InTheTemazcal

Image Source: Pixabay "My friend, I am going to tell you the story of my life, as you wish; and if it were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it; for what is one man that he should make much of his winters, even when they bend him like a heavy snow? So many other men have lived and shall live that story, to be grass upon the hills." from  Black Elk Speaks John G. Neihardt opened his most successful book, Black Elk Speaks  with his own words, expressing them in the sense of Black Elk's "mood and manner" for telling his life story (Neihardt 2008). The book reaches us, the readers, as a collaborative effort of many participants, with Black Elk speaking as the Lakota holy man and Neihardt as the poetic writer. The former told the saga, while the latter orchestrated its transcription, translation, and publication, sending a united voice to the universe. The book's first six paragraphs, in Chapter One, "The Offering of the Pipe,...

The book, Black Elk Speaks, as seen on Amazon.com This year, as the winter solstice graces us, we're initiating the celebration of the new solar year by reviewing Black Elk and John G. Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks (1932).Winter solstice marks the longest evening of the solar year and occurs during the final quarter of  Wanícokan Wi * ,  or   the Moon When the Deer Shed their Antlers. On the Gregorian calendar, that's on or near the 22 nd of December. Remembering with Nebraska Black Elk, a holy man of the Oglala Lakota, saw his vision in the Black Hills region west of Nebraska. During the  Waníyetu Wi , or the Moon of the Rutting deer, the Nebraskan reading program, One Book One Nebraska (OBON), announced its 2017 selection: John G. Neihardt's  Black Elk Speaks . OBON aims to demonstrate ... "... how books and reading connect people across time and place. Each year, Nebraska communities come together through literature in community-wide reading...

The route of the 1,172-mile, 30-inch diameter Dakota Access Pipeline that the Standing Rock Sioux and others protest. Image Source: Wikimedia This morning the howling wind woke me. For many years I did not like windy days, but, in the temazcal , I learned to love the wind. “El aliento de los abuelitos,” the Osos called it. Translated from Spanish, it means "the breath of the grandparents." They told us that in the wind were the secrets of the elders who had gone by the way. If we paid attention, they said, we would hear their secrets. If we paid attention we would hear the answers to our questions. They are always whispering to us, but we do not pay attention, and we miss the answers to our questions. We miss the solutions to our problems. The answer always lies in the here and the now, but we do not pay attention to it, and we do not hear it. We constantly look for it somewhere else … somewhere we are not. We constantly look for it in some moment, in the fut...

Header from Pixabay, Public Domain. Today I can name the moon. Once I could not name it. When I can name the moon, I know that I've been living a healthy lifestyle. I know that I've paid attention to the Mother Earth, or Pachamama,  my family, and myself. When I'm unsure which moon shines through my bedroom window at night, or how the sun lights her face on a particular evening, I know that I've missed out on something and need to pay attention. Most of us have lost track of the lunar calendar. Even more of us have lost track of the lessons she teaches. Can you name the moon today? Our Gregorian Calendar A predecessor to Rome's Gregorian Calendar Image Source: Kleuske (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)] on Wikimedia Commons Today's most widely used calendar, the Gregorian calendar, came to us from the ancient Romans. By the time the Old World invaded and took over the New World, our calendar, with its blocky months of rec...

John G. Neihardt - Source: UNL Newsroom The words of  Heȟáka Sápa  (Nicholas Black Elk) first came to me through  Dr. Paul D. S ø rensen , of the Department of Biological Sciences, of Northern Illinois University, in DeKalb, Illinois. In his Biological Conservation course, we discussed the causes of loss of biodiversity from  Paul Ehrlich's book, Extinction , and we came to know several Native American philosophers. Later, those of us who participated in S ø rensen's American Ecosystems course in the Great Plains, which took us west through the Dakotas to Wyoming, traveled through some of Oglala Lakota lands and learned more of the Oglala medicine man. The collaborative work by Neihardt; Ben, his son; others of Neihardt's family: Black Elk, himself; Standing Bear; Flying Hawk; and others spoke to the world. According to Wikipedia (2016), the "...prominent psychologist Carl Jung read the book in the 1930s and urged its translation into German; in 1955, it was...

The trail just above New Mexico State University at Alamogordo, NM. Image from My Track app, on Google Maps satellite image. My most productive and enjoyable days at work include a hike. My workplace, located in the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains of southern New Mexico, affords me the opportunity to hike a trail just above my workplace. It's the closest trail and makes for a reasonable 30-35 minute work out. The Benefits of Hiking During My Work Day Hiking during a break in my work day has benefits for my work goals and my personal well being. Here are a few of them... Improved Focus.  This particular trail has a few stretches of unstable rocks that will roll under the feet of a distracted hiker. I've actually sprained my ankle on this trail once, and I've taken a hard, headfirst fall while hiking there on another occasion. The rough trail conditions force me to practice focus (or suffer the consequences I just described). I focus, especially on t...

International organizations use the Banner of Peace as a symbol in celebration of a Day Out of Time. "Where there is peace, there is culture. Where there is culture there is peace." - Nicolas Roerich Today some South Americans celebrate the Mayan culture's celebrates Day Out of Time, which marks the end of the Mayan 13 Moon Calendar ( Tzolkin ) year. The day falls outside the tallied days of the calendar, as a day of reverence and cultural appreciation. Thirteen 28-day months make up the Tzolkin calendar, corresponding to the 13 revolutions of the moon around the planet within our solar year. As a calendar based upon the lunar orbit, many cultures associate it with the feminine, cyclic aspects of our world and life as two-legged ones. Twenty-eight days also corresponds to the average length of the human menstrual cycle. I like Ellie Crystal's  description of the celebration of the Day Out of Time . She wrote, ... "The Day Out of Time is celebrated...

As a young man, busy paddling my canoe, studying, building my curriculum vita, getting my name in front of my influencers, and testing social limits, five minutes of mindfulness practice took a tremendous effort...a confounding irony in itself. My mind was excited and full of ideas and curiosity; my body was full of testosterone. Chaotic People on Charles Bridge in Prague Photo by Viktor Hanacek, on picjumbo.com With age, the ideas have joined the wind. The once red-hot ashes of curiosity have long since soaked into the earth to green the grasses of someone else's summer. Testosterone has become a number, rather than an incentive. Today I slip into a mindful state much like the the muscles of my legs adjust to the trail slope, without convincing them to do so. Mindfulness gets easier with age for several reasons: Practice Makes ...  I started consciously practicing mindfulness, specifically, as a student at Northern Illinois University , in DeKalb, Illinois. An of...