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Native Knowings: Wisdom Keys for One and All

Native Knowings: Wisdom Keys for 2012 and Beyond

Native Knowings: Wisdom Keys for One and AllThis original and powerful ebook offers a concise compendium of some North American (Turtle Island) wisdom teachings that are offered to help guide Human Beings through an era of transition.

Smashwords review: “An excellent read. Informative without being preachy. Exactly what I have been looking for. Bravo!”

Native Knowings is available in 10 different eBook and Smartphone formats at Smashwords.com as well as for the Kindle reader on Amazon.com (see link above).

The books is also available for all Apple devices from the iTunes and iBook stores.

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On the Road: An Evolving Turtle Island Odyssey

After walking 3,500 miles from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and arriving somewhat south of the place native people know as the Western Gate of Turtle Island, a band of pilgrims encountered the poet Gary Snyder on the last night of January, 1996. We had been walking toward this Western Gate for eight months, so we were paying attention to the portents.

With several other pilgrims, I heard Snyder speak that night at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He said that when he considered modern man’s relationship to the earth, he felt it lacked a conscious spiritual connection. “The fire of catastrophe,” said he, “has burnt out all.”

Snyder revealed himself as one the many elders we had set out to find on our prophetic quest across the back of North America. He’d sounded a steady incantation for decades on behalf of the earth, his words finally reaching our pilgrim ears at the end of our epic walk specifically in quest of sacred places and steadying voices.

As it happens, poet Snyder won a Pulitzer Prize for authoring the collection, Turtle Island. He summoned his title from the creation stories native to our North American continent – the old, old name.

That night in Santa Barbara, Snyder said that ,as he saw things now on Turtle Island, people have organized themselves by race, gender, belief systems, and so forth. But we have not yet organized ourselves by ecosystems – the actual places where we live, and the actual resources native to these places.

“Nature is no social construction,” Snyder said. “The land sees no colors.”

Using high language and artful rhythm, Snyder told us that when we come to comprehend this, it will help us all to finally and truly become Native American in the full spiritual sense that embraces all the land and all the people, the plants and the animals.

Through hearing the poet’s lyric, I came once again to a basic realization about why we had walked, and what we – a multicultural, all-faiths band of pilgrims — hoped to accomplish with our procession on foot across North America to meet some of the contemporary elders of our land. We were striving to help establish the kind of authentic spiritual connection with the earth that Snyder invoked with his words.

Eleven years after the end of the walk, in 2007 shortly after I finished writing the story of our walk in the form of an epic nonfiction saga (Odyssey of the 8th Fire), Gary Snyder reappeared. This time the poet came to Santa Fe to speak about his late compatriot, Jack Kerouac, the writer who crafted an undulating, enduring paean to America and freedom with his novel On the Road (1957)

Snyder was invited to Santa Fe by the Museum of New Mexico and the Palace of the Governors. They asked him to speak as a complement to their exhibit of Kerouac’s work, including the original, continuous and amazing 120-foot teletype scroll that Kerouac used for writing On the Road – a novelized account of open, mad, freedom-expressing rushes across the back of Turtle Island in the late 1940s and early 1950s, with beauty to behold and creative souls to encounter.

Poster for the Santa Fe events.

On stage in downtown Santa Fe at the packed Lensic theater, Snyder told the audience that back in 1956 he had use of a cabin near Homestead Valley, just north of San Francisco. It was a rude structure, lacking glass for the windows. In this country abode, Kerouac moved in with him for 5-6 weeks – a place to crash.

Very much in command as he stood center stage, Snyder spoke directly of his friend Jack Kerouac as a man who was well intentioned, sweet, playful, sometimes goofy, non-judgmental, and imbued with the spirit of compassion. He said Kerouac was keenly intelligent, well read, and had a mind for words. One of Kerouac’s prime spiritual gifts, the poet said, was his ability to confront the immediacy of his imagination.

I listened to Snyder attentively. I wanted to understand more. In preparing to write the nonfiction saga of our long walk across Turtle Island — Odyssey of the 8th Fire — I’d been informed by books telling of our human journey: Homer’s Odyssey, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie, William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, and Paolo Cohelo’sThe Pilgrimage. Inevitably, Kerouac’s On the Road also touched me with its entraining cross-America accounts of reaching outward, inward, downward, upward.

The miles that Kerouac’s Beatniks traveled in cars and buses and by hitchhiking, we odyssey pilgrims later traversed on foot – as if that were an era wanting speed to break free of bonds, and the era of our walk a time to slow down, to take measure of the vast, multi-faceted spiritual landscape sprawled out before us, to proceed across it at a more deliberate pace.

With the overarching thrust of their works, Kerouac and Snyder were among a multitude of inspirations for me. In Odyssey of the 8th Fire, the actual Turtle Island emerges from the depths of North America with immediacy and relevancy. Spiritual elders of North America step forward by the dozens to share teachings of our land.

The spontaneous, howling, Beat pilgrims Jack Kerouac wrote about were, in one conception, on the road for truth, freedom, and spiritual realization advancing in their time and place. Our on-the-road walking quest some fifty years later was, in part, a natural extension and evolution of this fundamental quest, and also a part of the overall, amazing, grand, hope-lifting odyssey of all of us: multicolored, multi-faith masses of people over centuries of time striving awkwardly, unceasingly to establish a conscious, realized connection with the spirit of this beautiful land that we might finally be truly at home here on Turtle Island, and that the land and water and air might cleanly support our children and grandchildren in health and freedom.

We odyssey walkers stretched out our legs and strode toward what we felt could help. We did what we could. We walked to a great many of the holy sites of Turtle Island, and there enacted ceremony for all of the sacred hoop of life on Turtle Island, respecting all spiritual traditions and all colors of humanity – as had been the agreed-upon philosophy of our pilgrimage band, some 40 or more multicultural souls.

As it happened, as it happens. Circumstances impend. Roadways exist. Poets sing.

END

Resources

Jack Kerouac – On the Road
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Road

Gary Snyder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Snyder

Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe, NM, USA
http://www.palaceofthegovernors.org/

Odyssey of the 8th Fire
http://www.8thfire.net

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Final Embers of Hiroshima Peace Flame Expire in Ceremony at Big Mountain

hiroshima1 The fire that was ignited 57 years ago on August 6, 1945 when the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, was ceremonially extinguished by a band of pilgrims May 27, 2002 at Big Mountain on Black Mesa in Arizona, in a high desert range sweet with the smell of sagebrush.

In 1945 when the “Little Boy” bomb detonated 2,000 feet above Hiroshima, the city was instantly shrouded in an awful cloud. Witnesses beneath the cloud remember that they “saw another sun in the sky…” When the wave of light, heat and wind from the flaring atomic sun reached the ground it roasted to fine ash all that came before it. The wave raced outward until it reached the mountains on the edge of Hiroshima, where it was reflected to roar again through the city center. Over 140,000 human beings died during or shortly after the blast. Many more lingered — dying later, or developing genetic mutations.

Aftermath of the nuclear bomb.

A man named Tatsuo Yamamoto recovered embers from the Little Boy blast 57 years ago. His family, with the help of a nearby monastery, has tended the flame continuously ever since, feeding it with prayers of forgiveness, understanding, and peace. This is the source of the flame the pilgrims carried across America, the flame they recently extinguished on Big Mountain.

The Hiroshima Flame Interfaith Pilgrimage brought the flame to America in January, 2002 and then carried it cross-country, walking West to East. They began in Washington State at the grave of Chief Seattle, and took their final steps toward the East in May in New York City at UN Headquarters and the site of the World Trade Center disaster.

(To read about the background of the walk, and the walk’s earlier pilgrimage to the emergence point of Los Alamos, New Mexico, click here).

While led by Japanese Buddhist Nuns and Monks, the prayer walk included people of all colors and faiths. They walked not in protest, but rather with prayers of hope to end war and destruction. The walkers concluded their epic pilgrimage with multicultural ceremony, including traditional elders of the Hopi and Dine’ (Navajo) Nations at Big Mountain, one of the high sacred places of North America.

Four Corners: Spiritual Center of the Continent

While the Hiroshima Flame borne by the walkers has notable significance as a living representation of a redeemed spirit, the place where it was extinguished also carries immense importance.

Four Corners is a sacred region in the Southwest, long appreciated and honored by traditional peoples. Although the relationship between the larger Dine’ and Hopi governments, and between those nations and the US government and corporations, has often been a morass of conflict and confusion, the sacred teachings about the Four Corners handed down from antiquity echo — at some level — in the soul of every person involved.

Dine’ tradition holds that at the start of the present epoch of world history (Glittering World), the Holy People put four sacred mountains in four different directions: Mt. Blanca (Colorado) in the East. Mt. Taylor (New Mexico) in the South, San Francisco Peaks (Arizona) in the West, and Mt. Hesperus (Utah) in the North. In this manner, they established Dinetah, readily knowable boundaries.

Within the bounds of the Four Corners lies the formidable and imposing Black Mesa, and the ridge that runs along part of it, called Oyama by the Dine’, also known as Great Mountain or more widely as Big Mountain.

To the casual observer, Black Mesa seems a barren and inhospitable place, devoid of value. But to traditional wisdom keepers, this is high holy ground, an energy center of importance to the overall balance of life. For others, Black Mesa is a storehouse of natural capital, just waiting to be converted to bankable wealth. Evidence of this material value lies in the gangling high–tension power poles and lines which picket the mesa, the exceedingly wide and deep roadways, and the industrial installations of every description, including a private airport for mining executives.

Ceremony at Big Mountain

When the Hiroshima Flame Interfaith Pilgrimage arrived at Big Mountain about Noon on May 27, the pilgrims walked a half mile out onto the range, scanning the sagebrush and the blue sky, and chanting their familiar Namu Myo Ho Renge Kyo. Their combined voices sent the chant ringing widely across the mesa.

The pilgrims spiraled sunwise around a center point on the range, forming a multiracial hoop of about 50 human beings. In the center of the hoop, the native elders and walkers kindled a small wood fire from the Hiroshima Peace Flame. It roared to life.

When the fire was burning and buckets of water had been blessed, the pilgrims spiraled single file into the fire and to the bucket of water. One at a time, they anointed themselves with the water, and then with prayer each flicked a few droplets on the slowly dwindling flame.

The hour when the Hiroshima Peace Flame was extinguished, 57 years after it was sparked to life in an unprecedented nuclear conflagration, was a quiet, sweet, solemn moment in the high desert. It was marked in the distance by birdsong and children’s laughter. The Sun was high overhead. The people in the circle were relaxed and at peace in friendship. They walked off the range quietly, and down a dirt road.

Then came whirlwinds. The breeze had blown freshly all day, sweetened by the newly sprouted sage, and it made standing in the open sun comfortable. But after the ceremony things changed. Powerful whirlwinds arose in succession and presented themselves directly before the pilgrims with a harsh, dusty moan. Just as the Wind Nation had spoken dramatically weeks earlier as the walkers carried the flame into Los Alamos, New Mexico, so it spoke again through mini–tornadoes that swirled right up to the walkers, then changed direction. The whirlwinds did no damage, but demanded attention.

Until Human Beings Live in Harmony

After the ceremony the walkers and several residents of Big Mountain gathered to share a simple feast, and to talk among themselves in the shade of a shed. Several traditional elders addressed the walkers at this time, to thank them for coming and to speak of how they see things in the world.

Hopi Grandfather Martin Gashweseoma

Hopi Grandfather Martin Gashweseoma, 78, spoke briefly. He reminded people of the crucial importance of the Four Corners Region, and of Black Mesa and Big Mountain in particular.

As he had explained at UN headquarters in 1993, and on many other occasions, Grandfather Martin told of how, at the beginning of the present–day 4th World, by Hopi tradition, the people who had survived the great flood that cleansed the Third World assembled at Four Corners. From there they spread out in the Four Directions to live out their destinies.

Before the human beings parted ways, Creator established Four Nations, told them they would come together again towards the end of this Fourth epoch, and gave each the responsibility for one of the Four Elements: the Black Nation to keep the water; the Yellow Nation to keep the air; the White Nation to keep the fire. The Red Nation was instructed to caretake the Earth, hesaid,to hold fast to traditional ways, and to protect Four Corners at all costs, and without violence.

They were told that there is great power under the land. If this power is allowed to escape, he said, it would result in great destruction.

Traditional elders recall in their ways that the Hopi were instructed to remain as custodians of this region while war still stalks the world. Four Corners is a microcosmic image of the entire planet. There are specific knowings that refer to Black Mesa and Big Mountain, teachings that warn they should not be dug into.

Still Under Siege

There is an ongoing war for Big Mountain, a war older than a generation that is waged with legal edicts and bulldozers on one side, and prayer, song, and dance on the other. Because Black Mesa is a key center of spiritual energy for North America and the world, and because it represents a hornet’s nest of crucial karmic and environmental issues, it is an issue that should be of intense interest to everyone.

It is a bitter irony that American corporations and government have targeted one of the principal sacred sites on the continent, and exploited it with technology, ripping it open to fulfill explicitly material intentions.

Speaking in the Dine’ language (interpreted by a relative), Grandmother Louise Benally told the walkers, “Here we are still at war with the U.S. Government over energy. I feel like I am still living in the 18th Century, when the cavalry started harassing us. Dineh people remain on Black Mesa, and oppose the forced relocation of traditional peoples so this place will not be taken over for the coal and uranium that are here. We have a spiritual responsibility to this place.”

Black Mesa

For over 20 years, Peabody Coal Co. has been strip mining Black Mesa for coal, and consequently, residents believe, reducing the water table and causing radioactive pollution as uranium deposits are disturbed. Over 30 billion gallons of water have been sucked up from the aquifer at Black Mesa by coal company pumps, then mixed with pulverized coal, and used to slurry the mixture to a power plant in Nevada, where the guts of sacred Black Mesa is burned to provide power for the Las Vegas strip. Meanwhile, family wells on Black Mesa have dried up. So have the springs. Some elderly people in the Black mesa region must travel up to 50 miles to get drinking water.

Crisis is upon the Four Corners again this summer. The fire element is wildly out of balance, and that has impacted everything. No one has ever seen a year like 2002. Wild fires are burning hundreds of thousands of acres throughout the Southwest. Elderly Dine’ who have herded their sheep, goats, and cattle here for generations, say they have never seen a drought so ferocious. More than 7,000 stock ponds have dried up across the Dine’ reservation. Thousands of head of livestock are dying or expected soon to die from lack of water and grazeable forage.

bmelders The assault on the material resources of Black Mesa continues. Peabody Coal Co. is planning on expanding operations by opening a new mine, which will ultimately infringe upon Big Mountain itself.

“It hasn’t changed,” Grandmother Louise Benally told the pilgrims. “The feds still want our energy, and they still want our land. There has been coal mining here for 20 years. Now the land is drying up. We feel ourselves drying up, too.”

Black Mesa elders remain determined to stay on their ancestral lands. They need support to hold this spiritual center. Some of the strongest support they have received over the years has come from the people of the Yellow Nation.

Spiritual Friendship

Twenty–five years ago a friendship was inaugurated among the traditional Dine’ and Hopi at Big Mountain, and the Monks and Nuns of the Nipponzan Mihogi Order. The friendship began during “The Longest Walk,” a pilgrimage organized by various American Indian movements. This walk journeyed from the Pacific to the Atlantic to call attention to a host of issues of concern to indigenous peoples.

Pilgrim Tom Dostou

Traditional elders from the Four Corners region decided that the Big Mountain issue should be a part of this effort. Over the course of the walk they informed all the Indian nations about coal mining on Black Mesa, and the relocation of Dine’ people. Traditional people have been resisting government–mandated relocation for over two decades. Despite their resistance, thousands of Dine’ men, women, and children have in recent years been forcibly removed to a barren area, far from their ancestral homes.

Buddhist Monks and Nuns joined the Longest Walk, and they were touched by what they learned about Black Mesa. They walked and prayed the whole way alongside the Indians. Later, through the 1980s and into the 1990s, several Buddhist people lived at Big Mountain to help defend it. In this way traditional Dine’ and Hopi and the Japanese people became a family. As portrayed in the newly released film, Windtalkers, earlier in history, during World War II, they had been enemies.

The friendship deepened when people of the Yellow Nation joined people of the Red Nation at Sundance. According to long–held Lakota tradition, the Sundance ceremony was to someday travel throughout Turtle Island, and to bring many Nations into the Sacred Hoop of Unity. The first Big Mountain Sundance was held in August 1983.

The intention of the Lakota Sundance in Dine’ country was, and remains, for purifying body and mind so that the people of Big Mountain can defend the ancient lands. The people dance to strengthen themselves spiritually. Although harassed and challenged, the Big Mountain Sun Dance still happens every summer.

Steps Along the Trail

With this background of friendship, it was natural that the Hiroshima Flame carried by the walkers should, in the end, guide them to Big Mountain, not far from the place where the uranium used to build the Hiroshima bomb was long ago dug from the Earth.

After the feast and the remarks of the elders, the walkers had an opportunity to reflect on their pilgrimage. They said that, as a group, they felt good about what they had accomplished. They said they had been faithful, and that they listened to spirit the whole way. They never made decisions on any other basis.

flamr The Hiroshima Flame Interfaith Pilgrimage had its origins in the year 2000 under the inspiration of Tom Dostou while he was in Japan. At that time he was entrusted with a spark of the Hiroshima Flame (the source flame remains burning in Japan). Tom conceived the vision of returning the flame to where it had come from — not as a protest, but as a necessary deed of spiritual redemption, because not only the people of Hiroshima had died, but also many native peoples were poisoned by the uranium dug up, without spiritual permission, on their lands.

Tom passed his vision to Jun Yasuda of the Nipponzan Miyohoji Buddhist Order. Then they started walking. They walked 1,300 KM in Japan, and then brought the flame to America. Over the months and miles of the walk, there were many remarkable developments. At the start, they could find no plane willing to carry the flame across the Pacific to North America. But at last they secured a boat ride to Hawaii, and by serendipity arrived at Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 2001 — 60th Anniversary of the Pearl Harbor bombing.

Sister Jun Yasuda at Oyama

That bombing raid by Japan killed over 2,400 people, crippled the US Pacific Naval Fleet, and radically accelerated the world war which later ended at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Kahunas at Pearl Harbor

In Hawaii the pilgrims were welcomed by a delegation of Kahunas, the traditional Medicine People of the islands. The Kahunas took them to the former site of a sacred shine on the island of O’ahu, overlooking what had once been an uninhabited tropical lagoon. This quiet lagoon, held as deeply sacred for generations by the indigenous people of the Hawaiian Islands, was dredged and bulldozed to create the military base of Pearl Harbor. For the Kahunas, there was an obvious karmic link between the desecration of one of their sacred sites and the bombs that later rained upon the military base.

The Kahunas and the walkers also journeyed to Mount Kilauea, carrying the Hiroshima flame into the volcano’s caldera. The pilgrims arrived in Mexico on Dec. 15, for the major spiritual festival honoring Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Hiroshima Peace Pilgrims after the final ceremony.

Hiroshima Pilgrims at the final ceremony.

Then they walked for months from the grave of Chief Seattle on the West Coast past nuclear installations in Hannaford, WA, Los Alamos, NM, Huntsville, AL, and elsewhere. Walk initiator Tom Dostou rejoined the walk in May in New York City for the UN and World Trade Center vigils. Thus the walk finished with the circle completed, the hoop whole.

“We followed the flame,” the walkers said. “We were not carrying the flame, but carried by it.” At the end, the flame led them to Big Mountain to add the awakened forces of their pilgrimage to the defense of the Earth and the cause of peace.

– 30 –

Nota Bene: Roberta Blackgoat, respected Big Mountain elder and lifelong defender of sacred lands, died in April, 2002 at age 84. For obituaries check the Big Mountain web sites

To learn more:

Black Mesa Indigenous Support

Hopi Notes

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Cachora Comes to the Holy City: Don Juan in Santa Fe

Copyright 2002 - by Steven McFadden

Saturday night, January 12, 2002 — two days before his 88th birthday, a man named Cachora, spoke with an audience of about 170 people at the Church of Religious Science in Santa Fe, NM, a city noted for its spiritual history and destiny.

An elder of the Yaqui Indian Nation, and a Nahual (man of power), Cachora has remained a mystery figure for decades. But now he is coming forward from his homeland in the Sonoran Desert of Mexico into the public realm. It is time for this, he says. Chachora says says he is the real man who is portrayed as the enigmatic shaman don Juan in the series of books by Carlos Castaneda: Journey to Ixtlan; The Teachings of Don Juan; and so forth.

With a bright canopy of stars in the night sky, and just hours before the Capricorn New Moon, the Santa Fe teachings began with a Chief’s song offered by Golden Eagle (formerly Standing Elk). He is an Interpreter and Chief for the Yankton Lakota Sioux peoples of South Dakota. Golden Eagle drummed and sang to honor Cachora, and to honor all the Chiefs who serve the Sacred Hoop.

Cachora appeared dark and intense at first, his eyes shaded from the light by a black sombrero. The hat was formed with a humble downturned brim, and crowned with a single golden eagle feather set in the right side of the woven band. He stood straight and strong through the night. Except for when he was speaking, Cachora kept his hands joined together over his solar plexus, above his red tunic, but behind his deerhide vest edged with cowry shells.

Even the shade of a hat could not long conceal the elder. He showed himself to be radiant in health, lithe, open of heart, filled with deep sincerity and hearty humor, and welcoming to all the people. One observer said he seemed “as solid as a beam of mesquite,” a famously tough tree. A human being of attainment, he demonstrated throughout the evening his faith that this potential rests in every human.

Cachora said that he knows 4,000 plants, and how they can be used medicinally to help people heal. He said he spends his time in the mountains, to study and to gather plants, and to teach his apprentices. But recently, Cachora said, he had been guided by Sprit to come forth and teach more widely in the world.

After a few brief introductory remarks, spoken in Spanish and translated to English, Cachora invited any and all questions. “Come on,” he said over and over, “ask.’

Here is a synopsis of Cachora’s translated remarks through the evening, as paraphrased by this reporter:

He was asked his thoughts and feelings about the earth and humanity right now, with everything that is going on in the world? I believe the future of humanity is opaque, he said. We are not seeing much in the way of peace and harmony.
Earth changes will continue to come upon the Earth, and a comet, too.
Santa Fe is sacred. Remember this. There would be plenty of water here, no crisis, if the people take care of the land and perform their ceremonies and prayers — no matter which spiritual tradition — and respect the earth. “If you give offerings, there will be plenty of water.”
The plants and trees are sad. Dry. They are not respected by the people for the crucial contribution they make to our lives. Gather and use them with respect, always offering a prayer. Don’t mistreat them. “Plants are our life. We must care for them.”
Cachora mentioned that his father had long ago worked in the mines near Santa Fe, and so he knew the area well. I know the caves and the mines here, he said. They are sacred.
Through the evening he several times made dismissive remarks about the books of Carlos Castaneda and claims that they might in some way accurately represent him or his teachings. Of Castaneda, Cachora twice said that he was “un pinche loco.”
Cachora answered yes, when asked if there were traditional teachings in his culture about people of different faiths, colors, and nationalities coming together at the time of global crisis, and uniting in mutual respect to work for the health of the earth and all that lives upon it. He said this process — what many would call an unfolding of the legend of the rainbow warriors — is happening now.
There’s not too much we can do about government, and wars, and harmful corporations, but we can work on ourselves. Pray and purify yourself. Don’t be ashamed of yourself. Love and accept yourself. Follow your vision.
Thank Creator for the day, every day. Sunrise is the best time to do this.
Purify yourself. Do it with prayers at sunrise. And do it with Purification baths (Sweat Lodges) at the time of the Full Moon. Meditate and pray in the mountains. This is necessary in the world now.
It’s better to meditate outdoors, where you can be in direct contact with the forces of nature.
Keep your diet to natural foods, with no chemicals and no genetically engineered components. For health, food should natural and clean, as Creator designed it.

At the end of the teachings, Golden Eagle closed the circle with his drum and a spirit song that, he said, Lakota people sing to honor Pte San Wi (White Buffalo Calf Woman). We have had this song a long time, he said, it was given to the Lakota the first time White Buffalo Calf Woman came among the people: 16,000 years ago.

— 30 —

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Massive Majestic Medicine Wheel Ceremony to Help Heal Our Earth

turtle2 While dwelling amid the high mountains along the North American Continental Divide, Bennie LeBeau of the Eastern Shoshone tribe experienced a torrent of dreams and visions, especially in 1999. The visions directed him to set in motion the plans for a massive Medicine Wheel Ceremony.

Over the last year Bennie has become aware of many sharply distressing changes in both land and animals at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. These changes are becoming even more ominous right now, he says, and they have prodded him into direct action to bring his visions alive.

The huge Medicine Wheel Ceremony that Bennie envisions is intended to be a mass spiritual event. The ceremony is set to take place at High Noon on Saturday, May 8, 2004 at more than 20 sacred sites in the American West, and at many other sacred sites elsewhere around the world, including Australia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Ireland, Germany, and the Middle East.

The Grand Teton peaks in Wyoming –The Four Grandmothers Standing Tall – will serve as the center of this Medicine Wheel. The long spine of the Rocky Mountains runs roughly North and South in the Wheel; and the circumference reaches from California deep into America’s heartland. Simultaneous prayer ceremonies at other sacred sites around world will help to re-attune the web of subtle energy pathways that envelop planet earth.

“All nations, all peoples are invited to participate,” Bennie said, adding, “all nations, all peoples are needed to work together on this — the black, white, yellow, and red nations of Mother Earth.”

map-red A Medicine Wheel is an ancient spiritual tool with a history of widespread use all over Turtle Island (North America). Stones are set to mark the Four Directions of North, South, East and West, and also of other major points. In this manner, if done with knowledge and respect, a sacred space is defined. Within that space, the people can direct thoughts, feelings and actions toward a unified idea.

The Medicine Wheel also helps people to be grounded physically, to properly orient to the Four Directions, and thus to have a clear sense of where they are. That foundation of stability gives a reliable base for high spiritual work.“The Earth is drastically out of balance now,” Bennie LeBeau says. “This Medicine Wheel ceremony will strive to re-set the basic tone — or vibrational pattern — of the West, and by extension help to re-attune the whole of the earth.

Message for Peacekeepers

I met Bennie LeBeau in Placitas, New Mexico on February 9, 2004. He had driven down from Wyoming to meet with some members of a group called the Spiritual Elders of Mother Earth, a network of indigenous people from 21 different tribes in North, Central, and South America.

The elders began coming together as a group in 1999 in response to the global crises of environment and culture. Their traditional teachings have long warned that such crises would arise.

The elders say they understand from their traditions that part of their original instructions as human beings was to serve as keepers of the Earth. They were also told that one day they would have to step forward in a time of extreme crisis and lead — to educate people about how to restore balance — for the survival of life on earth would depend upon them remembering and acting in a sacred manner.

Bennie LeBeau

Bennie LeBeau was born on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming in 1950, and is an enrolled member of the Eastern Shoshone tribe. He served in the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam in the early 1970s. In the years after his military service, he supported himself mainly through outfitting, taking people out fishing and hunting in the mountains.

Bennie told me that he began to have visions when he was in his late 20s, while guiding hunters along the Continental Divide. He went to the local Medicine People to ask for help in understanding, but they were unable to offer interpretations. So Bennie lived with the visions.

Bennie said he eventually came to understand on his own what his dreams and visions meant: “The land is out of balance. The bio-electric energy of the earth is being profoundly scrambled and disturbed by mines, electric transmission lines, railroads, highways, damming of the rivers, and also from development of factories, trucks, cars and so forth. War is adding to this.”

“It’s time to do something important, to reconnect the energy. So many sacred sites are not kept, not tended. But this is what is needed, for things are out of balance, out of harmony. It’s extreme now, and it’s time to come together around this, the old ways and the new ways. Every human being has a stake in this, no matter their color or their spiritual tradition.”

Talking with the Elders
To bring this massive, multi-tradition Medicine Wheel ceremony about, Bennie was inspired to travel and talk with representatives of the indigenous Nations near the waters and mountains of his vision, and also with other cultures. He began his journey in January, 2004. “I am to ask for assistance in re-activating these sacred sites,” Bennie explained. “We must all do our parts as humans to bring about harmony.”

On February 10, 2004 — the day after I met with him — Bennie journeyed west from Placitas to the Turquoise Mountain (Mount Taylor near Grants, New Mexico). This is one of the sacred mountains that mark the Four Corners area of Turtle Island (North America). Turquoise Mountain is a massive dormant volcano, towering more than a mile above a vast desert plateau.

Turquoise Mountain (Tsoodzil) Mount Taylor, New Mexico

With Leon Secatero of the Canoncito Navajo, a Grand Elder for the Spiritual Elders of Mother Earth, and Red Eagle of the Cherokee Nation, Bennie visited with the traditional keepers of Turquoise Mountain: Navajo Grandfather Martin Martinez and his wife, Grandmother Janíce.

Bennie told them of his dreams and visions, and also of his plan. Grandfather Martin, who is in his 90s, was pleased to hear it. He told Bennie that his visions were in harmony with the Navajo teachings and prophecies that he keeps. He also mentioned that with his wife, Janíce, he had a vision of a multi-tradition ceremony to be held near a holy spring on Turquoise Mountain. They wanted to realize their vision.

As it happens, in the context of the 600-mile radius of the Medicine Wheel of Bennie LeBeau’s vision, the Turquoise Mountain of New Mexico is in the South position — the South Mountain.

In the Medicine Wheel teachings of Turtle Island the South is a direction sometimes represented by Mouse. Mouse is so small and defenseless against the rest of the world that he must rely on trust and instinct to live. Much larger forces of Spirit are at work in the world, and Mouse understands how humble a creature he is in relation to all this. But good and surprising things can happen when trust leads Mouse to make a bold move for survival, guided by Spirit.

“This was prophesied a long time ago,” Grandfather Martinez told Bennie and the other elders. “I am glad you have come and taken responsibility to be a messenger.”

“The mountain is the pillar, our helper,” Grandfather Martinez said. “It listens to us when we are in harmony with the stones, trees, clouds, waters, and stars. This is the wholeness that keeps life together. We will communicate with the mountain.”

Grandfather Martin gave Bennie his blessings to go forward and make his Medicine Wheel Ceremony a reality. He said it was a good mission and that now is the time.

All the elders traveled up onto the flank of Turquoise Mountain after their meeting. There by a sacred spring they made ceremony together to prepare for May 8. Grandfather Martinez also initiated the drum that Bennie had made for himself, a drum laced with symbols representing the Medicine Wheel ceremony.

Grandfather Martinez shared with his guests some Navajo lore about Turquoise Mountain — the South Mountain of the four sacred mountains of the Navajo, known to them as Tsoodzil, the Blue Bead Mountain. (Turquoise Mountain is sacred to several other native groups as well; all have been invited to the May 8 ceremony).

Grandfather Martinez said there were giants on the mountains in the old days, and they were the guardians. Some were good, and some were not. The giants have gone, but their energies are still around, and a lot of it is negative energy. The negative energies and entities are coming back strong now, and it is affecting the people.

mine-arial In the context of Grandfather’s words, the ravaged land all around Turquoise Mountain bespeaks an ugly story. Over many years large-scale mining has dug up and released uranium for the sake of eternally toxic nuclear energy.

“We need to do ceremonies continually to strengthen and cleanse and empower,” Grandfather Martinez said. “It is very important to do this now. The ceremonies help to keep the negative forces at bay.

Grandmother Janíce told the circle of elders that the ceremony would put in place another set of vibrations. “The ceremony will happen at a time in the spring when all the plants are surging with new life,” she said. “If we come together in respect with the plants, she said, we can use this energy to help bring about the intention of the ceremony.”

Grandfather Martinez spoke of the Medicine Wheel ceremony as a universal wake up call. The mountain ranges have sovereignty over lines of energy that radiate around the entire earth. Thus, he said, the ceremonies we do encircling the Rocky Mountains will radiate out to other points.

Grandfather noted that many people and groups do things individually, their rituals or ceremonies. “That’s okay,” he said, “but right now Mother Earth and all the living things upon her have need of something more — something where all the people are together and of one heart, one mind.”

The May 8 ceremony that the elders have envisioned for the South Mountain, Turquoise Mountain, is to be a Blessing Way. That is how it will happen. Drums and singers from many nations will pass the song from sunrise on May 8 until sunset, and some may choose to sing in the night. “We will also be calling all our ancestors to be with us in this ceremony,” Leon Secatero said, “that we may all reconnect with our ancestors.”

There will be a particular emphasis when High Noon comes to the Four Grandmothers Standing Tall (Grand Tetons in Wyoming). That is when ceremonies in the entire Medicine Wheel will also be putting a focus on being of one mind and heart, expressing their gratitude for Creation by raising the vibration to its highest level.

For the elders of Turquoise Mountain in the South, the ceremony will also mark the starting time of an effort to establish a permanent public park on part of thier ancestral lands, so that people can go there to pray and make ceremony when they feel called. They also envision a healing center.

While Bennie initially saw the massive Medicine Wheel ceremony-taking place over a 600-mile radius, reaching out from the center point of the Four Grandmothers, Grandfather Martinez saw it more globally. They came to agree that everyone who chooses to participate, at whatever holy sites are accessible to them anywhere in the world, would be invited and welcomed.

One Heart, One Mind, One Circle
The call for people of all nations, races, and traditions to participate in this massive Medicine Wheel ceremony comes at a time of widespread military conflict, and of profound environmental damage to the earth, the wind, the fire and the water. It is also a time of intense culture war.

The same kinds of passionate forces that bitterly pit religion against religion, race against race, and political party against political party, are also at work in Indian Country. There are many factions.

Not everyone endorses the idea of White, Red, Black, Brown, Yellow and Rainbow peoples coming to participate together in ceremony.

But the intention of the Medicine Wheel Ceremony on May 8, 2004 is for something all people can hold in common without dispute: the realization that a healthy earth is necessary to our survival, and to the survival of our children and grandchildren.

In responding to his visions and by calling for this ceremony, Bennie LeBeau is forcing the issue. Will Native peoples open their ceremonies and share their teachings? There are lots of strong viewpoints on whether this is a good thing.

Bennie says the indigenous tribes will have to open up and teach. He is well aware that not all tribal groups will welcome this.

“Some tribes will open, some will not,” he told me. “Each will make their own decision. This is going out to the world. There is no set ceremony. People may follow their own hearts and traditions. They know their holy places and their Medicines. But we must all do it together. There is no one person who is in charge. It is up to the people.”

“The old traditions alone will not work to meet this current challenge,” Bennie said. “Things have changed. We need to take the best of the old and add it to what is emerging. This is the medicine that we — and our Mother Earth — need now.”

Bennie says that the big mess the world is in now is the very reason why the ceremonies were preserved for so many generations, against such overwhelming persecution. “This is why the ancestors suffered and sacrificed, to save the songs and dances that set a tone of harmony in the relationship between the human beings and the earth, for the universe which provides our essential sustenance of food, water, and shelter.”

The May 8 Medicine Wheel ceremony is intended to bring the people together through a unified vision on one day and to be guided by Native American neighbors and relatives, who have a millennia-old tradition of ceremonies to respect and maintain the balance of life on Earth.

About this diversity of viewpoints, Grandfather Martinez said, “Our gratitude will answer all the questions. We will be energized by this ceremony, making connections with all our relatives, all our cultures. All cultures must be valued and welcomed, not one left out.”

The Massive Scope of the Medicine Wheel
The boundaries of the May 8, 2004 Medicine Wheel Ceremony that Bennie LeBeau has envisioned reach in a huge circle, touching on major sacred mountain peaks and bodies of water. He has interpreted his vision as “The Magnificent 19 + 1 = 20.”

The planned Medicine Wheel ceremony covers an area with a radius of some 600 miles. The Grand Tetons in Wyoming – The Four Grandmothers Standing Tall — are at the center of the wheel, and 19 major mountains and waterways mark the perimeter of the wheel. The idea is to have ceremonies happen simultaneously around the whole wheel while centered on the Four Grandmothers Standing Tall, and stabilized in space and upon the Earth by the traditional Four Directions.

Center of the Wheel – The Grand Tetons.

The ceremonial points around the perimeter of the Medicine Wheel are located in close proximity to these sacred sites:

. Lake Sullivan, North
· Saskatchewan River
· Qu’appelle River
· Souris River
· James River
· Missouri River
· Platte River
· Arkansas River
· Cimarron River
· Colorado River or (Lake Mead)
· Lake Tahoe
· Okanagan Lake
· Turquoise Mountain (Mt. Taylor, NM)
· Mt. Humphrey (Flagstaff, AZ)
· Mt. Whitney
· Mt. Shasta
· Three Sisters
· Mt. Rainier
· Lake Louise

The vast scope of the Medicine Wheel.

As Bennie LeBeau explains it, “the intent of the ceremony is to place back into balance those lands, mountains and bodies of water that are now out-of-balance due to reckless development. We will use our drums, songs and dances to re-vitalize these sacred sites. Working together as the ancestors once did, we will re-attune these sacred sites. Our ceremony will become an important tool to teach all people the importance of our Mother Earth.”

Bad Vibes

Yellowstone geyser

According to Bennie, it is important to understand the relationship of the energy lines that link place to place on earth, and also the earth with the heavens. These energy pathways are like the nervous system of the human body and its wiring system, he said. The lines (ley lines) make up a matrix, or a network of energy for the body of the earth, and they can be adjusted the way a human body can be adjusted with acupuncture.

Bennie said that right now bad vibrations have built up to massive levels, and are stressing out the Earth Mother as well as many of her people. One clear evidence of this distress that is of particular concern to him is seismic activity in and around Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, near the homeland of his Eastern Shoshone tribe.

Geologists call Yellowstone a super volcano, because of the massive caldera of molten fire beneath the park. Over 10,000 geysers — including “Old Faithful” — rise from the depths of the earth. Yellowstone has more geothermal activity in one concentrated region than all the other sites on the planet put together.

Bennie LeBeau says that recent eruptions, 200-degree ground temperatures, bulging magma, 84-degree water temperatures in the lake, and a massive, unexplained die off of elk tell him that something big is happening at Yellowstone right now. The earth is profoundly disturbed.

He notes the following: in July, 2003 Yellowstone Park rangers closed the entire Norris Geyser Basin because of bulges in the land and excessively high temperatures. Ground temperatures on that bulge reached 200 degrees. It became a dead zone for fish, trees, flowers, and grasses.

Some geologists have speculated that if the massive caldera we know as Yellowstone were to erupt, every living thing within six hundred miles could be affected with devastating consequences.

The long-term effects of such an eruption would also be severe. Thousands of cubic kilometers of ash would shoot into the atmosphere, blocking light from the sun and dropping global temperatures, just as in the case of a nuclear winter.

Park officials disagree with this assessment of the situation. Franklin C. Walker, Assistant Superintendent of the National Park Service, addressed these concerns in a Dec. 12, 2003 letter to the chairperson of Eastern Shoshone Tribe “From the perspective of geologists, the Yellowstone volcano is not preparing to catastrophically erupt. No indication of increased volcanic activity is evident.”

Yet since then three earthquakes have rattled the ground at Yellowstone: A 5.3 mg quake was reported on Feb. 6, 2004, a 3.5 mg. quake hit a week later on Sunday, Feb. 15, and then Saturday Feb. 21 a 3.2 mg. quake struck.

Further, as reported by the Associated Press on March 12, 2004 the elk herds in Yellowstone Park are suffering a massive and mysterious die off. Since Feb. 22, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has discovered over 300 dead and dying elk. This mass die off is unprecedented and unexplained

Of note, Yellowstone Park is also the site of a legal, on-going Buffalo slaughter. The Buffalo are killed to prevent them from becoming “too numerous.” In native understandings, Buffalo are widely considered to be healers of the earth. The places where their hooves touch the soil are especially fertile.

Now — early in our new milennium — at Yellowstone the joined rhythm of buffalo hooves is being replaced by the throb of snowmobile engines, and also by the sharp, invisible, unceasing waves from a 100-foot high cell-phone tower that has just been erected. The new tower overshadows Old Faithful and the entire Yellowstone historic district.

Bennie sees all of this as distinctly ominous. He is determined to do something about it. He says one important, helpful, and peaceful way to respond to the whole mess — Yellowstone and the global megacrisis — is with ceremony. He says his visions have shown him that ceremonies can serve the earth in a way similar to the way acupuncture serves the human body.

If the abuse of the earth continues, Bennie believes, things may get so far out of balance that Yellowstone will roar loud enough for everyone on the planet to hear the cry of pain.

The collective songs, dances, meditations and prayers of the Medicine Wheel ceremony set for May 8 will be directed to the Earth with the intention of respect, gratitude, and healing.

Protocol of the Medicine Wheel
As Bennie envisions the Medicine Wheel ceremony, the Eastern Shoshone from the Wind River Mountains in Wyoming, and others from the area who choose to participate, will gather at the center of the wheel, in Grand Teton National Park on May 8. They will combine their songs, chants and drums.

At the same time other tribal nations, groups, and cultures near the other 19 sacred sites around the perimeter of the Medicine Wheel will use their songs, chants and drumming to vibrate and bless those areas.

This vast Medicine Wheel around the Rocky Mountains of North America will be in relation to, and supported by other ceremonies at sacred sites in North America and around the world — wherever people choose to gather together in respectful ceremony. The whole of the Medicine Wheel will come to its highest expression in the hour when High Noon comes to the Four Grandmothers Standing Tall.

Turquoise Mountain — the South Mountain on the Medicine Wheel — has already committed to ceremony under the guidance of Grandfather Martin Martinez and Grandmother Janíce, and many other elders and Medicine People from nearby Pueblos. With Grandfather Secatero, the elders established a Protocol for the Turquoise Mountain Ceremony and made the Protocol available for others to consider.

Many other points on the Medicine Wheel are set, while some are yet to be organized for ceremony on May 8.

Lake Sullivan with tall pine trees in the North direction.

“This is to be a joint effort,” Bennie said. “I call to all my relatives to come forward now, and help to make this Medicine Wheel Ceremony happen in a good way using their own protocols, and joining together in one mind, one heart at High Noon on May 8, and to remember the Four Grandmothers Standing Tall and Yellowstone in the center. We must be in the highest form of sacred thought while in prayer. We must work in a straightforward manner. There should be no disagreements as to who is right and who is wrong, for the mountains and rivers of this Medicine Wheel have already had enough of this.”

“The vision showed that this undertaking would be a joint effort working together in peace. We shall bring back peace of mind to our hearts, to our spirits, and to our homelands. We will release the bondage of negative thoughts and prejudice for the betterment of all living things.”

In a Beautiful Manner
“We need to do this dance,” Bennie said. “We need to fulfill this vision, and I cannot do it alone. It needs to be done by all the people, all colors, all faiths. They will come together from all directions.”

No one need change any religious or spiritual beliefs to participate, Bennie said. There is only one central, non-controversial thought form that participants will be activating with their meditations, songs and dances: respect and gratitude for Creation.

From his many dreams and visions, Bennie has developed a sense of what kind of impact the Medicine Wheel ceremony can have: “When the sacred mountains and waterways have been set back into good order and harmony, Mother Nature will be re-orchestrated in beauty. We will see a significant change in the attitudes of all those living inside and outside the wheel.”

“After the ceremony the Indigenous Nations, groups and cultures that have participated in the manifesting of this vision will work together. This will awaken and re-integrate the ancient teachings of the Indigenous Nations as brothers and sisters.”

“Together we can do this in a beautiful manner. Together, we can bring balance and harmony back to the land. It needs to happen now. So be it.”

In closing, Bennie articulated a point that he, Grandfather Martinez, Grandmother Janíce, and the Spiritual Elders of Mother Earth agree upon: “The human race is depending on us for we are the keepers of the earth and its sacred wisdom. As the Hopi teaching instructs us, ‘We are the ones we have been waiting for.’”

RESOURCES

Film about the ceremony – The Sodizin Ceremony: the Reunion of Mother Earth with Her Children

Turquoise Mountain Protocol

Bennie LeBeau’s Home Page
http://www.shrinesandsacredsites.com
Spiritual Elders of Mother Earth
http://www.spiritualelders.org

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Arising from Sacred Land, Aiming Upward

On an August evening in 2009, Doug George-Kanentiio offered a ten-minute oration while the Sun was setting. Choosing good words, he spoke about the power of great art, about our prophetic era, and about our relations with the land and each other. At the end, he gave voice to the emerging vision of establishing an Indigenous University in America.

Sacred Rain Arrow, by Alan Houser.

The microphone Kanentiio stood at that evening was set on land about twenty-five paces from “Sacred Rain Arrow,” one of the sculptural masterpieces created by the late Allan Houser. Kanentiio’s talk was part of a benefit event for Go Native Arts, hosted in the garden of the Houser Estate about 20 miles south of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

An hour after Kanentiio’s oration, his wife Joanne Shenandoah stood before the same microphone. By this time the stars had emerged, and Jupiter was strong in the sky to the East. Joanne faced south, centered herself, and gave voice to the enthralling Prophecy Song from her Orenda CD. She was supported with harmonies arising from daughter, Leah, and flanked in the West by the beseeching bronze presence of Sacred Rain Arrow.

We are now reminded
to be aware of our place upon this earth.
and to fulfill our obligations to ourselves,
our families, our nations,
the natural world, the Creator.

The words sing, we are to awaken.
Stand up, Be counted,
for you are being recognized in the Spirit world.

– Joanne Shenandoah – Copyright

Several days after the benefit event, I met Kanentiio again amid a crush of people by the Plaza bandstand at the annual Santa Fe Indian Market. We found a quiet place to sit and talk.

To answer my questions about the land, Kanentiio began telling of where he was born and raised, Akwesasne Mohawk Territory on the shores of Kaniatarowanenneh (St. Lawrence River) at the New York-Ontario frontier. The Mohawks are part of the Iroquois Confederacy, and the Keepers of the Eastern Door. Their confederacy is the oldest, active participatory democracy on Earth. With its Great Law of Peace, the Confederacy was a direct example and inspiration for the U.S. Constitution.

A former editor of Akwesasne Notes, Kanentiio is also a founder of the Native American Journalists Association, and the author of several books, including Iroquois on Fire: A Voice from the Mohawk Nation. In collaboration with his wife, Joanne, he is co-author of Skywoman: Tales of the Iroquois.

For many years Kanentiio served on the board of directors for the National Museum of the American Indian, and he is currently serving on the board for the Parliament of the World’s Religions, the largest interfaith gathering on Earth. Steadily growing in scope and influence, the Parliament will reconvene this December in Melbourne, Australia.

As we talked in Santa Fe, Kanentiio reminded me that Mohawk Territory straddles the border between the USA and Canada. It’s territory that’s in both nations, and it’s in neither. “Akwesasne is a nexus,” he said. “It’s situated at a juncture of land and water that is of considerable strategic importance. We straddle the St. Lawrence River at what were once known as the 25-mile rapids.” These rapids serve as a key natural valve of flow in relationship between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean.

“Historically at Akwesasne the lives of the people were interwoven with the land and the water. People were called there because the place had all the resources necessary for life, and those resources gave stability to the people and to the community. That provided the Mohawk people with a high degree of cultural continuity, and it gave us a certain power and purpose. We always had that.

“Then in April of 1959 there came a break with this pattern. The St. Lawrence Seaway came into being, and our whole way of life changed. The natural, free flow of the living waters at 25-mile rapids was choked with locks. That energetic change fractured our community. It messed up the fishing grounds, and it separated the people from the water and from the land. We began to metamorphose from a vigorous people to a sedentary people. We became wage earners for the first time, dependent on money, and we began to lose our language. That brought about a huge change in values, and a whole generation of our children began to change from that point onward.

“When traditional indigenous peoples are separated from the land, then there is a break in trust in relation to the land – a break that goes both ways. We don’t trust the land, and the land doesn’t trust us. But you must have that trust. When we don’t communicate with each other, and when we don’t communicate with the land, the relationships become abrasive.”

In this context, Kanentiio mentioned Handsome Lake (Ganyahdiyok), the legendary figure who brought Gaiwiio (Good Words) to the people over 200 years ago. Among his life experiences, Handsome Lake was given a vision of the future. He foresaw environmental disasters including air and water pollution, and he offered prophetic cautions.

“Handsome Lake and others warned us that the final assault on the Iroquois – the greatest danger – would come from within. That’s what’s happening now,” Kanentiio said. “In terms of ideals, the Iroquois Confederacy represents something very good. But things change. Metamorphosis has continued and is continuing today, but at a faster pace. In our tradition we have in our creation story an important part about the twins, one twin of the good mind and one twin of the bad mind. That’s something to remember. These twins are always present.”

“Smuggling of tobacco and narcotics, and gambling — whatever commands a profit — has created a narco-culture at Akwesasne,” he said. “Our good, traditional Iroquois values of humility, compassion, simplicity, generosity and communal service have been replaced by greed, intimidation, violence, and death.”

After hearing this, I told Kanentiio of a meeting that happened about 17 years ago in Montreal. I found myself sitting beside the widely known and respected Hopi messenger Thomas Banyacya in a hotel lobby after he had given a talk. As we conversed, Grandfather Banyacya told me that long ago, when the Earth had gone through another epic metamorphosis, gambling had been the precipitating factor. “That was the last straw,” Banyacya told me. “When the gambling and all its related problems built up to a certain level, that triggered the great flood that cleansed the land.”

After listening to my story, Kanentiio responded. “We Indian people are supposed to be the custodians of the land, but what we are doing now is running casinos. We are sidetracked. We have lost sight of what we are supposed to do. The bright, shiny thing along the path has enticed many of the people to become lost, to lose track. Handsome Lake warned of that a long time ago, and now it’s everywhere.

“The Earth is beginning to stir,” he said. “She’s beginning to express the dreams and visions of long ago. The Earth is showing us that she’s increasingly upset with us. The Earth is beginning to arouse. There will be huge changes in this time of reckoning, of healing, until the balance is restored. We are very close now. It won’t be subtle. Big winds will come. The Earth will shrug its shoulders.

“We are not able to change this movement toward purification,” Kanentiio said, “but we know some things will survive. The Confederacy will endure in spite of itself. That is a shared understanding among traditionals, that despite all the odds the Confederacy will survive and go on, as the larger world will also go on in a new way.

“People feel the urgency of the changes now, and many are motivated to do things. That’s good. Preserve what you can. You have to leave something good and tangible behind.

A particular thing that Kanentiio would like to help leave behind is an Indigenous University for North America.

“A few years ago, Vine Deloria, Jr. thought maybe we could take the system of formal education, which had been used to undermine traditional native societies, and reverse it’s impact by creating our own institution based on the university system,” Kanentiio said. “We would create a formal, accredited university where native knowledge keepers would have a place to teach.

“We have native colleges, but an Indigenous University could in time meet and exceed universal standards for learning, and provide formal instruction in all native arts and sciences, of which there are many. It would have a high emphasis on online study. That’s a dream of ours.”

The Indigenous University would be open to everybody on the planet, no restrictions of race or religion. ”That is typical Iroquois,” Kanentiio explained. “Our way is to make it possible that people come to a meeting of the good mind. To get there, you need to sit in respect with one another. You have to invite people from all walks of life and viewpoints to share information, and you have to listen to one another.

“We have the ideas to create an Indigenous University,” he said. “What we need now are the physical and financial means to bring it about.”

: Joanne Shenandoah and Doug George-Kanentiio

In a related effort to weave indigenous viewpoints into the world’s larger framework, Kanentiio and Joanne — as well as other native peoples from North America and around the world — have become involved with the Parliament of World Religions. “We have in part managed to get the Parliament to adopt a native perspective on the Earth: to regard the Earth not as a commodity, but as a being.”

Kanentiio serves on the board of directors for the Parliament. He noted that the theme of their December, meeting will be ‘Reconciling with Mother Earth.’ “My hope for this Parliament,” he said, “is that teachers from world’s various disciplines, Jews, Evangelical Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Roman Catholics, and many more — can get together again in Melbourne and finally acknowledge that Earth is a living planet and should have standing. If spiritual leaders accept that, and take these spiritual understandings to their nations and congregations to make it a guiding principle, then that’s a good thing.

“We feel the real revolution in human society will come about through these spiritual changes,” Kanentiio said. “It has to happen there first, on the spiritual level. Once we change the spiritual, then the politics will follow.

“For me,” he said, “the roots of this understanding go back to our Iroquois value that all human beings have equal worth, if not necessarily equal abilities. Everyone’s life has meaning. Some are singers and healers, and some are cooks or builders, but each one of us has the blessings of existence. To cultivate this, to acknowledge, to have gratitude for being alive. You can always do that. Our lives are not casual, not by chance. We have been directed here to this time and place, and we are meant to take all of our life experiences with us, all the joys, suffering, and pain, and to take it with us with good mind when we return to the place of living light. That makes the light stronger for the generations to come.”

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Tools for Becoming a Sage: Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi

©- 1993 by Steven McFadden

“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.” – Psalms 90:12

Even among the avant-garde who are exploring the spiritual dimensions of aging, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi has been a trailblazer and a catalyst. Eventually many others will follow, he suggests, and the kinds of ideas he has been advocating — which are now seen as provocative — will become part of an established way.

Zalman Schacter-Shalomi

“I’m just helping to get the conversation started,” he says with intimations of both hope and certainty. “It’s just a matter of time.”

A survivor of the Holocaust, Zalman has maintained a foundational confidence in Spirit and progress. “I do believe there is more good in the world than evil,” he says, “but not by much. The task of each person is to help tip the scale. Every life matters immensely, and every well-lived and completed life helps with tikkun olam (healing the world).

Zaida (grandfather) Zalman was 65 years old when he started the Spiritual Eldering Project in 1989 to meet the needs of the current generation of elders. He was well trained for this pioneering task, not just by virtue of his studies, but also via the course of his life.

Born in Poland two days after a lunar eclipse, on August 19, 1924, his family soon moved to Vienna where he spent his childhood. When World War II broke out he was imprisoned for a time by the Vichy-French government. He fled Europe in 1941 to the United States, where he entered the Lubavitch Yeshiva in New York, and was ordained as a Rabbi in 1947. Later he earned a Master of Arts in Psychology of Religion from Boston University, and a Doctor of Letters from Hebrew Union College (1969).

In his long and varied career, Zaida Zalman has been a congregational Rabbi, a Hebrew school principal, a Hillel Foundation director, a resource consultant, and a spiritual guide. For 20 years he worked as professor of religion and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at the University of Manitoba. Later he served as Professor of Jewish Mysticism and the Psychology of Religion at Temple University, where he is now Professor Emeritus. An iconoclast and somewhat of a rebel, he is the founder of P’Nai Or Fellowship, an international Jewish renewal movement.

Every institutionalized religion could benefit from periodic review and renewal, he says; otherwise they become rigid, calcified, unable to respond to the demands of the present. The same need for review and revitalization, he argues, is also true for individuals — especially as one becomes older.

The Purpose of a Long Life

“What is the purpose of a long life, or an extended life span?” Zaida Zalman has wrestled with this question for a long time. Before founding the Spiritual Eldering Project he invited several distinguished elders, including Betty Friedan, author of The Fountain of Age to join him on retreat so they could concentrate on this and related questions. As a consequence, he has a ready answer. “Creator must have had a purpose in mind. After all, the human animal has two legs: a physical leg and a spiritual leg. We have been walking around on one leg, the physical leg, for a long time, so now we are looking to walk on the spiritual leg.

“A very important attribute of growing older is the wisdom a person gathers. Sharing that wisdom can help elders enjoy their remaining years, and much of that sharing can be done on an intergenerational level. What I’m trying to do with my work is bring back the vitamin of grandparents. By creating intergenerational possibilities, both people gain. The old ones gain vitality from the contact; the young ones gain wisdom and perspective on life.

“We must all pass through a gate of transformation to move from aging to sage-ing. This enables us to use our life experience to enrich our elders years, face mortality, repair relationships, develop a regenerative spirit and transmit wisdom to future generations.

“People need a time to harvest their life,” he says. “If you have plowed, sown the seed, and worked a lifetime, you’d be well advised to bring in the harvest. In some way every elder is looking for completion, being pulled toward it, but we rarely talk about it in spiritual terms.

“Most models of elders today are either of people who are in decrepitude, or people who died in the saddle — people who worked until their dying day without harvesting the experience of a lifetime, without taking the enjoyment of solitude — an opportunity to talk with the self — without harvesting the work and experience of their lifetime. You do not need to die in the saddle. You can harvest your life, spend some time on completion. Then, if you’ve done that work, you’ll be in a position to upload the wisdom of your life to the global brain.

“What blocks the path to the future is often an internal thing. People are often freaked out about death, because they can see, if they choose to look, that the Angel of Death always lies ahead at the end of the tunnel. So many people avert their eyes. They don’t wish to confront the reality, the inevitability of death. Who can you talk to about these things? We need to let the conversation about death out of the closet.

“The internal program we are born with says ‘save life and avoid death at all costs.’ Nine times out of ten this program is absolutely correct. The harvest of life cannot come to people unless they set time aside for it. Most people are afraid to look to the future because they see the Angel of Death lurking there. So, instead, they back into the future. When this happens there really is no past, no future. Only a shriveled present. We need to get out of the box, to reclaim the past and the present, and confront the unlived life — by this I mean the great pains, the failures, the disappointments, the betrayals. Most of the time we don’t want to hear the inner voices that say ‘when are you going to…?’ But it’s important to hear those voices. And it’s important to answer those questions.

“When that instinct is frustrated, you become depressed. It’s kind of an involutionary melancholy — the pain of the unlived life. Examining your failures can lead you to real successes. Look at the old files of your life, the failures, and re-examine them. This can give you energy for the present. I believe that part of the reason that we are given the time of eldering is to open the file drawers and go into the past to correct, to heal, and to harvest.

“A lot of the spiritual work people do is just putting whipped cream on top of a bowl of garbage. You’ve got to clean up the garbage first before you add the whipped cream.

“When you begin to think about how you want to harvest your life, you can at first be paralyzed by the choices. Which is the least troublesome path to take? But as an elder the horizon of choices opens up even wider. When are you going to do something for yourself?”

How to Become a Sage

Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi is a man of abundant talent: linguist, storyteller, computer wizard, singer, and penetrating social analyst. As Director of the Spiritual Eldering Project, he has been a pioneer in developing dynamic models to explore the processes of aging and wisdom cultivation. He has studied his own Jewish heritage thoroughly, and also explored spiritual teachings with Sufi-Masters, Buddhist teachers, Native American elders, Catholic monks, Tibet’s Dalai Lama, and humanistic and transpersonal psychologists.

The Rabbi travels nationally and internationally, to work with elders, and with people who work with elders. He has earned wide respect as an advocate for new ways of understanding what it means to grow old, and for synthesizing a body of teachings that is both ancient and modern. As a consequence of his broad experience and studies, in his public classes and seminars, he ranges far and wide, quoting from scholars and mystics the world over.

“What happens when you grow old and no longer wish to compete with younger people? Who do you look toward for models? Someone who is old, or someone who is an elder? And what is the difference? How do you become a sage? It’s not necessarily the result of book learning.

“Elders right now are often seen as a drain. They are a problem. They are going to use up scarce resources, like Social Security and Medicare. But there are other possibilities. When Social Security was first designed they thought people had a life span of 67 or 69 years. But now the reality is an expanded life span. We need also to expand our consciousness and awareness too, or it will lead to depression.

“When the mind is kept open, then the older you get the more settled and clarified you become. With the extended life span it is also possible to extend awareness. But we have to work on it. We don’t have a great number of models. The term we have for ourselves is ‘Homo Sapiens,’ the wise people? But how does Homo Sapiens behave? We have no models and no code for this. The model does not exist. We need to create models, a new template — to reformat the disk of life.”

“No one else can ‘elder’ you. It’s an intransitive verb. You must do it yourself. So what are the tools for becoming a sage? Contemplative practices: recollection, reflection, meditation, and envisioning — see your life as a landscape, a panorama. Have conversations with your own soul. Get to a witness place, and witness your own life. And as you witness, learn to forgive, yourself and others, otherwise you are robbed of energy. You are handcuffed to the person you have not forgiven and you drag them everywhere with you.

“We have to blaze a trail for eldering. There is a small window of opportunity right now. Are elders just ready for the junk heap? Or do they have something to contribute?”

Some Tools of Eldering

From time to time through his life Rabbi Schachter-Shalomi has found himself sitting in the bathtub gazing into a hand-held mirror to see who he is and who he is becoming. In theological circles such a practice might well be called ‘discursive meditation,’ but he says he is just talking things over with himself.

“You have to meet yourself at some point. That’s really important. I’ve learned that. It’s different from the kind of meditation where you still the mind, which is also important. It’s taking the time to have a deliberate inner dialogue, to ruminate, to ‘chew the cud’ of your life.

“The soul teaches us throughout life, but the lessons are fleeting, ephemeral. That’s why it’s important to take time and look at the panorama of your life, to see the extension and the scope of it — the development of your life’s course. What have you distilled from life? What will become of your experience. When you record them in a journal, you have a way to reconnect.”

“You can become a mentor, and pass on your knowledge to a younger person. I don’t mean passing on information, but something else. Mentoring is sharing wisdom, healthy interchange. When this happens it rouses vitality in an older person, and brings a great joy. When you decide that you want to do this, you will attract people. When the flower is ready, the bee appears. You can also make a tape recording, tell your life story and what you have learned. Make copies and give them to your relatives. Pass on your heritage.

“Or, anther way to do it is to write an ethical will: a written, or recorded testament of your values and the learnings of your life. Mine your memories. Describe what you have learned from life, the epitome of your experience and wisdom. Write it first for yourself, but you can also give it to your children. Don’t just reap the harvest of a long life, but also share the harvest. At holidays, thanksgiving, Christmas, whatever, reconstruct the past to make it accessible to the present. People need the affect, the emotion, the impressions. If you are not an elder, then ask the elders to tell their stories.”

A Lifetime is Not Infinite

“People want to deny their mortality, they don’t want to come to terms with their mortality. There is a great delusion that ‘I will live forever.’ Most people deny their mortality. They don’t want to look down to the end of the road. In this, though, there are consequences for a person’s life and for the society.

“Life has to be harvested in some way, to be completed. People who deny their mortality get caught by it nevertheless, but they live unaware of it the last part of their lives. The Hindus called it Avidya, not wanting to know, closing down of consciousness.

“If someone in the October, November, or December of their life span closes down their consciousness, that means that towards the end of their life they have been sleeping through it. So all the opportunities that are there, to harvest your lifetime, to reconstellate one’s past or be able to see it now with a different perspective, to upload the wisdom the of a lifetime, to reconcile with the people whom one needs to be reconciled with, to clean up karmic pollution — all these things do not get done when a person denies their mortality.

“People pretend a great deal that mortality isn’t there. It’s all hidden away; its all made pretty. The mortician will do cosmetics on people and they don’t look like they looked when they died. They make it all like it’s not the way that it’s happening, so the impact isn’t there. The impact of knowing that one is coming to the end of the course of one’s life, that’s what gives a sense of the preciousness of time. I think that when people get older and they are aware of their mortality, then time is very precious. Many wish to continue to deny death, or to play in their later years. They do not want to develop wisdom. Sometimes it’s just not possible to wake someone up.

“Coming to terms with your mortality means to make peace that physical death will happen. I don’t want at this point to hold out for people the carrot of the afterlife as a way of having a life-jacket against the anxiety that comes from having to come to terms with mortality. I don’t want to talk about afterlife and all the things that I believe that psychic research and near-death experiences and all these other things are beginning to verify. I want to leave that for after people have come to grips with the terror about dying. Otherwise they won’t encounter what they need to encounter. That’s the reason why I want to hold off on putting it in. When I use the word death, I mean just physical death.

“People who don’t want to look ahead as they grow older back into the future, rather than walking into it face forward. Only by making peace with the inevitability of mortality can we make peace with ourselves.”

What is Wisdom?

Zaida Zalman is a compelling speaker: focused, coherent, aware of the shifting mood of the audience, and also observant of the passage of time. Warm and expansive, he supports the spoken word with gentle gestures of arm and hand, often coaxing differences of opinion and debate.

A vigorous singer, he can be prompted to launch his rumbling but melodious voice at the turn of a phrase that puts him in mind of a favorite tune.

Since it’s rarely a topic of social conversation, most people are brought up short when they are asked about wisdom. This is treacherous territory, and without care a respondent runs the risk of revealing puzzlement or ignorance rather than insight. It needs to be approached carefully. Zaida Zalman has been hanging out with the question for a lifetime, but still he eases into the subject with an anecdote.

“I heard this story from an old-timer in California. It was so good that I keep repeating it. I wish I could remember his name and give him credit for it.

So the story is: a person comes to the wise man and says, ‘how do you get wisdom.’ He says, ‘wisdom comes from good judgment.’ And how do you have good judgment? So the wise one says, ‘from experience.’ And where do you get experience? ‘From bad judgment.’

“So, I like that progression: from bad judgment to experience to good judgment to wisdom. So what you see is, wisdom is a generalization of everything one has learned from life, it’s a distillate of that. If you say, ‘hey, Zalman, make with some wisdom, you know.’ Then I’m supposed to do applied wisdom, wisdom in order to get me XYZ, whatever the thing is that I want to get; then that which may pretend to be wisdom becomes very manipulative, street wise. It’s clever, but not wise.

“There is a whole tradition of wisdom that sees wisdom as a woman. That comes from the Greek Sophia. The Hebrew word for wisdom is also a feminine word. These words have a sense of, like Pallas Athena jumping out of Zeus’ head. Wisdom comes with God, prior to the world. So, if I were to say, ‘wisdom is that which jumps out of the head of the Ancient of Days,’ that would be a way of expressing it.

“I think a lot now about feminism. I have a feeling that in the next 50 years there is going to be a switch, where more and more of the people who have life experience, who have learned something, are going to be true spiritual elders, and that’s going to have its impact on people. Women after menopause will be in positions of being counselors, and that will bring social equality to wisdom.

“At this point, we don’t see it yet. If somebody were to go to Washington and say, “in the cabinet, could we have a wisdom seeker? Could we have some wise elder just be there and speak of wisdom whenever something comes up that needs that kind of consideration? That’s what the Senate was supposed to be able to do in the first place, to be able to take life’s wisdom and apply it to government, to advise and consent.

The Real World

Stories are stock-in-trade for Zaida Zalman. He has hundreds at the ready. As with many spiritual teachers throughout the ages, he has come to realize that insight is often conveyed — and retained — far more effectively through a parable. His deep olive-colored eyes twinkle when he sees an opportunity to launch into one, and he has the capacity to tell them at majestic length and with effusive detail, or to compress them to an essential outline to fit a small window of opportunity — when the attention span of listeners appears to be strained.

“There was a man by the name of Rabbi Ramour Yenischlayzal and his son Rabitizikel,” he begins.

“Rabitizikel is a teenager, and the father is the venerable head of a Hassidic group. Suddenly there appears before them a person who says, ‘Rabbi, I need some help, I’m about to get married and I need some money badly.’ The Rabbi looks at him and says, ‘don’t you know you’re dead, you’ve died already.’ The man says, ‘what are you talking about? They are waiting for me. I need the money, please help me.’ The Rabbi lifts up the man’s coat and shows him that underneath his coat he has shrouds, the shrouds with which he was buried. Suddenly, it dawns on the man what has really happened and he disappears.

“The Rabbi’s son is upset by this and says, ‘Poppa, what was that?’ And the father says to him, ‘there are some souls that live in the world of confusion. This one couldn’t reconcile himself yet with being dead so he’s inventing a whole life story so that he can continue to deny that he is dead. By showing him these things I brought him up short, and he had to pay attention. He disappeared because he no longer had to be in the world of confusion where he appears as if he were living on this plane.’

“The son thinks for a moment, and then asks, ‘Poppa, for him he was pretty real for himself. How do we know that we aren’t in the world of confusion? We appear pretty real to ourselves?’ And the father says, ‘my dear child, the world in which you ask the question is the real world.’

” That story that is similar to the old Chinese story from the sage Lao Tzu about the emperor who dreams that he is a butterfly, and then asks himself, ‘am I a butterfly dreaming that I am an emperor, or am I an emperor dreaming that I am a butterfly?’

“The question is not resolved for the emperor, which one is who. But for the Rabbi and his son the question becomes resolved by saying, the place where you question, where you are asking ‘is this for real?’ that’s the real world. Because in the world of your illusions you don’t ask the question. You don’t question your illusions.”

The Pearl Beyond Price

Zaida Zalman’s is fond of hats, and wears them indoors and out — berets, fur caps, yarmulkes, whatever. His head is usually covered, whether cooking, taking his daily two-mile walk, or praying. When he considers a question, his eyes roll heavenward for an instant only.

If he had just one opportunity, a single thing he could say to a group of young people, what story would he tell? “That’s a good one,” he says. “I’d like to think about that one a little while,” he adds, but then he pauses not at all.

“The story that comes to mind now, first, is about the Pearl Beyond Price.” His eyes brighten. He fixes his gaze upon the listeners and begins.

“There was a king and a queen and they had a son who was very bright and good, and they wanted him to be king when his time came to be king, but he needed to do something really heroic first.

“There was a pearl beyond any price and he had to go find that pearl. The pearl was in Egypt. It was guarded by a dragon, a very fierce dragon. The king called his son and told him that he must do this, and don’t you want to some day assume the role of being a person of majesty? The son said ‘yes, I want to do it.’ The whole dream, the whole notion excited him a great deal — yes, he wants to do the heroic thing.

“The father says, ‘go and get the pearl but you’ve got to be very careful. You are going to come to that place and you’ll start eating their food and wearing their clothes and before long you will forget what your mission is and that is not going to be so good.’ The son says, ‘no, I won’t forget, I won’t forget.’

“So he went down to Egypt and went around with his royal robes and pretty soon people snatched them all away from him, and he got involved and in order not to attract attention and get into trouble, he started to wear what everybody else was wearing, and eat what everybody else was eating, and pretty soon he forgot that he was on a mission from his father, the king, to bring the pearl beyond any price.

“Some time went by, and there was a friend of the king who had compassion for the son. So he said, ‘I’m going to go down. I’ll bring some food from the palace and I’ll bring him a change of clothes, which on the outside are going to look like the clothes that everybody else is wearing, but on the inside are going to be the real royal robes.’ He comes and at first the son doesn’t want to hear of it, but then after a while he begins to share with him.

“They walk together, and the friend gives him some of the food and the son begins to remember. After a while, he just breaks down and feels ‘I’ve lost it, I’ve muffed it.’ And the friend says, ‘no you haven’t, there still is time — this is why I came to help.’ Together the two of them went, and they outwitted the dragon and took the pearl beyond any price. When he came home the father rejoiced over him and that was how he made him finally king.

“Now, I would tell kids, ‘imagine for a moment that this is your story: how would you interpret that story for yourself?’ And then I’d just leave it at that.

“That story is like a worm that keeps on agitating and agitating until the person will finally get what’s its all about — that we come from another place, from a place beyond. We are here. We have to do a job. Then we forget that we have to do a job. Then comes a good friend who still remembers what it’s all about, and tells you and feeds you the decent food. After a while you get back on the job ask the big question ‘where’s the pearl and how do I deal with the dragon?’ And then it happens.

“This story is a very rich story because it talks about the descent of the soul and its purpose in life, and I think that’s a good story to tell. There may be some others, too, but that is the one that comes first.

“I would tell elders the same story, only I would talk to them more about the pearl. How did the pearl get formed? From the irritation that the oyster had — all the pains that you went through in life and all the troubles you’ve had. When you say, ‘nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen,’ those troubles made that pearl happen. What a pity it would be if you only had the troubles and you didn’t find the pearl.”

What Have You Learned?

The father of nine children, and a grandfather 21 times over, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi is prolific in other ways as well. He is the author of Fragments of a Future Scroll; The First Step; and Sparks of Light. He has also written books on Jewish renewal, and most recently a book entitled The Spiritual Elder: How to Enjoy the Harvest of a Lifetime. In this book, as in his public talks, he is firm on the opportunities and responsibilities of older citizens. He says elders must learn to use their life experience to enrich their later years, to face their mortality, and to serve as models for younger people.

“Every so often we need to change the pickle juice of the mind. If you hang onto disappointments and resentments, and stew in them, then every thought and feeling you have is going to have some of that flavor. It’s nobody else’s responsibility to do anything about that, though you can certainly ask for help. But, ultimately, you’ve got to change your own pickle juice.

“One thing I’ve learned is that learning is inevitable. If you are open to life you always keep on learning, and good learning is like white-water rafting. Most people think that events happen to them beyond their control, like they’re drifting down the river and they’ll bump against a rock, and they will be flooded and be overturned, and all the calamities that happen. That is also learning but that is not participating in the process of learning.

“If you participate in the process of learning, you get a chance to look a little bit ahead to read the water. Then you paddle very strongly in the direction where it is going to be better for you to be. So if you feel a hunger for a particular kind of learning, you can really satisfy that hunger. Usually, we don’t know why we have that hunger until later on when we get there we see that this hunger was a perfect preparation.

“I’d like to go back to a story in The Bible. Moses comes to Pharaoh and Pharaoh says to him, ‘I’m not going to let you guys go.’ But then they get to dickering back and forth about what they can take along if he goes into the desert and Moses says, we have to take everything. Pharaoh says, why? Moses says, because we do not know how we are to serve the Lord our God until we get there.

“That has been a very important part of my learning: to recognize that the goals I set for myself are the carrots I hold out for myself, but they are not necessarily what I am going to achieve. Often the things that I set out to myself as goals that I want to have are bound to fail. From the fallout of my failures I am going to have my successes. So if life serves you lemons, made lemonade of that. That is the notion of being able to say of the difficulties of a lifetime, ‘I can learn from them, to extract from them the things that are the successes, but I don’t know what the successes are, only in retrospect.’ That is what is so amazing about that, because, how do I know what I have to prepare myself for when I haven’t seen the future yet?

“Nobody can see around the corner of time. We understand trends, but trends are not around the corner of time. If I see someone tacking with a sailboat, they seem to be going in a direction that never looks like the direction where they really want to go, but you have to go that way because that is how the wind and the current is, you can’t move otherwise. I have a feeling that we know the trend to which we are going, but we don’t know beyond the trend. Because every once in a while something comes up and we have to steer in one direction, then the other direction. We always see a different goal in front of us than the real goal which is in the other direction to which we are being moved. So, the sense that there is a destiny which I don’t know yet but with which I can cooperate is something that I have found out.”

Coming to Peace

“If you ask me how I’ve come to this point, come to peace in my life, and I claim I that know, then I am a liar. I really don’t know… I can’t…if what I said before makes real sense, then I couldn’t have steered in this direction by myself. I find this out afterwards.

“So the peace that comes from saying that my destiny in the hand of G*d, that’s one form of saying it. Another way of saying it is like it is as it is put in the Desiderata: ‘No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should…’ In either case, it talks about the same process of a certain kind of rightness. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t tragedy. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t pain. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t real upset and breakdown, and shattering, and all that kind of stuff. Yet, at the same time there is a serenity that comes from saying something, like the prayer that they talk about in the 12-step programs, ‘G*d give me the wisdom to know the difference between what I can change and what I can’t change, and accept what I cannot change.’

“I cook soups very well, but if you ask me, ‘what are the ingredients,’ I give up. Because I see what’s in the refrigerator, and I start putting it together. And somehow a little of this and a little of that and it comes all together. I don’t feel that it is planned that way. Now I know that when I have to talk to some people, I have to talk to them about planning, about preparing, about nose-to-the-grindstone, shoulder-to-the-wheel, all this kind of attitude. But in reflection, it doesn’t look to me like that is really the way that it goes.”

What the Rabbi Sees Ahead

For many people age has the effect of freeing them from heavy demands and petty ambitions. This can liberate time and energy for considering the long view, and for taking steps to ensure that the future has the potential to be better for the generations coming behind them.

“I start looking ahead,” Zaida Zalman says, “and suddenly I find I am looking through the rearview mirror. When you ask, ‘what would the future look like,’ I then go into a nostalgic past, a romanticized past, and then go into a tribal thing, and think for a moment, it would look like that. But it’s not going to look like that.

“We are on the verge of breakthroughs that are so immense that we can hardly imagine them. But it pays to imagine them, and it pays to spend time to figure that one out. There is going to be a communication super-highway. We’re going to all go with fiber optics.

“The speed with which calculations are being made and things are being sent, and communications are happening is increasing. Money has become less and less something that has to do with paper or with coins and there’s more and more blips, electronic blips. So the whole thing, when the planet is trying to organize itself again so that it’s one world, one planet. We can’t go back to a pre-planetary understanding, because once the creatures of Earth have been seen from outer space, there’s such a shift that has happened that it can’t be reversed. So, with that we have to be thinking globally.

“If you start thinking globally then you start saying, of course complexities are going to increase, and what’s going to happen when complexities increase? There’s bound to be breakdown of the current structures. And, unless there is a breakdown of the current structures — which is like the good-judgment, bad-judgment, good-judgment experience, you know, that chain — we can’t put in new structures that will be able to handle all the complexity.

“The rate of change is accelerating at a more than geometric scale. What do you call that? Logarithmic? It’s going to change according to a logarithmic scale, so that the amount of change that’s going to occur between now, let’s say, and the year 2025, I can’t even imagine what that’s going to be like. But, I can also say that from where I am in my understanding of life right now, I know that an essential ingredient of that is going to be elder power, or elder mind — not elder power, that’s not the right word — elder mind is going to be very important.

“We are learning the heavy ecological lessons that result from thinking in short segments of time. The quarterly report has to be replaced by ‘Seventh Generation’ thinking (from the Iroquois Great Law of Peace: “In our every deliberation and action, we will consider the welfare of the seventh generation of children to come.”)

For that to happen, we have to deploy people with longer life span, with greater consciousness, and also to enter into the world, not to leave it behind — not to become anachronisms and say, ‘well, you know, I went to graduate school in the 1950s and so I’m arrested there [in my development].’ But rather to able to say, ‘No. I’m right now on the edge of my learning, and I have a notion of the direction, the trend, of where it’s going to go, and so what do I have to put into place so that the world will be ready to be more in balance?’ That’s the kind of preparation that you can do in order to make an elder mind.”

Elders Have to Hold the Field

“At this point we are in a very primitive place where peace is concerned, peace and justice. We are, in destruction, very sophisticated. So we can now have a Star Wars, and you can just imagine the billions of money and the kind of minds that go in to doing that. It’s amazing. At the same time, when you start figuring that we don’t know how to deal with a David Koresh without violence, that shows how primitive we are, how psychologically primitive, sociologically primitive, we are.

“It will take elders to sit with the younger generation, the people who are just opening up, and to talk with each other. I see that the complexity of things is going to increase. I see that the current matrix cannot hold the complexity, the current matrix will have to shatter, and when it shatters there will be a great panic.

“In order not to have the panic, elders will have to hold the field. At that point, it is going to be really important to have those kinds of intergenerational conversations that will bring the same amount of sophistication that we have now in war, and in terrorism, and in violence, into peace and goodness, healthy social interaction. So, that’s what I see as a task.”

– End –

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, author of The Spiritual Elder: How to Enjoy the Harvest of a Lifetime, holds the World Wisdom Chair at the Naropa Institute, an accredited, nonsectarian private institution of higher education that offers contemplative education combining Eastern and Western educational traditions, in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information: The Sage-ing Guild

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Keys for Adept Aging: Tried, True, Trustworthy

“This book is a real soul-searching piece of writing…this would make a fantastic gift to any older family members.” — Lesley Jones for Readers’ Favorite

Throughout history most successful and long-lived civilizations have held a place of respect for elders and have benefited from their life wisdom.

Sages are elders who have gracefully accepted the passage of time, integrated their life experience with understanding, and made the fruit of their long experience available to others.

But how does one do this? How does one grow wiser as one grows older?

By drawing from the wisdom of the ages, Keys for Adept Aging opens up a range of thoughtful pathways for cultivating soul maturity. Readers will be enriched.

“As tens of thousands of baby boomers enter their 60’s each day, this little gem is a timely addition to books on aging…it makes a great gift for the elders in your life. Highly recommended.” — Amazon reader

“In later life one sometimes has the feeling of going into a large church and seeing a shaft of light coming down. That shaft of light, perhaps, comes in the period of life between 65 and 70. A lot of people have walked through that shaft of light…But remember, it is the shaft that makes the person, it isn’t the person that makes the shaft.” – John H. Finley, Jr.
Publisher of the 2nd ed.: Soul*Sparks Books (2014)

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