Reclaiming Indigenous Voice & Vision by Marie Battiste

Explain to me please, when did the change take place, from owners to wards of the selfish state? Write down the reasons why the land under our feet became foreign soil in perpetuity.  (Chief Lindsay Marshall)

Ultimately, peacemaking is about healing.  You cannot order someone to heal or force someone to heal.  Fines and jail time are not tools for healing.  Healing depends on a process that moves people from "head-thinking" to "heart-thinking". (Robert Yazzie, chapter: Indigenous Peoples and Postcolonial Colonialism)

Post-colonialism will not arrive for Indigenous peoples until they are able to make their own decisions.  Colonialism remains when national legislatures and policy makers make decisions for Indigenous peoples, tell them what they can and cannot do, refuse to support them, or effectively shut them out of the process. (Robert Yazzie, chapter: Indigenous Peoples and Postcolonial Colonialism)

A great deal of non-Indigenous communication is designed to compel the listener to accept the position taken by the speaker. (Robert Yazzie, chapter: Indigenous Peoples and Postcolonial Colonialism)

Culture comprises a society's philosophy about the nature of reality, the values that flow from this philosophy, and the social customs that embody these values.  Any individual within a culture is going to have his or her own personal interpretation of the collective cultural code; however, the individual's worldview has its roots in the culture -- that is, in the society's shared philosophy, values, and customs.  (Leroy Little Bear, chapter: Jagged Worldviews Colliding)

If everything is animate, then everything has spirit and knowledge.  If everything has spirit and knowledge, then all are like me.  If all are like me, then all are my relations. (Leroy Little Bear, chapter: Jagged Worldviews Colliding)

Noninterference is respect for others' wholeness, totality, and knowledge.  (Leroy Little Bear, chapter: Jagged Worldviews Colliding)

For all its litany of devastation and deprivation, postcolonial theory ultimately comes to rest on this belief: that there are things that have survived, that they do have power, that the margins are in fact the centres, and that the tide alternatives that colonialism has somehow persuaded us to accept -- between the worthy and the worthless, for example -- are extremely hazardous and in every sense ultimately unholy.  And that, if we don't get understanding this, then we'll be living not a riddle, where two truths co-exist, but a lie, where we give up on trying to reconcile them.  (J Edward Chamberlin, chapter: From Hand to Mouth: The Postcolonial Politics of Oral and Written Traditions)

For Pueblo people, pottery is a prayer, realized in a physical form. (Gregory Cajete, chapter: Indigenous Knowledge: The Pueblo Metaphor of Indigenous Education)

Knowledge is like a cloud.  Clouds come into being, they form, and then they go out of being again somewhere else.  The maps that we have in our heads as Indigenous people are inherited and enfolded within our genes.  Many Indian people and elders have said that we don’t lose knowledge. Knowledge, like a cloud, comes in and out of being.  Knowledge comes to us when we need it. It evolves and develops.  (Gregory Cajete, chapter: Indigenous Knowledge: The Pueblo Metaphor of Indigenous Education)

Indigenous knowledge is derived from communal experience, from environmental observation, from information received, and from the visions attained through ceremonies and communion with spirits of nature. (Gregory Cajete, chapter: Indigenous Knowledge: The Pueblo Metaphor of Indigenous Education)

Cognitive imperialism, also known as cultural racism, is the imposition of one worldview on a people who have an alternative worldview, with the implication that the imposed worldview is superior to the alternative worldview.  (Marie Battiste, chapter: Maintaining an Aboriginal Identity, Language, and Culture in Modern Society)

Western scholars are gradually realizing how important Aboriginal knowledge may be to the future survival of our world.  (Marie Battiste, chapter: Maintaining an Aboriginal Identity, Language, and Culture in Modern Society)

Confronting cultural racism in Canada is a difficult task because cultural racism cannot be contained to any one portion of the state. (Marie Battiste, chapter: Maintaining an Aboriginal Identity, Language, and Culture in Modern Society)

In most Aboriginal languages, there are no fixed categories of objects, such as sun, wind, natural resources, minerals, plants, animals, or peoples.  These categories are English translations of Aboriginal categories of being that describe the external patterns and interactions of life-giving forces. (James (Sakej) Youngblood Henderson, chapter: Ayukpachi: Empowering Aboriginal Thought)

In the Aboriginal worldview, there are diverse ways of knowing: those of thinking, feeling, and willing.  Each is interwoven yet distinct.  Thinking is part of the flux, feelings are a particular location in the flux, and willing is using thinking and feelings. (James (Sakej) Youngblood Henderson, chapter: Ayukpachi: Empowering Aboriginal Thought)

Aboriginal ways of knowing are focused on caring about the world. (James (Sakej) Youngblood Henderson, chapter: Ayukpachi: Empowering Aboriginal Thought)

Love is something that you can leave behind when you die.  It's that powerful.  (John (Fire) Lame Deer)

The True Source of Healing: How the Ancient Tibetan Practice of Soul Retrieval Can Transform and Enrich Your Life by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

PART ONE

A traditional Tibetan view is that illness can be linked to soul loss.

Spontaneity, creativity, ease, and playfulness are qualities of our natural state of being.

The mind that is in pain cannot think its way out of its pain.

How can we access higher awareness?  By taking what I call the three precious pills -- stillness, silence, and spaciousness -- which connect us to the inner refuge.

If we recall our negative emotions or other painful experiences and host them without judging, criticizing, rejecting, or grasping them, we engage the process of healing.  By hosting, I mean allowing the pain to freely arise, abide, and dissolve.

Begin by looking at four areas: personal alone time, family life, work life, and your connection to nature.  In any of these areas, are you lacking a sense of stability, comfort, inspiration, flexibility, or openness?  Notice any feelings of discomfort, sadness, exhaustion, or disconnection.

Do you feel at home within yourself? One way to reflect on this is to notice how often you need to be distracted.

How do you feel when you are by yourself? Do you feel comfortable, connected, and renewed in the stillness, silence, and spaciousness? Or do you feel restless or listless?

Soul retrieval has everything to do with discovering the space within, and then retrieving one or more of the five elemental essences that you lack and nourishing yourself from this source.

People with too little of the earth element may have trouble completing what they begin.

When the water element is not balanced, you may feel ill at ease.

When the water element is balanced in you, you are comfortable in your body and in your environment, comfortable at work and with your family.  You are fluid, able to respond with ease to changing circumstances. 

The fire element brings an enthusiastic joy that is mentally wakeful and physically blissful.

When the fire element is blocked, you experience a lack of energy ,inspiration, and vitality.  Your life can seem like a plodding routine.

When the air element within you is well balanced, you can readily transform negative mind states into positive ones.

Earth supports the ability to connect with our thoughts, feelings, and emotions; with the people we care about; and with the work we do. 

When air is not balanced, you feel stuck.

If the space element is balanced in you, whatever arises in your life can be accommodated.

The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance.

Without the right quantity, quality, focus and force of energy, we are compromised in any activity we undertake.

To be fully engaged, we must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interest.

Sadly, the need for recovery is often viewed as evidence of weakness rather than as an integral aspect of sustained performance.

Creating positive rituals is the most powerful means we have found to effectively manage energy in the service of full engagement. 

A positive ritual is a behavior that becomes automatic over time -- fueled by some deeply held value.

It is impossible to chart a course of change until you are able to look honestly at who you are today.

To live like a sprinter is to break life down into a series of manageable intervals consistent with our own physiological needs and with the periodic rhythms of nature.

Without time for recovery, our lives become a blur of doing unbalanced by much opportunity for being.

The key muscle that fuels spiritual energy is character -- the courage and conviction to live by our values, even when doing so requires personal sacrifice and hardship.  Supportive spiritual muscles include passion, commitment, integrity and honesty.

Spiritual energy is sustained by balancing a commitment to others with adequate self-care.

Without realizing it, we often create stories around a set of facts and then take our stories to be the truth.

Rituals create a means by which to translate our values and priorities into action in all dimensions of our life.

The Soul Searcher’s Handbook: A Modern Girl's Guide to the New Age World by Emma Mildon

Meaning? Belonging? Understanding? Loving? Fulfillment? Peace? What’s your destination?

The soul talks to us through sensations – our energy levels, illnesses, and aches and pains.

Our thoughts, feelings, emotions, experiences, and energy are all reflected in how we nurture and love (or not) our bodies.

The more connected we become to our souls, the more in tune we will become with our bodies.

Today, we often find ourselves consumed by society’s penchant for over-delivering on work results and undervaluing quality of life. 

Our lives have never been more public, making solitude a rarity and self-care nonexistent.

Dreams are ways for our souls to make us take note of lessons that need to be learned and issues that need to be resolved.

Nightmares are often an indication of a fear or hurt that needs to be acknowledged, confronted and healed.

Never [stop] being astonished by how many ways there are to be spiritual.

Energy, be it positive or negative, influences our health, love, adversity, joy – embodied through our everyday thoughts actions and choices.

With every act, you’re either lifting the world around you with the good shit, or polluting it with pure ick.

Spirituality isn’t an inborn superpower.  It’s about having the power to live a spiritually connected and authentic life day to day, in small, practical increments.

The Second Curve: Thoughts on Reinventing Society by Charles Handy

Being in control also means being responsible. 

Self-responsibility will be a feature of the emerging society.

The problem with the self-responsible society, that one that we are slowly becoming, is that we have to learn how to educate ourselves in areas that we did not need to worry about before, because someone else was taking care of them. 

To move forward in many areas of life it is sometimes necessary to change radically, to start a new course that will be different from the existing one, often requiring a whole new way of looking at familiar problems.

Complacency is a sign of looming danger but also of opportunity.  Doing nothing risks losing what you have.

Second curve thinking does not come easily.  It requires our imagination, intuition and instinct more than rational analysis.  Then, to act on it demands the courage to step into the unknown when all the signals, and all those around you, tell you that you don’t need to.

Anything that takes us out of our comfort zones for a while can act as a reminder that the past we are used to may not be our best future.

New thinking is not the prerogative of those in authority.

The Big Book of Yoga by Andrew G Reece

Hatha Yoga Pradipika even goes so far to say that Hatha Yoga practitioners who don't also engage fully in meditation miss the point completely, and derive "no fruits for their efforts".  Remember, the fruit we're talking about here isn't better health or fitness, but a mind that rests in complete stillness!

Hatha yoga is and always has been meant to be a system of spiritual development.

[Hatha yoga] employs techniques of cleaning, conditioning, and strengthening the physical body, in order to handle the higher energy levels that come as a result of practice. 

The word nadi is Sanskrit for "tube or pipe".  Nadis are the pathways that carry prana throughout the body; they perform the same function for the movement of prana as do veins and arteries for the circulation of blood.

Kosha means "sheath" in Sanskrit, but for ease of reference it usually gets translated as "body".  The five koshas are the Yogic way of accounting for the different aspects of the human experience -- from our physical bodies, to our emotional and mental states, all the way to depth of pure Spirit…. Consider the different parts of a candle flame -- it's easy to say that there is a blue part, a yellow part, a white part, and so on, but all of them are parts of a whole, and it's difficult to point out exactly where one layer ends, and another begins.  The koshas are a bit like that.

According to Yoga, to live a pure life is to be in line with those things that make it easiest to grow harmoniously as a person. 

The Mind's Own Physician: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama on the Healing Power of Meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Richard J Davidson, Zara Houshmand

"Mental health is not simply the absence of mental illness." Matthieu Richard

"If we're unwise, then most often the only way we know how to deal with pain is to escape from it through absorbing the mind into something pleasurable, which leads to the blind pursuit of sensory pleasure.  Yet that contributes to a greater sense of stress and dislocation." Ajahn Amaro

Stopping and opening one's field of awareness is, ultimately, a radical act of self-compassion and wisdom. 

"The fulfillment of one's aspiration for happiness really lies in the transformation of one's undisciplined state to a more disciplined state of mind". Dalai Lama

"There's an enormous emphasis in Buddhism on creating community.  It is said that on one occasion the Buddha's attendant Ananda, being very impressed by the importance of community for one's own individual spiritual practice, said, "Lord, it seems like half the practice is sangha" (sangha being the community).  And Buddha responded, "Say not so, Ananda.  The sangha is the whole of the practice".  Alan Wallace

"People are stuck in suffering and can't move on to the good news that there's relief from suffering". Dr Jan Chozen Bays

"The Buddhist psychological training, or treatment, if you will, shifts us from what is suboptimal -- the entanglement in confusion, addiction, rigidity, and so forth -- toward what is normal, with a greater increase of healthy states and, finally, to extraordinary mental health, well-being, and inner freedom". Jack Kornfield

"We're not designed as an organism to take in the suffering of the whole world." Dr Jan Chozen Bays

"The antidote of media fasting could be a very powerful treatment for our mental health, collectively and individually." Dr Jan Chozen Bays

"Meditation is full of mistakes, heartaches, and boring moments, and the feeling of getting nowhere.  It's doing it every day, preferably twice a day, that makes all the difference.  Then it becomes a divine therapy that does two things.  It spontaneously affirms our basic goodness, hence addressing the whole panorama of low self-esteem that is epidemic in Western culture.  The other thing meditation addresses is the unconsciousness and all the repressed emotional junk of a lifetime.  That repressed material is warehoused in the body and causes all kinds of problems." Father Keating

"The greatest step toward happiness that we can make is to recognize that happiness and pleasure are not the same thing."  Father Keating

"Heedlessness is thought to be one of the core conditions that give rise to all sorts of destructive behavior".  Dalai Lama

"The starting point of Buddhism is really the nature of reality and the fact of one's existence, the human condition". Dalai Lama

"The problems of mind are very complex, so the antidote also must be comprehensive.  Mindfulness is just one part of that." Dalai Lama

"Many problems are essentially due to ignorance.  Ignorance brings with it an unrealistic attitude and unrealistic attitude brings a lot of mental problems.  Accept reality, and approach it more realistically." Dalai Lama

The Mayo Guide to Stress-Free Living by Dr Amit Sood

Part 1 of 2

The simplest and most effective way to lift someone’s spirits is by giving one or more of the four A’s: attention, appreciation, admiration and affection.  These gifts shift others attention to what is right in their lives.

Being still goes against the mind’s nature.  The human mind has been fidgety for many generations.

Flow with the mind’s movement rather than opposing it.

Ask yourself if you are choosing thoughts or is thinking just happening.

Notice nature once a day and as needed.

Prejudices are judgments, or beliefs, that disregard the truth and are based on a rigid worldview.  The mind’s desire to protect itself from future harm sows prejudices.  They form rapidly, before we have fully processed the facts. We don’t recognize our prejudices, because ignorance confuses prejudices for intuition.

The prejudiced mind selectively collects information that agrees with its preconceived conclusions.  It globalizes the negative.

When things go wrong, as they invariably will, focus on what went right within what went wrong.

Annoyance is a symptom of unhappiness; unhappiness originates in hurt; hurt sprouts from unmet expectations.

Compassion reminds you that an expression of frustration is a call for help.

You don’t carry a foolproof instruction manual for living. You learn from what life teaches through your mistakes.

Your thoughts and actions, although well meaning, may still represent fear, desire and ego.

Acceptance of situations springs from the realization that the universe has many mouths to feed. Half of Earth has to face away from the sun for the other half to be bathed in sunlight.

Acceptance isn’t apathy, but an empowered surrender – a state that balances passion and impulse with transience and justice.

Intentional, mature forgiveness is empowering and doesn’t usurp your strength or self-respect.

Forgiveness represents the culmination of a sincere practice of gratitude, compassion, acceptance and higher meaning.

You forgive because you wish life’s higher meaning, not your hurts, to guide your journey.

Ignorance is effortless; wisdom, intentional.

Humans are programmed to be dissatisfied.  Today’s luxuries become tomorrow’s norm and necessities the day after.  Expectations and desires stand a step ahead of achievements.

Life offers choices, opportunities and disruptions.

Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self-Acceptance by Rosie Molinary

Confidence is born from proof, and proof of your worth comes when you have cultivated and embraced your whole self.

A negative self image is a beacon, calling us to explore what is really going on deep within.

With journaling, you see the patterns of your life; you claim -- or reclaim -- who you really are; you coach yourself into becoming the someone you imagined; you arrive at a sense of balance, of yourself, of wholeness.

Our words aren't just empty.  They are a road map to how we are feeling about ourselves.

We often fear bringing past hurts to the surface of consciousness because we are scared of the damage they could do -- yet subconsciously we have been processing those hurts all along. 

Consider what the beauty industry's endgame is: It's their bottom line, not your self-esteem.

When we reduce our sustenance to happenstance, we lose our attachment to being healthy, to honoring life, to connecting.

Emotions are not there to punish us.  They are there to serve us, to give us information, to help us gather insight, to teach us.

Well-being, it turns out, is really about meeting one's basic needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness through connecting with what's inside rather than outside.

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas

Rich American men, who tend to live longer than the average citizens of any other country, now live 15 years longer than poor American men, who endure only as long as men in Sudan and Pakistan.

There is no denying that today's elite may be among the more socially concerned elites in history.  But it is also, by the cold logic of numbers, among the more predatory in history.  By refusing to risk its way of life, by rejecting the idea that the powerful might have to sacrifice for the common good, it clings to a set of social arrangements that allow it to monopolize progress and then give it symbolic scraps to the forsaken -- many of whom wouldn't need the scraps if the society were working right.

This idea that self-love trickles down to others is an early ancestor of win-win-ism.

Ubers and Airbnbs and Facebooks and Googles of the world are at once radically democratic and dangerously oligarchic.

It is not inevitable that what passes for progress in our age involves the concentration of power into a small number of hands and the issuance of stories about the powerful being fighters for the little guy.

The more genuine criticism is left out and the more sunny, actionable, takeaway-prone ideas are elevated, the shallower the very idea of change becomes.  When a thought leader strips politics and perpetrators from a problem, she often gains access to a bigger platform to influence change-makers -- but she also adds to the vast pile of stories promoted... that tell us that change is easy, is a win-win, and doesn't require sacrifice.

How to Help Your Loved Ones Enjoy Death and Go Happily to Their Next Rebirth by Lama Zopa Rinpoche

We will die, but we don’t believe it.

Death believes totally in equal opportunity.

What makes death so difficult is attachment, desire, clinging: to this life, to the body, possessions, family, friends and so forth.  This clinging makes death difficult. … and we cause this ourselves.

Wherever we are, whatever we do, whoever we are with, if we always remain aware that the purpose of our life is to help others, to give happiness to others, we will never create the causes of suffering, either for ourselves or others.  Then we become the source of happiness for everybody around us – every being – and they become the cause of our enlightenment.

When we meet people we should feel that our job in meeting them is to make them happy.  When we eat we should feel we are eating to get the energy to help others.

The main thing at the time of death is to cut attachment, clinging, so we must give away our things, either mentally or actually.  It is extremely urgent to let go of your material possessions, especially those that you are most strongly attached to.

In your heart, you can offer everything to Guru, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.  Even if there is nobody around to hear you, from your heart think, “I am offering these things to the Guru and Rare Sublime Ones.”  Having offered them, think it belongs to them.

During our lifetime we constantly check our motivation to ensure it is as vast and positive as possible.  Every morning we would think, “The purpose of my life is to free every sentient being from suffering and its causes and bring them every happiness.  Today, that is my job and I will do nothing else but that".

From now until I achieve enlightenment – before the time of death, while I am dying, in the intermediate state, and in all future lives --- I will never allow myself to come under the control of self-cherishing and I will never separate from bodhichitta.

Set the intention to be really careful for however many seconds there are from now until the time of death.  Put all your effort into this, just as some ones crossing over a dangerous bridge would pay full attention to making sure they do not fall off.

Whatever I experience as I face death and move through the death process and into the next rebirth, I will always only ever think of benefitting others.

It might seem that our life would be perfect if it weren’t for all the external factors that keep interfering and bringing us suffering.  But if we examine deeply it will be very obvious that if we didn’t have the attitude of self-cherishing we simply wouldn’t suffer, no matter what situation arises in our life.

Without the inner enemy, there is no outer enemy.

We are mistaken to blame the mugger who takes our wallet or the person who steals our partner, but we are totally justified and right in blaming and begrudging this sneakiest of thieves, the self-cherishing mind.

The wind energies of the subtle body – more subtle than the air we breathe—carry our mind through a system of 72000 channels throughout the body.  It is said that our consciousness, our mind, “rides” on these winds.

Death is the most important time of life.

We need to deal with the physical needs of our loved ones at the time of death, of course, but the spiritual needs are paramount.  To die with a happy mind, a peaceful mind, that is a spiritual concern.

To die without anger or clinging is vital for a happy death.

Write down what you want to practice at the time of your death, how you want to die.  Write down in your diary right now!  Whether you die gradually or suddenly, you need to know this.  Otherwise, when death comes, or when the doctor tells you that you have cancer, you will have no time to prepare, and because of attachment to this life you’ll panic.

A happy death depends upon how we live our life every day, every moment.

The future depends on the present.

Practicing every day and preparing for the time of your death is far more important than going to the hospital to check the body, because death can happen at any time – even for healthy people.  Today, many people have died, healthy as well as unhealthy.

When you know how to die with full confidence…. That death is just change, that you’re leaving this old, sick body for a new, healthy one – then you are qualified to help others who are dying… you will know how to help them die with a happy mind.

That we can’t remember our previous life is because our mind is too clouded, not because there has been no previous life.