Living the Dream

The Nootka Holy Women’s society was an ancient beginning matrilineal society. They encouraged people of the village to come to their circle to ask for help with problems. The first time the person came to the circle with a problem, they would go, in turn, around the circle, give ideas and thoughts on the topic and what might be done. The second time the person came to the circle with the same problem, the women would go around the circle and add more ideas and ways to solve the problem. The third time the person came with the same problem, the women would give deeper ideas and thoughts on resolving the issue. The fourth time the person came to the circle, the circle all moved.

Tags: Native Culture by Shewolf
No Comments »

I know little of spirit because I am such an infant at all this.  But I am learning.  Lessons on earth are practical and are lessons we must seek to discover the greater understandings.  This takes a type of discernment we are not typically in tune to. 

This is what I believe:

Once we are fully and cellularly aware that we are not living this life for ourselves, nor are we always in charge of decisions made for us, we can be open to understanding that our choices do affect decisions.  Let me clarify that.  We can make choices but it may or may not affect our destiny, according to a Greater Plan.

It must be very difficult for our guides/angels/Creator to stand back and let us make the mistakes they see we are going to make.  We do have to learn these things for ourselves.  We may need to fail because failure is the mother of success.  We will eventually get it right through a process of trial and error.

We question Spirit in our lives when our mind is fueled with anger, love, hope, fear, desire, anxiety.  We begin to feel either too confident or too scattered in these pulsating emotions.  The bottom line is that we do not, do not, know who we are in the Grand Scheme of things.  We have to learn to be true to the moment without giving ourselves away.  Spirit is not stronger than we are nor are we stronger than spirit.  Both spirit and ourselves are strongly entwined and wholly interdependent.  That being said, we are then responsible to see spirit in all that happens to us, in all that we choose to do, in all that we dream to do.

Sometimes it does not feel as if spirit is all-abiding.  It is, but it is  fragile.  We are products of civilized society, a modernized world, and those worldly thoughts get in the way of our recognition of spirit’s movement in our lives.  Sometimes spirit is an aggrieved witness to how we sabotage ourselves.  We often shake our fist at society because we no longer feel a true connection to spirit and realize that what happens is meant to happen because of our own choices and the place we need to come to in the end.  We are mutated beings because of the world we live in.  We have become divorced from the perceptions that we are still one, spirit and the “I”.

Spirit can not be incised or driven away.  It is there, sorting out understandings.  It lies behind the surface of the world we live in.  It is an intimate connection and one we must work towards being more aware of.  Is the tree aware of its fruit?  Is the fruit aware of its tree?  Yes, there can be separation but always nature makes us one.  The fruit drops and become food for the root of the tree.  The tree topples and leaves its seed upon the ground for new growth.  Our spirits may be toppled by our own axe, but it remains.  The fruit of spirit in us may drop but it gives rise to new ways of seeing spirit as it rises in another way.  In a way, spirit is Nature, in our nature, of our nature.  The Unity is divine.  We have only to know this to have it manifest itself.

We are divinely connected to the spirit world.  We had no choice, have no choice, and will never have choice in that.  We are highly evolved and that is the gift of being human and last earthly creations.  We exist both apart from and in unified cohesion with the surrounding worlds of earth and spirit.
As a child of Creator and Earth, I search to understand the connection of spirit and self. 
In moments of deepest despair and feelings of abandonment and rejection, I have a choice t make.  I can either see it as a spiritual event or an earthly event.  If I see events as spiritual, then I will accept that there is a greater lesson and a greater plan than I am immediately aware of.  It is then, if I accept that I am a spiritual being having an earthly experience, that spirit manifests itself into my earthly consciousness.  From spirit we came, and in the end, and earthly life is over, we are left with spirit.  Know it and you know yourself.

© Carol Desjarlais.  January 19, 2006.

Tags: Journal Blog by Shewolf
No Comments »

I have seen your one step in front of the other,
raised signs, like banners,
fists like flagstaffs, fingers folded
into might and right
to poke at the graying sky
that suckles on a malevolent ocean.

Water gulped the Ninth Ward,
and faithful rowed to Superdome,
swam to Convention Center,
waded to a promised land,
waited on indigo islands for a nation
they believed, in their hearts,
would save them.
Stunned, sad brown eyes,
rolled their dead dreams
against walls that have always been here,
thirsting for a truth
tried by justice and jargon.

Account and count is taken.
A city, overcome with promises
waits in stagnating pools of peace
for Right’s religious fervor
but governor gets a new office
while sticks of homes mold
in miserable muddy mentality.

In firm faith, Neigan says,
“At the end of the day,
this city will be chocolate again.”
White, Hispanics, black,
hungry and homeless
march and mention King
who would have haunted
the sidewalks and steps
until someone listened
to the sound of feet and fists
flailing in an ocean of angst.

I step into the march with you,
fist curled around a pen.

Tags: Poems by Shewolf
No Comments »

The things we women do
be beautiful.  Beautiful,
as crystal’s chorus,
sounds of saline,
dripping in the veins
fetal swoosh of heartbeat
spelling out stories
in the bearing down
clenched palms of your hands.
Stories like moving straw
to give birth,
pushing weeds and babies
into different places.
Bearing the jugs
of scavenged things
makes you stand tall, woman.
Tall woman, no matter height
or weight or size of bust
or belly or furrow of brow.
Tall as following a song
you hear in your sleep,
arms reaching out;
a stumbler in dark places,
to be wakened, amazed.
Wakened.  Kissed awake
by ordinary smiles
and whispers, My Love,
sharp elbows and backs
in your bed.  Whispers that bid you
crawl through the bitterness
to light candles on a cake,
candles on the altar,
candles at your bath.
A name and a blessing,
Eve, Mary, Joan, you are
to the bright eyed child
who suckles at your breast.
A heart, kneeling alone,
Are you, left amongst the axing
That you stood up against;
like a pine, alone, I say,
with tears sluicing to earth
to give time to unbend and rise
give horizon to small things
and place for the moon to rest.
Oh, the things we be
be beautiful.

Tags: Poems by Shewolf
3 Comments »

Those things come from dark woods
bats and things hanging
like ropes and drug things
looking at the backs of heads
drinking from spitted fountains
walking in backwards
dropping to backs
like poisoned flies.
Oh, yes, those things come from that.

Cracks in the earth
uncover bones of nightmares
rusted flesh, red, bloodlet earth
striped like a broken back
bent to capture white fluff
for someone else’s dreams.
Oh, yes, those things come from that.

Things lying foot to rail
going to heaven feet first
with a fistful of beliefs
pulled through the veil
to be slipped down
after dark, on soft winds.
Oh, yes, those things come from that.

It all sweetens things
re-scripts the tumble down fear
that he took the dream with him
but, light fell on the shadows
and I exchanged my dangling dream
for the freedom of entering his.
Oh, yes, those things come from that.

Tags: Poems by Shewolf
1 Comment »