We would like to impart this knowledge to you; while it will give you a taste of the experience, your first-hand week of living at Nishnajida with this year's Seekers will likely not prepare you for the eventual realities of the year-long Wilderness Guide Program @ Teaching Drum. In an effort to better glimpse what living in the wilderness for a full turn of the seasons might be like for you, we suggest performing the following thought experiments, being as honest with yourself about your current ideas, conceptions and expectations as possible. So: imagine this week has not ended and will not yet end, you are not returning to the familiar outside environs from which you have ventured- rather, your quest has only barely begun. You, along with these virtual strangers will be living and learning with each other for the next forty-seven weeks. Does this seem a long time? Too short? How do you think you may feel spending three-hundred and forty consecutive days in such a place with a bare minimum of distractions or escapes? Eating a very simple diet, day in and day out?

Will you Be with whatever frames of mind and emotional states that may visit you- can you imagine yourself enduring being overwhelmed or inundated by fear, negativity? In the case that you do feel overwhelmed, can you in turn sit (and learn) with and from those feelings? Expect to spend large amounts of quality time with your own raw material- emotional, psychological, physical, spiritual. No one will be telling you The Way (Out, nor In)- such a way will be up to you to discover if you desire it.

One of the gifts of the program is that spending time with your inner pain gives you the priceless gifts of self-awareness and patience that can then be applied to every situation and relationship in your life. Crossing into healing yourself in your own time and way generates self-empowerment. Empowerment also comes from the relationship that develops from learning how to shift your paradigms to encompass viewing the Earth's raw materials as useful for daily living- not merely survival. There are deep satisfactions that come with being interdependent and intimate with a group of fellow humans. Daily communion with the Earth and the realization of being connected with and dependent on the Plant and Animal people for survival engenders a heightened respect and regard for All of the Relations.

The support that will be available to you throughout the year may be second to none - this will likely not be so apparent while traversing the confines of your own inner battlefields. Nor comforting, when inner demons arrive mostly uninvited for an ultimately healing detour into personal hell(s). Here too, Giving clears space for Receiving. An attention given to your Shadow to make way for peace of mind. Then again, you may not actually discover peace of mind- or so your mind may tell you. How practiced are you at listening to your mind's words and your body's emotions with the proverbial grains of salt? Or, paralleling the no-salt Native diet itself, will you remember the full range of depth and possibility after long periods without the overwhelming spices and additives of normal Civilized life?

Again, you're not leaving these woods for the foreseeable future. Where will you go within yourself when stressors are applied? What might you do, or not do?

This said, still the ideas of what you may choose to plunge your Self into are unlikely to be too close to what personal realities will actually manifest during the experience. Idealism being one thing, the thing itself, quite another. Certainly we cannot predict how you might respond given any situation- however, certain patterns can be observed as to what the majority of the 'Year-longers' go through in a general sense. Alienation, fear, questioning, sadness, loss of 'direction', doubt, yearning for escape and distraction, mind firmly planted in elsewheres, depression, joy, discovery, growth, satisfaction. Atypical baggage to be carried, dropped, checked, lost, rooted through, found, and lost again.

What mindset will you enter this experience with, and more importantly, what type of attitude do you think you will maintain through the ups and downs on these waves of consciousness? If you wish to take a hard look in multiple mirrors for an extended time and are willing on some deeper level to repeatedly (almost doggedly) examine what you perceive, you may well be suited to the WGP. Yet wishing and willing alone probably are not enough to carry one through the dark and tight spots that seem to appear as a result of such seeking. What, then, will? Thoughts and intentions that seem foundational to your current sense of self may mutate or crumble away entirely- a stripping down in more than one sense. Enjoy the journey, if you indeed decide to embark on this (or any other) voyage toward Self and Other-Self. The experience will almost certainly be unique, powerful and well worth the journey if you are truly a Seeker of Truth(s) and willing to freely explore and question. "What ye seek ye shall find". This experience was both challenging and fulfilling in ways that we never imagined or expected. We are still reaping the fruits of this learning and awareness, and will be for years to come.

Love,
Fellow seekers from the Wilderness Guide Program, '05-'06