When I was invited to Europe in 1998, I thought I was just going to market dream catchers, tell their stories, and teach dream catcher weaving. Before I left America, I had been told by Mishanagqus, a Passamaquoddi/M'kmaq seer who has strong medicine, that I had a much larger job to do. I was being sent to the place where the pebble of mind was dropped into the pond. Great Spirit had showed me that I was to teach a new way of being for a new people. I had returned the ancient stories to the people. While at powwows in Massachusetts, three Indian women each gave me a gift--the eagle of dawn, a bear claw, and a turtle. And Grandfather Oak, a 96-year old Indian man that I'd healed at the Topsfield powwow gave me his dancing moccasins. I'd been told that I was to dance a new dream, to create the new possibilities offered by the Vision of the Seventh Fire. I would find a female companion, my spiritual and earthly mate, with whom I would bring the message and the teachings of the Seventh Fire. This is where the path divides. No longer will the way of the mind be allowed to dominate and divide. People of the Mind must be shown the vision of the Seventh Prophet of the Anishinabe and given a choice to learn to walk in balance. They must rediscover their connection to all things --- the path of the spirit. To many "civilized" people, the path
traveled by my People seems slow and primitive. The power and wisdom of
this path isn't easily understood when their mind is taught to play inside
boundaries and their heart is closed to sissagwaad, the soft
wind of Spirit. Our project is to teach the way to peace, the wisdom and
the power of the spiral, the way of the circle, how to walk in balance
between mind and heart, how to find inner strength and serenity, and how to
use power and wisdom according to the Original Instructions. This is the
traditional way of the Native people of North America. I've
taught this with drumming, storytelling,
song, dance, and the weaving of
dream catchers.
It wasn't enough. There must be more. Another aspect of fulfilling the Seventh Fire prophecy is to reveal the illusions that hold people in mental and spiritual concrete. There is no way to know which illusion to spotlight because there are so many illusions that seize on a person's life and they become disempowered. Asked to dance a new dream for the people years ago, I have searched and probed for those illusions and how to dispel them. One of the most powerful illusions is the supremacy of Science. What most people don't understand is that Science is a way of knowing; not a set of rock solid facts but hypotheses and theories that provide a way of looking at the universe and how it works. The mysterious world of Quantum Physics has taken Science on a journey that seems to lead back to the mysterious world of Spirit, a unity of understanding about the nature of nature and the Creation of the Creator. Someday people will once again recognize the power that can be tapped without the trappings of Science and the ego-mind. |