Interview with Gayatri Lee, PhD

"The Last Ghost Dance" by Brooke Medicine Eagle
Review and Commentary by Gayatri Lee, PhD
Article and Interview, by editor Gayatri Lee, PhD, appeared in the September, 2002 issue of Spirit in the Smokies, a unique, intelligent, inspirational magazine. Printed monthly in Asheville, NC, it features first-person transformational stories, interviews, book reviews and select articles.Visit www.spiritinthesmokies.com You can email Gayatri Lee at editors@spiritinthesmokies.com

Ever wonder why many really ancient sites and teachings have star maps? Or why so many "wisdom keepers" from isolated peoples have come forward in recent times to share their heretofore private wisdom?

Brooke Medicine Eagle has listened to the stories of the wisdom keepers and read interpretations of ancient texts, like Vedic masters who wrote in Sanskrit, perhaps the oldest surviving language. She also has communicated with masters and loved ones who have gone before, and with the expanded intelligence of Nature. From this she has painted a picture that is as compelling as it is believable.

Brooke is a Native American "metis" - mixed native and European blood. She is dedicated to bringing forth an integration of all that she has learned, a vision of great hope and promise. Brooke has been teaching since the 1970s to thousands in North America and Europe. In studying her work, I am very impressed and inspired by this small woman with a big calling.

We have information here from her latest book, The Last Ghost Dance, followed by an interview.

Cosmic Context

Brooke tells us that our galaxy travels around a large central sun over a period of nearly 26,000 years. During this galactic year, we move through the 12 houses of the Zodiac, similar to how we pass through the astrological signs in our yearly movement around our own Sun.

According to her studies, there is a band of high vibrational frequencies that lies across the circular path like a fat pencil on the rim of a bowl. This results in our crossing this band of light energy every 13,000 years - during the galactic Aquarian period on one side, and galactic Leo on the other. Once in the band of energy, all things and beings, including animals and everything physical, rise in consciousness, and a Golden Age occurs.

While in this band, people experience a sense of oneness with all, including the unmanifest, with a focus on the physical. Creativity thus is divinely guided for the good of all/one, and humanity rises to amazing heights. High vibrations prevail and fear is replaced by love. After about 1000 years, the Earth moves out of the energy band.

This Golden Age and advanced cultures continue for centuries, but gradually more and more generations are born who have not experienced it. Eventually, the experience of separation and related fears of lack and death take hold. The elders realized they needed to record their knowledge, to inspire humanity in the coming ages of darkness, and to remind us of eventual re-enlightenment.

We can see why a strong edict to remember the ways of the ancestors, and to honor the oneness of all life, was passed down. Even with this, only the most gifted and disciplined could maintain or temporarily regain an experience of profound connection and expanded awareness.

Perhaps now we also understand why so much reference has been given to astrological phenomena from these ancients. Brought together, the passed-down "myths" generate a more complete cosmic story of our existence. And where are we in this cosmic cycle?

According to Brooke, right at the precipice of the high energy band going into Aquarius. She points to the fact that over the past 150 years, we have increasing signs of ordinary people exhibiting expanded awareness - from Theosophical Society founder Mme. Blavatsky, beginning in the 1870's, to many people today. In recent years we even have "Indigo" children being born with expanded abilities.

Bringing Heaven to Earth

One may ask, why do anything if this Golden era is inevitable? Brooke's guide, White Buffalo Woman, showed her two scenarios. One is of an Earth near death, filled with pollution, greed and inhumanity. The other is a most pristine environment and harmony. Apparently we are at an important choice point of which we will create.

I am reminded of an old Star Trek. Captain James Kirk and his landing party were on a planet where all the buried fears and fantasies of his crew were manifested. What saved the day was when they figured it out and purposely held loving thoughts, even while it appeared they were about to be killed. The fearless, loving thoughts made the villains and monsters disappear. Of course, they had to leave to keep the monsters at bay, or commit to doing the work of releasing those buried energy patterns.

Brooke strongly suggests we do our own emotional shadow work, and focus on our oneness with all that is - celebrating and supporting each other in community. Otherwise, like the crew of the Enterprise, our buried fears continue to manifestt while we stay in that reality. We are conduits of energy and as we choose forgiveness, love and gratitude, we help anchor the new energies into our bodies and surroundings.

We are powerful creators, and with the higher energies, the time lag is less so we can see the connection between our thoughts/emotions and what we manifest. We can take the opportunity now to clear lifetimes of negative energy patterns, and make great strides in becoming conscious co-creators.

I believe this is the leap of consciousness being talked about, and it requires conscious action, utilizing every moment of angst and judgment as an opportunity to clear and return to oneness within. Communicating and co-creating, consciously, with Nature and the unseen realms - with Spirit, is our part in bringing Heaven to Earth. It's a moment to moment choice.

In The Last Ghost Dance, Brooke talks of connecting with the cycles and elements of life, and opening to expanded consciousness. It's how we can remember to do what has seemed like magic. She offers literally 100's of processes and mentions the relevant ideas or research of 100's of authors, all in an engaging style that made it hard to put down the book. It is something I will consult repeatedly over the coming years.

Interview with Brooke Medicine Eagle
by Gayatri Lee, PhD

August, 2002

Editor Gayatri Lee (GL): Tell us about your work.

Brooke Medicine Eagle (BME): I call it the Flower Song Work about helping the Earth to flower. One of the things I emphasize is the importance of developing ceremonies and other such things in our own communities so we remain grounded in our daily lives. As people see how simple it really is, to facilitate ceremony, it gives them confidence in being leaders themselves.

The eight great ceremonies follow the seasons of the year, including Easter, Christmas, the Harvest Festival, etc. It's important that children are included, raising them in a circle of meaningful seasonal ceremonies so they sense the sacredness of the wheel of life.

My gatherings are usually ten days in a 10,000-acre wilderness area in Montana where people go on vision quests, and where they have room to roam in pristine nature. People come from all over the world to create a family in doing this.

I plan to have a group of people who will support me in getting this work out to larger groups in what I call the Spirit Dance. I've been told we can work with thousands of people at a time, like a big rock concert, with music, ceremony and things that will focus and magnify people's energy in a positive way.

GL: So instead of vigils and worldwide meditations, these are people having fun -

BME: - with a very dedicated focus. Another way to speak about them would be "Dedication Dances." The native peoples created their lives through dance and ceremony. Rather than going to work 9 to 5, their work was about visioning - energizing a dream and putting positive energy into something. I do that too.

We had hoped to buy my home ranch for the foundation, and are in the process of raising funds. It's three thousand acres. Now I live on a ranch in the Flathead Valley of Montana seven hours away.

GL: Tell us about your childhood.

BME: For the first 10 years, I lived in the country with only my older brother and parents. I developed deep contact with the Earth. But if I had remained there, I would have been too parochial and unaware. For me to touch that global sense within myself, I had to go away. My parents divorced and we sold the ranch. My mother and I moved to town where I went to high school.

There was an amazing teacher - a musician! One of my gifts deals with sound and vibration. This man encouraged my joining band and chorus. He did plays, shows, dances. We raised money through giving statewide concerts, and recordings with famous artists, with only seventeen students in our class! I sang and danced my way through high school.

This teacher was exceptional. He had the banker, the school superintendent and the local farmer up on stage doing a minstrel show for the community! He literally awakened a town into community through music and participation. When he left for a bigger school during my senior year, the whole town crashed. There was nothing to do; no one picked up his baton. This was the most powerful thing I received there. It was a real lesson about community.

Then I went to the University of Denver in Colorado on full scholarship, only finding out years later that my SAT scores had been extremely high. I got a degree in psychology and mathematics.

GL: An interesting combination!

BME: My name is Daughter of the Rainbow, of the Morning Star Clan, whose helpers are the sun and moon and whose medicine is the Eagle. The sun and moon as helpers indicate a balance of yin and yang in my life - business and art, male and female - two different sides of the coin, working together.

I had always known I would be a healer, so I followed that line. I went on and got my masters degree in counseling and student personnel work from Mankato State University in Minnesota. Then I worked at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis as a resident hall director and doing student personnel work. All of my visions started then.

GL: When did Buffalo Woman come to you?

BME: Probably the most direct experience of her was on my fourth vision quest in Bear Butte, South Dakota, recorded in Buffalo Woman Comes Singing - about women's role in the changing times and my need to come into wholeness. It was a rainbow vision about all the races coming together into a new time.

Embodying Spirit

BME: In 1973, I was given a scholarship to Stanford University for a Ph.D. Instead, I went to the Humanistic Psychology Institute where I met Moshe Feldenkreis. What an amazing awareness he created. There was so much consciousness popping there at that time, it was an amazing place to be!

I started studying with the old medicine woman whom I talk about in Buffalo Woman Comes Singing, and getting credit for it! I also had my first experience with a channeled master. These three master teachers really worked me over! I chose my own uniqueness over a label of some kind. I just went out and did what spirit asked me to do with my life, rather than being a psychologist.

After that, I went on the road and taught what I was learning. I had wonderful body awareness training from Feldenkreis and knew it is important to help people integrate their spirit with their bodies. A new name I was recently given is Walking Star - taking cosmic energies and walking them onto the planet until it becomes real.

GL: Practical spirituality?

BME: Like Sunbear used to say, 'It's got to grow corn.' It's great to have all these principles and ideas, but it has to make a difference here on Earth. This is the Aquarian Age, the time of the nine-pointed star, when we must become conscious co-creators. People are becoming aware of how our unconscious affects what we call to us.

It is very clear to me that we have vibrations - what my brethren teachers call "intent" - which calls to it similar vibrations. This is an absolute law of the universe, and if this vibration includes some kind of trauma, it will vibrate until we get it clear.

The idea is to get clearer and clearer. If people want to know what is buried in the deep dark depths of themselves, look at your life. It isn't mysterious. To own and acknowledge this and transmute it, without blame, is the key. We need to do shadow work on levels deeper than our habituated persona.

Call To Action

GL: Malidoma calls your latest book 'a call to action.' Do you agree?

BME: All of us need to step forward and do the work. The energy is being amplified enormously right now, and any one action can count a thousand times more than before. What we do now is very, very important. We need to blend our energies together in cooperation and wholeness for the new time we are in, and include the unseen realms. There is no way we're going to get where we're going unless we get there together, because together is where we're going!

GL: Are you familiar with Michelle Small Wright and her Perelandra Institute?

BME: I LOVE her work! One of Wright's best statements is her definition of a garden, which is anything that human beings do to make and change their world. It's everything!

I also love Greg Braden's work. He shows how modern quantum physics talks about the quantum hologram - this is the Web of Life - the whole Native American philosophy! I could get aggravated and say, "Excuse me - that's what Native Americans have been talking about for centuries, and then these johnny-come-lately palefaces come talking about a quantum hologram, suddenly making it totally respectable!" Yet scientific confirmation helps us get it - and I think it's really fabulous!

GL: What do you most enjoy?

BME: My first love is being out in the pristine beauty of the land. I also love to sing. Much that I do is about singing the song of life in a joyous and beautiful way, bringing beauty from the sound and vibration into the world. I am also enjoying more opportunities to do ceremony with large numbers of people, where we enter ecstatic dance and lift our energy to energize something positive in the world.

GL: So you've gone full circle. You are the musical community catalyst.

BME: Yes!

GL: Is there anything you'd like to add before we close?

BME: I think we have an enormously powerful journey ahead of us. The exciting part is, it is a journey with a destination that can only be reached with love, good energy, sharing and cooperation. A beautiful world is what we are being asked to create.

This new generation of magical children has been sent by Spirit to help transform our human family in order to renew our world. The call we have is amazing, powerful and beautiful, and I am optimistic.