There’s an irony in that it took more than fifty years for me to better understand what I had observed in that briefest of visions of what I later knew to be native American life. I grew up with a love of forests and animals, greatly enjoyed canoeing and kayaking, but truly had no special inclination towards native American history or lore. Except for the names of long forgotten tribes or places, suburban Long Island is very much the now of materialism and devoid of its own history, despite of all that happened there – whether pre-Columbian or post. Moreover, as my family was essentially from European stock, the most recent being my father – a Jewish refugee from pre-war Nazi Germany – I wasn’t home-versed in native American life. Such is the education of a suburbanite – not of the past, only the present and future – to fit in, connect up, and move on. In other words, I had learned little in the way of my own psycho-spiritual ontology – only the feeling that something was inherently missing from my life and that missing piece was a deep spiritual connection to life itself.
As a practitioner of shamanic ways, L had already helped open the doors into my unconscious using entheogenic medicines. While one never knows what one will experience when one transcends the thinking mind and the doors of the unconscious/subconscious are flung open, one does get what one needs. Not long after my first journey, I had requested another using the same medicine and went into this with some intent, purpose if you will, to better understand why I had that childhood vision of the Indian world. As the warm embrace of the medicine overtook me, I felt immediately drawn to a wooded clearing in which I literally beheld the native American world and observed its primeval, though physically difficult, nature. Standing as an unseen apparition (or so I thought), I found myself in a small village and readily observed the lives of these people. I immediately sensed that there were few mental complexities, as in today’s life, but rather the more pressing physical challenges of food, shelter, health, and protection. I entered their world, neither challenged nor unaccepted, and went along with the men on a hunt for game – witnessing the hunt, the skinning and tearing of the deer carcass to prepare it for food and for other uses. Along with the women, I stood by a river and watched them tend to fishing baskets/weirs made of woven grass (the same as used for their mats). I saw them living together, children, women, and some of the elder men, in large lean-to shelters. These people slept together, lived together, and I had the intuitive thought that many, perhaps all, had died together one winter when it grew too cold and too hard to survive. Yet, there was no sense of pain or anguish in this knowledge, rather the de facto understanding of the nature of existence – from birth, through life, and to death. That samsara, the cycle of birth and death, is not to be resisted and not to be a cause of resistance. It is the endless dance of experience in living form.
I saw a small boy running happily through the village and I thought of my own youngest, how similar they are in age, and how unaware they are of the length of life’s journey (and how far along I am). Then, an Indian male with whom I walked spoke to me directly and said to me that life is like a river that flows to the sea and that I should not get hung up on the obstacles in the river, but to be more like water, which flows around life’s obstacles. At some point I asked about my fears – whether to him or just to my subconscious mind, I no longer remember. But I heard the words in my head immediately. They said “when you feel fear count to ten, then say out loud – see, there is no fear.” Try it – it works. And then, as I was being summoned away by L’s questioning about where I was in my mind, I finally saw his face – the face of my companion. We were sitting on the bank of a river and I turned towards him – his face neither very old, nor young, his long dark hair tied back, and his skin rather reddened and aged with the sun. But he had a gentle look of knowing and understanding who I was – who I am. And while I don’t know much of him, I believe that he is my spirit kin – if not, in fact, my previous self from a former life.
After the journey ended and I had regained my waking consciousness, my first thought was that I must not fear so much in this life, but rather give up the idea of fearing altogether. I realized that it has played a huge role in my life, making me doubt myself and my abilities, making me weak and weak-willed in the face of challenges to my character, and while it has offered protection at times it became a convenient place to withdraw away into – and a means to reinforce separation from others. Fear is the absence of love, the feeling and knowledge of love, and is only a fault of perception. The mind creates fear only because it doesn’t know love. The mission of my life therefore must be to break this chain of fear, starting from childhood – and reinterpret the vision of my native American self, so that it’s not one of isolation and loneliness (as I had interpreted once), but one of community and living fearlessly. The Indians knew that fear weakens resolve and prevents love (one cannot fear and love at the same time), and although they had harder lives than us they lived fearlessly and did not get lost in the present by worrying about tomorrow. Only a cold winter did them in, perhaps. But I realized through this trip into the depths of conscious that I need to unlearn fear and give love, to work out the painful karma of my youth into happiness and fulfillment as an adult – under all conditions, especially when the winter winds blow…
