Connecting with the Warrior Within

What happens when you intentionally ask life for “warrior training”… and life responds by putting a 50-pound backpack on you and sending you straight up a mountain?

In this solo episode, Wil shares the story of an eight-day, 32+ mile backpacking journey through Sequoia National Park that became one of the most physically demanding experiences of his life.

Going into the trip, Wil set an intention to discover more deeply what he was capable of. That intention was tested almost immediately: steep climbs, intense knee pain, blazing sun, thousands of feet of elevation gain, exhaustion, and one particularly brutal 13-hour day that ended with him slowly descending a mountain alone in the dark.

And yet, somewhere inside the experience of having absolutely nothing left, Wil discovered that somehow… he could still take another step.

But the warrior training wasn’t only about individual strength. It also became a lesson in receiving help, generosity, vulnerability, brotherhood, and the extraordinary intimacy that can emerge when people move through something difficult together.

In this episode, Wil explores:

• The fears he carried into the wilderness
• A sacred (and somewhat silly!) dream involving “mall angels”
• What a grueling day in the mountains taught him about perseverance
• Discovering strength beyond the mind’s declaration of “I can’t do this anymore”
• How shared hardship created profound brotherhood among the nine men
• Finding joy in skinny-dipping, mud, ramen, creek water, stars, and simple acts of service
• Improving his relationship with meditation and stillness
• How eight days almost entirely without a phone changed his experience of presence
• Encountering Shiva through the themes of dissolution, transformation, endings, and renewal
• Holding grief and heartbreak alongside the possibility that endings can also contain mystery, sacredness, and meaning

Ultimately, Wil returned home with a deeper knowing: I can do hard shit.

And that knowing isn’t just about hiking mountains.

Most of us have some metaphorical mountain waiting in our lives- something uncertain, uncomfortable, or frightening that asks us to become bigger than the version of ourselves we currently know.

Maybe you don’t have to know that you can make it all the way to the top.

Maybe you only need enough courage to take one step.

And then another.

And another.

Sometimes we have to climb the mountain to remember who we truly are.

Connect with Wil:
wil-fullyliving.com
Instagram: @wilfullyliving

Check out Inirly (the group that organized the trip):

https://www.inirly.com/

If Queerly Beloved speaks to you, subscribe, share the episode with someone you love, and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Weirdly beloved, we are gathered here today for some juicy conversations about all things spiritually queer and queerly spiritual. I'm Sylvia Will Gather Rainbow, a spiritual life coach, retreat host with the most, and a drag queen, and I'll be chatting with the most amazing folks, or simply sharing some wisdom of my own. If you like what I'm serving, please remember to subscribe so we can keep hanging out. Alright, let's get super woo together in the spiritual AF. Queer AF Cosmic Container. And blast off. Hello, beloveds, and welcome back to another episode of Queerly Beloved. Today is a solo episode where I'm gonna be talking about something that was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, physically speaking, at least. I recently returned from a trip to Sequoia National Park, and boy, what an adventure that was. I spent eight days backing through the Sequoies with a group of nine men. We traveled more than 32 miles with backpacks on our backs that weighed somewhere around 50 pounds. We climbed thousands of feet in elevation, slept in these tiny little tents. We filtered our water from the creek, and we also got to meditate and chant and sit in spiritual practice and do really intense breath work throughout the week. It was an incredible trip, and I'm excited to share some of the lessons, including those from a particularly brutal day where we were hiking for like 10 plus hours. So let's start with the intentions that I had going into this experience. I set the intention of wanting warrior training. I wanted to deepen my knowing of what I'm capable of. And warrior training is really that energy of doing, that energy of courageous action. And I knew that this would be challenging. And so I sought out that experience of seeing what I'm capable of. And listen, I definitely got what I asked for. Be careful for what you pray for, my beloved. Because apparently the universe heard warrior training and they said, okay, great, put him on that mountain with 50 pounds on his back and send him straight on up. Because literally, that's how the trip began. You know, I'll rewind a little bit and say that before we left, I was definitely having some fears. I wasn't sure if I'd trained enough, and I was worried I would be the weakest link, like the person who was slowing everyone down and they'd be waiting for me and annoyed with me. And I definitely worried about altitude sickness. I'd never been in these kinds of altitudes before, and I didn't even know what altitude sickness was. I definitely worried about being cold. I am a person who runs cold typically, and I hate it when I get cold and I can't like fix that. I especially worried about being cold at night, like being cold in my tent and not being able to get warm and just staying awake all night. So there were just a lot of unknowns, a lot of uncertainty. And I remember the first day of the trek, we put our massive packs on that included these bear canisters to keep all our food in that were quite big, and our packs were already really packed tight, and then we had to add those. So we were all just like cramming as much stuff in as we could, and we all put our backpacks on, and it was a hot day, and the very first part of the trek was like very steep, and here we were with these really heavy packs, and within 30 minutes, I think most of the nine of us were asking ourselves some version of like, can we actually do this? Can we go for eight days and do 32 miles with this kind of weight and this kind of hike and terrain? And and also asking, like, do we actually want to do this? You know, as like this moment of like, this is when we could turn around. But we kept going, you know, so 30 minutes in became an hour in. And then I started to kind of get the hang of it and I felt pretty strong. And I remember that first day I arrived at our lunch spot, which was kind of halfway through the day, and I was one of the first. And I was like, I've got this, I definitely have trained enough. I am okay to make this work. Until that day, we started going downhill. And almost immediately I began experiencing like really intense pain in my right knee. And then by the time we reached the bottom, because it was just getting worse and worse, it was like every step hurt and not just going downhill anymore. Like when I was walking around on the flat ground where we were tenting, it was painful, like so painful. And I started to get really scared because, you know, this is day one, and I'm already in that kind of pain. And I remember thinking, like, I should talk to the leader and tell him that maybe it's best if I just go back now so that I won't hold up the group. And I remember that night, you know, going to bed and praying about it. And sometime in the morning, like before sun rose, I was having almost like a lucid dream. Like I was kind of in and out. And an angel showed up. And when I say an angel, in this case, I don't mean like some celestial angel you'd see in a Renaissance painting or something with flowing robes and enormous feathery wings. This girl was like someone you would see at the mall. She was like my hot topic angel. She was like contemporary and just cute and sassy. And uh, you know, I guess that is what works with my consciousness in this moment. So, but I did sense that she was an angel, and I remember thinking, oh, I should ask her to help with my knee. And so I did, and she called two of her friends over, and one was like this redhead, and they also were like contemporary mall angels, and they started doing some stuff with their hands and over my feet, and they were using this language and laughing a little, and the whole thing was a little ridiculous, but also sacred at the same time. And then I woke up and I swear my knees felt drastically better. Was I actually visited in my dream by angels? I don't know for sure. What I do know is that I was ready to hike the next day, and that was such a blessing. And that experience became one of the first reminders for me that this warrior training wasn't necessarily about just doing everything through my own effort. You know, sometimes strength also means asking for help, you know, from your brothers, from spirit, from an angel dressed to go shopping in the mall in the 90s, whatever works. And that kind of training continued. So next came the day that all of us began referring to as the day from hell. And I want to give you some context here. I was hiking with people who were not strangers to physical challenge. There were former college athletes in the group, there was someone who had run marathons, a yoga teacher. These were strong athletic people. And by the end of this day, pretty much everyone agreed it was one of the hardest physical things we'd ever done. We spent hours climbing, and there were long stretches without tree coverage. So we were just exposed to the blazing sun, like going up and up and up. We were ascending thousands of feet, sometimes climbing over these huge rocky steps with these, you know, giant bags on our bodies. And I just kept going hour after hour. And eventually we made it to the pass, and that was such a triumphant moment. You know, the sun was setting and it was like the most beautiful view, and it had felt like we would never make it up there, but we we did, and I was like ready to collapse, and I felt like, oh, it's complete. But the truth was we still had almost two miles to go downhill. And at that point, as I mentioned, the sun was down, and so we were in the dark, and so we start going down, and now my right knee's fine, but my left knee started to hurt because I'd been favoring the right knee all day. And so here I am going down with my headlamp on, and not only was I physically exhausted, but I was in a lot of pain, and I had just no energy left, and I figured out a way to make it work because if I walked regularly, it was just too excruciating. And so I basically sidestepped down the mountain, and it was slow, you know, and so eventually I told my little group to go ahead of me, and I was just alone in the dark. And, you know, I could see the headlamps of my brothers further down the trail getting further and further, and I kept thinking, oh my gosh, oh, maybe they're done, maybe they found it, and I'd get a feeling of hope, but then they'd keep going. And so then I kept going and for hours, just step by step by step. There was this strange moment when I realized I have nothing left, and yet I'm still going. You know, my body felt completely depleted, my knees hurt, my mind had been telling me for hours that this definitely has to end soon, and somehow my legs just kept moving. And that was the moment when something clicked inside me when I realized, like, yeah, I am stronger than I thought I was. There is more available to me than I know. Even when the voices inside me are saying, You're done, you can't do this anymore, you need to stop. There's another part of me that can calmly keep pushing and keep telling me, take another step and another and another. And that's how it went until eventually we found camp. And I remember taking my backpack off, taking my jacket off and throwing it on the ground and just curling up on top of it. I mean, it was like after 10 p.m., we'd been out on the trail for like 13 hours. I was cold, I was starving, I was at a point of physical exhaustion I'd never experienced before. I was ready to just go to sleep right there. Eventually, we did get our tents up, but I went to bed without dinner, and it was just such an intense night. But honestly, it really was a shift. You know, before the trip, I had imagined warrior training as, I don't know, more like a big, brave, heroic act. You know, you summon the courage and you do the thing, you conquer the mountain. But that wasn't the warrior training I received. My warrior training was it was less glamorous. It was more about perseverance and commitment and just continuing in the face of I can't do this to keep going, even though that thought is coming through again and again. And so it was interesting because I definitely learned in these moments about what I was independently capable of. But also throughout the trip, I was discovering how much we need one another. And there's this extraordinary generosity among the men on this trip. We were all struggling and we were at times under-resourced. You know, you're carrying everything you need to survive on your back for eight days. And so no one has a tremendous amount of extra anything, like down to the toilet paper. Like you're only taking as much as you think you're gonna need. And yet, because we knew we had this shared experience, we we each knew how hard it was. We became incredibly generous with what we did have. So people generously shared snacks and resources, and we would help each other with our packs. And, you know, if someone was struggling, someone else looked for a way to lighten their load. And this was a beautiful reciprocity. Every one of us knew today you may need me, and tomorrow I might need you. And after that hell day, there was this bond between all of us that it's difficult to explain. It was like we had gone through this grueling task together, and we knew what the others had experienced, and that we had experienced too, and no one else will ever know what that was like, except for these fellow brothers. And there's something really powerful about shared hardship. You know, it can strip away the bullshit. And suddenly there's less concern about proving oneself to each other. So you're just you're exhausted, you're dirty, you stink, you're eating ramen, you know, out of a tiny little plastic bowl, and nobody has the energy to maintain that performative persona. Instead, you just are real with each other, and that's such a beautiful, vulnerable, tender place to be. I found so much joy in that, in being able to really let down any of my walls, my masks. And yeah, there were just there were a lot of beautiful moments with the brothers, you know, skinny dipping and this gorgeous lake and covering myself with mud. There were nights when I would collect my brothers' empty water bottles and my own, and I'd sit by the creek and just be under the stars, pumping this creek water to filter it into our water bottles and just feeling so good to be of service to my brothers while still experiencing such peace. So, yeah, I'm super grateful for the brotherhood that I got to experience over those eight days. Another intention that I set through this week was to improve my relationship with stillness. And stillness and I have historically had a bit of a complicated relationship. You know, sometimes I would try to meditate, or I'd be in some kind of medicine ceremony, and I'd be doing my best to be still, and I'd immediately become aware of something like, ooh, my leg's not comfortable, or something feels weird, or something itches. I need to adjust this or that. And maybe I really need to scratch my nose, you know, and I would be trying to get myself to stop. Uh, but then this other part of me would be like screaming, like, no, you have to do this before you can be still. And I set that intention thinking that I would struggle with this because I knew we'd be doing a lot of long meditations. But somehow, thanks to the groundedness of nature, and also I think thanks to the presence of the one of the leaders, Evan, who is a meditation teacher and holds such beautiful grounded stillness. I think being in his presence and the presence of the other brothers and presence of nature, it really wasn't a big challenge for me, which was surprising and was really helpful. And I since then I've continued to already be in a better relationship with stillness. It is not such a struggle. I also think having my mala beads were really helpful. So just having something tangible to focus my attention on, like moving from one bead to the next. So we were using the mala beads with our meditation practice, where with each bead we would do this small short breath. We also use the mali beads to do ohms, to do an ohm practice and also a uh breath technique that we use the mala beads for. And so I think the malabads is definitely a great hack for me when I am struggling with stillness. And super grateful for the ways I was able to, yeah, improve that relationship with stillness. I think the other component to it was being away from technology. Like I was away, like not looking at my phone. It was basically off for eight days. And so having that spaciousness that comes with not being uh jack uh hijacked by my phone, pulling at my attention, notifying me of stories and messages and news. It was so wonderful to just be in the moment. You know, my attention was on what was in front of me. I wasn't thinking even about what I looked like because there was no mirrors. I was just looking at nature and taking each step by step. And so it was so much easier to be in full presence, and that was such a gift, and I do think that also supported my ability to sit still. Another unexpected learning that happened during this trip was my ability to sit more courageously with death. And yeah, this was especially meaningful to me because during the hiking, I spent a lot of time thinking about my cousin, who is more like a brother to me. We're super close, and he was recently diagnosed with brain cancer. And the way death and dying came into this retreat was we spent time talking about and learning about and honoring Shiva. And in the past, I had connected with Shiva as a symbol of strength and power and divine masculinity, and I hadn't connected so much with Shiva as the destroyer, the the force of dissolution and transformation, you know, the the energy of endings that makes it possible for something new to appear and that that that cycle, you know, the auspiciousness and the importance of that part of the cycle. And so we learned this song that was honoring Shiva and the auspiciousness of Shiva. And we talked about where Shiva was currently showing up in our lives, and I shared about my cousin. And the morning after that conversation and that song, I went down by the creek by myself and I was sitting by the water, and I started singing that song to Shiva. And I wept and I wept for my cousin. I wept because I'm scared. I wept because I don't want to lose people I love. And I wept because I have lost others, and I I allowed the water to to take it. You know, I I imagined just giving some of that sorrow, that that fear to the water. And I started opening myself up to this idea that is still definitely challenging for me, but it's this idea of accepting death. You know, everyone I love will die, and I will die as well. And death isn't it's like some mistake in the system, it's part of life. And when I say that I'm beginning to see death as auspicious, I don't mean that it's not still tragic and sad. It doesn't mean that the grief goes away. It's like I can hold the possibility of the auspiciousness and meaningfulness of death while not spiritually bypassing the heartbreak and you know, pretending everything happens for some perfect reason that we will always know. It's it's not as clear as that. It's more mysterious. And I am learning to give space to that, allowing myself to consider that death might contain meaning that I can't understand with my limitations of human perception, and that there is something sacred about endings, even when they are so incredibly hard to accept. And I don't need to treat it as wrong or proof that God doesn't love us. Uh, instead, I can be with death in a way that honors the sadness, but also honors it as part of this cycle in life. And what feels particularly valuable is I feel steadier in the face of what's going on with my family. And in the past, I've felt like I won't be able to support like his siblings and parents and him and his wife because it's been so heavy on me. And I don't feel that anymore. I feel like I can stand more steady in the face of this and be there as a point of support. So that was a really beautiful. Beautiful, unexpected part of this retreat that I'm super, super grateful for. So, yeah, let's kind of start wrapping things up. You know, I'm I'm home now, and I am just feeling so freaking grateful for all the incredible luxuries of modern day that I usually take for granted. My warm bed, my shower, my refrigerator, ice and my drinks, a toilet. Like it's so amazing to not have to dig a hole when I need to go to the bathroom. So that's been really wonderful. And I hope to keep that alive, that deep appreciation for all the blessings in my life. And I also am still holding on to this knowing that I am capable and strong, and that I can do hard shit, you know, that I am a badass who can do hard shit, part of my language. And I am really holding on to that knowing, that that depth of knowing. And I just want to say that this is something that I think everyone can receive, that we often don't know what we are capable of. So I will I will speak to you and say that you are probably much more capable than you give yourself credit for, that you are stronger than you might know and more courageous than you might know. And sometimes the only way to discover that is by voluntarily, proactively stepping into something really difficult and uncomfortable, something that stretches the boundaries of who we think we are. And I'm not saying you have to, like me, put 50 pounds on your back and go to the Sequoia for eight days, but maybe there's some other metaphoric mountain in your life that you are standing at the bottom right now. Something that scares you, something that asks more of you, something where the fearful part is saying, I don't think I can do this, you know? And maybe you don't need to know that you can do the whole thing. Maybe it's just about taking one step and another and another. Because I know from this experience that on the other side of that challenge, you get to see yourself more clearly. The the you that is not limited by fear, the the deeper you, the truer you, the big, bold, badass, courageous you underneath it all, the warrior. And sometimes we have to climb the mountain to remember that. And so I invite you, my beloveds, to find the mountain that will help you see who you truly are. Thank you for listening. Peace. Oh my goddess, beloveds, what a joy it was to be with you today. Let's hang out again soon, okay? And if you can think of a friend who would benefit from hearing this, please share it with them. Sending so much love and light to you today and every day. Until next time, peace.