I Kin Ye

I am sitting in the sun allowing the light and breeze to penetrate my thoughts as I pray to know them as friends.

I hear the words of a co-worker echo a Hawaiian sentiment about the alive responsiveness of all living things. She says her feelings in her own words and sparks renewed appreciation in me for the interconnectedness of all things, "Everything in nature desires to be friends with us."

She lights my heart up. I smile.

"What?" She asks laughing.

I realize I've paused mid-action in goofy smile, "Words like that are medicine to my soul." This medicine in words has be arising in me since January. New concepts. New ideas. New phrasing. New cycles.

Old ancient feeling.

I've been reading many books, but am stuck on two pages in The Education of Little Tree. I've put it to the side many times, reading other books, returned to this simple talk story and the profound element of family, love, understanding contained in those two pages puts me in a clutch the book gently to my heart, consider the many lessons two pages can contain trance.

On this day, one concept strikes me differently. Usually affected most by the grandfather and grandmothers use of "I kin ye," instead of "I love you," is my favorite passage. Today it is the expounded idea of what it is to accept others as family and to kin them by understanding what it is they are feeling in any circumstance that arises. In this passage one of the men in the congregation has stood up to berate everyone and another man has stood up to tell him that if any misunderstanding has occurred he wants this one to know how loved he is and that everyone would like to right the misconception. In the telling of the story the grandson asks why no one gets defensive, grandfather says it is because he is kin and everyone understands that he comes from a time of fighting and that what they really want is for him to feel safe again.

The idea arises and connects to a statement I made while assisting a friend with chores.

Zonia?
Yes?
Why don't you go out anymore?
I don't know. I've gotten into a state of resisting everything lately.
Why?
I'm not sure.

And as I do, ponder this idea, let it stir around amid a million differing concepts until it blob tags with a clarifying sentiment, differing situation and words that heal my view--today the ideas that connect are
1. New Generation of Healthy Medicine People connects to 2. "kin," understanding, fighting, resisting, 3. this moment on the bench looking skyward at leaves dancing sunlight, 4. A week of feeling myself pass through and 5. a bath wherein I contemplate images from childhood, not just paradise, but also Armageddon. (What used to be taught as an actual occurrence makes its way into my spirulina sea salt crystal bath as spiritual metaphor for hearts devotion) and 6. a line from the Upanishads.

"You are what your deep, driving desire is.
As your desire is, so is your will.
As your will is, so is your deed.
As your deed is, so is your destiny."

This has led me to ask the question of each line:
What is my deep driving desire?
What is my will?
What are my actions?
What is my destiny?

As I review, an observer of my life interactions, I watch God's answer in the form of book readings, a visitation from young friend I have known a decade and moments like these on the bench.

My own end of 17 year travel cycle including re-gifting everything I've owned many times over, the epic adventures, the prayerful meetings, the miraculous money-less journeys wherein just enough is actually enough I am so happy to be free so not impoverished, uncontrolled, at peace with manifestations of walk abouts and the wondrous simple pleasure of sunrise to sunset the counter experience of modern day belief infiltrating all sectors of life, "Money is God."

That I do know I can not pay celestial bodies to rotate and shine in such glorious perfection. The--no one but my soul and its Source energy own me. The--I have no reason to go this way but for the ancestral angelic guidance and the facing of ridicule about ending my professional teaching career almost two decades ago. The--lone path that has just settled into home and this rocking bench in the sun.

I reflect.
Always in motion, it is difficult to truly know the lives and communities I've touched or affected but perhaps the greatest effect is, as I tell my friend's 3 year old little grandmother who pretends to know everything:

The greatest process of learning is knowing what you do not know and looking to those who do.

What I do know is how to resist the established thought for me own--to be told over and over I'm crazy for living differently until it is the norm, and how to say unfavorable truths to medicine kids in the throws of addiction who have only stories of use and addiction to share, disembodied, who are bored of esoteric wisdom, whose elders are quietly either in addiction themselves or manipulating them and encouraging it for money, I have shared my wisdom.

This exploration I have resisted since I broke down the willow of a lodge threatening to charge and threw it in the fire. A bit thunderbird of me, but "I kin me." This trend I silently observed in my heart welcomed and watched as the wealthy and humble sat circle together, then some took over every indigenous circle and spiritual realm shifting it into yet another rat race for financial flow.

​Grateful for financial flow, wealth was not my objection, the shift in dominant focus was.

I retreated further from technology, my generation, and spirit family into jungles to quietly do the work of touching one body at a time. I flourished in someways and in others felt two things 1. like a ghost and 2. like a caricature phantom of my previous self.

Resisting only to resist. In a cyclic thought about how to protect the spirit of teachings that taught me freedom in my spirit, the power of connecting to Source, in health and vitality and mostly in relationships.

I have, and we all know the danger of judgement, but also I questioned the difference between discernment and judging behaviors and actions. Why? Because of my own time as teenager crying for visions, needing rite of passage overdosing seeking God in acid, cocaine, and alcohol and leaving body to find death ancestors and pain pulling me back into body so that spirit compelled me to serve young, old, sick, my own family and adopted. For protection. Looking into my own heart, " I kin ye."

I was always two people, both too old wearing my grandmother's shawl and wise enough to know what habits age, that there are grey spirits that feed through us their own addictions, and a teacher who acted surrogate mother to many teens needing adults who refused to parent or guide, too busy caught up in the age of youth beauty and riches. Forgive my fighting, some experiences have taught me patterns and cycles I do not wish to replicate. Discernment. I could not unknow what I knew.

I look up from my heart. Resistance and judgement, to protect myself from my former selves. A third woman arises. She sees youth and fun are still here glowing and glimmering. She observes the power of medicine, time, the changing of generation as new generation elder teachers guide soften and learn to parent, to sober, to think, to consider future, pay attention. Next generation. My spirit family tribe. Where is the door back in?

Acceptance.

I began to again focus on beauty, joy and devotion.

From the outside of tribe, I gather those in outer circle to enclose, embrace and pull in towards the safety of inner circle. Bring back together strays. Rejoice. Open. Learn again.

Clear the black web of separation, change my words, address my own human heart pains, make contact. Calls to people I let go too long, travelling no longer valid excuses. Well springs burst again and what seemed lost is found. That for the youth I touched in my idealistic phase--a circle is now drawn around me--spiraling back loved, awakened to higher-mind meditations of devotion, elements, song, dance and the simple things that give community meaning.

The ceremony of life.

I see them, this young generation of medicine people will be both an evolved version of the best minus the fight for the way has now been paved. They are safe to commune with the invisible realms and supported in vision. These ones hold the sacred, like Paradise, in their hears. It can't be taken. These are the ones honoring their bodies, taking care of the Earth, trusting the power of prayer, and holding a higher form of love creed that transcends all dogma.

These ones bring me back to life. Their words and actions are medicine and, though they work with plants, WHO they are is the salve not what they use, and not in excess.

The second group of young ones become grotesque caricatures of charlatan teachers (in the old days tribal elders in tipi were drug and alcohol counselors) lacking ethics and foundation to hold them steady. They imitate behaviors and language but mock God and Spirit, engage in consumption to extremes that will deplete dopamine stores and create physical/ mental disease. They are not medicine for the people, but have only words to downplay the Armageddon of soul.

Pictures, not only of garden, adorned my spiritual upbringing but the ways people would choose darkness in empty choices, false pursuits, and addictive behaviors also were present.

When I began to see the trend of addiction and tainted places of worship in which I used to seek sanctuary, I left.

More concerned with free mind and healthy body, I focused on what saved me from the path of nowhere, empty. I took firm stances and cut off relations. I now know this was itself a blind eye, fixated on shadow, and I was momentarily building a firewall. Looking inward at my own ego, my own addiction to cyclic stories, my transient nature, and the quest for the infinite became finitely fixed on human pursuits, my own failures that led to dust.

As I stopped travelling, the wall fell and the karmic train dustily piled up now cleared and quiet. Tangled heart are free. Relationships re-established. And, though I love that I've gotten younger than I was when young, the expression kiddo being used by several elder women in my life have awakened my wizened heart. I am not a child, although relationships have always been my little girl cry.

To heal, the story must circle.

Zonia?
Yes?
How long does it take to heal?
As long as it takes to spiral back to the point of confusion, to tell the story until you are either bored, have better experiences that define you anew, or collect more data until you refute that idea which is making you sick.
What if I get so far into it I forget where I am trying to go?
Other people are more likely to forget you than you are, hold close to your heart, trust, you will come out the other side.

I remember during my morning oceanic embryonic brew that one of my favorite pictures of this spiritual warfare was a ring of self-induced chaos and confusion, fire wherein in the middle is paradise and the humans highly tuned to nature, surrounded by the love of people from all of Earth, devoted in their heart to spirit, are protected, peaceful, kind, happy, and truly free.

This is my tribe. My spirit family. So in love. So in their hearts.

Independent of others for extreme riches or expenses, their simplicity leaves little barriers between a real life with a fit body and a shimmering heart.

This to me is the true meaning of THRIVE.

Protecting these things that are of value is the next generation's mission. At one with the elements they wish to safeguard our waters flowing from Mother's breast, the Earth from which all beings grow be it food, animal, plant, human, the air we breathe, to live in tune with the metal of their hearts vibrating towards all life and ever in harmony with human destiny to love--to hold--to connect--to heal that which has been structured to separate us from the power to choose light.

Money is not god, but it can be used by godlike people in order to create new systems. It can be a great ally. Welcome it and fixate our hearts on opportunity, stewardship, education, connection, health, joyful celebration, and lasting experiences.

For the Indigos who fought to clear the path and karmic relationships for this new generation, may there be understanding for this our kin. Current world consciousness arising was not won easily and though it proliferates in words and beauty, there is still much to do, but may we birth into the circles of safety and joy. May love draw us into the light. May we be taught again the idealistic beauty of faith and love's devoted contemplation.

I accept the new generation of true medicine people as my teachers and return again to basic lessons with a beginner's mind.

To know what it is I do not know and allow the love flowing to enter me dissolving all barriers between me and its people. Young, old, mid-life--let us hold hands and be family. Sing praises. Recall our medicine hearts to our friends, elevate desires for life to continue and also have the strength to face still resisting corruption with a shining spirit. True inspiration breathes life and creates unity.

Let us breathe together, then, and remember desires of the heart drive all action and determine not only our own destiny but of the entire human race.

Sitting swaying bench, I look into my prayerful hands and see the light of gratitude I felt myself reaching for, it is here with me and I hold it close. Nothing to resist, calling safety into my field. Heart to heart with all living beings, pulling me forward, connected, friendly, hopeful, healed, and a I feel a golden shower of happy rain down upon me in sunlight through the leaves like medicine to my soul.