Welcome to The Liberation Site
The
Liberation
of all human kind must be our highest priority, for if we cannot be
liberated from the illusions of modern life, then we will surely
destroy ourselves. If we can be liberated, then there is
literally no
limit to our potential. We have the choice to enter a future
beyond our
imagining. The Hero's Journey toward this Liberation is to become
Self-Aware. We may think that we are already self-aware, but there is more:
In the Fall of 1974 at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri I
had the extreme good fortune to meet an old Sioux Indian Holy Man named
Frank Fools Crow. He was a Medicine Man and Ceremonial Chief of the
Lakota Sioux Nation. Chief Fools Crow invited me to come to South
Dakota and stay with him in his house outside of Kyle on the Pine Ridge
Reservation. The following January I hitch-hiked up to the Pine Ridge
Reservation to accept his invitation. I went because I wanted to learn
as much as I could from that wise old man. Chief Fools Crow often knew
things that there was no possible way that he could have known. He
regularly did things that could be called miracles, and modern science
would say were impossible, and yet, the thing that was most impressive
about him was his utter humility. He and several other Medicine people
that I have come to know were and are the humblest people I have ever
met. The best way that I have heard it described is that they are like
hollow bones, and where the rest of us have egos and desires, they are
empty, and thus Creator's good Spirit can move through them to create
miracles and heal people.
In the years since I lived with Chief Fools Crow several
people have
told me that I should write a book about my experiences, but I was less
interested in just sharing stories and anecdotes about those amazing
Medicine people that I knew and still know, and more interested in
figuring out and sharing the stories and knowledge of how someone
could become that
hollow bone in the service of God. That, I believe, is a story worth
telling and explaining, and this website is intended to share that
story to the best of my poor ability and the time I am able to devote
to this writing.
Many would say that to attempt to acquire such spiritual power is
foolish in the extreme. I would completely agree, but for the fact that
to really approach this knowledge, to move closer to God in Truth means moving
closer to a true understanding of ourselves, and this understanding of
ourselves might yet prevent us from destroying ourselves. Besides which,
those who seek these powers for their own selfish reasons rather than
to serve the Creator will quickly lose
interest when the path to this knowledge requires them to look at and
come to terms with those parts of our selves that we keep hidden from
our own awareness.
It could hardly be otherwise, for how could we hope to approach and stand before
an all knowing Creator if we lack the courage to take a good hard look
at ourselves and know ourselves fully and completely?
Approaching this knowledge requires a huge amount of compassion, understanding
and love to be held, not only for all of those around us, but also and most
importantly for ourselves. This may sound narcissistic, but it is in fact
the opposite. Narcissists cultivate an inflated view of their own worthiness,
greatness, superiority, and how loveable they are. We live in a narcissistic age
in which advertisers try to pump us up with assurances that
“You Deserve!”
whatever product they wish us to purchase. The path to true spiritual knowledge
requires undoing a great deal of this pervasive narcissistic propaganda and
conditioning. We must deflate the illusions that make us feel so good about
ourselves, see them for what they are and, the hardest part, see how we have
been fooled or how we have fooled ourselves and recognize how we truly are.
For this, we need a great deal of compassion, forgiveness and love. We truly
are forgivable and forgiven. We need only accept that fact.
It is not enough to simply be willing to go on a Vision Quest, fasting for several
days and expect that God or Angels will show up to give us a Vision of
Understanding and spiritual powers. In order to be able to make that Spiritual
Leap of Faith we must first come to terms with who we are, how we are living,
and what we are doing, and this part of the process, as mentioned above, is
far more difficult than
fasting for several days on a Vision Quest. However, this part of the process
also promises to put us deeply in touch with our own hearts regardless of whether or
not we have a vision.
Once, when addressing a large crowd of non-native people, someone asked
Chief Fools Crow (through his interpreter, Matthew King) how we should
prepare for difficult times ahead. His answer was that we should pray.
The next question was, “How should we pray?”
His answer was, “However you believe, pray that way.”
One of the other medicine people gave a teaching that went something
like this:
You know, our religions are like spokes on a wheel.
They all come into the Sacred Center where Creator is, and when you are on
one of those spokes, if you go away from the center, you become
judgmental and worried about rules and details, whose interpretation
and understanding of Scripture is True and accurate and whose is False
and misguided, and who is Holy and who is Evil, and you had better hold
on tight to your spoke, because you could spin off, but if you move
into the center, you become more filled with compassion and love and
less concerned with rules, dogma and sanctimony, and when you get close to the
Center, you can clearly see all of those other spokes and their
connection to the Sacred Center, and you can easily step from one spoke
to the next without ever letting go of your own spoke because you
recognize their connection to Creator's Good Spirit.
This great teaching seems connected to another complementary
story, the story of the Blind Men and the Elephant. The first blind man feels
the elephant's tusk and says “The elephant is like a spear.” The next
blind man feels the elephant's leg and says “The elephant is like a
tree trunk.” The third blind man touches the elephant's side and says
“The elephant is like a wall.” The fourth grabs the tail and says “The
elephant is like a rope.” Each blind man truly and accurately describes
what they feel, and each is correct according to their experience, and
yet if we really want to understand the nature of the elephant, we need
to incorporate all of the different descriptions. Our sacred wheel with
its many spokes has something we describe as “Transcendent” in the
middle. We are all like the blind men, each with our portion of Truth.
Let us combine our Truths so that we may better understand that Sacred
Center as well as one another.
Stories and explanations on this website may jump from spoke
to spoke, making connections with the Sacred stories from many of the
Sacred wisdom traditions in order to see further. The Truth must simply
be seen from many different vantage points in order for us to really
appreciate it properly. This has the added benefit of helping us to see
the Truths in other wisdom traditions while recognizing their
connection to our own tradition, and can thus help us to recognize our
common connection to all humankind. If the relevant sacred stories from
one of the wisdom traditions are not included, it is simply due to the
limitations of the author's base of knowledge, and not a reflection on
that wisdom tradition.
There is one spoke on our Sacred Wheel that deserves special
mention, and that is the spoke of Science. Indeed, Science too,
functions as a spoke on our wheel and has its Truths to share. There is
an Islamic teaching about “The Two Sacred Books” where the “first Book”
consists of the Holy Quran, the Bible and the other sacred texts, and
the “second Book” is the book of the world around us. Both were created
by God and it cannot be a sin to study and understand either the Sacred
Texts or the Sacred World and Universe that God created. It was
thinking like this that allowed scientific knowledge in Islamic
cultures to flourish at a time when Christendom was mired in what
has been called the “Dark Ages.” It is surprising that Christianity has a
tradition of hostility towards scientific understanding, given that one
of the unique features of the Judaic creation story as compared to
other religions of the time period is that God repeatedly proclaims
that the new creation is Good. Science is not the enemy of the Truth.
On the contrary, it gives us another very useful opportunity to gain a
better grasp of the center of the wheel that the Lakota Sioux call “The
Great Mystery” (another name for God.)
One might wonder: if Science is a spoke on the Great Wheel, then
which end of the spoke leads to the Sacred Center? Perhaps it is both in the
realm of quantum mechanics in which our normal understanding of the
nature of physical reality becomes quite fluid and uncertain (relative
to our everyday experience) and in the field of psychology in which
Carl Rogers so eloquently teaches us love, compassion and understanding
for those around us, and Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud teach us that we
are only scratching the very surface of the understanding of our own
human nature and the world around us.
If any of us are to transcend our own egos and become hollow
bones through which Spirit may move, it will be of utmost importance that we
gain a great deal of self-knowledge and come to terms with all aspects
of our selves. The field of Psychology discusses Personality Theory, and this is a
good thing to do, but the more difficult path that we may choose is to
come to an understanding of these theories, not as something abstract,
but rather as part of what we perceive when we look within ourselves.
We must recognize and forgive ourselves for having a
human nature that is flawed and forgive ourselves for those flaws. That
is exceptionally hard and heroic work, and it holds the best possible
promise for solving problems that might otherwise lead to our
self-destruction.
The rest of this website contains links to writings designed
to help a person to embrace the hero's journey and learn how to become
that hollow bone through which the Holy Spirit may do its great work.
(Not all of the content has yet been added, so not all of the topics are yet active links, but soon...)
Cleaning Out the Closet
The Enemy
Tears and the Open Heart
The Vision Quest
Questions and comments will be greatly appreciated and can be sent to
the author/webmaster at:
The content of this webiste is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.