Table of Contents
| Preface | | vii |
| 1. | The Visions | 1 |
| 2. | Children of the Great Spirit | 23 |
| 3. | Mother Earth | 50 |
| 4. | The Spirit World | 72 |
| 5. | Animal and Spirit Guides | 102 |
| 6. | Shamanism | 122 |
| 7. | The Fast | 137 |
| 8. | The Owl | 161 |
| 9. | Mind Culture | 188 |
| 10. | Forty Years of the Ascendant Mind | 222 |
| 11. | The Great Story | 278 |
| 12. | Life Story | 311 |
| 13. | Soul Story | 330 |
| 14. | Past Lives | 365 |
| 15. | The Creation in Time | 397 |
Forewords & Introductions
On the first day of the first spring of the new millennium, a minister's son, with a career in big business, suddenly began to have visions. The Creator came not as the Christian Deity, but as the Great Spirit. Then the two became One. What was wrong with civilization?
Events, coincidences, past lives, soul stories, life stories, dreams and spirits began to collide with our civilized notions.
For God to confirm each individually was remarkable. But taken together, the limits of the invisible civilized mind became apparent. God, spirit and reality existed beyond the confidence of modern society; this freedom became a language that challenges our basic assumptions and security. The hidden chains of civilization released. The Original Sin returned to the Original Wisdom. God became obvious. The Creator is All.
What is sleeping in civilization?
Read an Excerpt
For some months I had been talking online with a woman from the Midwestern United States. Her name was Marilyn, and the friendship started randomly on a chat program. We had almost given up on each other a couple of times, but gradually we began to talk regularly.
It was January 2001, and she was heading out of another marriage. I sympathized with her but we didn't dwell on it much, or the rocky lives we had lived. Most of our talk was about the present.
At one point Marilyn offered to tell my future. I told her that I didn't want to know if it was bad. No, she said, it was very bright. My fortunes would turn around and I would be a success in business. That was nice to know, as much as a soothsayer could give. Who knew, but if it was true I'd take it.
Eventually she revealed that she was a shaman. This meant little, outside of being a 'psychic.' I had always believed there was a spirit world, but never had an inkling of it personally. It remained theory, someone else's reality. What did it matter? It was going to happen whether I knew it or not.
I ignored horoscopes for that very reason. Spirituality had never given me any hope. Religion had come up dry, and those who had a 'spiritual' gift had some good stories, but that was the extent of it. It was not a matter of discounting its reality, just its ability to make life better. I avoided the subject as just another interesting concept. We barely broached the subject. Marilyn had become a good friend over the normal things in life, and I appreciated that. We all have our own 'color.'
On the Tuesday morning following the break-up with my girlfriend, I found Marilyn online and told her what had transpired. Marilyn wondered if she herself was going to be alone for the rest of her life. I reassured her she was not, despite her marriage breaking up. Everything had a way of working out.
She asked me if I could 'see' if she was going to be alone. That was her department. I had no capacity for those types of things. She insisted despite my repeated protest. I have no 'sight.' She was the shaman; she should be able to answer those things herself.
Apparently shamans cannot. They can see others but not themselves. Odd I thought. Marilyn kept on me, almost pleading. It was a big concern for her. Sensing the longing, I said I would try, knowing it was useless. But I would humor her.
Closing my eyes, my mind was suddenly in the desert of the American Southwest with one of the mesas in the distance. All of a sudden I heard voices in the direction of the great rock. One voice was louder than the rest. That, I thought, must mean there was someone coming for her. I told her so. For some reason I closed my eyes again.
All the voices in the distance started to come nearer until they covered the sky over me. Millions of them. They were filled with joy and soon the sky surrounded me like rippling water in the sunlight, each sparkle a voice. They were so happy to see me. It was pure joy, but no sound was distinct, just an endless number of voices directed to me.
Why, I wondered? This was the desert, a place with no life, but here was this huge crowd giving me the distinct impression they were very pleased to see me, as if they had been found, that they could be seen. I did not know what was so special about my meeting them, but it was a sight of such beauty, of such multitudes, of such emotion that I was quite moved.
I wrote to Marilyn, telling her what I was experiencing. Somehow I knew that these were the souls of the Native People, hidden and protected in the desert where white men had not yet come. They could not be reborn because there was no land for them. But why were they so happy to see me?
I closed my eyes once more. Turning to the east in the desert I could see the Holy Land in the distance across the ocean. Above it, hanging in the air, was a massive charred statue of Christ. It was not a crucifix. The carved image was of Jesus in a pleated gown with His arms at His side. A wooden image. What did this mean? Why was it burned?
I then turned to the western sun and could see Marilyn's face smiling in the breeze and the sun's rays. Such joy upon her countenance. The whole vision lasted quite a while. It was not a flash in the pan. I could turn and look, and look again at the voices in the sky, the charred statue of Christ, and the western sun and wind on Marilyn's shining face.
Marilyn told me that I had just been blessed with a vision. Those who are given them are 'chosen.' I had no idea what this meant. It was obvious the Native souls needed to be reborn, but nothing else made any sense. It was certainly a unique experience, and I didn't see it coming. But what was it about me that gave the voices such happiness? Was I the first white man to find them? That seemed to make sense, though I didn't have a clue why it happened. Still, their joy was infectious for they were lost, unable to return to life because of what had been done to the Native People and the earth.
It was awe-inspiring, like an awakening even though I could not understand its full significance. There was just this joy at my presence, that they had been discovered at last. Someone had come to see the truth. I felt compassion for their plight. They needed to be reborn. Beyond this I knew nothing.
We began to talk about the Native People and how I had found so much life in the desert where there was supposed to be none. My knowledge of Native people was the standard fare of university classes. I knew little of their spirituality, found things like potlatches confusing, and knew of the horrible injustice that had been meted out to them over time. It was a holocaust no one ever wanted to fully acknowledge.
The only Native man I was familiar with was the War of 1812 chief, Tecumseh. That was a man to be admired. Perhaps the greatest leader in their history, Tecumseh had tried to unite all the Nations to resist the westward expansion of the white man. He seemed to have limitless energy, his oratory skills were legendary, and his reputation as a warrior second to none. Such an amazing undertaking, only to be thwarted by the parochial interests of the different Nations. He knew what was coming, and it was the Peoples' last chance to stop it.
As I live in the Niagara area of Canada, the War of 1812 is an ever-present part of the landscape. There had been a number of battles in the area. The Americans declared war on Britain in 1812 in protest over British measures to blockade trade with France and harass the upstart Americans who had humiliated Britain in the War of Independence. This made Canada the closest target for American conquest. Every colonist thought it was a lost cause before the first shot was fired. The British garrison was too small and the Americans vastly outnumbered our population.
But two strange events occurred. The British commander of Upper Canada, General Isaac Brock, teamed up with Tecumseh against the Americans at Fort Detroit. Outnumbered, Brock and Tecumseh infused the enemy with the fear of Indian savagery, and used visual tricks to make their numbers look larger to the enemy. The Native war cries throughout the night intimidated the American general so much that he surrendered without firing a shot. It was a surprising, bloodless victory.
That autumn, eight days after Tecumseh's death, Isaac Brock was shot defending an attack at Queenston Heights along the Niagara River. But the British again won the day and suddenly the morale of the province turned around to the possibility of victory against American conquest.
Talking about this with Marilyn, a memory came to me. About fifteen years before, I had been taking a solitary drive in the countryside outside of London, Ontario. It was a beautiful late spring day. In the middle of nowhere there was a historical plaque. I stopped to see what it was. The marker read that near this spot Tecumseh had died. I walked back across the road to my car and stopped. There was stillness all around me, yet a gentle breeze was coming from the forest. Somehow it felt like the spirit of the man was still there. I had not thought about that moment since.
Marilyn recounted her experience being half-Native, of the Choctaw Nation. She had lived so many of the sorrows of her people; the poverty, the wasted sense of life they had inherited from the near-destruction of their culture. I could feel her dismay at the way white men saw the world, how lost they were, and how they took the Native people with them into their civilized darkness. Her grandmother had been part of the Trail of Tears, as the army drove the Nations off the land and onto reservations. The imposed starvation of the women and children reflected the loss of everything but their hearts.
The poverty of white men's souls became the world in which her people now lived. Civilization had transformed reality. White men's truth had taught the People how disconnected civilization is from the world. The civilized have created their reality and meaning of life because of it. They feel alone, even with God.
The People did not want to feel that lonely. Despite feeling powerless, they could not forsake the true heart and live from the mind. Marilyn's own life reflected much of that experience. She was abused as a child. Her father had left the family and her mother was a negative influence on her. Marilyn's Native grandmother was the anchor in her life. Then there were the broken marriages, the rapes by other men, and the fear of facing herself, until she summoned the courage to explore her spiritual gifts.
Most shamans, I was to learn, were guided by other shamans in their training. Marilyn had done it all on her own. Either way it is quite the struggle to learn the reality of the spirit world. But she grew strong in her gift and how to use it to help others. The Internet had become her way of connecting with those in need. She would work with those who wanted her help but there would always come a time when Marilyn would have to tell them something serious, like a character flaw that was blocking their healing and needed to be faced. Few had the stomach for the hard truths of who they were. It destroyed the meaning they create about themselves. People want their lives to go well but don't want to accept the fact that events are lessons that speak to their deeper truths. Marilyn took a lot of abuse for simply telling people what reality laid under their veneer. The power of the Truth, I was to learn over and over again, is a difficult thing to face. Marilyn's sight into the reality of a person had to be used judiciously, in small steps, for it to heal. The Truth is very simple, she said. White men complicate everything so much that the Truth gets lost. Simplicity is at the root of all.
The vision of Christ over the Holy Land had confused me. It was odd that from one desert I looked across the world to see another, and there was the image of the founder of the religion that had swept the People away. I recounted something I had heard once. Jesus had come to one of the Native Nations and spoke with them. They did not find Him threatening, but very much a part of the spiritual reality that they had always known. The People found the words of Christ very much like their own. When the missionaries came, the People welcomed them as brothers. But the acts of these Christians did not reflect what the Native People and Christ had in common.
The evangelists seemed to be missing the point, and turned what was plain to see for the Natives into an abomination. The white men were blind with so many truths in their bosom, unable to understand them or distinguish what was important. It contributed to the lack of understanding between the civilized and the Native People of the New World. Jesus made sense; the People had lived by His truths for thousands of years. But the actions of the white men ran counter to everything Christ professed. What was wrong with them? And the European aboriginals were intent on bringing the Natives into their confusion.
It started to rekindle thoughts of my religion. I began to reconsider it in light of the Native experience of life and their history with the white man. There was a lot to sift through. Christianity was a dead religion to me, whose ghost remained deep inside.
During our discussion, Marilyn told me that I had to choose a new name. This came out of nowhere. She said that the Elders asked this of me.
And who were the Elders? They were the wise souls of the great chiefs and warriors of the past. She was talking as if they were in the room with her.
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