Vision Quest – A Support for Life Transition

21st-31st September

Spiral into the centre
The centre of the wheel
I am the weaver, I am the woven one
I am the dreamer, I am the dream
Song of the natives

Holger and Gesa Heiten were the leaders of this vision quest that I have just completed that took place on land managed by the Findhorn Hinterland Trust over the last ten days. Holger in particular has had a long, forty year connection with the Findhorn community (the Park Ecovillage Findhorn) having initially come here when he was eighteen. He was so impressed and influenced that he has been coming back every year since. He is also connected to native american elders through the School of Lost Borders and for many years has had his own organisation, the Eschwege Institut, which is involved in gestalt therapy that supports life transitions.

The sixteen strong group that came to the Findhorn ecovillage this year was made up of the leaders with their older teenage daughter, four assistants/ apprentices and nine participants. The group was based around the Woodland Shelter in Wilkes Wood where we camped on the bark camping pads- I found it particularly pleasant to sleep on the soft and warm bark of the purpose built pads. We were so blessed to be in such a beautiful place to do this kind of retreat and I felt it was perfect for this sort of experience involving a rite of passage. There was something important in this particular landscape to do with the connection between the land and the sea. This landscape seemed to reflect my internal landscape and it was so good to simplify back to the bare bones of life during this experience. On this land there are a lot of mini habitats with moss, insects and lichens that grow on poor nutrients and hardship. Only in such extreme conditions with poor nutrients,drought and variable temperatures do you get such abundance of special species. This hot spot zone was a key for me as I came to see how I could grow having less around me in my life.

Let me introduce myself. I am Jakob Reitberger 44, a handicraft/technical Montessori teacher for class 5-10 in Eichstaett, Bavaria, Germany. I am married with four children 23, 20, 13 and 10 – two boys and two girls. I have worked in the school for thirteen years and two years ago there was a change in leadership in our school which became one of my struggles. I also had a winter sport accident this last year and later experienced paralysis in my face which shocked me and was the reason that I felt I needed to take a pause in my life – I felt totally broken! I love my wife and children very much but they seemed to have different needs from what I felt was essential and important for me at this time. This was tearing me apart and was part of the backpack of challenges I came with. Others in the group came with lighter and some with heavier packs but all felt it was beneficial to have others here to help them heal, move on and grow in their lives.

The core of this experience/ritual of this retreat was to stay in solo time for 100 hours which involved going out with a tarp and something to drink to fast in a place that only you know. You stay there and be with yourself. Before going out and when you come back there is a process so that you can get the most out of the experience and then be able to integrate it. For me it felt like I was cutting up the old pieces of my life to create both a seed and compost to help grow a new essence to help me move forward. After the experience I feel very connected and bonded with the earth as well as feeling still, calm, full of enthusiasm, boldness and daring.

Every day during the retreat, from the human doing to the human being, we dove deep into listening to nature outside and inside us – we were re-naturing the human being. A life transition is a time where the old things including deep wounds are faced, acknowledged, appreciated and transformed. A pause in life creates the possibility to process and integrate the struggle of life. It is possible to bury old beliefs.

I am not new to the idea of a vision quest as fifteen years ago I had taken part in one in Sweden. What I received there helped me look at life in a different way – to see how my life is like a swaying grass stem that moves in the wind but always comes back near to the quiet and stillness of the centre. It helped me see that the things around us are like the wind. This experience sustained me until the upheavals of the last two years. I wanted to come here because I knew and was touched by Holger’s and Gesa’s work and also wanted to connect particularly with the Findhorn Ecovillage and other communities as I lived for one year in a yoga ashram, Yoga Vida, in Germany and am connected with some other communities there such as Templehof in Bavaria.

At this moment I feel brave and with this fresh energy and direction am ready to go back to Germany with a courageous and open heart and new thoughts to share with my children, group and school family. I feel I have let the old things go and am able to return fresh and enthusiastic. Because of facial paralysis, for three months I had had to give up my teaching but now I feel I can go back and return to work helped greatly by this vision quest experience and so thankful that my facial paralysis has almost faded away. A huge thank you to Holger and Gesa, the vision quest magic, this community and the special landscape that has helped my personal transformation to happen.