animas valley quest - a contemporary Vision Quest

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 This contemporary enactment of the pancultural vision quest is a dynamic wilderness rite for men and women seeking greater depth and clarity about life purpose and meaning. As a rite of initiation, the quest is a ceremonial descent to the underworld, in which you die to your familiar way of belonging to the world, uncover the passion and wisdom of your soul, and retrieve the gift that is yours alone to bring to the world, enhancing personal fulfillment and genuine service. The quest serves as a modern rite of initiation — not into any social, religious, or spiritual group, but into your own soul and deeper layers of true adulthood.

As a rite of passage, the quest facilitates the transition through a major crossroads of life. These crossroads — leaving home, mid-life crisis, career change, loss of a loved one, divorce, a healing crisis, spiritual crisis, or retirement — can be quite disorienting and emotionally traumatic. But these unavoidable and pivotal shifts are often the necessary threshold of all post-adolescent personal development and initiation.

When you neglect the human need to periodically renew yourself, your life becomes hardened, dry, brittle. The Animas Quest is an opportunity to surrender the solidness of your life so that something new might sprout in its place. It is a chance to discover (or recover) your own unique animating essence, your personal puzzle piece of the Mystery, the gift that only you can offer the world, a necessary offering toward our collective navigation of this fragile planetary time of multiple crises and immense possibilities. During your quest, familiarity and comfort are left behind. Your old way of defining yourself is abandoned. The more-than-human world and the deep imagination become your guides.

Since 1980, Animas Valley Institute has been developing and enacting this modern counterpart to initiation and passage rites found throughout the world. The Animas Quest interweaves the practices of ancient traditions with the self-development tools of modern depth psychology and ecopsychology. Although we have learned much from native traditions, our programs are not imitations; they are distinctive and thoroughly modern, designed specifically for contemporary people of Western cultures.

The Animas Quest catalyzes the encounter with soul by temporarily displacing everyday consciousness through five primary means: (1) solitude for three days and nights while (2) fasting (i.e., drinking water only), (3) being fully exposed to and enfolded within the forms and forces of nature, (4) enacting a series of ceremonies, and (5) employing a set of practices (soulcraft) that support you in crossing into the mysteries of nature and psyche.

The Vision Quest will take place over 11 days. Preceding your time of solitude are four full days of preparation activities that enhance your ability to benefit from the fast.  During the five preparation days, we work with dreams, poetry, deep imagery, ceremonial drumming and dance, dialogues with nature, the way of council, and other practices to help us slip out the door of our everyday lives and access our own deeper, wilder, psychonautical currents. The heart of the quest consists of the solo: three days and nights without human companionship in nature, fasting, engaging in personal ceremonies, saying yes to the mysteries of soul, tending the true mythos of your life, praising and grieving, and birthing a vision. Upon your return to base camp, there are three days of reincorporation activities, preparing you to embody among your people what you received on your fast.