My Vision Quest
The gift you carry for others is not an attempt to save the world but to fully belong to it.
- Bill Plotkin
A Vision Quest (or Vision Fast) is an ancient indigenous ceremony which calls a person to engage in a sacred journey of self in transition containing four core elements to serve both as challenges and supports for journey: solitude, immersion in nature, fasting, and community. A Vision Quest is held in an open and rustic surrounding and offers participants an opportunity to leave their familiar world behind them and live on their own, away from the usual distractions of everyday life. The surroundings also offer a powerful reminder that, while we are human beings, we live on another living spirit full of beauty, power, and healing of untapped potential for all.
A vision quest has 3 parts to it:
Severance – leaving your world behind.
Threshold – crossing into the spirit of the natural work
Incorporation – the responsibility of bringing back to your community your vision and putting it into action.
My quest started as part spiritual growth and part PhD research…yet ended up being 100% working on my soul and connection to the natural world. Circling the Medicine Wheel I am reminded of our indigenous knowing, that life is cyclical not linear, and that when we lose our natural way of being, we lose our trust in all things.
After several days of preparation and council we head off to our 4 night/4 day fasting solo journey into the land. The first night of solo fast, as I lay there alone and freezing in the darkness with a terrible windstorm upon me, I realize my tarp is nowhere strong enough to survive the night…which really means I was scared to death and unsure of my ability to survive the night. My flesh was pressed hard into the Earth as everything around me whipped uncontrollable in gusts up to 60mph. Mother Earth knows not of my ego, or perhaps she does and she is there to remind me I cannot ignore her as she rips my tarp away calling to me, “you cannot hide from me” and exposing me like a vulnerable newborn. Stripping me once again of all my attachments so that I know nothing can come between she and I no matter how hard I try. She reminds me that I will destroy myself if I continue to cling and fight for my life rather than just be. Robert Bly writes of how we spend the first 20 years of our life stuffing 90 percent of our wholeness into “the long black bag we drag behind us” and the rest of our life is spent attempting to retrieve it…long because it is so full and black because it is our shadow and we can’t see or understand its contents as we walk towards light and there is no alternative even though it is a part of us which we are reluctant to acknowledge. This was my night.
After surviving that night, and two more following, I am led to my last night alone/solo fast. One of the key ceremonies you hold during the Threshold time is a death lodge. A death lodge can take on several shapes, but the purpose of it is to invite in all those from your life and give gratitude for their presence in your life, thanking them for whatever gifts they have provided for you be it love or a hard lesson. In the death lodge you experience what it would be like to be dying and take stock of your life to date. It is very humbling to sit in the dark of the night, alone in the wilderness to face your death. I sat in my circle facing the West watching the sun go down and the night fall. The West is where the soul/psyche stage of life exists and is represented in the Earth element whereby everything falls to the ground to begin to fertilize and renew. It is a time in your life to go into the deep dark parts of your soul, our shadow selves, and face our wounds. It is believed that only through this can we turn our wounds, our suffering into our greatest gifts. I remember sitting there realizing that the ashes of my body will someday consume about as much space as a small rock, that this is how small and insignificant I am when I live a life disconnected from everything else. I realize I have to die to truly live for there can be no life without death, no beginning without an ending. Alone, in the darkness of night and more frightened than ever in my life, I keep reminding myself of this truth:
Many indigenous traditions are said to cry at birth, for that is the beginning of death, and they celebrate at the death, for that is the beginning of life.
After my death lodge and a few hours of sleep, I awake around 2am to go back into my purpose circle, facing the East time time, and awaiting for visions and rebirth. The East is the place of spirit and life beginning as the sun arises every morning for us to begin our new day. It is the place of power unseen and greater than us, mysterious and paradoxically chaotic. The Dalai Lama says the Tibetans lost their spirituality [Buddhism] until they were kicked out of Tibet. In the dark night of fleeing for their lives, they found what they had lost – their purpose and why they existed. He says there were cold and isolated before that event, the world knew little about them. But in their exile they found their voice and role in the world. This is what the East is all about, “Hay-oh-ka” is Native American for creating disorder, mixing things up when life is too serious. Let’s hope that is what is happening in our world today, that we are meeting in the East of our Mother Earth because we are lost and need to find our way back home.
