Xochitl Ashe (01:11)
Welcome, welcome, welcome, everyone. Hmm. I just have to take a moment because this is truly one of my dreams come true. I have a beautiful teacher, mentor, elder here that I've actually been connected for many, many, many, many years. I think at least 20. And then we recently connected about four years ago at Esalen Institute. And so it's my pleasure and my honor to bring Jyoti Ma to our podcast.

Jyoti Ma (01:59)
it's my honor completely. I'm glad we have so many decades. We've been walking by each other's side.

Xochitl Ashe (02:01)
Hmm. Yes, and so I want to introduce you to this really, what I love to say is one of the visionaries and wise women of our time. And so if you don't know her, you need to know her. And if you already know her, you're in for a treat. We're going to have this. incredible conversation today. So Jyoti Ma is an internationally renowned spiritual teacher. She has cultivated projects that demonstrate ways of life that honor the earth and all peoples. As the grandmother vision keeper of the Center for Sacred Studies, centerforsacredstudies.org, she co-founded Kayumari with spiritual communities both in America and Europe. Other projects she has helped to convene are the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers and the Unity Concert. She's founder of the Fountain and its mission is to restore an economic model that is based on reciprocity and collaboration guided by nature and the sacred. Currently as a delegate of Mother Earth, delegation of United Original Nations, a collaboration with the Fountain, It has grown, creating a global movement for and with the earth that is ready to activate the new day. I'm so ready to activate the new day. And these conversations to me are like ceremony. You know, we begin, we open sacred space because the intention of this podcast, the intention of getting together, is really that all those that listen, may you find some medicine for you that you can bring into your heart, into your life, into your communities. So I would love to, what an honor to have Jyoti to just open up the sacred space for us.

Jyoti Ma (04:24)
love to. Thank you so much and thank you for having me. I'm sitting here on the sacred territory of the Pomo and the coastal Miwok people offering this prayer to you great ones. I'm calling on the spirits of the four directions and those that live above us and below us and those that work through us to help us create a circle of awakening today, a circle where inspiration can flow and touch each of our hearts and open our hearts so that as they breathe out that intelligence of love, it will pull us into a state of oneness that we can share together. For truly the prophecies from many nations, from many walks of life and spiritual practice have been telling us for generations about this moment of time that we're all standing in, a very prophetic moment of choice. Thank you for waking us. Thank you for helping us clear out what's in our ears and eyes that will not allow us to listen and see you and the miraculous moment of your making that we are all in and have come to serve. Thank you for our medicines. All those medicines from around the planet, some have left their continents for a while and have moved out. to open and wake people and heal people and prepare people for this very moment we're standing in. And as my elders told me so many decades ago, we were in a moment of blessing as these great power plants and teachers, those intelligence of nature that weave this creation, that they've come to offer themselves up in this moment of preparation, healing and awakening. What a gift it was. if we were brought to the table to sit with them and learn from them and be with them and listen deeply. For they say, the elders told me that there'll come a time when they'll go back to their home countries and we'll be left with ceremony and the song that will help us continue to sustain life and honor all life is sacred. So thank you, creator. Thank you for all the magnificence and diversity of this creation. As I stood on my back porch this morning, raising my prayer of gratitude to the morning star that called the sun to bring the light of day so that we could all step up inside that light and fill ourselves with it. For surely this is a moment when all light bringers must fully activate themselves. and bring their full authenticity into the work of service of a world in ascension, a world moving from one cycle and opening into a new one, a world that's ending is falling into the beginning as the Eagle Condor prophecy speaks. When the ending falls into the beginning in 2026, it's important that tells us to pay attention to what is falling down. so we can stay informed. But to stay focused on that which is breaking through and that which is breaking through, you say, will be carried by those individuals and movements and organizations that are basing themselves on the original principles of those original ways of life in those original days, those original principles of love and heart and reciprocity and collaboration, tolerance, unity, all life is sacred. Let us remember ourselves and come back to that so that we can embody those principles and walk the light of that new day, that new dawn into its full manifestation. I know it will take a lot of courage, Creator. for we will have to use the spiritual practices and the things that you've already given us to prepare for these times, distill our minds and listen to our hearts and stay in dialogue with you and this creation so that we can listen intently to the instruction of the steps to take. Help us not be pulled into the confusion, distracted by some of the false stories that are flying everywhere for truly the Spirit said at the first of this year that as we watch that ending fall to lean into our communities, into our cohorts so that we can all have more eyes on what's falling down so we can be mindful and strategic as we step bringing the light of this new dawn. through a gear of mind, M-I-N-D, feels. And it's Hardy showing what a mind trick is playing on us, the ways that we are caught in the mind and lost in self. But we are waking and the Mother Earth is counting on it. She's calling forth everything she... and doing everything she can to bring us awake in this moment for we as a human species are making a choice about how many of us will go into that new dawn. For she told us a few years ago that she could no longer carry these maladies that we were putting on her and are still doing to her this day. That she was going to have to start her ascension process and her big movements were going to be put in motion. If we assisted those original people, if we got our resources to them so that as they hear her instruction, they can gather her medicines and put her healing into play, and her motion can be more gentle for us as a species. And if not, she says in 2026, she must start the movement and that movement will be much stronger. than if we choose to collaborate, to participate, and to bring her into our full focus. Let it be that way. Let it be that way. For there are ancestors that are guiding us, directing us, showing us the way. Some are here with skin on and some with not. But they are here and they are presenting that instruction. They have initiated us, they have prepared us, and now they are given the guidance of the walk. Let us listen deeply so we can hear and return. a way of life where all life is sacred. And the new cycle begins and what a celebration we can have. Truly, truly it's an honor to be here during the turning time. It's an honor to be able to show up once again because many say that we are the Bodhisattvas that we came when the turning was before. And we have come again for we know how to listen and we will bring this energy of consciousness through the keyhole and into the new dawn. So I thank you for all those that are listening, for all those that have heard that call, for all those that are circled up here to have this dialogue today and let creation lead our way. I give you great thanks. I give you great thanks. I give you great, great thanks.

Xochitl Ashe (12:55)
Hi, yeah, yeah, ah-ho. And so it is. Thank you so much for these words. I'm so happy that we got to record them today. I really needed to hear that prayer. So I want to talk about first. You are so connected. You've always been so connected to spirit. And I want to talk about how I got to know you, because I think that while there might be some folks that know about some of your work, I got to know you because I went to Ojai to see a documentary about the 13 indigenous grandmothers. This was like 20 years ago. And as an indigenous person myself, just, it brought me to tears on so many levels. Tears of joy, tears of recognition of what I have known was true in my heart. You know, here it was manifested in what was your vision to bring these 13 indigenous grandmothers together. while, you know, a lot of people know about the 13 indigenous grandmothers, I think it's important to know about Grandmother Jyoti Ma because you were the one that had the vision to bring them together. Can you? Share with us about that vision.

Jyoti Ma (14:52)
Yes, and I want to stretch that out to a whole community because I live in a community and we caught something together in ceremony one night. There were about 80 of us gathered and the mother came in very strong presence. One of the strongest moments that so many could witness at the same time. It was a humbling moment. She said, I'm going to give you one of my most treasured baskets. And in that basket are some of my most precious jewels. Those jewels represent lines of prayer that go back to the original day. Do not change them. Do not mix them. Protect and keep them safe. Walk them through the doorway of the millennia. Hand them back to me. I have something we're going to do. Now we didn't really understand what all that meant, but we had come together as a community on top of a mountain in the Sierra about an hour's drive from Yosemite. And up our 14-mile logger road came elders that would find us somehow, and they would initiate us in each of those jewels in the basket. And each of those jewels in the basket brought a line of prayer from those original days that informed us of the protocol of how to care for that ceremonial way. And as we got initiated by each of those medicines in the basket, we began to dive deeper into a memory of that original way of life when all life is carried as sacred. It woke us. It woke a whole village of us. that those teachings stretched out not only in our community, but in other places where we had, you know, groups gathering following the same mandate, our mission. And we had a community that opened up outside of Prague that's now going to be 27 years old. Our community is almost 40 years old. And when we came together, we were very innocents and we were very naive, maybe still are. But we had this devotion that was very alive in us like fire. And it brought us to the top of this mountain. We didn't know how to go about starting a spiritual community, but we knew we wanted to step out of throwaway society. where I use a car for a while and then it's done, it's thrown away, I get something else that I use in my home, it's done, I throw it away, the relationship didn't work so well, it's done, I throw it away, throw away society. And we didn't want to live that way, we didn't want to raise our children that way, we wanted to step out of whatever box that was and... We didn't even know where we were stepping to, but we wanted to declare longevity. We wanted to say, can we, as a people living together like this, truly open to an awakening process? Can we step into full potential and authenticity and be kind while we're doing it? Because waking up is messy.

Xochitl Ashe (18:38)
Yes.

Jyoti Ma (18:40)
and we're humans and we bump into each other as those wounds flare and they heal. We wanted to be kind to one another while we went through such messy moments. We wanted to walk through the challenges that we knew would come up that 14 mile longer road and even longer past that time and still into this one. We wanted to dedicate ourselves to unity and love and kindness. We wanted our children to raise. their consciousness and grow it through those original principles and with those original principles and walk on this planet differently. We wanted to ride the river of life and we knew that on that river there are going to be white foamy moments where it said you're sure you're going to get shook out of the canoe. But we wanted to be sure when we hit those moments we would stay in the canoe and ride it out with each other till we got to the next part of the water. which was gentler and take us a little bit further down the road. So after this many decades of walking together, we've hit a lot of those whitewater moments. We stayed in our canoes, and now we're getting old with each other. I'm 77, I'm just about to turn 77, which my Western calls me 77, my elders say at 78 years of walking around the sun. But I would not have had any back in the early days. I had no idea where she was bringing me. And I'm not sure I would have gone there because I didn't have aspirations. But we followed her and we were devoted to that. And we did the work of cleaning ourselves and opening and healing and finding ways to unify and embrace our diversity. We found ways she brought us tools that would help us do that, would help wake us and heal us and keep us awake. She brought us a way of life through ceremony that is part of life that, you know, when my little ones, when they were growing up that were born in my bathtub, they'd come running on their old tricycles over to me and they were raised where everything was. This was how a way of life was. It wasn't something you went to do over here practice and then over there with no, it was something that was a way of life. And so they would know, ⁓ grandma, need to get my I need to get my blanket and come and sleep behind you and TP tonight because you know mom can't get in, I gotta go in and talk to Grandpa Peyote because you know I I'm having so much trouble in kindergarten.

Xochitl Ashe (21:39)
Hmm.

Jyoti Ma (21:40)
So you'd see them there and they'd be on their knees, probably in and talking to Grandpa Peyote in the fireplace. And then they'd crawl back behind me and go to sleep. They'd have their answer. They knew how to go and speak to Mother Nature. We called it Crystal Mountain because she always presented crystals to everybody. So the kids would run into the kitchen in the morning sometimes when I was cooking and, look, look, Grandma.

Xochitl Ashe (22:00)
Hmm.

Jyoti Ma (22:07)
she gave me and be this beautiful crystal clear clear clear. I said, wow you must have said something really kind to her or something this morning because she really wants to recognize you for that. And you could see them going away. ⁓ what did I do this morning that she was so happy with?

Xochitl Ashe (22:24)
Yeah.

Jyoti Ma (22:27)
You know.

Xochitl Ashe (22:28)
So it was it was this community where you were in. And how did how did you come to know that you needed to search for these 13 grandmothers?

Jyoti Ma (22:42)
Well, this basket, they brought all these teachers up that road. And for almost a decade, we were initiated and trained up. And then more people in the village started getting the whisperings of it's time to gather the grandmothers. It's time to gather the grandmothers. So we went about doing so. I sat down and wrote a letter with all the vision as I've shared it with you and what the promptings were that were coming from our community. And I sent this, inviting them to come to a gathering in Upper State New York at the Dalai Lamas Medicine Retreat Center. And I sent it to 16. We got the names of those 16 by sending the word out first across our community and all the different places where it lived and letting them know what was in motion and them sending back names of the elders that they said, oh, this is the one. you need to call. So I ended up with 16 names coming that way. So I wrote them. 13 of them answered back and accepted this invitation to that first gathering in 2004. Now we thought it was going to be, I thought it was going to be one time, you know, and then we will have accomplished what she asked. But when we got there, magical, magical things happened that told us that This vision was timely and validation occurred to let us know it needed to stay in motion. And one of those examples is grandmother Rita Blumenstein. She was Yupik from up in the cold country of Alaska. She's no longer with us. She's gone back to the ancestral land. But she was there and she told us a story. She told us a story of when she was young and small girl. that her grandmother came and got her and sat her down and said, Rita, I need you to know that what you're old and gray like me, you're going to be asked to come and sit on a council of 13 grandmothers. I have gathered 13 bundles of sacred stones and 13 white eagle feathers. You must protect and keep these safe until that moment comes. And when it does come, Then you are to pass out this bundle and this white eagle feather to each and every grandmother there and take one for yourself and sit down and know I'm standing behind you and the times we've been preparing for are now. She was in her 60s. When she brought that message, believe it was her 60s. And there wasn't a dry eye in the room.

Xochitl Ashe (25:37)
Hmm.

Jyoti Ma (26:03)
you know, and we could all feel the import of what Spirit was putting in motion. So the council, we all actually told the council when my board was there, my staff were there from the Center for Sacred Studies. And we got together and we went and told the grandmothers, if you want to become a council, we'll just give you our organization because it's two years old and. If you want to make another form out of that, then you need to be two years old first before you can do other things in political kind of realms or wherever they might want to go through NGO work and things like that. you can have this. What they decided was they wanted to become the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers and they wanted to come under the blanket of the Center for Sacred Studies for a while. And so for almost a decade we walked with them and helped produce and raise funding and organize because they chose to go around into each of their home countries so we could meet their culture. We could see the diversity of culture. We could see the different languages, the different regalia, the different ceremonies, and be touched by the sacred territory that culture took care of and stood on. And that started a movement for world peace. as I said, we were there almost a decade and a few years prior to that, of them needing to go and fly on their own. The next, I call them archetypal seeds, that was given to me was the fountain. And we began to put our focus on the next part of what the mother's asking us to tend to. And that brought us to the fountain. And that brought me into deeper relationships with the earth and particularly with the four original people of Columbia who we still have. We're still very, very active and working with. And yeah, so that the Mother Earth delegation came in 2019. She's been putting the new parts of this next part of my story together so that we could be poised to respond in these challenging moments we're in. I'm happy and humbled by that.

Xochitl Ashe (28:09)
Yeah. Mm. Well, thank you, because that leads us to our next part, which is what now? Right. Like I I'm really feeling the urgency and at the same time the need for stillness of hearing like what now? You know, we are in a time where Like you talked about the Eagle Condor prophecy, which is from my lineage, but there's many prophecies that have talked about this time and it's not like it's coming. It's now here we are. It's here. And I think it feels really scary, really uncomfortable, really confusing for many. You know, it feels like apocalypse, right? Like what is... in stores is really not good and horrible. And yet I feel that it is so important to bring voices like yours because We need voices like yours at this time. You speak about 2026, especially I know that there's a prophecy about 2026 and coming from Colombia because but because you've worked with the original peoples of Colombia, I would love your wisdom around. 2026 because not a lot of people know about that.

Jyoti Ma (30:47)
Mm. I would start by answering that by saying, you know, that in 2013, they brought a small group of us together in Columbia and shared the next part of the Eagle Condor prophecy, which was that we were entering a 13 year great cleanse. So if you look at that time from 2013 till now, you can see how strong that cleanse has gotten with the pandemic, with everything that's gone on, with the earth changes. And that now we're in that 13th year of the Great Cleanse. We're in that year right before the ending falls into the beginning in 2026. We're in that moment. it's like, like we're in a, the earth moves in 26,000 year cycles. When I was in India, I would go into sacred places and I would see clocks on the wall. And from 12 to 1 was 2,500 years, and from 1 to 2 was another 2,500 years. And so it went all the way around the clock to 26,000 years. That last little part of that cycle they call the Kali Yuga. This is where the ending is falling into the beginning. It's the same sharing. That's why it's so important, as I share with people, to remind them that nature is all about cycle. everything cycles. Everything's always in motion. It's not stagnant. It's in motion and it's in a cycle. And so every 26,000 years she closes a cycle. Now they call this the sixth extinction, which means that she's been through that this five times before. So she's going to be fine.

Xochitl Ashe (32:43)
Hehehehe

Jyoti Ma (32:44)
She's moving into an ascension process, which Rita Blumenstein talked about as she said her grandmother would tell her stories about the original times and all the birds were white. And then as they started, as the mother earth started to open her chakras and move up the chakra system, the birds turned black. She said that this first first three chakras that we've been in as humans has been about learning about our animal survival and that this next chakra as she opens to the to the heart that she's taking us all into this ascension into the heart which is when she starts that ascension process that brings her fully into an enlightened being but moving from the power chakra those instinctual nature into the heart is she said the first time we will become human beings. So we're at that kind of a time and space. So I say it doesn't help to say what went wrong or who did it wrong or this is wrong or this is right and all the stories that are flying all over the place right now. We just need to embrace we're in an ending cycle.

Xochitl Ashe (34:05)
Mm.

Jyoti Ma (34:07)
And if we can embrace that ending cycle, then we will get more strategic to watch how things around us, the government, the social structures that we have put together through our Western ideology that has cut us from our source and the connection to nature itself. We've got to restore that. We're coming back to that restoration of self. And when we do, we will step into the next cycle, which is going to bring us into a study of unity. That's what her heart chakra will do. Will bring us into a full opening and learning from the consciousness of unity, of our oneness. And that brings us to a full return to where we started from so long ago. At least that's the way some of my elders explain this time that we're in. But we have to be really courageous and we have to be humble and we have to be willing to listen. Because if we can restore this connection with our nature, if you can go out wherever you are, all of you have access to nature. Go sit by the river or by the sea. Go sit by a tree that calls you or a meadow of flowers that's beginning to blossom, cause spring is surely upon us soon. and deeply, deeply listen. Close your mind, slow your mind, still your mind, and open your heart so it can start to talk to you and make that connection with the dialogue of nature, because it will happen, it happens. That's what we call deep listening, when you go and you sit and you deeply listen and make that connection, because she's always dialoguing. We're the ones that close things off from her. When we open back up, we get to see the miracles she produces every single day. There's not a day goes by I don't see a miracle. know, taking a waking up and having a breath in the morning is a miracle. And you know, we're water babies because when we're born, water comes first and then we come. So we got to pay attention to what we need to do for water.

Xochitl Ashe (36:37)
So once you sit in that nature, once you do that and you start to make that reconnection, then who are the original people that care for that land? Do you know who they are? That's the next place to go. Not to go out grabbing for things. You sit and you hold something and then you let it come to you. We didn't go out and reach for the elders to come and find us on top of that mountain. They came and found us. We didn't have an aspiration. We didn't try to appropriate. We tried, we just sit and you get clear about just the listening. Who are the people that were the original cake takers? It will come to you, they will come to you, you will find them and the funniest things will happen. Just like you and I met. You know, those kinds of moments get to happen. And then once you've got that place, then you start looking at. Okay, I'm waking up now. What do I need help with? Are there things I need to do to help cleanse myself? It brings me back to the teachings of Terrence McKenna. Because in 2012 when the Mayan Calendar was supposedly coming to an end and Y2K was too. So everybody thought the world surely was ending and people were really frightened. They were really frightened. So Terrence went to the mushroom people and he asked him is time ending? And they said, time is ending as you know it. And then they went on to say that there were parallel realities running side by side all the time and always have been and always will be. what we needed to do right now was we needed to clean ourselves, clear our minds, and take the time to heal and awake ourselves so that we could start to be more. aware of what we're focusing on. For truly what we focus on when this time change comes, and it will come very quickly when it does, what we're focusing on will be the stream of consciousness in those parallel realities that we'll fall down into. So if I got all my focus on war and destruction and abuse, I'm going to fall down into a world like that. What world do you want to fall down into?

Xochitl Ashe (39:03)
Mm. Heaven on Earth. Yeah.

Jyoti Ma (39:09)
There you go. There is a stream of consciousness running parallel like that. And I start, I was driving down the highway not too long ago with my husband and I remembered these teachings that Terrence had brought up. And all of a sudden I said, wow, you know, I think that's what we're seeing right now all over. It's all these different streams of consciousness. Which one do we want to get, catch the current for? I think that's kind of the moment of choice we're in, like never before.

Xochitl Ashe (39:37)
Yeah. Hmm, I'm so happy you spoke on that because I really felt this clarity. I think it's been already a month right after the L.A. fires. So I was living in Mexico and when we met, I was living in Mexico and now I'm in L.A. So, yeah, so I was we evacuated and, you know, our home didn't burn. But yes, we're so blessed. But you know, being in the middle of it and Spirit told me to come back to LA and I was sitting really just not fully in clarity, really overwhelmed by the situation, the grief, the sadness of being in a... in such a massive fire. And finally clarity came and it was that I had to be certain, that I had to be certain that no matter what was happening around me, that I was born for this and that Mother Earth, Pachamama is gonna guide me. and is gonna guide us who choose to connect with her at this time. And that whatever I do, even if I'm sitting on the couch, just being in silence, that my assignment right now was to hold the vision that paradise on earth, heaven on earth, unity, love was possible at this time, no matter what.

Jyoti Ma (41:39)
See it, be it. See it and be it. We can no longer intellectualize what we already know. Now we have to embody it. And that's a word.

Xochitl Ashe (41:40)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so that's the work that I like. want to know, you know, because you're somebody that I really admire. I feel like you have a clear channel. A very strong one. So what would your recommendations or advice at this time would be to some of us that, you know, when we're in the middle of it or we get hit, you know, we get angry at watching. the atrocities that are happening, like how do we get back to that certainty, that clarity? How do you do it?

Jyoti Ma (42:32)
She gave me an image. friend of mine actually gave me this image some years ago. But at the first of the year, she brought me some instruction. The image she brought me was that we are divine. We are like divine flames in a wind tunnel. We have to plant that flame so it's firm in itself, and we need to step right in the center of it. so that we can use the wind to grow us and brighten us as we walk the light of the new dawn, rather than allow the wind to diminish us or extinguish us. So when things get really crazy, like they just did two days ago, I mean, we can speak every day has another big whoa moment. there are going to be a lot more of them. But when they that image has helped me so much, just when it gets like that, I just take a deep breath and I see myself being that light, that defined flame in that wind tunnel. I feel the wind moving around and I feel it brighten me and warm me and grow me. And I hold it like that. You know. There's another mantra that I was given some years ago that wants to come up and I can share. I give it to you. I have to pass it to you by you repeating it after me three times. And I can tell you a little story about how this happened. Well, I was with the grandmothers and as I said, we went to each grandmother hosted a gathering in her home place. so grandmother, Sering Gatong