In the Summer our family went on a family camping weekend run by a chap called Thomas Schorr-kon, a student of Tom Brown Jr. I had been introduced to the idea by a chap I have met through my business consultancy work. An ex senior manager at British Telecom, and the last person I would have guessed would be into this kind of stuff. Shows what I know.
As we got to know one another we both began to let drop little things about our respective practices. It turned out that he has been learning from Tom Brown Jr for a number of years and regularly helps in running courses when various shamen from North and South America visit this country. It is amazing the people one bumps into if you just keep your eyes and ears open
. I have been thinking for some time about how to get my wife and kids even vaguely involved/interested in things of s spiritual nature. I guess my intention became strong enough for me to pay attention when Dave mentioned this camp. However, even when I looked at it on the website
www.trackwayssurvival.co.uk I didn't really understand how close to what I had been looking for it would prove to be.
The camp was run in one sense at a very practical level - classes on tracking, stalking, bird language, flint napping. The kids loved it. They got to do things in a herd without mum and dad. They got to mix and mix-it with kids of their own age, and I got a chance to see them learning experientially both the overtly taught skills and those that come with having to get along with people. Judy also enjoyed a lot of this stuff. We had a chance to join in fire stalks and smear one another with charcoal from the fire to blend in with the night. We had a chance to go for a walk and create a song-line on the way out so we could recreate our journey by re-singing the song (an aboriginal practice).
And there was a whole lot of other stuff going on at another level. The instructors talked overtly about a philosophy that held many elements I understood - the importance of thanksgiving, levels of reality/experience (the living dead, the spirit-that-moves-among-all-things, the world of spirit, the void), the power of the mind. They talked about rituals that had significance in themselves and that were also a gateway to other aspects of experience.
They also talked about things I have been hovering around understanding in a way that gave me an additional glimpse of these things - widening ones sensory perception, holding balance between wide-angle vision and focus, the power of envisioning, respect.
I am being very general in a way. I could also be very specific like how my chi kung practice helped me join into dance sessions in a way I have never managed before - dancing with trees and sharing the lead
- at least never without large quantities of alcohol. About their notion of the art of invisibility in nature. About "fox-walking". About making a necklace for my wife (even one that other people have admired) out of things in the woods. Maybe I will get time to write about some of this stuff in the future.
What I decided to write about was my first experience of a sweat lodge. At about four o'clock one afternoon the process began. The people who wanted to participate were asked to gather wood for a ceremonial fire and large stones and rocks to be used to heat the sweat lodge. I went off with a wheelbarrow to collect some rocks from a nearby quarry. What I didn't fully realise was how long and craftily steep the path was down to the quarry. I loaded up the barrow so that it was comfortably heavy but that I could still push despite the flat tyre. I then got back to the long (3/4 mile) uphill drag. As I began to push it up I realised it would take me forever. Lately, I have been experimenting with a phrase "If I really believed in this stuff what would I do". I thought of envisioning and how Thomas had had experiences of making things true and his encouragement to experiment with this stuff. So, I did. Instead of making it an uphill push I made it a downhill push and happily pushed my barrow back down the hill to the camp.
As dark began to descend the ceremonial fire was lit. We were encouraged to pick out stones and charge them with the idea of things we would like to take into the lodge with us. All kinds of things went in - love, freedom, compassion, birds tweeting and teddy bears (well it was a family camp). There were various rituals to be observed. At one level I could see their manifest value and at another level I experienced the mindfulness they encouraged as I remembered not to cross certain lines and walk in certain directions in order to respect both my hosts and the spirits they were calling in.
Finally, nakedness and entering the furnace. Imagine if you can a small domed tent. About five feet high in the centre and 10 feet in diameter. Competely sealed around the floor and door opening with dirt and blankets. No light or air from outside. In the middle a large pit to contain the red-hot stones brought from the fire outside and, just to add a little spice, an old fashioned stove built up inside so parts of the metal glowed red-hot. Around the pit there was a gap of about 2-3 feet around which one could just about squeeze. Now put about sixteen people in there, stumbling around in the semi-darkness. One tends to get fairly switched on to what you are doing for fear of tumbling into the pit or branding one's ass on the stove.
Oh joy, I got the position of honoured guest. Which basically meant squeezed up behind the stove opposite the door, in the hottest part of the lodge. Then the water and leaves go on the stones and so the fun begins.
We were encouraged to be careful about what our intentions were going into the lodge, what we wished for etc. as "It will come true". I had been meditating on compasison so I hoped for both some deeper understanding of this and an improvement in the relationship with my wife. Well, they did both come true.
I could write for ages on the detail of what went on in the lodge - the rounds of calling in the spirits, prayers for ourselves, speaking from the heart and prayers for others, and releasing the spirts - the man who experienced his own panic at not being in control, the way the group energy helped him to stay and how he found a voice - the learning of gratitude for simple things as overwheliming thirst and heat exhaustion was eased by a small drop of water etc. I won't - but I would encourage anyone to give it a go
.
During the four hours spent in the lodge I came hard up against my own vulnerability as I lay naked in the dirt, gasping for air, hoping people would leave so I might stretch myself out a bit and ease my legs and back. How I desperately wanted to stay but had to resort at times to sticking my nose out of the bottom of the tent for a lungful of air. How I like to think of myself as being able to provide a holding space for groups but could hardly bring myself to speak, let alone think about what to say or think about others welfare in there. And I touched compassion for myself and at the same time compassion for the people who find it so hard to stay in my groups and confront some of their demons. Quite a simple thing really but it made complete, direct sense to me at that moment as I struggled and accepted being Barry.
The relationship with my wife has improved through the simple expedient of being easier on myself and experiencing her as someone I love (and acting on it as well). Again a pretty simple thing and one I would like to have convinced myself I was doing before. And I believe I was, to the best of my ability. Maybe it was that my ability to do these things improved a bit.
Barry
Author
Logged
. Yet I know people who have got addicted to them - whose lives have changed as a result of doing them. So it was good to hear your experience.