I thought I'd share a bit of my weekend, so if you are interested in my ramblings read on. I put the experience down in words to make it more concrete for me and to help me process it. I share it in hopes someone might want to spend more time connecting with Spirit through nature after reading it. Read it if you like or let it rest.. either way is OK.
I went on vision quest this weekend... Friday morning through Saturday night spent in a power place in the mountains of North GA....
Just before dusk yesterday, I was sitting with a chill mountain breeze... my place of rest was a hard granite rock outcropping on the slope of a mountain... my back snug against a gnarled old tree.
My vantage point overlooked a grassy woodland valley. Just below me where the mountain ended and the valley began, a crystal clear mountain lake reflected the blue sky overhead and it captured the brilliant colors of fall in the leaves of the surrounding trees.
Leaves fell all round me, reminding me of colored snowflakes. Whirlwinds spinning through the valley sometimes picked them up, twirling and dancing with them across the mirror of the lake. They seemed spirits dancing in the power of the season.
The clear blue sky overhead reached to a distant mountain range and where they touched, the sky was painted a golden red hue as the sun slipped below the distant horizon.
I sat there in meditation and took my vision inward.. as I slipped inside, I saw a small brown shape, round like a ball...
I observed quietly and after a while, I saw a woven mesh or net like covering wrapped round it..... woven of metal... it was similar to the weaving in the dream-catchers I sometimes make but was wrapped round the ball on all sides. It was clear that the purpose was to hold the ball tight and secure....
I looked closer and it seemed the ball was more like an acorn....
As I continued to watch, it changed....
Brown eyes with a tinge of yellow appeared... grayish-black upper part of a hair covered nose.... It was as though a wolf was looking at me through an oval opening... I could just make out the upper part of his face.
The wolf spoke to me...
He said the acorn was a part of my spirit that I had repressed... repressed, because for most of my life I have felt unworthy.... Unworthy of the abilities and gifts that I have been blessed with. Unworthy of accepting and acknowledging….
And because I felt unworthy I had become judgemental of myself... That I had tried in many ways to be perfect... Yet because I was not/am not perfect and could never be perfect.... the cage I had woven around the heart of my spirit only grew tighter over the years...
He said that while I have known growth, many of my actions and efforts to find and know freedom have only served to make the cage stronger.... because I expected too much at times... expected
perfection in my actions, perfection in the results.
Wolf said that in my struggle with perfection, I always come up short, will always come up short... and this only serves to confirm to the judge that is my mind that I was unworthy.... It is an endless
cycle, an endless struggle which I could never win...
Wolf said that I needed to break the cycle... and that I needed to release him...
He said that he is the wildness of freedom that I seek.
He said that only by truly accepting myself for who and what I am and by embracing my imperfection, could I realize that my unworthiness was a lie... part of the dream I had accepted as truth.
And then, as I acknowledge and accept this, I will finally be able to accept the gifts of mind and spirit that I have been blessed with.
With that realization, many of the stumbling blocks my mind has placed in my path will no longer hinder my journey.
He said I needed to understand and accept a simple premise and the best way he could say it in words the perfectionist within me could understand was "You are perfect within your imperfection".
He said too... that the acorn needed to be free to grow.... so that my spirit could learn the wisdom of the oak tree... roots sunk deep into the nourishing earth... trunk and limbs raised high… reaching to the sun and sky and stars. Yielding to the driving strength and flow of the winds, yet strong in the knowing of my place in creation... able to bend, but not break.
He said I must perform a ritual and make it a binding covenant. That I must take something of importance to me... and put the medicine of my unworthiness in it and cast it into the lake.
I thought for a moment and remembering my medicine bag beside me, slipped my hand inside. My fingers touched a rock in the bottom... I recognized it as a smoke colored clear quartz crystal I had picked up on one of my walks. I pulled it from the bag and felt the cold bite of the mountain air in its sharp edges. I cupped my palms round the crystal and warmed it with the flow of blood through my hands and with the exhaling of my breath...
As I inhaled, I focused on taking the cleansing mountain air deep into my body. As I exhaled I let the medicine of unworthiness I carried within me flow into the rock crystal in my hands.
My eyes were still closed and I saw the acorn again... inside the metal cage...
As I sat with my breathing, a seam in the mesh began to glow with a faint yellow/golden light..... it spread vertically up the seam, grew brighter and the mesh parted.......
I opened my eyes and gathered my senses.. at first I didn't recognize where I was… as my focus returned I remembered I was on a mountainside in the forest... I gazed out over the lake then to the sky overhead... the moon, half-full illuminated the now dark woods where I sat... I thought it fitting that the moon sat in watch as Wolf spoke to me.
I stood and climbed down the granite boulders to the edge of the lake. I paused, asking the spirits and Great Spirit to help me release the negative energies I had carried inside so long...
I asked the spirit of the lake to accept the crystal and to hold the medicine for me within her depths. I raised my arm and flung the crystal as far out over the lake as I could. It landed with a splash and I watched the ripples in the moonlight until they faded into the calm mirror of the lake's surface. I turned and climbed back to the tree to sit again with the vision.
I closed my eyes and again saw the wire mesh.. saw the opening still radiating a yellow gold light.
As I watched, Wolf stepped from the opening and spoke again...
He told me to observe my new friend... the dog Midnight... he said she was his spirit sister and that I could learn much of freedom of heart and wolf spirit if I would simply observe her in the wild
places...
He also said that I was to have a new name.....
Cante Sumanitu Taka
chun-tay shuen-mah-nee-due dahn-kah
I asked what it means...
He said... "Wolf in the Heart' and then padded off softly into the shadows of the forest.
