The Baba - Chapter 8 part IV

Image via Wikipedia

“Good question. Kwesi why don’t you answer that for him.”
Kwesi looked at me very seriously, turned his chin so that he was looking directly in my eyes.
“Young man a vision quest is a very serious thing. Do you remember in your initiation anything being mentioned about the Simba Nation?”
“Yes…..Ha2tim was inspired to form the club by Simba. It is a camp that meets once a year, and it puts young men through a Rites of Passage. Everyone in order to be raised in rank past royal must assist in some fashion.”
“Ha2tim received his first sweat lodge experience through Simba, and brought it back to us when we were financially and mentally able to handle it. We also found out about the vision quest through his research. The vision quest is a personal journey that is taken by someone to receive clarity in their life. It is in a sense a initiation by fire. We have five hundred acres here and for brothers in the Midwest this is where they come for their sweat lodge and for the few their vision quests. Simba has chosen you for both.”
I felt honored. I have been in this organization for such a short time, but they recognized something in me that made them want to invest all this time in my development. I am determined not to let them down.
After dinner Simba had someone show me where I would sleep for the night. He instructed me to get some sleep because I would need it for the ordeal ahead of me. When I got to my room, I was so excited I could not go to sleep, although I had no idea of what I was to face outside of what I was told. I could not relax. I decided to find something to read to help me sleep. There was no tv in the room, but there was a bookshelf with a wide variety of books. I chose to look at the “African Tree of Life” although I read it many times.  Hell, I felt I wrote the book. During initiation we had to scribe each proverb, write and prepare to discuss them, and write how these proverbs had been useful in our lives or how we suffered in our lives for not knowing it. At first I didn’t like the book, but after we started discussing it I could not believe the wealth of the knowledge it held. We had to carry it along with our initiate handbook everywhere we went. It was called our burden, but the book was more like a burden breaker if you took it to heart. I remembered that chapter 6 dealt with initiation, and according to what Kwesi told me the vision quest was an initiation. He didn’t come right out and say it, but I know that it is. The verse that I focused on is a proverb that states initiation is a lure to mastery. The question that lingers in my mind is what are they trying to lure into mastering.