Be Like Your Place

This deep imagination that I am reading here is a text published by Tyson Yunkaporta in his book Sand Talk. It is a dream walk and can be listened to alone or in a group, ideally laying down on the ground. It guides you to experience the infinite potential of your mind and to "be like your place."

Author: Tyson Yunkaporta

Transcript

Here now,

Picture in your mind a campfire you have seen from a time when you have felt safe and happy and connected.

See the fire,

See it clear,

Have no fear.

See deep into the heart of the hearth,

To the flame in the hot coals.

See it dance,

See the rhythm of it flickering.

Feel the heat on your hands and face.

Rub your hands together,

Make them hot.

Then rest them on your belly just under your navel.

Rest them warm on your belly and feel the heat there.

Imagine you are walking on water and feel the campfire in your mind.

It is a real thing,

This image.

It exists.

But where is it?

Is it in your brain?

No,

It is in your mind.

But where is your mind if not just in your brain?

Imagine for a minute that your mind is not trapped only inside your skull,

That it can move around your body.

See the campfire in your head,

Crackling yellow and red.

Feel the heat of it reach your face.

Now try to move it down that image.

See it move and feel the warmth of it move down your face and past your chin,

Down your neck and to your chest.

See it and feel it move down past your liver,

Down over your stomach to your lower belly area.

Hold the image of the fire right there in your belly.

It is not in your head now.

Your mind is more than your brain and your sight is more than what your eyes provide.

Your mind's eye can see the fire there in your belly.

See it,

Feel it burn.

There is a power there in your belly.

This is your big power.

It has energy,

Warmth and rhythm.

Just like the fire you are seeing here with your mind's eye.

Feel it under your hands burning bright.

Now blow it to burn brighter.

Take a slow deep breath.

Blow it gently out through the lips that are almost closed.

The way you blow on hot coals to make them glow.

See the coals crackle and spark.

Your hands are protecting the fire in your belly.

See it as you breathe in again slowly and blow right into the heart of the earth fire.

Breathe in,

Breathe out.

See the coals glow and the flames flare.

Keep breathing in and out fanning the flames.

The air from this place as it enters your lungs is leaving small pieces of itself behind that enter your blood stream and raise through it to every part of your body.

Those pieces are like sponges mopping up tiny pockets of poison,

Poison left behind from a thousand sad feelings.

Sad memories,

Toxic events and attacks and accidents and damaged lands,

Stolen places,

Stolen things,

Corrupted waters,

Murders and massacres,

Fences and blocks and assaults and insults and injuries and hidden histories.

Let those poisons be mopped up by the little sponges of air in your blood.

Let them be taken in those sponges all through your body and back to your lungs.

Moving back from liquid to air and blowing back out through your mouth and nose.

Blow the badness out.

Let it leave you and disintegrate in the air.

Rise up far above and blow away on the breeze.

The poisonous things leave behind dry areas,

Damaged areas in your body.

Imagine all through your limbs and torso and head all this dry and crackly dead grass,

Snapped branches and grey paper leaves.

All this scrubby trash is blocking your mind from moving freely around your body.

See the fire there in your belly.

Blow again on the hot coals,

Gently seeing them glow and feeling the heat.

Blow again,

Harder this time and see the sparks begin to spiral up from the fire as you blow.

Blow again,

Harder and make the sparks fly further from the flames.

Fluttering upward into the dry dead grasses laying thick under your ribs.

See them land there,

Settle in the feathery fronds,

Smoking softly in wisps that wind up through the itchy snarls of grasses and sticks on layers of leaves.

See the tiny flames flare and climb and spiral and spread and the sparrow hawk swoops in,

Wings in the rhythm of the flames to take one of the smoking sticks in its talons,

Sweeping up inland to drop its moldering in the knotted undergrowth of your chest.

The fire forms a long line burning across your torso,

Dancing the same rhythm as the fire in your belly.

Bright yellow flames that burn briefly and not too hot,

Leaving soft cool ash that crumbles into the soil.

Your flesh nourishes it and will continue to nourish it each day as the dew drops fall and settle and sift inward.

The line of fire spreads upward,

All the scars and injuries and brittle patches left by damage and loss and abuse of being swept into the fire and made into soft charcoal and ash,

Swirling together like brown and white coco-toothed feathers.

Soon it will spread to your throat,

Then your eyes,

Then your ears,

Then your hands.

See the flame and smoke and feel the heat adhered crackling and snapping through your ribs,

Your collarbones,

Your neck and throat,

Chin and mouth,

Cheek and nose,

Eyes,

Forehead and skull,

Ears,

Shoulders,

Arms and elbows,

Forearms and hands,

All burning and the smoke billowing out through your fingers and high into the sky.

Dry,

Damaged areas are all made clean and new and warm and light.

The fire spreads now from your hands,

Past the campfire hearth in your belly,

Flames leaping across from your fingers to your hips,

Burning,

Same way,

In your bones,

In every part of you,

In your cellular memory.

Mind and memory are real things,

Although they can't be touched,

Measured,

Proven or even seen.

They exist,

But not only in your brain.

They extend out to your body,

To the land and your relations.

Your mind is infinite and extends as far as your attention and love can go.

Mind,

Brain,

Body,

Land,

Loved ones,

All these things at the front of your thoughts at once,

They make you heavy.

Your body and spirit sinking,

Thinking,

Heaviness moving deep through you,

Eyelids heavy,

Closed,

Hands heavy on your belly,

Back pressed into the ground,

Skull,

Shoulders,

Feet,

Legs,

All heavy.

The feeling,

The loving in the land and the love in your body are the same thing.

You and the earth,

The same thing now,

So you sink right into it.

Feel yourself going through the floor or ground,

Like it's quicksand,

But transparent.

The land,

You,

Sinking slowly into the dirt or sand beneath you.

There are layers of rock and water down here and you pass through them,

Sifted and cleaned by them as they pass through you,

Calling you as you fall deeper and deeper into the dark.

You are not afraid,

You are not alone.

You begin to feel that loving feeling again.

Suddenly now it is not coming from you,

But coming into you,

Flowing through you and around you.

There is a warmth and a rhythm to it,

A deep rhythm sounding deep,

Deep down.

You sink further,

Faster,

Toward the loving rhythm and the warmth.

You see a soft glow,

Closer and closer,

Warmer and warmer,

The rhythm thicker,

Thicker and older and stronger and deeper than anything else.

It is familiar,

Comforting and so is the glow.

The glow is from a fire,

A hearth fire or a heart fire with hot coals.

You know it,

You've seen it before.

Could it be the sun?

It is the same as the fire in your belly.

The image in your mind from before,

Only it is massive.

Its power is made of the same stuff as the power you carry in your belly,

Your big power.

As you feel the heat and rhythm,

You sense the same inside you,

Beneath your hands,

Throwing and glowing.

It feels like a fish sniffing at a line deep beneath the sea.

It is faint but real at your fingertips,

Stirring deep in your belly.

You know this,

You remember this place,

The earth you came from,

The big mother that bore you,

Your home.

Now that big hearth fire under the earth stokes your own fire,

The fire in your belly replenishing your power,

Filling you up with endless love and energy.

It is clean,

Warm and pure and it lifts you up.

You feel lighter and upward you go.

The glow disappears beneath you but the rhythm and flame remain in your belly.

They propel you up,

Up,

Up,

Up,

Through miles of heat and rock and cold and earth and more rock and sand and water and earth.

Up,

Up,

Up,

Up,

Until you reach the place where your body is sitting or lying there in the world.

But you can't stop,

You keep drifting upward now,

Lighter than burnt leaves on the breeze,

Stirring and rising up,

Up,

Up,

Through any ceilings or tree tops.

Up,

Up,

Through any clouds and into a shining blueness that stretches as far as you can see all around.

Up and up,

Still you rise as the blue becomes deeper,

Richer,

Darker.

Soon it falls away beneath you and you are into a clear black infinity all around.

The earth is far below and you drift on through burning stars.

The seven sisters are here burning bright.

All the hero ancestors are up here,

Sky can watching you,

Blazing that same fire again.

Your rhythm is pulsing out to them,

The air pulsing back,

Light washing through you in waves,

Stoking up that fire inside you again,

Blazing those coals,

Washing you clean and clear.

Can your mind even extend up here to the patterns in the endless night sky?

Can your mind possibly perceive all of these stars,

Shapes,

Gaps,

Forms made by those gaps?

The stories of morality and rich knowledge there,

Thousands of parts all at once.

Can it know every part at once?

What it does hold for sure are the patterns created by all these parts.

It sees objects pulled toward a space and knows what must lie there out of sight.

It is able to see the swirl and stories and positions and angles and times and seasons all at once.

To read the big patterns these show together and therefore make predictions and judgments about land-based events,

Phenomena,

Weather,

Ritual,

The timing of all things in your life throughout each cycle of seasons,

The longer cycles of generations and the even longer cycles of deep time and story.

What would it take to free your mind,

To allow it to see these big patterns again?

All the ancestors appear,

They're left their traces in the earth and waters below as well and you carry those traces within,

Those memories and knowledges and deep,

Deep love.

Those things wait for you below,

They target you,

Begin to draw you down.

You are no longer light but not heavy either.

You are in balance and you return to your place of love below.

You are a point of connection between the earth and sky cap,

So go be that.

You drop,

Plummet through stars and darkness and blue-black and deep blue and light blue and maybe clouds and water drops and tree tops and ceilings and then softly,

Softly,

Softly settle back down,

Down to earth into the feeling of your place and your body.

The rhythm that never stops,

The fire in your belly,

Your power and the infinite potential of your mind.

Again and without.