THE WAY OF THE CHEROKEE
by Tsquayi

THE LEVELS OF SPIRITUAL BEING

I wrote the following in the summer of 2001:

For the past week, I have seen many signs from the Spirit Messengers, the birds and the butterflies, that another Spiritual change is occurring in my life. Such change is not new to me, in fact, I have experienced such changes many times through my life. One, when I was a youth, involved a vision of a white bear and another, a few years ago, involved thirteen white herons and thirteen blue herons. For Native Americans, such Spiritual changes often involve the appearance of a Spirit bird, mammal, or other creature. I learned to accept the changes as Natural events which I had no need to fear and which I would come to understand as time passed.

As I walked this morning, September 8, 2001, an orange butterfly brought me, for the first time, an overall, although not complete, understanding of these changes in my life. I am sharing them with you because I believe the plan is the same for every person. There are thirteen levels, like stair steps, of Spiritual being for persons on this earth. Basically, the steps represent Spiritual growth to higher levels of Spiritual awareness.

Each of the steps can be defined by certain characteristics that emerge within the person as he or she moves up to the next step. The characteristics of all thirteen levels have not been precisely revealed to me, but I will tell you about those that have been revealed to me and perhaps you can fill in the blanks for the others.

A newborn baby begins life at step zero, that is, with no Spiritual awareness, only physical awareness. Step one is the earliest stirrings of Spiritual awareness and step two is often related to childhood fantasies. The third step is more clearly defined for me. The third step is the level of religious awareness, a belief in God, and the number relating to it is three. The significance of the trinity in the Christian religion is not a coincidence.

For many people, the third step is the extent of their Spiritual growth. During the remainder of their lives, They never feel the need to move beyond religious awareness. But, some people continue to grow beyond religious awareness to higher levels of Spiritual awareness. Each higher step does not replace the steps below it but adds new dimensions to the lower steps. Thus, religion is not replaced by the steps above it but is expanded and enriched.

I was about thirteen years old when I reached my fourth step and the White Bear appeared to me in a dream. The great bear stood towering above me on its hind legs. I drew my bow and prepared to drive my arrow up into its heart when it spoke to me. It said, “Do not kill me. I will protect you.” I lowered my bow and waited for the bear to speak again, but, it spoke no more words. Instead, it sent its thoughts into my mind. It showed me a Spirit Path that I could follow if I wished to become Yvwi (Yuh wee; Human Being). I have followed that path through my life and the White Bear has always protected me.

As I moved to step five during my adolescence and young adulthood, I became increasingly aware of the Spiritual aspects of Nature and other people, particularly Cherokee Elders such as my mentor, Kawaya. They told me that the Spirits would speak to me through my inner voice if I would only listen. I became increasingly aware of my own inner voice and learned to trust my intuition. I became absorbed in reading philosophy, particularly Emerson, Thoreau, Maslow, the Bible and religious writings from other religions. I read these writings not only to learn, but often found verification for things that came to me through my inner voice.

As I moved to step six, I became increasingly aware of communications from the Spirit World, primarily through contact with Nature but often from something I read or during a conversation. When I needed the answer to a question, it would appear before me, often on the page where I would open a book.

The seventh step holds special significance. The fact that the number seven had significance in the Cherokee culture as well as many cultures around the world, including Judeo Christian writings, is not a coincidence. At the seventh level, the person’s Spiritual life has grown to share equal importance with their physical life. This is the level that was the goal of the ancient Cherokee. This was the level of “Yvwi”, the Real Person or Human Being. For a person who reaches the seventh step, the Spirit World has become a source of comfort, wisdom and power in every moment and every aspect of his or her life. The Spirits and Nature all rush to do the bidding of the Yvwi

My advance to the seventh step, a few years ago, was marked by the sight of thirteen white herons and thirteen blue herons around a spring fed pond one misty morning. I believe they signified a balance between my Spiritual being and my Physical being, the white herons representing the Spiritual and the blue herons the Physical. I experienced an increased ability to receive communications from the Spirit World and I found that my powers to make things happen greatly increased. Young children, dogs, women, and some men, whom I would meet for the first time, seemed to instantly recognize and like me. People I had not met but who read my writings wrote to me that it seemed I wrote directly to them and knew their thoughts. A typical example is a man from Pennsylvania who wrote, “While I am not a Native American, I find myself drawn very close and a part of the many things you choose to write about. Sometimes I feel you write about me, the way I feel about life and the world around me”.

The steps from eight through thirteen, are not clearly defined but I can tell you some things about them. All these levels are increasingly related to good and the power for good increases with each level. Among the ancient Cherokees, those who moved above the seventh level became the Medicine People and Shamans and their wisdom and power grew in proportion to the level they attained. They could communicate with the Spirit World and the Spirits of all living things, heal a person’s Spirit or their body, travel from their bodies to other places, change into animals, birds or other creatures, bring rain or the return of the game animals or fish, and perform feats of magic. ¹⁰

Occasionally, a rare individual, blessed by the Spirits, rose to the thirteenth level, with wisdom and powers beyond human comprehension, and he or she was called Adawehi (Ah dah way hee; Magician). Sometimes, the Adawehi did not die. If they advanced above the thirteenth step, they moved bodily from the physical world into the Spirit World.

BALANCE

The concept of balance was central to ancient Cherokee thinking and is also applicable to our thinking today. Our health, happiness, politics, religion, economics, work, education, social contacts, marriage, friendship; in fact, virtually every aspect of our lives, require balance to function properly.

I will try to explain exactly what I mean by balance. Balance is the control of opposing forces to produce a desirable condition or outcome. Good health is the result of the control, usually automatically by your body, of the many opposing biological forces within the body. For example, microbes enter the body constantly and would destroy it if it were not for the white blood cells and other defense mechanisms of the body which destroy the microbes. But a large surplus of those same protective white blood cells, caused by leukemia, can destroy the body. The blood sugar level within the normal body fluctuates through the day with our eating and digesting carbohydrates, balanced by the production of insulin by the body. Diabetes is a condition in which the blood sugar levels rise dangerously high because of a deficiency of insulin. Insulin injections may be necessary to restore balance. As these examples show, balance is not a steady state but typically involves constant fluctuation on either side of a desirable state. These examples also illustrate that when an imbalance occurs, some action, on our part, is often necessary to restore balance. All healing, whether physical or mental, involves taking action to restore balance.

In our daily lives, we constantly try to control opposing forces to produce a desirable life. We try to balance our work and our leisure activities, our income and our spending, our intake of calories and our level of physical activity, etc. Allowing some aspect of our life to get out of balance usually brings an undesirable condition. We must have food but overeating causes imbalance which brings obesity, many health problems, loss of self esteem, etc. The usual response to this imbalance is to begin a diet to better control the amount and kinds of food we eat.

The ancient Cherokees did not have the concepts of good and evil, but instead, looked at things and actions in terms of balance. Things and actions were not inherently good nor evil but were desirable if they were in balance and undesirable if they were out of balance. Likewise, a person was not inherently good nor evil but chose a path which led either to balance and a good life or to imbalance and a bad life. The Clan Law, the basic law of the ancient Cherokees was based on the need to restore balance when something happened to produce imbalance. Punishment of the offender was less important than receiving reparation for the offense.

The Cherokee elders and parents taught the children the importance of becoming a Yvwi (Yuh wee; Human Being, Real Person) who was a good and worthy person in balance within himself or herself, with other persons, with Nature and with the Spirit World. The reward for being Yvwi came in the form of a happy and successful life.

Pagenotes:

¹⁰ Such descriptions of Spiritual power are not limited to Cherokee folklore, the Judeo Christian Bible contains many such descriptions.

The Cherokee Purpose