Advice For Vision Quests

Richard Ebbs writes some advise for vision quests in his website :

Stalk the unconscious.

Hunt the clues to an awareness of consciousness.

Know that you are part of a web of causality where everything is connected.

Listen to what is going on.

Look for clues in everything you sense.

Look for clues in everything you think, everything you feel, and in everything that happens to you.

Feel your connection to the earth. Breathe. Try and maintain a sense of the web of energy that surrounds you.

Try and let an intuitive sense of this energy give you direction.

Believe that you may find new and deep guidance, of profound importance to your life, if you are open to this.

Remember that if you want to find yourself, you may have to lose yourself first. Maybe 'you've got to get out of it if you want to get into it' (as somebody said) and before you can integrate yourself more effectively it may first be necessary to go to pieces.

Suspend your disbelief.

The world as you know it is something that you (re)create every moment. So, you can create the world in different ways if you choose to do that. What happens to you is determined by the totality of who you are. So, take responsibility for who you are, accept yourself totally, and run with the grain of the Universe.

Stay vigilant.

Engage fully with what is going on. (So that if you choose to go off in some new direction, you do that with commitment).

Allow yourself to be both the one who acts and the one who watches. Avoid 'possession' by whatever aspect of yourself is currently to the fore: be creative with identification, so that even in the middle of ecstatic experience, for example, you know that this is just one face of many. See the addictions, see the fear. Be aware of the sleepwalking parts of yourself. Choose, for a while at least, not to energise them. Don't overindulge in thoughts and feelings whose origins are in 'scenes from the past'.  Be focused.

Hunt the 'ally'.

Have courage. Be a warrior. Do not underestimate the importance of the challenge.

Look for the clues. Guidance may come from anywhere: from dreams, from a tiny creature of some sort. From seeds planted in you at this time that do not sprout and grow until months have passed. You may find a spirit guide, perhaps in a totally unexpected way. You may find an ally of some unexpected sort, also in a totally unexpected way. You may be tested. You may not be tested at all. Only you know what you should do. Be strong. Extract all that you can from this. If nothing happens, that's fine!

Let an intuitive 'body-energy' awareness guide your steps. Don't hang around in places that don't feel right: do hang around in places that do feel right.

Try and recall your dreams after you sleep.

Recover everything that makes you whole.