Posts by Lost Borders
Young Adults Wilderness Rites of Passage – Dates TBD
Dates and other logistics for this program are to be determined. For all inquiries and interest: Please contact Siri Gunnarson at [email protected] Every summer the School of Lost Borders offers a wilderness rite of passage for young people ready to confirm their entry into adulthood. Nearly every culture on the planet shows evidence of a…
Read MoreDark Nature: Matrix of Initiatory Growth
Of all the shields of human nature, the dark or fall shield can be at once the most compelling and the most frightening. It calls on us continually to risk everything, to let go of what has come before, to step over the edge, to go where life is lived inwardly in the mansions of…
Read MoreThe Elder’s Journey: Four Shields of Eldering for Women
Throughout the ages, elder women have enjoyed sitting in circle to weave the rich tapestries of their stories, stories that continued to warm and inspire people across time and culture. What about us, now, in our time? As women in all stages of growing into our greater years, there is a growing passion and a…
Read MoreCA Summer Vision Fast
The modern day vision quest is a border crossing practice, an opportunity to reclaim our true place in the natural world. When one steps across the threshold and into the unknown wilderness, boundaries begin to dissolve and our vision begins to expand. The threshold place is a dreamscape, where we can hear, again, the voices…
Read MoreOpen Desert, Open Mind
Death Valley is a vast open space that stretches on for miles. Here the scale of desolate earth and expansive sky is something to behold. Jack Kornfield writes about the open mind in manner that might also describe this vast desert: “Clear, open, awake, without color or form, containing all things, yet not limited by…
Read MoreThe Great Ballcourt Initiation – Fall Fast
Death is the ultimate agent of transformation—be it a physical death or “the little deaths” encountered throughout life. Indigenous cultures developed rituals to aid and guide people through these stages of change and renewal, utilizing the power of death to enhance and intensify these experiences. For the Mayan people this ceremony was played out on…
Read MoreCO Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Story Telling and Listening
Who is this miracle speaking to me? And who is this miracle listening? What amazingness are we creating? Out of gray matter a star spark of thought leaps between synapses into the air, and pours through gray matter, into my heart: how can I not listen generously? ~Marilyn Nelson The shields of human nature turn…
Read MoreCO Two Week Training
The two week training offers the participant an immersion into the vision fast ceremony, including the beginning skills necessary to lead it and an understanding of how the principles of the vision fast can be applied to a profession, community, or client. Trainees are encouraged to learn the form, the process, and then give it…
Read MoreNM Fall Vision Fast
The land knows you, even when you are lost. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer In increasing times of unrest and uncertainty it can be a common human experience to gravitate towards more “certainty” rather than less. Yet, in the Zen tradition “not knowing” is most intimate. The natural world reminds us of this intimacy and offers…
Read MoreCO Three Week Training
Wilderness Rites of Passage have been practiced in cultures around the world as a way to celebrate and transition from one phase of life to the next – to leave behind what no longer serves and step into life as it is now. These can be developmental phases of life, like moving from adolescence to…
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