Asking For Nothing
Equinox 21 March 1:07 am (CET)
(An extension of the Gray Antelope Rule)
What you have before you now is more than you could have ever imagined.
If you weight it against how much time you spend thinking about what you do not have......what bitterness and rage shall replace itself in your mind!
Your desire for what you do not have may become like a light blinding you as you stumble about in want inside the palace of your dreams, completely unaware of the treasures you have made inside your soul.
"Want nothing when you come in here",
is what the old man said to me as I crawled on four legs,
back into the womb of mother earth,
ma-doo-dis e wan; (my dear sacred water)
you shall hold me while the wind carries me.
"I am here already.
Yes, I am everywhere around myself."
And so we sang inside the sweat lodge so many years ago.
Everything has been provided, you need only understand how to see what is in front of you.
It is very easy to become a victim of your own desire for something you think you do not have. In modern life we focus more on what is missing rather than understanding what is present. It is both compelling and tragic how modern life ensnares us in hunger and want so somebody we will never know can make money or be put into an influential position over others. It as if the desire for what we want is a shark feeding in dark waters. This desire has churned up the seas and disappeared the sacred trees and put every animal on the earth into fear and hiding.
The true nature of abundance can only be revealed when desire becomes silent.
We argue and fight with abundance by giving so much power to getting what we want rather than understanding properly what it is that we have.
As a painter, an artist, I live on a small island where it is very difficult to find pigments and other art supplies. Many times I have visions of paintings I want to make, sculptures I want to carve, but have not the colors or tools to make what I see in the desires of my imagination. I love my artristic imagination. In it I have learned how to make paintings with the pigments I have, learned how to carve stones with the tools that I have. The work is different, and very often better than what I could do if I had whatever tool or color my desire can show to me. Learning to make paintings with the colors that I have has been one of the strongest revelations of my life.
The old indians taught me that the truth is almost always simple, simple, simple. They have taught me that whatever I need is near to my hand.
They have taught me to strive to want nothing.
When I look at the history of this world, I do not rely on Hollywood or Governments to inform me. My reliance is upon the lens of the Sacred Pipe. The history of the world as seen by an old pipe passed from generation to generation. If I need to know what is going on I need only look in the ashes of the fire.
When the old indians asked me to carry the sacred pipe around the world, I understood immediately that this would be the work of a diamond cutter. You know the stone is tapped and tapped again in very specific ways to make the diamond jewel? I felt immediately that this is what is going on with the idea of the old indians to have this ceremony. A circle around the earth. Like the diamond cutter, at each place I stop there is a tap-tap-tap with the little morning fire, with the standing stones, with an eagle feather. A circle around this earth is a very mathematical, precise act which will change 10,000 things. Step by step, in each country the ceremony will be woven in with those ceremonies which have gone before. The ceremony is the people and also it is the land.
The day they asked me to do this (25 years ago) I said OK. I wanted nothing at that moment. Everything sweet and meaningful and possible arrived in my arms at that moment.
People will find out. They will arrive to help. People in Japan or Australia or Siberia will ask the sacred pipe to visit their lands and tap-tap-tap on the hearts of the waiting dreamers, onto the keepers of the ancient future.
Soon on the main web site for the World Journey of the Sacred Pipe I will post a map of the world showing the places we have made the ceremonies.
