Teaching: The Dead, The Living, and Agriculture

Teaching: The Dead, The Living, and Agriculture

(From Koki Medicine Clan Teaching: Nov. 16-18, 2007)

This teaching focuses on three things which are extremely important to understand in spiritual development, otherwise the result can be a warped, misleading understanding.

THE DEAD

THE LIVING

AGRICULTURE

The Dead: By the Dead we are speaking of Ancestors and their relationship to the continuation of Life.

The Living: By the Living we are speaking of the cycles of life and the birth processes and of course those having a human experience.

Agriculture: By Agriculture we are speaking of that which sustains us.

Without understanding these three points, we would still be dealing with an elusive spirituality which would not be grounded in reality. All three points have an important role and we need to take an active and energetic approach in exploring the understanding of these points. One of the necessary processes is to explore the definition of these points further than our habitual definitions. For example we consider that food sustains us, but we need to consider the whole cycles from birth to death of how we take in this sustenance and how we are distracted from understanding this cycle and our relationship to it and participation within it. Our sustenance comes from the Earth from the moment we are born through our Mother’s milk which she produces from the sustenance that she took in from the Earth. We may habitually take for granted that oil to cook with comes from a bottle, but in fact it does not come from the bottle. A tremendous amount of energy, effort and sacrifice goes into our food production and it is also tremendously exploited and is controlled outside of our immediate communities. In many cases, especially in this country we, the People, are separated physically, mentally and spiritually from the production of what we consume not only to sustain our bodies, but also to cloth ourselves, shelter ourselves and protect ourselves. The majority of these things is in the hands of others who do not incorporate our voice inside their decisions. Our traditional past maintained a vital relationship to everything that was consumed by the community and it is a mistake to dwell in an energy of hopelessness by saying this was only in the past, because it is still true that many Traditional Communities continue to maintain these vital and spiritual relationships. It is important to also note that much of our Traditional Ceremonies are connected to the healthy relationships involved in Sustaining ourselves through Agriculture.

In considering the sustenance that we take in, we must also consider that the majority of it is “dead” whether it be the plant or animal that we are taking in. This physical phenomenon reveals a spiritual phenomenon that what sustains us is “the Dead” both physically and Spiritually. The Dead (Ancestors) lead us in our lives, open the doors to our progress, administer advice and understanding and protect our experience. Agriculture itself is a process of the Dead giving rise to Life and Life passing into Death. Without the Dead growth is impossible.

Realizing the importance and essentialness of the Dead we have to consider how our control over the burial process and cemetery has been given over to others. No longer can most of us place our Dead in a Sacred Burial Ground where we can go at any time to communicate directly with the Ancestral Bone, do the appropriate Ceremonies and so on. We must consider that a spiritual “prison camp” has been created where Ancestors are entrapped rather than journeying to the rightful place of the Ancestors. The primary reason why a spiritual prison camp would be created would be because of the lack of the appropriate Ceremony of the Passing of Life and no appropriate Burial Ground. We have to realize that at this time the Earth is filled with spiritually unhygienic societies where the Dead are not in their rightful places due to the circumstances of Death (premature or nonsensical violent death), due to the lack of Ceremony or due to mental/ spiritual confusion where the Spirit is disoriented and lost. This has created a Spiritual Chaos which has greatly complicated the process of communication with the Dead.

The Dead are just as important as the Living and as Agriculture (Sustenance). People rely on the Ancestors returning to the Bones so that the Ancestors could communicate with the Living. In the chaotic state we reside in, often an Ancestor might return to their Bones only to find that there is no one to greet them. This cycle of burial and the appropriate process of a Soul passing from the Living to the Dead is frozen also by “grief” and a failure to understand the process of continuing the relationship when the Living pass to the Dead.

Ni Bon: “Yesterday I was trying to remember a memory of which I had no experience- of a time long past and gone. But my memory cannot serve me in search of this memory because my whole memory had been handed down through books. I tried to reach my memory to see how the Ancestors walked on the Earth 500-1000 years ago, to see how they were able to quench their thirst at the rivers, how they looked at the trees, plants and animals, but my memory fails me because I have no conscious memory of being inside of that experience. No matter how I want to recapture it, I can’t because it is not inside of my experience. I started to think the memory of this experience has to serve me, just as their memory served them even through a brutal past.”

We can only extract how it was for the Ancestors from our limited stories, tales, and limited dreams, but we have to see the essence of the experience in the here and now in order to keep the Ancestors alive in this time. Even though we do not have the eyesight to see that far into the Past, the Ancestors do have the eyesight to see us in our Present. The Ancestors adapt much better to the future than we do to the Past. It is the Dead who approach us in our Memory and not the other way around, they speak to us in the symbols and terms that we are familiar and comfortable with. In manifesting a vision we allow the Ancestors to bring their memory to us, not that we go back to see their reality. The Dead can influence that memory in us today so that we can bring it into the Present. Today we are speaking about two things, one is Ancient and Civilized, the other is backwards and barbaric. The Ancient Ones knew that you do not take uranium out of the Earth and you do not do anything without Ceremony. The Life experience is about Ceremony. We must be very mentally active and attentive to know how the Dead are interrelating with us today. The Ancestors have their eyes open in our bloodstream, they know our destiny and they orient us. Without the Dead any society becomes disoriented.

There are several booby traps, including being misguided, the torments of the mind becoming the master, and becoming hoarders of possessions.

In speaking about all three points, the Dead, the Living and Agriculture, we must recognize that the natural flow of the Seasons has been tampered with. The concept of daylight savings time is a manipulation as is the corruption of holidays revolving around consumption, waste, fantasy, and the glorification of atrocities. The disruption of the Fall cycle of “death” is accomplished by Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. This particular cycle (that we are currently in) is one in which we here witness the dying away of the plant people, the trees losing leaves, and our daylight hours become minimized. It is a natural time to focus even more intensely on the Dead and the Spirit! This cycle has been usurped by these “holidays” which embody the essence of wastefulness, distortion, glorification and justification of genocide, and accumulation of debt. Meanwhile the cycle of learning for the Children is just as disrupted and corrupted.

The manipulation and breakdown in the cycles of the Dead, the Living and Agriculture is certainly due to the conscious manipulation that we have spoken about at length and it is important to realize that this conscious manipulation is powered by the Indigenous Medicine that was stolen and continues to be stolen from the People. One of the primary purposes of the new age movement is to infiltrate Indigenous Spiritual Circles and water down Indigenous Traditions. However we must also realize that many of the Indigenous Spirits have rebelled against those who stole their traditions which is why we see the battle between Ancient Principles of Civilization and backwards European barbarism raging. 

When we consider our defense of our Self, Family and Community inside of the present situations which bombard us and surround us, we cannot allow ourselves to make the mistake of thinking in terms of hopelessness. We have to be aware of how we can defend ourselves physically, mentally, vibrationally and Spiritually. We have to be aware that our ‘Immune System” itself is a Spirit which protects us and that we need to fortify that Spirit. Our mental body is another Spirit that we need to clarify. Mental torments eat away at our mental acuity and mental power. Mental torments (obsessions) become unwanted squatters in our Minds and undermine the Mental Body. There is also many things that we can do to amplify the health of the Vibrational Body, such as martial arts which are also about physical protection. 

Going back to our discussion of the Dead, we have to realize that many of our direct Ancestral bones may be scattered possibly around the World and we may not be able to access or even know where our Ancestors bones are. As soon as we see a society stop caring for its Dead we see a disintegration of that society and a dismantling of the Soul to make it Will-less. When we see the Dead being incarcerated in concrete boxes we have to realize that this is a symbol of imprisonment. We also have to realize that the oppressors of the world who are ruling through Indigenous Medicine never fully understood that medicine and the Medicine itself has rebelled against them. Many of their current movements are due to desperation as they realize that their time is up. You see the desperation obvious in the obsession with finding a way to live on Mars and the obsession to clone human beings. They not only are trying to play “God” but also are trying to find a way not to meet or to bypass the “divine judge” who stands in the Pathway to and from Coabey or the world of the Ancestors. They are aware that the Earth and the Spirit of Life is rebelling against the mentality of desecration against the Mothers of Life. They are realizing that they cannot protect themselves from the Spirits of the Elements or from the Dead.

The Dead teach the Living which is why we spend so much energy in developing relationships and means to communicate with the Dead. The Dead are instrumental in the development of Cultures and Traditions. Many of the ancient and modern scientific discoveries came and come from the Dead, enabling the Living to manifest things in Life! The Pyramids, Ancient Temples etc. are good examples of this. When one is disconnected from the Dead the natural element gets dumbed down. Others have found ways to take control of our Dead, depriving us from this communication and Teaching. The Ancestors are the Catalyst between You and the Wisdom and Story residing inside of your DNA!

The modern ways of talking about the Earth are very superficial, also the modern means of communicating (phone, TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards, etc) have nothing to do with the root of Ancestral Practices. They are a substitution for those Ancestral practices and a distraction, pre-occupation and obsession which takes you away from spending time with your Dead! And those modern means of communication and those who control and propagate them do not have you and your community, nor your communal or spiritual development at heart. 

We can ask the question: “What is a Tradition? What does it entail? Why is it important?” If we were to define american tradition or culture, we would have to define it as “me, myself and I” (selfishness), consumerism, disregard for Elderly, lack of community caring, competing with the Jones… True Cultures are rooted in agricultural cycles, rooted in Ceremony (Tradition), attached to the Natural Cycles of Life, the Sun, Moon, Rains, Birth, Naming Ceremony, Rite of Passage, Ancestors, Healing and Conflict Resolution. Tradition/ Ceremony also about placating the Spirit, because the Spirit is respected. Tradition is about real life situations, it is an “adult” approach to finding solutions through the Spirit. If we are walking as people of Culture this is very different than walking as people dependent on the american “anti-culture”. Compare the behavior of those people of Culture who when confronted with a real life situation (a drought) go about seeking solutions and direction from the Spirit, versus the behavior of those, for example, in this country who simply wait for government intervention which is simply used to further disempower the people. Traditionally one would seek the intervention of the Spirit of the Rain (for example). These contrasting responses to a critical situation (drought) indicate an extreme childishness in those who willingly depend of the government (or other authority) as if that government (or authority) was 1. Concerned with them and 2. Intelligent enough to have real solutions, and 3. More powerful than the Ancestral Spirits. In any anti-culture the Dead are ignored during any crisis and are not considered essential to the Living. This is devastating to the sustainability of Life and the welfare of all Life on our Mother Earth. Ceremony is about complying with the Dead! Without meeting the needs of the Dead, the Living cannot flourish!

You can also compare and contrast children (typically) raised in this society (usa) versus those raised traditionally. Those who are raised traditionally have a place inside the sustainability of the village, they have their function, whether it be small children in the jungle picking up termites and throwing them in the fire to chase away mosquitoes or children elsewhere being responsible for building the shelters for the people! In this country children are not required to be part of any sustainable life, if they have chores the chores are unrelated to the community’s health and welfare and the children are not raised with any kind of understanding of what tradition, culture and community is. In this country we have a population of adults who think and act like children who have never been raised to be adults and who childishly give up their power to “authorities” who are considered more capable than them but who are also composed of the same childish adults. In the European society that we live in, the people do not talk to the Ancestors, seek advice from the Ancestors and continue the work of the Ancestors. We have to understand that when talking about European Ancestors (those of us who have some or all European Ancestors and those of us who simply have to deal with a society filled with those who have European Ancestors) that these European Ancestors are also not necessarily stabilized due to the total lack of any Ancestral Practice in modern European society.

Contrast this picture of the helpless dependence of adults here to Cultured societies where all the people had a voice in finding solutions to whatever the situation was. In Kongo the chief would have to rule with impartiality even over his own family member. If the people perceived a bias in his rule they would tell him to go to the mountain and sit with the Sun. This meant that he had to face once again the Spirit of Truth and Impartiality and Clear Thinking so that he could return once more to the people and the situation and fulfill his function correctly. When people are claiming to be embarking upon a course of spiritual development, the first thing that needs to be appreciated is the Dead. Many of the new age ceremonies out there are “feel good” ceremonies tapping into themes like “universal love”, misappropriating terms and teachings and catering to adults who think like children and want to be validated in their dependencies and obsessions. These new age traditions very often revolve around channeling from some “guide or spirit” who is not connected to the person’s ancestors at all. The new age movement has stolen tradition away from the Dead. 

When we are looking at a Ceremony such as a Palo Initiation, we need to understand that this initiation is about complying with the Dead, placating that person’s Mysteries, dealing with certain past and Ancestral trails. If this initiation did not have to do with the Dead and the needs of the Dead there would be no shell divination, no divination of dreams and so on as all these things are means of understanding what it is the Dead are saying to the Living! In an Ebo it is for the Spirit to say what it needs. Many times people may be in a fantasy about the ebo, thinking just in selfishness or with their foolish heart about needs but ebo is for the need of the Spirit and the Ancestors. Often people are so much more concerned with their own comfort or entertainment that they will not follow through on what the Spirit clearly states that they need to follow through on. This is a clear illustration of the selfishness with which the living in this society view the Ancestral Spirits (the Dead). The wants of the Living is given a higher value than the Needs of the Dead which in turn creates a Spiritual Chaos and broken relationships between the Living and the Dead! The Elders of a Traditional society were the protectors of their Children’s Spirit and would intervene when they saw the Child/ Young Person moving in a direction contrary to that of their Spirit. This society is built upon the phrase “I’ll support you in that”… Which is a band aid. Even mediation in this society is a band-aid because if you are not explaining to people about the effects of colonialism then there can be no stable or productive long term outcome to the mediation. The mediation is happening in a box and is not allowing the people to understand the root reasons for their conflicts. 95% of today’s ills are spirit related, especially in america because here there is a total disconnection from the Spirit. 

There is another aspect of this whole spiritual chaos that we are speaking of here which must be noted. There are cases where the person’s own Ancestral Spirits turn their back on the person because the person is not attending to their Trato (agreement). In the case of a Palo Initiation the Trato is with the Kongo Medicine, therefore it is the Kongo Ancestors who are leading the way for the progression of the person’s personal Egun. This means that if you are not a Kongo descendent that you must consciously honor and respect that root as the root which is leading your evolution. At times, specifically with Europeans, we see a refusal by the European Ancestral tree to be the followers of the Kongo lead, or we see a refusal by the European living descendent to be the follower of the Kongo lead. In the latter case the person’s own Ancestors may become angry with the person for being rebellious towards the Root of Adoption. It is important that whether it is a Taino Initiation or a Palo Initiation that the person and their Ancestral Tree is willing to follow in the footsteps of the Taino and Kongo Spirits! This is a frequently overlooked point.

There are (specifically) European Ancestors who do not want to face OpielGuabiron! Those people and ancestors are those who do not want to face the consequences of their past (and present) actions and who do not want to take responsibility for those consequences. Opiel Guabiron is one of the Spirits who is going to keep a person to their commitments. Opiel is the Guardian within the passage between the Ancestral Realm and the realm of the Living. The traditional story of Opiel is that he will not let anyone pass through who is not Taino. We can understand this definition of being Taino as having a consciousness rooted in Taino principles, as being committed to Spiritual Agreements and as honoring the Ancestors who are offering knowledge and education to the Living. Opiel is about Truth and Justice and we can also understand that Siete Rayos (Nsasi) is also about Truth and Justice. The phenomenon of the obsession concerning cloning today is linked with an attempt have another cycle of a living experience without going through the passage that brings one face to face with Opiel (or his Traditional counterparts).