Let It Come Through

The message "Don't let the fire go out!" woke me from my sleep into the mysterious light of the full moon. Watching the clouds blowing past casting shadows, I sat with fear.

This eclipse has had an unusual effect on me, a bit of fear mixed with elation, intensity, movement and calm. Upon waking, I felt my soul reaching out to me through a memory. The force of contact woke me. The power unsettled the part of me that has grown comfortable with my sacred responsibility to raise my son, attached to the simplicity I've very intentionally created.

But, for three nights my nervous system has been overly sensitive. The night of the eclipse, my inner-ear opened with a dull thump followed by a high-pitched tone that cut through my cluttered mind in a way that typically happen when I enter highly charged sacred sites. It reminded me of the drums I began hearing during my first trip to Lake Atitlan. Those drums continued to beat in my head for years, at times, pushing me to an edge of sanity, overwhelmed with fear.

One would think that with all I encountered in the fifteen years since, that the channel between my soul and body would be deeply carved, smoothed from prayer, life, practice and presence. It is not. It remains a mysterious passage, and when direct soul contact happens, the force is so strong and palpable it still overwhelms me. Much like falling in love, merging with myself blasts away all of the illusory identities to make room for something new.

Seven years ago, my teacher motioned me to help a young Mayan priestess who was asked to carry a lit candle from a sacred ceremonial fire at one sacred site, to another sacred site. A hundred medicine men and women from all of the Americas-Abya Yala were boarding the boat that would ferry us across Lake Atitlan to Patziapa, where our ceremony would continue. This ceremony and conference was honoring the "Spirit of the Water". I was among the delegates who traveled from the North, yet were closely linked with the Maya delegation via my teacher Mayan Spiritual Guide OmeAkaEhekatl Erick Gonzalez.

The young girl held the candle on a plate with a small, glass pillar protecting it. I arrived with a piece of hand woven cloth that I had either been carrying without purpose, or that my teacher handed to me when he instructed me to help her keep the candle lit. During that time, my connection to my teacher was rich with fluidity, my hands and body an extension of his. My understanding of where he stopped and I started was nebulous. However, none of that seemed to matter, then. It was ecstasy to serve. And, in that service, I rejoiced.

The young Mayan priestess had another Mayan helper to one side of her. It became clear that the only way this was going to work is if I stood guard on the other side. Neither of the girls received me with a toothy smile and casual receptivity, but they opened to include me in this effort, sincere and present, taking note I had a cloth and was intent on following through with my instructions. Carefully, as the wind picked up I held the cloth as protection, the three of us walking together down the pier to board the boat.

The task we performed struck a chord in others as they opened a path for us on the crowded boat and cleared three seats where we could care for this flickering light in the increasingly strong winds. It was as if the hope of the world was flickering among our hands, the wind a natural phenomena that would destroy that hope without our persevering attention. The possibility that despite my color of skin and the atrocities that have occurred between our nations, we could all care for this lit ceremonial candle coursed through my veins. The sacred responsibility entrusted to me felt weightless in those moments of ceremony, and so heavy before and after.

As we exited the boat and made our way into the roundhouse, the young Mayan priestess continued the final steps of her journey alone. Still flickering, she placed the candle on the altar, our task complete.

I returned to sit near my teacher knowing that one day this memory would return.

(Mayan Spiritual Guide OmeAkaEhekatl Erick Gonzalez can be reached via http://www.spiritjaguar.com/)