Some time has passed since I last wrote. Much has happened in that time. Some good, some ugly, but that’s life, isn’t it? Regardless how beautiful the field, go far enough and eventually you will step in a pile of crap. This leaves you with two choices. Rant and rave, pissed off over something you never had control of in the first place or scrape off the poo and move on. If you're fortunate, maybe you will find a creek to rest beside, washing off the remnants, to where your misadventure becomes nothing more than a bad memory. In time, that too will fade.
On and on we go, traversing valleys and precipices, on this journey called life. One certainty presides over us all. No one gets out alive. From my perspective, that's a good thing. Seventy or so years of this is enough. Immortality would be a curse. A never ending cycle of highs and lows, with time inexorably speeding up each year. By two hundred it would seem each day was passing in a blink. Enough to drive anyone mad. A great movie I watched on this subject, “The Man From Earth”. Well worth the watch if you have the time. Some believe death to be the bane of human existence. As though it is something to be feared. I see death as the ultimate gift. A gift to be welcomed, and looked forward to. Not to infer I am suicidal. I deeply appreciate this gift of life, and the privilege to experience reality in this form. However, I do look forward to it ending.
It has always been my understanding what you do today is what matters. Living life remembering life allows a person to stagnate. Stuck in the past, reliving traumas that never healed. Never becoming all one was created to be. One thing I have learned, the past lives only if you continue to feed it. Remembering the torments and tormentors, giving them status and presence, as though they remain in existence. Reanimated corpses of long dead agony. Ethereal ghosts of the mind. To exorcise these demons is the simplest of processes. Let them go. Yet many define their existence by these events. Missing the experience of being human by allowing an experience while being human to contain them. No one said this was going to be easy. If it were anyone could do it.
Some live their lives imagining their lives. Dreaming of what they may become. Never fully realizing who they are. So caught up in the dream of what they may yet one day achieve. Struggling so hard to be more, to have more. To become something they do not need to be to impress those they don’t want to be. All the while their lives pass them by. Moments like drops of rain, washing away each experience squandered. Interestingly, they never seem to get there. That far off horizon never reached. Until that final moment, when its time to go, realizing all that was missed. Too late to turn back.
One other option I have witnessed are those whose lack of self esteem and sense of self drives them to live their imagination. Before the advent of the internet, this was a rare occurrence, and typically society at large noticed these individuals and gave them a comfy place to live, complete with padded walls and nice people in white coats to care for them. An existence perpetually medicated, unquestionably deluded. “I'm Napoleon!” Of course you are. If you will step this way we have just the place for you to conquer.
Now exists all the tools necessary to become anything one can imagine. To create for themselves an entirely new persona, history and even physical appearance. Some go so far as to actually believe their imaginations, and then transfer that imagination to the real world. Living life so deluded they forget who they really are. Demanding the populace at large accept them as what they imagine themselves to be. So caught up in their fantasy they have given their fantasy life, fully expecting all to accept their fantasy as well. Dr. Frankenstein would be in awe of the monsters some have created.
Some of the more absurd I have seen are those who proclaim themselves Native American. Really? Look at yourself. Look at true First Nations People. Do they look like you? In any way? The color of their hair and eyes, shape of nose, mouth and face. Does anything of their countenance look anything like yours? It is one thing to be genetically Native. To be a descendant of the First Nations People. Hell, after 500 years or so of European occupation, mix marriages and of course all the Cherokees who traveled the continent banging everyone’s great grandmother, I expect most everyone who can trace their linage back a few generations will find an Indian in the woodpile. That however, does not make you “Native American”. There is a vast difference between being genetically Native, and being culturally Native. If I have to explain the difference, you would never understand it. Nor would you accept it. It is astounding the lengths some will go to in order to defend their delusion. In my travels I have heard the most outlandish of stories used to defend pale skin, blonde hair and blue eyes. I cannot tell you how many times I have had someone stand before me, so obviously of English, Irish, French, Scandinavian and Asian descent, demand I accept their ludicrous lamentations of being Native American. Fools like this may as well don a pirate costume and exclaim arrgh! all day. You look as foolish, and yes, everyone is laughing at you. Do you get how ridiculous you sound when you walk into a room, blonde hair and blue eyes, and make the declaration of being “Native American?” You really are embarrassing yourself. And providing comic relief to some of the more cynical, like myself.
Riddle me this, oh special one...what the hell is so wrong with being who you are? If you're white, be proud to be white. Or black or yellow or purple with green polka dots for that damn matter. There are two species of human, with four subgroups in each species. Be proud of you. Obviously, if you have a belief in a higher power, that higher power made you what you are. Therefore, are you so petulant, arrogant and pretentious to inform that higher power it was wrong? Doesn’t that mind set immediately nullify your higher power? How can it be a higher power if it is fallible? Isn’t the concept of infallibility indicative of a higher power? Or is that to logical and I, along with the rest of the world, am supposed to believe you were Pocahontas in a former life, you're immortal and are simply continuing your existence?
Most existing in their pit of self delusion are harmless. Well, maybe to themselves and a few in their families, but to the world at large they have little to no effect. Others however cause irreparable damage. Certainly those who portray themselves as Native American teachers and leaders. Accepting and initiating invitations from those who know no better in order for them to pontificate their delusions. South Park recently aired an episode. I liked to have passed out laughing when introduced as a Native American in walked the stereotypical white guy with a headband. Watch the episode, then look at the fool you invited to teach the children all about Indians. Sound familiar? The last woman I dated actually pulled out a book about Frank Fools Crow and proceeded to inform me, based on her perception that book was an instruction manual, on how I am supposed to conduct myself. The incredulous look on my face should have been enough. The real nut buster? She was a mental health professional! Let that sink in a moment, I'll wait.
OK, on we go. Still with me? Good. You know who is real good at playing Indian? Indians. When all you have to feed your family is the knowledge of culture, many see that knowledge as a commodity. And there are thousands upon thousands oh so willing to buy. Leave the rez, become a God. Or stay on the rez, because every year there will be a new crop of the urban confused more than willing to open their wallets and dispense every dime they don’t have for all that spiritual knowledge. Many know there is no substance to what they are buying, yet they continue to support it for fear of not having it. Even if it is hollow and empty, convinced its acceptable. Watching as women are abused, children broken, their men emasculated. Accepting what they know is blatantly wrong because the individual they are deifying has claimed to be a medicine person, head man of a non existent society they made up in their minds or some other foolish nonsense. These individuals know all the right words, can imitate all the right gestures. Some have even convinced themselves they are what they pretend to be. On and on it continues, eroding the very fabric of the culture they are selling, until all that exists is a facade of what once was.
A true Holy Person would never reveal themselves today. This society, those so convinced of what is or isn’t, would crucify them. Many times I have witnessed the Sacred reveal itself. Sad to say, I have had the unfortunate displeasure of watching as the Sacred was used to defile the Sacred. Like petulant children, “I didn’t want that color!” This circle attacking that circle. One claiming to be, while denigrating the next. If Christ himself walked through the door most would put a bullet in him. And exactly like children at Christmas, so busy playing with the box they ignore what was in it.
Here is how this works. The person chosen is the box. Chosen, not those who choose for themselves. They are the receptacle the power is housed in. They are simply a human, like anyone else. No magic powers, no special gifts. Just a person, acting the fool, being human. Until ceremony. Then the human steps aside, the box is opened and out comes the gift. The power. These unfortunate few are exceptionally difficult to find. Living a life of abject poverty, in constant misery and sadness. Knowing their lives are no longer theirs to live. Understanding as much as they are capable that they are now nothing more than a box. Waiting for someone to come and open them. Only to return to a life of torturous loneliness. But wait mr. hawk, that’s not how the books and movies portray it. Its all love and light, warm and fuzzy, with group hugs and effusive accolades. Everyone gets a trophy. If you will indulge me a second? Please return to a previous exercise. Find a mirror, look deeply into your eyes. Now, tell yourself, “I am an idiot.” Rinse and repeat as necessary until comprehension dawns.
True healing hurts. A lot. Any medical professional will tell you, and I am certain you have heard at least once, it has to hurt before it gets better. Do you honestly think it is any easier spiritually then it is physically? Traumas that have existed for 20 or 30 years, being forcefully ripped out of you. Nothing about that suggests warm and fuzzy, unless of course your into that sort of thing.
I guess the point to this rant is be you. Whatever you were created to be. Obviously, there is a point to you, or you wouldn’t exist. Yes, you are a little snowflake, unlike any other snowflake that has been or ever will be. In all of time, that ever existed or ever will exist, there is and only ever will be, one you. How freaking cool is that? So why in all that is sacred would you want to be someone or something else. That robe you wear, the flesh, your meat suit, its the only one. Okay, so it isn’t perfect. It has flaws and discrepancies. But then, isn’t it supposed to? If you believe you were created, not hatched, then you were created to be exactly what you are. What happened, happened. Use it for beauty, instead of wallowing in it and emanating the ugliness of it. Find a way to turn ugly into beauty. Don’t worry so much about what you might be. Hell, you probably wont ever become it, and if you did you probably wont like it. You were made to be exactly what you appear to be. Yes, we all want to be more. But more shouldn’t be different. More should be better. So ask yourself, is what you are better?
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