I have spent the last few years of my life becoming increasingly afraid of death. This began when reaching mid-life, I realised how fast time goes by and that no matter what I do, that fateful moment of my own demise will come sooner than later. Then I started to have dreams about it and to spend much waking time trying to imagine that moment, when everything you are and ever were disappears forever.
My beliefs in Native spiriuality are strong and have gotten me through some very hard times. They have also gotten me sober, and though the practice of sweat lodges I am in touch with the spirit world, in which I believe firmly, for having experienced its manifestations first hand. However, there is one thing that my spirituality does not address: life after death. There are many stories about the spirit world that change from nation to nation, elder to elder, but at the end of the day, Native spirituality is actually very personal and based on individual perception of the world. In my own deep beliefs, there is no life after physical death and spirits are independent entities, not beings who were formely living people. So, Christians, muslims and other believers in the main religions of our world have one thing on me: the reassurance of some kind of peaceful and rewarding place beyond this life, or a burning hell in the case of catholics, but that is still a form of existence, whereby thought survives -I think therefore I am.
In my view of death, with the brain gone, there is no more thoughts, emotions or consciousness, there is an absolute nothingness, for eternity.
Still, I recently managed to find a way to cope with that terrifying destination that we all will reach in the blink of an eye: I realised the obvious, that was staring at me all the time: Death is NOT a new experience. it is not the great unknown that most people think of it as, which compels them to make up any kind of stories of afterlife to cope with the notion of void that most minds cannot handle without breaking down. Death is, instead, a very familiar experience: we simply go back to the nothingness where we came from, where we already were for eternity (backwards) before our birth! There is nothing to be scared of, as that nothingness carries no pain, no anxiety, no sorrow at all!
In fact, life is but a freak incident that interrupts an internity of nothingness and void. And compared to that eternity, its duration is insignificant. All things that we should be afraid of like suffering, losing loved ones, illness, old age, violence and loss, there are all in our lifetime. Why be scared of benevolent emptiness?
This is very reassuring to me, and I hope to have a good life and live old, and when it is time to go, I hope I will still hold this belief, so that I can let go of earthly concerns, knowing that I am simply going home.

Laurent Mougeot
July 18th 2008

Hell is others...Jean-Paul Sartre said that, and I have to agree with him most of the time. Human beings are capable of the best and the worse, but more often than not they choose the worse, because it's easier.
What bothers me is the false nice people. There are many people who can't stand me out there and they let me know it, hey I'm fine with that, it's their right! What gets to me is people who tell you what you want to hear, who lie to your face about thir intentions and seem so sincere when they say "yeah, you're right, I know, I would never do that again" and all the way they are lying through their teeths and they don't give a crap about what you think. What gets to me is the ones who only think about their own selves and who don't change no matter what...never learn from their mistakes no matter how bad these mistakes might hurt them or others. I keep being dissapointed all over again.
One should never believe people's words. Only their actions.
Then again...maybe I overestimate people's bad intentions. Maybe a lot of people are just afflicted with an incurable case of STUPIDITY!

So this is 2008. The beginning of a new year always brings the question for me: what have I learned this year? How is this going to shape my future actions, feelings and thoughts? Is there any "wisdom" I want to pass on from the past months? Well, because it has been a particularly challenging year -hard not to dwell on the negative when the reality of human evil and stupidity comes knocking at your door- I did learn some lessons. Although it may sound negative, I am becoming more and more realistic, casting an unedulcorated subjective look on life as opposed to looking at it through tainted goggles. Of course this does not mean that I am not happy. I am accepting the truth of human nature and the truth WILL set you free, and one can be happy without freedom. So here are the painful lessons of the year:

1) TRUST NO ONE.

I actually trust one person, my wife, because you need to trust your life partner, or forget about marital bliss, which I have and enjoy. What I mean is, don't take a chance with trust. If it's brown, smelly and looks like shit, then it IS shit. Trust is the one weapon that will be used against you to strike you down. I have paid a dear price for misplacing my trust in the past few years, from being robbed blind to betrayed and stabbed in the back. So I will from now on keep my trust where it belongs, in myself and my wife.

2) DO NOT BE A HEALER TO YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS

Now that's a hard one to learn when you are trained to help, when it's in your nature. Ever since I have quit alcohol and drugs and put my life together, I have been involved in different kinds of healing practices; first, as a AA sponsor and informal helper of fellow addicts. Then as a professional counselor; and of course as a spiritual healer and Lodge keeper, which are things that came my way, I did not choose them. The spirits chose me and I paid the price with a childhood populated with ghosts, visions and mental angst -I actually DID see dead people, sorry for the infringement Joel Haley Osmen! So naturally, I have always wanted to help people I care about when they came to me. Well, here is the scoop: to be a good healer, one should stick to helping strangers only. The funny thing is, I knew that from the beginning, it was part of my academical training, but for some obscure reason I decided to overlook that golden rule many times: you should not council your family and friends! It's simple really: with strangers, you have to care professionally while keeping a healthy distance. So when they fuck up-which they invariably will, especially when it come to drugs and alcohol- you don't care, it does not affect you personnally. Start doing the same with the people you care about and you WILL be dissapointed and it will make you bitter. It also makes sense because if a family member crews up his sobriety for exemple, you know it's going to snow ball and affect children, loved ones and yourself...and it makes you feel like you "failed" them, when the truth is that they only failed themselves. This brings me to the next point, my own reflexions on the true meaning of sobriety. My resolution for 2008? To be a good husband to my wife, a good grand-father to my grand-children, a good uncle to my nephews and nieces, a good friend to my friends...and a counselor to no one outside of work!!!

3) SOBRIETY vs. ABSTINENCE

So here I am. I will be celebrating 13 years of alcohol-free life on April 10 2008 and I just celebrated 11 years of drug-free life (after a slip on cannabis on December 12 1996) and never have I cherished my sobriety as much as I do know, that I realize that we are a species threatened of extinction. By we I mean the truly sober people out there, cheers to you my brothers and sisters! I say that we are becoming rare because I have not seen someone embracing a life of sobriety for quite a few years, in spite of my efforts to help some. Don't get me wrong though, many of those I helped -well not many, but some- did