Dreaming Bear Kanaan "Cherokee neo shaman" in Israel & Hawaii

[educatedindian]

A request for help dealing with the founder of (believe it or not) the shaman seduction myspace page.

---------------------

Dreaming Bear Kanaan. http://www.dreamingbear.net
> and http://www.myspace.com/shamanseduction
>
He is almost 37 not 31 as his myspace page claims. He also
> claims to be of Cherokee descent on his mother’s side and
> Palestinian decent on his father’s side.  

 He held a lot of fundraisers with the claim that he was going to Lebanon
> and that the money was going to his father, a refugee in a
> camp, over there....He may have used the money to live
> off....many others also
> contributed to him financially for this trip.
>
[Claims to speak] fluent Arabic and upon arrival in Israel and
> Palestine, it ended up that he spoke about 5 words in Arabic
> and learned a few phrases in the language like “ I see god
> in you” that would make people smile. As far as his Native
> American heritage goes, he sings songs that seem ridiculous...more of a European American
hippie’s version of Native Culture, and claims to be a pipe carrier and
> initiated into the red road.
>
> He wore a lot of flashy “native” looking garb that
> showed his bare chest and tattoos and walked with a staff
> with an eagle on it. As you can imagine, the Israelis
> thought it was the real deal straight out of the movies…as
> do the folks on Maui, where he now claims to be from.
>  
> For a lot of the trip, he refused to cover his chest and
> argued with people of other religions who wanted
> him to cover himself when entering churches or mosques

....he was also claiming to be a Cherokee Shaman which is
> still posted online on a piece that was made by Israeli Tv.
> http://www.vids.eu.org/view-id-1135357.html
> As of late He has now changed the term to neo-shaman. While
> in Israel, he held many supposedly Native American
> gatherings and charged for them. A few of the hosts there
> were a bit taken back by the way he handled the money and
> for not offering them a fair amount for their efforts.
>
> He has recently removed
>  both of these claims to his identity (Palestinian and
> Cherokee) on his main website in the past year though he
> continues to give teachings, hold sweat lodges, build tipis,
do card readings and give private sessions (all of which he charges for).
>
> Upon return form the “Holy Land” he has made claims
> over the Internet and in performances that his most recent
> work is bringing Israelis and Palestinians together for
> peace. He posted some video footage of himself speaking in
> Bethlehem on several websites with this claim. This is a
> terrible exaggeration....In the video footage he is
> actually talking to a group of several hundred people
> primarily from Germany from a group called Tamera that live
> in Portugal with a small number of Palestinians and Israelis
> present. The only other talk he gave in Palestine was to a
> group of eight -year old girls who were not terribly
> interested whom  he harshly reprimanded through out the talk. He never did
> any work during this trip that brought the two sides
> together and most of the time he was doing poetry
> performances and/or teaching “ Native American” style
> teachings to new age Israelis who never
> questioned any of this.
>
> Another very difficult part of this trip was when he would
> give live talks on an Internet radio show with his new age
> style about forgiveness and compassion and then after the
> show was often very hungry and would argue with waitresses
> stating that he not want to eat kosher in Jerusalem and
> demanded that they put cheese on his burger, treating people
> the opposite of everything he had just broadcast live to a
> few thousand people.
>
> Many have supported him financially...most are women who simultaneously he is sexually
> involved with....Those who have managed his tours, arranged speaking
>  engagements, made videos for free, designed websites
> etc… have all faced his arrogance and lack of integrity
> and misalignment with his teachings.
>
> He is becoming very popular in the more mainstream new age
> world and [many] have been afraid to speak up in the face of
> all of this glitz and glamour...beneath this glossy performer is a
> very wounded man...he is an incredibly skilled
> poet and an articulate charismatic person [but] this guy tends to use people
> for his own benefit and despite what he preaches is not
> walking his talk.

[bls926]

I'd never heard of Dreaming Bear Kanaan. However, a quick google brought up quite a bit of information. Seems very New Age, touchy-feely.



DreamingBear Baraka Kanaan
http://www.dreamingbear.net/


Excerpt from his profile

The foundation for DreamingBear’s work as a transformational spoken word artist is deeply personal. Born to a runaway teenage mother and refugee father, he survived through years of poverty and abuse. When he was eight years old, he witnessed the death of his brother and the kidnapping of his sister. To cope with an overwhelming sense of pain and loss, he began to write, beginning the alchemical inspiration for his metamorphosis and spiritual discovery.

His work was further defined by a year spent living in the wilderness, alone and without all the conveniences a modern life provides. While in a deep communion with nature he began to take his poetry to a new level and developed many of the works that have proven to be inspiring to so many. Upon recognizing a great need for humanity to converge more deeply with the natural world, DreamingBear went on to spend many years of his life living off the grid making nature his canvas of choice as he sought to create poetry to inspire a higher level of consciousness.

DreamingBear has traveled the world extensively, sharing his message of unconditional love and fulfillment of personal potential with audiences as diverse as international dignitaries, corporate groups, and third world refugees. DreamingBear holds a master’s degree in communications and is the author of Wild Love: Kissed Into Consciousness in addition to two spoken word CD’s. DreamingBear is a frequent guest in the media and was featured in Without Walls, a documentary on peace in the Middle East. A former college professor, he is now an acclaimed keynote speaker conducting seminars, playshops, and inspired gatherings worldwide.

http://dreamingbear.net/profile.html



Empowerment Sessions

Ignite your life’s passion! Through the use of essential flower essences, sound healing therapy, guided light work, and clearing of “karmic cobwebs,” DreamingBear offers personal empowerment sessions that will bring your energetic, emotional, and physical body in alignment with the highest vibration of harmony, peace, and wholeness. You will receive clarity and guidance concerning:

* Discovery & fulfillment of your life’s purpose
* Power to transform old thought forms into new awareness
* Enhancing relationships with friends, family or partner
* Spiritual reawakening & development of intuitive/psychic gifts or talents
* Interpreting direct transmissions from your higher self and guides
* Inspiration & support to break old habits, energetic ruts, and emotional
addictions

“My session with DreamingBear was both powerful and insightful. It was wonderful to connect with my guides, and hear my higher-self messages. I truly felt a wave of fascination and deep peace washed over my body and all that emotional baggage just dropped away. I haven’t stopped smiling since. Thank you DreamingBear for creating a safe environment of unconditional love and understanding.” ~ Mirayah Delamar, Sacred Earth Bellydance, Maui

Cost: $100 per hour

To book a personal empowerment session with DreamingBear or for more information contact Carlisle McMillan at 808-573-2107 or publicity@dreamingbear.net.

 

http://dreamingbear.net/offerings.html



Asking for donations (on his profile page)

~Donate to the Lovevolution Foundation~

When you donate time, energy, space or financial resources to our non-profit Lovevolution Foundation you are supporting:

Education as Entertainment: making use of cutting edge knowledge from the various academic disciplines as a way of inspiring this world into a willingness to embrace their highest potential on every level.

EarthCentered Awareness: conservancy and promotion of a sustainable healthy biosphere promoting a clean environment for future generations to inhabit.

International Peace Advocacy: promotion of cross-cultural, transgender, & international equanimity by building relationships founded in the celebration of creative arts in order to unify ratherthan divide.

Spiritual & Scientific Unity: by focusing on the commonalities between spiritual & scientific traditions we wish to create a dialogue for recognizing our inherent
inter-denominational oneness & planetary unity.

The ‘Center for Unconditional Love' is an establishment in progress where our intention is to help whole generations of people deal with personal hardships; through cultivating their innate gifts we hope to unconventionally help a society that has been sent reeling by the overwhelming nature of ugliness such as prejudice/intolerance/inequality, cruelties of neglect & abuse, and the negative aspects of international wars.

Lovevolution Foundation has already begun to cooperate with mainstream media, academic & spiritual community efforts, & international partners to co-create inspirational events, both through television, radio, internet & globally sponsored events that contribute to empowering this generation to evolve into their highest potential fullness.

http://dreamingbear.net/profile.html  




The Lovevolution Foundation
http://www.lovevolution.net/

. . . The primary focus of TLF is to facilitate the emergence of individuals who actively seek to evolve into their fullness by offering inspiration as a path to fulfill one’s creative, spiritual, & intellectual potential. It is our intention to quantum leap forward a sort of new ‘science of the heart’ in order to co-create a more peaceful, creative, and educated society, in a project we call “lovevolution,” pronounced Love-volution. The concept behind Lovevolution is part evolution of intellectual & human centered processes into an ‘enlightened’ state, and part revolution of the way we approach our everyday lives by “being the change we seek” as Gandhi said. . .

[Defend the Sacred]

Sorry, but he lost me at "shamanseduction". There's just no recovering after that.

[bls926]

This is from Connie Schmidt's Whirled Musings
http://cosmicconnie.blogspot.com/2007/07/hunka-hunka-burnin-luston-maui.html

Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Hunka hunka burnin’ lust…on Maui!

Just when I thought I was ready to finally wrap up the increasingly ill-named Hawai’ian "Week," I got this email last night that was so full of mana that I just had to share it with you, Dear Ones. The message came from my favorite New-Wage spam service, which never disappoints. The subject line read, "Be Kissed into Consciousness with Dreaming-Bear." On first glance that didn’t sound particularly Hawai’ian, but then when I scrolled down I found out that Dreaming-Bear, after flitting about in twenty-six states in the US and seventeen countries overseas, has finally alighted on Maui.



Dreaming-Bear Kanaan, aka "The Kissing Prophet" (for which moniker I think we have some ditzy Maui journalist to blame) is a poet, performance artist, and poseur extraordinaire who appears to be deeply in love with himself. Judging by some of the pics on his web site, he also must drink a lot of Red Bull. But he’s also got a mystical shtick, which is why I got wind of him from my New-Wage spam service. His spiritual credentials are pretty impressive: he is, according to the email I received, "an Ordained Mystic Shaman, Author of 8 Inspired Books, Compassion Troubadour, & an International Spiritual Teacher of Tenderness."



Among his books is a collection of poetry entitled Wild Love ~ Kissed into Consciousness. So far it has a five-star review on Amazon, based on three reviews, and if you read those reviews, particularly the first one, you'll see the writing style is remarkably similar to that of the poet himself. Wow, his gift must be contagious, huh? Of his poetry he writes:

I Am, therefore. I Write. Each poem is my own personal painting with words. What Michelangelo did with the Sistine Chapel; I have sought to do to the page of Existence with the palette of thought.*

According to the bio on Amazon, Dreaming-Bear "has been a Professor at various universities & colleges for the last seven years, he holds two Masters Degrees, one in Communication, & one in Native American Philosophy (being completed now)." He is currently traveling and speaking around the world in homes, schools, and public venues "in an effort to create communal ecstasy and spiritual rapture through a synergy of poetry, art, music, and dance; happening in sacred performance rituals called: Shaman’s Seduction."

I imagine things have been a little dull on Maui since the disgrace of Tilak, who for a time was one of the darlings of the conspicuously enlightened on that magical isle (although he didn't actually live there). Dreaming-Bear is younger and whiter than Tilak, and as far as I know he doesn’t keep little flashlights in his mouth, but he does seem to have an enthusiastic female following.


Here’s what last night’s email promised:

Come experience Ecstatic Love through a dialogue of divinity! Be a part of the High Vibration poetic darshan, all the while being aroused to inspiration through expanded thought forms; which untie your heart’s wings & allow the sacred within you to soar! Feel your mind, body, & spirit come together have a quantum-conscious evolution in the Now, as you so playfully discover your second-innocence. Let your senses be reborn through the essence of Oneness. Receive the activation & inspiration your soul has been longing for!

Here are three upcoming opportunities for you to commune with what is being described as "Hafiz and Rumi joining hands and hearts to walk into the 21st century & use Dreaming Bear’s tongue as theirs to deliver their ancient voices to a world hungry for Divine-Love."

~Maui Mass Media~


Reading further, I gained a little more insight into Dreaming-Bear’s shtick:

MauiTime Weekly writes of Dreaming-Bear:

Yeah, he's kinda really hot, too. I prefer to think of him as the kissing prophet. He whispers and flirts his message of peace in seductive language and varying degrees of undress. He says stuff like, "Make love to the moment" and "taste the holiness in the chocolate," so you know I’m totally down with that. Don’t let me steer you wrong, though — DB’s intentions are pure and true, of course, meant to inspire against the ravages and tragedies of war. DB believes in this generation, in this society, that we’ve really lost a sense of tenderness as a way of life. And when I say tenderness I mean kindness and compassion, kissing. Imagine for a moment kindness and compassion making out in the corner somewhere," he’s said on a YouTube video entitled "Chocolate Poetry." How sweet that would be, wouldn’t it? And that’s tenderness expressing itself in us. Mmmhmm... like I said, kissing prophet.

But ya know, I think you really need to experience a little hunka hunka Dreaming-Bear for yourself. Make sure you’re not drinking anything, because it might end up coming out of your nose and messing up your keyboard (I’m watching out for you, Tony). And you probably ought to empty your bladder too, unless you were planning on changing your underwear anyway.

All righty, then, Dear Ones, are you ready for a little Bear? Here are some samplers:

* Dreaming-Bear on The Real Revolution
* Dreaming Bear at a Maui Poetry Slam
* Dreaming-Bear’s MySpace page
* A nearly hour-long interview that I call "Two SNAGs (Sensitive New Age Guys) on Maui." [Nausea alert: The SNAGs are really, really SNAGgy.] The sound isn't real good on this one, but if you scroll down you can see more video gems and other links.
* And finally, a photo collection best described as Dreaming-Bear’s tribute to his own beauty. I guess I should put out another nausea alert for that one too.

History, particularly modern history, has shown us that intense narcissism coupled with pseudo-mysticism can be either tremendously entertaining or terribly dangerous. I’m definitely leaning towards the former with Dreaming-Bear, particularly since he is ostensibly hamming and posing for a noble cause: peace. But I think it’s pretty obvious that his highest cause is himself. As a narcissist myself, I can relate. In fact, I find that Dreaming-Bear is inspiring me. He has convinced me, once and for all, of a deep truth about myself:

I gotta find me a shtick or a scam.