My Favorite and Best Teacher!

 

Here is a little bit of my spiritual life adventure. I am sharing about a teacher who is very inspiring. She has inspired me and thousands of others, and still does! We need, in our life, to have good examples of people we respect and we admire for who they are or what they do. Could be anyone, a family member, a friend, a teacher, nature, or an animal companion. Everything inspires us, some more than others, but all make a difference and this is how we grow. We help each other by sharing ourselves.

....When I think of my life now I can’t help realizing the progress that I have made in many facets of my life. 

When I met grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha (grandmother is a term of respect and endearment in the native community, for a special teacher), on the outside everything looked great, but inwardly it was far from being the same. I was always interested in understanding who I was and what I was doing here. So I did quite a bit of reading on psychological, metaphysical and scientific studies, and took several courses. All this to be able to develop myself more and be able to really see and hear and connect with who I was. It still did not quite help fill up that hole, that emptiness that was inside. God was always with me, but I was not always with God. When I discovered yoga and the Buddhist culture (not a religion – more a way to be aware and able to control your mind) it helped me. I remember thinking “Finally people talking a language that my spirit responds to”.  I even became a yoga teacher in order be able to relax enough to at least feel life more through my senses, which were quite numb. Being born in our society is not always an easy task and like everyone else I had a lot of wounds and psychological handicaps that I was not aware of or had been very successful at burying deeply inside.

At one point one of our mutual friends which was a part of our meditation group, talked about how her sister had met this very interesting lady called Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha. She explained about some of exciting workshops that her sister had taken with her.

We organized to meet “Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha” and we were enough in numbers for her to come to Montreal and do a week-end workshop for us. These special two days shared with Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha were most enlightening.  I never had met before someone who was so transparent and very to the point. All her teachings were very simple and very logical and it was steering something inside, a truth, something I could not deny.  As a motivational speaker, Grandmother Pa'Ris'Ha uses science also (Quantum physics) so we can have a bigger picture. When she teaches, you know, you can tell that it has all been done, practiced, experienced, and lived.  Her teachings are true gems of wisdom, not just words.  She lives and applies in her everyday life every bit of what she teaches you. She walks her talk. This is what gives her so much authority.

Today I can truly say that I have never met anybody that gives so much of themselves. She is constantly giving. She is the most generous and loving person I have ever met. She has helped and is constantly helping a huge amount of people and making a huge difference in their life. Either by giving generously and endlessly so they could be educated or fed, either by sharing all the tools that she acquired (she’s very well educated in many fields of the mind and the spirit) or being there when there is a need, distributing blankets, food and so much more. 

Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha is a teacher of the heart (http://parishas-world.com) and she helps you understand yourself better as a growing human being, by sharing her love, values and the beauty of her spiritual upbringing which is very inspiring. “We are spirits learning to be humans” and not the opposite as she says. But in the same time she will teach you scientifically about the brain and its functions so you have a broader picture of who you are. If there is any problem somewhere, you better be sure that she will be there helping in any way she can. Grandmother is very modest about all that she does.

She mostly wants to help people develop their full potential so they can live a full life and in return be able to make a difference. She is a natural healer and her presence is very soothing, comforting and uplifting.   Pa’Ris’Ha is real and well balanced. She is an extremely intelligent and very polished business woman and very successful at it, and always from the heart. The wonderful part about her is that she will share all her successes with you and teach you all you need to know to do the same. But most of all, she is always helping people in need, no matter what it take, physically, emotionally, spiritually. She is a woman that sincerely wants the world to be a better place, and she does not only talk about it, she acts upon it. She is a blessing to us all.  

In all the years that I have studied with Grandmother, I have acquired tools that have truly helped me go through some very intense life’s crises and come out of it better than I was.  Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha teaches you to be strong and walk on your own two feet, materially as well as emotionally. If she sees that you start depending too much on her, she disappears. The term “Grandmother” says it all.  As I mentioned earlier, it is an endearing way to describe someone who you trust and respect and who will help you grow and develop your full potential. Just watching her is a teaching. If I can achieve even a parcel of what she’s achieving spiritually and materially on a regular basis, I can say that I would be very fulfilled and satisfied. It is important to have a person like Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha in your life. It is the best incentive to succeed that you’ll ever have, because she truly is with you every step of the way.  She really embodies Love, Compassion and Generosity.

The good part is that we are all teachers and students. We all matter and have a unique message to share with the world. If we don’t, who will?  This could be simply being who you are. Simplicity is the way of life. Nature in its beauty and deeply healing energy, is very simple. No pretense, no fear, just a constant display of love and beauty. 

Trust yourself, love and appreciate who you are. You are as unique as your fingerprints! 

By BM

GRANDMOTHER PA’RIS’HA AND THE AMERICAN DREAM OF COMMUNITY

Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha. Where should I begin to tell about my wonderful, beloved mentor and friend, Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha and the American Dream? There is indeed, so much to tell!

First, the stage needs to be set so I will tell you about how I met Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha. I hope this story will jostle something in your soul and even sound a bit familiar.  

THE BIG QUESTIONS

Spirituality has been the central focus of my life, especially since my college days. After a dramatic experience in those early years in which my heart began to burn with love, (a whole important story in itself) — I was hooked on acquiring a metaphysical understanding of the phenomena called “LOVE”. I dove into philosophy, religion and psychology studies—and opened myself to learning about LOVE —not to finding a “good job”.  I figured that if I got the big questions answered, my life would just naturally fall correctly into place.

Also, of course, I wanted to “fall in love” but I will hold that for another time.

My soul, my spirit, my mind (however you want to say it) also hungered to understand the “meaning and purpose of life!” I was so curious! I asked myself the really BIG questions! I wanted to know if there was really life after death! What did the great sages and the world’s religious traditions — East and West — and their texts say about life after death? What did psychologists say about people who had “Near Death Experiences?  What were the world’s current spiritual leaders saying about the meaning of life?

I “majored” in the study of Religion and received my BA diploma from a prestigious Ivy League college. It had a small religion department, but at least it had one.

These were the good old “hippie” days when lots of people—both young and old— were asking similar questions.   Many were taking a good look around and saw that the “rat race” was not the American Dream it was made out to be.  The young especially looked at our parents to see if they were happy.  So many were not!!! Lo and behold they were mired in a nine to five regime and stuck in a lifetime of toil to pay their houses off and for their kid's college. What had become of the American Dream?  Our parents were on a treadmill. Where was the world headed? (Surely it has not changed very much since then….and may be worse?!)

 

I grew up in Pennsylvania and had an aunt who lived in the Pacific Northwest. While in my early 20’s she took me to see a “homestead” on the beautiful coast of British Columbia. A Californian art professor had retired early and gone “back to the land.” He had taken his wife and family to a tiny little inlet, built a log cabin and planted a garden. They grew vegetables and canned them. They fished. The kids played in the delicious clean waters of their private little bay and learned to do everything their parents were doing to “live off the land.” That was their home-school.  No public school for them! And you could play your guitar and read books at night by the light of the fire, cozy and warm. Maybe you could actually use an electric light jerry-rigged to a car battery for power.

This was a revelation to me! OH!  You can make your way through life living on a small plot of land out in nature? You can be surrounded by fresh air and sunshine while you are living and working side by side with your beloved family??? You can take your boat out on the waters and fish and smoke the fish as you prepare for the coming winter?

HOLY HOMESTEAD!

THAT was the life for me!

Does this, pray tell, sound like something a Native American might know a bit about?  How about a woman such as Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha who was raised by her own Cherokee Grandmother in the hills of southern Appalachia?  Might she be well versed in the ways of walking a Beauty Path on the earth? Indeed!

If they teach about the 1960’s and early 1970’s in history classes these days, (and I have my doubts) you may know these were a time when the Environmental movement, Civil Rights movement, Women’s Liberation, and other good causes were shaking the nation, along with WAR, of course; the Viet Nam War. We had a great anti-war movement, but not so great that it did not prevent our troops from coming home broken and traumatized. And then we young people grew up and went back, for the most part, to our parents’ old ways.  Get a Job.  Buy a House. Go into debt. Sound familiar? Only it’s not just the parents who are in debt now…their children’s lives are plagued by college debt, etc. now too. And unemployment.

And in the meantime… our jobs were sent to China and it does not look so good for the “American Dream” ...unless you creatively reshape that dream somewhat!

At the age of about 26, I DID “fall in love” and a major factor in cementing my relationship with my Beloved was our common love of the earth and Mother Nature.

I told my Beloved about my visit to the British Columbian homestead. He was sold, lock, stock and barrel!

We scrimped and saved out money. He eventually quit his job as a high school teacher and I quit mine as a writer for a small newspaper outfit. Land was cheap in West Virginia and we were able to scrape together $13,000. In 1978, we were able to buy 54 acres of forested hillsides and a flat, cleared “hollow”. We lived our first six years there in a stone root cellar with a tin roof, 15’ X 15’. We lived without electricity (except a car battery) and pulled our water with a bucket from a cool, clean stone lined hand-dug well. We worked little jobs on and off to make ends meet and ate peanut butter and jelly as our mainstay (with homemade bread, of course.)

We had chickens and a garden and to our surprise we met quite a few “transplants” like ourselves. We had a little group of friends both “transplants” and locals who shared in our enthusiasm for going “back to the land.” And the local older folk were downright friendly and helpful and somewhat amused at this culture of hippie homesteaders. (Just to keep the record straight….my Beloved and I did not “do drugs”.)

Admittedly, we eventually became more traditional and designed and built a “dream house” with real electricity and many of the modern conveniences, though we always heated the house with wood. My Beloved went back to teaching and we raised two sons. I homeschooled for a while, then the boys went to public school where if nothing else, they learned the ways of the world. Their father, my Beloved, was a well-respected history and psychology teacher and coached the wrestling team. My family’s high school years were great, and often I went to the high school to substitute teach.

But as the years went by, and my dearly Beloved spent much of his time at the school, I began to feel a discontent, a restlessness. Our dream had changed. We no longer worked side by side as we used to. My children made friends with kids their age and were often in town with them when not in school. (It was a long drive to the school and town.) I became the sole gardener and caretaker—the person that baked the bread and kept the home fires burning.

At the same time, during the years I WAS at home in the woods homeschooling, my spiritually questioning mind had led me to read books that gave various “takes” on Native American spirituality, or to say it another way—the “Medicine Path.”

Back in my college years, I had read a very popular book titled A Separate Reality, written by an anthropology graduate student named Carlos Castaneda. As Amazon summarizes: In 1961, a young anthropologist subjected himself to an extraordinary apprenticeship with Yaqui Indian spiritual leader don Juan Matus to bring back a fascinating glimpse of a Yaqui Indian's world of "non-ordinary reality" and the difficult and dangerous road a man must travel to become "a man of knowledge." Yet on the brink of that world, challenging to all that we believe, he drew back. Then in 1968, Carlos Castaneda returned to Mexico, to don Juan and his hallucinogenic drugs, and to a world of experience no man from our Western civilization had ever entered before.

During the years I was in West Virginia, Castaneda wrote many more books telling of his foray, his explorations and experiences into a “separate reality.”  I had had my own experiences with psychedelics in college and had determined that was not for me--even though I certainly learned things from those experiences. But I was intrigued by Castaneda’s tales. My appetite for Native American teachings and phenomena such as mystical visions was whetted.

Now and then, a friend would lend me a book or a series of books and the book, Medicine Woman, by Lynn Andrews, was one of these. She described her “apprenticeship” with a Cree Medicine Woman and I was intrigued. As I read each book in the series, I found myself shaking the book and exclaiming to the air: “I have to find a Medicine Woman”!

 

West Virginia is a beautiful state filled with hidden treasures and surprises.  About an hour from my home is—would you believe it—a Krishna community. Founded by young seekers during the hippie era, they had embraced the teachings of a Hindu holy man named A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada who taught in the U.S.  His followers were often seen (and heard) on big city streets or in airports chanting “Hare Krishna”. To quote the Wikipedia, this religious organization holds core beliefs that are based on Hindu scriptures, particularly the Bhagavad Gita, and the Bhag Purana, and the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition which has had adherents in India since the late 15th century and American and European devotees since the early 1900’s.

New Vrindaban, as the community is called, sports an awe-inspiring home built for Prabhupada, but he died before he was able to reside there. This “Palace of Gold” is open to the public for tours.  The campus has stunning rose gardens, a temple and a lake where 30-foot-tall statues of Krishna and his consort, Radha, stand (if they are still there) in a paradisiacal setting.

In the mid 1990’s, the community reached out to other spiritual traditions and teachers and presented several Interfaith conferences. These were delightful gatherings of all manner of spiritual oriented folks! I heard through the grapevine that a “real” medicine woman would be speaking at a coming conference. This is where I met my Beloved Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha!

It was love at first sight-or perhaps I should say—at first hearing. When Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha did her presentation, she sang what she calls her “Heart Song” which is in the Cherokee language. I was, as they say, “blown away”! I had found my Medicine Woman! I did not understand what she sang but it pierced my soul in an inexpressible way. Eventually I learned it was a song that called to the four directions and gatekeepers of the Cherokee Medicine Wheel.

I was in the front row of chairs during Grandmother’s presentation and I sat eager with anticipation, waiting for her to speak. And during her talk, she walked across the space in front of my seat and stopped right in front of me. She smiled and reached out and touched my cheek with her finger. Again, I was “blown away.”

I learned that day that Grandmother lived in Cleveland, Ohio, as did many of others in her Circle. I wondered when I would ever be able to see her again. I was “blown away” again—overjoyed to learn that they were building a retreat center and educational facility a few hours south of Cleveland, across the river from West Virginia, just about two hours from my home. OMG! I was thrilled! It was called Friendship Village. I subsequently spent many a day there, helping with building projects, learning ceremony, doing Vision Quests, and sitting up all hours of the night, captivated by Grandmother Pa'Ris'Ha's oral teachings; laughing and drumming and chanting and experiencing the ways of living in a small community, in a Circle of friends.

When I look back now at the beginning of my association with the Circle, I realize that one of my fondest wishes, my American Dream, was to live in a manner that put me close to the land. My dream came true, partially, in my time in West Virginia, until I was essentially left alone on my hillside while my husband and sons were drawn more and more into the mainstream of life, and I was left behind.

The lesson I have learned is that it is sustainable communities or Circles that we need here in America.  To be a truly strong society, we stand in need of living close to the land with love and respect. And we stand in need of Circles—of “intentional” communities with families and friends that are large enough and who share common productive activities that are viable enough to continue even while people come and go and seek their own destinies.

I owe so much to Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha for providing me with the extraordinary experience of living and working in a small community, Friendship Village, where people learned and worked together, sharing common goals. Not too large, not to small. Not a town. Not a city. Not a family farm--but a unique self-governing community of People who embraced common principles and ethics and shared a beautiful American Dream! I like to imagine that Friendship Village provides a kind of prototype for the future of America.

BDW

A Gift of Support

 

It still seems like it was just yesterday. Our first meeting was one of getting to know each other. I needed help, desperately needed someone or something to help. I had sunk down pretty low and fortunately found my way to Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha by way of a mutual friend. It took me a year to place the call to her to make an appointment with her for self-image coaching. I procrastinated yes, for a full year before I got the courage to call her and say I’d like to meet with you. Even in the state I was in, I put it off. Finally, I found my way to Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha and my life was changed forever! In our time together I shared with her that I had thought about going to school to become a Massage Therapist. I had recently gotten a massage and decided that I had to make sure everyone knew how wonderful massages felt!

I also shared that thought with the Licensed Massage Therapist who gave me my first massage, that I thought I might be interested in doing this myself. The therapist told me to really give it some thought. Being of small stature of 4’11” it could be challenging, and did I think I’d be strong enough physically to handle the work. Then she brought up that I am a Type 1 diabetic, and how that could also influence my ability to do massages. I thought I’d get more support from her and I don’t think she was trying to dissuade me. I believe she was just wanting me to be looking at all aspects of the field.

As was typical for me I talked about it but didn’t put any real energy into finding out about any local schools that offered massage therapy. Understand that this was 1984 and there weren’t many trade schools or colleges at that time that offered such a course. As a matter of fact, there were two. One in Akron, Ohio and one in Columbus, Ohio.  It was Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha that brought all the information about them to my attention. She asked me if I was really willing to let what somebody said to me take away my dream?

These cities, for me, were light years away. Technically the school in Akron was approximately 35 miles away. I can tell you I didn’t stray far from my home. As a young woman in my 20’s, the distance to Akron seemed much too far away to go to school and Columbus was simply out of the question for me. 

As we would discuss the prospect of me attending one of these schools, I’m pretty sure I came up with every reason and excuse I could find as to why it just wouldn’t work. Too far away, too much money, I don’t want to do it by myself and on and on I went. I kept up with my sessions with Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha and the topic didn’t come up again for a while. 

After one of our sessions, she asked what I had planned for the upcoming Saturday, and I had nothing planned. She said we were going for a ride she wanted to show me something. Not too far into the drive she shared we were going to The Ohio College of Massotherapy in Akron to check out their curriculum and all they had to offer. It didn’t take long for us to take a liking to the people there. And WE SIGNED UP, yes both of us!

If the magnitude of this action on Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha’s part isn’t apparent to you, let me point out a few things. 

First of all, she had a growing young family in her care as well as other important responsibilities on her plate. Our relationship was fairly new and budding, not one of those where we knew each other for years and years and we were best of friends. And yet she went out of her way to find out the name of and the location of the school and brought me there AND signed up with me!! Even though she told me she was interested in learning about massage therapy I don’t feel it was something she actually needed in her life. Not to mention the investment of time and money to do this. I was amazed but truthfully Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha just made it seem like it was just no big deal. Like that’s how you get things done.  I did promise that I would drive myself to the school. LOL It was time to grow up and do something for myself!! I was scared but I was really excited to have this new venture going on in my life. Something to look forward to. Without Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha I would not have ever taken the leap to do this and she knew it. She did this for me! With her support and guidance and gentle push I made it through the course and the two weekend programs required to graduate.  

Due to personal reasons Grandmother was unable to complete the course, but she never stopped being a guide, a strong supporter; that person I could just call to ask questions or share any doubts I might have. My Anatomy and Physiology teacher made sure I was aware of his belief that I was in a place that I wasn’t going to pass the State Boards. She just told me to do my best and I’d make it regardless of his opinion. Just Do It again are you going to let someone else determine your outcome?  I passed the state medical board test in December of 1985 and believe it or not, did better on the anatomy and physiology portion than on the massage practical test!  

To this day my heart over flows with gratitude and love for Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha for what transpired that year. I have enjoyed the gift of being a Licensed Massage Therapist for many many years. While I did the work to get through it, that road would have never been traveled down were it not for her Gift of Support to me. Wado and always much love to you Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha!

By BF