Wild Woman – Page 20 – Karen's New York Love Affair

In love with the night – night running, that is

Just back from an amazing full moon trail run along the Burrard Inlet. Once again I am in love with the night and with night running. Night runs are the special ones. They usually happen when life is so busy I have to just push against the limits and boundaries and go for a run after dark. Thinking about some of my favourite night runs tonight, I realized that they most often occur at or near the full moon. Maybe I have wolf blood!

Tonight, running on the trail, there were glimpses of the lovely moon, near full, gleaming through the trees. At other times, the trail was in deep shadow. I literally could not see if there was a trail in front of me. Running into the shadows I felt the night thick around me, a palpable presence. Velvety, luminous, warm, and contactful. Those precious moments reawakened the enchantment of life.

Other night runs I recall have been equally entrancing. I remember vividly a long run along a deserted paved road in the White Mountains, winding up towards the Bristlecone Pine forest, home of some of the oldest living beings on earth. Running in the dark, following the faint glow of the painted line down the middle of the road, the night was a luminous dark mist around me. Another amazing night run was the Klondike Road Relay, which I have described to you before. The road led from Skagway, Alaska, through a mountain pass and on down to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. If you recall, that run began with a white mouse crossing my trail.

The adventurous Nancy Wake, who was a spy in World War II, died recently. She was also known as the White Mouse. I am sure she had many night adventures, much more daring and harrowing than the moments I have recounted here. What a zest for life she had! May her spirit be at peace.

Nature’s mirror and guidance on the medicine walk

On Saturday, July 16, three hardy souls joined me for the four directions teaching and medicine walk at the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve. The day was grey but our hearts were light as we joined together in the ancient ceremony of sitting in circle on the earth. Our basecamp was in a sand-floored clearing beside the Seymour River. The river’s water level was much higher than it was during last year’s event, due to all the rain Vancouver has been getting this year. I was worried that the entire clearing might be under water, but luckily, there was space for us to put up a tarp to seek shelter from the rain. The participants helped me to erect the tarp, and I must say we erected a very skookum shelter for ourselves! There was a slight mishap with a falling branch, but luckily no harm was done and it became part of our group story for the day.

There was a berry-filled bank of bushes containing the gold to ruby tones of salmon berries, and we stopped to sample these on our way to the basecamp site, and again on our way back up the trail at the end of the day. It is so wonderful to find literal as well as figurative nourishment from nature, freely offered! One of the gifts of the south and summertime is the lush fruits of the earth, there to pluck and to share with the other creatures.

Once our shelter was ready, we set up an altar with coloured stones for the four directions. Each person placed an object that was special to them on the altar, and we had a circle-round of sharing our current state in the moment and our intentions for the walk. I felt very moved by how strongly each person had felt called to come on this walk to explore something they cared deeply about. When I set the date and put out the offering for the day’s event, I offered the day quite lightly (partly because I never know if anyone will want to accept the offer), but it seems to send forth an energetic beam that draws people who are really into what I am offering. This is magical to me, and I am so grateful. As I have mentioned previously on this blog, the flow of events unfolding is an important indicator to me of how to offer my gifts into the world. If I offer something and there is no response, I conclude either it is not the right time, or it is not the right offering. This year three people came, and a few others almost came, so this tells me the flow is happening! And that bringing the nature teaching closer to Vancouver (rather than only offering events at Monkey Valley) was a good idea. I feel so psyched about the medicine walk day that I am inspired to offer a yoga and the four directions workshop in the same location in September!

After a teaching on the four directions, and some grounding in safety principles for their solo walk, the three participants set off on their three-hour meander through the woods. When they returned, all safe and not even too wet considering the heavy downpour that occurred during the first hour of their walk, I felt joyful to see their faces. We had a late lunch together, and each person told their story of what occurred during their walk. It was such a gift to hear how nature responded to their open-hearted intentions. Each person had a unique story, and it was fascinating how the details of their journey reflected their inner guidance and wisdom. The mirroring of nature is so beautiful! I am always amazed at how it seems that exactly what is needed is what occurs on the medicine walk, in the sacred space of the ancient ceremony. The perfection of the unfolding of the universe is revealed so clearly when the intention is to see.

Next steps on Decision Road

Today I’d like to pick up the story of my journey to my first vision fast. When I left you last time, I had set out on the road trip to Boulder, Colorado, for a week-long intensive at Naropa University, prior to going with my classmates to our vision fast site in Wyoming.

The first night of my trip I had camped in BC. The next day I travelled through Idaho, finishing the day at a Super 8 Motel in White Hall, Montana. Bad idea! It was a tough day overall, as I passed a total of three dead deer by the highway. I was exhausted by the time I reached White Hall, and thought I’d treat myself to a motel room rather than camping. I checked in after midnight. I was relieved to just be able to crawl into bed, but I soon found that I felt itchy and creepy. I looked more closely under the sheets and saw bedbugs. Gross! I still feel itchy just remembering this event that took place 6 years ago!

I brought in my sleeping bag from the car, and slept on the floor. I woke at 6:00 am and wanted to hit the road right away. I left a note for the manager, with a sample bedbug on a kleenex, asking for my money to be refunded. The office didn’t open until 8:00 am, and I didn’t want to wait around, so I packed to go, carefully shaking all my belongings to make sure I didn’t carry any of the bedbugs on my journey. (Needless to say, I never heard a word from the Motel 8 manager, and my money was not refunded on my credit card.) Perhaps this event was one of the heroic ordeals that the adventurer must pass through on the journey to the treasure!

The next day’s drive was better, and I paused to visit with flowers and a Russian olive tree on the way. The Russian olive tree is a survivor, and it reminds me of my family’s history. Transplanted in the new world and finding nourishment, even thriving. I saw a prairie dog, lots of magpies, and 3 antelope. I’d never seen antelope before, so this was a special treat. I was driving through the grasslands of Wyoming. The land was so beautiful, but it saddened me that all the fields were fenced off and “owned.” Although the rain continued, the soft mist felt like a gentle holding, palpable, soft, and loving.

I reached my friend Tom’s place near Boulder by 7:30 pm, in plenty of time to settle in, pitch my tarp in the back yard, have a shower, and rest from the journey before class started the next morning.

The week at Naropa sped by, with each thought, dream, and learning seeming to have significance for the upcoming vision fast. So much was new and unfamiliar, it allowed me to open to new parts of myself. I dreamt that one of my teachers was in the back yard at Tom’s with me, whirling me around and hugging me. Energy and essence of many colours swirled around and through us as we whirled.

A classmate set me up on a blind date, and it was the perfect date. We had a delicious dinner at a restaurant in Boulder called Saffron (wonderful vegetarian food), and then happened upon an outdoor movie as we walked through the streets. It was The Motorcycle Diaries, a foreign film—the dramatization of a motorcycle road trip that Che Guevara went on in his youth that showed him his life’s calling. The theme of road trip as inner journey continues! I hoped that my upcoming vision fast would show me my life’s calling… To be continued…

Another view of anger

Readers of this blog will recall that one of the themes I have explored through my work in nature and writing on this blog is the phenomenon of anger. New insights keep arising over time, and new information comes to light that I’d like to share with you. Last time I wrote about Gabor Maté’s book When the Body Says No. He explores the relationship between stress and illness, and documents research that links the suppression of negative emotions with the likelihood of relapse or death in cancer patients. There is a very strong link between repressing anger and disease, because repressing anger increases physiological stress on the organism. Not only that, but “the experience of anger has been shown to promote healing or, at least, to prolong survival”! (p. 269)

This is a new perspective on anger that I have not come across before. Yet the expression of rage leads to high blood pressure and heart disease. That doesn’t sound healthy either. What is a person to do? The resolution to the paradox is that both repression and rage are ways of avoiding the genuine experience of anger. According to Toronto doctor and psychotherapist Allen Kaplin, “Healthy anger… is an empowerment and a relaxation. The real experience of anger ‘is physiologic expereince without acting out. The experience is one of a surge of power going through the system, along with a mobilization to attack. There is, simultaneously, a complete disappearance of all anxiety. When healthy anger is starting to be experienced, you don’t see anything dramatic. What you do see is a decrease of all muscle tension.'” (pp 270-1) Astonishing!

When experiencing rage, people tighten up, breath shallowly, and tense their muscles. These are all signs of anxiety! Gabor explains that acting out through bursts of rage is a defence against the anxiety that invariable accompanies anger as a child:

Anger triggers anxiety because it coexists with positive feelings, with love and the desire for contact. But since anger leads to an attacking energy, it threatens attachment. Thus there is something basically anxiety-provoking about the anger experience, even without external, parental injunctions against anger expression… Naturally, the more parents discourage or forbid the experience of anger, the more anxiety-producing that experience will be for the child. In all cases where anger is completely repressed or where chronic repression alternates with explosive eruptions of rage, the early childhood history was one in which the parents were unable to accept the child’s natural anger. (pp 271-2)

Gabor goes on to describe the two forms of defence people tend to use against feeling the aggressive impules of anger. One defense is to act out by yelling, hitting, or swearing. This is a defense against keeping the anger inside where it can be deeply felt. The other defense is to repress the anger. Both of these methods, as we have seen, lead to illness. (Gabor documents this extensively in his book.)

Gabor concludes that anger does not require hostile acting out. It is a feeling to be experienced. Learning to do that can be difficult (because of the incredible anxiety that often co-exists with anger), and it is something a trained person such as a therapist can help us learn to do. In the times when I have successfully felt my anger as a physical experience, it is actually quite simply a feeling of heat and energy in my body. It is sometimes even beautiful—a sparkly strawberry-red substance that can even have a sweet taste!

The second thing about anger is that it contains valuable information. If instead of acting out I can consider what triggered the anger, I can learn what is really going on (or, often, what I think is going on but is actually just an old pattern being activated in my psyche). Do I feel threatened and powerless? Unloved? Not considered? Has someone trespassed on my boundaries? Whatever the case may be, the anger can give me the energy needed to effectively deal with the situation. This is much different than unconsciously acting out my rage!

As I have mentioned before, anger and the red essence are energies we can work with in the direction of the south in the four shields psychology. It is very valuable work, learning to protect our inner child through the skillful expression of anger. BC therapist Joann Peterson says “Anger is the energy Mother Nature gives us as little kids to stand forward on our own behalf and say I matter“! (p. 274)

Addicted to stress

Taking a brief detour from the journey to Boulder, Colorado, I want to tell you today about [Vancouver doctor, researcher, Buddhist, music-lover] Gabor Maté’s book When the Body Says No. He explores the relationship between stress and illness, and in this passage, describes how stress can be addictive:

For those habituated to high levels of internal stress since early childhood, it is the absence of stress that creates unease, evoking boredom and a sense of meaninglessness. People may become addicted to their own stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, Hans Seyle [pioneering Czech-Canadian stress researcher] observed. To such persons stress feels desirable, while the absence of it feels like something to be avoided.

As I reported in an earlier entry, I have been experimenting with removing sugar (and also caffeine) from my diet. I expected this would lead to a much calmer state overall, without the artificial stimulants in my body. I also changed my meditation practice from evening to morning, so that I would be starting the day from connection with the ground of my being, and have that calm as a touchstone throughout the day.

In spite of these changes, I’ve been finding that the symptoms of stress in my body are growing! Not reducing, as I would have expected. How is that possible? Because I started working 45-50 hours per week, in a very stressful work environment, on a chaotic project with impossible deadlines. Oh! The curious thing is to realize how much I enjoy and seem to thrive in this environment. I feel energized all day. I love the rush. I usually come home feeling tired and satisfied (on the days when I am not up in arms or completely frustrated)!

I realized when I read the preceding passage from When the Body Says No that I am indeed addicted to stress, and the hormones that come with it. To slow down feels uncomfortable, each day and every time. Even just anticipating it feels scary. Who will I be if I don’t do this crazy thing? A big nobody! I am laughing at myself, but the feelings are true. It is the most difficult adventure of all to quiet, and allow space for the unknown to emerge within my soul.

P.S. I took the top photo on a country road near Horsefly, BC. I was very moved that the people who lived there cared for their child, and wanted to protect him or her by placing this sign up for all to see, so that drivers would be aware their child might be on the road and unable to hear the coming vehicle.

Rentals

Renting the Retreat Centre

The Monkey Valley Retreat Centre is pleased to create a rental arrangement customized to your needs, whether you are planning a private meditation retreat in nature or wish to bring a group of 30 for a yoga weekend. The remote location of the land is ideally suited to nature pursuits such as stargazing, bird watching, and winter activities such as snowshoeing and cross-country skiing.

Prices vary according to group size and whether you will be providing your own meals. Please contact us for a customized rate package.

Examples

Winter special: log cabin rental for 1-6 people—$2,000/month or $1,250 for two weeks
Camping groups of 5 to 50—$20/person/day (meals excluded)
Summer log cabin rental for 1-6 people—$400/group/day (you do the cooking)
Solo camping meditation retreat—$350/week (meals included)
Solo camping meditation retreat—$150/week (meals excluded)
Solo meditation retreat with indoor accommodations—$500/week (meals included)
Organic meals cost $30-50/person/day.
Rentals provide exclusive use of the land, affording your group complete privacy.

Life in the Wild

The Monkey Valley Retreat Centre is truly in the wilderness. Our nearest neighbours are about 30 kilometres away.

Monkey Valley is surrounded by crown lands on all sides, affording an exceptional experience of privacy and feeling of being away from civilization. The retreat centre is off the grid, which means that no power lines or phone lines go to the property. We do all we can to maintain the wildness of this place.

The way of life at Monkey Valley is designed to minimize human impact on the earth. The retreat centre runs on solar power, with an energy-efficient, quiet backup generator for extended cloudy periods. We use as little energy as possible, and try to keep waste to a minimum. We use biodegradable products as much as possible, because the water that goes down the drain eventually finds its way to the creek.

Our water supply is from an underground spring that is bountiful year round. The water has been tested to ensure it is safe for your drinking. It is crystal-clear and delicious, straight from the tap.

The centre has a cell phone for emergency use. Your cell phone will work in the house, but we encourage you to unplug from it while you are here!

The retreat centre is a haven for steeping in the energies of nature. Time here is free from traffic, TV, radio, and newspapers. We honour and acknowledge the shamanic traditions that use mind-altering substances to shift consciousness. However, at Monkey Valley we don’t use these methods to journey to other states of awareness and deepen into our true nature. No recreational drugs or alcohol are permitted at the retreat centre.

When you come to the retreat centre we will teach you about low-impact camping and ways of being in harmony with the land and her creatures. We also teach safety topics such as how to stay found and how to handle wild-life encounters.

Severance phase: setting out on Decision Road

John Boyer, one of our guides for the upcoming vision fast in Wyoming, taught us some aspects of the Lakota people’s vision quest ceremony. The first stage of the vision fast is called “Decision Road.” This is part of the severance or preparation phase, in which we make the decision to commit to the fast—to fasting for a vision for our people.

On June 10, 2005 I set out on the drive to Boulder, Colorado, where I would be meeting my classmates at Naropa University. I felt like I was truly on Decision Road. The sense of sacred ceremony that I had felt on the medicine walk lived in me still, and imbued my road trip with the same feeling of magic. Two nights previously I had a dream in which John had recognized my abilities and acknowledged them publicly to my people. There had been a romantic element in the dream as well, which had filled my heart with gladness. Although I forgot about the dream soon after, the sense of warm-heartedness from the dream also imbued my journey.

I left Monkey Valley at about 3 in the afternoon. As I drove east along Highway 3, I could feel my identities and attachments peeling away. I had a vision of cords dissolving—the cords that bind me to my people. It was dark when I decided to make camp at the Johnston Creek Provincial Campsite, about 45 minutes east of Osoyoos. I hadn’t made it out of BC yet, but luckily I wasn’t in a hurry. The campsite was near the highway, but there was a noisy creek between the campsite and the highway, which eliminated most of the traffic noise.

It only took me 35 minutes to set up camp in the dark, and in the rain! I was pleased. I used my car (the yellow Tracker), a picnic table, and two trees to hold up the tarp. I meditated in my car for 40 minutes, while it rained, and then tightened the tarp cords before climbing under and into my sleeping bag. I read in bed a little, and a moth came to visit, attracted by my flashlight. Then I saw a small mouse-like creature running silkenly towards me, then dart under the car. So I had a visit from mouse too! My dear friend.

I thought back over the trip so far. I’d been feeling a great deal of pleasure while I was driving, sometimes very intense. An intimate singing aliveness in my body. A short distance after Princeton I began to smell sage through the open car roof. I pulled over at the side of the road, and went to see it more closely. I gave Reiki to the sage and asked permission to take some of its leaves for sacred purposes. It smelled so good. I smelled each leaf as I picked it, and gave Reiki to each plant I picked from. As I left I picked up a piece of trash. I looked up and there were two rainbows hanging against the mountains across the highway. What a beautiful sight and gift! Then I saw that the driveway I’d parked on belonged to the Lower Similkameen Indian Band. These people had hunted and fished on the land at and around Monkey Valley. I felt that they were blessing my journey. A gift from my people! What a wonderful start to my trip. The rainbows lasted for a few minutes, and became double and triple rainbows—three or four of them as I drove along. Decision Road is the beauty way!

Fasting for a vision: naming my intentions

As I mentioned last time, writing a letter of intention was one of the preparation tasks in the severance phase of the vision fast. I wrote a 6-page letter and sent it to the two guides. Here I include the part where I focused on my hopes for the vision fast:

“When considering what I seek from the vision fast, my mind naturally turns to my desire for a strong, clear vision of my life’s purpose. What are my gifts? How can I best be of service? What is it I am here on this earth to do? To be? Certainly answering these questions is an ongoing, lived experience that is already underway.

“Perhaps there are harder questions that I need to bring to the vision fast. Questions like what prevents me from opening my heart to my direct experience? I long to let go of the habitual patterns of ego that keep me busy, planning, and unable to respond freely in the moment. These patterns also prevent me from being touched by what is happening in the moment. I noticed on a recent visit with my mother that I could see her vulnerability, and feel my love for her, yet my defensiveness prevented me from being fully present with her in a fresh way in the moment. I know these defenses were necessary, and served a purpose. What healing needs to occur within me to let go of them now? I want to be touched by my life and my interactions with others! I want to be open to people and to what is arising, not to act in the patterned ways of my ego. I long to be able to trust the moment. I want to know the open luminosity of my true nature. I have tastes of the incredible richness of the true nature of reality, yet so often my experience is dulled by the ego-supporting activities of my mind.

“I want to lay myself bare in the vision fast. To lay myself bare on the bare earth, and let everything that is not real be stripped away.

“I want to help the child part of me grow up in the vision fast. I have been independent and supporting myself for over twenty years, yet there is still the part of me that is hoping someone will come along and look after me. There is still the part of me that is looking for my father’s love. And maybe my mother’s too! I haven’t met my living partner yet, and this is something my heart longs for. I have a deep yearning for that, and a corresponding sadness. Somehow the two things seem interconnected—the fact that I haven’t let the little girl grow up, and the fact that I haven’t met my living partner. I understand that the vision fast is a rite of initiation that has the potential to grow me up. I state my intention to let the ritual transform me into a true adult. While honoring the gifts of the little girl. The possibility that she has gifts to offer didn’t occur to me until now.”

Reading this now, I smile at the self I was then, and the connection I have since shared with my little girl within, some of which I have shared on this blog. I celebrate the warm intimacy we share in my heart. I also smile because I still have many of the same questions about life purpose. I wonder if I will ever know the answers! To be continued.

Fasting for a vision: preparing for the journey

The story of the vision fast I was going to undertake in June 2005 begins with the preparations I made in the threshold phase. The vision fast was a component of the three-week residential portion of the summer semester at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. This would be my fourth trip to Boulder; I’d previously attended three other residential sessions. The last one was in January of 2005, in Boulder, when my class met our two vision fast guides and we had the opportunity to ask questions to help us prepare for what lay ahead.

The two guides, Nancy Jane and John Boyer, were very patient with us. I was worried about wild animals, and whether my sleeping bag would be warm enough. I was somewhat belligerent as I spoke my questions to these two strangers who would be guiding me and my classmates. Other people in my class asked about different aspects of the ceremony, such as meal planning before and after, and what to do on the solo time. As we sat around the table in the Naropa cafeteria, excitement mixed with anxiety as our questions tumbled out. I didn’t realize yet how significant these two people and the vision fast ceremony would be to me.

Nancy Jane and John had guided together many times. For many years, they had taken the Grade 12 Waldorf School students in Boulder out for a rites of passage vision fast. Nancy Jane also guided for the School of Lost Borders, and John had put hundreds of fasters out on the land near his ancestral ranch in Wyoming. My group was going to fast in the red desert of Wyoming too, at a special place that John had known since his boyhood when he had gone out gathering fossils and arrowheads. It was a place that the Native Americans had used for sacred ceremonies, perhaps for thousands of years. Ancient stone circles and other evidence of sacred ceremonies remained on this land, and wild horses lived there too.

To help us prepare for the ceremony, we had been given various tasks to perform. The medicine walk was one. Another was to write a letter of intention, stating what we were claiming on the vision fast—our reason for undertaking this rite of passage—an ordeal that would involve sacrifice, discomfort, and the risk of death. I had also been writing down my dreams, and performing impomptu sacred ceremonies on my land. During this time of preparation, it seemed that everything was infused with mystery, magic, and significance.

One cold evening at Monkey Valley in February, wondering what my intention really was, I went out into the cold starry night to find out my true heart’s desire. I found it was to be right there, in the cold starry night, on a rock with snow and trees around. Nowhere else. Not different than exactly how I was and reality was in that moment. It was to meet my man-god, fully matching my godself. It was to open out and be consumed by the whole valley and hills. To dissolve into the breadth of it. It was to have the black mystery swoop in and engulf me, annihilate me. It was to know the mystery. And too, to know the sacred embrace of making love with all that—the dark mystery. The passion of being alive filled me there in the darkness. To be continued.