Pilots, Guides, Teachers and the Rule of Silence

Copyright© 2007 Turtle Heart, Entire Contents

There is so much more on the earth that we have yet to discover. Science has yet to credibly decipher and understand even the most simple of the rock art in North America. How did those ancient artists paint such vivid colors in caves where there was no light. The paintings also show no carbon stains as might be expected if one were using candles, torches. Some Indians have argued that people were disciplined members of special societies and that seeing in the dark was no great challenge for them. Sometimes I believe this explanation…or if not believe, at least can imagine it.

As any good strategist knows, moving and living invisibly is a particular requirement of people with secrets. Poor people, working people, the ordinary people of the world leave great heaps of rubbish and marks of their passing. The members of secret societies leave no mark or trail, unless one knows precisely what to look for.

Advanced trickster would leave advanced tricks for us to discover. The guided hand theory, this one.

I have always believed in the ascended masters. I have also always believed that the American Indian lands and knowledge system contains the Chiefs of the Great Brotherhood, for those of you who may know precisely what I mean by that, that is my belief.

I have had a fantastic appetite in my life for this knowledge. Studying rock art images, ancient power objects from all around the earth, looking at the science, math and sociology, anthropology of this world around me. I drove my parents and all my teachers and friends crazy with this pursuit. I have a talent for understanding the math and science that lives inside a good ceremony. Many otherwise intelligent observers dismiss activities like tribal ritual as pagan nonsense. The world is a mirror, and a butt-head when he looks in the mirror of life will only see other butt-heads. Not many people suspect the sacred math and science that is behind a pipe ceremony, a sweat lodge ceremony, a yuwipi ceremony.

Why keep secrets?
I remember many years ago I used to take one of my elders to the village sometimes so we could eat a fine meal together. All my friends like to eat, it is one of the things I look for in a friendship. Well one day we are all dressed up. he was a beautiful man, a gorgeous, spiritually illuminated, kind and charismatic man. We soon found ourselves being followed by a crowd of people, maybe 25 or so. Tourists obviously. People who loved Indians and had travelled a long way to see one. And here was a fantastic one. While when I was younger I cut quite a stylish figure with my long hair and my big buffalo body…there was no question that the Grandfather was the focus of all attention. We had to more or less flee from them to have some peace that day. That day also ended my habit of taking this old Indian to town. It was a little scary. His dignity, in my eyes, was beyond having to endure such vulgarity. Many of our shiniest and most sacred Indian people are tucked away and hidden. The dogs and sheep of the dead world would tear them to pieces. Sometimes you keep a secret so you can stay alive.

The Kiva Indians have rarely given up the information on their religion. Even though Spanish and English priests and government officials have tortured them, they have said little. As a result, of all the tribes on the earth, the old Kiva Indians may have kept “in secret” their ancient ceremonies and instructions almost in their pure states. This is a fantastic accomplishment. The average person looking at the ceremonies in paintings and old photos would never suspect the cycles of time, understanding and teaching that have evolved in those ancient holes in the earth called Kiva.

I have been a guest in the Kiva of the Big earring Clan and also the Butterfly Clan, both occasions many years ago now. I found out, on each occasion, far more about myself than I found out about those Kivas.

The Tipi Indians, on the other hand, always lived out in the open. They talk big, move big, and do most things in a big, loud way. They draw (and seem to enjoy) a lot of attention to themselves, even now. In many places in the USA and the world, when people think about Indians it is almost always the tipi Indians they are thinking of, as if these were the only Indians on earth. This comes from their loud spirits, which I have nothing against. There are more than 500 other tribes of more quiet Indians. Because they have made so much noise, the tipi Indians have almost nothing left of their original rituals and teachings. What little that remains has become so well known that modern people all over the place copy and imitate it and make such a mess of the whole question of Indian ritual that all Indians and all people generally are worse of for it. Nothing good is coming from all this silly modern people pretending to be shamans. It is some sort of odd epidemic compounded from people alienated from their own culture and stealing from another, probably without “meaning” to. The result is predictable, perhaps even inevitable.

It is really just more noise, and in this great noise the silence of the sacred is not lost, but protected, because it is sacred silence.

That which is most sacred exists in a world enshrined with silence. Those who guide it live silent and quiet lives. While no one is going to tell you who they are or where they are. If you know how, you can polish your spirit into an agent of sacred silence, you might find your way one day. The Sky Gate is open, it always has been. Where does the sacred silence hide? The only clue I will give you is that it always hides in plain sight. Always.

“We should ascend out of perversity, even as we ascend a mountain that we do not know, with the aid of guides who do know. None who sets forth on an unknown voyage stipulates that the pilot must agree with him as to
the course, since manifestly that would be absurd; the pilot is presumed to know; the piloted does not know. None who climbs a mountain bargains that the guide shall keep to this or that direction; it is the business of the guide to lead. And yet, men hire guides for the Spiritual Journey, of which they know less than they know of land and sea, and stipulate that the guide shall lead them thus and so, according to their own imaginings; and instead of obeying him, they desert and denounce him should he lead them otherwise. I find this of the essence of perversity.
-- FROM THE BOOK OF THE SAYINGS OF TSIANG SAMDUP (Talbut Mundy)