THE BOSTON GHOST DANCE OR HOW I LOST MY ARROGANCE Approximately ten years ago I lived in Boston. For me, it was a wonderful adventure. At the time, I was keeping my wife (now divorced) company while she finished her graduate degree at Emerson College. So, for a year I worked, wandered, and played in the fields of intention of that big city. I was a featured intuitive reader and spiritual healer at a long established bookstore and healing center called The Unicorn Bookstore. My tools as a psychic were honed to razor sharp in many ways while I lived there; Boston is a very old world and new world mix and the energies are challenging to say the least. --If youre a psychic, Boston is the If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere sort of town that will either embrace you or eat you up, depending on how personally you take the daily onslaught of negative energy thrown at you by unhappy people in a big, noisy, crowded, sometimes dirty, metropolitan city. Neutrality and amusement are the key to psychic survival there...and if you are to thrive, you must be humble; willing to change...and so this is how I lost my arrogance: One beautiful Sunday in late spring, my wife and I were out strolling in a more green part of Boston, near Summerville, when I heard a low thumping, rhythmic sound. --I thought to myself, This is not a sound I would normally hear in a city. I walked toward it and began to recognize that strange, out of place sound...it was the drum beat of Native American drummers at a pow-wow. I have lived much of my life in and around Native people. For part of my childhood, I grew up in Cherokee county Oklahoma and lived in the capital of the Western Cherokees; a town called Tahlequah. Many of my friends are Native people and in Tahlequah, everybody has a little Cherokee in them (supposedly I do as well, according to my genealogist Mormon Uncle...I guess he, of all people, would know). In Tahlequah, native culture is alive and thriving. People; dark-skinned full-bloods, halves, and all degrees thereof, participate in the Nation and culture. The local cultural center is a pilgrimage and haven for many, and if you want to talk Pow-wows, Tahlequah has plenty, and they do it right! Feathers and bells, talented, beautiful dancers, music, vendors, sacred dances, open dances for anyone to join in the circle, fried bread, Indian tacos and take your hat off unless it has medicine, children and old people, laughing and smiling. --and the drummers, oh my friend, let me tell you...sometimes...if you have a group of drummers who are spiritual people, practiced with medicine, who know how to channel Divine energies...well then, you are in for a real treat. --Slip in close to them but dont attract attention to yourself, be neutral and let the sound of the drum and their amazing voices wash over you. Be open. If you have a group that knows what they are doing, you will receive a huge healing. --It will feel like you are just getting the chills, but I assure you it’s not just the chills...it is the Divine Feminine; sometimes in churches it is called the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost. Whatever it is, let it wash over you and you will go home a different person. It was with this Oklahoma background of mine and with expectations of a beautiful big Pow-wow, I excitedly rushed to the Boston park where the sound was getting louder and louder, I turned the corner to see a site that did NOT meet my expectations: It was a pow-wow alright but it was a miserable one. A huge circle in the park had been cordoned off but it was mostly empty. The Pow-wow had a very small turnout. In a circle that couldve easily held 300 people, there were only 10 or 15 dancers. It looked quite pathetic to me. The costumes they wore were not entirely traditional, and the dancers were very light-skinned, in fact, many of them looked whiter than me, and I must tell you, I am indeed a Yoneg Chooch! (Cherokee for White boy). With a lot of judgments, I stood at the edge of the ring observing this lousy spectacle; white people dressed up like Indians, prancing around like they deserve to be a part of this culture. As far as I could tell there was only one darker skinned native person there. My judgment about this came partially from the good people of Tahlequah. In Tahlequah, for over a hundred years there has been infighting amongst the people about who deserves to call themselves a Cherokee. Does a full-blood have the right to call himself more Cherokee than a half-blood or a quarter? Where do we draw the line? And if we do draw a line, have we just created a caste system? My amazingly talented friend and artist mentor, Murv Jacob is not a full-blood but has done so many beautiful things over the years and helped many people to appreciate Cherokee culture, yet because he is not a full blood he has received much harassment and prejudice in his time there....all this infighting comes from fear of course. Fear of resources, fear of identity, poverty mentality, power struggles, racism and generational biases...this is an insidious energy that perpetuates separations and breeds judgment. This is the judgment I had picked up and was holding in my heart toward this weak version of a pow-wow. It is hard to describe myself in that moment. I watched the dance come to an end and a very white, bald man in native costume walked up to the dark-skinned man with long, flowing black hair and shook hands with him; the two were happy to meet. My attitude was, oh boy, youve got to be kidding me. Im used to big pow-wows with lots of dark skinned legitimate people dancing...” In that moment, I was in my body but a part of me was not, part of me was outside my body observing my arrogant judgment. The drums began a new song and seven or eight lonely dancers filed into this huge over-sized ring. –However, just then, I felt something tap me on the shoulder and in my right ear I heard a gentle voice say Enka, shift your vision. --for a moment, I was so caught up in arrogant judgment that I forgot I was psychic… What happened next was a powerful life changing moment for me; suddenly the circle was no longer barren. It was filled with HUNDREDS of native people in costume all of them in spirit, dancing along side the lonely seven or eight in a body! The realization, the sudden vision of this, overwhelmed my senses. Chills ran through my body and any little bit of judgment or arrogance was immediately pulverized to oblivion. Suddenly, instead of arrogance and judgment, I felt humble, I felt grateful because I knew that what I was seeing was real. I felt pure joy, I felt as if spirit was gently knocking me on the head like a loving father reminding his mischievous child to behave. I felt lucky to be alive, lucky to be there. I felt this all in my heart, powerfully. I stood at the edge of the ring watching both the dancers in bodies and the dancers without bodies moving to the rhythm around the circle. Occasionally one of the spirit dancers would notice me watching them. I next “saw” a medicine chief. He wore an outfit that looked Plains Indian and had a feathered bonnet. He was inside the ring with the dancers but was making his way to the humans in bodies standing just outside; one by one, the people standing at the side of the ring who were watching the seven or eight dancers, were receiving a healing/blessing from this spirit chief. He had some kind of substance in a small pouch that he would take out and sprinkle in front of the people as he said a small prayer of blessing for each human. I watched him from the corner of my eyes slowly make his way to me. Finally, he stood in front of me and reached into the pouch, with his thumb and two fingers he held up the powdery substance and began say the prayer…but then he noticed me looking at him. He moved as if slightly startled. He did not expect to find a human clairvoyant “looking” at him. He said, “Can you see me?” With a grin I replied, “Yes, I can.” He thought about this for a moment, nodded and said, “Don’t tell them we are here.” I replied, “Okay, I won’t.” He continued with the prayer/blessing. I felt the energy step up. I felt clear and happy. A moment later a warrior who was dancing by leaps and bounds landed in front of me and repeated, “Don’t tell them we are here” I replied, “Don’t worry, I won’t.” I watched this marvelous spectacle for a long time, native people in spirit from all kinds of different tribes, all together, all holding the space for healing and helping. --There really is no judgment in spirit. I began to realize that the “white” dancers were just as legitimate as the dark-skinned dancers and I purged the last of my judgment about it. Many of these light-skinned people are the descendants of the eastern bands whose people were decimated by disease, or avoided being removed to the west on death marches. Because so many of their own people were gone, they had no choice but to love people and have children with the only people around: immigrant Europeans and their children. These light-skinned people are the descendants of native people and are loved just the same by their ancestors as any other people. –We love our children just the same, no matter what color they come in don’t we? Spirit is very much the same; all love, all acceptance, all are included. On that day, I was humbled in a most gentle way by spirit. On that day, my arrogance died. .
Posted on: Sat, 05 Jul 2014 01:52:09 +0000
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