Inlandwhale

For untold millennia, humans of all cultural backgrounds have gone alone to the wilderness to seek truth and to honor times of transition.  An individual life is unavoidably filled with transitions: childhood into adolescence, adolescence into adulthood, adulthood into elderhood, elderhood into death.  There are many other passages as well: marriage, divorce, mid-life crises and retirement–to name only a few. Cultural change and transitions are also a natural part of human life.  Prior to modern times, people have faced and honored these times of change with ceremony.   These ceremonies and rituals have helped both individuals and societies to interpret their life experiences and give meaning and value to them.
Ceremony and honoring of life’s passages are not a part of most modern cultures.  As we have come to rely more and more upon our technologies and have less and less contact with the natural world, we tend to stumble through life’s transitions with increasing loss of meaning and extended individual and cultural depression.  There is no escaping the crises, accidents and upheavals of life, so it is essential that contemporary culture develop meaningful rites and ceremonies that can help us make sense of life in all its modern complexity.  These rites of passage for the 21st century must honor the modern mind, body, psyche and spirit as well as honoring the ancient wisdoms.
 
Culturally appropriate rites of passage from adolescence into adulthood are critically important.  Without accepted and honored ceremonies, adolescents are initiating each other into adulthood, using the symbols of “maturity” that they see as the privilege of adults around them: alcohol, drugs, violence, sex.  We offer an alternative, a culturally appropriate rite of passage through a vision quest in the wilderness.  We prepare initiates for a 3 or 4-day fast alone without shelter or company in the natural world.  The vision fast process involves 3 phases: severance from the world that they know and will leave behind, threshold or time alone, and incorporation into their new life and life status as an adult.  The benefits of this work at the individual and cultural levels are many and include: self-knowledge (both strengths and weaknesses), leadership skills, self-esteem, self-confidence, sense of responsibility for self and community, fuller access to emotions, feelings and spirit, respect for self and others and a deep honoring of the natural world that supports us all.