Shamans Among the Machines

There are some interesting points starting at 15:25+ for about 5-10 minutes. The whole thing is very interesting, so check out what you have time for.

On November 8th, we entered the next phase of our global evolutionary upgrade, known as the Sixth Night of the Galactic Wave Movement, according to Mayan scholar Carl Johan Calleman. It’s a demanding time, and a bit messy, as planetary birth processes tend to be. But is it cause for alarm?

Until recently, comparatively few people were interested in Mayan culture or ancient prophecies. The Mayan Calendar, popularized in the West by authors such as Jose Arguelles (The Mayan Factor), Barbara Hand Clow (The Mayan Code: Time Acceleration and Awakening the World Mind) and Carl Calleman (The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness) touched a relatively small audience.

With the release of the doomsday movie 2012, however, that’s changing dramatically. Now that the end date of the Mayan Calendar — December 21, 2012, on our Gregorian calendar — is a scant three years away, people are beginning to panic. Is the world going to end? Is this like Y2K, only infinitely worse?

It depends where we choose to place our focus. Remember that the collapse predicted when the clocks struck midnight on December 31, 1999 never materialized. Our culture thrives on fear, and this latest movie is pure Hollywood, calculated to thrill, chill, and rake in box office profits — not to educate and enlighten. For that, we need to go to the source.

The Maya are now sharing their prophecy with the rest of the world in great detail, in an effort to clarify exactly what is happening, and why. One vehicle is the film, Shift of the Ages, which explains what this unique era in human history is all about.

The key word here is “era”. This is a global birth process, not an event. We’re in the midst of an extraordinary evolution in consciousness. The December “end” date — indeed, the year 2012 itself — are simply markers, signifying the conclusion of a vast cycle of time and transformation. People all over the planet have been awakening in stages for decades.

Now, humanity has reached what might be termed an “uncritical mass” of awakened souls, who are helping to guide the shift that’s taking place worldwide. Time is actually speeding up as we make these changes, and the acceleration creates all sorts of strange “symptoms”, both in our bodies and in the Earth’s body.

Thus, what one might interpret as catastrophic — earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, etc. — is just Nature’s way of cleansing and clearing in preparation for the new, much as many of us are coping with headaches, muscle and joint pain, sleep issues, digestive disturbances, and a host of other weird physical, emotional and mental changes that are part of what a third dimensional human undergoes as we expand into beings of Light. Because that’s precisely what is happening.

We’re moving from water-based to Light-based bodies. It’s huge, exciting, scary, and real — and it’s happening to everybody, although at different times and in different ways. Imagine how the first amphibious creature must have felt when it crawled onto land and realized it could live in two environments. In essence, that’s where we are now.

So there’s no need to panic. 2012 isn’t the end of the world, just the end of a World Age, or time cycle. We’re becoming galactic beings of Light, stepping into our global greatness in a whole new way. Many sages throughout time have prophesied this dawning Aquarian Age as ushering in a Golden era of peace. We’ve voted for this as a collective, and are now emerging into the new. Let’s rejoice, and help our fellow travelers to adapt.

For further illumination:

∞ If you’re interested in learning more about the Mayan Calendar and how it can help you shift time awareness in your daily life, request my series of articles that chronicle my journey through the lens of indigenous wisdom. Please email Amara Rose with “Mayan Calendar articles” in the subject line and I’ll send them as Word docs.

∞ Sqrapple: don’t unravel, unfold

∞ Wake up and dream your world into being

∞ The art of awareness: painting your aliveness on life’s canvas

About the Author:

Amara Rose is a metaphysical “midwife” for our global rebirth. She is the author of the eBook series, What Shines: Practical Wisdom for Unleashing Your Inner Brilliance, available from RadiancePublishing.com, and offers spiritually-focused life coaching, e-courses, talks and CDs. Visit LiveYourLight.com to learn more. Contact Amara at amara@liveyourlight.com. To read additional articles focused on personal and planetary evolution, visit Amara’s Practical Spirituality page on Examiner.com.

The 5 Animal Allies of the Pachakuti Mesa

Across the world shamanic traditions have flourished and persevered in times that have been favorable to them and also those during which their existence was deeply threatened. Yet, in spite of attempted eradication and the wider prevalence of cultural amnesia, many practices of this global lineage have survived – often greatly transformed through their adaptation to the shifting sands of culture.

Despite changes in appearance and the frequent adoption of aspects of the “new” religions and belief-systems that have accompanied the transformation from hunter/gatherer, pastoral, and subsistence cultures to agricultural and urban life-styles, core shamanic beliefs and practices continue to sustain people throughout the global ecosphere.

Within the Peruvian Andes and coast the synthesis of millenia-old shamanic practice and modern religious belief is found in both the traditions of the paqokuna and huachuma curanderismo. These traditions have, to varying degrees, incorporated elements of folk Catholic belief, cosmology, ritual, and liturgy. While this certainly ensured survival in a changing and persecutorial environment it also points to the wisdom of recognizing the inner syncretic nature of the shamanic universe as a principle of action.

The salient feature of both the highland paqokuna and coastal curandero traditions is their focus on the ritual and ceremonial mastery of the mesa. In each case the mesa is an altar-like collection of shamanically invested artifacts arranged according to the teachings of the lineage and the personal insight of the healer. Though somewhat different in form, both traditions engage the culturally acknowledged powers of the natural and ancestral worlds through the mediating instrument of the mesa.

Through propitiatory ritual and invocational ceremony, states of contact are reached with these powers in which balance, health, prosperity, and fertility are restored within the community. Underpining all practice is the recognized law of ayni, as it is known in the highlands, in which it is understood that there exists a delicate state of interdependance between all levels of the physical and spiritual worlds. Perhaps best expressed as the “Law of Right Returns,” or, more colloquially, “today for me, tommorow for you,” the notion of ayni succinctly encapsulates the knowing that within the intricate matrix of interdependance that is our universe, an inbalance is created when a return “payment” is not offered for the intervention of the spiritual realms. Since practically everything within indigenous and shamanic culture is seen as a result of actions and dynamics taking place within the spiritual realms, one of the primary pursuits of a people becomes the maintainance of proper “payments” to those “causal” realms. The person for whom this becomes a specialty is the paqo, pampamisayoq, and altomisayoq, or the curandero depending on their tradition.

Shamanic Practice

The Pachakuti Mesa itself originated through Oscar′s many-year apprenticeship with his personal mentors in Peru, maestro curanderos don Celso Rojas Palomino and don Benito Corihuaman Vargas. Emerging from his apprenticeship within the coastal huachumero and the highland paqokuna traditions, the Pachakuti Mesa embodies distinct elements from each of these specific traditions of medicine practice.

The wisdom of these two lineages, representing related yet disctinct ancestral cultures, creates an organic structure that serves to anchor the vast array of shamanic practices existing to serve life from the personal dimension to that of the community, while harmonizing these with a global vision and the celestial sources of guidance and support. Strenghtening this ancestral heritage and cross-cultural relevance are insights drawn from the world′s many wisdom traditions and the growing understanding of quantum dynamics and consciousness.

Following its original birthing from the cultural and shamanic lineages of Peru, the applied practice of the Pachakuti Mesa has evolved through its service to non-indigenous Western culture. It has become a true repository for the unfolding experience of its dedicated practitioners and community. The Pachakuti Mesa can truly be said to be a continual birthing of the wisdom of sacred community dedicated to a shared Earth-honoring path of service in which the ancient nourishes the present, birthing the creative expression of contemporary practice.

Pachakuti Mesa Healing Service

The mesa is the instrument by which the mythic power of prophetic time and the profundity of the three cosmological worlds is harnessed in practice. It is the medium of translation for the spiritual wisdom and understanding of the Andean cosmovision, allowing them to transform into practical applications and effects within a community.

A mesa is the consecrated arrangement of ceremonial power objects that make up a curandero′s “tool set,” and is also the point of focus for the spiritual forces engaged through ritualized action. It is simultaneously the seat for spiritual vision and the multi-fold powers of creation, and by being the locus of intention is directed by the healer. Two elements in particular come together within the mesa, blending into its unique form: the transmission of traditional wisdom given by the teacher and the idiosyncratic initiation that characteruzes the individual path. From the integration of these two sources of inspiration a healer′s mesa is born.

Travis Wright's Pachakuti Mesa

The Pachakuti Mesa, as an embodiment of global earth-honoring service, integrates within its primal structure the five alchemically venerated elements of the universe: earth (Allpa), water (Unu), wind (Wayra), fire (Nina), and the fifth transcendent element which is produced by the harmonious intermingling of the originating four – the aether (K′uychi). Each of these elements is focussed in one of the five directions of the quadrangular mesa – South, West, North, East, and Center – and is embodied by one of the five primordial powers of the Andean cosmovision: Pachamama (Earth Mother), Mama Killa pronounced Mama Key-yah (Moon), Wiracocha (Creator), Inti (Sun), and K′uychi (Sacred Rainbow). When these powers are united by vision and intention – lovingly anchored within the physical repository of the mesa – the Pachakuti Mesa blossoms as a transformative agent within the world.

Each of the directions of the mesa hold a particular archetypal form, energy, and healing medicine, arranged according to a dynamic understanding of the mythic and energetic universe. They therefore provide a vehicle for the initiatic apprenticeship of the fundamental forces of creation and, more importantly, the means by which their transformative presence is directed in the world. As an experiential mirror of the dynamically self-aware universe the, Pachakuti Mesa contains within itself both the map and the mapmaker, and ultimately becomes the primary source of instruction and guidance for the healer.

The Power of Ritual

Beyond the base structure of the Pachakuti Mesa and the aligments contained within it, it is the unique experience of the healer that determines the shape it assumes. As a continuously unfolding source of initiation and a reflection of the soul experience of the carrier, the mesa itself will naturally evolve and transform over time. Indeed, a mesa can never remain static – to do so would contradict one of the fundamental experiences of creation: all is in motion. While a mesa will hold certain patterns over time, it must ultimately be recognized as an expression of transformation itself, which cannot be boxed within a static form.

As mentored by don Oscar, the Pachakuti Mesa is a ceremonially consecrated imaginal map of the universe, an archetypal cosmic landscape, which “energetically” anchors both seen and unseen dimensions of the anima mundi (i.e., World Soul) before the shamanic practitioner. It is a beautiful container of spirit, and it is also a soul-infused artifact of the material world. It is a living, dynamic pattern upon which and within which we can consciously do our transformative personal and planetary healing work. As a global community of Pachakuti Mesa Carriers we embrace this ancestral lineage not because it is superior to all other traditions, yet because its effects are healthfully liberating and aesthetically graceful. It is a visually dramatic and sensually rich millennial heritage, which appeals to those who resonate with the healing power in natural patterns, earth rhythms and cosmic cycles. It is also a syncretistic shamanic tradition, which is openly tolerant and widely inclusive of diverse cultural ideologies, religious beliefs and all world wisdom paths. In essence, the Pachakuti Mesa is meant to be a pristine reflection of the individual practitioners ontological sense of belongingness within the Great Sacred Web of Life.

Via Don Oscar Miro-Quesada