Articles

Precision and Power

On my wall calendar hangs a dangerously beautiful picture of three tornadoes twisting together. Below the picture the caption reads "Strong enough to lift a car or flatten a house, the tornado is precise enough to drill a piece of straw into a hardwood tree." As I read that I realized it is exactly the distinction between offerings at Last Mask Center and other shamanic healings and training programs. We are interested in precision and power, not just more power.

Most trainings are about acquiring skills to work with spirit within our current worldview. Those that involve a different culture's worldview are about acquiring culturally defined skills and levels of initiation within that system. However people are not required to use that culture's worldview to transform their personal worldview. In these ways the skills learned are just another modality, like learning Thai massage or EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). They are useful, but they are just another set of skills. When we ignore the personal work necessary to transform our worldview, we are simply acquiring more power.

Most people feel that if their intent is good then there is nothing wrong with acquiring more power. This is a typically American worldview. The deeper truth is that when we focus on acquiring more power without equal attention spent in deep personal transformation, our good intention matters little. A focus on acquiring precision will become aggression even when we mean well. Excellence will be come arrogance even when we intend compassion and kindness. Devotion to our work becomes spiritual ambition.

However, when we engage in training that requires us to transform our worldview, we are not caught in this lopsided approach to acquiring more power. Our power grows hand in hand with our ability to be responsible and farsighted in the use of that power. The Cycle to Transformation training is designed in this way to give people the skills and the personal inner development necessary to move as a person of power and precision in the world. Working The Cycle develops excellence in each individual's uniqueness and deepens the devotion to live that calling.

The Cycle of Transformation training can do this because at its core is a cosmology, a new worldview. Everything is seen through the lens of that worldview. The sum total of the seven components of that worldview define us first as people of power who must learn skills to accurately and effectively engage with the living system of power around us. We are each here to bring a unique gift to humanity. The full expression of that gift will require the ability to step fully into our power with precision, a daily working relationship with spirit, and ongoing deep personal work. All of these things require skills beyond good intent, affirmations, and positive thinking.

The Cycle of Transformation gives us a context for our life. This context simply makes more sense than the one we learned accidentally in our family of origin. Through it we can read the messages life is giving us and interpret the guidance of our body. In this context, what has happened becomes a teacher. What is happening becomes acts of conscious choice. And what will happen is our destiny.