I want to first off again let you readers know that I am not first nation blood. There are many tribes all over the world with similar and sometimes not: ideas, beliefs and practices. Today I am writing about my ideas, beliefs and practices that may be similar or not to those of first nation person/s. My work in creating, crafting, building my medicines is my own. I have had the pleasure of learning from many people who walk in the dreaming realms, shamanistic, medicine/s circles and spirit worlds. I have developed my own work based on the similar things I have learned. Sometimes a teacher has been present and sometimes not and during those times I had to build on what I had already known. I have come to respect traditions when necessary and understand that sometimes I am on my own and I have to make it myself by working with Spirit creating my medicine tool chest that is used for myself, animals, other people, air, sky, wind, plants, trees, soil, earth, buildings, you name it! I just do not want to pretend to be something I am not. I also want you to know that you can create your own medicine/s and how you use them. Building the steps towards what ever medicine you desire to know, by creating friends with it. Pray is always a good tool in letting the living being/s you are working with know you are serious.
Right now I am going to discuss “prayer smoke”. Tobacco is the medium in which the prayer is carried to the creator by spirals of smoke floating up. Tobacco is very serious business maybe one of the most important medicines used. I have tobacco heirloom seeds of several varieties and once I start farming will be planting, growing, harvesting, and becoming friends with, learning about its medicine with a desire to grow my own sacred tobacco for ceremony.
Currently when I buy tobacco I buy it from first nation stores. I buy the organic across the board. I buy high quality I am using it to send a message, a request to Great Spirit or God, I never cheap out on Spirit!
I have been in situations where a serious prayer was seriously needed and had to use a cigar. It was high quality Cuban. There times where sacred is what you make of it. That is what happened here.
I was always against smoking. My mom smoked pretty heavy and it just never felt right to me, made me sick when people in my generation smoked in the house, on planes. It was bad news! When I began working with tobacco it was usually added to smudge. It was usually some group purification event so many people used a pinch of tobacco, prayed into it and added it to the pot of smudge. I also would add lavender, jasmine, rose flowers, other types of herbs into the mix when needed like in a house blessing.
After that I started using a loose leaf tobacco blend for offerings to land, front door areas, water, especially when going into a place like a vast forest I would offer before I stepped onto a the trail. I use the tobacco offerings in a way of saying hello, I am here, I am friendly, I honor you, by the way bless you, I am listening and I come in peace!
Several years ago I was asked to do healing work on a powerful woman. Her name is Heather. She wrote a book about her experience as a white woman married to the last dreamer and chief of the Yaqui nation. The book is called the Queen of Dreams in case you want to read it.
We would begin the session with pray smoke. Setting the intention for the session and calling in Great Spirit. Her prayer was for what she needed from me and my prayer was for the best I could be for her. She taught me that it is okay to use cigarettes for pray smoke. She preferred a smaller cigar type. It is when it all came together for me. Now I use loose leaf, or premade always organic and always in alignment of the highest pray and good. I never smoke, when I smoke I pray.
Mediums all over the world have used smoking as a way to intice spirits from the other worlds into this one for the purpose of communicating. I do not do medium work I have found I can connect in to God and get what I need to know there.
Back in my manic days when I did not understand walking THE PATH and giving everything to it. Back then I was more into trying to control my reality, life that was constantly a mess of drama and chaos. One day up and the next down, an emotional disaster I was even if no one could see it. I think most everyone I knew and this applies to today was so caught up in their drama of trying to force there life into a form they could live with always around money, the fantasy that was projected onto us by mind control experts through TV, food, society that project on to us what we should be, look like, what to wear and if we did so we would fit in and be so unbelievable happy! Bullshit’a’rony big time.
I began the path of my people when I was born into this world. I did not formally accept the path until 23 and it was not until my brain tumor that I fully complied with living fully in a conscious way, a ritual way, a ceremonial way, hour by hour, moment by moment. Eventually it comes down to dying the physical death or the shamanic death, rebirth, resurrection to BE the person I came here to BE. My life is all about my spiritual work which has mostly been emotional work until now. Once I gave in I could finally see what prayer is, means and why I must do it. Before my prayers were all over the place. I asked for things to be the way I wanted them, not in the way they needed to be for the full evolution of my spirit. When I began prayer smoking I had paragraphs of words while I attempted to hold intention and attach them to the smoke in the form of prayer and I wondered why it did not seem to work for me. Why God was some how not listening? Maybe there was no God, no Creator? Everything was way too complicated because that is what I was, complicated.
Steps I take: I find a good energy place outside to sit or stand in. I pick up the object I am using for the pray smoke. If I was given the right to be a pipe carrier and maybe some day I will I would use the sacred pipe putting the tobacco in it carefully with full attention and intention of my prayer. I am using my own rolled cigs or bought ones these days. I will hold the cig to my head focus of intent and then to my heart and focus of intent. Then I call to the 7 directions I hope to write a blog on my experience with the directions in the future stay tuned! Next I light with matches; this is another sacred idea here. Only use that which is or comes from a living being. Matches come from the standing beings which are tress and are consider very sacred and what they bring to light the pray. Then I began pulling in the smoke and intentionalizing it with my intent and blowing it out allowing it to flow to the heavens, most the time carried by the wind. Then when I am done I usually put whatever is left into my sacred jar for keeping. I never leave any medicine even used anywhere. It is mine. I might need it down the road even the smallest bit.
The tobacco plant has the most beautiful flowers that smell out of this world good. The flower is white and looks like a vessel and bees love it, honor it. I have spent a good length of this life to learn to honor tobacco, to trust, to settle down in a uniform intention and pray a prayer worth praying. The more I settle in and trust, the more I find there is only one prayer that is worth praying, worth intent, worth sending a smoke signal to the heavens and is worth it to Great Spirit and that is Thank-you. It is all I send these days, it is a simple intention held during the duration of the pray smoke and it is really the only pray that matters for me these days. I have nothing to prove, to conjure, to do as my ego slips into the unified self and I am everything in this moment as I surrender into being. The Thankfulness that I have reached in my life, some sort of sanity and my need for anything becomes less and less. I am everything and all there is left to do is thank God for my life, for my being when I feel prayer is needed. When I feel the desire come from within to light up my sacred tobacco, hold my intent in my mind, heart and with every cell emotionally aligned into full being producing in harmony the being’ness of thank you. As I send my pray smoke to the Spirit of all things with Thankfulness for creating me.