The Wind Is My Mother
By Bear Heart
Bear Heart’s Philosophy
Walk in beauty. Have a purpose; strive for its fulfillment. Strive to live in harmony and cultivate loyalty, belief, and faith. Be in harmony with all things, but most important, be in harmony with yourself first. Harmony will neutralize any problems and help your life to be beautiful.
Harmony is a tolerance, a forgiving, a blending – subtle, soft, but very strong. In order to live in harmony, the common denominator that binds is "loving one another" in its truest form.
When you have a good purpose and reach (strive) for that purpose, it makes life worthwhile to live.
If your life is built on something solid, the winds and the storms of life may blow, you may sway back and forth (like a deeply rooted tree), but you will stand strong as long as you firmly hold on to that life-giving force.
When you have respect for the elders, it extends to everything else, including all of nature and its life forms.
Our lives become more meaningful when we remember those who went before us and when we stop to notice the world around us.
When there are blue jays around your house, they have come to protect and take care of you. The protection of the blue jay is one of the ways the Great Spirit acknowledges our presence here.
Let the Great Spirit take care of acts against you. Turn it over to Him, saying, "You know better. Please take care of this for me." It takes great character to be able to say that and mean it.
You don’t have to resort to force, you don’t have to defend yourself, when you have faith. Stay calm, see it through.
When someone has to defend himself, he usually employs force. But it can be better to explain your situation – say what you’re going to do and what you’re not going to do. Come to an understanding and you won’t have to use force.
If you get angry, you’ve lost the battle. To be truly humble is not an indication of weakness. It takes a greater strength to keep quiet – to simply cope with any problem that comes up.
When you have an individual connection with a Higher Power, you feel protection as well as sustenance, encouragement, strength, and guidance.
Qualities of Leadership: Humility, Courage, Loyalty, Compassion
Fast because "you can only retain when you’re not full." When you’re full, distraction comes. You must be a clear channel in order to learn.
To be replenished, we need to keep emptying ourselves to receive more. In that way, we become vessels, holding up on hand to receive the blessings and then opening up the other hand so that we become channels, letting those blessing flow into the lives of others
True Indian giving is when someone gives you something you need and later on you give that person something in return (not necessarily the same thing).
It’s hard to say thank you with nothing in your hands. Give something in appreciation if you can.
Be a good recipient. When someone gives you something, whether a big thing or a small thing, he wants to satisfy himself in some way be doing it, and if you say no, you hurt his feelings.
We sometimes overcomplicate things – they don’t have to imply this or that. We complicate our lives by dramatizing everything when we were just meant to live a simple life and enjoy it.
Never claim to know anything until you have experienced it yourself. Otherwise, it’s hearsay. Take courses and read whatever you want to stimulate your potential, but go out and do it yourself before you say you know it.
It’s one thing to have sight, but it’s a greater gift to have insight.
Learn to observe. You can learn to predict things by observing the environment. Being aware of everything going on around you can save your life. Trust your intuition.
When you learn to observe without judgement and without getting emotionally involved, you can better dispense your own power in ways that can truly help people.
It’s one thing to live a long time – it’s another thing to learn something in that space of time. You’ve been given the gift of life – don’t just become old, learn something.
As you arrive somewhere, see if it feels right in your heart. If it doesn’t, then change directions. (Follow your bliss!)
Being age conscious and time conscious are traps. Live life as though you might die tomorrow. Do what you would like to be doing and do your best each day.
Paper is a waste. Give your word and live up to your word.
A man or a woman commonly referred to as a "medicine person" is someone who acquires knowledge enabling him to work with people so that help and healing can come from On High. "We’re caretakers of sacred knowledge – that’s all we are." To become powerful is to allow a Greater Power to work through you.
Medicine is helping people attain what is good in life. When you give a lifting hand and make someone feel better for it, you’ve given that person "medicine."
Everything has energy, even inanimate objects. When you receive something solid from the earth, you don’t always know its history or what kind of energy it has accumulated, so it is best to bury it in the earth for four days and on the fifth day dig it up. If you want to clear the energy of an item [which cannot be buried], let it sit out in the sun for four days. Be then, the energy in it will be cleansed.
Never complete a negative statement. Thoughts have their own energy, vibrations. Planting an idea in your conscious awareness is like planting a seed. The subconscious responds by attracting all the things necessary to bring that idea, whether positive or negative, into fulfillment.
When you change your thoughts, your emotions will follow. The mind has the power to do anything.
The term "witchcraft" includes shamanism, sorcery, magic, and wizardry. What makes witchcraft good or bad is up to the individual using it. "I have a sort of built-in protection. If anyone gets really, really mad at me, as long as I don’t retort with the same kind of energy, something bad happens to them. I don’t do it; they do it to themselves. That is the Great Spirit’s way of taking care of His own."
A medicine woman needs male energy and a medicine man needs female energy around them, especially when they’re making medicine. It makes the medicine stronger.
Never point a finger of scorn or judgement at your fellow man because when you point, there are three fingers pointing back at you. (Wicca!)
If someone is unkind or throws verbal daggers at you, that person has a problem – why make it your problem too?
Laugh at yourself and with others.
Love in today’s society is very conditional. People talk about unconditional love, but they never talk about nonjudgmental support, which goes hand in hand with unconditional love. Those two to together to express real love.
Love and forgiveness are synonymous. You can’t truly forgive unless you really love. You can’t truly love unless you can truly forgive.
Love is synonymous with the word "forgive," they go hand in hand. Too often when someone has wronged us, we don’t make it easy for them to say, "I’m sorry."
A home is where love abides in the hearts of those who live there.
Children come here to teach us – to teach us how to be humble, teach us how to be forgiving.
The way to take care of something you’re not happy with (a habit, addiction, etc.) is to honor it and say, "Thank you, you’ve taught me a lesson. You’ve been with me for a long time, but now I’m going to try something else." Get it out and put something positive in. They can’t both occupy the same place at the same time.
Be grateful for all the difficult situations in life because you can learn something from each one. Take responsibility.
When something terrible happens to you, say, "Thank you," because there’s a lesson there.
Life is suffering. And coping with suffering gives meaning to life – it is what gives us our strength. In our struggles we may think we can’t go any further, not realizing that it is merely a turning point in our life. You can turn things around in your own life, live hopefully, and keep that hope going.
If we’re going to fail, it’s better to fail trying than just giving up.
No situation is all negative. There’s a counterpart that’s positive. Look for it, reach for it, utilize it – it will offset the negative.
If you really want to release something, you must also relinquish your sentimental attachments to it.
Find a balance between tears and laughter. There are two sides to most every situation in life – try to balance them out. In the most somber situation you can almost expect something to turn around – if you don’t balance it out on your own, a situation often arises which forces you to.
The two sides of the brain must be kept in balance to lead a balanced life (Left = Logical. Right = Ethereal/Spiritual.)
The first thing you feel like doing comes from your instinct (right brain), but then a flood of logic comes in (left brain). If you practice using your instincts with small things, you will eventually be able to rely on them for the big decisions in life.
Your stomach is where the energy that sustains your life enters your body. It’s not necessarily what you put into your body, but the attitude with which you put it in that counts. Focus on positive thoughts and your state of wellness can be maintained, not only be what you eat but by how you are eating.
Always be grateful for food. Leave a little food on the plate as an offering. Breathe a word of prayer so that the dividends of the gift (food extends your life) may be multiplied into the lives of others.
Peace is not the absence of conflict. It comes from the ability to cope with that conflict. So never lose sight of the fact that the sun is going to shine through to a great day, a great life. Whatever our potential, you can reach it.
The most important thing is not your circumstances in life, but your reaction to those circumstances. A lemon has to be squeezed first before it can make lemonade. They either squeeze the best out of you or the worst. It’s up to you.
Accept that the Supreme Being never abandons us. What people don’t always realize is that He goes through our ordeals with us and brings us safely through. He never forgets us; He’s always there day and night looking after us.
The beauty of silence, the lack of frenzied activity for a period of time, helps us collect our thoughts and center our lives so we can maintain a sense of calm when we return to the hectic society and resume our work. We learn to cope by incorporating that stillness into our daily lives. That stillness is actually the presence of the Higher Being who is with us at all times but often goes unrecognized.
There are many spiritual paths, but only One Spirit. If you are strong in faith, you don’t have to fear what anyone else does (believes). However we make contact with the Creator is meaningful in His eyes.
It’s good to send out prayerlike energies when we see something that is out of balance in people’s lives.
When you pray for something and receive it, say thank you. When you do that, many more blessings come.
Praying is not only following rituals and doing it just right. Ritual give us focus and direction, but we can pray at any time anywhere. The power of the Creator is all around us, but we don’t often focus it on any specific area. It’s how we feel inside, how our heart connects, and how we live that’s called walking the Spirit Road.
The secret to communicating our feeling is humility. It’s good to come right to the point when we pray.
Churches were never made for perfect people.
We become spiritual by having an experience of oneness with the Great Being.
The spirit just works, it doesn’t think in terms of distance, it doesn’t think in terms of time.
When you are in a sacred place, you yourself become sacred. Purification (physical and mental) allows you to come before the Great Being with "clean hands," meaning a clean attitude, a clean heart, a clean life, as clean as you can live it.
Don’t consider yourself above or below nature – consider yourself a part of nature. Spend each day in acknowledgement that every day is a holy day, a sacred day. Look ahead to the future with your prayers. And consider all life forms as your relatives and respect them.
By showing respect for the land, we’re going beyond that to the Great Power who makes all things possible – the Creator and all that He has provided for us.
All animals have their own system of communication, whether we understand it or not. Everything on the earth is interdependent.
If you must kill, present an offering and talk to the animal or plant, explaining, "I need you for ..."
"The rivers and streams are the veins of the universe. They’re your lifeline, take care of them." When the earth and her resources are used without offering something in return, we’re faced with natural disasters and the death and damage that follow.
To live abundantly is to feel free.
We don’t see far enough ahead. We have scientific knowledge, but not the wisdom to guide that knowledge. Money is not the answer to everything.
Each one of us has something to offer in this life, every one of us. Too often we define success in terms of financial achievement. Real success is doing your very best at all costs. Our actions speak for themselves.
If you have a job, and the job has become a rut, think of it not as an end in itself, but as a springboard to something else that will come to you. For the time being, make the most of it. Work on your attitude, find the joy – make it a joyful experience.
The manmade things we put on this planet dim our view of the actual beauty that exists.
Life is a circle (Sacred Hoop). What we’re actually doing is borrowing sunlight, the wind, and the food, which comes to us from the earth. So, think of each day as a loan and learn to use it wisely.
The Sacred Hoop is the circle of all life – the Four Directions, the Earth, and everything that lives on the Earth. Everything is part of the Sacred Hoop and everything is related. Our existence is so intertwined that our survival depends upon maintaining a balanced relationship with everything within the Sacred Hoop. The circle represents the universe – it represents all of creation, united together as relatives.
There is always good and bad in every culture. Love is what repairs and heals and when we bring this universal love into our own lives we feel better for it. It has to come from understanding and tolerance. Now is not the time to look at the differences, but to see how we are alike. Love is the common denominator that binds us together. Love is expandable; it can encompass this whole universe. It can heal.
We are truly all brothers and sisters in this universe, and most important, we have to maintain that relationship in order to survive.
The process of self-knowledge involves asking yourself three questions: Who am I? What have I become with the who that I am? Why am I here?
Who am I? You have an identity from the One who gave you life. You are known. Search for that path and stay on it.
What have I become with the who that I am? When life was given to us it was a gift from the Creator and what we make of that life is our gift back to the Creator.
Why am I here? Some people mistake goals as their purpose. A goal can be a means toward a purpose, but it is not an end in itself. Whatever your career, you have the opportunity to enrich others.
Finding yourself, looking within, is the most important thing in life. "This is where I stand. This is who I am." The word memorial does not indicate that someone has died, but rather that someone has lived. Choose what to stand for – what to live for.
After you’ve learned something about yourself, self-discipline is the next step. If we can’t master ourselves, how can we master anything else?