Re-Visioning Adolescence and the Rite of Passage, Chapter 6

October 22, 2008

It seems almost unfair to try to explain Family Constellation Work in one condensed chapter like this.  I’ve been doing this work for the past ten years and have never experienced such deep, soul-level work.   If my botched explanation touches you in any way, please do look further into this approach.  It has changed the lives of hundreds of people that I have worked with.  It has changed my life. 

 I’m tired and my son’s wedding is looming (we leave a week from today).  I am excited about it but also looking forward to it being behind us.  Tom and Erica are going to Hawaii for their honeymoon.  Wish I was heading to the Global Passageways retreat next week myself.  Instead, I’m sending a Bead Person for each attendee.  I’ll be there energetically!

 

Jamie

 

 CHAPTER SIX

The Art of Separating

 I once heard a Lakota medicine man give a wonder­ful talk about how the tiny spirit finds its way from the spirit world and into the body of his or her mother. This wisp of life travels a great distance and then, at concep­tion, is given a human body following an explosion of sperm into the fertile womb of the woman. At birth the body of the woman mobilizes for another explosion as the child enters this world and is separated from the mother. This separation is necessary if life is to continue.

Adolescence is like a second birth, perhaps even more complex and difficult than the first. In this second birth the child is not an unaware infant but a participant in the separation. A tremendous tension builds between hanging on and letting go as the child, once again, attempts to separate.

In the work of people such as Bert Hellinger, Milton Erickson, Virginia Satir, and many other insightful engi­neers of this important event, they observed that the fail­ure to separate from the parents and the family of origin could bring about neurosis, mental illness, physical illness, and even death. As I’ve deepened my study of this important developmental moment-of separating-I’m willing to risk saying that 98% of the clients I see are trapped in the tense pull of this separation either from their own parents or from their children or from a way of being that no longer allows for further growth. This movement away from the family and into our own uni­verse touches some deeply fundamental force that seeks resolution.

In fact, there is a universal tension that builds within all of us between the need to belong and the need to separate. In the age of adolescence, this tension is like a guitar wire, tight and singing. We seek a firm membership in our culture and family-and simultaneously seek to wander off alone into the forest to discover the higher truth of our aloneness. This becomes a combustible mixture that, when left alone and uninitiated, will burn its own trail through the forest.

 On September 11, 2001, we were all shocked by the terrorist attacks and the subsequent collapse of the World Trade Center. Strangely, just three days before this event I’d checked out a book called The Psychology of War, by Lawrence LeShan. The skinny little book was riding in my van the day of the attack so I picked it up and began reading. All around me there was the trembling energy of a nation about to either collapse, as the towers did, or to rise to something new. I wondered which it would be.

Dr. Lawrence LeShan speaks about a universal tension between the desire to belong and the desire to be an individual that is shared by all human beings.  Since our country was on the edge of war, I read on, surprised at how clearly he explained this tension:

 Historically and anthropologically, there  are two different means (both of which appear in nearly every known human culture) available to us that promise to   sat­isfy both of these drives, simultaneously and without contradiction . . . . A very small part of the human race turns to one of the schools of esoteric or spiritual development . . . .There is a second means of resolving this tension, between our need for singularity and our need for group identification. This means also appears in nearly every culture, and it too promises to fulfill both of these needs simultaneously, without contradiction; it promises to enhance our individuality and heighten our existence and, at the same time, increase our sense of being part of a group; to lessen our separateness at the same time it increases our individuality. Further, it pro-mises to do so with full social approval and without the arduous discipline required for meditation, which apparently can only be followed by a few. This second path is the way of armed group conflict-of war.

 LeShan says we resolve the conflict in one of two ways: by seeking spirit-or by making war.

One of the largest whales our children will have to hunt is that which will insure the safety of planet Earth. If we are to survive all of us, both young and old, need to become conscious of our own belonging and the forces that drive it. I hope someday to explore the full impact of blind belonging versus conscious belonging but, for our topic here, it’s enough to say that teaching our youth about this powerful tension system is an essential part of initiating them into adulthood.

 The Power of Exclusion

In ancient native cultures, the greatest punishment meted out to a member of the tribe was to be excluded. In some ways, even death was more merciful than full exclusion. We, in our archaic souls, understand the power of inclusion and exclusion, yet we also seek separate­ness.

Most romantic literature and poetry is about finding what the heart most desires only to lose it again. Coming and going. Essentially we are programmed genetically, biologically, and spiritually to find ourselves safe and embraced by what we love only to turn and leave it behind. It’s the driving force behind initiation-to leave the known, familiar territory and to discover something new.

 The Power of Mother and Father

In adolescence, this tension between belonging and aloneness can take on mythic proportions. To let this dynamic tension unfold and allow the child to be born again into adult life, we need to understand the subtle forces at work within the family. 

Many tribal societies recognized the intensely deep pull that a mother has on a child.  Separating mother and child, as we have explored, was often the first part of a rite of passage ritual.  It’s as if a second umbilical cord, invisible and made of steel, needs to be cut.  We think of adolescence as the time when the child pulls away from the mother, but mother must also be willing to let go of the child.  If, in the early years, the bond between mother and child has been fully formed, the child can move more easily away from the mother.  If for some reason the bond was incomplete, both mother and child find separation difficult. 

In The Magical Child, Pearce (1986) explores this mysterious bonding process in full detail.  He recognizes that many innovations in our modern society have suc­ceeded in weakening the bond between mother and infant; medical births, drugs in childbirth, mothers at work, day care centers and television are just a few of the intervening forces he examines. When I first read Pearce many years ago, I found this bleak picture of the future of the human race to be almost unbearable. All of the eroding fac­tors he lists have been the standard for decades. Even in choosing to birth my own three children naturally, with­out drugs or extreme medical intervention, I still had to fight the hospital staff to allow nursing on demand, in-room care etc. 

What does this mean, for our society, I wondered?  Although natural childbirth is in vogue again, is it enough?   Our economic structures still force women into full employment. They return home exhausted and over­worked, their children warehoused in childcare centers day after day.

 The Family Constellation Work of Bert Hellinger

When first introduced to the intensive family work of German psychotherapist, Bert Hellinger2, I recognized that he had, perhaps, found a solution to the incomplete bonding within families.  By returning to the deep river of love and connection flowing beneath families, we can restore what has been broken.  The truth is parents love their children.  And children love their parents.  On the level of the soul, there is no stronger force operating.  Whatever negative factors have influenced the way we act in the world, this love remains true.  Hellinger (2001), in summarizing his decades of experience with family systems wrote:

 The most important thing I’ve seen is that love is at work behind all human behavior and, however strange this may seem, behind all our psychological symp­toms.  This means that it’s essential in therapy to find where the clients love. 

 Working energetically with the family system, Hellinger recognized the soul’s desire to complete what has been incomplete. He discovered that the obstacles to love flowing within the family could be resolved and removed by a variety of means. 

Consider the young infant wanting only to reach out for mom and to be taken. When this natural movement is interrupted somehow, through sickness or separation, the infant enters childhood constantly trying to complete the movement. Hellinger observed that he could place a sur­rogate or representative mother in front of a client and that the client could, at last, complete the movement that the soul has longed to make for a lifetime.  He calls this “a completion of the reaching out movement”3. 

Hellinger developed a tool now called the family con­stellation as a way of working with families. The family constellation makes visible the hidden ties and connec­tions that flow naturally out of love and loyalty within a family.  He called these connections “the hidden orders of love.”  According to Hellinger (1998):

 The systemic orders that allow love to thrive in families are difficult to define precisely. They have far greater flexibility than social or moral laws that have been invented by societies or individuals and that must be obeyed to the letter. They are also different from the rules of a game that can be modified to suit the circum­stances or according to whim.  The orders are simply there.” 

 A family system includes children, their parents, the grandparents and great grandparents on out.  Others may be considered part of the system as well, such as former spouses or partners or someone whose fate affected the system.  For example, someone from whom a member of the system gained something significant either by their death, loss, or misfortune.  

Within this loosely defined system, there are certain natural orders that must be maintained if the system is to thrive and flourish.  Hellinger (1998) wrote,

 As we have seen, love succeeds in our relationships when belonging, a balance of giving and taking, and a good order can be maintained.  This is also true for the extended family, but five additional dynamics constrain the success of love in family systems:  (1) honoring the right to membership, (2) maintaining the com­pleteness of the system, (3) protecting the hierarchy according to time, (4) following the order of precedence between systems and (5) accepting the limitations of time.  

 Such a concise summary of these hidden orders of love can be misleading. When applied to the depths of our family systems, they become a complex web of ties and loyalties that give rise to our life experience. The sug­gestion is that a family system is just that, a complex system of relationships that are in a constant state of balancing, forming, and reforming while always flowing forward toward the next generation.

For our purposes here, we’ll focus primarily on the orders of belonging and precedence. 

We all have a place within our system and must keep that place and be included if things are to flow in a good order.  When we lose our place, a disorder or an imbal­ance is created and the larger system automatically begins to adjust for the imbalance. In other words, the first to enter a system takes precedence over those who enter later.  For instance, Mom and Dad enter a system before the first child, and the first child enters before the second, and third, etc.

Hellinger also explains carefully that there are orders of precedence between two separate systems. For instance, when a man divorces and marries again, his sec­ond system takes precedence over the first.  To compli­cate matters further, however, if there is a child from the first marriage, that child still holds first place before the second partner. If the new wife attempts to take first place over the child, the marriage will begin to rock and roll. 

The goal of this discussion is to stress that each member of the system holds a particular place and love flows more easily when the orders of precedence are honored. In fact, everybody just feels better when all who are a part of the system are included. 

Likewise, each member must carry or be responsible for their actions or feelings. When an important event causes grief, guilt, or other reactions and the responsible person doesn’t take their part, the event may begin to echo through the system. When this happens, a younger member may take on the feelings of an earlier member thus becoming entangled and unable to move forward. 

Hellinger’s vast inquiry into such systemic distur­bances gave me an entirely new pair of spectacles with which to view adolescent development.  It’s possible that many of us can’t separate from our system of origin or our parents because, through no fault of our own, we are entangled-caught in the web of love, loyalty and strong emotions.  The issues are multi-generational and thus very complex. I also want to stress at this point that Hellinger was very careful to advise us not to attempt to rigidify or formalize these orders of love.  Each relationship system must be approached individually and with a willingness to see what that system has to say. 

Having said this in such brief terms, we find that tracing a disorder or disturbance is not a simple task.  The tool of the family constellation provides us with a way to see what may be invisible within the hidden orders of a sys­tem. A constellation uses representatives to set up an energetic picture of the family within what is called by some facilitators the knowing field. A trained facilitator learns to read the movements within the system and adjust, by trial and error, as a means to find and restore the proper order and resolve the imbalance. 

Here is a simple example.  A man had struggled his entire life with a deep sadness for which he can find no reason.  In a constellation, he chooses representatives for himself, his mother, and his father and then intuitively moves them into the open space of the circle without thinking about it. He places mom facing away and looking far out of the circle, dad at the opposite end looking on, and himself in the middle watching mom.  The facilitator then gathers a verbal report (and nonverbal) from all representatives to see what feelings or thoughts come to them as they stand in place.

We find that mom’s representative feels very sad and has a strange longing in her heart. Dad’s representative feels disconnected and helpless. The son’s representative is angry-longing to get mom to look at him.  The client has provided information that mom lost a little sister to early death and so a representative for the little sister is chosen and brought into the existing picture. Immedi­ately, Mom’s representative feels a great relief and love for the little sister.  At last, she can now see her husband and her son and feel love toward them.  The resolution is to make sure the place of the little sister is firmly held in the family and then mom can be more present for her family. 

This is an extremely simplistic example of a very complex process, but it is intended to give you a picture of what a constellation looks like.  By way of explanation, we surmise that the early death of the little sister caused a painful storm of grief in the mother’s family of origin.  Her parents found it easier to not think about the loss but to set it quickly aside.  The place held by the little dead sister eventually closed up and her place no longer held in the family. However, the soul of the older sister (our client’s mother) felt the loss and sought to hold a place for her little sister. This created a sadness and depression in mom that stopped her from being fully available to her new system.  She was entangled in the grief and loss and had passed that burden on to our client.  To resolve the entanglement, we put the little sister back where she belongs or “longs to be”. 

Signs of systemic disturbances may be chronic sadness or depression, a loose anger or violence floating around the system, an inability for an individual to go forward into life, and even illness or suicidal thoughts. 

The powerful suggestion of this work, and one that is consistent with many traditional native cultures, is that we do not operate alone but are intricately connected throughout our lives to those who came before us, both the living and the dead. It is possible for us to be inti­mately and invisibly connected to the fate of an aunt, grandfather, or even a great grandmother who suffered a difficult fate. This connection, formed out of deep love and loyalty, is the cause of our current life circumstances. 

Although we did not suffer this fate, we willingly and lovingly carry the burden of it. These burdens must be passed back to whom they belong if we are to go free into our own lives.  It’s the tender hearts of the young that are most vulnerable to taking on the sad fate of those who came before. I see that these heavy entanglements are often at the root of suicide, mental illness, physical distress, chronic sadness, depression, or rage.  Such entanglements stop development in its tracks.  Instead, we give a significant portion of our personal energy in service to the system and thus have none left for our own life struggles. 

When a family member seems caught in depression or loops of anger or self destructiveness, scan the family system for any who may have died early, been pushed out, or have been otherwise excluded.  Take special care if you divorce your child’s other parent because they will remain loyal in the soul. Hold firm to your place as parent and simultaneously as the child of your parents.

 If, as you have read these many pages, a child (or yourself) may be entangled in this web of family, I strongly suggest you learn more about Family Constel-lation Work.  I feel in my heart that when a young person does a suicide or suffers severe illness, they often serve some hidden purpose for the larger system.  If a child is so entangled, we must do all we can to release them.  

Likewise, look to your own entanglements.  Are you caught in a web of loyalty to your family of origin?  Do you feel somehow unable to be fully present to your spouse or children?  Do your relationships end prema­turely or seem deeply dissatisfying?   

We’ve only begun to research and look into these larger, echoing effects within the family system, but to witness a family constellation is to become aware of these larger forces at work.

Search for repeating patterns as you scan your system.  There can be some strange surprises.  For instance, my oldest daughter was the only great grandchild to be born on her paternal grandmother’s birthday.  Grandma had married on August 15, and my daughter got married on August 16. Grandma had five children by age 22, and my daughter had four children by age 22. Some of these coincidental patterns can be just plain interesting.  Occasionally, they can be a warning signal that the child has taken on the fate of another. 

Ultimately, our job as parents is to do all we can to prepare the child to leave us.  It sounds somewhat callous but that is the truth. When systemic issues prevent that separation from happening, all will suffer. We can’t attempt to explain how or why these hidden orders of love operate as they do within families. Hellinger calls it “phenomenological” because it cannot be explained.  The tribal ancestors, perhaps, understood it more clearly. 

During our time with Bert Hellinger in Austria, I asked if he felt that the family was the kernel from which all else grows and he said only, “Yes, of course.” In 2002, the international conference on systemic work was on ethnic conflict.  It was entitled Fields of Conflict-Fields of Wisdom.  From our deepest entanglements and conflict, comes our greatest wisdom. 

 

 

By Jamie | Posted in About Being All You Can Be, On Writing, The Bead people Peace Project, The Education Crises | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Re-Visioning Adolescence, Chapter 5

October 21, 2008

It has been a challenge to eek out this time each night to proof and prepare this post, but it feels right and good.  Sometimes it seems like my thinking is about a decade ahead.  This book feels even more important to me now than it did when I wrote it.  Just today a good friend of ours who has worked in the healing arts her whole life told us that her son tried to commit suicide a month ago.  The young people need everything we can muster to help them gain strength and place in the world.  Even though I can’t attend the Global Passageways retreat in Hawaii next week, it excites me that 100 great thinkers from across the globe are coming together to address the very issues that I have spent 20 years pondering.  I know from reading many of their resume’s that they have put their beliefs and observations to work in real, active programs in many nations.  We need to multiply their efforts and get to work.

 Today I made my first trek of the week to Pine Ridge to teach my classes.  It was so windy out there that half the prairie was blowing across the road.  I’ve never seen so many tumbleweeds.  They looked alive-dancing across the road-and I thought maybe I should have included a “prairie clan” in my little Bead People book.  By the way, we have just had The Wind of a Thousand Years translated into Spanish and ordered the first copies.  We’d love to have others with language ability help us to translate it into other languages.  It is a short book so not too large of a task.  You can see it at www.thebeadpeople.org 

 One more note-Milt and I went to see a speaker who is a psychic and healer tonight.  It was fun-we had him hold one of The Bead People and he said it would be used for a charitable purpose and that he saw “upper 7 figures” coming in to the right organization using it for a fundraiser.  I think he may be a real psychic!J   The other day in my mind I visualized 1,000,000 Bead People out wandering the world.  Naturally, I don’t want to build them all myself-so get on board.  Order a kit or instructions, a pile of Wind books and pitch in and help.  In November I plan to offer a special on kits and the instructional DVD.  Visit the website a week from now to see it.

 Good night-God Night.  Remember, Chapter 5 is below this wordy post.

 Jamie

 

 

 CHAPTER FIVE

Where Have We Been?

 

Today, although we know so much more about what happens in the wiring and firing beneath the skull and the blood flowing in the bloodstreams of our young, we’ve grown stupid about what is going to happen when the child reaches a certain age. We hope it can simply happen without us.

What is this strong, powerful force that enters our young and changes them from happy, light-hearted chil­dren to a brooding, changeable alien species? Don’t misunderstand my words; I love the power inherent in this reservoir of youth. I simply want to better understand it, to move consciously through its twists and turns. We know that adolescence is a confluence of many forces at work including biology, spirit, mind, social environment, and something even larger and more mysterious. Many fields of study have attempted to unravel the mysteries of this confluence. As Furstenberg (2000) noted:

 Our disciplines have drawn artificial boundaries that are not extant in the natural world. Many disciplines have left biology out of the picture and have acted as if individual differences do not matter. Others have focused on individual differences while neglecting the culture and social structure. This balkanized approach to the study of adolescence serves us poorly.

 As parents and teachers, we often turn to the sciences to assist us in deciphering the coded mysteries of this powerful period of human development. The information sifting out from these sources, however, can be conflicting and confusing. The sciences, when they split and turn and separate from one another, truly do “serve us poorly”.

 

 What’s It All About, Mr. Natural?

When I was in college we had a little cartoon called “Mr. Natural”. Mr. Natural was a wise old hippie man who had many things to say. In one cartoon (this has stuck in my mind for decades) a devotee came to the sage and asked him, “What’s it all about, Mr. Natural?” The old man turned to the younger and said, “It don’t mean shit.” Often, in moments of profound confusion, I see this cartoon in my mind again and laugh. It gives me breath and relief once again to reconsider the nature of things.

Attempting to understand the vast fields of science and research relating to the brain and to human develop­ment can be vastly overwhelming. It would, perhaps, be to our great benefit, both with our own health and the health of our young people, to return to a simpler and more obtainable path. The path of natural observation and simple inquiry can take us a great distance toward the desired outcome.

To begin with, we know that the human brain and the path of human development move from the simple to the complex. Beginning with Piaget’s (1970) well-known definitions of childhood development, we know that the movement is from concrete operations to formal opera­tions spanning the first decade and a half of life. His observations, oddly, end at the very moment that these forces gather. It’s as if adolescence itself makes the most dedicated observer speechless. If we consider that the formal thinking stage is not the end of development but is simply another beginning, it makes sense. Pearce (1992) calls this stage postbiological development, or development beyond biology.2

Between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, the child is being prepared for something greater, something perhaps unheard of. Joseph Chilton Pearce (1992), in Evolution’s End, wrote, “Just as the failure of bond­ing at birth is the adult’s responsibility, not the infant’s, the failure of adolescents to follow our discipline is the fault of the adult models.” 

In other words, the vast amount of developmental research suggests, as this book does, that our young peo­ple need support, care, and initiation from and by their Elders. The brain may not be the seat of the soul, but it is certainly one of its containers and requires care, feeding, rest and stimulation in order to hold the contents of human spirit.

Instead of the support and care, we have, as Pearce wrote, “created a holding stage that keeps young people in a limbo, into which children enter earlier and adults stay longer year by year.”

Michael Meade (1993), author of several books on adult male initiation, commented about the men attending his gatherings:

 It is no accident that the average age at these gatherings is about forty-no accident because the ‘midlife crises’ repre­sents another period of initiation, when all the smoldering issues of previous life stages as well as those of the present are ignited.  

 Although we explore primarily adolescence here, it’s important to recognize that all of life is a series of initia­tions. With each new change we enter, initiation to that change must happen. I remember standing at the foot of my daughter’s hospital bed as she gave birth to my first grandson. It was terrifying. For the first time, my daugh­ter went to a place completely alone. I couldn’t follow her and there was nothing I could offer her except my presence. Birthing that child was her territory alone. This experience caused a deep break in my life as mother and plunged me into the life stage of grandmother.

The other day I ran into an old friend I hadn’t seen in several years. She’s a counselor in the school system and we were both attending a program on suicide prevention. G. walked up to me and said “Oh my god, Jamie. I’ve thought of you so often since that day you were out to my house. I made it back, FINALLY.”

I had no idea what she was talking about and thought perhaps she’d moved far away for a period of time or taken a long trip. She laughed and said, “You don’t even remember, do you?”

I was still confused. Then she told me that the last time we met we’d been talking about life issues over a cup of tea in her kitchen. Evidently, I told her she should go into the furthest, darkest corner of her being and stay there for a while. I’ve no recall of having said that or whom I stole that wonderful advice from. My friend explained how she took these words to heart and had spent the last several years clearing out her darkest corners-and that it was damned difficult. She was amused that something that had brought such a profound change for her I didn’t even recall. It was clear, however, that it was good advice. She had a bright and shining look about her that she’d not had previously. Initiation is being courageous enough to go into those dark corners and to see what may be hidden there.

The Lakota people have an ancient teaching that once guided and directed all of life’s paths. It is, “As above, so below”. The teaching is that all that happens on earth has a corresponding response in the larger universe, and vice versa. We are intimately and forever connected to the larger forces that operate outside of our physical or visible awareness. In order for life to go on well, we must align our selves with these higher forces. We don’t exist in isolation from all that is around us. It’s up to us to find out in what ways we are connected, or not connected, to the natural world.

 Reaching For God

Below is a passage from a novel by Sue Harrison called, My Sister the Moon. It relates the story of the rite of passage of a young Aleut whale hunter in the far north. In the ritual, Samiq must become the whale that has been speared and is being pursued by hunters on the great sea. To prove his manhood, he must take on the pain and injury of the whale itself, to follow the giant beast into the sea as it suffers and dies from the poisoned spear lodged in its side.  His thoughts as he enters this pain offer us a glimpse:

 How long would he be in the hut, one day, two days? How long since he had eaten? Since the day before his ceremony? He should sleep; though sleep seemed elusive, pushed away by his need to become the whale.

 But perhaps the only way to become the whale was in the same way he had become otter-through his dreams.

 Samiq, Whale Killer, closed his eyes; let his thought go to the cold gray of the sea. He saw waves, dark as shale, solid, shining like wet rock. But then that image was swallowed by the pain of his hunger until the pain grew into something that stretched beyond him­self, and it pulled him down, into the dark­ness, through the waves, away from the wind.     

 I use this fictionalized account both because it is beautiful, and because it exemplifies rituals in which the young person is carefully tutored then removed from his society and urged to enter into the transforming experi­ence from which he re-emerges as a man. In this, as in many rituals, it is the goal of the ritual to connect the initiate with both natural and supernatural forces. In this story, the boy must become the whale before he can become a man.

Without any knowledge of biology, neurological processing, or genetics, the Elders of thousands of years ago knew from experience what would happen when a child reached a certain age. They knew that the time would come when the child would put aside childish things, leave the sphere of the mother, and move into his or her rightful place as a productive member of the commu­nity. Ventura (1994) said, “Unlike us, tribal people met the extremism of their young with an equal but focused extremism from adults. Tribal adults didn’t run from this moment in their children as we do; they celebrated it.”

Meeting the extremism of the young with our own equal but focused extremism-this phrase speaks to the heart of initiation. We can’t be soft and safe with initia­tion. We can’t spare their feelings or do it for them. Soft­ness from parents causes the young people to disrespect their Elders. We are weak when we should be strong, and they see this. The young challenge-and we fold.

We see this again and again and again. Instead of ini­tiating them, we allow them to become master manipu­lators and “too big for their britches.” How often have you stood in a checkout line and seen some tyke win the battle of the checkout? Whining, crying and screaming, with mom yelling no, no, no-and then the toy, candy, or what­ever, ends up in the cart. The child is rewarded for bad behavior, and the parent is weakened by the exchange. This is not the power of true parenting. Children can’t develop fully when they are given too much power.

What is it in our current society that allows us to think that if we give the child anything he wants, we are somehow a good parent? There is a joke in our family about me sitting on my children. This story came out of one or two events in which my daughter got out of con­trol with her anger; she was quite young, maybe eight or nine and to insure her safety and my own, I sat on her, held her hands down and waited it out. My reasoning was simple and basic-I needed to win this one. Eventually she calmed down, and we were able to reason with one another again. That I only had to “sit on her” once or twice is a testament as to how effective it was, but the story has become somewhat of a legend in our family. My daughter now tells her children to be good or, “Grandma will sit on you.”

 

 Spirit-The Greater Goal of Initiation

Initiation is about coming of age and taking the full challenge of adult life. Our Elders once recognized that initiation was also a unique opportunity, a moment in time in which the young could be connected and linked to the larger sources of life itself. Not only do the Elders of the community guide the young, but those Elders also look to the Ancient Ones to assist the process.

In our travels into Indian country, we encountered many traditional people who still talk to their ancestors and the spirits that they sense are easily within reach. Often we could not record a community member without the Elders first praying and gaining permission from the spirits. This reliance on the larger forces, on unseen ancestors and spirits, is something that science and even religion have too often forgotten or abandoned.

Once we were asked to produce a video for a project on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The organization cares for children and adolescents who were struggling, but before we were allowed to do anything, the woman in charge asked if we would be willing to make offerings to the spirits and ancestors before begin­ning. She explained that in her culture the children are sacred and that the spirits must be involved in anything having to do with the children. This was not a simple request on her part-but an integral sub­structure to their healing plan.

Later, I began doing constellation work with another Lakota group.  Again, before I was required to do an Inipi ceremony so we could ask the spirits if this was the right time to do this work-and if I was the right one to do it. The spirits agreed, and I began working with their group.  The spirits had some conditions, however.  They said that before every session we were to pray and smudge and, following the work, we were to enter the sweat lodge (Inipi) to thank the spirits and ancestors for their help.

Whether we call that great mysterious source God or Wakan Tanka or Allah does not matter to me. Never has a human word adequately named such a mystery. I only know that communication with higher forces, the ances­tors and the Creator, are fundamental to many tribal cul­tures and to all cultures.

A second common element we encountered often in Indian country is the deep and loving care of the earth. The tribes who still honor the old beliefs recognize that it is the earth that pro­vides for us-not the other way around. The land is the Mother. She wipes our tears, heals our wounds, takes us to the center of life, and then allows us to rest with her until we return to the earth once again. We can take the energy of both our ancestors and the earth as a form of guidance in caring for both our children and ourselves.

For example, Elena Avila (2000), the author of Woman Who Glows in the Dark, tells her story as a psychiat­ric nurse who returned to her tribal roots in Mexico. She became a traditional healer or Curandera. Curanderismo is an earth-oriented medical practice grown out of the blended indigenous cultures of Mexico at about the time the Spaniards arrived. Avila began to integrate her ancient ways into the modern when caring for her patients. In her book, she speaks of using the earth to heal the trauma of a woman who had been raped:

 I would bury the woman in the earth, all but her head. Then I would stay with her throughout the experience, protecting her from being hurt, wiping away any insects that might come hear her face, and reassuring her if she felt any panic. When a person has been so badly traumatized, being enveloped in the earth for a few hours is purifying and allows us to surren­der our heaviness to the earth.

 On reading this passage, I felt an intense inner com­fort at the thought of giving such pain and sorrow to the earth. It seemed right, somehow.

During one of our trips to a small village in Mexico we were allowed to participate in an ancient Amazonian ceremony that is performed to renew the earth so that we can continue to live on her surface. I can’t speak of the intricate meanings of this ceremony but can only share the effect that it had on me.

The ceremony began at midnight under a full moon with three dancers coming out of the dark wearing some kind of fronds that clattered like sticks as they walked. They wore cone-shaped hats and were completely covered in the regalia (they looked like small huts). Humming a low rapid chant that sounded breathy and rhythmic, the three dancers were then joined by a woman. They bowed to the woman and chanted and, at some point in the chant, the woman began to wail. Her wail reached far out into the night and caused my heart to skip a beat. I thought of a woman birthing a child, bringing new life into the world. The wail came from so deep within that the woman coughed and choked and then began wailing again. This went on in rounds for over an hour until I felt suspended in some faraway place, con­templating the very universe coming to life. I walked away from this ceremony truly feeling renewed.

It may seem strange in this age of science and tech­nology to consider returning to the ways of taking our learning from spirits, nature, or from the very earth. Our belief systems and our minds want to minimize the power of these natural and supernatural forces and rely instead only on science or medicine to give us our answers. The suggestion here is to take both-but to recognize again that nature (earth) is the mother of all science.

It’s as if we are making a full circle from the seven­teenth century when scientists broke out of the strait­jacket of religious dogma to forge their own way. Now, centuries later, we find ourselves wearing another strait­jacket-the dogma of science. There is no suggestion in these words to reject all the wonders of science and return to the land, but only to expand our thinking out to include, once again, the larger forces at work.

Earth, with her natural cycles, patterns, and solutions, is a great teacher. Water, wind, fire, earth-leaves blow­ing, trees growing-all have the ability to touch our soul and make it strong again. We have also witnessed her fury when care is not taken with the natural resources-the air, water, soil.  When we read the work of Galileo, Einstein, David Bohm and other great minds of science, we see that they also have learned their most important lessons at Earth’s knee.

A Hopi man we interviewed for the Oyate series told us a story. He and his grandfather were out tending a field of corn.  He was about ten-years-old at the time, and he went to get a drink of water from a jug. His grandfather stopped him and said, “You’re children are thirstier than you are”.

The boy said, “But, Grandfather, I don’t have any children.”

His grandfather pointed to the young corn plants standing in the field and told him, “Those are your chil­dren. They do not have the legs to go to a drinking place to get their water. You do. So you, as a parent, must give them water first, and what­ever is left out of that water, then you can drink. If there is none, then you can walk to a place where you can drink.”

In Hopi Country, that way of being is called the hardway. I was very impressed with this teaching. In main­stream society, we make life too easy for our children when we should be teaching them the hardway. We should be meeting their extreme energy with our own extreme energy in order to prepare them for all that life will hand them later. To do this, the parent must have great strength.

What I’ve come to understand, as this decade-long book project has unfolded, is that we can find the right way toward initiation and a culturally appropriate rite of passage if we return to our own common roots, that of the land, the spirits, and the ancestors. In our souls, we are all indigenous, tribal people. We don’t have to figure it out alone. The true goal and the ultimate prize of a rite of passage is to recognize the larger spiritual forces at work, and to understand that, ultimately, we are not alone.

As a people, we yearn to shift away from the purely mechanistic thinking of the age of science and find again our metaphysical and mysterious links with nature. This movement back toward the natural forces of the earth and the universe appears not just in the crystals and essential oils of the New Age but in books on education, ancient healing arts, and modern physics as well.

In the late eighties, I spent a year and a half living in Tucson, Arizona. I was actively seeking something, both for my soul and for my career. At that time, the “New Age” was considered the seventh largest industry in Tucson. I remember chuckling at that. Who but Americans could turn soul-seeking into an industry? And yet that bit of trivia also says something about what we desperately long for in this new age.

Even some big business books speak of care of the soul, such as Stewardship by Peter Block (1993), The Soul of a Business by Tom Chappel’s (1993), or Spiritual Enterprise by Marc Allen.  The movement is toward holism-seeing the totality and interconnectedness of a system-and not just its small component parts operating in isolation.

 Hunting the Whale in a Modern World

Our children face a very different world than that of our ancestors or even the world into which we were born. The changes are astounding. When I took college algebra, I couldn’t afford a calculator. Now I can buy a sophisticated calculator at any checkout counter for three dollars. Technology, the Internet, the sophisticated weap­onry-all of this is new to this age. Our children have to deal with the changes these things are bringing. Added to this, we must recognize how technology has affected the climate, the food supply, and the earth itself. We have one challenge stacked upon another. Our young may not have to face a whale on the open sea, but there are other whales that they must be prepared to hunt. And they depend upon the parents and Elders for this guidance and preparation.

The chapters to follow examine several different models of human development that I’ve found to be the best tools available for assisting our young people (or ourselves) into becoming strong adults. I choose these models because they are consistent with the idea of standing and observing the nature of things and with whole system thinking. They also help us to become bet­ter and better at reading the book of human behavior and being. This examination begins with the large generational systems of family and then moves into smaller and smaller observations of patterns of human behavior. See them not as separate models, but as many threads on the loom that will help us to weave something beautiful for our children and our selves.

 

By Jamie | Posted in About Being All You Can Be, On Writing, The Education Crises | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Re-Visioning Adolescence, Chapter 3

October 19, 2008

So far I am keeping my promise to post a chapter of this book every day.  It is always an interesting challenge to re-visit an early work.  My urge is always to begin revising, simplifying, adding or taking away.  I’m not sure there is a writer in the world who does not do the same thing.  In this work I can tell that I did a revision while working on my Master’s degree.  The language is headier and more convoluted than I would use if I were writing it now.  Hopefully, it does not hide the message too much.  I just don’t have the time I need to do a total rewrite and even if I did, I would probably turn that energy toward some new work. 

 

 Chapter Three

Pseudo and Remnant Rites of Passage

 What happens to our youth when the need for initiation and a rite of passage is not met, and they are left to fend for themselves?

Paradoxically, two opposing forces are at work here-the need to belong and the need to separate. The young teen simultaneously wants the com­fort and protection of childhood, and he or she also wants the risk and challenge of adulthood.

Parents, too, are caught in the same push/pull. They want the child to move forward-and they want the child safely home and in bed.

This tension between two equally powerful forces, belonging and separating, plays its music in so many dif­ferent ways from the total development of a new tribal subculture (gangs) to the almost innocent (but still deadly) challenges of who can drink the most Southern Comfort. This broad range of responses is our best indicator of the powerful force behind the need for initiation.

Additionally, young people are vulnerable to adver­tisers, vulnerable to one another and the pressures of their peers, and vulnerable to the turmoil of their own attempts to do soul-building. No one is exempt from this time-not the pretty girl who gets perfect grades, con­forming beautifully to what Mom and Dad want and not the young male with spikes in his hair and an earring through his eyebrow.

What is most amazing is how well they manage alone. Having been mostly denied the company of adults and Elders, as Furstenberg (2000) described, they manage to create a structure that does the job, more or less. In fact, the subculture of adolescence contains all the important structural elements and subsets of the main­stream culture. Unfortunately, self-guided initiation can sometimes have painful and tragic consequences.

The following pages explore the many ways that we, both young and old, have attempted to hang onto some form of rite of passage rituals and to guide our youth into adulthood. I call these the pseudo and remnant rites of passage.

 Peer Initiation-The Pseudo Rite of Passage

In this uneasy age, young people are initiating one another and creating rituals of their own design. Risk and challenge are still evident-but the venue has changed. They challenge one another with such tasks as who can drink the most, who dares to drive the fastest, who will lose their virginity first, who dares to do drugs, pick up a gun, or take on another in a violent fist fight. In the absence of an Elder-based initiation and rite of passage, the young people have made up their own.

Peer initiation is a pseudo or false rite of passage. In peer initiation the young person is both separating from the parent culture and finding a new belonging in his or her peer culture.

The pseudo rite of passage contains most of the same elements (which we will examine more fully in a later chapter) as a traditionally constructed rite of passage. There is a separation from the mainstream community. There is the opportunity to undergo a test or challenge, and there is often a hierarchy of leadership from eldest to youngest (or coolest to not-so-cool). Finally, the peer commu­nity supports its new members in achieving new heights, however misguided those may be.

 The primary element missing entirely is Elder guidance. In the pseudo rite of passage guidance comes from within the peer group itself, as does the celebration of the status of the new member.

Essentially, well-formed peer groups become a tribe. This new tribe with its peer initiation allows the young person to define personal identity and form community. We find these new tribes taking the shape of gangs, cliques, clubs and other socially-organized groups.

For instance, an entire culture can grow around the computer hackers and gamers-or around the chess club. These cultural groups can be either loosely organized or very sophisticated and complex. The behaviors that arise from such groups, as we have seen in both large cities and small towns, are dictated by the group and can be either very innocent or take bizarre and violent forms. A group may have its own code which includes lan­guage, dress, and behavior as well as initiation and ritual practices. The codes and rules of belonging vary greatly within the strata of adoles­cent life and will form around common characteristics within the membership. The tribe creates the accepted codes.

Unfortunately, young people are often willing to pay a heavy price to belong. The group may challenge the new member to undertake a task or feat in order to gain membership. This can be anything from becoming sexu­ally active, to shooting drugs, to killing another child. What, we must ask, are they seeking that they are willing to pay such a heavy fee for their membership?

It’s important to note here that there is a universal tendency in all human beings to seek to belong to a group. We are social creatures, after all. This behavior is not pathological in and of itself. From preschool age on into old age, we take membership in many, many groups, often simultaneously. However, it’s when we must compromise our humanness in order to belong that the ques­tion of belongingness takes on larger proportions.

Most cliques and peer substructures are fairly harm­less. The rules for belonging revolve around wearing the right clothes or hairstyle and speaking the right pass­words of that particular group. However, even these benign subcultures often require the youth to give up a significant percentage of their own personality and development in order to belong.

Statistics indicate upward trends in gang member­ship, adolescent crime, drug and alcohol use and adoles­cent suicide. This is an indicator that these pseudo rites of passage simply don’t work. When young people initiate each other, there is no substance, no deeper morality, and no inward push toward building character or soul.  In some instances peer initiation can lead to death, as we have seen in stories of college hazings, street gang activity, etc.

Youth cannot initiate youth. They haven’t gained the skills, depth, or experience necessary to do the job. True initiation must come from a higher level of development than that which the initiate has obtained. True initiation must come from the Elders and adults within the culture.

This is no light topic of discussion but one that requires further research and questioning. With even a cursory glance, we can see that this willingness to sacrifice self to pay a price for belonging continues often far into adulthood. When adolescence extends itself into the adult years, we find fertile ground for individuals like Jim Jones who took 900 of his followers into a group suicide, or David Koresh who stood off the FBI in Waco, Texas to sow his destructive seeds. As these two extreme cults indicate, our vulnerability does not end with the biological stage of adolescence.

I remember an intense period of disillusionment in my own early adulthood. I realized that I had done all the right things, yet I was deeply dissatisfied. I’d gotten my college degree, married a nice man, had three babies, and taken my place as a woman in my culture. Why, then, did my soul still ache with intense longings and dreams? This dissatisfaction extended well into my thirties because my initiation was incomplete.

When my first daughter made me a grandmother, I found myself entering yet another life stage and period of initiation. For human beings this ongoing development travels all through life and ends only with death.

 Remnant Rituals

Families have attempted to keep old rite of passage rituals in place. We send our children to church school catechism, have them take their ritual places in churches, or see them off to each new level of schooling. Some­where between ages fourteen and sixteen we tentatively turn over the car keys and, later, we stand aside as they wear a colored robe and receive that longed-for high school or college diploma. If they make it that far, we consider ourselves lucky and successful parents.

Remnant rite of passage rituals include acknowledg­ing the girl’s first menstrual period, the first boy/girl party, the first prom, the first job, the boy’s (or girl’s) first deer-a whole list of firsts marked too often with small sighs of relief rather than with celebration. Included in these remnant rituals are also the child’s first extended band trip and the stronger religious rituals such as the Confirmation, the Bar or Bah Mitzvah, and others. Many of these rituals are still very much intact, and I honor their place in our lives. However, they generally mark only one small part of the child’s passage into adulthood. This important period of development is spiritual, physical, emotion, and psychological.

In the home many of our initiation challenges are weak and sometimes offer mixed messages. Ours is a culture of contradictions; we push the little ones to read and write faster and sooner, and then pull them back from any true challenge. We give and give and give until our kids are fat and lazy-and then berate them for not achieving more.

This picture of current parenting is not a pretty one. We hand out chores and post to-do lists on the refrig­erator so the kids will see them (hopefully) as they go for a snack. We enact arbitrary laws and regulations more as a way to control than to instruct. We study the popular books or we turn over the task of initiation to an educa­tional system that has lost touch with what is relevant and only causes boredom and unrest. All in all, we rob them of the fierce experience of hunting and conquering their whale one moment-and push them off a ledge the next.

When our children reach adolescence and this fierce need for initiation arises, we begin to think our job of parents has become that of a police force constantly monitoring the movement of our young people to insure they do no damage to themselves or others.

If we were to re-examine the remnant rituals, we may discover they contain the potential to gain strength and force as true initiation and rite of passage rituals. Because they happen within the family, community, or church, we could make them grow in intensity and strength to match the intensity and strength of adolescence itself.

When my first daughter was about twelve, she wanted to go to on a trip to Hawaii with her aunt. There was plenty of lead time, so I made a deal with her.  If she could earn half the plane ticket, I’d give her the other half. It was amazing to watch how resourcefully a twelve-year-old girl could raise money. She babysat, did office chores, and worked for her aunt. Her focus was astound­ing. When it came time to get on the plane, she was there, ticket in hand. Interestingly, the trip itself was less rewarding for her than the enjoyment she got from taking the challenge necessary to obtain the trip.

As parents, we need to be constantly scanning the current moment for opportunities to appropriately chal­lenge our children. These remnant rituals of getting a driver’s license or taking a band trip could be made stronger and more powerful by raising the stakes, by making them reach a little higher for what they want. If you are going to hand out the dollars, or the keys, or the trip to Germany, what are they going to do to earn it? We need to quit being soft as parents and make our children work for what they want. Somehow having the goods has become a replacement for having the guidance.

 Replacement Rituals

In addition to these many pseudo and remnant rites of passage, there are a number of honest attempts to rein­state a way of initiating and testing our young people. I found many such approaches on the Internet and in publications such as organizations that take young people on a challenging trek up the Gunflint Trail in Canada or Outward Bound and other camp programs that put the young person through a strenuous course to build strength and confidence. Most of these programs engage the natural world in a powerful exchange-as they should.

These organized rites of passage programs often contain many of the right elements: a learning period (initiation), separation from the parents and family, an extreme test or challenge and a welcoming back. Perhaps the one drawback is that they are not sustained over a period of time but are usually handed out in short bursts by teachers and coaches outside of the child’s own Elder culture.

There are also many modern challenge rituals such as fire walking, bungee jumping, skydiving, river rafting or rock climbing that test at least one area of a young person’s endurance and skill. We also see many adults whose initiation is incomplete undertaking such chal­lenges and benefiting greatly from them. It’s amusing to see how popular some of these crazy television programs are like Survivor and Fear Factor. What we see is additional signs that our adult population is, as yet, uninitiated.

One weakness of these challenge programs is that they don’t necessarily strengthen the link between the child and his family, Elders, community, and personal history. As we’ll explore more fully in a later chapter, suc­cessful separation emerges from the strong bonds with these key relationships.

Additionally, these created rituals tend to test only one aspect of life and for a limited moment in time. Initiation is not just a physical test or challenge but must unfold concurrently in our physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual worlds. In order for initiation and the rite of pas­sage to be truly effective, it must come from the family and community of the young person and touch on all of these important areas.

 Organized sports and other activities within school and the community may also pick up the loose threads of initiation and provide a form of a structured rite of passage. Activities such as band, choir, theater, sports, debate, etc. often have adult leadership along with the intention to build skill, intelli­gence, and confidence in one or more areas of a young person’s life. These groups are most successful when there is one strong adult individual who takes the time, energy, and effort to treat the whole child and his or her needs. These groups provide a peer group and membership but with adult guidance. They also can provide a program of personal mastery combined with the long-term challenge of winning a competition, making enough money to take a trip to Europe, or moving to a new status within the group as in sports or band. These activities are also recognized in a positive way by the family and commu­nity.

However, nearly all of the above replacement rituals generally grow not out of the family but out of other people and places. Once again, there may be ways to strengthen these replacement rituals to encompass more of the young person and his family thus providing a stronger movement toward adulthood.

 Initiation as an Act of God or Fate

Sometimes nature or fate itself takes over the initia­tion of our young. The early death of a parent or sibling, a car accident, a serious illness or other acts of God can significantly impact the developing youth. Such events force the young person to consider all that he or she is and to seek answers to difficult questions. We should be very attentive to the needs of such a youth. They, through no personal choice, must confront the beasts of fear, sad­ness or anger. The traumatic event itself becomes the test or challenge which forces their initiation and the movement toward adulthood. In a paper on higher levels of devel­opment, Shuppin and Silverman1 wrote:

 Many of those who do make the transition to a higher form of existence do not consciously choose this path. Rather, they are ‘thrown into their destinies’ by circumstances which seem beyond their control.

 This simple ten-page paper by Shuppin and Silverman was instrumental in my own development.  It suggested that a personal crisis is often followed by a powerful burst in spiritual development, a process termed “positive disinte­gration” by Kasmirez Dabrowski2 whose work we will explore in a later chapter.

 A divorce between two parents, while not an act of God, can also be a time of crisis and trauma in the life of a child. Divorce is like a little death of what is familiar and comfortable and is usually intensified by the strong emo­tional content that often attends divorce. Parents are estranged, sometimes angry, and each one is certain that he or she is right about the reason for the divorce. Children can be pulled into the struggle through no fault of their own and become players in the couple’s game.

Please, if you must divorce your spouse, leave your children out of it. Allow the child to love both parents freely and equally. When we force a child to choose, we split his or her soul with our own personal angers and failures.

 Self-Determined Initiation

Occasionally a resourceful young person will identify a weakness in his or her private sphere of life and set about a course of self-determination to alleviate or resolve the issue. This happens more frequently than most adults realize. The youth operates from an inner resource that he or she may not recognize until later in life, those critical turning points we all have.

Life richly presents opportunities for initiation and advancement at every stage of life. Such life-changing moments can come from a single sentence, a dream, a book or an action he or she has witnessed. It also comes from having enough maturity and development (no mat­ter our age) to recognize an initiatory moment and act.

I also suspect the self-determining young person finds more support and knowledge from adults than he or she may recognize at the time.

For example, as I mentioned earlier, when I was in seventh grade I was so shy I couldn’t answer questions in class. I was tired of being stuck in this shyness and determined to get over it. I auditioned for a part in an all-school play, The Robe. After barely surviving the audition, I was shocked to find myself cast in the role of a slave girl who in one scene was supposed to strut out onto stage alone and do the dance of the seven veils. It was impossible. There was no way I could go onto the stage and shed scarves while wiggling my bottom for the audience. The director saw my dilemma and quietly recast me as a silent slave girl feeding grapes to a soldier in Galilee instead. Having a part in that play completely changed the course of my life, and I had a little help from an astute drama director.

Along any difficult path we take, there are helpers. This is true for our youth and true for all of us. We take the help we need at the time we need it.

 Completing Initiation as an Adult

In the many years of writing this book, I’ve spoken to dozens of adults and asked them how they initiated themselves or what was a rite of passage in their lives. It usually takes only a moment for people to connect with their own initiation stories. An interesting phenomenon happens when they do-they come alive.

Telling a personal rite of passage story reconnects us with the powerful initiatory moment, those moments when we felt both apart from everything that has previously sup­ported us-and wide-awake and open to what is coming. We can recall the smallest details-what the earth smelled like, what time of year it was, who was around us. Initiation stories sometimes take on mythic proportions in our memories.

What was that moment or moments for you?  What was that time when you suddenly realized you were no longer a child, no longer dependent upon the opinion or actions of others for your wellbeing? When was that time when you were caught by circumstances and needed, suddenly, to find your own way out?

Adult initiation stories often revolve around taking a trip and being forced through circumstances to resolve issues of food, sleep, money, and travel (the basics of life) in some challenging or imaginative way. We can easily gather these stories ourselves by looking at our own lives or asking friends and acquaintances for their rite of passage stories.

A common element in initiation stories is the moment of extreme aloneness when, disconnected from all that is familiar, we feel connected to something larger than our own small self. This enlarged sense of the world is the true prize of initiation and one we will explore more thoroughly in this book.

Also common is the initiatory moment that comes from an important encounter with an older adult. At a time of trouble or disconnection, we meet that important coach, teacher or neighbor who takes an interest and guides us in another direction. When I was in tenth grade, my world history teacher, an eccentric and intelligent man, made it his mission in life to push me out of my complacent way of being and into a different realm. His strong views, when mixed with my watery personality, created something new in me. Without him I might have sunk more deeply into the dark pool of my youth.

Who is that person (or people) who came along at just the right moment and threw something new into the mix of your life? If you think back, it was probably not their gentleness that moved you forward-but their push. He or she didn’t let you rest but threw you beyond your present capabilities.

Try to do the same for a young person. Look around and see whose path you have crossed, and then be willing to step in and take an active role.

 Initiation via The Mentor

A mentor is an older individual who becomes involved with the initiation of a young person. Although similar to the close encounter in the previous section, this person plays an ongoing role. The mentor may be a fam­ily member but is often someone outside of the family. This initiation story is so common that it’s a popular theme of movies and stories throughout our culture. Think of the movies Good Will Hunting or Dead Poet’s Society. Often when we hear of people who have attained a high level in life, whether in sports, business, or other areas, we soon discover the shadowy influence of a powerful mentor behind them.

The mentor recognizes the sparking life force of a young person and somehow brings that spark into sub­stantial flame. They push, shove, hold, or support depending upon what is needed. Often the mentor recognizes himself in the youth and through some mysterious hidden process, completes his own initiation by helping the young one.

We should be alert to mentoring opportunities within the sphere of our own lives. This does not have to come from a federally-funded program or be a formal relationship in order to change a child’s life. Often it is simply offering the right stuff at the right time. We should watch for these opportunities.

 Initiation Via The Military

Finally, the military can be a burnishing force that brings a shine to the young person. It has long been a practice for parents to encourage the child, particularly male children, to enter the service for this specific reason-to finish them. However, the Vietnam War (and now the Iraq war) have forced many of us in the current generation rethink this method of finishing our children-sometimes the finishing is permanent.

Dr. Larry LeShan3 in his book, The Psychology of War, reminds us that the original purpose of government in ancient times was to make war. LeShan (1992) wrote:

 Governments are built on an original design whose major function was to make war, not to maintain or make peace. As an obvious holdover from this past, every government today has officials in charge of ‘war’ or ‘defense’ at its highest level. Nowhere, to my knowledge, is there an official at similar levels in charge of ‘peace’.

 In this fascinating book, LeShan says that we engage in war because it satisfies something essentially human in us that has to do with both being separate and belonging to a larger group or cause. Like the initiation stories men­tioned earlier, war brings a sharp focus to all the blurred edges of life and makes the soldier come alive in a way that he (or she) may never have been before. In simplest terms, LeShan says we go to war because “we like it.” We like being fully engaged in the larger movements of the world. The military, likewise, serves all the functions of a rite of passage; there is separation, initiation, intense training, travel, a difficult challenge and the hero’s wel­come (usually) upon return.

A critical question could be asked here. Is it possi­ble that our government could polish our youth with peace as well as war? What if young adults were required to serve their country but were allowed to choose the track most appropriate for them-allowed to serve the global family in some way? The Peace Corps was an attempt at this, and the model could be strength­ened as an alternative option to serving with guns.

 As we’ve explored, our modern culture still contains many elements of initiation and a rite of passage. We are not so very far away from being able to provide what our youth need so desperately.

All of the pseudo and remnant rituals presented in this chapter work in odd, interwoven ways to somehow bring maturity and further development to the young. Many of us can recognize our own patchwork passages. These initiatory moments create a coat of many colors that we wear the rest of our lives. We value those significant moments that led us in a new direc­tions or took us to our current place in life. Imagine if such remnant rituals were strengthened and brought into sharper focus with conscious intention. The question is can we boost these remaining rituals in order to assist our young in making the leap to adulthood?

For help in considering this question, the next chap­ter explores the most common elements of formal rites of passage rituals used by indigenous cultures across the globe. By keeping these elements in mind we can examine the remnant rituals to see if they could be made stronger and more relevant to today’s young people.

 

By Jamie | Posted in About Being All You Can Be, On Writing, The Education Crises | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Re-Visioning Adolescence Chapter 2

October 18, 2008

Here is the second chapter of Re-Visioning Adolescence and the Rite of Passage.  I’ll continue to post chapters until I’ve given you the whole book.  Again, I welcome your comments and ideas.  For those of you who prefer fiction, many readers have told me that my novel, Washaka-The Bear Dreamer is the fictionalized version of this book.  You can order it at www.manykites.com

 CHAPTER TWO
Challenge-The Heart of Initiation

 Malidoma Some’ (1993)1, a medicine man of the Dagara tribe in West Africa, was taken from his village at a young age and raised by missionaries. Later, in returning to his own people, Some’ discovered that his place in the village was lost to him. In spite of his advanced age, and with great determination, he underwent the arduous six-week initiation and rite of passage ritual of his tribe. When he completed it, he felt as if he was home again at last. Some’ (1994) said of our culturally disconnected country:

 I don’t know yet what the content of American initiation will be, but I do know what it’s going to look like. It has to have a moment of separation from the family and the community. It has to happen in nature and be a genuinely challenging ordeal. Whatever the initiates feel before entering this cycle must be deepened to the point of transcendence, giving them the opportunity to feel whole. Finally, and most impor­tantly, there has to be a strong community ready to welcome the survivors of the ordeal. This welcoming must be massive, not like a simple ceremony of giving a diploma, but a recognizable, wholehearted embrace and valuing of the initiate’s power to contribute to the community.

 In just a few sentences, Some’ summarizes what we all need and want, no matter our age. However, it’s a real Catch 22. We can’t successfully borrow the traditions of other cultures, but many of us can’t recall our own tradi­tions either. Are we then doomed to go through eternity performing empty rituals around meaningless Hallmark holidays or marking our progress in small, ineffective ways while we continue searching for what we long for but cannot find?

There is a hunger in us. We need connection. We need ritual, guidance, mysticism . . . we need initiation. The more alienated and alone we feel, the more we seek a culture that can guide us. Our young, as we will explore further, feel bereft of this support. In the absence of it, they cleverly create their own subculture and design what is missing.

I recall the significant moments in my own life when an important passage was obtained. In seventh grade I bravely auditioned for a school play in order to overcome a severe shyness. With sweating palms and a pounding heart, I took that script in hand and recited the lines. In my early twenties I spent six months in Europe. At one moment I stood alone before a train schedule in Switzerland deciding whether to take a train to Rome or Paris. What a giant moment that was! There were also times of suffering, of being uneasy and depressed, entan­gled in the darker underbelly of my youth culture. In the late Sixties, my friends and I sat under full moons with kegs of beer and a campfire on a beach. We sat in dark rooms reading Lao Tzu with joints of marijuana burning. As I look back at the settings we chose, the things we did, it is now clear to me that we sought a tribal presence in our lives.

One day, long after I had moved out of that treach­erous era, I was substitute teaching in a high school class­room when a young man walked in with his hair in stiff, rigid spikes rising from his scalp like a helmet. I smiled inwardly. He looked both like a magnificent warrior-and a ridiculous boy-but I admired him. Oh, how I wanted to sit beside him and explain why we now-grown kids of the Sixties are so difficult to shock-our generation wrote the book on self-initiation.

On one of our collection trips we visited Atka, an island along the Aleutian chain in Alaska. The island is home to about 100 people of the Unangax3 (aka Aleut) tribe. Milt and I stayed in a small guest trailer next to the school. The wind was so fierce at times that I thought that poor trailer would tumble over. The Unangax2 people have blended the Russian Orthodox Church with their own native traditions. We noticed many of the people, young and old, wore a small gold stud pierced beneath the lower lip. Ethan, our host, explained that there is a ritual piercing that happens in puberty to signal the beginning of adulthood.

I thought of all the young people piercing and tattooing body parts in our modern culture and saw again the driving urge we have to find a tribal sense of our­selves. Both piercing and tattooing have, for thousands of years, been part of initiation rituals in many tribal cultures across the planet. The Lakotas pierce the skin as part of the Sundance ritual; the Samoan traditional men undergo extensive tattooing over the entire lower part of the body.

Like so many other things, this trend toward tattooing and piercing seems to be a visible signal from the young people expressing their need to undergo some tribal ritual of belonging, a test or challenge that may even include pain in order to win their place. When that place is given too easily, without effort and challenge, it is not easily taken. At the risk of sounding trite, many of today’s youth are too soft, drowning in a false sense of entitlement resulting from the prize being given-but not earned. Adults often scorn these alternative practices among the young, yet offer no viable alternatives.

What is this web of culture we’ve created? Does it satisfy? Does it feed not only the body but also the soul and spirit? Are you, sitting here reading this book, finding your life to be all that you had hoped it would be? The truth is, many of us are none too sure of this culture we have created or inherited. We scurry to and from jobs and activities that don’t challenge and don’t change, a dull landscape of days passing by. We make money so that we can buy stuff, and then run ourselves ragged taking care of the stuff. We seem to just go along without seriously questioning this creature of culture that we have created. We long for our own deeper initiation into something big and mysterious. We are, in fact, the uninitiated.

Is it any wonder that the young look in our direction with doubt and mistrust in their eyes? Sometimes I simply drive around looking at the monolithic houses we’ve built and wonder what portion of body and soul (not to mention the earth’s resources) does it take to simply keep those houses standing?

When was the last time you were assaulted with a challenge so great that you were completely uncertain if you could make the grade? Did you take the challenge-or slither back to safety? How, then, can we uninitiated adults determine what a young person needs to learn? And then how do we teach and initiate them?

Asking these questions caused me to look more deeply into my own life. It wasn’t pretty. I had a dozen books on my computer that had not even been submitted because “what if nobody liked them”? I was afraid to make phone calls that could get me work and support my life. I had an obsession about being a nice girl. Mustn’t make anybody angry or upset. I passively waited for things to come to me instead of deciding what I wanted and working toward it. I selfishly didn’t want to do what I didn’t like to do.

Rather than wallow in my uninitiated swamp, I undertook several challenges myself. I began to speak more bravely, made a few people angry, finished my master’s degree, sent the books out and about, etc., etc. I haven’t died yet from taking risks-and life advances. Perhaps the hardest part of my initiation was to stand beside my young children after their father died and allow them to grieve knowing I couldn’t fix it or change it. All I could do was be there to watch them bear the unbearable.

 Socrates said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.”

 Initiation of the young and the final rite of passage, the event that marks the movement from childhood to adulthood, is the stuff of stories and myths found across the globe and in all forms of literature, religion, and culture. Consider Jack confronting the giant at the bean­stalk, David slaying Goliath, the three little pigs off to seek their fortunes, or Hansel and Gretel facing the wicked witch who would have them for supper. Consider Odysseus standing on the shore of a massive lake under­going one trial after another. Every culture is rich with hero legends and the mythologies intended to guide our lives.

This mysterious passage is not only through time or space but is an interior journey toward a stronger sense of self, a deepening of our human experience of soul. It is the young boy facing the whale on a gray sea or the giant buffalo on a sea of pale grasses with nothing but a tiny weapon. It is the young girl moving into the mysterious arts of her sex in preparation for the great moment when she will give birth to the next generation. The themes play over and over again across the globe. A child enters a dense, dark forest-and emerges an adult. The movement has an inevitable timelessness to it.

Initiation is not just for teens. Any time we enter a new stage of life or go through a transition, we again enter a period of initiation. We must all undergo these passages. Essentially, we are climbing the ladder of the soul.

 Challenge-the Heart of Initiation
As we have explored, challenge and risk-taking are the twin moons of this passage from childhood to adult­hood. It is the times when we are suddenly forced to reach deeply into our reserves of memory, knowledge, and experience. With appropriate challenges, the triune brain begins to branch, grow and explode into the frontal lobes to bring about a higher level of experience. If there is no risk and no challenge, there will be no growth.

However, growth requires incremental challenges, small steps that move ahead but do not overwhelm. When the risk is too great, we freeze. Children, especially, need strong families and a wise culture around them to guide these steps. They need to feel firmly connected first to the family and then to the culture in which they live. This web of connection provides the safety net that later allows them to walk the tightrope high above their heads. As the child grows, the level of challenge and risk can also grow and, in adolescence, there is a leap forward.

Who better to provide the safety, challenges and the basic necessary skills than an adult or Elder who has gone the route? Throughout human history, the initiation of the young has been the responsibility of the Elders and parents.

In ancient tribal traditions, initiation and the rite of passage for the male and female children was guided by life itself. Guidance varied according to the role each was expected to play within that culture-and the roles were determined by the needs of the community.

For instance, in a culture dependant upon the land for sustenance, the use of tools and weapons and meth­ods for successful hunting and fishing took precedence. Survival wrote the subtle laws that evolved over many, many generations, and these natural laws were then passed on to the next generation through the initiation process. However, in spite of many cultural variations, the biologi­cal laws took precedence.

Boys were taught to provide food and safety, and the girls were prepared by their Elders to have children, although all members of the community gathered food. Often the boys were challenged with harsh and stringent initiation practices. The girls generally underwent a more subtle initiation. It was not because the girls were the “weaker sex” but because the Elders knew that the young women would undergo their own trial by fire in the birthing bed. In childbirth, a woman faces death. The boys, however, needed harsher measures in order to prepare them to protect those women and children. Without this basic division of labor and expectation, there would be no clan or tribe or next generation.

I use the past tense here with some tense confusion and want to remind the reader, and myself, that there are still many existing traditional cultures that continue the rituals much as they have for thousands of years. How­ever, there are also many tribal communities struggling to redefine themselves in the modern world with almost total cultural loss. They stand with one foot in an ancient tribal way of being, and another in the realities of this modern world. Both past and present tense are appropriate when speaking of tribal cultures.

Recently, a friend and I were talking about the state of your youth. She is Lakota and was incensed by the rate of incarceration and suicide for Indian youth. I pointed out to her the rates are extremely high for all young people. We finally agreed that if you are Indian-and adolescent-you are doubly damned in this culture.

To tribal cultures struggling to hang on to their traditions, the modern world poses a difficult challenge. For instance, the small community on Atka, while still a very closed community, is also globally wired to the modern age. They have Internet access, computers and a link to all the resources of the mainstream culture. The globalization of our modern society is becoming a major factor in how communities define themselves-and also how they can lose a sense of identity and connection. Paradoxically, the growth of the global family also demands that we redefine how we do culture and belonging.

Regardless of our rapidly changing world, it is still the family and the culture which are responsible for the many processes that transform a child into an adult. Unfortu­nately, we are not doing a very good job. 

In this modern world, the roles between men and women have been muted and blurred. The giant Gap or Calvin Klein billboards show the girls looking like boys, the boys looking like girls and none of them looking too happy about it. Our roles are confused. This gender con­fusion is exacerbated by several other factors of the newly emerging world.

For instance, risk and challenge have been neutered in our liability-conscious society. We are afraid to let our young stray out into that dangerous world. We are afraid to let them risk anything for fear of being labeled a bad parent.

Organized and professional sports have replaced the hunting and warrior societies. Our collective memory as farmers or hunter/ gatherers has turned us into obsessive shoppers, constantly roaming the aisles, baskets in hand, to survey the wares provided so abundantly for us.

And sexual initiation, once a beautiful and gentle unfold­ing of natural procreation, has either become just another sport or a source of worry, fear and shame.

The goal of all ancient rites of initiation was to bring the child into the community as a contributing member of that community. Rather than being initiated into the role of providing assistance to the family and community, young people now hoard their first paychecks from McDonalds and Wendy’s, and plot how to spend the ‘me’ money, thus entering the role of consumer rather than contributor.

Is it any wonder that our young people are unable to determine the role they must play, unable to feel the value of their own contribution to the family and community in which they live, and unable to move fully into their own open-ended potential? In this new world, our forests have been laid over with concrete, the giants are long gone, the lands have been tamed, and the mysteries banned. We raise the sword of our own skills and find nothing huge and scary upon which to turn the blade of our own cour­age and character-and so we turn it on each other.

Malidoma Some’ (1994) said, “Initiation is the bridge between youth and adulthood. In my village, a person who is not initiated is considered a child, no matter how old that person is. Without initiation we cannot recall our purpose. To not be initiated is to be a nonperson.”

Extending Adolescence 
 It is clear that today’s adolescent is having a tough time growing up. In a summary of research on adolescent development, Frank Furstenberg3 explains that use of the word adolescence only emerges in the mid-20th century when the children no longer took their working place within the family and community but went to school instead. Furstenberg (2000) described a central paradox in this cultural shift. He said:

To a great degree, the problematic features of adolescence and the transition to adult-hood are structurally created and maintained by social institutions that isolate youth from adults; ironically, this is done to prepare them for future roles.

In other words, we’ve created institutions designed to advance our youth but find now that, when isolated from adults, they will grow their own subculture.

Adolescence as a stage of life was created by the shift in our culture toward formal education for all children-and away from the natural movement of the child into the role his or her parent occupies. Educational systems, as has been well documented, were created to prepare children to serve the industrial age. Unfortunately, this isolation and the creation of adolescence as a life stage have not advanced our development-they have delayed it.

Robert Bly, a well known poet and contemporary teacher, suggested his book, in The Sibling Society, that the vast majority of our population is frozen in adolescence, forever stuck with making limited choices based on “me and mine.” While Bly’s assessment may very well be correct, it presents a terribly bleak view of human development at the beginning of the new millennium. However, in societies as in individuals, crisis, breakdown and chaos are often the forerunners of transformation. Perhaps we can take hope in that and wonder what new uprising of human potential is about to unfold. Ventura (1994) said:

Adolescence is a cruel word. Its cruelty hides behind its vaguely official, diagnostic air. To say someone is ‘adolescent,’ going through ‘adolescence,’ or worse, ‘being adolescent’ is to dismiss their feelings, minimize their troubles and, (if you’re their parent) protect yourself from their uncom­promising rage.

 I’ll not spend a great deal of time here analyzing what has caused society to weaken in this way. There are already enough committees, task forces, and other entities spend­ing precious time and resources attempting to analyze the factors at play. We could spin the bottle and it would point at government, schools, television, rising divorce rates-and it would change with each spin.

Playing spin the bottle won’t solve the problem. It won’t bring back what has been lost or chase away what has arrived. We can only begin by looking at what our society has become-and then take advantage of our unique, human ability to adapt to our surroundings and go from there. Biology won’t change. Adolescence won’t go away. However, culture is man-made. We determine what it is and what it will be.

 

By Jamie | Posted in About Being All You Can Be, On Writing, The Education Crises | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)