This page will post recent letters to and from Sunheart. Some will be greetings and words of inspiration, comments about the website, or links. Much of it will hopefully be real questions and answers about almost any subject relating to ancient wisdom and culture. This includes not only the scholarly and arcane, but the practical and spiritual as well. Most of the problems people face today are not very different than the ones faced by our ancestors thousands of years ago. Those answers, when stripped of negative stigmas and propaganda, still work today. Nothing has been lost, only hidden. The restoration of that timeless wisdom will help restore and heal our spirits today.

What Kind of Questions Should I Ask?

You can ask any kind of question that you think will help in your understanding of the world around you and inside of you. Sunheart has been a university professor of many subjects including music, English composition, sacred poetry, World Views and Values, Philosophy, Ethics, Cinema, World Religions, "Shamanism," Native American History and Culture, and other subjects, and has written extensively about not only these subjects but baseball, multi-dimensional travel and Near Death Experience, ecology and nature, world history, New York City, linguistics, humor, and current events. He has been an editorial consultant to many psychologists including Dr. Michael Picucci, Dr. Bernie Seigal, Dr. Emmit Miller, and Dr. Dee Anna Parrish, coined the term APT (Authentic Process Therapy) and is affiliated with The Institute for Staged Recover. He is an ordained interfaith minister who gives sermons frequently at Unitarian Churches all over the country, including Tennessee, Michigan, and New York, and given workshops at dozens of pagan-folk gatherings. He studied art in Greece and Italy, music at Juilliard, and writing by working with Madeline L'Engle, Coleman Barks, Nancy Willard, Gioia Timpanelli, and many many others. As publisher of one of the first national desktop magazines, focusing on spirituality and the arts, he worked with many great spiritual teachers and writers. As described in many of his books and articles, he has since then worked closely with many Native American elders and has written down volumes of teachings as a way of helping to preserve certain oral traditions in this difficult time. These resources are now yours through this webpage. Questions about these and other subjects are welcome.

What's Up With "Sunheart"?

Sunheart is the name of this light-hearted and illuminating website. It is also a rather flambouant pseudonym for a Native American writer whose given name is "Chipmunk." A sniveling and bookish professor at a conservative, straight-laced liberal arts college by day, at night he becomes the "shamanistic" spiritual advisor and visionary Sunheart, crisscrossing the continent working with spiritual leaders of every tradition, and helping bring together the indigenous nations in this time of prophecy, passing on the messages of the elders to all who will listen.

But the name Sunheart is not the product of an overwrought imagination, warped by too many cups of bad coffee. It is based on terms of endearment he has been given by people from all over the world since childhood. At 13, he was given a classical guitar decorated with a Sunheart design-- handmade out of rare woods by a Rosacrucian hermit in exchange for hearing him play one piece. (really!) In 1983, the Tibetan Buddhist Lama Khenpo Kathar Rimpoche, the Kagyu Abbot of North America, named him Kunga Nima, "Shining Example," or "The Sun of Love," which indicates he is of one mind with the Karmapas. He was named "Bright Heart," at the passing of the Ojibway teacher Gheezis Mokwa in 1992. He was referred to as "Golden Heart" by members of one esoteric American spiritual path. In Micmac, Sunheart is Niskamalamun. Suryadev-ji is the equivalent in Sanskrit. To his Native friends and teachers however, he is known as "Abachbahamedtch," or "Chipmunk," which means, "One Who Helps the Elders."

In a lifetime of service to the Creator, Chipmunk has quietly assisted many revered elders of all stripes in getting their message to the world, gathering up helpers and "students," and organizing events for others for the past thirty years. During that training period it is estimated that his efforts have subtly touched the lives of a million people by person to person teaching, and ten million more through his regular radio appearances, TV broadcasts, books, concerts and lectures. On Thanksgiving of 2000 he had an inner experience which indicated that he should acknowledge the name Sunheart as a gift from the Creator, and with that name, bring these diverse teachings together into a singular vision for the future. This website is being launched on Valentine's Day 2001, with love, and in heartfelt hopes that more people's lives will be touched by the ancient wisdom, beauty, and truth that each culture possesses.