What's in a Name?

[Photo Credit: Matt Gross for Unsplash]

It was the final day of my Vision Quest. I was camped out alone at the edge of a mountain meadow. I had been fasting for three days. I felt weak and nauseous. Still, I was eager to complete my Quest by asking the Universe for a soul name, something that would help me live into whatever new identity was emerging for me from my time on the mountain.

I had turned seventy a few days earlier. Entering my eighth decade felt momentous to me, and a few sobering questions were surfacing: How do I come to terms with growing old? Who am I now, anyway? What is my contribution, as I age? I forced myself to get up off my sleeping bag and sit outside my tent, with my journal open on my lap. I considered the lessons I'd already learned from my new hyper-alertness to the natural world. "Bless what you behold," seemed to be the message it held for me. Now, I waited for one thing more.

When my new name finally crystallized, it appeared on the page like a startling reflection in a still pond. At first, it seemed so obvious, so facile, that I doubted it was anything but the work of my own imagination. Yet, it felt poignant, and true, as if the Namer knew me intimately, better even than I knew myself. The name was charged with deeper meaning and significance than I could comprehend in the moment. But it was filled with possibility. I picked up my pen, steadied my hand, and circled the name on the page: "Silver Hair."

Soul names are different from the names we were given at birth, those names laden with the hopes of our parents. Brian Edward are my given names--good, solid English names. One of them is the name of British royalty. But the other, Brian, always felt a little lame to me, and that was before Monty Python confirmed my suspicions with their film, Life of Brian. In my teens, I began inserting my middle initial into my signature, as if I was a famous person, like an author or a songwriter or something. Preposterous! Except that I have since become both an author and a songwriter. So, perhaps not.

My soul name doesn't relate to what others expect of me. It arises from what some would call my mythopoetic identity. More image than concept (images being the language of the soul), Silver Hair evokes something of who I am, innately, of who I was created to be. Emerging as it does at this stage of my life, it suggests a role I might be called upon to play in the tribe, a gift I might be required to offer, a work I might be invited to embody. That it has something to do with becoming an elder, this is a distinct possibility. But how? Simply by allowing my new name to draw it out of me.

Devin Lebrun went out onto that same mountain with a soul name already in mind--Little Breath, as he tells me in our conversation for The Mystic Cave. He was emerging from a difficult patch in his personal life, a time that had left him feeling diminished. The name seemed to fit: it was diminutive; it didn't presume too much; it was humble. But he'd also been doing breath training and he knew that there was still life in him, life and breath. So, the name was hopeful, as well.

But Mystery, which is how those of us who shared that experience came to speak of the wise and curious ways of Soul, had another name in mind for Devin: Wandering Warrior, or "WaWa," for short. That had a different energy altogether. There was nothing small about it, or provisional. It evoked a daunting sense of personal power, something Devin could imagine, but something he knew he'd have to grow into.

That was two-and-a-half years ago. Devin has now left his day job to launch a new company, the Global Breathing Network, that takes breathing techniques into the corporate world and to anyone else who will listen. It's a bold vision of how breath changes everything, making possible the dreams and visions of our souls. Such a daring move requires the curiosity of a Wanderer and the courage of a Warrior. Devin is leaning into those qualities now, as he claims the soul name that was bestowed on him on the mountain.

To listen to my conversation with Devin Lebrun, click on the Play button below. To learn more about the breath training he offers through the Global Breath Network, follow the More Info button to the show notes.