We’ve just returned from our trek with Tipi in tow to South Dakota where my love, Andrew and his fellow Dancers journeyed through a 4-day Traditional Lakota Sundance Ceremony.

I knew of the ceremony through tales Andrew had shared of the past seven years as a Sundancer, and the visceral remnants of scars he bears on his chest and back.  I didn’t really know much other than my sense that this was a very powerful ceremony of ancient warriors, and that it is fiercely protected.  It seems somewhat inadequate to say what a deep privilege it was to be invited to attend, witness and support this Sacred Ceremony.  It was much more.  It was an invitation into Great Mystery.

As a supporter in perpetual prayer, my eyes and heart opened to a doorway unto Great Mystery.  I absorbed deeply the beauty and grace of prayer for all people, the land and all that is. I see and feel the potency of focused intent like never before. So few among the privileged to experience this ceremony, and as such surely each one on purpose to access unique potencies of the mystery. I drink deeply from the elixir and for me, this doorway opened portals of power within.  Pathways for more refined energies to pass through my body.  To be breathed in essence.  There is magic here.  The energy wants to be engaged with and is showing me how it can be focused for example on an obstacle where it spirals energy to unravel negative energies, alchemizing the outcome for good.

Within this opening, I am aware that my new awareness is but a tiny drop of its potency.  Andrew says it will be integrating within me for the entire year, and as such I  am grateful to invite more realizations.

I have a deep respect for this ceremony and all who dance.  My love for the creator, my family, community and this beautiful man I have been blessed with overwhelms me in waves of grace.  These dancers are so majestic.  They stand in between worlds and our Mother Earth, she nourishes them.I observed how one’s awareness is drawn in to the degree it has interest (thirst) and purpose (destiny).  Self Initiation through seeing.  Remembering stirring in the spirit.

Some of what I experienced is wanting to be shared and reflected upon, yet most of what I experienced is being held close in the silent sacredness of my heart.

We talk a lot in these times about manifestation, as masses are beginning to realize that the formula for bringing source energy into form begins with focused intent.  I believe this is the origin of prayer.  And the degree of power our prayer holds is equal to the intent and purity of the individuals heart.  A simple and ancient formula likely given to us by the star nation.  Prayer is alchemy.  A vibration magnetic in nature.  And is the basis of our universal law of attraction.

Surely the early Sundancers knew this power, as I felt it beating through every cell in my body.  The lineage strong and pure.  I understand now how the ceremony was deemed by our government as illegal for so long due to its power.  A power they wanted to take away from the people.

I experienced this ceremony as the pure potency of creation energy.  And I speculate that each of the seven sacred ceremonies brought to the Natives is rooted in creation. Life Force is creation energy.  It is the root of all that is and the birthplace of consciousness…..where we are closest to the powers of Earth and Sky.

Akin to the Goddess, Mayan, Toltec, Egyptian, Peruvian and other cultures, the ceremonies seem to have in common a formula of numbers in form.  Geometrics.  Like keys opening locks I experienced the energies exchanging with universal grids.  In this way, ceremony itself is the vehicle that connects our intentful prayer to the powers of creation.  To UNIVERSE.  What I find interesting about the Lakota culture is that its ceremonies feel more energetically purposed than physically as found in structures like the ancient pyramids.  Perhaps in this way they are more refined in their obscurity.  The veil is lifted during ceremony and then remains obscured in energy structures and grids.  There is great power here.  And it is vast in its impermanence.

I observed much in the Native Culture during our time on the reservation.  In ceremony, the spiritual presence of the dancers inspired me and brought tears of appreciation and awe to my heart. The women dancers embodied the nurturing presence of the Grandmothers healing the hearts of humanity.  Grace moved through them all.

Interestingly the physical and mental realms felt more dominant than the spiritual, unlike what I’d expected.  Much of it saddened and confused me. I observed children dismissed and discarded and thirsting for love.  They want to be held and nurtured, yet are treated roughly with harsh words and actions. I observed a great disregard for nature.  For Mother Earth as she was recklessly discarded upon.  Garbage strewn about everywhere.  Even in a most sacred ceremony.

I observed a complex set-up in place with deeply embedded belief systems of victimhood and hopelessness.  Anger.  Rage rooted in complete duality to the Ancestry as a deeply sacred people.  Through my lenses, I saw very little sacred in the day to day living.  However, in ceremony I observed and absorbed a palpable potency of this Ancestry.  Spiritual Wisdom and Authority.  Power.  In spite of the disparity permeating the modern people of this land today.  My prayer for the people is that they become empowered by the alchemical nature of their ceremonies, inviting more beauty into their daily lives.  The way they walk in the world.  Proud.  Not victim.  Loving our children and our Mother.

Only we can decide who we are or are not.  It is what we stand for that informs our experience of the richness or sparseness of life’s potential.

Andrew shares with me that the way to conquer or destroy a nation or people is to dehumanize them, take away their way of living, take away their food, and take away their belief system.

I realize on the other side of my experience that I expected to find a deeply sacred people gathered here.  People who walk in high regard for the Earth, Creator and all Nations.  People of high vibrational consciousness honoring their Ancestry.  What I did not expect was the realization that the power in the ceremony WAS the Ancestry.  The people themselves like you and I, simply human.  Human and suffering greatly.  In poverty, anger, hopelessness and a good dose of apathy.  These common people gather to honor their Ancestors and humbly pray for their lineage’s healing.  The Ancestors are the power.  The force present uplifting humanity toward its potential.

Our Ancestors love us, pure and sweetly.  They simply love.  This helps me understand and to know deep empathy for the complex nature of the struggle of these people.  Having had their humanity stripped away in many forms, their way of life distorted into the furthest extreme of polarity, their diet dictated by the government to deplete the physical body toward dis-ease, and attempts to remove all ceremony as heretic behavior making it illegal in an effort to strip away their power, it is easy to understand how these conditions remain so strongly embedded.  Their power of faith and belief deliberately comprised.

Many generations have been groomed into acceptance and degradation.  Many have become far removed from their ceremonial roots.  I reflect on the inquiry of what I would like to say to this generation and I hear a roar within me resounding “ENOUGH!!!”  “Take back the access and power in the beauty of Great Mystery every day.”

I believe the Sundance to be particularly important as I saw how the Ancestors through ceremony are what is holding the people up from utter despair.  I hear a clear invitation from spirit to the people.   With tears in my eyes I hear them say  “Look Up….Meet us here.  You know the way.  We will help you to re-member who you are….”

With the love I feel for my own children I offer these words of prayer for the youth and all who are in a cycle of pain,  “Enough being “put upon”.  Take back your power.  Decide.  Choose who you are going to be in this world and begin to act in accordance with your commitment. This is where change begins. Within one heart at a time.  No-one can make this change happen for you.  Your inner voice of authority is what must choose.  Activate the grid.  The formula is here in ceremony.”

Andrew says the seven sacred ceremonies were brought to the people by the spirits when they were struggling in their hardest times.  Not unlike today.  These people are suffering greatly.  And I believe returning to ceremony will be the salvation of the people.  Not just on the reservations, but across the lands.  I believe Ceremony will show the way through the portal of Great Mystery where life creates from vitality and source.  To be inspired into a different form of action is what many are thirsting for.  What will be the  catalyst force?

I observe most of us humans feel a strong affinity to the Native American Culture.  I’m beginning to see this as the souls knowing of our origins and pure nature.  Our nature as beings.  Close to source. Close to nature.  The place all cultures of origin share in common.  We all recognize something true here.  In spirit.  And the weaving of ways sharing strengths while shedding distortion heals all.  Mending the sacred hoop.

Perhaps it is time to bring forth more of our gifts as agents of change.  How do we share beyond donations of food, cigarettes and money?  What does donating teaching, leadership and inspiration look like?  Many have been inspired to facilitate transformation of these conditions, yet little evidence of success is apparent in what I observed on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

In recognizing the sacredness of Native ways, can non-natives mirror back the reflection of sacredness for the people to remember themselves by?  How do we help in the reclaiming of a cultures spirit?  And do we have the right to?  These are questions I am asking.

Survival on the reservation is simple.  We have much to learn in this way.  We are far to consumer driven and full of distractions.  I realize for me, simple is good.  I feel more.  See more.  Know more.  Love more.

I learned some things from my time in our tipi on the reservation.  And this learning will continue on for the next 13 moons.  I feel a strong kinship and love for these sacred ways and the hearts of these people.  Especially the children.  And I know they too felt mine.

I am grateful for all of our friends who shared the journey as their own pilgrimage in spirit.  I am blessed to share my heart and my life with my beloved Andrew.  I am grateful for this love so pure and divine.  And for this “common man” who is anything but common.  We share a profound commitment to serve healing for the planet and all of our relations.  This I know as it is what brought us together.   Yet in his dance I witnessed within him a capacity to serve at a level of humility that simply defies language.  It is a language of the warrior.  A language of the heart.

I pray grace upon him.

I pray for you.  I pray for me.

I pray for the balanced empowerment in a pure force that uplifts all people from despair.  I pray for an opening of creative essence to take up residence within our spirits as fuel for our hearts, minds and bodies to be as we are intended to be.  Full. I bid you well with Blessings to you and your loves….

Perhaps next year you too will feel the call to journey with us.  We’ll be there sharing Love.

In LOVE and Dedication to the process of PEACE on the planet,

Carrie Rae