An apprenticeship to the
vision fasting process involves the mastery of
a body of knowledge: the myths and the traditions,
the applications and processes of passage rites
and the search for vision, that have been developed
and adapted over the millennia. Although this
training may, and should, include academic pursuit
and study, the heart of it lies in experience,
the encounter with Spirit and the experience of
facing our gods, goddesses, our stories and our
Self, alone upon the earth.
This experience, although universal,
is also unique to each of us, and it is that unique
gift, that we must bring to those who follow us.
Accordingly, the training will address your specific
needs and abilities. This includes developing,
affirming, and empowering one's special
gifts and "medicine;" the clarification
and articulation of your values and myths and
the implications and relevance to various ritual
processes; the adaptation and/or application of
wilderness processes to your specific position
or profession; developing or honing specific counseling
skills; and your personal fast or medicine walk
to address the question, "How am I to give
my gifts to my people?"
Training in this area includes
participation in a fasting quest. When one enters
the wilderness, one makes a choice to face and
discover the unknown. Good preparation and good
intent are our strongest allies. We enter, fully
responsible for our efforts, but the outcome is
beyond our control. Our good intent may lead us
to certainty or to a deeper awareness and appreciation
of the Great Mystery. This training, undertaken
for whatever intent or conscious motivation, involves
being open to discovery, to entering the wilderness
within ourselves.
It is our intent and vision
that this training contribute to the greater healing
of the earth and her children. Apprenticing is
designed to contribute not only to your personal
and professional growth, but to allow you to leave
here better able to help heal individuals and
a culture experiencing the personal and collective
suffering from rootlessness, poverty of vision,
and lack of a compelling or sustaining mythology.
We believe in the modern day making of medicine,
medicine being that which brings us back to a
condition of health or wholeness. Contemporary
society lacks any unifying myth or tradition,
so we must start with our common root: being alive
on this earth. We begin with the experience of
wilderness and draw our sustenance there, reaching
toward the Source as expressed in the soul and
the Spirit, that we might, through our many branches,
bring it to light, and flower.
