Kenneth Cohen, Bearhawk, is a scholar in the field of classical Chineese studies, a Qi Gong Master, and practitioner of several Indiginous healing practices. He is author of two books, one on Chi Chong and the other on Native American Healing. He is often consulted by governmental and private agencies to consult on the needs of the "healing community".

My name is Ken Cohen, Ken Bearhawk. I am going to talk with what do people need to know to not only survive but to heal during these times of great change. I am going to begin with a song. (song) that was a Cree song. So what do we need to know? It is more what we need to unknow. I think people are to smart for their own good. We need to shrink people's heads. It is a good time for me to announce I have founded a new school. A school of unknowing. You can come to my school and I will guarantee that you will no longer have a degree. So if you have a B.A., M.D. Ph.D. M.B.A. or whatever degree you have your head will be shrunken to normal human size and I will decredentialize you. There are many schools that offer credentials, but I have the only school that offers decredentializing. You might think I am joking. I am joking about the school, but I am not joking. The need to decredentialize is important because I think one of the problems in our world is too much rankism. That is people pulling rank. Assuming that their social, economic, or even worse, educational status, gives them the right to portray themselves as some higher order of human being. I think we need to get rid of ranks of every kind and realize we are all just two-leggeds, just human beings. One of my elders, A wonderful Innu, not Inuit, Innu. Whose people are originally from the Baffin Island. He said to me do you know why most Indian people call themselves the people, e.g. The Innu, "The People". and many other tribes when you translate their own word for their tribe it just means "the people". He said it is because we know we are just the people and not better than any other form of life.

One of the other things we need to do in these times is learn from our older and wiser relations. This goes along with shrinking our big heads. We need to realize we need to learn from our stone relatives, and plant relatives, and our animal relatives, as well as our two-legged relatives. But especially from our older and wiser relations because there is no one older than a stone. You look at the lines on a stone you are seeing the wrinkles on the face of some one who is very, very old. It might have taken a thousand years for each of those wrinkles to form. Each of them tells a story. Only if our minds slow down enough will we learn to listen to the great silence. Only when our minds become as slow and quiet as a stone will we hear the stone. And only when we slow down to the rhythm of the plant will we hear that plant. Only when we slow down to that rhythm and we expand our minds will we hear the message from the animals. We need to get out of our exclusive, human, anthropocentric one-upmanship mode to begin to listen. You have probably heard the teaching we are born with two ears and one mouth because we are suppose to listen twice as much as we speak.

I want to speak of one other thing that has to do with simplifying and listening to our own relations. This is a vision I will share with you. This is a vision I had after 9-11. After those horrible terrorist attacks, those horrible deaths that affected all people of good mind, that affected me, affected all people of good mind, good spirit. Those acts of cowardice when they attacked poor innocent people. You might say they were rich or whatever, it doesn't matter, they were two-leggeds, just like you and me. It was an act of cowardice to attack the world trade towers. I will tell you the information I received. I went out praying after 9-11. I have a certain medicine that I have been given that I carry that I use to connect with the great mysteries. In those prayers I was told that the wars were not going to cease for a long time. Of course we are seeing that. I was told at that time that they would be protracted for the following reason. When I say that I was told I mean I was told by the Spirit as a consequence of that ceremony. I was told that the oil is the blood of mother Earth. Now there are other things that are blood of mother Earth I am not saying that the water is not the blood of Mother Earth. But in my vision I was told that the oil is the blood of Mother Earth, and the Coal is the bones of Mother Earth, and the natural gas is the breath of Mother Earth. What we are doing is disrespecting our mother. We are breaking up and excavating her bones, we are siphoning off her blood, We are sucking out her air. We are literally killing our Mother Earth. Remember those so-called fossil fuels, the coal, the gas, the oil; they are in fact the decayed bodies of our ancient plant ancestors. So we are literally digging up the bodies of our ancestors when we take those sacred things out of the ground. The earth will not tolerate that disrespect. I was told that these plant people, these ancient plant people, actually form an energetic root for human beings. Scientists have not discovered this yet, but they will discover it soon that there is an energetic connection between the human body and the energies we receive through the ancient plant people, the so-called fossil fuels. We need them in the earth. We need them in the earth, not out of the earth. We need them in the earth in order to feel physically, psychologically, and spiritually grounded. As we remove these essential things from the earth. As we remove parts of the earth's own body we destroy our ability to function in a balanced way and to make good decisions. So unfortunately as we get more and more into this oil based war (my personal opinion), we will find ourselves less and less able to make the decisions that get us out of it because those things are not suppose to be taken out of the ground in the first place. So this all comes back to respecting our Mother Earth and having the courage to do with less. Sometimes I think the essential spiritual problems is two things: one side of it is learning how to trust that which can not be known, learning how to trust the mysteries, hence the need to shrink our big heads, its true we need to trust the mysteries. The other thing is we need to have the courage to prioritize our deepest inner voice. Most people know it is right, I really think they do; but they don't have the courage to follow that wisdom. They don't have the courage to follow those instructions. So it comes down to cowardice. I think we are in a cowardly world, a cowardly society. We need to have the courage. Sometimes having courage means doing with less, it means sacrificing. Means not having a big fancy car, means not having a big fancy house. Means the doctors take a voluntary cut in their salary, what do you doctors make, $500,000.00 dollars a year. Drop your salary down to $30,000/00 a year; don't laugh I am serious. It means we have to make the sacrifices necessary for the welfare of our two-legged relations. Treat other people like our own children. Would you destroy the world for your own children don't destroy it for other people either. So that is my opinion. Could be right, could be wrong. You think about it. Thank you.