What is the difference between teachers, guides, and elders? I have been sitting with this question for quite some time now. In a time when there is such a great need for elders. How do we know the difference?
I asked this question at the Wisdom Keepers Gathering in June. Some of the things that came up in this conversation were:
A person can be all three
Often an elder is a teacher and a guide
Elders live in the mystery
Guides are teachers
Elders serve the community and are revered by community
Often we mistake teacher and guides for elders
You can be a teacher to someone and not even know it
You can be an older and not be an elder
Teachers relay conceptual knowledge
Teachers don’t have to be people
As I have been sitting with this question I am starting to believe that maybe there is an evolution to these three things. Maybe they transcend and include like the development of archetypes.
Level 1 Teacher Focus is on the Topic
Level 2 Guide Focus is on the Journey
Level 3 Elder Focus is on the Person
I was in Brazil years ago where I gave the keynote speech on gender. One of the things I shared was that women couldn’t fully initiate men and men couldn’t fully initiate women because you can’t take someone someplace you have never been. I can take men pretty far on the journey but there comes a point when they have to find a male mother for their second birth, (as Robert Bly puts it in the book Iron John) because initiation happens through the feminine.
After my speech a young gay man came up to me concerned about him having to be initiated by a man. What I said to him was, “Oh no, you misunderstood me.’ I’m not talking about an older, I’m talking about an elder. An elder can see themselves so of course they can see you. An elder's responsibly is to put you first.
One of the biggest barriers to becoming an initiated adult as opposed to an adolescent adult is that we can't initiate ourselves. We need elders, we need someone to hold space for us that we trust to put us first.
Quanita
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