Living Maya

THE ENERGETIC FACTS OF LIFE

2012-01-10T09:23:00.000-08:00

Life is a merry-go-round. Like the one at the end of Strangers on a Train, it’s out of control and spinning faster and faster. Every atom, every neutron, every proton, every electron, increases its spin and raises its vibration as a necessary response to the increasing DENSITY of our times.

Never mind the New Age scuttlebutt: all the evidence suggests that collective human consciousness is sinking deeper and deeper into Matter, like fireflies sinking into the Swamp, or Souls journeying into the Underworld. The denser the Matter, the slower the spin of the electrons, the thicker the quagmire, and the deeper the shadow we are diving into.

Mayans say that the 21^st December, 2012, is the turning point. The end of this cycle of human historical time — not the end of the world but the world as we know it — and the start of a new, cosmic cycle of time in which Spirit, and not Matter, holds sway over consciousness. A turning point when atoms change their spin from yin to yang, negative to positive? Probably no one actually knows for sure, because that’s the nature of cosmic shifts – whatever it is, if it is, will be TOTALLY UNEXPECTED. A bit like death. No amount of book-learning or spiritual belief is going to prepare us for the final shift from flesh and blood to whatever lies beyond. Only direct experience counts in the Nether Realms.

Back to the merry-go-round. As we sink deeper into the darkness of materialism and ego-bondage, it becomes necessary to raise our own awareness and energy – our “vibration” — simply in order to keep our heads above the putrid waters of the Styx. Just feeling okay requires ever more discipline, spontaneity, abandon, acceptance, surrender, humor, lightness, and grace, to balance and counteract the increasing pull of darkness and despair in the world. Or so it feels, at any rate.

As the darkness increases, logically, our own capacity to summon light must also increase if we are not to be swallowed up by it. Time is speeding up, or is it slowing down? Consciousness is ascending and descending at the same time, like a tree with both branches and roots. We are being stretched beyond our human capacity, to bridge the abyss between animal and god, earthly and divine. We don’t have to like it; we don’t have to understand it. But we do have to suffer it, because humanity is the only species we've got (or so it seems), and earth (and our body) is the only home we have — for now.

As chaos increases and the merry-go-round spins faster and faster, out of control, it gets harder and harder to hang on. Centrifugal force is gravity squared — in the end, your mass is turned against you, so simply digging your heels in won’t work. There’s only one thing that will work, and that’s moving towards the center. In the center, gravity’s pull becomes zero.

If you find your center, you will find the center of the Universe. Each of us is that center, or else we are nothing at all. Because that center is the only thing that will hold.

Darkness is where light lives. Matter is the womb of Spirit. Darkness coagulates and condenses so that the light can break through the matter-shell, like an egg hardening as the baby bird is formed. The egg of your ego-centered world is about to crack around you. Pray that it cracks, because otherwise you will suffocate inside a mistaken identity and die without ever having gleaned the truth, so the dream-nightmare of your life will continue into death—creating a fate worse than death.

Dec 21^st 2012 is only 355 days away. It may not be the end of reality as we know it; it may not be the end of time or history or this current civilization (we can always hope). But suppose it turns out to be the end of your life? Suppose that all your hopes and plans end on that day? What would you do with the time you have left? Would you spend it giving thanks and saying goodbyes, and if so, how? Could you live a good, clean life that left the world a better place, knowing that there might not be a world after you passed? Could you crawl all the way to the center of the merry-go-round (drag yourself all the way into the present moment) and still act with a sense of purpose, responsibility, and meaning that transcends your personal goals of glory?

Forget about your life. The heart of the Universe is wherever you are. The thicker the psychic shit you have to wade through just to keep moving forward in these times, the more light you will need to summon from within to guide you. And the faster your spin becomes, the more of that psychic garbage you will be shaking off, the more the shit is gonna fly.

Imagine you spent twelve years of your life sweating blood to become accepted by the “Mayan brotherhood” as a medicine man. Then imagine that you got to see “gringos”—spiritual tourists—coming to your village and paying money to gain the same acceptance from that same Mayan brotherhood without ever earning it or giving a single drop of their blood. Would you be angry? Who would you be angry with? With the gringos for exploiting a sacred trust and profaning an ancient tradition? Or with the Mayans for complying with the exploitation and cooperating with their own corruption? Or would you be angry at your own gullibility and vanity, for ever having thought that your blood was worth more than gringos’ dollars? Or for believing that there was such a thing as a sacred trust or a spiritual tradition outside of your own heart — which is the heart of the Universe?

Finding out that the world’s corruption is a mirror of our own souls hurts. But sooner or later, we’re going to have to realize that, for a spirit being to try and be a spiritual person is just vanity. It is all in vain because it only takes us further from our actual nature. It is as if God wanted to be a Somebody. To who, and for what?!

Being a medicine man or shaman is a job like any other, plumber, carpenter, tinker, tailor, peanut salesman, taco chef. A shaman is all of those because he’s none of them. He is part of a long and anarchic tradition of tricksters, and this is the tricksters’ time now. That’s all. The shaman-trickster’s function is to disrupt routines; to throw a spanner in the works of the ego’s never-ending agenda and of the human-social “matrix” program, to remind people that nothing is what it seems — including the trickster. What tricksters do only looks like a trick, because we can’t see what’s really going on. The only one fooling us is ourselves. The trickster’s job is simply to raise your energy and your awareness any way he can — because that’s how he raises his own.

The trickster treats kids with candy and teaches them to leave flowers outside their houses for quetzales (Guatemalan currency). It’s a generational “trick,” a routine outside of routine, a reminder that all space is sacred, except to the profane. The trickster lights fireworks at religious parades and sticks whoopee cushions under Popes and Kings. He does the unexpected, because that’s his nature, and he just can’t help himself. There’s a trickster in all of us; he just wants to bring it out, any way he can.

As long as we can laugh at his “tricks,” we are beginning to learn his secret. It’s not morality or spirituality that will save us when the darkness descends. It’s laughter and levity.

There’s a war going on now and hardly anyone knows it. Most people don’t even know they’re on the battlefield until they lose a limb, or a head. It’s a war between gravity and levity. Those who can keep themselves light, who keep from buckling under the pressure as the darkness and heaviness of the world increases, will find themselves airborne when the shift occurs. IF it occurs — because, to some small extent, it depends on you, those of you with the capacity to generate light internally (and there are only a few of you). It depends on the lightness and levity with which you can meet your afflictions, on the degree to which you can raise your own energy and awareness, alone or working with others, even as that of the collective continues to sink further and further into despair — into the mass morass of the morose.

There are certain things each of us needs to know before we can access what we already know. That’s my job — to help you to find and do your job. There’s no such thing as a free ride on this boat. It’s all hands on deck as the mother ship ascends. If you can’t carry your weight then you are dead weight, just ballast for the chucking. But at the end of the day, it’s the only ride there is.

I was going to tell my stories, but my writer got carried away with himself and so it will have to wait. This is just a warm-up for what’s to come, a brief teaser as to the energetic facts of life. They are facts which your mom and pop never taught you, because they never knew them. They’re not to blame for that, but they’re not off the hook either. The sins of the mothers and fathers are on your head now. So live it up if you want to live them down.

The most basic facts you need — not only to survive but to flourish and thrive (and procreate) as consciousness in an infinitely expanding Universe — have been kept from you. There’s no need to cry Conspiracy (though you can if you want), because that was how you wanted it. Until now.

Imagine that you only had 355 days to live. Would you want to know all the things that your ancestors didn’t dare to share, because they couldn’t bear to care? Well, would you?

The buck stops here. It’s too late to get off the carousel, except by flying. And there’s only two ways to fly.

Mayan Courtship, Shawl-Pulling, & Dancing with the Saints

2011-11-21T09:17:00.000-08:00

In Santiago, the Mayan women, young and old, wear shawls, and the shawls are an intrinsic part of courtship. If a young Mayan male wants to let a Mayan girl know he is interested, he expresses it by pulling on her shawl. The girl, if she is to protect her honor, holds on to her shawl and doesn’t let the man take it away. In this first courting gesture, the young Mayan should be careful not to pull too hard and the Mayan girl doesn’t want to let him take her shawl away. If she wants to let him know she is interested, she can do so by not pulling away immediately. The little tug of war indicates the degree of interest of both parties, and it is important for young Mayans to develop the necessary social skills to perform the ritual correctly, as in a kind of dance.

If the girl’s response is encouraging, the next time the young Mayan holds onto the shawl a while longer or pulls a little harder. If the dance reaches a point where neither party lets go of the shawl, a bond has been established between them.

If the man pulls too hard and takes the shawl away from the woman, her family is obliged to visit the young man’s home and demand its return. Men who commit this error repeatedly become known as shawl-snatchers, and Mayan girls are careful to keep their distance from them. The other side of the coin is when a young girl has her shawl taken too many times. Then her family collects the shawl more apologetically, word gets around, and less and less Mayan males want to pull that particular girl’s shawl.

Last week, I went to a local ceremony at the shrine of San Miguel, where a shaman danced with his bundle. There were five travelers, all dressed up in local garb: a gay man, a lesbian couple, an old lady, and a beautiful girl named Jenna, aged twenty. The group—who had all met up while in Guatemala—had run into Dolores several times by chance, and she took it as a sign and introduced them to an American psychotherapist, Ileana, who lives in Santiago. Ileana offered to organize a “spiritual retreat” for them (for a sum), and they agreed.

I met the group at the San Miguel shrine, where I was filming the ceremony. Nicholas, a Mayan versed in local history, had been hired by Ileana to provide the group with historical information. Ileana also paid Las Confradias (the shaman brotherhood) to let the “gringos” dance with the saints (wooden figurines of San Juan, San Miguel, Jesus, and the Jaguar) as part of their spiritual retreat. At a given point, the doors and windows were closed, the marimba music stopped, and candles were handed out to everyone present. The shaman honored the four directions and then used a candle to light everyone else’s, moving slowly around the room until all the candles were burning. The dancing then began, culminating when the shaman danced alone with his mysterious bundle.

By that time everyone’s candle had burned almost all the way down, and they were blown out and the stubs handed to the shaman, one by one, who placed them in a small container. Everyone then lined up to kiss the scarves of the saints and the ceremony was over. People continued dancing, however. Nicholas danced with Jenna for more or less the whole time, and I danced with Debbie, one of the lesbians. At one point, the button of my sleeve caught on the fringe of her shawl, and I realized I was pulling it off her without meaning to. “That means I like you,” I said, and laughed. Debbie seemed puzzled so I told her it was a tradition here. She asked Dolores if it was true. Dolores told her that it was: “That’s how they do things here in the village,” she said, and explained the curious ritual of the shawl-pulling. Debbie’s partner caught the end of the conversation, and feigned jealousy at my “courting” her woman.

Chutinamit ceremony Nov 2011

2011-11-10T16:12:00.000-08:00

It was 9 dog day (Tz’i) on the Mayan calendar when we did the ceremony on Chutaminit at the base of the San Pedro Volcano. Dolores Ratzan had been hired to conduct a purification ceremony for a group of seventeen travelers . A local shaman performed the ceremony and I was there to film it. Underneath the spot where the ceremony was to take place were two buried Mayan temples, invisible to the eye. The shaman lit the coals and burned copal incense, lit candles for the four directions, and laid out chocolate, sugar, and rum as offerings, all the while intoning an ancient Mayan prayer which Dolores translated for the group. Towards the end of the ceremony I struck up a conversation with a woman I had been introduced to and whom I knew to be a doctor. I made asked her how the ceremony compared to western medicine. She gave a curt and dismissive response, so I dropped it. Cleary she wasn’t open to the idea of shamanic healing, which caused me wonder why she had volunteered for the experience in the first place.

Four days later, on the boat across the lake to Panajachel, I met another woman, and during the course of our conversation I discovered that she was also a doctor. She told me that a hundred physicians were being flown in from Canada the following day in order to perform free hysterectomies for Guatemalan women. The woman, whose name was Eve, was concerned about how to communicate with the indigenous women. She was aware of the cultural divide and that the difference in worldviews might prove problematic. She asked me about Maximon and the kind of shamanic healing that went on in Santiago, hoping to gain a more rounded perspective. I told her how the Mayans believe that diseases are the result of subtler kinds of energies entering into the body that eventually manifest as physical symptoms. They believe that, even if the damage caused by these foreign energies is too severe to be healed, it is still important for the energies be taken out. Removing such foreign energies—invisible to modern medical instruments—was the shaman’s job—and also Maximon’s. Unlike the first doctor I had met, Eve was open to my words; her mind was a parachute, in fact, making her the exact opposite of the other woman. It was a strange symmetry, and it brought home to me how much being in Guatemala is like walking simultaneously in two different worlds.

I believe in western medicine. I also believe in shamanic healing. There are times when a shaman cannot help you, and there are times when a professional doctor cannot heal you. Yet there is a practical, material basis for energy work (even if it’s little understood), and there is an element of faith healing (the placebo effect) to modern medicine. So the two fields overlap.

It was a relief to run into Eve, because after that first encounter, it reassured me that the two points of view (those of Mayan and western culture) could be bridged. Maybe even this was part of why I was here—to mediate between those two worlds, or weltanschauungs.

As a Westerner experiencing total immersion in Mayan culture, I get to be equally in both worlds, and enjoy the best of both.

Guatemaya Home

2011-11-07T17:27:00.001-08:00