Entering the Silence 4B

I asked where we would go, “the sacred places.” No one said, but they were ready to explain the na’chi.  This is the prayer staffs my older cousins would run from one site to another to plant in pots provided along the way for this purpose.  7 groupings of feathers hung from the staff, representing the 7 Sisters we traced our clan systems to.  To one who had only seen the staffs flying during the final day of this initiation, when all of the families could come, they had been a source of pride.

“7 Sisters.  Each clan gives us thought,” Grandfather told me.

We spent one night camped near Kinishiba, the ruins down the mountain.  We met Mr. Montoya, a longtime friend of Grandfather’s.  I managed to overcome my excitement as Grandfather handed him the first na’chi, and Mr. Montoya reverently raised it above his head to the sky four times before planting it in the pot.

The boys brought their first round of na’chi to plant, carrying them like one would carry flowers to their beloved.  As they blew in the breeze, I thought I saw the dark-haired woman who had sat with me last year when the snake bit me.  She seemed constantly appearing when I least expected it.  Her eyes told me I was a sapling, connecting generations forward.  Her smile was power, but friendly, and I longed to talk to her.  She had a way of doing things, passing on a thought.  In her humble nature, I was more.  This woman, over the course of years, would draw me out, and help shape who I would become.  For now, she was distracting.  My skills would be measured by a life of integrity, my father had said, and devotion to the Sacred Parents.

I was delighted to learn in my training that what all believe… what all beliefs have in common, is Mother Earth’s truth.  After we finished dinner and while I pondered the other three stops on this pilgrimage, I opened to receive what I needed to know.  There was probably more laughter and fun than understanding, but the answers were imprinted for another time.  I accepted what was happening as words flew, but mouths did not move.  I bathed in this, respected the possibility.  Trying to figure it out would be a waste of time, and I had learned that understanding was highly overrated.

When we departed the next morning, we knew we were expected to follow through in our quest.  We opened our arms with a passion to share with those we met along the way.

“Stay in the flow!” I smiled.

Circle and sharing are key to our success.

We were nearing the dirt road that followed the river to Cibeque when we slowed to show respect at the crossing and followed the protocols to receive the Mountain Spirits’ permission to continue.  Those who do not honor this passing of power, loose the right to facilitate power.

Outstanding virtues of our traditional life and wisdom were the living evidence revealing itself in the passage of time.

Sun Wolf chuckled.

“Yes, it is made so.”

The nearest thing to this experience, was seen in the… I think I am… the power I felt faded.  The tlish diyan premise was not to look back but always move forward.  The symbolic face paint empowered us to remove doubt, questions, and reluctance.

To recognize potential, to open and be filled by the quickening was a new experience my cousins, some eight present today, had given away their pain and were filled simultaneously.  Smudge and breathe work immersed everyone present.  The more time you spend, the deeper you go, and the greater your success.  Cord cutting symbolized the isolation we felt with birth, and some where the directions were chanted.  The natóh was smoked, and glad vision was able to transfer energy.

Just now, however, I was ready to serve.  I had not talked a lot to Strikes the Enemy or Sun Wolf about the calling into childhood I remembered.  But they seemed to know more, there would be thoughts and feelings.  I still had not come to any conclusions about the meaning of the contemplative imagery.  I was probing back into my past, trying to remember when I dedicated myself to develop and nurture a relationship with power.  When it became apparent that discipline and intention were regarded as important medicine, I began to surrender to the power.  Many shapeshifters in our family time warped with great healing, achieving impressive results from the power in motion.

There had been a time when I thought my process uniquely different from others.  I had become oriented in patterns, and this brought my solid sense of self and my growing abilities.  It wasn’t a brag, just a fact.  Meanwhile, I learned power was for curing, healing, prophesizing, reconciling problems, and finding the lost.  Gradually, I developed spreading love, transforming, creating peace and prophecy.

It was the dreams which kept returning me to power, never over anyone.  This life is a spiral dance of power, and we are always transparent as we accept our gifts.  Possibly our power has been given to us to create for the betterment of all.  I had merged above and below out of a possibility of being able to do what I do and set a standard and goals while focusing on actualization.  I was enjoying my challenges as steps to take and never sought to be perfect.

I sighed deeply and gazed up at the stars.  The moon had set, and the sky was black velvet studded with stars.  Everything served a purpose; we are humble and grow.  I watched the 7 Sisters, dancing their wheel, calling to their sister, Mother Earth.  It was a beautiful night with a touch of cold as Fall was ending and the new year beginning.  I shifted my back comfortably against a boulder.  I had taken this position, maintaining my stillness practice in an endeavor to become better at blending.  I could only transmit the frequencies that Earth emitted in a moment.  A miracle is created by lives transforming.  This takes co-creation of believers, not testers.

A night bird called, “to conduct magic there must be spiritual relationship.”  “Keep in balance,” Grandpa said, “don’t waste time.”  Have a sense of humor… supernatural maintenance, laughter is the greatest healer.

The sound of the creature was the truth of Sun Wolf’s coyote lesson.  I had traveled, never being asked to do anything alone.

Another bird answered… all things manifest as co-creation.  Balance… body… sensational telepathy… I stopped the thought suddenly, and laid my hand on my hokkishedeh bag, while I sense different energies feeling differently.  This was the internal partnership, and I was learning how to recognize it.  I was certain, power = supernatural reclamation – electrical universal energy, or the quickening.  The night bird voiced its agreement.

I was also remembering that our guardians of support exist to help.  Do individuals believe in ways that worked best for them?

There was silence, which made me feel the power everywhere, and each power was there in its own unique frequency.  The birds were different than me, but we were the same.  The caller out there and I have life that is a gift freely given by the Sacred Parents.  Now, I was certain… do you believe you can fly?  I do.  I was also certain that whatever the magic of natural power emanated from our Mother, it was one with the spiritual power of the Star Nations.  This uniqueness related to us, for we can only work as transmitters.

There had been silence some time now.  Experimentally, I called to the power.

I cleansed myself in the fire smoke to release doubt, guilt, reluctance, fear, selfishness, wanting to demand how and when… and then asked for help-to-help others.

Almost instantly my call was answered, and a bond of perfect unity eclipsed me.
Close by the birthing hoop was being set up.  I sat waiting, grasping my hokkishedeh bag again and breathing.  I had to be ready to speak my haquiñi… I turned and acknowledged the directions.

Maybe our offerings spoke of our faith and commitment, following magic’s protocols.  I felt spirit leading me but waited patiently for answers.  45 seconds, or less, was a formula for intuitive responses.  Each healing was carefully kept alive, carrying the rite of ceremony individually tracked, because no one is the same.  Our chants, prayers, and ritual formulas allow us to live in the past, present and future simultaneously.  This was the way of all things, nothing born of Earth is “new.”

Now we are not constrained by time, being able to see through “No Time” with the practice of our sacred rituals.  I had the feeling that the energy here was playing with me.  I got chicken-skins as an ancestor passed through me.  I had no fear of this interaction.  All time is linked in one moment, all time exists and flourishes in the circle.  I was in an awkward position, my feet not properly placed under me as I sat.  Now the scene in front of me came to life.  Something that effected my equilibrium.

“MoonFire!” came a soft whisper.  “Is it you?”

My head turned.  The voice was familiar, but there was something else.  We are an interlocking medicine wheel of memories, identity and possibilities spinning in concordance with other interlocking cogs of expansion.

Of the people in my life at the present time, only Strikes the Enemy and Grandfather were fluid in my thoughts.  I supposed that some others in the family knew these things as reality, but it was rarely discussed outside of our little canyon.  I had a strong sense of unity of nature that is expressed in our Circle Dance.

“Yes,” I said as my own confirmation.

Thinking rapidly, I arrived at a conclusion.  Greeting the Sun and entering the unity daily frees us from fear.  Lesson of the stone, so from my distant past.  But why… connection meditation, slowing and becoming united.  Living together in harmony, ants were walking on the floor of the house.  I put an alternative source of food outside.

“It’s been a long time, my friend,” the voice said.

I went into soft focus to see in-between.

“I dream you!  I’ve come to answer your call.”

Toho’ma.  Of course.  It came rushing back to me.  When I was five, I had been playing by our pond.  I was attracted to a shiny object and stuck my hand in the hole.  I knew better and paid the price when a rattlesnake defended its space.  Toho’ma had sat with me, stroking my brow, until Strikes the Enemy found me, and carried me home.

“Are you really here,” I asked.  It was more of a statement than a question.

“Yes, of course.  MoonFire, one day you will initiate me in this exact same way.  And my life will change.  Here, remember me.”

She handed an object to me.  I remembered; I had given Toho’ma the piece I had found in that snake hole.  I tucked it into my hokkishedeh bag.

“I thought when you meet me again, you could give it back to me.  That would help me remember now.”

I said nothing.  I was embarrassed to admit, she had me totally confused.

“I came to tell you,” she continued.  “This is where it will begin.”

“Begin? I do not understand.”

“You will, and when you give me this, I will remember you.”

“What…?”

“There will be awhile that I will not remember.”

I thought a moment, puzzled, but Toho’ma continued. 

“You will understand more as you grow.”

Ah, that growing thing, I thought.  Technically, I was a child, and of course unable to understand this complicated adult thing.  But she spoke of the future.  True, there were things that would make more sense, in ten years, maybe?

“But Toho’ma, where are you going?  Why are you leaving?”

It still seemed unbelievable that she would leave.  She was like my protector spirit.

“I must MoonFire.  I must live a life before I can stay.”

A full life!?!  The energetic being, who had come to console me, was talking about being alive.  I was delighted.  To have a vision of an entity that would manifest, now that was prophecy!

So, this was what Grandpa was known for.  Would Toho’ma recognize me?  Would I recognize her.  How would I know who to give the token to?

“How will I know you?”  I asked.

“I don’t know, MoonFire.”

What, I thought.  This ceremony was really weird.

This was not going to be as easy as I thought.