I had just returned from a journey into the New Mexico wilderness when a woman called asking about vision quests . I shared some of my recent experiences as well as the details of the programs I lead. The voice at the other end of the line was curious and enthusiastic.
“It does sound wonderful and inspiring,” she said, except for the part about spending time alone at night in the wilderness. I’m not at all certain I could do that, even though everything else about it speaks to me. Can you tell me how you, or someone like myself, gets to the point where I could deal with it?”
“The simple way,” I told her, “to learn to deal with it is by being alone at night in the wilderness.”
The above conversation is not that unusual. Every person, regardless of age, gender, or position has to confront fear in his or her life. We may face it in different arenas, as in relationships, work, sports, health, or sex. We may fear things in nature, in others, or in ourselves, but no one is immune to it. There are those who have reached the pinnacle of success who are still haunted by the fear of failure, and those comfortable making decisions affecting the lives of thousands that still fear their parents’ disapproval.
Fear is everywhere, and there is both good and bad news in this. The bad news is that we can’t avoid it, or we do so at our peril. What we don’t face rules us, most often unconsciously. A life avoiding fear is a life ruled by fear. It will be a life restricted to the known, with self-discovery and creativity as its casualties. It will be focused on safety and security, and passion will atrophy. Conversely, in facing our fear directly, we break its hold on our lives. By doing what we’re afraid to do, we develop confidence in ourselves. We learn that we can “handle it.” We put ourselves in positions to learn new things, to discover talents or resources we didn’t know we had, to seek help, perhaps meeting people and making friends along the way. In short, as we enter new territory our world expands, and as it does, our fear becomes a smaller part of it.
For the last twenty years I’ve been guiding people on vision quests; taking people to wilderness where, after several days of preparation, they spend four days and nights alone, without entertainment (books, etc.), company, or food. People come to participate in these programs for a variety of reasons: to connect with God, Spirit, or Nature; to make or ratify significant life decisions; to discover their core values and unique gifts; to prepare for adulthood, marriage, dying or other major life transitions; or to renew passion or confirm a commitment they have lost. Though the people themselves may vary as much as their reasons for coming, they all have in common the willingness, or the necessity to face their fears as they go out “to the mountain.” How they face those fears and the lessons they learn from it is always one of the major gifts of the questing process.
Charlie was a computer programmer in his early forties. He loved children, although he had none. He was bored in his job, which kept him in a basement office with no windows, and he was “going through the motions” in a lifeless marriage with a conservative and fearful wife. He felt trapped and stuck.
Charlie entered the Vermont woods with his hopes, fears, and a flashlight. His major fear was of noises in the dark, but “as long as I have my flashlight nearby, I’ll be okay,” he assured himself.
As twilight approached, Charlie gathered his intentions and his courage, and made ready to face the darkness, the noises in the night. He worried that, if he should fall asleep and be awakened, he might be unable to find his comforting light, and so, with nylon rope and safety pin, he attached it to his shirtsleeve. His “problem” solved, he relaxed and drifted off to sleep.
Hours later, he opened his eyes in the blackness. Something had startled him, jarred him loose from the webbing of sleep. What was it? The noise -- where had it come from? Confused and disoriented, he struggled to attain consciousness, to bring his attention out of his dreams and into his body. As he did so, he became aware of a presence, cold and foreign, his fear erupting as he jerked himself upright, screaming, “There’s something on my arm!” It was, of course, his flashlight.
The story of Charlie’s flashlight illustrates how fear works in our lives. We develop strategies not to feel it, to avoid it, to make it go away. Like Charlie, with rope and safety pin, we become attached to whatever seems to lessen its presence. Charlie was clinging to a boring job and a lifeless marriage, situations that brought him little pleasure. By holding onto them he hoped to avoid his deepest fears: fear of rejection if he faced the job market at forty, fear of living alone and feelings of inadequacy at the thought of entering the singles social scene. Charlie came to realize that, like his flashlight, clinging to these situations not only didn’t relieve his fear, it actually increased fear’s power in his life.
Charlie had been holding onto his job, his marriage, and his flashlight the way a young child clings to a parent. The young child, who lives in each of us, hopes to avoid the frightening things in the world. He or she tries to do this by holding onto Mommy or Daddy (or spouses, money, children, position, etc.) or by magically making those things go away (drinking, television, workaholism, etc.). Most of our “security objects” do not, in fact, nurture us. Often they are deadening or outright destructive. But the real damage is not just in the activities or objects of our dependence. By clinging, avoiding, or medicating our fears, we structure our lives around a childlike feeling of helplessness, thereby reinforcing it. We subconsciously affirm our weakness, our inability to “handle it,” encouraging and enabling fear to spread until worry and anxiety pervades every decision and action.
Scott Peck, in the best-selling book The Road Less Traveled, defines metal illness as “the avoidance of legitimate suffering.” Whenever we avoid our difficult feelings -- fear, grief, anger, loss, pain, etc., when we refuse to fully experience them, we make ourselves ill, we create disease. The problem then is not the feelings, the problem is not the fear; it is our urge to deny it and protect ourselves from it. Staying in bed will protect us from the fear of the bogeyman in the closet, but if we truly want to lessen our fear, we have to open the door. Fear must be confronted and faced to be healed.
Joan was a woman in her late forties. Married to an alcoholic -- a playful, but irresponsible husband -- she was tormented by indecision whether to stay or leave. In addition, she had dreams of starting an alternative school, but feared the commitment of energy and financial resources required to make it a possibility. She had stayed in this limbo for years, and might have continued, except she was shocked into action by the sudden death of her best friend.
“When Corky died, my life started staring me in the face,” she said. “I’ve lived my whole life trying to please other people, and I’m perpetually scared because of this critical voice, which tells me I’m always doing something wrong. I don’t know how I’m going to change all that, but I can’t, and won’t, live the rest of my life this way.”
Joan had reached a crisis, a turning point in her life, and rather than run from it, she decided on a wilderness vision quest as a way to turn and face it squarely. By doing so she turned a crisis into an opportunity, and experience of death into the potential for her own rebirth.
On one evening of her four days alone, she created a personal ritual of dying to symbolize her own death and rebirth. She created a circle of stones, a ritual tomb in which she would spend the night awake. This circle and the commitment to remain through the night, represented to her the “long, dark tunnel,” not coincidentally, also symbolized the birth canal. In the center of the circle was a very large stone, representing her new purpose that would support her through the long cold night.
As Joan sat through the night in the New Mexico Mountains, waiting, praying, affirming her purpose, she was beset by the demons of doubt, discomfort, and fear. Many times she questioned why she was doing this, how much easier it might be to lie down and fall asleep. “But,” she reported, “I’ve given in and fallen asleep in one way or another for forty-nine years. I was committed to finding the strength and courage to remain awake in difficult circumstances for at least one night in my life.”
Early in the morning, with a faint light lightening on the eastern horizon, Joan was frightened by a rising chorus of howling coyotes, seemingly coming from all directions. “I was really frightened, “ she said. “I didn’t know anything about coyotes, or how close they were, and I thought they might attack me. I imagined what I would do if they attacked, and that made it worse, as I imagined myself being torn to shreds.”
At that moment Joan heard a noise to her right and turned to see a bobcat, not ten feet from her. The bobcat, startled by the movement and Joan’s unexpected presence, scrambled backward while Joan, also startled, without thinking, reached out her hand, saying, “Don’t be afraid.”
“I was shocked,” she said later, “not so much by the presence of the bobcat, but by the fact that I had no fear whatsoever. I had just frightened myself half to death thinking about the coyotes, and here was something much more ‘dangerous,’ and I was fine. I think I realized right then that nearly every fear in my life had been imaginary.”
Joan’s decision -- to do whatever it took, as yet unspecified, to transform her experience of life -- was an act of power. Her willingness to face her “dark night of the soul,” to enact her personal ritual of dying, alone, brought her face-to-face with her fear and resulted, not in her death, but the death of a life based on fear. Her wilderness vision quest marked the beginning of a new life, a life organized around intention, passion, and wonder.
“I wish everyone could have the experience I did,” says Joan. I was running away for so long. I realized now the way is to go through it, not way from it. I have so much less fear in my life now.” Joan is no longer married. She has moved, spent time in a spiritual community, and continues to explore the possibility of creating a school. Charlie is in a new relationship and finishing a graduate degree in education. Their lives and the changes they’ve made have not been easy, but they have faced those challenges and difficulties with a sense of peace and a faith in their ability to discover and develop the resources needed to move forward.
As Charlie noted the last time I saw him, “I now see myself with abilities I never knew I had, good friends I can call on, and the courage to ‘go into battle’ if I have to. My life seems lighter and full of possibilities I never knew existed. Maybe it was there, all the time, under my nose and I didn’t realize it, but I know in my heart I never would have realized it if I had kept running away from the battle.”
Charlie and Joan will meet fear again, many times, as we all must whenever we explore the new and unknown. Yet, by their commitment to face it frontally, they have moved far past the point of being paralyzed by it or having it determine their direction. They are choosing their own directions, following their truth and the guidance of their hearts. And when those choices seem to lead them down a path with dragons, with a wry smile they can say, “I’ve met those creatures before, and I’ll do fine.”
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