What would I do if I were starting out on my journey today and not forty years ago? 

  Back then I had just dropped out of a Life apprenticeship in mathematics and the sciences—engineering at the university level—and had left an almost obsessive involvement in youth sports behind.

  I was a blank slate as far as art, culture, history, ’meaning of Life,’ and direction was concerned.

  There was no internet and no social media. I haunted libraries and used-book stores for voices who resonated within. 

  But something inside had caught fire and was urging me on. At first it was experienced as a break from the known, the comfort and security of middle classdom. At the time it was terrifying. It would be years before I could look back and see that it was less a break away than a movement towards something different. Something I should have embarked on much earlier if the vision and resources were available in my youth. 

  They weren’t. And the question I am asking today is whether they are more available now for a certain type of individual, the type I was and am. 

  The Shaman-Type I’ve called it. 

  And as much as I look around I just don’t see it. 

  Sure, the media landscape has seemingly placed the world at our figure tips. But has it given us the wisdom to discern the vital from the dross, the Living Truth from the ceaseless avalanche of words, words, words?

  And has our educational system changed at all in the intervening years?

  Not for us ST’s, that’s for sure.  

  Here’s to you, you crazy mad careeningly creative destructive fools! 

  You unknown unacknowledged unmentored hope-of-tomorrow Shaman-Types!