Image by Stefan Keller
The first priority in life is to be true to the creative principle within yourself -- to recognize that you have the gift of life and to be a caretaker of that gift. Second is the responsibility to your parents, your family, and your friends -- to see the best within them. To call forth the best within others, to understand your special purpose and reason for life, and not to give away what you know until you are certain it will grow -- that is important.
How To Be Sure Of Your Purpose?
Look at what comes easily. What are the gifts that most easily manifest in your life in this present moment? What are the areas that you feel called to work in? Are the skills there or not? When do you feel the most clear flow of energy? What part of the Earth are you comfortable upon?
As we analyze that energy, as we analyze the sense of fullness and relaxation in the heart and the sense of feeling strong or weak, we are more able to make a clear determination of what our particular skills are and what areas we are to develop further in this lifetime.
Sometimes We Have Four Or Five Purposes In One Life
Some people flower swiftly and realize many accomplishments. Others are like some very rare orchid, slowly developing and blossoming, almost in secret, and then years and years later, when people have forgotten that the seed was planted there, it flowers. So we needn't be concerned about when or how we recognize ourselves to please others.
We understand our true entity in accordance with our life purpose and the unfoldment of our own vision and the accumulations of thought force around us from this and other lifetimes. The wise person goes to the heart of the matter, examining the heart of his or her own nature.
First Responsibility: To Know Yourself, Understand Your Own Mind
Knowledge of self is knowledge of will, the clear intention to be, seeing its threads as it weaves through all aspects of life. And it is each one's responsibility to understand one's family, one's relatives.
Understanding of your family is recognition of the lunar and solar energy within yourself, the positive, the negative, the mother, the father -- and how within the center of your spine there is emptiness and the potential of the childlike wisdom body coming forth. Your relationship with your co-workers and your clan is also very important, and the land you live in, and the nation.
The Universe Is Always Responding
As you more finely tune your concentration of mind upon manifesting your potential in a creative and harmonious way, there is the reciprocity of the universe saying, "That is good". For the young college student, it is the unexpected grant; for the business person, it may be people saying, "I want that product".
Always the universe is responding to our question, "This is good, this is correct", or perhaps, "Wait upon that". So we don't make a decision alone. We make our decision in relationship to the world around us. How is my duty as an individual, how are my gifts as an individual benefiting the world? How is it coming back? Can I write something that will help the people?
Sometimes we are aware of our gifts and wonder what we will need to bring them clear. How to turn aside what obscures our great potential? This is very important.
Calling Upon The Creative Power Of Ritual
Make a special place, a shrine area, a praying place, a studying place, observing your own nature and all of the world from that place. Make offerings of sage and sweetgrass or frankincense and myrrh, whatever is good for you, to clarify the space.
In the mind's eye, in the heart's eye, surround the area with light, that you may have clear direction, clear connection with the seed of your perfect mind. Then look and see if there are certain attitudes of mind that stand in the way. Sometimes people are afraid of success; that is a common fear. How to overcome this fear of success, of accomplishing your goal? That is laziness, actually, because you know you can accomplish, but all these little ifs and what-nots come up.
How To Overcome Those Ifs And What-nots
How is it that we have lost our self-empowerment? How is it that we have lost the essential peace that is within each of us? What are the attitudes and thoughts that stand in the way of our seeing clearly that which we are?
In the Native American way of understanding, the first illusion we are faced with is the illusion of pride, of superior and inferior. In the circle all things are related, neither up nor down. Nothing is alone; everything is together. We are in the family of life.
Each of us is carrying that spark of will, that spark of clear mind. We each have a special purpose and reason for being here in this time. To uncover that sacred purpose we take a vision quest, a journey within. In a journey to the Temple of Understanding we can clarify our understanding and come to true knowing of our gift and purpose in this time.
The Temple Of Understanding Is Within Us And All Around
Within this temple there is a great library where the records of all things are kept. The library is a study room for each and every one of us, in which we have stored away all the programs of our expression in this life and the other lives that are coexisting.
As you look, you want first to affirm the purpose of being here, to do good, and then to look at the patterns of living that have been moving you through this life, to see if they are in harmony with your primary purpose in this lifetime. If they are not, there is a fire that always burns and never smokes, there within the temple. This fire is where the old patterns are to be thrown as we write out a new model of consciousness, a very clear affirmation of our purpose.
If we sense fear in ourselves about meeting our divine qualities and the power of our being, the creative force, we want to take that script and burn it and write a new one, a script that says, "I will be all that I am to be and will manifest all of my gifts."
It is also good to look at relationships, to see how we share with other people. Where are the points of least resistance and clearest communication? Affirm those bridges, those fibers of life. And the obstructions, the attitudes and patterns of relationship that stand in the way of your fully manifesting your potential, they are to be taken down, released, offered to the fire.
Seven Kinds Of Human Beings
Basically, there are seven kinds of human beings, that is how the Tsalagi people have said. There is the person who is moving along the line of will; that may be the timekeeper, the drummer. There is the Peacekeeper, the White Chief who never sheds blood; that is the person along the compassionate way, the one who always seeks to bring peace and turn aside anger through prayer and generous actions. There is the one who builds through envisioning, the one who sees along the golden light of clear mind and brings forth with hand and word and action what is beneficial to all. Then there are the builders of lovely places, who bring the dream into solid formation for the benefit of all and who have a way of understanding and communicating along the entire stream of the clan mind, the group mind.
And there are the scientists, the ones who have looked at the particulars, who have watched very carefully to see, "Oh, this and this together has a certain effect upon the environment, this and this together brings forth the wisdom of bioresonance; the mountain man has lofty thoughts, and the man by the shore has the wisdom of the waves." This is the science of bioresonance, seeing the particular wisdom within each one and recognizing that it is all one.
And there is the person who understands the wisdom of the heart, one who is devoted to the ideal, to bringing forth for the benefit of all beings what is good. This one is concerned, not with science, not with the how, but just with being and doing, complete devotion for the benefit of all the people.
Then there is the shaker, the transformer, the lifeforce maker. That is one who shakes aside old thought forms, turning aside what needs to be turned aside. That is the person who wears the amethyst; that is the person who glows with the violet flame.
Coming To Complete Integration
Each of us at some point in our life is radiating and resonating according to those different rays. As we come to complete integration we make a decision: Will we continue our work for just our own enlightenment alone, or will we continue to work for the benefit of all beings? Will we continue on Earth, or shall we become the seed of a future life, a future planet?
These islands in times of confusion, these beings who decide to make a way station for the expanding mind, they are very wondrous teachers. My teacher, my grandmother Nellie, she has become a planet. Her heart was so big, her prayers were so pure. Always she brought people home to eat with her, and sometimes her children and others would say, "Why is this?" And she would look and smile and say, "Have you enough, my dear?"
She was reminding us of the abundant universe and the power of compassion. The gift of giving is the gift of receiving. So it was her path to carry her way beyond this time to create a resting place for those minds that have expanded beyond the learning of the Earth. And others decide to stay on Earth until the last person, the last being, recognizes and understands the Mystery of life.
Being Aware Of The Power Of Mind
Remember that we are all in process, unfolding, and let yourself know freedom from the suffering of doubt. We can choose, we can weave; we hold the form, we dance it, and the moment comes when it is recalled in each of us.
We are human beings. We can live in harmony and dignity. We can make peace, we empower ourselves to be peaceful. That is an affirmation, that is a hope, that is a vision. By the power of its sound it is a reality.
May our hearts ever recognize the clear light of mind. Let us affirm our wholeness as human beings. Let us affirm the mode of complementary resolution in ourselves and in all our relationships. Let us honor the light of clear mind in each one we meet. The Beauty Path, the Great Peace, is the meeting of ourselves, the perception of our minds, and the cessation of those waves and thought forms that create discord.
Let us sow the seed of peace in all our actions, thoughts, and words. Let us renew the sacred hoop.
Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc.
www.shambhala.com.
Article Source
Voices of Our Ancestors: Cherokee Teachings from the Wisdom Fire
by Dhyani Ywahoo.
Dhyani Ywahoo is a member of the traditional Etowah Band of the Eastern Tsalagi (Cherokee) Nation. Trained by her grandparents, she is the twenty-seventh generation to carry the ancestral wisdom of the Ywahoo lineage. Charged with the duty to rekindle the fire of clear mind and right relationship in these changing times, she is a guide to all who walk the Beauty Road. In her first book she shares with readers these precious oral teachings of her people.
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About The Author
Dhyani Ywahoo is a member of the traditional Etowah Band of the Eastern Tsalagi (Cherokee) Nation and the twenty-seventh generation to caretake the Ywahoo lineage. She is also founder and director of Sunray Meditation Society, an international spiritual society dedicated to planetary peace. Sunray meditation groups meet regularly in many cities in the United States and Canada. The practice is open to all; instruction is provided. A brochure is available upon request. A portion of the proceeds of all Sunray activities supports selected Native American projects. For more information, please write: Sunray Meditation Society, P.O. Box 308, Bristol, VT 05443 or visit www.sunray.org.
