“Will we see you at Sundance this year?”

The words took me by surprise. I had not foreseen or sought them. As I stuttered “Uh, well, uh… sure” in response, I had a surge of fear as I knew this wasn’t a question or a request, it was a directive. And the directive was not from this man called Godfrey; it was of the Spirit.

About a month and a half earlier, in 1990, after participating for ten years in various Twelve Step programs based on Alcoholics Anonymous, I noticed something unusual. For the first time in my life, I found myself expressing a desire to have a Teacher who would help ease my spiritual path.

I was never one to follow anyone in my life. I knew “following” wasn’t what it was all about. I had no idea what a Master like that would be like. I just longed to be able to sit at the feet of someone real for a change, who could maybe model what a full relationship with Spirit was like, maybe just talk to me about those things… who knows? The gist of it was that I was tired of having my spirituality so deep within me that it had no form.

Two weeks after expressing that intention in my prayers, I was in a local coffee shop and saw a makeshift sign announcing a “Cannunpa (Cha-nupa) Ceremony,” a Sacred Pipe ceremony by a Lakota family, who was in the city. . With no particular investment, I went to the address, only to find it was at a friend’s house.

I found myself in a circle with about twenty people and quietly watched the proceedings. Curious. The family was called Chips; a mother and her three children, with a couple of assistants. It was all very simple. Older brother Charles led the ceremony after talking a bit about his life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He didn’t say anything startling or shocking, and I guess what I appreciated most was that he seemed so aware and happy to be alive.

He said they were there doing healing ceremonies for the sick, who had been invited or “sponsored” by a local family, with whom they would stay for a month or so. She talked about the Yuwipi ceremony where the Spirit comes through his younger brother, Godfrey, and directs people seeking healing. Through Yuwipi, Spirit tells them what they need to do to get their health back.

Having been involved in conventional medicine for sixteen years and having had my own deeply spiritual experiences with life and death, I was more than just curious; I was determined to be a part of what they had to offer. In my typical way, after we had all prayed and shared the Pipe and most of the attendees had left, I stayed and asked what it would take to be a part of a ceremony. Of course I thought I could jump in right away, and of course what I found out was that such sacred things are not spectator sports.

After a couple of weeks of keeping in touch with my friends and, ashamed as I am about it, pushing to be a part, they told me they would ask the family if I could attend a inipi, better known as a purification or sweat lodge. They told me that there, Godfrey would “know my heart” and only then would they invite me to become more involved. But not.

The Twelve Steps had taught me about surrender, and even with all my enthusiasm, I knew that the best thing to do was to fully open up to what was happening and leave the rest to powers greater than myself. So that’s what I did. After a while they invited me to an Inipi, and then another and another, until I spent four nights in a row. My world was rocked.

I went through what I felt to be the successive stages of the spiritual development of a human being. There was little thought during the ceremony itself. Amidst the ancient songs and drums and prayers and heat and fear and relief and sweat and pain and expansion and contraction and deaths and rebirths, I felt as if my insides were rearranging, every part of me. He had gone from the visceral experience of the first person looking up and perceiving the moon in awe to the expression of humanity he was on that fourth day of ceremony in 1990.

Next: Intention in action.