Lindsey Lou On The Move: Standing Rock and Beyond

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(American) Individualism Grows Up

It’s come up often lately, this issue of our American Individualism encroaching upon our paths forward to a new world of community and peace. The way forward is very much a process of self and it takes more time than we ever think or wish.

The question is often, What do I do?  What is it I’m meant to do right now? 

I’ve seen throughout time a common experience of misinterpreting what our ‘heart is telling us’…. We usually are being guided to do something but it is usually something we don’t ‘want’ to do, the harder path, the scary choice, and so we dismiss it, quickly forgetting that Creator does have our back, our hearts actually, and is trying to support us.  We then mistakenly feel alone when facing something big like needing to move on or change something….a job, career, relationship, moving, taking on leadership, starting something, finishing something, etc. We are feeling what we are meant to do but it is usually the harder choice, triggering an immediate ‘ease and comfort’ meter assessment and neural path creation away from discomfort;  the judgement and disposal of heart inspiration to brain landfill happens so instantaneously, we totally miss and/or immediately forget that the Creator just tried to answer our prayer!   

All of this is to say, finding one’s place even in the urgent times we are in is a process of self that takes way more time than we ever realize. Most collective movements, truly healing and peaceful communities, the most powerful Love in the world is usually of people who are elders…. They have already walked the road we are currently on, they’ve done the work … the learning, repetition and practice of unloading the baggage and coming to know exactly Who they are and they are old because it takes time. Can we make it there faster? Perhaps… do you have an elder? Have you found one that speaks to your Spirit? If so, did you hang on? Do you honor them? Care for them? Check-in with them daily? Are you listening to their wisdom or, at times, placing it immediately in the ooo-i-don’t-want-to-do-that land fill? If you are seeking their words, reading them, are you rereading them to the point that they become part of you? 

If not yet, that’s ok; they’re patient, they have many more years of patience than ourselves, and the lesson always comes back around, until we learn and get to level up to the next!

The wisdom, the Way forward is with our ancestors. I’d like to bring their writings and what’s been left for us to the soundcloud account, available for even just a few more searching for steps forward along the Red Road.

I’ll begin with the virtues of my ancestors, as it has been my journey since 2016 to come back to the Lakota Way to learn and to share.

Also placed below each virtue are some of my favorite Mother Teresa (MT) quotes as her wisdom has been truly illuminating for me in foggy times.

I find great solace in the practicality of her words. To me they are like a blueprint for the inner self, a lovely path of words for the hard work so elusive that words hardly ever suffice and which few have space to be able to gift in authenticity; the things which exist so fundamentally and innately but that cannot just be checked off a list.

Complimentary to her endlessly inspiring quotes, a book of her personal writings, Come Be My Light, is even more illuminating and supportive … It speaks to what the personal journey in service to the collective really is, what it really feels like and what it really takes. Of course we each get a unique journey, but to learn her experience is to know that even though she looked like a natural and it all came so easy, that is an oversimplification and so it puts us back into the place of personal responsibility and empowerment to listen to Exactly what our heart, the Great Mystery, is guiding our bird spirits to do, and to put away the fear and do it. We must do all that it takes to do what is in our hearts to do.

Elder wisdom X Elder wisdom BOOM!  Perhaps I’ll be Wise and Humble enough to learn from experience and speed the process.

1 Unsiiciyapi “HoSheeCheeAwpee” Humility, to be humble, modest, unpretentious.

Of the twelve values, this One raises the power of the rest.

MT:

If you are humble, nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are.

2 Wowacintanka “WoahWahCheetanka” Perseverance, to persist, to strive in spite of difficulties.

MT:

Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.

God does not require us to succeed, he only requires that you try.

Yesterday is gone, tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.

3 Wawoohola ” WahWohHoLah” Respect, to be considerate, to hold in high esteem

MT: 

Let us always meet eachother with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of Love.

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to eachother.

I want you to be concerned about your nextdoor neighbor. Do you know your nextdoor neighbor?

If you judge people, you have no time to Love them.

4 Wayuonihan “WhyOwnia” Honor, to have integrity, to have an honest and upright character

MT:

Spread Love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.

We shall never know all the good a simple smile can do.

What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.

5 Cantognake “ChawnTeyOhgoneAwekay”  To place and hold in one’s heart = ” love”

MT

Joy is a net of Love in which you can catch souls.

6 Icicupi “EachEachOobee” Sacrifice = to give of oneself, an offering>>Service

MT

The fruit of silence is prayer

The fruit of prayer is faith

The fruit of faith is love

The fruit of Love is service

The fruit of service is peace

Love cannot remain by itself, it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action and that action is service.

7 Wowicake “WoahWeeJawckHay” Truth, that which is real, the way the world is

MT

We do not need guns and bombs to bring peace, we need love and compassion.

8 Waunsilapi “WowSheLawpee”  Compassion, to care, to sympathize

MT 

The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.

9 Woohitike “WhoaEateeKay” Bravery, having or showing courage

MT:

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.

10 Cantewasake “ChawnteyWashOnkay” Fortitude, strength of heart and mind

MT

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

11 Canteyuke “ChawnteyYouHeh” Generosity, to give, to share, to have a heart.

Whatever you have, give to those less fortunate; as one then, we have all we need.

MT

If you cannot feed a hundred people,then feed just one.

12 Woksape “WokeSawPay” Wisdom, to understand what is right and true, to use knowledge in a good way

MT 

Never travel faster than your guardian angel can fly.

You can listen to the virtues and the wisdom of our elders here: 

Listen to Start Here by LindseyLouOnTheMove on #SoundCloud

https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/UbrbK

Mother Teresa’s words https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1543796.Mother_Teresa

The Lakota Way 

Written, and from which the values and their actions are referenced above https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/305508.The_Lakota_Way

The Virtues Spoken by our relative and elder Lee Plenty Wolf

Something fun to do:

By way of that epic elder wisdom and partaking in a beautiful practice of self, with the amplification power for the collective by undertaking it together, let us complete this challenge over the next 21 days ! https://kindspring.servicespace.org/challenge/

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On the Struggle Bus today?

Feeling overwhelmed? Covid gotchu on the Struggle Bus? This Corona Spring continues to be an immense lesson of Mother Earth’s.  She reminds us that it is not she who is dying, rather it is we, the most peculiar (in our potential and also blindness) of her children who are not only dying but killing ourselves!

The state of our human world is a reflection of exactly where we are within – confused about Who We Are, distracted. We’ve come to the place that we are, not for lack of practical, easy-to-implement solutions but because spiritually and therefore mentally and physically and therefore socially and politically – we are a mess.  

[If these words bring discomfort, please know, for my part, I have no judgement; my pure intention is of compassion and love. In digging to the root of my own discomfort and need to judge, I discovered a deep mistrust of other humans. It is not an original, natural paradigm, rather a great misunderstanding that I’ve since given myself permission to let go of – I trust my brother and sister humans to take their own journey toward healing and Love, as I trust myself to take mine…it is a work in progress!]

We are helped along in this by our exceptional power of rationalization, a gift which was never intended to guide us, rather to support us; as imbalanced individuals we sure can overcomplicate things to the point of paralysis. 

This overwhelm cannot be ‘overcome’, rather relaxed into with awareness and healing time – we are what we eat, we are what we buy, we are what we do. We become how we think, we exist as we believe. 

He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if thou gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into thee.

Nietzsche

The implications of this are simple because in each of these things We Have the Control [firstly to stop fighting/conquering/’overcoming’ in general, rather relaxing into and healing]…

Undoing the corruption which has infected our democracy, taking power from the Corporations driving ‘the 9 to 5’, ‘data bundles’, ‘cool’, ‘30-year mortgages’, ‘ownership rights’ and ‘costs’ of water, food, shelter, health, ‘retirement’, ‘tax monies’ which ‘fund’ ‘the dark web’ and ‘gun production’, etc. etc.  is merely to choose differently.

These are systems, merely systems we created to serve us and which no longer do in many ways, for many people….[and it is critical to distinguish that it is the systems we participate in and perpetuate (right down to something as ubiquitous as a smart phone which carries within precious metals fought and died over as savagely and systemically as blood diamonds)  that no longer serve – that is our way forward, rather than fighting (i.e. struggling) some self-sabotaging, endless maze identifying and targeting some ‘inherent evil’ which is rooting, lurking and presenting within some ‘inherently evil human’. It turns out, what I do for/to me is that which I am doing for/to you and … 

The way you see people [you] is the way you treat them [you], and the way you treat them [you] is the way they [you] become.

Goethe

So here we are, full circle… I am what I put into my body, I am what I put into my mind and my spirit, I become as I do with my body, mind and spirit.  May it be Truth and Beauty then. Love. Thank you Creator for my healing – that I may Love and be Loved!

Of course, doing the work to get to the root of Why we choose to eat poisonous food that is fast and made by Corporations, why we choose to commit entire lifetimes to careers for retirements into death, why we choose to become indebted to a single, built structure of one place at the sacrifice of an entire world of communities which welcome contributing, open-hearted guests, why we choose struggle … is a good bit of hard work. Hard not complicated though, and actually, we quite love and thrive on purpose-driven (…that Truth and Beauty and Love stuff) days of good, hard work!

Divesting then is quite straightforward. Simply divest from the things that no longer serve you, things that no longer bring you joy because they literally harm you or they literally come at the expense of another living being. When it comes down to it, no matter which of the many brilliant lenses you see with: your life is still just made up of many simple choices that You have the say in! 

Power to you – in creating the more beautiful world our Hearts Know is possible! (Indeed, yes! It was a choice to use the Vimeo version of this video rather than the YouTube version.)

Resources

The book The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, by Charles Eisenstein

Divesting stuff

‘Divestment’ as an activism strategy has gained strength in recent years particularly to affront the fossil fuel industry (system!), though also the larger toxic aspects of the industrial revolution (system!); however, you remember the good old stories of ‘bus boycotts’ affronting racism (system!), the Underground Railroad affronting slavery (system!), and further back than that, the ‘Boston tea boycotts’ affronting imperialism (system!), similar in another part of the world to Ghandi’s spinning wheel and food fasting for independence from British goods, affronting that same imperialism; all the way back to indigenous warriors affronted with mortality, the strategy of selfish, savage colonization (system!)…  

Alas, this has all been a work in progress for many lifetimes now!  

Getting to the Roots

Each of these artificial and arbitrary systems required us to change Who We Are to fit into them… we had to learn to choose struggle (“discipline”, “sacrifice”) as the “selfless” path, the “righteous” path, the “practical” path, the “respectable” and “honorable” path, in order to spend entire days/lifetimes running the systems of the industrial revolution – otherwise facing (self)judgements made to be negative, wrong, “evil” such as “lazy”, “selfish”, “savage”, “Godless”, “eccentric”, “crazy”, “idealistic”, “feminine”, “emotional”; similarly, we had to learn mistrust to learn judgement to learn inequality to justify the superiority, ownership, conquering which enabled the systems of racism, slavery, imperialism and colonization.

We are Not evil. Rather, with that precious, unique gift of rationality (that great existential, bitter/sweet, double-edged sword of our human experience)  as our (mis)guide we taught ourselves to serve systems.

Going forward, we may give ourselves permission to let go, to pause and get to the root of anything ‘demanding’ our energy and which feels like ‘struggle’, to be aware and scrutinizing, i.e. guided first by spirit (feeling) and then supported by our gift of rationalization: of the things which may be systemic, no longer natural but contrived, and which feel different than love, beauty, courage, compassion, wisdom… Truth and Beauty! 

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Corona Spring and Climate Change… How To Celebrate Earth Day This Year

We’ve reached an interesting groove by now. We’re managing our curve, we’re taking our social distancing medicine and seeing results.  Still in it though and now mindful of screen time! Simultaneously, and as we approach *‘Earth Day’ nature is rejoicing! 

Almost conflicted, many of us have found great joy in seeing the natural world around us blissfully fulfilled by balance! 

Here are two ways to embrace Mother Earth as the annual ‘Earth Day’ celebration approaches and which do not require much screen time:

  1. Walk in Solidarity with the Chief for this year’s Walk For The Bees! Get out, #BeeWalkAroundTheBlock in true Covid Spring fashion, with the bees in your heart and send your pictures in to the chief! 
  1. Take the next few minutes to Join OneClub! If not right now, then certainly on Earth Day!  By spending just a few minutes to join our little club you will make an immediate impact for our trees as well as a lasting one, automatically, each time you conduct your online business. 

If you find yourself online, then here is the place to be on ‘Earth Day’!

*Earth Day is every day, is it not? Reach out for help finding the balance in the space that heals you.

Also, be not conflicted, take great peace and guidance from indigenous wisdom now and onward: 

This moment humanity is going through can be seen as a portal and as a hole. The decision to fall into the hole or go through the portal is up to you. If they repent of the problem and consume the news 24 hours a day, with little energy, nervous all the time, with pessimism, they will fall into the hole. 

But if you take this opportunity to look at yourself, rethink life and death, take care of yourself and others, you will cross the portal.

Take care of your home, take care of your body. Connect with the middle body of your spiritual house, all this is synonymous, that is to say the same.

When you are taking care of one, you are taking care of everything else. 

Do not lose the spiritual dimension of this crisis, have the aspect of the eagle, which from above, sees the whole, sees more widely. There is a social demand in this crisis, but there is also a spiritual demand. The two go hand in hand. Without the social dimension, we fall into fanaticism. But without the spiritual dimension, we fall into pessimism and lack of meaning. You were prepared to go through this crisis. 

Take your toolbox and use all the tools at your disposal.

Learn about resistance with indigenous and African peoples: we have always been and continue to be exterminated. But we still haven’t stopped singing, dancing, lighting a fire and having fun. 

Don’t feel guilty about being happy during this difficult time. You don’t help at all by being sad and without energy. It helps if good things emanate from the Universe now.

It is through joy that one resists. 

Also, when the storm passes, you will be very important in the reconstruction of this new world. You need to be well and strong. And, for that, there is no other way than to maintain a beautiful, happy and bright vibration. This has nothing to do with alienation. This is a resistance strategy…. there is a rite of passage called the quest for vision. You spend a few days alone in the forest, without water, without food, without protection. When you go through this portal, you get a new vision of the world, because you have faced your fears, your difficulties…

This is what is asked of you:

What world do you want to build for yourself? For now, this is what you can do: serenity in the storm. Calm down and pray. Everyday. Establish a routine to meet the sacred every day. Good things emanate, what you emanate now is the most important thing. And sing, dance, resist through art, joy, faith and love.

These are good words which were given to me this week and so I am giving them to you. They are being attributed to “White Eagle, Hopi” – though I have not been able to verify this origin. 

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From Anxiety Attack Nights to a Healthy, Happy and Free Life

In the middle of 2016, I was doing what I was supposed to. I had graduated from College, I had volunteered for two years of national service; I had gotten a real job where I worked hard, did well, and moved up. I made money, spent it and travelled to exotic places. 

Even so, over time, in the middle of the nights I awoke hardly able to breathe. The gnawing question was always immediately present – What am I doing?  That’s it. That was the plaguing conundrum which jerked me awake in darkness, night after night. 

Then, during work one day, I was gifted an experience with a prospective client that rocked my days as well. It was clear pretty quickly that this gentleman was outside of the parameters of my target and yet, I remained with him for an unjustifiable amount of time (in the world of business and productivity).  Our conversation, however, was of higher vibrations than daily this-and-that and metrics and cost/benefit analysis’; we were speaking to the things of this life and our purpose. Somehow he knew at the heart of me, there existed a forgotten past – the origin of my people, Oglala Lakota, the details of which I knew not too much at all. 

My Nana took her family from the reservation long before I was around to learn that it is no place for a free person. She sacrificed our culture to save our dignity – so that I could even fill the shoes of the person who wrote the first paragraph of this post. There are grandmothers who shared in the same impossible choice and took their families down the other road.  I’ve found now, years after the moments I spent with this guy, that the descendants of either choice have been left in a state of lostness, without the peace or power of remembering Who I Am. 

It has been a real journey since that day when that man struck me to my core with a new, more catalytic question than the one waking me up each night: What are You doing for your people? It brought tears to my eyes. For I was in sunny, southern California.  The house across the street from where I was standing was poised upon the cliff, above the shoreline, overlooking the ocean. I did know enough by this point that the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of my people, like most reservations across Indian Country, was still no place for a free person.  Statistically, it beats most places that service-minded folks in this country choose to travel to on Volunteer Vacations, to ‘developing countries’. 

By great blessing, less than a week later, news erupted for a short blip giving truth to the reality of private security guards of an oil corporation allowing attack dogs to maul peaceful elders and children on the treaty land of the Standing Rock Tribe. 

I’ve made a personal study of change and the conditions which cause it in recent years. These describe the truth of my own:  a rock-bottom of sleepless nights and absolute cringing commutes to work in apprehension of arriving (my spirit singing to take the driver’s seat!), a single, sincere conversation with a stranger (compassion) and an invitation (to serve)!  My people were finally taking a stand and they were inviting us to stand with them! 

And from that, a whole new life…

2016

September

  • Quit my job
  • Bought the Snowbeast! A 2005 Nissan Murano with 180k miles on it for $2k – solely for the purpose of getting to Standing Rock and serving. 
  • Attended a community event in which a local Tribal leader was speaking about his journey’s to and from Standing Rock delivering supplies. He shared the date of his next trip and invited anyone who wished to go to Standing Rock to caravan out with him. 
  • Built the Site
  • Gathered as much support as possible
  • Packed
  • Rolled Out!

October

November

December

2017 What now

January – February

  • Effectively dismantled in mind and spirit,  disillusioned, filled with anger but also in awe of the beauty and peace of my people and that place, I tried to collect the chaos within by writing it all down and organizing the special moments captured in photo and worth a thousand words, into a book.  
  • Learned to make my own power message t shirts, decided the process requires too many of mother earth’s resources to pursue further; natural dyes would probably help but still
  • Went to the ocean for peace
  • Decided to locate things people were giving away and flip them around to people who would buy them on Next Door and OfferUp; while this did generate some good funds the resources required of mother earth to get it done is a no win. 
  • My motorcycle, Julez, died
  • I reached into skills of days passed and repainted my nephews room
  • I watched the Women’s March on TV instead of going
  • I attempted to get involved with a local group that was getting people organized around political action but found that my personal expectation to go forward with meetings in a holistic way, as in the way of the Lakota, at Standing Rock, has no application in business-as-usual yet – too much for me at the time
  • Gave Fire Cider a go, using a recipe from the Hobbit at Standing Rock
  • Discovered a best friend was going to be working in Austin for a month
  • Simultaneously a self-defense instructor certification was going to be taught there in the same month with a following certification training available about two weeks later in Utah (the idea of Self Defense as a path forward was a fleeting inspiration by the Creator in that exact moment I learned of my friend in Austin)
  • Queue my return to reading but in a new way, as momz gifts me Living Your Strengths, in which my own healing attempts to go deeper and my mind glimpses the possibility of theTrue aligned potential within
  • On the Road to Austin

March

  • Still haven’t cut my hair, guess we’re growing out
  • First WWOOF! Thank goodness for Mary and Lucy in the world! Thank goodness for WWOOF
  • UT Austin RAD training and SXSW
  • Back on the Road to Utah – but through the natural places: Big Bend, Candelaria (where my phone dies), outside Roswell where I bendered somebody’s fender, Albaqurque, Bear Ears where I got stuck at the top in muddy snow forced to finally reckon with my lifelong competition with my own instinct, Hite where I ate dinner by a campfire acknowledging my ignorance and letting it All go, finally slept peacefully, under the stars, waking up a changed person – and on to Provo, but not before the Snowbeast stopped at a gas station and turned over for about 20 minutes before deciding to start again. 
  • RAD Training #2 and instructor certification,check; miracle at Utah Lake before rolling out of town and back into the nature. 
  • Let many layers go, across many miles, hiking and camping through Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, Grand Staircase-Escalante and Zion. 

April

  • Made it home to the fam
  • Retreat to the Mudcaves
  • Flew to Florida at my Sister’s request to help her with her Grandfather’s Estate Sale
  • Road trip with pops in a Moving truck from Florida to San Diego, a path of many moments to savor and learn from: things like life and death, alcoholism, true friendship, grace, beauty, exhaustion, humility.
  • Splinter Jones startup 
  • Wet and Wild Summer, back in Austin! 

April to September

  • I come to know how to cook in a tiny house
  • Off grid living: chickens, dogs, coyotes, electricity, rain water
  • 70 names a week and watering holes far and wide
  • Chiggers
  • Hauling giant mats, tubes and trailers, steering pontoons, floating with the Big Kidz
  • Baby turtles at the coast , the ayers rock of N. America
  • Nani’s surprise 85th birthday in Denver!  
  • House sitting the homestead, Harvey, coyote massacre and the manual of fun
  • Stop ETP march in Dallas
  • St. Louis roadie with Momma!

October- November

  • The magic of Kauai
  • Nextdoor brings the cats and dogs!

December

  • The great Cookie Monster Challenge
  • The Miracle of Jane and Aggie!

2018 In a nutshell

January

February

  • Nani’s Journey begins
  • Hit the road for the Longest Walk, Washington state to Washington DC
  • Emergency trip back to CO to be with Nani
  • So begins a time of learning and preparation: First up> Zero shoes, Fasting, Postmates, Dr. Santos

March

  • Nani moves on, Cricket joins the pack

April-May 

  • Momma’s time of mourning, not the time to go across the country
  • Building mom’s healing pond, all natural with a solar powered waterfall

June

  • Janes first Surgery
  • Dumpster diving

August

  • Jilly arrives from Brazil
  • No Regatta protest miracle
  • Plans Change, partnerships shot

September – December

2019

January 

  • Desert fast and Sunshine boy

February – May 

  • Training and teaching with Heidi

June 

July

  • Fundraising for Barb and Chief
  • Jane Surgery 2

August-September

  • Built Nations Rising with Chief
  • Olio, Booch and Congee

October

  • Sampson Stay
  • New locs
  • Boston

December

  • Magic of Kauai

2020

January – February

  • Starhawk teaches the way of Permaculture Design at Earth Activist Training
  • Kamila reminds me the world of online and social innovation

March

Through time, much evolution, it all amounts to Health, Happiness and Freedom… My life is my message.

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Shoestring Love

The perfect act of Shoestring Love – just a little something, whatever a person has, is more than enough enough – has the healing power to save someone’s entire day… to save an entire world!

We are each given a singular Purpose here, one collective mission: to Love and be Loved. That is the great Oneness of our Being. It is in the expression of that Love that makes up the glorious individuality of self.

How might you gift your Love to the World Today? 

These are the things that I must do:

Very recently, a dear love of mine, visited me from very far away. She was here for only a moment, a mere glimpse of life, but through her glorious lens, she saw something that I had been misunderstanding my whole life.  At one point in one of our days together, she declared, “You are an artist!”  

Is that the first time someone said that to me? No.  But was I finally ready, for whatever reason, however many layers of time and self, to hear it? Yes.  In letting this sink in over a few days, I got to the bottom of it – I have always put off creating the inspiration within based on the misconception that there was always something more important for me to be doing for the world. 

Finally, I embody the freedom that there is Nothing more important for me to be doing for the world, in the world, than the exact things of inspiration which are born within me and none other.  


Much Love, Lindsey Lou On The Move

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Sacred Circle for Ceremony

Grandmother taught us… Life is a ceremony in itself, worthy of celebrating with ceremony – which means that yours and my life are worth celebrating every single day with a ceremony. When we do a ceremony from our heart, just like anything else growing, a bud will be born within us, and sooner or later that bud will begin to open; it becomes a flower, and that flower comes to full blossom where there will be seeds. But because you and I live on this Earth, winds of change will come upon us and when that happens the seeds will blow away – and somewhere else, another ceremony will be born…. When ceremony loses its spirit, it becomes a ritual – and life today is full of rituals… Grandmother was born in 1893.

Uncle Angaangaq, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), The Mother Earth Delegation of United Indigenous Nations of the North during the time of the Corona Pandemic March 2020

In the summer of last year, 2019, I was gifted a revelation that only now, in its own time, has begun to unfold.  

As my spirit has reawoken, my soul reborn, I’ve found such power in meditation which reveals to me more and more the vast unseen. In this process, at one point I came to understand that there would be a significance in gathering together in prayer within the vision plane. At that time, such a thought had never occurred to me… the concept of gathering with another living being, or many, with full intention and awareness, within the realms of the great unseen! I’ve since come to know that all things are possible, much more than the limited experience of our ego-driven physical experience allows us initially to conceive of – until it awakens to the great Truth of our Being. 

A Gift for Your Celebration

Within this physical plane we are gathering in the Sacred Circle of the Red Road. 

To honor this beautiful ceremony, as a symbol of connection and strength, I would love for you to have your own sacred circle. Each one is made with love and each blessed by our Mother, the Earth.

Your sacred circle is made up of individually twisted braids and beads that can be worn throughout your day – around your wrists and ankles or as a necklace; and so they will be available for you to unwrap and circle around you when grounding in for ceremony, ideally in touch with our Mother, the earth (your feet upon the soil, or grass, or sitting upon a rock).   Someday, should the occasion arise in which one or more of us come together in the same place on the Earth, then too our individual circles may be unwrapped to be rejoined together in ceremony. It is a beautiful thing (another act of Shoestring Love in the world!)

  • Each one is twisted in the way of our Hawaiian relatives, who taught me how rope is made to be unbroken.  
  • The colors that flow throughout, red, yellow, black and white,  are used often in the Oglala Lakota tradition of I and my grandmother’s people. The four directions represented in these colors describe Truth, as they represent the circle of life; and so they are reflected also in the harmonious rainbow and in the beautiful rainbow of the human family.

You may order a single long rope or a set of four shorter ones, one for each direction and with the capability of extending the protective power of that sacred hoop to each wrist and ankle during your days.  

While it does take more time to unwrap and reconnect each of the four into full circle for ceremony, I have come to find that experience as a gift in itself… taking the time, to care, and to come into circle wholly mindful. 

It is also possible with the four braids to leave two, three or all four connected up to wear as you wish. 

To order yours, please Come in to the Circle with us.

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If you are already a Sacred Circle Member, please complete your Order Request Form here:

Sacred Circle Order
Length Option *
Size, general bracelet/anklet sizing *
What are your favorite colors to wear?
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The Easiest Way to Write a Book and the Most Important Reason to do it!

When I went to Standing Rock, I went in service of the people. I learned that I was blessed to be able to go as not everyone was. I also learned how quickly we American’s, or perhaps just humans of this age, go immediately to ‘fixing’. We dig into the experience we bring and begin firing our ideas away.  This was never as clear to me as at Standing Rock when morning meetings expanded and contracted in size and time according to people’s passions to surge to the protest, and accordingly, as the new people came and went the ideas around issues were repeated over and over again. 

Because I went to be of service, I listened more than I spoke and continually asked what I could do. One day, in response, the leader of IEN said to me, write.  I tried keeping up my words on social media and on the blog but I didn’t feel that good about it or at it. For whatever reason I decided to begin photographing certain things with the intention of Never posting them to social media or even on the blog (I’ve since learned it’s not ‘for whatever reason’, these are ispiritations which can be sourced directly from Creator – perfect instinct). 

When I got home and my mind wouldn’t focus on anything – lost in the haze of what had just happened, what did not happen, and the what now question – I had those photos. I organized them into albums that made sense to me.  Then I began placing them into a single word document – no words yet, just one after another as they wished to tell their story. 

At this point, they amounted to many pages. This was the queue for me to pause the building process and go into the world of publishing. On this note, I think that part of what is overwhelming about the world wide web is that you find a million types of solutions for something you thought would be quite clear.  So then you’ve got a million tabs open without a way to shut your computer down for the night to save energy – Thank you Tab Saver Extension. 

I’m going to make a decision for the most part right now that rather than going down the path of all options for you, I’ll simply tell you the one I chose and why.  

Some options simply didn’t fit for me at this time because at this point my mind felt pretty certain that money was the root of evil and corporations are not trustworthy based on their profit over people or planet motivation structure.  I landed on theBookPatch because:

  • They were quite informational about each of the considerations regarding publishing/self-publishing
  • They were very transparent about one of the points that I think some, possibly many, publishers take advantage of people on – the ISBN number and the ownership rights associated with them
  • Been in it for a minute
  • Made it easy to learn the cost to print based on different settings like page number, binding, color; 
  • They’re pricing is Not prohibitive especially if you can’t order for bulk pricing breaks. 
  • They have an online bookstore in which your book always has a place for people to buy a paper or digital copy, both of which you choose the price point of and in which you receive 100% of the amount for the digital copy. 

I’ve stayed with Book Patch because:

  • All of the above did remain aligned throughout the process of uploading my book according to their guides and publishing it for sale
  • The print quality is amazing! I’m truly impress with the look and feel of the paperback
  • They were responsive to my emails and their service was satisfactory

Based on this process I was able to continue on with actually writing what was going to be a real book. I determined the number of colored pages (an important factor for this book since I always wanted it to be a photo journey) based on the cost to print and the value I determined was affordable and realistic for readers… one of the queues which force a writer to understand whom they wish to serve. Learning this, I meticulously, reviewed each organized photo for quality and impact and ultimately had to cut hundreds! 

From here, I still did not tack myself down to anything as concrete as chapters and paragraphs… I merely wrote the details of what each picture evoked in me.  Throughout this process the intention behind my words became 1. To memorialize the experience for those of us blessed to have stood on that ground and 2. To try to convey the magic of it, in any degree possible, to those who could not be there.  

As those words fell out, then the context of them came – sometimes hundreds or thousands of years worth wanted to pour out! The pages began filling themselves to the point that the sentences themselves had to be reprocessed over time and through many versions to become the most concise forms of themselves. 

Once it was all down and out of me, I dropped it. I so wanted to honor those whose land we were guests and whose battle we were merely invited to pray in, as spiritual warriors, true water protectors. I also wanted to tell the truth, lay everything out as it really was.  At that time, for most of us getting home from it, we were angry. The darkness in my spirit burdened the pages. And to lay these things down for others to pick up was pushing me to a layer of vulnerability I wasn’t yet ready for. I needed time.

The process is an example of the seasons of life. When I was ready to open the document, maybe a year had passed… the winter seems to be my writing time aligned with the season of reflection and storytelling, around a fire, into the night. I read it in full and found the rawness as I had left it and it was jolting. I was no longer in that place.  Likely, thanks to the initial writing itself, as well in the meantime, I had travelled into nature, began to shed entire lifetimes of layers of burden. I swept through the pages once again but now with a new lens for  my edits, fine-tuned some pictures, reorganized a bit – this may have been the point when I moved from a word doc to slides, it seemed worth it even with the huge time suck that it was, to be able to move the images and word blocks as I wished. Then I put it down again for a few months at least. I may have gone through this picking-up/tweaking/leaving/picking-up a few times… but at one point I opened it and found myself in disbelief that with each page, up to the very end, I really liked it!

The real magic of it, is this… 

I’ve since had the blessing of hearing feedback from water protectors who were there.  From one such reader I learned the power of it to put a person right back there, racing heartbeat and all… she too had to put it down, to give space and time to that which still needed to heal, and which the book catalyzed! What a blessing to have gotten to heal through the process of writing a book and to gift that to another!  

Should you ever find yourself needing to heal, needing to pour something out of you… staring at a blank page, an impossible place to start for many of us…

  1. Search through the images of your life. 
  2. Place them into albums that make sense to you. 
  3. Lay them down onto pages in the order they wish and let them evoke the words they call for…

These words may keep flowing for many pages, and you may find yourself lighter and that now these words are meant for someone, for some reason.  Follow your instinct, you know what to do!

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Whole Earth Balance

We look at our world today and become overwhelmed.

But!  Do we ever ask – How the Earth heals herself? 

She does it easily with four beautiful systems of energy exchange and abundance. 

We are quite familiar with each of these: 

  • Fire, the sun, that brings golden light to all of our days
  • Air, the cleansing life breaths and movement of every single moment
  • Water,  and the original and absolutely perfect department of transportation
  • Earth, our foundation, the rich black gold of our soil

As you look to your own life, your own health and life spirit, Are you taking part in the sacred balance of our physical world? 

Our peace of mind in these times lies in these four natural systems – when in balance unlock the infinite bliss of the spirit. 

The whole earth heals when you set free the balance in the space that heals you, and that is a Hopeful and actionable idea! 

One person can become One People can save One Planet!

You can start right here, in the online space you occupy. Please take the first easy, peasy step for healing the space you are in and Mother Earth too…

Join OneClub by saving some trees immediately and automatically with every search!

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A Sacred Circle of the Red Road

Epic times. Hard to put words to.

Find your resolve and inspiration here; please feel welcome to join us in this sacred circle of healing and love…

I wish health and happiness for each one of us and my heart feels great compassion for those who are suffering.  Suffering, however, is not new upon the landscape of the human experience, nor is it inherent. This is why there is room in my heart to find much joy in this moment when the great storm of selfish power is ending. Mother Earth has waited for us to choose a better way all of this time.

Some of us are ready, we’ve been waiting – we are aware of our own innocence, insignificance and Great Oneness simultaneously.  For those of us whose eyes are open and ears are listening we are on a path of healing and also serving as healer, of learning while also teaching. 

It is a time for our great “Wisdom, Courage, and Compassion”

This then, is a Sacred Circle meant to gather up those of us who understand the call of Mother Earth. We are in process, growing in our Wisdom, Courage and Compassion as we continue to listen closely to learn from Her, from the ancestors of our past and the spirits of Truth who walk among us today. 

As a welcome, here is a special gift for each of us who come to this space to better know the story and the Way of the Red Road. 

This group is our tepee of many skins. It is a sacred circle and together we sit upon the earth across vast distances. We represent the beautiful blended rainbow of colors of the two-legged. 


This is a powerful space to find healing, learning, comfort, support, and focused energy for prayer and creation. 

It embodies and fulfills these years of immense transformation, of rebalancing – the feminine spirit flows strongly through this circle because it is a time of coming back to balance, and so the sacred masculine is just as welcome and necessary. 

Gathering in the Vision Plane

Because we are distant from each other and often even our own Being in this physical plane, we shall gather in the vision plane… visualizing our circle, our sacred pipe, filled with holy tobacco and even White Buffalo Calf Woman sitting among us, joining us in the rounds of sacred prayer. Her teachings were a gift for those of us listening, especially for guidance in times such as this.

As I send out daily Red Road words and song for your meditation, replace the pipe ceremony as you need with deep breathing or any other means by which you find your way to Relax into Oneness with all that is seen and unseen.

White Buffalo Calf Woman is but one great spirit that has come forth to peoples of history to awaken those they met. Her words in this space are to provide a guide. They are not meant to constrict the path of your spirit as you receive our daily Red Road readings and go forth in meditation; your intuition is a direct means of communication with your Creator Spirit, to deny it is to deny your Creator, to embody it is to find that Infinite Blissful Love, Peace, our given Power of Creation in Love.  

Join the Sacred Circle of the Red Road

Upon listening to The Story of White Buffalo Calf Woman and the Way of the Red Road and joining our sacred circle we will be linked in the physical plane, as we are universally, all of the time. 

Our community…

  • Exists to help heal Mother Earth and to make miracles happen!
  • Is pretty organic. If something is contributing to the healing and learning of the times we are in, and in a spirit of Love, then it is a true gift and blessing to this community – it is welcome and appreciated; the ripples of it will describe Truth and evoke Beauty beyond what you may know. 
  • Benefits from the Buddy system. As you join this circle, please extend an invitation to anyone in your direct circle that comes to mind right now. 
  • Grows from your own inspiration and contribution to the playlist of our meditations and days
  • Is connected and strengthened by the Sacred Circle of Ceremony
  • Is energized by your Check-In!  For the sake of community and prayer power, it is amazing to hear from you when you sync into the reading and prayer. Feel free to share where on earth you’re sending your love and healing energy in from and anything you are lit up about or needing our love, support or prayer in. For example: 

Hey all, checking in with love and gratitude from the occupied land of the *Kumeyaay Nation, USA. Feeling blessed in the miracle of this new day which greeted me with one of the Mothers most fulfilling of experiences – a perfect rainbow, unbroken and clear, framed in a more subtly reflected but full, secondary rainbow. May your hearts feel full, as mine did standing in the soft, golden rain of the morning, the breeze caressing my cheek, the cool water conveying the message of life to my skin, and that perfect reflection expressing all of the Beauty, potential and harmony of this world. MUCH LOVE

*Please help to teach the others how to Honor, in gratitude, the lands and peoples of your story and/or the place where you are now, as often as possible

Please listen or read The Story of White Buffalo Calf Woman and the Way of the Red Road if you have not yet.

Cheers, to the perfect intuition, service and love which dissolves the fear-driven energies of the world away at once and for all time. 


The Sacred Circle is gathering.

Many blessings and gratitude to:

  • Ken Carey whose partnership with Great Spirit has brought us many teachings of times long passed as well as those of the unseen, infinite and timeless – including this retelling of the story of when White Buffalo Calf Woman came to the Buffalo People to gift them the ways of the Red Road, from Return of the Bird Spirits, the vibrations of which meet us as deeply today.
  • Joyce Sequichie Hifler, a Cherokee sister, who has gathered many teachings of our relatives throughout the history of Turtle Island placing them into easy to follow daily lessons.
  • Eub Motega whose vibrations in his song of Medicine Power bless the intentions of this Welcome, the beginning of this Sacred Circle

More Resources: 

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Narcissism is Real, it’s time to Heal

There is a Flow that lives naturally within each of us; when you find yours, you’ll know better the path forward into a life Free from Fear – be it the kind one experiences under physical attack, or mental or spiritual.  

There was a time only a few years ago that I went out into the world on my own. Of course, we live our lives this way, going out in the world each day, all of us on our own – what I mean is… I wanted to be in nature, off the map, solitary.  I wanted to be on my own and yet, there were times when I would lay my head down in the darkness of the night and my fears would begin to replay, back and forth, across my mind to the point that I would forget Who I Was – I began to get lost in my vulnerability, mistaking it for weakness – a young woman alone in the darkness – a fragile creature to be attacked during sleep;  forgetting that I was exactly where I wanted to be, happy, healthy and strong; held in my place by all of the universe, exactly where I was meant to be, entirely secure.

There are many layers which contribute to that insecurity, built over entire lifetimes of human history as it has been for many thousands of years, for all of us; and we are all connected, so yours is mine and mine is yours. This is why I felt this way at the time, despite the Self Defense Instructor training I had just received across two different, back-to-back, 3-day courses. 

But I craved healing and freedom from this and so soon enough, my path brought me to one of the strongest women I’ve had the blessing to learn from. Her work can be seen in the landscape of higher education throughout San Diego County.  It is her passion to teach healing through the wide lens of training you give your body, the nutrition you provide it and the flow you give it through martial arts and preparation. She fills entire gyms of students who work really hard during her lessons of kickboxing, taekwondo, hapkido, aikijujutsu, eskrima, boxing, and self-defense strategy and technique.  With true passion and grace she invited me to train with her in every single one of them, 2 to 4 sessions per day, 6 days a week for many months. I learned technique but more crucially, I came to better know the Way of Oneness with mind, body and spirit, of place and time – the rhythm of defense as in life – is a flow. It was a great revelation to become aware that as much as I thought I was someone who ‘goes with the flow’, I wasn’t; not even close, rather I was quite awkward and stifled. 

I’ve since been on a continuous grand lesson of return to a synchronicity with life’s flow, of which I’m sure I will always be small and childlike.  Even so, I have gained a much better understanding of my own Flow; I know, because I’ve since gone out into the world alone, filled this time with a sense of confidence, the freedom of it, to live and be without fear. The freedom of knowing, within, of being whole, ready. 

While my sensei Heidi has the benefit of entire semesters and series of semesters with her students, I have short moments in time with those whom I serve. 

Additionally, outside of the credit-driven motivation structure inherent in teaching college students, some of the layers built into the fabric of our lives allude to something convoluted and taboo about women learning self-defense. Without unfurling a tome of study identifying all the layers of complexity, (the origins of them and perpetuation of them), I will simply say, the many threads holding these barriers in place are much like those that maintain the fight of our times… the aggressive, diverse and competing forces of climate change – the causality of which and solution of which cannot be simplified into something singular like converting from fossil fuel to solar, or even revolutionizing our democracy – it truly cannot be anything short of transformation within the very core of our Being, of Humanity; a rebirth of living what we value, our own re-awakening to Who We Are. It is all connected, all related. We crave the freedom of living our true selves, fearless, love-driven and a contributing member of Mother Earth’s great family.

We Crave Freedom From Fear

We crave the freedom of living our true selves… fearless, love-driven, powerful catalysts of health and balance, of wisdom, courage and compassion. 

I’ve found that even more powerful than the motivation for college credits, we are tired of living in fear. We no longer accept the fear-driven culture that we’ve been raised in to penetrate our spirits.  For example:

I know of mothers who fear that if their baby is taken from them, their own life will be over. That’s not freedom, that’s not life. It’s not even True to motherhood, a vehicle for the expression of perfect Love – imperfect within the suffocating grip and subtle bounds/habits of fear. Motherhood, nor even the loss of a child, is in and of itself the fulfillment, or loss, of one’s own purpose… again, it is one of the many vehicles by which we travel the Road of Love (interchangeable with ‘Purpose’) toward the destination of Love, Purpose.

Through much synthesis of Master Heidi’s nuggets, I’ve uncovered an ability to evoke the Flow that lives naturally within each of us; when you find yours, you’ll know better the path forward into a life Free from Fear – be it the kind one experiences under physical attack, or mental or spiritual.  

Find your Fearless, Live your Flow.

2018 World [Fall Semester, San Diego Mesa College] Kickboxing Champions. Sensei Heidi Sarmiento, center.

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