TNR Happenings, July 22, 2029

Why I Go To The Reservation Year After Year

It is so hard to put into words, but here goes. Everyone reading this will find themselves somewhere in here. It’s a way of checking in with myself on a bi-annual basis. I look forward to it all year. I talk about the stories all year long until my feet touch the Reservation. It’s a check and balance of my life and all the lives that I touch.

1. Promises made and promises kept: Twenty years ago, I stumbled upon the underpinnings of how our society deals with people who have what they want or are somehow in the way. I was naïve as they come and only considered my own needs as I was socially conditioned not to have regard for others in dire straits. Having differing beliefs was a crime back then, just as it is now. Every treaty or legal agreement (526) has been broken or ignored. This reminds me of the false sense of self and the true self, the world of appearance vs the world of essence. I look back at my promises and ask myself if I kept my promises, if I could do better, and which areas need to be cleaned up. Without this annual trek, it’s too easy to lie to ourselves. Before we know it, we have resigned (as opposed to recognize) to endure below-the-line relationships, offices, parenting, marriage, relation to source, etc.
2. Relationships that I treasure and ones that no longer serve me: Talk about the paradox of the tension of opposites. If you are in a relationship tinged with guilt and shame, chances are you are not checking in with yourself on an annual basis. Everything boils down to relationships in practice, marriage, parenting, friends, Tao, health, etc. Many of the relationships we find ourselves in are far from optimal. There is a price to pay to lead a life of purpose, meaning, and passion. Weeding the garden comes to mind continually. Up to and including comes to mind.
3. Resisting change in your life: All of the planning, zoom calls, and endless phone calls, and streams of emails get tossed in the toilet each time we arrive on the Reservation. People used to ask me specific analytical x’s and o’s questions while on the Reservation, and I used to mistakenly answer them as best as I knew at the time. Now I say, you’ll find out. Can you adapt to the conditions at hand or will you be frustrated by the ‘Reservation Hesitation’? The more analytical, controlling, fundamentalist, and letting people do your thinking for you, the heavier you will be on those around you. It will most assuredly show up in lowered Level 2’s/DCME, retention, referral, and results.
4. Saying you will go next year and bring guests: My son is getting married the day before I begin my journey to the Reservation. I will leave my wife behind with a houseful of guests and mayhem all around after the backyard wedding in perfect confidence that it will get done as well as if I was there—exacting specifications spoken here. Going to the Reservation is sacred to me. It’s a connection that thousands have felt over the last 20 years. How long this connection lasts is not based on the sacredness of the connection but rather on the person's internal character.
5. Living my life according to principles, not Facebook likes: Are you a people pleaser, a marshmallow outside the spotlight or your office, or do your kids or spouse have their way with you? A tribal elder on the Fort Peck Reservation who bestowed native American names on several then members told me once that living the Red Path was a richer, more profound way of life that would serve generations to come. Imagine telling a person from a third-world country that you have to pledge allegiance to device addiction to be accepted by mainstream society. Imagine telling the same person that if you see atrocities that don’t affect you or make a profit for you, then they aren’t your problem. Shep, the Fort Peck elder, continued saying that you can’t cut corners and give in to conventionality, laziness, half-assed effort, or not going the extra mile for people. It was like he was looking through me and TNR. A warning or a prophesy?
6. A reminder that we can have profit, but it doesn’t come before people: Humanitarian before greed. A supreme state of gratitude somehow takes you over the moment you step on the Reservation. Weather, good fortune, bass guitarists, drummers, and coincidences always accompany us on the Reservation. No matter what your problems back home are, there are solutions; people on the reservation have it a lot worse and then some. A constant stream of tears accompanied many a plane ride home. These tears were not in pity but in being able to help with no excuses or stories of circumstances that prevent us from helping kids right here in the US living in third-world conditions.

This feeling of humility and gratitude returns me home in a better state than when I left. Giving up the need to have things my way and letting them just be does something for the soul. Some of the nicest words spoken about me came from people who came to the Reservation. People say its like they get a glimpse of the man behind the mystique of Miyagi. We are all one people, regardless of who recognizes this truth.