The Path to Peace, Happiness, and a Sense of Purpose Through the Sweet Medicine SunDance Path

Sweet Medicine SunDance Path: What Programs does DTMMS Offer?

The Sweet Medicine Sundance Path offers an approach to modern life that helps people live with greater integrity, maturity and individuality. Their worldwide programs address the crucial need of humans to move knowledge beyond mental facts and into lived experiences. This experiential approach to learning provides a creative space for each person to gain spiritual transformation. DTMMS is the parent organization of the Sweet Medicine SunDance Path. Their vision is to inspire beauty, excellence, and knowledge so that all people gain direct access to peace, happiness and a higher sense of purpose.

Longhouse Program: Why is it Important?

Students and teachers meet in community settings called Longhouses where specific teachings are provided. Once the concepts and ideas have been discussed, students leave the classroom and spend time in nature to absorb what they learned on a deeper level.

Being in nature allows people to experience the elements and "worlds" of Grandmother Earth. The earth is home to 5 elements (water, earth, air, fire and the void) and 5 worlds (plants, minerals, animals, humans and the spirit realm). Nature becomes a teacher that helps each individual test knowledge for themselves. In this way, knowledge becomes wisdom.

Red Lodge

Red Lodge is a Longhouse program for people dedicated to reaching their highest potential. It celebrates community by bringing together people who desire to learn about their connection with all forms of life. Red Lodge students gain tools and experiences that help them create greater life balance, health, and spiritual connection. The teachings are designed to enhance each person's individual spiritual understanding and therefore people of all spiritual traditions and religions can find incredible benefit and growth. Red Lodge Longhouses are currently offered in Arizona, Italy, Canada and Australia.

What is Ceremony?

Ceremony is one of the foundational features of the Sweet Medicine SunDance Path and is included in all programs and events. Through ceremony, people create a deep connection with Spirit, one of the names for the mysterious, all-encompassing, divine energy of the universe. Ceremonies are done in both individual and group settings, and each ceremony has a purpose and intent for creating a desired change in reality.

Life Transitions: Who needs Rites of Passage Ceremonies?

Rites of Passage ceremonies support and facilitate a person's maturation and growth throughout their life. They occur at specific life transitions and honorably mark the movement into the next phase of the person's development. These ceremonies are said to be essential for human growth. Without them, humans can mature at a much slower speed and experience unnecessary challenges in relating to their world.

A Rites of Passage ceremony marks the transition from one phase of life to another; life, marriage and death to name a few. This can include Baptisms, Naming Ceremonies, Debutante balls and the Quinceanera as well as the Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah in the Jewish traditions. The Sweet Medicine SunDance Path offers Rites of Passage ceremonies at several key places throughout a person's life. There are ceremonies for the parents before a child is born, after the child is born, naming ceremonies and various phases of the child's life into their adulthood. There are adult Rites of Passage ceremonies as well.

The Sweet Medicine SunDance Path supports the availability of spiritual knowledge for all humans. Spiritual knowledge is a roadmap for how to live with integrity and place attention on what actually works. Many people who attend programs and ceremonies in this tradition learn how to overcome personal challenges and access their individual excellence.

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Maintain Your Identity, Always

History shows that great leaders and scholars had maintained their identity throughout their life. That gave them charisma and followers. Identity crisis arises for three main reasons; the sheepish mentality, lack of individuality and intense competition. With the unique talents and skills only, a person can shine and set an exemplary record in his chosen field. For instance, Charlie Chaplin created his own brand of comedy that conveyed the life's hard reality. Nobody can imitate him, because any originality has only one life. In India, a Tamil actor maintained a revolutionary image throughout his film career to spread the good things of life and became the darling of the masses. Later on, he became the Chief Minister of the Tamilnadu state. Here, the significance of keeping an identity is highlighted.

Education. Right from the kindergarten to the college level, parents decide the educational need of their wards purely based on the status, market demand, and income prospects. Actually, education is thrust on the kids without caring for the individual capacity and aptitude. Many a times, English is preferred over the mother tongue as the former has the global presence and acceptance.

Profession and business. Many people simply copy the methods and practices of those already proved in the field. People seek foreign employment and settle abroad forgetting the roots in the home country. People are ready to give up their originality for the sake of promotions, money, and other favors.

Medicine. The value of traditional and indigenous medication has been forgotten as the Allopathy is squeezed to favor the products of MNCs made part of other medicines. In fact, the efficacy and wholesome effects of the local systems like Siddha, Ayurveda, Unani, Homeopathy, etc. are sidelined. They are shown as unscientific and made supplementary to the English medicine.

Lifestyle. Copying the lifestyles and cultures of others leads to more harm. One must understand the values of the native lifestyle. For instance, the use of cell phones is proved to harm human health. Yoga remains the best for physical and mental fitness. However, copying the good things is advisable. An ordinary man cannot afford an affluent life.

Religion. Renouncing one's own religion just for worldly reasons like status, money, and power makes him very mean. Such a person will not only lose the identity, but credibility in the society.

History. Generally, the past events are twisted to the advantage of the previous rulers. The British scripted India's history based on their convenience and perceptions by concealing the facts and truths. The present rulers of a nation boast of their leaders as champions of society relegating the greatest achievements and sacrifices of other leaders in the background.

Food and Health. Depending on the physical and mental make-ups, a person should decide his eating and other habits for good health and happiness. A diabetic man must refrain from eating sugary dishes instead of getting tempted by the indiscriminate consumption by a stranger.

Imitating anything leads to the loss of one's identity per se. Sometimes it invites dangers too. Do not compromise your individuality, because it earns you recognition from others. That is possible only when you do good to others. So, explore your individuality with a positive attitude. Definitely, it rewards though belatedly.

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Humanitarian Breakthrough - The Power Lies Within You!

Be it through education, mass media brainwashing or some other social engineering programme night and day there's always someone trying to make you be somebody that's really not you, making it easy to forget that you're an individual and this individuality is your greatest strength.

-Dare you be yourself, thwart the plans of someone's agenda to clone and control you?

It is easy to forget that the power lies within you. There are so many people trying to make you buy into something that takes away your power. See this for what it is; a potentially dangerous and disempowering trap:

Take for instance the doctor. He/she has been designated the power over one's health. Someone who can 'fix it' if and when something goes wrong... No! There is no power for you in buying into that mindset! The control over your health ultimately lies within you. Responsibility is the key.

Then, in ignorance and apathy, we have given away our power to a small number of politicians who easily seduced by money and attention go by unchecked, allowing them to profiteer and make laws following an agenda that does not have our best interest at heart... The solution is getting rid of these con artists, decentralizing political power and quashing this disease called statism...

-I believe that community based societies are the answer and will be the future politics of the new paradigm. For every community to work it MUST have unity, self-sufficiency and the ability to discern.

Happiness is 'just 'round the corner.'

There are always those trying to make you buy into something with the promise of when you finally obtain or achieve what they're offering you'll be happy, having reached your rainbow's end. The obtainment or achievement of what's being offered and the accompanying happiness is said to come through the result of exam passes, job promotions, political ideals, financial advisors, pyramid marketing schemes, religious cult gurus or some new found fad... etc.

However, from cradle to grave, for all that time, effort or money the promise of forever happiness as a reward never arrives. It's always just 'round the corner, never in the here and now. That means you will be forever tail-chasing, going nowhere, never fulfilled or satisfied, having given your power away to those false promises and schemes created by a few select handfuls of individuals who benefit...

Discernment, selling and buying

A young child sees a cheetah and leopard as one of the same. That's because the young child hasn't yet learned to discern the differences between these 2 cats, but will of course be able to when it gets older and develops the necessary perception.

-My point is that the development of discernment is a wonderful thing, allowing you to be more effective in life:

When you fall sucker to the 'one day I will be happy' tail-chasing reward scheme scenario you haven't discerned the differences between someone selling you something and your buying of it. You have just blindly accepted that this is the way it is and enter into the scheme. When you discern the fact that someone's trying to sell, you may realize that it's a disempowering con scheme and no longer become the affect of it by buying into it: Discerning selling from buying therefore means no longer giving your power away in this way.

In conclusion

-If you want to achieve a real humanitarian breakthrough then do realize that the power lies within you through your individuality and the ability to discern.

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