We don’t need to steal native spirituality for lots of reasons.
Number one… really??!!
Our ancestors (our parents and grandparents, who were spiritually bankrupt in many ways because they had had their native wisdom stolen from them generations ago) whizzed into all these countries: the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, all these places, and brought a ton of destruction. Now here we are, generations later, years later, turning around and saying, “Hey give us your spirituality, give us what you have left.”
Like haven’t we taken enough.
How shallow is that? I mean, that was the reason our ancestors were bankrupt in the first place… because they didn’t take their own experience and knowledge and use that as their spiritual ground. Because they were looking for something for cheap.
Native wisdom isn’t like unfindable. We don’t need to steal it. It’s the thing that you find when you’re being a decent human being in the society that you live in. It’s learning wisdom from everyday life, and from the experience of people around you. We can still do that. We don’t have to steal it. We can find this for ourselves.
There are tons of teachings around that can help us get to this place without having to steal it from populations who are still in crisis and trauma from the things that have been done to them. Non-duality is, as you know, the one I am always pointing at because non-duality is showing you how to do it yourself. How to get out of your head, out of all the conditionings that you’ve been given. Out of the mental block that is making you unable to see reality as it is.
These teachings are about learning how to get out of the crazy imagination that consumes our consciousness. We don’t need to steal native chants, and native stories, in our order to do that. We need to do our own work first. Then when we are solid, awake, participants in life… then we can be allies. Then we can offer real help to the communities that have been hurt by colonization; the people who are still hurting from what was done hundreds of years ago. Help them come back. Give them space to rediscover who they are.
Then we are brothers and sisters who can share rather than take.
We don’t need to steal it. We can grow up grow up and become responsible. We can come awake in our own beings. We can live in this world in the solid ground of reality. Living as who you are.
From this solid ground we can start learning things. So go back through the Navajo native teachings that we’ve been working on this week. Go back through them again, and look at them in a real light. They should be telling you something that you don’t already know through your conditionings, but you kind of know in your soul. Love means how you take care of your family. That’s love: how you take care of people. It’s not a fleeting feeling that we want to get and acquire. It’s what you do.
How can we live in our communities in a way that we’re actually an asset? That’s a very very complicated question in a complicated world. There’s not an easy answer because everyone we’re dealing with is broken. Our systems are broken. Our communities are broken.
Look at these native teachings and see how they tell a story about how easily a human being can become broken. Like the teaching on evil. That story tells us that if we start grasping after temporary joy, and temporary confidence, then we are easily swayed by this evil being. This shows us how easily we can go bad.
It’s also a wonderful clue of the wisdom that is available to us on the deep spiritual path. There is a joy that’s not temporary. There’s a confidence that’s not temporary. We have the tools, ourselves, to go looking for these things. We don’t need to steal them in any way.
And that brings us to an important point. When you actually get right down to the crux of the matter… you’re not going to get it from any spiritual teacher. Ultimately you have to do it yourself. Ultimately you are perfectly capable of doing it yourself. All you’re trying to find out is ‘who you are.’ Find out what’s real. Who is it that is looking out of your eyes? Who is it that hears the sounds that comes in through your ears? Who is it that takes what comes in through your senses and turns it into meaning?
You don’t need to steal anything to become yourself.