Kisewatisiwin - A personal commitment to humility, prayer, and loving kindness towards all things

Niwâhkômâkanak - My relations (we are all related in the Creator's eyes)

Kikawinaw Askiy - Mother Earth

Tipiskâwi-pîsim - Moon

Iskotew - Fire

Real learning happens only through relationship.

The tellers of stories are weavers, their designs are the threads of their personal sagas as well as the history of their whole people. Though the designs are always traditional, the hands that weave them are always new. Future generations are the new knots Creator ties onto the threads that weave together our families, communities, and Nations in the wider fabric of the cosmos.

Hani derler ya ben sensiz yaşayamam diye, ben onlardan değilim. Ben sensiz de yaşarım; ama seninle bir başka yaşarım.

Healing people, heals the land. 

Healing the land, heals people.

I can dream of almost everything, as long as you dream with me.

Metta

May I be safe from inner and outer harm

May I be happy and peaceful

May I be healthy and strong in my body

May I live with ease in this world

May I be filled with Loving-Kindness

 The only truth there is: this moment.

When you relax your driving desire for comfort, real fulfillment arises. When you drop your hectic pursuit of gratification, the real beauty of life comes out. When you seek to know the reality without illusion, complete with all its pain and danger, that is when real freedom and security happen. 

 To be undivided and unfragmented, to be completely present, is to love. To pay attention is to love.

When we go beyond the attachment to pleasure and pain, allowing the long-conditioned responses to be met by awareness instead of being compulsively acted out, we experience a deeper happiness. An opening of the heart and mind occurs, a feeling of fulfillment in the moment. 

Akinti herkesin gittigi yer, akis kendi yorungemiz.

Biz bu hayata sadece iyi hissetmek icin degil, ne yasiyorsak hepsini iyice hissetmek icin geldik.

İnsan sevdiklerine zaman ayırmalı. Yoksa zaman sevdiklerini elinden alıyor.

Violence is the ultimate reaction to oppression.

Omrumuzden uzun bir ideale adanmisligimiz olmali. Kendini birseye adamaya deger gormeyen insan hayattan saygi da gormuyor.

Ait olmanin tersi aitsizlik degil; uyum saglamak.

Sen nedenleri halledince hayat nasillari halleder.

Bizim bir agri kesici, yatistirici ve costurucu medeniyeti icerisinde oldugumuzu farketmemiz lazim.

Insan olmayan bir gelecegi tasavvur edip hayal edebilen ve onu yaratabilen tek canlidir.

Attachment = Our drive to connect with a caring other, and feel ‘seen’

Authenticity = Our ability to acknowledge our emotions, interests, and act in a way that is truly who we are, and aligns to our sense of meaning and purpose

We are always negotiating between authenticity and attachment. When authenticity threatens attachment, attachment trumps authenticity. If the choice is between ‘hiding my feelings, even from myself, and getting the basic care I need’ and ‘being myself and going without, I’m going to pick that first option every single time. Thus our real selves are leveraged bit by bit in a tragic transaction where we secure our physical or emotional survival by relinquishing who we are and how we feel.

As soon as you believe that your children are more important than the children of somebody else war is inevitable.

At times of pressure and fear, our perspective narrows and the part of our brain that takes over is more the fear and defensive based fight or flight. We lose the governance of our prefrontal cortex which is capable of taking a broader view. Perspective expands when people are not under physical threat. Our perspective narrows and it becomes subsumed in group identification and thought of revenge or hurting the other. The Hebrew word for Egypt is Mizraim, meaning a narrow place. So under threat or when we are perceived as under threat, we go to this narrow place. That’s a place of slavery. When we are enslaved to our own unconscious, we are governed by our emotions and the heart closes down.

It is impossible to create a peaceful world from a vengeful place, the very thing you want is the thing you are undermining.

Believing that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic is a trauma response.