Sunrise from the peak of Mt Kilimanjaro
“Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing”
Helen Keller
Having prepared yourself and walked the four directions of the medicine wheel for the past four weeks it is now time to step into the centre and open yourself to Vision. How you do this is up to you and will depend on your personal view of how the world works. You may choose for example to open yourself to receiving Vision – in this case you do nothing structured but simply allow yourself the space and time to collect any thoughts and feelings that come to you. This is how you would do a Vision Quest from an American Indian perspective – you create a sacred circle of Polenta – step into the circle and sit for 24 hours and be open.
Alternately, you may choose to be more structured and create Vision from the bottom up and then see how this fits with how you intuitively feel.
Regardless of which perspective you take on Visioning, my key suggestion to you in this is to give yourself space and time – make a conscious choice here to set aside a day on the Equinox to be as free as possible from outside distractions like mobile phones, internet, television etc and ideally to be as free a possible from other people. You may also choose to do this in silent retreat and/or you may choose to do this whilst fasting. The key principle is to try and stop the world. Remember also that we are not going to ask again to call in Vision until March 2027 so be intentional about this.
You’ve already done four weeks of preparation for this – in the East you sat in gratitude for your journey so far – in the South you connected with the inner child and innocence and passions – in the West you confronted your inner fears and doubts – in the North you connected with the wisdom gained from life’s challenges.
Now we sit in the centre knowing where we are in the journey – the elements of night and day are in balance – time to ask.
If everything was aligned to my higher purpose – what’s the Sacred Path I am trying to walk in my life?
1. What does it look like?
2. What does it feel like?
3. Why do I want this – what ideal is this connected to?
You can also break this down into your foundational base consisting of the five elements – physical, mental, emotional, material and spiritual. The process is – firstly determine what your current state is – out of 10 how do you rate where you are now? – then determine the Ideal state using the 3 questions above.
Remember this is not a ‘forever’ question – nor is it about solutions or about how to fix things - your time frame is simply the March 2027 Equinox.
When you do this exercise you are stirring the pot so to speak and different people will receive in different way – it’s all good. You may find you see images, you may want to draw things, write things down, key memories may come to you, people may come into your mind. At this stage just allow don’t move into interpretation – receive.
From an Existential Philosophy perspective what you are seeking is Existential Alignment between who you aspire to be, your free self and the interpretive stories of the past.
You may also wish to consider this from the perspective of the Ideal Self – Richard Boyatzis proposes there are 5 elements of the Ideal Self – your life purpose – what do you believe you are actually doing here? – your key Values – which enable you to determine if you are a good person – your life Philosophy – which enables you to determine if you are leading a good life – your Self Identity – the story you tell about who you are – and your Social Identity – who you are in social settings.
If you use this structure you can explore these five elements using the same process as above – what’s your current state? – what’s the Ideal state as determined by the 3 questions above.
Always what I would suggest you are seeking is PEACE – peace on your life path and journey – a release from existential angst that will upset your voyage. There can be no peace in the world without peace within so this is the place to start if you wish to change the world.
“On this path, it is only the first step that counts”
St. Jean-Baptiste – Marie Vianney, Catholic Saint
In peace and love always.
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