The Art of Getting Lost

My teacher, and mental-spiritual-martial art mentor, dr. Ronald ‘Back Horse’ Chavers taught me, between 1980 and 1990, a lot of stuff.

Among the most memorable were: ‘systematically getting lost’ (in order to discover new things) and ‘systematic improvization’ (all human action is recursive improvising).

Carlos Castaneda, a USA anthropologist who wrote a number of books on how he was educated by Toltec (indigenous Maya) magicians in surviving death by becoming a spiritual warrior.

One elementary technique of Don Juan, his mentor, to get into a high speed learning mode was disrupting routines: get yourself confused as deep as possible.

The art of getting lost is similar to what Rebecca Solnit beautifully tries to grasp in her ‘Fieldguide of Getting Lost‘ (2006).

For me The Art of getting Lost is a way to get regularly out of my comfort zone in order to get moving on the Red Road, my life’s vison. (see Vision Quest).

The Western cultural cosmologies and realities offer little individual, even less collective, spaces to get into deeper (non-cognitive) modes of learning.

The Art of Getting Lost is a ancient human skills  needed to get into sync, to reconnect, with nature’s and cosmic cycles, transitions and principles.