Vision Quest Reflection
Dottie Sayward Wylie
Along the lines of "here's what I know...now" here are
some thoughts...
I wrote this several months ago, after the Sept. Reunion of the
group who completed the Vision Quest in Aug. 2012. For many reasons it got
forgotten and was not posted.
"The human art form is in uniting fruitful activity with
a contemplative stance- not one or the other, but always both at the same
time."
(from Richard Rohr's Falling Upward)
At a recent reunion of women who had completed a Vision Quest
together, I heard and saw how vital the desire to manifest this "human art
form" seems to be. So many of us in the group spoke to this desire in one
way or another. It seems to be something that lies deep within us, and perhaps
becomes more visible and pressing as we move into the later years of our life.
We are in different life circumstances, and have different personalities
and ways of being, but we all are balancing, juggling, rushing, working,
playing even as another part of us yearns for peace, quiet, and a time and
place just to be. It seems to be about balance, and that was clear in the
stories of the women who had all been on this transforming wilderness quest.
How was it possible to bring what we had experienced back into our daily world?
The Vision Quest group is made up of women of all ages, with
most being over 50. Some are working, some in school, some retired. We spent an
incredible 9 days in the wilderness of the California Inyo Mountains, east of
the Sierra Nevada near Mono Lake. For 3 days we each spent time totally alone,
somewhere in the vicinity, fasting with only water. The preparatory time
beforehand, the gathering and traveling, the sharing, the deepening of our own
process, our increasing trust of each other, all gently worked on us so that
our defenses and personas began to fade away. We all brought our intentions and
ideas of why we had come, our fears and trepidation and our brave hopes.
Inevitably the outcomes were often unexpected, as each individual had her own
unique encounter with the gorgeous landscape, magnificent rock outcroppings,
old growth Jeffrey pines, thick-trunked lodge pole pines, fragrant sage, the
perfect weather, the warm sun, the deep darkness, the rhythms of nature,
thunder, lightning, and the small creatures of the earth and air. How these
encounters acted as a mirror for each of us is what we remember. Therein were
the messages, the lessons, the power and sacredness of the encounter. How we
interacted with nature, with what we found, experienced, smelled, felt and heard
reflected back to us who we are. The outside world turned us inward to see its'
reflection. Our coping, our courage, our fearful moments, our realizations of
what we no longer needed in our lives, our letting go of the old, powerfully
taking on the new, marking our grieving, our sadness and welcoming our
joyfulness- all found their place in the totality of our experience in a
wilderness that became our home.
We moved from the protected, safe, familiar, comfortable
environment we knew into a totally unknown, potentially unsafe, unfamiliar,
uncomfortable environment and experienced it transformed into a crucible. Here,
stripped of our protections and false notions, we became friends with the truth
of ourselves at this point in time. And then, after reuniting and sharing our
stories with the others in our base camp, we returned to the world and to the
hardest part of all. How does one bring this experience back into the
familiarity of our daily life? How do we ever see our world in the same way
again?
At the Reunion I heard stories of how quickly we were caught up
again in the pace, in the responsibilities, in the push and pull of daily
demands; how new or unresolved problems rose up into our days and nights. How
our euphoria at the end of the quest was slowly eroded by doubt and despair as
to how we could really bring our new life into the old. How do we live in the
world, and yet be not consumed by it? How do we find balance between the inner
and the outer? Age-old questions...
Numerous answers have been given to these questions all through
the ages, suggestions made, theories put forth. For me it is a continual
unfolding as I become more and more conscious of my reasons for what I am
choosing to do. I am grateful every day that my life today does not require me
to work at a job in order to survive. However, I can very easily take on
"doing" in my life to the point that it replicates that very
situation and I am once again without the balancing state of non-doing, of
peaceful restful or soulful activities that fulfill an inner yearning to
create. What I know now is that the "doing" is not inherently the
problem. It is the lack of awareness or consciousness about what is motivating
it that can cause the problem.
It requires me to stay very aware and mindful enough to stop if
I am out of balance, to reassess, to "contemplate," - to listen
to my heart and make changes. Again, I am grateful I have that freedom. If it
is a "fruitful activity" and one that I can fully support with my
heart and soul, I feel balanced. "Doing" to be busy, to distract
myself from what needs attention, to avoid - that leads me to imbalance. The
inevitable next step of stress and irritability, in my case, always wakes me
up.
One thing I do know now is that on one level we really don't
have a choice if we are aware and listening to the truth inside. There is only
one choice, the one that is authentically ours. Yes, it's perhaps more
complicated than that. We are led by our egos down other paths; we listen to
old messages, to outside influences and pressures. But one day we learn, one
day when we actually experience the liberation from those forces and become
friends with our own deepest essence.
Our questing women also were discovering that it actually might
be possible to bring new life into the old. Finding that we are the new life,
we know the shifts we feel are real. We are living into it, slowly and in our
own rhythm, just as nature transforms herself each season, as surely as the
seeds are germinating in the dark. We bring our newness back into the world,
and listen, always listen to our own signals of imbalance. It's an inside job.
Perhaps all it takes is a deep breath to bring us back to "fruitful
activity and contemplation."
Dottie Sayward Wylie
September 2012
