One of the fiercest and most hypocritical human emotions is envy. A wicked wish from someone who cultivates jealousy and bad thoughts toward you is a great danger. Each time the sender of envy thinks and emits this black emotional thought-entity, he or she targets it toward the unprotected medicine field of a person-receiver, thus creating serious diseases and emotional problems. These bad feelings ally easily with obscure Underworld entities, attacking the person who is the target of the envy. This often occurs within dreams. When the envy is conscious and sent deliberately, the harm is even more terrible, appearing as a sudden illness in the person's life, with no apparent cause.
In most traditions, natives exercise careful demeanor in order to avoid being the target of people's envy. Utmost discretion and true humility regarding one's material and spiritual wealth, even with close friends, is the best guardian. People who constantly show off are not prudent, exposing themselves unnecessarily to all sorts of life's tragedies without knowing it. Obviously, many people are not aware of this, for they continue their pretenses in an unconscious fashion. This seems to be a cultural peculiarity of Western countries.
The majority of people on this planet constantly emit and discharge their bad thoughts and bad words onto anyone at hand. Unfortunately, this is a behavior that is never truly reproached and that is, to a certain degree, accepted in many strata of the society. In fact, this is nothing other than a complete lack of education in these supposedly "cultivated" societies. In the end, everyone sends potential physical and moral harm to everyone else, even through their most intimate feelings and thoughts.
Envious Thoughts Can Cause Illness
Most people are not even aware that their envious thoughts may make someone sick. They constantly unload their heavy temper and negative emotions onto others, instead of assuming and transforming these in their own core. This is one of the ways that the dark forces have filtered into us. By disposing our emotional garbage on others, by getting angry at others, or blaming them, we assume we have freed ourselves of it. However, energies do not operate this way. Not only do we harm others, but, instead of freeing ourselves, we create a vicious circle. And one day our negativity returns to us, at the end of the circle. It returns with more force because it has accumulated all the negativity of others in this process.
To metamorphose such endless absurd attitudes, a warrior's self-control is required, as well as an immediate aptitude for feeling another's moccasins. We must acquire, in our spiritual learning, a discipline that redirects our negativity toward the natural elements. For example, there are countless practices to release negative emotions: by hugging a tree, breathing into the earth, swimming in water, or burning the object of our suffering in the fire. Natural elements hold the power to truly transmute the shaman's human emotional garbage, unlike other humans who are easily entangled in their own negativity. The earth will transform our negativity into inner power, the fire will transmute it into light, the tree will absorb it into its own roots, and water will help us forgive.
Sometimes envy or bad thoughts may try to insidiously enter into our energy field, without piercing through if you are strong. If this is the case, it immediately bounces back to the sender's field, who may in turn become ill. At other times, the envy that took the form of an obscure entity may well discharge itself onto a close familiar of the targeted person. Unfortunately, children are often perfect victims because of their greater openness. It is, therefore, important to bless and smudge your entire family, asking for protection.
Healing and Protecting Against Envy
The native ceremony for healing and protecting against envy involves three consecutive days of alternate fasting and continence observed by all the members. This healing process also invariably requires a physical sacrifice of some sort. The process ends with a sweat lodge and prayer ceremony. Prayers are a continuous part of our life, for, through them, we disclose a profound deference for such rituals of purity. Often performed in a standing or squatting position, a native prayer, as a rule, says what is essential. It may be repetitious, thus forming a chant and inducing a slight trance state. Whatever form the prayer takes, it must always come from the heart center, the seat of love and wisdom. When the heart and faith in spirit are strong, our protection is inevitably powerful. We have prayers and chants for everything that requires our true appreciation of life, even during the hard storms, or even during the eclipse times of our lives.
Ceremonial altars can be erected for various purposes. They provide a telepathic vinculum and a place of focus for the shamans. Altars are the center of the universe for us. They are our cosmic tree, the emergence hole through all the levels of consciousness that are accessible to us. For these altars, any object can be transformed into a sacred element and a power object. One stunning example is the use of Coca-Cola in the Maya altars. The curanderos, or healers, believe that the gas expels bad spirits of the stomach. Therefore Coke is very sacred to them! Knowing what Coca-Cola represents, which has nothing to do with spirit, I can only say that this example expresses the purest magical mind.
I have also observed 100-year-old women healers worshipping plastic containers on their altars, because the durability and non-fading colors of the plastic stands in contrast to their aged and cracked clay vessels! In a native mind, anything is good and can become sacred and precious.
Despite their great humor, old shamans are usually very serious when talking of their conception of illness and the human transgressions that produce it. What they have taught me is primarily that we cannot destroy energy, we can only transform it. In light of this explicit principle, we are all recipients of the stupendous inner potential to self-heal. A good warrior must unveil and reveal this inward capacity. To mature into a powerful healer, however, there are rudimentary precepts of protection that it is imperative to possess.
Daily Practice of a Regenerative Discipline
The daily practice of a regenerative discipline to maintain the amount of energy made available to us by the universe is the distinguishing characteristic of a strong warrior. We are the perfect mirror of the energies into which we tap. We become undifferentiated from the energies with which we merge, whether we use them properly or misuse them through harmful activities. This should be our daily reflection and prayer. Because we function in this way, as a mirror, we must be a perfect receptacle so that we may teach others not to unload their negativity, but to positively transform it through our heart. Our hearts must be, at all moments, the heart of the universe.
The greatest recipe for happiness for native shamans is as simple as breathing in the very early morning. It is a way of living. It is a way to integrate these four daily precepts of wisdom to ensure the perfection of our spiritual warrior within:
- Purify the body and spirit through fasting and the perpetual cleansing of the unbalanced passions, wanting, and needing of your ego;
- Pray to invoke beneficial morning spirits to bless your home within and without;
- Sacrifice to give of yourselves, reciprocally, to the powers, for the magnanimity and abundance of the universe in our lives; and
- Appreciate the magnificence and beauty of the encompassing world, in the same way that children glimpse it at every moment.
Published by Samuel Weiser Inc. (now Red Wheel/Weiser)
©2000. http://www.weiserbooks.com.
Article Source
Dreaming the Council Ways: True Native Teachings from the Red Lodge
by Ohky Simine Forest.
In Dreaming the Council Ways, Ohky Simine Forest shares her infinite vision of bridging the gap between peoples, and restoring the earth to its majesty. Sharing information on power animal guides, dreaming, medicine wheels, and other teachings of the Native American Red Lodge, she attempts to find a common denominator among peoples, and reveal a larger perspective of our spiritual paths, beyond the divisions that pervade our societies.
Info/Order this book. (Also available as a Kindle edition.)
About The Author
OHKY SIMINE FOREST was born in Quebec, Canada to Mohawk and French parents. In 1995, Ohky created the Medicine Center which offers spiritual retreats, sweat lodges, medicine wheel ceremonies, vision quests, and earth burial healings. She makes her home in Chiapas, Mexico, and visits the United States several times a year, giving retreat seminars and conferences. For a schedule or to contact the author, visit http://www.ohkiforest.com/
