Chapter 78 Vision: Tall Trees and Flaming Faces She was camped on Mt Harney’s southern side among tall evergreens with huge red trunks. She was quiet for the entire evening watching the stars come and go and the new crescent moon hanging low in the western sky as the sun started rising in the east making the moon glow red. For hours she watched the colors stretch across the sky and through the trees until the sun was finally visible. Sitting for hours was one way Joe liked to do his “modified sweat lodge ceremony”. “Sometimes,” he would say, “I just don’t want to sweat.” Joe thought a sweat lodge could happen without a lodge. He would sit in the badlands and observe the world sometimes watching shadows move, over the course of a day, from one vantage point. He said, “People who only go into a sweat lodge are missing out on the lodge of this earth, really the lodge of their life.” He would sit outside in hot or cold in the badlands observing natural worlds and his spiritual world since he felt both of these mirrored each other as long as the mind of the observer is in control. Joe would question, “Why is it a sweat lodge is only hot? I also sweat when I am cold. This is an unbalanced arrangement since hot and cold are a part of nature so it is a part of our lives. No one wants to explore the cold because of its associations with dying. I was afraid to even think about the cold, but now that my time is here I see I should have thought on it more than I have.” Joe most enjoyed observing shadows around badland formations. She would ask him where he wanted to go and he would reply, “Right up against the rock.” She would smile since that meant an outside sweat lodge ceremony (how nature distinctly creates each round!) while watching shadows trace over a formation. Joe would then make a multitude of connections—some surprising to her like his comparison of the shadow angles to the four parts of the Johari Window which was a self actualization method of finding out what you know about yourself, what others know about you and what is unknown. Other comparisons were expected like comparing Johari Window position #3 which is the moment when the sun completely illuminates the rock as the moment of spiritual recognition.
Right up Against the Rock: Watching the sun move from east to west across a badland formation and how the shadows and light correspond to knowledge of self and others as seen in the Johari Window. Johari Wind ow:
3-- Known to self
1-- Unknown to
and others-social
self known to others--blind 4--Unknown to self and others-nighttime
2-- Known to self, unknown to others-secret 1. 2. 3. 4.
Fullest shadow 55 degree tilt Less shadow approaching noontime at 40 degree tilt Minimal shadow at 15 degree tilt—finally lit for a momen as sun sets Nighttime, deepest shadows