The Ancestors are Watching
Act 1
Scene 1: The shamans arrive
To the sound of ancient music, seven shamans of different races come into the space and sit in a semi-circle around an altar.
Shaman 1 enters last and pours water into a vessel.
Scene 2: The sharing of visions
Shaman 1:
All of us have been having the same visions. All of us have heard the wind whisper to us the story, the calamity, that has already started to unfold. We have gathered from different times and places to send help to our descendants.
Shaman 2
Black magic and sorcery have become common in our land. I foresee a future in which powerful magicians dominate the will of others. Their words inflame millions to hate, lust, envy, and evil.
Shaman 3
Where I come from, people have started taming animals and forcing plants to grow where they do not want to grow. I foresee endless rows of enslaved plants in the dead earth as far as the eye can see. I foresee animals in dark cages strangers to the sun.
Shaman 4
My tribe is forgetting to reconnect with the spirits of the land. I foresee a day when humans forget she is alive. They pull out the bones and blood of the earth and cover her in scars.
Shaman 5
In my place, each person no longer knows every skill. We specialize. I foresee a time when people become slaves of tools they do not understand.
Shaman 6
In our land some people believe themselves better than the rest. I see a day when people harden their hearts to each other. Some feast while others starve. The many serve while the few rule. And none are happy.
Shaman 7
Where I live, we are getting better and better at killing each other. I foresee a future when the killing knows no limit.
Shaman 1: I foresee a day where we lose our dreams.
Shaman 2: A day when we think we are alone.
Shaman 3: A day when we are lost in a hell of our own making.
Shaman 4: A day when we have poisoned the water.
Shaman 5: A day when the stars disappear.
Shaman 6: A day when people hate being alive.
Shaman 7: A day when people hate their own bodies.
Shaman 1: A day when we don’t know what we have lost.
Shaman 2: A day when we have forgotten,
Shaman 3: Forgotten
Shaman 4: Forgotten
Shaman 5: Forgotten
All in unison: Forgotten, forgotten, forgotten…
They all into silence.
Scene 3: A decision is reached
Shaman 1: My friends, What shall we do? Can we stop these visions from coming true?
Shaman 2: No, it is unstoppable. It is already too late.
Shaman 3: Besides, it is their choice.
Shaman 4: Our choice.
Shaman 5: Who knows what purpose it has.
Shaman 6: What wonders will we find in this journey of separation?
Shaman 7: Yes, it is humanity’s destiny. God and nature have equipped us for it.
Shaman 2: But there is danger. I know it. I feel it.
Shaman 5: So do I.
Shaman 6: And I.
Shaman 2: We must act on what we see.
Shaman 3: When they have forgotten, how will they remember?
Shaman 4: I’m afraid our descendants will stay lost. They will create wonders and never use them to serve life. They will go deeper and deeper into separation and never find their way out again.
Shaman 1: How can we help them? How can we reach hundreds of generations into the future? How do we communicate across such a span of time?
Shaman 7: We know ways.
Shaman 2: We too know ways.
Shaman 1: Let us not delay. We know what to do. Find others who share our vision and organize them to send help to the future. Let us check back in again in ten thousands years, in the place outside of lifetimes, to share and coordinate and celebrate what we have done.
Shaman 1 anoints each on the forehead with the water, and each departs in turn.
Act 2
The shamans come back into the circle. Shaman 1 enters last and pours water into a vessel.
Shaman 1: Brothers and sisters, tell us what you have done to prepare the people for the age of Separation.
Shaman 2: My people founded wisdom schools around the world, to carry the knowledge of how to be human into the future. They passed it through lineages of Sufis and sages, shamans and tantricas, Zen masters and Taoist adepts, Dogon mystics and Jewish Kabalists, Christian gnostics and Hindu yogis, and esoteric priests in every culture. They preserved the thread of knowledge and mastery until conditions became ripe for it to blossom back into mass consciousness. That time is now.
Shaman 3: My people created sacred stories and seeded them into every culture in the world. Each encodes deep, liberating knowledge. Sometimes we hid the wisdom in fairy tales for children, sometimes in myths and legends. We issued forth as storytellers around the world. Eventually our stories found their way into mass culture. They bypass the rational mind to awaken a new and ancient consciousness.
Shaman 4: My people dispersed to remote areas of earth where they would be undisturbed until the crucial moment when the world would rediscover them and be ready to receive the knowledge they had preserved. They call them “the indigenous.”
Shaman 5: My people entered into deep prayer with the plant beings, animal beings, and mineral beings to persuade them to help us. They sent sacred medicines into the world. The people in Separation will discover them in the darkest hour, each opening a gateway to the next. The medicines will liberate imprisoned minds and heal souls of generations or trauma and habit.
Shaman 6: My people opened portals to the star beings to ask their help. They agreed to seed information and technology from their civilization into ours, technologies of mind, of spirit, of energy, of light, and of sound.
Shaman 7: My people set up resonance keys that link veins of knowledge with sacred objects and places on earth. When someone handles that object or goes to that place, if they are in a state of receptivity, the knowledge blooms in their mind. They call it a download or an epiphany. They say, “it came to me.” Actually it comes from us. This is how we transmit knowledge to the future even when direct lineages are broken.
Act 3
Everyone turns to Shaman 1.
Shaman 2: You have not yet spoken, my friend. What have your people done?
Shaman 1: Our work is ongoing. We are doing it now. For thousands of years, we entered into meditation, and each of us forged a connection to someone living at the time of peak Separation. What we do is almost nothing, but it is the most important thing. We witness them. We hold them in our knowing of who they are. We hold them in our knowing of why they are here. We hold them in our knowing of their capacity to heal themselves. We hold them in our knowing of their capacity to heal the world.
The shamans rise and join hands. They turn to face us.
Shaman 1: This is not only a story. This is real. Right now. We are your ancestors and we are with you. Do you know what happens when you die and become an ancestor? Everything falls away except the love. Look carefully at your companions. You will see the accumulated love of a thousand generations shining through their eyes.
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