Mark Tollefson

Mark TollefsonMark TollefsonMark Tollefson

Mark Tollefson

Mark TollefsonMark TollefsonMark Tollefson
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Vision Quest - Spring 2024 Information & Agenda

Dates:   April 18 - 28, 2024


Do you hear the call of the wild beckoning your soul?


Do you sense that you are so much more than you are currently expressing?


Do you yearn to connect deeply with your innate gifts and your authentic voice?


Do you desire to truly serve the world and leave it better than you found it for future generations?


If so, then I invite you to consider joining us for what could just be one of the most influential and important initiatory events of your life…


Schedule a call with Mark


What?           

  • A 10-day Vision Quest experience in the pristine & remote high desert hills east of Santa Barbara, CA. 


The experience includes: 

  • 2 sweat lodges
  • 4-day solo water-fasting Vision Quest
  • 6 days of teachings (pre & post quest): preparation, meaning making, integration & nature-connection
  • Experienced, trusted ceremonial guides
  • Additional support staff (women and men)


Guides:            

  • Mark Tollefson
  • Meghan Maiya


Dates:            

  • April 18 - 28, 2024


Cost:              

  • $2,595/per person 


NOTES:

  • This is a drug and alcohol free event. No entheogens or psychedelics will be used or permitted on the land.
  • Everyone will need to arrive between 4:00-4:45pm on Thursday, April 18th to caravan to the site as a group. Programming begins the next morning on 4/19.


Most people live life on a path that others have set for them, and are too afraid to explore any other. Then, there are people like you… 


People who see the world differently - who demand to meet life on your own terms. People who are willing to knock down all the obstacles that life puts in your way.


It isn’t easy. It requires you to be able to think differently, act differently, and see the world in a different way. 


It requires a level of consciousness that consistently requires you to be self-examining, and self-aware. This is even more challenging when our worlds are filled with things that constantly want to put us back to sleep: becoming unconscious in the busyness of life.

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day!


Our culture gives us limited ways of living, being successful, being in relationships, protesting, birthing and dying. Who made up the rules?  Who enforces them?  How was I taught to follow them?


Think about the world as you see it now and ask yourself:


Is the life you are living your will?  


Is this what you wanted as the highest expression of your life?  


Did you agree to this?  


Is this consistent with the vision of the future that you want to see?


Getting real about these questions can feel overwhelming and validate our need to stay busy to hedge against feeling deep emptiness. 


But there is a way to slow down, to listen, and hear another voice:


The Vision Quest


Since the dawn of humanity people have fasted alone in the wilderness, seeking vision in order to serve their people and their land. The vision quest is a cross-cultural, nature-based, spiritual practice to discover, make peace with, and fully engage with what remains when all possible distractions have been shed.


In this place of profound stillness and silence, a deeper connection emerges. A deeper connection to the Earth, a deeper connection to Soul, a deeper connection to one’s interconnected essence. This is Vision.


It doesn’t matter if you feel unworthy, afraid of the unknown, wounded by experiences of the past, lack of clarity, overwhelm or any other form of resistance - a genuine meaningful and abundant life of vision can be yours. 


“A human not living their vision is not living at all.”


When we look to the natural world, we see that the only constants are birth, death, and renewal. The Vision Quest provides a container within which you can engage the natural developmental process of deep renewal. Releasing that which is metaphorically dying within, and embracing that which is metaphorically being born allows you to mature and grow with the changes inside and outside of yourself in order to connect with your deepest calling.


This Vision Quest experience was created for humans with a passion for nature and engaging the mystery of life itself.  This experience is designed to support you to transform from yearning for a profound connection with vision, nature and soul - to initiate you into living a life of profound connection to vision, nature and soul.


The Vision Quest is a timeless ceremonial process rooted in traditional earth-based wisdom, adapted for humans living today to facilitate the journey of ecological awakening and soul initiation.


This is an invitation for you to take 4 days to slow down - REALLY SLOW DOWN - and listen. This is an invitation to sit with, pay attention to, and commune with something greater than yourself in nature. This is an invitation to become aware of that spark of the Divine that is present in everything. 


What calling would you hear from Soul if you really surrendered in this way? What vision from the sacred would touch your heart? How would your life be changed if you were initiated deeper into your ecological self, into your most authentic Soul-driven life?


Our trusted mentor & guide, Mark Tollefson, believes that this is the greatest possible gift to ourselves AND response we can have to the challenges of our time. He believes that many years from now, future generations will look back with awe and wonder, "Who were the strong ones back then, the ones who took the time to slow down and really get clear about their deepest calling & and vision in life, in order to effect real change? Who were the ones that made a stand to make a difference?"


More than anything else, the Vision Quest is capable of initiating you into a truly Soul-driven life where you can make this kind of a difference.


Life has a way of taking us through initiation by accident, and most of the time our understanding of what life offers us is ungrounded, and incomplete.  Certainly, we gain wisdom, we accumulate reflective experience, but there is no guarantee that we have plumbed the depths of who we are, come back with the jewel, or have the success of our experience to stand on.  


We need a more structured environment.  Something that gives our river some banks to flow with purpose and meaning. This is what the Vision Quest can do.

Register Now

AGENDA:


Thurs : Arrival: arrive between 4:00-4:45 pm 


  • 5:00pm caravan as a group to the Vision Quest Group Area.
  • Arrive. Set up camp.
  • Dinner. 
  • Community Fire / Storytelling.


Friday  - DAY 1:   Welcome, Introductions & Intention / Motivations, Connecting with the Land.


DAY 2:  Deepening Intentions / Motivations.


DAY 3:  Prepping for your solo Quest.

  • What you need to know.
  • Purification Sweatlodge.
  • Selecting your Quest site.


DAYS 4-7: Solo Vision Quest days

  • Cross the threshold at dawn.
  • At your site, Questing for Vision: 4-days (96 hours).
  • Water only, no food.


DAY 8:  QUEST OVER at dawn. 

  • Welcome back.
  • Break – fast.
  • Day of quiet reflection / journaling.
  • Sweatlodge.
  • Celebration Dinner


DAY 9:  Sharing, Mirroring & Reflections.


DAY 10:  Integration.  Taking it Home.

  • Pack up
  • LEAVE AS A GROUP: 5:00pm


YOU WILL NEED TO BRING:  (You will receive a detailed packing list once you register.)

  • Personal camping gear (tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, tarp, pate/cup/utensils, cooler, etc.)
  • Food for 5 days (Days 1-3 and Days 9 & 10).  We will feed you on the day you return from your solo quest (on Day 8).


NOTE: This is a drug and alcohol free event. No entheogens or psychedelics will be used or permitted on the land.  Do not bring any with you.

Schedule a Call with Mark
Register Now

Vision Quest

    Audio

    Vision Quest Poetry

    • Have You Ever Tried To Enter The Long Black Branches?
    • A poem by Mary Oliver, read by Mark Tollefson.

    Sometimes a poem is the best way to express an idea. We can try by talking or reading things, but poetry has a unique way of being able to say things that otherwise might be unable to be communicated. I've never come across a poem that more perfectly expresses why and what a Vision Quest is. Please listen and share!!

    Poet Info


    Mary Oliver
    US (1935 - 2019)

     

    -- from West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems, by Mary Oliver

    About Your Guides

    About Mark

    About Meghan

    About Meghan

    Mark Tollefson has been teaching nature-based connection and facilitating  transformation for 30 years. Born in the wilds of northern Canada and  from a young age mentored by people intimately connected to their  lineage and nature-based roots he brings rich life experience and wisdom  to his work.

    Mark has been a survival skills instructo

    Mark Tollefson has been teaching nature-based connection and facilitating  transformation for 30 years. Born in the wilds of northern Canada and  from a young age mentored by people intimately connected to their  lineage and nature-based roots he brings rich life experience and wisdom  to his work.

    Mark has been a survival skills instructor at Tom Brown Jr.’s Tracker  School, the executive director of Wilderness Youth Project and the  Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens in Santa Barbara. He  has owned a pub and restaurant, worked as a roughneck in the oil fields,  helped open an international high school in New Zealand, and founded  his own non-profit working to promote sustainable farming with the Maya  of southern Belize.

    He has participated in and started many men’s groups and has sat in circle with men for many years.

    He has guided hundreds of people through rites of passage into  holistic living and thinking, helping those he works with to step into a  new paradigm of being that is based on Thriving Life, connected to our  true purpose for being alive at this time.

    Mark works one-on-one and in groups with people who wish to live from  their essence and uncover the blocks that keep them from living a  Thriving Life. His  process of using myth and story-telling helps  create a map unique to each person that will uncover true vision and  purpose.

    Mark has many passions including playing music, poetry, carpentry,  and cooking delicious food. He is the father of two amazing children and  lives in Santa Barbara, California.

    About Meghan

    About Meghan

    About Meghan

    Meghan Maiya is a seer, a listener, and ceremonialist rooted in Earth-based ceremonial practices.  Over the years, with the support of amazing teachers, mentors, sacred ceremonies and time, she has learned to develop and use these gifts to support and uplift others. 

    Meghan journeys with Spirit, Soul, Earth and Ancestors to help people und

    Meghan Maiya is a seer, a listener, and ceremonialist rooted in Earth-based ceremonial practices.  Over the years, with the support of amazing teachers, mentors, sacred ceremonies and time, she has learned to develop and use these gifts to support and uplift others. 

    Meghan journeys with Spirit, Soul, Earth and Ancestors to help people understand the gift and beauty of who they are. Seeing life from a Soul perspective can help us all to navigate better right here, right now. Her business, The Gift of SoulSight, helps provide fresh ways for people to view life by showing how we've been in sacred training all along. It is an empowered perspective.  The journey is always beautiful. Wherever you are on your journey, Meghan will meet you there.  She humbly works with teachers, guides, elders, and anyone who is in need of being lovingly witnessed.

    Recently, Meghan has been catching and working with song medicine. It is a beautiful way to stay present with emotions and energies and not get stuck in stories, old beliefs and patterns.  Working with the medicine of song is a powerful way to pray & transform!

    Meghan’s professional work has been diverse. She formerly worked as the Director of Development, Research and Special Projects for Hershey Felder Presents (HFP) doing biographical and historical research for HFP’s new theatrical productions and for the Live from Florence filmed events. She also spent 3 years assisting and running the office for The Right Honorable Kim Campbell, former 19th Prime Minister of Canada.  Before that, Meghan worked in the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego as a Senior Program Evaluation Specialist and Project Manager. She coordinated multiple research projects in the fields of Integrative Medicine and Behavioral Health (PubMed Publications).

    Additionally, Meghan spent thirteen years as a psychology professor teaching a range of courses at San Diego State University,  local community colleges and Optimum Health Institute of San Diego.

    She is a proud mother of two amazing adults, Jordan & Emma.

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