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Wisteria Event Campground, Community, and Nature Retreat |
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Sweatlodge at Wisteria
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THE SWEATLODGE AN INTERPRETATION There is no one way "to do" a sweatlodge. No one tradition has a monopoly on the truth of the lodge. But there are basic underlying principles that do not change. It is wise to listen and learn from others, yet, ultimately, the lodge teaches you what is appropriate for your relationship with the sweatlodge. This information belongs to the sweatlodge experience and should be shared appropriately. Use discretion and exercise your own spiritual freedom. We welcome submissions of your stories about Sweatlodge and will post them to share. email us: info@wisteria.org |
Inside the sweat lodge after snow. |
Sweatlodges at Summer Solstice and Cornstalk will be coordinated by Doug Sundling with facilitators to be announced. Sundling's ongoing relationship with the sweatlodge began in 1986. He brought the sweatlodge to Wisteria in its initial year of 1997 and has maintained the sweatlodge's presence here since.
Sweatlodge by Doug Sundling (protected by copyright)
SWEATLODGE AS GROUP EXPERIENCE
Introduction
Sweatlodge. A ceremony of transformation, of renewal. A universal ceremony that has been diversely expressed within different cultural contexts for many purposes – from seeking peace of mind or cleansing of the body to preparing for a major life event or trying to heal a devastating disease or to giving thanks. The sweatlodge invokes more than a sweat. It offers a spiritual relationship that can deepen and mature with aging, rather than being a one-time or occasional event.
There is no one way "to do" a sweatlodge. No one tradition has a monopoly on the truth of the lodge. But there are basic underlying principles that do not change, though they can be diversely expressed. It is wise to listen to what others share about their experiences with the lodge or their learning from a particular tradition; but ultimately, the lodge teaches what is appropriate for the cultural context we each live within.
The knowledge I have of the lodge I prefer sharing at an idle sweatlodge site and then letting people learn what is appropriate for them from their sweatlodge experiences. When I have tried writing down what to say about the sweatlodge, the notes have always swirled and turned in circles, resisting a well-ordered, outlined linear presentation. What can you trust that is in writing? Even I am constantly revising this very text. Though written language frames expression within limits, I hope what I describe is concise yet provoking, informative yet imaginative while staying true to the spirit of the sweatlodge. The ensuing dialogue is based on several traditions and my own inspiration. Despite what I may write, more can be said that I don’t know. This written dialogue offers no codification of one of the oldest and most enduring rituals that has accompanied the human spirit.
SPIRITUAL SINCERITY & FREEDOM
Spiritual sincerity, not allegiance to any doctrine or religion, is essential for participation in the sweatlodge and is the ageless thread binding past with present. Being comfortable with the dynamics of the sweatlodge creates a harmony for what is a ceremony of, by most standards, suffering and endurance.
Individual freedom in belief is woven with conventional ritual methods. These two interweaving dynamics – sincerity of the participants and respect for the core principles of a sweatlodge ceremony – allow for divergent spiritual perspectives to come together within the ritual conventions of the sweatlodge. This is a fundamental canon of the sweatlodge – rather than dictate or regulate how you believe, ritual should provide the means to access the Divine and should respect your relationship with the Divine. Ritual and detail shouldn’t trap but should help you engage your prayer.
The sweatlodge wraps its participants with opposites: the warmth and security of a womb and the suffering and ignorance of extreme heat and darkness. Being part of a ritual that is timeless while being part of a ritual that exposes your weaknesses and mortality. Your weaknesses can be exchanged for strengthens. Your sense of disarray can be exchanged for harmony. Your illness can be exchanged for health. To successfully mix such dynamics requires spiritual sincerity and understanding of the basic fundamentals of creating a sweatlodge ceremony. Anything goes begets randomness which the universe will organize into a circular path. Growth, insight, or enlightenment isn’t random.
Social solidarity rather than ritual orthodoxy characterizes the history of the sweatlodge. Mutual support and shared experiences of being in a sweatlodge to pray or be cured override adherence to a specific belief system. But this doesn’t mean anything goes; conventions of time and place limit what is acceptable, if the facilitator or participants don’t.
The sweatlodge provides opportunity to engage your spiritual ideals and desires and then to go forth and act on them. To walk your talk. And like the sweatlodge experience, those ideals and actions are determined by the individual, and each individual determines how to fit those actions into the conventions of that individual’s culture – be it by conforming or by rebelling.
THE BEAUTY OF THE SWEATLODGE
With what we consider mundane elements is built a very simple (crude in modern terms) facility, which creates space for the emergence of the "profound," the sacred. Gathering the materials for the lodge – picking stones, cutting saplings, buying jute or cotton twine, selecting blankets and other covers, gathering and cutting firewood – and then building the lodge and the subsequent fire to heat the rocks: all these acts fashion the lodge experience. Acts to create the lodge are part of a sacred rite rather than just grunt work to get another job done. Building a lodge is a commitment of honor and service.
A sweatlodge ceremony is shaped by both the past and the present:
by certain conventions that are remarkably consistent no matter the time and place and
by what each participant says and does during the ceremony.
Thus no two ceremonies are the same – similar but different.
The four basic elements of Earth (Land), Air, Fire, and Water are brought into immediate and intense state of transformation which infuses the participants with the power of that transforming. And the transforming of those elements is always different due to shifting temperaments of weather, elements, and participants.
SYMBOLS & SACRED TOOLS
Symbols help define our relationship with the Divine. We each bring symbols to a sweatlodge ceremony – those chosen from our own life’s experiences and those culturally induced. Some are temporary; some are firmly fixed in an individual’s perspective of life.
Your relationship with the Divine, like all relationships, is a function of time and place. Life is a process, a creative process. Does that mean everything is relative? There are fundamental relationships that don’t change. Earth, air, fire, and water are holy because without any one of them we don’t have life. How we express our relationship to those elements is relative to time and place. The cultural context and the participants determine what materials and acts of honor to use.
THE FOUR ELEMENTS
In this ceremony, all the elements – earth, air, fire, and water -- must be transformed: wood yields to fire so this invisible force can transmit its power into rocks which yield their fire to water which becomes steam and stops at our skins, but the invisible forces of fire in the steam penetrate our Earth composite shells, renewing that invisible force of life within us.
A spiritually oriented sweatlodge becomes a synagogue to pay homage to the four directions, to the four elements, to the four seasons, to Mother Earth, to Father Sky. A synagogue to give some of our blood of Earth – water – back to Earth. A synagogue to listen to the Creation. To honor and celebrate being human while sacrificing the clamor and prejudices of being human. The sweatlodge clearly encourages a very different behavior than what subversive submitting of worshiping does.
HOW TO PREPARE
The sweatlodge experience begins when you choose to participate in a sweatlodge, usually demarked by your contact with the sweatlodge facilitator. The mental and spiritual commitment has been made, and the first steps toward the actual ceremony have been taken.
Fasting helps prepare you for the sweatlodge. Fasting is an act of altering, and your body soon begins to recognize that fasting is a signal some sort of transformation is about to occur. Fasting can be simply avoiding solid foods for a few hours or for a day or more prior to a sweat. Fasting can include eating cleansing foods like fruits and fruit juices. If your gut is free of any substances, you are more receptive to the ceremony of the sweat. A food-free stomach eliminates having a second fire burning inside you as the fire of the sweatlodge burns outside you.
It is important that anyone who participates in a sweatlodge brings something to give to the sweatlodge. You are taking from the lodge and need to give in return. Western culture is basically a one-way relationship of always taking, especially from Earth, with little, if any, consideration for giving. Some traditions ask you give something to the sweatlodge facilitator. In Native American tradition, tobacco is usually offered to a facilitator and/or the lodge. Remember that food offerings attract ants.
Your sincerity is the most important thing you can bring to a sweatlodge.
People with heart disorders, diabetes, or other serious internal affliction should consult a physician for a medical opinion in regards to participating in an experience of intense heat. These folks usually are more conscious of their limitations and more sensitive to how they are experiencing the sweatlodge. Diabetics who have fasted for most of the day before a night sweat I have facilitated have emerged calm and even-keeled and said they felt for the first time they had gained some control of their bodies. Each person needs to evaluate his or her own situation. And consult with the facilitator of the sweatlodge ceremony.
No metal. No contact lenses. If you don't understand why, the intense heat will teach you quickly.
If a sweatlodge is held at night, watching the fire perform its magic while massaging your spirit is a wonderful way to prepare for the subsequent sweat. Time becomes suspended. If family and friends who have done sweatlodges together compose the group of participants, the behavior around the fire and during the ceremony might include humor and socializing. If the group of participants is eclectic without the family or daily social bonds, then experience has taught me that quietly letting fire massage your spirit is best. Chit-chat does little if anything to help an initiate prepare for the intensity of a sweatlodge ceremony that may be a first time experience either with a sweatlodge or with this particular facilitator or group of participants.
SWEATLODGE AS GROUP EXPERIENCE
Contemporary use of the sweatlodge has drifted heavily toward using the ceremony for healing purposes, often as a place to unload a lot of psychological baggage. Be realistic about such a healing process: years of therapy cannot be compacted into a one-session sweatlodge. The sweatlodge is not a garbage pit, but a place to experience transformation and renewal, to help you further along whatever path you are on or seek to be on. For someone to pour out his or her problems and then leave after a round or two is irresponsible towards others in lodge. For someone to use an eclectic sweatlodge ritual of strangers for personal exorcising usurps the sweatlodge’s power. Sweatlodges for that particular processing need to be so organized and to have the appropriate people inside and outside to support such a ceremony, as should be sweatlodges to initiate or conclude a ceremony or individual quest.
Your desire simply to participate in a sweat is enough; you don’t have to bring problems or complaints. But the sweatlodge is usually a group experience; hence, be prepared to share and carry what others bring into lodge. As with any intense group experience, the appropriate convention is that what happens in the lodge remains with the lodge.
TIME & THE SWEATLODGE
The duration of a sweatlodge depends on the behavior of the elements and participants. Sweatlodges serve needs to pray, to seek counsel or instruct, and to share wisdom and stories. Each lodge is different because no two lodges embrace the same mixture of elements and people. For some people, one, two, or three rounds of a four- or five-round sweat is the extent of their sweatlodge experience. The lodge will tell you when you have had enough. The sweatlodge is not an endurance test; it is a ceremony of transformation. Your transformation (or inability to yield to it) may occur before the final round is finished.
Time with the sweatlodge, like with life, is both linear and circular. There is a beginning and an end, and between there is a relentless cycle of time. Cycle of birth and death fuels the flame of life. Life's fire can warm or burn us, infuse or consume us. Life is not static; the one constant in life is change. Nature is a process of seeking stability and equilibrium -- a process of maintaining balance, as one does within a sweatlodge ceremony. It is a process that is timeless.
TRADITION
Does tradition fix customs passed from generation to generation – how to behave, how to think, what to value, how to value – as precedents for the present? Does tradition mix those precedents with the shifting of time and place? Is tradition rooted in both the past and present? The past is fixed, but history can be reinterpreted and reconstructed, hopefully to nurture our depth of understanding. And human needs and perceptions blossom according to time and place.
Tradition emerges from an ongoing interpretation of the past relative to the present – even by those who insist on rigid adherence to past precedents. Though tradition isn’t just a core of teachings or regulations passed from past to present, tradition can’t be limited to the current living “eye of the beholder.” Life may be relative to the existing moment, but there remains the omnipresent objective guide of history, as recorded in writings and human memories.
Does tradition dictate how to conduct a sweatlodge ceremony? Does sweatlodge tradition dictate otherwise? How easy for folks to believe that their interaction with an old, if not ancient ritual such as the sweatlodge brings the past into the present and that this transformation of the past, as understood by people according to their circumstances, is tradition. But does tradition tolerate such transformation? Does tradition behave more as a verb than a noun?
Tradition is expressed by symbols, but tradition has become a significant symbol onto itself, both to validate a kinship to the past and to be a judge of what is correct for the present. The dialogue about what is traditional draws many perspectives rendered by the shifting relationship between history and contemporary need, between continuity and change.
The written word tends to embalm what it describes, be it an idea, a process, a ritual, a belief. Establishing ideal structures often banishes variation and innovation. The impact of writing about sweatlodge ceremonies has been significant, giving folks reasons either to validate something or to avoid what the written word states. Interestingly, the spirit of the sweatlodge ceremony – of tradition – seems to prevail, for folks consistently move from some sort of initial contact with printed material to learning more through listening and participating.
While most sweatlodge ceremonies essentially embrace a core composition, each sweatlodge is unique. The sweatlodge has as much to do with the participants as with conventions of the past. And despite this openness to variation, the sweatlodge remains consistent in its structure and enactment: heating rocks, opening and closing the door to the lodge, pouring water, and praying through words and songs. A participant in a sweatlodge ceremony today could faithfully be part of one held a few thousand years in the past or the future.
The sweatlodge embodied what seemed an American ideal prior to the mass immigration of Europeans after 1492: rituals were bound by custom and enlivened by innovation. Tradition provided a means to return to the precedents of the past while responding to the present needs of a particular place and time. The precedents of earlier social, political, religious patterns – community values – are more faithfully transferred by and experienced in a tradition such as the sweatlodge than they are with contemporary fixed structures and institutions.
[For further insightful reading on this topic, please read Raymond A. Bucko’s, TRADITION – THE LAKOTA RITUAL OF THE SWEAT LODGE (1999).]