Sitting by the fireside in the cold desert night, the sky above him pitch black and mysteriously void of stars, he reflected on who he was and what he might have been and the history of the troubled times that were unfolding all around him.

His name was Chief Joseph. Possibly the greatest of the Nez Perce Indian Tribe.

On a parchment in front of him, he wrote these words.

Let me be a free man.

Free to travel. Free to stop.

Free to work. Free to choose my own teachers.

Free to follow the religion of my fathers.

Free to think and talk and act for myself.

Then he began to reflect on what it might all mean. If someone were with him this night of his vision quest, what would he say?

Staring at the fire, it spoke to him.

"Your inner fire is the best part of you.

"Its who you are inside. Its who you want to be on the outside.

"Every time you dream of what is possible for you, it sparks.

"Yet almost everybody reacts to it with fear.

"And this is why, more than anything else, our world is in such a sorry state.

"Its not even the major tragediesthe wars, the poverty, the sickness, and death that impresses its weight upon the traveler on this stage of the world.

"Its the quotidian numbness of those who arent in a war zone, who have food and shelter and enough to meet their needs, who are well enough, and who move from day to day as shadows of their own glory.

"If these numbers would step outside the hopeless swamp of mediocrity, step outside the approximate dream, then they could heal the major tragedies of war, hunger, and sickness.

"Yet their genius and their collective will has been trapped in the not-quite, the not-yet, and sometimes the not-at-all.

"They have let the heroism of their soul which bravely chose another incarnation fall to waste.

"They are lonely for their own greatness.

"They are frustrated with life and getting what they dont deserve.

"They are not able to reach for that inner something that pulls at them.

"They do not wage battle against the stupidity that keeps them locked into insignificance.

"Yet the world they desire can be won.

It is authentic.

"It is probable.

"It is their own.

"When we feel the world inside, then we will find the way to heal the world outside. When this happens then you and every man, woman, and child can be free."