Lectures & Workshops (April 21, 2006)

Mayan prophecy and cosmogenesis 

Indigenous prophets of ancient and modern times from around the world have prophesied that the new millenium will be a time of 

spiritual and technological progress/transformation for humanity and the planet or a time of turmoil and cataclysm. The Maya Elders from Guatemala believe that "change is accelerating now, and it will continue to accelerate. If the people of the Earth can get to 2012 in good shape, without destroying too much of the Earth, we will rise to a new level. But to get there we must transform enormous powerful forces that seek to block the way."

In a workshop titled "Mayan Prophecy/Mayan Cosmogenesis: The Earth's Evolving Consciousness Works" to be held Saturday, April 29, from 10am to 3pm, María Teresa Valenzuela will explore concepts of indigenous prophecy. The Seven Maya Prophecy, the Maya Long Count Calendar, and cosmology of the universe-and the pivotal date of December 21, 2012-will also be taught and discussed. Pivotal discussions and experimental group work will be offered to help participants develop greater positive awareness and action in their daily lives. As a group, they will seek to develop a new, innovative model for higher evoluntionary consciousness.

María Teresa Valenzuela is an indigenous Mexican woman from the Sierra Madre in Chihuahua, and she comes from a line of healers and curanderos. She presently lives in Guanajuato, Mexico, where she is known as a spiritual teacher and healer who uses the Shamanic medicine and wisdom taught by her grandmother, father and tribe. She has worked with healers and shamans in Mexico, Peru and Ecuador and with indigenous elders from the Maya culture of Guatemala. 

Valenzuela can be reached at laikaraiya@yahoo.com. She is available for soul retrievals, spiritual guidance, speaking engagements, personal and house cleansings (limpias), house blessings, life rituals and ceremonies and personal healing.

The workshop will be held at LifePath Retreats, Recreo 80 415-154-8465; info@lifepathretreats.com 
The cost is US $S35.

The Power of Silence

1. silence is creative

Creativity is not found within the known. Creativity means to bring the new into being. All "thinking about" is simply juggling with the old. You might come up with an answer, but this is not developing creativity. Creativity needs the silence of "non-thinking." It requires that you quiet the chattering mind. Silence and creativity are one.



2. silence builds trust

Silence allows you to trust yourself. You give yourself time to listen to your inner voice. You learn to discover your unique ways of knowing. You discover that you do know the answers. You simply think others know better than you do. You have been taught this for most of your life. Listening silently to the prompting of your heart, you begin to know your own voice. You become your own master.



3. silence gives rest

Entering your inner silence gives you deep rest. The rhythm of the body slows. The rate of breathing slows. Your heart rate drops. You enter the present moment. You enter your essential self. There is no need to go anywhere. There is no place to go. This is your time for relaxation. This is your time for simply letting go and letting be.



4. silence brings balance

Silence allows for balance. It balances your natural rhythms. You "do" and then you stop "doing," you "do" and then you "be." This is easy to remember. It is the rhythms "do be do be do." All of nature follows this rhythm. We are human beings who have somehow transmogrified into human doings. We have forgotten the joy of silently being in the present.



5. silence promotes the real

Many of us are afraid of silence. We will do almost anything to avoid silence. When I am silent, people often ask me, "Is there anything wrong?" For some people, silence has become wrong. It is a form of communication many avoid. Living your life without periods of silence is akin to playing music without silence between the notes. For many, practicing moments of silence allows all hell to break loose. Thus, the peace of inner silence never becomes an experience of renewal.



6. silence allows listening

Most people in our world long to be truly heard. Those who enter a period of silence each day learn to hear the song of their heart. They learn to listen to the song that only they have come to sing. When they listen to the song of their heart they find more love and compassion enter their dealings with others. This allows listening and real communication. Silence moves us toward real communication.

(Excerpts taken from The 7 Powers of Silence by Tony Cuckson.)

(Doña) Bernadette Vigil offers a three-day silence retreat, "A Path to Finding Stillness." Vigil is the author of Mastery of Awareness and studied extensively with Sri Sai Swami Kaleshwara. During her process she went into silence for three months. She utilizes profound wisdom, humility and integrity to lead her students toward the discovery of their true essence. The workshop begins Thursday, April 27, at 6pm and ends Sunday, April 30, at 6pm. Cost is US $150. Payment in full must be made by April 24.

Space is limited to 15 people. Cost includes private room and three meals/day. Location: Soledad Monastery (15 minutes outside of San Miguel de Allende). 

For information and registration call Andrea Usher at 150-0102 or email: andreaush@yahoo.com 

Awaking the Buddha within

Saturday and Sunday, April 29 and 30, a 16-hour interactive workshop designed to teach participants what being a human means, not only theoretically but also through direct experience. Our knowledge of what we are is limited, repressed and many times ignored. But the possibilities are limitless.

In this workshop our goal is to help participants know themselves better and increase perception by means of simple yet effective exercises. We want to help you recover the capacity of joy through your senses, go a little deeper into what we call "the inner self"; it is there, you only have to rediscover it.

The instructor, Aura de Wit, is a corporal psychotherapist with 20 years of experience in the different levels or dimensions that we can reach as humans. Her work is backed up by the Asociación de Psiterapia Transpersonal Ontogonía, A.C., from Mexico City. She has experience in meditation, holistic healing, chamanism, dream interpretation, auras and chakras and she was a Chi-Kung instructor at the 7 Lotos International School in Mexico City.

For information and enrollment call 152-4727 or 044-415-111-2809 or email  nictena@yahoo.com.mx 

A trip to the campo

"This trip to the campo was the most worthwhile and important thing that my husband and I have done since we've been in San Miguel. I was so impacted by what I saw and heard that I couldn't sleep all night, just thinking about what those people are going through." That was the reaction of Joyce Randall to last month's visit to Cruz del Palmar, a town in the campo north of San Miguel de Allende.

Most foreign tourists to our beautiful city, and even many who live here, seldom venture beyond the familiar cobblestone streets into the campo and visit the people who live there. As a result, they know little about the real Mexico-México profundo. That's why the Center for Global Justice is sponsoring day trips to the surrounding campo. The next one is Saturday, April 29, when we return to Cruz del Palmar. 

There we will see the stone-dry Rio Laja and the high desert landscape as we talk with the people about how they struggle with the problems of survival under harsh conditions. Along with community leaders, Atahualpa Calderon will brief us on water problems and other issues they face. Then we will enjoy a picnic comida prepared by the local women in the cool shade of a palapa made of cariso by Doña Vicenta. She will also show us a demonstration garden that needs little water because it is composed of rocks, cacti and other local plants. 

We will learn of efforts by the people of Cruz del Palmar to improve their lives. They prefer to remain in their community, but often, reluctantly, must migrate. One campesina put her dilemma clearly when she said, "My children are hungry. I must go to El Norte for work. What would you do?" It was her question that inspired artist Sallie Latch to do a painting of the woman and her challenge to us. A print of it is on sale at the Biblioteca bookstore.

Migration is an option that seems to always be on their minds. This helped Eleanor Jaffe, who teaches at Brandeis University, to decide to revise a class she teaches to focus on immigrants from Mexico. "The trip to the campo made such an impact on me," she said. Ann Howell was also so moved by what she experienced on the trip that she wants to volunteer in the campo to work with the children or the women. A little reality can have a big impact on a person.

You can experience the campo for yourself by joining the Center for Global Justice's April 29. Walking will be kept to a minimum. Be sure to bring a hat, water and a snack, since comida won't be served until around 2pm. The trip costs only 250 pesos, which includes comida, bilingual translation and transportation. Half the proceeds will go to the community. 

Advance registration is required and space is limited. For more information or to get your tickets, call the Center for Global Justice at 150-0025 or come by the office weekdays between 9am and 1pm at Calzada de la Luz 42.

Dancing with the medicine wheel
By Teresa "Tía Terre"

Forms of the medicine wheel exist all over the globe, from the great stone circles of Europe to the mandalas of India. All of these are reminders of our past when the world was guided by the law of right relationships, honoring all life forms, when humans respected themselves and all their relations. To understand the healing powers of the medicine wheel it is important to know that these wheels, over 20,000 of them, existed on this continent before the European people immigrated here. These wheels served many purposes for the native people of the Americas. 

These ancient wheels marked and created ceremonial centers of culture, astronomical laboratories and places to pray, contemplate and connect with nature's ways. They were places to strengthen the mental, emotional, physical and spiritual body.

Medicine wheels were placed in areas where the energy of the earth could be strongly felt, areas now called vortexes. The areas where modern medicine wheels are built and danced are serving the same function as the ancient wheels did for healing. When the medicine wheels are used in a ceremony they are vehicles to show respect and honor to the ancestors and elders, expressing gratitude for reconnecting to nature's way of knowing.

The medicine wheel dance had a strong beginning for me from a vision quest I took years ago in Sedona, Arizona. This vision came to fruition last November when 17 people gathered to create a medicine wheel on the land I take care of outside the city limits of San Miguel de Allende. This weekend retreat, held in honor of the wise woman's ways, brought together women, children and one man from 7 to 71 years of age and representing five countries.

While creating the medicine wheel we practiced nature's ways of knowing, honoring ourselves and giving gratitude for the all that is, the Great Mystery of Life. When you forget to express gratitude for this, you forget your relationship to nature and isolate yourself, which begins to manifest disharmony. When you forget to honor the all that is you, you forget to love. 

"Selfness love" (selfish love) is self-centering and honoring of self; it is feeling grateful for being in this life experience. Gratitude is a state of grace. It clears and strengthens you. The medicine wheel represents and reminds us of the beauty of living life to its fullest while in this present body. 

When dancing the wheel you call in wakefulness to aspects of spirit reflected in you. There is no separation, for the whole of consciousness is in the dance, an acknowledgment of wholeness. A remembrance with a threshold into sacred relationships is part of what is found with the dance of the medicine wheel.

The medicine wheel is a tool that helps you accept and even embrace change. It is a tool to enable you to take delight in the many varieties that you call into your life. Each of the 36 positions of the wheel provides you with a somewhat different comprehension of all that is around you. As you experience your stage in life at all the positions, you gain 36 new understandings of life to add to the ones that you have today. Your wellness grows and glows.

Imagine how much more versatile your wardrobe would be if you added 36 new outfits! Now, imagine a more multifaceted life with 36 added viewpoints. 

This is one of the gifts the medicine wheel holds for you. When you are ready to dance this wheel of life, you'll find the help and healing needed through this sacred circle. Come dance with the medicine wheel.

Local inquires for Tía Terre and her colleagues of Cuna de la Naturaleza Colectivo can be sent to naturescradlecollectivo@gmail.com  or call 044-415-149-0153.


Teresa "Tía Terre" is a 25-year resident of San Miguel now living outside the city limits in a developing ecological permaculture community. In the 1960s she studied with Hanna Kroeger, an herbal, energy and psychic healer in Boulder, Colorado. She went on to Bisbee, Arizona, to work with an elder of the Ozuna family learning and facilitating native ways of healthfulness.