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Original Message
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This Hopi Indian story was passed down, mouth-to-ear and now I share it with you. This was my Grandfather's final message before his passing.
"Nakwa brothers and sisters,
It is in my heart to share the knowledge of native people with our brothers and sisters, I have not much Time to do this because I will soon walk the Line of Sacred Corn, and so I will find another way to share what I know and hope I can reach many people and touch their hearts and bring them to a better understanding of our Earth Mother.
When I refer to God I say "Him" but I am equally comfortable with "Her", in fact, I do not know which gender I use most, but one thing is very sure, when I say "God" I always refer to our Earth Mother or to an aspect of Her. Life is one great aspect of Her, Land is another great aspect of Her, and Death is another great aspect of Her. She controls the Underworld, and She controls this Fourth World, when we were in the Third World, we were with Her and thus it was She who controlled the Third World.
When we go to the Next World, which we call the Fifth World, this same Earth Mother who has always nourished and supported us, will also be the controller of the Fifth World, but there will be a difference, She will release more control into our hands, because in the Fifth World we will have the good hearts and the wise minds not to abuse our control.
We have different names for Her different aspects, in Her aspect of Death She is Masau, and as Masau She is male. In her aspect of Land She is our Mother and She is female, in Her aspect as life she is Spirit and She is Male. There are many aspects but they are not different Gods, they are the omnipotent Earth Mother, and in my humble view, for whatever it may be worth, this is the case with all
old religions. Many native people do not like their belief system to be referred to as "religion" because it brings to mind the Christian missionaries and all that they inflicted upon the "heathen" native people, but I do not have this problem, I am a religious man, and my religion is very old and as valid as any other great religion. I am Hopi. My religion is called "the Hopi Way" or simply "Hopi". I want to leave in this forum the essence of my religion. If I were to brew it all down to its essence, what would I have in my hand? Evolution.
I have had the great blessing of my Mother to travel in India, China, Africa, Europe and of course Turtle Island (America) the Land of my birth. Turtle Island will always be Turtle Island to me. Nobody *discovered Turtle Island, *We were born on our Land, She gave to us this Land when She gave our Lives. We Love and Honor and Respect Turtle Island. It was a giveaway. Not a discovery. Our Land
was renamed after an Italian by the name of Amerigo (I think his second name was Vespucci), because he was the first Caucasian man to Land on it, but he did not discover it, he stumbled onto Turtle Island, and yet it was given his name. That is water under the bridge, but as I say, to me it remains Turtle Island.
What is the essence of my religion? To *serve my Earth Mother who has given all to me, and to serve Her we must honor Her, Respect Her, and obey Her. To obey Her is the hardest part we might say, because She appears to be silent, therefore how do we know what She wants from us? She is not silent! She is very eloquent, but She does not speak with the language of words, at least not to us, I
am sure She does use words when She speaks with Her brother and sister Stars, but our ears are deaf to Her voice, just as we are deaf to other sounds, such as the dog whistle. There are many sounds our ears do not hear; Her voice is among the sounds we cannot hear, so She communicates with us through sign language. We call this sign language "symbols" and we have to train our senses and our mind to interpret Her sign language, just as if we are learning a foreign language.
We learn to understand Her symbols quickly, because, once She sees we are trying to understand Her, She is overjoyed, and She does all in Her Power to help us. Symbols are natural to native people all the world over. It is our first language! Our native language takes second place to symbols. As we move through our Lives our senses and our minds are always alert to symbols, we might be so absorbed in symbols that we cannot hear our brother calling to us in our native language! Our dreams are very important, we shape our lives according to our dreams, and we search our dreams for Her guidance and direction. One of the first lessons we learn in Life is to pay attention to our dreams and to learn to understand them. The course of my Life has been governed by my dreams, and will continue in this way. I would be lost without my dreams. When I think back, it is through understanding my dreams that I learned to understand symbols, and thus I moved on to searching for symbols in my daily Life as well as my dreams. What a rich language! An all-encompassing language!
One symbol has so many levels! One symbol can say so *much more than one word!
Last night I dreamt I was pulling a cloth out from under autumn leaves, the cloth was heavy and I soon noticed it was not simply a cloth, it was part of a dressing gown, and then I noticed (by the weight) that it was on a dead body. I did not pull more. I stopped. I noticed that by pulling I had cleared the leaves off two socked and slippered feet. Male feet. I did not uncover the face of the male. I asked a man who was nearby to inform the police. With a heavy heart I went indoors. This dream told me so much! I know only two men who wear socks, slippers and dressing gown. One is Keith and the other is Ken. One of these will die in Autumn when the leaves are thick under Trees, they will die after they take a bath, when they are almost ready to go to bed, not in the morning because neither of these men wear socks under their slippers in the morning. They will die indoors and not outdoors (even though they were covered in leaves) and they will not be ready for death. The face was hidden from me, but by the weight of the body I can guess which man will die this Autumn when the leaves are thick on the ground. I will be informed of his death in the Morning of the following Day. But if I keep alert when I see the leaves accumulate on the ground this Autumn, I will receive a sign *before he dies, and this is important to me, because I will get a chance to say goodbye.
To read symbols we have to become a tracker, I think of symbols as being tracks for which I look. The first step in beginning to serve God is to be the best human being we can be, the second step is to look for Her words to us, and to respond in a good way to Her voice, 'Yes, Mother, you call me? I stand alert! Show me a sign and I will do all my best for you." This second stage is an enlightened state of being. No need for a priest or a temple, in this second stage a man can communicate one on one with God. We do not need to hear Her voice to know She wants us to honor all Land and Life, She is Land and if we wish to honor Her we must honor Her body also. She is the giver of Life, of Spirit, and we must honor Life wherever we find it. It is easy to honor Life in our families and friends, even a terrible sinner can do this, but we must honor Life also in strangers and in our enemies, we must honor Life in even those people who abuse that Life, because the Life itself is Sacred, and that it is abused is terribly sad. Where we see Life being abused, we can try to guide that person to a better understanding of Life.
Respect and Honor are very important to native people. The Respect and Honor we earn from others as well as the Respect and Honor we give to others. We Respect and Honor our God and all Land and all Life, *and all Death. We do not shun Death, and if we have walked a good Road, we do not fear Death because Death is the doorway to a new body, a better more evolved body, and a better Life in the Fifth World. In the Fifth World where finally a good man can live in a peaceful World Where all men and women are brothers and sisters and Live in perfect harmony with Nature. But if we have not walked a good Road, we do fear Death, because we fear reprisals! If our walk has not been good there will be no better more evolved body for us, and no peaceful Fifth World, at least not in our Next Life! Even when we fear Death we nonetheless Respect and honor Death. We have the gift of Life because we are not strangers to Death. We have Lived and Died before, and the fact that we are still in this Fourth World means we have not yet perfected our actions and our service to Mother Earth, we are still here in our imperfect bodies and in this imperfect World because we are still struggling to *know Her and to serve Her and to bring ourselves to as good as we can get, given our present physical limitations. Those who do not fulfill their potential return to this state of being, those who do fulfill their potential move on to the Fifth World (Which pahana calls Heaven but which we recognize as the Star "Taalawsohu" which is also called the Star of "David', and which pahana calls the planet "Venus").
Owi, Venus the Morning Star is *very important to native people, the exact positioning of Venus is crucial to our ceremonies. We believe Venus "overlaps" with certain points on our Mother, the San Francisco Peaks is one of those points. We believe the summit of San Francisco Peaks, and other equally high places, "merge" with Taalawsohu, and our Katsinam return there when they go home. I heard an elder speaking a few Days ago "only one who is initiated can know about the Katsinam" and this is very true! This is a great Sacred matter, native children cannot know about this until they are old enough to understand and then they are first initiated, but I will say this: in a broad sense only, they are our departed Spirits who act as our Guardians. They watch over us, they protect us, and they are also very concerned about our behavior. When we say, "they come in the Clouds" we mean *exactly this. As I already said, we are not able to hear all sounds, neither are we able to perceive all colors. We use only a small part of our brains, our senses have limited access to our neurons, if we cannot see and hear all things, then we must not scoff to hear a man say "our Katsinam come in the Clouds." A man said to me "this is the most difficult part of your belief system for me to accept".
Strangely this same man believes in UFO's, so do I, but it was strange to hear him say it is difficult to accept our Katsinam can go about in Clouds because I also heard this man say (a few months earlier) "I saw a UFO with my own eyes! It was in a cloud formation. One minute it was a cloud and the next minute I clearly saw a brightly colored, rainbow-like, crystal space ship. I saw it for a few seconds before it merged with the cloud again!"
Maybe he saw the transport of our Katsinam. One thing we can be very certain of, our Katsinam probably do go around in fancy crystal space ships, but our Katsinam will *never invite us into their spacecraft. They will never entice us to leave our Earth Mother. They reached their own Great State of Being by living on our Earth Mother and by *dying on our Earth Mother! They did not run off in the spacecraft of *aliens! They evolved to a higher state of being because they walked a good road and died at the end of their time and *evolved into a better body and into the Fifth World.
I remember the words of a Catholic priest who tried to convert my father: "Jesus *died for us, and He also said we must die to receive Heaven. We cannot just climb a pearly staircase in these corrupt bodies and ascend to Heaven, we must first die and be born again in new incorruptible bodies." And then this priest sighed deeply, "Oh how that term is misunderstood! A whole new religion has blossomed as Born Again Christians, but to be born again, first we must die"! My father said what difference does it make? The Born Again Christians also follow the Teachings of your Master, so in the end they won't go wrong." When I heard these words I thought how similar this belief is to our own belief, "Without Death there is no Door to The Fifth World."
When I speak like this many people say, "Of course we must die, we have no choice!" We believe we may face such a choice at End Time: Live forever in these corrupt bodies, or die and evolve to perfect bodies. We believe there are many aliens who inhabit our Universe, and as with people here in our own World, some are good and some are bad. All the good "aliens" have died and evolved to a higher Life form, a Life form that can live closer to the Sun. We cannot see them, but they are there, and they always occupy the Morning Star in any Solar System. These good brothers and sisters know very well the rewards of the final human form, they know the peace that comes along with having the *full use of the evolved human brain, and with hearing the full sound spectrum through the evolved human ear, and seeing the full color spectrum through the evolved human eye. They know the Love and Respect that comes with the wisdom of using every neuron in the evolved human brain. They would *never deprive us of these great gifts of Life and evolution. They would never entice us to leave our Earth Mother! *Only by remaining with Her can we achieve the final step in our evolution.
Again, some may say, "We have no choice but to remain with Her!" We believe the choice will come.
We believe that aliens will come and try to convince us to leave Her and go with them. They will come when End Time is upon this World. We all know that End Time will be accompanied with devastation, with tidal waves and earthquakes and volcanoes. We believe that when this is happening the aliens will descend on our Earth Mother and use everything in their power to convince us that we should leave. "Your planet is going to self-destruct! Come with us, we Live in a beautiful World where there is only good health and peace; where there is no poverty, no hunger, no disease: indeed they will even stoop so low as to call their world "Heaven" "The Fifth World" "Paradise" and other names of glory which are used to describe Taalawsohu. But if we listen to them, if we go with them, we are assured of *desolation. These kakyakyauna (terrible and ungodly) aliens are ancient (by our Earthly standards), and some of them have very beautiful bodies, but how did they get their beautiful bodies? How long can their bodies remain alive? Having stepped out of Nature and natural processes, having turned their backs on evolution, how do they sustain their Lives? (Imooyi, you have heard me speak of this, will you please explain why they *need us and what can become of us, and our children, if we go with them.)
We believe we have always been around, and the bones the archaeologist's dig up are the bones of our previous bodies. In other words, we were here from the beginning and we evolved from the earliest form through all the primal forms of man to become Homo Sapiens (who we call simply "man") Neanderthal, Homo Erectus, Cro-Magnon etc, we have walked in all those forms, and we have one more change ahead of us. I read a book by Carl G. Jung wherein he calls the final form "Homo Maximus", this name feels good to me, I think he must have been inspired by Spirit when he "realized" this name, I believe it will stay with us.
My last caution: evolution is a fact; we can see the proof in fossils. Why would aliens who have remained faithful to their Mother and received the reward of evolving from Homo Sapiens to Homo Maximus try to persuade their less evolved brothers and sisters to abandon their Mother in the very Time running up to evolution? They would not.
Owi, End Time will not be a picnic! Death is not usually easy. But people are dying every Day. Thousands of people die every Day and we don't panic and try to bolt into alien space ships! We accept this Daily mass Death of our brothers and sisters around the World as *natural. We hope they have walked a good road and that they will evolve to become Homo Maximus. But when End Time is upon us some of our brothers and sisters will panic, because it is unusual, because they have never(in their living memory) witnessed such mass destruction and Death before. And the aliens will *gratefully open the doors to their space ships to every willing runner! Because they *need us! We do *not need them! They will descend like flies and pluck us off the Body of our Mother. I wish I could be here at this Time, I would do my best to stop as many brothers and sisters going with them as I could. But I believe I will walk the Line of Sacred Corn before End time, just as I believe many of my younger brothers and sisters will remain here and face End Time.
You will notice that I capitalize the T in Time. Native people have an inherent Respect of Time. We view Time differently than our Pahana brothers and sisters. In a way it is also a Deity to us, because it is an aspect of our Earth Mother. The aliens who will try to entice us to leave our Mother have learned to manipulate Time, they can move around in Time, (and this probably sounds as ridiculous as saying "our Katsinam come in Clouds") but it is true. They can go backwards and forwards in Time and in this way they can extend their Lives, but however ancient they may be, they are *not immortal. Their bodies age albeit it takes a longer Time. Even though they may look young and beautiful, by now they are very old. And their youthful appearance is superficial. Their internal organs are ancient and must be continually replaced. This is not what we want for our children and ourselves. It is not what I want. I want the incorruptible body of Homo Maximus! I don't want to have my gut sliced open from Time to Time and my innards replaced. I want incorruptible internal organs. On Taalawsohu we are *given the gift of Time. We are wise enough and responsible enough to receive the full knowledge of Time and not to abuse it. On Taalawsohu we will also be able to go backwards and forwards in Time, or remain in a perpetual present Time, but we will not have stolen this Great Gift ahead of evolution, ahead of
God’s Will, we will have earned this with our loyalty and courage.
My last words: perhaps the greatest difference between native religions and pahana religions is this, we believe in God *and evolution. We believe God's greatest work is through evolution. God is the Divine Artist, evolution is the Divine Art, we are His clay, and Death is His kiln. Walk the good road my brothers and sisters, and we will surely meet up in the next World!"
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