Great Forgetting (Part 2): The Awakening
The Great Forgetting was the moment we fell from relation. We ceased to see the world as kin and began to treat as a commodity. We forgot that flowing rivers sing, that stoic stones endure, that deer and trees and winds live in circles with us. That forgetting spread like a shadow across history, giving rise to empires, machines, and markets, but also to alienation, despair, and ecological ruin.
Yet forgetting is never final. Memory remains like embers under ash, waiting for breath to revive them. Awakening is the act of remembering what was always true: the world is alive, and we are a part of it.
Awakening is not nostalgia for some vanished past. It is a turning, a return to the center, and a stepping forward. The old knowing does not vanish; it waits. And in our time, as the Earth groans under the weight of our forgetting, memory calls to us more urgently than ever
The Depth of Forgetting
Consider the life of the average modern person:
They spend 95% of their time indoors.
They stare at screens for 10 or more hours a day.
They can identify thousands of corporate logos, but only a handful of plants and animals.
They go months without bare feet touching the Earth.
They are schooled in a hyper-materialist worldview that prizes objectification, competition, and separation.
We have become fluent in the language of technology and commerce, but illiterate in the language of Earth. We know the names of brands but not of birds, the functions of machines but not the habits of rivers.
This is what forgetting looks like in our bodies and daily lives. It is not only cultural, it is personal. It shapes how we breathe, how we move, how we dream.
In the Time Before Memory
There was a time before the shadow fell when people lived in harmony with the land. The Old Ones, our first ancestors, followed the slow turning of the seasons. They could smell rain on the wind before it fell. They knew the voice of rivers when the salmon returned, and the silent language of deer in the shadows.
The animals were not other. They were relatives, companions, guides. Raven brought warnings. Wolf taught the family way. Bear showed the path inward. In those days, the boundaries between human and animal dream and waking, visible and unseen, were not rigid. The Old Ones could step into the vision of an eagle or the awareness of a fox as naturally as they breathed.
This was the old agreement to live in reciprocity with all of creation.
But change crept in. The wanderers set down roots. Villages rose where once there had been only campfires. They fenced the Earth into rectangles, planting seeds in straight lines. The hunt gave way to the field, and the people’s path no longer followed elk or pinion harvest. This was the beginning of the Great Forgetting.
The Earth, once revered as Mother, became a resource to be exploited. The voices of wind and water dimmed beneath the scrape of plows. The stories and ceremonies that bound people to Earth and sky fell silent, replaced by the clamor of building and storing. A living, breathing world was flattened into something ordinary, something useful, something for sale.
Yet beneath the noise and hurry, a longing remained. The people felt an emptiness they could not name. They chased possessions, knowledge, and power, but none of it filled the void. It was only a shadow of the deep connection their ancestors had lived.
The Great Forgetting Crosses the Water
When the Great Forgetting crossed the ocean to Turtle Island, it did not creep like a slow shadow. It struck like a storm. Indigenous peoples who had walked in balance for untold generations faced a force determined to sever them from their ways.
Yet they carried medicine strong enough to endure. As taught by the Woptura lineage, Four sacred gifts were given by Spirit: the Canupa (sacred pipe), the drum, the Inipi (sweat lodge), and the Hanblechia (vision quest).
These were not relics of a lost age; they were living bridges back to the center and the great hoop of life. The sacred pipe was prayer embodied, the drum carried the heartbeat of creation. The sweat lodge purified body, spirit, soul, and mind, a womb of renewal, and the vision quest stripped away distractions, sending the seeker alone into the raw quiet of the land.
There, without food, without shelter, beyond what Creator gave a person, could once again hear the speech of stones and the counsel of wind.
These spirit-given gifts endure because the Earth endures. And they remain pathways for awakening, not only for Native peoples but for all who approach with humility and reverence..
Thresholds of Awakening
Awakening rarely arrives in comfort. It comes in thresholds of illness, grief, solitude, and silence. It comes when the old way of seeing collapses and something deeper breaks through.
A person may awaken on a mountain fast alone with hunger and stars. Another may awaken at a graveside when the weight of mortality strips away illusions. Still another may awaken quietly while sitting by a river, suddenly realizing that the water is not flowing past them but with them.
These moments do not create truth. They reveal it. They tear the veil of forgetting.
Practices of Remembering
Awakening must be tended. Memory is not restored once and for all; it must be nourished.
Solitude in nature: To sit alone under the sky is to remember scale and humility. Wilderness fasts and vigils are ancient ways of breaking through the veil.
Ceremony: Songs, prayers, dances, and offerings create bridges between worlds. They remind us we are participants, not masters.
Storytelling: Myths and parables awaken memory, reminding us that raven still speaks, the rain still listens, the stones still endure.
Gratitude: Gratitude restores relationship. To thank the tree, the river, the deer, the fire is to remember that nothing is owed, everything is a gift.
Community: Awakening deepens in circles. When elders mirror our stories, when friends gather at the fire, when communities honor the Earth together, memory takes root.
A Story: The Circle and the Center
Once, the people forgot the center. Without it, they quarreled, wandered, and fell into despair. Families were torn apart, leaders fought among themselves, and the community lost its direction.
Finally, a wizened elder stepped forward. He drew a great circle on the Earth with his staff and placed a stone at its center.
“This,” he said, pointing to the stone, “is the center. When you forget it, you forget yourselves. But when you return to it, the circle becomes whole.”
The circle reminded them of the greater whole of life, the powers of creation, the Sun, Moon, seasons, the medicine wheel, and the unbroken hoop of creation. The stone at the center reminded them of their grounding in what is eternal and unmoving, the place where the seen and unseen worlds meet.
So the people began to gather at the stone. There they prayed, told stories, and even settled their disputes, for in its presence they remembered they were part of something greater than themselves. Slowly, balance returned to their lives.
Awakening is always this: a return to the center. Not a step backward into the past, but a step deeper into what has always been true. To awaken is to remember that the circle exists, that there is a center, and that by returning to it we find ourselves again.
The Earth Remembers
The Great Forgetting is not the end of the story. The Earth remembers. The animals remember. The ancestors are waiting for us to remember.
The land is not ours to own but ours to love. We are part of its body just as rivers, trees, and clouds are. When we take up the Four Sacred Gifts and return to the center, we begin to heal the broken parts of ourselves. We awaken the wisdom sleeping beneath our skin. We step back into the old agreement, into the sacred dance where every footfall is a prayer and every breath an offering.
Why Awakening Matters Now
We live in a time of unraveling. Climate shift, mass extinction, and social fracture are all symptoms of the forgetting. But they are also opportunities for remembering.
Awakening is no longer optional. It is survival. Without it, we spiral deeper into alienation and destruction. With it, we rediscover balance, reciprocity, and a sense of meaning and purpose.
The question is not whether awakening will happen; it is already happening. The question is whether we will embrace it fully in time to heal what can still be healed.
Wrapping the Bundle
In the old way, people lived in reciprocity with the land. The Great Forgetting severed that relationship, but the story does not end in loss. The Earth still remembers, and so do we.
Awakening is the return. It is remembering that we are part of the circle. It is walking once more in the old agreement. It is standing again in the sacred hoop where all beings belong.
This is the invitation of In The Old Way to guide those ready to step back into conversation with the Earth to stand again in the circle of all beings and to remember what was never truly lost.
