The Day Walk
a short essay
The Day Walk
(written in 2002, unpublished)
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The day walk is a journey upon the face of the earth, a ceremony of preparation, a pilgrimage through the mirror of nature. In the natural world, signs and symbols of your inward journey are reflected. The walk is a distilled version of the threshold phase of the vision fast [the solo period at the center of a full Vision Quest]. (1) -- Steven Foster and Meredith Little
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It has been said that all spiritual stories, across cultures, have the same plot line. (2) A hero comes to an impassable river, or other obstacle, which is guarded by a demon. The hero withdraws to gather strength, to prepare spiritually. Only when ready, the hero calls forth the demon to do battle. By defeating, befriending, or taming the demon, the hero takes it on as an ally, absorbing its powers, which then allows a crossing of the once-impassable river.
Consider how that plot line informs the task of a Day Walk: a solitary, ritualized day spent in nature, meant to clarify a stated intention and to incorporate it into one’s life. The Day Walk is a spiritual story with three phases. First comes Severance: withdrawal from one’s day-to-day existence, the severing of ties, the preparation for the struggle to come. Next is Threshold: the time for threshing the wheat from the chaff, for doing battle with the demon and then passing over the previously impassable. The final stage is Incorporation: taking the lessons back into the corpus, the body of one’s life.
Severance
Preparation: The Day Walk is best begun at the dawn of a new day, the dawn of a new state of awareness. If you wait until the morning to pack, to mill about the house, to say goodbye to those you leave behind, you risk a distortion of thought, of feeling, that may ripple through the rest of your day. It’s best, therefore, to have completed your packing the day before. Ideally, you’ll even drive yourself to the place of the walk the night before. If not, try to arrive by sunrise.
Intention: Perhaps the single facet of “a Day Walk” that most separates it from “a simple walk in nature” is intention. Any spiritual practice begins with intentionality: a mindful attention to the how, why, and what of one’s inner life, and how they relate to the outer world. Preparation for a Day Walk, therefore, best begins in advance of the actual day. Ask yourself: What’s up for me? Perhaps it’s a relationship with something outside yourself: another person, a group of people, a job, a duty, a path-whatever. Or perhaps it’s about something entirely your own: an unresolved emotion or uncertainty, a healing or unhealthy practice, a personal commitment to be made or rescinded. Finally, a Day Walk may also be used as preparation for a Vision Quest-a fuller rite of passage that incorporates the same elements as the Day Walk, but in a more expanded format. Whatever the reason for the Walk, whatever the intention, see if you can distill it into its essence. “Tomorrow, I’ll walk the earth to . . .”
Threshold
Solitude: So much of a person’s self-definition is derived from outside relationships that mirror back who and what and why we are. While this is an essential part of human life, these relationships may become habitual and confining. A retreat to solitude offers a person the chance to explore, perhaps even shift, this self-definition. By removing oneself from the day-to-day, we allow something new to emerge. Anthony Storr, a psychiatrist and author, warns us: “This is not without its dangers. Any form of new organization or integration within the mind has to be preceded by some degree of disorganization. No one can tell, until he has experienced it, whether or not this necessary disruption of former patterns will be succeeded by something better.” (3) Therefore, preparation before and support afterward are an essential part of the Walk.
Ritual: Begin and end your Walk by marking these transitions with a ritual, as though you are truly crossing over a threshold. To another person, or a circle of people, declare your intention aloud before leaving (and again before telling your story upon returning). Or if alone, sing a song, smudge yourself, step over a stick, whatever feels right. The idea is to create a simple ritual that marks the transition from the day-to-day to the sacred, then back again. Throughout the day, consider what other simple rituals you may perform to mark the working through of your intention. Perhaps you’ll experience a climactic moment or a special insight-something that needs to be externalized. Or perhaps you’ll come gradually to some special understanding, as your intention evolves inside you. Keeping a journal through the day can be an important part of this process, helping both to clarify what is unfolding, and to find an expression for it through ritual.
Fasting: The most obvious part of the Day Walk’s fast is the act of not eating. On the Walk, however, you also are called to fast in other ways: from talking, from working, from being in outside relationship, from following habitual patterns. The act of fasting from food then becomes, at once, a physiological event and a metaphor for one’s life. It changes the very biochemistry of how we are nourished, while also asking us to consider what it is that truly nourishes us in our daily life. Similarly, closing the Day Walk with a celebratory evening meal is a dual act: a change again in biochemistry and an opportunity to celebrate the recreation of community.
Nature: The natural world is naturally sacred. If we respect its beauty (as well as its power and unpredictability), if we walk it gently, then Mother Earth in turn will behold our own beauty and will hold us gently. A Day Walk is an invitation to explore this relationship. You walk the Earth, looking for signs and symbols that have a charge, that choose your attention. What do these outer signs have to teach you about your inner life, your specific intention, what has brought you on this sacred walk? How is the outside world a mirror to your inner life, your inner struggle, your inner path? Walk the land with intuition as your guide. Walking, sitting, journaling, singing, looking, listening. Explore the outer landscape as though you were exploring the inner landscape of your own self. The words of T.S. Eliot may serve as your best guide: “In order to arrive at what you do not know, you must go by the way which is the way of ignorance.” (4)
Incorporation
Storytelling: When we tell our inner stories out loud, we make them real, we give them shape, we invite them back into the body, the corpus, of our lives. This may be done with a trusted friend, or within a safe circle of friends. Either may serve as our community, our “Council.” Though this telling may be done days or weeks after the Walk, telling the story soon after completion-when all the details of the day are still clear and fresh-can be especially powerful. Just as “the Day Walk” is not the same as “a walk in nature,” so too must the story be told within “a Council,” a group that will honor it, rather than as “a casual conversation” that will rob the story of its sacred power. Borrowing from The Way of Council by Jack Zimmerman and Virginia Coyle (5), the rules for sitting in circle are few, but powerful: Speak from the heart. Listen from the heart. Be of lean expression. Be spontaneous. Maintain confidentiality. In this special setting, a deeper inner wisdom may find expression in the outer world, giving it form, making it real, declaring it to be true.
References
1. The Trail to the Sacred Mountain: A Vision Fast Handbook for Adults, Steven Foster/Meredith Little.
2. The Way to Shambhala, Edwin Bernbaum.
3. Solitude: A Return to the Self, Anthony Storr.
4. “East Coker,” T.S. Eliot.
5. The Way of Council, Jack Zimmerman & Virginia Coyle.
Consider how that plot line informs the task of a Day Walk: a solitary, ritualized day spent in nature, meant to clarify a stated intention and to incorporate it into one’s life. The Day Walk is a spiritual story with three phases. First comes Severance: withdrawal from one’s day-to-day existence, the severing of ties, the preparation for the struggle to come. Next is Threshold: the time for threshing the wheat from the chaff, for doing battle with the demon and then passing over the previously impassable. The final stage is Incorporation: taking the lessons back into the corpus, the body of one’s life.
Severance
Preparation: The Day Walk is best begun at the dawn of a new day, the dawn of a new state of awareness. If you wait until the morning to pack, to mill about the house, to say goodbye to those you leave behind, you risk a distortion of thought, of feeling, that may ripple through the rest of your day. It’s best, therefore, to have completed your packing the day before. Ideally, you’ll even drive yourself to the place of the walk the night before. If not, try to arrive by sunrise.
Intention: Perhaps the single facet of “a Day Walk” that most separates it from “a simple walk in nature” is intention. Any spiritual practice begins with intentionality: a mindful attention to the how, why, and what of one’s inner life, and how they relate to the outer world. Preparation for a Day Walk, therefore, best begins in advance of the actual day. Ask yourself: What’s up for me? Perhaps it’s a relationship with something outside yourself: another person, a group of people, a job, a duty, a path-whatever. Or perhaps it’s about something entirely your own: an unresolved emotion or uncertainty, a healing or unhealthy practice, a personal commitment to be made or rescinded. Finally, a Day Walk may also be used as preparation for a Vision Quest-a fuller rite of passage that incorporates the same elements as the Day Walk, but in a more expanded format. Whatever the reason for the Walk, whatever the intention, see if you can distill it into its essence. “Tomorrow, I’ll walk the earth to . . .”
Threshold
Solitude: So much of a person’s self-definition is derived from outside relationships that mirror back who and what and why we are. While this is an essential part of human life, these relationships may become habitual and confining. A retreat to solitude offers a person the chance to explore, perhaps even shift, this self-definition. By removing oneself from the day-to-day, we allow something new to emerge. Anthony Storr, a psychiatrist and author, warns us: “This is not without its dangers. Any form of new organization or integration within the mind has to be preceded by some degree of disorganization. No one can tell, until he has experienced it, whether or not this necessary disruption of former patterns will be succeeded by something better.” (3) Therefore, preparation before and support afterward are an essential part of the Walk.
Ritual: Begin and end your Walk by marking these transitions with a ritual, as though you are truly crossing over a threshold. To another person, or a circle of people, declare your intention aloud before leaving (and again before telling your story upon returning). Or if alone, sing a song, smudge yourself, step over a stick, whatever feels right. The idea is to create a simple ritual that marks the transition from the day-to-day to the sacred, then back again. Throughout the day, consider what other simple rituals you may perform to mark the working through of your intention. Perhaps you’ll experience a climactic moment or a special insight-something that needs to be externalized. Or perhaps you’ll come gradually to some special understanding, as your intention evolves inside you. Keeping a journal through the day can be an important part of this process, helping both to clarify what is unfolding, and to find an expression for it through ritual.
Fasting: The most obvious part of the Day Walk’s fast is the act of not eating. On the Walk, however, you also are called to fast in other ways: from talking, from working, from being in outside relationship, from following habitual patterns. The act of fasting from food then becomes, at once, a physiological event and a metaphor for one’s life. It changes the very biochemistry of how we are nourished, while also asking us to consider what it is that truly nourishes us in our daily life. Similarly, closing the Day Walk with a celebratory evening meal is a dual act: a change again in biochemistry and an opportunity to celebrate the recreation of community.
Nature: The natural world is naturally sacred. If we respect its beauty (as well as its power and unpredictability), if we walk it gently, then Mother Earth in turn will behold our own beauty and will hold us gently. A Day Walk is an invitation to explore this relationship. You walk the Earth, looking for signs and symbols that have a charge, that choose your attention. What do these outer signs have to teach you about your inner life, your specific intention, what has brought you on this sacred walk? How is the outside world a mirror to your inner life, your inner struggle, your inner path? Walk the land with intuition as your guide. Walking, sitting, journaling, singing, looking, listening. Explore the outer landscape as though you were exploring the inner landscape of your own self. The words of T.S. Eliot may serve as your best guide: “In order to arrive at what you do not know, you must go by the way which is the way of ignorance.” (4)
Incorporation
Storytelling: When we tell our inner stories out loud, we make them real, we give them shape, we invite them back into the body, the corpus, of our lives. This may be done with a trusted friend, or within a safe circle of friends. Either may serve as our community, our “Council.” Though this telling may be done days or weeks after the Walk, telling the story soon after completion-when all the details of the day are still clear and fresh-can be especially powerful. Just as “the Day Walk” is not the same as “a walk in nature,” so too must the story be told within “a Council,” a group that will honor it, rather than as “a casual conversation” that will rob the story of its sacred power. Borrowing from The Way of Council by Jack Zimmerman and Virginia Coyle (5), the rules for sitting in circle are few, but powerful: Speak from the heart. Listen from the heart. Be of lean expression. Be spontaneous. Maintain confidentiality. In this special setting, a deeper inner wisdom may find expression in the outer world, giving it form, making it real, declaring it to be true.
References
1. The Trail to the Sacred Mountain: A Vision Fast Handbook for Adults, Steven Foster/Meredith Little.
2. The Way to Shambhala, Edwin Bernbaum.
3. Solitude: A Return to the Self, Anthony Storr.
4. “East Coker,” T.S. Eliot.
5. The Way of Council, Jack Zimmerman & Virginia Coyle.