THE REPETITION IS THE POWER
Before we committed to follow the path of knowledge we’d had several teachings, lessons, and validating events to draw from, but we really didn’t know where to begin. We had three teachers of healing and sorcery willing to initiate us at the time, but they needed to hear I’d made the decision.

When I did make that commitment, all three teachers, began telling me about my first act of power. Each teacher had different suggestions, of course, and I went after my needs, but the common idea from all three is that the first act had to include a declaration. What these teachers described sounded like a motto, then a chant, then for a while it was a magical rope. They even called it a vehicle. I had no idea what they wanted me to do.
After lots of trial and error, I finally hit on a verse honoring ancestors and the four directions, stating in three languages my intentions to walk the path of knowledge. Each line could be recited aloud, which took total about 30 seconds, but each line could turn into a separate activity around the subject of that line, also. For instance, if I paused on the line about the Four Winds, I could expand time and feeling, by specifying each direction and what I wanted from it. I could salute the Four Winds, dance them, sing to them, whatever. After a while I found symbols and movements that went with the themes of each line.
I grew to enjoy it, in all the ways I delivered that declaration, and it took about six months for me to start seeing the results that I’ll explain below. I did it every day, for about seven years, to make the power of its words permanent.
Some days I did it in a lousy mood, upset I had to do it all. It took maybe a minute to rattle it off those days. It actually took longer for me to ask myself, “What did I get myself into? Why me?” Then on other days, I said, “How do I get more of this? I must do it more often,” days when I’d had a vision, or found myself truly at peace in the midst of the chaos that was the struggle of the moment.
Performing my first act of power, consistently, granted me protection. I still don’t know exactly how I got out of certain troubles I created for myself, spiritually, psychically, physically even. But I was protected more than once in a number of ways, and we learned a lot, as you may imagine, about the arts of protection.
Performing my first act of power consistently, provided guidance. Early on I didn’t know where I could join in a bonafide sweat lodge – it’s not something you just go out and purchase; it requires ancestors, elders and leaders. It took six months, but all of a sudden, during an intense time of life, the perfect sweat lodge came to me – one of those milestones in life when can one say, “The rest is history.”
This discovery, and others like it, happened with many topics of learning. The declaration, I believe, brought me the teachers I needed as I needed them. It was like a magnet for crystals, feathers, herbs, and so forth, as I needed them, as well.
Performing my first act of power consistently provided courage. I started out saying it provided confidence, but confidence is fickle, it can be over or under confidence. Courage on the other hand, is always enough. The Repetition is the power. Courage.