Since the most read pages of my website are about the Four-Petaled Flower, I decided to offer you the Afterword from my book – Unity Begins Within: Spiritual Healing Meets the Four-Petaled Flower. The times are calling for it.
I was savoring a mug of my favorite Mexican coffee—café de olla—a distinctive blend of ground coffee, piloncillo (dark brown sugar), and Mexican cinnamon made in a large, round, clay pot called an olla. I drink it when I’m in Mexico, which is where I was, sitting with Emily at her round kitchen table in San Sebastian. In a few days, we’d be driving to the airport to pick up a group of ten women traveling from all over the United States to join us in a weeklong exploration at the ruins of Teotihuacan. I love working with Emily. While we each have our special roles, our mutual respect allows us to lead together in what feels like a synchronized dance, instead of as two separate people. We create the day according to what’s happening in the moment and inspire one another to teach and heal in more expansive ways than if we’d been alone.
As the flavors of café de olla merged in my mouth, Emily and I discussed the upcoming journey, the same one I wrote about at the beginning of the book. “We already know the Four-Petaled Flower will be the true leader,” Emily said.
“Yes,” I agreed, and then pointed out the obvious, “but other than that, we haven’t scheduled much.”
As our conversation meandered back and forth, the ancient ones took us by surprise and simultaneously infused us with the same awareness. “We’re not just going to learn more about the Four-Petaled Flower, as we had originally thought!” Emily exclaimed.
“No,” I said, “We’re being tasked with awakening it…”
“Yes!” Emily interjected, and we finished the vision together, “…and then integrating its healing medicine into universal consciousness.”
“How in the world are we going to do that?” I asked in amazement, then stopped, took a sip of my sweet café, and closed my eyes: “The human soul is part of the soul of Earth, and since the Four-Petaled Flower is a symbol of Unity and Wholeness, activating it will naturally release that energy into the atmosphere. Once that occurs, all life forms will be affected.”
“True,” Emily said, “and because all are One, the integration will happen as a matter of course.”
“Absolutely,” I replied. “It’s the same principle as removing the seal from Phutu Cusi and releasing the love energy underneath Mount Kailash.”
Emily had been to the ruins hundreds of times and envisioned our group exploring them in a new way. “There are several different entrances,” she said. “You know how on the first day we usually go through the main gate and walk directly into the large courtyard?” She was referring to the pyramid of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent deity, and the route that takes us from his courtyard down the Avenue of the Dead—the one-and-a-half-mile, North/South main street lined with more courtyards and temples.
“What if we don’t visit Quetzalcoatl first?” Emily asked. “Instead, we can walk into the ruins from a side entrance and begin in the center of the complex, directly in front of the Pyramid of the Sun, the location of the hidden Four-Petaled Flower cave. If we consider the cave as the center of the flower, we can connect with it every day, and from there, intuitively wander along the unseen petals in the four directions—East, South, West, and North—as far as the energy under our feet leads us.”
I was nodding like crazy. “And once we find the center of each petal,” I added excitedly, “we’ll activate it.”
This unique, four-petaled route would entail being outside the gated area of the ruins and within the surrounding communities, and as far as we knew, no one in our lifetime had ever explored Teotihuacan from this perspective. While Emily and I weren’t sure what it would end up meaning, we knew in our hearts it was the right thing to do. “This,” we said, holding one another’s gaze, “must have been the way of the ancients.”
We shared our plan with the other pilgrims, and they committed to the challenge. Each day after breakfast (where café de olla was a staple), we sat together in meditation with the intention of becoming attuned to the ancestors who had lived in an area much larger than the officially designated archeological site. We prayed for guidance regarding where to go, asked to receive wisdom from the spirit of the flower, and when we were ready, walked to the ruins and beelined to the cave underneath the Pyramid of the Sun. Once each person was satisfied with their connection, we traveled together in that day’s direction.
With Emily’s extensive knowledge of the local communities, our group entered towns, villages, and neighborhoods that had formerly been part of the ruins, but were now inhabited by families, animals, shops, ornate churches, and community plazas. We explored as a group, yet each woman was guided by her intuition—something akin to being in the collective environment of the Spirit Realm—while maintaining our individuated selves.
Once we began feeling the energy of the petal we were dedicated to, we united even further and were led, perhaps by the flower itself, to an area that felt right to everyone—a local church, caves in a cactus garden, the stone remnants of an old ruin with ancient multi-colored murals, and even the Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan itself. It reminded me of when John, Sarah, Jeanie, and I were seeking the right place to perform our ceremony at Mount Kailash.
Since this is the same trip I wrote about in an earlier chapter, let me refresh your memory about what happened next. On the fifth and final day of our unique mission, the group climbed up the two hundred and forty-eight steep steps to the very top of the Pyramid of the Sun. Once we were there, after we adjusted to our far-away distance from the ground and how close to the sky we were, we made a circle in the middle, right above the hidden carved Four-Petaled Flower cave. We sat down, placed our mesas in the center, and held hands.
This is where Sarayna offered us the original teaching, which is worthy of repetition:
The Four-Petaled Flower is a symbol of the Unity of All Life. It is Wholeness, Beauty, Fragrance, Bounty, Harvest, and Union. The energy of each petal imparts uniqueness, and the center of the flower is a combined fusion of all four petals and creates the energy of the entire symbol, which is Unity.
In a similar style as when I connected with Phutu Cusi and Mount Kailash, our group first collectively envisioned the uniqueness of all four petals coming together. Then, when it became time to activate the center of the flower—the Unity energy—each person visualized it rise up from the depths of the Earth, through the cave, then rise above the pyramid. Once it reached our physical bodies, we breathed deeply and, with a collective outbreath, let it move through us as we released it into the atmosphere for all beings to receive.
The trip lasted another few days, and after the participants had gone home, Emily and I sat at her kitchen table and processed the events—this time drinking strong mango margaritas. “As expansive as our vision was,” I said, “it was also limited. I can’t believe I completely forgot that planetary missions require personal purification.”
“Yes,” Emily replied. “It’s too bad we were taken by surprise by the huge need for emotional release that walking this unknown path stirred up.”
The experience of opening and activating the flower had created a lush opportunity for internal disunities to ripen, arise, and seek healing and unification. Group members transmuted individual as well as collective, heavy energy—and thanks to their high integrity, each person arrived at a newly awakened internal balance. Participants shared that they felt more “themselves” than when they’d first arrived, and one even said, “We all experienced a sense of grace and satisfaction that we were able to accomplish our task.”
Emily had a mystical vision during one of the petal activations. She saw that the universal image of the Four-Petaled Flower was originally brought to us by our star family ancestors who embedded it within the center of Earth as an infinitely spinning, energetic imprint. This whirling rotation creates a complete sphere, and its physical manifestation is what we perceive as our planet.
In other words…Earth is a rotating, radiating Four-Petaled Flower.
And since the human soul is part of the Earth’s soul, if she radiates the Four-Petaled Flower, we do also.
One of the ways Pachamama manifests her Four-Petaled Flower rotation is by offering us wildflowers. We see their colorful faces at a river’s edge, in sprawling meadows, on the desert floor, cascading down hillsides, and even popping up in concrete cracks next to deserted buildings. There are thousands of distinctive varieties, colors, shapes, and sizes growing all over the planet. Even in the Arctic, where the growing season is only three months out of the year, you’ll find spectacular, multi-colored displays. Wildflowers ask nothing of us. From the tiniest, velvety yellow buttercup to the thirty-six-inch-tall purple coneflower to the intoxicating fragrance of a soft lavender lilac—no matter how many petals they have, each one is a gift from Pachamama.
One person alone can’t cure the world’s addiction to duality and separation, but we can attend to our own. I’m not saying this is easy. Separation has been pervasive in my life. As an abused and neglected child, a disowned daughter, a mother who had to share custody of her son with a power-hungry ex, and a grown woman, I’ve lived and replayed separation more times than I care to remember. And even after awakening to it that day at the river, it’s taken years for Unity awareness to consolidate within my mind and heart. My Teacher said: Unity exists always, even in the direst manifestations of separation. And while I believe his words are the most important in this entire book, it can still be difficult to view it in this way.
I must.
We must.
There’s no rightful order to awaken and live Unity. We can start by walking the Four-Petaled Flower Medicine Wheel to notice and heal our personal disunifications. Or we can begin in our minds and simply choose to see life from an expanded perspective. Remember the Shamanic Rebirth teachings? Now is a perfect time to participate in that life-changing ceremony. Whatever your way of living Unity might be, it’s important to know that it not only enhances you, but feeds the collective, which in turn supports Pachamama within the healing vortex she’s entered on our behalf.
Original art visioned and painted by Emily Grieves. https://www.emilykgrievesart.com/
Perfect Unity shall prevail. I received in grace, inspirations for my future “Spark of Life” healing-health retreats. Grateful!