I want to acknowledge the passage of time since my last posting. Words and ideas were quite literally beyond my ability to express. Some, I’ve known, would insist it comes from my reluctance to share. If I had a nickel, as the expression goes, for every time that this was pointed out to me. It is true that sharing my observations has not always been a pleasant experience for me or those with whom I’ve shared.

I once was given an owl talon by a Cherokee shaman and teacher. This talon was to be held by me to remind me that in making a counterpoint to someone’s view, it was not necessary to rip their chest open to make my point. I acquired the skill to refrain from that behavior, though I relish the fact that I can.

This time was due more to the fact much of my learning and work in the area of consciousness is beyond words. It lies in the coming together of the intellect, heart and gut. The as above so below. What Jung called “coincidence”, many call abnormal even bizarre, I came to call normal for the territory and even came to expect.

A couple out of many. On a trip to Chaco Canyon to conduct some measurements to confirm the possible astronomical observatory theory of the canyon, I met an elderly gentleman who introduced himself as a Zuni shaman on a trip to the canyon for ceremony and a raven had told him I was going to be there and would give him a ride. How are you going to pass on that? I walked away from that trip with my measurements as well as a lineage of stories that dated the site to Stonehenge as well as experiencing my first peyote ceremony.

After Vietnam I wanted to learn the skill of meditation and wanted to go where no one had any answers only questions. Where else but Japan and a Zen monastery? Not just anyone, but one that in it’s history had never allowed an occidental student. I waited outside the gate for four days, each day a smallish man would open the door and smile at me, nothing more. On the fourth day I was surprised when he introduced himself as a Roshi and that I would be allowed to enter. In very broken English that he had been waiting for me for some time. With somewhat of an attitude, I asked if he had been waiting on me, how come it took him four days to ask me in? He replied that it was necessary to understand that I had also been waiting for him. I studied and practiced there for 3 1/2 years.

How do I express to someone who has never had the experience, that for four years my dreamtime was shared with a wolf and three Grandmothers who were my teachers?

Reincarnation as a concept came into my awareness at probably the age of eight. It made sense to me intellectually and for years I expressed a belief in. I was twenty-one and visiting the Alaskan wilderness for the first time when on the first night I heard the call of wild wolves. I had such a visceral reaction accompanied by a memory of how much I had missed that sound, that in my mind and heart the validity of reincarnation was answered and was now mine.

Now there is a gap between knowledge and making it your own, it’s like the gap between talking the talk and walking the walk. You train for a task for a period of time, you are confident that you can, but there is a difference when you have.

At this point in my writing I find that I can not understand or know how I ever intended to affect someone else’s thinking. I know that I was swept up in the idea that a change in thinking is desperately needed on the planet. I’ve found in my studies that we as a species do not need to learn new tricks but instead we need to remember. It’s interesting, I found the most agreement between my science background and those paradigms that have been labeled pagan. It is certainly true that the paradigms that speak of living within harmony with the planet, should speak to us with a loud voice.

There is a strong correlation between our separation from the planet and the rise of the personality centered cults. There is also the systematic reduction of role of the female aspect. If there are two better examples of factors to begin the explanation of how and why we find ourselves as a species on the precipice, I can’t think of any.

Another interesting tidbit I gleaned from all my searching was that the people’s we have long considered primitive, really did not have it very bad at all. We’re all familiar with the European dark ages, but in the Islamic world, people had pocket calculators. In Meso-American, civilizations have come and gone in which their cities supported a population of 100,000. They had made measurements of the Milky Way Galaxy that it took the Hubbell to calculate even as accurately.

It is becoming more clear, that the history of the modern world needs to be rewritten. Our species might be traveling to the stars right now if two events, that one could attribute to religion, the burning of the library at Alexandria and the burning of the Mayan codices. One could make an argument that we, as a species, are really just catching up with where we’ve been; even lament the idea of where we might be now.

One of my most critical insights of this whole investigation, is the understanding that, as in history, the winner gets to tell the story. You have to really dig and search the voice of those other than those with the biggest stick. Example for my Christian friends; it is the accepted story that Christ arose from the grave in a physical body. This was a matter of great disagreement among the early sects of Christianity with the other side asserting that Christ appeared as a manifestation of spirit. It was not until 500 years later that the official account of the story was decided.

I thought I might conclude this posting with another little insight that might surprise you. Jesus was a Buddhist.