The Wisdomgiftingby Tamarack Song |
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Black waves growled up the beach...I was alive with the Wind and the touch of the first sunrays to shoot through a low break in the greasy clouds. |
Black waves growled up the beach as I leaned into the wind to make my way to the pier. Earlier, in the calm following dawn, two camp buddies and I rummaged through the beach pebbles for a rare arrowhead like the one displayed in a glass case in the mess hall. I persisted long after they tired, sensing the need for an object to balance the scapular medal the nuns had hung around my neck.
Camp was about over; all week I was out on this lake attempting to fulfill my dream of coming home with a canoeing merit badge. This was no longer the same lake; its sparkly breezedappled surface now chesthigh rollers with roiling crests blowing off in foamy spray. And I was no longer the same person.
Yesterday I was the little skinny kid unable to right a swamped canoe in deep water; now I was alive with the wind and the touch of the first sunrays to shoot through a low break in the greasy clouds. That big aluminum boat bobbed like a mad cork as I roped it out to the end of the pier.
We were sailing downlake like a leaf on a windswept puddle. By the time my paddle got a grip on the water, we were broadside in breakers methodically coercing us to join the beached driftwood. That prospect gave me the flash image of the troop leader giving me, the canoeing merit badge flunkee, public reprimand (or worse) for risking life and ship in such conditions when I couldn't even handle myself in calm waters.
That did it-as we popped over the next crest and slid down its smooth backside I dug my paddle deep on the lee and grunted till I saw stars. Losing most of my gain to each buffeting wave, I ever so gradually forced my bow into the wind. Fatigued and shaking, I gained new wisdom from the dance which wind and water just taught me, and new strength from the warm presence of the little stone point in my pocket which I had found that morning. Each wave protested with metal thunder as we wedged through it on our path to its source.
Having Personal Power has nothing to do with having control or influence over others. Rather, it is the core of our essential being, the fire that comes from the search for, and development and sharing of, that which is deeply and uniquely us. It is being aware of the voices within and the voices without, and being responsive to them. It is being fully sensitized, and having the direction and purpose of vision. It is knowing one's gifts and energies, knowing they were given for gifting.
The essential quest of our Journey is reempowerment. We begin to know the form
and character of Personal Power as it intimately relates to each of us, as well as gaining grip on the tools for developing and sharing it.
The first step is coming to know our essential being -- that which is truly and intrinsically us. Perhaps the easiest way to that knowledge is to first understand ego and personality and how they are distinct from, and often mask, our essential being.
For this purpose, let us define ego as our conscious identity as we project it to others. Before the age of 30, especially when we are in the Fourth World of our Hoop of Life (roughly age 14-30), we have a tendency to confuse ego with Personal Power. This happens because we are brimming with the selfawareness and headiness that comes with newly experiencing adulthood. The humility and perspective received upon entering the Fifth World (time of knowledge beyond self, age 30-45) ), allows us to begin developing our Personal Power aside from the constraint of ego.
Since leaving the Fourth World I've become increasingly aware of how those with
topheavy egos (egodependent personalities) tend to become selfabsorbed and narrow in perspective. These people are often an annoyance at best to people with wellbalanced egos, but they can be threatening to people with deepseated insecurities and a disproportionate influence on younger people.
Personality is the vehicle of ego-the partially acquired and partially inherited way in which we interact. A strong, riveting personality, or charisma, as it is often called, is valued in the civilized way, as it is a powerful vehicle for influence and control over others. However, it can be a personal liability, as it quells the thirst for, and may even be confused with, Personal Power. We often hear it said of this sort of person, "He's really different once you get to know him." Patience and concerted effort are needed to find the person behind the persona.
Relatively speaking, Native Peoples are less verbal in the expression of their personalities. Smalltalk is avoided, and the "gift of gab" is not a part of their social repertoire. Because of their closed mouths and open eyes they are often stereotyped by outsiders as stoic (or, in combination with their undiscriminating courtesy, as childlike and naive). We know that the reason for their sparse verbiage is hardly because they have nothing to say. Native American orators are considered to be some of the greatest the world has known. Native People speak easily from the heart, because that is where they dwell. Thus they are easy to come to know. And, when approached in kind, in little time one falls within the realm of their trust and friendship.
Tamarack, who lives in the Wisconsin forest, is a Native-approach counselor and dream interpreter, primitive skills instructor, guides quests and other rites of passage, and is author of the book, Journey to the Ancestral Self. Write to him at Medicine Lodge, Nishnazhida/Three Lakes, WI 54562-9333; (715)546-2944.