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December 12, 2020 By Lindsey Tarr Leave a Comment

(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/

Filed Under: Blog, Projects, sacredcirclefeedapp Tagged With: American individualism, change, Collectivism, Come Be My Light, Community, Decision making, Elder, fear, healing, indigenous, Joseph M. Marshall lll, Lakota, Lee Plenty Wolf, Mother Teresa, Peace, purpose, red road, service, The Lakota Way, wisdom

April 4, 2020 By Lindsey Tarr Leave a Comment

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

  • Got acclimated to a world I’d never been in or have been since
  • Celebrated my 30th birthday at camp

November

  • Arrested with a felony count and a few misdemeanors 

December

  • Fam came to Standing Rock!
  • Broke camp as requested by the tribe for safety during the winter, left no trace and rode home with an off-the-grid skeptic/investigative journalist, finding out even more things about this world I had never known nor wished to.

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

  • This time we make it to the Women’s March 
  • Speak at AIM Gathering
  • Begin building Tour of Hope, Develop Shoestring Love   and Nations Rising Tea Program to fund tour and mission

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

  • We meet master Heidi and begin huge focus on training to teach self-defense from a different lens than RAD 

2019

January 

  • Desert fast and Sunshine boy

February – May 

  • Training and teaching with Heidi

June 

  • Walk for the Bees
  • Book is Finally Ready! On to the next!

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

  • Lovely Liv comes to light the fire
  • Retreat to Mudcaves
  • Crane frames
  • Covid

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

Filed Under: About Lindsey Tagged With: anxiety attack, barefoot shoes, change, Congee, dreadlocks, dumpster diving, earth activist training, fasting, freedom, happiness, healing, health, indian reservation, kombucha, life after college, life satisfaction, money, mourning, natural pond, off grid, oglala lakota, olio, pdc, permaculture, postmates, purpose, quit my job, RAD self defense, real job, Self defense, service, Standing Rock, starhawk, success, volunteer vacation, work life, writing a book, WWOOF, zero drop shoes

March 31, 2020 By Lindsey Tarr 2 Comments

Biography

Lindsey is a servant leader in stewardship of our Mother, the Earth, and all of Hers. The Way of this work is in learning the Ways of Love, healing, humility, and continuous growth; it’s the way of the Red Road. In practice it is:

  • Doing the hard work of remembering Who I Am
  • Often an immediate, response to a call for help
  • Serving locally to help bring about balance: building packs of neighbors’ dogs to be able to get them a bit more of the exercise and healthy social engagement for which they are all starving, regenerating soil, catching water, growing food, or within a multi-year, grassroots coalition of environmental and/or social justice
  • Living in flow, finding direction primarily by relaxing into the perfect instinct of the spirit, only secondarily stepping forward and thinking with the ego, sidekick rather than guide

In reflection, the drive to serve Mother Earth and people have always been her focus…

  • Within residential solar, her team redirected millions of middle-class dollars and millions of pounds of CO2 in fossil fuel costs by driving direct change to clean energy
  • In national service, as an Americorps Fire Team Leader, her team of corps members and hundreds of volunteers impacted dozens of communities and nonprofit organizations throughout the southern states, including more than a handful of disaster responses
  • While putting herself through community college, she began to learn the ways of leadership, canvassing and fundraising for change as she led a team to help drive through the landmark piece of legislation, the Million Solar Roofs bill, with the group Environment California

Even so, 2016 marks a time of rebirth… everything previous feeling like a different lifetime and everything since representing an exciting journey of Truth, remembering; a beautiful story of the really good stuff like freedom, fearlessness, wholeness, purpose and fulfillment! 

Filed Under: About Lindsey Tagged With: fearlessflow, freedom, healing, mother earth, mywhy, purpose, rebirth, service

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