Teachings
Pueblo Teaching
It was in the middle of a cold afternoon in May. I was riding in the front seat of the new pickup truck. The son of the medicine man, who is becoming a medicine man himself, was driving. In the back was my husband Ted, the driver’s 18 month old son, and one of the family’s grandchildren.
We left the village area, pulling away on the dusty road from the adobe homes and village store. For several miles we drove. The vistas were huge: red muddy earth, open sky, and the sacred mountains tall in the distance.
Now the dirt road grew rougher. The land no longer bore any signs of cultivation, and the driver turned and spoke.
“This is our middle place,” he said, gesturing to the right and the left of the road. “When people have been in difficult things: accidents and suicide, and the crossing to the next world is hard, this is where their spirits come.”
It was clear that no one from the living used this land. They did not come here to hunt, or picnic or cultivate corn or herd their sheep. This was purgatory. Everyone knew exactly where it was. The living knew exactly where to come to pray for the people who were on their journey.
Nothing more is said, and we continue to drive. The road stretches on. Miles later, signs of habitation announce themselves: stone walls appear, some just remnants from dwellings abandoned generations ago, others stable and circular, the structures of operating wells. We see falling homes and good ones, and everywhere the unmistakable markings of fields, lying rectangular and raw under the sun.
Just last week I had been on the road from New Mexico to Kansas to pick up our new dog, Kaira. All along the drive, the wheat fields were tall with plantings. Some fields were already gold and approaching harvest. I saw this everywhere: New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Kansas. So I turned to our driver, and I asked: “I notice the fields aren’t planted?”
And he answered: “It isn’t time yet. We cannot plant, until all the seeds have come. The seeds—of the squash and the beans and the corn, come with the dances, and there is one kiva that has not yet given its dance, so we wait.”
For the second time on the drive I am struck by the wisdom and simplicity of this pueblo whose spiritual culture is completely intact. This is the patience, I think. These fields are not even tilled. I imagine Mother Mary, waiting for her order to carry baby Jesus. How many of us want to move immediately into action when the impulse comes? How many are willing to wait with the patience, so the time is right, and we can be impregnated?
We drove back to the village in quiet. The only sounds were the chanting of the sacred singers to the drumbeat that played on the cd track. To the side of my view, I watched the 18 month old. Sitting in his car seat, eyes alert and face bobbing up and down, he was moving his hand in perfect rhythm with the beat, holding a rattle in his mind. He moved with all the connections intact on the inside. I have been playing the drum for many years, and I thought I knew how to play from the heart. This child already has the understanding, and by following his movements, after all these years, I find the doorway.
The truck pulls into the driveway of the father’s large and sprawling home. He is dressed simply, in a checked shirt and jeans. We tell him about our drive, about seeing the middle place, and he nods. Speaking matter-of-factly, he says, “Yes, that is true. And our heaven is in Arizona.”
“I have been there five times,” he adds.
I listen as he describes having walked the 200 plus miles, with the other members of the tribal society who have been granted access. This is where, for generations and generations, for hundreds and even thousands of years, from the beginning of this people, since their Creation time, every ancestor has gathered when they have left the planted earth and made their journey to the next world. They know where their heaven is, I think to myself. They know precisely, so they can find their way.
The son speaks up. “I haven’t been there,” he says. “I haven’t been allowed to go.”
As you hear this story, I invite you to think about the application in your own lives. In every tradition, there is a specific place where the heaven world exists, and there is a sacred walk. In Christianity, the heaven world is in the Buddhic plane. This is the plane of the Christ consciousness and the Mother Mary. It is a plane of very fine vibration and higher feeling. The purgatories that we walk through are the worlds of coarseness and separation in the emotional and the mental bodies.
Some of you will journey to the Buddhic Heaven very quickly as you walk. For others it may take longer, but each one of you will find your way. Going along the sacred trails by car does not work. Throughout history, in every tradition—Islam; Judaism; Hinduism; Buddhism; you will see that people have to walk. There are sacred places and sacred sites, and each place carries its traditions. They walk to mountains, rivers, holy temples; they circle stones. If pilgrims are too ill to walk, then they are carried. We are each asked to stand before our God, as we give ourselves over. This is the meaning of having a self, and a heart, and a soul, and even a secret, and surrendering it over.
If you do not have a sacred pilgrimage that you can find in the village or town where you live, then you can come to New Mexico and take one of the walks from the tradition that is here. People walk from the big Cathedral downtown to the Church at Guadalupe. They also travel on the road to the Church in Chimayo.
There is one more thing that I want to tell you that came from the medicine man during this visit. And it is this: these people have a beautiful understanding about blessings that I encourage us to take. For them, when an ancestor dies, all of the blessings that fell upon that ancestor now go to the descendants. If your mother or your father or your grandmother or grandfather had abundance, or a great mind, or a strong back, or enjoyed prosperous creativity in their last years, all of these blessings are for you.
In the West, many have been raised to worry about curses, and so we are hesitant to connect to those who have passed; we do not wish that the curses come upon us. Each of us can become a little bit like these pueblo people. Receive the blessings from your ancestors, so every time you think on them, only the good things will reflect on you.