One of the many tools we work with at wildernessFusion are the ten powers of journey. The ten powers are a road map for both wildernessFusion as well as our students. These powers are similar to Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey or the story that all collective myth share. The steps of the ten powers of journey and the steps of the heroes journey come from two very different and divergent perspectives, however the teaching is similar. What are the steps of each journey, what is the simplicity that guides us with every journey we take?
The third power of journey is a tool called search/research. What am I searching for, and once I have taken that step, what did it teach me what do I need to research to focus my search on the next step. We can set the context of the search to a single day; what am I searching for today, and at the end of the day, what research do I need to do before tomorrow when my search continues.
However today I am sitting within the context of a years. Perhaps its the change of the calendar or more likely the the snow and cold that has drawn me inward that leads me to reflect on the year past and the year that is about to unfold. What are we searching for in the year ahead. What can we learn from the year we have stepped out of, what research do we need to do to have more focus in the year ahead?
Will the contraction or integration be a positive experience or a negative one? If we take our cue from the society we live in, the society that does not occupy the contractive steps of the journey, we will have a negative experience. Luckily we will be using the map of journey that guides so much of what we do at wildernessFusion the ten powers of journey. We will be looking at our journey from many perspectives, we will sit with each other in council, and we will reflect.
Then as we emerge from this reflection we will begin the journey all over again. Yes at the end of 2018 we will enter the edge of our tenth anniversary. Just like everything at wildernessFusion even our tenth anniversary is an edge. It begins with the first class taught under the Tracker School umbrella in 2008 and ends with the forming of wildernessFusion the entity in the beginning of 2010.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, let us fully occupy this year of focus and concentration. This focus allows us to enter our edges, and our new identities. Are we ready to see how wildernessFusion has become a place. How each of us has grown, and who we have each become.
I will leave you with a poem of my favorite modern poet David Whyte. I hope his words help you embrace the search/research in your own lives.
Karl
Self Portrait
by David Whyte
from Fire in the Earth
It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world with its harsh need to change you. If you can look back with firm eyes saying this is where I stand.
I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love and the bitter unwanted passion of sure defeat.
I have been told, in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God.
