Rosy is a Root (the Native American Girl) - Chapter 1
Winter of 1838-1839 some thirteen thousand Cherokees were driven westward in what has become known as the Trail of Tears. Roughly a third of them, four thousand, died on route.
I grew up knowing that I was a warrior. I
am part Cherokee, Spanish, African American and white. I never noticed my
exotic heritage until I was mature enough to realize that it is a gift. To know
many cultures, religions, nations. This has instilled in me that we are one
people.
They call me mixed blood. I don’t fit into
one group of people. I am the other, a person that doesn’t fit into any. I was
born with blue eyes, that of my German grandmother, red skin and black hair. My
eyes changed to a honey brown after a month of my birth.
Everyone in my school was international. I
felt safe and comfortable because everyone had a heritage that was different,
unique. I was naïve. I didn’t know how dangerous it is just being alive in a
world that tries so hard to be free but is tired. I don’t know why we always
must fight for freedom. I suppose we are bound to duality and that separates
us.
I knew very little about my Cherokee
ancestors. All I knew was my great grandmother was half black and half
Cherokee. When my father died at age six, I didn’t receive much support or care
from his side of the family, which had the stories of my Cherokee, African
American and Spanish ancestral journeys.
I am yearning for the stories of my soul
but all I have is my inner knowing that I was built to be a warrior. My father
was a marine, my grandfather was in the army, my great grandfather was a
general in the navy and my other great grandfather worked at NACO now knows as
NASA as an air force engineer.
I knew nothing about the Trail of Tears
and the people thrown away like trash. I found White Buffalo Woman or she found
me when I started to recognize the trauma that pains me but I was born with
this pain, so I’m used to it. It’s all I know. I grew up Catholic and my
grandmother was strict. She grew up in girl school with nuns that were very
critical. I love Jesus but I also admire Green Tara, Quan Yin, Durga, Lakshmi
and White Buffalo Woman. These women prevailed, beat the odds and survived with
their spirit intact.
I had a friend growing up. Her name was
Lele. She was the most beautiful girl. She was mixed blood too. Her father was
light skinned black and her mother was pale white with pale blonde hair and
bright blue eyes. Lele had subtle blue eyes, long curly golden hair and skin
that could get dark like honey and light like honey depending on the sun. Her
mother passed away from liver failure just out of her forties. I remember all
her drinking parties and strange men coming over her house. Lele’s mother lost
her twin brother to alcoholism, and I think she could not bear the pain, so she
began to fade away slowly into an early death.
I thought drinking parties were fun when I
was young and wild, careless, reckless and naïve. I realize now how trapped
Lele must have felt being in a home with a mother too tired to grow beyond her
pain. Lele and I grew up when high school came. We saw each other every day and
then one day less and less until we barely knew each other. She became
interested in drugs and alcohol. I didn’t want that. Years later, a couple
years after high school graduation I found out that she was homeless, and her
mother was dead. Trauma is a silent destroyer. It ruins generations slowly, too
slowly to realize that you are being consumed by a damaging thought, feeling,
pattern that exists within you.
I didn’t have a best friend after her. I
still don’t today but I knew a boy. I was a senior. He was a freshman. We met
in creative writing class. I fell in love with him at first sight, but it was
platonic. We used to lie on his parents’ couch and talk about our past lives.
That was the first time I recognized that our souls have lifetimes with others'
souls. We both agreed we lived in the 18th century together and we were a part
of an underground revolution.
When I moved to Tennessee, leaving
Virginia behind to expand my wings we talked sometimes until not at all. One
day after a year of silence, we talked and as usual our talking lasted three or
four hours. Something had changed. He was more ridged, uptight and cold. He
always was the fun-loving, fierce yet stable person. I could tell something
happened and he was in pain because of it. He wouldn’t tell me. When he finally
opened up, shaking off this tough and defensive shell, I saw the boy I first
saw in creative writing class. He told me he saw us married. As quickly as he
opened his heart was as quickly, he slammed it shut. He told me that what I was
doing was devilish. Yoga is the devil. Meditation is the devil. Native American
ceremony is the devil. Buddhism is the devil. Judaism is the devil. Mantra is
the devil. Sanskrit is the devil. Everything that I was became the devil to
him. I didn’t know in the year of silence he was converting to his version of
Christianity that seemed frightening because it reminded of something deep
within me being. We still have not spoken today. I learned that many times we
are forced to let go. The journey of soul growth rips us apart from those we
are comfortable with but cannot grow up.
I began to notice a spiritual war - a
silent war that has been going on for a long time and it points directly at the
indigenous people because they know the truth underneath the thousands of years
of lies. My great elder told me about the killing of buffalo to win the war
against the Native Americans such as Lakota people. White man created a
mountain of Buffalo bones so high and so low it reached the spiritual world
like a mockery. The white man knew if they extinct the buffalo groups of Native
American people would die for their source of food, shelter and strength came
from the buffalo. Then, I discovered that it was legal to kill Indians and one
would get money, large sum of money for the depopulating of Indians in lands of
California. Now, you know why Indians don’t trust the government. Trust is
earned - not freely given. One can force, control, manipulate but the Earth is
governed by karma and unless karma changes progress fails to learn its lesson.
It's like repeating the fifth grade over and over and over.
The spiritual war has to do with wisdom
vs. belief. Belief can be a poison. Believing Indians are savages is a mind
with absolutely no discernment. Wisdom is discernment. So many beliefs and the
world goes mad trying to damage other beliefs to preserve their belief. Belief
can be powerful, both good and bad. Belief with wisdom is a harmony with the
universe. Belief without discernment is a power over the universe, assuming
God, projecting your narratives onto God like he’s a puppet we get to put our
mind inside to decide how he moves, what he thinks and what he does.
The Indians knows that this dark age is
just a phase. The Earth is a progression. There is the rise and the fall and
this isn’t our first attempt at rising in advanced technology to become an interstellar
civilization. We have done this several times before and fail because we don’t
grow spiritually in harmony with the Earth because our separation is used
against us instead of for our education.
The voice of the wisdom keepers is hidden
in the meditation. Only those who dare to meditate will find what is an
important missing component to the matrix but to go into meditation is to
meditate upon fear and the traumas that numb close what must be open.
Meditation is the only way of accessing discernment and unlocking separation
many times disguised as a belief that dictates to us who is worthy and who is
not. Perversions form and we dwell in a very clean and tidy house but inside we
are stained with hate for ourselves and others - a kind of hate disguised as
righteous and doctrine.
I bring up what most refuse to see because
my ancestors were forced to see it every day of their lives. The catholic man
taking Indian children away from their families, putting them into boy or girl
schools and forcing them to not speak their language, practice their
spirituality or remember anything about their nature. Those are the places no
one knows about because it's easier to be naïve. It’s easier to not see but
when you’re forced to, you have to choose to either let the pain destroy you,
let the confusion become belief that replaces discernment or fight for your
freedom. I choose to fight for freedom by meditating directly on fear to see
what's on the other side.