To do when i grow up...

That is a good question. Realizing in the past couple of weeks that i really am not set in what it is that i want to do with my life. This could be a terrifying thing, if i participated in stuff like age and caring about what politicians and the Norm told me i am supposed to do. But, i actually find it pretty liberating. I remember at a meeting at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire with Kate Ramsey when i was in the pro cast, we were supposed to come up with our goals for the season. I told her that i do not really do that, i tend to be in the moment. I am proud of her that she accepted that and remarked on how that was how i work and that she thought it was OK. Most people in her position could find that uncomforting but she rolled with it.

I feel like we as a people in our culture are never comfortable with being where we are. Everything is based on perpetual growth. If the economy is not growing we freak out. Where does this all end? If we grow forever we eventually eat the planet. Maybe we need to sit back and stop making so many goals, start embracing the moment a little bit and being happy where we are.

I am still mostly a taoist i think.

The Verge, Part II

So major life realizations happen sometimes. Periodically the clouds clear away from the face of Eternity and you see and understand. Often times, it is brief. That is how it has been for all of those times i have stood on the edge of enlightenment, eventually the clouds return before full realization sets in. I have had a big one in the past couple of weeks.

I have always had a hard time with relationships and have never really figured out why. I get so swept away and then eventually get to where i need to move on and escape. That could be just a male fear of commitment thing and i think that has a little bit to do with it, but it is more than that and i had a big flash of insight the other day as i was getting in the shower.

I have always described how i feel in relationships thus: i feel that there is something calling to me, just below my level of conscious awareness, a nagging feeling that i need to be doing something in my life. Is it a destiny or fate? I am not certain. The early parts of a relationship always make that voice shut up for a little while. The relationship becomes this awesome all consuming thing. After awhile though, when you get past the initial stages, the little voice from out of the wilderness begins to nag again. "Hey buddy, me again, let's get back to work on this other thing you can't really describe." Usually at that point, i will shortly be gone.

The realization that i had the other day was this: My relationships are not the most important thing in my life. Being with someone, by itself, is not going to give me meaning and happiness in my life. This sounds very simple but it explained so much for me. I think there are people who can have their relationships be the only center of their lives, but i can not. The spiritual quest for me, my martial arts training, finding ways to help the world around me, these are the things that make me happy and make up who i am as a person. Without those things, i can not be happy in a relationship with someone or without.

I think what sort of happens is that in the beginning i put all of my attention on the person i am with. After awhile when some comfort sets in, i start working on those other things. The level of attention drops somewhat from what my partner has come to expect in the beginning. This is not because there is a problem, but it is noticeable and can come across as a problem to the person i am with. I try to reassure them and at first it is really OK. They still feel the difference though and continue to ask. I continue to try and convince them all is well and after awhile i start to get to feel slightly trapped. The issues with the relationship, which were mild in the beginning gradually begin to take up more and more of the time and effort of the relationship until i feel like the relationship is consuming everything. I also have a hard time talking about it all the time.

This is a cycle caused by my issues that has caused most of the relationships i have been in to end. I have been with a lot of amazing people, very few of them would ever want me to give up who i am. I feel that knowing this is a giant weight off my shoulders because it really explains so much of the things that give me stress in a relationship. I also feel it gives me an ability to understand and explain what is going on with me and not just feel guilty about it.

This being said, i do need to figure out what exactly it is that i should be doing. Sometimes people who preach talk about having "the Call." I feel like there is a Call for me to do something. I saw a friend in PA on the weekend who told me i looked exactly like i did when she came to the faire in high school in 1998. In many ways, i really feel like i have conquered the age thing (that is for another blog) and now i need to figure out what i am going to do with that power.

I feel i am still on the verge, the verge of a next evolution for me, one that could be amazing for myself and those around me. Just have to avoid getting complacent and really work it out.

The Verge

There have been several times in my life where i have really felt like i was on the verge of something. This is one of those times. Everything seems like it is so close to falling into place. Everything is just on the edge of making total sense. I am not sure what to call this state.

I believed in enlightenment for a long time. Still do believe there is a vista that the likes of Jesus and the Buddha, Lao Tzu and others witnessed that does exist. I know it has something to do with the blowing out of the ego and stepping out of the grasp of time. First person perspective becomes different in my estimation. There are times when i have opened my mouth and the universe did the talking.

This is one of those times. I feel close to the Holy Darkness where God is. By God i mean the divinity of everything. The union of self in the the surround.

Every time i have come close to this place, eventually it fades. Something pulls me back to my ego and my karma. In the long arc of my life, and the life of the universe, that does not really matters. Every moment that i have stood here in the presence of elder things, is eternal and those moments are lifted up to divinity in beauty. It is these moments of Eternity that define our lives.

World Views

There are some fundamental and core beliefs that every people and society holds. They are deeper than our religious beliefs that we cling to and fight wars over. History, like i wrote about in my last blog is one of those things for most peoples of the world. Time is another. They are kin. I have found out that birthdays are something that is fundamental and unshakable to most people in our culture since i gave them up. People get violent and angry about it when i tell them i have no birthday. These core beliefs are so fundamental that trying to shake them rocks people a little bit. At first they think you are crazy but if it starts to sink in that you are not joking, often times they will fight to keep the belief intact. Rocking the foundation can be psychologically difficult. It is like the situation some people get into after experiencing an earthquake. The ground below our feet is not supposed to move fluidly like water and when it does sometimes people need therapy.

When Europe crashed into North America we could see two world views with fundamentally different foundations clashing. Many problems that happened in European dealings with the aboriginal population was because the two groups were operating on a completely different paradigm and neither side had the tools to communicate with the other.

There was an example of this that my professor Clavin Martin witnessed at a council in Alaska. There was a conference about a scientific plan to help preserve and increase the moose population and many Yupik elders were there. After presenting the plan the biologists invited Paul John, a native elder to speak. He spoke in a hushed tone, nearly whispering and said, "We think this is a good plan but we should speak of it quietly. We know from experience that the moose listen to us and if they hear this plan and do not like it, they will leave." The room was silent for a moment and then, the biologists went on as if nothing was said. From our world view, what Paul John said could not be heard. We do not have the apparatus to function in a world view where moose are listening in on our conversations.

Neither world view is right. They are different. Carlos Castaneda was taught to be a sorcerer, and in order for that to work, he had to enter into a new world view where Coyotes could talk and his mentor could turn into a raven. That is crazy in our world of reason and when we are in it, we can not be a sorcerer. That does not mean that the world view of the shaman is not real, it is just different.

I am digressing though. The real thing i want to get at here is that we have some core ideas functioning that shape everything we do in our daily lives and we do not even usually begin to think that they can be questioned. The birthday thing is an example. Most people can not begin to believe that i honestly think that i do not have a birthday. They think it is cute and a little eccentric but even after i have explained that it is a deeply held philosophical belief i have been working on a long time, they will still often come back with, "But really when is your birthday?" Yes, i was born, but it is the measurement of the passage of the years that i think is artificial and very Western.

That chart that i have at the beginning of this blog is one i would put on the board when i used to teach about the difference between European and Native American world views. I remember one day after class sitting there and looking at the chart and realizing that everything on the Native side was actually all the same. Self, place and time are not separate in a hunting and gathering world view. The whole chart itself was very European of me. I am a product of this world view as well and did not even realize it. We love to measure stuff in our culture. How many acres do you have brother? A Sioux horseman on the plains could not possibly think of one acre as the same as any other. Each piece of dirt has its own character as surely as you and i do. Borders are more fluid in a world view where you live in intimate connection with the Surround.

It is good to blow free air around these core beliefs and shed the light of day on them sometimes. In phenomenology they would bracket things. For example, [the sun is just a ball of gas in the center of our solar system.] Bracketing is a way to take a look at what is said. You notice in this statement the word [just]. That changes a lot. The sun IS indeed a ball of gas or plasma in the center of our solar system but it is so much more. It is what all life on this planet is made of, it is the prerequisite for sanity to some people in the northern or southern polar regions at those times of year when Brother Sun disappears for months at a time. To me it seems better to do away with that word [just] in most circumstances. As we live in the universe, things are never really just anything.

We all also have some personal assumptions that are so fundamental that they shape our lives and we probably do not even remember them or know that they shape everything we do. Some promise we made as a child or broken hearted teenager that shapes everything that comes after. Maybe as a boy your father did not show up for the big game and you promised yourself, "i will never trust anyone again." Are there things like that that have ruined every later relationship we have ever had?

Finding these fundamentals can be a big step toward health and i am not saying they all need to go. Some probably do, i vote on getting rid of all of our Cartesian thinking as a first step to health as a people but that is probably another blog. Some of these fundamentals are probably healthy, but knowing that they are there can never hurt. They are often hard to find because they run in the deeps of our subconscious most of the time. I feel lucky to have wound up in the classes and experiences that i had. These ideas are not only mine but those who tread these grounds before me. I feel that i have learned a lot about myself and my people, my place in the universe by being a seeker of knowledge and trying to deeply look at what i think.

History

"I am sad to see what a shallow village tale our so-called history is." ~RW Emerson

Somehow i think i have given people the wrong impression that i like history. I thought it would be good to put out there my opinions on the subject to clear things up. I really do not want people to think that i like history, in fact, i sort of think history is one of the worst things that has ever happened to humans. Right up there with the Cartesian idea that somehow what we really are is a consciousness locked up inside our skull, a mind that is somehow separate and distinct from our body. That is on my top 5 list of all time most unhealthy ideas that happened to humans/humans invented.

When i was in college and was a history/philosophy major, i spent very little time in classes on the Civil War or World War II, classes about facts and dates and the like. Most of my time was spent studying the philosophy of history and the philosophy of the hunter/gatherer with Calvin Martin. He wrote an amazing book called In the Spirit of the Earth, Rethinking History and Time and in that book he explained and explored the world view of Paleolithic (hunting and gathering) human versus the philosophy of the Neolithic (farming) human. No one talks about it. History is one of those things that we assume is just out there in the ether happening to us, but history is a wicked mistress with an agenda.

History is not just what has happened to your people in the past, but it implies a trajectory. We learn about American history in our schools because history itself implies a chosen people, in our case Americans. Positing this also has the side effect of imposing an Other. If there are Americans, there are also those who are not one of us. Historical people build monuments to their greatness and these monuments are very religious in nature. Take for example the carving on the Lincoln Memorial, "IN THIS TEMPLE AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN IS ENSHRINED FOREVER." The memorial is called a temple, Abe is enshrined and he will be remembered forever. Very religious terminology.

Monuments are not seen until people start farming and worshiping sky gods. Go to a hunter gatherer village, such as an Austrailian Aboriginal Hunting Clan, a year after they lived there and you find no trace that they were ever there. Now go and visit Tikal in the Guatamala or Angkor in Cambodia and look at the stone structures made to last for thousands of years. People build monuments when they believe that they are a chosen people, someone that needs to be seen down through the ages. It is chosen people who go to war.

Hunting people who live off the land live in a margin of grace. They have faith that they will be provided for. Farming and hoarding stuff is a margin of fear. We grow food and store it up because we believe that the earth will not provide for us. Farming people stop seeing the spirit and powers of place as all around and inherent in everything they see, but start taking those powers and throwing them into the sky. Whether it is the Sun gods of Central America among the Aztecs and Maya or Jehovah, the God dwells separately and humanity is apart from that being. Many many times this comes with fear and guilt. In Central America with the cyclical nature of time, there was no guarantee that the cycle would start up again. Wars were fought to take slaves that could be used to feed blood to the sun, the fuel that kept the cycle starting up again. The Bible itself says that when humanity left the garden it would have to eek its living out of the earth. This jives with what we know about hunting and gathering life styles now. Life in the Garden of Eden, and life in a paleolithic society had lots of leisure time. Farm work is rough.

History and Time feed off of themselves. All of the wars we have ever fought are the direct result of us being a historical people. We know the saying that those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it. We have no evidence to support that because as a society we have been remembering our history since we started hoarding our food, and as historical people we have been repeating all of our dumb mistakes over and over again. So we really have no way of knowing whether people who forget their history are doomed to repeat it, but we do know that those who remember their history are indeed, doomed to repeat it. We continue to fight wars and cause genocide in the name of this and that. There is always an Other. Presently it is terrorists. During Macarthy, it was Communists. To some people it is homosexuals, it used to be the Native living in the plains, in Germany Hitler made it the Jews, and it all plays on our fear. This type of politics works very well in the paradigm of history. Believing that there is an evil other out there is a good way to motivate people to do all kinds of things: commit atrocities, give up their rights, generally hate and be easily manipulated.

I see the Crazy Horse Monument and i do not really know what to think. I do not believe that Crazy Horse would have wanted the face of the sacred Black Hills to be blasted apart to make a monument to him that people could look at forever. Monuments and tearing up mountains is a very European thing to do.

I worry for my people. I feel that as long as we try to solve our problems within the paradigm of history, we will never do it. I also see no way to break that cycle because no one can even fathom that it is a problem. It seems like a hokey thing to even say. Before it was brought to my attention, i never even thought that history was a made up thing. I am not sure what is to be done about all of this. I am within the problem i know that as well. I try and have my personal vision quests and i know that those powers that the hunter saw inherent throughout the woods and the rivers, himself and the rocks, still are there. They nod familiarly to you if you put away the ipod and cell phone once in awhile and get out beyond the reach of the street lamps. Be in it, embrace real darkness and night. The angel choirs are singing outside my window right now, i can hear them. They are the voices of peepers and crickets and other people whose names i do not yet know.

The Substance of our world view is Time. There is a clock in every corner of our lives. A boat is efficient to us if it can cut through the water and get us to our destination more quickly. The clash that happened when Europe crashed into North America was this, the Substance of the peoples that lived here before we arrived was not time at all, but Beauty. An efficient canoe to a Micmac hunter in Canada, was the one that was more beautiful. The fish would be more likely to give themselves to the hunter whose canoe had the most beautiful decoration. The Europeans who arrive here could not even fathom this because both peoples were operating on a different set of beliefs. Beliefs that are so fundamental we do not even realize we share them and world the place around us with them. Time and history are two such things for us. No one ever thinks to question them, they are the foundations that we walk on. To shake them is to shake our whole deal with reality.

It is a tough decision and difficult to write about in any way that makes sense. I choose to try and walk in beauty but it is difficult. I have been conditioned. We all have for we are all products of our society.

I guess what i am getting at here is that i feel that history is one of the major problems and it is good at being a chameleon. No one knows it is even a problem. It will eventually let you out of its grasp though in moments that exist between the ticks and tocks on the clock. There is an eternal present moment. When we live in the now, the whole concept that time is moving faster the older you get falls away. I do not feel that at all because i have been working on this a long time. I gave up on birthdays and worry and i honestly feel like time is slowing down. I have days on occasion that seem like an eternity. Last week seems so long ago to me. Embrace your moments.

Be in the now. If you can do this, you will achieve a fullness in life that is hard to fathom. You have to be able to do it in the moments you do not like as well, maybe when you are at work. Don't miss those moments because they are not coming back. Be fully in them and the Kingdom of Heaven will open up for you, eternally and now, not in some dreamy place in the clouds, but here in the place that you are.

Wow, i can ramble when i want to. I do hope this makes sense. Anybody have any ideas on how to break history's strangle hold on our imagination? I imagine not. In our world-view we live, all of this usually gets labeled as crazy.

We the People

Ah Americans. I am one. We are so proud of all that we have accomplished. We have done a lot, don't get me wrong. We really believe that we are the greatest country in the world and i would really not want to live anywhere else. I am happy that i can get online and write this blog and not be taken away tomorrow. What i am writing about now, is this selective ability we have to be both part of and separate from all the things we did.

Most of your super flag waving patriots are happy to point out all of the good things that we have done as a people, but as soon as you begin to talk about the ugliness of America: slavery, our acts of genocide toward native people, etc. they are quick to point out, "I did not do that! I never had a slave or killed a Native American." There is a great change of perspective when you move from positive to negative. We won World War II because we are the greatest country on Earth, but I never did any of those things so i don't want to hear about it.

It is all woven together. If you want the good, you have to take the bad along with it. We are a people that has made amazing strides in human freedom and we are also a nation that has committed or attempted to commit genocide. We have created some of the greatest scientific advances in the history of the world, and we are the ONLY country to ever use nuclear weapons in warfare and on two cities full of civilians by the way. Many people get upset about Native Americans or African Americans talking about the hardships their people have endured. Why is it so hard to accept that WE did do that, just like we put a man on the moon or helped end the Holocaust. As i said before it is a package deal.

I personally believe that is how we begin to heal and move past it. My professor Calvin in college was talking to a student during office hours and she told him that she had been raped by someone that she thought was a friend. He told her, "I am sorry." "Why," she asked, "you did not do it?" His response, "I know, but has anyone told you that they were sorry?" She wept and thanked him. I am deeply, deeply sorry for what my people, for what we have done. I understand that people have good reason to be pissed off. Friends i have known on the reservation have had good reason to not trust us white folks. WE have lied to them for 500 years. Our going down there and feeling the conditions and bridging gaps started a healing. Healing did not begin because we got defensive and said, "I did not do this to you, get over it." It was because we looked it in the face and said to our fellow human beings, "yeah, i am sorry, what happened really sucked."

We are the beneficiaries or victims of our past in some way. I live in a neighborhood with good influences and a decent school system that my parents' could get partially because of where they grew up which was a result of their parents being able to live in the right neighborhood or get good benefits because of the color of their skin. Some people live in horrible conditions because of historical reasons as well. We do not need to deny this and blame people for being lazy. There are some inequalities in the world. We should look at them honestly.

Note, i am not trying to make excuses for anyone. I think one of the worst things people can do is live with a victim chip on their shoulder. Any human circumstance can be overcome. Petty tyrants (see Carlos Castaneda and the book The Fire From Within) can be a great boon to advancing personal power. But, this idea and this defensiveness about how hard it is to be a European descendant in America because people blame us for what our ancestors did is a victim complex as well.

I love the place that i live in. I am proud of who i am and who i came from, but the people i descended from, were people, and sometimes people, all people suck. We are living presently in an era that is the result of our people sucking more than other people. Europeans happened to get in power and dominate the world for a good long time now. Maybe we will move toward a world where there is less oppression of people, but one way to do that is to honestly look at and accept what we have done. There are still people that in either direct or indirect ways are still suffering from OUR actions.

Ultimately, everyone's ancestors have done some sucky things to other humans and to the place they live in and the animals around them. Even more than being an American, i am a human. That involves a lot of beauty and a lot of ugliness that no other animal could even begin to imagine. But i accept who i am and what i am. I am a part of this whole great story that is humanity, for good and for bad. I am full of love and pity for those who have suffered, all of those who have suffered at my own hands down through the centuries and ages that we have walked in this form. We are all, every one of us, every one else, both living and gone down through the centuries. We are part of this community of humanity and we need to soon realize that we are all deeply, deeply rooted in this thing together.

Namaste

We all go the same way home...

"And we all go the same way home, yes we all go the same way home." ~Flogging Molly

During my stay at the Colorado Renaissance Festival i would often sing the song "The Sun Never Shines" by Flogging Molly. Dreagn introduced me to it and i really like it. The song ends with a refrain that is written above. It is repeated. I found myself on the final weekend of the faire singing that song and as i did i looked out over the people watching me and the patrons passing by and it moved me.

The song has a theme of death and as i looked over the people at the faire, the people were like walking ghosts. We all truly do go the same way home, back to the earth from whence we came. Death makes us all equal, the conqueror worm masters us all in the end. Time makes a mockery of our lives if we allow Him to grip us.

I thought about all of those people as i sang on and heard the words echoing in my own thought. Each of them walking by has their own story and a whole world of life dances about them as they strut and fret their four score and then are heard no more. Each of us is in the same boat, the saint and the sinner, all of them, no matter where they have been or what they have done is rendered equal in the dirt.

We all truly do go the same way home. As i sang and looked out over the people passing by, i realized that we are all in this together in a very palatable way and it was beautiful to feel a part of the whole great cycle of the whole great story that carries along the streams of our lives.

Namaste