What I've Always Known: Living in Full Awareness of the Earth

by Tom Harmer

Book Overview

"There's a war going on. A war against the earth, against mother earth. I wonder whose side you on?" So says Clayton Tommy, Salish teacher and mentor, to Tom Harmer, his apprentice in the old ways of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400048559
• ISBN13: 9781400048557
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Harmony
• Length: 305 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

A Powerful and Honest Work

Tom Harmer's work What I've Always Known: Living in Full Awareness of the Earth, is a deeply powerful and honest autobiography that resonates with emotion and strength. The author offers a beautifully written and personally rigorous response to the question "whose side are you on?" - the side of Earth and all its wisdom, or the side of shallowness, greed and disconnection. Harmer's time with the Salish people of the Washington/Canadian border is one of working, sweating and living towards an embodied and holistic response to this question - which may be, in fact, the only real question there is. Harmer's tone is respectful, introspective, honest, and real, and he has a knack for writing beautiful prose with a strong current of authenticity. I have not yet read Harmer's previous work, Going Native, that is a precursor to this one, but I intend to. Even without the previous book, however, What I've Always Known stands by itself as a strikingly meaningful work. I recommend this book to all who are seeking to live in full awareness of the earth, that we may all become truly awake and alive at some point and be able to answer the ultimate question - "whose side are you on?"

A gift to read -

I devoured this book, along with Tom's other book, Going Native, feeling like I've felt a soul brother. Tom's gifted writing and descriptions of the mountains and forests where he lived, and his clear memories of his altered states while in sweatlodge and out on "mission" questing for the "power" -- all of these captured me as if I was alongside of him experiencing it with him. More importantly, his realizations and the teachings of his Okadogan elders echo those of my Cherokee teacher's words. Tom humbly shares his struggles with his inner demons. His willingness to walk a path of courage with his teachers and the native ways that they taught him was exceptional. Not many of us who grew up in the cities and suburbs would have the courage to walk the mountains or be on a 10 day sweatlodge walking naked in the snow as Tom did. We're so accustomed to our comforts. Yet Tom revealed his journey and proved that it is only by letting ourselves go into the wild that the wild will crack us open to reveal our true selves and relationship with Earth Mother. Powerful. I felt like I was curling up in the arms of Earth Mother reading his book/s and they grounded me in my similar path to wake up and be alive on this amazing planet with our four-legged and winged and standing people friends. Thank you, Tom for your honesty and willingness to share your stories with us so that we can also learn to walk the way of the Earth and be on her side ever more with the wisdom you share in your book/s.

SimplyThe Best

A lucidly written, easily followed Tale that, while essentially didactic in nature, has none of the cloying foppery and greasey psuedo-mysticism that most other books of the genre display. It is totally free of stilted diction, vaugue allusions, self importance. This book is a recounting of one man's rediscovering of "What I Have Always Known" (the 'Realm of the Spirit', for lack of a better expression), and it is so well written that the reader can easily suppose that some of the magic that Tom finds along the way rises up out of the pages to shimmer before the eyes of the reader, beckoning.

Which side you on?

The information and guidance about how to live with the awareness of the Earth is often not easily accessible to us Westerners, or is set within New Age paradigms that for most are difficult to stomach. This is where Harmer's book comes in... it is based on the truth of one man's personal experience with an old indigenous medicine person. Yet, Harmer is no Castaneda and his teacher is no imaginary Yaqui sorcerer ... rather, we get so see life among present day Okanogan Salish in the American Northwest; Harmer learns from them as the Indians themselves have been learning from the time immemorial: little by little, in bits and pieces. He is taught by his Salish mentors to observe nature, his dreams, and to integrate his lifetime experiences and traumas so as to increase his ability to perceive and act in the world. I know of few books where the simplicity, pragmatism, reverence for nature and power that native peoples possess and wield has been demonstrated so effectively. There is much anthropology on Northwestern Indians, the Salish, Kwakiutl, the Tlingit.... a lot of academic crap, and very little about their real-time knowledge, wisdom and power. This book closes the gap & I recommed it highly, especially if you want to learn about native American dreaming practices, exorcism, spirits and, above all, about how to develop and practice perception skills and awareness. Above all, the book lays out quite starkly the choice each of us has to make for ourselves...do we serve the planet or its destroyers. As Clayton Woods, Tom's Salish mentor asks: "Which side you on"?

Forging an Ancient Bond With Mother Earth

This book is a masterpiece of erupting spirit that is clothed in a graceful whirl of raw, sensual, primitive natural beauty. It tells the story of one man's (a White man's) journey to find inside himself a connection to mother earth and the spirits that dwell with her. This story may be hard to digest for the average Western (non-American Indian) mind and yet is written exactly for that audience. It bridges two worlds - the White man's world that the author is from and the very, very ancient ways of knowing that are the American Indians' world that he is joining. This spiritual book needs to be dissolved and assimilated, rather than devoured, to have the most impact. Passages need to be read and re-read, a meditative state of mind helps to create clarity. Its style is fluid, alternating between stream of consciousness and review of what was learned; between recollection and second sight; between confidence and caution. The awkward English spoken by many of its characters forces the reader to slow down and thoroughly digest what is being said. The difficulty in understanding what is being said by the Indian characters, at times, is related to their difficulty in translating the rich tapestry of the American Indian tradition into a language that is poorly stocked with tools to handle concepts so complex, unconscious, and related to personal sensitivity. The book opens at a critical time in this authors life (the book is an autobiography) when he is deciding whether or not he can continue to live a city life, cut off from the spiritual influence of mother earth. Without wanting to give too much away, he decides on the side of nature. Most of the book details his ongoing quest to be a "power man", the term given by his mentor, Clayton Tommy. ("Power" does not have quite the same meaning as in casual English - it refers to a relationship with a spirit entity that "fills you up"). It details his gradual ascent into spheres of knowing "power", but it is not a strictly cerebral experience by any stretch. Achievement of higher realms of awareness requires ongoing physical engagement, knowing mother earth requires exhausting climbs to "power spots", preparation for important events entails grueling rituals, obtaining self-insight demands extraordinary trust in ones future and profound soul searching. The way the author describes these physical and mental experiences is by immersing the reader into magnificent panoramas of all five senses, sculpted through detailed wordsmithing. The detail provided is purposefully excessive, as if again to force the reader to slow down and realize that it is the perception of the little things in the present that is a gateway to deep understanding. This is an extraordinary book; raw energy surges through its pages. Anyone who can have a negative review about this book simply does not get its message. The only bad thing about the book is that it has to end (like all books do - but I hope Tom will continu