The Walking The Sacred Wheel lessons "hint" that Sacred Circles is a "wisdom school" of the old tradition, and that by participating in the course you are engaged in wisdom school training. We said that the form of the classical Western dominated society with its fundamentalist religions caused initiation teachings that preserved the Great Mother traditions and its sacred relationship to the Earth to "go underground". These nature-honoring and life-centered practices were then only available through "secret societies" and clan affiliation. We would now like to further explain what wisdom training actually is and what involvement with such a "school" means.

Wisdom "schools", ancient or modern, are way-showers. They offer paths to explore the inner realms of creation so that the wisdom gained can in turn be manifest in the external world. This is a path of Devotion and Service and as such it must have a balanced spirit or the seeker can be charmed by imbalance -- self-aggrandizement, ego-centered consciousness, hunger for control and power. It is a unitive path that seeks non-dual consciousness and teaches ways to "rise above" disintegration. Such schools teach respect for all creation and that the "apparent" hierarchy of spiritual creation is really a "system of related possibilities, the potentiality of which is seeded within the whole of creation", (as John and Caitlan Matthews said in, The Western Way ).

These "schools" offer few rigid formulas or scripted ceremonies that have to be followed to the letter because their goal is the growth and maturity of the students. In the beginning, "guidelines" and "sample practices" are given because the new or "young" always need "a hand to hold" and/or "railings" when crossing "narrow bridges over unknown territory". But in the end, the response-ability lies with the student to chart their course and find their way. As time goes on, the student is urged and impelled to question and validate all that is taught to see if it "fits" and carries truth.

What makes it a challenge to try to really explain wisdom school training is that it's one of those "you have to experience it in order to really be able to understand it" things. Therefore, the easiest thing to do is to talk "about" the philosophy of the schools and that naturally becomes an intellectual exercise which is not at all what the schools are about - (direct experience of the numinous, etc.).

Thus given such limitations, we will identify some themes common to most schools.

Creating Sacred Space is central to Wisdom Tradition spirituality and wisdom schools. It holds that in the act of dedicating or claiming sacred space we do indeed create an actual context for contact with the Numinous and its aspects. In that vane, our Wheels are not a " gimmick" -- they have a life and power all their own that is supported by centuries of many traditions. The elemental "beings" that we invite are "real" in their ability to interact (to be in relationship) with us. If it is what we want, they will help us to reshape our lives to the highest good we are capable of perceiving at that point in time. There are natural and actual correspondences between shapes (i.e. the angles of the planets, or squares, circles and triangles, etc.) and energies, things and concepts, BUT, the mysteries are not static or frozen in time: they change and grow with the changes that occur in humankind. Every space that we create has its own natural energy or underlying principle and teaching to offer. For instance, in a sweat space dedicated to the sacred, the "real" heat of the ceremony is a different kind of hotness which can burn away many of the things which separate us from the sacred. The ritual circle as sacred space is thus not a place arbitrarily set apart from the realities of the world, but on the contrary, it is truly aligned with the essence of creation through the coordinates of North, South, East and West. Because of that alignment and the power inherent in such space, we are actually aligning with and participating in the primal act of Creation. AND through each sacred space we create, the mystery grows and evolves by our commitment.

Intentionality is also considered real. In this tradition they don't say, "Be careful of what you pray for, for you might get it." They say, "Be careful of what you pray for, for you WILL get it." (Maybe, [and usually] not in the way you imagined, but you will get it.) So it teaches us to be very clear and exact and to KNOW what our real intentions are."

A Four-Fold Way used by most schools is the oldest spiritual discipline on the planet. It is a well defined, working (living) system - not calcified ["set in stone"] or rigid. It has identified specific energy resonances. It is a balanced system, and as such it provides safety for its use. (For safety is a real concern. Through ignorance we can invite harm. It is imperative that we understand what energies are inherent in each direction and that we are in resonance with those energies when using them for growth.) It is a system (energy matrix) that uses symbolic actions (some as ancient as the birth of consciousness) to serve a specific intent of which Initiation is the hallmark. It is cross-cultural, (anthropologists tell us that every society practiced some form of initiation rites) and it is grounded in the development and service of relationship with the Numinous, (the reason for initiation).

Initiation in this system holds the intent of introduction or initiation into a region of the psyche hitherto unknown to the initiate. It could be thought of as an archetype (energy matrix) of initiation which serves the function of "reference or engagement" to use Joseph Campbell's term. It uses external symbolic (Rituals and Ceremony) acts to tap into (provide relationship with) internal symbol patterns. There is a corrective aspect of initiation that leads away from conditioned reaction (habitual patterns) to choice and response. It is intended and experienced as part of maturation for the spiritual, emotional, mental and physical bodies and provides railings or support systems for the sometimes shaky bridge crossings to maturity, ("Knowns" in the chaos of the progressing into the unknown).

There are two distinct stages of initiation. The first is usually a preparation for development of the heroic mode of behavior. This mode prepares the individual and gives them strength to be able to accomplish the tasks of survival to provide physical needs and also to develop the ego sufficiently to overcome the negative forces of the unconscious. "Armed" with this ego integrity, the individual can then go on to the second stage of initiation which is a pattern of behavior whereby consciousness of ego is transformed into consciousness of Higher Self.

This is what we are doing in the Wheel work - providing a symbol system for "Second State" initiation -- providing experiences for changing from a dependent or self-seeking ego-nature to a mature nature with an individual capacity to judge what should belong to group adaptation and what should belong to the individual alone.

Robert Moore said in "The King Within": "Essentially, the process of initiation removes our Ego from the center of the universe.......Through ritual training and the special imparting of carefully stewarded wisdom, the Ego is displaced into an orbital position around a Transpersonal Other...... As a complete cultural system, modernity has largely turned its back on...effective processes of initiation, on ritual elders, and even on family, tribe, and nation. Consequently, an individual Ego can no longer reach the sober but joyous realization of its noncentral position in the psyche and in the wider universe......An individual psyche, bloated by dangerously distorted assessment of self and others around it....must pay the price for its infantalism.....Corrupt politicians, wife [and husband] abusers, self-styled fundamentalist "messiahs" and their terrorist henchmen, money-hungry yuppies, (etc. etc. etc.)... cause the social and environmental devastation that always accompanies the Ego inflation of the human psyche unchecked by a sense of limits grounded in a Transpersonal Other."

As we all know, transformation of any kind holds surrender or submission to a power greater than ourselves and the imperative for such surrender can be a source of extreme suffering and "dis-integration". This brings us to another aspect of initiation that we need to mention because we hold it in our intention when we are planning what we see as "initiatory rites" - the Wheel weekends. This is the aspect of renewal and containment for healing. It is presupposed that the true initiate by the very nature of their psychic unrest or friction, needs a period of containment during which they can heal.

Ritual and Ceremony. Ritual triggers awareness of our LIVING RELATIONSHIP with whatever it is we do ritual around. It is living because it is reciprocal - it gives while receiving. It is an intentional activity serving a specific function which in this case is spiritual communion. The specific type of rituals that a Four-fold Way or Earth Honoring Path utilizes are renewal rites, which inherent in their process is the activity of drawing power, support, and instruction from planetary and other energies with the reciprocal feeding back to the energies by attuning to their innate patterns, (in other words, becoming in resonance with the Sacred). The ability to do this depends on the level of our willingness to sacrifice those patterned ideations and learned dogmas (habits) that no longer coincide with innate sacredness. The fruits of this ever expanding reciprocity is that personal growth is excited by those encounters that reveal what is conflict and/or struggle between what we have learned and real energizing friction that is produced while relating to and being in relationship with the Sacred. This innate friction cultivates the disconcerting awareness of our need to transform. We find out what we are living for, what our lives revolve around and what we are being fed by.

There is an inherent structure in ritual and ceremony and this serves the purpose of limiting the ability to get into "Ego or Personality worship". Once this becomes evident, those attached to emotional needs for personal recognition start complaining or decoying the process with objections which serves the purpose of drawing attention back to the ego. But if we hold firm - stand in integrity with the process, which is inherently to evoke Source Relationship (or encounter and dialog between Personality and Essence - Ego and Higher Self - Illusion and Reality), we serve individuation and spiritual maturity. This will always be disconcerting to those just seeking personal gratification, but those willing to risk self-exposure and disILLUSIONMENT, learn how this friction serves human development and the owning and development of our Souls.

The central strand of this weave is perseverance to the TRUTH that our unique individualness can know. With enough commitment, a self-penetration occurs and this allows us the capacity to braid ourselves into the collective fabric without losing our individual color. We become able to dance the intricate steps of collective interplay which is sustained by each individual's contact with their internal dependence, the Great Mystery, the Source, the Sacred.

And finally, all schools belong to and are extensions of some Lineage(s). We have been exploring your physical and spiritual lineage and have presented some lineage information to you, but we need to say a few more things. On the Earth plane, lineages manifest as energy streams. A flow of energy with a certain resonance. As energy, they can increase in magnitude (amplitude), and their force or power can decrease when the energy's source is not "fed". We too have a personal energy with a certain resonance. One of the reasons certain spiritual practices seem to "fit" or "feel right" to us and others don't is because the energy of the lineage that the practice comes out of, and our personal energy either resonate together or they don't. This is why our interest and the "fit" changes at times - either our own energy has changed and no longer resonates with the energy of the lineage, or vise versa. Another aspect about Lineages is that as energetic wave patterns, they have the same characteristics as other waves. They have distinct periods of power and growth, periods of decline and they go "underground" and seem to disappear at times. When energy is not fueled, its power or ability to do its work (to manifest) will decline.

At times when the energy stream is "underground", the lineage seems to have died out or only exist in memory or history, and then it will surface again in another age or time or place. Troubadour or Chivalry (Beloved energy) is an easy lineage to use as an example. It surfaced at one point and place in historical time with the Cathar "Heresy" in the Midi region of France and gained energy until it reached its apogee with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table on old Albion Isle (modern England). It began its decline with the "barbaric" invasions and the Inquisitions of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, or Dark Ages as they have been called. But elsewhere in Persia it remained alive (though somewhat changed) through the Sufi tradition. Prior to that we find a trace of it in David's and Solomon's time in the Song of Songs and the Psalms and on the American Continent in Amerindian history with White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman and Kokopeli. And, (if we may be afforded a small measure of license) we find it again in the future in the Jedi Knights of Star Wars.

As humans, we participate in the sacredness of creation by "feeding" spiritual lineages with our attention, devotion, and practices. (As they feed us.) When we turn away from or no longer practice a lineage, it loses the strength and power that we as humans "feed" it, but it does not end. That which is sacred and ordained (created) by Spirit does not "die". It merely changes its form and goes "underground" until it is time for it to surface again. Lineages therefore have life-cycles that ebb and flow, and they grow in strength and lose power in the same manner that other energy does.

Thus, Sacred Circles is a wisdom "school" in the sense that its intent is to provide initiation experiences that re-turn us to our sacred relationship with self, others, the natural world and all creation - our true selves and not merely our individuated selves. It uses a cross-cultural lineage energy to present its teachings because our own spiritual heritage is cross-cultural, and because; though there are many different expressions of this perennial spirituality, there are also many common threads. And since the core of this tradition is feminine and unitive, we wanted to present a form that shows we are indeed "all related".

We have spent many years searching (and re-searching), and have come to know that it is essentially impossible in this day and age to fully return to the life-giving ways of the ancients. The world population and private or government ownership of land, technological dominance, rationalism, and cultural materialism has rendered that possibility almost impossible. We therefore must find a way to return to a unitive consciousness that blends the wisdom of ancient ways with the sometimes harsh realities of "modern" life. Thus the course is designed to be that kind of bridging experience.

And as we said before, extreme individualism has caused us as humans to develop in a way fundamentally different than our ancestors. Certain aspects of our beingness were emphasized in this process and others were ignored or allowed to lie dormant and/or underdeveloped. Being born and or being sent to school in an industrialized nation has caused us to become an unbalanced creature that does not express the fullness of our nature, or all that we truly are as humans. Our personalities in this "modern" time are developed from a posture of defense rather than being nurtured out of us to be an expression of the uniqueness we have come to this Earth plane to express. What forms the core of our personalities is often rigid and defensive because of the unbalanced dominance of aggressive, extroverted, rationalism in our formative years. We react and rely on defense strategies even when there is no danger rather than being able to respond to life. The life of the body, and the emotions, and the deep subjective experience of how mind and body interrelate, is sacrificed for the life of the mind - a dominance on the mental aspects of who we are. Thus, we simply are not invited to "be all that we can be", but instead are programmed by the dominant culture to develop only a small percentage of what we truly are. This is not a conspiracy or intentional, it is a legacy. And what we think is archetypal or part of "human nature" is in reality culturally and epochally (the times we live in) defined. All humans born into industrialized nations with technological dominance and economic materialism are programmed by these same unbalanced forces. There is no one to blame, it is a cultural phenomena. But even in the face of this extreme unbalanced development we have a choice and a responsibility. And we have help. This is why the first year of the course is spent in (re)introducing you to the importance of a balanced wheel of life that places equal emphasis on East, South, West, and North, (spiritual, physical, emotional, mental). We also have help from forces or energies called lineages that are making themselves available very strongly at this time. It is through these lineages that we will be able to counterbalance the lineage of modernity that causes us to depend so heavily on rationality.

Thus this course is a "wisdom school" training program in adult spiritual development in which we introduce to you ways to "un" or deprogram your thinking, your emotional reactions and even your physical nervous systems so that you can move out of habitual ways into responsive ways. It is designed to move you out of a dominant, analytical, linear stance (ego-consciousness) and back into a unitive, organic and balanced one, (a blended consciousness that is strong enough to contain the psychic distance we need in order to fulfill an individual destiny, while still holding participation consciousness that allows us to stay connected and immersed in all that is).

This is a spiritual development that is visceral, (that is really felt in the "gut"), and that reunites the mind and body so that you can be all that you can be. It is designed to restore to you the power of your intuitive unifying nature so that you can use it in conjunction with your mental capabilities. In fact, the course seeks to restore your intuitive essence Self to the center or core of your consciousness so that your mental life, your thoughts and attitudes are actually mediated from this core beingness. It is designed to heal the learned helplessness, alienation, and loss of personal power that are the legacy of the loss of a primary relationship with Spirit and connection with the Earth. It is a way of integration and inner strength that utilizes knowledge that is mediated into wisdom. In order to do this we present to you exercises and processes that if you really dedicate yourself to experiencing and practicing them, you will re-educate (de-program) your sensory and neural systems. Even the musculoskeletal system of your physical body will de-program and change back to the natural essence of you. You will awaken and integrate your subtle bodies and thus make accessible many potentials which all humans possess and can access, but which are only latent in most of us. You will be able to "hear" what nature has to tell us all, (and has been telling us all along. We just didn't know how to listen anymore), and you will know its meaning for you and the world. You will have visions and your unconscious and repressed forces will be integrated and return into being allies rather than compulsions and addictions that push and drive. Your ego-personality will take its rightful place as an important part, but not the dominating part of the fullness that is you. Your dreams will be guides to right action, rather than only being used to "work-out" repressed and incomplete issues. You will once again dream the Great Dreams of collective humanity that we dreamed as children, but have mostly forgotten as we "mature". You will move along a self-regulating and self-accessing continuum of evolving states of consciousness in which your individual fate, your life-dream, in the sense of destiny, can be known and expressed. You will come to an authentic realization of your destiny. You will "dream" your life awake. For to fail to awaken one's body in this way means that one lives a programmed life - not their own. It is someone else's life who is being pressured to live the "mass dream" of consumer materialism as a robot or "spiritual zombie" (that is so susceptible to advertisements and political and other propaganda, etc.). You will find and know your soul.

The course teaches the awakening and activation of your mystical or magical body that is feared by so many because of propaganda against the instinctual and natural within us. (In order to gain control of us, those who seek domination and power over others must repress the loving, unitive core of us and replace it with fear or else we simply could not be controlled.) This magical body is the body that can experience and generate "paranormal" events. (We must point out here that these experiences are in actuality what is normal for humans, but are now perceived as outside of what is normal, because what we know as "normal" in this age and time is in fact abnormal!) The ancients knew that all was alive and life can communicate with other life. On this physical Earth plane, life energy exists in matter and can contact other life energy wherever it exists. (In the Far Eastern and Western traditions this energy was often labeled "mind", but because of the ease of confusion with that term we will call it "life energy".) It is this life energy that one who has fully awakened their mystical body can use to make objects move or even disappear. The directing and movement of this energy within one's own body is what makes people be able to walk on glowing fire coals barefooted and become a healer through the use and understanding of healing energy.

And this course teaches the activation and accumulation of personal power (sometimes called "presence" or "beingness") through the awakening of your spiritual body. We also stress the realization that "personal power" is impersonal and can be used for "good" or for "evil" (to harm or control others). Power is energy and energy does not enter into the dualistic realm of "right" and "wrong". It is to the human part of us that the responsibility of discernment is given. Ghandi and Hitler both spent their lives learning to activate their personal power. How they each chose to use that power is evident. As a teacher/leader, the activation of personal power provides you with the gift of being able to access directly the unconscious destiny aspects of those whom you influence and thereby help them to awaken their consciousness. Of course this is a very grave and serious responsibility and how you use your personal power carries consequences. Hitler's use of power is an excellent example because it is so obvious what happened. An Austrian was able to amass undying and unquestioning devotion from the German people because he used his personal power to awaken in them an ego-centered idea of a destiny. He took a people who were starving and humiliated after the First World War, fed them, and sold them a dream of Aryan glory in which they "rightfully" controlled the world. Because he awakened some sense of a destiny in a people who were alienated, fearful and hopeless (and lacking personal power of their own), he was able to get them to do things that were against their higher nature. A dispirited mass of people rode the energy of Hitler's (and others of his staff's) personal power rather than awakening to and developing a natural personal power of their own. Ghandi's intention on the other hand, was to be of great service to his people and his goal was to awaken their own personal power, not to control them in order to use them for his own egoic ends.

This course is also about an actual experience of Spirit, God, Shekinnah, Great Spirit, Creator, Mother/Father God, etc. rather than belief in Spirit, God, etc. It is a direct experience not a mediated experience. It is not about belief, but about tangible experience and direct personal connection to the "larger forces" which mystics and shamans have. It is a lived practice, not a network of beliefs. The exercises and processes are based on and are derived from proven methods, (older than recorded time) that enable humans to have a direct experience of Spirit. No priesthood is necessary to guide you "onto the path of righteousness". In fact a hierarchy of priests, gurus, or rabbis, etc. is often a real hindrance on this path for we are not seeking a political understanding, but a somatic, direct experience. It is about Gnosis , the Greek word that referred to a spiritual knowledge (direct internal or visceral), rather than rational-analytical knowing. Gnosis implies and provides the kind of unifying (sometimes called oceanic) experiences in which all the separations and divisions and illusions disappear until there is nothing but the oneness of all creation. This turning the body into "light" does not belong to a privileged few priests or leaders, but is in fact a necessary experience for all if we are to manifest our true purpose. It is about spirituality not religion - moving back into essence from form.

This direct experience (the vertical path) is obtained by awakening and integrating your body selves through committedly engaging the spiritual/bodily practices, assignments and exercises of the course in a step by step way up the ladder to illumination - the direct experience of Spirit. You move in a self-regulated way along the continuum of consciousness into direct experience. You learn to tap into and ride energy streams (lineages), of your own heritage and your own choosing to help and guide you on your path. (Another goal or beneficial side-effect of devoted practice is the beginning of healing of the crippling void left by "secular" modern education which values only the products of the mental realm and completely ignores or down-plays the roles of the spiritual, emotional and physical realms.)

We have come to know that what we perceive as reality is programmed by us. It is a consensus agreement. In other words we code reality and label some things as reality and others not because of a whole set of beliefs and mental attitudes. Therefore "reality" to us mirrors what we think it SHOULD be rather than what it actually is. One of the goals of this course is to examine our beliefs and mental attitudes (awaken ourselves) so that we can know just what we are programming reality to be and make the decision whether it is what we really want or need reality to be given the challenges, crises, AND opportunities of the times.

Walking the Sacred Wheel is presented in a universal sense for all spiritual seekers on a Path. It shares from all the major traditions in an integrated expedience of wholeness. It is designed as a walk of discovery in which an opportunity is offered to learn from the natural world how to live in harmony with the seasons, attune to their deep changes, and thus explore and nurture our own inner nature. Wheel work is a time-honored cross-cultural quest for knowledge and personal strength that predates all known religions, philosophies and psychologies. It is an ancient and powerful form of inner relationship and information retrieval. And, though Wheel work is a visionary quest in the mystery play we call life, it is not ascetic, nor a colorless way of self-denial; it is full, and earthy, it is sacred and it is fun.

We have mentioned in various ways in the first year's lessons, and even beginning with the brochure that this course is an initiatory experience as in the old Earth-centered traditions. It has a specific design and goals, and it works with and uses spiritual energy to realize, (make real) its initiatory goals. In the classical Western framework, initiation teachings were only able to be maintained through mystery schools that preserved this Great Mother energy when patriarchy began to gain power. People who stayed in deep relationship to the land and the generative (creative) power of the Great Mother through Mother Earth were able to remain in contact with and therefore receive from this life-giving force. (Patriarchal consciousness needs to make separations, the Great Mother consciousness makes ever-increasing connections to the point of total merger - the mystical or ecstatic experience of the "light" and visions.) Because of persecution, peoples of the West were forced to maintain this contact in more occult, (which simply means "hidden") ways. As time progressed, the dominance of the "cult of individualism" over relatedness (as was maintained through the tribe or clan), was spread by the Greeks, and then the Romans, and then the colonizing Europeans. Today, that Western "progress" (called rationalism that is purely cognitive or cerebral), is spread by industrialization and technology that is driven by science and its need of control. So the occult or "underground streams" of Western spirituality were/are, like Earth-centered spirituality, essentially feminine. Their goal is to undo the process of division and alienation and to return to the True Self - not the merely individuated self.

Extreme individualism has caused us as humans to develop in a way fundamentally different than our ancestors. Certain aspects of our beingness were emphasized in this process and others were ignored or allowed to lie dormant and/or underdeveloped. Being born and or being sent to school in an industrialized nation has caused us to become an unbalanced creature that does not express the fullness of our nature, or all that we truly are as humans. Our personalities in this "modern" time are developed from a posture of defense rather than being nurtured out of us to be an expression of the uniqueness we have come to this Earth plane to express. What forms the core of our personalities is rigid and defensive because of the unbalanced dominance of aggressive, extroverted, rationalism in our formative years. We react and rely on defense strategies even when there is no danger rather than being able to respond to life. The life of the body, and the emotions, and the deep subjective experience of how mind and body interrelate, is sacrificed for the life of the mind - a dominance on the mental aspects of who we are. Thus, we simply are not invited to "be all that we can be", but instead are programmed by the dominant culture to develop only a small percentage of what we truly are. This is not a conspiracy or intentional, it is a legacy. And what we think is archetypal or part of "human nature" is in reality culturally and epochally (the times we live in) defined. All humans born into industrialized nations with technological dominance and economic materialism are programmed by these same unbalanced forces. There is no one to blame, it is a cultural phenomena. But even in the face of this extreme unbalanced development we help from forces or energies called