Lillooet, B. C. January 8, 2022
Dear Readers, here is a third set of meditation reflections. As stated in an earlier post, it must be born in mind that just as when descending a mountain, the tiniest degree of change in direction translates into a very large difference down at the base. The benefits of meditation are like this and I do not intend my letters to give a false impression that huge buckets of instant beneficial change will shower the practitioner. Rather, I do want to spread the true simple message that if you can heal by even the slightest amount the way you perceive and think, and calm the frightened horse in your mind; you will certainly see real big change for the better in your life going forward and in a way that grows exponentially. In stillness you will adjust your course. In motion you will have already arrived on a happier road.
In the arena of my motion or direct action, I can tell you in this post that I have two sisters and both of them were traumatized and suffered abuse in childhood as I did. In some of the same ways and also in unique ways in both their cases. I have had a deep desire for my whole life to learn how to help them but never felt equipped to do this in a way that went beyond the usual. Until now. We are all parents, all grandparents and all growing old. None of us three have ever really lived fully or freely in exploring our potentials. This cannot stand. Here is a letter I sent each sister recently to explain what I have done.
Lillooet B. C. January 2, 2022
Dear Tina and April, Sisters,
Please read this letter and the excerpt from my essay, The Kybalion of Seuss before pondering the bundles (pajos) inside your envelopes. I have made a “big medicine.” Big, in that it has been sixty years in the making. I know it is time, I know I have done it correctly and I know it marks the end of victim-hood and of brings the responsibility of full adulthood with it. It solemnizes the end of childhood, which in all three of our cases were “amputated with less regard than one has for swatting a horsefly.”
In my case, a very sad, very angry, very young spirit boy has dogged my steps all my days and marred my efforts and relationships. I never knew how to “lay him to rest” until now. Now I know how. I am not smart, rather I have been blessed by being shown. I imagine you both have similar entities whether you have been aware of it or not.
The truth is, that in all cultures (even white complected ones, if you travel back in time) there are ceremonies marking the proper dignified passages into adulthood, marriage, parentage, old age and death. NOT in the cultural vacuum façade we grew up in. Even if we had had enviable childhoods this dignity has been denied us. In our cases there are open wounds that have never healed. They WILL leave scars, but beautiful scars like a bonsai tree bears. They needn’t, however, stay open and septic.
I awoke on January 1, 2022 with the entire assemblage you hold in your hands in my mind’s eye and in my heart with all the ingredients and how to assemble them. Inside of the bundles are herbs collected by me 14 years ago from all over Texas. The tartan is my favourite shirt of the past 30 years, that has been in, on and through everything that I have been in, on and through. I don’t like it, I love it. Along with the Tejas herbs are some herbs and seeds from here where I live and a few symbols I have chosen to represent our childhoods, which we are honouring and also laying to final rest.
The bags are sewn shut, please don’t open them. They are medicine. I have smudged and spiritually purified all the properly gathered ingredients and I have smudged the finished bundles with smudge given me by some lovely St'at'imx twin sisters. I have sent you each your own smudge to cleanse yourselves with. Light the tips and waft some over your head.
The bundles are to be buried in a wooded or flowered area of your own home properties. About a foot or a bit more deep with a rock that you feel drawn towards on top. As with a beloved pet’s grave, you should be happy to see it when you are out in your garden, after your natural grieving time, if any.
In my case, there will be no more grief. I will smile every time I see it. This action is just that, ACTION. The things we cannot see or touch that plague us so and the one thing overarching all that sends unimaginable blessings, responds to action and intent. I am your brother and I vouch for my intent in the making of this medicine. Take a picture if you want but you must bury the bundle and let it go back to Earth as the spiritual follow through.
You will see a change start working immediately, if subtly. A one degree shift on the ocean equals an entirely different destination and set of experiences along the new way. I look forward to seeing both you lovely women on the new roads we are going to tread. After receipt, call me, call each other and if we can and want to, we will go on the same day. We don’t have to but we could. Let me know and ask anything you want to ask. Now, the excerpt I mentioned...
"It was during that chaotic time back on my home street that I went to my first garage sale. I only bought two items. One was a worn blue cloth bound Dr. Seuss book entitled Thidwick The Bighearted Moose and the other was an eight pound hickory-handled sledge hammer.
That Texas garage sale afternoon, I hauled a railroad tie from the tracks nearby and collected a bucket of rusty spikes. I installed the tie in my back yard by scratching out a little trench to keep it from jumping. There, in the spiritual company of the men like my Swedish grandfather who shovelled coal on ships, laid tracks across prairies and plowed fields; I hammered spikes and sang up the old songs. There was no one around to roll their eyes or laugh at me. I watched the neighbourhood boys coming home crippled and addicted from Vietnam, hammered a little harder and took to smoking Bull Durham. The endorphins released by the exercise were a balm. I wasn’t conscious just then of what I was building. I only knew I had to get it done.
I realized several years ago that added to the other variables by which we perceive that which is immutable; the degree and polarity of anything can make us feel better or worse but cannot change what underlies. I recalled those hot afternoons forty-five years ago down in Texas hammering spikes into a creosoted cross-tie. I find the same peace through exhaustion now as I did then. There is a lot wrong with the world and it seems to be caught in an eddy of drug-induced indifference like trash swirling around a bridge piling.
In Lillooet, as a retired old man, I chopped and stacked wood for a week, sweating buckets of salt water. Part of me realized I was fuelling up an invisible engine that would run on a spirit track that I had built as a boy. Childhoods are not meant to be perpetual as popular media cunningly portrays in order to sell more toys. However, the fact is that far too many of them, childhoods that is, all over this world and in all periods of history are amputated with less regard than one has for swatting a horsefly.
They don’t cease to be, for wisdom teaches us that you cannot take away from or add to what already is. All there is, is all there is, was or will be. So, somewhere out there, perhaps in the space that used to be occupied by my big fir tree, runs a slow moving freight. The boxcars are clean and the doors are open. The ladders are made of polished hickory and are easily scaled. Like a recurring dream, the train is always moving away from harm regardless of where one boards it.
It is full of childhoods of every description and as they naturally ripen, they each arrive at exactly the place where they precociously jumped on board. There, while their friends watch from the slow rolling platform, they surrender their cocoons within the dignity of a voluntary ceremony. You know, the way primitive people used to do. On that ground, they cast off their antlers and disperse their parasites.”
"And then", to quote T. E. Lawrence, “And then the little things creep out to patch themselves hovels in the marred shadow of those gifts."
~~Now, the third set of Meditation Reflections~~~
Reflections on Guided Meditations or Bobcat Logic for Meditation Hesitancy (3)
Dec.16, 2021
How does mindfulness settle your monkey mind?
By teaching me to take my own cognition less seriously. By realizing a broader arena to observe my thoughts from. By helping me see the truth that I am not my thoughts. By reminding my mind to honour the vessel that transports it and bears the consequences of its actions.
Dec. 19, 2021
How do you comfort yourself in times of loneliness?
By reading, creative work of all kinds, writing poetry, listening to Welsh triple harp music, taking walks and doing anything that helps me get to know myself. I used to chain smoke Drum tobacco but I ceased almost two years ago after forty-five years of daily use.
Dec. 21, 2021
What do you want to realize or invite into your life? Why?
The ability to see with the eyes of the spirit, to think with my open heart, to speak the truth, to be a medicine for others, to experience my own emotional healing, to witness the healing of my family. I want to experience the benefits of the gifts I have been given, free from self-doubt, self-sabotage and other acquired destructive patterns. I want to be remembered by those I encounter as a man that I myself would admire. I want to find my own true earthly home before I die and to recognize that I have arrived there. I want to realize that I can live well, rather than merely survive. I want to leave behind my best thoughts in written works for my offspring and friends. I want to have the courage to live as I see fit, rather than warp myself into the imposed modes of people who follow dogma. I want the courage to assert my world view as being worthy rather than always seeking acceptance and approval from others. To sum up: I want to realize courage, healing, dignity, integrity and abundance.
Dec. 24, 2021
Who can you extend compassion to today? How?
My son, Miggy. I can do this by video-phoning him and talking. By letting him know that he is not alone. By letting him know that I also struggle with mental/emotional issues. By encouraging him to walk forward into better circumstances and to seek guidance for his particular issues. I also want to extend compassion to my wife. By talking to her about her concerns regarding our son.
Dec. 26, 2021
How will you prioritize your rest today?
It’s minus 20 degrees Celsius today, so I will prioritize my rest by staying in my long-johns and relaxing.
Dec. 29, 2021
What joyful thing would you do if this day was your last?
Make a gumbo!
Jan. 1, 2022
What areas of your life can you approach with more openness this year?
I can approach with more openness, all of my existing relationships and any new relationships. I can be more open in my healing and that of others. I can be more open to the Yang force and in cultivating gentility in my treatment of myself and by this practise, to others as well.
Jan. 2, 2022
Tap into a sense of pure possibility. What are your hopes and dreams?
I dream of the possibility of being a conduit of healing power. I dream of attaining full expression of my self-hood.
Jan. 4, 2022
What can you see, feel, hear, smell and taste in this moment?
I can see: Indian corn hanging on my wall, Dusty Bones, Esq., my cat, sleeping, a Welsh Mabinogion inspired weaving on the bed, my medicine stick mounted on the wall, my wife’s blue hat perched on a lamp-shade.
I can feel: My chest hair, Dusty’s Winter coat, low thread count cotton sheets, tennis elbow from chopping wood and website work.
I can hear: High Winter wind, digital crickets and the tarp flapping on the wood-pile.
I can smell: Wood-smoke and sandalwood soap from my shower.
I can taste: Cayoosh Creek water from my tap.
Jan. 4, 2022
When you turn inwards, what do you learn about yourself?
I can tap the wisdom of my DNA, the whispers of all my ancestors. I feel more keenly, that the feminine soul that graces my physical body is genuine. I am resilient. I have been hampered by abuse and neglect in my childhood. I am a very strong person and I will rise above negative control conditioning.
Jan. 6, 2022
What emotion lies beneath your cravings? What might you really need?
I believe the main emotion underlying my life to date has been anger with frustration and sadness woven into it. Chemically, I think this triune looked like depression and I naturally sought relief by self-medicating. I sought relief from the frustration of being non-neurotypical and from being forced to live and act in a way that others found more comfortable. This cultural bias exacerbated my childhood trauma.
As to what I might really need:
First, I need to tell my story. I am actively doing that on my website, Artemisia.
Secondly, I need to heal mental and psychological wounds. I am attempting this by using techniques learned from the wonderful humans at Calm.
Third, I need to help heal my sisters and my sons. I am attempting this by sharing what I am learning about mindfulness and by regular dialogues. I am also taking the initiative to make a ceremony for our truncated childhoods and our premature entries into “adulthood.” This, I am doing in the Texas Cherokee Way.
Fourth, I need to find my rightful “work” in this life. To this end, I am learning to love myself and to behave in such a way that shows it. I am taking the teaching of gentleness deep within, to prepare myself for this last phase and to be worthy of what comes along next.
Far from fin