Guides or Therapists?

Comparing a vision quest today to traditional quests of centuries ago, the range of issues in modern life is far greater than in the small, tight-knit communities of the past. Communities of the past were relatively homogenous and lacked wide diversities of

1. Wealth, class, and economic status.
2. Racial, ethnic, and gender identities.
3. Family dynamics, upbringing, and personal history.

In a small village on the Plains, over a whole lifetime, one might know, interact with, or depend on a total of a hundred and fifty people. One identified with the village or the tribe. Today, social media and telecommunications have completely changed the categories in which we think. People now identify with issues or “imaginary communities” — for example, vegans, progressives, libertarians, animal rights activists, etc. — and they’ve never met even a fraction of those they claim to feel connected to. A modern person is generally aware of seven billion people, views news and video footage shot all over the globe, and, though having a thousand “friends” on Facebook, may not actually be close to or intimate with anyone.

Also, primal peoples lived in physical and psychic landscapes where the human world – a village in the jungle or encampment on the savannah – was small, dwarfed by an immense natural world whose forces – storms, extremes of temperature, large animals – could nurture or destroy life.

Today, most of that is reversed. Human settlements sprawl across the globe; urban areas are inhabited by millions; and the forests, rivers, and sky have been cut down, dammed, paved over, and crisscrossed by electric lines and jet trails. The natural world shrinks away, restricted to managed forests and parks set aside and protected from the onslaught of the human. An adolescent today recognizes over two thousand corporate logos and less than ten native plants. All this has consequences.

In the past, vision quests were more focused on “vision,” on opening to forces beyond the human, beyond the self. Who would go to nature in search of renewal if a normal day included tracking deer through the forest, fishing in the pool where the river bends or gathering mushrooms in shady spots under the hemlocks? Who would quest for healing if they’d never been hit, humiliated, or felt alone and unwanted? Vision quests of the distant past took place within a sensuous, nurturing, and intimate daily life, and in that context, were focused on creating personal connections with spirit guides and the “more-than-human” world, whether that be labeled Wakan-Tanka; Dreamtime, Nierika, or the ancestral realm.

In the 21st century, most who “go to” nature experience “normal” life as a left-brained reality of reason, logic, and material reality. Many seek relief or freedom from today’s “cultural consensus,” a set of assumptions that are dismissive of and disconnected from Nature. This consensus also separates us from our bodies, emotions, and each other, and it’s a primary contributor to much of the pain, suffering, and spiritual crisis – personal and collective – we face today.

Whether in actual pain and crisis themselves (and many are), most people today sense something’s wrong or missing in daily life. They long for some connection to other modes of perception and being, a form of awareness that feels deeper, more profound, and “real.” And they’re curious about other worlds, including those referenced in myth, experienced in dreams, and spoken of in spiritual texts and by saints and sages over the millennia.

Vision quest guides today need to have an intimate familiarity with the dysfunctions and dis-eases of modern life that’s far-wider than anything required in the past. They must also have a language to speak about these conditions and be able to offer a broad palette of processes and perspectives that can address the spectrum and specifics of those who seek their guidance.

But a guide is not, and shouldn’t try to be, a therapist. That role is both too limited and too immersed in the paradigms creating the problems themselves. For therapy:

1. Assumes (and focuses on) pathology and illness in the particular individual, ignoring the collective pathology in which those individuals develop.
2. Assumes an adjustment to normality is desirable.
3. Is hierarchical – the one seeking help has problems; the therapist has answers.
4. Is specialized and limited. The therapist is Jungian, Freudian, somatic, cognitive, psychiatric, etc., and therefore the “problem” (and answer) are viewed through that discipline’s myopic lens.

A guide accepts the presence of something larger, a force or mystery referenced through the millennia, whatever name might be applied to it. Accepting this is humbling. In the face of this Unknown, he or she realizes “he” possesses few, if any, of the answers. This is — at the same time — liberating, for the task is to simply assist those who seek to develop their own relationship to that force beyond what they know now, and in so doing, to find their own truth and answers.

Today these formerly-separate realms (temporal and eternal… known and unknown… left brain and right) need to be woven together and balanced if we’re to bring hope and a sense of grand adventure to the practical tasks of living well in challenging times. Vision quest guides are explorers on a journey, committed to that grand task of “connecting heaven and earth.” They’ve learned much, and they recognize the end is limitless, there are no experts, and all who come seeking assistance are companions on the path.

— A good part of the post above was adapted from my soon-to-be-published book The Vision Quest: A Guide’s Training Manual. (Expected in mid-July 2018)