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The Art of Being Lost
by Bill Plotkin
What does it mean,
exactly, to be "lost"? Perhaps this: we don't know how to get from where we are
to where we want to be. It's not the same as being stranded (when we do know
how to get where we want to go) or abandoned. Being lost is not a simple
problem of immobility or imprisonment. Neither is it the same as not knowing
where we are. I may find myself in an unfamiliar room in a city with no idea
whose home or office it is, but if I recognize landmarks out the window or am in
the company of a trusted guide, I'm not lost; I know how to get from where I am
to where I want to go. Or, conversely, I may know where I am physically but be
lost because I have no idea what I want to do next in my life or where I want
to go.
We can also be
lost intellectually, emotionally, or spiritually. It's not unusual to feel lost
in the middle of our lives while sitting in our own living room, and it's
possible to remain lost for months, years, or permanently. Lost souls.
We might even be
lost without knowing it. That's how the seventeenth-century Spanish
missionaries thought of the indigenous people they encountered in the southwest
corner of what is now known as Colorado. The missionaries named the river that
runs through that country the River of Souls Lost in Purgatory (El Río de las
Ánimas Perdidas en Purgatorio), believing the natives were necessarily lost
because they were living without the benefits of the missionaries' religion. Who
do you suppose was really lost without knowing it, the missionaries or the
indigenous people? Like the missionaries, it is possible to be looking for a
kind of paradise without knowing you are already there. That is one way to be
lost.
But being lost is
not at all a bad thing -- if you know you're lost and you know how to benefit
from it spiritually. Most of us consider being lost a bummer, highly
undesirable or even terrifying. We all have important things to do, there's not
enough time in the day as it is, thank you, and getting lost is a major fly in
the ointment of success, a monkey wrench in the gearbox of progress. In the
Western world, where "progress is our most important product," we are
encouraged from our earliest years to know exactly where we are at all times
and precisely where we are going. Yes, such knowledge is often desirable if not
necessary, but not knowing is of equal benefit.
When wandering,
there is immense value in "finding ourselves lost" because we can find something
when we are lost, we can find our selves. Indeed, the deepest form of wandering
requires that we be lost.
Imagine yourself
lost in your career or marriage, or in the middle of your life. You have goals,
a place you want to be, but you don't know how to reach that place. Maybe you
don't know exactly what you want, you just have a vague desire for a better
place. Although it may not seem like it, you are on the threshold of a great
opportunity. Begin to trust that place of not knowing. Surrender to it. You're
lost. There will be grief. A cherished outcome appears to be unobtainable or
undefinable. In order to make the shift from being lost to being present, admit
to yourself that your goal may never be reached. Though perhaps difficult, doing
so will create entirely new possibilities for fulfillment.
Surrendering fully
to being lost -- and this is where the art comes in -- you will discover that, in
addition to not knowing how to get where you had wanted to go, you are no
longer so sure of the ultimate rightness of that goal. By trusting your
unknowing, your old standards of progress dissolve and you become eligible to
be chosen by new, larger standards, those that come not from your mind or old
story or other people, but from the depths of your soul. You become attentive
to an utterly new guidance system.
The art of being
lost is not a matter of merely getting lost, but rather being lost and
enthusiastically surrendering to the unlimited potential of it. In fact, using
it to your advantage. The shift from being lost to being found (in a new,
unpredictable way) is a gradual and indirect one. The way to encourage that
shift is to first accept that you don't know how to get to the place you want to
be and then opening fully to the place you are until the old goals fall away
and you discover more soulful goals emerging. Then you are no longer lost, but
you have benefited immensely from having been so. This kind of being lost and
then found is one form of ego death and rebirth, one form of entering the
tomb-womb of the cocoon.
Being lost and
then found in this way ushers you more fully into the now. We are often so busy
trying to get into an imagined future that we've lost the present moment. We've
lost the self -- the soul -- that lives and breathes only in the here and now.
Consider for
example being lost in the woods, something few people can imagine enjoying. All
of a sudden, the world has shrunk; here you are, sitting beside a stream in a
forest. You don't know which way is home. You call out. No one answers; or,
only the stream, the wind, and the ravens answer. Maybe you panic, maybe you
don't. It sinks in that you are really lost. Gradually, you become aware that
everything you can count on now is right here, more or less within reach, and
there's no guarantee there will ever again be anything else. You could have
spent your entire life on a meditation cushion to get to this radical place of
present-centeredness, and now you are here courtesy of dislocation! Like a
shipwrecked sailor on a tropical island, this is your world. What will you do
with it? You've lost nearly everything you thought was important; the old goals
are irrelevant, and yet, here you are. Now what?
This is precisely
where you must eventually arrive, psycho-spiritually, for the purpose of soul
initiation: you must be willing to release your previous agendas and embrace
the soul's passion as you find it here and now.
By arriving more
fully in the present, through being lost and accepting it, your life suddenly
suffers a radical simplification. Old agendas, beliefs and desires fall away.
You quiet down inside and it becomes easier to hear the voice of the soul.
This is why the
Wanderer seeks to get lost.
The Wanderer
learns there are four necessary components to the art of being lost. First, he
must in fact be lost. Second, he must know he is lost and accept it. Third, he
must have adequate survival knowledge, skills, and physical or spiritual tools.
Fourth, and most important, he must practice nonattachment to any particular
result of being lost, such as being found by a certain time, or at all. In
other words, he must accept his condition, relax into it, and arrive fully
where he is.
Whether he is
physically, emotionally, soulfully, or spiritually lost, getting to know the
experience of "lost" in the most intimate terms is his only true way out.
Upon entering the
second cocoon, for example, we notice that the adolescent life, a life in which
social and economic advancement are our primary goals, is no longer so
alluring, but we do not yet have an appealing alternative. We're lost. Rather
than merely changing jobs, life partners, social groups, or places of
residence, we must accept that we are lost and can't extract ourselves by
continuing to play by the old rules. What are the relevant survival knowledge,
skills, and tools for this kind of being lost? To spiritually survive the
second cocoon, you need to know about the relationship between ego, soul, and spirit.
You need to know about the call to adventure, ego death, and wandering. You
need the skills of self-reliance and of leaving home. You need tools in the
form of pathways to soul encounter. And you need to cultivate the art of being
lost. Then you must settle into the fact that, as of yet, you do not know what
your soul desires for the life you've been blessed with.
Another way the
Wanderer might cultivate the art of being soulfully lost is to physically get
lost in wilderness. She might wander in the wilds until she is not certain how
to get "out." Then she will sit and practice presence, accepting what is,
because here and now are all she's got. Obviously it helps if she has
previously acquired some survival skills, including ways to find water and
shelter and, if she'll be there several days, food. She'll also be glad to have
her physical survival tools with her -- her pocketknife and a way to make fire
and shelter, for example. That's why the Wanderer studied the arts of
backcountry living when acquiring the skills of self-reliance. She also studied
the art of orienteering, so she knows she eventually can find her way out in
good shape. She just doesn't know when that will be, and, truth be told, the
lost Wanderer is not in a great hurry. Here's an opportunity to practice
solitude, wandering in nature, tracking signs and omens, talking across the
species boundaries, and other soulcraft arts. Here's her chance to trust the
path that begins at her feet, to be fully in the moment as it unfolds. If she
can do this while lost in the wilds, she's more likely to be able to do it when
spiritually lost, like Dante, in the middle of her life.
When I find myself
lost in the wild, fear starts in my groin and works its way up to my belly and
down to my knees. My heart races. My throat wants to shout for help. My whole
body begins to tremble and my head whirls. My breath grows shallow and rapid. My
heart beats quicker and quirkier. But if I don't panic (or after I'm through
panicking), I notice my body actually likes being lost! Not the mind, but the
body. My skin begins to tingle, as if with delight. I become very awake. My
senses grow sharp and clear. The sounds, colors, textures, and edges of things
become distinct and radiant. I can't help but notice an enjoyment arising
through being so present, so much in this body. Here. Now. Thought slows down
and becomes crystalline. What will I do, I wonder. I hear a weird voice say,
"Let's enjoy being here before we get in too much of a hurry to be somewhere
else. If we can make a life here, after all, we can make a life anywhere."
Perchance you
think you do not have the skills or interest (or time!) to get lost in
wilderness and then attempt to find your self. Few people do, but few people get
serious about any kind of wandering. On the other hand, I've known many people
who were not the least bit interested in getting lost but had the misfortune -
or fortune - of doing so anyway, and learned wondrous things from the
experience (other than to never leave home again).
On a vision fast
when I was a trainee, there was a woman quester who (like many people) could
successfully get lost inside a large paper bag. She got lost in the dry summer
mountains of the California desert. She lost her bearings in the middle of a
warm blue-sky day while on her way back to her camp after a short walk. She had
no camping gear or warm clothes with her. She had just visited the location
near base camp where we had arranged for her to leave a stone each day as a
signal to us she was all right (without having to interrupt her time of
solitude). She left the stone and then became disoriented while attempting to
return to her fasting circle. Later that afternoon, I checked to be sure she
had left the stone.
The next day,
there was no new stone. The quest guide and I hiked to her camp. Nobody there,
but her sleeping bag was -- a more alarming discovery. We spent the next several
hours looking and shouting. No success. We tried to track her, but the desert
pavement in that land rarely registers conspicuous prints. Finally, we found
her track in the dust of an old dirt road. She was headed away from both base
camp and her camp. No telling how far she had gone. Plus we suspected she had
already spent a night out, alone without warmth or shelter. We were about to
contact the county search and rescue squad when we spotted, through binoculars,
about a half mile down the road, a white bra hanging from a lone juniper. We
ran down the road. We found her under the tree, out of the midday sun, quite
comfortable and enjoying her day, confident we'd show up sooner or later.
Despite her lack of wilderness experience, she had managed to make a warm
enough bed out of juniper boughs. She was a lot more centered and calm than we
were. She wasn't really lost, after all, she told us; she knew right where she
was -- here, under this juniper.
The lost quester
had learned much from her experience.
She learned she could comfort herself in difficult circumstances. She
learned she could survive a night alone in the (warm) wilds without equipment.
She learned how to gather her resourcefulness and to arrive in the full
presence of the moment.
Practicing the art
of being lost doesn't require external wilderness. You might, for example,
spend an extended period of time in a social or ethnic group with strange (to
you) customs or styles, in an unfamiliar city or foreign country, with an
unusual religious practice or community, or without your familiar religious or
spiritual practice if you have been employing one regularly for many years -- or
with people much younger or older than you. Or simply wait for a day your life
no longer makes sense, or when someone or something or a role you've depended
upon has suddenly disappeared. Remember to apply all four components of being
lost to these other unknowns.
This article was excerpted from:
 Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche
by Bill Plotkin, Ph.D.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, New World Library. ©2003. www.newworldlibrary.com or 800-972-6657 ext. 52.
Info/Order this book.
About the Author
Bill Plotkin, PhD, has been a psychotherapist, research psychologist,
rock musician, river runner, professor of psychology, and mountain-bike
racer. As a research psychologist, he studied dreams and nonordinary
states of consciousness achieved through meditation, biofeedback, and
hypnosis. The founder and president of Animas Valley Institute, he has
guided thousands of people through initiatory passages in nature since
1980. Currently an ecotherapist, depth psychologist, and wilderness
guide, he leads a variety of experiential, nature-based individuation
programs.
Visit Bill Plotkin online at www.natureandthehumansoul.com.
More articles by this author.
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