Prelude

As a Humane Being (who hopes one day to be remembered in the same way I remember my grandfather), I’m frequently called upon to explain my lifetime practices.  How, it is asked, can someone who has lived their entire life in the magical ways of indigenous Earth hope to bring the philosophy and practices to light for those raised in separation and isolation? 

Reality as is comprehended in chaos, my 70th year of life (2025), is only half the truth of who we are.  This arbitrary moment relegates half of our power to the continuous chaos of Coyote Chasing Tail mind, as well as the futile need to control EVERYTHING.  By this reality, all of humanity was actually eradicated when Haley’s Comet crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 1986. 

Fortunately, your mind recognizes that did not happen, and in this moment, I want to remind you that back then a lot of people believed it would create beach-front property in Arizona, cause California would be gone.  Whew!  We dodged the bullet on that one.  There is a spiritual relationship with the land that worked in co-creation for that outcome.  Sit with that a moment, because I want you to know that what you choose to believe and put your faith in now will be the future of this planet.

So going back to sharing beliefs and this interconnected spiritual philosophy has taken its twists and turns throughout my life, just as I am sure you’ve had challenges in yours.   We are not as different as you may think.  I spent a whole lot of time being a sponge, adventurer and helper… Guardian.  On the other side of the coin of becoming a Humane Being, there was heartache, abuse and self-negation.  These later parts kept bringing me back to the land.  The positive aspects were how I would return, refine, and reformat the navigation of my destiny.  Out on the ocean they call that tacking.  Through all of it, I came to a common ground of understanding where our realities overlapped.

Back in the 1980s I wrote a healing biography.  It immediately found a publisher.  The publisher thought it would make a great movie of the week (that was the thing back then).  I had even been in contact with a couple of actresses… to play me!  Unfortunately, or fortunately, the publisher went belly up and the book was never published.

That was my choice.  It had moved into a very dark space as I processed my life through the writing. I learned what still lingered in the hidden recesses of my reality.

I went back to some of my more traditional practices that I had drifted away from.  By doing this I have been called a guardian and firekeeper, counselor and teacher, and now tracker… da’igoti… a scout and 'tsanti… Web Dreamer.  I have written thirty + books, some teaching, many containing prayer work… deh saad beh… our words of power, and a few narratives.  I even did an ecopsychology book for kids.[1]    I organized women worldwide in the Sisters of Honua.  And all through this was ebb and flow, challenges and great, miraculous moments.

All in all, I get to look back from 70 and say, “What a life I have created!”

I came back to my biography as part of an energetic sharing with my students of SpiralDancing Life, as we undertook the study of, and enactment of the 7 Initiations I have experienced through my family’s ways.  This book was written as we discussed the rituals, energies, experiences they were having, we overlapped time in my sharing.

I follow a time-honored tradition in taking you, my engaged reader in to flow for – what?  Connection, inspiration, insight, healing, or merely entertainment.  You see, it doesn’t matter – understand that any of these will shift the reality you now carry.  The great Winds of Change whisper through humanity’s dreams to awaken and recognize how much more to us there is than what we have been taught.

…For this recounting of the making of me: some mystical initiations with visions, a little of the challenges of the time, and of course the magical possibilities that abound.  Whether you believe any of it or not, to weld these words on the written page… to share these Talking Leaves with you, on the edge of contemporary society and indigenous Earth… it’s time to consider…

Grandpa stated it succinctly:
This is a reality to which humanity will aspire.  Adventure, discovery, the relationship with esonkñhsendehí… Changing Mother Earth, and her language of sights, sounds, dreams, feelings… experience.

There is, of course, the requisite reintegration of the inner child – a necessity for imagination and belief – a rebirth, appropriately symbolized by the pervading rush of emotions.  To be reborn, one must first enter the Gate of Rebirth:
            There is a sense of letting go, a release from the necessity to understand.  The result is a trust that is warm and welcoming, and the nervous system relaxes. 
Then there is nothing…

The world through our eyes is changed forever.  Stare up at the vaulted night sky above the head of the Guardian mountain near you.  How fitting as the four days of mourning return us to the ways of living. 

I have digested my life: traumatic and joy-filled.  The truth is hozhoni naslee… Beauty is everywhere.

If you are a novitiate, who holds in your hands for the first time a mystic truth, you are to be envied for the possibilities that may open for you.  The veteran who has dreamed this realm and who may fret that this type of information is vanishing, need not worry, it is my knowing that many still perpetuate these ways.  It is my distinct if somewhat redundant pleasure to assure everyone who has picked up this documentation that you will find something that will affirm you as you believe you are.

[1] Many of these can still be found in bookstores, and on Amazon.

I am all I need to be…
I am All My Relations,
And so it is.