Spiritual People

 

Natural Law

 

"The Natural Law is a spiritual law. Its powers are both light and dark." There are some characteristics that are evident in the system which the Creator made. He made balance, harmony, and polarity. In other words, every (+) plus has a (-) minus. Every positive has a negative; every up has a down; every problem has a solution. The Spiritual Law is the same - it has light and dark. Both are good, so both need to be honored. Lessons can be learned on both sides.  Great Spirit, teach me the powers of the Natural Laws.   -- Oren R. Lyons, Spokesman Traditional Circle of Elders

Teachings of Buddha

 

MILKYWAY Spirit Path .. Wicakiyuhapi Wanagi

 

Cultures the world have passed down stories about stars and creation. Lakota people had regionally based beliefs called Star Knowledge. One of these stories tells how the stars give a spirit to a Lakota person at birth. When they die, that spirit returns to the sky and travels though the Milky Way.

According to Lakota tradition, every Lakota baby that is born is given a wanagi. A wanagi is like a spirit from a star. We live our lives here on this earth with that wanagi. Then when we die, that wanagi leaves our body and it goes to the cup of the Big Dipper.

The cup has seven stars. Four of them make the dipper part and three of make the handle. Those four stars that make the cup are called the carriers. When the wanagi leaves a person who had died, those four stars, they carry this blanket between them and on that blanket is this wanagi.

When that wanagi is taken to the Milky Way, it's accompanied by seven stars. The other three that make the handle are called the mourners and those seven stars together are called the Wicakiyuhapi. That's the Lakota name for The Big Dipper. Then this wanagi gets on that spirit trail and then that wanagi by itself then travels. The narratives say there's a fork in the Milky Way and it's at that point where that wanagi returns to a star.

In Lakota, you hear the phrase mitakuye oyasin, which means all my relatives, all my relations. A lot of times, we westerners think of that meaning all my cousins and all my aunts and uncles and we think of humans, but when Lakotas say this mitakuye oyasin, it means all these relatives of all the nations, not just the human nations. The star nation is one and that's this idea of relatives throughout the universe. So, all Lakotas are related to stars. All the research now is we are exchanging molecules all the time with our environment. This is this idea that it's these species are not finite. One specie versus another specie is that the plants, the animals, all other people, we're exchanging molecules with all of these living beings and that fits into the Lakota cosmology perfectly. That's not foreign. It wouldn't be strange to traditional Lakotas from 150 years ago to have been old that. They'd say, well, yeah. That's mitakuye oyasin, we're all related.

Enter and abide

 

 

 

 

"Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing, nor upon tradition, nor upon rumor, nor upon scripture,

nor upon surmise*, nor upon axiom, nor upon specious** reasoning, nor upon bias toward a notion pondered over,

nor upon another's seeming ability, nor upon the consideration

'The monk is our teacher.' When you yourselves know:

'These things are bad, blamable, censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,' abandon them...

When you yourselves know:

'These things are good, blameless, praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,' enter on and abide in them."

Gratitude unlocks

 

Trauma

 

Remembering what we know

 

Last line of Defense

 

Healing across time

 

Poverty

 

Ishi

 

Adolescence

 

On War

 

Quote of the Day

 “The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity .…They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”

Vice President Henry A. Wallace, April 9, 1944.

questions

 

"Ask a difficult question,

and the marvelous answer appears."

—Rumi

“The great thing about science is that the questions are so much more important than the answers. Almost any scientist can find an answer if he/she can only find a good question. I think that theology tends to make the mistake of straining for answers, even answers that claim to be final. Science lives with the questions. All its answers are tentative and breed further questions. The really great questions— those a bright child might ask—are never finished answering.”

—George Wald, Nobel Laureate, Biology

Roots

 

still a Loser

 

Ancestors

 

Explain

 

No More Make Believe

 

 

List of Lakota deities

Anúŋğite - The two-faced Spirit referred to as mother of the Four Winds, Yum the Whirlwind, and the daughter of the Pȟežúta (Medicine Men) Ka and Wa. She is also known as Wakanka, the elderly woman.

Aŋpo - The spirit of the dawn, an entity with two faces.

Čapa - The beaver Spirit of labor and taxes.

Četaŋ - The hawk spirit of the east.

Haŋ - The ancient spirit of darkness; banished to be under Maka.

Haŋwí - The moon Spirit who accompanies Wi. Also known as Haŋhépi Wi (Nighttime Wi) to differentiate her from Wi. She is also the Spirit of mother hood, constancy, kinship, and feminine things.

Hununpa - The bipedal bear Spirit of wisdom. After Iktomi was made the trickster and he forfeited his position as the Spirit of wisdom, he became the lower Spirit of wisdom.

Iktómi - The spider trickster spirit and son of Inyan.

Íŋyaŋ - The primordial creator Spirit. His color is yellow.

Ite - The wife of the wind Spirit Tate.

Campbell taught

 

Joseph Campbell taught us that what we are really looking for is not so much the "Meaning" of life as the "Experience" of being alive. In other words, this awareness will mark the transition from the "search for meaning" to "the experience of meaning" as a necessary way to fully grasp the meaning and experience of our entire existence. The whole process tells us exactly what the Myth is.

Marcus Aurelius

 

Tecumseh

 

The road crossing

 

Purpose

Hannah

Religious Animal

"Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste." - The Lowest Animal

Van Gogh

People still persist in thinking that life is flat and runs from birth to death. But life, too, is probably round, and much greater in scope and possibilities than the hemisphere we now know. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Miles

Religion v. Spirituality

Mahatma

Rebbi

Dan George