A More Dignified Way of Life
This is the final part of the series From Ego to Soul: Remembering the Right Brain’s Wisdom. [Read Part 1] [Read Part 2] [Read Part 3] [Read Part 4]
For weeks after I read this book, I couldn’t speak about it without crying. Not because I was sad about what we did to the Native American people—I was, but that’s not why. I felt personally devastated that I hadn’t lived my whole life with the communal sense of freedom and dignity the author describes.
The European settlers came to America and encountered friendly Native peoples who were more spiritually advanced than they were. But the settlers were so intent on exploiting the resources of this new land, they couldn’t see the real opportunity they had. Instead of learning from the natives, they called them dirty savages, went to war against them, and took their land.
Today, we live lives bereft of the wisdom they would gladly have shared with us if only we had given them that chance.
Luther Standing Bear was born in the Lakota tribe and experienced life before and after his people were sent to a reservation. He learned the white man’s ways, yet maintained his original understanding of the Native American ways. In Land of the Spotted Eagle, he offers a vivid account of his Lakota upbringing and insights into the Native American mind and spirit.
While his descriptions of the lives and roles of women in the tribe were less insightful and inspiring than I would have liked, I found it easy enough to look past those parts. What Standing Bear offers is something equally rare and valuable: a detailed portrait of what right-brain masculinity looks like.
These men were warriors, but their warfare was defensive, not expansive. Before the white man, warfare was solely about keeping unfriendly tribes out of their hunting grounds. The men were the leaders, but the welfare of women, children, and the tribe as a whole was always primary. The men always walked and rode ahead of the women, so they could protect them from danger. They hunted, but never for sport, and always with restraint, gratitude, and respect for the animal.
This is masculine energy in service of right-brain values—protection instead of domination, strength serving the collective good.
As a tribe, they were guided by a devotion to higher moral principles, most notably kindness, courage, and unwavering generosity. Every blessing in their lives—the birth of a child, a marriage, success in battle or a hunt—was also an opportunity to give food or a horse to someone in need. They governed themselves through a strict code of politeness, truthfulness, and respect rather than external force. They didn’t have a word for ‘please,’ because politeness was always assumed. Arrogance and boasting were met with ridicule. The few incidents of crime they had were dealt with by ignoring the person.
But beyond this code, they gave each other a high degree of individual freedom. Not even a chief could force a man to go to war, or tell him how to dress or line up for battle.
Above all, Lakota men and women alike lived in a deeply embodied state of unity with their sense of God, called Wakan Tanka, or the Great Mystery—the infinite creative source that animates all living things. To them, Wakan Tanka was the trees, the rivers, the buffalo, the Earth, the Sun. And that meant that every aspect of nature was beautiful, interesting, and full of its own kind of wisdom, and they loved all of it.
The white man’s concept of wilderness did not exist for them.
The medicine man, as the author describes, learned how to heal the people directly from “Wakan Tanka as manifested in the creatures and beings of nature.” He didn’t need to go to school, because he found the infinite source in all things.
“This association of knowledge with all the creatures of earth caused him to look to them for his knowledge, and assuming their spiritual fineness to be of the quality of his own, he sought with them a true rapport. If the man could prove to some bird or animal that he was a worthy friend, it would share with him precious secrets and there would be formed bonds of loyalty never to be broken; the man would protect the rights and life of the animal, and the animal would share with the man his power, skill, and wisdom.“
This is what right-brain wisdom looks like in practice. He didn’t sample nature so he could study it in a lab, he entered into relationship with it. He didn’t rely on books for his knowledge, he received it through humble, patient connection. He let his intuition guide him. The medicine man understood what our left-brain dominated culture has forgotten: that other beings are our equals, and they have wisdom to share, if only we would take the time to listen.
Overall, Luther Standing Bear’s detailed account of pre-reservation Lakota life shows us what a right-brain-led life actually looks like. It isn’t theory, or fantasy—he lived this reality. Just over 200 years ago, people lived with great depth and meaning on this land. They made listening to the knowing of their souls, over the insistent voice of their egos, a tribal virtue and held each other accountable for it. And we called them primitive because we couldn’t recognize wisdom that didn’t fit our left-brain framework.
What if we finally started to see the Native Americans as spiritually advanced instead? As a model to learn from, instead of savages to eliminate.
We’ve seen how the left brain has dominated our civilization, how it usurped the Master’s role, how 4,000 years of patriarchy systematically disconnected us, how literacy locked it in neurologically. We understand the framework, the history, the mechanism.
And now we see that there is an alternative, and it’s not an ancient myth. They lived this way, right here.
Their example proves the right brain knows how to create the kind of communities that will allow us to live in relative peace with each other, with nature, and with the Earth.
What if we started giving its wisdom a voice in our lives? What might be possible for us then?
This concludes the From Ego to Soul series. If you’d like to explore how far human consciousness can go: Why Aren’t We All Wanting to Be Babaji