Tuesday, January 23, 2007

On the drive in to pick Collin up on Wednesday, going down I-76, I was debating whether to take Highway 52 or Highway 7. I decided to let my gut decide, and when I did that, I had an image flash in my mind of a certain stretch of Highway 52, near the sheep farm. So that’s the route I took, and when I got to that particular stretch of road which had flashed in my mind, I was treated with the site of a bald eagle sitting on top of a telephone pole. I think over the years I’ve been slowly forgetting how to listen to my gut instincts and intuitions. I had forgotten how good and right it feels to flow with that kind of knowing. I feel more like I’m one with my environment, not separate, when I go along with those subtle feelings and cues.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

I just finished reading two books by Tom Harmer on his experiences with Native American spirituality. I don’t know if I can quite articulate what it is these types of books do for me. I guess they are very affirming in a way, helping me to make sense of experiences I’ve had a long the way, validating my gut feeling that there is a much deeper, truer way of experiencing reality then the way modern cultures sees it. It’s sad how cut off we are from what is true, what shadow beings we have become. How did we lose such a profound way of knowing? Seeing only the surfaces of things as real.
 
Yet I’ve always been in touch with the deeper and truer way of seeing. It persists, even when there’s been nothing in my culture to support it and nurture those perceptions along. Often I’ve grieved for the fact that there is no one in my world to teach me. That I have gifts that need to be developed and no one to show me the way. There are no teachers in our culture, no true teachers, just a bunch of new-age loonies on some sort of ego trip. For years I’ve had the inexplicable feeling that this lifetime I will not have any teachers, not human flesh and blood teachers, that is. Maybe part of the lesson of this lifetime is to discover my power on my own. To reach out to what is greater than the mere human experience and learn how to tap into that for knowledge and power.
 
I love the way the Native Americans talk about power. It is so much an alignment with what I’ve learned about power on my own. The vast majority of humans think of power in a very childlike, material way, as if power is simply the ability and skill to function on the strictly material plane. The person who waves the biggest club, or the most powerful gun, or the biggest fistful of dollars is the one with power. How simplistic! How childish! That kind of power is a farce. Those with that kind of power are actually the most vulnerable among us. They are always at risk. True power does not use the props of the material world, it deals with invisible forces. All that’s required to be a person of power is to align oneself with the powers that be in this universe. If you are in alignment, then power operates through you, shifting the fabric of time and space, making anything possible. It’s more like you change the world by influence rather than by brute force, but it’s more than that too. It’s more than personal influence; we become a vessel for divine power to flow through us. It’s like by honoring the divine we become divine. By acting in harmony with the sacred we are manifestations of the sacred.