The day of the 2020 election, I was invited to present on a panel about religious freedom. Other panelists being of Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic faith. I represented shamanic indigenous spiritual ways which as I explained is not a religion. It is a way of being in relationship to the creation that existed before there was religion as we know it today. I explained how indigenous people do not have a word for religion since they know all creation is alive, conscious, interwoven in a cosmic web of inter-relationship. They knew that all life is sacred, that we are 100% dependent for our lives on forces of nature that we are not in control of and that those forces are spiritual energies that we need to be in respectful, reciprocal relationship with or else we will not survive. So there is no religion that is separate from how they live their daily lives trying to be in harmonious balance with all the powers that give and sustain our precious lives. Religion came later, much later.
I was the last of five panelists to speak after the others had shared about discrimination their people have and still do experience. I shared how i do not have freedom of “religion” because of the insanity of this country’s laws that make it illegal for me to eat or drink certain plants grown by Mother Earth, something indigenous people have been doing for thousands and thousands of years in socially integral ways that expand and grow consciousness. It is precisely an expansion of consciousness that is needed today shapeshifting from one that believes in separation, that has an economic system that feeds greed, fear and violence, to a consciousness that knows how we are all interconnected and that what we give/do to another we do to our selves, to our children, to our grandchildren. From that expanded consciousness we can work to grow a cooperative planetary consciousness based on love, kindness, caring, justice, equality, peace, beauty and healthy world, a Win-Win World for All. It is possible. I know it. I have seen it.
I closed my sharing with respectfully honoring the diversity of religious beliefs and practices expressed by the panelists with my understanding that beneath the differences real spirituality comes down to a bottom line truth that God is love, and those who love, know God. It seemed to resonate with each speaker as I watched their heads nod in agreement.
It is not so easy living that love consistently when it is so easy to be triggered into fearful reactivity by the dramatically challenging times of so much social unrest and climate change we are living in today. Below is a photograph of a place I have been going to each day to remind myself of the deeper waves of life, the beauty of the natural world, the magnificent creation we are gifted to live in. I call it “Sanity Shores” because the energy there is sane. The rhythms are constant but always changing. Impermanence and continuity. There is wisdom there. There is no ego there. There is what “God hath wrought”.
I share the image caught on camera so you too might take in some of the sanity there to help you through this time of unrest, of unease, of unknown future. There is Father Sun sending down stardust from above. There is the endless sky. The wispy passing clouds. There is the flowing waves of Mother Ocean. Rock People. What indigenous people say are the oldest living people on the planet, the ones who carry the history of what has been.
May the figures on the screen help you connect with a center of strength and peace within you. May they help you connect with the love that is in you, that you are, that we all are. May it help strengthen your knowing that so long as we are alive no matter what is happening, if we choose it, if we clean out any thoughts or beliefs that get in the way, we can Live Love Now remembering love is the most powerful transformational energy in the universe.
One more thing. If you look at the bottom left hand corner of the picture you will see a blue light. On the rational, logical side of understanding it is nothing but a lens flare. Of course. We all know that. We share a cultural understanding that explains its presence. Yet, might there possibly be more to it than that?
In a shamanic perspective it just might be a trickster doorway, a nierica, to/from another dimension, a spiritual dimension using the lens flare of the camera to bring through a transmission of some sort. Maybe it is just Coyote playing one of its tricks. But yet, indigenous people know that Coyote’s tricks carry medicine teachings, wisdom guidance to help people live in a good way with Creator and Creation. I invite you to take a look at that blue light. Open your mind to the possibility that the Sacred Mystery that exists beneath all physical phenomena and from which all that we see with our eyes comes from and returns, just might be trying to communicate something to help us through these dark times.
The Elders say Creation is a great mystery. They counsel to stay open, that there is more going on than what you think you see and what you think you know in your ordinary state of everyday awareness. "Stay open, Stay humble. Stay open to mystery” they say.
I invite you to find your way to open the blue light doorway and see what might come through for you. I welcome hearing from you.
Please keep the light of hope, faith and love alive and shining.
All Blessings.
love, tomás
