FireHawk and Pele Rouge bring an ancient
“medicine” teaching perspective on Leadership to the Minnesota TLG this Friday. We will be
working with the “4 Shields of Leadership” -
Creator/Adventurer/Healer/Warrior - they will guide us through a
process and conversation to expand our stories and experience of who we
are as leaders.
The Medicine Way
Our forebears used simple, organic structures of “social architecture”
to assure that all voices were heard in order to find their way to the
same kind of balance that they saw in the rest of nature. Nature uses
universal principles of balance to foster life that is capable of
sustaining itself generation after generation after generation. These
principles became known in many diverse cultures of the Americas as
"The Medicine Way."
Medicine, as used in the term "Medicine Way," comes from a
mistranslation
of the word Medowewin, an indigenous word meaning "Wholeness." A
Medicine Man or Woman was one who aided a person in restoring a larger
wholeness to his or her body and life.
The term
"Medicine Way," therefore, means a Way of Wholeness - a way where each
decision is considered from a number of perspectives, so that nothing
is left out - a way where our connection to the larger whole of life is
built in to our thinking, speaking and acting - a way in which we see
ourselves as a part of life, not separate from it - a way in which the
Sacred, or the Holy is not compartmentalized, but is invoked and
considered in all of our human activities - particularly in the ways we
interact with each other every day.
Medicine
Wheels are maps of wholeness and balance derived from thousands of
years of observing what “works” in natural systems. Each wheel is
related to and builds upon every other wheel. There are wheels for
knowing ourselves, wheels for gathering wisdom, for making decisions,
wheels for healing and many other wheels for seeing into and resolving
life’s difficult challenges. We might think of them as compasses that
help us find our way when we are lost, in danger or seeking to discover
the next layer of awareness of who we are, how we choose to live and
what is ours to do in this life.
“
Finding
and voicing our soul's longing is not enough…. If our intention is to
change who we essentially are, we will fail. If our intention is to
become who we essentially are, we cannot help but live true to the
deepest longings of our soul.” Oriah Mountain Dreamer,
The Dance.
In the Medicine Way, there is no greater responsibility than to live
and express fully the essence of who we are – in concert and harmony
with other humans and with all of life.
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