by Rob Gourley, July 1989 -Tucson LifeLine NatureQuest
(NatureQuest is a shorter seven day form of Sacred Passage)
Record-breaking heat followed me on the drive from Tucson to mile-high Bisbee where I found the streets and even the cafes sparsely populated, an unusual occurrence in this town. Of course, I never know what to expect whenever I go to Bisbee and more often than not, the unexpected seems to happen. Perhaps it's the combination of artists, craftsman, shopkeepers, architecture and winding narrow streets situated on top of a huge mineral deposits that creates this expectant chemistry, it's hard to say. The full moon coinciding with the summer solistic appealed to my sense of magic as I wandered up the hill behind Brewery Gulch later that evening.
Soon after arriving at John's Golden Flower Meditation Center on Opera Drive, I realized that my interview with John Milton was to be somewhat of a mystical experience in itself. A light evening breeze set off the wind chimes on the porch where we had seated ourselves. the sound of a flute fluttered out of a window down the street.
John cleared his throat after sipping some peppermint tea and proceeded to intone a Tibetan chant. Creating harmonic tones similar in quality to those made by a wet finger running around the rim of crystal glass, I felt the energy of the sound filter through my body. After a very hot and exhausting day, I was surprised to find that in ten minutes time I was feeling relaxed, alert and rejuvenated. He employs this technique as a send off to people who have just finished an Awareness Training period that prepares them for a seven day wilderness solo experience.
John Milton has been conducting wilderness solos for others since the 1950's and has been doing them himself since seven years old. His extensive background in the fields of ecology, environmental conservation and inner development has included being director of several public foundations, professor of environmental studies, consultant to many environmental protection organizations and author of numerous books and articles on these subjects. He was an instrumental participant in the shut-down of the Douglas copper smelter which had been responsible for sixty percent of the acid rain in the western United States prior to it's closing. As a dedicated practitioner of various Eastern and Native American meditative traditions, John's focus on realizing the union of inner Nature and outer Nature turns out to be the very essence of the NatureQuest experience itself. It wasn't until many years after his initial wilderness solos that he discovered that this process was at the core of many of the great spiritual traditions, including the Native American vision quest. With a gentle and eloquent elegance which he employed through the entire interview, he started off by carefully explaining the difference between a vision quest and a NatureQuest.
"Although there are similarities, I do not call this a vision quest because that is a particular ceremonial process which is a very sacred Native American tradition and I feel that it should be respected and honored. I am trying to keep the NatureQuest to a very simple, direct process which is not affiliated with any particular tradition. This process goes back to a deeply primordial level."
"There is ceremony involved, but the Ceremony and ritual come naturally and spontaneously out of the individual psyche. For myself, and for most folks who go out on a NatureQuest, such a sense of love and compassion and deep appreciation for the gift of life arises, that you feel an overwhelming desire to give something back while you're out. So people create ceremonies out of this desire to give something back for what has been received. The most important thing is that it comes from the heart. If ceremony is just a role, or repetition of something, there's not a lot of juice."
Most people find out about NatureQuest through those who have gone through the process and recommend it to others. Base camps are located on private land in Colorado, the southwest tip of Baja, the Appalachian mountains in West Virginia and the Chiricahua mountains of Arizona.
"The base camps are in protected areas that are very beautiful, very pristine, and very safe. They provide a good place to approach a profound process combining meditation and awareness training practices and principles with wilderness skills. After the Awareness Training, individual sites are picked about a quarter to a half mile apart where people spend seven days and six nights alone. At the end, we have two days and at least one night devoted to a reentry integration process where we actually help people bridge back into culture and integrate the insights they have gained. The spiritual openings are so profound that the main challenge is having to integrate them into everyday life, to cultivate them. That's where the Awareness Training practices come in handy."
I asked John about the types of experiences people usually have in the solo camps. Though each individual's experience is tremendously varied according to his unique nature, some common themes seem to occur with regularity to almost everyone who participates.
"In the first few hours on up to a period of days, people experience a profound release of stuff; fear, anger, sadness, alienation, separation, all those things arise. Since there are no humans or culture to reflect or project that onto, the universe reflects back a very clear mirror to your projections. So you have to own them. Because it's difficult to have those projections latch onto something and stick, it's difficult to hold your stuff and then keep it, justify it. So what generally happens is that people go through powerful releases of very deep material."
"After that, people enter into a period of tremendous opening. The meditation practices that I train people in have largely to do with cleansing the doors of perception of all the senses and sense fields so that they may become the bridges that naturally interconnect inner and outer Nature. The senses actually become the vehicle, so the main focus is on simply being present with what's arising in the moment through the sense fields."
"From one point of view, the emotions, thoughts, feelings that arise are tremendous distractions to the state of pure awareness. But once that connection with pure being is recognized, these forms just arise and disappear naturally since they always change, just like everything else in the universe. One can then move into spontaneous, natural flow. In a sense, the emotions, thoughts and feelings are wonderful because they are powerful demonstrators of that fundamental truth of the impermanence and continuous changeability of all forms."
"As a consequence of that union of inner and outer nature that occurs, it is very common for people to have what we would call extraordinary experiences, magical experiences, Shamonic experiences, visions. I encourage people not to get attached to the visions, not to cling to them, but to honor them as manifestations arising out of a deeper, formless insight."
"Sometimes the visions will manifest in very concrete ways. Particular animals, for example, may come in dramatic form. We've had all kinds of totemic animal beings manifest while people are out on NatureQuest. Bears, eagles, whales, for example, very often will come in and behave in a very unusual and direct fashion. Then an inner transmission occurs between the totemic being and the individual. Usually the transmission happens with one particular being from nature that happens to resonate with a particular aspect of that human being that's ready to open."
"It is good to interpret the animal totems in terms of the healing benefits or the philosophical insights or the emotional clarification that may be gifted, but these are temporary benefits. Fundamentally, behind all that, is this powerful demonstration of the Unity of all beings and the potential to realize such profound communion that opens. I encourage people to move as deeply as possible into that level because that's the most profound and deepest level at which the totemic experience occurs. In this way, the NatureQuest is there to help serve as a deep form of healing from attachment by going down into the level of absolute awareness."
"In almost every case people come out with a sense of profound and deep relaxation, a tremendous release of tension and stress. Deep insights will often develop and many folks will come out with a powerful sense of their true dharma, or true path, finding a completely new way of living that is exactly true for them. Very often, I see people come up with wonderful new directions for their business, their company or society out of the insight that develops. Because they very often become leaders in the process of healing the earth through the creativity that's released and the connection with nature that is established, I see it as a profound form of deep ecological healing."
"Guiding and teaching this process has been a profound education for me. I feel I'm given so much by the people that come out; it's as if each time a person comes out , I'm meeting Buddha for the first time. I don't make any claims that people come out fully enlightened, but what I will say is that they come out with the purity and fullness of their spirit shining through. Their eyes become luminous, very clear, which is amazing when you consider that this happens in such a short period of time. It's a short time in a lifetime to be able to go that deep."
"One of the challenges of out time is that on the one hand, there is a wonderful creativity and freedom and aliveness of expression coming forth which is in many ways really well adapted to our unique culture. One of the dangers, however, is that ours is a very new culture so there's still a certain lack of seasoning. Because of the nature of our culture, there is a tendency to get very attached to thoughts, ideas, and things."
"A lot of folks experience the distraction of a wide variety of different spiritual practices while never taking one practice and going very deep. It's very seductive; you can go on for a long time that way, under the illusion that you are growing and developing. Since we live in such a complex world, there is a tendency to create that same complexity in our spiritual lives."
"The NatureQuest is there to be an antidote to complexity, because the simple principles and practices that are shared all have to do with maintaining the simplicity and the purity of the moment in pristine awareness. Simple and direct, it frees one from distractions dramatically. You go out with no fire, a simple little shelter, enough food to eat for several days, and then fast. Basically, you're there in a very simple, original state in Nature, which is your original father and mother."
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