Seven days ago I wrote a story about my three day solo in the desert, and I ended the story with a "to be continued tomorrow..." However, a week has past and I am just now beginning to continue my story. I think this is the most emotional story I've ever told, and because of that it is hard to bring myself to that space to share it. It is not dramatic, not traumatic, not hollywood emotional in any way. There is no big bang to this story, no rapture. Just a slow journey towards loving myself. And I think that for me, right now, it is painful to reflect on a point when I didn't love myself fully. I went through a phase in my teenage years when I did not believe that I was worth love. I believed that I was only a valid human being if a guy loved me. I did not realize that I could source that validation and love from within myself. And so, again, it has been a slow journey towards loving myself. And it will always continue to be a journey. But at this moment in my life I am so full of love and so able to source my life from its very presence that it can be painful to reflect on a time when that wasn't the case.
If you are reading this right now and haven't read my previous post, I recommend checking it out to understand the Vision Quest setting -
https://steemit.com/nature/@anwenbaumeister/my-three-day-solo-in-the-desert-experiencing-a-native-american-rite-of-passage-and-facing-an-mountain-lion
As I did not bring a camera with me on my journey, my friend Lizzy Elliot graciously has allowed me to use photos from her Vision Quest. All photos were taken by Lizzy.
And so the story continues...
The next morning I woke up, ready to face myself. I was not going to fight myself today. Rather, I was going to forgive myself. For so long I thought that the reason I felt empty and unloved was because I was flawed. I never thought that maybe it was because I lacked compassion for myself. So on the second day of my Vision Quest, I set out on a journey to forgive myself. I also had a few other people in my life that I wanted to forgive as well. These people had hurt me, but by holding onto my anger towards them I was only hurting myself. I want to make an important note here: personally, forgiving someone does not mean that I condone the acts they did but rather it means that I am letting go of these acts and releasing their power over me.
For my forgiveness ceremony I wrote letters to each person that had hurt me. I wrote whatever I needed to say to them, and then I wrote with sincerity that I had forgiven them. After my 9am mountain lion wake up call, I crawled out of my tent with as many layers as I had in order to look bigger than the mountain lion in case we happened to cross paths. I scurried on down from my little ledge into the open valley. After checking my rock pile to make sure Jonathan was still alive, I changed the rock pile design into a flower, sending a message to Jonny. I then found a space to hold my ceremony. South signified childhood, and for this I placed a small tree bark. West signified adolesence, and for this I placed a pincone. North signified adulthoood, and for this I placed a rose quartz. East signified death and rebirth, and for this I placed a rock. I entered the circle with my statement of intention:
I want to forgive myself and love myself. I will open my heart up to the world once more and love the world with all of me.
I then read the letters outloud, releasing myself from the anger of past pain. After this, I began to speak to the South, my childhood. I apologized to that part of me that I had neglected, I told my childhood that I would continue to protect it, and I told myself that I forgave and loved myself. I then began to speak with the West, with more apologies, forgiveness, and love. My time with the North was a request to be let in when I was ready, and a realization that I had tried to jump into adulthood prematurely. To the East I simply gave love, respect, and awe. My mentor Laura had given me a guided forgiveness meditation for my Vision Quest. I began this meditation with myself, mutliple times, until I was bursting with self-forgiviness. I will write out this meditation in case anyone is interested in practicing it. This guided meditation was first written by Stephen Levine in Guided Meditations, Explorations, and Healings. You can find the full version here - https://goo.gl/ZH00s6)
Gently, turn to yourself in your own heart and say, "I forgive you," to you.
It is so painful to put ourselves out of our hearts.
Say, "I forgive you," to yourself.
Calling out to yourself in your heart, using your own first name, say “I forgive you,” to you.
If the mind interposes with hard thoughts, such as that it is self indulgent to forgive oneself, if it judges, if it touches you with anger and unkindness,
just feel that hardness and let it soften at the edge.
Let it be touched by forgiveness.
Allow yourself back into your heart.
Allow you to be forgiven by you.
Let the world back into your heart.
Allow yourself to be forgiven.
Let that forgiveness fill your whole body.
Feel the warmth and care that wishes your own well-being.
Seeing yourself as if you were your only child, let yourself be bathed by this mercy and kindness.
Let yourself be loved.
See your forgiveness forever awaiting your return to your heart.
How unkind we are to ourselves.
How little mercy.
Let it go.
Allow you to embrace yourself with forgiveness.
Let yourself be loved.
Let yourself be love.
I warned you at the beginning of this post, there is no hollywood story here. There was and still is just a slow coming to self-love. And this forgiveness ceremony was one step in my journey. That evening I returned to my tent and began to prepare my evening tea. I was still fasting, and my stomach was SCREAMING. However, tea was the only consolation it would get that night. The water had just boiled, and I had spent the past 10 minutes with my head down intent on securing the flame and the steadying the pot. In that moment I lifted my head and was greeted with the sight of 10 wild horses running in the valley below. WOW. WOW. WOW. Was all I could think. I was stunned by their sheer beauty and wildness. I had ridden horses for the past 7 years, but had never seen wild horses roam free in the desert. There were adults and children running around, so blessed in their freedom of this valley. The night was creeping on, and my fear of the mountain lion remained. However, the sight of these horses sent me an immediate feeling of serenity and peace.
The next morning, after my third and last 9am mountain lion wake up call, I wandered outside of my tent to greet the day. I did not have a special ceremony for that day. Rather, my intent was to simply sit with myself. Do you know how long it takes for a day to pass when you don't have the distractions of thinking about your next meal, preparing your next meal, eating your meal, digesting your meal, and then thinking about your next meal again? There's a whole lot of time to just sit with yourself when you don't have other distractions. And boy did I have plenty of time...
I sat there, just being. I just allowed myself to be. Nothing more, nothing less. No judgements attached, no goals, just breathing. And so began my discovery of meditation. I had meditated plenty of times before this, but I don't think that I truly felt a state of meditation until this point. Later that day I began doodling in my journal. I was freeflowing on a page and before I knew it I had sketched out a design to turn my home into a permaculture garden. Little did I know that those sketches that I drew out in that desert would become the basis for my current life dream.
The sun set on the third and last day of my solo. Once again I fell into the darkness, this time a little more at peace than the nights before. I woke up, ready to rejoin with other humans again. After a two hour hike down my ledge and through the valley, I saw Jonny. He had been waiting for me, and our faces immediately beamed with joy and our hugs were squeezed with love. We had made it. We had spent three days affirming our own lives by ourselves, and now we could affirm each others lives through our embraces. Writing this story has been a challenge, as it is always hard to capture the essence of a moment through words. However, I believe that is what makes poetry so special - it is able to put into words the unspeakable. And so I would like to close out this story with a beautiful poem by Mary Oliver titled Wild Geese that I brought with me on my Vision Quest. Thank you for reading this story.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.