What I've Always Known: Living in Full Awareness of the Earth

Rating:
Summary: Which side you on?
Review: These are exciting times. Knowledge, acquired and fiercely protected by indigenous peoples for thousands of years is trickling into the mainstream awareness, as if the keepers of that knowledge realized that the times of hiding are over. As if everyone has to be given an opportunity to freely choose between the greedy, dissociated consumer-baiting and life-rejecting world of corporations and mega-businesses or the life-affirming practices that emphasize connectedness to Earth, nature and community. The information and guidance about how to live with the awareness of the Earth is often not easily accesible to us Westerners, or is set within New Age paradigms that for most are difficult to stomach. This is were this book comes in handy... it is based on the truth of one man's personal experience with an old indigenous medicine person. Yet, this is no Castaneda with his imaginary Yaqui sorcerers ... we get so see a white man who hangs out with real life Okanogan Salish friends; Harmer learns from them as the Indians themselves have been learning from the time immemorial: little by little, in bits and pieces. He is taught by his Salish mentors to observe nature, his dreams, and to integrate his lifetime experiences and traumas so as to increase his ability to perceive and act in the world. I know of few books where the simplicity, pragmatism, reverence for nature and power that native peoples possess and wield has been demonstrated so effectively.

There is much anthropology on Northwestern Indians, the Salish, Kwakiutl, the Tlingit.... a lot of academic crap, and very little about their real-time knowledge, wisdom and power. This book closes the gap & I recommed it highly, especially if you want to learn about native American dreaming practices, exorcism, spirits and, above all, about how to develop and practice perception skills and awareness. Above all, the book lays out quite starkly the choice each of us has to make for ourselves...or as Clayton Woods, Tom's Salish mentor says: "Which side you on"?

Rating:
Summary: Forging an Ancient Bond With Mother Earth
Review: This book is a masterpiece of erupting spirit that is clothed in a graceful whirl of raw, sensual, primitive natural beauty. It tells the story of one man's (a White man's) journey to find inside himself a connection to mother earth and the spirits that dwell with her. This story may be hard to digest for the average Western (non-American Indian) mind and yet is written exactly for that audience. It bridges two worlds - the White man's world that the author is from and the very, very ancient ways of knowing that are the American Indians' world that he is joining. This spiritual book needs to be dissolved and assimilated, rather than devoured, to have the most impact. Passages need to be read and re-read, a meditative state of mind helps to create clarity. Its style is fluid, alternating between stream of consciousness and review of what was learned; between recollection and second sight; between confidence and caution.

The awkward English spoken by many of its characters forces the reader to slow down and thoroughly digest what is being said. The difficulty in understanding what is being said by the Indian characters, at times, is related to their difficulty in translating the rich tapestry of the American Indian tradition into a language that is poorly stocked with tools to handle concepts so complex, unconscious, and related to personal sensitivity.

The book opens at a critical time in this authors life (the book is an autobiography) when he is deciding whether or not he can continue to live a city life, cut off from the spiritual influence of mother earth. Without wanting to give too much away, he decides on the side of nature. Most of the book details his ongoing quest to be a "power man", the term given by his mentor, Clayton Tommy. ("Power" does not have quite the same meaning as in casual English - it refers to a relationship with a spirit entity that "fills you up"). It details his gradual ascent into spheres of knowing "power", but it is not a strictly cerebral experience by any stretch. Achievement of higher realms of awareness requires ongoing physical engagement, knowing mother earth requires exhausting climbs to "power spots", preparation for important events entails grueling rituals, obtaining self-insight demands extraordinary trust in ones future and profound soul searching. The way the author describes these physical and mental experiences is by immersing the reader into magnificent panoramas of all five senses, sculpted through detailed wordsmithing. The detail provided is purposefully excessive, as if again to force the reader to slow down and realize that it is the perception of the little things in the present that is a gateway to deep understanding.

This is an extraordinary book; raw energy surges through its pages. Anyone who can have a negative review about this book simply does not get its message. The only bad thing about the book is that it has to end (like all books do - but I hope Tom will continue on with the story soon). Having said that, though, I'm sure this book is not for everyone, or even for most. It relates a reality that is just plain strange and foreign to the everyday thinking of most modern folks and requires you to suspend many pre-held beliefs. It helps that Tom Harmer initially seems to struggle with some of the same reservations as we do, even as he lives these events.

The Indians believe that blind trust in your spirit guide is the only way to extreme advancement in the "power way" and most of us would find that really hard to act on, let alone risk our lives on. But if you are haunted by the feeling that all is not quite right in our relationship to the world and our Earth; if you are prepared for the possibility that this book might leave you shaken to the core; and that it may make you doubt (at least momentarily) many of the assumptions that you have based your life upon, then you should take a chance and read it.