Tuesday, June 28, 2011

How To Do Your Own Nature Quest

By Eric Fender


A nature quest is just another name for your native american indian vision quest.

Traditionally the nature quest refers to what's formally recognized as your 'Native American Vision Quest'. However some facilitators choose to make use of the term 'nature quest' instead of 'vision quest' to distinguish the difference between a 'Native American Vision Quest' and also the procedure being used.

Usually the Native American vision quest follows ceremonies that are passed down from generation to another generation. Personally I use the phrase 'vision quest' for your solo nature quests I facilitate simply because it is the phrase most people understand.

Nevertheless I really feel it's important to distinguish that I do not facilitate 'Native American' vision quests in the traditional feeling of the phrase. The reason for this is that I have not grown up in American and here in Australia I have not been subjected to numerous native American Indians to gain an in-depth understanding of their tradition.

Personally I've experimented having a quantity of the ceremonies that Native Americans use for their conventional vision quests nevertheless I've had mixed results with them.

For instance I've attempted fasting whilst out on my own quests but personally I discovered that to become much more distracting than beneficial because I was constantly thinking about my hunger as opposed to picking up the subtle signs from spirit and nature. That's to not say fasting is ineffective, nevertheless in my experience it grew to become quite a distraction.

Likewise with making a traditional medicine wheel for the 'power spot'. Personally I found it an additional distraction to place so much significance on having the ceremony. For example, gathering stones for your N-S-E-W directions, entering from a certain direction, smudging to purify the area, not leaving the circle except for special events etc. Once more, that isn't to say the medicine wheel doesn't have merit but in my experience it distracted from hearing the subtle messages from nature and spirit.

With a nature quest, the concept is to once more set out with the intention for the quest, discover a spot in nature you feel drawn to and hear and interpret the signs from nature and spirit and relate them towards the particular area of life you are looking at.

Then the real energy will come in the re-integration phase of your nature quest. That is when you develop a step-by-step document to carry the insights you acquired into action steps in order to transition from 1 phase of one's existence to another.




About the Author:



No comments: