Dia de los Bakulu (Dia de los Muertos)
A Bakulu is an Ancestor who was able to achieve the state of expertise within the destiny of their Spirit. They were able to truly fulfill their rite of passage (tratado), which is life, holding onto their principles and expressing their "best and highest". A Bakulu is a very sacred Ancestor, one who embodies the greatest Wisdom and Love. When we have the great blessing to know a future Bakulu, while they were still walking upon this Earth, their transition to the World of the Ancestors is both devastating and full of phenomenon. The devastation is perhaps more of a function of the ignorance and fear that modern "society" has towards "death" in general.
On this Day of the Bakulu, we take a moment to reflect on this ignorance and fear that causes our many peoples to consent to the incarceration of the sacred bodies of their loved ones in concrete, filled with poisonous embalming fluid. We take a moment to make an invocation for all those Spirits, who, upon leaving their human experience, find their former bodies treated with such disregard by a system that sees those bodies as a final payout, a final profit, from that person's life. We also take a moment to reflect that our Taino Ancestors kept their loved one's remains within their Bohios (homes) hanging in a gourd from the ceiling or buried beneath the floor. Perhaps the devastation arises more from the memories of our Spirits, who remember how closely we held our Ancestors, who cry out in pain, seeing our loved one's bodies in a warehouse of corpses, lined up in rows, stacked up one on top of the other.
Is it possible to "celebrate" the "Day of the Dead" when we allow strangers to bathe our loved ones for the last time? To dress them for their final journey out of this physical world? When we consent to the draining of the blood from the body and that sacred substance discarded as "medical waste"?
While Day of the Dead is a wonderful moment to acknowledge and honor the ancestors, does our responsibility end here? Have we ourselves considered, in a clear, honest way, our own inevitable transition to the World of the Ancestors? How will we choose to make that transition? In denial? Leaving the hard decisions to our distraught and devastated family and loved ones?
Over the years we have written extensively concerning the Day of the Dead and included many photos of the offerings that we give to the Sacred Ancestors, known and unknown. This year demands a different conversation, an honest assessment of how we, as Taino, as Paleros, as Spirits having a Human Experience, are allowing our loved ones, and ultimately ourselves, to make that momentous transition into the World of the Ancestors. Are we empowering or disempowering our loved ones within that most significant ceremony of Life/Death?
A Bakulu will be able to manifest their continued influence within the Physical Realm- Here a double Rainbow
Here Eagles....
www.crossings.net (home funeral resource)
www.homefuneralalliance.org (national home funeral alliance)
