Think Indigenous: Native American Spirituality for a Modern World

by Doug Good Feather

Indigenous spirituality is not a religion; it’s a nature-based way of living in alignment with Mother Earth and the spiritual laws of the universe. The answer to any meaningful question can be found in the natural world if you learn how and where to look.

Spiritually disconnected humans attempt to structure the Creator into models and narratives, in ways that frequently benefit self-serving political and financial agendas. Industries and organizations—specifically politics, science, and religion—try to organize the Creator into systems and processes, rules and compliance, and rewards and punishments to make us believe that personal safety, control, and predictability lie within their particular brand of salvation.

Organized religion has had a death grip on our one-on-one spiritual relationship with Mother Earth for the last few thousand years. In essence, religions have hijacked our natural sense of spirituality. Religious leaders have led us to believe that they want us to have a personal relationship with God, but they create systems and processes that force us to go through their particular brand of corporate spiritual salvation.

We’re in a time when many people the world over have spiritually devolved and have lost connection with their seasonal and celestial senses. The good news is that it’s not difficult to rebuild our relationship with the ways of the earth and stars. The memory of these ways is literally part of our ancestral blood memory. When we learn how to sink into the rhythm of our natural spirituality, we can sense the influence the moon has on us, and we become keenly aware of our earthly relationship with the power of the sun. We may have forgotten the words of our original song, but we can hum along until we begin to remember again.

Each morning when we wake—should we choose to listen—is a message from the Creator to remember the privilege we were given of waking up. It’s a reminder to get up and prepare our self, to honor our self, to go out into the world, to connect with Mother Earth and the hearts of other beings, to inspire and encourage those who cross our paths, and most importantly, to enjoy life.

When we devote our attention to the endless assault of people doing horrible things to each other and the horrific things we do to other sentient beings and to our planet, we disassociate from our morals and virtues, and our senses get dulled. Humans are not built to process the massive amount of pain, suffering, and cruelty we constantly expose ourselves to in the online world, which in turn creates many of the diseases in our heart, mind, and body. Unplugging from the online world and plugging in to nature is imperative to heal and regenerate our life force.

“The longest journey is the mind to the heart.”

we become lovable when we heal the parts of ourselves that we’re ashamed of or that we think are embarrassing or unlovable.

So, in the light of this collapsing world that we see—what better time to be born than now? What better time to be alive than now? Because this generation . . . we get to change the course of history. Humans have created the greatest crisis that we see on the planet, and the greater the challenge, the higher we will rise to overcome it.

A spiritual warrior fights not because they hate the person in front of them but because they love the people behind them.

The loss of a relationship is of little consequence in comparison with the loss of our spirit.