Return of the Ancestors pt II

Anyways, after getting back to La La Land and Agapeland, www.agapelive.com, back with those who have been my spiritual comrades since I first found my way to the community in 2000, well, things that occurred at the gathering began to take on an even deeper meaning.  There is so much appreciation for those that choose to hold a high space of love, compassion and joy- even if it doesn't get done perfectly, it gets done.  Even if at times we seem to bumble along on our path, at least we are on the path, becoming ever more aware of all the trappings of ego, illusion, and, well, planned pandemics and planned profits for big pharma, and at the same time, ever more aware of our True Identity of "Inexhaustable Good" as the founder Michael Beckwith would say. 

During the gathering I connected with several of the elders, many of which lived lives so completely different than we can imagine.  Many were healers and shamans, and there was one in particular who captured my attention as a group of us had lunch under a shade tree in Dead Horse State Park in Cottonwood, Arizona.  

I was a working volunteer that day, sporting my neon green 'harmony keeper'  t-shirt, helping to direct traffic.  Actually, I was not much more than a landmark by lunch time. Just someone for the person at the post ahead to refer to : "see that girl sitting under that tree in that bright green t-shirt?  - turn left there".

So, I was happy and delighted when my post tree was chosen by several people to have lunch under, including a few elders and a translator.  It turns out one of the elders, from Bolivia, was only 26.  Not really an elder, but asked to come along on the trip, and if there was any consolation, the kids in his village referred to him as 'old man'.  He was one of those shaman shapeshifters to be sure, since every time I looked at him he looked at little different.  In fact, when he first sat down he looked like an elder to me and it was only after he started talking that I saw he wasn't that old, but then when he shared his age when someone asked-- wow-- now way.   

He got to talking, through the translator, and it was clear he had a gift for channeling the divine energy through~  it was then that I realized that although I had heard a lot of wisdom in the previous two days, and had definitely felt some shifts with the many ceremonies, I had heard a lot of people talking about things, not so much with the energy.  There were exceptions, but a lot of it was talk about, rather than talk with. Some in the mind, rather than the heart. There was talk about the Mayan Calendar, what we are coming to, the ways we are destroying the planet, the ways we can make it better, how we are all one, but, this talk under the tree was different.  

After a little while he looked up and there were three birds flying in a small circle- not ordinary birds, but eagles.  These same three had been flying above me when I was playing my music out by the green river the day before, and when he said that birds gather when he speaks I wondered if the birds gathered for my singing in the same way, and as soon as I wondered it I felt a strong sense of peace, a gentle kundalini, a confirmation.  

When someone asked him how we can lessen our attachment to money, to not be bound by financial concerns and make them our primary focus, he picked up a plastic container of hummus that was sitting on the picnic blanket and said it was the problem.  We all stared at him, waiting to see what he meant, this old-young-old-young man, sitting there on the grass, under that tree, holding a little plastic container, saying it was the problem of our obsessive money issues.  It seemed silly for a moment, until he began to speak again.  He said that in his village everyone works and helps in growing the food.  People help to plant, to water, to harvest, to mulch.......no one pays for their food.  He said that when you have to give money for what you put into your body you become connected to money in a way that is not healthy.  

Now, that is a paraphrase, but it was the first time this connection, this thought, had ever been entertained in my brain.  Wow.  That is deep.  Nature doesn't pay for her seeds, or water, or for the bees to pollenate, and when our physical survival is based on our ability to acquire something that is not even natural to us, it a way it makes a part of us unnatural, or at least dependent on something unnatural.  Hmmm.... amazing food for thought.  He went on to say that it is a little different when you pay for something that you wear, since it goes on the outside of your body, and not on the inside.  

Now, I'm not saying that we are all contaminated with money or tainted by the unholy and damned dollar, but, what I am saying is what he said made me pause and think, and, I do believe, tap further into the vision of a world where people all work together to feed each other, take care of each other, love each other- not say, well, you don't have any of this money stuff, so you starve, sorry, I have my twenty houses to take care of.  There's just something a little, you know, weird about that.....

which brings me to the weirdness I felt being on the reservation, but I think we'll save that for next time......gotta start heading back to the desert.....