A pilgrimage of the heart

“In time overlapping, we now step into the center of truth and meet our combined destiny in Sacred Places that call to us.” — Maria Yraceburu

In the later half of July I went on the “Places of Vision” pilgrimage to sacred Native American sites around Santa Fe, New Mexico with Maria Yraceburu and community. I knew this pilgrimage would be part of a dramatic shift for me in my personal growth, having spent the last year in intense introspection, working on the physical, emotional, and spiritual levels concurrently, with intentions of self-improvement and healing. It also shifted my perspective on what I’m capable of achieving if I put my heart to it. I never thought I’d be able to go on a trip like this, but when I asked Spirit to make it happen, everything immediately lined up.

Sharing the story of my pilgrimage has been challenging to say the least … not only having to condense down all the amazing details to a reasonable length, it’s not unlike trying to describe a dream in a way that you might understand. Especially when it comes to passing along the stories I hear of prophecy. Stories of the heart are not meant for wrapping your brain around! I’m not a prophecy carrier, but to the best of my knowledge the tid-bits I pass along here
are true.

“Keep an open heart as it will
lead you where your mind can’t.”
— Phil Chavez

Maria Yraceburu, our Apache elder and prophecy carrier, had a dream, an omen to go and connect with the land there, her ancestral home and our spiritual ancestral homeland, in the desert Southwest. When she spoke of this with her elders, they confirmed that it would fulfill an ancient prophesy of the Apache twins bringing water back to the land, restoring life and energy.

Coming together

We began at Bandelier, ancient native dwellings in ruins, where human history stretches back at least 10,000 years. We climbed tall ladders up into the cliffs where we held ceremony in a small kiva to seek permission from the land and the ancestors to hold the ceremonies we’d come on this pilgrimage to do. A kiva is an enclosed ceremonial structure within the community dwellings, they are womb-like, often underground, connecting us with Esonknhsendehi, Changing Earth Mother. Upon our exit from the kiva we were “rebirthed” and we claimed haquini, our identity, in gratitude. And the land and the ancestors granted us permission. Our prayers were set in motion and the wildlife greeted us with confirmation at every turn… turkey vultures, butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, too many insects and birds to remember, rattle snake, garter snake, four deer including a doe and a fawn … and we were in awe.

We had elders on the journey with us, in addition to Maria of the White Mountain Apache, we were alongside Phil Chavez of the Jicarilla Apache, Lynda Yraceburu a Romani Chovani (gypsy healer), and Happy Pahia a Hawaiian Kahuna. They each shared with us their stories—of the land, their personal stories of who they are and where they’ve come from, stories of their people’s histories, and prophesy, stories of where we as One Humanity are headed. This was a bridging of cultures, the bridging of hearts, symbolic of all peoples coming together as one.

Part of our pilgrimage was to see what it means to be in community. What does it look like to know all of your neighbors, and support one another? To live together, work together, and celebrate life together? We visited Taos Pueblo, where they still strive to live as traditionally as possible in community, with no indoor plumbing or electricity in the hand-built adobe pueblos. We also had the pleasure of being welcomed into the home of Flo and Sal Yepa, traditional potters and elders of the Jemez Pueblo. They welcomed us with arms wide open and embraced us each as family. They would tell us, “Our home is your home and you will always be welcome here … if you need to take a nap, please lie down on the couch!” We spent the day hearing their stories and honoring all our elders with giveaway (giving traditional gifts of the heart), and for each gift given, there was a story gifted in return. There was so much wisdom being gifted, we were literally dizzy by lunch time, and the riches continued well into the afternoon.

Healing the past, moving into the now

I don’t know why the mixture of indigenous spiritual beliefs and Catholicism among the modern-day pueblo peoples was strange to me. The Virgin Mary has greater presence than Jesus Christ because of her association with Mother Earth. We visited a couple of churches, including El Santuario de Chimayo, a chapel built on ground that has been sacred for thousands of years. Many have literally been healed with the earth beneath the chapel, and there’s a hole in the sacristy floor behind the altar where one may take some of this dirt. It was also the first church founded in the Americas by the Ortega family, founders of the California Missions that served to convert the native peoples to Christianity.

Normally I think of religious iconography from any path as beautiful, and I was surprised at the disdain I felt as I looked around. Perhaps for the atrocities committed against the indigenous, perhaps because of my own past of not feeling at home in Christianity, although I thought all those feelings were well behind me. I fully support the idea of blending spiritual paths, I walk a blended spiritual path, so this really caught me off guard—another layer of the onion exposed, so to speak. Perhaps my past was behind me, yet as a representative of the greater community I was tapping into hurt and anger much larger than myself—for the opportunity to heal it?

A fellow pilgrim was called by Spirit to do ceremony on this day to heal this past, not just healing for a people that had never known disease, enslavement, or war, but healing for those that inflicted the pain—they all suffered. This pilgrim is a descendant of the Ortega family and told us her story of having traveled to Mission San Juan Capistrano, where she connected with the spirit of a Friar who was in pain—from the atrocities he both committed and sanctioned—and was in need of healing. She picked a spot by the river near the chapel for the ceremony. I was reminded that every walk of life has experienced persecution at some time or another in history. Who has not been the bully, the bullied or the bystander? When the ceremony concluded, any that still harbored sadness was instructed to pick up a nearby stone, breathe the last of our sadness into the stone, and throw it in the river. All of us, now in tears, did just that.

Fulfilling an ancient water prophecy: Harvesting the water

Unplanned miracles took shape as our itinerary wasn’t working out in so much detail. We didn’t have time to make it to Chimayo Springs, so we walked up the river a ways to perform the water harvesting ceremony, the first step in our ceremony to bring water back to the land. Off in the distance we could see wild horses, at the foot of a nearby mountain across the river, who appeared to take a break in their grazing to watch us.

“Uncle” Phil, Child of Water, drew water from the river, to be carried by “Aunty” Pahia for the first part of this two-day ceremony, the bridging of the Land of Aloha and Turtle Island, North America. The elders told stories of prophesy about the origins of humanity on this earth located where the Pecos ruins still stand. Pecos was once a thriving trade center in the Southwest, abandoned for unknown reasons after the Spanish took it over. They spoke of prophesy about the Apache twins that are said to return home and bring the people back together again, and how their elders had only recently confirmed to them that Maria and Uncle Phil are the two fulfilling this prophecy. When we finished singing songs of honoring the earth, we looked up and the horses were directly across the river from us, intently watching us!

We pilgrims were asked to carry a crystal on this day, and my mind had immediately jumped to one I had brought with me from home. My heart leapt when it was revealed what we would do with them. I had brought the quartz crystal pointer I used in my healing work and as “talking stick” for many of my events—it contained the energy of my community and my service to them. But listening with my heart, the crystal told me, “I’m the one.” Trusting there was a greater purpose I couldn’t yet see, each of us imbuing our crystals with our prayers of gratitude—gratitude for our lives and for our healing—we tossed them into the river, into the healing, flowing waters. And then I knew it was the right crystal, with the energy of my community behind me, in turn receiving the blessings I received. Sometimes we have to give up something precious to show just how much we honor the sacred parents, Esonknhsendehi, Changing Earth Mother, and Yusn, Giver of All Life, and show just how serious we are about creating healing.

Confirmation that all we had done, was as it should be, also came to us in prophesies remembered by our elder Judith Moore, guardian of the headwaters of Chimayo Springs, who joined us mid-ceremony. In great detail she related to us how the nearby mountain was connected with Pecos, and so many more details I couldn’t retain in conscious memory.

Blessing the water

The ceremony was completed the following day at Chaco Canyon, a very dry and desolate place. There was little shade and it was very hot when we arrived. We were guided through Tlish Diyan, Snake medicine, Earth rites of passage amongst the ruins, fulfilling more prophecy about reconnecting ancient Star Nations with humanity, about how we are community coming together, coming home.

When the proper place was found, the water was poured into a ceramic pot made especially for the purpose by Flo Yepa. It was “planted” half-buried in the ground, along with our offerings, prayers, and blessings, to bring water back to the land, to heal all that was buried in our collective unconscious, a healing ceremony that would be far-reaching. Uncle Phil and Aunty Pahia closed the blessing of the water with songs of honoring, in their respective traditions. At the precise moment when we completed our ceremony it began to rain. Not a heavy rain that required raincoats, but a light rain the Hawaiians call a blessing rain.

Understanding on a heart-centered level

Those of us that went on this pilgrimage, were meant to go and participate in this, on behalf of our community, on behalf of the world. The steps we traced, from one sacred site to the next, followed along the tracks of our ancestors. The ceremonies we enacted were beautiful in their simplicity, and reminded us we are all children of Earth, we are One with All Our Relations.

So much about this pilgrimage hit me on a deep level and resonated in my my soul, truth unfolded before me on a pilgrimage of the heart, and there is just no intellectualizing it or analyzing it. My heart understood with perfect clarity what we were there to do, why we were there, and why it was so important. And yet my brain still cannot grasp any of it! The experience was … hmmm … hard to sum up. But I feel more at home on Earth, in this life.

Click here to read about my experiences preparing for this pilgrimage »

Tagged as: animal omens, Apache, ceremony, Native American, New Mexico, Pilgrimage, Prophecy, sacred places, water blessing, Yraceburu EarthWisdom