AFTER HAVING READ "BLACK ELK SPEAKS" As Black Elk finishes his story, he speaks of the end of his people… their visions and dream… His vision of Truth came from the spirit powers of this universe and was a display by them of what “could be.” That power was so much more easily available to a man of his kind, in touch with the earth and existence through the most sacred senses. What he saw was what the world could be like if everything was Right among everything—people, animals, plants… everything. Yet with the Ascent of Man, there was a side to the world developing throughout societies, human bodies and minds in other parts so foreign to these untouched, pure and powerful souls of the Indian people. With this “Ascent” flourished Technology. Within technology it was this sense of needing, wanting more than the earth is readily providing. In part, this was what was referred to by the Indians as the “craziness over the yellow metal” that the Wasichus (white men) had. It was this growing greed of the world which was so apart from the ways of the Indians, and it was during this refusal to conform that their visions and Black Elk’s were taken away from them, and lost in a sense. Spirituality and higher consciousness has spread greatly over this world since the period when these events took place, though we are now even further from the Goal, with an everyone-fight-for-yourself mentality of segregation, greed, violence, poverty, wealth and mental illness of such an ever-greater number that to clear the land of this completely would need practically a miracle it seems. On a different scale from the entire world at large, Black Elk and his brothers and sisters were an unharmed kind in touch with the planet and its essence, its powers, in ways of the highest order. They understood the way things of the world worked—where they came from and why. There was not one area of being alive which they didn’t use, from the deepest realms of the subconscious to the furthest realms of the spirits of this universe. Everything else in between seemed simply to be coming from these other realms or “ends” so to speak, from where they found the meaning of life. It would inform them of what to do. Symbols were REAL, and sacred objects which stood for even the most religious of things existed because everything they believed in was proven as REAL. It had all come directly from the earth and spirits. There was no room or real need for these new, incoming technological objects. The technological forces became increasingly dominant and unnaturally powerful, far beyond the pure strength of the Indians. Though the Indian spirit is not forgotten, and I believe remains strong in some very, very, very small areas, it must be remembered TODAY, NOW. People need to see what they are doing to themselves and to others—need to be woken up and shown Truth, even just once, somehow… Pain runs so deep in this world—-it goes so far back in history through so many billions of different people that are living and have lived, that it can never all be shaken. But this spirituality can still increase, and if at a rate quicker than the other ways of anything “evil”, then eventually that of the Spirit and universal Powers can overcome and begin to really pick up momentum, flooding this earth with an unshakable peace found buried in the lives of those who used to live because of this Knowledge. October 4, 2005