How a Native American Rite of Passage Changed My Life
I had prepared for nearly five months, so why am I so weak?
It’s only the end of my first day of Vision Quest, yet I’m dogged by a rising suspicion that maybe I’m not up to the rigorous mental, physical, and emotional demands of the next two-and-a-half days.
No food or water, alone, and in complete darkness, except for when I need to go outside and pee or poop — there is a nearby latrine the community members dug for that.
Had I shortcut the process of purification? Why is this happening?
I go to the ground to reassess my condition. It’s soft and dank with the rich, earthen smell of exposed dirt and decaying leaves. The infrequent pitter-patter of rain beats a constant thrum on the outside of my birthing lodge, a dome-shaped structure made from bent and twisted together willow branches.
I don’t know what I should do.
To quit now seems like such a cop-out, yet feeling so vulnerable this early in the ceremony— knowing I’d have to endure even more suffering over the next few days — is an equally untenable situation.
Just then a voice, stern and clear, cuts through my mental fog.
“Pray with the cannupa. And keep going.”
It’s Naji, the leader of my sweat lodge community, delivering mental instructions and some much needed motivation.
Rising up from a fetal position, I fumble around in the pitch-black before finding my cannupa pipe leaning against the east gate of my birthing lodge, where I’d left it.
I grasp it with two hands, then bring it to my chest.
Immediately my energy returns, as if the weakness was a figment of my imagination. How could this be?
I hold the pipe with the bowl perpendicular to my heart, imagining a beam of light emanating forth from it, connecting my heart to Great Mystery at the center of the universe.
Facing west, I begin my prayers.
Naji is a tall, sinewy white man who’s been my friend, mentor, and Red Road teacher for the past seven years. On weekdays, he’s a court-appointed investigator. On select weekends, he’s the leader of a sweat lodge community he started over 12 years ago on his land in a rural suburb of Portland, Oregon.
He likes to tell a story of how serendipity brought him to this path. It all began while he was in a post-grad slump, living in Woodstock, New York, in the mid-90s:
“I was smoking too much pot, depressed, working in a spiritual gifts shop. One day two Native American brothers walked in, members of a local tribe. They invited me to my first Inipi [the Lakota term for a sweat lodge] ceremony. I went, and from then on I was hooked.”
Though my path to the Red Road wasn’t through Natives, I share part of Naji’s origin story: lost, needing something more than what I had at the time, something transcendent even.
In the beginning of 2013, I had just moved back to Oregon from Tennessee after a failed seven-year relationship. I was fresh out of rehab and needing to fill a glaring gap in my life previously occupied by drugs. Like a tiny sapling barely broken through a forest floor, I needed just the right conditions to grow healthy and leave behind a highly destructive former version of myself.
At the time I was living with an old friend in a temporary housing situation until I could get back on my feet. A therapist, he listens while I talk openly about my struggles with sobriety. One day he tells me about a sweat lodge community he’d joined in the past year, led by a guy he’d met through work.
“I think you’d like it,” he casually mentions.
I attend my first sweat lodge soon thereafter in the soggy days of mid-March. It’s at once familiar and entirely new. Familiar because I had grown up attending church and the structure reminded me of a more expansive, song-centric version of Catholic mass. Entirely new in that, when we prayed collectively, we acknowledged all of creation — the standing nation (trees), creepy crawlies (insects), four-leggeds (animals), and the winged ones (birds) — instead of only Jesus, Holy Spirit, and God.
Rather than believing in dogma handed down by hierarchical power structures, Native Americans believe everything is interconnected. All forms of creation are equally sacred, valuable, and part of a larger web of life — that’s the essence of Native American spirituality.
I resonate right off the bat with the Native American animistic spirituality, which feels like a new kind of math from the religious. In fact, it’s echoed throughout the response we all give after prayers: Aho Mitakuye Oyasin, which means “To All My Relations.” That’s me, you, plants, animals, all of creation. This stood in stark contrast to the Christian belief that man is separate and above other life forms.
Another important distinction is that Naji directs the ceremony while sitting among us, not from a bully pulpit, removed from the congregation, as a priest does. The obvious symbolism being that we’re all equal. This further wins me over.
The four rounds each last about 45 minutes. We sing traditional Lakota songs, then pause briefly to pray as a group. Between each round the door was opened to let steam out. Then, more red-hot stones — said to be “painted red” for their glowing appearance — are brought in, one by one, up to 10 new stones for each round.
By the end of that first sweat lodge back in 2013, I was splayed out on the ground, streaked with mud and grass from head to toe, awe-struck by what I’d just experienced. I felt both exhausted and refreshed, something similar to a long distance run. I wanted more.
I knew I’d found my path forward.
It’s early February and I’m gathered with the three other Hanbleche 2020 pledges — Niko, Nguyen, and Scott — at Naji’s house. It’s a typical winter evening in northwest Oregon: 40 degrees and cloudy with intermittent rainfall. We’re sitting in a circle on the living room floor, diligently taking notes as Naji dictates instructions for Vision Quest — preparation, protocols, and some historical background to the ritual.
He smudges down the room by burning mugwort in an abalone shell. Then he explains the objective of Vision Quest:
“As part of this shamanic practice, we have to be able to admit we don’t know everything. We’re going up to empty out so we can be open to Spirit. We can open up to the intensity of the practice. Part of that is pushing ourselves to go beyond — to go beyond the limits and baggage of our discursive mind, to let it go. That also means we’re allowing ourselves to be open to Spirit through different ways: fasting, dancing at our altar, praying with our cannupa. Being open to whatever Spirit brings in terms of weather. By being open to it all is how we open ourselves to be ready to receive from Spirit.”
He ends with an impassioned plea to “empower our altars with the Mystery of Spirit.”
This isn’t my first rodeo. That came last summer, 2019, in the Ochocos, a chain of remote mountains in Central Oregon. It’s Naji’s preferred location for Vision Quest because of a long-standing Native American tradition of bringing pledges to these sacred mountains for the four-day ritual.
But this year, being what it was with the coronavirus, our community voted against going to the Ochocos. We would instead hold the ceremony on Naji’s six acres with a smaller camp of helpers and supporters for us pledges.
Even with the location change, I have a certain confidence I didn’t possess last year. I’m no longer a novice, yet I’m far from a master. I’m somewhere in the middle — a Red Road journeyman.
I’m aware I’ll undergo significant spiritual, emotional, and mental changes as I go deeper into the purification process over the next three-and-a-half months. But I’m also aware that there are unknowns — those places over the course of the process where unexpected obstacles arise.
What I love most about the preparation for Vision Quest is how honest it requires me to be with myself. If I go about the preparation without cutting corners, it’s a powerful process for rooting out all distractions standing in the way of a deeper understanding of who I am and my place in the Cosmos — what the ancient Greeks call gnosis.
The four-month preparation is designed to transcend the mundane, superficial aspects of everyday life, to open oneself up to communion with Spirit.
In order to do this, a pledge limits their diet to unprocessed foods like organic meats, fruits, and vegetables, and eliminates dairy, gluten, alcohol, coffee, tea or other stimulants, carbonated drinks, processed sugar, and chocolate. The idea being these foods can all be used as crutches, distractions one uses to subdue psychological unrest.
To help us get through a challenging sweat lodge round, Naji has a Buddhist expression he likes to say to convey a truth about the mind-body connection: the mind rides the breath like a man rides a horse.
As this expression relates to the diet, a clear mind follows a clear body. Free from cravings, the body clears a path for the unencumbered mind to probe deeper into one’s internal landscape, allowing greater awareness.
I’ve learned that when there’s discord between the mind and body, it’s impossible to engage in deep prayer and introspection. In all spiritual work, the body, like the mind, wants clarity. It’s a symbiotic relationship where both need to work in harmony.
But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to get the body and mind in sync. In reality, paring down to a handful of “mountain-safe” foods on a dopamine-chasing American diet is quite difficult. I’ve experienced this firsthand with intense cravings for nearly all the foods I had to cut out.
In both years I’ve participated in Hanbleche, it’s taken some lead-in time for me to remove all the offending foods from my diet, cutting out dairy and gluten one week, alcohol and sugar the next. A get-rid-of-everything-at-once policy is doomed to fail — trust me, I’ve tried it.
After getting over that hump, something magical happens: life gets better. I get deeper sleep, wake up well-rested and clear-headed. I’m less inclined to get in arguments. Anxiety decreases. A sense of well-being increases. I feel emotionally, mentally, and physically lighter.
Then, and only then, can the real work begin.
Uh-oh. An all-too-familiar pattern that’s repeating from last year. I open my laptop and begin typing out an email:
Subject: Things coming up
Naji,
I’m writing because I’ve been having a hard time lately and a lot has been coming up for me in the Vision Quest process. Apart from adhering to the diet and tying those initial commitment prayer flags, I’ve been stalled in the process (I haven’t yet begun my prayer ties or processed cedar) because of some personal stuff. We can chat more about it this weekend but just wanted to let you know where I’m at with things, that’s all.
Thanks for your guidance and help always.
Aho,
Chris
It’s early April, 2020, more than a full month into the Vision Quest process, and I’m slacking on beginning two crucial preparations: tying 117 prayer ties of each color of the seven directions (black, red, yellow, white, blue, green, purple) with cedar bows I’ve harvested but still need to break down into finer material.
I could’ve seen this coming.
Lately I’ve been feeling extra stressed with being at home every day, nearly all day long with my wife and our three-month-old baby girl. This wasn’t what I had planned. Just a few months ago I thought I’d be returning to a new contract at Nike, but then the coronavirus pandemic arrived and my job disappeared. So now I’m scrambling to find new employment and we’re continuing to subsist on unemployment insurance payouts.
I hit “Send.”
Minutes later, I get an email back from Naji:
Chris,
Good to let me know how things are going — let’s talk this evening if you can, I am usually on my long drive home around 6, if that works. Not having your ties to work on while you go through the intensity of preparing yourself is like not having any Tylenol when you have a toothache — the toothache is not going to kill you but there’s a world of difference when you can take a pill and have the throbbing dissipate magically for a while! It’s optimal, as things come up and intensity arises, to plow it all into your ties and prayers — the “altar” that is going to be around you, protecting you, and which the spirits will be looking at and responding to during your time on the hill praying with the cannupa. If you need dried cedar I can give you some. Breaking the cedar down takes maybe an hour at most, and that’s something that your helpers can also assist you with, i.e. do for you. You don’t need to cut all your ties to get started on the the ties — you can cut a few black ones and get started — again, cutting ties and flags is something that your helpers can assist you with. In the long run it’s best if you’re doing at least some of the preparations yourself, but in the meantime, your wife can help you get things started, and her participation and prayer in the making of your altar will be of great benefit to you both. Obviously, your helpers can’t make your ties for you, but can help with most other things.
Naji
Naji’s words are a salve on my anxious mind, providing clarity for the road ahead.
The Vision Quest process has a way of undoing one’s defenses, of rendering maladaptive patterns obsolete and tired coping strategies useless. This episode was a reminder that I can’t hold on to my resistance in order to control the outcome. I must go full steam ahead, regardless of any real or perceived obstacles that stand in my way. That’s the work on this path.
It’s a mild and sunny day in mid-May when I meet at Nguyen’s house to join him and Niko on an outing for one of our last remaining preparations, harvesting mugwort.
A sacred herb in Native American culture, mugwort is revered for its deep sleep-inducing properties and is said to promote visionary dreams. For this reason, we were to harvest enough of the plant to sleep on in our Vision Quest lodges, about a trash bag’s worth.
Nguyen knows of a place to find large amounts not far from Portland. We pile into his truck, equipped with clippers and trash bags, and drive to the location, about 30 minutes outside of town.
We find two large stands, each with mature plants as much as five feet tall. It’s a nondescript plant easily dismissed as just another weed, except for a unique characteristic: fragrant green leaves that, when rolled into a ball, can be used as a slow-burning smudge.
Harvesting mugwort was the last act of finding the preparations in the area, or what I like to call the “spiritual scavenger hunt”. Each one of us had already procured an eagle feather for a wiluta, harvested red willow from a location in the Columbia River Gorge, and collected white willow for use as poles around the perimeter of our lodges.
We also had tarps for our altars, new clothes to wear during Vision Quest, including long underwear, fleece pants, fleece hoodies and jackets, and had purchased our Pendleton robes to be draped in when we came down “off the mountain”, rejoining the community.
We were ready for the big event.
Set the intention: Who am I? What do I want from this? Why do I want it?Three questions from the orientation back in February are running around my mind. They’re three questions Naji wanted us to ponder as we were doing all of our preparations.
I admit I’m no closer to having answers to them now as I was three months ago. Truthfully, I still don’t know who I am. And I’m not sure what I want from this, making the last question useless.
But I don’t stop praying for the answers to come.
It’s now Monday morning and I can hear the sing-song chirps of Pacific wrens outside, signaling daybreak. I’ve been here since Thursday evening. I once again reach for the pipe in darkness, bringing it to my chest to pray to the four directions, above and below, and to Great Spirit, Wakan Tanka, in the center.
Yet again, prayer has gotten me this far. It’s pulled me through moments of intense self-doubt, of wanting nothing more than to tap out. It’s helped me focus on my breathing when all I could feel was my stomach aching from hunger and dehydration. It’s helped me remain resolute in my decision to stay here through it all.
And then, like a lightning bolt through my psyche, it comes to me: I might never know who I really am, but that’s ok.
The purpose of this preparation — all the prayers that went into all the prayer ties, the restrictive diet, gathering items in the community, inviting friends and family to the four-day event (including my mom who flew 2,000 miles to be here in support) — was not to figure out who I really am. It was to take what I’ve learned about myself through this ritual and apply it to my daily life, so that I can go forward as a more evolved version of myself. It’s all in service to becoming a better human.
Though I falter time and time again in life, what the process of purification for Vision Quest has taught me is that I can do better and be better.
I can be more spiritually connected, more healthy, more patient, more compassionate. I can be a better husband, a better friend, a better father, a better brother, a better son.
And I can take this blessing of improved awareness forward to tackle all the things I need to work on.
Just then I hear footsteps nearby. Naji’s booming voice comes:
“Brother, your prayer here has ended, please come outside to rejoin us.”
Vision Quest 2020 is over, but I know the real work is yet to begin.
