Customer Reviews

Life Lived Like a Story: Life Stories of Three Yukon Native Elders (American Indian Lives)

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Our stories shape our world. This book shows that. If you want a context for understanding this from the inside out, which is the only way to understand it, other books can be very helpful in the search to get out of the box of white man world. Secrets of Shamanism: Tapping the Spirit Power Within You The Future Is Yours: Do Something About It!Urban Shaman Lost Secrets of Ancient Hawaiian Huna, Volume 1, ThetaHealing can be helpful. There is a Sufi story about moths, and the only moth that really understands the candle is the one who gives himself totally to the light, and the light gives itself to him. This applies to shamanic work, and especially any kind of indigenous approaches to any kind of healing, especially psychological. Shamanic techniques work from the larger self, especially in service to others. Shamanism means working with the subconscious, and at times superconscious minds. It cannot be apprehended by the conscious mind, the ego. Without service, many things just don't work, or work only slightly. Whispers of the Ancients: Native Tales for Teaching and Healing in Our Time gives you some idea of how very different native storytelling is, and so does House of Shattering Light: Life as an American Indian Mystic, & Journey to the Ancestral Self: The Native Lifeway Guide to Living in Harmony With Earth Mother, Book 1 (Bk.1). These are very good basic books, to getting out of the box of White Man culture. Wong Kiew Kit's books on Chi Kung show how ideas like this survive in Chinese culture. Western culture is lost in the literal, and won't look at the deeper meanings of its stories. Neville Goddard has ideas on this, as one example among many. So do Joseph Murphy The Power of Your Subconscious Mind and Max Freedom Long Secret Science Behind MiraclesThis book is a good start, though, sort of like a tourist guide, or a textbook, to reflections from the subconscious mind.

I appreciated all that the women shared regarding their Native history, culture, what it was like to live as they did and how things have changed-for better or worse. The editor did a sensitive and intelligent job of bringing out the uniqueness of each women's story. I spent last summer up north and this gave even more color to what was already, for me, a trip never to be forgotten.