Pre-Experience Jitters

For a while now, I’ve known that I need to get away and take a night to sit in the woods and hold vigil. Knowing that you need to do something, and actually doing it are two very different things. I always had excuses, and figured that doing something like that on my own without a little guidance from someone who knew what they were doing was a little risky.

So, fast forward to a month or two ago, when my new mentor Sandy told her apprentices that we were doing a Sit, I was pretty excited. We were going to fast, go to the woods, find a spot, and hold a vigil to connect to Spirit. I know that this is something that I need to do to continue down the path that I am travelling, but I’ve hit a wall. The anxiety and doubts have set in.

Here I am. A half a day into the fast. Two weeks since I’ve touched alcohol. Less than a week without caffeine. Tomorrow night is the night.

We arrive in the afternoon. We do a little bit of ceremony, the go to our spots. Sandy and one of the apprentices does an offering to the Ancestors every hour. I’ll be in the woods with my water bottle, a garbage bag to sit on, the clothes on my back, and a mask (that’s for the second half of the night). The first half will be me sitting and being present. Hopefully, the lack of food and discomfort while being in the middle of the woods will help me connect with Spirit. The second half will be me using my mask to connect to one of the animal spirits I work with.

That’s the plan, at least. It seems that part of this process is getting ready for it. Part of this has been facing pieces of myself that I don’t necessarily want to face, a process that I imagine I will continue to deal with during the Sit. The discomfort of the fast, the diet leading up to it, and the lack of sleep that I will be facing tomorrow is expected. I didn’t expect so much discomfort to come from inside of me.

Part of me doesn’t want to face anything that might come up in the Sit as I am by myself in the woods. Part of me knows that I get jumpy when I hear things moving in the woods at night and I’m alone. Part of me says that I’m fine and I don’t need to grow. I can easily stay here, where I am in this work. I know that’s not true, but it’s as if there is a part of me that wants to hold back and not grow. More the reason, I suppose, that I need to do this.

In many shamanic traditions, there is a sort of dismemberment process. Some take that as an emotional metaphor, but there are stories of shamans being taken apart by their spirit helpers in dreams only to be reassembled later on. It is their initiation, their way of becoming a shaman. I feel like this is something akin to this. I feel as if I will be losing part of myself in this, but in a good way. I’m not so sure of myself to say that I am going to have a dismemberment experience, but there is a feeling of sacrifice, of giving up. And that makes me nervous.

I have not as of yet experienced this shamanic dismemberment, in dreams or journeywork. I’ve been called to the work other ways, but I’ve always felt right at the edge of this experience, this cathartic rearrangement of world view. I look for it, but, at the same time, I fear it. There’s a lot that I don’t want to let go of. Of course, in the role in life that I accept, I have to. It’s part of the job description to face the scary. It doesn’t mean that I can’t kick and scream about it a little first.

Even if it is just a metaphorical giving of my comfort for a night, and nothing else, it will be quite the experience. It might just be the deep delve into Spirit that I need, though. Nothing but me, the woods, the Spirits, and the prayers from the nearby fire. I’m anxious and excited.

I’ll share more next week after I get back.

Until then

-The Green Mountain Mage