Heavy Doses of High Sierra Mountain Medicine (Spiritual Crisis', Sick Hearts & Deconstructing “The Big Three”)

July-August 2014

“These mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently...”

–Brother John

            So I climb down from the mountain and check the news. Not surprisingly, once again another US and European bomb fueled religious war disguised as politics racks the so-called “Holy Land”. Not a coincidence, I suspect, that this theme has been on my mind a lot this summer. Sometimes, most times, while in the midst of these High Sierra mountain temples it is quite easy to ponder religion/spirituality/the Great Spirit/Mother Earth/God/science... whatever you choose to call the attempt to understand the Great Mystery is fine – I’m not concerned with labels or semantics. As with most so-called controversial subjects, rather than shying away from chatting about them I tend to just dive in headfirst and try to stir it up (always with a laugh and a smile, of course.) After reverently sauntering amongst these divine mountains and forests for a few years I’ve come to the conclusion that the root of most if not all of our modern dilemmas is simply this: the separation of Man/Woman from Earth (alas that this has been violently re-enforced by all the so-called ‘great’ religions). It is this arrogant notion that we are superior to and not a part of Mother Earth and all of her beings, particularly each other. Our connection is gone. Our spirit is lost. So perhaps the root of the crisis we face in this mad modern world is not political, nor economic, nor social, but… spiritual – something that some Indigenous folks have been saying for centuries.

Methinks there is no possible way to resolve any part of this crisis while we remain separated from Mother Earth and her cycles of life. It’s pretty simple, really: no clean air, water, soil… no life, much less any politics or economics. I don’t give a damn what -ism system you think is the solution, it’s not. All of them have declared war on The Earth and her so-called resources. All of them place humans above Earth. You think communism was or is the solution to this perverted capitalism?! Check out the state of our Mother in Soviet Russia or China. So all of your great progressive politics aside, until Earth/Ecology/Environmentalism/Conservation/ Preservation/Wilderness/Gaia/Pachamama/Turtle Island… whatever you choose to call it (I’m not concerned with labels or semantics) – is at the top of any and every priority list, all other issues are moot. My friend Tiokasin Ghosthorse, host of the excellent ‘First Voices Indigenous Radio’ broadcast, pointed out the fatal flaw of an otherwise encouraging ‘Occupy’ movement: Earth is not the priority. More Western thought can never solve the problems created by Western thought. For example, the last thing the Americas need is more ‘occupation’ – these continents have been occupied for over 500 years. It’s an occupation that has led us all to the apocalyptic precipice upon which we’re now teetering.

It’s far past urgent for us to make an effort to put this spiritual dilemma into words. Very difficult in this often feeble English language of ours, but we’ve got to define it so that we can truly address it. What is the true problem, the root of the massive imbalance and inequality in the world today? What is it that we are actually trying to fix?

Native people here often spoke of how they could see and feel that many of the newcomers to their lands had ‘sick hearts.’ Given the disgraceful history of the European invasion of the Americas and the atrocities committed from north to south, it’s pretty clear that this behavior was not done by people with good hearts. When you deconstruct history, it’s indeed difficult to label this centuries-old illness as anything else. I believe the First Nations were in fact seeing something that has taken the Western world centuries to figure out. Odd isn’t it, how so many diseases have been “discovered” by our society in the past 100 years or so, all esoteric diagnoses of what are actually manifestations of a profound spiritual sickness. Odd isn’t it, how half of this nation is on medication of some kind trying to heal all the physical and mental ills created by a society that seems to intentionally poison its own peoples’ bodies, minds and hearts (so that a very small few might make a very large profit). After an honest analysis of this mad modern dilemma I would suggest that you will come to the same conclusion that our Native brothers and sisters so clearly pegged hundreds of years ago, and you may even start to use the same words. Let us call things what they are - let us define this illness. I’ve certainly seen an awful lot of hearts full of a sickness that no “regular” medicine can cure. One can currently see them all over the globe fighting their religious wars, hearts very, very far past being merely sick.

So how does one heal a sick heart? How does one re-connect to our ancient, reverent spirit with the Earth? I certainly don’t have the answer, but perhaps it’s something that the mountain has been slowly trying to explain to me over dozens of trips upon the High Sierra granite of Kings Canyon, Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks, and Sequoia National Forest. My summer employment has me regularly discussing the seven “Leave No Trace” wilderness ethics with hikers. These guidelines are all very good, but one thing I’ve discovered is that the folks who codified those seven ethics forgot the most basic and invaluable instruction; one that makes all the others unnecessary. They were employing Western thinking, and this will always fall short. There is only one “Leave No Trace” ethic: Be Reverent Towards Mother Earth. If you understand and live this original instruction, you certainly won’t need to listen some ranger yap about picking up your trash or minimizing the damage you do to the land or water. Not coincidentally, this reverence and respect also has a remarkable healing quality.

I’m very lucky and humbled to have ingested some serious doses of this High Sierra Mountain Medicine lately. If I’m ever able to coherently describe the clarity and perspective it provides, all credit goes to the mountain. It’s certainly not of my doing (I usually don’t even know where the words are coming from). This medicine speaks in a ‘language older than words’, to quote the great writer Derrick Jensen, and it has much to do with silence – creating an obvious dilemma for someone trying to write or speak about it. But try we must. Jensen, btw, will challenge you. So I challenge you to read his profound classic, Endgame. He once said something in a documentary that rings very true for this particular topic. When asked by an audience member what they could or should tell their kids to give them hope for the future, he responded, “Don’t give them hope, give them love. If they love, they’ll fight back.” How many of us truly love the Earth? Where did our ancient reverence go? When did our hearts become sick?

If we wander back to the current news headlines, I bet we might get a glimpse. Despite some of the very best people I know and love identifying with these faiths, and without belittling their belief in them, a very common thread I have found growing up with, reading about, studying, listening to, observing, and at times reeling in disgust from the behavior of many people in the Judeo-Christian tradition (Middle Eastern religions – The Big Three, if you will: Judaism, Christianity, Islam) is that all three often tend to display remarkable amounts of self-hatred. Guilt. Shame. Denial. Hypocrisy. Fear. Children tortured by that guilt and shame. Adults hiding abuse and incapable of showing love or affection. Everyone terrified of something. Everyone yelling and screaming about something. And the obvious curse of The Big Three: mass violence; killing in the name of… It seems to me that much of this has roots in that sense of separation that far too often leads to this mass violence against those who maybe don’t feel so separated. An honest study of the history of religious warfare by The Big Three is stunning: how many millions of people have been murdered in the name of their God?! How did these “holy” people let this happen? What might have prevented it from happening? But even more importantly, what might prevent it from continuing today?

            “Go climb a mountain. Soak your head in the sky and you will return calm and better able to cure your own woes and the worlds.” –Brother John. (If you don’t know which John I’m referring to at this point…) Brother John was raised in a fierce, violent, intolerant, fundamentalist Christian household. He was forced to memorize the Bible upon threat of a lashing. Perhaps the only good to come of this was that it gave him some spectacular religious adjectives with which to describe God when he finally got out of that “Christian” household and into the mountains, where She actually resides. The European and Euro-American idea of ‘wilderness’ was (and is) one of savage beasts and savage people and savage land to be conquered and tamed. It is a theme that runs through every single chapter of American history. Might I suggest that this idea is true Original Sin. It is a fatal flaw that Western society has yet to reconcile. (Check out the excellent history of the wilderness movement in the United States, “Wilderness and the American Mind” by Roderick Nash.) Somewhere along the way Europeans became terrified of Mother Earth.

Brother John was one of the first white guys to point out how shamefully wrong it all was (and is). He ‘surrendered to nature’. After some stumbling (my one angry critique of JM is that early on he did not speak out more for Indigenous people and wrote some remarkably ignorant things about them – where was his voice after the Nez Perce War, Wounded Knee, etc.?), he did finally get over his 19^th century anti-Indian racism, hung out with Natives in Alaska and realized that he was speaking their language. He demonstrated a very different way of life to a society bent on conquering the Earth. He basically started the mainstream movement to create, preserve and protect national parks, our last ‘wild places.’ He helped to start the long process that will (hopefully) change the paradigm; change the very manner in which we of Western Society must think about and discuss Earth, and each other. Methinks it is our generation’s only task to once and for all rid ourselves of that wicked Original Sin.

A Giant Sequoia told me a secret that our Native brothers and sisters know well and one that I’m sure Brother John heard a thousand times when he wandered the Sierras: we all are Earth; we all are wilderness. No greater than the smallest insect and no smaller than the greatest mountain. The very concept of having to define “wilderness” is actually quite ridiculous, isn’t it? (What part of the Earth isn’t wild and free in its natural condition?) It points out the depth of the separation present in this culture, and many others. A spiritual sickness. A sick heart. So when the Big Three and all of the cultures springing from that history learned to hate Earth, what they actually learned to hate was themselves. I think we’ve seen the results. There’s nowhere to go from there but down. Down to a modern crisis that leaves our very existence upon this good Earth in question, and those Big Three still fighting and killing each other to the end, arrogantly claiming God’s truth – should we really be shocked by this nonsense anymore? Only very sick people with very sick hearts fight wars in the name of God, over and over and over again.

“We do not want churches because they will teach us to quarrel about God… We do not want to learn that. We may quarrel with men about things on Earth, but we never quarrel about the Great Spirit.” –Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekht, Nii-Mee-Po (Chief Joseph, Nez Perce)

Another little secret I learned on the mountain: those Big Three religions are actually the same religion. Quote that. They are all based upon the exact same history, the exact same original text, the exact same geographic area, and the exact same idea of human superiority over Earth – which actually breeds this cursed Earth/self-hatred. Sure, you have to give or take a prophet or two (all their names be praised), decide who actually followed that prophet “correctly”, have a few food and clothing taboos thrown in, and add or delete a few chapters from their original book. But it is the same fear-fueled religion – probably why they all fight each other so much. Ponder that for a moment before you scream “blasphemy!” at me.

From what I have seen and experienced, let me suggest that this fear and self-hatred is simply not present in tribal spirituality, in societies reverent towards the Earth. Their very basic foundation is in the sacredness of life, of respect for Earth. One goes alone to the mountains or forests to seek visions, to find his or her spirit - not to blast them apart in search of ‘resources’. With this profound reverence guiding you, this life is a blessing and we are put here to give thanks to Earth, to sing, to drum, to dance, to celebrate, to thank the soil, to thank the rain, to find our own humble path inside the Great Mystery. That sort of worldview, that sort of ‘religion’, tends to work out pretty well. Study the history of these communities, most living in balance with their environment for thousands of years, versus one on the brink of destroying itself and everything around it within a few generations.

Within Christianity the manifestation of that true Original Sin has much to do with a curse written into the Bible by some arrogant European king from the Middle Ages, “fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over…  every living thing that moves on the earth.” –Genesis 1:28 [italics mine] What an utterly absurd notion upon which to base a society! Yet this absurdity was first visited upon the European continent (which was once profoundly reverent towards the Earth), and then upon the good people in many other parts of the world as these confused Europeans sailed the ocean blue and violently imposed this way of thinking wherever they went. Many of those good people have been trying for hundreds of years to point out how misguided and arrogant this way of thinking is.

So it is that we children of the Empire have hundreds of years of Earth-hatred and self-hatred to undo. Don’t you think we might be better served by listening to people and communities who still have hundreds of years of Earth-reverence in their worldview? Or perhaps better yet, by listening to the mountains and the forests, the places where these same people and communities first learned this reverence? The remarkable book God is Red by Native scholar Vine Deloria should be required reading for every citizen of this country. Especially for those who preach and holler so much about religion and their perverted notions of what is wrong here. A tragic irony is that I would suggest that those folks are absolutely correct on one level: the United States indeed suffers from a dramatic spiritual crisis – it’s just that their religion and their worldview caused it.

            This is not a political crisis.

Only a people who hate the Earth and feel no reverence towards her could develop an economic system based upon the poisoning of the very air, water and soil upon which they depend for existence. I continue to be flabbergasted by people who make the argument that a few short-term jobs for a few short-term dollars are more important than the stability of an entire eco-system that supports all life (or more important than the absolutely spectacular beauty of the Earth, for that matter.) Only a people who hate themselves and humanity could allow this system to not only remain in place, but arrogantly spread its destruction to almost every corner of the Earth under the guise of “development” or “progress.” When I have this discussion, it’s always been striking to me how some people are so quick to concede that yes, it’s all wrong, but then say things like, “We’re just a cancer on the Earth.” “If we would just disappear everything would be good.” “I can’t wait for it all to crash and get rid of us.” Self-hatred. Spirit gone.

            That sounds like a spiritual crisis to me.

            Despite my sad dismay at much of our behavior, I don’t believe homo sapiens are a “cancer”, and I certainly don’t pray for the end of it all. I believe we are simply a small part of this good Earth. It’s far beyond tragic that a great many of us have utterly forgotten who we are and where we stand in the midst of the Great Mystery, and thus wander aimlessly through life like lost children. The last thing we need is any more self-hatred! The last thing we need is any more religious war from The Big Three, today with weapons of utter mass destruction - created by people with very sick hearts.

So perhaps the words of our Native elders, of folks like Brother John are far, far more than just good poetic, folktale readings. Perhaps they are urgent spiritual instructions for those of us who must summon every ounce of courage we possess to undo hundreds of years of self-hatred and re-learn how to love the Earth, and, in turn, ourselves. It seems to me that the true test of this generation (and every one to follow) is to find and embrace that ancient spirit that every culture, every race, every community, every nation of people once possessed: reverence towards Mother Earth. Our Mother.

So, now more than ever, for the love of… God… might I suggest that we all finally listen to those original instructions and take them deeply into our sick hearts: this life is a blessing, being given a lifetime upon this beautiful Earth is a blessing. So, in the words of my favorite writer, “climb the mountains and get their good tidings!” Let the healing begin.