Down to Earth
On this past Memorial Day weekend, I was given an unusual gift. I was allowed, along with two other people, to sit alone in the woods for three days. This adventure was called a "vision quest" and was based on a ritual from American Indian culture. I had applied for the gift, not knowing exactly what to expect but knowing what I read to you earlier: that American Indians would do this many times in their lives, when they had a dream or a vision they wanted to understand, or when they (as we would say) wanted "to get away from it all" and get a fresh perspective.
The American Indian vision quest had intrigued me for a long time. I had read the accounts of vision quests by great American Indians like Black Elk of the Oglala Sioux. I had read enough to know that the term vision quest was something of a misnomer since "quest" implies movement. On an American Indian vision quest, what you generally do is sit…and wait…and fast…and pray.
The original accounts tell of the Indians being visited by animals who spoke and who taught important lessons. And although there is a lot of talk about how all animals are precious and none more important than another, everyone knows that when an eagle or a mountain lion or a bear visits you during a vision quest, that is a very powerful symbol.
In retrospect, I realize that one hope I had was that I be visited by a hawk or a fox. The animals or plants that visit you become your totems, with which you have a special relationship, sometimes for the rest of your life.
Like Billie Wind in the passage I quoted earlier, I had heard of animals speaking, and like her I had doubted. I went on my vision quest not to hear from animals so much as to have some quiet, some calm, some time to reflect. I went out of curiosity--and because it was given as a gift.
Seven Oaks, the spiritual pathworks center in Madison County, had announced it was accepting applications from people who wanted a vision quest. The announcement gave me little information, merely requesting a letter saying why I was interested.
I was accepted in a return letter from Seven Oaks founder, Donovan Thesnega, made my preparations and arrived, still not knowing what to expect.
Much of what happened those three days in the woods was beyond my imagination. Today, I want to tell you about three or four of the many things I experienced--just a handful of experiences I still reflect on and learn form.
Donovan had stressed one basic instruction: "Pay attention." It was easy to follow his advice in my first experience. There is something about this animal that really grabs you. My first experience was with ticks. The first one crawled on me as I walked to my campsite deep in the woods. I flung it away, proud of myself for not killing it as I usually would.
I found the second tick as soon as I set my pack down and unrolled my tent. I flung it outside my camp circle, somewhat concerned. I was seeing an uncomfortable pattern here. For although I was all for remaining open-minded about the worth of all creatures, I felt a strong impulse to draw the line at parasites. I was also concerned because I had read about ticks and time in a book entitled, The Parable of the Beasts. The author cites experiments that prove that ticks have a funny relationship to time. They can live in a state of suspended animation, not aging, unaffected by heat and cold, until a mammal walks by. Then they come alive long enough to find a meal. The key is warm blood, and mine was only warm blood around.
And sure enough, I had no more than turned around before another tick was crawling up my tent. It seemed pointless to fling this tick away, so I watched to see what it did. It crawled to the top of my tent flap. It had guaranteed access to me there, but for some reason I did not move it. And it didn't move itself, for three days.
For those three days, I didn't even see another tick. But as my vision quest ended and I left my area to return to the sweat lodge where we would close the experience, a tick crawled up my leg.
I had to face it. I have a tick for a totem animal. In retrospect, I see now that ticks had been speaking to me for a long time. One of the most vivid nightmares from my childhood, a vision that I still recall with shivers, was the realization that my hair was almost completely obscured by ticks, in various stages of distension.
But what was the lesson this animal had for me? I remembered a question Donovan said we might want to ponder: "How shall I serve?" And I realized why this gift of the Vision Quest had appealed to me: I had thought it was free. Like a tick, I had come alive long enough for some hot, spiritual food.
The second experience was in many ways the most powerful for me. It began shortly after I had arrived at my site. As I stepped into an open area a few yards from my camp circle, I noticed a sapling standing alone in the clearing. It was about five feet high, cut at a sharp angle. Puzzled, I walked to it, but I still couldn't understand it. Tiny leaves sprouted all along its shaft. It was thick, an inch in diameter, straight as a ruler, with no branches, just these tiny leaves. When I touched it, it moved. In fact, it came out of the ground in my hand.
I saw then that it wasn't a sapling at all. It was a stake, cut from a living tree and thrust into the ground. And in the moist earth, it had begun to sprout and grow, even though it had no roots.
I felt badly for having disturbed it, quickly replaced it and tamped down the earth.
I remembered all this suddenly the next morning as I remembered a dream I had just woken from. I dreamed someone had picked up that stake and thrown it to the ground. And so, I had to find that stake and make sure it was all right.
I found it in the dim morning light, still upright. But the tiny leaves, which yesterday had seemed so glorious, now looked sad and wilted. I felt just like those leaves, brooding and listless as the sun got brighter. Somehow, I identified with that rootless stake, struggling to live in alien soil, just like I as struggling to adapt to this alien Indian worldview.
Later that day, I was relieved of my brooding and comforted by that stake in a most surprising way. The only interruption to my isolation during those three days came around mid-day when Donovan brought the three of us together briefly to see how we were doing and to teach us how to "get guidance."
First, we made a list of every experience that stood out in the last day and a half. Then we chose three items that seemed particularly powerful or vivid. Then we chose one. I chose the sprouting stake.
Then Donovan said, if we wanted to, we could ask for guidance from whatever we had chosen. In order to get guidance, you merely ask: "What do you have to teach me?" The hard part, Donovan warned, is that you must be open to whatever guidance you get, not just what you want to hear.
There is a technique of dream analysis used in Gestalt therapy that I use in analyzing my own dreams. The theory holds that since you have placed everything in your dream world, you know why it's there. So, you can give it a voice. This technique of "guidance" struck me as very similar. And since I had come to learn something and get outside of my usual perceptions, I didn't fight it or get busy doubting that a stake could give me guidance. Instead, I asked the question and tried to stay open to whatever "happened." It is hard to tell you exactly what followed. I didn't hear a "voice," but I can understand that someone else might say they had. Instead, I heard a very clear, strong sense of the stake. And as quickly as I could, I wrote down these words:
"I was put here for some reason neither of us understands. Do not feel guilty for me; you have taken nothing from me. I had given up on life when I was cut and shaped into a stake. Yet life flowed through me. Life is a gift that flows through us all. There are times when we all disturb the flow."
For the rest of that day and the day after, I stayed in that state of feeling open. Some of the guidance was easy to understand--and some of it was humorous. For example, I watched a red spider crawling and laying and jumping all over my area in a way that could only be described as demonstrative.
At one point, it crawled up on a twig, and I looked it in the eyes long and hard. It had two large black eyes and two smaller ones--and they were all intently focused on me. And I had the strong sense that it was telling me: "Look, four eyes; look before you leap. But for God's sake, leap!"
Other guidance was more difficult, more subtle. Upon rising my last morning, I lay on my mat to stretch.
A moth landed on the mat right under my eyes, and everything stopped while I stared at its markings. It gave me a Cherokee inkblot test. I saw a beautiful shape in brown, bordered in yellow. It first suggested a buffalo's head. And as I stared longer, the buffalo's beard became horns, and I saw a combination of clown and devil. These symbols were rich for me. The buffalo is a symbol of wisdom in American Indian religion. Beyond that, as Donovan said later, much of the work that they do at Seven Oaks brings out the devil in people by helping them to clown.
For me, the image of that moth is one of the clearest statements of the balance between wisdom and clowning, between placidity and devilment, and of the importance of embodying those opposites.
______________________
From the first hour of my vision quest, I had struggled with my impatience. Instead of encounters with sprouting stakes and ticks, I had hoped for some dramatic, large animal. An eagle was too much to hope for, but a fox--now there was something to hope to see. But every time I'd think of that, I'd realize I had to stop daydreaming and pay attention to what was really in front of me. I was actually surprised at how quiet and still I was able to be. It was undoubtedly the least I had moved since I had first started to crawl; the least I had eaten in my life; he most alone I had ever been; the least I had spoken since I first made a sound. But it was not an enforced, rigid stillness. Rather, it had come remarkably easily.
On the last day, I had struck my tent, (having placed the tick outside my circle with my thanks) packed my gear and sat waiting for Donovan to come and lead me from the woods. Behind me there as a slight noise; I rolled slowly to my left. Six feet away stood a beautiful red fox. Slowly, slowly, he walked around the edge of my circle and slipped out of sight down the creek bed. His guidance to me was clear, as though from a voice, "Walk carefully, for every step is precious."
_________________________
On reflection, my vision quest gave me a series of clear, rich images--a sort of philosophy of life in icons:
Shortly after I returned from my vision quest, I got an unexpected gift of money. Part of that I gave to Seven Oaks and part I carried to the Sunbow Trading Company. For those of you who don't know, the Sunbow is one of those rare capitalist establishments where you can't make a bad decision.
I went in with an American Indian rug in mind. Instead, this one grabbed me. After unfurling several others, I kept coming back here. This had to be the one. And as I prepared to pay, the owner asked if I wanted to hear the story of this rug.
It was a shaman rug from Turkey. In the center is a totem symbol, a beetle. And I recalled sitting in my camp circle during my vision quest, discovering an enormous dead beetle. I picked it up to examine it, and when I put it down, the hooks on its legs caught on a twig. I gently released it and laid it down. Moments later, I heard a sound and discovered my dead beetle wasn’t dead at all as it pulled its heavy body through the grass, under the rotting leaves, back against the earth.
Presented 11/17/85