be⏤not to do.
My companion and I accepted their invitation. On this particular weekend, we drove through the Flat Tops searching for a campsite. Just any old place will not do for us. We have learned that it is not enough that the place looks inviting. We stand and walk and move in a place to sense the ‘feel’ of it. Then, somehow we know when it is the place that will teach us what we need to experience for those days or nights. If we fail to get that sense, we move on down the road. So it was on that late afternoon. We had been roaming patiently through the peaks, valleys and by mountain lakes for a few hours because, you see, we trust the process. Gladly so, we moved into a space of delight for our souls.
There were variously placed fire rings, leftover from previous visitors. Tall pines formed natural rooms around each space like the walls of a house, creating privacy. Yet, unlike the walls of a house, excluded nothing. Here, in this small space, the cold fire rings were the only evidence of human visitation.
Looking out from the edge of the pines, through just the right crispness in the August mountain air, I could see the range for miles, one Flat Top to another with the small valleys dipping in between only to rise again to meet their complementary opposites. The earth was gifted with plenty of rain that season. In reciprocity, she produced abundantly upon her green. Yarrow, asters, lupine, other flowers too numerous to mention turned their faces to the afternoon sun in the meadows below the pines. Only the occasional calling of a bird and the light fluttering of the breeze upon the leaves broke the silence.
We even talked in muffled tones because we knew we were setting up camp for the night in a pew of the natural church. In reverence to that understanding, my companion walked around our borrowed dwelling and cast a sacred circle with the smudge of burning sagebrush.
He and I have come to have a rhythm of working and being together in spaces such as this. Our rhythmic rituals are, to me, as sacred and natural as the space itself. It’s as though the small rituals themselves become an entry point into other realms of understanding and appreciation. Often, they do become an opening through the veil to greater awareness if we just choose to see.
Having set up camp and daylight still present, we set out to explore our wider surroundings and noticed that beyond the area where we had been, there were actually several dirt roads. Some were merely paths. We chose one overgrown path leading into the trees and came upon a series of tumbledown corrals left to return to the elements. Within the corrals, curiously segregated from other plant growth was an abundance of osha growing tall. Osha is a ferny-leafed plant with a hollow stalk and large round clusters of small white flowers that is prized by herbalists for its immune-building qualities, much like echinacea or astragalus. With the exuberance of a child, my companion leapt the fence and began turning in circles and gazing in wonder at our find. Then, he lifted a few of the herbs whole out of the soft ground, careful not to take them all from one area. He would return again before we left to harvest a few more to take home. One of my favorite scents has come to be the spicy celery smell of osha roots drying in the pantry.
Our intuition had led us to this pristine niche that was a naturalist’s haven with simple discoveries at every turning point. I can well understand why Thoreau stayed at Walden Pond for two years, or how the hermits of China or India through the ages have spent their whole lives isolated in the mountains. At that level, life is nothing but clear and honest.
We left the osha and corrals and turned toward another dirt path, which in turn, led us to a larger, more traveled road. We followed this road for a short way to an expansive clearing where it was evident that large groups of people had been with their recreational vehicles and trucks. There were deep ruts in the ground where vehicles had been, perhaps trapped by mud. The trees were cut down and the grass was gone in much of the space.
I understand that people like and need to congregate together in various ways. However, as we entered the clearing, what I saw forced me to stop short. The profound disrespect these humans displayed to this borrowed space appalled me. As we moved through the clearing, I noted the food that was left to rot, the trash left to blow into the bushes and the excrement left unburied. I felt sick. A heavy emptiness hung over the place, the emptiness of arrogance and mindlessness. I felt a certain shame and sadness about being a member of the species that can and does wrought devastation upon our Mother. Gathering trash along the way, we left the emptiness and breathed ourselves back toward a more comfortable inner balance in the direction of our campsite.
While we had continued to roam, the sun was sinking lower. We picked our way back toward our camp, with a detour here and there. One of my companion’s favorite songs is Take the Long Way Home by Supertramp, and he abides by it. We walked back via the old corrals and chose a roundabout route that extended down into a valley before winding back up to the Flat Top of our camp. Preoccupied with the devastating scene of some minutes ago, I was distracted by a sound. I thought it to be some ‘party animals’ yipping it up in the forest below us. My companion laughed and said, “Don’t you know coyotes when you hear them?” Standing still, my ears began to hear the haunting cries of the coyotes. As I stood in my own stillness, I became aware that the calling emanated not from one place, but from peak to peak and valley to valley. In my experience, the calls were acknowledgment and validation of one to the other and the whole. As I became even more aware of my surroundings, I noticed that Nature, the primeval artist, had mixed upon her palette alizarin crimson and zinc white, streaking a rosy glow across the sky, and adding touches of cobalt violet here and there. The silver of mist hung in the trees of the valley below giving rise to an energy that called forth the mystical. The humbling magnificence of those moments is with me still.
Back at the camp, we began to prepare for the coming darkness. It had begun to cloud over and shortly a light rain began to fall. We listened to the popping of our fire and felt the cold of determined raindrops finding their way through the trees overhead. Periodically, the coyotes called in the distance proclaiming their existence in the shadows. After a time, I made my way to the tent while my companion remained with the fire to witness the night.
Climbing into the warmth of my sleeping bag, I settled onto the ground, feeling the earth take the weight of my body and my mind so that I could be fully in the moment. In presence, there is no separation. There is just complete awareness. In this mystical territory, Spirit goes places where the mind only dreams, into a gliding raindrop or blowing in the wind.
As my Spirit was out traveling, my physical sensibilities experienced a sudden jarring that brought my body upright. In the timelessness of the night, the offensive din of a clamorous engine split the quiet atmosphere, robbing me of my peace. It seemed to be coming from nearby, which I thought impossible since no humans were within a few miles of us. The racket continued on and on through the thin air, much longer than any reasonable vehicle moving through on its way to somewhere else. I finally called to my companion to identify the sound, which he said was a generator. “A generator for what?” I asked. “I guess they need their TV,” he said. “How very strange, “ I said to the darkness as I lowered my head to my pillow. After about an hour, the noise ceased in the amount of time required to have fueled a police drama and all its commercials. The night retained its startled silence; its universe traumatized, the travesty holding, until I finally drifted off to sleep.
Choice Points in Mindful Living
How attentive to our surroundings and their conditions are we as individuals as we move through our days? How aware are we of the importance of our every thought and action? The question of mindfulness permeates life. The preceding story contains signals toward two segments. It queries our individual awareness of our singular impact on the world at large. It also brings forth the matter of our own willingness to be with ourselves and know our own true nature.
I See the You in Me
As individuals we are a system within ourselves⏤body, mind and spirit. We are also a part of larger systems, a nuclear system like the family, all the way to the expanded global system of the Earth that we inhabit. Each of us has an effect on the systems of which we are a part. We also affect those more peripheral systems that move beyond us by virtue of others we touch through thought or action. Like an individual human being, we may also think of any larger system as having body, mind and spirit. As small as we may think we are, a cog within a wheel, we ‘can’t not make a difference’ in our actions. Quantum physicists and chaos theorists say that if a butterfly fans its wings on one side of the world, it will affect the ocean current across continents.[i] If we can begin to understand this concept, we can see the world as a reflection of ourselves. As the old song says, We Are the World. Knowing this then, all mental deliberations and corresponding acts can be counted as choices or decisions we make, not just the major ones. These choices all have consequences not only for ourselves, but elsewhere. As systems, we all have a past, present and future. Where and how we focus our attention will provide the filters through which we make our decisions.
The Role of History in Mindful Living
The relevance of history is important. At the same time, history may no longer apply in this moment. There are any number of ways to carry history as a heavy burden. Carolyn Myss talks about “woundology,” taking on victim identity.[ii] Now that therapeutic interventions are more the norm, instrumental in personal development⏤without the stigma⏤people are venturing into this realm of discovery. It’s common to get stuck in a cycle based on early negative imprints. The latter can produce beliefs that, in turn, generated critical internal voices and less than useful behaviors. Then based upon what is held as true, the imprints are replicated by unconsciously attracting situations and individuals holding the same energy. Like attracts like. In this case, it’s common to teeter on the brink of a hoped-for life, but never quite the destination. Today, more people are willing to move beyond traditional psychotherapy. Holistic interventions such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), hypnotherapy, certain forms of bodywork and spiritual attunement methods open the way to much more easily dispense with limiting beliefs that drive chronic roadblocks. The danger here is if a person gets stuck in the rabbit hole of discovery mode. The mind loves intrigue. The light bulb goes on. The “aha” takes place. However, if we blame the origins of our behaviors or beliefs, then “woundology” becomes the quagmire. Explanation becomes the fascination, and then the excuse…or even the addiction.
Interrupting Old Patterns
I had an experience with some friends at Red Cliffs in the Southern Utah desert. We built a campfire under the full moon. I sat down next to the fire and immediately allowed the undulations of the fire to draw me in and immerse me in her message, blocking out all awareness of my other surroundings. I have no idea how long I was in the fire, but it must have been a very long time. For whatever reason, I finally shook myself loose and raised my eyes to an incredible sight. The full moon had completely risen and the galaxy was sprayed across the heavens while ethereal light played on the large red rocks around me, allowing otherworldly beings to take form. It took my breath away. I realized in that moment how very large the world is, how very much there is to experience and how I had been lost solely in the detail of it.
Explanation and discovery can be like a fire that hypnotizes, the flames moving in such ways that uncover more and more subtle nuances until our attention spirals into oblivion. When people begin to tell their stories of discovery through their pain, they are in the fascination stage. When they are telling the same stories over long periods of time, particularly to anyone who will listen, they are in the excuse phase. They have taken on the victim identity. There is a choice point. Take the higher learnings for yourself and then put the pain in the past where it occurred. Or find a wider and wider audience for your stories because your old audience has become bored with you. A sure sign of healing comes when the learnings have been embodied through new beliefs and actions and the stories of pain are told less and less frequently, if at all.
Many years ago, I had a friend who would contact me every few weeks and tell essentially the same story every time. She was unhappy in her relationship. Her husband abused her, ignored the children and drank his way into a stupor nearly every night. He would not allow her to work to earn a living. They were nearly destitute. She wanted a better life. At that young age, I was always eager to ‘help’ in a way that I long ago learned does not help. I made suggestions about what she ‘should’ do. She acted upon none of the suggestions, but I kept on offering advice. I had not yet learned the lesson about pushing my reality onto someone else. After having heard her story countless times, one day she caught me at a time when patience and compassion had taken a hiatus. I bluntly told her that I was sick of her story and until she did something about her situation I did not want to hear from her again. Amazingly, when she called me months later she had divorced her husband and taken a well-paying job. She told me the figurative slap in the face I had delivered served to propel her toward action. Without knowing it, I had naively performed a pattern interruption. A pattern interruption is what it takes to create a change in history, whether we do it for ourselves or someone else facilitates it for us. The most useful method is to ask questions in such a way that causes the person to go inside to uncover their own answers. The first step is in knowing the pattern is there. The second step is discovering the meaning behind the pattern and how it has played out in our lives. The third, most important step is inhibiting the response and doing something different that serves us better the next time.
The statement “I’ve always done it this way” is not tolerable in mindful decisions. It is the understanding we glean from the past and applying what is truly apropos that enriches our choices in the present. Then, we can use history as the wisdom meted out by oracles.
The Role of the Convenience Factor
There is a company in the Great Lakes region whose story is being replayed across America. A larger company bought out the smaller company a few years ago. The transition managers made decisions while under extreme pressure from the CEO of the parent company. Their decisions, based upon bottom-line profit motivation, eliminated many jobs in a small town where there was little other employment. In the course of their release some of the employees were not respectfully treated by the new management group.
A couple of months later, the transition managers realized they had eliminated some jobs that were actually required to do an adequate job in producing their product. They were forced to recreate these jobs. The totality of these deeds certainly set the tone for woundedness, which the “survivors,” as the remaining employees still call themselves, use as their crutch some years later.
By buying into crisis management and its subsequent actions, the CEO and transition managers had unwittingly played into the victim identity of “surviving” employees. Even though this incident happened a couple of years ago, it remains as fresh as yesterday in the minds of the “survivors” as they continue to look upon management with distrust and suspicion. The incident served to reinforce the predominant belief within the rank and file that says: “I’m not valued.” Crisis management says we cannot take the time to do it right the first time. However, we can sure take time to do it over, in this case, with devastating results to employee morale.
In a different context, as individuals we may neglect to measure the aftermath of our actions. I was once traveling with a group in a foreign country. There was a young woman in the group who, on one level, was crying out for acceptance by others. Yet, in everyday action seemed to be doing everything within her power to isolate herself. People within the group were witness to her aggressive behavior toward others, particularly service people. Interestingly enough, a part of her realized the destructive nature of her behavior. She would come like a child, in tears, to various members of the group seeking forgiveness. Yet, in the next minute, would withdraw any remorse for her actions and indicate, “This is the way I take care of myself.” The question we might ask is, “At what cost and to whom?”
Frequently in Western culture, we feel pressure in the moment and the need for action, any action. We make decisions while under fire often without thinking things through to their predictable outcomes. When that happens, we may experience regret coming from those kinds of decisions and live with unfortunate consequences as individuals, as towns or even as countries.
In the Now
Developing visions of what we want in the future is an excellent way to propel us toward a goal with mindful intent. While visioning excites us and planning is necessary, living extensively in the future neglects the present. For years, I was guilty of living light years in the future, cut off…in my head. I had to learn to actively focus on present space-time where I physically existed. Not to do so taught me an extreme lesson in my total health and well being.
By living solely in the future we miss out on much of our lives. Cultivating mindfulness is what sparks us toward our journey and into the richness of experience. Mindfulness is concerned with depth of awareness: what is within and around us. When we are still in the moment, the real action takes place. It is from this place that we can appreciate the beauty of a flower or the strength of a mountain, perhaps realizing it for the very first time. It is from this place that we truly experience our feelings and emotions, and begin to notice the dynamics. It is from this place that Spirit enters, and we begin to understand that all our existences are seamless in nature. Then, based upon mindful non-action we can make the best choices.
The Seventh Generation Decision
The keys to sound decision-making are balance and clear awareness, weighing the parts and bringing them to the whole. In some Native American traditions, they practice what they call the Seventh Generation Decision. This means weighing the factors of today, history and future when considering options. Then asking the question: what effect will this decision have seven generations into the future? Go back to the story that served as introduction to this chapter. We can see how the first persons who chose to leave trash at the group campsite⏤a choice that may have seemed insignificant at the time⏤effectively laid a foundation for what was to come. They gave a form of permission for others who followed to be care-less in their treatment of that natural site.
Malden Mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts makes Polartec, a brand of fleecy cold weather clothing. In 1995, the mill burned. Aaron Feuerstein, the owner, was known to be dedicated to producing a quality product and to the people working to produce it. Most business owners probably would have collected the insurance, cut their losses and perhaps moved operations overseas or south of the border where the cost of labor is cheaper. Feuerstein did no such thing. He made a Seventh Generation Decision. In the small town of Lawrence, the closing of the mill would have had serious results for the economy and the individual lives of over 3,000 people.
Understanding the outcome of such a decision, Feuerstein exhibited his commitment to the workers by rebuilding the mill and resuming business. Indeed, not only did he rebuild the mill. He paid out some $15 million dollars in wages and benefits to the workers while the mill was being readied for production to resume. While he was considered a saint by the workers, religious and political leaders across the nation, and even the media, he was considered a fool by many. One business professor indicated to his students that this man should not be a role model.
In a time, when “profit” and “shareholder” are the basic business mantra and thousands are out of work due to downsizing with no chance offered for retraining, Feuerstein is something of an enigma to many. However, he is not an enigma from the perspective of the Seventh Generation Decision and one who takes the high road. He looked ahead considering the meaning of quality, customer and employee loyalty and likely growth margin resulting from sound decisions. Like other business owners, he has downsized when necessary to eliminate unnecessary jobs because of technology advances, but “without crushing the spirit of the work force.”
At the same time, he works to grow his company at such a rate that the people displaced by technology have new jobs. Malden Mills is a union shop and they have never had a strike. Feuerstein said, “We were doing well before the fire, but afterward the heavens opened up.”[iii] This seems a clear example of higher consciousness prevailing.
What are the things we do to lull ourselves to sleep over issues of importance to the general good? How often have you heard, “I’m only one person. What I do doesn’t matter.” The universal truth, all are one, says that all are connected by the web of life. All play their part in the creation of what is. Mother Teresa said, “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But if that drop was not in the ocean, I think the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”
Circling Stillness
The question is how do we re-create ourselves in every moment? If we physically reincarnate ourselves many times over in a lifetime by replacing the very cells in our bodies, then we also reincarnate through thought and action. What we choose to focus on, we become. There are many ways of hiding from ourselves. Those ways can include any number of addictions. An addiction is anything that keeps a person continually distracted and separate. Separateness in this definition is what keeps individuals dis-integrated from core Being and disconnected from others. Thinking of the word addiction probably first brings to mind overconsumption: alcohol, drugs, gambling, food, etc. Addiction or distraction goes well beyond these behaviors. If we were to stand back from our lives and see them objectively, probably all of us would begin to notice ways we create separateness.
Money Madness?
In idle conversation, a man pulled some paper money out of his pocket and threw it on the ground and started kicking it around with his foot. “What is this?” he said. “It’s just paper. It’s a symbol meant for exchange. It will buy this land. Yet, how can you own the Earth?” He went on to talk about what a poor exchange it would be, the ground where we sat exchanged for the torn and worn paper.
In Western culture at least, we trade major portions of our very lives for this thing called money or what money can buy. Some people hoard it. Others spend it to acquire an excess of material goods. They believe that somehow these material goods will define them. They surround themselves with far more than is reasonable for comfort in their lives. Rather than money being a means to an end, it becomes the end. It creates walls by separating people into a caste system or becomes the perpetual dangling carrot always one step ahead in the pursuit of more. Acquiring goods becomes the life purpose and the Self is left in the wake. The group mind supporting beliefs around money has created such ludicrous realities as the average cost of a 3-bedroom home in Taos, New Mexico of $251,000, or $178,080 plus $500 per month maintenance fee for a one-bedroom co-op in New York City [in 1997].[iv] How many months of the year does an average person have to work just to pay taxes and sustain themselves? Sitting down and laying out the figures will bring to awareness the true meaning of how we choose to trade our lives for a lifestyle.
There’s a belief⏤something has no value unless there is a price tag attached⏤ permeates the modern world and stretches back in time. In the late 1800s, Dr. Mikao Usui rediscovered an ancient natural form of healing using the subtle energies some have said to be the same as those used by Jesus of Nazareth and the Buddha. After years of searching, Dr. Usui came across descriptions of the healing in Sanskrit material. But it was through a long period of meditation, fasting and prayer on Mt. Koriyama in Japan that the way to activate the method came to him. He named this healing method Reiki that means Universal Life Force Energy. He felt that he had been given such a gift that he brought Reiki into the streets and clinics of Kyoto. He worked with beggars at no charge. Many were healed and sent back into the world. Yet, Dr. Usui would see the same people back on the street begging for their sustenance. He learned two things. If the exchange was not equal, people neither valued their healing, nor thought it real. He also learned that some people prefer to take no responsibility for themselves or in earning a livelihood. Because of Dr. Usui’s personal learning, Reiki practitioners in the Usui method charge some form of exchange for their time to create a structure of value and personal responsibility. There are many documented case studies of healing of diseases of the body/mind/spirit through Reiki.[v]
The question here becomes: what is really of value to each of us? Can we buy the love of our families or the laughter of our children? Is there a store that sells a sunny day or the gentle lapping of water on a shore?
The Job Diversion
For some people, it is not the money but their jobs that have become the diversion from themselves. There is a distinction here between job and work. A job is something that a person undertakes to be paid a livelihood, but their heart is not in it. On the other hand, a person’s work is something they are drawn to do through every cell in their being. It’s something that given the choice of remuneration or not, they would still do the work. The work does not have to be something grand. It could be as simple as sweeping the street carefully to contribute to the beauty of the whole. Some people may think their heart and whole being are in the task they perform, when they are really driven by an urgency to fill up their days and avoid their realities. People may delude themselves with all kinds of beliefs about their chosen livelihood. For example, “my patients need me” or “my company can’t do it without me” are common statements. These become the excuses then to spend long hours at the office or on the road. In reality, they would do better to first heal themselves, mend relationships at home and reconnect in their lives. How can we be of even more service to others by first being of service to ourselves?
True Security Lies Within
For others, a job can be an avoidance of a different sort. These are people who became trapped in a job through a belief about security. This belief is most active in large bureaucracies like the military, federal, state and city government agencies, and older corporations where people are lulled into believing that responsibility for their security lies outside themselves.
Patriarchy cut a wide swathe through Western culture, from home to work to countries at large, and can be seen interchangeably at a global level in different contexts. We are only just beginning to move into something more viable. The US military uses the benevolent patriarch Uncle Sam as its recruiting symbol. The father figure will care for his family in the traditional sense by providing food for the table and making authoritative decisions for those in his charge. Father has many rules and regulations that are not to be questioned or crossed. As long as the family is respectful, the status quo is maintained.
The power of the Self is choked off. Along with the sense of Self, creativity usually expires. Here the unit remains intact for the supposed good of the whole, but maybe not for the individual. Those who do not adhere to Father’s rules are the black sheep of the family and typically leave home. If these renegades choose to stay, they are usually kept hidden in the family closet to languish forever. This metaphor has its purpose, of course, which falls in line with another metaphor, the one of war.
Under the onslaught of “incoming,” questioning authority could be a dangerous thing. Yet, when business is war no wonder so many are walking around shell-shocked and depleted. Interestingly enough, the world is shifting. After so many years of being in familiar albeit brittle cocoons, many employees and military members are discovering that Father is not providing in quite the way he did before. They are being booted from their homes and told to think for themselves. The day of the extended family is over. They feel cold. They are bewildered. Yet, the greatest gift in events of this type is looking inside ourselves to realize: we are our own strength. We provide our own true security, not someone or something else.
Silence in the Information Age
We are in the Information Age. While it brings with it many gifts, it can bring liabilities if we allow it. There are probably few parts of life where electronics have not become a part of who we are. They make life more convenient. They connect us across continents. They make our world smaller somehow. It can be so seductive that before we know it, the tendrils of cyberspace can isolate us from human contact, ironically, as they seek to connect us. There is the image of the eccentric hacker alone in his room, unwashed for days, glued to the computer screen. Through mainstream television, violence enters our living rooms and becomes the norm, desensitizing us if we let it. Too many sitcoms can dull the mind in a different way. All over the modern world, whole households sit anesthetized in front of the tube…finding their hands in potato chip bags or lifting beers mindlessly, forgetting how many they have already had. The only communication the family may share is the one of common physical presence. The questions for each of us are: 1) how big a part of each of us has the Information Age become; 2) what is the quality of the information and; 3) how do we strike a balance?
With the continual data barrage of various kinds coming at us, it is no wonder when silence enters our lives it can be startling. True silence, unfilled with distractions, forces us to go inside at some point. The range of experiences in doing so was never better illustrated than at a retreat involving meditation and other inward-looking practices. For many at this retreat, the practices were an unfolding and their faces beamed radiantly. For some others, the practices were uncomfortable. Even though participants were asked to maintain silence by the facilitators, these few would invariably make jokes, laugh loudly and lure others into conversation thereby avoiding true experience for themselves and sometimes preventing it for others. When someone talks incessantly, she is afraid of her Self. In our modern world, unless we consciously seek it out, silence is unfamiliar to us. The unfamiliar can be distressful; especially if it cracks open places we do not normally go.
Questing Spirits
So many people go through life shuffling along, eyes glazed. They have long gone unconscious from self-imposed distractions. Their bodies and minds just go through the daily motions. Their Spirits are left to gain what meager sustenance they can. And so, these Pilgrims go to the stillness of a camp in the forest instinctively to revive themselves, to resurrect themselves from the death of their days. Even though they have gone with this subconscious intention, once in stillness, without distractions, they experience a scary place. It is the emptiness of their days, the screaming silence as their souls drown.
There is a Sufi tale about a monkey and a cherry. The monkey saw a cherry inside a bottle. Seeking to take the cherry, the monkey put his hand inside the bottle. His hand closed around the cherry. However, when he tried to withdraw the cherry from the bottle the fist he made around the cherry was too large to exit the opening. So, as with many things in life, the prize was so near yet so far away. He had it and he did not have it.[vi]
For the Pilgrim, to look into the yawning black chasm of their days means to look into themselves and their own true being. It means seeking awareness and the choice of living. Terence McKenna said, Go inside to come outside. For many, the thought is so frightful that they screech back to what’s familiar. Like the camper in the beginning story of this chapter, they reach to turn on the generator-operated television to drown out the silence of their cries.
Sedonia Cahill is co-author, along with Cindy Spring and Charles Garfield, of the book Wisdom Circles. She began to experience what she calls a spiritual hunger while she was in college in the 1950s, a time when discussion of the topic was as taboo as menopause and birth control. She felt a deep dissatisfaction in her life and was drawn to go on a sorority retreat with a charismatic Christian minister. At the end of the retreat, the participants held hands in a circle and Sedonia felt truly connected for the first time in her life. She discovered after a subsequent return visit to the minister, that it was not the minister or his teachings, but connection through the circle.[vii]
Just as we come from the light of our birth and return to the light of our re-birth, the symbology of the circle is present in timeless fashion in spiritual traditions world-wide. Black Elk was an Oglala Sioux holy man who held the circle close.
You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the whole World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. The sky is round, and I have heard that the Earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is in a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.[viii]
Through traversing her own circular path, Sedonia was brought to a vision quest, which proved to be the vortex that allowed her to delve deeply into herself and emerge from a kind of metamorphosis. For her, she needed an ordeal to test herself in a spiritual way. She was apprehensive, and at the same time excited. There was something big on the horizon. It was a November many years ago when she stepped into that unknown territory, the uncharted waters that whispered beyond here there be dragons. She went into Nature, a woman alone and isolated for three days and nights. It was cold, but she was never cold. There was every kind of weather, but the weather was insignificant. She did not remember the physical things because what she came to remember was that she was not alone. She was not isolated. The wind spoke to her. When she sang her thoughts through the circle of her being, Nature responded. Through ritual and Nature she communed with the Divine and found it was her Self. It was within the sharp austerity and the stark musical silence of the vision quest that she stepped through the doorway. When hearing her own heartbeat in the echo of the wind, Sedonia realized that she was the expression of Universal Consciousness. From that transcendent depth she made her way up, to pop her gifts out into the light of her days.
In the last twelve years, Sedonia has facilitated over 70 vision quests for Seekers of their own truths. In essence, she is the midwife that guides the preparation of the birthing canal and then bids the seeker gently into the interior landscape of the desert. The primary question people come to resolve is what work to do in the world. As Sedonia said, “The Great Spirit is not a career counselor, but a quest can provide a deep connection and sense of Self. It can give one tools to take their medicine into the world.” During this time, a quester’s whole world may fall apart. It is within crisp clarity that issues may arise that they had not allowed themselves to acknowledge or address.
Mindful awareness becomes reality. This reality is the greater reality of who we are, warts and gifts. It is the greater reality of our own processes and how they fit in and affect the whole system. It is the greater reality of the Web of Life. For many of us, it takes the monastic cell of the desert, free of detractors, to come to that understanding. This understanding creates the moment when we begin truly living for the very first time. This work takes courage and the labor pains are bittersweet, quickly forgotten in the joy of genesis.
[i] James Gleick. Chaos: Making A New Science. New York: Penguin Books, 1987. 11–29.
[ii] Caroline Myss. Anatomy of the Spirit; The Seven Stages of Power and Healing. New York: Harmony Books, 1966. 209.
[iii] Thomas Teal. “Not A Fool, Not A Saint.” Fortune Magazine 11 Nov. 1996.
[iv] Paul J. Lim & Seema Nayyar. “Top Places to Live: Great Retirement Towns.” Money Magazine Extra, 1997 Edition: 64, 69.
[v] Diane Stein. Essential Reiki: A Complete Guide to An Ancient Healing Art. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, Inc., 1996. 13.
[vi] Assembled by Indries Shah. Sufi Thought and Action. London: The Octagon Press, 1990. 31.
[vii] Sedonia Cahill. Private telephone interview. 29 Oct. 1997.
[viii] Black Elk. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux . Told through John G. Neihardt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1932. 194.
All events described in this book are true. Some of the names have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.
Bio
Carla Woody is a spiritual mentor, writer and visual artist. She is the founder of Kenosis, an organization based in Prescott, Arizona, supporting human potential since 1999 through life enhancement coaching, retreats and spiritual travel programs working with Indigenous leaders and healers in the US, Mexico, Central and South America. In 2007 she founded Kenosis Spirit Keepers, a volunteer-run 501(c)3 nonprofit organization to help preserve Indigenous traditions threatened with decimation.
Table of Contents
Part I. THE NATURE OF THE JOURNEY
Chapter Two: Awakening to Consciousness
Part II. INVOLUTION
Chapter Three: Cultivating Mindfulness
Chapter Four: The Masks We Wear
Chapter Five: Things Buried Deep and Tended Well
Chapter Six: Bootcamp for the Soul
Part III. EVOLUTION
Chapter Seven: The Seasons of Our Times
Chapter Eight: Staying in the Field
Chapter Nine: The Un-Namable Sacred
Chapter Ten: The Pilgrimage Home
Permissions: The author has given great effort to locate copyright holders of any material other than her own that have been quoted in this book, and regrets if any have been inadvertently overlooked.
Calling Our Spirits Home: Gateways to Full Consciousness
Copyright 1999 by Carla Woody. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be directed to: Kenosis Press, P.O. Box 10441, Prescott, AZ 86304, info@kenosis.net.
Also by Carla Woody:
Standing Stark: The Willingness to Engage. Read in Illumination Book Chapters.
Portals to the Vision Serpent. Coming soon to Illumination Book Chapters.
