Seeds Are Life And Death!

Seeds Are Life And Death!

As Indigenous People, if we cannot see ourselves as seeds, we are lacking the ingredients of progression and are failing to understand the Spirit that is the Spiritual Entity which gave birth to us all, whether two-legged, four-legged, flyer, creepy crawler, swimmer, tall and green ones.... We are all seeds of this Earth, which as Tainos today we identify as "Atabey" and each particular culture and tradition reserve their unique name for the same Mother who birthed us all alike. So as Tainos searching and seeking to construct a culture within the ruins of our ancestral traditional ways, we must dig deep within our essence to see and understand our place within Mother Earth, which is suffering from the ills brought forth by the alien mentality of the two leggeds who invaded and who totally rebelled against the Mother of Life. We are the seeds of Life brought forth by the Earth herself, and if we are to make contributions of coexistence with our existence we must travel within the black dot, through the black dot to cultivate the seeds of progression and change in a world that is inevitably changed, and is slowly heading in the direction of totally rebelling against the actions that have been taken to dismantle the Sacred Hoop which contains the memory of evolution within the experience.

As Tainos, once again if we cannot see ourselves as seeds, we are definitely and without a shadow of a doubt, blind, ignorant, and involved in the manufacturing of mental deceptions within our everyday movement towards the entertaining of the lunacy that haunts our mental body each day that we allow ourselves to be in a fantasy inside of an illusion that leads us to no conclusions. The only thing that can be harvested is more fantasies, more illusions, and the continuation of being instrumental in the dumbing down of our mental bodies!

The center root of Taino consisted of cultivating seeds that would bring nourishment, wisdom, for the living and communication with the Dead. The seeds were the central theme of understanding the life of the Yukayeke within the center root of the Ceibe tree and the Ancestors understood that the tentacles of the Ceibe were the living veins of the Mother. The Yucca becomes Yucca because of the seed and the Yucca that the Ancestors cultivated had within the DNA of that seed, life and death in unison. The People understood how to separate the process of Death from the process of Life from the one seed that is the Yucca that nourished the people and gave them sustenance for their physical bodies. Whereas the Cohoba seed is the seed of the Dead, that the Living ingests in order to be in a trance of the Dead. In the trance of the Dead, the seed allowed the Living and the Dead to sit in unison for the benefit of the People, to gain the knowledge and wisdom to sustain themselves and to elevate their understanding and their conception of the Spiritual Entity. The Cohoba of the Dead allowed the Dead to continue to Live inside of the Cemis through the consciousness and intelligence of the Living who holistically and scientifically understood the distribution and the birthing of the seeds of life that the Mother shared with all alike.

Seeing ourselves as "seeds" immediately brings up the most powerful manifestation of ourselves as Seeds, which is our children, our grandchildren, our greatchildren who continue the bringing forth of our Essence as Seed! The Seed contains within it all the knowledge and wisdom necessary for its growth, its expression and its creation of multiple more seeds containing this same knowledge and wisdom. The seed requires the vital elements present in our Mother Atabey and also the Light and Heat from the Sun (Boinael). The moisture, nutrients, air, rain, even micro-organisms all are necessary for the growth of the Seed, however the Seed itself holds the "intelligence (knowledge and wisdom) for its full manifestation and its generation of another generation of Seeds. The transmission of Knowlege and Wisdom must and will remain consistent and strong as Seed generates Seed. A seed does not seek or expect to derive its Essence, Identity, or Intelligence from it's "environment" but understands its total dependence on the Natural Elements for its manifestation from Seed to Seed Producer. This process of transformation from Seed to Seed Producer is very important for us to see in our lives.

As Tainos we cannot allow ourselves to go into slumber and denial concerning the Seeds, because the Earth herself is not in need of the Seeds, for she is the birther of all Seeds. It is "us" who need to regain and caretake the knowledge of the Seeds, because we cannot and should not and we must not continue to portray ceremonies that lack the vitality to manifest Seeds of Progression for the People and for the unification of our Actions with all our Sisters and Brothers of Life. We cannot continue to pretend to be doing ceremonies of planting in the absence of actions, because ceremony in our way should be rooted in the essence of the DEAD. But the actions of some of continuing to call the Dead to a ceremony(s) which is rooted in Fantasy and Enactments is detrimental to us all. Ceremony is the bloodstream and back bone of a people to thrive with the Earth in ALL of her Relations and Manifestations within the Evolution of Progression. There is a stream of medicine people and politicians who are invested in deception and illusions that lead the people empty handed in utterly searching for solutions to thrive in the current situation that the Earth's People find themselves in. Fantasies of Ceremonies abound, which are more rooted in denial, in self-hatred, in Hollywood stereotypes, and in blindness to the highest degree that one can surmount mental and spiritual blindness.

Meanwhile around the Earth Indigenous People and Indigenous Ways continue to be under attack from an enemy utilizing the same vicious, divisive, manipulative and deceptive techniques that were used upon our Ancestors and upon all the Ancestors of this Continent. Meanwhile it only takes one leader of the community to make a "deal with the devil" to bring down the entire community, the one weak link that allows the full penetration of this enemy to come into the heart of the Community and its Indigenous Ways, stripping the community of its Land and soon following that of its Culture and Spirituality, and soon following that of its physical health and vitality. When will we learn that it only takes one weak leader to become corrupted to destroy a nation? And what of the Indigenous communities such as us Taino, whose very Re-Surgence founding leaders were not clear on what side of the fence they were standing? Whose "medicine people" were unclear and continue to be unclear about the spiritual foundation they were standing on, not knowing if they should choose to emulate hollywood stereotypes of "north American Native spirituality" with its stereotypical purification (sweat) lodges and medicine wheels, totems and so on, or whether to emulate the movie "Emerald Forest's" portrayal of Amazonian "Indians", or whether to emulate the richly complex Central American cultures, or whether to emulate Christianity, warping deities such as Atabey and Yokahu into the virgin mary and jesus. What developed from the countless hours spent talking about the coming Earth Changes, and still never moving, never creating, never putting into action any plan of action, all talk, no results...? If it only takes one corrupt leader to lead a community or nation astray what happens to the community that is lead by 95% corrupt leaders (including medicine people) who refuse to embrace the Indigenous Principles which have proven over and over again would allow communities to thrive?

In this season of Spring Equinox, Equinox ceremonies abound within the resurgence... strangely dressed people (looking more like christian asthetics with perculiar headresses) prance around enacting what our Ancestors would perceive with perplexity as ridiculous performances, elsewhere scantily clad amazonian-esque actors re-enact hastily researched and poorly defined renditions of cohoba ceremonies, funerary ceremonies and so much more for throngs of school children and tourists... Irregardless of the climate and weather conditions, the seed planting season is forced into the dates of Spring Equinox, the "medicine people" in the temperate climate of the North forgetting that the Caribbean is a tropical zone, shivering in the cold winds of March to perform a C-section delivering the baby Jesus (I mean Yocahu) from the warmth of his mothers womb into the chilly early spring air so that he can begin his yearly cycle of life on the outside and then life on the inside of his blessed mother's womb, forgeting the conditions in the Caribbean allow agriculture at any time of the year, with the primary defining factor to our Ancestors being the level of rainfall during the year and not the temperature! Our traditional Taino spirituality has been taken by these buffoons and distorted, torqued, knotted and disgraced beyond recognition once again by those who are continuing to assuage the feeling of guilt and inadequecy and personal rootlessness, by becoming experts upon our tradition, the spiritual descendents of the chroniclers (missionaries) with the full new age adornment so favored today! Desperate in their need to cling on to their "father" christianity. Virginizing Atabey to more closely resemble their maternal fantasy of the blessed mother mary, proudly strutting through museaums, parks, pow wows, sacred grounds, schools, universities, events and areitos as the modern missionaries of our people, the Panes, the Las Casas, still harboring their secret jelousies and envies towards an Ancient People who truly understood their rightful place and balance upon the Earth, still rocked by their personal identity crisis, and still trying to please the big man and big woman!

Within all this drama, where are the seeds being planted? Are there even any real seeds present? And if there are real seeds, are they planted in the Earth or are they simply "symbolically planted" after which the "participants" go and gorge on "traditional" food which has been really planted by exploited Indigenous People around the world or do they run to McD or the King to gorge on beef patties farmed from cattle grazing on what was the Amazon Rain Forest and Tomatoes picked from virtual slave laborers in Florida or California (the unwanted Indigenous, so called"immigrants")? What type of exploitation will it be this time? Or do they simply visualize seeds being planted and then proceed to visualize a meal to eat? One more spoke in a consummer culture this time consuming "spirituality" neatly packaged in "ceremonies that you can do at home every day" and if you want to "you can even become a real Taino shaman.....!" Or play the political field right, get the right headgear, self promote on facebook and myspace, build a cyberspace organization and soon a mythical yukayeke will elect you casike! Then develop an unverifiable "bloodline" back to a recorded casike or unrecorded (your fantasy is the limit) casike and your in for life. However at death do not expect any other burial than a good christian one with a few decorative Taino flairs, Taino hymns and the famous Taino 'our father' (never mind our Culture was Matrifocal)..., and if you are lucky a "Taino regalia" and a few sparse "community members" competing with your biological family for the spotlight! And there you will be in no man's land, caught between looking for jesus and looking for spirit guides and trying to avoid "those Africans"....! None of this funny at all, this is not meant as a joke or ridicule but a deeply disheartening look at where the fantastical ceremonies have lead our people to.

What seeds have been planted for these times of Earth Changes that we are no longer waiting for but which are upon us? Where have these ceremonies taken the people or not taken the people? Are our communities prepared for today and everything tomorrow will bring? Traditional, natural seeds are the lifeline of our Survival, not only the seeds that produce plants, trees, and so on for our physical survival, but also those ceremonial seeds that allow our Spiritual Gardens to have Harvests for our Continued experience within our Mother, Atabey! We can no longer continue to give credence and acceptance to what is being marketed as "Taino", we can no longer stay silent in witnessing the modern destruction of our Culture and Spirituality, and we can no longer wait for authentic ceremonies to somehow miraculously evolve from these enactments, but we must fully and immediatly embrace the FACT that we are SEEDS and SEED-PRODUCERS and tend our GARDENS!