GRANDFATHER'S PRAYER FOR TODAY
I give honour and respect today to the nameless ones throughout the world who share their wisdom with us so me all grow a little wiser.
Medicine Man Who Wishes to Remain Nameless
I do not wish those who read this to know my name, not because I am afraid or ashamed of the messages I share, but because a true medicine person does not seek personal attention. I do not do what I do because I want your admiration or homage. I do not want you to say, "He is a wise man." My wish is that instead you will give any credit or regard for the words you read to the message in words themselves and to the Greatest of all Spirits. When I considered offering to you, I fasted and prayed for the wisdom to know what would help those of you who need the help the most. I saw two spirits as I prayed. The first who came to me was standing tall. He held a spear from which hung the feathers of hawks and owls. He did not speak to me. He pointed his spear to the direction of the wind and I looked into the wind and saw many of my people who walk the Earth today. They were standing in a muddy place. They were angry at me for talking to you. They called to me that I was a traitor to my people if I offer words to help any others. The warrior with the spear looked at me and his hard face softened and he turned away.
Another warrior came to me. He wore a buffalo skin over his head and he drew a grand medicine wheel on the sand in front of me. One side pointed to each spirit of the wind, to each element of the Earth. He stood in it and walked around slowly. He stopped in each direction and spoke to me. In the first he said, "Truth is the truth. There is nothing else. Truth is not owned by any people."
In the second he said, "Every people have their sacred ways to dance their truth. Do not change them or give them your ways. Let each find their own dances for the one truth."
In the third he said, "What makes a people strong is their heart. A painful heart is not strong. A strong heart is not selfish."
In the fourth direction he said, "Each must protect their sacred ways, yet each must share the truth that makes those ways sacred."
Then he stepped into the centre of the circle and then before me, on good ground, stood the spirits of all the ancestors of my people. The man with the spear stood there as well. He did not speak. He pointed the spear to the Ancestor Spirits. The man in the circle said, "Respect your ancestors and hold what is sacred close to your heart. In this way you will respect your people. Respect your Creator and speak the truth to those who wish to hear it. In this way you will respect your world." The vision was suddenly gone. I sat in the sand looking where the spirits were and I heard a voice say, "Be a messenger not the message." This was my vision. This is why I chose to do this.
Part 2 I offer you this truth that I know. You may take it as a gift if you wish. A misconception many people have is that to be "with the spirit", to be spiritual" means you have to be sitting some place in a "higher state" praying to God. You can be conscious of yourself and spirit no matter what you are doing. There is spirit in everything. There is spirit in rock, in roads, in buildings. There is spirit in everything. You name an object and there is spirit in it. There is even spirit in things that are made. There is energy in them. All objects have been made of things from the Earth, so all things have spirit in them. When you are conscious of yourself, then you can look around and be aware of the spirit in everything around you. Then you can have a spiritual experience washing your clothes. I have been looking at your group website. It is good. But I wonder if the people who read it who are looking for the keys to spiritual growth know the basics that are very important about spiritual growth that no one teaches you. One of these is that everything has spirit and you have to be aware of that spirit. Not just your own spirit. Some people think that to be spiritual means just to be aware of themselves and their own spirit. You must be aware of everything, because everything has spirit. We are all part of one spirit. If you focus too much on the part of spirit that has your name on it, you will be missing something. You might not even know that you are missing it until it is too late and you don t have time to find it. The next thing people need to know is that being spiritual does not mean owning the truth. No one can own truth. Truth can only be shared. No one can own it. It, like love, means nothing unless there is someone you can give it to. To know the truth of the world and keep it to yourself means nothing. You must also be careful not to run the risk of believing you know the only truth, or that you know all that is true. The universe is very, very big. Even this Earth has so many spirits, so many voices. It does not matter how much truth you know, there is always going to be someone who knows something that is true that you don't know yet. Judge truth with an open heart and an objective eye. Sometimes when you believe something is true and someone tells you something different, your heart may tell you (that) you know what he or she are saying is true, but you don' t want to let go what you already believe because you have invested energy in it. So being spiritual does not mean owning or having the complete truth. You cannot deny other's view of truth simply because they are not yours. Many people have different names for the same thing. It doesn't matter what you call these things, the power is identical in the people's lives who chose to believe in them. People may come to us and say, "Teach us about the Great Spirit. Teach us about Usen. Teach us about Wi or any other name." There are hundreds of names for the Great Spirit. When you pray to whatever name you pray to, the power of the prayer is identical. What it does for you is identical. The act of meditation or prayer connects you to yourself and that part of Creation and God that you are a key to. If man would understand this, there would be far less fighting. Understand that just as you feel the strength of your truth when you contemplate it, another man feels the strength of his truth when he contemplates it. The form or shape of your truth may seem very different, but the strength you feel is the same. It is from the same source. I have heard some people say that they are reaching to ascend and become masters. Master yourself before you try to master heaven. Ascension begins inside. They say when you are complete in yourself, you have ascended. But no man is complete in himself, no woman is complete in herself until they have become complete with the whole universe. Difficult. Not a small thing to ask. Impossible if you don't see and share in the spirit of things around you. This reminds me of a story. When frogs sing the rains come. One day a cricket was walking among the frogs. The cricket started to chirp and the frogs started to croak back. The cricket said to the frogs, "Oh, your croaking sounds terrible. My chirping is much better." The Cricket was very smart and cunning. He tricked the frogs into chirping by saying things to them like, "It is better to chirp. Croaking is ignorant. Croaking is low. That intelligent people like me chirp." The frogs wanted to seem smart, so one by one the frogs decided that maybe he was right and they started to chirp, not croak. Soon all the frogs chirped and chirped and chirped, and the rain never came. All the frogs suffered because there was no rain. Finally, one by one the younger frogs started saying, "Do you remember when our grandfathers use to croak? What a sound that was, but the rains always came!" So the young ones started to croak. Then their mothers and their fathers remembered the joy of croaking and the rains came back. The Cricket was doing what a cricket should do. But a cricket should never tell a frog what to do. The frogs should never do what a cricket does. Each one of us has a song to sing. That is what our spiritual self is, our song. Some will chirp, some will croak, some will howl. All the songs are the same to those who sing them. They are equal. Does that make sense to you? You must remember then, being spiritual is not a part-time job. It is something that is part of your life. In everything you do, you feel the spirit of it. That is why people are coming back to traditional ways. Even though we were not perfect people. Even though we had wars, we had fights and squabbles over land, women, animals and other things. Even though we tried to live in peace on the whole, we had setbacks like everyone else. And even though there were some bands who had more setbacks than others. Even with our setbacks, we were aware of the energy and the spirit around us. The red man always lived and always lives - if he is following his traditional ways- conscious of the spirit in all things around him and in the spirit in himself. The red woman knows the spirit of all things around her and is aware that it is the spirit in herself. The red child is taught from the day it begins, to feel the spirit of things around him. To the red man, to the red people, the Earth is not a dust ball in space covered with things that were created for man's use. We feel the life and the energy in everything around us. Because we are human we are not perfect, yet we hold something that technological society takes away from people today. They are looking for it because it is important to their life. It is important to the life of everyone. Those who don't have it feel like they are empty shells living in a world that is cold and mechanical. To fill this feeling is what people are looking for. If they would just look inside they will find it. It is there just waiting for them to see it. They do not need to learn to Sun Dance to find it. That may not be their way. They need to look for what they lost. Tell them to look again. Do you understand? The words of the Elders are meant for everyone. Therefore we encourage you to share these words and messages as a gift to others as they are a gift to you.
GRANDFATHER PETER(Tread softly on the Earth Mother)
