Vision Quest

I paid for my vision quest. It was important to me. I wanted it to come from Self. But my parents did chip in to help by some of the gear. I remember I prepared for it at the last minute. It was a total rush job. My brother worked at L.L.Bean and the night before I left, I went up and bought a whole bunch of gear. My dad was willing to foot the bill, but he looked at me like I was a bit of an ass or something. I knew he wasn’t quite happy with what I was doing, but he figured he couldn’t stop me. He saw it as a waste of money, and a waste of time.

Before I left though, they did give me a copy of “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel. It was to become an important book in my life, though I did not know it at the time. The morning I left was dreary, kind of rainy. My dad drove me to the airport. I thought of the whole thing in mythological terms. As far as I was concerned, this was a ritual death, I wanted to die to my old life, I wanted something new. I felt like this was my last hope. Either this or suicide. I didn’t have any other options. I was going to the “last chance” mountains.

It’s hard to remember being this depressed or this lost, but it was true. I had no power. I felt like a loser. I felt empty. So I went to the mountains. I was absolutely terrified. And deeply alone. I still had a girlfriend in Japan, but I could feel that there was little chance of it working out in the long term. I was going to school, but only because my parents wanted me there. I had little real direction.

The plane flight was uneventful. Except that I started writing about what I was seeking. My intent. I longed for some kind of center. I wanted to be an adult. This would be my first trip to New Mexico, to Santa Fe, and it held a kind of mythological importance. For some reason, New Mexico became synonymous with my soul. It was the place where I would go to be connected with my soul.

My first reaction to arriving in Albuquerque was that it was so different then anything that I’d ever imagined. It wasn’t at all like I imagined. I thought I was going to the desert. But it turned out to be the high desert, which is nothing like what I thought. There were trees. There was water. It was beautiful, but in a way I didn’t expect.

The first three or four days were spent up at this camp in the mountains. Evidently one of the descendents of Robert Oppenheimer owned it, was a friend of the guide, and lent it to him from time to time. So, we were high up in the mountains. First time I had gone camping. First time I’d done anything like this at all. Obviously given that it was a pseudo American Indian ritual, there were a lot of Indian overtones. But it was really a bunch of white people looking for ways to make their lives work. There were six or seven fellow questers. All of us were broken in some way or another. You got to be pretty desperate to go the mountains and fast and pray for four days. Really desperate. There has got to be a longing that can not be satisfied any where else. It’s definitely not for everyone.

One guy had recently lost his long time girlfriend. He came to sprinkle her ashes, to let go of her, and try to move on with his life. Another, like me, lost, was looking for some kind of direction. A third was searching for his “burning bush”, some kind of compass or direction in his life. Another, looking to open up, to break out of the rigid hard shell that she had built around herself and really connect with others.

It’s funny, these people appeared in my life for the briefest of moments. I knew them for about a week. But they are ingrained in my heart and soul in a way that some of my co-workers, people I knew for years, are not. There is something deeply bonding about an experience like this. It’s an experience, your walls come down, your illusions break down, and you are left raw, naked, exposed before God and the rest of humanity, just as you are. And from there, you can begin making your first steps towards an authentic life.

We went to the mountain. It was a mesa. The evening before we left for our solo time, there was a great storm out of the east. It rained. It thundered. When the lightning hit the ground, I could feel it vibrate in the earth. We were only allowed to bring a rudimentary shelter—a tarp—that we had to put up with our own two hands.

I sat under my tarp passing the time, wondering what in God’s name had brought me to this. But the storm passed. And I emerged from my little shelter, like the itsy bitsy spider, to find the two brightest biggest rainbows I had ever seen. As we were on a mesa, the rainbows extended high above our heads, and deep into the revine below us. I took it as a sign from God that somehow, “everything would be all right”.

The next morning, the day we were to go off on our solo time, I felt as if I were walking towards my own death. The guide woke us with the song “morning has broken”. I felt broken. He held a little ceremony, where we were smudged with sage, and in silence we would walk off to find “our spot” the place that would be like a womb, watching over our death, and our birth. He said a prayer for each of us. One at a time.

And I walked off. Tears in my smoke stained eyes. I felt as if I were saying goodbye to all that I knew. All that I was. It was one of the most painful feelings of my entire life.

Alone, at the edge of the universe:

I set up my meager camp with the tools that my parents had given me. I never felt so alone before. I can’t quite explain it. On the outside, it was like I was just going camping by my self for a few days, but on the inside it felt like I was saying goodbye to my family. I felt like I was saying goodbye to everything, I felt like I was dying. And it wrenched my heart in two.

I did this ritual, called a death lodge. Basically, the point was pretty simple, it was as if you’d come to the end of your life, so before you go the great beyond, everybody you know comes for a visit, to reminisce about the old times, and to say goodbye.

I can not describe the pain.

One after another, I called up the people in my life. I called forth family and friends, relatives and enemies. And I would say goodbye. With some, I could sense how the ties that bound us together, for whatever reason, were beginning to dissolve. I said goodbye to my grandfather, not knowing he would have only a few months left in reality, anyway. I said goodbye to my brothers and sisters. I said goodbye to their childhoods, just as I said goodbye to my own. I said goodbye to my parents, and their youth, as they entered late middle to old age. Everything came back to me in the most vivid and poignant detail. I have heard it said that when a person dies, they go through a life review, (my whole life flashed before my eyes). For those few hours…my whole life passed before my eyes, in all its mystery, its sorrow, its grandeur, its laughter. The tears came thick and heavy.

I had the hardest time saying goodbye to my childhood. I wanted to somehow stay, to linger.

I remember as a child dreaming what heaven would be like—I imagined that it was just as things were—I was with my family, in our house, with our friends, except their were no worries, there was no pain. We were happy, content, and loving each other. It was as things were supposed to be. And it would make me smile.

Now as I sat on top of this Mesa, my only companions the trees and a few lone sparrows, I wept for the loss of my dream, of my heaven. I had no idea of what new world may come forth. I only saw the world that was fading before my eyes. I only saw all that I was leaving behind. My grandfather, his old irish songs. He used to take me for long walks and sing “It’s a long way to Tipperary…it’s a long way to go…it’s a long long way to Tipperary, my sweetheart, I know.” His terrible jokes. His warm smile. My dad singing “the tide is high and I’m rolling on” as we drove to the beach…my mom singing “I’m a leaving on a jet plane, I don’t know when I’ll be back again” as we drove away from her parents home one Thanksgiving…Friday evening pizza…baseball games…fireworks…backyard basketball…home run derby…the smell of wrapping paper on Christmas morning…my little sisters…games I used to play with my brother…chlorine from swimming pools…all the races I had run…or swum…chicken nuggets and French fries at my grandparents house…the cold Maine waters…Italian ice…bubble gum ice cream. All of it. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

I knew that I would die, that my parents would die, that my brother would die, that my sisters would die, that my youngest sister, who I had seen from her first days, who still carried her innocence, she too would die. And there would be nothing that could be done, for that is life.

I’m sure, I’m sure, you too can imagine the pain, as you have been there too.

My uncle once wrote about “the well of sorrow”, “I have been to the well of sorrow,” he said, “I have tasted the salt of its tears.” The guide on the vision quest told me that there is a bottom to this well. I believe him. Yet, to this day, I have not discovered it. I know, that I can drink deeply of this well at any moment, that in my own heart, there lies a sadness that can never be quenched, or satiated. It is the summation of all my goodbyes, of all my leavings, of all my never returnings.

And still we live on.

Basic Goodness:

The great gift I discovered on the mountain came from a seemingly mundane and inconsequential event. One morning, I arose early, the clouds and rain had cleared. I went to the top of the Mesa. I was surrounded in a ring by mountain peaks. 360 degree panoramic awareness. The world was clothed in the gold of the early morning sun. If heaven existed on earth…it was here…it was now. I sat in that sun with nothing to do, nowhere to go. My sorrow felt as distant as the sky, and yet as close as my breath. The mesa top was a vast field of flowers. And the bees were busy, all over the mesa top, doing their work. In all directions…flowers…bees.

One bee came by me. He landed on my hand. He landed on my water bottle. I thought to my self, “Bee, you are in the wrong place, I am no flower. I am a man, not part of your world. You are wasting your time here. You should get back to work, in your world, with the flowers, with nature.” And then as I sat there, I realized that I wasn’t really separate from that world…that as far as the bee was concerned, I, and my water bottle, were not different from those flowers. We were part the world, just as the flowers were, not separate from it. Even the plastic from my bottle was natural. And I felt like belonged here. Like I wasn’t an interloper, or some kind of poison, that I was o.k. I felt as if I were good, that there was something in me that could be trusted, that there was goodness at my core…not horror, not emptiness…just simple basic goodness.

In Dzogchen meditation, as I have been taught, there is a view of the nature of the mind, or reality itself that is like that of a child, laying in the tall grass, lazily gazing at the sky, watching as clouds pass by, knowing that all is naturally perfect, just as it is. It was kind of like that. Everything was perfect, I was perfect, just as I was…and from that small little spark, I felt as if I could find a direction, a will to carry on. It was a little flickering lamp, not strong, but still I knew it was there. I had something to trust. I had someone to trust. My Self, my deep heart’s core.


When we returned from our time alone fasting, I didn’t feel as if I had been changed completely, but there was some kind of shift. There was some kind of power growing within. I felt like I could connect with people, like I could open up, and there would be something valuable there, not just a wretched display of horribleness.