The Great Spirit

Best-version transcript — the human transcription refined against a word-timed machine transcript of the cleaned audio. Spotted an error? Corrections are welcome.

The Great Spirit – Reflections on North American Native Spirituality

Sydney Banks

Transcribed by Karen Williams, on thirteenth March 2013 Length of audio: eighteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds

I’ve talked about American native Indians and their beliefs many, many times and I’ve told you how much I respect those beliefs. They talked about spirit all the time and this is where the secret lies. It honestly does. This is one of the secrets that everybody on earth are looking for. They believed that the mother earth, the deer, the mountains, the fish that swim in the lakes and the very ground that they even walk on was all spirit. It was spirit in disguise. It had taken on a form and they knew this. And they also knew that if they could teach their people this, and if people could see beyond the words, this is where we’d find that wisdom that everybody’s looking for, that spiritual wisdom that lies within every living soul on earth.

Let me try and explain it as well. When they said that the mother earth was spirit, they were also trying to tell you that there was something far, far greater beyond the illusion of mother earth. There was a greater spirit beyond and this is what they call the great spirit or if you wish the creator of all things, because if you can find out the secret of the spirit and the form, this is where you will find this magical wisdom that everybody’s looking for and this wisdom, this is what clears the soul, this is what brings to the finder, it brings them love, understanding, it brings them courage, it brings them self-reliance. All these things are created when you find the secret of the spiritual aspects of life.

The knowledge that you seek is beyond the five senses: tasting, seeing, hearing, smelling and touching. What you seek is beyond all rituals, all beliefs, all concepts. Where is it found? It’s only found in one place and one place only and that is deep within your own soul. It’s an innate wisdom that the creator gave us from the beginning of time and this is where you’ll find it, deep within your own soul, beyond mother earth there lies what you call the great spirit and this is the creator of all things. This is why everything in this universe is created from spirit. You and I are created from spirit. Every animal that every roamed the face of the earth was created from spirit. Literally nothing can escape the spirit. It’s a spiritual world. It’s a spiritual existence and only the human mind fails to see this and the white man calls this the eagle and the eagle is a delusion. It really is non-existent, it’s self created and this is where the losses take place, and if you can go past the eagle mind to the spiritual mind, that’s where you will find the answer.

Such knowledge creates a true human being and the less spiritual knowledge you have, the less a human being you’re going to be, because you’re losing the power of this wisdom that lies within and this is what these wise medicine men tried to do, guided people back to this wisdom to make them true human beings. This means to say they had a truer soul, they had true wisdom, they lived with this wisdom. It’s not just a word. It’s not just sayings. It’s actual fact that this spiritual wisdom cleans the soul. It turns you into a truer human being. That means to say a nicer person. And as you lose this wisdom, as I just said, you become a not too nice person. You become angry, jealous, spiteful, hateful. You lose your power of love and understanding. But as you regain this power, once again you find your love, your understanding in everything you’re looking for to turn you into a truer human being and that’s the idea in life, is to try and better yourself, to try and bring yourself into this world of spirit where you’re guided day in and day out. And I can assure you love and understanding is always the way, not aggression. Aggression is from a person who isn’t too human, who have lost their inner wisdom. Love and understanding, that’s what those wise people try to teach their people to bring them into harmony with what they called mother earth and the white man would call it nature. It’s really the same thing but two different words, but isn’t it amazing to think that everybody on earth knows this deep within, it is only that their thoughts, their ideas, their concepts have lost it and to regain it you have to go and look within.

This is why all the mystics from the beginning of time, all those wise people have always told you the same thing over and over again, look within for the answer and the reason they told you to look within is because they knew that truth has no form, truth is before the creation of mother earth and such truths can never be heard from the human ear nor can it be seen from the human eye. It is a formless spiritual knowledge that lies within and the only way you can find it is by looking inside. This is why many of those wise medicine men were invisible to many people. This is why their knowledge was lost because people searched from the human ear and the human eye and they didn’t realise what those wise people were trying to say was beyond the human ear and the human eye. It was a mystical knowledge that lay deep within the soul of every human being and truth never changes, it’s still the same today as it was from day one. You must search deep within your soul.

Let’s try another way to try and explain this truth. Do you know how some of the eastern mystics and eastern philosophers, they talk about the world has no beginning and no end? Well, the reason they say that is they knew that everything was created from the same spirit. It doesn’t matter the form, it was the same spirit, and if everything is the same, there can’t possibly be a beginning or an end. Now, the American native wise man, they said it in a different way. They said that everything was a circle and a circle naturally has no beginning and no end. And if you can see this, this is very, very wise words because the centre of this wheel is your free will and from this centre of this free will you can go anywhere you want because that’s your free will. But if you go in the wrong direction, you get out of harmony with what you call the great spirit. And once you’re out of harmony with the great spirit, this is where you have all these mental problems, all those misguided ideas, concepts, beliefs, because you’re out of touch with the inner self.

You know, many years ago I had the honour and the blessing of finding my way back into the centre of that circle, the centre of that wheel and everybody, literally everybody finds their way back there the same way and that is looking within. And what I realise, there were three principles, three spiritual principles that took you back home and they were the gift of thought, the gift of consciousness and the gift of mind and if you can use those three principles wisely, this I guarantee will take you home to the sanity, into the spiritual wisdom that you seek, always, always, always. It cannot fail because divine mind is the universal intelligence of all things, divine consciousness is what makes us realise the existence of mother earth and divine thought, accompanied by your free will, guides us through life and if you want to have a beautiful guide, you must have beautiful thoughts, because thought is the guide that will take you through this life as a beautiful human being or a lost soul. The creator blessed every human being on earth with a free will and the power of thought and if you use this freewill and the power of thought wisely, it will guide you through life as a happy contented human being. And I can assure you the spiritual wisdom you seek is with you always and it’s hidden under a maze of wrongful thinking, so what we have to do is clear our thoughts of wrongful thinking. And when the spirit rises to a higher level, here is where such knowledge is found, and it cleanses the mind of unwanted negative thoughts that lead you astray, that lead to drink and many other social problems. Such knowledge, it assists you to live in the present and it decontaminates all your wrongful thinking and brings you back to the now, it allows you to live today and releases you from the negative past and the negative thoughts that are troubling your spirit.

A very wise thing to remember is, immaterial how well you’re educated or how little you’re educated, we all have the same wisdom deep within our soul, the wisdom that our grandfathers taught. One very important thing to remember is spiritual wisdom lies within every human being and it has no boundaries and it can enter the minds of any human being at any time. Believe me when I say to you, when any human being is ready to receive such wisdom, it will appear for you. Such wisdom is with you always.

Another thing to remember is when you go seeking such wisdom, don’t go looking with the knowledge you now have. When you think about it, there is no use searching for the unknown with the already known. This would be similar to a dog chasing its own tail and I can guarantee you, you will never in a million years find what you’re looking for. The idea is to silence your mind and make room for such knowledge to enter. To do this I have a good friend who sits and meditates in the forest and he absorbs the spiritual energy from the trees.

Now, remember, mother earth is spiritual energy in disguise, including the trees, the sky, the lakes, the deer, everything, literally everything is spirit in disguise and another very important thing to remember, such knowledge will come via a feeling, not from an intellectual understanding, but from a feeling. You have to allow the feeling to enter your soul and once this feeling enters your soul, you find the wisdom, once you find the wisdom, you can intellectually understand it. This is why I say to you, simply understanding it intellectually is of very, very little value, because when you do this, all you do is take on another belief, another concept and a concept or a belief does not hold truth.

After all, if you really think about it, the intellect belongs to the physical reality, but spiritual wisdom belongs to a reality before the formation of mother earth. It lies deep within your soul. This is where the true wisdom is found before the physical form. This is why the wise have always told us to look within for the answer we seek. And this is the only place you can find it, is deep in your own soul. You know, the beauty of finding such wisdom is it lets you see all the unnecessary insecure thoughts that contaminate your life, it lets you see the falseness of life and take you to a truer truth that lies within.

And never let anybody tell you that they are greater or more spiritual than you are, because the wisdom that lies within you lies within every human soul in the world. We’re all created equal and we all stem from the same three divine principles called mind, consciousness and thought and my advice is learn to use these three principles wisely and you will never go wrong.