The Four Winds

I live in one of the States of the Four Corners.  I like the idea of lands and a people coming together to one point.  A point that disappears once we all stand on it together.  Within me I hear a call for the Spirit of Unity.  My spirit grows weary with the constant opposition.

Years ago I began a journey.  My soul began calling the four corners of my being to come together.  It had grown weary from the constant conflict within me.  Mind, emotion, body, and heart were at odds with each other all the time, never coming to an agreement.  My soul called for help to bring them together.  My soul called for peace.  Without an answer my soul feared it would have to forsake this life.

Then one day, music sprang from the depth of my heart, and out of my mouth a prayer was sung into the world.  A Great Spirit appeared and answered my heart and soul's cry, and taught me how to bring the four corners of my being to a point of unity.  I made peace with them, one by one.  I brought all the pieces of me together.  After a time, learning under the Guidance and Love of Spirit, practicing patience, love, reaching for understanding, giving the dark places within me a voice through the art of writing, they finally came together under One Spirit of Unity.  The past, present, and future within me came together under the Wing of Spirit, and found an all inclusive embrace where all within me is accepted.  They found their common ground, the one point where all conflict disappeared, and each came together with one intention...

Peace.

To finally have quiet within me felt like a miracle.  No more did I hear a battle raging, nor did I feel my arms and legs were being pulled in different directions.  When all that I am stood on one point, and found Silence, I heard the still, small Voice of Spirit.  Within it I could hear my own voice clearly, one voice.  Out of the Silence I could direct my thoughts, my voice.  No more did they run loose sending my tongue out of control.  With the control of my thoughts, my emotions settled into place.  Thought and emotion were married, I understood their relationship.  Love brought them together through my heart, all three living within the temple of my body.  The Father of thought planted His seeds into the Mother of emotion, producing inspiration and dreams and vision.  My vision saw beauty, saw Spirit's Presence alive in everything, and everyone. 

After my heart, mind and emotional kingdom were cleansed of corruption, after I made peace with the four corners of my being, I walked into the world and found to my dismay the battle I had left behind was raging in the world, in others.  They were suffering, and I tried to share what Spirit had given me, but their resistance was great, just as mine was initially.  I recognized myself in them, the same spirit of war, conflict, opposition, believing enemies were everywhere outside themselves.  They did not want what I had to offer them, what the great Spirit had given to me to share with them.

I asked Spirit, "How can they not want peace?  Do they not see that the Love they seek is available within them?"  Shock made me tremble at the sheer resistance and rebellion, and the outright refusal of a people who warred, making conflict with each other.  They hungered for war, for enemies.  There was no willingness in them at all to change their perception, not even to a small degree.  They didn't know.  They did not know the enemy wasn't outside themselves.  Their ways reflected the battle within.

My heart grieved for them.  I prayed to Spirit, for them, and for more faith to be given to me.  I could not stand by and witness such destruction - where a spirit of opposition, competition, is the name of the game.  Where winners and losers, right and wrong, ruled of the day.  Constant arguing, with no one bending, no one coming together under the Spirit of Unity.  Their eyes saw only where they were divided, not where they stood on common ground.  And worse, they liked it that way.  My heart bled with a Grief I thought would undo me.  Yet...I learned it was myself who also needed to make peace with a warring people, and to allow within myself their own choices.  Spirit was alive in each one, and they had a choice to listen to Its voice within themselves.

We have all been given free will, and are using our free agency in every moment...whether we believe we are or not, this is true.

Several years ago I was given the privilege of attending the Sun Dance ceremony, the path of my bloodline allowing me admittance.  The Sun Dance is a sacred ceremony, a living, dancing prayer to the Great Spirit.  We prayed for our families, our children, and their children, those to come in future generations.  We prayed for Mother Earth, and all our relations.  We danced together, sang together, each with our individual prayers, yet praying together in One Voice of the People.  We celebrated our Ancestors, and each other in the present, and those to come in the future.  Once, during one of the gatherings of song and prayer, I was lifted to a vision where I walked among my Ancestors.  I walked the entire line of them from the beginning.  They stood on each side of me as I walked, I heard their prayers, their chanting, their voices of encouragement.  They asked something of me, and in spirit I agreed.  When I reached the end of the line, I saw my mother.  She smiled, and pointed to the living...my daughter and her children, and her children's children.  For them we prayed, for them we danced and sang with One Voice.

Now I call upon my Ancestors, I call upon the Four Winds, I call upon a People to come from the Four Directions, I call on the Great Spirit to bring us all under His Mighty Wing to bring peace and love to the hearts and minds of humanity.  Our future generations depend on you.

Mitakuye Oyasin -- All My Relations

---