We must learn to look at ourselves from the center~

IMAGE: PATRICIA MORRIS

“It is difficult but exceedingly important to learn how to stand apart from the things we believe to be true, or from our own fears, our anger, our jealousy, our hate, or even our own love for someone. All of these can control us and prevent us from thinking clearly.

“Fear, anger, jealousy, and hate can completely obscure a person’s intelligence. Wise teachers say to avoid these as you would a poisonous snake. Love too can prevent a person from seeing clearly if it is not balanced by reason.

“In order to acquire this art of standing apart from our strong feelings and thoughts, we must learn to look at ourselves from the center of our medicine wheel. From that center, we will be able to see how we fit together with everything else. We will experience ourselves to be a small but infinitely sacred part of a very large process.

“When we dwell in that balanced center point, we cannot be controlled by our strong feelings or thoughts. From this sacred center, whatever action we take will be taken because we decided to act, and because it was good to do so.

“When we can look at ourselves in this way, we will have learned the first lesson in detachment: that we are not our bodies, we are not our thoughts, we are not our feelings or insights.

“We are something else far deeper and wider. We are the being that has thoughts, has insights. We are the being that feels and knows. We can watch our feelings, our thoughts, our insights and know them to be reflections in the sacred lake.”

~from Sacred Tree: Reflections on Native American Spirituality

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