Many of us find ourselves with a feeling of being lost today. What do we do when we feel this way? We try to find our way. How do we find our way? Surprisingly, finding our way, when lost, is far more simple than most of us ever imagine. It takes Honesty about Being Lost. This approach works as well in our lives as in the middle of a mountain.
How do we find our Way? Imagine, you go hiking up in some beautiful mountains, following a clear trail. It starts raining but you brought rain gear and you are warm and keep hiking. After awhile you realize that you’re not sure if the trail you are on is actually the trail, or a rivulet carved out by the rain, or an animal trail. By late afternoon, you realize you are lost and you’ve already spent a couple of hours trying to find your way back, without success. Now what?
Before you read on, consider that the invitation here is for you to lead your own learning, and to do so by noticing, not just cogitating. That’s key to finding our way, when lost: YOU DO IT. YOU do it in YOUR Reality. And you do it with your SENSES, NOT just all the pretty things you think about “the world” that is simply non-sense-ical.
That’s where the honesty comes in: with the courage to acknowledge our being lost, the humility to acknowledge that the non-sense-able “knowledge” we pretend to have is not helping, and the ability to begin relating to reality, here and now, sense-ably.
Ask yourself how YOU approach finding your way, when lost, even write out the answers, and you’ll learn a lot more from your own noticing than from just reading my words. Invest some time in paying attention to your experience and you’ll discover a richness that you may have never noticed, or been actively avoiding. Work from your experience of “being lost,” whether in your personal life, or on the land.
We can approach finding our way much more simply and GROUNDEDLY than most of us will ever imagine.
When we get lost we find ourselves nowhere. Where? We don’t know where.
Many of us may freak out when we lose our bearings and find ourselves nowhere. We want to be somewhere that is ELSEWHERE. We may panic to “know” how to get somewhere ELSE.
Curiously, our panic does not come from being lost, but refusing to ACKNOWLEDGE that we are LOST, and GET COMFORTABLE, FIRST. Notice that. We insist on “finding ourselves elsewhere” even though we already know that we don’t know how to get THERE.
This is where modern humanity is right now. We are freaking out because we realize that we are nowhere. The deeper our sense of being lost, the deeper our urgency and panic to be elsewhere. Some people panic, thrash around, then give up hope.
I am not here to give you hope. I am here to give you tools to finding your way. There’s a profound difference.
Having spent literal months at a time, alone in vast, sparsely populated mountains, jungles, and deserts, from the Yukon to South America, I have been lost many, many times. Fortunately, one of the first things I learned was how to BE lost, when I found myself lost.
If you are willing to BE lost,
when you ARE lost,
you have already taken the most important step to finding your way.
The FIRST step is to STOP pretending you are not lost.
The next step is to STOP trying to find your way,
and START noticing where you are, and how to get where you are.
My teachers challenged and guided me to SEE, HEAR and MOVE in reality. That’s it! It sounds preposterous to most modern people. It certainly did to me when I met an old man who told me that I had never seen, heard or moved except in my descriptions of everything. We move in impressions dislocated from our bodies and our Living World. Learning to SEE, HEAR and MOVE is done alone and in places that are often vast and remote. It’s about finding our way.
Curiously, learning to find our way has a lot to do with getting oriented, and comfortable, even when lost.
Most people, when they lose their way, keep thrashing around. They are terrified of “being lost.” During twenty years in the Colorado Rockies, every summer tourists go for hikes up in the Rockies and get lost. Every summer people die.
Typically, they are from Western and Northern Europe, where temperatures are far more stable than they are in the Rockies, which are dry, high altitude, and where hot summer weather can turn to rain, and then to a blizzard, in a matter of an hour, even in the middle of a very hot summer.
Why do they die?
First of all, they have no connected context for where they are. They think they are walking around in a three-dimensional tourist brochure. They act on the basis of impressions-without-context. The very word “modern” from the Latin modo: “just right now” speaks to this decontextualized state of being, that many people are stuck in. We orient on the basis of impressions. Which impressions? The images and the catchphrases that our minds are loaded with.
Secondly, these people die because they refuse to be HONESTLY LOST. They ARE LOST but they refuse to be HONESTLY LOST. They refuse to embrace their BEING, in Being-lost. That means caring for ourselves well and addressing our immediate needs, instead of keeping on trying to discover what we don’t know, i.e. “going somewhere ELSE,” as some idea. Getting well takes getting connected within and without, HERE.
Are you cold? What is available right where you are lost for getting warmer?
People find themselves nowhere and refuse to BE nowhere. They don’t know where they are but they insist on trying to go somewhere ELSE.
The rain’s still pouring. Night comes. Their clothes are drenched. Rain turns to snow. They have no fire, no shelter, no warmth, no energy reserves, and in the morning they are dead, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the key to finding their way and being found: nowhere.
Like my Cheyenne friend told me over and over and over again:
“Go slow, get there fast.”
That’s a complete teaching. You can’t get it by just reading the words. You have to use your senses.
Of course, I thought I could get that teaching fast. It took me the better part of two decades to get that teaching, because of how “fast” I tried to “get” it. Had I truly slowed down all the way, and used my SENSES, the wisdom, i.e. the literal “home of the trails,” in that saying would have been apparent in very short order. But I was enthralled with the “pithiness” of this saying, its “indigenous ring,” bla-bla-bla…
None of that was why my friend told me that repeatedly. He was a True Friend. He was showing me how to find my way, not how to “be Cheyenne” or anything else that I was not. He always encouraged me to discover who, where, and how I was, and what I was related and connected to.
It took me a few decades to get why my Cheyenne friend always had a laughing smile when he said it to me, because of how fast I wanted to get it. HAHAHAHAHAHA. I was in such a hurry it took me two decades to get it.
That kind of thrashing, lost, disoriented, accelerated, hurried, harried mind never even asks, “get where?”
If I had asked that of my oldest Cheyenne friend he would have just smiled at me and said, “yeah, get where?” and then chuckled. But early on, with indigenous friends, I learned not to ask them questions, but to ask them of myself and pay attention.
This is how real learning happens. This is the Old School, literally. The world “school” points to it directly. It comes from the Greek skholé: “ease.”
We are acculturated to relying on descriptions, maps, and others to orient us from a mental model, not from our senses.
Part and parcel of being disoriented is always wanting to be somewhere ELSE. We never land where we ARE, and NOTICE.
In other words, we never get that “THERE” is HERE.
When we actually get HERE we very soon discover that HERE is connected to EVERY-HERE, which allows us to go EVERY-WHERE as soon as we allow ourselves to BE and to CONNECT HERE, to HERE, to HERE.
We remain disoriented in the measure that we are never anywhere,
and always nowhere,
on our way to somewhere else.
Don’t just read those words, look at the pointing until you SEE what it points to in your relationship to being “lost,” and getting “found.”
Who are you expecting to “find” you?
Read the question real slow, word by word, and you’ll discover something. I can tell you that those tourists up in the Rockies where expecting someone else to find them, they insisted on getting somewhere else, and they refused to BE lost.
Sometimes my Cheyenne friend would even add, for my benefit:
“Go SLOWER and you’ll get there even FASTER!”
Then he’d laugh outright. I wasn’t sure what was so funny. I got it many years later, but that took getting lost so many times that I actually got GOOD at it. Then I realized what he’d been pointing out.
WHERE is the “THERE” that you’ll “get” FASTER IF YOU SLOW DOWN?
How about if you go even SLOWER?
How SLOW could you go?
Alright, once you’ve figured where “THERE” is, here’s another question:
What’s the FASTEST, MOST DIRECT, and even INSTANTANEOUS way to get THERE?
Think of the tourist lost in the summer snowstorm in the Colorado Rockies: Where is the “there” that he refuses to get? What is the fastest way he could have gotten “THERE”?
What does it take to actually GET “there”?
Getting found, when lost, is very simple. Let’s take it step by step:
When lost, we find ourselves nowhere.
Where? We don’t know where. Being HONEST in being LOST means acknowledging “I am LOST. I don’t know where I’m AT. All I know is that I am lost.” There’s far more knowledge and wisdom and being honestly lost than we acknowledge. Most people who are lost refuse that knowledge and wisdom in panicked pursuit of “not being lost.” It’s the same mentality underlying the ignorance of the statement “I don’t want to know about the problem, I want a SOLUTION! ”
My Cheyenne friend called that honesty “humbility,” the ability to humbly acknowledge the abilities you do and don’t have, and then use and grow the abilities you have, instead of pretending you can do something you can’t.
If you go to the reality of that real-eyes-ation, you’ll discover that you can get from being LOST to FINDING YOUR WAY almost instantaneously. What’s required is not getting somewhere ELSE but, rather, getting where you are and how you are and who and what is there with you.
Most people stay stuck on “Where do I go?”
WRONG QUESTION.
We’re lost. Being honestly lost means acknowledging that we don’t know where to GO.
That means we don’t have the answer to the question. Time for a new question, a question with humbility.
Being HONESTLY lost means acknowledging “I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where to go.” Then asking “where am I?” and I mean in my immediate vicinity.
Great! The secrets to finding my way are all hidden in that honest acknowledgement:
Quit trying to go elsewhere. Find out where you ARE. Get WELL at being HERE, where you are. Then get to know, connectively and sense-ably Greater Dimensions of where you ARE.
You are already FOUND because you have started finding yourself WHERE YOU ARE. All you have to do is grow the connections and the dimensions of being where you are.
Most people will not STOP. They just keep on going anyways: here, there and everywhere.
They go up that hill, down that valley, over the next ridge, take the yoga class, the Buddhist chanting course, the Course in Miracles, and on and on, more lost at seventy than they were at thirty years of age.
The last thing they want to do is to be HONESTLY LOST; to be HONEST that they are LOST.
The fastest way to get oriented is to STOP!
Then NOTICE.
In that stopping and noticing something almost miraculous happens immediately:
We go from no-where to now-here. “Oh! I’m HERE! Okay. What is HERE where I AM and HOW am I and what’s going on HERE?”
Noticing immediately take us from NOW-HERE to KNOWING-HERE.
Guess what? You are no longer lost. You are Now-Here and starting to Know-Here.
This is a very, very rich and life-saving transition. It does not require going anywhere ELSE!
It simply requires embracing your condition HONESTLY, instead of keeping on trying to escape it.
Reread that and then read it in your relationship to reality.
To discover now-here we first start with the closest range of Knowing-Here possible: starting with “how am I, right here, right now? Who am I here with?” “What is the first priority to getting better, in being right here right now.”
If my feet are in a foot of cold, running water, maybe I need to move slowly to where I’m not in a foot of cold water.
As soon as we discover the realities, the textures, the places that are a foot under water, the places that are dry, where there’s dry wood, dry shelter HERE, maybe some pine pitch to use to light some wet wood, maybe some big rocks to heat up in the fire, then we begin to discover that now-here very quickly loses all sense of terror, of disorientation, and of emergency. We become friends to now-here by knowing-here CONNECTIVELY, SENSE-ABLY.
Everything you need is where you are at.
This is how generous this Living Place you are a Shape of is. As soon as we’re willing to be here, we discover that we can get better and better at being here in very short, constructive, connective, life-affirming order.
We discover that we can actually plush out now-here and get comfortable and ORIENTED HERE.
Suddenly we’re going from nowhere, to now-here, to know-here.
Very, very LIFE-AFFIRMING. Life can only be affirmed and know HERE, FIRST, by making SENSE of HERE, WITH OUR SENSES.
That takes being willing to be here, even when we’re lost. It takes embracing our BEING-HERE, instead of resisting it or trying to change it or deny it, or getting all dramatic about it.
A critical component of being-lost is the refusal to be where we are, exactly how we are. It’s the insistence on being elsewhere and in a different way, even after proving to ourselves that we don’t know how to do that.
The only way to get somewhere else is to connect being here, to being here, then here, then here, until we learn that we can be HERE any-WHERE. But the first step is being here and discovering how being here connects to the rest of what here connects to.
As soon as I know here, I’m no longer lost.
I soon discover and develop the skills to BE here, and here, and here, and here. I’m still not “there,” but I am “here,” and here is connected to the entire universe; I just need to pay attention to the connections. Here is connected to every “where?”.
For those who read my article Tracking the Trackless Tao, we learned that “the first step is to stand.” In other words, the first step is to STOP.
Very quickly after embracing being-lost-here, I’m already finding myself HERE! As soon as I find myself here, I discover that I’m no longer lost: I’m HERE.
As I get comfortable being here, I get comfortable knowing-here, and knowing a “here” that is more spacious, comfortable and connected to everything that’s here and connected to here in the measure that I’m willing to BE here and to KNOW here. The spaciousness and the connectivity expand in the measure that I STOP trying to “be” somewhere ELSE and discover where I actually am.
Pretty soon I discover that I can leave here and come back here.
Once I get good at being-here I discover that the same skills I use to get comfortable at being-here can also be used here, here and here.
I may not yet know how to get back to where I was, but I do know how to BE WHERE I AM and, pretty soon, how to be WHEREVER I am. I have found my Way WHERE I AM. Finding my Way HERE, and KNOWING-HERE reveal the connections to anywhere I am or want to BE.
Learning only happens here, where you are.
Many people who say they want to “learn” something are looking for an exit from where they are, and are in deep refusal of where they are and how they are exactly where they are.
There’s a whole “spiritual marketplace” of people selling all kinds of ways to “get somewhere else.” And people spend a lifetime thrashing around going here, there, and everywhere because they know they are lost, but they refuse to KNOW where lost IS. They insist on going ELSEWHERE.
I can’t help you get elsewhere. I can only meet you where you ARE. If you are lost we can discover the Beauty available right-at-hand once we become HONESTLY lost. Then we find our way, connecting here, here, and here in very simple and interesting ways, starting with connecting with our refusal to honestly acknowledge that we are lost, as individuals and as a rapacious, globalizing way of masking ourselves from the obviousness of our situation. When you DO it, then you’ll discover that finding where “lost” IS is actually a pretty amazing adventure.
A friend who has been reading my articles for the last six years, and was sure he was getting it, told me “you should put a disclaimer on all of your articles and tell people that they won’t get what you are talking about until they spend some time with you on the land. If they are sure that they get it, they probably don’t.”
The first step is to stand. Finding our way, when lost, starts with getting honest about being lost, then getting curious, then getting connected, then getting comfortable, then connected HERE to what contains HERE, in a Living Reality that is far more generous than our panic at being lost, and the smallness of what we notice when we resist the condition we are honestly in.
“Are we going to be able to save ourselves and our world?” many ask. The world is not “saving” itself. Behold where fossils from the ocean bottoms lay on the mountain tops and you’ll get that. Life does not “save” itself. Life Offers itself to Life, and invites us to the Ceremony of Bringing our Beauty, our Brilliance, our Joy and our Tears to the Ceremony of Making and Living the Offering. It is Shaping Aliveness in the Invitation to Know the Shaping of Aliveness, FULLY, so that we can be so Fully-Filled that we Re-Member Ourselves in the Invitation to Participate in Aliveness and the Offering of Aliveness to Aliveness.
When lost, dare to be HONESTLY lost, and discover that finding our Way in the Way of Real Aliveness is not so far away.
Gather Seeds – Of Wisdom,
Which is “the House where the Trails and Tracks are Made,”
That We May Find Our Way,
and Welcome Life’s Invitation,
To Make Our Offering.
There's a way of LIVING where it really means something to be ALIVE, when we Align Our Way of Living with Our Actual Living Design. Many of us have settled for Struggle, as a way of Life, without the Keys to Understanding Why.
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ZaireZiibi
Giving thanks to you Journeyman O!
It was today when I stopped and got honest. I am lost, disoriented, disconnected. I’ve been exploring your articles for a few months now, and remembered this one when I admitted to being lost. As I come back to it I receive it very differently as I engaged with it more, stopped to look, wonder, question, speak and write to what I’m noticing. One thing I notice is that I don’t “get it”. As much as I might want to or think I do, there are still ideas and concepts floating around and convoluting my thinking.
I do get a sense for what you’re getting at. I have seen much of what you’re pointing to in my own observation, but still disconnected, unrooted and with a conditioned habit of “focus on the finger” rather than looking at the Moon.
Engaging with these articles is showing to be supportive in snapping out of the swirl of ideas and concepts and remembering my roots in the ground. Thank you for sharing the richness that is provided here.
I do wonder if you still engage with this site as the articles and comments date back to the most recent being around 2017 or so. That timing is interesting too because though I was surely lost before that, it was around that time that my perception of reality began to be challenged and shift continuously. Every time I thought I had the “right idea” about Life, the floor would disappear beneath me. Of course, the floor was never there. Life is not an idea.
While getting honest about being lost, I also find myself quite alone. I read the article Discovering Emergent Intelligence Together and the other articles where you point to possibilities in ways of relating, connection, family and community. I’ve observed and wondered about this all my life. It didn’t make sense to me the way we relate to each other and other shapes of Life, even when I was/am participating in these ways. The possibility of connection AND authentic expression seems so far away, and yet I don’t know if there’s anything I desire more. It is in sitting with that I see it undeniably; I am lost.
I’m reminded of the poem by David Wagoner, Lost
Stand Still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
After reading this again and typing it, I look at the trees and hear the birds around me. I see I am not so alone after all.
I’ve been wandering the Earth for the last 7 and a half years, tortured within myself, sensing another way, like an instinct, like Bear tracking honey for miles. But everyone and everything around me said that what I was seeing was “normal” “just the way life is” “just the way people are” “all families are like that”. I couldn’t understand why I’ve seen things so differently and why this instinct, this sense is so strong in me. These articles have drawn connections for me to trust my sight and develop a deeper trust in finding my way. Along with a sense of responsibility to care for and empower others with finding their way home, as I look to find my way.
I discovered your website in May of this year 2024. I write this comment on 27, October, 2024.
I don’t know if you or anyone will see this. If you or anyone does, I want to connect.
Walk in Beauty,
-ZaireZiibi
Journeyman O
Greetings ZaireZiibi,
What a generous comment, enriching to read, contemplate; honest. We are only alone in the measure that we exclude the ALIVENESS around us from our experience. And we only do that because we haven’t been ALONE long enough in a place where ALIVENESS is the organizing principle long enough to realize that the Shapes of Aliveness all around us SEE us, HEAR us, TASTE us, EXPERIENCE us and, if we STOP long enough and BE, in a way that allows for an Aliveness beyond just ME, ME, ME and ME, we eventually real-eyes our INTER-WEAVE with the All-Being and that it is Intelligent, Sensitive, Responsive and Response-Able. The day you stay long enough in a forest to realize that the SAME BIRDS are coming to visit you is when it starts, as an example. And that will take several months of being-in-Place until the Place becomes your Being for it to happen; the first time.
Modern humans have no idea of how much the rest of the Aliveness rejoices in Natural Humans and misses our presence, participation with and relatedness to them. So if you CHILL and don’t fuck around doing all kinds of disruptive things to the forest around you, the Aliveness around you WILL teach you how to become truly human again, and they will reward you richly for dedicating yourself to RETURNING TO YOUR PLANETARY REALITY where LIFE and RELATEDNESS are the Operating Principles.
The night you tend a fire you’ve been tending long enough to realize that there is a Fire Being who lets you know who and how it IS, then you can never be alone, you begin to Real-Ize what it is to be REALLY ALIVE WITH THE ALL-ALIVENESS, IN THE ALL-ALIVENESS, AS THE ALL-ALIVENESS IS ALIVE in all that Lives in a way that it could never be alone. It would be impossible for anything Natural to be so removed from Aliveness as to inhabit it from separateness.
And, yes, there’s a price to that. You will die to that sense of separation. You will die to the luxury of living as if the world, the Stones, the Plants, the Animals could ever attain the state of utter stupidity, alienation and arrested development that is the norm among the walking dead of modern subhumanity. And to the subhumans you will REEK of something that provokes terror and disgust in them: ALIVENESS ITSELF, FULL-ON, REAL, ABSOLUTELY CONSEQUENT with no room for the degenerate pseudo-morality of those whose only “god” is deadness and its coin.
ZaireZiibi
Greetings O!
Thank you for the response. It’s good to see you’re still engaging through this site.
I will be with these words and look and listen. My initial reaction is to tell you of my current situation and the paralysis I feel in making a decision and moving forward in my life. While I trust connecting with you and perhaps even closer work with you would be of great value, I don’t think pouring out the inner turmoil here is a the way to go. I do ask what ways of connecting with you are available?
To the pointing of “Aliveness rejoicing in Natural Humans”…I see it to a certain extent in my own experience. I’ve had various Shapes of Life show me hints of the possibility of relating to all Life in a new way. I notice the difference when I relaxed, attentive, full of care verses when I’m in my head, tense and careless. Now I’m asking myself how to make this happen? How to get into a Place like Forest and learn to See, Here, Move.
Part of what comes up as a block is money…”whose only ‘god’ is deadness and its coin.” I don’t know if this points to money alone but I trust this is part of it. I would say the way I relate to money has been as a slave. Not with a hyper focus on accumulating a lot of it, but in being limited and controlled by it. You speak of the richness you live with and in, with little money. I see the possibility by how I’ve lived and have done a lot of amazing things having never had much money. But I sense that you’re pointing a possibility I hadn’t seen before. Even now, as I sit here in Houston, Texas I want to go to Mexico, but questioning if it’s stupid to go with just a few hundred dollars. It’s an experience of feeling restricted and limited, just based on money or so it seems. What do you say of relating to money? One thing I’ve been looking at is how you wrote on being a Hunter-Gatherer in the Modern world.
You’ve mentioned a point in your life after going to a Sacred Mountain, you left as O. You saw that all the information and ideas you had accumulated were nothing and of no use to you. If I’m getting what you’re getting at, I would say I have come to a similar place. It was River and Forest that showed me this. I spent years traveling, reading, researching, talking with people from different backgrounds. I thought I was getting somewhere, that it’d all come to a point where I could use all the ideas and identities and be somebody. Now I see that it’s Being that is Alive, not being somebody or something…a resource.
You’ve written of living in different parts of Earth, of planting secret gardens, of creating a community of people throughout the Earth committed to Greater Aliveness. Much of what you write and speak on I’ve envisioned, but have not taken action on.
It’s amazing that you point at getting past the “Me, Me, Me”, I was just in conversation with a friend saying how tired I am of the “Me, Me, Me” that I’ve been living. Which makes writing this uncomfortable, because it seems like it’s all “Me, Me, Me.” At the same time I’m looking to What Is in my life and how these pointings relate rather than making them some good sounding idea that I speak of but don’t actually Live.
I won’t lie and say there isn’t a urge to ask you a lot of questions, but I see that it’s myself that the questions are to be asked to.
I do appreciate and cherish any insights or pointings you care to share.
28, October, 2024
O
Hello ZZ,
We are living in very challenging time as very challenged people.
Money-making is not that complicated but it’s not taught today: you have to enrich OTHERS’ lives. And that implies having enriched your own with LEARNING and SKILLS. The greater the diversity of your skills the greater you are able to enrich other lives.
But the true value of money, of which we need very little if we live simply, is TIME. TIME IS ATTENTION. To own your TIME is to own your ATTENTION. To own our ATTENTION is to be able to discover this Planetary Aliveness we inhabit.
You say, “I spent years traveling, reading, researching, talking with people from different backgrounds. ” Did you HELP anybody long enough to learn some REAL skills? Can you cook great food, build furniture, plant a garden, make a shirt, upholster an armchair, butcher an animal, tan a hide, solder some metal, make compost, grow plant starts, wash windows, mow lawns… ANYTHING REAL AND ENGAGED WITH REAL LIFE AND REAL NEEDS?
Do you know that all over this planet there are people with second or vacation homes, many of which were bought and used a lot when their kids were younger and now get visited little? Many of these people would be DELIGHTED to have someone trustworthy to simply live there, keep the mice from chewing through the wires, and let them know if anything requires further attention.
What do you mean “talking with people from different backgrounds”?! Did you put any of those backgrounds into YOUR foreground? Or did you just take a bunch of their time, self-absorbed with your “search” and your questions and ZERO considerations for THEIR TIME AND ENERGY? I’m not being accusatory; most folks with your kinds of “preoccupations” are like that. They are the kind of folks you’ll invite into your home, devote half your day to, feed them a meal or two and they don’t even wash the dishes, much less think to send you a message to simply say “Thank you” after they’ve taken much of your time. My teacher had a word for them: “ONE-WAY SUCKS.”
If you have some SENSE of REALITY you have some SENSE of what’s happening beyond YOU. You’ve got a SENSE that if people “from different backgrounds” talked with you they put aside their OWN activities and commitments and projects to do so.
See? THAT is why you are confused. You’ll never find REALITY and its SENSE by talking to People. You need to get your hands dirty and engage with them, help them around their place, participate!
I have a friend from Brazil who flew to Europe with $50 dollars and the clothes on his back. Not even a change of socks or underwear. He found the cheapest ticket there and ended up in Madrid. He ENGAGED with people. They’d ask him, due to his accent, “Where are you from?” “Brazil.” “How long have you been in Madrid?” “Three hours.” “Where are you staying?” “I don’t know.” “What do you mean you don’t know?!” “I flew here with only $50.” People took him in, gave him work. He traveled all over Europe and all over the world for 5 years. He perfected his Spanish, English and RUSSIAN. He had enough money to buy himself a house and a little property when he returned to Brazil. He will NEVER be poor because he’s a CONTRIBUTION. He wasn’t looking for “the meaning of his life.” He was IN Life discovering its SENSE, RICHLY ENGAGED!
He THREW HIMSELF INTO LIFE! ALL the friends of the people who met him would tell the people hosting him, “Now it’s OUR TURN TO TAKE HIM TO OUR HOUSE!” Those people sent him to friends in other countries; “Hey, we’ve got this amazing guy from Brazil who flew here with $50 in his pocket and the clothes on his back; he’s a great storyteller, a great cook and a TOTAL ASSET willing to CONTRIBUTE. You’ll LOVE having him around!” He was 19 years old when he took that trip. Five years later he was a MAN, the kind men and women LOVE being around! And I LOVED meeting him. He came to one of my introductory classes in Brazil where I was telling people that Life is RICH IF YOU CONTRIBUTE TO LIFE AND TO OTHERS.
He came up to me afterwards and told me his story and invited me to his place. Amazing guy.
I don’t give classes, retreats, workshops or consultations in any public venues any more. Most folks are limp biscuits and immune to learning.
Most BORE ME TO TEARS. For me LIFE is a LOVE AFFAIR. I’m way more interested in LIVING IT than telling people about it. And meeting my needs, which are few and easily met, frees me to dedicate my time and days to what I love which creates value for Life from the Soil up. That’s why this website has been abandoned for most of 7 years.
If I am not absolutely inspired by what you are doing with Life’s Invitation, I DON’T WANT TO KNOW YOU!
So you’re lost! Get acquainted with where you are at beyond YOU and you’ll discover AMAZING THINGS, RIGHT THERE IN HOUSTON! It’s not about making “money” it’s about LIVING. And if you don’t feel like engaging go to the second-hand store and look for a good mountain bike to LIVE on and get a $45 tent at Walmart and go do nothing in a National Forest somewhere. You will be instantly RICH. I mean, if you’re going to do nothing, DO IT!
And if you’re a 35 year old who wasted his life on video games and internet porn and narcissism go out there and just be honest about that and tell someone you admire who has SKILLS and A LIFE that you’re prepared to CONTRIBUTE in exchange for LEARNING without anything in return UNTIL YOU ARE CONTRIBUTING VALUE TO THEM! You’re willing to sweep their shop and wash their dishes and clean their toilet until they figure you’re ready to learn something else.
SUPER SIMPLE! You won’t be wondering what the “meaning” of Life is much longer. You’ll be LIVING it!
On my first trip to Mexico I met this young, blonde woman from Arkansas here. She looked like she grew up in tough circumstances. Definitely not privileged. Country. She had come to Mexico 3 years earlier with $200 for a short two-week trip. She never left. She found HER people; COUNTRY people, but far KINDER than her folks back home. She loved it here and, when I met her, she had spent 3 years working all over Mexico on farms with other Mexican field hands. She was having the time of her life. She wasn’t making a lot of money but she was living RICH. She RADIATED ALIVENESS! And all the humble Mexican people she lived and traveled with protected her. She made a CHOICE. She chose to be ALIVE and GO WITH THAT ALIVENESS. Yeah, she overstayed her tourist visa. But “tourists” don’t ride in the back of pickup trucks with a bunch of country Mexicans so she didn’t draw attention. And she didn’t strut around like she was “the blond queen of heaven.” She was country. The gal had HUMBILITY. Admirable. A True BAD-ASS. ALL HEART! She was on Planet Earth FOR THE LIVING! She told me that what she felt with the people here made it impossible for her to go home because SHE WAS home! She chose a Life she LOVED!
There’s a Principle I practice and embrace that I call “serial suicide.” When you’re bored with your life, KILL THE PERSON YOU BELIEVE YOURSELF TO BE! CHANGE YOUR CONTEXT AND LIVE ANOTHER LIFE! DARE TO BE SOMEBODY ELSE DOING SOMETHING ELSE BEYOND PATHETIC, NOT to aggrandize YOURSELF but to aggrandize the amazing, one-time-shot of an opportunity to be ALIVE AS YOU!
ZaireZiibi
A, thank you!
This honesty is worth more than I can say. I don’t receive it as accusatory simply honest and accurate. You say “kill the person I believe myself to be.” This is absolutely what I saw as I sat with my comments and the responses I received. Along with what your saying about Being a Contribution.
I appreciate that you don’t waste your time on people who don’t inspire you and bore you. I see the pseudomoralizing in how I’ve been and trying to fit Life into ideas.
I see how full of shit I am, and I will choose a different way.
I will not settle.
To the question of if I gained skills along the way, I’d have to say no. I dabbled but couldn’t say I truly learned the skills. Now in confronting that I can and will do so.
Thank you for this richness.
Journeyman O
Hello River,
Me’gwitch for taking that in a Good Way. How old are you? Are you Anishinabeg? “Ziibi” is river in Anishinabeg. What about Zaire?
What is it that you are attracted to in what you have read on this website? Why have you come back, as you say, since May? How did you discover this website?
You noticed that this website has been pretty much abandoned since 2017. If you look beyond the most recent articles it’s been mostly neglected for longer, because there IS A World-Wide Web which is Aliveness itself, and it’s threaded and woven into a Wholeness and IT’S ALIVE. If you touch it and CONNECT to it you will discover that it is not only ALIVE but it is DIVINE INTELLIGENCE. They hid God from us by convincing us to BELIEVE in a “god” whose only existence is believing.
Let me tell you how to SEE, TASTE, FEEL, LIVE, DANCE, SING GOD BEYOND BELIEF! REALITY IS GOD! And REALITY IS NOBODY’S FOOL! She’s ALIVE! This world is MATERIAL. “MATER” is “womb/mother,” but they never tell you that. This world is a WOMB-WORLD, a NATURAL world, a world that is FERTILE and GIVES BIRTH.
So to become Ad-Ult (literally “feeding forward”) is to REAL-EYES the Nature of this World and that how we MOVE in it is like MOVING with and In Relation To a Birthing, Creative Intelligence. The Gods do not have thumbs. Their creation is NATURAL, from the latin “natus”: “to birth, to give birth to.” The Gods BIRTH worlds they don’t MAKE worlds.
We, as humans, have a profound challenge: we have THUMBS. So we can not only make CONTACT but we can make THINGS. And we can not only make things but we can make things WITHOUT CONTACT with the Greater Aliveness. We can fool ourselves into believing that we are the prime protagonists here.
In the Ancestral Temples of Antiquity, to enter one had to stoop below a lintel that said, for example in Greece, “gnothi seaton,” “know thyself.” If you want to know thyself “what question must you ask?”
Zaire
Boozhoo O!
I do take it in a good way and with gratitude. It’s not lost on me that you are taking giving your time, your attention to respond. I don’t take that for granted. You don’t have to do that. The way your words reached me I say, this is a human being who loves life, who cares for life. And at least from who I’ve been around in my life, I think there’s very few who could receive those words and not be upset or offended. I could be wrong, but in my experience most run away from this sort of directness. But this isn’t about entertainment or getting all mushy over good sounding ideas. I rode that merry-go-round for quite a while. Me’gwitch!
Good questions. I’m 35 years old. I am not anishinaabe. Ziibi is “River” in anishinaabe. Some of this will overlap with answers to your other questions. My family name is Saunders.
I do have family who are anishinaabe and friends as well, and they have shared their language with me. My nephew Zhooniyaa (speaking of money), my nieces Isla and Cici. They all, especially Cici have been great teachers to me. They are all also growing up in broken, toxic, hostile and abusive environments. Just as my 8 sisters, 2 brothers and myself did. Cici was not treated well by those around her. I spent a lot of time with her and she is a great help in my remembering. At 6 years old with all she had dealt with already all she wanted was attention, love, affection and to play and explore. To BE and Belong. I saw myself as a child. I never felt a sense of home, or I was okay to be as I am. A few years ago I saw that there was no life in belief, and I started spending even more time alone. Most often at the River Mississippi-
Misi-Ziibi(Great River/Father Water). Sometimes I’d invite friends, but mostly I was alone. I started bringing my tent down there and sleeping. This is in the middle of the city of Minneapolis, but most people were to afraid to go down there at dark so it was good. I would look, listen and speak with River. Some people around me just started calling me River. Misi-Ziibi showed and touched me with REAL POWER as I paddled up current in it’s flood.
Some time later I was working up in the Forest of the North in Minnesota, traditional lands of Anishinaabe. I had a profound realization about my Father presence in my life, at that time he had passed 19 years earlier.
I was in the forest, in the evening, with notebook and pen. I was sitting in silence when it came so clear, “You will now be known as ZaireZiibi” without thinking I started to write it. I acknowledge Cici, Zhooiyaa and Isla they had given me such precious gifts and along with this name came a sense of responsibility to give all to Life and to a different way of being and relating that the generations to come could be and connect with. I had no idea what that was and I still don’t.
Many of the other children in my family and that I know are living in these ways, and a fire burns in me seeing this. Getting caught in the Me, Me, Me, is in contradiction to this and I’m happy you called it out. I don’t want that deadness.
Zaire is the name I was given by my Mother and Father at birth. It’s an interesting one and also means River, or more specifically The River that swallows all Rivers, and is rooted in Congolese, Nzere (River). But it’s said that Zaire is a distorted version of Nzere created by the Portuguese. From what I’ve been able to gather I have ancestry there. And it seems many parts of the Old Rock Lady, I think is how you’ve referred to Her at times. I also find it interesting that I have Belgian ancestry from my Mother, and Leopold and “Belgium” pillaged the place.
I discovered the website when one day the memory of a piece I’d read came to mind titled “The Anatomy of Slavespeak.” by Frederick Mann. I had become deeply interested in language since I’d started learning Spanish and noticed how it was changing my way of thinking and looking at things. (It’s embarrassing to admit I still haven’t mastered the language because I have given to it.) I couldn’t find the piece that day, but what came up was the article on “Straight and Crooked Headed People”. That pretty much got me as far as being attracted to the site. It’s fascinating to get a sense of the consequent of language. It’s obvious how taking a Peoples language and giving them your own is key to conquest. I have wondered why the names of places remain though. You spoke on Mexico and there’s a lot of states. Also, they challenge me to really look, and look and look some more and to slow down. As well as not being about belief or words being “true”, and the unique language expressions. Getting to the etymology of the words. I’ve looked at it as a tool, pointers, but not fooling myself that memorizing the words meant I got it. I could simply say I love learning. But I don’t see reading these words as learning. It’s when I actually go out and relate and connect. I’ve shut myself off from this in periods of my life and caused myself a lot of pain.
I have noticed the site has been abandoned for the most part and when I contemplated that what I thought is what you are saying. I figured you were giving your time-attention to the World Wide Web of Aliveness, and I didn’t plan to just keep reading the site and think that would be it. I was sedentary at the time from a torn achilles tendon. Which barefoot walking was crucial in healing. So I didn’t really expect a response. It also introduced me to others such as Martin Pretchell. But I do see that I have been half hearted in really giving myself, whole hearted to Life. I was busy trying to save others and myself. You said it, “Life, the World isn’t saving itself.”
God IS REALITY is the only reference to God or a god that isn’t sense-less. This distinction of birthing and creating is new for me. I hadn’t looked at this before. Nor the implications of thumbs and making things and things without contact.
I see how we make ourselves the protagonist and separate ourselves living through narrative, disconnected from what IS.
“Gnothi seaton.” “If you want to know thyself, what question must you ask?”
I’ve been with this all day. The initial thought was “Who I am?” But looking at my life and how often I’ve asked that it doesn’t connect for me. It still appears separate, isolated, disconnected. I sat and looked some more, and heard “Who/What do you come from?” That’s closer to the sense of it, but “come from” didn’t seem to get it. Then I heard the word “Belong.” I went to the etymology of it and see “to go along with, properly relate to.” That connects for me.
The question that comes to me as an invitation is,
To whom/what do you Belong?
Journeyman O
Boozhoo Ziibi,
Thanks for your thoughtful and rich reply.
Yes, most people ask “Who am I?” in order to know themselves, and then they spend decades spinning their wheels in the narrative construct of their “person” (literally “mask,” in latin). “To whom/what do you Belong?” is an important one. In many Rooted communities, for example, that is the first statement someone makes: speaking the Name of their People, Country and Clan. But for persons coming from broken homes and displaced peoples few of us would know how to start. People? Country? Clan?
But there’s one far more ESSENTIAL and basic than that. And modern humans can’t even imagine that it doesn’t figure either in their “worldview” (which they presume to establish with very little time dedicated to SEEING), nor does it figure in their “self”-view. Oftentimes we are just happy to have survived long enough to be able to get the hell away from the hellish people we survived. And oftentimes that survival hard-wired our neurology into strategies and loops that are challenging to embrace, tend and nurture to less loopy expressions.
I HIGHLY recommend “The Presence Process” by Michael Brown and the youtube videos of Dr. Allan Schore on “Affect Regulation” for STRUCTURAL, BIOLOGICAL KEYS to understanding our development and how it gets nourished and arrested. “The Presence Process” is a GEM and Michael Brown spent several years in apprenticeship with one of my Cheyenne/ Tsis-tsis-tas/Sacred Arrow Elder Brother when he was in a world of literal hurt. I am sure you will treasure the gift it invites us to give to ourselves. It is, in fact, a guide to “affect regulation” from the Living Medicine. I send the recommendation to you as a Sacred Gift from the Living Relatedness. For me, and for so many more people i have shared it with, it was definitely a before and after. And I don’t just send it to you: I send it to you for your Beloved Relatives Zhooniya, Isla and Cici. I hope it lands as a Good Medicine for them as you embrace them with Simple Presence.
“Modernity”, which comes from the latin “modo”: “just right now”, i.e. immediacy, i.e. no future, no past, no deep relatedness but just pure survival is what results DEVELOPMENTALLY, BIO-STRUCTURALLY when we grow up in environments that are UNSAFE FOR CHILDREN and DISCONNECTIVE FROM OUR DEVELOPMENTAL POTENTIAL. “Modernity” is DESIGNED to arrest development and transform human BEINGS into human MECHANISMS, which is what is left when the RELATIONAL, RIGHT PRE-FRONTAL CORTEX is not developed. We adapt to disconnection rather than relatedness, STARTING WITH OURSELVES. Rather than connecting, we respond to stimuli. And it’s going to be a very long wait if we are going to wait for SOMEONE ELSE to reweave the connection in and for us and for and with the Greater Aliveness.
So take that challenge to “Know Thyself” to its SIMPLEST expression and replace Who? with something more ELEMENTAL.
I don’t know how many Gáuigú/ Kiowa People you might run into in Houston. There’s a tale and Teaching of True Greatness and of KNOWING THYSELF that Guih-Pah-Go/Lone Wolf (the Elder) [may his Name, Country, People, Essence and Example be long remembered!] https://www.legendsofamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/KiowaLoneWolfAndWife.jpg gave to the General who had him imprisoned down in Florida that points to the ESSENCE of BEING and NOT-BEING. If you do a search online for “Martin Prechtel mp3” you’ll run into a talk where he gets into it. I forget who was interviewing him.
Oh! And just to make it clear. Yes, I am giving you my time and attention. Many have given me theirs. And it is always given so that we may SERVE THOSE WHO FOLLOW, NOT just serve ourselves. That is called being “Ad-Ult,” a word that points to a REALITY whose SENSE is ENTIRELY LOST on “moderns.” : “Ad”: “movement forward” + “ulto”: past participle of “alere”: “to nourish”. To BE adult is to leave a FUTURE FED. It is also the profound sense of the word “ancestor”: which is NOT someone who lived in the PAST, but rather someone who lived in the awareness of LIVING BEFORE OTHERS, LIVING IN INTERCESSION ON THE BEHALF OF THOSE WHO FOLLOW. And there are too many Peoples for me to thank for GIVING ME THEIR TIME AND ATTENTION. Many did so in the EXPLICIT, STATED EXPECTATION that I would do the same for THEIR descendants and ALL descendants who dare to serve something greater than themselves. Among those People I Name the “Latgawa-Takelma, the Vikings, Tsis-tsis-tas, Maklak, Anishinaabeg, Kaska, Tlingit, Ahousat, Metis, Lakota, Nakota, Dakota, Gáuigú, Orang Indonesia, Orang Bali and many others. We have a FUNCTION as human BEINGS. It is a Blessing, a Challenge, a Grace. We are Shapes that the Aliveness makes in Stone, Water, Air, Fire, Relatedness. BEING human makes SENSE. Making SENSE is done with our SENSES in Connection, Attention and Service to the Greater Aliveness.
That all “sounds good,” right? What do we do with our SENSES when something “sounds good” to us? I’m asking the question because modern humans are “Pro-grammed,” i.e. “they put a label in front of” everything. Over many years of living and sharing teachings around the world many people agree with me. BUT THEY DON’T GET WHAT I TOLD THEM, because what I told them, TO THEM, are words they agree with. But the words are pointing to a REALITY THEY DON’T USE THEIR SENSES TO GET.
So I’ll give you an example of not-getting-it WITH THEIR SENSES. In my previous comment I said, “In many ancestral temples, to enter one had to STOOP DOWN below a lintel that says, “KNOW THYSELF.” That is a complete Teaching. I can assure you that Guih-pah-go GOT IT because it’s precisely what he, and any other INITIATED ADULT, understands. So imagine yourself approaching the Temple. It’s made of Stone and it’s got EDGES. You look at the lintel that you have to bow UNDER and it admonishes you to “KNOW THYSELF.” You want to enter the Temple so you bend at the waist and perhaps at the knees. WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT NOW? You are LOOKING AT “thy self”. Children fail to know and grow in knowing that SELFk because, up until adolescence, their whole developmental enterprise has been solely dedicated to developing their “persona,” their “who am I?”. Even more so if you grew up in a square box in an urban environment with no real, sustained, caring, mutually nourishing contact with that which SUSTAINS and NOURISHES you BY BEING NOURISHED.
You see, the Teaching is COMPLETE AND LIVED, but the modern mind that enters that temple, and is precisely in the CONDITION of knowing thy self, immediately wants to stand up and resume his narcissistic “journey” inside “the temple.” They COULD have ENTERED the temple, BUT THEY NEVER DID; they merely went inside it in the smallness of who they think they are and the self-aggrandizing pathetic of “their grand journey.”
It is good to live in TENTS by the Misi-Ziibi. It is GOOD to live that Way. It is Good to live as SIMPLY and LIGHT on the Land as possible.
Gather Seeds, of Wisdom – which is Way-Finding and Knowing- Seeds of Relatedness. Face Southeast/Dawn Light.
A Good Road is a Slow Road. Walk Good Roads.
O
ZaireZiibi
O,
I came back to say this response is of such value that I want to say, it’s hard to think that with where I’m at I have much to contribute to you, but perhaps that’s been a part of the issue for me. So if there is anything I can contribute I’d be happy to. Thank you again.