MITAKUYE OYASIN: The Path with Heart

Everything is One.

    We’ve heard this before. After all, it is written in so many texts both ancient and modern. It has been taught by so many great spiritual teachers, it is probably the single, most espoused spiritual truth of all time.

    But have you actually experienced this oneness? Have you felt AT ONE with all things, ever? Have you actually felt it where it counts: in your core, in your gut and in your heart?
Of course you have.

    Even if you can’t remember it (and many of us don’t) you still have that experience locked away somewhere inside you, because if you didn’t, you quite simply would not – could not, even – be alive.

    It isn’t hard to see why we might have forgotten that we are one with all things – after all the world that surrounds this small, limited entity we call “I” is hardly announcing it with blaring trumpets. To the contrary: what it tells us in a constant stream of a thousand small (but convincing) ways is quite the opposite: it reinforces our belief that we are alone, unique, isolated and quite separate from everything and anybody else, and that we should be careful, smarter, protected, defended, covered, promoted, insured, and armed.
How does that make us feel?
It makes us feel scared.

    So how does the experience of ONENESS make me feel?
Hmm, let me see. I remember feeling ONENESS when I fell in love… that was nice! Then when my little son was born… how odd that I should feel like I knew him! Okay, where else? Ah, way out in the Tasmanian bush, up in the mountains, then, out of the blue, passing a complete stranger in the street and exchanging a meaningful glance, at other times in meditation, in the sweat lodge, on a vision quest… in short, mostly in all those places where I have learnt to seek the experience again and again.
Why do I seek it so much? Because I’m waiting for the day when it will come and stay for good. Because when I’m at ONE my being is filled with love.

   Years ago I came across a Native American saying, a sacred utterance of the Lakota Sioux: the phrase “Mitakuye Oyasin” which translates as “All My Relations.” I began to use this in my sweat lodge because it captured the spirit of the medicine man’s relationship to the world.
But what does it mean?
In English it doesn’t even make grammatical sense; it is not a sentence for there is no subject, no verb.
Rather than try to explain what it means I offer a short meditation that may give you an experience of its meaning. So read this first and then take a minute to do it, allowing yourself to experience its gifts.

   Even as you are reading this, allow your awareness to widen, to expand.
Let yourself become present to your immediate surroundings: the space you are in right now, the people near you or around you, the room, the house, the trees, the lawn, the ants, the magpies, the dogs, the sounds…

Mitakuye Oyasin

    Let your awareness expand around you like a balloon, expand and take in your neighbourhood, the suburb, the whole of Adelaide, the sky, the clouds, the whole of Australia, all the nations on Earth, even the Earth herself…

Mitakuye Oyasin.

   Stretch ever outwards, not with your mind (it can’t do it) but with your heart. Feel the vastness of space, feel the energy of the planets as you race past, and feel the furnace of the sun…

Mitakuye Oyasin.

Beyond the sun, know the sprawl of emptiness between the stars and the stars themselves… feel the galaxy and past that the infinite number of galaxies spread forever, in all directions.

Mitakuye Oyasin.

Hold all of it in your awareness (your heart can take it!). And now know that as far as you have travelled you have not touched upon anything that isn’t your brother or sister. There is nothing that isn’t you!

Open your eyes and gently enquire: how do I feel?
This is the gift of Mitakuye Oyasin.
When we have this experience, fear evaporates spontaneously because what is there to fear if everything is ‘you’. If all that surrounds you is simply more “you”, how can any fear be justified? All that is left for you to do is to love all the diverse manifestations of you.

Mitakuye Oyasin!

Claudio Silvano

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