Receive our quarterly newsletter and program updates.

Programs

The School of Lost Borders in committed to creating opportunities for people from all walks of life to express their invdividual natures within old and modern ceremonial practices.

Solitude and silence in wild nature, the commitment to community, honoring personal intent, and the acknowledgment and responsibility to bring forth one's gifts, are the foundation of our ceremonies and teachings. Every course at the School is a right of passage, a border crossing from the past to the future, from the old to the new, from the outward to the inward, from the self to the Self. The emphasis is on the challenge of life transitions, the borders we all must cross.

Rites of Passage trainings for vision fast guides and other human beings.  Trainings explore the elements of The Four Shields of Human Nature, Mirroring, and Storytelling in immersion programs through one week, two week of month-long trainings.

The modern day vision fast is a border crossing practice. When one steps across the threshold and into the unknown wilderness, boundaries begin to dissolve and our vision begins to expand. Everything is pregnant with meaning, and nature speaks to us in the voices of rock, tree, and wind. Following the ancient pathway of this rite of passage, we step into our true nature and remember our home among the wild. We become who we were born to be.

As our modern culture has grown ever more sophisticated, we have also become ever more divorced from our natural surroundings and from ancient wisdom about living and dying. We have pushed Death away from Life, the dying away from the living - all in order to impose the illusion of control on the uncertainty of change. We have lost touch with the natural world and with our place in it as mortal animals. We have forgotten "how to die."

We seek to answer a call heard in the voices of people who sit in our circles. Many people express a longing to bring their deep and ceremonial relationship with wild nature into their work lives, homes, relationships and communities. Living the Practices is designed to synthesize the traditions of the School of Lost Borders with spiritual, artistic/creative, personal and professional disciplines and practices.

Upcoming Programs

diamond

CO June Queer Quest

For over the last decade at the Queer Quest, groups of people from every part of the queer community have gathered on the land to…

CA Two Week Training

In these times of change and uncertainty, it is crucial that we show up for our community in ways that truly serve. The world is…

Young Adults Nature Based Rite of Passage

Every summer the School of Lost Borders offers nature based rites of passage for young people age 18-28 ready to confirm their entry into adulthood…

The Elder’s Journey: The Four Shields of Elderhood 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 commitment to tell our own stories

Four Shields of human nature: remembering our place, our belonging, and our connection to all creation

“The Great Summons of our time is to find our way home to our true nature                     in the living body of earth.”                   Joanna Macy…

CA Women’s Vision Fast

Perhaps you are one of the many women called to this ceremony. Maybe it is time to move deeper into the questions: What is asked of me? How do you source myself? How do I recognize the ancient myths guiding my life? What is drawing me toward the threshold? A descent, incubation, or an emergence? Is this a time of letting go or a time to reclaim? What do I offer in service to the greater?

CA Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Storytelling and Listening

Telling one’s own story is an ancient art. Nowadays, we have forgotten how to listen and how to tell. Yet the very survival of our species depends on our ability to communicate with each other in such ways as to be mutually enriched by the telling and the listening. If we cannot tell with expression, our life is mute. If we cannot listen like a mirror, we cannot reflect back the wholeness of the four shields — the body, soul, mind and spirit of the teller.

CO 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…

CO Summer Vision Fast

In your bones you hear the singing of your sacred ancestors. You follow in their footsteps. You go alone, with an empty belly and a bare minimum of equipment, into the heart of the wilderness, for four days and nights. There you live with yourself in solitude. You surrender to the mirror of your wild environment, and to memory, the looks-within-place. You enter the mansions of nature’s soul. You ponder the questions: “Who am I?” “Who are my people?” and “What is my intent?”

NM 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…

"We do not go into the desert to escape people, but to learn how to find them: we don't leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good."

THOMAS MERTON

"We do not go into the desert to escape people, but to learn how to find them: we don't leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good."

THOMAS MERTON

"We do not go into the desert to escape people, but to learn how to find them: we don't leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good."

THOMAS MERTON

"We do not go into the desert to escape people, but to learn how to find them: we don't leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good."

THOMAS MERTON