Keep yourself balanced. Your Mental person, your Spiritual person, your Emotional person, and your Physical person: they all have the need to be strong, pure, and healthy. Work out the body to strengthen the mind. Grow rich in spirit to cure emotional ails.
Lakota Code of Ethics
Over the years, the insights and practices of the `Red Road´, the spiritual path of the North American indigenous people, have become increasingly influential in my life. My initial interest may have been piqued in childhood, watching those antiquated and biased Hollywood representations of the `Wild West´ on rainy Irish Sunday afternoons, always rooting for the Native Americans as they tried, against all the odds, to defend their way of life. I guess it’s an Irish thing, always rooting for the underdog.
In my twenties, a book by Sun Bear on the Medicine Wheel provided first deep insights into the lives and the psyche of the indigenous people of North America. The concepts of stewardship versus ownership, ecocentricity versus egocentricity, and the reverence with which all of Creation was held; these all made a deep impression upon me.
Not only that; the parallels with the Celtic spirituality in which my people have evolved, and which was being so eloquently expressed in the 1990’s by fellow Irishman John O’Donohue, really resonated with me. The universality of indigenous cultures around the world became readily apparent. That decade was a period of young parenthood when I was learning to shape family life, to cultivate a garden in which food was grown in harmony with Nature, and to bring up children, as best we could, within the sense of belonging to all of Creation.
A turning point came in my life in 2003; I got clean and sober after decades of substance addiction and made a conscious decision to embrace life in its fullness. It was around this time that I first met Ron. A Vietnam veteran, fifteen or twenty years my senior, he was a North American of Swedish and Lakota extraction. He shared with me the simple teachings of the Red Road, as an integral part of the process of addiction recovery. In this context, the work of Anne Wilson-Schaef and Don Coyhis also came into view. It was indeed a blessing to get to know these teachers and their work.
There was a seminal moment in 2012, when, as the newly hired COO at the NGO, Forest Stewardship Council, I was attending my first FSC General Assembly, in Borneo. On the second evening there was a session reserved for `Indigenous Peoples´. Following an inner calling to participate, I entered the room. Many heads turned, surprised to see this white, Caucasian male, – for many a stranger, – take a place at the round table. When invited to introduce myself, I stated my name and role in the organisation, adding that my culture, the Celtic culture, `did not differentiate between the material and the divine´. Several deep friendships and much learning have grown out of that initial encounter.
Over the years, some basic concepts of Western Civilisation – the `Male White Scientific Mind´ (a term coined by Anne Wilson-Schaef) have revealed themselves as very questionable. These include land `ownership´, the concept of putting toxins into the earth to grow food, celebrating greed over need, and rule by majority displacing rule by consensus.
In my Red Road apprenticeship, I had learned much about rituals such as the sweat lodge but had never actually experienced one. What led me to change this now? My recent spring fast was just coming to an end when I overheard a conversation where the term `sweat lodge´ was mentioned. Intuitively, I made enquiries as to where in Germany such a ceremony could be experienced and, importantly, who could be relied upon to facilitate in a genuine fashion.
My trustworthy friend recommended a community and location and put me into contact with the facilitator. It happened that a sweat lodge was planned on the last Saturday of the month, and I was kindly invited to attend.
As I was to learn on the appointed day, `sweat lodge´, on one level, simply describes the structure used for the ceremony. It is like an oversized, upside-down, blanket-clad, round breadbasket made of sally rods anchored securely in the ground.
The term `sweat lodge´ refers primarily to what goes on inside the finished structure, when the wattle is covered by blankets, and a `door´ is hung over the entrance. The `sweat ceremony´ is a spiritual purification of the body, mind, and soul. It is performed under the supervision of the facilitator (Elder) and intended for prayer and healing. It is ancient, sacred, and deeply revered among the cultures in which it is traditionally practised. Every aspect of a ceremony – from the construction of the lodge to the prayers offered – is imbued with deeply symbolic spirituality. It is not a recreational event, and certainly not simply a sauna.
A group of seven people arrived from different directions at the rural location on the appointed morning. I was the only one who knew none of the others. After an initial round of intercepting my own Saboteurs (Why is she smoking? He’s too overweight for this! This lady wants to run the show!), and Sage calming (just follow instructions Patrick, be kind, trust the process), we began to remove and dispose of the old spent structure and, using materials which had been gathered and deposited on the site beforehand, build its replacement.
The lodge stood on flat ground between two fishponds, on a slightly sloping hillside. One pond above and one below, with a stream taking the surplus rainwater directly down the hill to one side. Torrential rain marked this March weekend, so we spent the entire day up to our ankles in mud and in the surround sound of water falling on water and cascading down the hillside.
The leader was an experienced facilitator. We were on one wavelength from the get-go. A man some years my junior, he guided the work with kindness, competence, and serenity. To the delight of all participants, the work proceeded harmoniously, with both humour and gravitas, and with sure success. The architecture of the wattle structure is very exact. We were given explanations as we proceeded; four concentric circles for the four directions, – Air, Fire, Water, and Earth, for example.
It took several hours to complete and cover the wattle structure. Sometimes minor corrections had to be made to ensure the veracity of the structure. Binding, untying, moving, bending, and rebinding. The fact that not a single sally pole had snapped during the construction was viewed as very auspicious. Such breakages often happen, apparently, requiring major rework to secure the necessary correction. Once the structure is in place, it is covered with several layers of wool blankets and the door is engineered, so that the inner space can be sealed from the outside world.
By now we are three of four hours into the work and, my senses nourished by the incessant heavy rain, the squelch of the mud under foot, the whisper of teamwork, and the odd chant or prayer, I am already entering a trance-like state. My only mundane concern is how we are going to be able to get a fire going in the submerged hearth.
That is the next task. A fire-maker had been appointed in advance, whose task is to build, light, and keep the fire going for the rest of the day, under instructions from the facilitator. He is somewhat insecure (who wouldn’t be in such weather conditions?) and is kindly reassured and encouraged by us all. I apply my own knowledge and experience of constructing fires under adverse conditions, while being careful not to usurp the position of the appointed one.
Next, we gather around the set hearth, before the materials are ignited. Selecting from an adjacent pile of stones put there by the facilitator, in four rounds we each place loaf-sized stones on top. With each stone, we are invited to declare, silently or out loud, what each represents, in terms of what we wish to relinquish or to invite into our life, or both. After the final round, with each person having placed their four stones, the bonfire is set alight.
There is now time for a tea ceremony while the flames engulf the structure comprising generous piles of beech and pine, causing it eventually to collapse, bringing the stones crashing down into the locus of the inferno. Soon the stones are red hot, and the ceremony can begin.
We are each designated a position within the lodge. The heat inside is generated by the hot stones brought in at intervals by the fire maker under the instruction of the facilitator. These are placed in a deep round concavity in the centre of the earthen floor, sprinkled with medicinal herbs and finally doused with water. Steam and herbal aromas now quickly fill the lodge.
`The spirits of our ancestors dwell in the stones,’ we were told. `The stones are our oldest ancestors. Water represents the feminine principle, fire the masculine. Roused by the heat of the fire, the spirits are released from the stones when water is sprinkled on them. Emerging and mingling with the steam, they enter the body, driving out everything that no longer serves us, and bringing healing properties. Before the ancestor spirits return to the stone, they impart some of their nature to the body. That is why we feel so well afterwards, relieved and regenerated.´
The sweat ceremony is a place of safety, giving, sharing, receiving, releasing, cleansing, healing, caring, nurturing, creativity, and community. Done with ceremony and ritual, it becomes a place where we connect with ourselves, each other, and Mother Earth. Through this contact we come to a better understanding of our place in the Universe, of our relationship to all things. Any state in which the body is tested to extreme limits has its dangers, so an experienced leader (with an apprenticeship of four to eight years) is paramount. She/he must fully grasp not only the spiritual significance of the tradition, but also the physical and mental safety protocols.
The darkness within the lodge took me by surprise. I sat in complete blackness, except for the glow of the red-hot stones and the firefly effects of the herbal offerings placed upon them before the dousing with water began. When the water did hit the stones, there was a loud sizzle, both audible and tangible. This moment was cathartic. I found myself sweating profusely in what seemed both the `Womb on Mother Earth´ and the actual womb in which I was gestated so many years ago. The former gave me great comfort and solace, while the later came close to inducing panic.
Travelling back in time, I discerned and re-experienced the precarious and perilous aspect of my uterine sojourn. Having no direct knowledge of the circumstances at that time, I bring empathy to both my dear deceased mother and my self. Life is a mystery. Everything happens for a reason. I chose that womb. It was a formative experience, clearly an extremely difficult one.
There is no mother to sooth me now, only the grown man who has stepped up to the responsibility for his inner child and who consciously accesses and cultivates the healing energies of Mother Earth. A mantra enters my consciousness as the heat sends my mind to a higher place. `Safe, here, now´. It repeats as a silent chant, reverberating though my entire being. `Safe, here, now´.
Each round sees more stones brough in from the fire. The fourth and final round is the hottest. My mantra carries me now. I know why I have come. I feel connected, grateful, and blessed. No longer concerned with the question of why I had never done this before (in this incarnation, at least), I recognise that it has been worth the long wait.
Afterwards I feel energetic, cleansed, and detoxed. Revitalised and tired at the same time. Something has created more space in my consciousness – like things have been removed. I feel meditative, calm, at one – not two.
Remembering that we all respond differently to heat at different times in our lives, I return home in the recognition of the need to listen carefully to my body as the experience reverberates and continues to unfold in the days and weeks that follow. `Safe, here, now´.
