Hickor'nut Spirit

Lately I have been on this kick of re-reading some of my favorite books. I'm in the middle of this one right now and remember why I like to so much.  It is an autobiography of a boy who's parents both died and so was raised by his Indian Grandparents.  Every culture of course has its unique aspects, but I love to find the ways that we are all the same.  Truth is  truth and although people may explain it differently or  use different imagery... when truth is spoken... it tends to resonate.  It is  universal regardless of the cultural context.  

I love this truth taught to Little Tree by his Granma:

  

Granma said everybody has two minds.  One of the minds has to do with the necessaries for body living.  You had to use it to figure how to get shelter and eating and such like for the body......  She said we had to have that mind so as we could carry on .  But she said we had another mind that had nothing atall to do with such.  She said it was the spirit mind.   Granma said  if you used the body-living mind to think greedy or mean; if you was alays cuttin' at folks with it and figuring how to material profit off'n them.... then you would shrink up your spirit mind to no bigger'n a hickor'nut. .... 

In such case, you lost your spirit complete.  That's how you become dead people.  Granma said you could easy spot dead people.  She said dead people when they looked at a woman saw nothing but dirty; when they looked at other people they saw nothing but bad; when they looked at a tree they saw nothing but lumber and profit; never beauty.  Granma said they was dead people walking around.  

Granma said that the spirit mind was like any other muscle.  If you used it it got bigger and stronger.  She said the only way it could get that way was using it to understand, but you couldn't open the door to it until you quit being greedy and such with your body mind.  Then understanding commenced to take up, and the more you tried to understand, the bigger it got.  Natural, she said, understanding and love was the same thing.  


I see right out that I was going to commence trying to understand practical everybody, for I sure didn't want to come up with a hickor'nut spirit.

See what I mean??  Truth.  Reminds me of  Mosiah 3:19 and 1 Corinthians 2:14.    

Beautiful.  And who wants a hickor'nut spirit anyway?