[Thespiritexpress] (no subject)

[John Ivey]

Than you Carlie.
I am deeply grateful that you and everyone are committed to these Tuesday
and Friday sessions. I have been able to show up and receive genuine
healing in my life. This is so true and vivid at this juncture  of my
journey.

John

On Thu, May 9, 2024 at 8:55 PM Jima via Thespiritexpress <
thespiritexpress at lists.mcn.org> wrote:

> John,....I will read your story tomorrow when I am not so tired.  For now
> I wanted to tell you how dear it is to have your presence in Friday's
> Shaking yoga.  Sitting in the meditation group with you is a gift to us all.
>
> With much love.......Carlie
>
>
>
> On 5/9/24 9:25 AM, John Ivey via Thespiritexpress wrote:
>
>
>
> 5-9-24.
>
> I have shown up on the periphery of a group of people who have roots in
> the soil of Coastal California. A small online gathering occurs via
> electronic airwaves and I have been invited to participate.
>
> I am not even sure what this group of souls is. Who am I here? How do I
> fit?
>
>  And even as I arrived, I approached knowing that disease is draining my
> life force. The doctors all say I will be dead soon.
>
> I approached and first met Ron in a ceremonial setting in the Kiva that he
> has created.
>
>  Sense that moment communication with Ron and this group which he anchors
> has become important and significant in my life.
>
>  As I watch the dissipation of this body and the life force sustaining it
> I want to offer something back to this community that I do not fully
> comprehend but which has fully embraced me. On that note I offer this story
> of a trip I once took.
>
>
> I experience a very different kind of community and awareness when I cross
> the international border into Canada from Alaska and am able to spend time
> with my friends in Whitehorse YT. This is partly due to the fact that these
> associations originated from my 11 years as a staff member at a Buddhist
> community in Trinity County Ca. These are people who traveled there for
> retreat and/or Buddhist teachings. My function there was one of caretaker;
> for the physical plant, the land, the animals and the subtle energies which
> inhabit the land. I also cared for the human beings who traveled through or
> lived on the land.
>
>
>
> As a group of committed people, we had certain deeply developed
> relationships with the land we were on, each other and spiritual practice.
> We grew food. We grew home. We milled lumber from the forest.  We built
> buildings. We created irrigation. My granddaughter was born on that land.
>
>
>
> We all believed that together we were nurturing sustainable relationship
> with the wholeness of all, rooted in soil, place and earth. The end came
> suddenly. Unexpectedly.
>
>
>
> Perhaps the greatest lesson for me is yet to find peace accepting that
> end. This is a work I have still to embrace. Some form of ignorance clouds
> my view.
>
>
>
>
>
> That sudden end has left me with a confused and unresolved grief.  I turn
> to Wildness for healing and to remember the wholeness of all.
>
>
>
>
>
> In many ways I am still that misplaced Irish potato farmer running across
> North America to escape the famine and poverty, charging the “Frontier”,
> conquering, subduing all in my rush to find security and “New Home”. I have
> crossed the frontier. I have been to the end of land. There is a road there
> now.
>
>
>
>
>
> The road ends at the Arctic Ocean in a moonscape of ice, frozen earth,
> neon vapor lighting, steel frame buildings, monster machines crawling, and
> oil derricks blowing flame into an endless Arctic night, as far as the eye
> can see.
>
>
>
> The magic of the Aurora Borealis and the vast Universe from which it
> originates are still accessible. But you must travel backward to find them.
>
>
>
>
>
> Thinking again of the international boarder. It was a powerful spiritually
> healing experience to arrive in the United States of America from another
> country and culture alone in a 16-foot canoe surrounded by boreal forest
> and tundra; well north of the Arctic Circle.
>
>
>
>
>
> The River!
>
>
>
> You could place five Californias in the drainage basin of the Yukon River,
> and still have room for Reno. I traveled for two weeks alone from another
> country and had yet to reach Alaska when 190,000 thousand caribou began to
> cross my river.
>
>
>
> Bulls! Antlers broad and branched, in tattered shreds of bloody velvet
> plunged, swimming with head high dignity as if water and land knew no
> separation. They are the land come alive.
>
>
>
> Calves! Splayed legged, gangling, necks stretched forward, eager snouts
> and faces trained on their mothers bounding white rumps found themselves
> immersed. Hooves paddling with natural instinct in the rivers wild and
> strong pull. They are life becoming.
>
>
>
> Five hundred animals at the sweep of an eye on one rivers bend. Float
> among them. Embrace. The Porcupine heard on the Porcupine River and still
> 300 river miles from the Yukon. The drainage of this tributary alone would
> hold one California.
>
>
>
> The image of a man called Billy John arises in my mind. I met him at his
> fish camp above Old Crow.  A man of the Vuntut Gwitchin people he is one
> who hallooed me from the river bank and insisted with waving arms that I
> paddle to his take out. These camps are all of a most rustic nature with
> hand built cabins and drying racks for fish and game meat. I was hallooed
> into several of them over a couple of days as I approached Old Crow.
> Everybody had hot coffee on and insisted that I be fed.
>
>
>
> I beached that canoe and we climbed the bank. Billy John turned out to be
> an 84-year-old man. He had fresh caribou hanging and salmon in the smoker.
> His rifle lay on a table within easy reach of the cabin door. I can't
> remember his wife's name but she was sitting in a wheel chair wrapped from
> head to toe in the afternoon sun on the bluff above the river. I reached
> out as if to shake her hand at introduction. This old woman took my hand in
> both of her's and I found myself captured. The capture moved from hands
> through toothless smile to eyes that seemed to hold the shimmering magic of
> a full on aroural display.  She never spoke a word.
>
>
>
> I am reminded of a term that I learned from another culture entirely.
> Dharshan, is Sanskrit in origin and the meaning I came to understand was to
> find oneself in the presence of a spiritually accomplished person and
> receiving blessing on a plane beyond ordinary mind. I felt that I came to
> know the meaning of that word in a deeper way in that woman's grasp.
>
>
>
> Billy John paused for that moment. Inside the cabin we shared food and
> coffee. He spoke of just returning from his older brother’s funeral. "All
> the Elders are dying." I heard those words, yet I am sure I do not have the
> depth to grasp the real meaning of his gaze as he spoke. I did hear myself
> say, "Perhaps now, you are the Elder." He shifted his eyes from a distant
> horizon I could not see, found my own and responded. "Yes. Now I must be
> the Elder."
>
>
>
> I filled myself on the generosity of people I may never be able to
> understand. Soon, strong water bore me on.
>
>
>
>
>
> Three days later, I paddled away from the warm embrace of a people who
> spoke directly saying “We don’t just eat the Caribou. We are the Caribou”.
> I traveled alone from such a simple yet profound grasp of the
> interdependence of all that lives, toward my own confusion in the
> techno/modern world.
>
>
>
>
>
> Some days after leaving the village of Old Crow, on a blustery stormy
> afternoon as white caps on the widening Porcupine River threatened to swamp
> my canoe; I lined it along a muddy and swampy river bank. Across the mouth
> of a side slough on a high spruce covered bluff a small trappers cabin
> appeared out of the wind driven mist. As afternoon moved toward evening I
> found myself comfortable from the storm drying wet socks beside a wood
> stove. I cooked food.
>
>
>
>
>
> Bursting open suddenly the cabin door was filled with the silhouette of a
> man! “This my cousins cabin!”  The words rolled out like warm honey on the
> wood stoves radiance. He filled the small cabin with his voice, in that
> broad, full, slow way that is the interior native’s adaptation of the
> English language. He stepped into the dim light, surveyed the situation. I
> could see other men gathering behind him in the fading twilight. He leaned
> over me, a slight trace of alcohol on his breath, “This is my cousins
> cabin”. Glancing at the others over his shoulder he looked back, he beamed
> a bit, “It’s OK if you stay here. we’re from Fort Yukon and we’re going to
> Old Crow for a wedding”
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> I felt the hair on the back of my neck and the tension in my belly relax.
> We had a bit of a visit before the two-boat party blasted off up river into
> the night with powerful outboard motors and lights.
>
>
>
>
>
> As I relaxed into my sleeping bag I thought of that boarder, that straight
> surveyed line, which we of European descent find so significant. That
> international boarder I had crossed two days before. I thought of all
> the separations created by human mind and rigid belief.  I realized that
> all of it had little meaning for those whose ancestors had made this river
> land home since “the beginning of time.” The village of Fort Yukon is in
> Alaska USA. The village of Old Crow is in Yukon Territory, Canada. The
> marriage of river, river people and the unspoiled wholeness of Wild Earth
> know of no straight-line separation.
>
>
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