Over the last ten years I have been a gypsy wanderer, a traveler, a medicine woman with a bag of tricks, but it was not always this way.

I actually started off as a high school teacher at 20.  I devoted my life to those students, taking many of them under my wing who felt abandoned by society, home, and life.  I held students in my arms who had been gang banged on the weekend, comforted students when suicide befell fellow students, and sat with parents whose worry had created separation and who somehow forgot the art of speaking from the heart.  I think what drove me then as now is life experience.

 At 14 my mother and I moved to El Paso so she could care for her mother who had breast, bone and lung cancer.  It was the first time I realized life wasn't all about me.  It wasn't not, but for that moment in time, I had the moment to experience that life is fleeting.  My grandmother was a very special woman.  I can remember my mom at her bedside.  I can remember the way they drank each other in through their eyes.  I can remember the first time I helped feed her.  Perhaps it seems like selflessness, but really, when you love someone it is for you that you are holding their hand, every bit as much as it is for them.  Because when you love someone, there will never be enough one more times.  And in the end the love you imprint will have to last a life time.

After she passed at the young age of 63, overwhelmed by death, I turned to drugs and alchohol.  I had a near death experience at 16.  My parents moved me two states away.  I believe it is the knowing that love exists and the way they were there for me, pleading, talking, loving embracing that I became the teacher I did.  

When I got a brain tumor in my 20's I continued teaching, sometimes barely making it home and not remembering the drive.  My parents relocated to live with me and when I awoke I would eat, sleep and then return to the classroom.  Then I met a medicine woman and began my own journey towards health and wholeness.  It was not easy.  The choices I made at that time in my life were choices that made everyone who loved me cringe.

I sold everything, I quit teaching, I put on a backpack and dropped myself down on the island of Kauai without a cellphone, no packing skills or experience, and trusted a divine force that led me to a shamanic burial on Big Island Hawaii.

What ended that journey was a final meditaion on the island of Maui, where I received back to me all the love and care of every single family member with whom I had not communicated in almost a year.  It was the time of no facebook and calls that came from me were spuratic and done in telephone booths.

The choice to self heal and to separate from my tribe was for me one of the many things along the way that changed my understanding of modern day mentality.  The mentality that self-realization and self-care is of primary importance.  I came to see that it was this mentality that in fact had caused so much separation in our world and the dissolution of tribe.  It is self-hood that brings us to our own paths in life, creativity...but truly it is what led me back to a field of service.

I see people on their own paths to wholeness and I know how important it is, also, at 39, both parents having survied cancer, three grandparents having passed, one aged and 94, I realize too that in the end, we always return to tribe. Perspective being that tribal unity is what keeps the family seed alive.  To care for aged ones and young ones alike.  It is the circle of love that brings us back.  Perhaps our parents weren't perfect, but we are alive...so the job they did was good.  We are always meant to learn and unlearn on our own.  But in the end, it is the love we put out that returns to us.

I feel lucky to be part of a family that loves deep.  We are all a little neurotic, have done one thing or another to each other, forgive, laugh, eat together and always we are family.  Some have their own family, some stay to themselves, I travel...we are all our own people.  In truth, it is the allowance of that allows tribes to dwell in unity.  We need not give up our individuality...but knowing where we come from, our ancestry, our birth, our blood is the first step to healing in the lowest energy body, our physical body, our groundedness, our root it is where we are housed, birth and die.

I saw a saying the other day, "not my monkey, not my tree."  I laugh now, in this moment because for our tree...we are all each other's monkey.  Different aspects of ourselves birthed in the outside world to know the truth and Mexicans do speak truth.  The older I get, the more the acts of love I consider ordinary seem to others outstanding, I can't help but think, we must as a race be forgetting something.  This behavior of love, care, and devotion used to be normal.  I can't help but pray that after we have gone into seclusion and self-inquiry, that we remember it isn't all about the one...it is about the we, the us, the entire human race and that we give ourselves back to that truth.

It is similar to the inquisitiveness that befalls my parents when in a yogic group, marveling over their love lasting from high school into their sixties.  How do you do it?  What is the secret?  My parents, slightly confused will look at each other and then back again, it isn't because we think the other perfect, it isn't because there are not minor disagreements it is quite simple...we love each other.  And many times I have seen a room go silent.  And so what is love?  What is the study of love?  

I can't help but think that love is the study of family.  It is the healing of ties, the forgiving of wounds, the willingness to see each other as perfectly flawed and imperfectly trying but never giving up in the trying, in the giving, in the communicating, in the saying of I am sorry. Please forgive me. I love you.  I trust you...such is the four tenets of the Hawaiian Kahunas.

Any tribe the world over all indegenous will teach you that seed, that little bit of knowing ohana, family, aloha, love, joined circles connected by fire, and prayer services over the sick that we must stick together and if the yogic practice of being happy, content and at peace while uncomfortable doesn't apply to this...check in with India...family, mother, grandparents is what they live for and marriage is for uniting tribes.

I hear alot use of the word tribe and tribal...it is a consciousness, it is a knowing and I believe in time we will come back to what it truly is. It is more than friendship.  It is more than fun.  To me it is the gift of having each other, to participate in the circle of life, not just in the yoga medicine worlds, but the whole world.  And perhaps as we come back in contact with all people's we will round out.  Help each other where we have each gone off track. 

Help each other unite...where we crave bliss...others crave security and is either one the truth of our existence?  ...life will always be slightly rickety, there will always be a curve ball, something that switches up our practices and blindsides us with unexpectancy, and in the midst of it...may we find enough hands there to hold us up, to bring us back to center (because God knows as much as I know where I am I sometimes get dizzy) so we can find our joy, our happiness, our bliss despite situations so that the one thing that never changes is our belief that the world is a loving place, that love is all around us and God is real, acting not only for us but through us.

 When the fires blaze 
my heart lights up
I come back to remembering
our eternal essence is not what we own.

I come back to remembering Jesus who when offered a kingdom
turned and walked barefoot into the desert
Buddha who rejected his wealth to
 sit under a tree

Crackling they endure the heat
and I recall the medicines
and people who sit in jungles
watching the Amazon fall to the ground
and facing extinction everyday they pray
for us

The shamans wife in
the Sierras of Mexico does sell her peyote
to visit doctors who give her medicine
to heal the illness
caused by

 Coca-cola
has found the remote villages
and history repeats itself in Modelo beer
drunken with need for money
that cannot be eaten

 The seed is the kernal that
 gives life to the people

 I pray those speaking medicine remember
we are here to pray for Earth and humanity
and can we step away from our own photos
 to pray
 for the wisdom of the ages
spreads out as land and sky
desert storm clouds
rain down
many waters spilling
blooming sage amid red rocks and scrub brush

The sky is infinity
vastness overhead
 horses etched cliffsides
sound thunderous gallops
pressing forward
lazer sharp
focus center points internal compass
due south
seaside Huichotle sweat lodges
merge
Navajo-Dineh
spirits intertwined
stories unravel
all this land is home:

Long ago a young woman held truth in her heart
preached it from the pulpits
and missed
the miracle of Jesus
working in her and through her 
she walked where she was led
stood at vistas on Cathedrals
pounding a grandfather drum
without a song
opening her heart
 she passed through her fears to run up walls
stood steady on legs 
the Goddess route
altars of tantric love
unionized on rock heads
pelvis vulva clitoris
making love all at once
they touch and pulse life into being
we are all born of this earth
and will return to its
steady still center
everything we have will go
but the love
experiences of service
we give
to those without money

God's divine presence is not for sale
It is ours
grateful to be guided to ancestral lands
whose horror and anger gives way to waves that
rush and pulse
surrender
I will fight no more forever
Aging I wear no costume
play no games for
time now unfolds
the grandmothers said...

None of this was for sale
now I do know what
commerce has taken
our humanity 
our fragility
our vulnerability
to be flawed
to cry
to speak an unpopular truth
we grin and bear
that spiritual sanctuaries
have created more emptiness

Where praises were sung to honor God
we raise ourselves up hierarchically
crushing the little children who need a knee and
sell them hugs for a dollar
to feed coconut cravings
festival addictions
have become highly exaggerated version of self
competing egos for the prize of the
most spiritual
goes no longer to the
crone with rosary beads praying
 privately for her family
but to the
young beautiful and rich
who sell you guru and hold back friendship--
for how can we charge for what used to be free
even elders sell tipi but

I remember when
we came together to
eat-sing-play-dance
I remember when friendship became sales's gimmicks
and struggling for money we
crawled begging our way

Back to the Kings and Queens
of the New Age Movement
Royalty in the making
we have created a parallel structure of
 successfully spiritual and abundant
Flyers, cards, costumes, and websites
Deny God
Claiming self as Creator...
No longer part or particle
I drop to one knee in the desert
Humbly
remember the ones who have come before me and 
pray to know another way
lineage passes on this:

We are now asleep
sitting together and
shining only our bliss
we neglect to use our
privilege, health 
as candles lighting the way

Awaken
in dark places we
look and find
humanity huddled together without fanfare
authentic like the stars remembering it is all about time spent together

Love shared is the presence of God

Sacred commerce has become another rat race
with
flowers of life, crystals, hoola hoops, fire and drugs
lots of them to
elevate the experience and make us believe

We are in ceremony
communion with the Divine Mother
whose breast has run dry and fires rage in
small towns we cry
what is lost

Remember the value of friends when we had nothing
we stood together in embrace
that is free

God is with us all along the way
reminding us that love is the only thing that matters
it is how we are here and the struggle is
the birth canal to our first primal yelp
this existence will be a cycle of emptying and filling
and no matter what comes in
we will all shit it out and cry our hearts out to be
loved--have attention--affection--praise

Connection to our Mother
in utero we were cared for and magically formed

Into this land
is a beautiful woman and do we plant and water her
until she blooms or bulldoze her
counting money and profits
raping the one who gives unconditionally to
dole out a chunk and dig up
ancestral finds of outer space origins
a knife to stab us in our own hearts

Living this life as if this is all there is
or looking towards eternal bliss in oneness
we are all here now
divided only by our stories
projections entitled blissed 
truly insecure and vulnerable
we are only human and dependent upon this planet

She will go on
the endless sky and stars do tell us
things burn out
civilizations dissolve
water runs out
no plastic bottle can be filled with what has dried
and do we now frack and infect our supplies for moneys and addictions
squandering the future with toxic fumes and GMO strains
cancerous dumps of
fertilizers to feed the masses
who do not plant seeds
who do not have land to grow

Laws are broken with the hope of freedom
and still we are enslaved to serfdom working what is not ours
in due season
we reap what we sow
spraying dandelions and then taking pharmaceuticals
for kidneys-livers-bladders-
passing stones and beverages made with
sugar 
rots our teeth
mercury our brains

We have given our food supply and
organic practices over to corporations who are now
the doorway 
to the apothecaries 
must sell the rights to herbs to be bought and

I remember when the silent scream unfurled inside myself that
the one had become a million
in every far reaches of land
we have sold ourselves and become slaves to our
master brands
bringing 
our talents
our voices
our hearts
our vision
to make others millions and 
trade amongst ourselves
playing cool
kids at 40
competing
ticks of the trade

Trimming
our intrinsic value declining
everyday we sit for chocolate 

All our thoughts and ideas wired into a
handheld device that tracks us to sell us what is already ours
in yoga postures, stretch pants

We forget yogis in loin cloths sat in caves
praying for Universal peace they gave over their egos and served

Our spirits now one with the new god--
money
is energy that propels things
forward we stream
grabbing for that which is temporary and 

Our souls of faith crave
peace that comes only in union with God
who makes the sun to rise
the waves to cycle with Goddess moon

Someday we will
 join the particles of our life to the one now here
and when that essence dissipates into God
will it pray land trees flowers hope children and
God itself back into being or perpetuate
the concrete poison and technology that is our cancer
may we learn to fear the cause more than the disease
and turn our focus back to
health color music dance slow time
dance in the breeze in trees to childrens laughter---and my heart beseeches everyone:

Come together
honor our partners
safegaurd our lineage that is family
forgive the separateness
bring us back to the one realization that can save us
beyond dreaming
beyond  hallucinations
let us be in the world and on the earth
humans reaching out to our grandmothers
slowing down to one breath one look that says
I am here for you and

Yes--young ones--
I am greying despite all my practices,
prayers, travels, medicines, service, love, joy, bliss
willingness to shadow to cry to scream to panic to
not know what to do if
all this beauty love humanity is lost
in a cloud be it fire, peace pipe, or solar flare

The time to break free of our addictons and
escape from behind fences
 to which we have been fleeing
separating people in open spaces

Find freedom
from people who sell you eternal youth and
 your own authenticity 

Walk your truth
in cities
at home
with your aged parents
and true friends
 hold you in times of loss
nurture yourself 
wholey rested
return to the work

You've given your life over to
the work 
is for others
to lift them up
to give hope
where it has left

Pray remembrance
life into death
experience miracles and 

Not to sell people God
but to guide them so that God is
 in them
around them
moving them and
one person 
at a time 

We will
re-fill
be fulfilled.
Reconnect
remember:

 Our human race
healing our Mother
and preserving our children
for generations to come.