Are you called to guide our warriors as they step into their true nature?
This year, for the first time, VeteranRites is offering a training for those who have participated in a Rite of Return with Veteran Rites or equivalent and are wishing to work toward becoming a Guide. Our work together will be primarily experiential; you will experience a complete Rite of Passage Ceremony as well as learn how to guide one.
We will gather July 24-August 4 (12 days) at about 4,500’ in the Colockum Wildlife Area, a vast expanse of DNR land that overlooks eastern Washington and the Columbia River. The terrain is rolling, with deep gullies cut into the basalt, right where the ponderosa pines meet the sage steppe. It is the perfect place to step into your true nature and remember your true home…to become who we were born to be.
The Purpose of our Ceremony
Throughout history, indigenous peoples and warfighting cultures across the globe have long recognized and practiced rites of passage and purification for returning warriors that fully honor sacrifice and traumas their soul endures as a result of lacing up the uniform and preparing to die, including the Lakota, Maasai, Crusaders, Druids, Celts, Hebrews of the Pentateuch, Pre-Socratic Greeks, Mayans, Vikings, Romans, and Mongols, just to name a few. Despite nearly 8,000 veteran non-profits and billions of dollars on veteran health care, we are not making a dent in veteran suicide. What is missing?
Whole Identity, Purpose, and Belonging after Military Service
Karl Marlantes, in What is Like to Go to War…“Killing someone without splitting oneself from the feeling that the act engenders requires an effort of supreme consciousness that, quite frankly, is beyond most humans. Killing is what warriors do for society. Yet when they return home, society doesn’t generally acknowledge that the act it asked them to do created a deep split in their psyches, or a psychological and spiritual weight most of them will stumble beneath the rest of their lives. Warriors must learn how to integrate the experience of killing, to put the pieces of their psyches back together again. For the most part, they have been left to do this on their own.”
In modern society, we have relinquished non-medicated rites of passage and purification for solutions that provide temporary relief but fail to get to the heart of what veterans need to heal and grow into the fullness of their being; sacred ceremonies and rituals that offer transcendent meaning, communal validation, and visceral freedom from the weight their soul’s carry. A rite of passage is all-senses alchemy of their internal wisdom connecting to the source and magnetizing the healing power of nature. Through this ancient remembering of self-generated ceremony and practice of wholeness, our warriors can activate the latent mysteries within to give form to their invisible demons so they can face them head-on, on their own terms. When faced they can finally excavate what is buried deep within, feel it, honor it, bury it in the earth, and let it go. When faced they can heal and bring in to balance the aspects of themselves that have gone unfed. It is a journey of unfathomable courage, strength, and vulnerability. Every one of these journeys to the belly of the whale is the true warrior’s Rite of Return and completion of the hero’s and heroine’s journey. Every one of these stories is the greatest story ever told. It is our mission to create the conditions for this return and hold these stories with the love and honor worthy of their sacrifice.
Veteran Rites exists to provide The Rite of Return for any warrior seeking to answer the soul’s call for deep healing in the wilderness in order to lay down what longer serves and step into who they are truly called to be after military service. Separated from society, in solidarity and solitude, to cross the threshold as a Whole Warrior to “put the pieces of their psyches back together again” and answer Who Am I? What’s My Purpose? Where do I Belong?
This ancient, cross-cultural ceremony has proven to drastically reduce the symptoms of post-traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, moral injury, and suicidal ideation by embracing the wholeness of our human experience and true nature.
The 11-day ceremony (+1 for Guide Training) is held in the wilderness of Eastern Washington with trained veteran and non-veteran guides. Participants experience time in community with other vets, four days of solo time, fasting in the wilderness, and a marked return where their stories are shared and witnessed in a“council of elders”. This return marks the beginning of a veteran’s process of incorporating that which they have gained and learned during their time in service and explored in the context of time alone in the wilderness, so they may bring their gifts home, able to participate more fully in service of their families and their community.
In order to scale up this unique and whole wilderness rite for returning service members, Veteran Rites must train warriors and culturally sensitive civilian angels who are called to witness and guide warriors to the sacred river of their inner healing and wholeness through wilderness rites of passage.
Eligibility
The Rite of Return is available to Military Service Members, Spouses, Partners, Gold Star (18+), and Dependent Survivors of Veteran Suicide. This Veteran Rites Guide Training is available to the warriors that have been initiated through the Rite of Return, and on a case by case basis veterans and civilians that have participated in equivalent wilderness rites of passage or spiritual formation in their healing journey and are called to this ceremony for themselves and to prevent veteran suicide.
Veteran Rites works with every warrior called to the land to fully prepare physically, mentally, and spiritually for their Rite of Return journey and address unique barriers and conditions that may prevent participation. Initiates are supported throughout their incorporation year by Veteran Rites and the circle of whole warriors they are initiated with. If your experience with wilderness rites of passage has not been with Veteran Rites, our model requires a substantial amount of resources in all Shields to remove physical, emotional, and medical barriers to make this ceremony available and accessible to all veterans, especially those living on cliff’s edge. This is the case for preparation, during the ceremony, and the Whole Warrior incorporation year.
COVID-19
Veteran Rites has adopted enhanced safety protocols and practices to prevent and mitigate transmission of the coronavirus among participants, our loved ones, and communities before, during, and after the ceremony.
CLAIM YOUR SEAT AND ANSWER THE CALL BELOW
HELD IN THE WILDERNESS OF EASTERN WASHINGTON JULY 24 - AUGUST 4, 2021
RITE OF RETURN CEREMONIES ARE LIMITED TO (8) PARTICIPANTS
Email Ryan Mielcarek at council@veteranrites.org if you have any problems in filling out this form or have any questions. We are here for you.
