The Moon Time

The women are honoured and respected for the gift they have been given as life givers. Women must keep themselves of good mind, body, and spirit at all times. There is a natural cleansing cycle that occurs for women each month that helps them stay healthy. Some people call this the menstrual cycle, the period, or the menses.

Very often amongst the Aboriginal people you will hear of a time called " the moon time". The name is understood to be symbolic of the grandmother moon that travels the sky at night. The moon is honoured by the women in different ways and as she becomes full once a month so do women. This is a time when the blood flows from a woman and she is considered to be at her greatest strength. It is a time for women to stay quiet, to think, and to meditate about who they are as women. This is also a time when the women should be looked after and cared for. Women are powerful during this time and, out of respect for that power, they do not attend ceremonies, feasts, and Pow-wows where sacred items such as drums, outfits, feathers, eagle whistles, rattles, and pipes will be present. In this same manner the women do not wear their outfits to dance in the circle of life at the Pow-wow.

Offering Tobacco

Tobacco is used by native people to represent the honesty that they carry in their hearts when words are to be spoken between two people or to the spirit world. When a request is made, a teaching is shared, a question is asked, or a prayer is offered, the tobacco travels ahead of the words so that honesty will be received in a kind and respectful way. To offer tobacco is to pay an ultimate respect to that which you are asking.

The Seven Teachings

Written by: Harold Flett

sweat lodge teaching

A very long, long, time ago, our people lived in harmony with the animals, the plants, all living things and life was good. One day something happened and the people began to fight, there was jealousy and hatred, anger and fear, the people couldn't get along. Everywhere you went there was fighting. It was bad.

One day this little boy listened to his heart. He couldn't stand the ugliness and meanness that was going on about him. So he began to search for something to help his people. He began asking everyone, " What can I do to stop this?". No one knew. Finally, the people said, " Go to the elders for they have been here the longest. If anyone would know, they would."

So he went to the elders and asked, "What can I do to help my people, to stop all this fighting?" And the elders told him, " You must take four kernels of corn and walk. At the end of each day, you eat one kernel and at the end of the fourth day you will wait." So the little boy did this. At the end of the fourth day the little boy sat down and waited. Nobody knows how long he waited, but it was a long time. Then the Skawbawis came down from the sky and took the little boy away. He went past the moon, the sun and the stars. They travelled until they came to a lodge in the sky and the Skawbawis left him there. The little boy was afraid. Then he heard voices from inside the lodge, " Beedigeen, come in, we have been waiting." Inside the lodge there were seven Grandfathers. Each had a teaching to give him. There was a vessel there too and they told him to look inside. When he did he saw a beautiful tree. It had branches covered with leaves and birds and animals. It was the tree of life. Then it was time to go. Before he left, each Grandfather dipped his hand in the vessel and painted a colour on the little boy, so he would not forget the teachings that had been given and they told him, " Take these teachings to the people, they will help them, they will have harmony." Then the Skawbawis took the little boy back.

When the little boy woke up, he was very weak, so weak he could hardly move. After awhile, he reached his arm out and felt something, it was a plant. He put it in his mouth and ate it. After, he began to gain strength. He ate some more. When he was strong enough, he sat up. The sun was dawning behind him and it cast a shadow down the hill to a lodge. And then he remembered the teachings he had been given and brought them to the people.

What is the Medicine Wheel?

The number four is very sacred to the Aboriginal People of North America. The Medicine Wheel is an ancient North American abstract symbol that stands for "the sacredness of four." It is used by many First Nations and Métis as a symbol of the life, health and values of an individual, community or Nation. It is generally thought to have come from the Indigenous cultures of the Great Plains but it's used by many different cultures throughout North America. However, it's not used in all the traditions of all First Nations and Métis. It isn't an Inuit concept and isn't used in Inuit cultural practices in any way.

Each Nation has its own concepts, relationships and teachings about the Medicine Wheel, but as an example, here is some information about the Medicine Wheel from the Ojibway (or Anishinaabe) perspective:

How does the number four work in the Medicine Wheel?

Usually, four spokes create four quadrants on the Wheel. The four quadrants can represent many different ideas or concepts and their relationship to each other, the universe and the individual, such as:

There are also four sacred medicines that represent each colour and wind direction:

1. Wiingashk (sweetgrass) represents the hair of mother earth, so it is often braided. Wiingashk is known for its beautiful aroma when it's used for cleansing. The end of the sweetgrass braid is lit, which produces a cleansing and purifying smoke.
2. Semma (tobacco) is used to offer prayers at the Sacred Fire where people burn semma and tobacco ties. Semma is also smoked in sacred pipes.
3. Keezhik (cedar) is cleaned from the branches and used to make a smoke smudge. Keezhik is also very useful for cleansing and helping to get rid of negative or "bad" energy.
4. Shkodawabuk (sage) is also used for smudging. Sage and cedar are women's medicines. They are the only medicines that women on their moon time can use to smudge with.

The Practical Power of the Shaman

The spirit of shamanism brings harmony and magic into everyday life. Shamanism is a very practical spirituality. A modern-day shaman could live next door to you and the only clues you might have are that they get along well with people and animals and have a green thumb with plants. Also, shamans have a knack for putting people at ease and for saying and doing the right thing at the right time. In his book, Urban Shaman, Serge Kahili King defines a shaman as "a healer of relationships, between mind and body, between people, between people and circumstances, between humans and Nature and between matter and spirit."

If you have a taste of divine ecstasy, shamanism can teach you how to ground it, how to bring it into your everyday life through using your natural gifts and talents. Shamanism can support you in translating that experience, that creative energy, into physical form so it can benefit yourself and everyone around you. The essence of shamanism is not an esoteric, mysterious, ritualistic tradition which can only be practiced by native peoples in a tribal environment. This ancient spiritual perspective on life is a down-to-earth, pragmatic, realistic way of living that anyone can use anywhere, anytime, including in our modern world.

Currently across the planet, the sacred knowledge of the shaman or wizard is being translated into everyday street language in order to create more healthy, harmonious and enriching lives for people. The spirit of shamanism is more of an open, flexible attitude and approach to living than a rigid set of rules, formulas and techniques. Applying the basic principles of shamanism opens people to new possibilities and options for dealing with modern daily challenges.

From Alaska to the Andes, from Tibet to Tanzania, shamanism is a worldwide phenomenon. Virtually every religion has its roots in shamanism, although shamanism is not a religion. It's a perspective-a way of seeing all things as sacred. Shamanism does not preclude any religion. It simply says that anyone can have a direct experience of the divine without an intermediary. By honoring the sacred essence of everyone and everything, one's whole life can truly become a spiritual adventure.

Highly recommended reading on shamanism

Omens and signs

The shaman relates to every form of life as being alive, filled with energy and always communicating something to us. The key is in learning how to receive the communication. "Omens are a way Spirit communicates with us in the physical world," states shaman Ken Eagle Feather in Traveling with Power. "You can decipher omens from virtually anything, but pay special attention to unusual occurrences, whether it's the strange behavior of birds, or conversations in which someone says something that catches your attention in a special way, or when a book falls off a shelf in front of you. You might find that messages on billboards change right in front of you, so that while others are reading anordinary advertisement, you end up reading a message from Spirit. Be careful about being too strict in your interpretations, though. Remember, you are looking for guidance, not assurance. An omen might be the same for several people, or it might mean several different things. It's up to you to create your personal omen dictionary. This open-ended response is called nonpatterning, and it provides the space for Spirit to communicate with you." Using personal experience as the means through which wisdom is gleaned (rather than through reading, thinking or analyzing), the shaman presents opportunities where people begin to sense a real, interactive connection with everything else that exists, even those things believed to be inanimate such as rocks, plastic, glass or metal.

Everything is energy

The basis of shamanistic creation, healing and transformation has always been the knowledge that the essential nature of everything is energy. Modern science, specifically quantum physics has only recently concluded that every living thing is made of energy. The reason that walls and rocks appear solid is because they vibrate at a low, dense rate. We know that pictures travel invisibly through the air and arrive on our TV screens. Is it such a stretch to open to the possibility that everything has an invisible energy within it? And that communication can be transmitted through this energy?

Shamans utilize the knowledge that everything is energy to create in their world by using their conscious attention to direct the flow of energy within all forms of life. Energy flows where attention goes. Indeed, scientists are now reporting that the outcome of their experiments are significantly affected by the beliefs and thoughts of the person conducting the experiment.

Since we come to this planet to evolve our soul within the paradox of this world of polarity (light and dark, inside and outside, body and spirit), we must develop the skill to play consciously and creatively with duality. If we are truly perceptive, we can see how the energies of each opposing polarity are serving us. If we see how we are at effect of all these dualistic energies, then we can make a choice of what to keep and what to eliminate. This is an act of magic. True magicians are those who can influence energy, whether it is inside them or in the world outside them. If we have learned how energy moves and behaves, we have opened ourselves up to our true selves. This is what the paradoxes of our world teach us. Shamans know that humans are determiners of spirit, and the choices, decisions and priorities that we set fashion the reality of the world in which we live.

Seeing

When shaman use their ability to "see" the underlying energy dynamics of situations and relationships, they are able to "see" cause and effect connections and forces that are not visible when viewing the circumstances superficially, i.e., looking only at the outer form. Perceiving the energy dynamics of life events reveals new alternatives and possibilities not previously apparent. "The art of the (shaman) is to be able to guide, to be able to illuminate the path in such a way that the person hooks on to a greater experience-that of freedom..." Eagle Feather shares. This allows people the freedom to move beyond limits of past perceptions into the realm of options, fresh creativity and natural magic.

A shaman would "see," for example, that the anger of a supermarket clerk resulted from the clerk's inability to express their feelings. The shaman could "see" how these emotions were adversely affecting not only the clerk, but the people in line. Consequently, a shaman may choose to engage the angry clerk in a friendly, relaxing conversation in order to shift the situation into flow and harmony.

Power

We have many powers within us that we can learn to use for our own benefit and for the benefit of others. From the shamanistic point of view, all power comes from within. Power comes from authorship (authority). Shamans become the authors of the creations in their world by freeing themselves of programmed and conditioned perceptions. In moving beyond customs, manners, rules and techniques, the shaman embraces the practicality of " What works, works." The shaman has little concern for how something works, only that it produces the results that one intends. Shamans are the most flexible, utilitarian and efficient authors of their world. They take the shortest, quickest route to their goals, even if the path tramples on their own concepts or beliefs.

One way people can experience this power is to look for proof in their own lives. Take love, for example. One way to increase the presence and power of love in a person's life is to decrease the presence and power of judgment. Shamans notice that their attention cannot be in both places at the same time, and, therefore choose where they want to spend their energy. To spend energy judging that they harmed someone or that another person caused them harm, would be a misdirection and waste of energy for a shaman.

Eagle Feather explains more about the true nature of power, " Anyone looking for power over others or control over material processes is probably going to be disappointed by the teaching, which essentially define power as the ability to free oneself from one's own perceptions and habitual patterns. The message seems to be that once you align with the energy, you're no longer the master. Spirit is."

Healing

A shaman is a bridge between this world and the invisible world of the spirit. A shaman is very anchored, very present in this world. Being so centered and grounded, a shaman can assist a person to travel into dimensions and see things from a much bigger perspective. Then people can heal because there is more room for them to expand and open to fresh new realities. This expanded awareness from the shaman creates a strong foundation for people to awaken to their own healing power within. The goal of the shaman is always to support the awakening of the soul. The shaman acts as an anchor so the person can reach their own depth and move through their own cellular transformation.

Shaman Frederick Wolf concurs. "People really know how to heal themselves. It's an illusion to think that someone is going to come and heal them. But what will happen is, when they feel the support and safety that the shaman can hold for them, they will have faith enough to go into that place inside of them that knows how to heal. It's not some magical thing that happens. It' s very natural."

Way of Living

Shamanism is a way of living on the altar of Mother Earth. It's a way to live in balance on the earth, a way of finding not only peace with yourself personally, but peace with nature and your environment. Shamanism is bringing the two worlds together: your inner world-"your heart"-with your outer world. It's important to be balanced, to be grounded in both worlds. We should be able to go anywhere and be at home, whether it's in a cave or a big city.

Shamanism is a pathway that can help us to realize the sacredness and magic within and all around us. Birds that soar into the heavens, trees whose roots reach deep into the earth, everything in nature reflects an aspect of our souls. As the poet Rumi said, "You will see stars and moons mirrored in your being." Shamanism is letting go of our limited ideas and concepts of who we are. As we abandon our illusions of separateness, we open to the beauty and simplicity of our true nature-our connectedness with all of life.

About the author: Drawing from the wisdom of native and ancient spiritual traditions, Keith Varnum shares his 30 years of practical success as an author, personal coach, acupuncturist, filmmaker, radio host, restaurateur, vision quest guide and international seminar leader (The Dream Workshops). Keith helps people get the love, money and health they want with his FREE "Prosperity Ezine" at www.TheDream.com.

Honor And Trust The Relationship With Spirit

People start a new commitment to the spiritual path, and then immediately want wonderful things to manifest for them. Unfortunately, this is usually unrealistic. Before you are given access to the unlimited information, or powers of the universe, there is a respect and a trust that needs to develop between you and the spirit realm. There is a mutual responsibility and accountability. This articles describes how to honor that relationship.

Many people start a new commitment to the spiritual path, or start defining their relationship with Spirit, and then immediately want wonderful things to manifest for them. Unfortunately, this is usually unrealistic. Before you are given access to the unlimited information, or powers of the universe, there is a respect and a trust that needs to develop between you and the spirit realm. Just as you are developing trust for the spirits, they are developing a trust for you. You are building a relationship that takes time, effort, and commitment. Once this trust is developed, there is a mutual responsibility and accountability. You can depend on the spirits and they will depend on you.

Spirit opens doors for you at your own individual level. It is like the employee being considered for promotion. As you prove yourself through time and effort, new opportunities will be presented for you to explore how Spirit, life, the laws of nature, and the laws of the universe work. Like a promotion at work, a promotion to greater consciousness comes with greater responsibility.

Knock, and the door will be opened for you; ask, and you shall receive. How true these words are. However, a relationship with Spirit is like building a relationship with a friend. It requires trust, shared experience, dedication, and much interaction. There is much to learn, and one needs to be prepared for the incredible power that becomes available in the learning.

As energy flows with intention between you and Spirit, and between different realities, your personality will change. You are opening your psychic centers and becoming more awake. Your entire being must make adjustments to include your new awareness. Spirit will monitor what you experience and at what levels you are able to receive information. Not only is trust being built between you and Spirit in this approach, but Spirit knows it is often better not to open too fast to new realities because sudden changes can feel chaotic and threatening. If you were suddenly opened up to completely new realities, the accompanying stress might be detrimental to your long-term growth. Spirit wants you to enjoy the transition, not be scared. Emotional breakthroughs may result in emotional breakdowns if you move too quickly. Be patient.

There are numerous accounts of people becoming spiritually awakened through near-death experiences or devastating illnesses; however, the awakening does not need to be so dramatic to create greater awareness and personal power. I often think of this analogy with my children, when they were small. They loved to sit in my lap and steer the car the short distance from the mailbox to the driveway. They insisted that I keep my hands off the steering wheel because they wanted to drive the car by themselves. I reluctantly agreed, but my caution came from knowing they were unaware of the power of this machine. Gradually, they would assume more responsibility for controlling the car, and one day they will be ready to drive solo. Hopefully, their experience will be a positive one.

One must enter the spiritual realm in the same way-with care and the expectation of adjustment. Awareness emerges in manageable doses until we are safely prepared. Sudden revelation and epiphany have their place in awakening, but one must not assume that they are the only avenues to enlightenment.

The patient path is one of developing a relationship with Spirit that is filled with integrity, love, and service. Do your part. Pray, meditate, practice journeying, and make yourself available for Spirit to work with you. Show respect for life and live from the heart chakra. Continue to self-examine and be committed to growth and spiritual development. As a demonstration of your effort, log your experiences in a journal. As you read and reread the entries, you will discover a subtle but sure change in your being. Many changes will occur, often without your conscious awareness. The journal will help you to retrace your journey and to recognize these changes. I think you will be amazed at how fast Spirit truly does intervene in your life. Be thankful.

There are many ways to connect with Spirit and finding a way to develop this intimate, personal relationship is up to you.

Jan Engels-Smith promotes self-healing, empowerment, better communities, a healthy world and conducts workshops in shamanism & journeying. Her book, Becoming Yourself is at http://www.LightSong.net . Jan’s a Licensed Counselor. She’s done over 2,000 soul retrievals. She is the founder of LightSong School of Shamanic Studies, a Chemical Dependency Specialist, and Marriage Therapist. She is a water-pourer for sweat lodge, a minister, a Reiki Master.

Plant Spirit Shamanism: The Death Of A Shaman

The loss of plants and of plant spirit wisdom will cause problems for the Earth

By ross heaven

There are nearly 270,000 species of flowering plants on Earth, and less than one percent of have been studied for their healing properties. Moreover, most of the research that is taking place is conducted in Western laboratories, where scientific rather than spiritual methods are, of course, employed. The intention is to isolate one or two active ingredients and patent more drugs instead of finding more cures. Any other secrets that plant might teach us die with it on the altar of Western rationalism.

Around 125,000 species – almost half the plants on Earth - are found in tropical rainforests, which cover almost eight billion acres of the world’s surface. Estimates vary, but it is well-known that several thousands of these rainforest acres are destroyed each year by Western companies or local farmers under Western sponsorship so that cattle-grazing and mineral exploration can take place, in the interests of fast food and petroleum companies. There is no doubt that many of these plants hold the keys to life-saving new medicines – we know this from the less-than-one-percent that have been studied - and yet every year thousands more are destroyed. Once they are gone, they may never return.

But this is only half the story, because traditional ways of working with plants are also dying out as the West exports, not only its technology and needs, but its worldviews and values to these cultures. It is a frequent lament among Amazonian shamans, for example, that many fewer young people are now coming forward to learn natural medicine and meet the spirit of the plants. They are migrating to the cities instead, or putting their faith in Western science, which sees their shamans as out-dated, misguided, or a throwback to a naïve age.

These shamans, who cultivate their successors through apprenticeship, have no more students to teach, and their knowledge is dying as quickly as the forests around them.

“I have always said to my children, you can be what you want, but don’t forget your culture”, says Guillermo Arevalo. “Come back to nature and your people”. Sadly, not all of them do, despite the pleas of the medicine men themselves. [Encouragingly, though – perhaps even ironically - the increasing interest in traditional plant medicines by Westerners, such as those I take on my Amazonian retreats, is now helping to revive the interest of younger Peruvians in their own traditions. The shaman, Artidoro, remarks, for example, that “When our children see Westerners coming here and wanting to learn about our plants and medicines, they think ‘maybe there is something in this after all’ and they ask their elders to teach them about the plants”].

If plant spirit shamanism were to die out completely it would be a tragedy not just for Amazonian culture but for us all, since many of the drugs we use in the West are derived from shamanic knowledge, pharmaceutical companies having, for decades, employed anthropologists and ethnobotanists to work with these shamans so they know where to look for the plants and what they are used to cure.

In Haiti, too, the situation feels similar. On this Caribbean island there is less of a temptation for the young to adopt Western values since all they have really experienced of the West, in a culture born in slavery and subjected to exploitation ever since, is Western oppression. But still, what the people aspire to is often power more than spiritual communion, and this is measured in terms of Western values so that money and material possessions become the new gods. Once again, this is not so surprising, since the Western use of force to take power from others is what has been taught them from birth. As a consequence, shamanic initiation still takes place, but for many this becomes a way of earning money in an otherwise deprived country – a job more than a calling to heal – and the older and more experienced shamans talk of a decline in the values and spiritual power of the newcomers to their profession. “Their heart is not in it”, they say.

In our own culture we can also chart the decline of traditional healing as science comes ever-more to the fore. In America, many true healers and shamans are now confined to the reservations so their knowledge and expertise is hardly known to the wider world, and many age-old natural cures, as well as the plants themselves, have been made illegal. In Europe, herbalists are under increasing pressure to become educated, validated and registered in the same way as scientists, leading to a decline in intuitive healing and belief in plant spirits. Throughout the world, the old ways are being denied or forgotten.

It is sad, oppressive, and potentially dangerous when cultural diversity and freedom of speech and belief are restricted in this way, but it is also self-defeating for those who oppress. Every plant is a complex mixture of interacting energies and healing processes, for example, and there are at least 30 active ingredients in each one. A Western medicine isolated from these plants is lucky to contain two or three, so we are all missing out on healing and making ourselves weaker instead of well.

In his foreword to Irish Folk Medicine Sean O Suilleabhain of the Department of Folklore, University College Dublin, offers examples of Western cures that could not have existed at all without the discoveries of traditional healers who worked in concert with their plant spirit allies.

“African medicine-men have for a long time used the bark of a certain type of willow to cure rheumatism with salicyl; the Hottentots knew of aspirin; the natives of the Amazon River basin used cocillana as an effective cough-mixture, and curare, which they applied to arrow-tips to stun their enemies, is now used as an anaesthetic; the Incas have left us cocaine; ephedrine reached the Western world from China; cascara was known to the North American Indians; from the juice of the foxglove was derived digitalin for heart-ailments; and finally, here in Ireland, moulds from which penicillin has been derived were traditionally used for septic wounds… early peoples used compresses, scarification, hot baths (tithe alluis), even vaccination”.

It seems dishonest and ungracious, at the very least, then, for modern medicine to take so much from the old ways and then belittle these traditions for their primitive beliefs and lack of effective medicine. We reveal our own ignorance when we do so, and, as science wins the war against tradition, the old ways die out, leaving fewer folk healers and plant experts whose knowledge our scientists can raid to develop their own new medicines.

Furthermore, despite the grand claims of drug companies, their products may actually cause illness rather than cure it. A report by Jerome Burne in The London Independent newspaper in 2005 revealed, for example, that “The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) – the government group responsible for regulating UK medicines, including herbs – says that between 2000 and August 2004, there were 451 reports of suspected adverse reactions involving herbal preparations, of which 152 were serious”. On the face of it, this sounds a lot, but, he continues, “By way of comparison, consider this from a report in the British Medical Journal last year: ‘In England alone, reactions to drugs that led to hospitalisation followed by death are estimated at 5,700 a year and could actually be closer to 10,000’. Herbs may not be completely safe, as critics like to point out, but they are a lot safer than drugs”.

There have also been some spectacular drug failures, despite the promises. In 2005, for example, the FDA, after an extensive review of hundreds of studies, issued a warning that the use of antidepressants may actually lead to an increase in depression and suicidal thinking – the very outcomes these drugs are mooted to cure. The Yahoo news story that covered this warning noted the FDA’s concerns that “antidepressants may cause agitation, anxiety and hostility in a subset of patients who may be unusually prone to rare side effects… psychiatrists say there is a window period of risk just after pill use begins, before depression is really alleviated but when some patients experience more energy, perhaps enabling them to act on suicidal tendencies”

By contrast, the herbal cure for depression, St John’s Wort, has never harmed anyone. As the Independent newspaper put it: “[St John’s Wort] is not only more effective in the treatment of moderate to severe depression than the SSRI Seroxat, according to the British Medical Journal, but it also has fewer side-effects”.

It is true, says the Independent, that “A study expressed concern about herbal remedies that could interact with treatments like NSAids… leading to increased gastrointestinal bleeding”. But, as the journalist points out, “the herbs don’t cause the bleeding, it’s adding the aspirin”.

On the face of this evidence, it is time for a return to traditional healing methods, to concern and compassion for patients instead of profits, and for a new generation of plant spirit healers to step up to the plate to arrest this decline in well-being.

To do so, it will be necessary to free your minds from the conditioning of scientific rationalism, so you can explore, dream, meet, and work with your plant spirit allies, the energies of nature that are calling you, and to rediscover the magic of plant spirit shamanism and natural healing, so it can be preserved and used for the good of all in this increasingly materialist and dis-spirited world.

Ross Heaven is a therapist, workshop leader, and the author of several books on shamanism and healing, including Darkness Visible, the best-selling Plant Spirit Shamanism, The Way of The Lover, The Journey to You, and Love’s Simple Truths. His website is http://www.thefourgates.com where you can also read how to join his Sacred Journeys to the plant spirit shamans and healers of the Amazon.

The Legend of the Dream Catcher

Long ago when the world was young, an old Lakota spiritual leader was on a high mountain and had a vision. In his vision, Iktomi, the great trickster and teacher of wisdom, appeared in the form of a spider. Iktomi spoke to him in a sacred language. As he spoke, Iktomi the spider picked up the elder's willow hoop which had feathers,horsehair, beads and offerings on it, and began to spin a web.

He spoke to the elder about the cycles of life; how we begin our lives as infants, move on through childhood and on to adulthood. Finally we go to old age where we must be taken care of as infants, completing the cycle. "But", Iktomi said as he continued to spin his web, "in each time of life there are many forces; some good and some bad. If you listen to the good forces, they will steer you in the right direction. But, if you listen to the bad forces, they'll steer you in the wrong direction and may hurt you. So these forces can help, or can interfere with the harmony of Nature. While the spider spoke, he continued to weave his web.

When Iktomi finished speaking, he gave the elder the web and said, "The web is a perfect circle with a hole in the center. Use the web to help your people reach their goals, making good use of their ideas, dreams and visions. If you believe in the great spirit, the web will catch your good ideas and the bad ones will go through the hole." The elder passed on his vision to the people and now many Indian people hang a dream catcher above their bed to sift their dreams and visions. The good is captured in the web of life and carried with the people, but the evil in their dreams drops through the hole in the center of the web and are no longer a part of their lives. It's said that the dream catcher holds the destiny of the future.

Aboriginal spirituality

To many Aboriginal peoples, spirituality is the cornerstone to their way of living. It is not seen to be solely a religion or a practice, but a way of life, intertwined in all aspects of daily living. It encompasses Aboriginal people's values, ceremonies, song, dance, and teachings.

Many Aboriginal people give thanks and prayer to "the Creator" for everything they receive and everything that occurs. This is the most important belief as it is believed that the Creator has provided the Mother Earth, be it animals, people, plants, water and everything is a life force and part of it or comes from the Earth. When something is removed from nature, thanks are given to the Creator for its life.

Values and teachings, such as kindness, honesty, sharing, caring, respect, wisdom . The re-creation of our lives and our communities is what healing and development really means and strength are fundamental to this way of life and Elders of the Aboriginal people often have the responsibility of modelling and teaching these.

Several teachings are delivered as explanations for the Anishinabe (Ojibway or Algonquin term for "the people") way of life. Story telling is often immersed with references to things spiritual and spiritual people. They too are teachings and are meant to foster lessons and the appropriate way of living.

One of the most important teachings is the medicine wheel. The medicine wheel has several teachings, such as the four directions (north, south, east, and west), the four colours or races (red, black, yellow and white). These are teachings about the world, parts of the world and the people who come from these parts of the world. All being equal under the Creator.

A medicine wheel teaching that is also a tool used to explain one process of healing is around human nature and balance. The four quadrants of the wheel are the physical, mental, emotional, and spirituality. Essentially, the teaching is that all of these parts of each human need to be functioning and in balance in order to maintain a healthy mind, spirit and body.

As spirituality is part of everything from Mother Earth, all living things have a spirit, such as animals, plant life, rocks, mountains, waters and of course, people. Prayer, ceremonies and rituals are most appropriately carried out in nature, close to the Earth. The sweatlodge, which is a purifying and worship ceremony, is carried out in a whole in the Earth, with a covering. The whole is compared to the womb of Mother Earth. There are many teachings and practices associated with the sweatlodge. A pipe is also taken from the Earth, that is from a branch of a tree and a stone.

Many Aboriginal people have also been successful in incorporating Christian or other teachings, doctrines and practices into their spirituality and have adopted an ecumenical approach to worship. Today, various faiths and churches practice Aboriginal ceremonies as part of their services and include Aboriginal teachings in their teachings.

There is an awakening occurring in Aboriginal country across North America and interest in spirituality naturally becomes the foundation to this revival. Aboriginal people have been through a difficult period of colonization and disconnectedness. Only recently, have the younger generation sought out the Elders, once again to teach them what it means to be First Nation, Inuit or Metis. This awakening has resulted in self-reflection and an understanding of the need for Aboriginal people to begin healing from the plight they have suffered. This is where spirituality and healing teachers such as the medicine wheel have become important that in order to create a self-sustaining, strong and vibrant and whole people once again, there must be health, healing and balance.

Taken from the Government of Canada Chaplaincy Section of the Correctional Services website