This is in response to Jerry Banfield's
Supernatural Writing Contest.
(Art by Pilar Zeta)
I have had many supernatural experiences in my life. In fact, it is safe to say that my experience of the world is likely what many would deem supernatural. I read minds often (not by will, but by receiving spontaneous messages), synchronicities are frequent fare, many times have I met just the right person at the right time or had someone come into my life in an unbelievable way, and I pay attention to my dreams to get information about my waking life.
Yet I am someone who doesn't see a divide between what we call natural and what we deem supernatural. I actually think a lot of these things are capabilities of humankind, but that we've limited our scope on what we can see and experience on the daily. There are many stories I could (and would love to!) tell, but I'm going to focus on the first one that game into my head as it's an important story for humanity, as much as it's a supernatural story.
Eye Gazing
When I lived in a college town, one that many described as a Spiritual Vortex, I had a good friend that I would spend a lot of time with. We would spend countless hours in his kitchen and sometimes outside or at various events staring into each others eyes. Doing this for periods of time is known as eye gazing, although I’m not sure where we got the idea to do this at the time. It sprung up naturally between us. We would sit in his kitchen after he prepared delicious natural & simple foods for us and eye gaze. As we stared, the space between us would become smokey & blurred as the edges of what we call everyday reality receded and we made space for the fantastic to sharpen. We would do this for hours. Often I would see multiple faces within his face, perhaps from past lives, we conjured.
One time we tried this on a playful afternoon outside. We ran around, climbed trees and chased each other through brambles in the forest yard behind the house I lived in. We laid on the ground and laughed, and as we did so, it started to rain. Very suddenly it started to lightning and I didn't want to go inside as he pleaded with me. I felt held by everything and didn't feel fear, but stayed out there enjoying the feeling of being one with it all and therefore safe.
Faces at Sacred Hill
But the story I have to tell came a bit before this play and laughter. A very interesting thing had happened on a place I began calling the Sacred Hill. As we ran around, we stopped in a grove of trees on the edge of the property which abutted a cemetery. We stopped in our tracks and stared at one another, into one another’s eyes for a time. I'm not sure how long it was - it seemed like a good half hour. Our feet firmly planted on this sacred spot of earth, we gazed into each other's eyes and suddenly
one after the other.
Something was coming home within me as I recognized faces that one moment appeared, looked back at me, and then disappeared only to make room for more faces. These were not people I had ever met or even people that looked like the majority of people who inhabit this college town. These were the faces of indigenous people, of Native Americans.
It was as if from the ground countless indigenous people reflected to me through my friend's face. In each moment, face after face transitioned and looked at me. I saw faces with extraordinary pain complementing deep, deep strength. One in the same. I saw and felt through their eyes the deep atrocities brought about from the oppressive dominator cultures come to their lands, exploiting existing people & place, killing, raping, stealing. While I stood there on the earth, looking at my friend, I experienced the feelings they encountered in this devastation, this travesty, this theft in the horrendous relations with the oppressor.
Incredible Strength & Pain | The Teachings
I am in no way claiming to have experienced the depth or totality of the pain they did for that would be impossible and disrespectful, but I felt a shred of it through my witness and what I saw changed my perspective forever. I saw the sadness and felt the ache. What I most remember feeling inside of myself was total awe at the strength in those eyes. Some of these faces were the strongest I have ever seen, the wounded warriors. Yes, wounded by the atrocities of the non-earth-based exploitive peoples, but strong and resilient of spirit. Strong from their connection to the land and from their relationship with Great Spirit. No one could truly and permanently take that from them.
It is painful to see the atrocities committed to indigenous peoples and it is something our culture and society still glosses over to this day through the stealing and exploitation of land and resources and rape of indigenous women. There is still total lack of respect & power plays, lies, horrible stories which are largely hidden from our cultural framework which enforces the stories we tell about ourselves. We need to have dialogue to listen to the indigenous perspective which is so pressed-down. We need to look into the Native Americans' eyes and hear their stories, read their books, witness them.
Of A Place
Indigenous is a term we give to people groups and yet indigenous simply means of a place. Since this time with my friend, many things have happened in my life, but because of this experience I have always felt a connection with the indigenous plight and so I have set myself in the way to learn about Native American culture and ways of being. I firmly believe that the ways of the Native Americans who lived here prior to the colonizers can teach us how to get out of our current planetary crises. I believe these faces came to me, a sensitive open person, so that I could really see and change my ways to be more open to an earth-based lifestyle. One where I care for the earth and hear her cries of pain as the dominator culture continues to heedlessly exploit for short-term monetary gain.
Because of this and many other experiences, I have been called to live close to land and to revive old traditions and make new ones in these same veins. To become a storyteller and to speak and give voice and make space for indigenous people and to myself become of a place. What I saw on that hillside was miraculous and it taught me that we must revive the indigenous perspective within ourselves.
Call of the Earth
Can you hear the stirring inside of yourself?
Many are feeling the call to live a more earth based lifestyle, whether through homesteading, gardening, picking up old skills and spending more and more time in nature. We as a people are being called back to the land as an intimate part of the evolution of the human species. For a time we have forgotten and now we return, revive, create, story-tell and listen from our hearts. We hear the indigenous perspective, we research the suppressed histories, we do what we need to do to heal and make amends.
This is how a better world is created,
one that we can hand to the next 7 generations.
