ALEX WILSON, AN associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan, is part of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, a First Nations tribe living in Northern Canada. For centuries, her tribe has lived along the Saskatchewan River Delta system, in which many lakes and smaller rivers and streams are interlaced and connected. She describes how inhabiting the connections between all things is at the heart of her tradition:
The place specifically where all my family is from, Pamuskatapan, means where you have to get out of the canoe and pull it along [to make it from one stream to the next.] Our family name, our clan, as it is said in English, is Wassenas, which means, “shining light from within.” So there’s an understanding in our lineage that we [and our journey are] connected, or related, to light.
The light within and the pulling along of the canoe offer a useful metaphor for how the soul, the shining light within each of us, is constantly yearning to return to the greater web of interconnected streams that make up life.
Inherently, the way we do this involves letting our light within lead us to paddle our canoe as far as we can, till we have to get out of the canoe and pull it along, so we can find and enter the next stream and paddle a bit farther.
This glide, pull, walk, and carry till we can glide again describes being a spirit in a body in time on Earth, as we traverse and name all the connections in life we can inhabit. Glide, pull, walk, and carry, only to re-enter the stream—this is the path of individuation, the path of spiritual unfolding, all guided by the light within.
Being wholehearted is the chief way that we inhabit as many of the connections in life that we can. We learn as we go, and the reward for being wholehearted, which means holding nothing back, is that we get to experience the Oneness of Things. This is how we glide when fully present in the life-force that flows under everything.
And skilled as it is, the mind is a conduit. Despite how we pride ourselves on what we know, the mind doesn’t contain anything. When we think of it as a container, we struggle to fill it or to keep it from overflowing. We struggle to track what it contains and imagine ourselves as keepers of all that it contains. But when we can accept that the mind at best mirrors the stream of life, then we’re touched and informed by all that moves through us and humbled to be a grateful passenger. This is how we pull ourselves along in the stream of life.
Then, when brave enough to let in what is before us, the vastness of life refreshes our consciousness. In such moments, we’re carriers of all that is essential. As the Zen teacher Dōgen says, we are like a leaf that carries a drop of dew in which the Universe is reflected. All of life is reflected in that one clear drop. Each time we wake, we go clear like that single drop. We could say that joy is the sensation of being a clear, lighted drop, and that truth is what we know when clear and lighted. This is how we walk, reflect, and carry our spirit through the world.
Repeatedly, we look for how to connect all things, just as members of the Opaskwayak tribe glide, pull, walk, and carry their canoes from stream to connected stream. In such moments, we do the work of spiritual portage, whereby we carry our canoe of a life from one stream to the next, crossing whatever marsh or forest lies between.
This is how life unfolds. Underground, the streams all connect. But living on Earth, we paddle as far as we can and then must carry our life to the next small shore. Glide, pull, walk, and carry. Onward we go, with no real destination, only an inborn yearning to connect all the streams.
We’re here to traverse and name all the connections in life we can inhabit.