Kaa-cheeeeeeeee-nahhh

The Great Vision

Across the street from my parents house was a most exquisite garden.  Mrs. Thomas had spent years cultivating and tenderly attending the flowers she grew.  Her whole yard was one big flower bed of dancing life and movement.  Each flower was carefully tagged with its name.  I used to sit out and watch her as she worked in it.  I saw the love emanating from her hands as she worked to create her masterpiece.

Sometimes I would slip over there to look at her flowers.  I would sit, crossed legged, outside her fence and watch the flowers as they overflowed from their beds onto the sidewalk.  I found them most intriguing and calming.  

When the vision first came to me, I had no idea I was even experiencing a vision.  Everything was so real.  One second I was staring with wonders eyes into the face of a flower, the next second I found myself to staring into the face of an extraordinarily beautiful woman.  She was a full-blooded Indian wearing a beautiful white buckskin sleeveless dress that hugged her body as if she and the animal were one.  There was fringe hemming the skirt and her feet were bare.  

Her face glowed with a radiance that astounded me and as my gaze panned away in the direction she was staring, I saw that her arms were raised in joyous exaltation towards the setting sun.  I, instantly, knew that this ceremony was a deep part of her, it was a daily ritual.  She just looked so beautiful, standing there with her arms raised in salutation, that I could almost hear the Heavens rejoicing! 

It never really seemed like she spoke to me in words (not until the end of our journey some years later.)  It was more like she spoke to my spirit.  She took me into her village where we sat upon the Great Earth and I began my lessons.  I observed the seed of life within her hand as she gently placed it upon the soil of this earthly existence.  I saw the effects through time, as moisture was added to the soil.  I saw that seed stir with energy and watched that energy grow until its shell could no longer contain it as it burst forth into life!  I watched that plant for a whole season, watched it come forth and grow, blossom and die.  And then I watched, after a time, as it sprang forth again, multiplied by the seeds it had laid in its fullness.  I watched this process over and over with every plant within the village.  

After that, every lesson stemmed from this first lesson.  I then learned of the wondrous trees who come forth, tender seedling, from the Great Mother Earth.  I watched them grow through time, a small vortex of energy, rising up from the Earth for a season, then I watched the seasons slowly call for a time of rest, as the energy slowly withdrew into its roots, protected from the cold by the Earth around it.  Only to spring forth again, new life, new growth, bigger and stronger.  Seasons come, seasons, go.  Each year passes as the tree doth grow.  

Before she ended the lessons within her village, she showed me the process of what they did in the event of a loved one dying.  I stood with her amongst the people in the village.  Off in the distance, I saw one who had strayed from the teachings they hold so sacred.  He was a young man and he seemed to be drunk.  I watched him stagger with a wildness my young mind could not comprehend.  He seemed to be possessed by this need to behave defiantly against everything he came in contact with.  Angrily he would throw himself to the Earth and beat his fist against it.   

Then suddenly he was dead!  I felt a sorrow within the village as they watched it all take place.  After the young man died, I watched as, in love, they went out there to reclaim his body.  They wrapped him in some kind of cloth.  A bed made of wood was erected.  A ceremony began.  It was not a sad ceremony for it seemed to me that it was more of a party.  My mind was young.  I could not comprehend all that I was seeing, but it looked like a party and there was dancing all night long.  They were dancing around the body of the young man as if they were building a circle of love around him.  This dance of enclothing him in love literally lasted all night long!  I can't explain the great strength I saw being built from this dance.  From the moment the dance began, it continued and grew in strength until the first ray of light began to dawn over the horizon.

All movement within the village ceased as every one turned to watch the first ray of light stemming towards the body of the young man laying on the bed of wood.  The villagers simply parted to allow the  ray of light to engulf the body of the young man.  Then I watched as his spirit body rose and began walking towards the light.  Every step he took I felt in him a peace.  I watched as he walked into the light where he seemed to just disappear.  I felt a relief come over the villagers, as if their loved one had passed safely into the Great Beyond. 

After I learned the lessons of Nature within her village, the Kachina took me to other places across the land so that I could see how different climates bring forth different plants.  

And then she took me across the seas so that I could see the exchange of cultures (within Nature) and how it is that there are differences in this world but none less precious to our Great Mother Earth than the next!  I began to see every man on Earth as some part of Nature.  In the end of this vision (which lasted until I was around 28 years of age) she said to me simply, “The Laws of Nature are the Laws of God.  If any one tells you any different, they are wrong.”