“All people veil evil,” Uncle said, “some better than others. But there are some entities that have no veils. These we know as the Controllers. The Controllers designed the White Man’s world, but I’m not distinguishing between skin colors when I say that. White Man’s world is just a slang-tag we medicine men use to label the world of the Controllers. Controllers want to control—earth, men, animals, plants, oil, water, health, gold, rare minerals, and anything else that’s rare, and by consequence, in demand. “For reasons that aren’t clear to us, the Controllers, or at least certain of their kind, are allowed to enter our world—”
“Do you mean they’re not from our world—earth?”
“No, they’re not from earth, but more to the point, they’re not even from the physical universe. They operate in a different dimension, not one that we can see or touch.”
“You said certain of their kind can do this. (...)
He nodded. (...) Only Controllers or Wakan Tanka can do this. (...)".
“Why?”
“Because Sonvertos are Wakan Tanka incarnate on earth. They’re human, yes, but they carry an innate ability to access the Creator’s subtle wisdom.
(...)
(...)
“What did you mean earlier when you said Sonvertos have an innate access to the Creator’s subtle wisdom?”
Uncle looked away for a short time, glancing at the prairie in the far distance. “Sonvertos are human, as I said, and all humans have the power to communicate with their Creator—and I mean the Creator of their spiritual natures… their immortal souls.
Sonvertos incarnate to this world for only that reason. They’re structured to communicate the simplest truths which can then be embodied in behaviors that are aligned with the Creator. They’re not interested in intellectual complexities. They’re not interested in impressing anyone. They simply know, usually at an early age, that they’re in a human body for the purpose of sharing a simple, but vital message.
“The message can come in various forms, but one element that’s consistent is that it’s not owned by anyone. No clubs, fraternities, organizations, none of the usual trappings of a hierarchical system. If you see such a thing, it’s not from the Sonverto, maybe a misguided follower wanting to grab some ego gratification or power, but not a Sonverto. This is how you can tell them apart from the Controllers.
“In my world, we know a good medicine man if he lives in a simple shack, has a good family, is generous with his belongings, and dresses without any pretense even when he performs ceremonies. He never takes credit for his healings or good work because he knows that he’s a conduit of the Creator, the Wakan Tanka and nothing more.
“Sonvertos contemplate the Great Mystery, but more than this, they don’t simply read books and acquire their knowledge from others. They read nature, they read energy, they read the seventh direction.”
“What’s the seventh direction?”
“You have your usual directions: east, west, south and north. And you have your sky, which is up, and your earth, which is down. That’s six directions. The seventh direction is within. It is the most important. The Controllers focus on controlling the six directions, while the Sonvertos focus on opening humanity to the seventh direction.”
“Why?”
Uncle smiled. “Because it’s the one place the Controllers can’t control.”
“Why can’t they control the seventh direction, if they can control the other six?”
“Because the seventh direction is the sacred way in which the Creator—the Great Mystery moves into the physical universe. The movement is always one-to-one. Creator to individual. Some people have allowed the Controllers to substitute their own image of a God, in effect, replacing the Great Mystery with the small faith. It’s not so much control as it is a form of magic like a shell game. It’s all about distraction.
“Controllers are very good at two things: one, forming distractions so people grow to be predictable and easy to manage; and two, providing substitutions for the Real that, over time, become real to most people.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, “why don’t people stop them, or boot them off our planet, or seal the passages they use to get into our world?”
Kohana touched my arm gently. “One thing Nammu told you is true; they are a very ancient race. They operate in a different spacetime, and the oldest of our records show them to be our gods… they know all about us, because they’ve created the game in which we play, and they’ve been observing us since we began on this planet. We can’t simply put the genie back into its bottle and toss it into space and wipe our hands of them.
“The Controllers may have created the game that humanity plays, but there is a bigger game being played out than one planet and a collection of races we call humanity. In this bigger game there’re larger players, more at stake, and this is where we focus. We don’t try to battle the Controllers, we honor them and their role, we avoid their distractions, and we withdraw our energy from them.”
“How can you honor them? If they’re anything like Nammu, they’re a bunch of sophisticated thugs and nothing more.”
Uncle cleared his throat as if attracting my attention. “Honor is our word for accept. If we battle them, then we’re trying to control the Controllers. We become like them. We don’t want to control anything, even the seventh direction.”
“But if they’ve created the game,” I asked, “and that game includes war, the destruction of earth’s resources, genocide… is the only option to roll over and let them continue with their evil?”
“It’s not the only option,” Uncle replied, “some will battle the pawns of the Controllers—the human face, but these are not the real Controllers. The real manipulators can’t be battled. They’re invisible. They live out of our reach, so why would we battle their pawns? We can only teach about the seventh direction. That is why we’re here.”
“It sounds so passive…” I whispered.
“It’s passive only when you think in terms of battle,” Kohana said. His tone slightly irritated. “We actively teach. We actively show people how to live aligned to nature. We actively demonstrate how to connect with our Creator. People must have the desire to awaken; we can’t force them to wake up.”
“And where do they get this desire?” I asked. “Everything you’ve said about the Controllers is that they’ve deceived us and kept us distracted. So where do people get the desire to even consider the seventh direction?”
Kohana looked to Uncle with a face of quiet frustration.
“The Creator of our universe is wise, do you agree?” Uncle asked.
“If some intelligence created the universe,” I replied, “it would have to be intelligent on a whole different scale. So, yes, if there’s a Creator of our universe, it would have to be wise.”
“If our Creator is wise,” Uncle said, “does it also make sense that its intelligence would create attractions for the seventh direction?”
“Yes…” I said tentatively.
“These attractions are in mythology, religion, philosophy, poetry, art, nature, even science and technology. The attractions are everywhere, just as the distractions of the Controllers are everywhere. They are competing forces for the attention of a human mind and heart.”
“What about the soul?”
“The soul is not distracted. The soul waits.”
“For what?”
“To see what the mind and heart choose.”
“And if they choose the attractions?” I asked.
“Then the soul engages in the mind and heart of the individual and becomes an active partner of the individual.”
“And if they choose distractions?”
“The soul waits for the opportunity to show itself. It’s like a man and a mirror in the forest. The man walks a hundred different paths in the forest, and one day he notices some movement in his side vision, and he turns to see a reflection of himself. If he walks a single step one way or the other, his reflection is gone. It is only when the man is in a precise place that he notices his reflection in the mirror.
“This is the way of the seventh door.”
“You changed to door instead of direction,” I pointed out.
Uncle nodded, but remained silent.
“What is this precise place?”
“For everyone it’s different. It’s part of the Great Mystery how the Creator attracts each individual. It can be a dream, a night sky, a person’s story… .” I felt Uncle look deep into my eyes. “It can be a bear… but how it’s done is without formula or a crystallized process. It’s organic, evolving moment to moment, lightly guided, and each step is a preparation.”
“The man in the forest walked by that mirror a thousand times but didn’t notice his reflection—maybe he saw glimpses and wondered what it was, and then walked on. So strong was his belief that he was alone in the forest that whatever movement he may have seen, he ignored as a phantom of his overactive imagination.” Uncle paused and shook his head slowly. “The mind can so quickly pave over the attractions of the seventh door.”
“The Sonvertos, they’re here as attractors?”
“As we all are,” Uncle said.
“As I said, it’s different for everyone. The attractions of the Great Mystery clear the bleary eyes of the mind, and open the eye of the heart. When this happens, however it happens, the soul is engaged just like the man in the forest when he finally stopped and noticed his reflection. He’s engaged and walks closer, never turning away until he is looking face to face at his reflection. He might even pick up the mirror and take it with him, so he can see himself wherever he goes, and even show others their reflections as well.”
“But where’s the Sonverto in all of this?” I asked. “I understand that the man in the forest represents the individual, the forest represents the distractions of the Controllers, and the mirror is the attraction of the Great Mystery. But where’s the Sonverto?
“The size of the mirror is the Sonverto. If the mirror is the size of a postage stamp, the man in the forest must be inches from it to notice. If the mirror is the size of a house, the angles from which it can be noticed are a million times more numerous. The forest grows in size and complexity with each generation—if the mirror doesn’t, the seventh door effectively shrinks and disappears for all but the most serious of seekers.”
“How do the Sonvertos enlarge the size of the mirror?” I asked, leaning forward.
“They bring the Creator’s channel to the people.”
I shrugged my shoulders and glanced at Kohana, and then to Uncle. “I don’t understand.”
“Would you seek the sun with a candle?” Uncle asked.
I shook my head. “No…”
“Would you seek the Creator with the mind’s logic?”
I shook my head again, believing it was probably the right answer.
Uncle grunted slightly at my lack of conviction. “These are the methods that the Controllers provide to seek our Creator. Use the mind. Use the logical side of your being for that is reliable, that is real, that is… practical. The only problem is that in the search for one’s Creator, it does not work, and so the Controllers allowed faith to join the search. Faith filled the vacuum of logic.
“Faith and logic are not tools to find the seventh door… they are tools to ignore it.”
Uncle paused and rubbed his hands together. “Sonvertos are a long line of spiritual architects who build channels from the individual to the Creator. They enlarge the mirror by example, through words, through images, through stories, through the beat of a drum called the human heart. They show the delusion of logic and faith, and in their place, they encourage the simple virtues of the heart, the imagination of the heart and mind in union. They bring the concept of the Sovereign Integral to the surface where the mind can see it and the heart can touch it.
“The Sovereign Integral consciousness is our destiny—where we will return when we have no density to cover us. No skins… no masks. It’s not a state of consciousness that can be easily achieved—the Controllers see to that.
“However, the Sonvertos show how it can be achieved, even for glimpses and the thinnest of moments.”
“How? How do they show it?” I asked.
“They provide tools that help people to activate their intuitive and contemplative imaginations. This is how people touch into the Sovereign Integral state. There’s no other way to produce the power necessary to move into this high state of consciousness without the imagination. It is the key. But imagination is like a newborn foal that doesn’t know which way to run with its wobbly legs. The Sonvertos provide the tools to assist with the directions to the mirror or seventh door, and then work with the individual to enlarge the mirror, so it doesn’t dissolve into the distractions of the Controller’s forest.”
“What tools do they provide and where does one find them?”
Uncle pulled out a piece of paper from his shirt pocket. It was folded and was clearly old from age and use. “This is an example of such a tool.”
He laid it out on the ground flattening the edges out. On the paper was a drawing that showed a single, large dot in the middle, around it was six other dots, and around each of those dots were six dots and so on, until the dots became so numerous they became impossible to see or count.
“Each of these dots is a behavior. We call these the six heart virtues, and they’re made up of the qualities commonly known as appreciation, compassion, forgiveness, humility…” Uncle looked at Kohana. “Taku dah-kue?”
“…Understanding… .”
“Ha, yes, and valor.” Uncle looked at me with a smile. “You see what an old deer tick I am? But who cares about the names or memorization? It’s enough to simply practice them.”
He pointed to the centermost dot. “This is the Creator. You see the Creator is the original source of these frequencies we call the six heart virtues. They go out from this centermost source and then connect as the Presence.”
“The Presence?”
Uncle nodded. “This is how the Creator extends throughout the universe. The Presence manifests in physical qualities like light, gravity, space, vibration, and so on, and these are like our human presence—they’re physical. There is also a spiritual presence, one that can’t be seen, but is the cause of the physical. The Presence is both the spiritual and the physical qualities.”
“How does anyone sense this Presence or make use of it?” I asked.
“The same way you sense anything non-physical, you feel it.”
“How?”
“By practicing and raising your awareness until you can feel that a heart virtue you are practicing, like forgiveness, is felt as one continuous behavior.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you practice forgiveness to others, even when it’s not returned, it will return to you from the Creator, and you will feel this in subtle ways, and to feel the subtle, you must seek it. You must open yourself to its expression in your life. You must use your imagination.”
“All of this imagination feels like a made-up experience… like I’m creating the experience… it’s not really happening—”
“What you experience is yours,” Uncle said firmly. “If you choose to create through your imagination, and your world reflects this, you have created your world differently from those who allow the Controllers to create their world. Your imagination is your antenna to the Presence. The Presence is your connection to your Creator. The connection is what enables the Sovereign Integral state to exist within the human state.”
Uncle shifted his position to find a more comfortable posture, and pointed to a dot on the paper in front of him. “This is just a picture with pencil markings, but as I’ve talked to you about it, it leapt off the paper and began to hover in your imagination. It’s being examined there. Your mind and heart are processing this image. They are wondering how it can be useful; what practical value it holds. These are all reasonable considerations, but do you know why you are looking at this paper in this way?”
I shook my head. “…No.”
“Because it’s easier to allow the Controllers to control, than to allow yourself to create.”
Uncle let the words hang in the cool, quiet air of the cavern’s ledge.
“Sonvertos teach how to use the imagination, which is the same thing as expanding the size of the mirror?” I asked.
“In part, yes, but it’s all about creation, and the source from which the creation arises. If the source is of the Presence, the creation reflects this and enlarges the mirror or widens the opening of the seventh door. If it is of the Controller’s worldview, unconnected to the Presence, then it enlarges the forest, making the seventh door a little more difficult to find.
“The creations of the Presence are not merely contained in drawings or words, more importantly, they are expressible. They come through our actions—not just physical actions, but the actions of our hearts and mind. Millions of people on the planet know this and practice this, despite the example set forth by the Controllers and their downstream puppets.”
“What do you mean by the actions of our hearts and minds?” I asked.
“Just as I pointed out to you, this drawing became a constellation in your mind, and when it did, it was also in your heart, because they’re one sensory system. This is an action, and this action goes out to the universe. Contemplation, imagination… these are actions… vital actions. What you can generate in your heart-mind system is without limit. It moves out, connects with others, forms new circuitry, and opens the seventh door where all people can feel the liberation of their spirit self and the connection to the Presence they so richly earn by being a human being.”
Uncle’s eyes were jeweled in the clear liquid of tears, but he didn’t turn away, even as one tear fell down his cheek, a willing victim of the sky’s weight. He was a man that seemed so full of love for humanity that I could only wonder how he came to feel this way. I loved humanity, but as an abstraction. I could just as easily say I tolerated humanity or, worse yet, disowned it at times.
“How do you generate these heart virtues as deeply as you’ve done?” I asked.
Kohana smirked a little and caught my attention. “He’s not going to tell you that. One of those virtues will hold him back, but I won’t be so easily silenced.” Kohana grinned. “I’ll tell you a story, with Uncle’s permission.” He paused and looked at Uncle, who casually raised his right hand and nodded slightly.
“There was an anthropologist who came to our rez about ten years ago. She was interested in our sacred sites and ceremonies. She wanted to write a book about our spiritual beliefs. She approached me first, because of my leanings into the White Man’s world. I agreed to let her come to the rez, and I offered to introduce her to the right people—Uncle being one them.
“She and I came on a cold night, and Uncle was not feeling well that night, but I didn’t know that. The anthropologist I could sense was kind of scared, driving out in the middle of nowhere with a big Indian, and she knew I was taking her to meet a real authentic medicine man. Not something most White People do comfortably, because they expect to see a wild-eyed, rattle-shaking, smoke-blowing, deerskin- clad crazy man.” He glanced at Uncle. “No offense.”
“There are times that description isn’t too far off,” Uncle said.
Kohana began to roll up his sleeves on his shirt. “When we arrived at Uncle’s place, I could sense that Uncle was not his usual self, but he never complained, and offered us warm pillows to sit on next to his woodstove. The anthropologist started with her questions, and they were all over the map, and I could tell Uncle was having a hard time navigating her questions—probably not helped by his physical state.
“Any rate, he held up his hand at one point, in the middle of one of her questions, and a hush fell over the room for several seconds. Even the fire was quiet. And then we heard this sound of a wolf howling in the distance. It was this beautiful, plaintive cry that just spilled out and found its way to our ears. We were all transfixed listening to it. Uncle kept his arm raised the whole time as if a reminder to remain silent.
“When he put his arm down, the anthropologist gushed about how Uncle had known the wolf was going to howl, and Uncle held up his arm again, and the anthropologist stopped talking, and we all listened, but there was no sound. A full minute passed in complete and somewhat uncomfortable silence. When Uncle put his arm down he spoke. He told the anthropologist that he had listened to her spirit. It had told him the same story that the wolf had.
“She was lonely. She lived in fear. She was tired of being depressed. Her spirit was waiting to be seen. To be rediscovered. To be allowed the chance to love again, but there was a blockage. The anthropologist was not able to release something. It was something related to a man who had mistreated her …a relationship that had begun with such perfect hopes and then slowly descended into mistrust and fear.
“Uncle stood up and gathered the woman’s hands and pulled her to her feet. By this time, the anthropologist was awestruck at what Uncle had said and confirmed in her expression that he was correct. He had taken her hands and folded them over her heart, and told her to close her eyes, and imagine one thing, one simple thing when she was a child: her mother’s touch when she had forgiven her as a child. The anthropologist did as she was instructed, and soon I could see her body trembling. Uncle told her to take this feeling and give it to the man that had wronged her, and to feel as if the wrong, no matter how cruel it had felt at the time, had been resolved.
“After about three minutes, she opened her eyes and she gave Uncle a huge hug. She laughed nonstop that night as we talked unscripted from that point forward. She wrote her book, but the book wasn’t about Lakota spirituality. It was all about the importance of forgiveness in relationships. She had asked Uncle for permission to write about him and what he’d done that night, but Uncle politely declined.
“The book, last time I checked, had sold hundreds of thousands of copies, was translated into about twelve languages, and our anthropologist was writing more books on the subject of the heart virtues.
“About three years later she called me to ask if she could visit Uncle again… as a friend. I told her I was going out there in a few months, and she could come along if she wanted. During that visit she explained to Uncle what had happened to her from that one experience and asked if he knew. Uncle nodded. She asked if he understood how many people her book had touched. He nodded again. She was trying to say how huge the ripple effect had been from her one meeting, and Uncle was downplaying it like it was no big thing, and I think it was kind of bothering the anthropologist. I could sense it, and I knew that Uncle could, too.
“At the end of our meeting, I was getting ready to go, and Uncle took her outside, and they went on a little walk. They were only gone for about thirty minutes, and when she came back she was all different. When we got to the car and started to drive away, I asked her where Uncle had taken her, and she told me that they had gone to a sacred site to thank the Creator for sharing.
“She explained that the whole trip to visit Uncle was designed to show her gratitude to Uncle. To thank him and show how much his actions had meant to her. He had taken her life and put her on a whole new trajectory, but when she had come out to deliver the message, she had felt snubbed by Uncle—not that he was rude; he just didn’t make a big thing about it.
“She told me he had taken her to a site where the wolves gather some nights to howl. He told her that the wolves deserved her gratitude, because they carried the initial message, he’d simply elaborated on it, just as she had done in writing her book. It was the wolves that had brought her story to him.
“She said that Uncle had shown her how to contact them and to send them a prayer of thanks. They, the wolves, were connected to her, and she would understand in time.
“About a year later I got a call from her, and she had told me that she’d used some of her book proceeds to help fund two animal shelters in her city—she lived in Philadelphia at the time, and that these shelters were the way she felt the wolves wanted her to show her gratitude.
“Only a few weeks after her first shelter had opened, someone had turned in a mangy half-wolf street dog, and when she heard of it, she immediately went to the animal shelter and adopted him.
“She loved that half-wolf like no other person probably could, and the wolf was her constant companion. She sent me pictures—beautiful animal, but the reason I tell you this story is so you can see why Uncle cares so deeply… it’s because the universe cares, because the Creator cares. When the universe and the Creator care so deeply, and you see this care, this expression of the Creator’s heart, you’re happy to be a part of it, knowing you’re only that—a part of it.
“People are just too busy, too distracted by the Controller’s world to take notice of how the Creator works through all channels to bring the virtues of the heart to all people, but people need to be focused on the seventh door to see this. That’s all Uncle was saying. It’s easy to care deeply when you see the Creator caring deeply through all things. You have to be able to interpret the behaviors of people through understanding and compassion in order to see this care of the Creator, and then expand it, adding your human touch.”
I had been absorbed in the story. I had even forgotten my thirst and pain.
Uncle touched my knee gently. “You see, Sonvertos must view the world not as a tangled forest owned and operated by the Controllers, but as a place of mirrors that awaken those who pass by. The circumstance that brings people into your world may seem to be one thing, when it is another.”
“What do you mean?”
“The anthropologist came to write a book on Lakota spirituality, and what she really came to do is to help people learn to forgive and build better relationships as a result. I understood this, because her spirit told me. It was like two different people were meeting with me, one, an academic, hoping to make a name for herself, and the other, a deeply spiritual person who wanted to share her heart with humanity and improve our understanding of forgiveness in the world. This is the case with almost everyone you will meet. They are two different people. There’s the one who is dimensional, conditioned by the Controller’s world and seeking to achieve something.
And there is another one, spiritual in nature that is seeking to live their life as an add-on to the Creator’s world of love, understanding, compassion, forgiveness and all of the bounty that lives in the heart-mind system.
“It requires that you look past the surface dimensional to see—”
“Excuse me…” I interrupted, “but what’s a surface dimensional?”
“I call humans who are attentive to the forest… dimensionals. Surface dimensionals being the first layer—the mask’s people wear. It’s this mask that prevents them from seeing the mirror. Surface dimensionals believe they have freedom and knowledge and success and that this will carry them. These things are enough, and all they need to do is to achieve more of these things and live a good life. For some, this is enough, but most, when they come to me, their spirits want more.”
“More what?” I asked.
“More meaning. More profound feelings. A greater sense of connection. More love. More intimacy. More insight into what is happening in their lives—at the deepest levels. They want to yield to the soul that lives inside them, to get out of its way. To let this soul assert itself in their life.”
“And how do they do that?”
Uncle grabbed a small stick and drew a square in the dirt. “This is the surface dimensional—Kohana calls it ego-personality, and I’m sure it has a thousand different names, but it lives as a result of the Controller’s world design. It is a reflection of this.” Uncle drew a larger square around the first square. “These are dimensional distortions.
These are coverings. These obstruct the light.” He pointed to the two squares with the stick. Then he drew a small circle inside the smaller square. “This is the heart.” Then he drew another circle outside of the two squares. “This is the soul.” Uncle then drew a line between the two circles. “This is the imagination. The heart must imagine the soul!
“The man in the forest walked by that mirror a thousand times but didn’t notice his reflection—maybe he saw glimpses and wondered what it was, and then walked on. So strong was his belief that he was alone in the forest that whatever movement he may have seen, he ignored as a phantom of his overactive imagination.” Uncle paused and shook his head slowly. “The mind can so quickly pave over the attractions of the seventh door.”
“The Sonvertos, they’re here as attractors?”
“As we all are,” Uncle said.
“As I said, it’s different for everyone. The attractions of the Great Mystery clear the bleary eyes of the mind, and open the eye of the heart. When this happens, however it happens, the soul is engaged just like the man in the forest when he finally stopped and noticed his reflection. He’s engaged and walks closer, never turning away until he is looking face to face at his reflection. He might even pick up the mirror and take it with him, so he can see himself wherever he goes, and even show others their reflections as well.”
“But where’s the Sonverto in all of this?” I asked. “I understand that the man in the forest represents the individual, the forest represents the distractions of the Controllers, and the mirror is the attraction of the Great Mystery. But where’s the Sonverto?
“The size of the mirror is the Sonverto. If the mirror is the size of a postage stamp, the man in the forest must be inches from it to notice. If the mirror is the size of a house, the angles from which it can be noticed are a million times more numerous. The forest grows in size and complexity with each generation—if the mirror doesn’t, the seventh door effectively shrinks and disappears for all but the most serious of seekers.”
“How do the Sonvertos enlarge the size of the mirror?” I asked, leaning forward.
“They bring the Creator’s channel to the people.”
I shrugged my shoulders and glanced at Kohana, and then to Uncle. “I don’t understand.”
“Would you seek the sun with a candle?” Uncle asked.
I shook my head. “No…”
“Would you seek the Creator with the mind’s logic?”
I shook my head again, believing it was probably the right answer.
Uncle grunted slightly at my lack of conviction. “These are the methods that the Controllers provide to seek our Creator. Use the mind. Use the logical side of your being for that is reliable, that is real, that is… practical. The only problem is that in the search for one’s Creator, it does not work, and so the Controllers allowed faith to join the search. Faith filled the vacuum of logic.
“Faith and logic are not tools to find the seventh door… they are tools to ignore it.”
Uncle paused and rubbed his hands together. “Sonvertos are a long line of spiritual architects who build channels from the individual to the Creator. They enlarge the mirror by example, through words, through images, through stories, through the beat of a drum called the human heart. They show the delusion of logic and faith, and in their place, they encourage the simple virtues of the heart, the imagination of the heart and mind in union. They bring the concept of the Sovereign Integral to the surface where the mind can see it and the heart can touch it.
“The Sovereign Integral consciousness is our destiny—where we will return when we have no density to cover us. No skins… no masks. It’s not a state of consciousness that can be easily achieved—the Controllers see to that.
“However, the Sonvertos show how it can be achieved, even for glimpses and the thinnest of moments.”
“How? How do they show it?” I asked.
“They provide tools that help people to activate their intuitive and contemplative imaginations. This is how people touch into the Sovereign Integral state. There’s no other way to produce the power necessary to move into this high state of consciousness without the imagination. It is the key. But imagination is like a newborn foal that doesn’t know which way to run with its wobbly legs. The Sonvertos provide the tools to assist with the directions to the mirror or seventh door, and then work with the individual to enlarge the mirror, so it doesn’t dissolve into the distractions of the Controller’s forest.”
“What tools do they provide and where does one find them?”
Uncle pulled out a piece of paper from his shirt pocket. It was folded and was clearly old from age and use. “This is an example of such a tool.”
He laid it out on the ground flattening the edges out. On the paper was a drawing that showed a single, large dot in the middle, around it was six other dots, and around each of those dots were six dots and so on, until the dots became so numerous they became impossible to see or count.
“Each of these dots is a behavior. We call these the six heart virtues, and they’re made up of the qualities commonly known as appreciation, compassion, forgiveness, humility…” Uncle looked at Kohana. “Taku dah-kue?”
“…Understanding… .”
“Ha, yes, and valor.” Uncle looked at me with a smile. “You see what an old deer tick I am? But who cares about the names or memorization? It’s enough to simply practice them.”
He pointed to the centermost dot. “This is the Creator. You see the Creator is the original source of these frequencies we call the six heart virtues. They go out from this centermost source and then connect as the Presence.”
“The Presence?”
Uncle nodded. “This is how the Creator extends throughout the universe. The Presence manifests in physical qualities like light, gravity, space, vibration, and so on, and these are like our human presence—they’re physical. There is also a spiritual presence, one that can’t be seen, but is the cause of the physical. The Presence is both the spiritual and the physical qualities.”
“How does anyone sense this Presence or make use of it?” I asked.
“The same way you sense anything non-physical, you feel it.”
“How?”
“By practicing and raising your awareness until you can feel that a heart virtue you are practicing, like forgiveness, is felt as one continuous behavior.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you practice forgiveness to others, even when it’s not returned, it will return to you from the Creator, and you will feel this in subtle ways, and to feel the subtle, you must seek it. You must open yourself to its expression in your life. You must use your imagination.”
“All of this imagination feels like a made-up experience… like I’m creating the experience… it’s not really happening—”
“What you experience is yours,” Uncle said firmly. “If you choose to create through your imagination, and your world reflects this, you have created your world differently from those who allow the Controllers to create their world. Your imagination is your antenna to the Presence. The Presence is your connection to your Creator. The connection is what enables the Sovereign Integral state to exist within the human state.”
Uncle shifted his position to find a more comfortable posture, and pointed to a dot on the paper in front of him. “This is just a picture with pencil markings, but as I’ve talked to you about it, it leapt off the paper and began to hover in your imagination. It’s being examined there. Your mind and heart are processing this image. They are wondering how it can be useful; what practical value it holds. These are all reasonable considerations, but do you know why you are looking at this paper in this way?”
I shook my head. “…No.”
“Because it’s easier to allow the Controllers to control, than to allow yourself to create.”
Uncle let the words hang in the cool, quiet air of the cavern’s ledge.
“Sonvertos teach how to use the imagination, which is the same thing as expanding the size of the mirror?” I asked.
“In part, yes, but it’s all about creation, and the source from which the creation arises. If the source is of the Presence, the creation reflects this and enlarges the mirror or widens the opening of the seventh door. If it is of the Controller’s worldview, unconnected to the Presence, then it enlarges the forest, making the seventh door a little more difficult to find.
“The creations of the Presence are not merely contained in drawings or words, more importantly, they are expressible. They come through our actions—not just physical actions, but the actions of our hearts and mind. Millions of people on the planet know this and practice this, despite the example set forth by the Controllers and their downstream puppets.”
“What do you mean by the actions of our hearts and minds?” I asked.
“Just as I pointed out to you, this drawing became a constellation in your mind, and when it did, it was also in your heart, because they’re one sensory system. This is an action, and this action goes out to the universe. Contemplation, imagination… these are actions… vital actions. What you can generate in your heart-mind system is without limit. It moves out, connects with others, forms new circuitry, and opens the seventh door where all people can feel the liberation of their spirit self and the connection to the Presence they so richly earn by being a human being.”
Uncle’s eyes were jeweled in the clear liquid of tears, but he didn’t turn away, even as one tear fell down his cheek, a willing victim of the sky’s weight. He was a man that seemed so full of love for humanity that I could only wonder how he came to feel this way. I loved humanity, but as an abstraction. I could just as easily say I tolerated humanity or, worse yet, disowned it at times.
“How do you generate these heart virtues as deeply as you’ve done?” I asked.
Kohana smirked a little and caught my attention. “He’s not going to tell you that. One of those virtues will hold him back, but I won’t be so easily silenced.” Kohana grinned. “I’ll tell you a story, with Uncle’s permission.” He paused and looked at Uncle, who casually raised his right hand and nodded slightly.
“There was an anthropologist who came to our rez about ten years ago. She was interested in our sacred sites and ceremonies. She wanted to write a book about our spiritual beliefs. She approached me first, because of my leanings into the White Man’s world. I agreed to let her come to the rez, and I offered to introduce her to the right people—Uncle being one them.
“She and I came on a cold night, and Uncle was not feeling well that night, but I didn’t know that. The anthropologist I could sense was kind of scared, driving out in the middle of nowhere with a big Indian, and she knew I was taking her to meet a real authentic medicine man. Not something most White People do comfortably, because they expect to see a wild-eyed, rattle-shaking, smoke-blowing, deerskin- clad crazy man.” He glanced at Uncle. “No offense.”
“There are times that description isn’t too far off,” Uncle said.
Kohana began to roll up his sleeves on his shirt. “When we arrived at Uncle’s place, I could sense that Uncle was not his usual self, but he never complained, and offered us warm pillows to sit on next to his woodstove. The anthropologist started with her questions, and they were all over the map, and I could tell Uncle was having a hard time navigating her questions—probably not helped by his physical state.
“Any rate, he held up his hand at one point, in the middle of one of her questions, and a hush fell over the room for several seconds. Even the fire was quiet. And then we heard this sound of a wolf howling in the distance. It was this beautiful, plaintive cry that just spilled out and found its way to our ears. We were all transfixed listening to it. Uncle kept his arm raised the whole time as if a reminder to remain silent.
“When he put his arm down, the anthropologist gushed about how Uncle had known the wolf was going to howl, and Uncle held up his arm again, and the anthropologist stopped talking, and we all listened, but there was no sound. A full minute passed in complete and somewhat uncomfortable silence. When Uncle put his arm down he spoke. He told the anthropologist that he had listened to her spirit. It had told him the same story that the wolf had.
“She was lonely. She lived in fear. She was tired of being depressed. Her spirit was waiting to be seen. To be rediscovered. To be allowed the chance to love again, but there was a blockage. The anthropologist was not able to release something. It was something related to a man who had mistreated her …a relationship that had begun with such perfect hopes and then slowly descended into mistrust and fear.
“Uncle stood up and gathered the woman’s hands and pulled her to her feet. By this time, the anthropologist was awestruck at what Uncle had said and confirmed in her expression that he was correct. He had taken her hands and folded them over her heart, and told her to close her eyes, and imagine one thing, one simple thing when she was a child: her mother’s touch when she had forgiven her as a child. The anthropologist did as she was instructed, and soon I could see her body trembling. Uncle told her to take this feeling and give it to the man that had wronged her, and to feel as if the wrong, no matter how cruel it had felt at the time, had been resolved.
“After about three minutes, she opened her eyes and she gave Uncle a huge hug. She laughed nonstop that night as we talked unscripted from that point forward. She wrote her book, but the book wasn’t about Lakota spirituality. It was all about the importance of forgiveness in relationships. She had asked Uncle for permission to write about him and what he’d done that night, but Uncle politely declined.
“The book, last time I checked, had sold hundreds of thousands of copies, was translated into about twelve languages, and our anthropologist was writing more books on the subject of the heart virtues.
“About three years later she called me to ask if she could visit Uncle again… as a friend. I told her I was going out there in a few months, and she could come along if she wanted. During that visit she explained to Uncle what had happened to her from that one experience and asked if he knew. Uncle nodded. She asked if he understood how many people her book had touched. He nodded again. She was trying to say how huge the ripple effect had been from her one meeting, and Uncle was downplaying it like it was no big thing, and I think it was kind of bothering the anthropologist. I could sense it, and I knew that Uncle could, too.
“At the end of our meeting, I was getting ready to go, and Uncle took her outside, and they went on a little walk. They were only gone for about thirty minutes, and when she came back she was all different. When we got to the car and started to drive away, I asked her where Uncle had taken her, and she told me that they had gone to a sacred site to thank the Creator for sharing.
“She explained that the whole trip to visit Uncle was designed to show her gratitude to Uncle. To thank him and show how much his actions had meant to her. He had taken her life and put her on a whole new trajectory, but when she had come out to deliver the message, she had felt snubbed by Uncle—not that he was rude; he just didn’t make a big thing about it.
“She told me he had taken her to a site where the wolves gather some nights to howl. He told her that the wolves deserved her gratitude, because they carried the initial message, he’d simply elaborated on it, just as she had done in writing her book. It was the wolves that had brought her story to him.
“She said that Uncle had shown her how to contact them and to send them a prayer of thanks. They, the wolves, were connected to her, and she would understand in time.
“About a year later I got a call from her, and she had told me that she’d used some of her book proceeds to help fund two animal shelters in her city—she lived in Philadelphia at the time, and that these shelters were the way she felt the wolves wanted her to show her gratitude.
“Only a few weeks after her first shelter had opened, someone had turned in a mangy half-wolf street dog, and when she heard of it, she immediately went to the animal shelter and adopted him.
“She loved that half-wolf like no other person probably could, and the wolf was her constant companion. She sent me pictures—beautiful animal, but the reason I tell you this story is so you can see why Uncle cares so deeply… it’s because the universe cares, because the Creator cares. When the universe and the Creator care so deeply, and you see this care, this expression of the Creator’s heart, you’re happy to be a part of it, knowing you’re only that—a part of it.
“People are just too busy, too distracted by the Controller’s world to take notice of how the Creator works through all channels to bring the virtues of the heart to all people, but people need to be focused on the seventh door to see this. That’s all Uncle was saying. It’s easy to care deeply when you see the Creator caring deeply through all things. You have to be able to interpret the behaviors of people through understanding and compassion in order to see this care of the Creator, and then expand it, adding your human touch.”
I had been absorbed in the story. I had even forgotten my thirst and pain.
Uncle touched my knee gently. “You see, Sonvertos must view the world not as a tangled forest owned and operated by the Controllers, but as a place of mirrors that awaken those who pass by. The circumstance that brings people into your world may seem to be one thing, when it is another.”
“What do you mean?”
“The anthropologist came to write a book on Lakota spirituality, and what she really came to do is to help people learn to forgive and build better relationships as a result. I understood this, because her spirit told me. It was like two different people were meeting with me, one, an academic, hoping to make a name for herself, and the other, a deeply spiritual person who wanted to share her heart with humanity and improve our understanding of forgiveness in the world. This is the case with almost everyone you will meet. They are two different people. There’s the one who is dimensional, conditioned by the Controller’s world and seeking to achieve something.
And there is another one, spiritual in nature that is seeking to live their life as an add-on to the Creator’s world of love, understanding, compassion, forgiveness and all of the bounty that lives in the heart-mind system.
“It requires that you look past the surface dimensional to see—”
“Excuse me…” I interrupted, “but what’s a surface dimensional?”
“I call humans who are attentive to the forest… dimensionals. Surface dimensionals being the first layer—the mask’s people wear. It’s this mask that prevents them from seeing the mirror. Surface dimensionals believe they have freedom and knowledge and success and that this will carry them. These things are enough, and all they need to do is to achieve more of these things and live a good life. For some, this is enough, but most, when they come to me, their spirits want more.”
“More what?” I asked.
“More meaning. More profound feelings. A greater sense of connection. More love. More intimacy. More insight into what is happening in their lives—at the deepest levels. They want to yield to the soul that lives inside them, to get out of its way. To let this soul assert itself in their life.”
“And how do they do that?”
Uncle grabbed a small stick and drew a square in the dirt. “This is the surface dimensional—Kohana calls it ego-personality, and I’m sure it has a thousand different names, but it lives as a result of the Controller’s world design. It is a reflection of this.” Uncle drew a larger square around the first square. “These are dimensional distortions.
These are coverings. These obstruct the light.” He pointed to the two squares with the stick. Then he drew a small circle inside the smaller square. “This is the heart.” Then he drew another circle outside of the two squares. “This is the soul.” Uncle then drew a line between the two circles. “This is the imagination. The heart must imagine the soul!
