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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

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Two Week Training for Women

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This is an offering to celebrate and hold the broad, and diverse experiences of what it is to be a woman in this moment in time. Since time immemorial Rites of Passage Ceremonies have facilitated change, offering a simple but indispensable container to transition from one life stage to another, to let go of (die to) the old and step in (birth) anew, so that life can continue.

What underlies these rites is the understanding of the circular, seasonal, and regenerative nature of life and death. This knowing runs deep in the female body. Despite the patrilinear impact of the last few thousand years that imposed a culture in which the feminine was largely exiled, we are still informed by the cyclical ebbing and flowing rhythm of circular time, and an innate understanding of the evolutionary necessity of change that lives in our bones.

CA Spring Vision Fast

The twelve day ceremony involves four days of preparation, four days and nights of fasting alone, and four days of incorporation.  The prep and post fast portions of the program will be held in the Owen’s Valley (Payahüünadü), at Baker Creek Campground, and the solo threshold phase of the ceremony will take place in Death Valley National Park (Tüpippüh Valley).

 

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 Women’s Fast – Remembering Ourselves Home

What is waiting to be known and honored in your life? Together, we remember a more intuitive, embodied way of being—one that honors the transitions we face and the wisdom they bring. As we step into the threshold of change, we release what we have outgrown and attune to what is emerging within us. By pausing, listening, and surrendering to the rhythms of the Earth, we reconnect with our inner knowing, restore what has been forgotten, and return with a gift back to our communities.

NM Fall Vision Fast

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 us refuge. There is something waiting to find us but  in order to be found…we sometimes must first admit we are “lost”…

Mid-Winter Vision Fast

“Deep within we know.  No matter how much dissociation and trauma we may carry, we still know.  We know in our bones when life has…

The 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…

CA 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…

Young Adults Nature Based Rite of Passage

  You are our next generation of world leaders and stewards, our next generation of teachers and care-givers, of artists and scientists, of land tenders and culture curators. You will inherit a planet in immense and immediate need for your unique brilliance. 

How are you being supported, right now, to explore your authenticity, to discover your purpose, to cultivate your gifts, to realize your belonging, to be prepared to inherit your future and to be recognized as an adult?

The Great Ballcourt Initiation – Spring 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.

"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