~ Mother Earthbeats ~

I would like to share a teaching from my dear freind Paul Ghosthorse, a Spiritual leader in my Lakota Tiospe.Dreaming Your Song
New Life Journal interviews Lakota spiritual teacher Paul Ghost Horse.

By Erin Everett

Paul Ghost Horse is a Lakota ceremonial leader who lives in
western NC and teaches and conducts ceremonies throughout the
country. His spiritual grandfather is Lakota elder and author
Wallace Black Elk, and he continues his family’s teaching tradition
by sharing some wisdom with New Life Journal readers. We are
honored to offer his words.

PGH: Years ago, when my grandfather was a young man, he went
on a hill for hanblecheyapi (vision quest), crying for a vision, and
an Eagle came to him. The Eagle gave him a song, and when songs
are given to native people, it’s always given in ceremony. The
song connects spirit to spirit; and so when the spirit gives us song,
they don’t give it with words. They give it with sound, so the
information is transferred from spirit to spirit, the spirit messenger
of Creation to the spirit of human being, through the medium of
sound vibration. So the Eagle came to my grandfather and gave
him this song, and there are no words in this song because people
fight wars over words and get into theological debate over
meaning, but this song is a song of encouragement for the two-
leggeds, so that they never give up in the struggle to become
human beings. The Eagle said this song is going to fly around the
world, and so this song has been sung in North and South America,
in Europe and in Africa. It’s been sung in Hawaii and Russia. And
it’s the song of the Eagle. There are no words to this song because
it’s still a new song. It’s still in a pure state; it has not been
contaminated with words and impressions about what it means.

As I was told: long ago, there was a people and they lived in a
place of paradise. They were very happy with themselves, and they
lived in the spirit of this garden. They had all they wanted to eat
and they needed no clothes, and everything was fine. And the
Spirit said, “Well, you can have anything in this garden you want,
but don’t eat from my apple tree. This tree here: this one is mine.
You can’t eat from this tree, but all the rest, they are yours.”

So the two-leggeds, being as they are, were attracted to that apple
tree, so they ate from that tree. They blamed the snake and they
blamed woman. But both man and woman were lured to that tree.
The snake was an unfortunate bystander. So the people ate from
that apple tree, and they had an understanding, they had a
knowledge. They knew they wanted to start building, creating, they
wanted to be like Creator. And the Creator was upset and chased
them out of that garden for disobeying, so they left in pain and
guilt.

But they left that place with new eyes to see and they traveled all
around the world with that pain and with that guilt, and they passed
it on to other people like a virus. All around the earth, passing it on
from person to person. Many of them wandered in the desert and
they prayed and prayed and a spirit came, a war spirit. They prayed
to this war spirit, and it gave them success in battle. They learned
technology, and they started drifting away from the earth. They
started traveling around the earth, conquering other people.

This place where we live is Turtle Island. This is our paradise, this
is our place, our Garden of Eden. The Creator never chased us out
of the Garden of Eden. We have not one story in all our history of
disobeying our creator and being punished. If something so
important had happened to us, we would remember. Original sin,
that is someone else’s story. It is not ours. These people who came
with guilt on their soul, they passed that on to the people here and
chased the people here out of the Garden of Eden. They came in
pain and trashed our paradise. It is said that there is a holy land
across the ocean, but this land here is holy and sacred and
everything here is that paradise.

It is still here under the pavement! My Grandfather says that we
are the sixth generation to live beyond the end of the world. Some
people are talking about an Armageddon coming, almost with
relish and enthusiasm. Six generations ago-seven generations
now-the last of the free buffalo were killed and the People were
put in concentration camps called reservations. Everyone was
given a number, registration and pedigree. The prophecies were
that we would be living in square houses and that the earth would
be covered in stone, and so here we are living in that age now
where there are roads everywhere and we can no longer drink from
the earth to cleanse ourselves, and the air itself is dark and smoky.
We are the sixth generation to live beyond the end of the world.
And we are trying to find our way. We are trying to understand
how to live in this life. The hunting is gone, so the new hunting is
in jobs, and we live in debt. We are trying to figure it out, trying to
find our way.

Everyone is born with an instruction in this life. As little children,
we are still connected to that spirit. We are born with an instruction
for what we are supposed to do in this world, the little puzzle that
is our life and how it fits in place. And then we lose our way very
shortly after because of the way we are raised in our society. All of
us are damaged now by the way we are educated and because the
food we eat is tortured and contaminated. This hurts our body and
our spirit.

For thousands of years, we’ve been drifting away from creation
and the original understanding of fire, rock, water and the green.
Those are the four elements in the Lakota way of being. So we
have drifted very far from that place. Where we are going, we
don’t know.

We have prophecies, and they shoot off into the future like an
arrow, but those things can be changed. Everything changes. There
is an old Greek philosopher called Heraclitus who said, “All things
are becoming.” There is an old Stones song that says, “All things
shall pursue,” which means that everything changes. The only
constant in the Lakota way of being is that everything is going to
be different tomorrow. Everything changes. So we sit in the middle
of the wheel; hochoka, we call it. That circle with the cross at the
center. We sit in the center and watch the universe all around us
changing from day to day in this kaleidoscope. Our grandmother,
the Earth, how she is clothed: her dress is white, her dress is
brown, her dress is covered with flowers, her dress is green and is
ever-changing. And our Father in the sky: his robe is blue and he
wears that crown of stars over his head. Knowledge and wisdom:
that is the Earth and the Sky. Grandmother and Grandfather: they
are one and the same thing. In Christianity there is a heavenly
Father. But where is Mother? It is a motherless religion. The
Catholics made Mary into Mother of God. So now who is God’s
father? Jesus becomes son and father? Catholics carry the most
guilt of all.

So when we are born into this creation, we have four parts of our
human soul. In the English way, people ask what is a soul, what is
a spirit? No one knows. They try to count the angels on the head of
a pin. In the Lakota way, there are four parts of the human soul,
and there are no words in the English language to describe those
four parts. And I wonder what information has been lost in the
European way of being, because those people were Earth People,
too. Long time ago, they had their songs and their ceremonies, and
they gave up their songs and their ceremonies for someone else’s.
Someone came in and conquered them and convinced them that
their way was better, their songs were better, their spiritual ways
better, and then they passed that guilt of eating from that tree to
new people. They were convinced that they disobeyed the creator
too.

None of my people ever carried that sin. It was never part of our
being. But it was given to us, and we don’t accept it. That’s not our
history. Our way is the way of the fire, rock, water and the green.
We have our seven ceremonies and four virtues. Buffalo Calf
Woman came many, many generations ago and she brought the
ceremonies and teachings that gave us the option of becoming
human beings. We have a culture that had developed without a
prison system because we had justice. We had no need for prisons.
There was never such a thing as an orphan, we never threw our old
people away in retirement centers because we valued them. We
had a culture that seemed to have no government, yet everything
was orderly. Most native cultures were matriarchal: the
grandmother’s wisdom was respected by the people and had great
influence. Men would hunt and fish and protect their territories,
and they would come into camp, and in every home there was a
woman. And the woman would say such and such happened while
you were away and this and that needs to be done. The men would
meet and say such and such happened while we were away and this
and that needs to be done. So the men, they all felt good because
they decided something.

So, that’s the way of balance. It was never a battle of sexes
between the native people; that’s a contamination from across the
ocean. The women did not want to be men and the men did not
want to be women, but everybody had their own power and
understanding. They were born a certain way and they learned the
power of that way. We are all one, but once we are born, we are
separate in the duality of life, male and female. Men and women
each only see half the circle. Together, we have understanding.

The chununpa (pipe) is bowl and stem, male and female, and when
you put them together, it’s a creation, a creation of the world, a
creation of the universe.

NLJ: Thank you, Paul. You just talked about ways that native
people understand and what people who have become
disconnected from their lineage have lost. Many people are
searching for those ways and desiring that connection to the Divine
and to the world around us, that magical connection that makes the
world more alive. Can you tell us the first steps for reclaiming that
connection?

PGH: Well, I don’t think the way for most of us can be found in
religion because in religion, there is dogma. You have to find it in
spirit. A person can be spiritual and still religious, but it’s still in
your spirit that you have to find this. You have to take the time to
go inside. Start each day with a prayer, something so simple. Just
observe this creation and look forward to this day. Give a little
offering of tobacco or chocolate or a piece of your hair or
something for when you’re beginning the day. Wonder about the
adventure that’s going to be in front of you and the challenges, and
ask for gentle teachings. Be conscious. I think the best way is to try
to be conscious through your day in all the little adventures.
Everything manifests from spirit and goes outward, so whatever
your prayer is for the day, that’s how the day is going to unfold, as
an answer. Whatever you ask for, whatever you project into the
day, it’s going to start coming back. It’s like, you drop a pebble
into a pond and the ripples go out, and in a little while, they bounce
back. So you are waiting for these things to come back. Half of
prayer is listening, so when you make that prayer for your day,
what happens through the day is the listening part. And then at the
end of the day, when you are lying safely in your bed and you
review your day, you look at all of the successes and all of the little
failures, and hopefully there are a few more successes than there
are failures, but the failures are good because you will learn
something. Failure is a good teacher. So you give thanks for that
day.

When a human being is born, they are not complete until they take
that first breath. You know, we come from the elements of the
earth. It makes up our body. There is a spirit and there are angels
that come and help us, and everybody has these spirits, these
angels. They are with us, but very few people use them. Very few
people ask them for help. Everybody seems to have somebody
around them, maybe it’s a great grandmother or someone, that
follows them around and kind of watches out for them. Some
people are kind of dead to this, and they don’t realize something’s
there, but most everybody has had the feeling that somebody has
been present alongside them at certain key moments in their life.
So we thank these spirits, these helpers that are near us, sometimes
with little gifts, maybe sometimes give them a little food or
something like that and encourage them and just say, “Thank you
for watching over me.” So they help you to be conscious.

When we take that first breath with our life, we become something
that has never existed before in the world. That person that is there
looking back at you when you look at your driver’s license-that
person has never existed before, and it has come into being, it’s
living in this robe, this body made from the earth, for a short time.

You have to drop this robe back into the earth. There is another
spiritual place, a spiritual dimension, a spiritual world that
everyone goes to but you can’t take your body with you. You have
to leave that behind because you can’t enter with your body. We
live in a 3-D world, and the spirit place is a 4-D world. The 3-D
has to be left behind and that one part moves into the next and how
you cultivate that life, how conscious you are, determines how
conscious your spirit is in that next life. We know this by the
ceremonies. My grandfather was thrown in a crazy house for
praying and healing, and my father was thrown in jail a number of
times for praying in a land founded on freedom of religion. Back in
317 A.D., Constantine made Christianity a legal religion,
supposedly free from persecution at that time. In 1978, Jimmy
Carter passed the Freedom of Religion Act so native people can no
longer be persecuted for praying. We can legally honor our young
girls for becoming women. We can have give-away ceremonies
again. We openly conduct our Sundance Ceremony.

So when people want to live their day with a consciousness and
listening, that spirit will guide them. And maybe the European
people will find their old songs again, because everybody’s family
had their songs. Everybody’s village had those sacred songs that
connected them to the Spirit. And those things haven’t disappeared
from the earth; they are just kind of lost for now, and people have
to find them again. All things have their song, and it just has to be
dreamed again.

So, that was the short answer.

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Look for future issues of New Life Journal, where we’ll share
tradition of the Inipi, the Lakota sweat lodge, which Paul shared
with our editor Erin Everett.

“Reprinted from New Life Journal.. www.newlifejournal.com”