The Joy of Quests...
The Joy of Quests...
... and how to change the way you think
Over the Summer I set off on a quest. Quests have a rich heritage. I suppose the idea originates in initiation ceremonies of the kind our indigenous ancestors would have seen as the doorways into adulthood. More recently in the middle ages the idea of a quest related to knights who would set off on arduous journeys to prove themselves. It’s something that I suppose we in the modern world have squeezed into a working mindset - our ambitions for a career perhaps. But work is not very romantic. We are all struggling within organisations - often bureaucracies - that rarely look for original thinking or putting ourselves way out of our comfort zones. Work is not a great place to embark on a quest.
I stumbled into my quest. I didn’t really think of it as a quest until the weeks and months after I got home but now, in retrospect, I can see it was a quest in the true sense of the word. And it is one of my top five life experiences, which is not bad considering it only took five days of my life to do.
I’m now thinking everyone should go on a quest of their own. A journey to find something in the real world that will release something in your mind you could never have discovered if you had stayed at home.
Here are some parameters to get you started.
1 - The quest needs to take place in a landscape you have a connection with. I think this is critical. A true quest is not a ‘bucket list’ kind of excursion. It needs to be in - and of - the land that is meaningful to you. My quest involved a 1,500 mile journey that took me from Devon to Anglesey in Wales, Gretna Green, the Cairngorms, Skye, Raasay, Oban, the Lake District and the Forest of Bowland. These are all places that have haunted my imagination in different ways. Places I find my mind going back to every now and then without meaning to. You know how when you let go of the steering wheel of a car it will naturally straighten itself? Well when I do that with my mind, let go of trying to control the direction it is focussed on, these are the places my imagination naturally gravitate towards.
2 - You have to go alone. This is critical. And I would go further. Don’t listen to music or read the news or message people on your phone. I updated my instagram with pictures and videos I took on my trip, but in every other way I disconnected from the world. I only spoke to or messaged my wife and kids. The reason this is so important is because the quest takes place in two different worlds. The physical world and your inner world. You can’t travel deeply into your inner world without being deeply and profoundly quiet. Some people will find the silence of this incredibly challenging and that is precisely the point of the quest. It’s supposed to be arduous.
3 - Avoid doing anything dangerous, but push yourself and live in a different time and a different way. You are looking to live the duration of the quest in a different mindset. That means getting out of your normal routine. My quest involved going to different places that were very far from each other so I got up incredibly early each day - around 4 or 5 - and then drove five or six hours to get to each new place. I then explored each place in a strange liminal state of tiredness before collapsing in exhaustion and going to bed much earlier than normal. This meant I was living in the world in a new timezone. I saw different things and felt I was ‘getting away’ from my normal life.
4 - Slow down. I don’t mean drive slowly, but I do mean you have to go everywhere by land or sea. No flying unless it’s to get back to a landscape that is meaningful to you. No shortcuts. The quest does not actually take place in the destination. It takes place between setting out and getting home. Therefore you want the journey to take as long as possible. You will find the treasure of the experience throughout the experience not at the end of it. Slowing down also expands the way your brain experiences time. Go deep rather than long. Quests on foot are the best, but driving for seven hours straight on a motorway can reveal new ways of being too.
5 - Be curious and let serendipity signposts guide your way. It’s important to have a goal, this is the framework of your quest, but you are also looking for reasons to go off piste. What you really want is to get lost. This is where you phone really does come in handy. If you spot something that snags at your consciousness look it up. Try and work out why it caught your eye. Is there a link between the thing and you? Is it a breadcrumb that leads you somewhere unexpected? It usually is. I see these kinds of things as serendipity signposts. To spot serendipity signposts you have to give the world and yourself the gift of your time. Don’t worry if the goal of your quest changes as a result of this kind of thing. Sometimes you need to get out into the world for the purpose of your real quest to materialise.
6 - When I got back from my quest and told a friend about it, he said ‘oh, you just did ayahuasca without taking any drugs’ and this blew my mind because of course the similarities are obvious. Living in the way I have described pushes you to the edge of your normal reasoning and thought processes. You will be tired and living in a completely alien way. Eating less means you will be hungry but not in a way that feels like a concession - this happens naturally because your quest takes over your consciousness and things like eating slip down your list of priorities. I just bought bags of apples and had bread and cheese in a coolbox and ate really basic things. The point about ayahuasca is that pretty soon you will start seeing things. I had lots of incredibly strange experiences as though I was communing with the landscape in new ways. When I got to the final stage of my quest, which was to find a mesolithic cave on one of the remotest spots on one of the remotest islands in the Scottish Highlands, I felt like I was dreaming half the time. No doubt this was due to me doing a 10k walk in a place where I saw no other people immediately after a seven hour drive and forgetting to take lunch… but I digress. What I saw and found at the end of my quest blew my mind. Literally in the real world but also in my head.
7 - Don’t tell everyone exactly what happened when you get home. There are moments of my experience that I shared, but most of it remains in my head. This is why I’m not telling you exactly what occurred. It’s really important to keep most of it to yourself because a quest is like planting a seed in your mind. It needs solace and reflection to grow. I am continually making sense of my quest now. My quest is now where the steering wheel of my mind naturally goes when I’m not otherwise engaged. It’s a wondrous thing to have done. It changed my life.
This just poured out of me this morning. I’m not even going to edit it I’m just going to post it. Proper stream of consciousness stuff.
If you want help planning and thinking about a quest of your own, drop me a message. You only need three to five days. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune. But I strongly urge you to give yourself the gift of time. It will change how you see yourself and your life.
Thanks for reading and, as always, let me know what you think.
Dan