Time to Move

Things started to go bad when we stopped moving. When we could no longer pick up what we really needed, leave what we could live without or find again and move on to the next place.

When we give up that freedom of body we give up our freedom of mind.

I cannot tell another person how to live and cannot accept anyone telling me how to live. 

I am old enough to know that reacting out of spite, anger to anyone’s advice or criticism will lead to allowing that person to control your actions.

I live by the will or whim of the Creator. I don’t know if my days will end today or this very moment (pause…not yet), later today a bus could  run me over or a blood vessel could burst in my brain. 

I have no control over anything but I have control over me.

I try to remain stoic in the classic sense. I understand that my place in this universe is to accept the realities of the natural world.

I understand the desire to be free of the tyranny of other’s opinions. 

I acknowledge the most powerful thing I have is my own opinion for I can change that.

How then could Indigenous Peoples have complex highly integrated societies made up of Individuals with free minds?  I don’t really know. I have seen how people pull together in hard times and I have also seen hundreds of people from many nations come together and build a lodge and hold a Sundance ceremony with nearly a 100 dancers at the Blacksmith Sundance.

The key was consensus. We are told that consensus is arrived after long discussions when all voices are heard. What we are led to believe  (and this has much to do with limits and duplicity of the English language) that consensus results in universal acceptance which would be impossible among free thinking people. 

I believe that consensus was based upon trust of the majority not surrender of one’s beliefs. The decisions of the collective were connected to the natural world and were reinforced by reality. 

The time to begin the sunrise ceremony did not require consensus.

It was time to move to the winter camp when the signs are all around. 

The reality of the natural world meant no need to question anyone’s life choices and the lessons that may come. 

If you were not ready to move when it was time to move camp no one could make you, no one would carry you, no one could force you to do anything.

In the light of the rising sun, which always comes, the camp would gone and you would be free to live alone with your own decisions.

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