Vision Quest 1998

Excerpted from author Darrell G. Yardley's book,
WindWalker: Journey into Science, Self, and Spirit (2000)
about his vision quest in 1998 in the desert of New Mexico...

Afterwards

Vision Quest
Placitas, New Mexico
One Year Later

Crawling out of the Sweat Lodge on hands and knees, I pause, touching my forehead to the ground, and say, “All my relations,” as ceremony demands. I am a little stiff as I straighten up in the bright New Mexico morning sunshine. Crawling out of the Sweat Lodge with me are Fear, Deep Sadness, Shame, and Great Anger. Unknown to me, they entered the Lodge with me the evening before. I am aware of Fear and Shame but not of the others. Unknown to me, they have been a part of my life since I was a child. All night long in the hot, pitch-dark Sweat Lodge, these Companions sat with me, suckled me, and nurtured me. Unknown to me at this moment, they are the Companions of my Vision Quest, the Companions of my Life. It is them that I must face the next twenty-four hours.  It is these Companions, my Shadow Sides, the Dark Sides, that I must turn and face—now, here, in the next few hours—if I am to move forward in my life.

Emerging into the beautiful New Mexico morning, I am unaware of anything but frustration. The first night of my Vision Quest has been a failure—no Vision, no spirits, zip, nada. In the bright sunshine, Fear moves back into the Shadows.

Beside me in the Lodge all night long were Mountain Lion and Turquoise Woman. I had asked them to stay with me through the Quest. I had prayed to the Creator for strength and courage—and Vision. I asked for clarity about my spiritual path and teachings, about my life. My only other spiritual visitor to enter the Lodge appeared around four a.m. I had felt the presence of a very strong, benign spirit enter the midnight-black Lodge. The spirit had stood over me, and I had felt its gaze and presence. Then it had turned and left. No other spirits had entered.

As I stand, I feel Grandfather’s presence beside me. I am not allowed to look at him. He is about to reach into my Soul’s deep, dark hurt-place, grab my pain, pull it out, and, in the dazzling sunshine of Insight, shove it in my face. In mere moments, an earthquake is about to occur in the person I thought was Me. A chasm reaching to the bowels of my Being is about to open. Hot molten lava of pus-pain will pour forth. I am about to turn and face my True Self.

[My official Vision Quest had started two days earlier, but my preparation for the Quest had started a month before. A month earlier Grandfather (the traditional Native American name for the medicine person doing the Quest) had me ”being out in Nature” two hours each day and keeping a Dream Journal. On my farm, the two hours with Nature had been no problem. The dreams, though, had been interesting. Most of my dreams during the month preceding the Quest were different versions of the same theme: my bike was broken, and I was going on a journey to fix it. I knew my bike was a metaphor for my spiritual journey. I could not imagine what needed to be “fixed” though. I had noticed over the last few months, however, that my previously powerful journeys to the Spirit World were becoming more and more difficult and less intense. I had not been too concerned about this drop in intensity because I had found that I could have Mountain Lion and Turquoise Woman present in this world/time, and did not need to journey to the Upper or Lower Worlds. I found that I just had to ask them to be present, and they were present.

Next came a fast. Ten days before the Quest I was started on a fruit and juice fast, supplemented with fresh or steamed vegetables and whole grains, but no caffeine, alcohol, meat, wheat, or dairy products. For the Quest I was to be purified inside (by the fast) and outside (by the Sweat Lodge).

Upon my arrival Thursday, Grandfather wasted no time in getting me started. I spent the first afternoon stacking firewood for the Sweat Lodge and practicing staying in non-ordinary reality. I was also instructed to familiarize myself with the Lodge area—and its spirits. Grandfather instructed me about the significance of my Quest-site and the Lodge area. He directed me to stay in non-ordinary reality during the period I was here.

As he spoke and walked me around the Lodge area, I could feel the spirits’ presence around me. Throughout the afternoon when I focused on their presence as I worked, I also was aware of them. I perceived their presence as a feeling that someone (or something) was nearby. Often the hair on the back of my shoulders and neck would tingle. Occasionally, my old scientific voice would protest that I was just imagining all of this. Imagination or not, it felt real.

At one point as Grandfather talked, I looked across the deep arroyo that ran in front of the Lodge. Across the valley on the hilltop directly in front of the Lodge—watching me—stood and sat a number of the spirits of the Ancient Ones, the pre-Pueblo, Anasazi Indians that had long ago inhabited the area—men, women, and children. Unaware of my distraction/vision, Grandfather continued to explain that many of Anasazi spirits were still here. (Of this I had no doubt as I stood looking across his shoulder at the Anasazi on the small hill.) He said that at night they walked up and down the streambed as they had done when they were alive. A wavelet of fear made its way up my spine as he talked about spirits walking around. It is one thing to read about spirits walking around in a Stephen King novel, but quite another to experience such. Although I did not say anything to him at the time about the Anasazi on the hilltop, he was aware of them. He later told me that he thought that they had all been killed up there and were for some reason bound to the place. They could not come down. It was other spirits that did the walking during the night. (Wonderful, I thought.)]

Raven appeared overhead, cawing at us, as Grandfather spoke. Grandfather said that Raven, messenger of the spirits, wanted to know what I was doing here. He said the spirits of the area were curious about me. Several times during the afternoon Raven came around keeping a close eye on me as I worked. Later in the afternoon I went out and looked across to the Anasazi spirits on the hilltop across the arroyo. I could not see them now, but I raised my voice to them and said, “I am Darrell, friend of spirits and helper of spirits. I come in peace and wish you no harm. I am here on a Vision Quest and would ask for your help. But, if you cannot help me, please do not interfere.” After this, Raven quieted down, flying over and calling in more of a greeting as he passed overhead. He still kept an eye on me, however.

Grandfather explained that both the Lodge area and the place I would be doing the second half of my Quest were powerfully spiritual places. In addition to the Anasazi spirits, numerous other spirits inhabited the area. My Quest area was especially powerful, he said. It was at the convergence of two streams and an energy vortex. Flashbacks of the Vortices of Sedona and their intense effects on me raced across my mind.

That first evening as I laid awake in the darkened Lodge, coyote howled in the distance. For me it was a calming, welcoming call, a call home.

As I tried to sleep that night, I could sense spirits walking about, but none entered the lodge. It seemed that every few minutes another spirit would approach, and I would come back to full wakefulness. <Little did I know that every time I awoke, Grandfather awoke. He would later tell me that when he came to retrieve me the next morning, Mountain Lion was sitting outside the fence. When Grandfather asked him why he was out there instead of inside the Lodge with me, the large, powerful cat had only turned and looked at Grandfather.>

All this spirit-stuff disturbed me. I found myself afraid and remembered Carlos Castaneda’s fears about encountering the spirit world in his work with don Juan. It was one thing to visit the spirit world, which I often did. It was quite another to have all these strange spirits walking around and not know any of them. This was not my ordinary day’s reality I was working with here.

The next morning, Grandfather came and escorted me to my Quest area at the confluence between the two small streams. He instructed me to remain again in non-ordinary reality, that the spirits were all around and watching me and were eager to help. He cautioned that they “spoke” in their own language, and I would have to learn how to “listen” to them in their language. They spoke in the way the wind blew, the animals that came to me, in the “speech” of a leaf or flower. The spirits spoke in many ways, and I needed to learn how to listen to them. I spent most of the entire day familiarizing myself with the area and introducing myself to the spirits. No visualizations of the Ancient Ones came to me, but I could feel their presence.

I also noticed that the energy vortex was much different from the vortices around Sedona. There was a sense of peace about the vortex, as opposed to the intense, high energies of Sedona. Later I would find out from Grandfather that, indeed, it is a peaceful vortex.

Friday afternoon came and back at the Lodge I had my last food and water until Sunday. That evening was the Sweat Lodge Ceremony.

The first round of the Sweat had been intense. Actually, the real “first round” had been so intense that we all had come out gagging, choking, and coughing with runny eyes. A packrat had decided to build a nest in the pit where the hot stone-people are placed. When the glowing, hot stones hit the wood shavings and droppings he had left, the shavings and droppings caught fire. The result was a Sweat Lodge filled with choking smoke—and retching people. After we had cleared out the noxious smoke from the Lodge, Grandfather had the red hot rocks for the first two rounds combined as we went back in. The usual number is seven rocks for the first round. We now had eleven fiery rocks sitting in the pit. When he poured water onto the rocks for the new first round, the resulting steam was so intense that I did not think I was going to make it. I asked Mountain Lion for strength and courage to make it through the round. I did not know how I was going to handle the other rounds if they were this intense. Two of the women, one suffering from claustrophobia and another fighting cancer, asked almost immediately to be let out. Because both women were in need of the Lodge’s medicine, Grandfather mercifully allowed the door to remain open for the remaining rounds so that the women could participate and receive the medicine. After the ceremony was over, we all went inside the property owner’s house. While the others partook of a potluck supper, I gathered my gear to go back to the Lodge to spend the night.

As I prepared to enter the Lodge for the first night of silence and food-and-water fast, Grandfather instructed me that for the remainder of the Quest I could not look at him and could speak only if he asked me a direct question.

It was a gorgeous evening. A full moon was rising. Grandmother Moon was so bright that you could read by her light in the crisp, dry New Mexico air. As I stood gazing at the moon and preparing to enter the still-sweltering lodge, I reflected that it had been almost exactly three years on another full-moon night like this that I had started the Internship that had so radically altered my life. I wondered if the full moon was an omen that my Quest was going to impact my life equally. As I step out of the Lodge the next morning, I step into the oncoming freight train/earthquake that is about to hit me.

As I step away from the Lodge in the morning light, I keep my eyes to the ground but feel Grandfather’s presence at my side. As I step away from the Lodge, I step into the path of the oncoming freight train. The earth cracks open and I am swallowed.

“You are blocked,” says Grandfather, herald of my train/earthquake. “What is wrong? The spirits were around all night long, but they would not go in. They could not help you. They are still here and willing to help you, but you won’t let them.” All night he had sat in vigil outside the Lodge chanting, drumming, praying, and smoking the sacred pipe. As I went without food, water, and sleep, he too was doing the same. All through my Quest, he would sit in vigil. In shame, I answer, “I am failing. I am blowing my own Vision Quest.” With my eyes still averted toward the ground, I continue: “I was afraid of them. I was afraid to ask the Spirits in.” He then says, “Look at me.” I stare directly into his intense burning eyes. I do not see anger or judgment there, only compassion and concern. “You are filled with so much anger,” he says. “It is time to let go of the anger. What is wrong?”

Prompted by his questions, the answer suddenly comes to me: “I am making a mistake; I am failing.” I repeat these words out loud to him and, before I can stop them, other words/thoughts/emotions erupt. I continue, “I’m failing my family. I am failing to provide for them. I’ve failed so many, many things in my life. And now I’m failing this.” His intense blue eyes burn into me, and he says the words that reach in, pull out, and show my very Core-Self to me. I have never seen this wounded Inner Me.

 He whispers, “You are making a mistake—or, You Are A Mistake!” In that moment, I see my Core-Self. My knees grow weak and buckle. The earth opens. The freight train crashes into me. A deep well of sadness opens up, and I plunge into it, stone-sinking. It is my sadness, my shame, my fear, my loneliness, all rolled into the one gigantic ocean that has been my life. Tears come unbidden to my eyes. I fight them back. The Truth in his words resonates with every molecule of my body. “Yes,” is all I can whisper.

“Darrell,” he says, “You have spent your whole life trying to prove you are not a mistake. Your doctorate, your career, so many things in your life, you have done just to prove to yourself that you are not a mistake.” The Truth of his words was the hot rock-people of the previous night’s Sweat Lodge searing great holes in my psyche: “You are not a mistake. The Creator does not make mistakes.” A cover of shame envelopes me, and I can no longer look into his intense eyes. “All your life,” he continues, “you have been in a prison, but it is a prison of your own making. That prison is your trying not to be who you really are. You are Heart, pure, open, bleeding Heart. Nothing more, nothing less. You never were a Professor. That is who you tried to be so that you could prove that you were not a mistake.

“When you started riding the Harley, you opened the top of your prison, the small, one-room box you have lived in for so long, and peered out. That was the beginning. When you threw your keys on your Department Head’s desk and walked away from the research, you opened that door wider. When you quit and walked away from your university job last year, you threw open the door. But you are still in your prison, still in your box.” By now tears were raining down my cheeks. I knew in the depths of my Soul the Truth of his words.

“You are still wallowing in that old self, his old shame, fears, and anger. You are still trying to prove that you are not a mistake. It is a prison you have built, and you can choose to unbuild it, to step out of it forever. What do you choose? Make it now, make your choice now!” In tear-choked words I answer, “I want out.” “Wanting is not enough,” he responds. “Trying is not enough.” “Do it! Choose to walk out of your prison now! Once you choose, though, you can never fully go back, even if you want to.”

“You have to Let Go!” he continues. “You are Heart. Decide now to start living into that heart, into who you really are.” I can barely stand at this point, and he guides me over to a chair. As we both sit, he continues: “I want you to go down to your Quest-site now and perform a ‘Crying for a Vision’ ceremony,” and he explains the Lakota Sioux ceremony to me.

A few minutes and tears later, I gather my gear and head down to my site. The Crying-for-a-Vision ceremony will help me to let go of my old self, the parts I no longer want to be, the parts that were never really me, as well as help me receive my Vision.

At my Quest site between the two streams, I mark out and follow Grandfather’s instructions for Crying for a Vision. I do not have to fake the tears. The tears come in great deep sobs. They are bottomless and so profound that I feel that I have turned inside out. They reach into the core of my life, my Soul, my Being. They come from my small self as a baby, as a young child, as an adult. Back through the years, the decades, they reach and come. Great wails of sadness, hurt, pain, loneliness, oceans of shame. On and on they march.

Torrents of anger come too, Great Anger. Anger at myself for trying to be someone that I never was. Anger at always trying to please others and trying to meet others’ expectations. I ask the Spirits and Creator for their help in releasing all of this and in walking out of my prison.

Finally, the tears subside. Peace replaces the anger, sadness, loneliness, and hurt. I look across the small stream in front of me, and there sits an Ancient One. The spirit of an Anasazi woman sits looking at me, smiling. She says nothing. I catch a slight movement out of the corner of my eye to my left. On the ridgeside of the arroyo stand two small spirits, two Anasazi boys around ages seven and ten. The spirits are suddenly revealing themselves to me. This time I have no fear. I welcome them and say thank you.

As I sit and lie at my Quest site the rest of the day, the purple asters greet me and speak of Truth, the yellow snakeroot flowers sparkle, say hello, and tell of Power, small white flowers radiate welcome and proclaim Purity. The water spirit of the place sings melodies of Peace to me. Wind, who Grandfather has told me is my mother, greets me, whispering my True Name and welcoming her Child back home. I do not understand her words, but I sense she is happy. At dusk, Hawk, who, I find, is my spiritual messenger, visits. I catch only a glimpse of him, but he will be back at morning.

As dusk approaches I find I am only a little fearful about the coming evening and the spirits it will bring. I welcome them and ask them for their teachings. All through the night, from dusk until about four a.m., Wind brings spirits to visit me. <Grandfather will tell me the next morning that she was showing me off.> None stay. They stop only for a moment and then continue on their way. Owl watches over me through the night. I hear him calling.

Around ten o’clock a new spirit arrives. He is not friendly. He is brooding and angry, and I can feel him looking down at me with hostile eyes as I lie wrapped in my sleeping bag. A dog barks a warning somewhere in the distance. I hear coyotes sound a warning call as the spirit approaches. They are concerned and are warning me. I am cautious but not really fearful. Mountain Lion stands guard, and the spirit is not strong enough to overcome him. I also sense that my own strength is sufficient now to deal with this Hostile One. After a few moments, he too moves on. He is unable to stay. <I find later that he is an angry Anasazi spirit that Grandfather had sent away and forbade returning to the area. He had sent him far down river.>

Around four a.m. the last of the spirits visit me. It is the same spirit that visited me in the Sweat Lodge around this time the previous evening. It is a very strong and powerful spirit, but benign. I can sense its good wishes toward me and tell it, “Thank you.” After a few moments Mother Wind ushers even it along.

___________________

It is time to go. It is over. Packing my gear back into my duffel bag the next morning, I am weak and light-headed. My breathing is hard with only slight effort. The two days without food or water, preceded by two days with little food and two weeks on a fast, have left me weak and dehydrated. I can feel my heart pounding as I strain to pull the zipper closed on the bag. I pause. Perhaps I should wait, I think. After all, Grandfather told me he would come get me when the time is appropriate. I decide to ask a higher authority. Slipping back into non-ordinary reality, I ask Turquoise Woman if it is time to go. Her answer comes, “Yes,” in a silent whisper to my mind.

Picking up the heavy bag, I take one last look around. To my left is the cairn, the burying place, of Professor, my old way of life. Professor is gone from my life forever now. I have released him. Out of this valley walks only my True Self. The old parts of me are released; the Professor, buried.

Looking around, I say my farewells to the Spirits of the place. To the Grandmothers and Grandfathers, the ancient Anasazi spirits that walk and live in this sacred place, I once again thank them for their help. I say goodbye to the water spirit, the tree spirits, the rock people, and the animal spirits. Hawk visited me again early this morning as he had at dusk the previous day. This morning he came and sat about twenty feet from me. Raven has already been by twice this morning, checking on me. Hummingbird has been with me both yesterday and this morning. Coyote stays in the hills, but he is watching.

As I start walking, Mountain Lion and Turquoise Woman follow along behind me. Coming around the bend of the small creek, I am disoriented and ask Mountain Lion to show me the way. He takes the lead.

 I walk up the small stream into my new path as Cougar Medicine now. This is Grandfather’s Indian name for me. I walk into my new life as Heart, True Self. This is who I am.

Mitakuye Oyasin