My
favorite part of Vision Quest is listening to the stories the Questers
tell about their four days of solo time and
the opportunity to reflect their stories back to them. What follows
is my story of my experience as a guide on this Ukrainian Vision
Quest.
Almost
half the group had quested the previous year in
the Carpathian Mountains. Questions of integration arose
even in the preparation
phase. Some provocative themes and ideas emerged.
I had brought an
American songbook with me for company and entertainment
while traveling and while holding base camp. One song caught
my attention and wouldn’t
let me go, “The Rivers of Babylon”,
which I had first heard sung by Jimmy Cliff many
years ago. Here are the words:
By
the Rivers of Babylon where we sat down,
And where we wept to remember Zion,
The wicked carry us away, captivity,
Required of us a song.
How can we sing Grandfather’s song in a strange land?
And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of
my heart
Be acceptable in thy sight over I.
In the original song the question is “How can we sing the Lord’s
song…?" I opened our circle on integration by singing and talking about
this song, the theme of finding oneself taken out of one’s holy or
sacred land, an alien in a strange land. This happened to the ancient Hebrews
in the
Biblical story alluded to in the song. They were taken to Babylon, the site
America’s
present war of terrorism. The story was picked up by Christian Africans taken
as slaves to the Americas. They were and are Coptic Christians with heritage
and traditions going back to Ethiopia in the time of King Solomon. And thirdly,
many of our Native American teachers come from peoples uprooted from their
ancient and sacred homelands and confined to the strange land of reservations.
Fourth,
many people returning to the cities from Vision Quest feel they have lost
a briefly rediscovered sacred homeland and are now exiled in a “strange
land”.
The answer in the song is the profession of faith in spite of captivity and
exile contained in the last two lines. What will each of us formulate as
a touchstone
for faith in and remembrance of our experiences on the Sacred Mountain?
I
wrote what follows as an assurance that I am as capable as the
next human being of having a crisis of faith. So I had a crisis
of faith and found new
strength
in this circle Eastern Europeans seeking to walk a path of Beauty and Spirit.
The spiritual experiences of these relative newcomers reopened the channels
of Truth, Awe, and Euphoria in this Elder who had come to their country
to facilitate
their Rebirths. How wondrously synchronous and deliciously and fully circular!
So what follows is the story of the ordeal, death, and rebirth of my Vision
Quest in base camp. Watch me descend into ashes and emptiness while doing
my best to
follow the directives I’ve built up over the years for holding space
for others. Watch me be penetrated to the Source of my own Love, Joy and
Bewonderment. Watch this Elder Brother whose vision had included taking
Vision Quest to these
wonderful Ukrainians and Russians refind his visionary Self in communion
with his new-found younger siblings. Watch us be reborn together. And I
reflect
on
myself writing this as part of my ongoing integration of this latest Quest.
Love and Light!
My
Ukraine has become an elusive dream lover. She is fascinating,
tantalizing and the source of numerous peak experiences. I think
she is mine to possess
and enjoy to my heart’s content. I shower her with kisses, and
she resembles that particular one beloved in youth who broke my heart
and rode a foggy wind
out of town. Here she has returned with all the innocence of that time
of life and all the promise to live happily ever after. We have neither
moved in together
nor been unfaithful, so our illusions of perfection are intact. But of
course in my cycle of depression she becomes an empty and ugly hag full
of desolation
and unrequited hopes and desires, only to show up again within a few
days with all the promises and hormonal exhilaration of youthful love.
What a mistress!
What a soulmate! And on this trip I was indeed for several days the knight
Parsifal after his rapturous night with the beautiful princess in her
sumptuous tent.
Suddenly awake with a parched throat and a headache, I found myself lying
on bare hard ground with a hot sun baking me into the earth. She had
abandoned
me, and though I had to go on, there were no clues as to which direction
to search
and no tender breast on which to lay my head and seek solace. We had
kissed passionately and now a barrier had arisen seemingly out of nowhere
and prevented
further consummation.
Aching and bereft there was only my old reliable fallback position. Try
to cultivate Buddha-hood. Meanwhile I went unconscious quite a bit and
consoled
my aches and
pains with apothecary formulas and felt like resigning from my life.
Fortunately
in this story of an errant knight, Princess Anima returned and
her name was Oksana, Misha, Vika, Sveta, Seryorgia, Yulia, and
Sasha.
S/he
expected
the best of me. S/he expected wisdom, understanding, deep feeling,
entertainment, clarity and insight. And s/he seemingly knew that
I could supply these
things. S/he knew that we could love and care for each either and gaze
profoundly into
each other’s souls. And this knowledge carried me like the most powerful
of ocean currents, like the warm reliable trade-winds wafting over a southern
sea. My sails filled and billowed and my ship began to cut through the water
just like it was designed to accomplish this precise action. Princess Anima’s
love and expectations breathed new life and inspiration into these
limp and hollow sails caught in the doldrums of a muggy equatorial
season. Together
we soared
like eagles. We soared like bumblebees. As children of the Sun our
souls strode lightly over damp leaves in a cool dark forest. Our light
shone from behind
the clouds. We learned and began to manifest the gentle fierceness
of a spike-horned Hart. We sought our own Source. We rode the Four
Winds and gazed at our reflections
in the Four Mirrors. We learned to love and hug like Bears. And we
danced the brightest, most vibrant Red we could muster. The universe
itself paused to
glance
in our direction unable not to take notice of something deliciously
special getting served up in the Meadow of Yellow Flowers, in the White
Birch Forest,
beside
the Talking Creek where Trees of Knowledge give Names to People.
We
watched the sun go down. We felt the movement of the river and
observed the natural flow and exchange of all living relationships
in the taking
of a single
breath. Epiphanies arrived like bullets to the head or close encounters
with flights of lightning bugs. Rattling in preemptive emptiness
cleared space for
moments of meditative bliss and beauty. Sometimes we even claimed
that cleared space as our own. Visited by the foundation of necessary
memories,
we could
claim our femininity, our masculinity, our adulthood, our playful
child, our Spirit,
our grief and other pain. Having claimed our space we could contemplate
whose claim had greater merit, ours or the flies. Our hearts became
heavy and overburdened
with the events and conditions of our lives. Our hearts became light
and easy in the purity and simplicity of each unique moment. We survived
our
ordeals.
We made declarations of faith in our Selves. We reveled in the pristine
presence of butterfly accompanists, and when lizards and deer visited
we felt especially
blessed and guided. We wandered in our dreams and wrestled with chimeras,
and lost things and found things and discovered pieces of our Selves
in the strangest
places. We were given confirmations of spiritual gifts. We celebrated
diversity. We found prayers of Nature to express the desires of our
hearts and souls
and saw signs that our prayers had been heard. We gave birth to ourselves
in all
of our perfect ugliness and imperfect beauty.
We
purified our Selves in the steam of traditional Ukrainian banyas
and the cold flowing water of our Talking Creek. We returned to
the world
and the challenges
of the world and the pleasures of the world in the village of Lumshory.
We feasted
on Hungarian stew and shashlik, Ukrainian barbeque, and wild mountain
blueberries. We ate. We drank. We were merry. We danced like coyotes
and returned to
our homes with new stories by which to tell our Selves who we really
are. We have
expanded
our visions and experiences of all our Relations with new understandings
of Right Relationship. We are preparing to give back and give away
to the sources
of our
gifts and pleasures and to the great mystery and circle of the
Medicine Wheel which includes everything that is, was, and will
be. This ten-fold
story of
eight Questers and two Guides goes on with an expectation of more
miracles and revelations.
This story goes on with an understanding of cycles of darkness,
dementia and depression. This story experiences confluence, the
ebb and flow
of yin and
yang. We are Nature wherever we go, whatever we do. We are human
beings, the two-legged
ones, cultivating congruence with our Visions of Spirit, Nature,
and Inner Voice.
