Altered States (Part III)

Yesterday, joining an online class, the host wanted to begin with a meditation. She pulled a card labeled “The Vision” from a deck, read the description, and suggested we meditate on that.

As you know, I’m in the “vision business,” having led vision quests for 35 years, but as I followed the prompt I was surprised by where I was led. Most people, when thinking of “vision,” imagine a very positive experience, and for the most part that has been true for me as well. But other aspects of that theme are far more nuanced… Specifically, a history of dissociating to escape childhood trauma can lead to a taste and talent for visionary experiences. I was one of those kids, and in difficult moments and situations, I would leave and go somewhere else.

As an adolescent. I received a scholarship to a boarding school, becoming a working-class kid in a very rich, (and snotty) environment. There I was humiliated and ridiculed for most everything working class about me — my manners, accent, and the clothes I wore… Imagine! White socks!

Adolescence is a time when a kid should explore, discover, and create his/her personal identity – i.e. “self.” For me, during those years, whatever sense of self I had collapsed, and I pulled inside and away to protect myself. Eventually, after 3 years, the ordeal was over and I moved on to college in California, but the residue of this history followed.

I found a girlfriend there, and as happens in all relationships, we’d have our conflicts and disagreements. These were very hard – frightening — for me, and I responded slowly. After she spoke, there would be long pauses while she waited for me to reply. During those pauses I would often go into an inner world, withdrawing from my body, my hands and feet feeling far, far away. Within that inner world I sometimes found a voice and had conversations with that girlfriend. Later, when I returned, I thought the conflict was over because we talked, unaware that all that happened somewhere else, in my own, personal “altered state.”

It was the late 60s in the SF Bay area, a time legendary for an explosion of interest in psychedelics. Psychedelics were very appealing to me, partly I suspect, because my experiences of myself as a social being were associated with hurt and terror, and “altered states” were safe havens away from all the troubles of life…plus the possibility of things being open, exciting, and new. Of course, I indulged and sampled many.

Fast forward 10 years… In winter of 1980 I came upon and read the book Black Elk Speaks, the story of a Lakota holy man. Black Elk’s life and story included many vision quests. It inspired me, especially his great “Vision,” a life-altering altered state.

The allure of that got me to hitchhike across the country and hike to the top of Harney Peak in the Black Hills and go without food and water for 3 days and nights. And I had an altered state (which I won’t go into here) that started me on a path that changed my life. Following that experience, I undertook a “vision quest” every year, each time trying to create a grander and more dramatic altered state. I was driven and now refer to it as my “crazy phase” of vision questing.

Eventually, a crisis in my life led me to 12-step meetings for Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA). It was there I realized the similarity between altered states and drugs and alcohol – they both were effective ways of avoiding one’s life. Certainly, vision quests, shamanic trainings, and wilderness adventures seemed “better” than drugs or alcohol, but the impulse was just as unbalanced, and through the 12-step meetings I realized I could no longer run away from or avoid the shit and pain of my life in favor of my more virtuous escapes to a different state of mind or being.

A well-known saying — attributed to many different sources — goes like this.
“A vision without a task is just a pipedream.
A task without vision is just drudgery.
But a vision with a task is the hope of the world.”

This saying is about balance. “Vision” refers to one’s connection to a much-larger world, a transcendent and transpersonal state beyond our personal history and who we are as an individual. It’s a greater “dream” or connection that can give us direction, passion, and purpose. A life without a connection to what’s visionary, a life without any compelling or greater energy in it, is not a life I want to lead.

But it must be brought into life … it must be balanced with tasks. One of my earliest teachers, Sun Bear, would say, “If your vision doesn’t grow corn, I don’t want to hear about it.” I love that! It’s the same message – “Oh yes, you’ve had a connection with the extraordinary, to a world larger than yourself … But does that vision grow corn? Do you bring it into this world, and how does it make you a better person?”

Today, in leading vision quests, the core question is always, “What gift do you have to bring to your people?” It’s a blessing to realize your gift, but who are your people, and how are we going to give it? Can we walk in balance? It takes two legs, with one step firmly planted in that transcendent and sacred world, followed by the second step into this — the world we’re living in now with all its difficulties. Can we bring something into this world from our time in the other?

And if we can’t, then we’re living in the clouds. And the real work is bringing heaven to earth.