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Testimonial: How a Trip to Arizona with Spiritours Transformed My Life?

Témoignage : Comment un voyage en Arizona avec Spiritours a transformé ma vie?

Discover the testimonial of Claude, the lucky winner of Spiritours’ 20th-anniversary contest in category 1! She recounts her experience of inner transformation during a rejuvenating trip to Arizona with Spiritours.

Desert – Arizona Fall 2022

“What does the word desert evoke for us? Silence, vastness, burning wind?
Going to the desert is first and foremost ‘going towards oneself.’ Leaving the known, the recognized that we believe we are, for the unknown, the unrecognized that we are…

The desert is always the elsewhere, an elsewhere that leads us closest to ourselves. Because the desert is not a goal; it is a place of passage, it is a crossing.”

Jean-Yves Leloup

What was the Silence I encountered? My vastness? My burning wind? This entire adventure in the Arizona desert was an incredible encounter, first with our guides, Francyne, Julie, and Gordon, and the general organization that made such a trip possible. This relationship of trust allowed me to completely surrender to the invitation of this unknown and dare to move towards the promise of an inner rendezvous.

This adventure was also an incredible encounter with a grandiose desert. Gradually and carefully, our guides introduced us to the vastness of the Arizona desert. First the “known desert” with its marked trails that naturally introduced us, because we were ready, to the “real desert,” the magnificent, the wild, the “Great Red Temple” with its sacred stone cathedrals that rise to the sky like divine sculptures! The desert of the “Dines,” the Navajo people. Monument Valley.

I played the flute there. I participated in the sacredness of the Red Lands. The notes of the flute danced with the mountains, bouncing from one to the other until the embrace of the junction between our heart and the Sky, this blessed and sacred place above all. It is also there that we met the Navajo “Medicine Man,” Jerry, who with simplicity and great depth, told us about his Lands and his history. He offered us the intensity of the purification of our body-heart-soul in the crucible of his sweat lodge. In an already torrid desert, we plunged into this sweat lodge for a chanted ceremony that lasted more than three hours… I was hot. My reality melted away to reveal a new reality, that of the heart, the soul, and the relationship to the Greatest. A powerful experience… an extreme experience.

Témoignage : Comment un voyage en Arizona avec Spiritours a transformé ma vie?

And then finally came the end of the world… the end of “my” world. After this purification ceremony, we were invited to enter the depths of the Navajo people’s Lands. This is where my solo adventure began. An incredible moment of four days of fasting, alone, in the sacredness of the desert. It began with the search for my place of power. Walking in the sand and stones, my soul recognized a cave and I immediately knew that this place was waiting for me to live my inner pilgrimage. A simple matrix-like hole in the rocky wall of a mountain. In the back were cavities for candles and incense. A rectangular stone with perfect cleavage had long since detached from the cave’s ceiling, ideal for making my bed. The place was waiting for me. Wonderful. It became “my” cave.

It is an experience of humility and love. Alone in my cave, I merged with the two worlds, the one outside and the one inside. They were one: I Am. No longer the mind. No longer fears and anxieties. No longer the noise of my conditioning. Nothing. Nothing but my cave become a matrix, the Silence of the red desert, the wild and purifying force of the burning wind and the coolness of the rain. Nothing but Beauty. The thousands of stars. The bright moon. My cave. It is there that I took my first, new steps, of crossing my promised land, my Elsewhere become Here. My body was then as dilated as my consciousness’s capacity to sustain this new posture.

On the fourth morning, I gently regained consciousness of the flow of Time, I repacked my things and resumed the ascent to base camp. My new steps were laborious. At five thousand feet above sea level and under a rainy, oxygen-poor sky… leaving this plenitude was not easy. Leaving my cave required a lot of courage. My cells, full of light and grandeur, left this place of power to return to base camp. Still in silence, I greeted my three fellow travelers who were also filled with the wisdom of their intimate adventure with the Most High. I returned laboriously but happily, greeting from my heart our welcoming guides who took care of us during our solo time.

Témoignage : Comment un voyage en Arizona avec Spiritours a transformé ma vie?

And then… and then the return. This is a part of the adventure whose importance I had neglected. The return to my body since I am “in-carnate,” which literally means “to be in-the-flesh.” My cells, still sparkling with vastness, had to contain themselves, again, within the limited space of my body. Not easy. And then the farewell to these wild and sacred Red Lands that moved away from me as we sped towards civilization. And then the food that was no longer necessary in my cave as the spiritual nourishment had been so rich and satisfying. And then the noise. And then the farewells to our adventure family: the seven of us. And then the plane. And then… the return home.

What can I say about this whole adventure? What remains of it? What has this desert of Beauty changed in me? Everything remains! I only need to close my eyes for a moment to feel the beauty of my cave that is always there… because “I Am” always there, capturing the sacred teaching of my cells, my body, my heart, my soul. Without inside. Without outside. Everything is always accessible when I am well seated within myself. Of course, I have often relapsed into my conditioned patterns since my return…

Of course, I have often cried at the sadness of the difficulties of my often trying daily life, I have encountered my weaknesses and sometimes even my rigidities, my “smallness” and my darkness… but beyond all these obstacles, my inner vigilance and especially the extraordinary experience of this Great Red Desert adventure help me not to be buried under the weight of these adversities. And that’s what’s important: To Live! To Laugh! To Play the flute! To See what I look at! To Hear what I hear! To Love! To be authentic! To be electric! To become “my” Monument Valley!

A rejuvenating trip that transformed my life.
AHO

By: Claude, the cave dweller

Note that we will be offering a trip to Arizona again next year with HO Rites de passage!

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