There was a moment, about 27 years ago, where I wavered in what I now know was a crucial decision. By a hair’s breadth, I chose the direction most unknown and the one that changed my life forever. I was fortunate enough to step into intensive studies with Wisdom Keeper Kahu Abraham Kawai’i, ua'ia Maka'i'ole, 'Uliama.
Even after acquiring a Bachelor’s University Degree, I felt like I was in Kindergarten again. I had been ushered into a world that was completely unfamiliar. I was in a place with no reference points, and where my usual ‘answers’ were completely unhelpful. Through gentle physical movements to open our bodies, and more strenuous ones to awaken dormant areas, we were gradually reintroduced to ourselves from the expanded perspective of Indigenous Mind. It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.
As we moved through the ‘exercises’, sensations, emotions, long forgotten memories, and old mental ‘habits’ arose, seemingly out of nowhere. Suddenly, I was face to face with almost everything I had desperately wanted to forget about myself: every insecurity and fear. My logical mind was racing to find any excuse to stop or leave altogether, telling myself that I was just exhausted, and that I needed some time to recuperate and ‘pull myself together’.
Although I didn’t understand it, a deeper current was propelling me forward through the discomfort. Deep down, there was a feeling that this was more ‘true’ than anything I had known before. There was a gradual feeling of returning to inhabit my whole being — all the parts that had been forgotten and even those I thought had been annihilated. As I clumsily navigated the discomfort of it all, the outer shell of my identity in the world began to crack. As I got closer to the awareness of Life pouring through me in every moment, all the labels I had ever given myself seemed to rise and fall away, limp in comparison to this vibrant and mysterious force pulsing through me and through all of Life. All the facades of who I had imagined myself to be, tried to be, wanted to be, had come and gone. I was left realizing that much of my identity had been founded in illusion. There was not much left of me, although in the midst of the emptiness something both foreign, and completely familiar, remained.
Each time, coming out of an immersive experience, I went back to a world I thought I had known, yet everything in my perception had changed. I felt more at home in my body, and though there was no logical thought process to support it, my life seemed to flow with less and less resistance from myself or others. My mind became less rigid, more quiet as well as more alert. There was a sense of more spaciousness, more ability to listen deeply to myself and others. Life seemed more expansive and full of possibility. The pace at which I moved through the world had slowed considerably. The way I met myself and others was irrevocably changed.
When I think back to that pivotal moment so long ago, in which I teetered on the edge of not going, I shudder. I could have just as easily said no to this profound doorway. In a way, everything was against my attendance: I had heard terrible rumors about the teacher, the immersions were on a different island than where I was living, and the cost was astronomical. The only thing guiding me to attend was a vague feeling somewhere inside. Something in me was saying 'yes' beyond all reason, and I am eternally grateful.
I feel now that I stumbled upon a pathway that brings us back to our origin point as human beings. It brings us back to the simple truth that we are animated by, and infused with pure Life — the same Life that inhabits the land, creatures, the stars, rivers and oceans. We are a part of the Living Continuum.
Coming back to Indigenous Mind gave me the opportunity to experience my body, emotions, and world from a completely different vantage point — one which was grounded in the pure experience of Life meeting Life, both inside myself and outside.
The great teacher, Alan Watts once said:
"[Conceptualizing your life] creates a gap or lack of rapport between you and your life. You think about things so much that you get into the state where you are eating the menu instead of the dinner."
For the first time, I felt like I was truly inhabiting each moment, savoring and digesting what is actually here, instead of my thoughts about it. This Ancient Pathway gives us the opportunity to discover that the Sacred is alive inside of us, beyond our ideas about it. Seeing from the perspective of Life, we become open to more Life pouring through.
Somehow both gradually and suddenly, the mundane became magical, and the Sacred was everywhere.