I have done many vision quests over many years, in different traditions and nations. Two of them were ten-day quests. Today I did a 40-minute quest as part of a teaching event by Muriel McMahon, a Native-American teacher from the Six Nations in Canada and a Jungian Analyst.

I think often of William Blake’s words that “the universe is in a grain of sand.” It doesn’t take hours of meditation to go to where you need to go, that journey can happen in a split second. It doesn’t take a 10-day vision quest, or days of fasting to get your vision either. It can happen in an instant.

Today as I lay on the land, loving the blue sky and watching the spiders and little bugs crawl up the reeds and fly about, spider webs glistening, and the sounds of leaves being moved by wind, I was resting and not worrying or straining for anything, but was just there, intentionally listening, feeling quiet. Then a cloud of energy moved into me as distinctly, clearly and as sweetly as anything I have ever felt. I have worried and felt intense concern for our young men and women coming home from war, suffering the effects of trauma and a psychological disorder called PTSD that can overwhelm a life, while almost no one knows how to treat it. I was diagnosed with this disorder after some serious traumas in my life by three doctors, but it’s just a name they throw out. Not one knows how to treat it apparently. I have lived painfully inside of it, I know it from the inside. I am a doctor of depth psychology who has been treating herself as an experimental patient for a decade, and have learned very much.

Today’s vision that moved into me clearly, strongly and sweetly said, simply , “Do it.” Find the way to help these young men and women and work with them. It didn’t give details or say how to find the way, but only moved into me the sturdiest sense of – just do it. That’s your answer. The ancestors have spoken. It’s is a mission. A calling. It came from this quest.

I call for the inspired, deeply loving helps of ancestors and spirits who can help me find the way to answer such a call. I have much to learn but it feels like what I am trained, destined and desirous of doing.