My Maya Ancestors would say that one key to flourishing is to embrace the swaying and vagaries of life. It is an art to rest in the unknown. It takes grace to trust the pacing of the days, at times endless, at times radical. Holding the unfolding requires the courage to surrender to the turning and returning of the cycles.
Flourishing and resilience are closely connected. Both voice a call for adaptation to the ebb and flow of events. They encourage us to be creative in generating resources. They urge us to shift perspectives, especially from victimization to empowerment, and from power to humility.
We oscillate dramatically, like a yielding pendulum submissive to life’s apparent polarities until we reach the insight of plurality. Worldviews based on our connection to natural cycles prompt us to open to a progressive spiral of becoming. This spiral is the path of going and returning through the contemplation of dynamic yet poised, careful yet bold, and challenging yet familiar ways.
These reflections are foundational to what can be considered Indigenous cosmovisions or perceptions of the universe as worldviews. These outlooks about the world attempt to make meaning of the interactions and relationships occurring among living beings and phenomena in all their contextual configurations.
The cosmos, or order of the world, manifests in all expressions of knowledge—medicine, ecology, the arts, and all forms of interaction. Creative and destructive natural forces are considered impossible to control, but humans stop resisting their presence and open to their influence through ritual. As such, the workings of the universe guide human practice and participation in the larger community.
Affirming a cosmic identity that considers the workings of the universe requires us to venture into the vast mysteries. Multiple nuances of how the world unfolds design a complex landscape. To give them a name, then, is to acknowledge these nuances. We experience life with heightened granularity. We move from oversimplification and essentialization to a unified plurality. One that is many times impossible to measure and explain.
In defining Indigenous cosmovisions, we encounter significant challenges. We find that global, regional, and local relationships are not linear. Our lifeways are deeply intertwined with our ecosystems, spirituality, cultural systems, social customs, institutions, political identities, jurisprudence, governance, and so forth. Naming these lifeways impacts our identities and right to self-determination. To define distinct perceptions through a universal lens results in granting power and resources—political and otherwise—to mainstream categories and their metrics over Indigenous contextual views.
To reclaim our power, current Indigenous cosmovisions have returned to language that reasserts our belief systems. For example, Abya Yala means “Fertile Land,” “Vibrant Land,” and “Flourishing Land.” It is the name given by the Guna Peoples of Panama and Colombia to the territories known as Latin America and the Caribbean. The name Abya Yala has been adopted by Indigenous Peoples of Latin America as an identity nomenclature reclaiming our collective territories. Similarly, Turtle Island is the common name used to refer to the Lands known as North America.
For non-Indigenous readers who may be unfamiliar with the use of these terms, it is worth clarifying that adopting and normalizing the preferred Indigenous nomenclature is an acceptable way of supporting Indigenous Nations right to self-determination. It is also a way to honor the distinctive characteristic of Indigenous Peoples to be named after the chosen terminology in their respective Indigenous language. As mentioned earlier, the term Indigenous, while vital for political reasons, has the downside of unifying and generalizing particular contexts.
Indigenous principles are intricately related to the Lands we steward. These values come from millennia of observing Nature. It is astonishing and inspiring to find within these complex systems a common theme in the perception of the world as a nourishing and at times devouring mother. The mother image reflects the same swaying and vagaries of life. She embodies the turning and returning of cycles.
The multifaceted mother character guards us from the childish narcissism of expecting an eternal provider. It also keeps us keenly aware of the ever-changing nature of events. Most origin stories and creation myths speak of the destruction of previous eras as a punishment for moral ugliness. For example, there are plenty of stories in which water destroys the world. The Nahua Leyenda de los Soles tells of eras ending in cataclysms. The Diné cosmology Diné Bahane’ narrates the journey of humans through different worlds. Most of these creation stories speak of eras coming to an end due to the loss of a sense of sacredness and ethical behavior. At the same time, the stories tell of a cyclic return, with a new opportunity for reemergence.
Cosmogonic worldviews—the conceptions of the world’s origins—explain the generative aspects of life. They are embodiments of the living systems of Mother Earth and relatedly of our spirituality. The many ways these graceful patterns work have been the focus of Indigenous sciences in the form of storytelling, ritual, and ceremonial expressions. For example, while Indigenous Nations in Abya Yala have distinct spiritualities connected to their culture and landscapes, it is possible to observe similarities in perceiving flourishing, health, and well-being as the strength that comes from cultivating connection, caring interactions with living beings, and enhancing the conservation and restoration of ecosystems. These ways of relating ensure planetary health and the honoring of Spirit. They manifest themselves in a continuous, thriving life for all.
The worldview of the spiral path frequently appears in these communities of Mesoamerica and all along Abya Yala. The spiral path is the path of the sun, snake, or snail that describes how phenomena unfold as in a spiral. This coiled cycle is a metaphor referring to a nonlinear, ever-changing path of continuous growth. The trail expands and contracts, departing and returning to a seeming beginning point, yet remaining distant from it even if almost unperceivably.
The spiral path contrasts with the Western idea of linearity that goes from birth to development, reproduction, and death, while meeting societal expectations about achievement and status along the way. The most obvious analogy to the spiral may be cosmic cycles, especially those of the moon and the sun through calendric systems.
As an example of these lifeways, to this day Mesoamerican Peoples, most notably the Nahua Mexica and the Maya, keep a keen eye on cosmological cycles through astronomical and contemplative observation. In practice, this means examining sophisticated astronomical motion systems through a 360-day solar calendar (called xiuhpōhualli, from Nahuatl xihuitl + pōhualli = year count) and a 260-day lunar calendar (called tonalpōhualli, from Nahuatl tonal + pōhualli = light count), understood as the count of days. While these calendric systems are similar since the Nahua calendar was developed from the much more ancient Maya system, they differ in orientation and in the specific influences and deities that orient the energies of the days.
The most salient similarity these calendars share is how both orient our relationships with the planet and the cosmos through daily energetic influences and motions. The moon and the sun draw paths as they liven the coming together of the Skies and Mother Earth. The sacred calendric systems are divided in groups of trecenas (thirteen days) and veintenas (twenty months) of influences called naguales (archetypal energies). These pairings change over the year, never falling on the exact same day as days in the Gregorian calendar. The path of these calendars is one of a spiral, indicating seasonal changes, ceremonial observations called xukulen, and ritual practice. The energetic influences of the months and naguales dictate medicine, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and all relationships and interactions, human and otherwise.
Along those lines, the Maya spiritual guides called Ajq-ijab are the keepers of time who as traditional medicine practitioners carry the Pison Q’Ajq’al, a sacred wrapping and medicine bag containing the red seeds of a tree considered sacred and used in ceremonial and medicinal practices since precolonial times. These seeds signify the naguales of the calendric cycles. The many groups under the umbrella terms of the Maya and Nahua Peoples of Mesoamerica use these seeds as instruments for counting and observing the influence of the web of life and its rotations, as well as for divination practices orienting human action in daily life. These seeds also have medicinal anesthetic properties and are used to protect from disturbing influences.
Another example of nonlinear cycles is the commonly known “medicine wheel” used by several plains tribes on Turtle Island. It is worth noting that this name is a Western one, so these ceremonial sites should be referred to with the names designated by the Native Nation based on their distinct relationship with their ritual spiritual systems. The most ancient of these archeological sites is in the Bighorn National Forest and it is called Annáshisee, or “Large campsite,” by the Crow Nation where it stands. The Crow Nation, however, has noted that the site was already there when they arrived in the area. No other Nation has claimed ownership of it, making it possibly the most ancient of these ceremonial sites. In a nutshell, this system presents a multidimensional scheme of seven directions that indicates a web of interconnected influences radiating out from a center to a surrounding whole.
Aspects of these spiral cosmovisions also exist in our everyday perceptions of well-being and personhood. Consider that spirals never touch the same trail again, even when progress is slight and unnoticeable. Now think about the spiral nature of healing, moving through challenges while at the same time one is making sense of these experiences and finding one’s place and purpose. With each turn of the cycle, or spin of the wheel, our feelings, narratives, and sense of identity are transformed. These timeless cycles reveal our innate nonlinearity. The spiral path reveals how our world is continually changing.
While obstacles invariably appear in any venture, the spiral path reminds us of how a shift in turn—even a slight one—changes perspectives. The spiral path evokes movement, shift, transition, transformation, however slight; thus, we are bound to shed our previous skin, like the snake, and leave the old-self, decaying beliefs to be composted. No matter how stuck we may feel in a situation, we are bound to reemerge.
Feeling lonely and alienated from the world may engender images of paralysis, apathy, idleness, and aimless drifting. The waves of futility carry us endlessly, not strong enough to drown us but thick enough to keep us exposed. Our minds turn their brief attention span to images of creepers, insects, clinging vines, and rancid, moldering, festering food. Suppurating wounds may populate our nightmares, crumbling down our sense of self. Yes. This is good. That old self needs to crumble. That old story needs to change.
The spiral path helps in such situations. Natural cycles of barely perceptible shifts may become sudden turns of transformation. A gradual path helps to integrate that change to keep it sustainable. You can reclaim the power of letting go of the old, festering narratives of othering, where we or others do not seem to fit. You can recondition into a new story of belonging. You restore the regenerative force of Mother Earth into your new self. The cycles become more palpable with the establishment of new stories of reparation.
Contemplation is the art of truth.
Mending broken threads,
we create stories of becoming.
At its very essence, contemplation itself is a spiral path of becoming. It is an exercise in letting go of fixity. It welcomes the fluid patterns of emergence, transformation, and return through the renunciation of reified identities. We surrender to the upheavals of the heart, mind, self, and Earth by surrendering the delusions of attachment and acknowledging the truths of conciliation and universal belonging.
We reclaim the agency of our relational creativity by offering ourselves as nourishment for others. In other words, contemplation is a personal and collective spiritual experience. It is life in its full force. It is a path to becoming a spiritual being.
All times meet in the spiral path, right here, right now.
The spiral path locates us in intergenerational webs of relatedness that have been lost in our fragmented twenty-first-century living. We are connected to the roots of memory from our Lands and Elders. This is the past stretching within the spiral path.
Memories cultivate wisdom, and we attain insight from community participation. This is the present unfolding. Participation stimulates responsibility as we let the old self decay to become food for a new form of life. This is the future derived from the spiral path and orienting our intention today.
In our practice together, I hope you will feel these forms of relationality.
The responsive cosmic system involves all phenomena. Spirit weaves us into the collective web of the cosmos with its innumerable elements and beings. In that sense, the spiral path also depicts the luminous vastness in the body, the connecting of the Lands through the heart, the mind, and the plural unity with Spirit. These insights bring coherence and greater meaning to human participation in the larger Earth community. All beings are represented in the vast cosmic web of relationships as part of a responsive living system that involves all elements and phenomena.
Our hearts connect to Mother Earth through phenomena.
We will start realizing this more and more as we keep along the spiral path of contemplation, consistently returning home, transformed.