Image by akiragiulia
Usually, a lack of proper spiritual education and moral guidance in a society is a powerful factor that allows the dark shadows easy entrance into clouded human hearts. Uneducated about these dangers, many people are induced with strong compulsive desires, expressed as ego-grasping tendencies that can even lead them to kill.
When you awaken to the possibilities of the spirit, the dark widespread influence makes you feel as if you are inadequate and misadapted in the society, to the point that you may think you are losing your mind. Many go crazy, or may feel as if they are. If they ever surrender in the struggle with the dark forces, they become lost in despair, insanity, depression, and profound neurosis.
Resisting the Dark Forces
On the other hand, a lot of people have an understanding of their influence, and may resist their induced immorality, but will be unable to render these dark forces ineffectual. Due to this, common people usually have a pretty confused spirituality, expressed as a normal life of deep frustration.
Many people, from all professions, are so cynical that they have given up the dream of a perfect society, alleging that history always repeats itself, endlessly, in an inevitable and irrevocable loop, that humanity is bound to wars and suffering and that nothing can be done about it. These people have no true vision. There are apparent liberals who never take real sides, forever arguing that concepts of good and evil are just relative. This is a confused state of mind disguised as open-mindedness.
Lack of a True Sense of Morality
The intellectual fairness of liberals affirms that there can be no absolute laws, even positive ones. These people may eventually become dangerous fools, with their double-talk and their lack of a true sense of morality. For such people, total common sense does not exist, and they may go far out of their way to rationalize and justify even the worst transgression. This is an emotional imbalance and immaturity often seen in the media.
Your original nature, your essence, is genuinely good, for you are primarily a child of the universe. You must, at every moment, affirm your forces of life with a knowledge of your death. True awareness can only happen in listening, touching, dreaming, and opening to the connection of your spirit.
The Problems that Face Society
Generally speaking, the problems that face every society are bound to the dialectic of violence and liberty. Wherever prosperity exists without a true sense of natural measure, we will find all forms of violence, luxury, and a lack of true ethical, respectful behavior.
Wherever there are a few individuals who control the economy, there will exist desperate people in the lower classes. Wherever there is ideology at the root of a society, there will be politics, and politics, per se, are tremendously limited, unless understood as a spiritual incentive. Ideologies claim that they have an answer to human suffering, but they do not. They only present a system of ideas disconnected from true reality and promise theories bound to disintegration.
No ideology can make true changes or true revolutions. Only the heart of the people can do that. Only the internal courage and discernment of true warriors can accomplish this. Although an ideology may apparently mend things for a while, this only lasts until the rotten apple surfaces again from below, from the Earth, and the discontentment of people.
The most "politicized" people I have ever met are Indian people, anywhere on this great continent, because of their innate communal sense. Politics is primarily spiritual. For most natives, everything was and is already lost, so the only thing left is, and has been for centuries, a deep communal sense, a relation to our brothers and sisters. Therefore, our understanding of the Council ways is straightforward, clear, and without double talk, for we know it is important to always speak our truth. We also know it is stupid to try to coerce another to our point of view. If politics has any meaning, it can only be based on a spiritual perception of these principles.
Principles Rooted in the Great Universal Laws
Ideologies are not based on true principles, because real principles are primarily rooted in the observation of the great universal laws. When you carefully observe, you find the same common factors, the same needs for a better life among everyone, whether in Asia, Africa, or America. These common factors extend beyond political parties or religious institutions; in this sense the shamanic ways, teaching true knowledge, go beyond ideas.
Ideologies must not be confused with ideals. Humanity does not need ideologies, but sound human principles grounded on the deepest ideals. The return of the Earth consciousness goes beyond ideologies. It is just a simple fact. Today, a regional problem or war is no longer the problem of the local people. It becomes an international problem for all to see.
Embracing Inward Responsibility
To embrace the inward responsibility of the world's problems within our womb, our being, is the only way we will repel the dark forces obtruding on humanity preventing freedom and the circles of people. It is a fine line, however. This responsibility should not be an excuse to interfere in foreign affairs without first being invited.
The way in which politics are applied in the world's cultures denotes a definite competition of young souls striving for places of superficial power. This is why most people are definitively not interested in the politics of their country.
The way in which politics are practiced (and always have been) creates an accepted form of violence and remains a way to divide the people into different classes or parties, through distinct ideologies bound to structures and cultural modes that alienate those within and without the society.
The Ongoing Wars Inside Each One of Us
There have been approximately 28,000 wars in the last 7,000 years, all over the planet -- big wars and small wars. This reflects only that the war is inside each one of us. Look inside your own negativity. Everyone is fighting internally against someone else most of the time, fighting for their ego interest and unfulfilled desires or beliefs. The only worthwhile war, however, is the one that fights off the biggest enemies of humankind: fear, terror, ignorance, and the stupidity that creates war.
To discern between ideologies and communal, spiritual principles, a true people must have a lucid, precise, and clear mind that sees and understands, without any distortion, the Medicine Wheel of Revelation. To be free of distortion, one must be vulnerable and open, willing to learn, empty of too much intellectual knowledge, without giving up one's particular essence and experiences of life.
Today's actual societies still admit and foment competition, ambition, greed, and violence, without true consideration for the people. Such societies disguise themselves under false morality and dishonest respectability. There is no real order in these societies.
Fear: The Main Entrance for the Dark Forces
What we must understand about human suffering, the hopes and the despairs of entire populations is that we are all responsible for the global human chaos inflicted upon the very sacred being of and on which we live. Whatever you do and think at the office, in your living room, in your deepest thoughts, affects the rest of humanity for good or for bad. Whatever fear you hold is translated as a contracting energy that irremediably attracts the fears of other people in your surroundings and contributes to the massive national and international entity of fear. This is the main entrance for the dark forces.
When every mind on this planet is psychically free from fear, we will see together the door to a perfect society. A perfect society does not imply one that is free from problems. Perfect means rather that there exist the spiritual means for every individual and the community to confront and challenge what the society needs for its growth.
If the universal principles of the Council ways work in a smaller case, such as in a native tribal council of various nations as the Iroquois League of Peace or in thousands of Zapatista communities of the Maya jungle, if the universal principles of the Council ways also work in the larger Council stars of our cosmos, there is no reason why they could not be applied at the intermediary level of this global humanity. We must strive conjointly for this aim.
We can talk on and on about the New Age, the new order to come, and the inspiring prophecies I have shared (see book Dreaming the Council Ways). This can easily become just another bit of intellectual information to add to our collection.
In the meanwhile, there are still millions of people who have no chance to read books or to undertake spiritual education of any sort, and who will never know anything of the wisdom I have shared through these pages. These people (the "lower" classes), with their own intelligence and means, try to survive and live on an everyday basis. They are also bound to the great cosmic influences, however, just as everyone of us is, if not more so. It is there, with them, that we must keep our feet on a firm ground. We must keep our perceptions with those "below," those who are closer to the Earth, who do not have access to all this information that affects the majority of humans on this great orb.
The Shadow Side of Humans: Chaos and Garbage
Even if we are at the edge of a new dawn, expressed as an emerging awakening of the spiritual awareness of humanity, we still have to take a look at the chaos and the garbage we produce in such massive quantities. This is our shadow side as humans. We can see ourselves as an autonomous humanity, taking responsibility for all aspects of life, only if we incarnate here, in our human body and soul. For no one else will take care of the garbage and the needs of everyone.
It is easier to place the responsibility on the great incognito, disguised "other". To be responsible for our thoughts is the first step in taking action for a true, inward revolution. You must feel responsible for everything happening in the world, without morose and pathetic mortification, but in full consciousness. Your own struggling thought, confused being, and competitive behavior create a dissonant energy that is, indirectly or directly, responsible for the disharmony in the field of the Earth, for the wars and the misery of millions of people. When each individual becomes aware of this simple truth, all our educational systems will truly undergo a massive transformation. If it is possible for someone to be spiritual, it can only be in this sense.
Making Changes for the Coming Seven Generations
The majority of people do not care for this, because they do not love their children -- not really. They do not love them for the sake of loving them, for who they are, beings of light, children of the universe. If they truly loved them, they would be moving mountains, effecting revolutions, internal and external, to create a new, organized culture and a different education for the seven generations to come and stop the violence on this great Mother Earth.
Generally speaking, most rich people only want to watch over their own interests, while lower and upper middle classes are essentially lethargic and disinterested, preferring to content themselves with the comfort level they may have reached. Those "below" are too busy trying to find something for their children to eat on a daily basis, not knowing if tomorrow there will be enough. At least these last have a true "excuse". Even in the midst of their great struggle, however, the real claim against abuse will often come from the poorest and most severely abandoned ones, for these are the ones that have "nothing" to lose.
Those below are those oppressed, and oppressed people have always existed in every culture, every country, everywhere around the globe, right now. When I talk of the pain of the Red people or the struggle of the Maya Zapatistas, I am likewise seeing and embracing the larger cultural memory of persecution and despotism of the dark forces that many of you, independent of your origins, may still carry within, as the same and unique voice that speaks into our human blood.
This article was reprinted with permission
from the publisher Samuel Weiser Inc.
©2000. http://www.weiserbooks.com
Article Source
Dreaming The Council Ways: True Native Teachings from the Red Lodge
by Ohki Siminé Forest.
Integrates the matriarchal teachings from Canadian Indian, Mongolian, and Maya roots to create a written manifestation of these early cultures. Ohki Forest invites you to grasp the true universality of these symbols and traditions, to combine their ancient knowledge, to live the council way today. She provides practical information about shamanism, power animals, and includes charts that offer guidance for Spiritual Warriors so you can handle both worlds. This book links sacred Earth ways with the indigenous vanguard of social justice.
Info/Order this book. (Also available as a Kindle edition.)
About The Author
Of Canadian Mohawk descent, Ohki is a vision-holder & spiritual teacher who has lived in Chiapas, Mexico since 1985 where she collaborates with indigenous Mayas through her organization, Red Wind Councils (www.redwindcouncils.org).
Trained and initiated by Maya, Canadian and Mongolian shamans, she has taught Shamanic Earth Ways, Women’s Medicine practices & Spiritual Warrior/ess training for over 30 years in North America and Mexico.
