Yesterday marked the completion of Spirit Dance, a yearly Native-American ceremony held to weave the vibrations of peace, harmony, trust, and love into the world. Dancers must pass an application and acceptance process before they are permitted to dance. This week I found out why.
Spider Heart
I believe it takes a pure heart and direct connection to the Divine to successfully water fast and dance around a fire in the desert for 96 hours, all while resonating vibrations of peace, love, harmony, and trust throughout one's body. Here's an account of my personal journey:
I live and work in Patagonia, Arizona, at the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center. Each month, at the new moon, we hold an inipi ceremony, or Native American Lakota sweat lodge. Many spiritual traditions and practices are honored at the Tree, and this is one that I strongly connect with. I enjoy the inipi ceremonies so much that I have not missed one since my arrival here. I was even asked to be a fire keeper, a great responsibility that I accepted with great honor and respect. Now I also carry and set stones (tonkas) for the inipi ceremonies. It seems this is in my bones; as though I already knew how to do these things even before I learned the tasks. The Native ways come naturally to me and hold a special place of reverence in my heart.
Each year the Tree of Life Foundation (separate from the Rejuvenation Center) sponsors Spirit Dance. This event involves three days of preparation and four days of actual dancing. The three days of prep involve setting up the site, building our sleeping quarters and hospitality tent, and handling the logistics of the dance. Each day we also hold inipi ceremonies for purification at sunrise and sunset. This allows us as dancers to move through our own personal issues and release any attachments or dramas that we may be holding. It also allows us to ground our intentions for the dance: trust, compassion, peace, love, world harmony...and let it begin with me.
During the prep days I mostly stayed with the fire. Once we lit the fire for the first inipi on the first prep day, the fire-keepers constantly tended it, keeping it going until the very last day of the dance. For the first time in my life, I slept on the ground outside under the stars by the fire - no tent, no bed, no conveniently-located toilet. Amazingly, I enjoyed it. Each night I stayed there with another fire-keeper. Incidentally, I'm the only female fire-keeper here. The boys put the logs on the fire before we went to bed, and I woke up about three times each night to add more wood. My intentions became more solidly grounded within me each night.
The first day of the dance we had a procession where we donned our dance shirts and carried the fire down to the dance site in a chimnea. Spirit Dance shirts are hand-made and decorated by each dancer. Each is a unique work of art portraying the spirit and focus of the dancer. I wore a phoenix, symbolizing rebirth into a new way of being, two all-seeing eyes, representing transparency and authenticity, a double-helix and spiral representing the Divine rhythms of life, and panther, dolphin, and a large bird which represented some of my totem animals. As we lit the fire at the dance site, the dancing began. I was in the first group to dance. We all danced two three-hour shifts each day. I danced 9-12.
"Dancing" is defined quite loosely. As long as there are three people in the circle moving in some way, it's considered dancing. Sometimes I felt moved to actually dance, and sometimes the energy moving through me was softer, quieter, like a whisper and a rocking or rotating in place. Occasionally dancers became quite tired and paused by the fire at night, contemplating and searching deep within. Always the intention resurfaced and reignited the passion and desire to move.
Why did I choose to dance? I represent peace, harmony, and love. Every day I move into higher levels of compassion and trust for myself and for all beings. In each exchange, verbal or otherwise, I portray a transparent authenticity that communicates the truth behind the words and expressions I choose. If I don't trust myself, then who can I trust? If I don't trust others, why on earth would I expect anyone else to trust another? World peace begins with me. Change begins within. We were about 30 dancers, experiencing this journey in our own unique way. Our group totem is spider. We're weavers of a new web of life; a life where we have compassion for others, even if we don't understand their choices and their journey; a life where friends and lovers trust each other as much as neighbors, governments, and religious groups trust each other; a life where ALL my relations means ALL my relations: human, plant, animal, insect, rock, and crystal; a life where ALL life is valued, respected, honored, and loved.
Aho Mitakuye Oyasin
