Vision Quest

EMOTIONAL FASTING AND DETOXIFICATION

ood is associated with love, gratification and is a source for our emotional needs. Going without food and daily companionship or routine facilitates emotional fasting. Most people in western culture have associations with food that are part of how they take care oftheir need for love. Without food, feelings long locked away orignored come to the surface.

"Our relationship to food is a microcosm of
all that we have learned about loving and
being loved, about our self-worth. It is the
stage upon which we reenact our childhood.
If we were abused, we will abuse ourselves with food. The degree to which we are violent, abusive, self-punishing is in proportion to the degree of violence, abuse, and punishment we received. We learned how to do it by having
it done to us.”
-Geneen Roth

As you fast you will be changing your way of relating to yourself and your body. This calls for a willingness to pay attention to what you need and be able to give it to yourself with the dedication of a mature parent who wants you to live life to its fullest. With this devotion to your emotional body, you can let go of old pain and begin to heal. This emotional detoxification and cleansing effects the mind and a new clarity is birthed that will help you change your relationship to food and to yourself.

PHYSICAL FASTING

o reestablish a healthy environment on Mother Earth begin with your own piece of Earth, your body. The respect we are willing to show our own body will be reflected back in our relationship to Mother Earth. Going without food heightens our awareness of our body. We begin to feel each breath, the touch of a stone, the slight breeze, our skin, our bones, our hunger. The toxins in our body begin to be felt and released. It is important to begin the detoxification of your body before you fast by changing your diet and preparing your body to go without food. Detoxing before your water fast will enable your body to cleanse and heal at a deeper level.

efore you arrive at the Vision Quest site, you are encouraged to have begun your physical preparation a minimum of three weeks prior to the arrival date. Conscious preparation is treating your body as a friend with intelligent awareness. THE FASTING PATH by Stephen Buhner will assist you in this preparation with clear guidelines and thoughtful suggestions that will enable you to begin to revitalize your physical body.

hen you arrive at the site there are others who, like you, have been preparing
for this time of healing, discovery and rebirth. Your guides are there to provide
information and ceremony so that all may share, question and continue to prepare
for their four days and nights of solitude at their own fasting site.

Prayer, good food and more cleansing in sweat lodge nurture this circle of questers. The first days of preparation you choose and make relationship with your solo site, asking to be welcomed and protected. During your solo time, your guides provide a means of checking on your safety daily without interfering with your solitude. Water

is always available. You are encouraged to take what you need to protect yourself from the elements by taking a minimal shelter, a tarp, and other minimal essentials to insure the maintenance of good physical health. It is a time of looking into the eyes of the other questers who also made the choice to take this time and journey into the unknown. As you walk through the portal leaving the ordinary world behind so do others, and you know that they too are fasting and listening to the wilderness within and without. You also know your guides and the support staff are in prayer and vigil for you. This unseen companionship of others becomes part of your questing time.

ach day, each night is a journey into your past, present and future. There are extended moments when the mental chatter ceases and the internal silence is filled with the present. Things become clearer and as your body is emptied, so is your past and a less encumbered future can be revealed, reflected upon and sanctioned by the mountainside you sit upon.
When you return, greeted by
your guides and those who wait
for you back at camp, you will have time to adjust to people again, eat food, take part in ceremony and begin to prepare
for the journey home.

  WAITING UNTIL SPIRIT IS HEARD
     As my prayer became more attentive and
   inward
I had less and less to say.
I finally became completely silent.
I started to listen
Which is even further removed from speaking.
I first thought that praying entailed speaking.
I then learnt that praying is hearing,
or merely being silent.
     This is how it is.
To pray does not mean to listen to oneself
speaking.
Prayer involves becoming silent,
and being silent
and waiting until spirit is heard.
-Poem describing Vision Quest by Kierlegaard

Sharing Story
In the middle of the circle there is an object called the talking stick. Sometimes, there is a special one made with care and creativity. At other times a twig, branch or stone has found its way into this circle. One by one, each quester goes to the center and picks up the talking stick. Holding it they tell their story and all listen. Sharing of story is an essential part of this journey. This is a sacred time, the sharing of deep emotions, insights, visions. Your guides listen, pray, reflect and honor the story, help with understanding and prepare the teller for the journey of returning to her life, but with new eyes, deeper understanding and perhaps spiritual imperatives previously unclaimed or unknown.

n the end, I think Coyote, the trickster of the mind who beckons us to follow our heart, is playing with us all. We are not that old as a species and not that long-lived. Although we can be incredibly resourceful and creative, our wisdom is often unseasoned. Perhaps, you will return again, once more shouldering your pack and making sacred pilgrimage, fasting and deepening your relationship with your mind, your emotions, your spirit and your body. When you realize, remember who you are and always wanted to be, you have healed the Earth by healing yourself. With that healing you can return the gift to the life around you.