The Boa Foundation has been hosting the international Aniwa Gathering of Indigenous wisdom keepers annually since 2017, and these leaders have been sharing their wisdom through cultural exchange and sacred ceremonies. The Teyunas, one of the many Indigenous groups that have participated, is a group of four nations in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Columbia: the Arhuaco, Kankuamo, Kogi and the Wiwa. (see TeyunaFoundation.org and see Aniwa Gathering). The following transcript is from an electrifying talk given by Kandymaku, an Arhuaco speaker and representative of the Teyuna, which he delivered at the Aniwa Festiva in 2018 in Fishkill, New York.
He stood on a rock in a wooded clearing as people sat on the ground or leaned on trees, listening to what he had to say about communicating from the heart. When we come from fear, he explained, this only takes us deeper into the problems we're trying to resolve. When we communicate from the heart, we become stronger, clearer channels for resolving what is before us. From this place of the heart, we can find solutions and come together to heal our environment and ourselves.
Kandymaku
“The moment is coming and that’s why we’re here. So that’s why we have conscious people gathering. We’re coming to the last dialogues. We’re in this consciousness rising and we’re learning to communicate with the heart and the next step in spiritual evolution will be communicating from this place – the heart. We’re preparing for that. It’s time to open up the heart from a place of consciousness. What is consciousness? To see the world from the clarity of our thoughts. My grandfather said, like I think is like I see. One time they took some elders to a river which was very polluted. He saw it clear. Everyone around him said, what are you saying? We have scientists that are coming to help us clean it. But grandfather said the first thing to do is to clean our own minds, clean our own thoughts, then we won’t see the river as a dirty place. That’s why we’re calling for the waking of spirituality, of consciousness. It’s time to unify, create a collective.
“We see this rising consciousness, we see that people know there is something they need to do for the earth, and that’s good. But the hardship is that they’re afraid. When they’re in the space of fear, they say we must take care of the rivers, these places, not for the sake of what they are, but because they are afraid they won’t have water to drink, that they will lose out on what they need from the river. We can’t have this consciousness rising from out of fear. This consciousness must come from respect, tolerance and love. Problems exist – but the more we talk about them, the more we feed them.
“When we take a look at environmental problems, we’re looking too much to the future. So if we’re looking to the future too much, we forget what we have to do in this very moment. So we’re activating that emotional state in our consciousness that hasn’t happened yet, that might not happen, we’re taking away that energy from what we must do right now. So then another elder told me a different story. We’re always focusing on our death – we’ve forgotten how to live. We’re not there – we’re just here. That’s the essence of real spirituality – to understand that simplicity from the essence of what we really are. To pay back to the earth, to contribute to her for what she’s given us. We were left with all this medicine, we were left with all these tools inside of us.
“And a lot of times we search for tools to offer outside of us because we might not want to give what we have, what is already inside of us. So that’s why they keep telling us – we must recognize ourselves, tap into ourselves, because those are all the sacred materials for offering that we were left with, that the earth is asking for. The animals never go out of this alignment. So we must remember ourselves, give from this space. That’s why spirituality has to be coherent and connected with everything.
”Spirituality should be an integration of our body, spirit, mind. Spirituality should take us to a place of not needing to search for anything else, for anything outside anymore. The more we search the more we go to find something, the further we get ourselves. So do you know why we haven’t found God? Because we’ve been searching outward. But it’s really to search inward that God lives within our hearts. We are all part of that God creation energy. We are all beautiful, majestic.
“Look, it’s there. Do you see how magical you are? That’s why yesterday I spoke about happiness — Zeezeazanwi (iku language). My heart is happy, my heart is content. That’s one of the hardships of standing on this rock and talking about spirituality to everyone. Because we might not all agree, see the exact same way. But it’s about being secure from where you’re coming from. And that’s the fun thing; that kind of disagreement is sometimes what makes it fun. The past serves as a foundation, as a place to create from. But you must live in the present.