Rachel Ruach’s Initiation & the birth of Tree of Life

My mentors reassured me. “Welcome to being human,” they said. “All humans were once this sensitive and could hear the rocks and trees talking to them. You are just re-sensitized.”

I had the deep fortune of sitting with an incredible handful of lineage of indigenous elders and mentors on my deep nature connection journey while learning about life, culture and cosmology, ceremony, and mentoring. With their continued encouragement from elders and mentors that I trusted, I deepened my solo time in the wilderness, often on wanders of deep listening or tending a fire from dusk til dawn or rousing at 4 am and making my way out to my sit spot (a special spot in nature near my home) to feel, pray, and listen to the dawn chorus of birds.

It was in these times that I began to make greater and greater sacrifices through spiritual commitments, tending the wilds around my home, making offerings to the land and Spirit, and fasting and prayer.

Spirit took hold of me and began to lead me on a deep and mysterious journey.

My elders and teachers would talk about the stages of maturation; about Adolescence, Adulthood, and Elderhood and what defined each stage. Adulthood, I was taught, is a stage of life where a person knows themselves, their gifts, and that they are held in a web of support. They are also ready and able to be in service to something larger than themselves.

Wow. That sounded good. Yes. That is what I wanted — to be an adult. To be ME as a knowing, connected, responsible, aligned human who could give my gifts to the world!

I approached my teachers, mentors, and elders (who were mostly men).

“Initiate me! I want to be an adult, wholly useful to the world. Please lead me on that journey.”

They responded, “Sorry — we can teach you about it culturally, but to lead you through to your adulthood initiation is not within our capacity…”

I was crushed. The yearning in me to initiate into my full adulthood got stronger and stronger with the growing question of how do I do this in the female body that I inhabit?

As I was taught, the bigger the wound, the bigger the gift; the bigger the gift, the bigger the wound. The depth of my longing and frustration became the signposts to where I needed to go.

Being guided by my yearning, on the Summer Solstice of 2008, I went on a quest in the Eastern Mountains of California of fasting and prayer for 4 days. Spirit appeared. 

I was left with two essential pieces from this encounter:

“We are initiating you.” (How, I did not know — but the journey had begun!)

And… I was left with a clear question, which became a sacred question for me: What is our cultural map, for this time, this place, from the orientation of my female body?

(I asked for a map because I had been given a map of human maturation, which was very useful to me. Now I wanted a map for being in a female body in this time and place. I often felt that we in America are birthing a new culture; that these times, with the painful and dis-connective history of war and genocide, while new life flowers forth in a land where people from many different lineages are coming together, necessitates a new culture.)

Walking away from that quest, I figured that I would be holding that question for 20 years, slowly collecting the pieces like a quilter finding little colorful pieces of fabric to incorporate.

Little did I suspect that six months later, this question would be answered.

The Cultural Map that came through and the story of it are for another conversation. One about life, our place in it, and how we function as humans.

The story I am sharing is about what happened after the map was received. Receiving a Sacred Vision and understanding that vision are two separate things. I still needed to go on my quest of adulthood initiation.

In 2009, when I prayed to be led through this portal, I was shown to go North, find the snow, the wolves, and find the elders. Putting the call out to the wilderness schools in the north that I was connected to, the most resonant place for me to go on my quest was Twin Eagles Wilderness School in Sandpoint, Idaho.

I decided that if I needed something epic to happen in my life, then I needed to approach it in an epic manner. So, I went on a 40-day walking pilgrimage from my home in Occidental, California to Idaho and gave away all items of value and importance before I left on my pilgrimage. I needed Spirit to see how serious I was, how deep my longing to know and understand the prayer in my heart.

Well, when you live life in an epic way, epic things happen.

After building a strong anchor system of six incredible elders in Idaho, I went into a three-month-long wilderness solo, from the Winter Solstice to the Vernal Equinox. I lived in a 12’ camping yurt at the base of the white mountains.

The elders who anchored me were clear, “You are on a unique journey that we have not been on. We can’t guide you, but we can hold space for your process.” Oh, how I just wanted someone to tell me what to do!

And what a blessing to be forced to listen that deeply, sitting in the stillness, the snow drifts, with the wild animals bounding all around me. Those three months were guided by my intuition and by Spirit communicating with me in the way that I had become accustomed. In the heart of my time, I went up for ten days, sitting out on the White Mountain, tending a sacred fire for 10 days, being brought through a beautiful and intensive initiation ceremony that involved the Kabbalistic tree of life.

When I came down from that mountain, I wrote a 70-page manual regarding adulthood initiation.

After I journeyed home from that sacred time, it took me six months of spinning until I realized that I needed to be welcomed back. I approached the elders in California whom I had been sitting with with my request.

“Of course!” they said. “This is our job! Yes! We need to welcome you home. What’s more, we will lay down a sacred fire and keep it tended and stay with you to listen to your story until you are done sharing.” And that is what they did.

All sixteen elders of our California community showed up to that fire. We stayed together all day, me sharing, them listening. When I went to bed that night and woke up the next morning, a sensation entered my chest — warm and tingly. I hadn’t felt it since I was a kid.

“Home. I am home.”

We began the first round of Tree of Life with a small group of brave souls who were willing to journey into the unknown with the format that I had received on the mountain.

With elders at our back and a deep ear listening to Spirit, the first round of Tree of Life Adulthood Initiation was born in the Fall of 2010!