I thought I’d write something in here so that if someone clicks to read my intro, they’ll have something to read. I’m not very good at this to make it short and succinct.. so.. just warning you..
I found NAFPS after the James Ray deaths. I was searching for information on the web and the NAFPS popped up. I have done some sweats in the early 90’s and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was appalled. I love the lodge and although I knew many were faking these ceremonies, I just couldn’t believe to what extent some would take it.. to cause death within that sacred place. Horrific.
As far as my background goes, I had read Castaneda when I was 14. I know he is a fraud, but at the time, I was in so much pain and filled with so much hate. I hated people, I hated how they screwed the Earth. I hated the way I felt the Earth suffocating under cement. Hated it. In fact, I hated so intensely that my sister told me one day that she could see hate in my eyes. I was ready to suicide. I hated being here. So, when I read the Castaneda books (the first four) I began to examine self importance and I began to work on that within myself. I still believe in the balance of self importance and that too much self importance kills. As I worked with realizing these concepts, not of self worth, but of importance, I began to calm down in my hatred and chose to stay alive. I spent my days in mediation.
I read a Ruth Montgomery book which when the 5th Castaneda book came out I found parts of it almost literally repeated and that was my first clue to the falseness of Castaneda. I read the rest in his series as they came out and didn’t like them. Back when I was still a kid, before the 2nd set of Castaneda books, I had also started a book on Buddhism, but never finished it. Something told me that reading books confuses, and not to do it so I didn’t read any more books and I have stuck by that all my life. On occasion when deemed appropriate I did read, an example being when I attended Guitar Craft and was suggested to read the Fourth Way. I didn’t much care for it, just not my kind of thing. I also read The Celestine Prophecy that my brother suggested and thought it was ridiculously stupid.
Fast forward into adulthood when computers and the web began up, my brother created a web page for exploring concepts of the unknown and spirituality. Other than the few items of Buddhism that my brother put on the page, it quickly became a Castaneda site. When he died, I kept it up for the people who converged there. Prior to that, I didn’t have anything to do with the site because I didn’t believe in Castaneda. Also, prior to my brother’s passing, he had told me that he was taking it down. But I kept it up for the people there, and in a few years ended up removing the entire forum because it was a cesspool. Not everyone on there was awful, but many were really creepy people with no sense or care for or about anyone but their selves. I actually did post to the site that Castaneda was a fraud. Of course, that didn’t go over well.
Well, the site is still up but is soon to go down once the fee comes up for the domain. But it has been inactive for years now.
Later in life I met a woman who claimed to be a Cherokee Shaman, but then changed the term to something else that I cannot recall at moment. That was a terrible experience and took me years to recover from. I didn’t go to her as a student, or wanting to learn her ways. I was her friend. She made it clear to me that she could either be a teacher or a friend and I chose friend because I just didn’t feel any need to have a teacher. I believe the things I believe, and really have no need or interest in learning someone else’s beliefs in effort to believe as they do, or be who they are. I am happy with my own beliefs. So, we became friends but it ended badly and it is just this year that I am truly beginning to feel free of all her shit.
I did write a book. I don’t promote it. But I don’t hide it either. It is part of what I’ve done in this life and although I don’t support my own book, I have no reason to hide it and pretend I didn’t write it. It is ok. There are parts I like, but it is not really what I would like to have written.
Well, as I said, I’m not good at writing an introduction without it being some long boring autobiography that I doubt anyone really cares about, but it does tell you sort of where I’ve been in life.
For this site, well, a few years after I’d been in the sweat lodges, I became aware of people stealing the Native spirituality. This confused me as I didn’t understand how spirituality could be stolen, as it is something within a person. How can it be stolen? It had been a few years since I’d been to the sweat, and I’d lost contact with those wonderful people, so I went to various NA chat rooms and asked. Naturally I was blasted for it but it was never explained to me, I didn’t understand and I wanted to. I wasn’t going to get the answer in these places so I left them. But I never put down the question and I even asked the woman who claimed to be Cherokee about it, and she didn’t know either. That was a red flag and actually it was just months later that I kicked her out of my life.
But, here, on this site, I finally found the answer and what’s more, I understand it and agree. This site and the people on it have educated me on spiritual/cultural theft and misappropriation. I have also been fortunate to learn here a bit about Native issues, life, and community.
I give thanks to the many people here for their patience and tolerance of a white idiot like myself. I will always be a white idiot, but I also know that for as long as I actually care to learn, the people here will help me to do so.
I only have good words for the many here who fight the thieves and yet extend a hand of education to those who drift in here.
Thank you people of NAFPS
