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The old paradigm is breaking apart. The new one is still not fully shaped.
If we're going to emerge into a just, equitable - and above all regenerative - system, we need to meet the people who are already living, working, thinking and believing at the leading edge of inter-becoming transformation.
Accidental Gods exists to bring these voices to the world so that we can all step forward into a future we'd be proud to leave to the generations that come after us.
We have the choice now - we can choose to transform…or we can face the chaos of a failing system.
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Manda: Hey people, welcome to Accidental Gods. To the podcast where we believe that another world is still possible and that if we all work together, there is still time to lay the foundations for that future that we would be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. I'm Manda Scott, your host and fellow traveller on this journey into possibility. And if you've listened to this podcast at all before, you know that I believe really strongly that we need to shift from our trauma culture to a resilient, connected initiation culture where we can open our heart minds to the web of life, moment by moment, and ask 'what do you want of me?' And then respond to the answers in real time, with flexibility and authenticity and a grounded awareness of our inseparable place within the huge, complex matrix that is the more than human world. But you will also know that I spend quite a lot of time on the podcast asking people, how do we do this? Because knowing that we need to, and finding ways where ordinary people can do this and change the nature of our world are two different things. I know this is possible. I see it in our dreaming students, and I see it in some of you who listen to the podcast. But I am always immensely hungry for connections with other people who are walking within the web of life. And so our guest this week is one of these people, someone who walks this path with enormous grace and huge integrity.
Manda: Cynthia Jurs is a Buddhist. She met her root teacher, Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, in the early 1980s, and in 1994 she became a teacher in his tradition, the Order of Interbeing. Earlier than that, though, in 1990 she went to Nepal to a remote cave 13,000ft up in the mountains to meet an old man, a 106 year old man who was a lama within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. And this lama gave Cynthia an assignment. She was to engage with the ancient tradition of Earth Treasure Vases. That's our anglicised version of this ancient tradition. The actual translation is 'vessels giving life essence to the earth'. And this is what they are and this is what Cynthia did. She sourced these small, very sacred pottery vessels, and she has spent the past 34 years making pilgrimages around the world to engage in sacred practice with local communities, gathering their prayers and whatever is sacred to them, so that they can be placed in the vessel and interred with clear, sacred intent in the earth. She calls these acupuncture points in the earth, and as you'll hear, there was a point relatively early on in Australia when she slipped into the Dreamtime and understood the connection between each of the vases that had already been interred, so that they formed a web around the world. There have been three generations of these vases, and there may be a fourth, so that in the end there could be as many as 108 of them. The practice is still going on and still engages incredibly committed people all around the world.
Manda: And Cynthia's work was such that in 2018, she was given the honorary title of Lama in recognition of her work. And all of this she has written in a book. It's called Summoned By The Earth; Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing Our World. And if you're interested at all in how we can learn to connect with the web of life, I absolutely encourage you to read it. It's beautifully written, and it recalls and records an incredibly beautiful set of practices.
Manda: And now, inspired by her years of service and her connections with others who care so deeply, Cynthia is forging a new path of Dharma in service to Gaia, a path deeply rooted in the feminine honouring of indigenous cultures and devoted to collective awakening. If you want to join her, cynthia leads meditations, retreats, courses and pilgrimages to support the emergence of a global community of engaged and embodied sacred activists. I have put all of the links in the show notes, and I totally encourage you to follow them up. But in the meantime, please dive with me into a thoroughly heartfelt, completely inspiring conversation. People of the podcast, please welcome Lama Cynthia Jurs, author of summoned by the Earth.
Manda: Cynthia, welcome to the Accidental Gods podcast, and thank you so much for managing all my complete chaos with the time. How are you and where are you this lovely October day?
Cynthia: Thank you so much for having me, Manda. It's really wonderful to meet you and be here. I am in Santa Fe, New Mexico in the mountain time zone, and I'm really delighted to be here today on a very beautiful October day here, too.
Manda: Thank you. I would ask about the election, but actually it's probably too painful for almost everybody, so let's not go there. Let's start with the fact that you have written an astonishing book, which is an account of an astonishing life. The book is called Summoned By the Earth; Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing our World. And as I probably will say in the introduction, and will say again in the outro, Anyone listening to this podcast needs to read this book. If you're interested at all in any of the spiritual work that we do, Cynthia is living it and lays out very nicely the steps to get there. So Cynthia, it's a very long story and there's a lot that happens, but I would like a little bit of grounding of how you came to do any of this. Just way, way, way back to the beginning of Cynthia, to what was it that spurred you from let's call it a mundane life, a modernity life, to a spiritual life.
Cynthia: Oh, well, I don't know. You know, I grew up in a very agnostic family. My parents were not church goers. They really rejected any kind of spiritual tradition. My father grew up as a Christian Scientist, and then his mother and his brother died very young because they wouldn't seek medical help, so that was very disillusioning to him. My mother's family were semi Christians, writers and publishers and community people, but she was really an agnostic and she really taught me about loving nature. So that came in pretty early on, but I was always hungry from the time I was a little girl for something spiritual. And they always said, well, you know, if you want to go to church, you can go, just be free. You know, they didn't stop me, but they weren't much help. And so I was searching, you know, I think I was really searching. And then it took a while. I kind of circled in and around a lot of different possible paths. And then I discovered Buddhism, and I was moved by it because it didn't really ask me to believe in an external God. It really points to our own Buddha nature, our own awakened nature, which is something that we all have. And the process of accessing that through meditation is the path of Buddhist practice. And of course, meditation is really helpful. So that was maybe one answer to that question.
Manda: Yeah. There's a beautiful bit in the book where you're in a bookstore in California and you've decided to take yourself on a silent retreat, which, again, is not something that the standard everyday person suddenly thinks, okay, silent retreat, that's a good thing. And you found a book about the female presences within Buddhism, as far as I can tell. And it sounds like that really gave you a baseline for what came next. So if we skip forward a little while. You met Thich Naht Hanh of Plum Village and Interbeing, and by this time, it sounds like you were becoming more embedded in Buddhist practice, being part of your identity. Would that be a reasonable thing to say?
Cynthia: That would. I was very moved by Thich Nhat Hanh and his teachings of what he calls engaged Buddhism, which some people call sacred activism. Taking us off the cushion and into the world in response to the suffering that we're witnessing, whatever that happens to be, and it's different everywhere. But I really appreciated that about him. And he became one of my very, very important teachers. I became a teacher in his lineage, but I also had a very strong interest in Tibetan Buddhism and was practising very deeply in that tradition as well. So sort of hand in hand. And that book you mentioned, that literally fell off the shelf at me in the bookstore, is a book called Women of Wisdom, and it's by Lama Tsultrim Allione, who was writing about telling the stories of the great women practitioners in that form of Buddhism, whose stories you don't hear because it's a very patriarchal system. And so mostly what we hear about are the great masters who happen to be men, and I was very interested in finding out more about the women, and I still am. This has been a big motivation for me, to really bring more attention to a feminine experience.
Manda: And then you also knew someone in the US who was of Nepalese origin, I believe. And he was the one who led you to the old man in the cave who was 106 years old. We're talking seriously old man in a cave! I realise you've probably talked about this on about 150 other podcasts, but for the people who haven't heard it before, give us the the edited highlights of the beginnings of the quest that has consumed, as far as I can tell, the last half of your life.
Cynthia: Well, through a mutual friend, I was introduced to this young lama named Lama Ngawang Tsultrim, who is from Nepal. He was in Nepal, although he does have a small centre in the United States. But at the time he was living in Nepal and his teacher was a very old lama, whose residence was a cave way up in the Himalayas and in a very remote part of the world. So this friend of mine was going to meet him and I asked if I could join him and he said yes, okay, you can come along. And I was just sort of possessed with wanting to go meet this old lama. But it wasn't until I was literally walking up the path, huffing and puffing because of the altitude, to go meet this old lama in the cave that I realised, wow, I have the chance to go ask a question of the old wise man in the cave. What am I going to ask him? My goodness, I'd better come up with a good question. So then I was pretty much consumed with what would my question be? And the thing that came to me is, what can we do to bring healing and protection to the earth?
Cynthia: And that really has always been my concern, although in a lot of ways I wasn't in touch with it. This was in 1990. So a long time ago and an early part of my life. But when I when I hit on that question, I realised, that's it, that's it. And even back then we were starting to see the signs of the unravelling of the web of life in all the ways that are now showing themselves ever more vividly. And so that was my question. And then we got there, we met him. He welcomed us. We lived with him for several weeks before I had the chance to actually talk with him. And then I did. He asked me what it was like, you know, where we live. And I spoke to him about things that I was seeing and concerns that I was having. And one of the concerns being the radioactive waste that comes from the production of nuclear weapons, which is happening here in Los Alamos, the laboratory near my home in Santa Fe. Where these weapons began and are still being produced, and how those substances affect the web of life and all kinds of other things, you know.
Cynthia: But he said, you need to get these Earth Treasure Vases, and you need to put them in the ground, and they will do that work of bringing healing and protection to the whole area around where they're placed. And my mind really didn't know what to think because first of all, a little clay pot filled with prayers and symbolic offerings, I just didn't know how that could possibly do the work that is called for in these times. And yet the other part of me was going, well, okay, this change that's called for, the healing that's called, for has to happen on many levels. Who's to say how that's going to happen or how we should address it? We have to address it in all kinds of ways. And so this is what's coming to me. Okay, where can I get some? And so then we were directed to another monastery where the lama there said, of course, how many would you like? And again, I didn't know what to say. You know, it was like a hundred thousand, you know.
Manda: Yeah, exactly. What's a good number? Think of a number. And what size are these vases? Just tell us a little bit about what they look like.
Cynthia: Well, the original ones were about maybe eight inches tall, something like that.
Manda: And they're cylindrical or are they kind of standard globe shaped, like a vase?
Cynthia: Fat little bodies and a little neck. And I asked for 25. I didn't know what to say and they said, well, yes, of course. And I received 30. And then some years later I received another 40 that were about half the size. So they are about 5 or 6in. Much smaller but the same shape. And they were made at the same time. The lamas gathered a lot of very sacred substances and mixed them into the clay, and then gave them to us to fill with sacred offerings that are meaningful to us and to the people in the communities where we go, so that they can make their own offerings and prayers into these little pots. And that process has been so amazing really to take this little pot to all these places around the world where healing and protection is called for, and into these communities, and work with elders and activists and young people and old people and everything in between. To just invite people to share what's in their heart mind about what they love and care about and what they want to see protected and bring healing to. And then all of those offerings, so to speak, are filling this little pot until it becomes almost like a living being, you know, and then it's planted like a seed in, in the area where it is going. And then all of those prayers, all of those offerings, really radiate out into the whole region. But what has happened in the course of filling them is that people really get in touch with their own calling, you know.
Manda: Yeah. What really matters to them.
Cynthia: Exactly.
Manda: I was really struck, reading through, by how much everybody who's involved in this takes it really seriously and really gets the sacred nature of what's happening. There wasn't, as far as I could tell, anyone who treated it as something mundane. Everybody dropped into that sacred level where this really matters, and I will give it the best of me. And then you talk sometimes about sealing them. Is the technique of sealing them something that you were taught in Nepal, or is that dependent on where you are in the world also?
Cynthia: Mhm. Well, there's a very traditional way of carrying this practice out, coming from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. And so once they're filled then they're sealed and then they're planted or buried in the earth. In our case, we decided they they would like to have some sort of a protective container around them to keep them in the ground. And so that was always a very creative process for people involved, because each step of the way, you know, you have to figure out how you're going to do it. And the container was always a really creative part of it. So they would be sealed. There's a cork that goes in the mouth. And that cork is opened and closed every time you do a ceremony over the course of time while the treasure vase is being filled. And then once it's full, then it's sealed with beeswax so it won't come out. And then we drape over it some fabric that is representative of the five Buddha families, which is basically the mandala. So there's the centre and the four directions of the mandala. And that really represents the prayers inside the little holy vessel going out in every direction. And then they're tied with more ties of those same five colours and then sealed with, you know the old letter sealing wax with the stamp? So we drip that onto the ties and stamp it down.
Cynthia: So it's really sealed upon sealed. So those prayers are just in there like they're going to do their job. You can feel it. And even you mentioned about people appreciating the practice. First of all, everywhere I have ever been, everyone recognises that there is a need for help with the earth and with what's happening in this sort of unravelling that we're going through, in so many ways around the world. And so there hasn't ever been anyone who goes, oh, well, no, this isn't needed. But even the most cynical people, they would take a treasure vase in their hands in one of these ceremonies, and it would come to them and they'd go, oh my goodness it feels like it's alive!
Manda: Because it is!
Cynthia: They can tell like this is for real. It's not just some airy fairy thing. It's a real thing. And even those kinds of people, they would have their minds a little bit blown, I think. So they have some power, you know. And it's like you can't figure it out, you can't say what it's going to do. There's no predicting it. And everywhere I've ever been, I've had to learn how to not project what I think should happen onto the situation, but really allow it to unfold in its own way and then be surprised and be amazed, really.
Manda: Right. And that was something that comes through very clearly in the book, was your capacity to know when you were projecting. I decide we're going there, but it just doesn't happen. And then you settle and you let yourself drop in and you let something come to you from whatever is sending it. And then the synchronicities all begin to stack up and everything flows, and you know that you're heading in the right place. And I loved, just before we move, I want to really look at some of the examples of places you took it; this concept of acupuncture for the earth. That this is, in a way, acupuncture. Very briefly, when I was a veterinary surgeon, I trained in veterinary acupuncture. And it is one of those things where you have to switch off your left brain or your head mind. There is no way you can get your head around how does this work, but you can watch it working. And so therefore what you need to do is to learn how to make it work, rather than half your brain going no it can't, and the other half going, well, yes, but it is. So I am assuming from the beginning you were within the mindset that this is working. And I was wondering whether the acupuncture for the Earth concept was something that helped you to override your own inner doubts, or did you just not have any inner doubts?
Cynthia: No, I had inner doubts. I didn't know, you know. I mean, it took me, 5 or 6 years after receiving the little pots before I started working with them. Because I was, first of all, really overwhelmed with how do you even approach this? And then okay, well, if we were to approach it, where do we take them and how do we do this? And it was just a lot of doubt, a lot of questioning and not a lot of help actually, in the beginning. Because the Lamas were all like, well, yeah, you can do this, but it's not really the main practice. You know, you should really be doing this, that or the other. And for me, it was as if they were crazy because look at what's happening in the world, you know?
Manda: Yeah right, Let's do this. This is the thing.
Cynthia: This is it. So anyway, it's funny you say that about acupuncture. And my husband is a veterinarian, and he specialises in veterinary acupuncture.
Manda: Oh does he? Oh!
Cynthia: Yes. And he's taught it and everything. He's not practising too much now, but he still does. And so of course with acupuncture and especially with animals, they can't say to you, oh, that feels really good or that's really working. You just have to observe and you'd see they're working or it's not. So yeah, I really had the feeling like these little clay pots going into the ground was like an acupuncture needle going into the earth. And there's all kinds of ways that balance is restored and healing is accomplished. But for us, it starts with our intentions. If we're cultivating an intention to bring healing, to be of benefit, then that is an energy that's going out into the world. And that's a good place to begin, not just go, oh, well, who knows?
Manda: No exactly. Let's just plonk these anywhere because it doesn't matter and get on with what the lamas tell us we should be doing. I'm so glad you didn't do that. There are so many stories of places you took the vases. They all struck me actually, every single one of them is really fascinating and every single one of them could be a podcast on its own. Liberia and Australia were the two that really leapt out for me. So if that feels okay, tell us a little bit about Liberia first. And particularly, if we can weave in the story of the man named Christian, because that had me weeping. It was just so moving and so profoundly obvious that change is happening.
Cynthia: Yeah, it was one of the places that I've been where the most obvious and tangible changes occurred. So it's a good example. Liberia, as you may or may not know, is a very small country in western Africa that had a long history of brutal civil war. Very conflicted, very dangerous. And I was invited to bring a treasure vase there. After the Civil War ended, there was a group doing peace building work called the Everyday Gandhi's.
Manda: Yeah, I love that.
Cynthia: Yeah. And I knew someone who was with them and suggested that a vase be brought there. And I mean, at the time, I didn't even know where Liberia was, so I had to learn a lot. It was actually the women who stopped the war. There's a beautiful film called Pray the Devil Back to Hell, um, about the women's peace movement. And in any case, to make a long story short, I took a treasure vase to Liberia and met a lot of people there, including former combatants and ex-child soldiers. Many of the women who stopped the war, tribal leaders, leaders of both Muslim and Christian faiths who were all coming together to make sure that peace was upheld after the war ended. And so I went into the worst fought area of the war, where this group was doing most of their work. And that's where we took the treasure vase. And it involved meeting with leaders in the community, all kinds of people, the elders, the traditional elders, and also the spiritual leaders and political leaders. I mean, you know, everybody just kind of came out of the woodwork, actually. And then we had to do a ceremony that the women would go into trance to ask the ancestors whether this little clay pot was something that would be wanted, whether they should accept it into their community. And I was sort of on the edge of my seat not knowing what would happen next. And had to be prepared for the fact that maybe it wasn't accepted.
Manda: They might say no.
Cynthia: They might say no. And then what actually did happen is that this one ancestral figure spoke through one of the women and said, yes, it was a very good thing and that they should do this. So then everybody breathed a big sigh of relief and prepared to go ahead. And we ended up having a gathering. The area that I was in shares a border with both Guinea and Sierra Leone. So the three countries Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, all were part of this war. Everybody was brought into it. And so people came from three countries for the ceremony, to make offerings into the treasure vase and pray for peace. And there were hundreds of people in this big, huge circle, all just pouring their hearts out, sitting for hours. And so when it was all full, then we sealed it and then the drums came out, the dancing started happening, and all of that was going on. And a big feast. And then it was time to take it to where the elders had decided to bury it. And that was in the village of this one elder who had spoken during the ceremony. And the people had wanted to build what they called at the time a palaver hut, or now called a peace hut in that village, as a place to go. Traditionally it is a place to go to resolve conflict and to kind of be together in peace.
Manda: Yeah. And to have mediation. It sounded like there was a kind of formal or semi-formal mediation system happening.
Cynthia: Exactly. And it's a traditional system that's independent of the court system, which is very corrupt, and that's a way that people resolve conflicts amongst themselves. So in any case, we went to the village to bury the treasure vase in this part of Liberia, and everybody was very involved and really deeply caring, and it was an amazing experience. And when it was all over, one of the elders turned to me and he goes, well, now what? We want to remember these prayers. This was really important to us. What what do we do next? And I'm always like, it's not for me to say what you should do in your Land. You know, this is your culture, your community. I'm just coming with this little humble offering. And so I turned it back on them. I don't know; what would you feel would be a good way to to proceed? So what ended up happening is that they decided to build one of these peace huts in the village right where the treasure base had been buried. So our organisation raised the money for them to do that, and we sent it over. And then they built the Peace Hut. And I returned about a year later to celebrate the building of the hut.
Cynthia: And that was another amazing experience with everybody coming and celebrating and dancing and honouring this whole thing. And then the people in the village came up and said, well, you know, all of this is very wonderful, but what we really need is water. Because we have to walk, the women have to walk miles and miles to fetch water. And at certain times of year it's not clean, so we get sick and it's a terrible, vicious cycle. Could you help us dig a well? So I went home and raised some more money and we sent it over and they dug a well. And then there was fresh water and it was really like life returning to the land. And in the course of all of this, I got to know a lot of people over there, including one gentleman who was a former general in the country. And then, again long story short, he ended up fighting in the rebel forces in the north, in that same area in the North. And his name is Christian Barthelson, his story is really powerful because he has this long history of being a fighter.
Cynthia: And then when the war ended, he had to put down his gun, like they all did. And it just so happened he met this group, the Everyday Gandhis, and they asked him if he wanted to become a peace builder. And he said yes. So his life turned completely around. And I met him not that long afterwards. And when he heard me ring the bell to initiate a period of meditation which I was teaching, he said his life changed again and he asked me if I would teach him how to meditate. And I couldn't believe it. You know, it was like, really? Who me? You? And it just was one of those. But he wouldn't take no for an answer. He just pestered me until I came around and I started to work with him. And he ended up meeting Thich Nhat Hanh, he lived off and on at Plum Village, Thich Nhat Hanh's community for about three years. His life completely transformed. He will never pick up a gun again. His life is completely dedicated to peace.
Manda: And he had been quite a notorious general, as far as I could tell from the book. His name was known and people were deeply afraid of him. So to see him change around must have been an extraordinary thing for the whole country. I was reading a bit where he went on the radio station to tell people what he'd done, and they were getting inundated with phone calls afterwards of just gratitude that he had shifted himself. Because I guess if he could do it, anyone could do it.
Cynthia: Exactly, exactly. So, yeah, I still work with him, and he's still hoping to bring peace to the world. It sometimes takes a long time, for those kinds of deep changes to take root. But we ended up building five peace huts in different conflict prone regions of Liberia. There's a whole peace building program that he and his colleague Harper Karman direct, with some of the women who are very involved in the work under the peace huts. And there's been some wonderful things that have come from taking a treasure vase to Liberia and the transformation within the people and within him.
Manda: And I think it's worth saying that certainly as far as I was aware, Liberia was the place you were most likely to be raped as a woman, like pretty close to 100%.
Cynthia: You might be thinking about Congo, because I also went to Congo. The Democratic Republic of Congo. No worries. They're both really bad places, you know.
Manda: But they're becoming better. That's the thing to remember.
Cynthia: They are, they are.
Manda: Yes. No, you're right. It was Congo. Yeah.
Cynthia: After I went to Liberia, I realised I had to go to Congo because I was starting to really identify some of what I call core wounds in the world, that if we're talking about healing the earth, we have to address. And the rape of women is one of them, because it's so epidemic and is in every street corner, every household of the planet practically, you know. But the worst place in the world is supposedly the Democratic Republic of Congo. And when I learned about that, I became interested in going there with this prayer. And the connection between the rape of women and the rape of the earth is very obvious also, really; how we treat each other and how we treat Mother Earth needs to change. So that was a very important trip as well, to go there into the heart of Africa, which is so important. And I met the indigenous peoples of the forest in Congo who brought the treasure vase into their hearts and met with a lot of women and did some incredible work with Nema nama Damu, who is one of my global sisters and started an organisation called Hero Women Rising. And truly, Congo is one of the most beautiful places in the world. And so this attitude about Congo also really needs to change. But it's the minerals. That Congo is so rich in minerals and those minerals are what fuels this.
Manda: Yeah. And the whole fossil free renewable revolution that is in fact just going to destroy other places.
Cynthia: So anyway, that's another story in the book. It's a great story. You wanted to go, I think maybe somewhere else. To Australia.
Manda: Yes, yes. Tell us a little bit about Australia because all the synchronicities of that; the Dalai Lama! Tell us about that. And the various ramifications of that I think is what was so interesting.
Cynthia: Well, I'd be curious to know what caught your attention. It was incredible for me, though, because I was trying to take this practice all around the planet and to cover as much ground as we possibly could. And I realised Australia is a whole continent; I got to go there, but I didn't really have a feeling of exactly what the calling was for Australia, until I was just about ready to go. And then I realised, huh, I think this is going to be a really important trip. And I went in into Australia. The people that I was partnering with had organised us to start with teachings from the Dalai Lama in Sydney.
Manda: Who just happened to be in Australia at the time you were going there, I think the synchronicity of that is gorgeous.
Cynthia: It is. And they organised for the little treasure vase to sit on the altar in the great big, huge hall where all these thousands of people were gathered. And there he was. And he picked it up one day and he chuckled and he just said, ho ho ho! This little pot and kind of gave it his blessing. And then everywhere we went, because we went around the continent, especially to Uluru, which is the big, beautiful, amazing monument of natural rock formation in the middle of the desert. And we were welcomed to country, which is a traditional practice that the elders from each region will, if you're lucky, you know they will welcome you to their land. And that makes it possible, it's almost like the portal opens, and you suddenly have your own connection to the spirits of the land, the ancestral energies of the land, the beings of the place. And it's an important practice for them, the Aboriginal people, to enter properly to a new place. And so we were taught about that. And the treasure vase was blessed by the custodial elder of Uluru, who was the one who originally invited me to come. Uncle Bob Randall, who's no longer alive, but who we honour deeply for his incredible teachings about unconditional love with responsibility, that he calls kanyini. And so we received his blessing and then we travelled up to the Northern Territory into Arnhem Land and were introduced to another elder who became my adopted mother, Aunty Margaret Katherine, from the Jaowyn people. And she took all of us under her wing.
Manda: And she gave you skin names. I wondered if that came from kin names or what is a skin name? Can you tell us that a bit?
Cynthia: That's a good question. I'm not exactly sure how it originally came about, but those tribes of Aboriginal people, they establish the familial connection between everyone. So it helps to keep everyone in their proper relationship. And if you were to cross into other kinds of relationships, that's not a good thing. So it's a way of keeping harmony really within the context of a tribe. And so it was important for her that we all understood our relationship to each other as well. So she recognised me as her daughter. And I have three brothers now from Australia who were there in very important roles on that journey, and all of us in the group got identified, you know, aunties, uncles, sisters, brothers, father, mother, grandfather. All of it. It was like there we all were and so we became family.
Manda: And it felt like a functional family. And so many of us come from dysfunctional families. You probably didn't, but.
Cynthia: Well, I did actually.
Manda: There we go. But in the West there's a strong chance you came from a dysfunctional family. And then Auntie Margaret has created a functional family around everything that you're doing. It just felt so beautiful.
Cynthia: It was so beautiful, Manda. And I needed that for my own healing. Because I did have some challenges within my own family. And so this was really healing. I always wanted brothers, I didn't have brothers, now I have brothers. The first pilgrimage to Australia was to plant the last of the original set of earth treasure vases in Australia. Out of that came this second generation I mentioned in the beginning, and I had brought four more for each of the four directions of that continent. Because the Australian people were so moved by this practice, they really connected with it in a big way. So we'd been around and this kind of global family was coming together around the practice. But we didn't realise we were a family until she made us one, you know? And then all of a sudden, there was just such a sense of connection between us. And that has helped tremendously in what we now call the Gaia Mandala. It's a whole global community of people all around the world who are sharing this great love of the earth and with and for each other. And she really helped us to claim our relationship to each other and the earth in a way that was so deeply meaningful. And I ended up going back more or less three times in a row, to bless this second generation starting up, going into some other incredible places in Australia, including a 50 000 year old rock shelter that she was the custodial elder of.
Manda: That you can only get to by helicopter, is that the one? And she took archaeologists there, which struck me was that a good thing?
Cynthia: Yeah. Some archaeologists were flying around by helicopter, kind of over that land, looking around to see what they might find. And they they looked down, and they went, oh, that's interesting, maybe we should land and go take a look. And they did and they found this place, which of course, her people knew about for 50,000 years. And she was the elder who had carried the knowledge about this place. So they found her and she was the one that they worked with to understand the significance of this place. It's got paintings on the ceiling, 30 some odd rock supports for a ceiling that then is covered with art going back that long. And it's just an unbelievably incredible place that is kind of like the Sistine Chapel. It's just so amazing. And that's where she invited us to go with one of the little vessels, which is planted in a private secret location.
Manda: It sounded like quite a lot of them were secret, but then some of the African ones sounded like there were actually hundreds of people watching.
Cynthia: Well in Liberia, when you're dealing with a war zone, you know, you can't have secrecy; it doesn't develop trust. So we did that publicly. But many of them are placed in a way where no one should ever be able to find it. It's not like we go, oh, here's here's where it is everybody!
Manda: Yes, yes. Come and dig it up anytime you like. No, but I do have visions of 10,000 years down the line if we make it through, somebody's going to find one by accident, and it's going to trigger one of those, oh my goodness, look what we just found. It's amazing. It's an ancient artefact. And you planted it. It's going to be cool. And in Australia, it felt like you dropped into the dream time. It seemed to me and you said you really entered a different state of reality. And the state of reality, that, as far as I can tell, the indigenous peoples live in quite a lot. I don't know if you've read Tyson Yunkaporta's latest book, Right Story, Wrong Story, but it's beautiful. And I read Summoned by the Earth just after I'd read that. So I was in that Australian space. The whole book is beautiful and very much deals with this space, but there's a bit in it where he's describing the making of a dugout canoe, and the adults are going off making a canoe, but the young people, the children, are playing in a bend of the north bank of the river, jumping in and out of the water, because today it is safe and tomorrow it won't be. The crocodiles will be there. And he just drops that in. And then 100 pages later on he says, we don't have the Palaeolithic fight and flight response that you white people have, because we know where the predators are, always. And that that flipped my, you know, we make so many assumptions of who we are and who our ancestors were and who indigenous people are. That is, they were very much like us, except they didn't have iPhones, but otherwise their physiological responses were the same. And it just isn't true. And I wondered, did you, this is purely my own brain exploring different avenues; did you sink into a space place where you felt the rest of the web of life alive around you such that you knew where the predators were?
Cynthia: Mhm. Something happened for me in Australia that now we're touching on it, it makes me cry. And I'm not sure I could say I knew where the predators were, but I felt intimately connected to the entire web of life, yes. I mean, there was a moment, I do write about it in the book, but there was a moment where I was alone in the location where we ended up burying that first vase on Auntie Margaret's land. Not the rock shelter, but before that. And it was such a fulfilment for me, because it was the last of the original ones. And I had been just so deeply committed to doing this. And there we were, and my group was staying there so that they could come to me. And the sun was going down, the full moon was rising. The, oh, I'm forgetting the name of the animals that are like coyotes that we have here.
Manda: Dingoes.
Cynthia: Dingoes were howling, kind of out there. I had my back up against the rock. I was touching the earth, just giving thanks for this moment. And it was just like everything fell into place. Later that night, after we had done what we came to do, we were sitting around the fire, which is something that you do in the outback of Australia. Just sit around the fire and tell stories. And Aunty Margaret had said to my brother Ben, she said, you know, she called the vase my teacher. She thought that was my teacher. And she said her teacher is in the dream time now. You know it's entered the dream time. We will tell this story to all who come after and we will remember this moment and these intentions. And then we were just sitting there like we couldn't sleep because we had kind of awakened to this so much larger reality. Ben said the vase has entered the dream time. The songlines have come to life. You know, the way they speak about the connection between places. And there in that outback, there's no electricity. The sky is just filled with stars and the thick stars fall all the way down to the ground. I mean, as far as the eye can see, it's just so incredibly vast. And the people carry such an awareness of the vastness of the interconnected web of life that is just impossible to even put into words. But that awareness was awakened for me.
Manda: Exactly. And you felt it. And this gives me enormous hope that white Western people, from whatever background, can connect to the web of life and can feel it move through you. And so I'd like to take us to that, because it feels like the the vases are still ongoing. Perhaps in the end there might be 108 of them. There might be a fourth wave. If you want to talk a little bit about the ones that are made in the US, great. But I'm really, really interested as we head down to the wire, about your journey now with Tara, Gaia, with the web of life and its place in your life. And also where I really want to get to is ordinary people listening, who who probably aren't going to give 34 years of their life to doing amazing spiritual work around the world, but can still do amazing things in their own communities. How can we help them to deepen their connection? But let's carry on with with you and where you're at. First wave acupuncture point set and then the amazing acupuncture channels have wakened up and you can see them and feel them. Where does that take us?
Cynthia: Well, for me, the assignment really brought me into the realisation that the earth is our greatest teacher in these times. And of course, Aboriginal cultures and indigenous peoples all over the world have looked to the earth as the great teacher. But us white folks in the dominant culture on life on earth are missing a lot of those teachings. But I was hungering for that inside of the Buddhist teachings that I love so much and have studied so deeply. But the patriarchal system of how those teachings are passed on was a bit problematic, along with some of the abuses, you know, the abuse of power that is often experienced not just in that tradition, but many traditions and systems. So I was grappling with a lot of those kinds of things at the same time as doing all of this. And I realised that the Earth really is an amazing teacher. That the Earth is just the embodiment of the greatest teacher, of the greatest teachings and of the community that practices them. This is what we talk about in Buddhism: the Three Jewels are the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, which is the teacher, the teachings and the community. And so those three jewels are perfectly embodied in this great jewel in space, Mother Gaia, this living being, this incredibly vast, unbelievably beautiful living being of which we are each a part. We're not separate.
Manda: Yes, we are an integral part of the web of life. It's the separability or the sense that we are separate. Something happened in the history of our culture that didn't happen to Auntie Margaret's people or the indigenous peoples of the Congo or anywhere else. And we lost that knowing. But what I'm hearing from you is that you're finding it again.
Cynthia: Well, I'm finding it again. Yes. And I began to turn my allegiance, really, to Mother Gaia. And through carrying out the treasure vases, I really learned to listen to the earth and to be guided by her needs and to answer to her calling, her summons. That's why I called my book Summoned by the Earth. And so gradually that has become the focus for me. And so I'm kind of carving a new path, really. Because at a certain point, I had to kind of decide where I wanted to focus my own spiritual practice. And a whole practice came to me in addition to the way we carry out the treasure vases, which is a practice of I call her the Sublime Mother Gaia. And I had done a practice from the Tibetan tradition for many years of Tara, who you probably have heard of, and she's a revered, beloved deity in that tradition. And she helped me a lot. You know, she's supposed to come when called. And in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, we talk about these deities, but they're really just personifications of our own innate nature, you know, our own awakened nature.
Cynthia: And so I called on Tara a lot, and she did help. But she began to then evolve, really for me, into a personification of Mother Gaia. And so I teach that practice now, and it has its own mantra and visualisation. And it's a beautiful practice. And when I teach it, I'm always surprised and moved by how hungry people are for such a practice. You know, because we all do receive so much benefit from going out into nature. We come back to our true selves, as Thich Nhat Hanh would say, we come back to our own true nature. It's a reflection of our own nature, when we go into the forest or to the ocean or hike up the mountain. Whatever it is that takes us into that experience with the stars falling from the sky, and we take note and we remember. This is how we can restore our own balance. So it's one thing to carry out this earth treasure vase and take it all around the world. It's another thing to realise that actually everyone of us is a holy vessel.
Cynthia: We are a vessel filled with profound gifts for the world that is coming from our deepest love and caring for life. And the dominant culture will do a lot to try to convince us that we don't have that power, or that it's not important, or we can't do whatever it is we think we want to do. But we can. And so accessing that calling, that summons within our own selves, realising that we have, as part of the web of life, interconnected with Gaia herself, we have a gift to give. Each of us has an offering that is going to be important for restoring that balance to the world, and we need to give it, actually. This is the time for what I now talk about a collective awakening. The time of the individual awakening is kind of over. We realise we're in this together. We can't do it alone, it's way too big, you know? So, I give thanks for all the people who've come forward now to help carry this practice out, which is continuing through others. Anyway, I don't know if that answers your question.
Manda: Totally. I've got so many questions, Cynthia, and I don't want to drag us off into my own pet agendas. So you have Gaia Mandala, your website, which I will link in the show notes and people can come along. And as far as I can tell online, they can do full moon meditations, they can come and explore Tara, Gaia, work with you. And they can deepen this practice a lot. One of the things that the students that I teach are often asking a lot will come with the question of what is mine to do? How do I discover what is mine to do? And I don't have a clear answer for that, other than sit very still, get to know everything that goes on inside you, and something will arise that will feel different, and you will know it when it's there. And your head mind will try and give you a thousand options, and you just need to learn to let them go. I suspect you have a much clearer, better, more succinct answer than that. If somebody were to come to you saying, how do I find what's mine to do? And I'm guessing quite a lot of people do. What is your response to that?
Cynthia: Well, it is different for everybody, you know. And so we all have to find our own way. And we all want someone to tell us what to do. But in fact, it is about coming back to our true self and forming a relationship with with her or with him or with them. And so one way of doing that is to stop. Stop for a little while and take a take a few breaths, come back to this incredible system that is operating in us with every breath, that connects us to the breath of life. When we when we breathe with awareness, we're actually connecting with the life force of Mother Gaia. We would die without that breath. So that's that's an important thing to do. And we are usually so distracted that we don't even realise this is going on. But when we can Stop for even just a few breaths, we come back right away. We come back to our own nature. We come back to that capacity to conspire and to conspire with something so much larger than ourselves. And we realise when we do stop, it's like we start to see, oh my gosh, I've been just so consumed with this that and the other that is so irrelevant to the big picture, you know, and we lose our way. So that's one thing. And of course meditation is a way to do that. So just coming back to the present moment, not trying to figure it out.
Manda: Yes. Heart mind. Not head mind. Thank you.
Cynthia: Yeah.
Manda: And are you seeing then, because you said individual awakening; we need now to be in the collective awakening. And it seems to me, or it feels to me that whatever the trauma was that separated our culture. Francis Weller has a concept of initiation culture and trauma culture, which I find very compelling. But a long, long time ago, probably ten, 12,000 years ago, something separated our ancestors from the web, such that we are the inheritors of that sense of not knowing how to ask for the help that we need, or even being certain that the help is always there. Some of us are coming back. It feels to me as if the the worst excesses of the trauma culture are flaring now, more than they have ever done in the history of the world, as far as we know. Or the history of our culture. And yet also there are treasure vases now planted all over the world. There are people who are turning away from being military psychopaths to being connected, and to knowing how to breathe and to listening to the sound of the bell. And so when I sit still enough, I have a sense of I could at any moment choose to give compassion and joy and wonder and gratitude out into the world. Or I could give my despair and my rage and my terrible grief, and that one or other of those feeds one or other side of what feels like a quite finely balanced set of balances. Does that concur with your concepts and perception?
Cynthia: Yeah. And the more we feed the spirit of what we want to see in the world, the more that comes into being. And if it's too difficult to stop for a few breaths on our own, we need to find others to stop with who will support that transformation. And the tree outside the door is a great place to start. You know, to go and breathe with the tree and put your back up against it and go, okay, I'm with you. You know, literally touch the ground. Ask for a relationship with the world, the natural world, the world of Mother Gaia. Give her your gratitude for your life. Make steps of peace, make offerings. And that's another thing that we've forgotten about; if we want to have a relationship of balance and harmony in our lives, it is helpful to give back and not just take all the time.
Manda: And give things that we value of ourselves, of our time, of our being.
Cynthia: So there's a lot of ways that we can begin to transform our lives and to begin to access that which is our true calling, which gives us joy, which gives us a sense of purpose and connects us to the larger community, the web of life. When we're doing what we hate, we're not connected in the way that we need to be.
Manda: Yes. And modernity is so obviously collapsing all around us that doing the things we hate needs to stop being a thing. We're very nearly at the end of our hour. I am interested in how the people who still exist within what was, at least at the beginning, quite a patriarchal system that you worked within, and now you are teaching what feels to me like a very feminine, spiritual version of the teachings that they were holding. How are they taking that?
Cynthia: That's a very good question. Some of them don't like it very much.
Manda: Darn. I was so, so hoping you were going to say yeah, they've all come to the realisation that this is what the world needs and they're right behind me.
Cynthia: No. There's some that are really hanging on to the past and a certain way of being. Very, you could say, maybe fundamentalist. There's others who are all for it. For example, the foreword to my book was written by Robert Thurman, who is a Westerner, but he's been involved in Tibetan Buddhism for his pretty much entire life and very close to the Dalai Lama. And he wrote an amazing foreword to my book. That was a mind blower for me, really, because I didn't imagine someone like him would even, I don't know, I just didn't expect it because I am kind of speaking out about some of the things that need to change. But it kind of remains to be seen.
Manda: Work in progress.
Cynthia: I would really welcome more responses from the traditional world of the dharma. But I also feel that where the practice has led me is into the wider world. I'm not that interested in just being held within the context of Buddhism, because I think the issues that we're dealing with and the call for healing that is needed is so much bigger and so much broader. And we all have to bring it about no matter who we are or where we are.
Manda: Yeah, right. And so we don't limit ourselves by labelling as a particular tradition. We just are doing the best that we can at any given moment. Brilliant. So we are nearing the end of our hour. Cynthia, this has been amazing. Your book is genuinely life changing and I will say as often as I can that I think anyone listening to this would really benefit from reading it, and then coming to your websites and engaging with you in the ways that people can, and in person if you're in the States and then online if you're not. Is there anything else that you would like to say to a collective group of fairly motivated people?
Cynthia: Well, hello to all of you. I hope I get to meet you more. I do have this full moon meditation that is a community practice online every month where we really activate this global healing mandala of Treasure vase locations and invoke all the locations and invite people to put their own offerings and prayers into a treasure vase that we're working with currently. And there's a number of them that are in the process of going out into the world. So anyone can join that meditation, and we welcome you to join us. The practice of the sublime Mother Gaia that I mentioned also is a beautiful practice, and I'll be teaching that both in person and online, coming up in the not too distant future. I just led a retreat on that recently. I'm also coming to Europe next year. I was just thinking, I don't have my schedule set yet, but I will be doing some in-person retreats and travelling to some various countries in Europe. So Manda, we should keep in touch about that. And the best way for people to keep in touch is to sign up to receive the Full Moon newsletter, which we send out every month prior to the full moon, talking about what the focus is for the full moon meditation, and then any other things that are going on like retreats and stuff. So there's a lot that you can get involved with through the newsletter and through the website, and people can see all of that. And the book is available pretty much anywhere.
Manda: Anywhere you get good books. Yeah, ideally not the giant vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity. But if it has to be that it's better than nothing. And then you put the reviews on the giant vampire squid because sadly, our publishers are really happy if that happens. Okay. So I will put links to all of that in the show notes and various other things that we've mentioned as well. So alrighty and when I know when you're coming to Europe, I will mention it at the start or the end of a podcast. So there you go, people. It's a reason to keep listening: find out when Cynthia is coming to Europe, although obviously you could find out through the website too. Cynthia, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for all that you are and do, and for making the time and giving us of your wisdom and your beauty and your light. We will definitely come back again sometime. Thank you.
Cynthia: Thank you so much. Wonderful to be with you.
Manda: And that's it for another week. I really hope you are as inspired as I am, and that all of us offer enormous thanks to Cynthia for all that she is and does, for undertaking a lifetime's work, for doing it with such integrity, and then for creating a community around the world to keep it going. There is a bit towards the end of her book that I wanted to read out in the podcast, and of course I never got there because the conversation is always so much more interesting than the stuff that I plan ahead of time, but I'm going to read it now. This is particularly for my Dreaming Awake shamanic students, and for anybody who's deeply engaged in the Accidental Gods membership, because I try and say things like this, and I never quite get it as beautifully concise and clear as Cynthia does. Here we go:.
Manda: Practising meditation is like working out. You have to build muscle to get it strong. The actions that come from a practice made strong by energy and muscle, along with a relaxed capacity to see clearly, is very powerful. More powerful than we can imagine with minds conditioned by self-centred habits and desires; the actions that come from an awakened heart mind are effective. They take us where we need to go, into full participation with the web of life. Through surrendering all that is familiar we arrive at a place where anything is possible.
Manda: I'm going to repeat a little bit of that: 'the actions that come from an awakened heart mind are effective. They take us where we need to go into full participation with the web of life'. We could stop the podcast forever about there. This is what we need to know. I'm not going to stop the podcast, because it's the one thing I've found that's almost as much fun as writing novels. But still, this bit matters, and Cynthia has the capacity to express it so clearly. So I genuinely encourage you to read this book and to go and explore the places where you can work with her more deeply. I'd recommend gaiamandala.net to begin with. There are full moon meditations there, and if you're listening to this podcast on the day it comes out, on the 16th of October 2024, the next full moon is tomorrow. So head off to gaiamandala.net and join with the many, many others around the world who are pouring intention and clarity and integrity and groundedness into the web that joins the acupuncture points that are these sacred vessels. So there we go. Homework for this week. And that's it for this week. As ever, we will be back next week with another conversation because as I said, it's a lot of fun.
Manda: In the meantime, enormous thanks to Caro C for the music at the head and foot. To Alan Lowles of Airtight Studios, for the production. To Lou Mayor for the video, Anne Thomas for the transcripts, and Faith Tilleray for all of the conversations that keep us moving forward. And if you're still here, as ever, an enormous thanks to you for listening. And if you know of anybody else that wants really to key in to the ways that we can connect to the web of life, then please do send them this link. And that's it for now. See you next week. Thank you and goodbye.