Old Wisdom

I was browsing through a book that I had forgotten about, and found this passage that I want to share. The book is Seven Arrows by Hyemeyohsts Storm and is a story about the Plains Indians and their struggles and triumphs. It also discusses much of their spiritual wisdom, though I have to confess, I haven't read most of it yet. However, I've read a bit about the Native American spiritual ideas and most of them are pretty close to ideas I've independently formed. Anyway, here is just a very small but significant piece of that old wisdom:

To Touch and Feel is to Experience. Many people live out their entire lives without ever really Touching or being Touched by anything. These people live within a world of mind and imagination that may move them sometimes to joy, tears, happines or sorrow. But these people never really Touch. They do not live and become one with life.

The Sun Dancer believes that each person is a unique Living Medicine Wheel, powerful beyond imagination, that has been limited and placed upon this earth to Touch, Experience and Learn. The Six Grandfathers Taught me that each man, woman, and child at one time was a Living Power that existed somewhere in time and space. The Powers were without form, but they were aware. They were alive.

Each Power possessed boundless energy and beauty. These living Medicine Wheels were capable of nearly anthing. They were beautiful and perfect in all ways except one. They had no understanding of limitation, no experience of substance. These Beings were total energy of the Mind, without Body or Heart. They were placed upon this earth that they might Learn the things of the Heart through Touching.

According to the Teachers, there is only one thing that all people possess equally. This is their loneliness. No two people on the face of this earth are alike in any one thing except for their loneliness. This is the cause of our Growing, but it is also the cause of our wars. Love, hate, greed and generosity are all rooted within loneliness, within our desire to be needed and loved.

The only way that we can overcome our loneliness is through Touching. It is only in this way that we can learn to be Total Beings. God is a presence of this Total. Heamavihio, the Breath of Wisdom, and Miaheyyun, Total Understanding, are but two of the words in the Cheyenne language which express this Wholeness.