How the Kogi Taught Me to Activate My Sacred Site

The spiritual authorities from the Kogi, Arhuaco, and Wiwa tribes came to upstate New York from Columbia, South America because they had to. 

The leaders, called Mamas, are chosen before they are born and raised in the dark for the first nine years, to communicate with "ALUNA", the thought process that shapes and maintains reality, the source of life and intelligence.  They say that without thought, nothing exists.  We are destroying the earth by what we think and what we have created as a result.  The Mamas believe it is their mission to care for the earth, which has become impossible due to our amputating, eviscerating and plundering her resources. They see the profound disaster we are unknowingly creating.

These tribes are the only surviving civilization from the world of the Inca and Aztec, untouched by Spanish conquest. The mountain they inhabit, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, which they call "the heart of the world" is an isolated triangular pyramid rising over 18,000 feet from the sea, more than three miles high, the highest coastal mountain on earth. It is on a separate tectonic plate from the Andes, and its unique structure means that it is virtually a miniature version of the planet, with all the world's climates represented. The mountain is quite literally a micro-cosmos, a mirror of the planet on which every ecological zone is represented and in which most of the plants and animals of the planet find home.*

When the snows stopped and the river reflected this, the Kogi knew that their mountain was "ill." They became profoundly frightened by what we are doing to the world, with no understanding of the forces which we are unleashing.  So in 1990, the Kogi decided that they, the Elder Brother, needed to talk to us, Younger Brother. They invited the BBC to film on their mountain: "From the Heart of the World, The Elder Brother Warning." Despite the film being shown repeatedly in the '90s around the world, the message was not heeded.

In the beginning of May, 2011, the Mamas left their mountain to meet with the elders of the North American indigenous tribes in upstate New York at the Menla Mountain Retreat.  This 320 acre private nature preserve cradled in a valley in the Catskills, under the stewardship of Tibet House and Robert Thurman, friend of the Dalai Lama and first American ordained Tibetan monk, is propitious for the gathering. To recover the earth, the Mamas of the tribes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, whose mission it is to activate sacred sites, has called this meeting to empower indigenous peoples to do likewise. 

Day one begins with opening ceremonies around a fire on a big lawn, where each North American tribal elder presents gifts and himself to the Mamas, while 100 or so of us others, mostly white people, form a large circle around them, standing, observing for hours. One of the elders criticizes the Kogi for their behavior of spitting into the circle. Ashamed by the disrespect our elders give them, I realize how culture can be so provincial and ignorant.

The four Mamas, young to old, beautiful to oddly shaped in face, all thin and rather small, dressed in simple white shirts and short legged pants, without ornamentation, listen to their translator, seeming very humble.  The only oddity is that they keep putting a stick in their mouth and holding a pear shaped gourd that the Mamas twist their sticks in. It reminds me of lemon sticks.  As a kid, we would suck on candy lemon sticks (like candy canes without the hook) with porous centers stuck into lemons.  What are the Mamas sucking?

Later I learn that all adult Kogi men chew coca leaves, which they have planted, the women have gathered and the men have ritually toasted in a temple for chewing. Making the lime gourd is an elaborate undertaking and the botanical nature of the stick has significance. While slowly chewing some twenty or thirty toasted leaves, the man will wet the lower and slightly pointed end of the stick with saliva and insert it into the gourd. Withdrawing the stick, he will put the adhering lime into his mouth.  Lime is a substance that helps the mucous membranes in the mouth absorb the alkaloids in the leaves of the chewed coca.   This constant process of chewing, stirring and licking allows for communication with spiritual forces of nature, summoning their aid, listening to Aluna, the Mother. (I am told that Kogi listen to the Mother by a process of divination, which keeps them in balance and their world in order. Having written two published divination kits, I am truly curious.)  So while the North American elders offer stories, feathers, stones, rocks, banners, the Mamas chew and suck and listen to Divine guidance.  They carry and use their gourds wherever they are.

During the meeting, which occurs over the next two days inside a building where the sun and the new buds of an awakening May lay outside our purview, we, the Younger Brother, sit on the perimeter in observation, frustrated, with our own questions about 2012 and spiritual activation, while the North American tribal elders continue telling endless stories of past tragedies, plummeting their ego feathers in verbose etiquette, following their protocol.   Compassionate, we wait to listen to the Kogi, who wait to speak, who suck their cocoa sticks. I wonder what they hear? The weekend is over and the set program has not begun.

Following, privately, I apologize on behalf of a continent for the rampant ego of our people, and mention to the translator that there were many pressing questions from the white folks on the outer circle.  He says the Mamas are happy. The tribal leaders are being empowered to do what they know and what is needed. As for the Younger Brother, it is our job to clean up the mess we made. 

The Shoshone Elder, the only one who mentions the polar shift, tells me that he and the other elders had prayed at Yellowstone when the scientists said an earthquake was imminent. The Elders together activated a release that prevented the quake. It was one of several examples where the scientists believed it was coincidence, yet the Elders knew that praying to their ancestors and to Mother Earth's sacred sites would make a difference. I think of the Sundance and the Rain dance and the many ways in which native peoples knew, and in many cases still know, how to talk to and activate nature. Satisfied that the Mamas are accomplishing their mission, I leave to return to my life in the concrete city that chokes the earth.

Here, detached from sun, moon, stars, oceans, trees, birds, stuck in my head, off balance by all the information ingested about polar shifts and the subsequent blanking out and the predicted reset button of amnesia, fear in the pit of my gut, the idea that I might not make the vibrational leap, might be in the wrong place at the wrong time, spins me in despair and confusion about the path I am on, or perhaps more to the point, the intersection I find myself in, once again, as I have been here before, on this traffic island with dying grass and no beauty, impossible to cross safely over, past all the whizzing whirl of mental traffic to get anywhere.  Emanating from my confusion are the many roads, no, highways leading to the many places calling me, from shouting demands, seductive suggestions, reasonable transactions, agreed upon responsibilities. I, like Rodin's sculpture The Thinker, am paralyzed, except for a washing machine like twirl of thoughts, obsessions, questions, old paradigm garbage.  I could unquestionably die here.

(Ironically, according to Drunvalo Melchizedek the Kogi don't think we are asleep like the Hindus and Buddhists do when they speak of lack of conscious awareness; rather the Kogi think most of us are dead, without the necessary life force.)

There was a time in an altered reality when I begged the Divine to help me become conscious. The Archangel Michael who holds a shield of light and wields a sword of fire pierced my heart with that sword, instantaneously clearing my head, opening my eyes to the real and burning out disease for my higher consciousness to prevail. I dive back into my heart now to recall that memory, as this is the reality I need. And there I radiate. The fire of the earth coming through my perineum to the heart, clearing my throat, head, rising into my crown and on the exhale bringing me back to the heart, by-passing the theft of the mind. I land in my body. As I breathe and feel the light of protection creating an egg in which I reside, it comes to me, that the way to begin is to claim my body as a sacred site. My yoni is as sacred a site as my heart and in that yoni, if I were to consecrate and awaken it, the wisdom of how to transcend my weight on this rock in the middle of this dead grass circle of confusion, would not only be apparent, but the transport would be easy..... if only I were to fasten my seat belt of trust, balance in the center point of my sacred site in the heart, listen and follow the Divine guidance without doubt and questioning.

* from the wesbite www.alunathemovie.com

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