by Brooke Medicine Eagle
The Path of Sacred Ecology
The ancient people of the land understood that to
be in harmony with all
things was not only the highest and finest way
to live, but also the most
practical, useful, beneficial and abundant. Their
practice was one of
being in harmony. To be on the path of sacred ecology
today means to
take our spiritual work back into the realms of
daily practice. This means
becoming conscious of the kind of houses we live
in, the ways that we
use water, the ways we use energy and electricity.
We currently practice housing ourselves in units
that suck energy from the
environment, and produce nothing of value. More
and more, I am inviting people to
look at new, alternative construction methods and
technology that can make their
daily lives a practice in harmony, in sacred ecology.
Bringing it Down to the Basics
Spiritual practices have always been rooted in the
simplest, most basic things in our
lives. I sense in my deep ancestral background
some connection among the people
of the Pacific rim, the Japanese, Chinese, Tibetan,
Innuit, and other Northern
indigenous peoples. It feels to me that these people,
for instance the Zen monks,
have understood this sense of being present in
a certain way with every moment of
one's life, even to simply be aware of the energy
we carry with every breath.
As a person who knows herself to be intensely perfectionistic
and efficient, I often
find myself scowling and seeing what's wrong and
not what's right. As I simply
catch myself in that moment and ask, "What are
you perceiving? Are you seeing
and creating beauty, or are you focusing on negativity
with every breath?" it
transforms my way of being in the world.
Water is another example of the most basic elements
on which we depend for our
survival. I was raised in the lifestyle of a homesteading
rancher of the 1880's: I
carried water in a bucket from a spring deep in
a ravine-hauling it daily up dirt steps
to our house, for drinking, cooking, washing, for
everything-I carried it on my body,
so I know in my body how precious it is.
When I send my students to sit alone upon the mountain,
I ask them to take only
the amount of water that they absolutely need,
not a bit more, so that they can
experience the preciousness of water, very powerfully,
in their bodies. When they
come down after two days, they have a different
awareness and appreciation for
water: they've carried it a distance to their site,
and when they've had to measure
the sips that they can take, it has a whole new
meaning for them.
In addition, I ask them to not take a drink until
they come to me: then I ask them to
make a pledge to care for, preserve, and be lovingly
conscious of the preciousness
of water-cleaning up their own rivers when they
live, watching how much they use
on a daily basis, all they can do. They willingly
make this pledge to pay attention,
and take spiritual action, in support and honoring
of clean and plentiful water in the
world. and, a part of this commitment suddenly
translates into, "How much water
am I using in the house?"
When you think of living in a home that gathers
its own water (that uses water
cachement systems, depending only on what is collected
in its own area or its own
loop,) then all of a sudden - like the first time
you run your water tank dry - you
have to learn a hard lesson about paying attention
every day to your water use.
The Hopi people have always had the powerful understanding
that if you put
yourself in a situation where you have to pay attention,
you pay attention! They
realized how easy it is to get lax and to forget,
and so they placed themselves in a
homeland where there is very little water, so every
day they are involved in
honoring the preciousness of water, and practicing
gratitude.
A Celebration of Earth Changes
I said to one of my teachers once, "I think there
are intense changes coming to our
Mother Earth, and while I don't want to set that
fear in people's minds, I want to tell
them the truth of what's happening." He answered,
"Deliver those doom and gloom
warnings if you feel they're true, just enough
to wake people us-that's what they're
for. But then immediately turn your attention,
and theirs, to what's positive: to what
we can do."
The way we humans have set up our system, we so
easily forget to pay attention
until a catastrophe finally wakes us up. What I
try to teach people is that we could
either practice sacred ecology-change our homes
and our habits-through the
motivation of "doom and gloom," or we could just
think about the type of world
we're creating. We have a joyful opportunity now
to co-create a world where birds
sing and grass is green and water is pure and plentiful.
We are right in the middle of the earth changes:
they are already happening! Look at
what's going on for the planet, for the species,
with the water, with disease. What's
important is to notice that we are in the middle
of it, rather than get used to it and
accept it. Perhaps in a few years or decades, when
we really wake up to a way of
living in harmony with all things, we will turn
around and look back and say,
"Whow!" We won't believe we could have functioned
in this much pollution and
dysfunctional disharmony.
Because we are habit-forming creatures, we're in
the habit of living in this world as
it is, and don't see that we're already deep in
the apocalyptic process. The Aztecs
say that we are at the bottom of the thirteenth
hell, the lowest that we can get. And
we say, "It's not that bad," The fact is that we
don't see how bad it is because of
our habituation: because we don't know what a truly
healthy, whole, vibrant, alive
way of being can be.
One thing I try to do in my camps is to awaken people
to make an act of power, to
remind them they can empower themselves through
their own personal work, for
their planet and All Our Relations. And secondly,
to make an act of beauty, on
whatever level they can to impact the world, whether
they're teaching a
kindergarten class, or starting a recycling program,
or speaking to a club they belong
to. It's incumbent on them to do this much: I try
to move people into action.
If, in fact, the grave teachings and calendars are
true, that predict we are at the
bottom of this thing, I believe what we need to
do now, in a sense, is literally
bounce ourselves up through action-to really let
ourselves be lifted into another level
of functioning, where in the next many years we
ascent into nine heavens! There is
an energy shift and new input coming in now, in
ways we can't yet decipher.
The Crystal Gong
One of my Nez Perce ancestors says that as the ages
change, at the center of the
universe a great crystal is struck like a gong,
and that vibration is a new sound that
will ring down to fill every one of us and change
us forever. I think it has just been
struck: I see movement at many different underground
levels, just beginning to
bubble to the surface. I believe in the critical
mass theory of powerful movement
and change-that a relatively small percentage of
the mass can shift the totality. It's
like a wave rolling, like an enormous, powerful
force, very gentle and simple, and
yet as it comes rolling in it really begins to
push and tumble things around, like a
domino effect.
My teachers say that if we stand in the light, the
light is shed on ten thousand. One
thing I'm trying to do, again and again, is to
make sure that I'm standing in the light,
and to urge my students in this direction as well!
I believe that the truly profound teachings of humanity
go beyond race and any
specific spiritual practice or philosophy. It literally
comes down to, "Are you in fact
living in harmony, or are you not?" What I'm about
in my life is helping to make a
place for use of remain as a species. We're either
all going to make it across the
bridge to a new time of harmony, or we're not going
to make it at all. This wipes
out the lines of color and creed, and means that
we all need to put our energy
together in a good way to make a difference for
the planet and all life.
I was once told a story about Crazy Horse, who prayed
for a vision of how he
should lead his people when he had gathered thousands
of warriors in the Dakotas,
prepared for a final bloodbath to wipe out the
white man. In his four days of fasting
and prayer, he was told two things, 1) to avoid
creating that bloodbath, and 2) to
give away what his people knew to the oppressor.
And this latter vision has been the
harder lesson for native peoples to practice-it's
so challenging to do this when a
people have had genocide practiced upon them.
However, if we don't do this-share our ways of living
in harmony with one
another-none of us will make it. If we want a place
for our children, we must make
a place for all children. We can't be concerned
just with our own people anymore,
but with all people. What I'm interested in sharing
and developing are those things
that have no "patent" because they are the experience
of all humans living in
harmony.
There's a whole category of things that many people
label as "Indian," that are
simply the ways of the land, the truth of how the
Earth works. They may have been
originally practiced by native peoples, but there
can be no patent on those ways,
because if we are going to have a world that is
workable for human beings, and
sustainable systems, we all need to learn and practice
those Earth ways.
I have a Celtic ancestry, too, and I know that the
Irish and Scots were the "Indians"
of Europe. Their land ways, their understanding
of trees and plants and herbs, all of
hose primary earth-based systems, ritual, ceremony,
and magic were incredible
suppressed. It thrills me to see people looking
back and discovering the very same
knowledge, the same herbalists and medicine women,
and the same caring for their
environment, in their northern European roots.
It can be very useful and exciting to clear ourselves
in meditation and really call on
our ancestors. This is not ancestor worship, but
rather ancestor communication. A
shamanic practice can begin to emerge through this
communication, no matter who
you are, because when you start to drop back into
your ancestors, as soon as you
go beyond the human, you're immediately regressed
into the mammalian, into
coyote, bear, wolf, buffalo, and you're experiencing
those energies that are now
identified so strongly in people's minds as "Indian."
This is literally earth experience, where we move
beyond our human selves and
bingo! there we are with the other animals, and
their wisdom begins to speak
powerfully to us. We go on and on, back and further
back,, and all levels of life
begin to speak out to us through varied forms-plant,
stones, etc. When we
communicate openly with those energies, we deepen
ourselves, our wholeness, and
our spirits enormously.
White Buffalo Woman's Law
We are so close to realizing these truthful ways
of living in harmony. One of the
great teachings that White Buffalo Woman brought
was to remind us that Creator
made us as one whole: we are one being. There is
no separation, except in our
thinking. So, to journey and make these profound
movements in perception-to open
our perceptions to the truth-is to know that we
are connected and able to
communicate with, and be in harmony with, all things
in the circle of life. This is
really the basic message of a sacred ecology.
From "The Path of Sacred Ecology,"
an Interview with Brooke Medicine
Eagle, originally published in The
Rocky Mountain Spiritual Emergence
Network Times, Vol, 5 No. 2.
