Native American Spirituality

[Spirit Dancer]

"Decisions that have been made for the last couple of centuries have been decisions made without the presence of a real God....from the vision, not of God, but of money."

Tom Porter, MOHAWK

[StrongButch]

Rather than going to church,I attend sweatlodge;rather than accepting bread and toast from a priest,I smoke ceremonial pipe to connect with the Great Spirit;rather than kneeling with my hands placed together in prayer,I let sweet grass be feathered over my entire being for spiritual cleansing and to carry my prayers This is how I pray

[Spirit Dancer]

A Matter of Significance
Recognizing Your Value




Change your thinking to knowing that your life matters and that you are important.


It can be easy sometimes to buy into the illusion of our own insignificance. We may see large corporations or institutions, celebrities or successful people in our community, and compare ourselves to them, thinking that their fame or material power affirm how little our own lives amount to. But nothing could be further from the truth. Every single one of us matters—tremendously. Our very existence affects countless people in countless ways. And because we are each essentially a microcosm of the larger universe, our internal experiences affect the whole of life more than we could ever imagine. The world simply could not exist as it does now if you, or any one of us, were not in it.

Perhaps you are aware that on some level you believe your life does not matter. If this thought resonates within you, maybe it is time to explore why you feel this way. You may have formed self-rejecting or belittling beliefs as a child to keep yourself safe or to help you make sense of confusing situations. You may have felt unseen or unheard and decided that there was something wrong with you, rather than with the attention span of the people around you. Spend some time looking into where these feelings of insignificance first took root, and see what changes you might be able to make in your life and in your heart.

This one belief in your own unimportance could be limiting you and impacting your life in enormous ways. When you shift your perceptions around your own ability to affect your life and impact the world, you may discover wonderful parts of yourself that you had long ago forgotten. There may even be exciting new parts that you never even knew existed. When you gain awareness of how much your life really does matter, new sources of energy can emerge and your sense of connection with the world is renewed.

[Spirit Dancer]

"We all form self-images and much of our behavior is pretty well determined by how we feel about ourselves."

Eunice Baumann-Nelson, Ph.D., PENOBSCOT