TeddyShark Says

Conscious Convergence, Vision Quest '97, Part IV: Vision Quest Begins

Preparation for the vision quest was relatively simple as everything was clearly spelled out in the vision quest guidebook sent out by the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). Although I possessed no camping gear I would be able to borrow it from my partner, Michelle. We went to REI to get the hiking boots, gloves, hat, long underwear, and whatever else was on the list of requirements.

There were also recommendations on how to best prepare psychologically and physically for the 10-day journey in the California desert. Because alcohol, caffeine, and drugs of any kind would be strictly prohibited, it was suggested questers begin modifying their diets and lifestyles to prepare for eating vegetarian food for the ten days and drinking only water, natural juices, and herbal tea. On the 3-day solo portion of the quest you would only be allowed to drink the water you transported from the base camp. The critical importance of having absolutely no food or sense of chronological time, and complete silence for the three days alone was heavily stressed.

I left Seattle Wednesday morning, July 9th for the drive to Santa Rosa, California, the home of the vision quest leader, Sedonia Cahill. Three days later I arrived around 6PM at her home where all the questers were to meet. I was surprised at the large number in the group; fourteen in total - four men and ten women from all over the U.S. (Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, Charleston, Vancouver, etc.). We had informal introductions and a meal in her enclosed backyard. Everyone was expected to find a place in or outside the house to sleep for the night. Upon awakening, a caravan of a few pick-up trucks and cars packed with Sedonia, her staff, and the fourteen of us began our 10-hour trek to the quest site which was located somewhere in the vast eastern California desert not far from Death Valley.

We stopped for lunch and again later in the afternoon for dinner. I was surprised to find most of my fellow questers downing heavy food, multiple cups of coffee, and even smoking after meals. So much for serious preparation!

It was dark when we got to the vision quest site. We were told to get our gear and find a place to put our sleeping bag and bundle up and get into it for the night. It turned out to be a very cold night and my first time ever camping out, sleeping on the ground was miserable. The only bright side was the magnificent and vast sky sparkling with unbelievably beautiful stars.

When dawn broke I got out of my sleeping bag, stood up and looked around. We were in the middle of nowhere. There were no signs of civilization in any direction. No toilets, no running water, nothing! Everyone was told to find and set up their individual campsites with their tarp, sleeping bag, and equipment while the home base tents and facilities were set up by the staff. We were then to return to the base site and have breakfast.

The rest of the day was spent with each of us giving a brief biography of ourselves to the group. When that was finished Sedonia gave us the itinerary for the week: Tomorrow (Monday) we would all leave separately after breakfast to go find a place within a 2-mile radius where we'd set up our campsite for the three days and three nights alone. We would then carry water to that site and clear it in preparation for moving there Tuesday morning. We would be in total silence and fasting Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. On the final day, Thursday, we would each prepare our sacred medicine circle per her instructions, and enter that circle Thursday at dusk and stay in it all night, awake if possible, until we heard the drums at dawn being played at base camp calling us to return. We were instructed to leave the circle at that point and come back to base camp, thus ending the solo phase of the vision quest.

All went as planned Monday. I found a nice spot a little bit up the side of the mountain from home base that felt perfect. I lugged about ten plastic containers each filled with a gallon of warm water to the site. I was more than ready for the move Tuesday morning to begin (and end) this 3-day ordeal.

As everyone returned to base camp we shared our search experiences and soon it was time for dinner. Sedonia announced at dinner that in a few hours we would be called (by the drums) for a group get-together that would be a send off ceremony. She said we would officially begin the solo when we entered the silence at the end of the meeting.

I was anxious to get this over with. This whole thing was more than I had bargained for and far more difficult than I'd imagined. In the evening when the drums started I headed for base camp and was surprised to see a beautiful fire and the circle of my peers who were in the process of finding their seats in the darkness around the fire.

The quest leader began by talking about the American Indian tradition and how they related to their vision quests as she lit up an old Indian peace pipe filled with smoking tobacco and passed it around. People took little puffs and passed it around the circle.

Next, she had her assistants hand out small tree branches about 6 inches long to each of us. She informed us that each person was to tell the group a story of the worst day of our life, and when we finished we were to throw the branch into the fire.

She chose the woman on her left to begin. As I was seated at Sedonia's right, it meant I would be last to tell my story. There were touching stories of failed relationships, lost careers, personal hardships, rejection, and serious illness.

When my turn came I said, "The worst day of my life was when I was 7 years old and my alcoholic father, who was a Marine officer in the Korean War was home on leave. My mother, my sister who was 2 years old and I lived in the projects in upstate New York. It was early Sunday morning and I was awake in the living room watching out the front door window waiting for him to come home from being out all night. I saw him staggering down the road and ran up to the bedroom and asked my mother if I should lock the door. She said, 'no, let him in.'

"I went back and sat down in the living room chair. My father opened the door. He was angry. His uniform was all messed up and as he stomped past me he yelled, 'call your grandparents and tell them I'm going to kill your mother.' I called 4-8226 and told my grandfather what my father had said. He said he would call the police. I then walked half way up the stairs and could see my father sitting on top of my mother in the bed beating her. The next thing I remember is my mother holding my sister standing next to me in the bathtub with the bathroom door locked as my father was trying to knock the door down.

"Then the police arrived. Later that day my mom, sister, and I moved into my grandparents home, where we would stay until I graduated from college. My father would never live with us again. That was the worst day of my life."

With those final words I began to feel the power and the pressure of the silence as it enveloped me. I then stood up and walked toward the fire, threw in the branch and watched as it slowly burned then disappeared in the flames.

My vision quest had begun...

 

Poem 80: Spiritual Realization (Here and Now)

Returning with knowledge that goes far beyond college,

esoteric truths loosening the noose.

An inner directional map to help you escape the trap.

For those ripe souls with long-held yearning,

now being faced with intensified burning,

it's time to commence the deeper learning:

Knowledge grounded in wisdom;

Love anchored in truth;

Faith deepened by spiritual experience.

Constant yearning, disciplined learning will ease the burning.

Be still as effortless effort replaces personal will;

not to worry - you're just becoming grist for God's divine mill.

--TeddyShark Saves Shibboullyville

2010 Copyright © TeddyShark

Conscious Convergence, Vision Quest '97, Part II: Between a Rock and a Soft Place

So I hope by relating these synchronistic events (in my July 22 blog post), from Calleman's propitious call in March, to my recent dreams the reader can understand why I feel liberated and motivated to reveal my vision quest experiences for the first time.

Of all the people on this planet I am one of the very last you would bet on to sign up for a 10-day vision quest in the eastern California desert. Until this trip I had never camped out or even spent one night in a tent. Growing up, my idea of the great outdoors consisted of playing basketball on the blacktop playgrounds of upstate New York. So let's look at the circumstances that motivated me to sign up for a 10-day vision quest in the desert.

I moved to Seattle in 1989 from Denver. I specifically chose Seattle because it was the only major city in the United States I could go and not know anyone for a radius of at least 1,000 miles. Having grown up and starting my career in sales with IBM in the Northeast (New York); gone to college in the Midwest (Wisconsin); and spent 10 years in the Rocky Mountains (Colorado); the Pacific Northwest was the only place I could go and completely reinvent myself.

I needed a fresh start and was reevaluating everything about my life. I closed out my corporate career in 1982 when I resigned from General Electric Medical Systems in Denver. The next 5 years were spent in the investment banking/brokerage business specializing in capital formation for small over-the-counter (OTC) companies. (OTC would eventually become NASDAQ).

To say it was the wild, wild, west in the OTC market would be an understatement. The small capitalization stocks were mostly unregulated and suffice it to say it was the first time I really saw what people do or say for money. It was raw, brutish, vulgar, and obscene. After a few years I realized for the first time in my career I was in a game I could not win. It was devastating and destructive for my ego to discover there were people who would say and do things that I was incapable of morally or ethically doing in order to win, make a profit, or gain influence or power. I hadn't realized until then the powerful moral compass I possessed and the strong sense of doing what was ethically correct, which for the most part was supported in my Fortune 10 corporate career. I now understand why I loved highly competitive athletics; there were rules, a scoreboard, and a referee. Very, very different from that world of situational ethics with no moral code of conduct that was more like a three ring circus with its array of clowns and freaks running every which way with no ring master giving direction and guidance.

I refer to that period of time in my career as my shark years and in fact some people nicknamed me "the shark." Those years were about winning, getting results, and playing hard and working hard. When I arrived in the Northwest I didn't have any idea what I would do career-wise but I was certain my executive days of swimming with sharks in the deep waters of greed, vanity, and power were over.

Then I discovered the newly evolving world of "bears." The popularity of books addressing men's issues like Sam Keen's Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man, and Robert Bly's Iron John had opened the popular culture to a whole new part of the male psyche. The unconscious and disowned inner feminine was now being addressed. This revealed deep psychic wounds in the area of feelings and emotions due to the exploitive patriarchal model dominant in American capitalism.

I spent more than three years chanting, drumming, hugging trees, facilitating ropes courses, and working in non-profits, and counseling and coaching. The characteristic that best described the bear culture was nice, very nice. But the problem I observed was they were as dysfunctional in their own process-oriented ways (conflict avoidance, passive-aggressive, etc.) as the results-oriented sharks. But the biggest difference came in the area of personal finances: unlike the sharks, the bears were not only wounded, they were broke!

What to do? I became painfully aware as my financial resources dwindled, I fit nowhere. I was between a rock (sharks) and a soft place (bears). That's why I started Moore & Associates. Putting on my corporate pinstripes and tying up my wingtips, I decided to see if I could make a living in the field of executive career coaching and counseling. It quickly grew into a successful small company with a handful of employees. I was building a solid reputation as a really good business coach and counselor especially with senior level executives at Fortune 500 companies as well as highly motivated and ambitious young professionals (especially in the areas of sales and marketing).

This was when I first began using the plush bear and shark to teach and demonstrate to my clients how the attributes of a bear and a shark were both in their own way indispensable to climbing the corporate ladder and having a successful career. When I'd finish a coaching session, I'd put the bear on top riding the shark and say, "This is what you need to be if you want to be successful." My clients were entertained but didn't miss the symbolic message: the need to balance the hard and soft skills, money and meaning, profits and people. Thus began the initial evolution of the TeddyShark process.

But I was working long hours, and as the only person generating the vast majority of sales and revenue, I was wearing down. I was now in my fifties while the three key members of my team were 32, 27, and 27 with seemingly an abundance of energy. Then a great opportunity presented itself. Through one of my senior executive coaching clients we were included in the list of qualifying companies for a large corporate outplacement contract that was about to be awarded because of a downsizing due to an impending merger. The long and short of it was I coached my team and prepared a sales presentation strategy to be led by my partner Michelle Hurteau. To the surprise of many, they delivered and we won what was to be a million dollar contract.

"You never know what is enough

unless you know what is more than enough."

--William Blake, Proverbs of Hell

 

My shark was ecstatic, my bear was exhausted and I started to secretly plan my exit strategy. I was going to be free (fly, fly away). When the check arrived I figured we'd get current on our bills and move our offices from Seattle to Bellevue. There would be enough operating capital that my young 3-person team could grow the company as they saw fit and I could take at least $400K-$500K, put it into CDs and find a small inexpensive home on the Oregon coast and leave the everyday world which I knew I no longer fit. I had had and seen more than enough.

The best laid plans...

We got the check in February of 1997. I told no one about my secret intentions. As I knew would happen, the core team had inflated, became all puffed up because of course we had the money, we won the game, and now they were the greatest, invincible. (I'd seen this movie; I starred in it 20 years earlier. I couldn't bear to see it again). I couldn't wait to get out, to be free - liberated from the religion of making money and the god almighty dollar.

I scheduled a celebration dinner with my young proteges at a new restaurant in downtown Seattle. I thought it was going to be my secret farewell team celebration. We all arrived, had drinks and appetizers, and the conversation shifted as they began to talk about their hopes and dreams for the company. I had attended their weddings, knew their families and for me, they were my extended family. As the evening played out I was stupefied when a loud silent voice inside me said, "You're not leaving!" Stunned, I sat there dazed and confused for the rest of the night downing one microbrew after another. I knew the voice was right.

 

Poem 53: Pain of Separation (Blessed Are Those...)

How desolate it must be

for those beings blessed with the awful grace to see:

life's material search in vain,

as each and every worldly pleasure a gain

of nothing more

than an ever-shortening respite from the pain.

--TeddyShark Saves Shibboullyville

 

For the next several weeks I went through the motions trying to fend off deep depression. I was having an existential crisis. My love affair with the world was over. I had played life's game as my family, society, and economic system had taught me. I'd won and won, and won and won. And each time I won, the victories became more shallow and more empty, the pain more intense. I felt I'd go crazy if I heard one more person say to me, "yes Phil, I hear what you're saying but I don't know what's wrong with you. If I had what you had I'd be happy." This just added to the sense "I must be crazy!" I was stuck and I didn't know what to do. That is until I got my Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) quarterly journal and saw the summer programs:

There it was: Vision Quest July 10-20 - seek out a new vision, finding out your true purpose in life. Sedonia Cahill from Santa Rosa, California, experienced in leading over 60 vision quests would be the group facilitator. She would teach the principles and guidelines as practiced by the Native American Indians using their sacred medicine wheel as a teaching tool and retreat/vision quest guideline. I was desperate and signed up immediately. I needed a vision, and a mission with real meaning. I needed to be inspired by something or someone otherwise I couldn't imagine staying in the world much longer. I was just recycling the gods of money, power, and relationships and even they were wearing down. I needed help.

2010 Copyright © TeddyShark

Conscious Convergence, Vision Quest '97, Part I: Time "in time" to Tell the TeddyShark Story

Thirteen years ago this month on July 17 and 18 my life was changed forever. The experiences happened while I was on my 3-day solo as part of a ten day vision quest sponsored by the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). Even though I kept a meticulous daily journal on the quest, I never thought it would ever see the light of day, or that I would share these experiences in their entirety with anyone.

Only a profound synchronicity of recent events has made me feel certain this is now the time and place to tell the story. Let me explain these happenings chronologically:

March - Carl Calleman issues his world call for the Conscious Convergence on the exact same days as my vision quest experience and on its 13th anniversary, a number that has significant meaning for me (1 plus 3 = wholeness). Over the years, Carl Calleman has earned my trust with his integrity, scholarship, and research.

April - I am a business executive and competitive athlete with a healthy lifestyle, so it was a surprise when I was diagnosed with a lung condition in its most severe and final stages. With multiple lung function tests confirming this diagnosis, it appears there are many more days behind me than ahead of me.

May - After 14 years, my beloved Westie, Slick's time had come for sleep. He, along with his predecessor, Muff had toiled mightily for 29 years to teach me all about loyalty, trust, and love. My great attachment, identification, and responsibilities as Slick's master are gone.

Poem 52: Because They're Angels (Pets)

Taking on lower forms, coming from above;

mine a Cairn and a Westie - in the world but never of.

Their sacrifice soul-ly made, teaching loyalty, trust, and love.

Ever eager to please, hoping a treat to reap,

Always too quickly their day ends as the time comes

for sleep.

Agonizingly I wonder, "How do they get in so deep?"

As I am captain of my ship, they've been companions

and the crew

and if all over again, a renaming to do,

Muff and Slick would simply be rechristened Love I and Love II.

-- TeddyShark Saves Shibboullyville

 

June - The last of my experiences, and the ones that convinced me unequivocally it was time "in time" to tell this story were two dreams that happened June 16 and 21:

The first dream on June 16: I'm driving a large four-door sedan across a great expanse of land. The dream seems to drag on at a snail's pace as I just keep looking straight ahead, plodding across the country at a very slow speed when at last I reach my destination. I slow down pull over and park the car near a small body of water. I'm relieved as I sit in the driver's seat and continue looking out the front windshield. There's a slight drizzle and fog with very limited visibility as I gaze outward. The all of a sudden, much to my amazement I look at the control panel and realize I've been driving the entire time with the lights off! I'm stunned as I look outside again and realize for the first time how dark, foggy, and overcast the weather's been for the entire trip. I feel great relief that I've made it to my destination and that I'm safe and sound. I look at the control panel and realize I can now turn the lights on. I'm excited; with the lights on I'll be able to see clearly and drive safely.

The second big dream comes on June 21: To give it a little context let me just say that from my earliest memory (3 or 4 years old) the first and only dream I remember occurring over and over in childhood is that I'm on my hands and knees slowly crawling across a narrow bridge that spans a powerful river below. In these dreams that continued intermittently into adulthood I'm always in the same crawling position going at an excruciatingly slow pace in the middle of a narrow bridge (while others in the outside lanes are coming and going in both directions walking effortlessly). This dream had never changed in my whole life. Until now! In this dream on June 21 I'm walking across a narrow bridge with a little child 3 or 4 years old. The child is playful and confident as it walks and skips a few feet ahead of me. As we have just crossed over the highest span and are walking in a slight downward incline I now can see over to the other side where the bridge ends. There is a flooded area where the river current has risen above the bridge just before the other side. I am scared as the child runs ahead and says, "follow me." I don't know what to do so I sit down in the middle of the narrow bridge and with my large wing span grab a hold of the bridge railings on both sides with my powerful hands. I test the railings by trying to pull them together as well as shake them. I'm astounded at how strong the bridge is and at the same time how old and black it is. I get back on my feet and am relieved and happy with the sturdiness of the bridge. Now my attention is back on the child who is now calling me forth to play in the river current as it flows through the bridge. I fearfully walk toward the child playing in the water and it reaches out and grabs my hand and confidently walks me through the water to the other side. The last thing in the dream I remember is the child saying to me, "Now that you've made it across, you have to go back and tell your story."

It doesn't matter anymore if people believe the story of TeddyShark or not. What does matter is that it's told as truthfully and articulately as possible. By bringing this story forth, I only hope and pray it inspires and helps others as it has changed and transformed me on my inner journey to wholeness.

2010 Copyright © TeddyShark