The Seeker ?? By TwoFeathers

Twenty-five or so years ago I had a Waking Vision, one that lasted for four consecutive mornings.  During this Vision I saw a huge dome that had this incredibly Spiritual landscape on the inside.  There were trees and plants of all kinds, boulders, rocks, streams, waterfalls and quiet walking paths.  This was a Big Vision!  I saw people coming and going. As they entered I could see great stress in their eyes and on their faces.  While inside there were little areas to rest and relax to be with spiritual guides who would listen, counsel, and give help. When the people left This Sacred Space, all of the stress and stooping of shoulders were gone.  This Vision was so strong and overwhelmingly powerful and far beyond anything I’ve described here, that I then and there I knew I must build this place.  I spent years attempting to build the place of my Vision but life somehow always got in the way.  

I remember once telling the story of my Vision to one of my Native teachers, Bill.  He, being a man of too few words, said only this; “Visions are easy”!  That was all he said about it and at that time it made me so mad and I didn’t get it. I continued on for years seeking “myself” and how I fit into the building of this Vision place. My searching was always the next workshop, book or especially the next Teacher.  I was looking for the magic of hopefully finding what could open my eyes and make me see and understand it all and finally make my life into what I felt it should or could be.   

Another Native teacher Nappy said to me, “Seeking/searching by its own definition means not finding”.  But I said, “What if: what, how, why or who is unacceptable or not quite how I imagine myself and/or it to be and therefore I must continue the search”.  He laughed and said,  “You sure hold on to your ever-shifting, one step in front of you, Vision”!  I said, “But I have learned so much on this seeking journey of mine!  Without the search, I would not be here”!  He said, “True you began to learn from the very moment you were born to this place because learning about life is, the natural way of it!  And you are always gaining knowledge by learning about the world around you...Always!  But the most important thing is that life is ALL of your experiences and you are here in this very moment as you are because of all of these experiences not some of them. By accepting all of your experiences both the good, bad and indifferent you will gain Wisdom.  Learning gives you Knowledge about life, which is only a set of tools to use to help you move through life.  Wisdom gives you the understanding to accept “life’s lessons” and to live within and walk within your own truth.  Seeking the Vision however always begins in the “next moment” and that will surely bring of the real Spirit the truth, eh?”  

After all of the years of hearing the words of my teachers, I just knew that they were speaking within their own Vision and at that time I choose to search on because I felt that I should find my own way as they had found theirs. For me the main question was…would there ever come a time when I had learned enough to know what every teacher or expert knew to stand in his/her own understanding?  But then, after hearing the words of my teachers there was always in the back of my mind this nagging question; just how responsible and truly respectful, am I, to myself.  

One day John, a very intuitive counselor friend called and said, “ I don’t know why I called but I feel that we should get together to talk”.  While together, after a bit of chitchat time I began to tell him about a serious “problem” of mine that had plagued me for years.  I had always had an inventive mind and that for years I had “seen” inventions before they came to past.  As I grew older I began to pursue these inventions.  I would plan, start finding materials and start to figure out how to bring it into being and to market. Every time when I would get it to a certain stage I would hit this “Brick Wall”.  My mind would “lock-up” and I would get no further.  This had happened over and over and I had come to wish my mind would just “get over it”.  John, suddenly laughing said, “How wonderful”!!  I was suddenly angry and I looked at him and said, “What the hell do you mean by how wonderful”?  He said “You have always seen this “block” as something lacking within you and something to overcome.  “I said, "Duh!"  He said, “You have to understand what a great gift you have.”  Yah right” says I!  John said,  “You have this Creative mind that “sees” coming events just before their time and you develop them to a point.  But the rest of it is not your job and at that point you should “give it away” to someone whose job it is to take it to the next step”!!!!  I was nearly knocked over by the power of those words. It was not the giving away part, but the part that it was not my job. In that moment of truth my Native Teachings hit me up beside the head. What I didn’t get before was that they hadn’t been telling me that I one day would find “It”.  They had been telling me all along to stand on my own understanding (you know trust) then and there.   I understood that my continual seeking is in its real truth a disrespectful act and I understood in that moment how my view of “never quite enough” is that act of disrespect… to me!!  I remembered that the basis of Native teachings is always about respect. First for yourself and second for "ALL" the world around you because you can only respect anything outside of you only when you fully respect yourself. What really floored me was that I had always seen respect as something I expected to give or get from others not something I give to me without expectations.    

Through this flash of “seeing” I finally stopped and looked around in “this now”.   And I understood that my searching had been mostly in the future or sometimes in the past but never in the present.  I understood that my searching was not wrong because how else could I have come to the understanding that it was time to stop.  Because of that moment of understanding over time I have come to see and accept that “This.. Is.. It”!  And that the acceptance of  “This Is It!!” as one of the most powerful and sobering statements of my life. I found that by accepting myself in the now instead of limiting me to my always imagined  “as is box” has shown me things way beyond anything I could ever have imagined and totally surprised me!  For years I had been told that I was walking (not going to walk) the Coyote Medicine Path. This was finally sinking in and I was beginning to accept that I was born to this walk and had been walking it all along.   

In the teaching of my Coyote Ways I have seen many people stop, look and feel “the moment” for the first time.  It is the first time when they say to themselves  “I am right now…All!..That I ever will be and always have been!”  Why would the Creator Spirit make you anything else but complete?  Even though “This Is It” is a simple truth, I have learned that coming to this understanding is not easy; it is a scary and sometimes difficult process. First I came to understand within my completeness were also places of, let’s say “incompleteness”. I have come to accept that there are things I do not do well and never will. What a relief and blessing!

I found that next comes a time of seeing and accepting the past and the future within the present.  I know a person, who by stopping, saw in that present moment that he had lived his life lying because of his seemingly boring life. Another saw herself as always feeling isolated and alone.  These are part of the things they saw within the moment. You see, they had had a change in perception and saw themselves differently. They accepted themselves “as is" and accepted “what they saw”.  The things they saw about themselves had become their teacher beings and they were beginning to “see” parts of themselves they had never known. This slightly different view of themselves as well as my view of myself had forever changed the way we perceived ourselves.   

Do you remember the person who came to the understanding that they had lived their life as a lie?  Within the process of that understanding this person saw a truth of how varied, full and rich a life he had lived within “the lie” and he now spoke in the present about that understanding. He saw and understood that he was never broken and didn’t need “fixed” and that now the lie had become his teacher.  He saw that that he could never “rid” himself of any of his feelings or any of his past.  He could only accept.  

The question I asked my teachers and the question many have since asked me is: how do I do this and where do I start.  My teacher’s answer to me and my answer to those I have taught has always been the same. “There is no how, what or where.  There is only acceptance and the moment!  There are no methods or training!  It is not how, when or what you do that is important!!!  It is ALL about the place you operate from”. One of my teachers once told me that: “It’s like swimming across a large lake.  After swimming to the middle you realize that it was much farther across than you imagined and now you are tired and scared.  All of the sudden your feet find…something….a rock!  A rock you can stand on so you can rest up for the rest of the swim.  The full acceptance of “This Is It!!” is that real rock!  And once you know where that “real rock” is it will always be the “base” upon which to swim on.  You continue just as you were, being and doing just the same except now you know where “The Rock” is and over time you will almost unknowly make changes without even realizing you have.”  

In closing I want to revisit my “Dome Vision”.  After many years I finally “forgot” my “impossible” Vision and I began even more to embrace my Native heritage.  I had been going to sweats for a few years when I was asked to run them.  After first saying “No” because of not being worthy of running a lodge, I was finally convinced to run them as I have for years. I did Vision Quests, Personal Quests, did ceremonies and began to understand and do (as I told about earlier) the Coyote teachings and counseling.  For twenty-five years I have lived in a beautiful and sacred area with waterfalls, streams, rock bluffs, ceremonial bluff shelters and beautiful woods.  As within the flashes of understanding about “The Block” and “The Rock” in another flash, I realized that I was…Living The Vision!!!!!!! “This Is It”.   The Vision had come to pass after I had gotten out of the way of it and realized It had been there all along.  The Dome had always been, just above my head.  

All things of Nature Always know your name!  

Mvto

Jim TwoFeathers