Join us in Hopi Land, March 16-21, for an immersion experience in the Hopi Way of Life you’re unlikely to find on your own. Once again, I’m honored to sponsor this rare opportunity hosted by Hopi Wisdom Keepers Charlene Joseph, Harold Joseph and others. You’ll be touched in surprising ways as to what really matters, positively affecting your daily life long after you return home.
With Charlene and Harold Joseph, Hopi Wisdom Keepers, and Carla Woody, Spiritual Guide and Author
An Immersion Experience in the Hopi Way of Life. Co-sponsored by Kenosis and Kenosis Spirit Keepers. A portion of tuition is tax-deductible.
Join us to learn from traditional Hopi Wisdom Keepers in their home villages of Shungopavi and Moenkopi in northern Arizona while they share who they are as First People, the original commitment they made to the Caretaker of that land — and some of the ways they carry out these spiritual responsibilities.
Our journey emphasizes lifeways and places of great spiritual significance handed down by Hopi ancestors, as it has been for thousands of years, still living today on First, Second and Third Mesas of the Hopi Nation. Visiting ancient villages of Old Oraibi, Walpi and hidden petroglyph sites, we explore the traditional Hopi way that holds the world together.
Our journey is timed to potentially attend a day dance. The Katsinas having engaged in ritual in the kivas and danced all night, often emerge during the day to offer blessings to all beings and prayers for fruitfulness.
The group size is limited to maintain respect and the intimate nature. A portion of tuition is tax-deductible to help preserve continuity of Indigenous wisdom traditions through the initiatives of Kenosis Spirit Keepers, the nonprofit extension of Kenosis. When you travel with us you directly help support Indigenous traditions.
For detailed itinerary, tuition, bios and how to register, go here.
Registration discount until December 16. Registration deadline February 27, 2023.
Register now to hold your space! For questions, call 928-778-1058 or email cwoody@kenosis.net.
The closer I got to the departure date the louder the demands became—if you can relate kinesthetic response to pitch. I do. It started with a niggling feeling at the back of my skull that progressed to sensations of instability in my solar plexus, which I can only describe as shifting sands. It finally felt as though the world was falling away. The accompanying pitch was relative, increasingly louder in my head until I couldn’t ignore it. I found myself taken aback…as it was meant to do.
This I know…
Alchemy can be defined as elements recombined to create new forms. When beliefs are re-formed, arising out of what was, rebirthing takes place.
Resistance is necessary as a form of progression. In order to resist, the mind has to consider something new. Otherwise, resistance wouldn’t happen. Imagining something new begins to create substance. The greater the level of resistance, the more potentially profound the new creation may be—and out of the comfort zone. The more rigid we are in our own thinking, the more inertia we will experience against moving forward.
To create, we must push through the membrane that separates what we’ve preserved as real from the newly imagined reality…
I also knew, and had many times experienced, the closer to profound movement we are, the stronger the impulse to go unconscious at the threshold and allow the status quo to pull us back. If we give in to backward movement, we remain tethered…contained.
Recognize that hesitation, feeling torn, or paralyzed are a natural part of the evolutionary process. Even external blocks can strangely present themselves, colluding with the internal part attempting to hold us back. It’s necessary to acknowledge any level of fear. Honor that part. Check in with intent, and then allow its resident purity to guide you.
But I was curious. I’m usually one of the first in my circle of friends and acquaintances to venture zealously into parts unknown. What made this time somehow different for me?
In late 2020, I received a formal invitation to visit the Matsigenka village of Shipetiari to bring a spiritual travel group to their home located in a remote, pristine rainforest area, the buffer zone to Manu National Park and Biosphere Preserve. This particular Matsigenka community is one of the remaining few who live most traditionally. I considered this an incredible honor. They’ve had few travelers and none like the spiritual travel groups I sponsor.
Of course, the pandemic intervened. At that time, there was no vaccine. The Matsigenka, being so isolated, had no exposure or immunity. Finally, fully vaccinated, boosted, September flight set and COVID rapid test taken a day ahead, I set off for my personal journey to Shipetiari where I would meet the villagers and their jungle home for the first time.
I noticed that, once I turned my attention toward travels and thoughts informed by the larger intent of the time ahead, any objections by that part who’d raised them become quieter until they dissipated altogether.
It occurred to me the pandemic itself had generated my internal objections. Not because I was fearful of infection but for another reason. Like most all of us, my usual world came to a halt. In all that continued expanse of time, I reflected strongly on those aspects most important to me, sorting through how I would live into the future.
At a certain point, I began to wonder when or if I would be able to transition back into the world with my new realizations. I noticed a hint of complacency, lethargy really. Or was it the work of actually wading back into “life” after a long period of contemplation?
Recently, I came across a definition of the fundamental natures of Shiva—the drive being equilibrium—and Shakti—drawn to the “stuff of the world” and change. To illustrate, there was an image of Shiva deep in meditation with Shakti attempting to bring him into the dance. I don’t claim to be a knowledgeable student of Hinduism, but in that moment the teaching reached out and grabbed me…two sides of the same coin. Elements familiar to me inserted themselves in a deeper way.
I had barely arrived in Cusco a few hours when I went to meet with Jack Wheeler. That’s when I learned we would be leaving early next morning for the jungle, barely breaking daylight. Jack is the founder of Xapiri Ground, based in Cusco. We met a few years ago. I discovered our nonprofits had similar missions toward preservation of Indigenous traditions. His work rests specifically with ethnic groups of the Peruvian Amazon. Xapiri Ground is working with the Matsigenka to document their cosmology, held and passed on through traditional songs and storytelling…now becoming lost.
The Storytelling Project was one reason Jack and I were going then. We, Kenosis Spirit Keepers, are helping to support that undertaking.The other was for me to respond to the invitation I’d originally received, begin to develop relationships and make arrangements to return with a small group of travelers respectful of the spiritual landscape and open to learning.
The next morning as I waited for Jack to collect me, I noticed my pervading sense of expectancy for what this journey may hold, what intent may open wide. None of it imaginable really at this juncture, and I never choose to put a box around such things. I had traveled these roads from Cusco to the rainforest many times up to a point. But how useful is it to consider every new time to be divergent from the last time, experiencing all with fresh eyes, attentive ears and otherwise open? Then finally there came the point of departure from what was familiar to me, the last leg of waters and jungle to our geographic destination.
It was clear to me we’d set out on a pilgrimage. Metaphors would arise and accompany us. But I may not consciously make their acquaintance until after the fact. It’s often like that for me. It’s how I save myself so my intellect doesn’t get involved and spoil it all.
The Matsigenka were welcoming. Over the week we spent hours visiting with people happy to engage us with the way they live, in concert with their jungle home, plants, animals and each other. They did so, not by telling us, but by being what comes naturally to them. In their way, all is sacred and there’s no separation between them and the ground underfoot, the trees towering above or the birds or monkeys that fly through the trees…the waterways, frogs, insects and other inhabitants. To be otherwise is not within their reality. I have been with other Indigenous communities who live close to land. Somehow, this was different in a way I don’t quite have the words to express but will begin to write of it soon. They’ve left a mark on me and so has the jungle. There being no way to separate what is integral.
This is the story I want to tell now. One afternoon I decided to stay behind. We’d had an eventful morning, and I just wanted to be still. No matter where we went, the jungle was ever-present. My small bungalow was elevated a few feet with one side open, tall trees and dense foliage began maybe fifteen feet in front of where I sat on the stoop. No one else was around and the village was a twenty minute walk by trail.
I just sat. Not too much flitted through my mind. I did realize how completely relaxed my body felt, how deeply and long I slept each night. Those thoughts vacated and I sat. I watched. Training my eyes up toward the canopy, I saw two macaws fly by. A woodpecker landed on a high branch. Movement at the edge of the brush and a huge lizard slipped by. I listened to the calls of birds, some melodious, others somewhat harsh. Insects made a continuous chorus.
Then I began to feel. Energy. Everywhere. The more I opened that channel, the more there was. So much life. So very much vibration. It seemed to me the world fell away—or I fell into it. I was permeated.
I was in a state of wonderment through the last bit of our stay, all the way back to Cusco and carried all the way home. Something had happened, and I had no words for it. Only now after three months can I begin to speak of it with any coherence.
There’s a sacred Vibration, the constant that holds existence. And there are places where everything readily resonates with that frequency, each expressing it in their own way.
Now I’m left wondering if that resonance is what I sensed in the Matsigenka people, the land and all that inhabit it…
Words are often inadequate to convey an experience or feeling of great depth. The language just doesn’t exist until someone invents it, and it gains use as part of the vernacular. Such is the case with werifesteria, “to wander longingly in the forest in search of the Mystery.”
Once its meaning is learned there must be instant relief for those attuned to it. If the word is in use then there must be others traveling along that pathway as well. The forest can take whatever form you choose to give it—inner or outer landscape, seen or unseen. It’s not linear or logical for sure. By its very nature werifesteria attracts the strong intent it delivers ahead. We need only hold rapt attention, gathering cues that unfold the deeper path.
I must be a werifesterian. It feeds my soul for what may be revealed.
***
For more information on our August 21-31, 2022 spiritual travel program to Peru, go here.
Many of you know I recently returned from a personal journey – immersion in the little known Matsigenka way of life and time in deep jungle…profoundly transformational for me. The community has graciously invited me to bring a small group.
– Carla Woody
It is a privilege to sponsor this special program focusing on sacred traditions linking the Q’ero and Quechua peoples of the Andes and the Matsigenka of the jungle. I offer you an intimate opportunity, unlikely to be found on your own — with the intent that we are all transformed and carry the beauty home.
We begin in areas outside Cusco wiith Doña Vilma Pinedo and Q’ero paq’os — traditional Wisdom Keepers and mystics — who usher us into the world of the Andes, an alternate reality of life-affirming choices.
Q’ero Despacho. Photo: Carla Woody.
Then we transition deep into the rainforest to the pristine, wild surroundings of Matsigenka homelands. We experience how it is tolive harmoniously attuned to the environment, creating natural medicines and traditional arts, consuming foods provided by the rainforest, and taking in oral history informing the Matsigenka world view.
This is a journey of ayni — sacred reciprocity. We sit in ceremony of all these traditions, become an allyu — spiritual community — honoring all that sustains the planet and our own wellbeing. We come together with blessings, prayers and share the daily activities of all pilgrims.
We will be a smaller group than usual with respect to the Matsigenka village capacities. Though small, their hearts are open and wish to receive us in generosity just as our Q’ero friends and Dona Vilma Pinedo do.
Detailed information including itinerary, tuition, bios, and how to register is on the program page. I’m truly honored to bring you this rare opportunity.
Register now to hold your space! Registration deadline July 21. For questions call 928-778-1058 or email info@kenosis.net.
I am privileged to bring you such a special opportunity. Join me and accept my invitation for this Adventure of the Spirit…and know that you are supporting continuation of the invisible, sacred threads that hold the world together.
Immersion Experience in Maya Cosmology, Medicine,
Art and Sacred Ways of the Living Maya.
A Spirit Keepers Journey co-sponsored by Kenosis and Kenosis Spirit Keepers.
A portion of tuition tax-deductible to support preservation of Indigenous traditions.
You are invited to step through the threshold…into a true journey of the Spirit.
We are honored to offer a special program focusing on the sacred traditions of Maya peoples. Through the timing of our travels we are fortunate to immerse ourselves in Maya Mysteries showcasing the spiritual strength of the Living Maya connected with their ancient origins. We offer you an intimate opportunity, unlikely to be found on your own, engaging with spiritual leaders and healers who serve their people — with the intent that we are all transformed and carry the beauty home.
We experience the beauty of the land and Maya traditions of the southern Guatemalan highlands plus the highlands and rainforest of Chiapas, Mexico. This is an opportunity for in-depth exposure to a number of Maya peoples and how they are linked through belief and practice.
Join us for ceremonies, curing rituals, ancestral sites and the inherent magic of Maya Land.
Here is just some of what you will enjoy in the southern highlands of Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico…
– Lake Atitlán provides the magnificent backdrop for Tz’utujil Maya Wisdom Keeper Dolores Ratzan Pablo to guide our entry into the sites and ceremonies of spiritual significance to her people in Santiago Atitlán.
– K’iche’ Maya Daykeeper Tat Apab’yan Tew accompanies us offering sacred ways from his native Guatemala and a fire ceremony connecting with the ancestors.
– In the isolated K’iche’ Maya village of Sij’ja’, where they receive few visitors, we take in the life stories and everyday sacred ways of Elders and local traditional women.
– Tzotzil Maya religious leader Don Xun Calixto holds an audience in his home where we learn of his curing methods and calling.
– Don Antonio Martinez, the last Lacandón Maya elder faithfully practicing his traditions, holds the nearly extinct balché ceremony.
– Take part in the festival of San Sebastian in San Juan Chamula and Zinacantán, and spend time in a Maya church where curanderos conduct healing sessions — and many of our travelers have deeply spiritual experiences.
– Encounter the mysteries of Iximche and Palenque.
– Experience the passion of Maya artists as they disclose what inspires them.
Throughout our time together, spiritual mentor Carla Woody shapes your journey for optimal transformation that continues to unfold long after you’ve returned home.
Early registration discount ends August 21.
Group size limited. Register today to hold your place!
Go here for complete registration information, itinerary, bios, past trip photos and travelers’ stories.
I’m sitting here waiting for the words to come. Sometimes writing is like that. Not because there’s writer’s block but because it takes a while – sometimes a long while – for the feelings to swim up…and form thought…then phrases…then sentences. At least enough to make a cohesive statement.
Yaxchilan, Chiapas, Mexico. Photo: Carla Woody
I’m not sure I’m there yet. I knew it five days ago when, during the final circle of this year’s spiritual travel journey in Maya Lands, I attempted to express myself. By then we’d been in the rainforest for five days. Its soft humidity – really, something about the inherent energy ⎻ tends to open other dimensions for me, even as it retains the Great Mystery. Perhaps it has something to do with the insistent, primal calling of the howler monkeys.
Having heard theirs, I’d offered some last reflections to the group on our experiences then paused. I realized I’d left out a piece I was struggling with emotionally, something well beyond my control. What I was able to say in that moment felt totally inadequate in relation to what I wanted to say. I imagine it came out somewhat flat, even though I could feel the tears in my throat.
I’d avoided reading The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border by Francisco Cantú for several months. I knew the subject matter would be hard for me to ingest. My feelings about what’s been happening at the US-Mexico border run deep. It rips my heart out. I personally know Rita Cantú, the author’s mother, a retired park ranger and composer-musician. She lives just a few miles from me. Knowing more now through her son’s book, I have enormous respect for the care in which she raised him, to instill the cultural values of his Mexican heritage and respect for nature. That said, I could imagine her challenges when he decided to join the US Border Patrol. Learning so in the book, it seemed unfathomable to me.
I can’t imagine what possessed me. But I decided to take Francisco’s book on my spiritual travel program in southern Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico. I guess some part of me decided that reading it from a physical distance at home in northern Arizona, difficult but still easier, wasn’t appropriate. Instead, after our daily immersion with the Maya peoples and sacred traditions of those lands, I spent most nights with Francisco’s recollections. I struggled with them.
Francisco set the stage by writing of his fascination with the borderlands, wanting to know as much as he could. He disclosed that, after obtaining a degree in international relations, he desired more than intellectual knowledge. This is what led to his work as an agent for the US Border Patrol working in the hard deserts of Arizona, Texas and New Mexico between 2008 and 2012.
I doubt he held anything back in the book. Although, he does say some of those in the book are composites of different people he worked with or otherwise encountered. Locations were sometimes changed. Done so to protect privacy and, I imagine, safety in some cases. He relayed his daily life: the range of personalities and approaches of fellow agents, tracking and capturing humans in the bleakest places, witnessing desperation, hopelessness and death, the horrific acts of the drug cartels and opportunism of coyotes.
No matter what you tell yourself and how kind you may be toward asylum seekers, after a while it’s got to take a serious toll on your psyche. I was relieved when I began to pick up Francisco’s internal conflict such that he finally opted for a job removing himself from the field, and then from the Border Patrol completely.
But that brought new awareness. He’d developed a friendship with a Mexican man who, unbeknownst to Francisco, had been brought to the US illegally at age 11, married and had children who were US citizens by birth. His friend went home to Mexico to be with his dying mother but was caught attempting to re-enter and detained. Not able to just stand by, Francisco found himself on the other side. He did all he could to support his friend in navigating a legal system that cares little of personal circumstances, and otherwise helped out the family whose father was deported. At the publication of the book, they remained torn apart.
The Line Becomes a River, named a top ten book for 2018 by NPR and the Washington Post, was a hard read but a necessary one. I was personally glad the author didn’t gloss over the most difficult parts, that he was exposed to wide-ranging aspects of the border issues, and wasn’t afraid to write honestly about it. It’s a book all should read to best inform their thoughts and votes.
***
I’ve spent many years developing relationships with Indigenous spiritual leaders and healers who serve their own people in the lands where I sponsor programs. Travelers’ tuitions help support the families of those involved and, through special projects, for the well-being of their communities. A range of service people are also involved and the local economy benefits. I don’t frequent areas considered unsafe. So it’s unlikely those I work with encounter the drug cartel. However, for many of them, behind the scenes of our time with them, they endure the results of acute poverty with little to no opportunity to change that state.
That hurts my soul, and extends globally to anyone seeking relief from violence, scarcity of any kind and inner demons they carry as a result. I cannot harden my heart as many can and turn away. Through a slight accident of birth and the times I was born into, I have not personally experienced these levels of hardship but a good number did down my family line.
Altar at the Cofradia House (Brotherhood), Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala. Photo: Carla Woody.
So I am yet sitting here waiting for the words to arise to adequately express the sorrow I hold for a world where everyone isn’t invited to the table, and the helplessness I feel to do anything about it except my very small part to make it so.
***
The Metaphor: Borderlands
During opening circles for any of my spiritual travel programs, I invite participants to note any personal themes that run through our time together. Mine are not tourist trips but first to help preserve Indigenous traditions, and also an invitation for travelers to undertake deep inner work. What better way than spiritual journeys against the backdrop of sacred lifeways of foreign lands where we’re not within our usual comfort zone? The purpose, of course, is to carry the learnings home to create re-alignment and best live through personal values.
I invite them to note any metaphors that arise from their themes, providing a rich foundation and potential in-roads. Only this morning, as I finish writing this article, have I discovered my own coming from these travels: Borderlands.
There are the literal borderlands fraught with political issues that create great distress and tragedies. But also there are metaphysical borderlands. In this moment, what comes to me is the forbidden ground we’re told we must not cross in order to reinforce the status quo. But if we did and navigated those lands wisely, with great courage and heart, there’s the opportunity to integrate any wounded or unintegrated aspects of the self, and move through the threshold to enter an elevated life.
This is an area of personal depth and further unearthing. The Line Becomes a River delivered it to me, gratefully while being immersed in the Maya lands and in relationship with peoples I’ve come to love.
It took me some months to read Cynthia Bourgeault’s book on Mary Magdalene. Not because I was slogging through mud, just the opposite. It contains such richness that I read just a few pages in each sitting to give passages time to digest. There are many books out there giving evidence, laying down arguments for and against, as well as historical references on the identity of Mary Magdalene and her role relative to Jesus and the apostles. This book goes deeper and harvests the fruit in a down-to-earth, often humorous, way. No stuffiness here.
The points for us today rest in the title of the book – TheMeaningof Mary Magdalene – where we can understand the true significance of who she was, the effect she had then and what her spirit carries through time. Consider that, in 2017, the Dalai Lama said women playing a key role in this century would ensure peace and “promote basic human values of compassion and love.” Truly this is what we need.
Central here is the Gospel of Mary Magdalene discovered in an antiquities market by a German collector in the late 1800s. It essentially languished until it was published in German in 1955, then in English in the mid 1970s. It is but 19 pages, essentially of dialogue, with pages 1-6 and 11-14 missing. Bourgeault also draws heavily on the Gospel of Thomas and Gospel of Philip from the Nag Hammadi findings, which she says are of the same “spiritual stream” as the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. These three gnostic gospels were not controlled by the politics of the time, as the sanctioned New Testament. The author does make reference to statements in the New Testament, but this is more to get beneath the surface of what was stated or inferred and how it balances out with the the gnostic writings.
However Mary and Jesus met, whether or not they were married in the everyday sense, it is clear they were joined in a holy, sacred marriage as part of a conscious path. Each was equally important to the other in the process of deepening, equality, love and integrity in service of wholeness and purity of heart. They entrusted each other – created the safe haven – to do the shadow work necessary to deliver them. Reading here we sense the intensity in which it all took place, an alchemical process of transmutation to something greater than either could be on their own. This in the midst and mess of humanness, but not all. There is also the imaginal realm, another dimension where chaos is swept aside and the light gets in.
I also appreciated the attention given to kenosis in so many paragraphs. Twenty years ago I used that word to name the work I do and still abide by it.
Kenosis comes from the Greek verb kenosein, which means to empty oneself…
self-emptying is the touchstone, the core reality underlying every moment…
The letting go of kenosis is actually closer to letting be…
first and foremost a visionary tool…its primary focus is to cleanse the lens of perception…
the direct gateway into a divine reality that can be immediately experienced as both compassionate and infinitely generous…
Having heard that so many of us had a challenging 2016…in any number of ways…and since we’re at the start of 2017, I wanted to offer you a rerun of this article I wrote a few years ago. It speaks of following energy, perhaps in a way you haven’t considered. And shares with you an annual tradition of mine⏤featured at the bottom⏤I’ve kept since I discovered it about five years ago. I find meaning and inspiration for the coming year in this way.
***
Several years ago, my friend Hilary Bee, a professional intuitive and spiritual teacher in the UK, told me that I have a strong inner navigational system guiding me. Over time, I’ve learned to trust it implicitly—even when the next step is obscured from my vision.
I call this navigational system intent, and it produces a high frequency of energy. I recognize completely when it’s communicating a path I am to take, choices to make. I’ve learned to recognize the energetic language. Equally, I’ve come to know over time when I’m straying from the path, or it’s time for an evolutionary change. A totally different level of energy accompanies that alert—and a nagging feeling something isn’t right. Of course, taking that fork in the road may initially produce chaos until order—and realignment—produces a deeper order.
I offer you this poem by C. P. Cavafy and then a caveat.
Ordinary people know what’s happening now,
the gods know future things
because they alone are totally enlightened.
Of what’s to come the wise perceive
things about to happen.
Sometimes during moments of intense study
their hearing’s troubled: the hidden sound
of things approaching reaches them,
and they listen reverently, while in the street outside
the people hear nothing whatsoever.*
While I agree with Cavafy in that the majority of people may be completely unaware, or at least ignore signals, you have an opportunity always to live according to the wisdom of the gods. It’s a fine-tuning process but completely available to you. It requires that you pay attention and then the courage to deviate from any beaten path, sometimes to follow what you can’t readily see.
Here’s a rather dramatic example from my own life. Several years ago, I sponsored two back-to-back programs in Peru. During just one spiritual travel journey the energy is always strong from ceremonies, resident energy in sacred sites and more. With an additional one under my belt and little break between, the veil between the worlds had grown quite thin for me.
After the last group left for home, I was sitting in an Internet café in Cusco. It was the time of Inti Raymi, the festival of the sun, which transforms this usually placid former Incan Empire capital into masses of revelers, huge numbers coming from other locations. I knew that many pickpockets came from Lima to take advantage of the tourists during this time. Consequently, I took precautions. I carefully sat on my coat with my passport and money secured in an inside zipped pocket while I focused on email neglected for several days.
I had been at it for some time with people at computers on either side of me coming and going without any real attention on my part. But then I sensed something, noticing only the color green in my peripheral vision, and went back to my emails. Then again, slight movement out of the corner of my eye. A loud internal voice—not mine—said, Look down! I followed suit. My coat was hanging open, the inner pocket unzipped with passport and money gone!
Literally with no thought in my mind and seeing nothing to go after, I was out of my seat in a split second and onto the street thronged with thousands. Instead of raising a cry with no information to relay, something caused me to turn immediately into the small travel agency next to the Internet café. My hands had a life of their own, clamping onto the arms of two men standing just inside the agency, waiting in line. In a loud authoritative voice I stated, “My money and my passport! My money and my passport!”
They faced me then with shock on their faces as I continued to make the same demand. Both struggled in my grasp; my hands had become pincers of steel. Travel agents and other customers began to turn and get up from seats. The two men managed to turn me toward the entrance in their efforts to be free. One finally managed to duck out the door saying something to the other one, who slipped out of his jacket, leaving it in my hands.
Dropping it, I started to go after the pair but heard a woman’s voice saying, “Are these yours?” She held my passport, money pouch and the green jacket. I thanked her, as well as the others who had risen to aid me. Then I returned calmly to the café and resumed my correspondence.
That night I had a dream: Someone gifted me with a puma.**
As we entrain with a higher vibrational frequency, light energy doesn’t allow us to doubt or contract in fear. It is supreme and grounded. It has peripheral vision. Salk’a—as they call undomesticated energy in the Andes—induces clarity without thought, compassionate detachment and the warrior’s action. This is a state of being we can maintain.
I have a personal tradition. Either during winter or in the first days of spring I seek to remind myself of this Salk’a journey and store further inspiration for the long haul. I want to offer my tradition to you: Watch another of Cavafy’s poems, Ithaca, beautifully set to the music of Vangelis and the resonance of Sean Connery’s voice. This one I fully ascribe to.
********
“Poem by C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992.
**Known as puma in Peru, we also know this sleek animal as jaguar, cougar or mountain lion. In the Indigenous Andes, it represents how to effectively navigate the Kaypacha, or Middle World, the one we walk in our everyday life.
We drove along the South Rim tourist area of the Grand Canyon and wound our way to the west on a dirt road through tall pines. Leaving the throngs of people behind, with much anticipation, we entered a different world. During opening circle for our spiritual travel program to Hopi just the night before, I’d let the folks know an opportunity had presented itself.
The Grand Canyon is sacred to the Hopi. They emerged into this middle world in ancient times from a point deep in its interior, and the Havasupai people have called it home for at least a thousand years. A relationship exists between these peoples. So when my Hopi partner Char Joseph contacted the Havasupai Tribe inquiring if there was someone who would speak to us about their ways, they were happy to oblige saying…all too often they were forgotten.
We pulled into Supai Camp, once the tribal winter home on the rim where just a few remain. The traditional dwellings are long gone. In 1934 the National Park Service (NPS) tore down or burned the homes without notice to the residents who were away at the time. I Am the Grand Canyon documents more than a century’s devastation of the Havasupai at the hands of the US federal government, NPS, Grand Canyon Association and Sierra Club. In the book, Havasupai Mack Putesoy testified how their homes were burned to the ground with all their belongings inside. Effie Hanna said she lost things she’d been saving all her life. In place of traditional homes on their aboriginal lands, the NPS built cabins and forced the residents to pay rent.
However, I knew none of this at the time we approached the home where we’d been invited.
Havasupai girl, circa 1900. Photo credit unknown.
We were greeted at the door by Colleen Kaska, daughter of Daniel Kaska who was chairman of the Havasupai Tribe in the 1970s. Elder Daniel is now quite frail but welcomed us. He wanted to tell us the story of the Havasupai, People of the Blue-Green Waters named after the beautiful canyon waters running through the area they now mostly live. Colleen shared in the storytelling.
Their aboriginal lands once encompassed areas from the Grand Canyon to the Colorado River and the San Francisco Peaks west to Ashfork and Seligman. In the warm months they lived in what is now known as Cataract Canyon in the interior of the Grand Canyon and grew crops. In winter months they dwelt on the rim in order to hunt.
Once the Santa Fe railroad came along and interest in the Grand Canyon grew as a tourist and recreational site the Havasupai were squeezed and began to suffer. In 1882 President Arthur declared the majority of their aboriginal land belonged to the American public. The People of the Blue-Green Waters lost their plateau hunting-herding lands and many thousands of acres. They were barred from rim watering holes by cattlemen and the NPS…and relegated to Cataract Canyon. This narrow 518-acre tract doesn’t see sun during winter months, and historically endured flash floods that sometimes took out homes and people.
Colleen had been relating this history in a matter-of-fact way. The more she spoke, the sadder I felt. I had no idea what we would learn when we came through this family’s door. But I didn’t anticipate such a story. I’d thought of the NPS and Sierra Club as entities that conserved beauty…not those who wrought devastation upon peoples of the land (I thought) they were to protect. I said, “This all must be heartbreaking.”
Colleen paused, became still. She had a faraway look in her eyes. “Yes. But when I walk our aboriginal lands⎯the ones taken from us⎯I know it is of my people. My ancestors are there.” The tone of her voice made clear that knowledge gave her strength.
Elder Daniel spoke haltingly of the century-long struggles to be recognized by the federal government, to regain any of the land taken from them, including his own personal involvement as chairman in this quest. Finally, in 1976 they succeeded to a small degree: 185 acres returned to the Havasupai with 95,300 acres named “Havasupai Use Lands” but controlled by the NPS.
K’iche’ Maya Daykeeper Apab’yan Tew was present as a sponsored guest on our spiritual travel program. He wanted to know about Havasupai ceremonies. He asked Daniel, “Do you have a story about some time of a spiritual nature you remember?” Daniel shook his head. It seemed the focus for so long had been a fight for acknowledgment, some recognition of their worth, that there was no energy left for anything else.
Mike Weddle⎯Kenosis Spirit Keepers board member, Daykeeper and musician⎯visiting from Maryland was able to join our group for just two days. He brought his flute. I invited Mike to offer Daniel and Colleen a prayer song. The music was sweet. When it came to an end, there was silence. Then Daniel began to sing in words and tones that entered every one of us. The energy seemed to shift.
When we all expressed how it touched us, he uttered softly, “It’s a funeral song.” And then, “We are a lost tribe.” It was painful to hear of such loss.
Our visit was over. We formed a circle outside under the pines and invited Colleen to join us. Elder Daniel was unable to do so. Apab’yan offered a Maya prayer for the People of the Blue-Green Waters and the land.
A few days later I received a note from Mike who had to leave for other business.
I think we all felt the same as elder Daniel Kaska told his story of loss and betrayal, going to Washington where no one would listen, voting against the government deal when his own people would not listen, and his final ‘I don’t know what will become of us’. When he sang his beautiful song, and then said it was a funeral song, I almost wept.
We were invited by Colleen to join a singing ceremony 8 am Saturday at Red Butte. I did go to represent us but there was no one there. There are two forest roads on each side of the Butte, but no people, no cars, and no singing.
So I climbed the switchbacks to the very top of the butte, the summit. At the very top there is a crossing with 4 paths going in the 4 cardinal directions. I’m sending a photo. Colleen called this the Supai place of origin.
I felt that in just 2 days I had been witness to the place where the Supai began and perhaps the place where they end. As there was no one else there to sing, I did the singing, and I sang the Maltyoxb’al, the [Maya] great gratitude song, for the arc of the Supai nation.
Red Butte where the Havasupai were born to this world. Photo: Mike Weddle.
Four Directions at the summit of Red Butte. Photo: Mike Weddle.
When we held our closing circle at the end of our week with the Hopi and Havasupai people, I spoke to the group.
I never know in advance how things will unfold when we hold a sacred container of pure intent. Things I can never predict come in ways that affect us all. I believe the most important thing we did during this journey was sit in respect, listen deeply to this Elder’s words and witness the grief he carries.
Sometimes that’s all we can do even in the face of our own helplessness at such recognition. And that acknowledgment matters.
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Note: Elder Daniel Kaska singing recorded by Apab’yan Tew.
On the second day of our time on the Island of the Sun in Bolivia an opportunity presented itself. Local Aymara spiritual leader Mallku Roger Choque offered to take us to a closely held sacred place, one little known to outsiders where even few locals venture. The ancient ceremonial purpose of the site off the Island of the Sun was verified some decades ago when archaeologists found ritual artifacts on the lake bed at its base.
Clearly, this was another gift being handed to us. The first gift occurred the day before when sponsored Hopi guest Suhongva Marvin Lalo had discovered the Hopi migration petroglyph on a huge stone slab at the ruins of Puma Punku, outside La Paz—significant validation of the Hopi migration path. My spiritual travel group also included five sponsored Q’ero Wisdom Keepers making this journey to return to their Inka origins, as well as participants from across the US and Canada.
Given the cue by Mallku Roger we descended from the high point where we were lodging to the boat below. Not long after we headed out, waves washing behind us, this Aymara paq’o, or medicine person, laid a large weaving out on the floor of the boat’s front interior. Crouching down, he removed items from his bag. Soon it became apparent he would be leading a despacho ceremony, a prayer offering. Others squeezed around the altar, getting as close as we could in that cramped space.
Mallku Roger Choque. Photo credit: Carla Woody.
And a memory surfaced, one of being on a boat and, so much the same, engaged in despacho ceremony the previous year on a private journey with a few friends. But that time we had been leaving the Island of the Moon, ancient site of the Mystery School for Inka priestesses. And after our prayers were all placed in the despacho, and it was tightly wrapped, I was beckoned outside to the boat’s back deck. The package was placed in my hands. I remember standing, watching the waves recede as we plowed through the waters. Raising my hands I released the bundle to send it arcing over the waters. Time slowed down. It seemed to hover for a few moments before slipping into the lake…and some kind of energy was emitted. We all felt it. I tried not to engage my mind then about what it might mean, if anything.
I came back to the present as one of my Q’ero friends stood before me offering me a kintu for the Pachamama—Mother Earth—coca leaves in proper placement. Taking them into my own hands, I began breathing my prayers into the coca. Another kintu was given for the Apus, the mountain spirits. My friend came back to receive the kintus that would be placed in an earthen vessel, along with the others. I gazed out at Lake Titicaca, so incredibly vast, then turned my attention back to the ceremony.
Despacho ceremony on Lake Titicaca. Photo credit: Carla Woody.
And in that split second, a vision distilled. I say vision but can I say a precise image appeared? No. It was more a sense that something was being woven together. Can I say that I was given a commandment? No. But I was receiving a precise direction. It produced the feeling of something inside settling and becoming solid. A calling I didn’t question. But it still involved asking permission. I sat there with the knowledge.
By then the boat had approached our destination. But first the vessel that held all our prayers and blessings was lowered carefully into the shallow water and came to rest.
That night after dinner I asked Hopi, Q’ero and Aymara spiritual leaders if they would gather in circle with me. I told them of the vision I’d received during ceremony: to invite Hopi, Q’ero, Aymara and Maya Wisdom Keepers on a pilgrimage in 2016 nearly replicating the one we were making this year from Bolivia to Peru with one difference. The culmination would be on Q’ero. While others have brought different traditions together in various locations on a much grander scale, the direction I’d received involved a journey of an intimate, humble nature. I felt that others across the lands who would assist in holding such a space for this pilgrimage would emerge to support it. I asked the Wisdom Keepers if they would tell me what thoughts they had. One by one they spoke agreeing wholeheartedly with this vision.
Only Mallku Roger was silent. When all had finished speaking their piece, he turned to Marvin, our Hopi guest, and said in a strong voice, “I see your pain. And I have the same pain. Your pain is all our pain.” He gestured around this circle of his Indigenous brothers. “We are to help each other. I will never abandon you. We will never abandon each other.”
He spoke at length on the Eagle Condor Prophecy, then turned to me. I swear his eyes bored into my very soul and wouldn’t let me go. “This is like a weaving. We cannot do this alone. There are those who are connectors, people who help. Your vision is correct.”
In that moment, the last vestiges of doubt that periodically played inside my head over the years about the work I’ve dedicated myself to…when I’d get tired…when my faith got called into question…when it seemed like I was swimming against a tidal wave with little forward motion…dissipated.
Later I wondered if last year—when I slipped the despacho into Lake Titicaca—something had been set into motion. One more evolution. Each time it’s never about predicting what is to come as a result. One can’t. But it is about engagement…full engagement to the calling.
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To read about the discovery of the Hopi migration petroglyph at Puma Punku and more background, go here.
To learn more about the 2016 Heart of the Andes spiritual travel program in Bolivia and Peru, the intimate pilgrimage honoring the Eagle Condor Prophecy as noted in this writing, go here.
We are pleased to announce our Spiritual Travel Program to Hopi: Sacred Guardians of the World. This is a rare opportunity to experience Hopi Spirit Keepers in their homes, hear the ancient stories, visit hidden sacred sites, learn about medicine ways and attend the Night Dances, all that weaves the very identity of the Hopi people as guardians of the world. Only recently has it become possible to be invited to an immersion experience unlikely to have on your own.
Sponsored Maya Guest
Apab’yan Tew is an Ajq’ij, a Day Keeper, spiritual guide, dancer and musician, of the sacred K’iche’ Maya tradition from the village of Nawalja’ in Sololá of the Guatemalan highlands. Sought after as a speak and consultant, we are fortunate to have Tat Apab’yan traveling with us as translator of Maya traditions as they may relate to Hopi ways.
Response to our previous programs has been overwhelming. The group size is limited to maintain respect and the intimate nature. A portion of tuition is tax-deductible to help preserve continuity of Native wisdom traditions through the initiatives of Kenosis Spirit Keepers, the nonprofit extension of Kenosis. More information, including detailed itinerary, tuition and bios, is on the website.
Registration deadline January 29. Early registration discount until November 6. Register now to hold your space! For questions call 928-778-1058 or email.
The Lifepath Dialogues offer an invitation toward embodiment of all that is life-affirming and the deeper meaning of sustainability. Themes are drawn from books "Calling Our Spirits Home" and "Standing Stark" and 20+ years as a conscious living mentor leading spiritual travel journeys with Indigenous Wisdom Keepers serving their communities, group and individual programs. Carla specializes in working with people who seek to live through their deeply held values. For more info see the “About” tab. The author may be reached via cwoody@kenosis.net. Follow this blog by becoming a fan on the Kenosis Facebook page.
The Lifepath Dialogues Gatherings
Topics here are meant to open conversations and self-reflection. For more information, go to the "About" page.
I’d avoided reading 
It took me some months to read 
The Lifepath Dialogues 
