I came upon the Lakota way, met my brother Orville, and joined his family because of a recurring dream that started for me in 1987. At that time, I already had a spiritual path, a strong community of like-minded friends, and a great lineage of teachers and a wonderful teaching of which I was an important part. Through Maharishi Mahesh Yogi my lineage stretched back to Swami Brahmanda Saraswati, Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math who, from 1941 to 1954, engineered a spiritual renaissance in Northern India, the home of the Vedas.

However, because of the insistence of that dream in 1987, I found my brother Orville and started down a brand new path with him in the 1990's. I asked him to be my teacher, we smoked the Cannunpa (a pipe used to release prayers and seal agreements) and I filled my heart with him as he did with me. He became part of my family as he probably did for you as well, if you spent more than twenty minutes around him.

I never looked back as I started over as a newbie on Orville's road, his way of doing things. I didn't get advanced standing or special treatment because of my past studies, activities, or because I still meditated every day. In fact, I never mentioned my background or knowledge of things Vedic around our ceremonies, even as others held forth on topics such as ashtanga yoga, kundalini, the Vedas, Vedanta, mantras, meditation, puja, Sanskrit, or ayur ved.

I have, however, in the last five years, heard two acknowledged Lakota medicine men hold forth on yoga, meditation and the Vedas in conjunction with their instantiation of the Lakota way. I already felt strongly that there were gaps in Vedic knowledge that the Lakota ceremony and investigative process filled. It was of particular fascination to me that these two men felt Vedic knowledge was a means to fill the gaps they perceived in their Lakota way of doing things.

During my Hanbleceya this year (aka "vision quest"), I was tasked to apply methods and generalized principles as a practitioner of Advaita Vedanta to Orville's Lakota tradition. The result, stripped bare of culture and anthropomorphism, was neither Lakota nor Vedic, but very North American and very non-sectarian.

Up until this Vision Quest, I had held back any discourse on or investigation into matteria vedica because I was concerned about what people would think. I wanted to be regarded as "traditional", which is absurd since I am not and never will be a Lakota person. I also didn't want to diminish my brother's name by mixing the Lakota way with anything else. That made more sense, but you know what? I was chicken.

Let me reframe this for you: I had spent over twenty years learning the most highly-prized techniques and philosophies of Advaita Vedanta, which is the essence of the tribal way of the Aryan people (Indo-Europeans). Within this body of knowledge is a 5,000 year-old, transformative account of their way of life as a free people! They were a nation not unlike the Lakota nation was 200 years ago!! Wouldn't you think the very structure of such knowledge might be relevant to those of us who are serious about discovering the truth of existence and applying it to our lives?

Just to cap it all off, as part of the advaita tradition, I was also deeply steeped in the teaching methods of a 2,500 year line of teachers called Shankaracharyas who were expert in blending and distributing the most esoteric and potent knowledge of life to a vast and diverse population of people. And I was going to keep these time-tested methods to myself because I was afraid? Bear in mind, Shankara's methodology can be applied to any teaching.

At the end of my Hanbleceya, when my Hocoka was coming down and Jay went in to get my Cannunpa, he saw a man, not a chicken. He remarked after we were done: "That's the most like you I've ever seen you!" As usual, he was right. Because of the traditional Lakota method of inquiry, I have since been able to lightly apply the most basic principles of Vedanta philosophy and practice to the lives we live as people in a non Indo-European culture and land. Awacin and Awashi, the building blocks of Atawa, have come forth as a result.