Another new, yet old, blog post from February 12, 2013. The ancestors were calling me strongly back then and this is what I heard.
If you have ever been in a sacred circle, a native ceremony such as a sweat lodge you may remember calling in the help of the directions and the direction of north in the Americas is usually associated with the gifts of wisdom from our elders and ancestors. I have been learning first hand why our connection with our ancestors is so important.
Imagine being in a circle of women and being asked to introduce yourself by your matriname. So I would say “I am Stephanie daughter of Mary, daughter of Ethel, daughter of …….. That’s as far as I can go probably because in our culture our surnames have been passed through the patriname or the passing of surnames through the father. I know that my matrilinial ancestry is Irish and that my patrilinial ancestry is Greek and I am aware that my ancestors have been “calling” me, quite literally. In the middle of the night at two am when I could not sleep I felt someone talking to me from inside my heart, (this has happened before in a telepathic conversation with my friend). When I asked who it was the response I heard was, “We are your ancestors”. My ancestors WANT to connect with me! I tried to grasp the conversation but it fell out of my reach that time.
On another occasion I created a ceremony, a combination of forest walk and my very own special medicine and purposefully invited not only my ancestors but also the ancestors and spirits of the land (UBC Endowment Lands, Vancouver BC) to join and participate. My communication with them was very clear indeed. On my first journey through the forest while sitting on the edge of a sunny trail I had an experience of turning into a seed and then growing into a plant towards the sun with all the other plants around. After walking for a while I turned towards the ocean and mountains to the north, I had a dialogue with my ancestors that made an real impression on me. I was asking for advice about my business and about marketing as I was a little stressed at the time learning to make “enough money”. The advice they gave was, “Don’t look to the Hungry to feed you, for the Hungry are always hungry. Look to the earth for she will always feed and support you.” I later found out that the “Hungry” was a term that the native of this land first gave to the white men who arrived here looking for gold, land, lumber and other goods, because it seemed that they where always “hungry”, they always needed more, more, more and had no problem exploiting our rich lands and the locals to get they’re hands on what ever they could that would make them a fortune. “The Hungry are ALWAYS Hungry”. I had to reflect on that for several months.
The following summer I moved into a house with a backyard in Kitsilano with plenty of room and the “okay” from landlords to garden. I had my first garden since living in Vancouver for ten years. My housemates and I where truly amazed at the abundance of food we had all summer long and are even more eager to garden again this summer and improve on all of our mistakes. While I strive and long for a sustainable lifestyle imagined to be complete with Earthship (sustainable home), permaculture knowledge, being a steward of the land and possibly living in community, I live in the city for now and have a garden and a communal house filled with wonderful people.
I AM studying marketing. Sometimes it does have a shallowness to it and reveals how “money hungry” people can be. But it also seems to make sense to be able to communicate my message effectively and attract my sacred clients to live my purpose and make a living here. I find the study very interesting, and am learning to apply what I am learning.
As a healer I like to get to the root of things. “Why the feeling of lack or scarcity in the first place?” I ask myself . As if living in an illusion of our own victim mentality, we have been disconnected from our earth, our bodies, our instincts and our hearts and identify with the mind. Our culture places much value on logical rational thought and hasn’t taught us basics of listening to our senses, our feelings or our intuition. When we operate from the mind it is easy to be brainwashed. In the process of this disconnection with our WILD selves many have fallen victim to opportunistic forces that persuade us to bow down to a money-God-system run by the “Hungry” greed that profits from it at the very apex of the pyramid. It now appears as if quite literally the earth is being ripped up from underneath us while the majority on Earth starves or suffers economic devastation.
As soon as we remember that we are Creators and that we are not victims we may gather energy. We will realize that we BELONG to the Earth and start acting like it. We can reclaim her, Our Wild Earth, our Wild Nature, our Wild Woman. So the messages of the ancestors keeps coming through to remind me what is really important about my journey here.
On the next part of my journey in the forest I found my self curled up inside a hundreds of years old stump, crying, and the ancestors where there to comfort me. It was as if they where holding me in the hollow of the trunk like a baby. I couldn’t help it, the sorrow and pain where just flowing and my ancestor’s comfort and care was very tender. I appreciate them greatly especially as they have been making these appearances of comfort more and more lately. They held me and told me that what I was experiencing is a widespread “cultural disease”. This fear of not having enough is a disease from our culture. When it is severe they told me it can turn into illnesses like stomach cancer and diabetes. No wonder so many Native people suffer from diabetes, it was introduced to them by white people along with sugar our introduced foods and way of life.
I was aware that I wanted to be strong and courageous and so I squeezed out my last tears and took some deep breaths. The ancestors helped me along and told me to look for a special spot to make an offering. They where teaching me how to pray. I walked along the forest path with the banana and chocolate bar I took as a snack. “We remember everything you do here in the forest” they told me as I stopped for a pee, “You’ve peed here before remember”? Wow I did remember and I remembered who I was with and multiple memories of peeing in that very spot seemed to flood in.
I found a huge stump with about twenty holes in it made from wood peckers all over the tree. I had some tobacco in a very small plastic container that was given to me by a friend the summer before. I began to give offerings of my food into the little holes all over tree content to feed the spirit or the squirrels. The ancestors taught me how make an offering to the forest and pray. I spoke my prayers with the ancestors as my witness and felt as though I was a younger person with many wise elders all around me. I spoke from my heart and my voice shook. When I was finished they told me to hurry along so I wouldn’t get cold and run out of day light, I had a long walk ahead of me.
We spoke more on that walk. We spoke about land and they explained to me that it was not so important to OWN land. We also discussed the semantics of the word OWN. They said that OWNING land was not as important as BELONGING is. They took apart the word BE and LONG. This word was a better word to use they said, as it implies that it is a place you want to be for a long time, generations and generations. I have always had a knowing that a place on earth where I was meant to be would call me to it and I would be called there to be a steward of the land. The notion of owning land was spread to this land by white people. I remember reading a reply by Chief Seattle to George Washington’s wish to buy the land on the west coast. It expands on this idea of OWNing land and also tells of how the native people’s ancestors and spirits live in nature, in the rivers, the trees and animals. Chief Seattle wondered what would happen the spirit of his people after the white man took over. Chief Seattle, they are still here!