The Sweet Medicine SunDance (SMSD) Path is considered a Warrior’s Path. Its primary focus is to foster individuality, autonomy and freedom for all people. This requires the dedication of a warrior’s commitment to personal excellence and collective change. The SMSD Path is one of many spiritual paths and disciplines that share this intent and focus. […]
Month: July 2016
The Warrior’s Path
The Sweet Medicine SunDance (SMSD) Path is considered a Warrior’s Path. Its primary focus is to foster individuality, autonomy and freedom for all people. This requires the dedication of a warrior’s commitment to personal excellence and collective change. The SMSD Path is one of many spiritual paths and disciplines that share this intent and focus.
Historically, part of following the Warrior’s Path involves setting out on the “Warrior’s Errantry” Vision Quest. It is accomplished through Warrior Task Assignments within each of the five aspects of the human (emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, sexual). This also necessitates proper alignment with the four elements (water, air, earth, fire) and the four sacred worlds (mineral, plant, animal, human).
This process involves taking the Warrior far from the comfortable, familiar environment she/he is used to and exposing her/him to experiences that demand resourcefulness and ingenuity in order to find and establish the proper weapons/tools of survival.
Ironically enough, submitting oneself intentionally to the potential of frustration and stress is the essence of growth in the Warrior’s Way of Enlightenment. Because the wandering Warrior must face new, strange and sometimes startling differences in daily living, all comfortable habits and ruts must be given up for more appropriate behavior to meet the new circumstances. The Warrior Task Assignments force the apprentice to look at new ways of approaching life and provide new weapons and tasks for attaining success.
It is the shedding of all our barriers and reservations and diving into the total potential of knowledge and POWER that is the Warrior’s goal during this quest. It is a time for letting go of constricting beliefs to gain FREEDOM. The Warrior’s Way is exactly what the name implies; a way of directing the days of our life to better produce the likelihood of encountering those experiences that will lead to the enlightenment sought. This way is an all-consuming, all-illuminating lifelong commitment that tolerates no illusions. It is not a hobby, sport, recreation, diversion or a fad.
As this Warrior Task Assignment journey begins, we must approach it as we would a pilgrimage to a Holy Shrine. We must hold in our hearts the knowledge that there is only one true way or route to this shrine — COMMITMENT and DISCIPLINE. We take to the road with certainty and strong Will and Intent to reach the goal. As we proceed, however, other roads that seem to be more attractive, more enjoyable, more socially acceptable, more physically (economically) rewarding or merely easier or shorter will always appear. In our confusion, it may soon appear as though the other roads better match the superficial appearance of what we think the path “ought” to look like. Instead of following our “true” route to the “shrine”, we then find ourselves wandering in all directions with our energy scattered, racing after what entertains us at the moment and losing the possibility of reaching the shrine.
By embracing the Warrior’s Path we will find our way home. We will discover our Inner Heart.
For more information, please visit DTMMS.
Deer Tribe Metis Medicine Society 