I have yet to begin to understand in a deep way the experiences I engaged with while on the hill those four days. What we call the Spirit World is just that - a world where the spirit presents. How we understand what we have named "spirit" is even more different than what I perceived.
Personal experience has value. The subjective, in some ways, is all we can count on to identify meaning within a seemingly random combination of biology, matter, and energy in cyclical patterns on a space/time continuum. Anomalies occur in the patterns and what then can we draw upon from which to create substance? We must attach personal meaning.
When personal meaning aligns with the personal meaning of others, we find religion or science or connection. Sometimes we find something close to Truth.
There is nothing so satisfying as finding a Truth. For me, these junctures of common personal meaning and experience grant an oasis from doubt and fear.
The star nation is a vast place to venture. There is nothing and everything there. Space is indeterminable, depth of field imperceptible, and time is endless. It is simply beyond the imagination except in the context of the personal meaning we attach to it.
Rarely do we have the opportunity to witness the similarity in construction of jawlines between species seemingly unrelated. The snake, the crocodile, the horse, the dinosaur - all long, parallel jaws.
The medicine of the sunka has shown the relationship between us and them. Loyal, compassionate, protective; as if one of us in family units. This teaches us ultimately to be more like them.
There are sometimes no words for these things we witness there. No words even for prayer. No words needed for prayer. Our words sometimes satisfy our ego's sense of importance upon the happenings of this world. But when the source of the prayer comes from the heart, words are unnecessary. There is an instant conduit created from here to there. To what we may call God. To where we pray. Instant. The moment that happens, we feel it. The prayer thought is different than the prayer itself. The channel does not close because the thought stops. So, prayer is instant and constant with the presence of heart in the absence of words. The words satisfy us, but the prayer is not the words.
In this way, visions and ideas work together as well.
The horses help the children. (I say this for myself.)
To stand on one's own in the face of the Spirit World - we say in the face of the Creator - we say to go there to the altar to die - one must surrender and freely give away the brittle, shallow den that holds our attempts to control, predict and make sense of our lives and others' lives. The barrage of imaginary outcomes and dialogues we use as protection against the unknown only serve to delay our recovery and rediscovery of something akin to peace of mind, acceptance, compassion, humility, gratitude and love in its most precious existence. Its rare, precious existence.
Can we dance together?
Sometimes we can dance together and sometimes we can't. The metaphor applies. Finding one who is willing to dance with you in terms which expand rather than contract is precious. Sometimes we have to let go. Sometimes the letting go gives both the opportunity to expand.
Remember the fire. (I say this for myself.)
It speaks.
The faces of the Spirit World are faces we recognize because this is what is familiar to us. When we look at a stone and see a face and it smiles one second and frowns another, it is showing itself in a way we can recognize. Does the stone's spirit show itself to a raccoon as a raccoon face?
For now, at this time, I'm finished writing.
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