What is a Vision Fast?
The
Contemporary Vision Fast
Reconnecting Individual, Community, and Earth Spirit
What is a Vision Fast?
People choose to enact a vision fast for many reasons. Often something is shifting or has recently changed in their lives and they seek to deepen their understanding of the transition. Some feel a yearning that can not be named or a specific spiritual call. Others have crossed a specific threshold in life such as finishing education, recovery from disease or addiction, marriage, parenthood, job change, divorce, menopause, children leaving home, becoming a grandparent, retirement, elderhood, or a life threatening illness. Some people fast because there is no available rite of passage to mark a life transition and they seek not only the ritual but the knowledge that is gained that informs their next stage in life.
The vision fast is based on traditional forms of rites of passage and initiation in many traditions and cultures that prepare, support and witness the transitions and role changes throughout life. It has three elements: severance – intentionally leaving behind your life as you have known it; threshold – the time betwixt and between what you have known and what is emerging; and incorporation – the return with new knowledge, understanding and skills that will be integrated into the next stage of life. Those enacting the fast do so willingly and with intention. They are guided in ceremony and experiences that enable deep listening to self, dreams, stories, nature, and spirit. People are offered ways to identify what is standing in the way of moving with clarity, purpose and intention into the next phase of your life. Time alone in nature, fasting, opens the way for teachings from the natural world, the seen and the unseen, heard and unheard. Participants are given the opportunity to develop practices that will support continued spiritual path and development. Before returning to family and community, individual stories are mirrored by the guides to insure that each person recognizes the gift that has been received and will be given. Finally, there is a ceremony of incorporation back to community represented by previous fasters and participant’s family and friends.
This last stage of the vision fast, the return to the community, is where the individual intention and gift meet the community need and future. The individual’s story brings new hope and inspiration to the community. The community supports the return path of the person who has fasted for meaning and purpose. It is an age old story – those who go to the mountain to fast and pray return with information and wisdom from another realm that is critical to the future of the community. This last stage is critical to our society and world today that has strayed so far from an honoring relationship with Earth.
Fasting for vision, purpose and meaning fosters a relationship with Earth and Community that is based in gratitude and service. The individual's own spiritual journey is essential to the creation and nurturance of meaningful community that in turn supports the growth of the individual. This best occurs when the individual intention and gift meet the community need and future. Reconnecting individual, community, and Earth is the ultimate gift of the vision fast.
Quest
Fast Settings
Vermont Wilderness Rites has fostered relationships with private landowners in North Central Vermont who are committed to ecological and spiritual Earth stewardship. Base camp locations are car accessible and yet afford privacy for the fasts. Undeveloped wooded areas, meadows and streams grace the land where groups meet and spend solo time. Landowners and guides are fully ensured and follow comprehensive protocols and guidelines to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all participants. On occasion, programs are conducted on permitted state lands.