How to Turn Pain of Today’s World into Gold.

Native American tradition gave me a simple but effective key.

The news haunted me. I felt trapped in someone else’s movie. Then I read about the Native American approach to Covid.

“Indigenous peoples don’t always need to go and explain what happened, why it happened,” says the Reverend David Wilson, a Methodist minister in Oklahoma City and a member of the Choctaw Nation. “We just know it’s there.”

Wow. Refreshing. They deal with it head-on. It is what it is. Let’s get going. No time wasted on speculation, regurgitation, conspiracies, and doom. I could get used to this.

Don’t think they’re speaking without experience. Covid has hit the Native American community hard, particularly the roughly 50% living on reservations. Low income, high rate of diabetes, heart disease, and multi-family dwellings create a perfect Covid target.

Lesser-known factors pile on more risk, like living without electricity or running water. 10% of Navajos on the reservation are without electricity. And as much as 40% have to haul their water and use outhouses.

I hate washing my hands every two minutes and I’d love to have an excuse not to do it, But, I’m happy to not have this one. Humbling.

Look for the gold.

Yet still, they turn the virus on its head and seek the blessings. Their cultural resources help: living with traditional values, deepening their connection to nature and to each other, calling on their capacity to persevere.

And most importantly they seek a deeper meaning.

“We’re taught not to think of nature as separate,” explains Tiokasin Ghosthorse, and that includes COVID-19. “The coronavirus is a being,” he says. “And we have to respect that being in an ‘awe state’ and a ‘wonder state’ because it has come to us as a medicine” to treat spiritual ills.”

Awe and wonder. Wow again. So different from — it’s a war! Kill it! Beat it! Duck and cover

Now, I’m not going to invite the virus in for a cup of tea. Or a couple of tequila shots, which is more its style. Boilermakers maybe. But If Covid had a voice. What would it say? Probably something like what Ghosthorse said next.

“Nature “has been listening to us not listening to her,”

He’s not talking about cute pictures of animals meandering around cities and lower pollution levels. Those are already yesterday’s news. He’s talking about integrating nature into everyday life and what that offers us.

“Living in harmony with Mother Earth is a lot of work,” says Bastida, director of the Original Caretakers program at the Center for Earth Ethics in New York City. “but it can be done by reviving the indigenous idea that humans serve as caregivers of nature… producing food by hand, finding medicine in plants, animals, and minerals, and performing rituals and ceremonies that send prayers to Mother Earth.

Ay Hamlet therein lies the rub. I’ve been a city dweller all my life. I’d like to believe I can do this. I’d also like to believe I would’ve saved people from the Nazis. I have no idea if either is true.

If I’m honest, I’m a cheerleader — rooting from the sidelines but not in the game. And, if I’m even more honest, I’m not sure I even want to do it. Hypocrisy, how deep it runs, hidden in the dark spaces.

Then something came to me. I recycle, compost, buy organic, have a low pollution car, etc. etc. etc. But those are outcomes. If we only do stuff, we’ll never get there.

Like the leaders in the article say, you have to feel it, be it, live it. If you change, things around you will change. And that’s how the world can transform one person at a time.

I searched for a key to it all and what came to me was — Connection.

Connection to self. Connection to each other. Connection to the Earth and nature. Connection to the Sacred.

Most indigenous populations believe that everything connects to everything. As Grandmother Sasa said,

“We have to care about others. You know, the grass, the trees, the plants, the air, the water — all are extensions of ourselves. And they teach us.”

Their spiritual practices unite the Native Americans with the place they live, the planet, and the cosmos. They belong.

Everything is interwoven, part of a whole. If you take something out and don’t replace it, you make a hole. If you pull on a string you make a knot or unravel something. It happens with the planet, with other humans and inside ourselves.

Western civilization talked itself out of this a long time ago. We are alone. This is scary. We’re forced into survival mode. We rush around and never notice what we’re a part of or even consider we are a part of something larger. Living in our little boxes we forget.

In our delusion of separateness, we don’t see the dots as connected. Creates rather a mess.

What to do? What to do? What to do? Pick a connection point and start.

NATURE

I started with nature. Aside from cockroaches and mosquitoes, I’m cool with nature. It’s not going to hurt my feelings, seems easier than looking at myself and more tangible than the sacred.

Whenever I’m out, I stash the phone and look around. It’s harder to feel unconnected when I find beauty. I’m a big fan of flowers that grow out of nothing, cracks in the sidewalks, holes in a wall.

I zero in on the small stuff. Take a close look at a clump of moss one day. It’s a tiny universe.

But I don’t take photos; I have the experience.

I lie on the earth when I can and remember: I need the Earth, it does not need me. I take in its support. I offer my thanks. Trees are great for this too. You can always trust a tree.

I follow the phases of the moon, the changes of season to be in the cycles of waxing and waning, growth/harvest/fallow times. It helps me to step away from — GO! GO! GO! GO! More! More! More!

My favorite ritual to honor the Earth is putting food out for wild creatures. A group of hedgehogs swings by my place nightly. I’ve even seen foxes and weasels. All in a Parisian suburb. I’m expecting elephants any minute now. Won’t my neighbors be surprised. Peanuts for everyone!

PEOPLE

Next up my extended human family. Hmmm, a bit harder. Instead of beauty, I try to look for the goodness in people. Surprising how often you see it when you look for it. We’re so used to filtering reality for what we don’t like. It becomes all we see.

For those humans who get up my nose, you know who you, are, I came up with three possibilities. Going from best to not so great…

I start by knowing their pain is pushing them and find compassion.

If I can’t manage that, I acknowledge I don’t know what is going on or even what needs to go on and find acceptance.

The last rung before tumbling into judgment, anger, and general nastiness is neutrality. I don’t like it; I don’t have to like it. Not my circus, not my monkeys.

If you think you’re immune to this, try an experiment. Go into a coffee shop and when you’re waiting to order, observe people. Notice the commentary your mind starts to all on its own. It can be terrifying. My café latte grande certainly opened my eyes.

So many people have been through difficult even horrible experiences. From the outside, you’d never know. Go to humansofnewyork.com. It’s a haven of people’s invisible stories.

Clearly, my batting average is variable. Inside me there’s darkness and then a bunch of stuff I don’t know what the hell to do with.

SELF

Which leads me to my connection to me. My connection to myself is based on exactly those two things: discovering/integrating my darkness and finding/living my gifts. If I can do that, I figure the ‘what the hell is it’ stuff will work itself out.

This is cool. My failures with others give me a chance to look at myself. Starting to build something here, but it takes time, effort, and getting over myself. Nature is a whole lot easier.

THE SACRED

Last one folks, the connection to the sacred. How are we doing so far?

Ethnographers wrote off ‘primitives’ as simple and backward. I get the feeling there wasn’t much of a conversation happening. Plus they zapped on something major. You can’t observe the sacred, you have to experience it.

So, time to connect to the sacred. I’m on more solid ground here. I’ve been doing this for a long time. My favorite connection technique is going to sacred sites. But as I don’t have a Gothic cathedral or stone circle behind my building, I use everyday stuff too.

How you do make the everyday sacred? Simple. You say it’s sacred and it is. When you call something sacred you fill it with that intention. Of course, you have to be willing to feel it, meaning you have some connection to it. But you’ll be amazed how something seems much more special by naming it.

It can be a found acorn or feather that you carry in your pocket. It can be a symbol you drew or wove onto a pillowcase. It can be when you look into the mirror. It’s important to remember you’re sacred too. You are not less than.

Yep, the sacred is everywhere, outside us and in us. It’s up to us to open up to it as it’s been pretty much pushed into specified times and places. Sometimes, since we have so little experience with it, we can even think it doesn’t exist.

Try a sacred experiment

Want an experience? Let’s run an experiment. I picked this one up from Stuart Wilde.

Try this: ask the God Force to show you something in the next 24 hours, something you have never seen before — a perception, an intuition, a different way of looking at things that you’ve seen 100 times before.

Then watch carefully. Something unusual will pop up — and you’ll see that the seemingly external world is, in fact, internal. It is talking to you. It loves you in its detached way.

I often do this when I need a lift. I set the challenge yesterday so you guys could see what happens.

Per usual, I’d forgotten about it by morning. This is actually a good thing. Otherwise, my mind is going to hop around like a frog — is that it? It is over here? Does that mean something? Shut up! Jeez.

Got breakfast together and went for the TV. I’d been watching a documentary in bite-sized bits, but I felt too lazy to organize it. When I clicked the TV on, it gave me radio stations.

Now, this is really odd. I am only on that screen when I’ve made a mistake. I backed my way out. To speed things up, I clicked 5 instead of 170 for my favorite breakfast fare, Salvage Hunters. And poof! An image of something remarkably like Newgrange appeared on the screen. Except this was on Gavrinis Island off the Brittany coast.

Et voila! I’d seen something I didn’t know existed and has deep personal meaning.

Note the sequence of events.

There were some nudges — the sense of not wanting to put on the film. A surprise that got my attention — the radio stations out of nowhere, Making a ‘mistake’ — not going directly to the usual channel)

What a serendipity of perfect place, perfect time! The segment lasted 5 minutes, yet there I was in front of it. That’s not just surprising it’s powerful.

Well done God Force! And me. And you for inspiring me to do this.

The way it unfolded is perfect Divine-speak. Be the bird following the breadcrumbs and you will get the whole baguette.

And the message fits right with my life. I’ve been thinking of moving to Brittany. Sacred site experiences are something I would happily do with people. I’m not packing my bags, husband, 4 cats, and visiting 3 hedgehogs yet, but I’m definitely opening the door a little wider on that possibility.

Stuie said it so well so here he is again…

If part of the plan is for you to learn to find the sacred in the ordinary, abandoning your efforts where you are now in order to seek a “better” place will only likely cause you to re-create the same circumstances and relationships at a different location.

A connection to the sacred is something you decide to have. It’s not rare, it’s yours for the asking. So, stay where you are and tune in!

In the sunlight of awareness, everything becomes sacred. Thich Nhat Hanh

Find your own connections…

There are so many ways to do this. Here are a few words to start you off: wonder, openness, mystery, quiet, willingness, intention, awe, testing, knowing, focus. Hold one of those in your mind, as an intention and discover where it might lead you.

In Native American culture, it’s a way of life. Over the confinement they put together a Power Hour to stay connected that is still up and running.

Connection. Is it going to change everything? No. But it’s a way in. It’s important to start with what you want to do and then push into less comfortable territory. This is mine but it’s royalty free! And yours? Let’s connect! Write to me in the comments or directly at [email protected].