severance phase – Karen's New York Love Affair

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…

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.

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.