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"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the
opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
Physicist Niels Bohr
I am winkte. Or should I say I identify with Native Americans of the
Lakota tribe's winkte tradition since I am not Lakota myself? The very
first time I read the word "winkte" was in John Fire Lame Deer's book,
Lame Deer Seeker of Visions, (as told to Richard Erdoes). According to
Lame Deer, "Winktes…dressed like women (or men), acted like women (or
men), and looked like women (or men). They did so by their own choice
or in fulfillment of a dream." Lame Deer went on, "…the Great Spirit
made them winktes and we accept them as such."
I think it is interesting to know, in light of this quote from John
Fire Lame Deer, that he said he was heyoka, or a sacred clown, and, at
one point in his own life, Lame Deer became a rodeo clown and named
his persona Alice Jitterbug. (Some clowns frighten me)
"…Not all can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given.
For there are shamans who have been so from birth, and there are
shamans who have been made shamans by folk, and there are shamans who
have made themselves shamans for the sake of the Great Spirit. S/he
who is able to receive this, let them receive it." - Fertility Cult
I had followed Native American culture for a long time before reading
Lame Deer's book. There were many things about the various indigenous
cultures here in this land, called Turtle Island by Natives, that I
identified with. I would like to spend a few minutes talking about
various things in the Native American's culture that made sense to me
and things in our country's culture that don't make sense to me before
I go deeper into a discussion of the place of those who follow the
winkte's tradition.
For example, in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (by Dee Brown), one
observer said that he was amazed that Indians could spend days on end
doing nothing but relaxing, eating, and playing games. But then, when
the time came to break camp and travel, they could do so for days
without sleep or food.
"Sleep when you are tired! Eat when you are hungry! Enjoy this
wonderful life given to you by Creator! Hoka Hey, today is a good day
to die!"
That resonates with me! Of course, critics may say I have been simply
rebelling against the Roman-Christian American culture I found myself
growing up in, but those ideas struck a chord with me, and it rang
with truth! For my family, who grew up during the great depression,
hard work, sacrifice, and denying pleasure were a way of life. I have
found that people, who are considered "lazy" in this culture, judge
themselves by the standards created during the depression, and it
makes me sad to see that.
It makes me sad because then those individuals, who can't seem to get
ahead in this culture, often turn to abuse of drugs and alcohol or
other destructive behaviors instead of demanding respect and taking
pride in the fact that they are not motivated by greed and material
possessions.
People come to this area from all over the world in search of the
"good life" and the great (so called) "American Dream." When you see
these individuals in the news, the news media always praises the
"freedom" here on Turtle Island. But freedom is subjective. The
freedom that the news media, politicians, and "successful" immigrants
are talking about is very different from what the traditional Native
American or just free spirited person calls freedom. In fact this
country's "freedom" was built hypocritically denying the various
indigenous nations and also peoples from far away theirs (In reality
this is not the true America where constitutional laws/rights are
broken even at the federal level every day, our freedom of speech,
spirituality, and right to honest truth are denied everyday still by
the so-called 'government' (really corrupt corporations spiralling in
their own insane vampiric idiocy, trying to draw us in, don't feed the
trolls) still the true Spirit of freedom works in mysterious ways
throughout, if mostly through the heroic efforts of our modern day
trickster figures, most of whom remain nameless, and sometimes,
bodiless.
The great native warrior, Tashunka Witko (Crazy Horse) said it
directly and truthfully: " How can you own the land upon which people
walk?"
The freedom that the people in the United States of America talk about
is the freedom to be as greedy as you want to be. Exploitation of
Grandmother Earth is the party line here in the land of the free. They
hold to the Roman-Christian Empire's belief that humans are on a
higher level than the rest of creation and are much more important
than the rest of creation!Therefore they have a right to exploit the
rest of creation to satisfy their wants and desires.
So I find it odd that you can pull a plant from the ground, cure it,
roll it, and smoke it and you might go to jail (but most likely you'll
just get zonked and be healed). Certainly greed has caused more death
and destruction than smoking or eating the sacred herbs. In fact greed
is the motivation in the destructive drug business. Often those who do
their business in the drug market don't even use the drugs they deal,
including 'official' pharmaceutical companies.
It has always made me angry that in a world full of hungry and
homeless people you can be as greedy as you like without any
interference. In fact those who are considered "lower class" will
aspire to be just like you! The wealthy have become the role model for
everyone to work towards. But spiritual wealth is better, even now the
rich try to lower their own taxes while raising the taxes of everyone
else. What kind of sense does that make? Pay your taxes, pay what you
can, and lets get on with it, sacrifice the 50 foot jacuzzi w/ custom
imax screen floor to help those poorer, it will be okay. LOVING
KINDNESS! German Proverb; A poor person isn't he who has little, but
he who needs a lot.
I have learned that the struggle for power comes down to a "gain"
mentality verses a "be" mentality. I use the word "be" as in being; as
in living with the earth instead of against the earth. The "gain"
people see freedom in terms of material things you can hold, see, or
own. The "be" people see freedom on a spiritual level. There is more
to life than how much you can acquire or what you can own, and truly
we can own nothing and share everything! Certainly there are
well-intentioned "gain" people, but they need to impose their idea of
freedom on everyone else first and foremost. This "gain" mentality has
to rule over all other thought. They may try to be compassionate about
it, but the bottom line is you will submit one way or another. (These
are the new age, create your own reality people, who seem a bit like
robots, sure they have programmed every aspect of their life, and they
see results, but wheres the fun in that when you overdo it and allow
for no relaxed sway of emotion? There is a zen saying that there is
wisdom is the passage of the seasons. You lose the natural flow of
life, it just looks like you've hacked everything, though good to
practice in some amount, somehow this goes against tao when taken too
far.
At least in fairly recent times, people with this "gain" mentality
have managed to suppress the "be" people wherever they met up with
them. The people at the top of the "gain" culture have kept the focus
off their greed by encouraging hate between the opposites. Black is
taught to hate white; right wing against left wing; man against woman;
and religion against religion as if one is more correct than the
other! There is even a division between those who are most active at
night and those who are most active during the day. "Day people" are
hard working God-fearing church-going people. "Night people" are
lustful sinners of course.But the truth is Everything is God/Goddess,
the slash is almost deceptive because they are one in every way, the
shadow, we must accept that we are in all that we behold, then we can
have empathy and begin to come to a point of harmony.
But in a sense the black is white, as the sidhe have known for long, also those who walk the path of tao, turn around and right
becomes left, as Ix-Chel Mayan Goddess of the Rainbow teaches. There
is a man in the woman and woman in the man this is the experience of
the winkte, or even a bisexual person, or transgender, arguably these
are different degrees of the same thing. As every mystic realizes the
most powerful time of a day is the dawn and the dusk. These are
something in-between. They are neither night nor day. It is a time of
balance, and it is sacred. Donnerlieschen Roesch (mystic) In a "gain"
world there is wide latitude of behavior on a material plane. You can
own everything and anything. The "gain" person sees non-material
issues with the same eyes that they see material things. Whatever they
observe they must know what color it is, how many are there, what can
I gain from it, and of course what sex is it. In the "be" cultures
there are wide latitudes, and individuals tend to observe their world
more on the spiritual plane.
(Can 'Ibogaine' Heal this? I Be Gain? Can it Heal AIDS at least?)
I believe you are what your vision tells you. Native people, gypsies,
hippies, and randomers may change names many times in life depending
on visions, dreams, and deeds. All of those changes were honored. They
were not based on physical evidence but based on one's spiritual
relation to the rest of creation and Creator. "Hundreds of women on
the movie screen. Not one of those women looks a thing like me…."
Georgie Jessup from Girl To Look Good Those observations lead me back
to the focus of my discussion of being a winkte. Being a winkte is not
a physical thing. Although I am sure that hermaphrodites were also
considered winkte and could offer physical evidence, with most winkte
their situation is a spiritual thing. It is a "feeling" that one
cannot really explain. The "gain" world calls us "transsexuals" or
"transvestites," and some claim we are simply "homosexual" There have
been many books from the gay community making exactly this claim.
However, homosexuality does not qualify you as a winkte. Homosexuality
is about whom you want to have sex with. Being winkte is a whole other
matter and frankly has very little to do with who you might have sex
with. There are many queer folk who may show feminine qualities and
who might show masculine qualities just as the same can be said of
heterosexual folk.
In the end, we am not angry at any heritage of nationality, we accept
the world as it is, in peace moment to moment, without hangups of a
conditioned past, we are all connected, we are all relations, so it
cannot really be said that it is Winkte against the Wasicu world, or
something like that,in fact sharing this tradition with other cultures
while respecting those cultures may yield some suprising parallels,
perhaps not from the official level but within the folk culture, just
as all people have a kind of shamanism. Native Americans are not the
only ones who have had these ideals, but many people have all over the
world, dreamed of this, that should be respected, though the rule of
monarchs has been a great enemy (remember in these cultures no
everyone within the empire is nessecarily a fan of the empire, how
many counter cultures and amazing things through history were lost to
us by regimes who destroyed the traces of them, or biased historians
who chose not to record that version which went against their belief?)
and the workings of the insane traditions of dishonesty and
oppression, but in this new age we are moving beyond that, things are
beginning to sprout virtue again, in a non linear and spontaneous way,
the rainbow family, including all beings, in manifest again, we can
get over making these divides and accept both are parts of life, its
good to gain, it can also be good to lose, because if you don't lose
what you can, you'll never really how wealth you are, by the things
that you cannot lose. The tao says seek not after respect, reputation,
or money, someone who seeks respect, can't be respected, while someone
who is indifferent, surely they must have virtue they are unswayed by
the judgements of others and follow thier own heart, and when you have
no money, or you don't focus your life on money, you realize the
infinite energy which is all around you all the time, in so many
forms,and you realize you are okay, you just are a lot less stressed.
So yeah.
In Africa they say 'it takes a village to raise a child' this is true,
so when learning of life, don't be afraid to mix traditions, they were
all falsely scattered anyways, follow your heart and go through them,
taste them all and see what resonates, intuitively you will probably
find a truer path, than any original preconception could have shown
you, and perhaps you can teach us all something, revive a vital
connection, unveil a mystery, think for yourself, all beings are one,
we are the dreamers of the dream, there are no boundaries, no
unsurmountable obstacles,
the wise know that true history is non linear, when we retell it in
the present it also has an effect on time representing a ripple! all
we have is now, constantly we are creating entirely new universes that
have always existed. all of them are rippling together in an infinite
sea, this is wytipodation
peace and love, rainbows, happy 2012, happy trails, i hope i haven't sent you too many notes.. yea have a nice life
warm blessins of heart TIFAERITH!
namo kuan shi yin bodhisattva!
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