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The picture above was taken inside the Aztec kiva. The bubbles you see were captured with three different cameras, and exactly resemble the bubbles shown on many crop-circle photographs (see, for example, Decoding the Meaning of Crop Circles for a photo by Ed Sherwood of the Silbury Hill crop circle of July 25, 2000). What (or who) are they? We don't know, but they showed up in photographs at other locations on our journey. (That's Drunvalo at the extreme right of the photo.)— ed. |
by Drunvalo Melchizedek
The People
Before I even begin, I will tell you that this journey is not over. Of course, the problem - our reason for going in the first place - exists in more areas than just the United States (my next journey will be in the Yucatan in Mexico, beginning in March of this year). But even more, the people who came along on this pilgrimage, including myself, all seem to feel that for them, in their lives and spiritual understandings, the journey is still happening, and that we are being changed by it.
It was clearly something that was ordained. People came together from all over the world, and they were supposed to be there, they were supposed to be doing that. Everyone felt this. Everyone in the group went through massive healing as we journeyed, in preparation for the later work that we were all there to do, and this has continued. I think that none of us will ever be the same.
One trip participant described her feeling for the group itself: "It's like the stories men tell of being in the war, when they develop a relationship with their buddies that they have never had with anyone before and never will again."
As I said, the healing and the spiritual work is still going on. Maybe it will never stop. Maybe it will always be going on.
The History
 In 2002, the Southwest found itself in one of the worst droughts in about 100 years, and the forest fires were burning all over the Four Corners area of the United States. When I'd asked what could be done, Mother Earth told me not to do anything at that moment, and so I waited and watched as the fires slowly approached my home. They actually came as close as fifteen miles away. The fires could have reached my home in a couple of hours if the wind had shifted in that direction.
As I was waiting for permission to help in the drought situation, I asked Mother Earth why it was happening. Her answer was something I hadn't expected. She said that it all could be traced back, not to global warming, but to the relationship that Modern Man has with his Ancestors. At first this seemed so strange.
The Ancestors in the Four Corners were a group of people that disappeared long ago, a people we call the Anasazi: The Ancient Ones. Mother Earth said that, long ago, the Anasazi were living their lives toward the very end of their culture when another terrible drought hit the Four Corners area. Along with this drought, the Anasazi were being attacked, by the Spanish and other enemies, until a day came when it simply was too much to stay alive.
A group decision was made. The Anasazi decided to go back to the "Third World," where they had come from before entering this "Fourth World" that we are in now.
The Third World is inside the Earth (actually, it's an overtone of the Third Dimension). So the Ancient Ones went into their kivas (underground prayer rooms) where there was always a symbolic "sipapu." A sipapu was the opening left on the surface when the Ancient Ones came out of the Earth from the Third World. So the Anasazi, using their special knowledge, went back into the Earth and back to the Third World, where they thought they would be safe.
But as we were to learn on this journey, it was not so simple. Their spirits were now connected to the outer surface of the Fourth World. They found that their life in the Third World rapidly became hell. Slowly, they began to realize they had made a mistake to go backwards in evolution - but there was nothing they could do about it, until... But that comes later.
A few years before, I was doing Mer-Ka-Ba work with a group and we found ourselves in that in-between world with the Anasazi, a misty, shadowy place. The Ancient Ones refused to acknowledge us at first - they simply could not believe that people of the Earth they'd known and left could possibly have found their way to the place where they now dwelt. Finally, they accepted us.
Now, as of last summer, the unseen relationship between the Ancient Ones in the Earth and the Modern Ones on the surface was reaching a point of pain for both peoples. It needed attention. It was actually beginning to affect the weather. Everything was beginning to die, and the fires were burning. Chaos was entering the lives of both peoples.
And so Mother Earth wanted me to go into all four states of the Four Corners - Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah - and perform ceremony to heal this relationship between the Ancient Ones and the Modern Ones. In so doing, the outer and inner worlds could come into balance.
Meanwhile, the fires were getting completely out of control - huge areas of forest were being destroyed - and finally, Mother Earth gave me permission to create a medicine wheel to bring rain to this area. So my family and I promptly built a small medicine wheel near my home and prayed for rain.
The next day, the sky was filled with moisture. Newspaper headlines called it the "Miracle Day," because the moisture went straight into the fires. It turned the smoke from black to white and allowed the firefighters to get a 5 percent hold on this completely out-of-control fire. It was the beginning of the end for this fire.
The following day, it even began to rain lightly - but only in this area, not over the whole Four Corners. Slowly, each day, it began to rain more and more until this area was wet with water and the fires here went out.
So the medicine-wheel field was working, but unfortunately only here, near my home. The fires continued elsewhere. The problem was not solved.
And as we set out on our journey, I wondered: "Once upon a time, I visited the Anasazi in their world. This time - perhaps - would they visit us in ours?"
The Journey Begins
Fifty-six people from all over the world had elected to come on our pilgrimage which, as you will see, was much more than just a "guided tour."
In Sedona, Arizona, we began our sacred journey with a Native American sweat lodge and fire ceremony run by Jade Wah'oo. We needed to do this, for the entire journey was to be both a pilgrimage and an ongoing ceremony of healing, and we needed to purify ourselves before we began - before we took on the responsibility of healing this ancient/modern relationship.
It was clear that there were certain places along our journey where ceremony had to take place, and the first of these was in Navajo land at Canyon de Chelly (pron. "Canyon de Shay"). So this was where we headed from Sedona.
Our Navajo Guides
 The Navajo have never been too friendly with the whites, and I don't blame them. We have not been honest or fair in our dealings with them, so why should they trust us? And I have seen this distrust in their eyes. But what I found when we arrived in Canyon de Chelly was just the opposite. The Navajo people there took us close to their hearts, and lead us to parts of their sacred land that normally are not shown to whites.
As the guides do with other tourists, they took us down into the canyons of their homeland and pointed out the pictographs made by the Anasazi, the Ancient Ones who were there before the Navajo. But in our case, they also showed us sites and told us stories about their sacred land that others of their white visitors had never heard.
Most of our group didn't know the history. They thought it was normal for the Navajo to be so friendly. But many of us understood that this simply was not the case. Our guide said that he had brought many groups to the canyon, but that ours was different. He kept showing and teaching us things that other tourists never saw or learned.
On the second day at Canyon de Chelly, on a rocky cliff overlooking the secret heart of the Canyon, our Navajo guide joined us for our ceremony. Together, we went into the "space of the heart" and prayed for the healing of the land. It was a truly moving and extraordinary experience.
But the night before, the night of our first day at Canyon de Chelly, was when many of our group experienced the first mini-miracle. I was not there for all of it, because I was meditating and preparing for what was to come. So I will give you the story in the words of someone who was:
"One of our group, John Dumas, decided to 'sit in' with a Navajo flute player who, with two helpers on drums, was entertaining guests at the restaurant where we ate dinner. John plays flute and didgeridoo, and the music he so skillfully and feelingly created became a true blending of our group with the Navajos - an incredible "jam session" that went on until late in the night.
"Although those of us who were there were very tired from hiking all day, we could not bring ourselves to leave. It was a true happening. The music itself was extraordinary. And the heart communication, not just between the musicians but between the Navajos and the people in our group, was one of the most amazing experiences of what love means that any of us had ever had. For the first time, at least in that small room, the Navajo and the white man were One. John played with shining eyes, and the joy that streamed from him was something to behold, mirrored in the faces of our Navajo friends.
"At the end, just as we were preparing to leave, a very, very old man walked out to the microphone. He was, he said, a Navajo Code Talker from World War II, and he had been among the group that planted the flag on Iwo Jima. There had been three other Navajos with him at Iwo. They were all dead now, all but him. Softly, matter-of-factly, he gave us their names, and told us how they had died.
"He said that he had written a sacred song for that day, for Iwo Jima and the battle they had fought there. And then, in the hushed room, without accompaniment, he honored us in the ancient way by singing us his song.
"When he left the room, he stopped to hug each one of us."
The First Medicine Wheel
From Canyon de Chelly, we went on to Chaco Canyon, in New Mexico - the master center of the Anasazi. We were hopefully planning to do a medicine wheel at Chaco, but once we got there we found that the government had sealed off all possibility for such a ceremony to be performed in that place. We talked to local officials, but they made it clear that we couldn't even bring drums into the area.
Instead, we all went to the major ancient ruin there, and found one of the abandoned kivas where the energy felt very powerful. It was open to the air, as the departing Chacoans had torn down much of their civilization, and the roofs of the kivas no longer existed. There was no way to go inside. Instead, we circled the kiva, and began ceremony with only our bodies and our spirits.
When the ceremony felt complete, we decided to move around the enormous site and connect as individuals to the land and to the Ancient Ones.
At first I walked with a few of the group members up the side of a cliff until I reached the top where I could see out over the entire canyon. I played my flute for a while, tuning my heart to the land. And then my inner voice told me to continue by myself up to a ledge that was hidden from the group (and from the government!).
 You could see that Chaco Canyon was in a drought, dry, with no rain at all or even any moisture. Life was hanging on by its fingertips. My inner guidance said to do a small medicine wheel in this hidden spot, and to connect it energetically with the one near my home in Arizona, hundreds of miles away.
I found some little rocks made of iron, and on a large flat rock I used these iron stones to make the wheel. I prayed to Mother Earth in the same way as if this were a normal-sized medicine wheel, and asked her to connect it to the wheel near my home, as I had been told to do.
After about an hour and a half, it all felt complete, and I returned to the group and became a tourist again.
Now you need to understand at this point that back home in Arizona it had been raining for almost two weeks, and everything was turning green and beautiful. But when the Chaco medicine wheel connected to the one in Arizona, the energy created by the Arizona wheel was sucked out of Arizona and into Chaco Canyon. By the next day, as my family reported, the Arizona weather near my home had returned to the same dry condition that had existed before we made our small family wheel.
Actually, I felt this shift the moment it happened. It was as though life force had been taken away from me. It felt personal.
I explained these events to the others, and said that we needed to keep moving to find the right place to create our group medicine wheel. I knew it had to happen very soon.
The Kiva Ceremony
During the next day of our journey, seeking a location for the medicine wheel ceremony, we visited two of the ancient Anasazi ruins from the Chacoan culture. They are enclosed and managed very tenderly by official caretakers.
In the Salmon Ruins, we were able to walk through the insides of the sacred structures and houses actually inhabited by the Ancient Ones. We knew that the Anasazi were of small stature compared to us, but the size of their doorways really brought this home.
 At the Aztec Ruins, for the first and only time on our journey, we found ourselves inside a roofed-over underground kiva. We could feel the energy and the mystery of it. Our group sat around the edge of the circular, cave-like chamber on benches that had been provided for visitors, and I talked a bit about the Creation Story of the Anasazi. How they had emerged from the Third World, and how the kiva stood for that world, with the symbolic "sipapu" at the top, where the Ancient Ones had climbed through into the Earth. Then we all entered the place of the heart, as we did so many times together on this journey, and performed a ceremony of healing there.
I don't remember what I said, but I remember the energy. I remember that a family of visitors came upon us, and stood reverently, joining us in our ceremony. And I could feel the Ancient Ones all around us. Connecting with us.
So far, all had been mere preparation for what was to come.
The next day, we headed for Colorado.
© Spirit of Ma'at LLC 2003
NEXT TIME, PART II
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