Several years ago I was seeing patients in a physician's office in
Greenville. I had just returned from doing a Vision Quest, and he and
the office staff stood around asking me about my “adventure”. I
described the ordeal of spending a day and night in the desert of New
Mexico without food or water, without sleep, the sweat lodge
that initiated the Quest, the night in the desert alone without fire or
light, and the intensity of the experience. When I had finished, the
physician looked at me and asked, “Why would anyone want to do
something like that?” I was at once disappointed and at lost for words
of explanation.
Being a Harley rider, I
looked at him and said, “Well, John (not his real name), if I have to
explain, you wouldn't understand.” (This is the answer I had given many
time to people asking me why I ride a Harley.) I've regretted my answer
to him since many times over the last several years, and wished I could
have given him a better explanation.
Returning from my second, and hopefully last, Vision Quest last August,
I will now try to better answer his question. My most recent Quest was
four days in hell in the hot August sun of Big Bend area in Texas,
where temperatures during the day reached 100 degrees and above. Many
time during those four days I asked myself this same question but on a
more personal level, “Why do I put myself through something as intense
as this?” To a rational, reasonable person, it is insane.
By way of background, Vision Quests have been around for a long, long
time. Native Americans used the Quest as the way a young man entered
adulthood. He spent time in the wilderness alone, away from his tribe,
without food and water, to get a “vision” of his role as a man in the
tribe. The Vision Quest is one of the seven sacred rites of the Lakota
Sioux and most native American cultures. Medicine men and women
routinely take Vision Quests as a way of maintaining the power of their
healing medicine work.
Jesus did a Vision Quest—forty days in the desert. He actually did
three Vision Quests during his short ministry. Buddha, Mohammed,
Abraham, and Moses all did Vision Quests. The Desert Fathers of Egypt
and the Celtic monks of Ireland spent great deals of time alone in the
wilderness or desert.
A Quest is a death/rebirth process. According to Ute medicine man,
Strong Eagle, a Quest has three main stages: severance, threshold,
incorporation. During severance, one separates him/herself from his
previous life. Severance takes place over a several month period as one
prepares to go and spend his/her time alone in the desert. It is a time
for saying goodbye, of preparing to let die those parts of
you that no longer serve you or of which you want to let go. During
severance you prepare to die. Threshold is your time on the desert,
usually without food, water, shelter, or sleep. This is your death
time; the time of letting your old self die in preparation to rebirth.
Incorporation is your rebirth. The new you is born and comes down from
the mountain top to renter your life with your family and culture.
So why do a Quest? It is a time of great spiritual and personal growth.
It is a time for for having an opportunity to see clearly who
you are and what you are about, of your direction, your path. It is a
time of stepping out of the clutter of your life so that you can find
yourself—and in doing so, you can also find God. It is a time when you
can step away from the mind monkeys and look yourself directly in the
face—your true face. It is a time of revitalization and rejuvenation.
It is a time of rebirth.
My current book writing project, entitled Lajitas Lizard and the
Bandidos: Dancing with God in the Desert, organizes its message around
this four day Vision Quest in Big Bend. In Chapter 1, I am coming down
from the mountain after doing my Quest cursing God. Little did I
realize the great teaching I had received as I walked down that
mountain and back to base camp that early August morning.
There are several times in our lives when we need to stop and get off
the merry-go-round that is our lives. To get quiet and get in touch
with who we are, and with God. A Vision Quest gives us that opportunity.
Peace
Copyright Ⓒ 2005. Darrell G. Yardley All rights reserved.
and 
, and he saw
no value or reason why someone would
want to put him or herself through such an ordeal. In that moment, I
could think of no way of explaining it to him. 