“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
So, what ARE we doing here? Each of us, what is it that we are doing? Just living, paying the bills, going through life day to day, not wondering why we are doing here, or not doing, here?
The mentor ponders these questions, especially when those questions are asked by those who seek our guidance, those who seek our wisdom.
How can I be wise, and impart my sacred knowledge to others, when I haven’t even answered these questions for myself?
I keep coming back to these questions, and when I do, I have different answers, depending on where I have been, what I am doing, and where I am in my own sense of purpose, my own day to day relationship with God, or Spirit, or the Universe, or whatever we want to name that which seems to be beyond our comprehension. Yet, being human, I want to have some order, some predictability in my world. I want to have answers for my ever present question of why.
The most arduous journeys are those where one ventures inward. One can cope with the unpredictability of the airlines, crowded airports, tight connections. One can replace the item forgotten in the suitcase, or do without. When one travels, one expects to have the unexpected, the exotic, and the mind-numbing ennui of a long, tiring flight, or the butt numbing last 100 miles of a road trip.
But, when I look inward, then I don’t have the luxury, the convenience of blaming some faceless corporate snafu, or the weather-caused delay, or the closed road up ahead, the lost reservation. No, this time its only me, and what doesn’t get faced, or examined, or dealt with is because I don’t want to open that door, or I fear walking down that dark path, dealing with the monsters and the potholes that I know, from past journeys there, still exist.
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.” -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
And all this scares the bejesus out of me. Oh, I can deal pretty well with the world and all its tumult. Its a crazy place, but there are some discernible rules and practices, and while the world may seem at times to be insane, my species grew up in the wilderness and we evolved and survived in the jungles and deserts. We survived, and I’ve got the genes to prove it. And, I’ve made it, so far. I was born of parents who survived the Great Depression and World War II. I’m a baby boomer, and I’ve survived nuclear bomb testing, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the Iraqi War, and, probably, the latest war in Afghanistan.
I’ve survived swine flu, bird flu, and AIDS. I’ve even survived a heart attack, and a few of the stranger family functions that have required my participation. I even survived high school, teenaged acne, and teenaged angst. I’ve even survived raising three sons.
We humans are survivors. That is what we are programmed for, and our survivor skills come to the forefront because that is who we are -- survivors.
If I look at my hand, it is the hand of my father, my grandfather, and my great great great great great grandfather, it is the hand of fifty generations before me. And, it will be the hand of fifty generations after me. That hand in front of my face got me here, and its going to shape the world to get my sons and grand sons and great great grandsons through life.
And who operates that hand, that hand of fifty thousand years of challenge and refinement, and stamina? He’s looking at me right now. That’s right, me. That complex biological machine, run on genetics and intuition and brain power to be an analyzer, problem solver, and survivor. Most of the gray matter upstairs is hard wired to stay alive, put fuel in the tank, and keep on running. And, hopefully, there’s a good amount of frontal lobe material there that puts some thought and reason to the whole purpose of what I am doing on this earth, burning up food and consuming oxygen.
Most of turn to religion to find the answers. We ponder the stars, the daily miracle of the movement of the sun across the sky, the march of the seasons, the length of sunlight, the migration of birds, and the cycle of life of the rest of the inhabitants of this planet. And, in all that searching, we grab onto a sense of order, a sense of purpose, a sense of knowing that all of this struggle, all of this wonder really matters.
We all want more than just the answer of biology. Our reasoning brain seeks order, seeks explanation, seeks purpose. And, because of most of our experiences don’t seem to happen because of the mandates of Socratic logic, or Newtonian physics, or the hypotheses of Universal order suggested by Stephen Hawking, our emotional hunger for order grabs onto the concept of God.
Oh, we give that a number of names, and a number of prophets, and seers, and philosophers, theologians, and saviors. And, we as a species find, in that debate for order and “being right”, most of our reasons for bigotry, hatred, and warfare. We grab onto the order of “us” and “them”, and craft new words and big sets of books that set forth our stories and our rules.
We want to make the Universe orderly. We gaze into the starry night, and make order by naming stars and constellations, and seeing the movement of points of light to be the reason we should take our rightful place at the center of the Universe, and that God loves us the most.
Many theosophies mandate that we do all this because of faith, yet there are whispers that if all this was really logical, was really reasonable and scientifically provable, we would simply believe our theology because it was true, not only because we feel it, but because it really was true.
And in all this, we are still left alone, with ourselves, looking up into the night time sky, looking for God. Or, we study the intricate cells of a leaf, or the amazing geometry of a spider web, and smugly declare that this is God’s handiwork. And, in doing that, we still give room to the concept of mystery. For it is all a mystery.
Like the reader of a good thriller, we enjoy the chase, but we also enjoy the part where the teller of the tale puts all the clues and all the plot lines into order, and leaves us with a nice, neatly resolved ending.
Our ancestors sat around the fire in the evening, listening to the teller of the tale about the stars, about the world, about ourselves, wanting the story to have a nice, pleasant plot, and end in time for us to head for bed at our usual time, with all the loose ends neatly tied up, and everything in order. So, when we rose again the next day, the sun was in its place, and the village was in order, as was the world.
We live in an oral culture. Oh, we have books and papers, and cities where the streets run in neat geometric patterns, and clocks give us the reading of the minute and the hour. Our machines increasingly take away the tedium of routine chores and mechanical tasks, and our technology grows by leaps and bounds with promises of more gifts of speedy calculations.
Yet, we tell stories. We love to tell stories. And, we love to be in the place where stories are told. Our texting and e-mailing, our addiction to instantaneous news and data somehow comfort us, we think, in being in the know. But, it is all story telling.
We haven’t really left the village. We’ve changed how our own village looks, and who really belongs in our village. Its not a matter of place anymore, but it is still our village. Our story tellers may not be literally sitting around our campfire, but we do have campfires and storytellers, and we keep telling our legends and our fables, and we keep celebrating our gods and the stories of our hunts and our harvests.
Yet, in doing so, we have left out a few things that a proper village would have, and would honor as fundamental. We have let our children and our youth wander away from the fire, and maybe, on a good night, find their own fire, or their own story teller. We are losing community at a time when we need to communicate more with each other, and bring ourselves closer together.
And, the village is becoming poorer. Our children are losing their sense of purpose, their sense of being villagers in our own village. Their place at the campfire is empty, and often not even recognized as a vacant seat on the log, as the storyteller of the evening begins their tale.
We can see that in the growth of gangs, in kids dropping out of school, in more single parent families, and teenaged pregnancies, and in the use of drugs, the rise of homelessness. We also see that in the eyes of young people we meet, who lack a sense of purpose, and a sense of hope in their lives.
All of us need a sense of place, a sense of belonging. We need a foundation on which to build our lives, and to shape our future.
And, when that is missing in people’s lives, there is a hunger, a yearning that is not answered by consumer goods, by entertainment, or by the plethora of modern day pleasures and culture. People want to belong, to matter, and to make a difference.
Every generation has ranted about the perceived deficiencies in the generation that is following them. Every society has anguished about the abilities of young people to grow up into responsible, mature, and productive citizens of the village. That is the nature of the elders, to worry about the future and the lives of those who are growing up, and who will take over some day.
We all want purpose in our lives. And, when it gets right down to it, purpose means leaving an impact on this world. Our graves have head stones, and we want to be remembered. We have sons and daughters, because, deep down, we want to perpetuate ourselves. Life is finite, so we scatter our genes and hope to reproduce ourselves. We are sexual beings because of that biological drive to be successful, to literally succeed ourselves in this world.
Yet, we seem to have neglected the concept that replication is more than sexual reproduction. We also need to replicate our cultural values, our society. In generations past, ancestors made sure the culture continued, that their stories became the stories of their children, that the same songs around the campfire continued to be sung even when we didn’t return from the hunt, or fell dead in the fields at the end of our days.
Instead, the stories of our children are not the stories of our own campfires, and we have left it to other forces to teach stories to our children.
And, we are realizing that the stories of our children are not the stories that we tell, nor are they the stories of great grandfather, and the stories of our village are dying out. They will die with us, and then, we will not live on forever. We want that immortality, and fundamentally, we believe it is our God given duty to ensure that those stories go on, and will be told forever.
Years ago, I joined other men, praying and dancing around a fire, in a meadow underneath the shadow of mighty mountains. A wise man led us, blessing us with sage grass smoke, as we stripped off our modern clothing. Naked, in every sense of the word, we crawled into a sacred place, a lodge make from branches and animal hides, near a fire where several men tended the coals, and rolled rocks, until the rocks glowed red.
In the darkness, we formed a circle, our naked buttocks touching the damp earth, the only light coming in from opening in the hides through which we crawled. In the center, the earth was blackened by fires of past ceremonies. Another round of smudging with sage grass occurred, and then a soapstone pipe was passed. We each inhaled the sweet and bitter smoke of tobacco, and a young man began to chant softly.
Soon, the door was shut, and the shaman began to pray, bringing in the ancestors, and blessing us for what we were doing, for what we were becoming.
Then, a few hot rocks were gently thrust into the lodge, finding their place in the center. The branches and hides above us were low, and we could not stand. The heat from the rocks and the heat of our bodies combined to a steamy sauna. The smell of sage grass, tobacco, and sweat filled my nostrils, and I fought the urge to panic, and run naked back into the world.
Our leader chanted more prayers, bringing in the spirits and the Four Directions and this became a sacred space. I was stripped of more than my modern clothes. I stood naked before the spirits, and I became part of this holy place.
There was nothing to do but sweat and contemplate my existence, my relationship with the Universe, with God. And, the men I was with were doing the same, all of us naked, fearful, and becoming with the Spirit. There was no place to hide.
Our ancestors were present, and it was time to face them, to be accountable, to acknowledge their wisdom, and the heritage they had passed on to us.
The unspoken question was what have we done with this legacy. How have we honored this trust?
The sage grass was burned again, and more hot rocks were brought in. The tobacco pipe was passed around, again, and more prayers were chanted. I fell into the rhythm of the old ways, which were really my ways, the ways of life that I had conveniently forgotten, in my quest to be modern, to be the “civilized” man that I thought was expected of me.
In the darkness, and smelling my sweat and the sweat of my brothers, and feeling my skin being cleansed by the sweat rolling down my chest, and the beating of my heart, as the temperature rose, there was connection, a closeness with my forefathers, connection I had never had.
All there was to feel was the spiritual connection that had been lost to me. Now, there was ritual and form and order for what seemed now to be so natural, so human. Spirit was present and I was connected. The beating of the drums matched the beating of my heart, and my sweat now soaking into the earth was as natural and as comforting as anything could be.
The prayers and chants of the shaman faded into the background, as my soul flew free, unleashed from the ropes I had created in trying to be, instead, the modern man.
I was no different than my father, my grandfather, and the generations before them. Nor was I any different than my sons, and my grandsons, and those who would follow them. I was of the Earth and of Spirit and I was alive with all of that.
There was release and connection, and in all that, there became peace in my heart.
The pipe was handed to me again, and I prayed out loud for my ancestors and for myself and for my children who would follow in my footsteps. I became part of the story around the campfire, and I felt welcomed into the village, the village that I had tried to run from, but could not fully escape from.
I had been called back, back to the village and back to the fire, to make peace with my ancestors and with the need to hear their story, and to tell my own story.
Time slipped into a place where it had no meaning, until it all ended, and I could return to a place where the air in my lungs was cool and a place where I could wash off the sweat and the smoke from the fire and the pipe, and where the sun fell below the mountain ridge. And, I was alive, more alive than I’d ever been before.
It was a place that I would return to again, and again. Oh, not in the Western linear time sense, but in the spiritual, ethereal world of Spirit, of sacred time. In that place, that dimension, there was strength, and unity and completion. It was a place where I could look into my own heart, and see beauty, and completion, and meaning.
I have attended a number of religious services and participated in a number of rituals and spiritual events. And, in all of them, there is a part of the sweat lodge experience that is present. We all want the same thing, a sense of spiritual connectedness and attachment. We want to be part of something bigger, and we want to be connected.
Without connection, without being part of the village, the campfire where stories are told, we are lost in the jungle and we are being left to die of thirst in the desert, as our brethren continue their journey.
My journey continues, and I yearn for the sanctuary of the campfire circle, of the wisdom of the story, of the connection I make around that circle with my fellow man, my fellow travelers on this journey.
Mentorship is all about this journey, about this yearning for connection and meaning. In mentoring others, we are also nourishing ourselves, and giving ourselves meaning and purpose. Mentoring is nothing new. It is part of who we are, and it is a deep part of our very nature.
Without it, we are lost, we are incomplete. We are not whole. And, when we are not whole, our weakness leaves us vulnerable, leaves us open to the sicknesses in our society that eviscerate us, emasculate us. We are no longer the warriors and elders of our tribe, we no longer protect and nourish the village.
We are no longer men.
We must take back this birthright, this heritage. We must answer the call of our ancestors to take our place in leadership, to take our place around the campfire. We must bring in our young men to sit beside us around the fire, to hear their pain, to give them space to grow into healthy men, and to share our wisdom, to share our journey.
In that, we reclaim our village and we end the diseases of disconnection, loneliness, and disharmony.
We are warriors and in this war, we must protect the village. We must answer the call to be proud, to be vigilant, and to be the fathers our sons must have.
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