trippin...

my blood's been acting up again.

don't worry. i'm gonna explain that.

i'm a big believer in symbols (that's all dreams are...and i don't mean in a freudian sense, either. that's why they're important. pay attention to them.), reoccuring themes and things like that. just one of god's ways of trying to tell you something.

recently the issue of understanding the depth and breadth of my native american ancestry has resurfaced.

i know there's some in there. but the strange things are the way i tend to gravitate towards the culture in direct and indirect ways; the way people randomly see it in my face; the sudden desire to see the desert that crept up on me about a year and a half ago.

last night in class we had to meditate, go to a "place" of calm and all that. i decided to go to an island and sit underneath the warm, clear, saltwater. totally immersed in it, smiling at the fish. i've always been connected to water....

but the native flute music they had playing snatched me out & put me in the desert.

hence i'm thinking about this today.

knowing my fear of anything with more than four legs, the desert is probably the last place i need to be. not to mention i'm not big on sand. but i'm being pulled towards it. it was ridiculously strong last year...i shoved it into the back of my mind. but whenever winter comes again....

thing is, your ancestors are like magnets. all of them will pull on you, but some have a stronger hold than others. even in the same family one group of ancestors will speak more clearly to one family member than another.

so while i feel like my resilience, strength, and things like that come from my african ancestors, my spirit, connection to god, nature, and life feels more native (the two cultures, in many ways, aren't too far from each other in those respects. but there does seem to be a sort of intuitive demarcation). i've always felt that in a past life i was some sort of priestess or shaman....i've known for some time that a vision quest of some sort would be a good thing for me.

but my one foot in the "rationality" of western society (no matter how hard i try to analyze and escape it whenever it rears its head) keeps fighting to keep me grounded.

but the more i think about it, the less it feels like "grounding" and more like captivity.

...and that's why the first part of my affirmation is summarized as, "get out, get free".

(see where those damn affirmations will get you?)