Naropa University – Karen's New York Love Affair

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.

Fasting for a vision: the threshold time

The time when we are preparing to undertake a vision fast is the first of the three phases of the vision fast ceremony. It is called the severance phase. The medicine walk I’ve been describing was an important step in preparing for the vision fast, as well as being a ceremony of its own.

In some ways I had been aligning my intention to undergo the mystery of the vision fast since 2003, when I decided to do the master’s program in ecopsychology at Naropa University. The vision fast was a component of the program—for 3 credits! When I read about it on the Naropa website, I was fascinated. The opportunity to partake in this mysterious ceremony of the first peoples of our land was a strong factor in my decision to pursue the program at Naropa. I wondered what it would be like to go for three days and nights without food. I wondered if I would be scared, sleeping outside, alone in the wilderness. I wondered what magic would befall me.

As I write this a golden moon hangs low in the west, shining through my kitchen window. It shares with me the warm secrets of all I have experienced between then and now. My heart glows in answering honey warmth.

This morning I have been pondering whether to share this story of my first vision fast. It is a sacred ceremony—not to be treated lightly. And yet the purpose of the vision fast is both personal and social. It is a journey of discovery of self, nature, and our place in the world. The culmination of the journey is to bring the gifts of discovery back to our people. You, dear reader, are my people. I will share my story with you.

Guides

Karen Rempel is the director of Monkey Valley Retreat Centre. She leads retreats at the centre, and also apprentices on vision fasts in Colorado and California. She teaches tools to help people find healing and guidance in nature, including the medicine walk, medicine wheel, four shields of (human) nature, other ecopsychology methods, and yoga and meditation, as well as guiding questers on vision fasts.

After a decade of working as a technical writer, she earned a master’s degree in ecopsychology from Naropa University, and trained as a vision fast guide at the School of Lost Borders. She has studied the medicine wheel since 2003 and has been a student of the Diamond Approach for many years. She is a registered yoga teacher and Reiki master, committed to providing a safe environment for self exploration and growth. She is a member of the Wilderness Guides Council.

Munro Sickafoose is a vision quest guide, an initiated man, whitewater river guide, and ceremonial leader. He has been deeply involved with indigenous earth–based ceremonies for many years. He trained as a vision quest guide at the School of Lost Borders, and has been leading groups and individuals in the wild since 1996. He has also trained at the Ojai Foundation as a facilitator in the Way of Council. He is currently Netkeeper of the Wilderness Guides Council, and is working towards a Masters of Divinity degree.

He guides at Monkey Valley and in Oregon and Washington. He also guides through the School of Lost Borders, teaching a program on the four shields of leadership with his wife, Susanna Maida. Visit his web site for details of other guiding trips he has planned.

Angela James has run 18 marathons and completed Iron Man Canada in August 2008. Angela has been a Team in Training marathon coach with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) groundbreaking charity sports training program since 2004. She no longer has Achilles tendonitis since using the ChiRunning form. Now Vancouver’s only certified ChiRunning instructor, she plans to give workshops all over the world teaching others this revolutionary technique. Her shining spirit uplifts and motivates everyone she teaches.

Angela incorporates ChiLiving as a practice along with her tea business. “Chi Tea” is her catch phrase, because she believes so strongly in the benefits of both ChiRunning and health-promoting, organic Rooibos tea. Angela is also an accomplished cello player. Visit her web site to learn about Angela’s upcoming ChiRunning workshops in Vancouver.

Kim Ashley guides vision fasts at Monkey Valley and is a life coach. She is the founder of Transformational Learning and Coaching. She is a PhD candidate in East-West Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, is a certified life coach through NLP and Coaching Institute of California, and is a member of the International Coach Federation.

She trained as a vision fast guide at the School of Lost Borders. Her background and education blend the ancient wisdom traditions of the East with contemporary success principles of the West, resulting in a step-by-step coaching approach to living with greater courage, balance, abundance, and happiness. She loves walking in the wilderness with her dog, Chai.

Musings on oil and vision quests

I have been feeling shocked, horrified, and deeply saddened by the environmental damage caused by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I am sure that millions of people feel the same way. We evolved as a species along with the other species on this earth, and are deeply affected by the massive devastation the oil spill is causing to the ocean, seashore, and many creatures living there.

To quote from an article about ecological trauma on the Greenpeace website, “Regardless of prevailing conceits, we retain learned patterns from 50 million years of primate evolution, 5 million years of hominid development, and 500,000 years of fire-bearing, tool-making hunter-gatherer culture. During this long genesis, humanity grew within the comfort and constraints of an intact ecosystem that supplied sustenance, vital lessons, wonder, and a home. Watching that home fall under the blade of industrialism shocks our system, whether we know it or not…

“In spite of our civilised ways, human psychology remains linked to our primal origins. As a result, we suffer the trauma of witnessing ecological abuse, watching wilderness obliterated, other creatures eradicated, and the Earth diminished.”

In 2004, I became inspired to study ecopsychology at Naropa University because of my desire to do something positive with my life to help preserve the animals and wild places that remain. I was also motivated by my feelings of helplessness and hatred towards the human race for what we are doing to the planet. Fortunately for me, and for the many other students at Naropa, the education there is built on a contemplative foundation. Through meditation and other practices, I learned to bring presence and a deeper awareness to my studies and my life. Experiences of the deeper truth of reality helped me to see the beauty and inherent goodness of life. Without this awareness I think it would have been intolerable to continue living in the world the way it is today. It is a miracle to me that my feelings of helplessness and hatred were transformed into feelings of hope, a deep love for the inner journey, and a commitment to doing what I can for the earth in a way that I can offer lightly and with joy.

How is this possible? Partly it is from the experiences of the deeper truth of reality, which helps give me a bigger perspective with which to hold traumatic events such as the oil spill (perhaps better described as an endless eruption of oil). A commitment to this deeper truth helps me to make my inner journey the first priority. I believe that our first task is to mature as human beings into the majestic creatures of being that we are born to be. Or at least do our best in this task! The second goal for me is to do what I can to protect and care for the earth and her creatures in the way that best uses my abilities, energy, and love. To me this means choosing action that I can take from a place of joy, rather than despair.

When I graduated from Naropa, I chose the work of being a vision quest guide as the way I had learned that brought me the strongest sense of joy, excitement, and love for my people. I thought that by guiding others to undertake a vision quest, I would be serving through helping them mature as humans and connect with their love of the earth. In this way, however the participants might choose to serve their people after the quest, they would be nourished by their connection with the earth, and perhaps guided by their love for the earth at times when it is necessary to choose a course of action.

I threw myself wholeheartedly into the path of the vision quest, seeking training with the School of Lost Borders and offering annual programs at BC Wilderness Visions. However, the results have been very modest! I have guided one faster per year, in addition to apprenticing on group fasts. This summer no fasters have decided to undertake this journey at Monkey Valley. It makes me wonder if not this, then what? Where am I being called to serve? I hold this as an open question, and am abiding in the not-knowing place of the threshold phase of the vision quest ceremony. Rather than rushing to fill the void with something new, I await deeper guidance and certainty.

It is so complex to be a human being living in North America at this time in history. We are dependent upon oil, like it or not. We all need to earn a living, and must spend a significant portion of our waking hours doing so. We can decide not to consume needlessly, and we can choose options that seem to cause the least harm, such as growing some of our own food or buying locally grown, organic produce (though many people cannot afford even this most basic choice for health). One of the things I needed to make peace with at Monkey Valley was that even though I was using solar power, I still needed to use my gas-powered car to get there. I continue to drive, too often and too fast, as long as I own that land and travel there, but also in my daily commutes around the city of Vancouver. I spend many hours a week engaged in earning a living as a technical writer, which is an effective way to pay the bills but does not help serve my planet or my people in a way that feels meaningful to me.

I feel my heart’s longing to do something worthwhile with this life. To serve my people and my planet in the best way I can, in the way I am meant to do. I guess today’s entry is my way of asking for guidance, and stating my intention. There is an excitement in the not knowing, and the longing, as I abide in this place. In the past I have shied away from direct environmental action, aside from financial contributions and participating in protests and petitions. I hold the possibility that I will be called to move into this arena more specifically. At dinner time I often thank our dear earth mother for the blessings from her body, and pray that the nourishment may help me do her work. May it be so.

Walk your blues away

You’ve probably heard that walking is good for you. It’s one of the most highly-recommended forms of exercise. It’s gentle on the body, and good for the psyche. The physical activity can get the juices flowing and even create a little endorphin high. Going for a walk is good for clearing the mind, and it’s also a great technique to use for controlling anger. Just being outside for a while and touched by the sky can lift the spirits. But this isn’t the kind of walking I’m talking about.

I’m talking about a simple practice called walking meditation. It’s different from regular walking, in part because the pace is slower. Its benefits are more profound than regular walking. It is a spiritual practice, and like many spiritual practices, the purpose is to support us in a different kind of awareness than our usual consiousness.

Our usual consciousness involves a lot of thinking! It is sometimes called our egoic mind. We use it to function in the world—planning how to talk to a coworker about a problem or new idea, deciding what to make for dinner, remembering a warm moment with a friend. As you can see, the egoic mind is usually oriented towards the past or the future. Don’t get me wrong—the egoic mind is useful, and developing a healthy ego, which includes a sense of being a separate self and other characteristics that ego psychologists have listed, is an important developmental achievement for humans. But it doesn’t stop there!

We are much more than our egoic minds, but unless we are remarkably lucky or have done a lot of inner work, we may not be aware of what that “more” is. Actually, we may not be aware THAT there is more. I believe that the midlife crisis is a waking up moment when we realize that the life of the egoic mind is not entirely satisfying. Perhaps we’ve raised a family or achieved career success. Relationships may have ended or they might be continuing, but somehow didn’t bring all that we hoped for. Maybe there’s a feeling that something is missing. A richness and aliveness that we remember life having when we were children. Or a sense of being at peace. There are many qualities to our being and to the nature of all that is that we might long for and sense are possible, but don’t experience as often as we’d like.

Walking meditation is a way to drop out of the busy thinking activity of the egoic mind and open our awareness to what else is true in the present moment. It can be a doorway into a more expanded awareness of reality. I’ve learned different forms of walking meditation over the years, at Naropa University, at Diamond Approach retreats, and elsewhere. I taught walking meditation as part of a meditation class I taught in Merritt, in which I introduced students to a variety of meditation techniques. I think having a daily meditation practice is very difficult, and also very important for developing our capacity to be aware of more than the egoic mind. I think it is so difficult that without a context such as a spiritual understanding to give meaning to the activity, and without the support of a spiritual community, it is probably not possible. But I could be wrong—if you disagree, or have had a different experience, I’d love to hear about it.

I stopped teaching meditation because I felt that without the support of a spiritual path, people wouldn’t be able to sustain their practice. But on the other hand, even meditating once and never meditating again might have a benefit. So I’ll invite you to try this for yourself, and see what you make of it. Whether or not you have a spiritual practice or want one!

Preparation: Choose a place to walk where you can walk slowly without worrying that people will think you’re weird. This could be in your home, or outside. Decide how long you’re going to walk for; I suggest 5 or 10 minutes the first time.

Let your eyes rest gently on the ground about six to eight feet (two to three metres) in front of you. Soften your gaze so your eyes aren’t focused on the details. Walking at night is good too.
Clasp your hands loosely in front of you, with your arms relaxed and hanging naturally. One way is to insert your right thumb between your left thumb and forefinger, so your left hand clasps your right thumb, and the rest of your right hand clasps your folded left hand.
Bring your awareness down out of your mind and into your feet. Feel your feet. Feel how they feel in your socks and shoes, or sandals, if you’re wearing any. Feel how they feel making contact with the earth.
Begin to walk slowly, keeping your awareness on the sensation in your feet. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to your feet.
At the end of the time you have set, increase your awareness to include the space in and around your body. Take a few moments to notice what you are aware of.

Blessings on your journey.