Why we do Solo Fast Vigils as part of our rites of passage experiences

Solitude

Spending time in solitude out in Nature (the Solo aspect) is a time honored tradition around the world. It allows us to finally be alone with ourselves, while at the same time encountering the phenomenal variety and beauty of the natural world. In today’s world, the opportunity for real solitude is fast disappearing—everything nowadays seems to be intent on ensuring that we are always connected to social input, and that we prioritize our attention on that social input. This naturally deprioritizes our attending to what is arising from within us–what do we think, feel, want, care about? Not important! What is the crowd telling us? What should we think, feel, want, care about? Being alone in nature allows us to really be with ourselves, and gives us the chance to see who we are when we encounter the endless visitations of nature–from bugs, to birds, to the weather, the sun and moon, to fire and earth and stones. Solitude gives us the opportunity to discover who we are as we interact with all of the world around us.

Fasting

Part of a rite of passage always includes the discovery that we are more than we think we are, and that we are capable of some much more than we give ourselves credit for. Going for a significant amount of time without food (the Fast aspect) is technically possible for all humans–studies show that it is generally possible to survive without food for 30 days on average! For most modern humans, however, our habitual patterns of both behavior and self-identity revolve powerfully around food, or more exactly, around the act of eating. Fasting allows us to gain a perspective that we are bigger than our current habitual ways of being, that we can be more than who we currently think we are, and that some of the limits we believe about ourselves are only ‘real’ because of imposed limits to our imagination–limits that have no basis in reality.
Another important opportunity that fasting provides to modern people is the opportunity to “detox.” Modern food actually includes a lot of ingredients that have somewhat negative, or at least limiting, effects on our emotions and our thoughts. Fasting often results in an experience that many describe as “waking up out of a fog.” This absence of food also allows us to ponder the question “if not food, what else nourishes us?” in a more than just intellectual way. What feeds our hearts? Our souls? 

Challenge

Discovering that “we are bigger than we think we are” is a particularly crucial aspect of the coming of age experience. Fasting, as we discussed, reliably provides this experience to modern (particularly affluent) youth. Spending the night alone in the woods (often tending a fire) with minimal camping gear (usually just a tarp and a blanket/sleeping bag) is another challenge that many young people initially view as something that they “can’t do.” This actual testing of their capacity to successfully navigate challenging experiences is another crucial part of the rite of passage experience. Many definitions of a rite of passage include the experience of “I don’t know if I can do (or survive!) this.” In our modern context, challenging our youth with actual life-or-death trials is unworkable. We have discovered that the challenges of lengthy fasts and overnight solo vigils provide a genuinely effective substitute.

Our summer youth programs, for ages 8 – 18, help young people navigate the journey from childhood to adulthood in a supported, mentored way.

Youth Program Overview →

Our adult programs, for ages 18 and older, grew out of the strong need we saw to guide adults through their own rites of passage — for transition does not end at age 18.

Adult Program Overview →