“How can I align my life with that spiritual intelligence that is written within my own DNA?”
The Sun comes up, evening morning and we offer prayer and song to greet the new day. Everything comes alive and wakes up; water, plants, people, animals, birds, and the trees. And in turn, night follows day, and autumn follows the summer. Mother Earth turns and changes, and our four-legged relatives like the deer change to match the seasons reflected in the environment all around them. Since before time itself, this has been the natural order of the day –the natural divine order to life, what Native peoples call the “Original Instructions” written within the DNA of every living creature.
It’s said that the only ones who have broken away from this natural divine order are human beings. We resist change. With our brains and our “intellect”, we think that we can control the natural order of life. Instead of learning from our relatives the winged ones, the four-leggeds, the plant nations, and the water and trees, we seek to control those around us, human and other species, we disregard and discard what we believe to be intellectually inferior to our own intellect.
Wealth, authority, status, and control are what the old ones might call “empty words”. They are meaningless and powerless in and of themselves. Any “power” they might have comes from is derived from the power that we have given them. We as human beings get to choose what has power in our lives.
Ceremony has taught me that, power comes from alignment with and an understanding of divine right order and living with those Original Instructions as they are embedded within each of us. Not as the ability to think or as intellect but as a living connection with the intelligence
that is in within all of life.
Winona LaDuke, Anishanabeg grandmother, activist, and one-time vice presidential candidate says, “Part of the mythology that they’ve been teaching you is that you have no power. Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.”
Prayer is one way we access real power. Through prayer, we access our power to change and heal our lives and to be part of the healing of the Mother Earth and all of Creation. When we pray we need to look at what we are asking. Perhaps rather than asking how we can control our lives, we might ask how we can change so that our life aligns with those Original Instructions as given to us by our Creator? Maybe we might ask, “How can I align my life with that spiritual intelligence that is written within my own DNA?”
As we greet each new day, we can consciously choose that our day, our thoughts and actions line up with our prayer and with the purpose and intention the Creator has for our lives. Rather than trying to control what our happens in life, we can seek to change and adapt to a natural,
divine order so that we are carried by Life rather than resisting it.
Wishing you and yours many blessings.
Oyondusuk nia nanawenuk
All My Relations,
Ted Bear Jackson
Native American Spiritual Leader