Thank you Truthseeker for posting that response. I think I understand and I will spend more time with the search function. I suppose the first books on my list should be Oupensky and Gurdjieff.
And thank you Buddy for those explanations.
I think for native people we may have escaped that particular ideology that human beings are somehow special and unique, the crowning achievement of God, or the pinnacle of creation. The idea that we too feed other beings is not particularly repulsive or reality altering. Everything feeds everything else. I have been thinking about this a lot lately. The whole STS/STO idea. In our world view, everything is in service to everything else. It isn't so much that some things are prey and some things are predator and predators are the winners, but more like all things are prey. In our view there isn't a top of the food chain because that would indicate a hierarchical order, when there isn't one, it's just circles within circles.
The idea we have when we take something we need is that the being giving it offers it freely and we return the gift with a small token of our gratitude in the full knowledge that at some future time something will be asked of us and we will give it. Maybe it will be the gift of our body to those things that eat that, certainly the gift of our energy in the form of ceremony. So I suppose I could say we don't mind being lunch as much as some, what bites though, is it seems that those things aren't giving anything back, they're takers, there's no reciprocity. They are outside the circle.
Here is an example, what that circle looks like for us, the way we experience the earth. Not the world as it is full of wasichus, takers, but the earth Herself.
When my brother was ready to go on his first deer hunt he did it the traditional way and fasted then he went in the inipi lodge and talked to the deer nation, and asked them if they would be willing to offer one of their own so we could live. After a while, he was acknowledged and told that yes they would be willing. Now he already knew all the deer in the area where we hunt because a boy has to watch them a long time before he hunts, so he knew exactly which deer had made him the promise.
They next morning as he was waiting in the clearing, instead of the whole family of deer entering at dawn to feed and drink, only one came and walked out of the trees and stood looking straight at him. He made his shot and..missed. The deer bolted. A few minutes later the deer returned now from another part of the wood and stood waiting. Three times this happened. The last time the deer waited while he stalked close enough to make his shot. It wasn't too good. So he ran up to the struggling deer and gave him a good death. There was love between those two beings. That is the world as we experience it. At least it used to be that way.
Every part of that deer's body was used with gratitude. That deer is his good medicine now and his spirit still helps him and intercedes for him. Because the deer were so important to us, we always would do things also for the deer nation to help them. Now I know the anthros have lots of theories about why this was, cultural materialism and all that, but I might say that those are STS explanations. The reason we helped each other wasn't because if we didn't then we would all starve, even though we understood that too. It was because those were our relatives. And yea, we ate our relatives, and sometimes they ate us.
There is another story about the snake nation. It happened when the people were still free, near the black hills, it was cold getting to be fall. A baby had been left in it's cradle board in the lodge, when it's mother returned a large rattlesnake was curled up inside the hood of the cradle board right beside the babies head.
The mother right away offerred some tobacco to the snake and told it she would bring someone for it to speak with. Someone in that band had snake medicine. Now I have heard the C's say that animals can speak telepathically to one another. Yes that is true and as the C's said ' You're still a critter.' I liked that very much, I laughed out loud. We are just big two legged animals so of course we can all talk to one another. So this man comes, and he just sits real quiet talking to the snake, you see there was a misunderstanding, that lodge had been put up over the snakes winter lodge, so sometimes animals share lodges and all and the snake was just curling up for his winter nap. So the man explained the baby wouldn't sleep that long and the snake would likely be inconvenienced, so an agreement was struck. The lodge was moved a bit, so the fire would be above the snakes bedroom and everybody was happy all winter.
These are not unusual stories for us. I would wear my fingers out typing these stories.
But just one more. A while back we moved into a little house that had been empty way out in the country. Well, the mice had been real thankful to live in that little house all winter. I tell you what, I would go and clean that little house and get all the mouse poop out and go to the store and come back and there would be fresh poop in all the sinks. I was getting pretty irritated with those mice. Of course, they weren't too happy with me either. So I had to start talking to them. You see I knew I didn't have any special right to that house just because I have two legs. So we had to reach an agreement. I explained that we two leggeds have to have a house since we can't just live anywhere, and here I had these two little ones so what could I offer them. So we talked things over, and we made a big compost pile out by the back fence and I always left out bird seed and rice for them, wopila to the mouse nation. It was a good agreement. Another relative has ant medicine and whenever we have problems with the fire ants he comes and has a talk with them so we can get a long.
This same house we lived in out there, all around us was cattle land. It was so bad overgrazed, it had been a bad drought, but the man just kept the same number of cows, feeding them hay. After a while the grass was mostly gone, a big wind came and a lot of the soil blew away. It was a mess. Well, finally some rain came and some plants began to grow up. These are special plants I don't know all there names but we call them helpers/medicine plants they come to help the soil. They have real deep roots and bring the minerals up from way down deep, they also are real hardy and will hold the soil down and channel the water down. When they die there bodies make like compost, after a few years they can heal the land pretty well. They make it so the grass can come back home. When the grass comes back then they have finished there job and they leave. Well, this farmer didn't understand any of this even though we tried to explain to him. That if he would just let the land rest a few years it would be just fine. So he decided to kill all those helper plants. He just poisoned them. Here there were trying to help him. It really makes me mad. Then he planted grass seed but there wasn't anything in the soil yet to nourish that grass so he sprayed more fertilizer on it to make the grass grow and put those cows out on it. We had to move because all that poison blew right over on my garden and killed it. He said he was real sorry about that. Why, he even waved to me from his tractor, all suited up in his respirator, while I stood on the porch with my two little children big and pregnant with my third.
I used to think people were the way they were because they were just stupid, ignorant. And if they could just be told, made to understand.. but now I think they can't understand because.. well they just can't.
We dont' usually talk about this sort of thing with other people because you know us Indians are just so imaginative. Reams of Jungian analysis has already been done explaining just why we aren't really communicating with ants but just a hidden part of our own collective psyche.
So in that way, I guess maybe I would say that, 3rd STS is like a prison at least for us STO types, I mean the STS types seem to like it just fine. Now though, 3rd STO well, I don't think that would be like a prison at all. Sure it wouldn't be like 4th density. But that's like telling a caterpillar he's in a prison because he's not a butterfly.
I am interested in this 'programs' idea. I'm sure I have some. I've gotta figure that out. And I also wanted to say I'm not trying to say we Indians had it all right and were perfect. I'm just offering maybe a few more pieces to consider as puzzle pieces, as possible ways of being. I will also say over the years I have had to lose or abandon cherished ways of being and thinking so I am always open to that.
I especially, have been thinking about our ceremonies and maybe they are just feeding more energy into these hungry takers. I know the ceremonies are changing, so maybe they aren't good anymore. And even in the past, some maybe were good and some maybe were not so good, were just tools being used against us. I keep trying to figure it out.
anyway...
this was long.. now I need to smoke
sending some your direction
kila
