I am writing about this because it seems an appropriate thing to do. If I was a young person trying to make some sense of my life a vision quest might be appropriate. However, it is a very serious thing to do and for me it consisted entirely of stopping eating and stopping drinking water for 4 days and nights. Obviously, one must be in excellent physical condition to even consider attempting this and very serious about what they are trying to do. However, present conditions in the world might warrant such a quest now and in the near future if one is an adult and still young and healthy enough to do something like this.
For me, this vision quest was relatively formal. I had a medicine man that several of my friends and I were studying with and he had said that when each of us was ready he would do the ceremonies to start our four day and night vision quests of no water or food in the wilderness. For me, this was 1983 on the North Fork of the Trinity River in Northern California in a Bear Wallow next to the river. One of my favorite past times while praying was to watch the sun sparkle off the river and imagine myself eating sunlight. This was one of the ways I tricked my mind and body to avoid eating or drinking anything for 4 days and nights. It isn't an easy thing to do because one's body and mind screams at one to drink or eat something anything. I had been on many one to 4 to 7 day water fasts before since I was a teenager and my favorite fast was an organic apple juice fast for 2 to 4 days to clean out toxins out of the body. However, now in my 60s it just doesn't appear to be that safe for me to still fast at this age. However, I might try it again now I have my Armour Thyroid from Canada to go on a water fast for 24 hours to see if I can still do that safely.
So it could be said in 1983 when I was 35 that I was well prepared for the altered prayerful states that fasting can bring. So when I shifted into no water and no food for 4 days and nights it was stressful but I could survive it both mentally and physically and maintain balance. If you can't do it and be balanced about it, it is not useful to you. So, one must have both the mental and physical discipline as well as the constitution to come out of it the other end with mental and physical health intact or it is not useful at all in the long run.
The first two sets of 24 hours were the very hardest for me. The first day I was kind of okay but the second day without either food or water was extremely difficult. Also, all we took with us was a sleeping bag, a ground cloth, a hooded jacket for warmth and a native American prayer rattle to facilitate prayer chanting native American style. We took no reading material of any kind or any electronic media of any kind. Of course this was 1983(a lot different than now).
Every morning a wood duck and all her babies(it was springtime) would come down the river in the morning and back upriver into the bull rushes for safety from critters at night with all her brood. During our vision quest two mated Bald Eagles flew overhead. So, according to native American Tradition this was a very good sign as Birds and especially Eagles are considered messengers between God and mankind(almost like angels).
After 4 days of no water or food we got up on the morning of the 5th day without water or food and walked several miles back to the sweat lodge where our medicine man was waiting for us. During the sweat he ritually gave us berries picked locally and pieces salmon to usher us back into the land of the living. It was the first ritual food we had had for over 4- 24 hour periods.
We shared as much of our experiences as we felt moved to do. Then we went to see a Star Trek Movie on the drive home to Mt. Shasta where we lived then in Redding on the way home. It was the one where Spock dies and is sent off into space. When "Amazing Grace" was played I cried because it was one of the songs I sang a lot during the vision quest from my heart. This vision quest changed my life because it answered many questions I had in my life. It is difficult to share just how much these four days changed my life in how I see my place in the universe. Let me try.
As I let hornets clean out my nostrils on the third day of fasting I realized that if one is calm enough hornets can be useful. They tend to sting when one feels fear or when one steals their food or kills them or their babies. But if you are no threat to them they usually are no threat to you.
When I heard bears coming to their wallow at night I was afraid to be harmed. But in the end I saw no bears. If they were there they were respectful and let us be. In some ways the scariest things I saw were some of my own visions. But it wasn't hard to separate the ones with meaning from the ones that were just fluff. However, many things took me years to understand properly.
But what I learned that might be the most useful to all of you is that "Within each of us is the whole universe. We each are literally a consciousness micro replica of God. Realizing and experiencing this is what the Creator intends so that we can be miniatures of Him, Her, the Being and take care of all of God's creation and be helpful to "HIM" in this way."
What I experienced those four days probably changed more how I now see the universe and my place in it than any other four days I can presently think of. Though there were many amazing moments or days in my life in the U.S., Hawaii, India and Nepal, Thailand, Japan and Canada and Europe and Mexico, these four days allowed me to experience the universe in such an amazing way it expanded my perception of what is actually is that we humans are and what we are actually capable of. From that experience I would say the average person is only about 1% of what he or she actually could be any given moment.
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