"The Line of Sight -- How the Guardian Serves" By Tamarack Song The desire of the Guardian is to erase the line between service to self and service to other. In training, the Guardian is first brought to the awareness that the line between self and other is an illusion. It exists only as an ego construct and does not have to be adhered to any more than the construct that the Earth is flat. The Guardian's trainer realizes that awareness alone will not change modes of interaction and behavior. We Humans are creatures of habit and pattern. We will act and react in the ways in which we are accustomed until we condition ourselves to new patterns that are aligned with our new awareness. So, at the appropriate time, the trainer will set up scenarios and perhaps also introduce exercises and games that will help the guardian trainee to recognize as a matter of habit that serving is receiving. That serving the self is serving other, and that serving other is serving the self. The Forest is strong because of the individual Trees, and the individual Trees are strong because of the Forest. If a single Tree were to focus on his own strength without consideration of the Forest, he would find himself strong—and alone. A strong Tree who stands alone is a weak Tree, and he will soon come to realize that. He is exposed to Lightning and to the Wind and to the ravages of Woodpeckers and Insects, and being the only strong Tree, he will draw the attention of those who covet his wood. The same is true of the Forest. If the Forest considers only her own strength, she will grow weak, because her strength is not hers alone, but the combined strength of each individual Tree. Where is the difference between the Forest and the tree? Would someone dare draw a line? This is the awareness that the Guardian is brought to, through stories like the one you've just heard, and through reflections on his own life experience. Because this awareness is Chi Debwewin, a Universal Truth, it will manifest everywhere around him, both in his life and in the life of others, and he will have no trouble at all discovering it if he can get beyond himself and attune himself to it. As I'm writing this, a young Guardian apprentice who I am training, is in the middle of this slow and very personal process of coming to the awareness that there is no line. Two things are occurring simultaneously: he keeps losing and misplacing things, and he feels disjointed and uncentered, as though People are placing expectations upon him to do things that he doesn't really want to do. This is because, from his perspective, they are either taking away from his time to do things for himself or they are involving him in conversations that he doesn't want to be a part of. He feels used and victimized. He is now just coming to realize that his misplaced things and his misplaced energy are not unrelated. This is the first step in awareness. He must first see himself as a whole integrated being before he can see the world beyond him as whole and integrated. Then he will perhaps realize that if he is scattered and uncentered, the world around him will feel scattered and uncentered. That usually brings a Person back to his own center, because it helps him to see that in order for the world around him to change, he must first change. It also allows him to see that how his world affects him has everything to do with how he perceives his world. Someday, perhaps soon, if he is like most other trainees, something simple will happen to him, like tripping on an exposed root. An awareness will flash—"I didn't trip because of the root. I tripped because of me!" Perhaps after some reflection, pieces of the awareness puzzle will start falling into place. "I'm not stuck in conversations – I stick myself in conversations. I'm not being used – I'm using others as an excuse for not being centered, for not being one with the flow. It's not they who irritate me – everything irritates me. Someone can ask me to do anything and I will feel irritated. Of course nothing fits, because I don't fit with myself." Then he will be trainable. Then we will be able to start with games, exercises and scenarios that will integrate his new-found awareness into his walking. This is the first step in Guardian consciousness. Anyone who progresses in training without developing this awareness that service to self is service to others and service to others is service to self, is on the path to becoming a Warrior rather than a Guardian. Developing this awareness works because someone who serves herself can just as well serve someone else. It is just a displacement behavior. A Warrior will go on to serve someone's individual ambition, whether it be religious, political or mercenary. He sees service as crossing the line between self and other. He sees himself as coming from a place of self centeredness, and his duty is to cross that line between self and other in order to project himself upon other in order to serve whatever cause he has aligned himself with. The Guardian serves the greater good. Because there is no line, that greater good is not something outside himself, it also includes him. That last sentence is the basis of the entire Honor Code of the Guardian. When we Honor and serve others in the same way as we Honor and serve ourselves, because we realize that we are one and the same, we would act quite differently than if we saw other as separate and distinct from self. Here is where the line starts to distinguish black from white, right from wrong, saint from demon. When I serve a cause, I can justify atrocities for the sake of the cause, because I am functioning under the illusion that my effect upon another is separate from my effect upon me. If, on the other hand, I see my service as also service to self, I will act with sensitivity, with Honor and Respect. The Guardian serves the People – all the People, whereas the Warrior is a mercenary for hire, who serves some People at the expense of others. This is why Warrior consciousness is rooted in civilized, agricultural societies (which are already based on imbalance and exploitation), and Guardian consciousness is rooted in the ways of Old Way Peoples who live in Balance with the Mother and all the Relations. These People intrinsically know and live the awareness that everything is related; in fact, they refer to all life as "the Relations." Line Additions The concept of evil is another line that Civilized People have drawn. It separates them form their Teachings. It gives them licence to treat what they have judged to be evil in a way that does not abide by the principles of Honor and Respect. What is good is to be cherished and cultivated, and what is deemed evil is at best to be avoided and at worst to be exterminated. In general, Native People recognize that everything is for a reason. What the Anthropologists and Missionaries have labeled as the evil spirits of Natives, are from Native perspective usually imbalances, which are usually welcomed because they are sources of great power and Teaching. The Pygmies of the African Congo, for example, say that evil spirits do not exist in their Forest, or anywhere for that matter. They only seem to exist in the minds of Villagers who tend the fields outside the Forest . Feeling hurt, lied to, stolen from, or cheated, is a judgement. I'm not saying that being hurt is a judgement; the feeling of being hurt is the judgement. Here are some examples: if I feel I have been lied to, I first have to believe in lies. The concept of the lie is the Human construct that I need to buy in to in order to label somebody a liar, in the same way that I have to buy into the concept of a devil if I'm going to call someone a devil worshiper. If I believe that someone has taken tomatoes from my garden and she denies it, I can either buy into the truth - lie construct and judge her a liar and summarily write her off, or I can treat her with Honor and Respect and listen to what she is really saying. In this way I will be able to hear her truth. Perhaps she had Children to feed and felt too ashamed to ask for food, or perhaps she did not believe she was stealing because the tomatoes had grown on her side of the property line. Another possibility is that she may have done you a favor at one time and you did not acknowledge it, so she saw the tomatoes as a fair exchange. When I feel something, it is my reality and not anyone else's. When I feel cheated or stolen from, I set myself up as a victim. I now become the passive receptor of something that was done to me. I am giving away my personal power. I am saying "I'm helpless in this situation, I have been taken advantage of, and I claim no responsibility for what happened." The Guardian Way would be for me to erase that judgement line and hold on to my power by saying "I chose to be in this situation and I realized at the time that there were risks. Perhaps I did not prepare myself adequately. Perhaps I did not Honor the energy or the reality of the other Person. This is a Teaching for me for which I am grateful because it gives me the opportunity to grow in strength and Awareness and to become more sensitive to the energies around me — the energies I involve myself in." When we live behind locked doors we draw a line between ourself and others. It is a line which separates trust from mistrust. It can't help but affect our psyches. When we go through the locked door and cross that line, the way we view and treat People changes. We use different criteria in our decision making – we shift from openness to cautiousness, from acceptance to conditions, from relaxation to tension. This is not our natural and intended state of being – it is not the way we are designed to be with those of our fellow Species. Perhaps the saddest element of our living with locked doors is that no matter which side of the door we find ourselves on, some of the locked door mentality remains with us. Like it or not, we have a built-in boundary. This makes it near-impossible to completely love, to completely trust, to completely cherish, to completely see another Person for who they are, and to completely share ourselves for who we are.