Conversation

Mary Elizabeth Thunder is an American Indian teacher who travels globally teaching, advocating for human rights, and guiding the spiritual lives of many. This September, Thunder will again be at Big Indian to guide people who do the Vision Quest, a solitary retreat on the side of a mountain. The retreat involves prayer and fasting for a week or more. She will also be giving two public talks. The first will be on Friday, September 8th, at 7:30 p.m., in the Tent in the Catskill Corners complex in Mt Tremper on
Route 28. The second, sponsored by Miriam’s Well, will be held at the Deep Listening Space, 75 Broadway on the Rondout in Kingston, at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, September 22. For information call 688-2169.
Chronogram: Tell me about the teachings that you transmit—where they come from, who they’re for, and what their purpose is.
Mary Thunder: My spiritual teachings come from the universe and my training is from comes from my Native American cultural traditions. But I believe that teachers of any culture, any tradition are trying to show people ways of living with the utmost of joy and celebration, with grace and with a compassionate heart.
My own traditions have taught me that our words and thoughts are of the utmost importance because they literally create our life. And I strive, myself, to walk in cosmic karma.
C: What is “walking in cosmic karma?”
MT: It’s trying to live the best I can, not to create karma for myself, or others. So that may mean I have to ask for forgiveness, to live in truth, and not creating chaos in life.
C: So what does the causeless aspect of it mean? It means you’re not creating new chains of reactions?
MT: For example, if a person has an addiction to alcohol, and that person drinks so much they’re not feeding their family, and they’re abusing their significant other; that’s creating karma. So, even though I may like to go get a drink, I wouldn’t do that because I know the karma would be created.
Instead I just pray as I go by the bar for everyone there, that maybe they don’t create karma that night.
C: And what about people that don’t have subsubstance addictions, but are, perhaps, working in the corporate world and are addicted to the idea of fulfilling the American dream and are creating other kinds of karma?
MT: Our spirituality has to be like a garment that we wear and we walk into any situation. When we go in the sweat lodge, for example, it’s dark. You can’t see each other and you can’t judge each other. So if you come make a prayer and an offering, you contact something real, and then you can take that right into corporate America.
C: What is it that you contact in the darkness of the sweat lodge?
MT: Yourself. Your prayer is for purification of the mind and the body and the soul, so that you can get closer to seeing yourself. You sweat away what isn’t you. And the more we see ourselves, then the more we understand ourselves, then the more we can see and understand others.
C: What is the self that you’re talking about? I think people would say “Well, yeah, I see myself, I look in the mirror every day when I brush my teeth.”
MT: That’s the façade. The self is the voice inside your soul—that which connects you to your soul so you can finish the mission that you came to this life to complete.
C: And what’s the interference that prevents people from hearing “the voice inside?”
MT: It’s all the games we set up for ourselves.
C: Like what?
MT: For example, just recently, one of my former secretaries was very high in Dell corporation, and she had a heart attack and a quadruple bypass. Now, no one wanted her to quit her job. It was good money, it was major status, and so I sat with her, was with her going into the operation, and then I sat with her afterwards and I said, “ What do you want?” You know, contact yourself inside and see what you want. And right after that she called me on the phone and she said “I am quitting my job and this is cool!”
When she looked at what she really wanted, everything around her was just stress. And now she has another job, not as much stress, just as much money, you know, and she’s very happy.
C: So what enables people to make the kinds of decisions that are more true to themselves?
MT: It’s the belief in something bigger than ourselves. You see, human beings tend to be very egotistical. Somewhere they get the that idea they’re God. Aand they become God on earth.You can see that every day. If I’m called into a major corporation, invariably I meet God in that corporation. They are the big people. They tell other people what to do. They have the money. People are scared of them; as in “fear the Lord thy God.”
The truth is none of us are God. There is a God, a universal God, and we’re not God. So if we relax ourselves and realize we’re not God, we don’t have to do it all, and we’re just human beings, and bring ourselves to that level of being which is at one with all human beings on the planet.
C: So you’re talking about a kind of humility.
MT: Mmm-hmm.
C: So we’re not gods, but obviously we have been given the intelligence and the ingenuity to master other forms of life on the planet and we tend to use it to destructive ends because we think we’re gods…
MT: Yes.
C: What would be a more appropriate use of that intelligence and ingenuity?
MT: Everything will change when we quit living outside ourselves; quit looking for confirmation from others, from society. That’s where we get into creating skyscrapers and covering the earth with cement.
We should remember that in our original DNA, we were our own ancestors. And we will be our own descendants. We are creating a future world that we will inhabit.
But our true connection is the Earth. So the more that we take care of ourselves, the more we can take care of the Earth.
C: What is the origin of the teaching that you’ve received and transmitted? What form does it take in your work with others?
MT: I impeccably stay with the ceremony, never changing it. Our ceremonies go back sixty-five thousand years, they say, and my ceremony specifically is where I honor Ar-me-sai, which is the wife of Lo-can-wo-mam, who came and brought us the Sacred Pipe and the Sacred che –noo-fwah. And with that we can right the wrong and we can make prayers for families, for healing, and so I never change the ceremony.
C: So you’re true to the tradition.
MT: Absolutely. The ceremony is an ABC123. And so we do a lot of ceremony.
We are also guides for people as they go on a vision quest, when they sit on a hill–in a sacred space—and, through ceremony, are able to contact that inner voice, contact the spirits, find out answers for their lives.
But I go beyond my own traditions, and I honor the path each person is on. I believe that all the paths that we pray on lead to the Great Mystery or Spirit or God.
I believe the way I teach not only comes from my own position but comes from years that I’ve spent as an alcohol/drug specialist, my training in psychology. But moreso it’s been that I had the ability to meet spiritual leaders all over this world.
Just recently, in ’98, I got to go be at the Spiritual United Nations with the Dalai Lama, and that was like a dream come true. What a great man!
And why didn’t they let this great man come to the United Nations? How was China able to not allow him to come in? I don’t understand that.
But anyway, in France we went to the gathering—it’s called the Spiritual United Nations—where he called together members of traditional religions. We had someone from every religion—an archbishop from the Vatican, we had Muslims, and we had Sufis, voodoo, Buddhists, Hundu. And then there was about twenty or so of us that were indigenous. And we called forth indigenous people from all over the planet, from Africa, from Siberia, Australia and the United States.
And when I got to have a private audience with the Dalai Lama, my question to him was “What is it that you hope to gain by bringing all these people together?” And his quest was that until the spiritual people begin see unity, then we really don’t have much of a chance. All he wanted us to do was to see each other.
What seems like a very simple goal, for a very complex issue. Especially when most of the wars on this planet have been fought over ideologies about God and whose religion is the best.
C: What is a bit of practical advice that you would give to people who have been alienated from their traditional religions for one reason or another or have become enamored with the cult of consumerism?
MT: I would suggest that folks come visit us in Big Indian in upstate New York. If nothing else it gets them out of the city and gets them into the country and into the fresh air. That in itself is healing.
But one thing that I always like to share with people is that, you know, you didn’t create your life in one event. It took you all these years to get as messed up as you are. I’m 56. I’m really messed up, right?
So don’t do it fast. If you are of a culture, connect to the traditional wisdom of that culture; for example, not only am I American Indian, but I am also Irish.
And so not too long ago I went on a trip to Ireland and felt those pieces of myself. Does that make sense? We have to live all of ourselves.
It is particularly difficult for Native Americans. We have been an oppressed people for 500 years. We have a lot of self-concept issues.
So, even though the ceremonies are healing, and I believe it’s part of processes that we are able to share these ceremonies again for help with the people at this time on the planet.
But living your life every day is the true test. We have to do everything as if we were in the ceremony.
C: What will you be doing in Big Indian?
MT: I’ll be there, I’m a teacher in residence. I’ve been going to Big Indian for 18 years. So I just show up and those people that want to come and do Vision Quests come and then every night we have teachings at supper, And we just sit at the table and talk.
C: And any body that is interested is welcome to come and receive teachings?
MT: Sure.
C: Is there anything else you would like to say?
MT: I think it is really important that people realize that this is the year 2000 and we have the ability to make a prayer that goes back 1000 years into our past and we have the ability to make a prayer that goes 1000 years into the future. So watch your thoughts and watch your prayers and make good prayers so we create heaven on Earth instead of the hell on Earth that we are dealing with now.
C: Amen.