Shamanism and Native Spirituality

Think About This

Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about his religion. Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and of service to your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.

Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place. Show respect to all people, but grovel to none. When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.

Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.

~Tecumseh -(1768-1813) Shawnee Chief

You must learn to see. There is seeing the visible. Most people see only the physical world around them. But there is also seeing the invisible. There is emotion, spirit and mind. The whole circle of the Human Being is both these things ~ the visible and the invisible. Most people refuse to look at the whole Circle and see what is really there.

From: One is the Sun

You can seek visions, looking for deeper meaning, many times in your life. But once you have an answer, you can no longer claim ignorance. To receive a vision is to be responsible for that vision. You can bless a new born baby and give her a name, and try to help those first steps walk a path that will be straight and true, but the greatest work will occur through the choices she makes along the way.

Fulfillment of spiritual purpose received through vision is rarely an easy or a straightforward path. Very often it will mean a change in a living situation because inconsistency is a form of dishonesty. If you have a vision of personal wholeness, but your investments support practices that are destructive or your relationships fail to communicate and share your wholeness, you are not being true, nor doing honor to the visions you have received.

The universe exists in its own unimaginably complex rhythm and balance, contributing freely to our spirituality and requiring balance as its only return. What that means in practical terms is that those who participate in a traditional Ojibwe vision fast never pray for themselves alone, but for the People, the tribe, the nation, the animals, the plants and the blessed spirits. Though the specific nature of the vision might be a secret, its practical use is likely to aid the life of the people.

We have access to everything the world has known, if we can learn to listen to the stones and the stories they have to tell, if we hear the winds speak who have been everywhere and heard everything since the beginning of time. The world will always provide vision, if we allow ourselves to be alone, then open our eyes and look, as if for the first time, at what has been around us all along.

From: A Voice From The Earth

“In the Lakota/Sioux tradition, a person who is grieving is considered most holy. There’s a sense that when someone is struck by the sudden lightning of loss, he or she stands on the threshold of the spirit world. The prayers of those who grieve are considered especially strong, and it is proper to ask them for their help. You might recall what it’s like to be with someone who has grieved deeply. The person has no layer of protection, nothing left to defend. The mystery is looking out through that person’s eyes. For the time being, he or she has accepted the reality of loss and has stopped clinging to the past or grasping at the future. In the groundless openness of sorrow, there is a wholeness of presence and a deep natural wisdom.”

~ Tara Brach

The Shamanic journey starts when we begin to live what we have grasped of the Great Plan.

Where do we start? Physically from where we are, however tempting it may be to wait until “the conditions are right,” until we move to another place, until we get a new job, until we find more understanding, more congenial people, until… until…

The Grandfathers say, “Start now,” Now is all we have, all we shall ever have. Start now.”

Our journey is a resumption of the long way we have come, not a totally new start. Spiritually we start from that moment and that place where we decide to re-commit ourselves to the journey, to re-surrender our wills to the will of the Great Source, to enlist with finality in the Company of Light.

Sooner or later this great moment comes to us, but it must be with finality, total commitment, we must stick with it, or it will be only another half-hearted attempt to take a few hesitant steps on one of the ways leading to the Center, and away from it. We must go forward firmly. or we may find ourselves again in the “dark wood.” Each time this happens it gets harder to resume the journey, and whether we go on foot, or “over wonderful slippery water” in a Shadow Canoe, resumption of the journey is what our spirits crave.

~Evelyn Eaton

At some distant point in mythological time, the living being which we call the planet Earth joined together with the Great Spirit of All That Is to co-create humankind. As the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, so is every child more than a joining of two parents. Distinct from the rest of creation, humankind achieved self-awareness and by so doing gained the right of free will.

Because we are children of form and spirit, we have access to both the Earthly and the Divine within ourselves. Further, every individual is a collection of many parts: emotional, mental, spiritual, physical. Each part affects the rest in invisible fashion. But there is a way to achieve balance by seeking the center point of stillness where all parts will merge. If we learn to move from that center, responding not to the various insistent voices of body, heart, spirit or mind but acting from an awareness of the greatest good, then all four are served. They may not receive all their wants, but their real and essential needs will always be met.

By seeking to balance the plurality of our existence, we have the ability to balance the entire planet. This is the challenge that faces us. But there is no way to point at humanity and say, all right, take responsibility for your actions, make these realizations, because humanity is a collection of billions of individual beings who have lived, live, and may yet live. Our movements as a whole are difficult to perceive. But the awareness of a few can profoundly affect the rest of humanity through the invisible but powerful winds of change. Humanity can evolve through movements in individual lives.

The Earth as Gaia, a living being imbued with the spirit of All That Is, is faced with the same challenge that we face as individuals seeking to balance our plurality. If we choose of our own free will to accept our destiny, releasing the weakness, inadequacy and resistance that binds us to our old vision and world view, then yield to our greatest potential, we can be the wielder of will for the Earth as well, making the decision that will end this cycle and allow a new one to begin.

The gift of free will gives us the right to choose any direction and any path. Somehow the gift seems most powerful if it is used to do other than what is expected. Destruction appears to us so much more powerful than creation, taking so much more powerful than giving, controlling so much more powerful than yielding. But this is a distorted view. The other side of the gift of free will gives us the right to choose to be what we are intended to be. While non-human beings accept their roles without choice, we are given the freedom to choose to take our part. From here we make our own paths, then choose to walk upon them, taking responsibility for every choice that we make.

No one is going to tell us what we have to do. No force outside us is going to provide an easy solution to our global crisis. No ultimate authority is going to deliver an absolute truth in which we will all finally be able to believe. No relationship, no religion, no acquisition, no achievement, nothing that we find outside us is going to make us whole.

As we journey within ourselves, searching for the center point of stillness, we may discover it is a place we can only approach empty-handed and alone. But turning our backs on the world we may find, to our endless joy, the whole world waiting there for us to arrive and our empty hands holding everything we need.

From: A Voice From The Earth

Moon Tracker
Truth
"Take your false face off. There is no need to throw your hands up in despair!"
Be Merry


I think it's time to go shopping... maybe even buy some really cool stuff at my online shops!!

Tracking Visitors