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IN THE SHAMANIC PATHWAY CALLED LIGHTNING DANCE

Many Knives describes a profound experience at the age of ten, that opened his eyes to worlds beyond the one of consensus reality. He saw his Grandmother sitting in a car, beside his Grandfather, at the time that she was in the hospital dying. The incident confused him, until many years later when his Grandmother appeared in Dreamtime and told him that he had seen her spirit body the day she died.

Many Knives describes himself as a black Choctaw. His Indian name, Bvshpolawa means Many Knives, in Choctaw. He explains that a knife is a tool, and he has many tools. His father was Blackfoot, African and Cherokee, but his mother was Choctaw, and he is aligned with that tribe.

As a Lightning Dancer, you see the body as a piece of equipment that gives you experiences. The practice of the Lightning Dancer includes working with the shields (or defenses), swords, body wheels, seven bodies, ten eyes, and five ears. As a Lightning Dancer, Many Knives knows how to reconfigure and recalibrate this equipment to rewrite ones personal histories. It involves modulating your will and changing your intention. You learn to move in the moment and respond to life instead of reacting. Once you learn to manipulate your equipment, you can go out of body.

In talking to Many Knives, I was interested in how someone learning shamanic powers can avoid misusing their knowledge—since all too often, ‘power corrupts.’ Many Knives explained that "the way to prevent that, is to remind people of the windigo, the shadow self. It grows as the shedah, the physical body grows. The hokshedah is the higher self, (the awakened shedah, or physical body). The Great Mystery speaks to us through our hokshedah. We all have one, as we are all part of Creator's stuff. The hokshedah is that cosmic thread in our belief system. The windigo is the shadow self, the ego that grows proportional to the hokshedah. As the light body grows, the Ego grows too."

Many Knives describes how the ego grows more cunning and is more difficult to detect in decision-making, as an individual grows, since enlightenment is not one-sided. Although the ego is necessary for structuring our mindset and assumptions, it can’t be in total control, or we’ll become unbalanced.

Our realities are held together by agreements, he explains, and if we all agree that that four legs and a flat top constitute a table, then those that buy into this agreement will all see a table. "I have worked with quite a few autistic individuals, and it was revealed to me that they do not buy into the consensus agreement for realities, but they are perfectly healthy in their own world of agreements. They are not the unhealthy minded individuals modern medicine wants to label them as, they just have a different mindset as their agreements are not the norm, since there is no norm per sec."

I also wanted to know Many Knives’ view on the correct use of shamanic power, when someone asks for a healing. He said, "There are two ways to approach this. The more passive medicine person will make prayers and let Spirit run its course, feeling that if it wills the healing, it will be, if not, so be it too. The shaman, on the other hand, sees the request as an invitation to enter the person's space and redesign the energy—but only for the highest good. One can not go into another's "wheel" (personal space) and play god for selfish gains—this is bad medicine, or black art. This is because everything we do affects everything else on many levels. Sometimes people need to suffer to get their lessons. They call in their spirit's evolution in this manner and correcting this imbalance would be the worst choice. Sometimes to manipulate another's space is enlightenment on their behalf, as we get out of balance to move to higher levels of awakening. It’s so relative.

One could manipulate another's wheel for whatever reasons, but this is spiritual abuse with heavy repercussions—this is what we call energy vampires. On a grand scale, our lives are rituals with everything we exchange energy with, so every action should be with the intent to elevate the world around us."

Although Many Knives has had many spirit teachers, the greatest was a blind wolf that had no ears. "I asked him, ‘Why do you have no ears?’ He said, ‘Because one day, society will lose their ears.’ I did not understand that. I asked, ‘Why do you have no eyes.’ He said, ‘Because one day, society will have no eyes. We will exist by feeling and feeling tone and communicating.’ Then as that vision grew, I understood that one day, we will not have our ears, which is the telephone. One day we will not have our eyes, which are our TVs and computers. We’ll live in a more natural state again."

Many Knives lives away from cities, and communes daily with the animals that live on his land. For him, "Cities are only appearances of power, nature represents true power. In the city, power is proportional to one's status—it can be purchased and bartered for. In nature lies the true power.

The elements hold down the four directions. These being air, water, fire, and earth, and the axle is Spirit, the great mystery they revolve around. Regardless of one's stature in the city, in nature All men exist equally. So, to a great extent, I find it most beneficial for me to go directly to the source instead of the by-product."

His visions occur first in the great Dreamtime, the unconscious time when one is at rest. In his forthcoming book, The Shore Within, he writes: "The Dreamtime is the space where we dance as close to Spirit as when we birthed, for here the self stays consistent in being "it," and the changes are the manifestations of the theatre around it. It is the waking, conscious world that we loose our personal powers, for here we do the shifting to accommodate and appease the consensus.

The Dreamtime is that sacred space where all events happen first, then move through the realms to our physical world…though society would have us see things differently." To live in an awakened state, he explains, "is simply a matter of transferring the vision of the Great Dreamtime to the dream, or waking state. This is honoring the vision and doing the work of great Spirit."