“Well, it’s great to learn wilderness skills and everything, but is the Guardian Way applicable to our current modern life? And if yes, then how?” – This is a question we receive a lot. And it’s a justified question, I’d like to attempt to answer.
To be of service, flexible and ready to step up when needed are some of the core Guardian traits. And this is just as much – if not even more – needed in our modern life today as it was when we were still hunter-gatherers. You might not need to know how to make fire with a bowdrill when you’re starting a new job at an office or a project in your community. But what about the underlying skills of perseverence, dealing with frustration and being present and centered, even in less than ideal conditions?
You might not even need to know how to deal with the cold or or how to cook on an open fire. But what about knowing exactly what your basic needs are and how to take care of them so that you are well nourished and at your physical, emotional and spiritual top to show up as the best version of yourself for your family, friends, work or passion projects?
Or you might question why we need to do Missions that we execute together in our Trainings. But there is also a good reason for those.
A Mission consists of planning, communication/signals, executing and debriefing of any kind of action to be done as the whole group, and there is usually the added challenge of not being seen or heard. You might be familiar with the planning and execution of an action. Maybe even the reflecting on it afterwards is included in most projects done in modern society – at least to some degree. So it’s easy to see the usefulness of that for mondern life.
But why put seemingly arbitrary constraints of not being seen or heard on the whole thing? Well, those constraints are far from arbitrary. They teach us to switch between super-focused and bigger-picture view. They teach us, that we don’t live on an island, separate from everything and everyone else. Each action, both ours and those of others can have a big impact on how a projects turns out. And if we shout the super-secret formula of our new product from the rooftops, a competitor is bound to hear it and act on it.
And those are just some of the useful skills to learn.
Old but still relevant
The three archetypes (Voice, Nurturer and Guardian) we can observe in a lot of social animals including us humans have developed as an integral part of our social structure. They are probably as old as humans living in clan. And they are still just as relevant today for our survival as a species. Most of us can see clearly why we need Leaders (Voices) and Nurturers, but Guardians?
Well, imagine a world, where nobody would step up if there is a fire, a flood or any other crisis. What if we didn’t have any explorers, researchers or scientiests? No people out on the frontiers, that feel drawn to a life outside their comfort zone in one way or another? These are all roles where the Guardian is very much still alive today.
The Wilderness as ideal container
So why do we then conduct trainings in the wilderness and not just anywhere else? Well, there is a short and a long answer for that. The short one might be that we, the Guardianway team, learned it in that context, and we just love to immerse ourselves in Nature.
But there is a more important reason behind it.
Living immersed in Nature, we step into a most natural container where we don’t need to come up with artificial rules, constraints or challenges. It brings us back to our most basic needs, strips away any superficial civilized additions, and allows us to learn to prioritize and make decisions in the simplest way possible.
Our modern life has become a lot more complex, and we often might feel overwhelmed by the added variables of any situation. So, through being immersed in nature, living a most simple and “primitive” life, we can re-learn how to walk, before we rejoin our modern life where we need to run again.
The wilderness community of all the non-human beings still living in balance with everything and everyone around them can be our best teacher when it comes to mirroring those basic principles of the Guardian.
This is the main reason why we invite you to join us in the wild. So that you can bring the experience of inner and outer strength, centeredness, and trust in interconnectedness into your modern life and to the community of humans that are part of it.
