Let Me Tell You a Story

It is May of 2018. I am...

• 32 years old;
• graduating from a four-year Ayurvedic Doctor program;
• moving from Boulder, Colorado to an ashram in Northern California; and
• breaking up with a beloved partner.

Before I go, that partner gifts me with the book Wild Mind by Bill Plotkin — a detailed guide to cultivating holistic mental health using the nature-based map of the human psyche.

Wild Mind immediately becomes a source of order amidst the transformative chaos of this transition.

However, as it turns out, and as I might have known, an ashram is not the ideal environment for a single young man trying to start a career.

Within three weeks, my three-year plan is abandoned and I am alone to roam the wilderness of the Western U.S. and deal with the wildness of my own mind. 

I have surrendered my familiar physical home, refused a beautiful human with whom I might have made a home and consciously forsaken what had until then been my spiritual home.

I have no consistent source of income and few prospects. I am living out of my car.

Why?

What drives a man to dismantle every stable source of support in his life?

It is now August 2018.

To conclude a summer spent sleeping outdoors, wandering in wild places, encountering mountain lions and conversing with black bears, I embark on my first Animas Quest — led by underworld guides trained by Bill Plotkin.

We set up camp for two weeks in the mountain-forest of the Four Corners region and spend our days engaged in all manner of wild experiments wisely designed to crack ourselves open to soul.

The adventure culminates with a solo fast — three days & nights alone in a chosen location with nothing but water and a variety of self-designed ceremonies to perform.

• I dig my own grave and sleep in it, naked.
• I dream of an indigenous elder on horseback unburdening me of a shadow that is not mine to carry.
• I tell my life story to a timeless tree. It takes all three days and I do not finish.

In the aftermath of this experience, my underworld guides offer a series of questions:

• Who went out?
• What happened?
• Who returns?
• What gifts do you bring for your people?
• What remains in the mystery?

Who went out? A man without a home — literally, physically, psychologically, romantically, professionally, spiritually, metaphorically, mythopoetically.

What happened? The part of me that has always felt randomly abandoned on a strange & dangerous planet found solace as a son of Earth; as a known and beloved participant in an intelligent ecosystem; as one who irrevocably belongs within the web of all beings. I surrendered every home I had in order to discover an inalienable way of belonging to the world itself, no matter where I go.

Who returns? The one who knows the difference between an authentic identity and a delivery system — that I am not what I do for work, or who I date, or where I live, but that any way in which I choose to move through the world can be the expression of who I truly am.

The gift I bring includes this identity as "one who destroys without malice." I am still learning the many things this can mean, expanding & deepening that definition, discovering novel forms of its infinite potential expression.

What remains in the mystery? So much. If my gift lives in the realm of creative destruction, what about maintenance, preservation, consistency, regeneration? What about tending to what is? 

So — that's one abbreviated story. There are many more.

And! I would love to know your story. 

If you'd like to add a wild chapter to your personal mythology, this is the sort of thing we do within Ecotone Academy.