03 Dr Twyla Baker Everything that Surrounds Us has a Spirit

So in respect to our relatives our everything that surrounds us everything that we interact with even down to the rocks they have a spirit they have a entity tied to them and this kind of played out in my in my studies when I was working on my degrees particularly in environmental geology I spent some time in Hawaii I got to spend some time in Hawaii and do some work out there in the volcanoes and there is a great sense of spirituality and power there and I didn’t necessarily get to interact so much with the Native Hawaiians that lived there and I wish I could have because I’m sure they would have said oh yeah there’s it would have been fantastic to be able to learn about the spirituality that’s tied to how they live as a people and how they recognized these spirits that live there and how that’s that influences their lives but I could feel it when I got to walk across the bottom of a live volcano and you can feel it you can feel it basically vibrates our thumbs in you and I’m not one to discount that power or our or just say oh well that’s just you know that’s that’s over here and you know science me or stem me is right over here and or compartmentalize those things I’d rather acknowledge it because it is they’re very closely related to each other and once you can make that tie and recognize that these things are inextricably linked to each other you’ll have an easier time teaching you’ll have an easier time understanding that relationship and they’re not at odds with each other if anything they are so intimately linked that they cannot be separated and should not be separated but that’s you know it’s up to the individual to decide so recognizing those relationships and seeing even in my life day-to-day like I mean you could you go to ceremony you we have certain times of year when we might do that or we’ve well I mean it’s all year long but um there’s certain times when we remove ourselves we put ourselves into nature and spend that time reflecting or reconnecting because it’s kind of a nourishment for this all and if that’s not fed then how are you gonna do any of the other things you’re just kind of going through the motions so to speak so you need to have be fed up or fed fully spiritually first so that you can drive all the other things so you can drive the day-to-day and help it helps you to know what’s important and it helps you to stay connected and stay focused and I’m just it’s wearing that time right now we’re in that time right now it’s it’s the middle of summer it’s kind of getting towards late summer people are out praying right now it’s it’s a good time and this is kind of when a lot of the tribes around here recognize at the new years switching over never really made sense to us with this Gregorian calendar to have New Year’s in the middle of winter why the world is asleep right now you know so that doesn’t quite make sense but well it’s it is what it is so and then a lot of that sense of spirituality and connectedness and the idea that we are related to these things we are not necessarily wanting to exert dominion over any of these types of things or anything like that we are the keepers we are the stewards we are the ones who have to maintain these things for the purpose of having it there for the future generations that is driven a lot by the idea of respect and acknowledging these entities as our relatives and if anything we are probably the least of the relatives we are the we are born completely helpless we are in it’s we can’t walk we can’t feed ourselves we can’t do any of these things we rely upon all of these other external things to feed us the animals with their flesh and the plants themselves they feed us their they should provide us our shelter so all of these things take care of us as human beings so we almost it’s almost like we owe them a debt of gratitude and therefore you know you’ll see that a lot in the spiritual teachings is about being grateful being thankful for what we have and you see that in our spiritual observations as well where will we might deprive ourselves of something of some very basic necessity and while we’re in prayer so that you have an appreciation of it when you come out of that prayer and it’s and you see that on a hot day a breeze is a blessing that you understand that when your mouth is dry I drink of water is a blessing all of these things are blessings and it could always be worse so anything that we are gifted that’s what makes it better that’s what makes it life is such a gift you know everything’s a gift the ability to see the ability to walk the ability to dance when others cannot dance the ability to hear when others cannot hear or to to wake up its stand up in the morning that’s a blessing because not everyone can do that so we work that into our teachings and we try to recognize that and we try to teach our young ones the gift that life is the gifts that life will bestow upon us it’s not about just iPhones or you know or computers or video games or anything like that you have to remove yourself from those things to understand what’s really important