There is a wonderful word which I learned several years ago when I participated in a sweat lodge offered by Wallace Black Elk, a teacher, healer, and shaman of the Lakota Sioux tradition and Dr. William Lyon, an anthropologist formerly of Southern Oregon University. That word seemed to penetrate so deeply into my consciousness that even now I continue to marvel at its depth and relevance to my life and spiritual path.

That summer evening as we sat stuffed into a large teepee-shaped lodge, our bodies issuing buckets of sweat as "warriors" brought in one fiery, red stone after another, "Grandfather" Black Elk (spiritual descendant of the original Oglala Sioux holy man, Black Elk) referred to an honoring of all our relationships in our personal world. He asked each of us to consider Mitakyasi, a word from the Lakota language that literally means all my relations.

As steam splattered from water poured over the stones and the sacred pipe was passed around, Black Elk explained that the Lakota saw the universe as a living, breathing, entity in which we are all connected, not only flesh and blood creatures, but mountains and trees, oceans and rivers; all the inanimate world also. He even referred to the heated boulders as the "Stone People." The Lakota word to express this interrelated web of life in which we all exist and have our being is mitakyasi.

This powerful word (actually an anglicizing of the Lakota phrase Mitakuye Oyasin), for which there is no equivalent in English, is a recognition of the unity innate in the universe. Even more, it is a salutation, a prayer for all creation to commune in the harmony and balance that bridge the diversity of our lives.

I have come to understand that this Lakota word is a sort of touchstone for my feelings about myself and my relationships with the other beings in my life (human or otherwise). A touchstone was originally a black stone (somewhat like flint) used to test the purity of gold and silver by the streak left on the stone when scratched by the metal. Thus, it has come to mean by connotation a standard by which other things are measured.

Whenever mitakyasi comes to mind, I know that I am receiving a signal from my higher consciousness that I need to consider my relationships not only with friends, relatives and coworkers but also how I am feeling about the world outside my personal realm. As a person with a long history of exhibiting a tendency to cut myself off from people and live as a loner, I find that I must look more deeply at "all my relations."

When I test my soul's streak against the touchstone of mitakyasi, I see neither gold nor silver. I see a myriad of gossamer strands shining where each person that I have known has touched my life, and also where I have touched them. I see that I am part of a greater whole, and that I cannot ignore my relationships with beings outside my small consciousness.

When I forget this truth of our "ecology of being," I sometimes fall into the psychological trap, of "exclusivity." Perhaps it is due to the "loner" mentality, but I sometimes think that "exclusivity" may be the only true "disease" of the soul. Now please understand that I am not referring here to individuality, but rather to "exclusivity" in the sense of the verb "to exclude." To be excluded is to be isolated such that one cannot participate.

Exclusivity becomes a disease when a person believes that her/his truth or beliefs are truer than another's. The condition (rather like the sin of pride) occurs, for example, when I think that God favors me rather than my neighbor for the righteous life that I have led.

While I am sure you have your own list of ways in which you separate yourself from others and the world around you, I will step forward here and list just a few preconceptions that keep me from realizing my connections with others, animate and inanimate, mortal or immortal at times:

Participants in that sweat lodge left that evening with various images or ideas about truth through the eyes of a Native American shaman. From talking with them, I knew that some had received visions while others heard voices that provided some direction as they left to proceed on their own paths. Others experienced healing or peace. Each of us left the sacred ground with a different experience.

I experienced neither visions nor voices nor very much peace; only legs cramping from sitting too long and heat so fierce that I had longed for the coolness of a sauna. With good fortune though, I took away a word of power, mitakyasi, which I have never forgotten, and which reminds me from time to time that I am not alone in this world; I am connected with everyone and everything. My participation in this universe we call home illumines this whole shining web in which we all live and have our being.

If I take the time to speak, think and act with a sense of my interconnectedness (as the Lakota concept implies), I can only feel compassion toward all creatures as they are indeed part of my self. If I am indifferent to you, I am indifferent to myself; If I care for you, I am offering love to myself as well.

Editor's Note: "Grandfather" Wallace Black Elk continues to offer sweat lodges and workshops. Together with Black Elk, Dr. William Lyon wrote Black Elk: The Sacred Ways of a Lakota. Dr. Lyon is also the author of Encyclopedia of Native American Healing and and other works about Native American cultures.