experiences
with
vision quest

where to begin?

In answer to the curiosity about Vision Quest and what it is all about, I have been asked to write a few words on where I stand now, somewhere along the road that leads into unfamiliar terrain. How does one write about something they are still undergoing? There are volumes of questions that I still have myself.

Then again, I have advanced far enough along in the practice of Vision Quest to look back and see the road traveled, peruse the lessons learned, and speak about them to a certain degree. I am also at a point on the path where I look forward into the mist of the unknown, with a certain trepidation that comes with that feeling of wild freedom and exploration of the vistas yet to be experienced in this work. I walk with equal parts of reverence and disquiet because I have experienced a part of this work, and it is profound, life altering, as the veil between the inner and outer inexorably becomes diaphanous the more the work is engaged in.

This work is about integrating ones (new found) inner awareness back into the world of external awareness. As this happens a commingling occurs not just of perception, but more importantly action. I can only chuckle to myself at reading these words as I think back to my start of this work. So sure was I about what was about to transpire. After all I had had studied with the B.O.T.A for years and also been under the tutelage (and still am) of my mentor. While both of these definitely made fertile my inner earth, composting it, preparing it, nothing but direct experience can truly form a frame of reference for what this work entails and produces. In fact it would be safe to say that unless you have undergone similar training, nothing you have done, read, or experienced in what I will call your old life, your pre-life, before doing this work, will allow you an intellectual hand hold onto what you will experience.

shared collective

Collective unconscious, I had heard the words before, read about it, thought about it, worked at peering into it, but had not viscerally experienced it, and repeatedly at that. The commonalty of experience, of sense that one is exposed to in this work, speaks to an intimacy of life, a shared inwardness that brings home the point of "All is One". Initially one may not even notice this, but upon review of notes, a continuous golden thread links items and experiences, the repeated preponderance of which dispels thoughts of coincidence.

2014/05/15: In one of my earliest sessions I found myself in a natural setting.

It is dark now, the stars fill the sky more than I have ever seen, so beautiful, the sable night is inviting, not frightening. The moon is rising, full pregnant, it cast a silvery light onto the meadow, the grass looks different, other worldly. I want to step into this light... In the distance to my right I see a [symbol edited out] and to my left I hear and see [symbol edited out].

The two objects I saw to my right and left were spontaneously generated by the VQ session, there was no prior priming. What is important for me is that they continuously come up in the advanced session on their own and that their analogous doppelganger are part of the mandated layout of an advanced teaching. Why these items should appear, and appear in the same spatial relation to me and each other on their own is wondrous enough, but for them to be part of the actual architecture of an advanced lesson with the same spatial relationships whispers to a collective shared experience.