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.