Hello, and welcome to Home to Her, the podcast that's dedicated to reclaiming the lost and stolen wisdom of the sacred feminine. I'm your host, Liz Kelley, and on each episode, we explore her stories and myths, her spiritual principles, and most importantly, what this wisdom has to offer us right now. Thanks for being here. Let's get started. Hi. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Hey everybody, it's Liz joining you as usual from central Virginia and the unceded lands of the Monacan nation. And I'm so glad that you're here. And as always, if you want to know whose lands you might be residing on, please be sure to check out native-land. ca. It's an excellent map, really helpful for North America in particular. I'll put that in the show notes for you. And I am so glad that you are tuning in today, and if you're listening and you want to learn more about the Sacred Feminine, there are so many ways that you can do that, but I'll tell you quickly about a few that you can do with me. First you can check out my award winning book, Home to Her, Walking the Transformative Path at the Sacred Feminine. That is available wherever you buy your books. You can check out the classes available via the home to her Academy. Those are going to be rolling out all year long in collaboration with different teachers. And you can follow me on social. I'm at home to her on Facebook and Instagram. I forget, I keep forgetting to mention the Tiki Takis as a previous guest said, but I, I try to show up there here and there. I also have a Facebook group that's pretty robust and you can find that at home to her as well. So if you'd like to be in conversation on Facebook, you could check that out. And then you can check out articles and all the past podcast episodes at hometoher. com. And I will put all of that in the show notes for you. And if you are a regular listener, I would love it if you would consider leaving a review of the show wherever you access it. The reviews are so helpful. It helps other people to find this information. And I don't know about you, but when I got started on this path, it was not easy to find information about the Sacred Feminine. I think it's getting easier now, but if that speaks to you, that would mean a great deal to me. And As always, feel free to reach out to me with your thoughts, your comments, your feedback, your suggestions. I really do love hearing from you and social is a really good way to do that. So let's get on with the show. So here's a question for you. How far would you be willing to go to live out your sacred purpose? This is a big question, right? I actually think about this all the time. And I, I have been so inspired to have so many people on this show over the years who are doing this in a whole variety of ways. And my guest today is someone that I feel like has really taken this to a whole different level. And I'm, I don't even know how much we're going to be able to cover in this conversation, but I know it's going to, it's going to be perfect. And I think her, her story and her life's journey has been really, really inspiring and spectacular. So let me let me go ahead and introduce her to you now. Cynthia Jurs is the author of the new book, Summoned by the Earth, Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing Our World. She became a Dharma teacher in the order of interbeing of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in 1994, and in 2018 was made an honorary Lama in the Vajrayana tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, in recognition of her dedication in carrying out the earth treasure vase practice, which, not to worry, we are going to discuss that today. Inspired by 30 years of pilgrimage into diverse communities and ecosystems, today, Cynthia is forging a new path of Dharma in service to Gaia, a path that deeply rooted in the feminine honoring indigenous cultures and devoted to collective awakening. Cynthia leads meditations, retreats, courses, and pilgrimages to support the emergence of a global community of engaged and embodied sacred activists. She's joining us today from her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Cynthia, thank you so much. It is really an honor to have you here with me.

Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm really moved just hearing, you know, the little I have from you and with you, it's really moving to connect.

Thank you. Well, I know I, I, I, yeah, I feel, I have a feeling this conversation is going to go really fast. But where I usually like to start with guests is I love to hear about people's spiritual backgrounds. And I always say part of it is I'm just curious, but I'm often interested because we are talking about the sacred feminine. I'm always curious as to whether or not that was a part of that spiritual upbringing and if there was anything you had to leave behind to access that or not. So yeah, I would love to start there if that's okay with you. Okay.

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, let's see. I, I grew up in a family that didn't have much of an interest in anything spiritual or religious. My father and his family were Christian scientists, but my his mother, my grandmother and his, one of his brothers died very young because, They wouldn't receive medical treatment and that kind of soured him. And so he walked away from the church and my mom was also from a kind of atheist family really. I mean, I think her, her ancestors would have been considered Christian, but her immediate parents were really kind of atheist. But my mother had a really strong connection to nature, and she instilled that in me as a child, and we spent a lot of time outside. And I absorbed a lot of my love for Mother Earth through my own mother. So but I was hungry for a spiritual life as a child. And my parents said, you can go to any church you want. You know, you feel free, you know, explore, do whatever you want. But, you know, you kind of have to find your own way. And so then when I was in my twenties, I started to hone in on things. I was very drawn to healing arts and studied body work and things like that, different formats and traditions. And then I followed a, a, a Hindu teacher named Muktananda for a while. But it was when I kind of found my way into the Buddhist world that things started to make a lot of sense for me because it was very much oriented towards, you know, not, not requiring one to believe in an external god, but really finding our own buddha nature Which we all have which is accessed most directly in the teachings through the practice of meditation and You know there we can kind of come home to our true self, as Thich Nhat Hanh would say, Thich Nhat Hanh became my teacher in the 1980s and I loved him because of his invitation around two things. One is engaged Buddhism, as he describes it. So, you know, it's one thing to meditate and, you know, breathe and practice and whatever it is, but it's another thing to engage our practice to be of benefit to other beings. And that really spoke to me. My family background was very engaged in local political situations and callings that way. So I kind of came up with that. with that. And the other thing Thich Nhat Hanh always stressed is the notion of interbeing. So this connection between all things and all beings, interbeing. And It, it just, his language and his approach is so simple, and it really opened up a lot for me to meet him, and you know, I became a, a teacher in his lineage after practicing with him for maybe 10 or 15 years, and, and and then I found also the Tibetans and I love, I love many of their teachings as well and and went very deeply into that. But I also was, was struggling a bit inside of the Buddhist world because it's very patriarchal and it's very hierarchical. I mean, many of the religious and spiritual traditions are. And I I was also struggling with that as a woman and as someone who is looking to the earth as the embodiment of, of so much beauty and wisdom in all the living systems of Gaia. So I've had to kind of make my own way now and I don't know if that answers your initial question, but let me know where you'd like to go from there.

Well, it definitely does. And I'm wanting to go back and just say, or ask you, because really, you know, if you read your book and you read some of your background to, to start in a household where you really didn't have much spiritual guidance at all, to, to end up living at Plum Village with Thich Nhat Hanh, I mean, that's, that's, that's fairly extraordinary, you know? So I'm wondering, you know, there's a. I, I want, I'm wanting to ask you about the spark or the hunger or the thing that, that, that set you on that, that path, right? Because I think there are many of us who maybe perhaps many people who are like, well, I want, I want something spiritual, but I feel it seems like you really were called in a very deep and profound way. Hmm.

It's true. I, I couldn't escape it. And. I think I was sort of possessed, you know, like I, and plus the times, you know, the times that I, I have lived starting in the 60s, you know, kind of coming of age in the 60s, and then breaking out of the dominant culture paradigm, you know, and then finding I, I didn't go to college. I went to I traveled and I traveled the world and I, I ended up, I write about this in my book, but I ended up at one point becoming a cook for expeditions by Land Rover into Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iran. This was before everything blew up in, in that part of the world. And, you know, just had some amazing experiences going very, very far away from the culture and community that I grew up in. And that was my, my big calling early on was just to. to go as far and wide as I possibly could. And and I was able to do that. It was a blessing, you know, to be exposed to so much. And then you know, I was, I was deeply hungry for some meaning to my life that was bigger than me. I kept searching and wondering and, you know, trying to find my way and healing was a big part of it, as I mentioned, but meeting Thich Nhat Hanh was, was seminal. You know, and I've been kind of circling around, circling around. But when I met him so much started to make sense. So I began to organize retreats for him. He asked me to do that. And it was right when he was just starting to come out and become well known. So I had the great good fortune of being close to him at a time when you could get close to him. And you know, he married my husband and me and you know, put a little bell in my hands and said, okay, start a sangha and things like that. So, but I was, as I say, I was also curious, very curious about the, the Tibetan tradition. And at one point I, I went into retreat on my own. It was the first time actually that I, I kind of extricated myself from my life and went up into the into the woods and did a personal retreat. And during that time, I had an experience of what I later learned was the 21 manifestations of Tara, the feminine deity that is so venerated in the Tibetan Buddhist culture. And I was meditating outside on a rock and I, and, and she just started arising into the space in front of me, like fully grown, You know, all the details and sitting on a lotus and, you know, looking at me and I didn't at that time have a lot of experience within the culture of Tibetan Buddhism. So kind of blew my mind. And it was happening day and night. Meditation, dreams you know, I couldn't, I couldn't get away from it. And that really, really got my attention. And, and you know, you'll, you'll recognize and be interested in the fact that this was this beautiful feminine deity embodiment of the sacred feminine. And so, you know, I, it led me onto the path. It, it, I went to Asia. I met one of my first Vajrayana teachers in Bhutan who said, Oh yeah, yeah, that was, that was Tara, right? Here, here she is, you know, in all her forms. And I just had to say, yeah, that, that's what I saw. And I hadn't, I didn't have that going already. So you know, I began to practice and began to listen and follow different teachers and receive a lot of teachings and go into retreat and all of that. But then in 1990, I, had the opportunity to go and meet an old wise man in a cave who was a llama living in a remote part of Nepal. And I was, immediately knew that I had to go and meet him, but I didn't really know why. And it wasn't until I was walking up the path of those high mountains, you know, kind of struggling to keep up that I realized I had been given this incredible opportunity to ask a question of the proverbial old wise man in the cave, and then I thought well, what's my question? I had I really didn't know, you know, I was just putting one foot in front of the other literally and but but then the question came and My question was what can we do to bring healing and protection to the earth? And That's still my question, really. It's the guiding question of my life. And we were already feeling the signs and omens, you know, back then in 1990 when that happened. But now, of course, it's even more powerful what, what the, the, the messages that Gaia is sending to us to wake up and to get involved in turning things around, you know, bringing healing and protection to the earth. So that's a good part of the beginning.

Yes, and I want to, and of course, I want to talk about, you know, where that conversation took you and, and all the ways that's unfolded but I do, I want to go back for listeners and just ask you if you don't mind to tell listeners a little bit about Tara, if they're not familiar with who Tara is is she's a beautiful deity and I she hasn't come up that much on this podcast so huh.

Well, okay. So in the in the tibetan buddhist tradition, there are many deities that are that are venerated and appreciated and worked with in meditation and They all embody aspects of our own Buddha nature, you know, we're, as I say, we all have that capacity to be awakened, to be liberated, to be enlightened or free. And so the, the teachings offer us different ways we can access that within ourselves. And the practices in Tibetan Buddhism, usually involve visualizing a deity that is an embodiment of something that we want to make part of ourselves, you know, and we begin to realize that actually we're not separate. And this is a sort of a skillful method of the tradition to invite us to, into a whole visualization. In this case, Tara is an embodiment of of the feminine, the awakened feminine. And she comes in different forms. She, they say there's 21 forms of Tara, and she is known very especially for coming when called. So when we invoke her, she's supposed to you know, show up. And I can testify to that because she's shown up for me many times over many years. And the, the form that is most often understood or, or worked with, with Tara is a called a green Tara. And in the Tibetan tradition, there's different colors you may have seen of the deities, like sometimes white, sometimes red, sometimes green or blue or yellow. And each one of those represents a different quality energy that is has several aspects, it's sort of the elemental energies of you know, the fire, the, the air, the earth element, the, the space element, the water element, or the the wisdom of those, elemental energies or the, the, the so called kind of poison or reactive emotions that are also associated with them. It's a whole teaching I could get into, but I don't want to take all of our time on that. I do, I do speak to it a bit in my book. So green Tara is connected to the the element of, of air. And she's very swift. She's all about action. And she's pictured always with one foot coming off the Lotus. So she's not just sitting there. She's actually ready to jump into action. And so when you call on her, she responds. And She's very helpful that way. She's supposed to remove a lot of obstacles and you know, just be a real ally in helping us do what we are here to do. She's all about engagement, you know, really. And the reactive emotion connected with the color green has to do with competition and jealousy and envy and those kinds of energies, which You know, many, many women and men, all of us, whoever we are, you know, we get caught in that trying to get ourselves ahead. You know, trying to accomplish what it is that we're here to do. Her wisdom is all accomplishing wisdom. And so we sometimes have to struggle with issues that come up in relationship to other people or other situations that are, you know, getting in our way or. Putting us down or, you know, these kinds of things. So there's lots of richness in this exploration. But anyway, green Tara, the Taras, they, they're often pictured very beautiful often naked or partially naked. You know, just expressing the beauty of the divine feminine. And again, in all, all her glory. You know, so to identify with an embodiment of that as who we also are, you know, is a way of empowering ourselves to embrace you know, something a lot bigger than what we may normally have thought of as who we are.

One of the things that I love about Tara and it shows up with Mary, the Virgin Mary as well. And, and I believe with Durga as well, is that idea that if you call in her, she's going to come and help you, but you got to ask, you got to ask for it. Like there's a, there's a co creative aspect to it. Yes.

One way of, of asking is by making an offering, to, you know, call on her, but to, you know, like when someone comes to dinner, a guest, you want to give them a beautiful plate of food, you know, you want to please them, you want to make them feel happy and sort of like that with, with these so called deities, these energies that are all around us just waiting, you know, to be invited.

And isn't there also a story connected to Tara about her demonstrating that you can in fact achieve enlightenment in the body of a woman? That's right, that's

right. Thank you. Yeah, she, so the story goes that she was a noble woman in, you know, times past and that all the, she was very interested in the spiritual life and service and everybody said, well, you should pray to be reborn as a man because then you can be enlightened. And she said, I'm sorry, but I'm, I don't want to do it in the body of a man. I want to do it in the body of a woman. And so she said she vowed to always take birth as a, as a woman, in the female form. And sure enough, you know, she, she showed the way. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Beautiful.

Well, and I, I'd love to go back to, so you, you, you got the opportunity to ask this question to the holy man in the cave and yeah, what did, what did, what did he tell you?

Well, he told me that anyone can make a difference, you know, in the whole area where they live. If they're connected to their deepest prayer, I mean, or intention is another way of talking about prayer. And and he looked at me and he said, but you, you need to get these earth treasure vases and you need to put them in the ground and they will do the work of bringing healing and protection to the whole area around where they're planted. And I was kind of skeptical, to say the least, because at the time I was very concerned, still am, about the fallout from radioactive waste coming off of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is where the atomic bombs were first made. And the nuclear industry is still going on here in New Mexico. And I was learning a lot from a woman you may have heard of named Joanna Macy, who has been one of my teachers. And She spoke at that time a lot about her notion of nuclear guardianship and the need to protect the web of life from these horrific substances that really change the whole fabric of life on earth affecting, you know, our DNA. And so. I didn't really understand how a little clay pot, which is what these are, filled with prayers and offerings that are symbolic of healing and protection could actually affect the kinds of change that are needed in the world. But I also, realized that I had a lot of respect for this particular tradition and that the change that we're needing is going to come in a lot of different ways. We have to, we have to basically do all of it because it's so vast. And this is what was coming to me. So I asked where I could get some, and I was directed to a monastery to have them made. And one thing led to another and I received 30, initially 30 of these earth treasure vases. And they, they were concerned about customs and security because they had to travel around the world to get to me. Once they're filled, which normally the, the llamas would, would make the pots and then fill them with these offerings and then, Bless them and consecrate them and then seal them. And then, then they would be taken out to places where healing is called for. But because they had to travel so far, they, they blessed them. They mixed a certain very potent substances into the clay. And then they consecrated the pots and then gave them to, to me and to our community to fill in our own way. And they said, just put them in the ground, they'll do the work, you know? And again, my rational mind was sort of I don't know what the word is in this moment, but, you know, doubtful, like how, how could that be? And, and yet, you know, okay, so let's try this. And it took me about five years before I started working with them because I was really overwhelmed with the assignment. But I also felt like the signs were starting to happen of forest fires and droughts and all the other things that we could name coming more and more quickly, you know? And so, okay, well, we have these little, little treasure vases and let's see what happens. So we started to work with them and dedicate them to going into different places and this global healing mandala of locations was born and we started up above Los Alamos National Lab and buried the first one there. And then we went to the four directions to the north, south, east, and west around that place and put them in the source of the Rio Grande River, the mouth of the Rio Grande River, and on top of the two highest mountains to the east and west. And that began. to seed this global intention for healing and protection. And then they started going out around the world. And at a certain point I received 40 more that were actually made at the same time as the original ones. And the practice has taken me all around the world to incredible locations and communities. I mean, because everywhere, you turn, there's an issue that needs healing or protection or renewal. And these are the times we're living in, you know, but then at a certain point we made another, uh, generation of these ourselves at the guy with the guidance of a native American. Potter here in New Mexico, who taught us how to make these little clay pots and carried the, the practice forward. So it's gone on for about 30 years, and the book is very much about a lot of those journeys, and what's happened.

Yes. So fascinating. And I was thinking, as you were saying, like with your skepticism, how I was just reflecting on how popular culture like we're simultaneously very skeptical of magic or, or, you know, things that fall in the realm outside of rational, logical data. I'm going to do X and X produces Y or whatever. And yet our stories in our movies and everything is just full of examples of the same thing. And it's like, I wonder sometimes if it's this buried. Knowing, you know, forgotten, forgotten in air quotes, right? Because we didn't really forget, but we're, we're trying to reclaim a knowing that yes, in fact, we are co creating energetically with all kinds of forces that we cannot possibly fully know. And so therefore have no idea how this might play out. But I, I think that one of the things that is maybe challenging, and I'm curious what you would say about this too. Like I've got, I've got school kids and You know, they think of magic is like Harry Potter, like they think of it as very dramatic, kind of like you see this very visible thing immediately. And yet I feel like what, what you're talking about and what you're describing, there also has to be a faith that it is larger than us. Right. And so we may well not see how it's going to play out in our lifetimes or, or know. And that's, that isn't really the point, right. For us to know for sure. It's to participate in the process.

Yeah, and participate in something so much larger than ourselves and get over ourselves, you know, like, I mean, I'll tell you when I thought I knew what was best for these treasure vases or for the world, all kinds of things would go wrong. But when I got out of the way and allowed something larger to operate that I was in service to, then suddenly things would start to fall into place and that is magic. You know, that is miraculous because so much of the time we make it so much harder for ourselves than, than it needs to be. And when we stop doing that and thinking we have all the answers, then something else can start to operate. You know, maybe it's the divine feminine, maybe it's Gaia herself, maybe it's great spirit, whatever you want to call it, you know the miraculous web of life, you know, that we suddenly align ourselves with that then can go where it needs to go, you know, I think indigenous peoples have always understood this, you know, and the way in which nature operates that we have tried to control and, and are making such a mess of. So, you know, I think the way Harry Potter operates in this case is through the synchronicities and the, the, the connections that start to appear where, you know, I, all I did was form an intention that, okay, so I would like to take one of these treasure vases or somebody calls and says, this needs to happen, you know, to some, some location. And then all of a sudden all this starts happening. Like I could never have predicted. Yeah. And the same with once, once they get planted, once they, once they get filled with all these, these incredible prayers and intentions and heartfelt, you know, tears and whatever it is that we love and care about so much that is connected to the. place where this little clay pot is bound to go, it becomes this receptacle for all that we, you know, care the most about in terms of life on earth and how to protect and enhance and support that, you know, that then it, it becomes like a living being and, and, and then things start happening.

Yeah. Yes. Well, and I, I wonder if you could speak to, I'm sure this is how many of these have you placed now? What, how many total have you done? Do you know?

I've, I always lose track. I'm not very good about numbers and I, I just, it's so big, you know, I think we have, we have a total of about, I think it's 93 or 94 and there's probably of that 25 or so that are still in process. So maybe more, maybe 30 ish still being worked with, but most of them are either planted already or are in the hands of people who are stewarding them because I've done. I've done many, many, many. I did a good majority of them to begin with. And then I realized it was time to involve others and invite others to take up the practice too. So my job now is to support a lot of other people doing that. And it's been amazing. I mean, we might make another generation to come in the future. We'll see how this goes, but right now we want to really support those who are working to get them in the ground because they're really supposed to be in the ground. That's where they do their work.

Yeah. Well, and I'm curious if there's I'm sure you've got, and well, and you have many of them in your book, but if there's any in particular stories that sort of come forward for you of, of actually, you know, placing one of these, like anything that you might want to share with listeners. Yeah.

There's been so many amazing stories. I, I often don't even know where to begin because there's been so many of them and each place is so different, you know. I mean, since you're interested in, in, in the feminine, I would say that like one of the very powerful places that I went with this practice is the Democratic Republic of Congo. And that's, In some ways, it's considered the rape capital of the world, you know, and rape is really being used as a weapon to control communities and people and women. And I wanted to address that as one of the core wounds that is in need of healing all around the world. And I met incredible women. There who are standing up to tell a new story, you know, and we also took the treasure vase into the forest. Congo has the second largest rainforest in the world outside of Brazil. And so it's a very, very important place to maintain the the balance of. you know, the living systems on earth by protecting those rainforests. And Congo is being exploited terribly by a lot of things. One being the, the mining of minerals. It's a very rich, rich land and a very beautiful land. And it is not the heart of darkness. It is a beautiful place in the heart of Africa. And so we, I ended up making relations with one woman in particular. Her name is Neema Namadamu and she became my sister and has now started an organization called Hero Women Rising. And Her work is, is integrating, you know, all of these things from empowering women to stand up to becoming voices of the future and, and telling their stories and healing and also planting trees to protect the, the land and the forest. So there's tremendous amount that came from taking one of the treasure vases to Congo. I mean, she is a living treasure. And what she's done as a result of all of this and what her people have done is, is transforming the country, basically, you know I went to Australia and when I was getting ready to go to Australia, I thought, I wasn't really like, okay, you know, I guess we have to go to Australia because it's a whole continent. And after all, we have to spread this around the world. And, you know, and then I got an invitation to meet the custodial elder of Uluru, which is Ayers Rock in, in the center of the Australian desert. And he was here in my hometown here and, and came and visited and gave an incredible blessing to this practice and invited us to come. And we did. And I, you know, We went from Uluru up to the Northern Territory of Australia, where we were introduced to an elder woman named auntie Margaret Catherine. And she's a Jawun elder who is actually no longer alive but She just took us under her wing. She adopted me as her daughter and she gave all of us in this earth treasure vase pilgrimage group, what are called skin names in her culture. She's aboriginal woman to make us relations, make us family, you know, connect us. And then she told us where to go. She showed us, you know, the way, and she just opened up the world. And I don't know how familiar you are with Aboriginal culture, but they talk a lot about the song lines that are the tracks, the dreaming tracks in the land of the different tribal groups across the whole country. These, these peoples going back 50, 000 years, you know, some of maybe the oldest people on the planet. And so amazing the, the culture that I discovered there and was so grateful to be you know, adopted by and, and then just her cackle, you know, and her, her incredible connection to this practice. And she told us, you know, this treasure vase is going to enter the dream time. It's part of the story now. And and then because she made us all family, it was like, instead of it being sort of this project that was being carried out around the world, it became not only a community, but a we were all like related. We were all connected. And that still has continued to this day. So You know, there's stories of working with ex combatants and former child soldiers in Liberia. That's another where real tangible things came from burying a treasure vase. And then there's more subtle experiences of things that have happened in places like The Great Pyramids and, and Avebury where the Standing Stones are in England and, you know, here in New Mexico where I shared about the cave and, or the Los Alamos National Lab. I don't know what's going to happen there, but we've met, we've connected with one Native American woman in particular who taught us how to make the vases and, you know, she sees that there's. Little openings, you know, and she's taught us how to feed the spirit of what we want to see in the world, you know, to focus on not getting pulled down by all the horrible things that are happening, but, but contributing our awareness and our energy in our, our lives to feeding that spirit of what we want to see in the world. And that's really what it's all about. And, and then, you know, realizing that while we can be working with these little clay pots, basically what they're teaching us is how to be the vessel ourselves, because we're each, these holy vessels filled with incredible offerings for our families and our communities and the land that we love and you know what we care about. So It keeps going in all kinds of ways and there's many more stories I could share, but maybe that's a little, a little taste.

Yeah. As you were saying that last part, I was thinking of a quote by the, anyone's familiar with the hugging saint Amma from India, who one of my favorite quotes from her is don't be discouraged by your Inability to dispel darkness from the world, light your candle and step forward. And I, I love that so much because it takes the responsibility and really I say responsibility, what I mean is ego. You know, it takes the, it is up to me to save the world. It takes that off of the table and just turns it into, but this is what I have to contribute and this is what I will contribute and that's all I have to do. And I get to trust that others, you know, are lighting their candles and making their contributions. And then, you know, just even from hearing you talk, it sounds like you get to see that. reflected back to you by the process of saying yes to this sacred purpose, you get to see it. Definitely,

definitely. And I watch people who take up this practice, how their lives are transformed and how they get in touch with the healing that is needed in their lives too, and how it's connected to what's called for in the world. And, you know, we just have to take the first step and then the world opens up, even if it's just in our own backyard, you know, So Yeah. Yeah.

Well, and I'm curious from you how you mentioned Tara and I, I would love to hear you talk more about who or what this sacred feminine is to you. And you're welcome to use any other language, divine feminine or goddess or whatever, whatever you want. But, and how perhaps that understanding of her, the feminine aspect of God has been shaped by this journey that you've been on with the earth's treasure vases.

Thank you. Yeah, it's really a big part of it, actually, because you know, I was very hungry for, for that connection. And I wasn't finding it exactly inside of these lineages that I was, you know, practicing in, which I, you know, I love the teachings and I, you know, I'm so grateful for my teachers, but there was like, ah, you know, so Tara came the closest to sort of answering that need. But at a certain point after having traveled around so much with these treasure vases all over, which was very challenging, actually, you know, to go into these places like Congo and Liberia and everything. I was asking for a direct relationship with Mother Earth, with Gaia, with the Sacred Feminine. And, you know, it was like one thing to sort of imagine her. And it was another to, you know, have my ground be her. And, you know, I didn't quite know how to get there, and I wasn't getting much help from my teachers, you know, but I would practice, I would do my practices, and I would go off and have these experiences, and anyway, one day I was I was invoking Tara, but what happened was that instead of the mantra that's associated with Tara, I started to hear a different mantra. And it was a mantra to Gaia that came, that just came, you know, and I wasn't like setting out to, you know, sort of say, okay, well, now I want this to happen. You know, it wasn't like that. It was just, it was, you know, maybe it was a little bit of a miracle or something, but anyway, I heard this mantra and I, I immediately started reciting it and I started having an experience of the visualization that I was doing of Tara evolving and transforming into an embodiment of Gaia. And so I began to work with, with this and I was afraid to bring it out because of how I might be criticized by the lineage masters for, you know, being just another one of these people who's sort of doing their own thing, who's trying to, I don't know, be somebody, you know, whatever taking the teachings and turning it into my own thing, which really was not at all what was happening because I was listening so deeply to the suffering of the world through the treasure vases that I, Came to, you know, really feel as if the times that we're living in is calling us to respond to her, you know and that the way in which the spiritual experience is being passed on in in a lot of ways is is Not really working very well anymore. You know, it's just kind of part of the same old story and And So this was all kind of swirling around. And finally you know, the, the llamas that I did talk to said, you know, well, you just need to practice this for a long time yourself before you start sharing it because it has to really sink in and so I did that, but I didn't do it for as long as they thought I should probably, but I worked with it very deeply on my own. And, and then I I went back to Nepal in 2018 and went back to the, to the cave where I had met the old Lama. And it was at that time that I was also made a Lama myself. And I was conflicted by that because I I knew that my teacher was Gaia, not the gurus, you know, that it was really shifting. The ground was really shifting. And I, but I love the culture and I love the, you know, I love so much of it. So I was, I was struggling. And where the Lama used to live when I met him, you know, 30 years ago, 35 years ago, his daughter was there and she was now 80. I, when I met her, she was 50. And I, I, She'd been there since she was 30, and she was now 80. I mean, like, this is a woman who, you know, if she were a man, people would be flocking to her. But if she, since she's a woman living in a remote part of Nepal, nobody hardly even knows about her. And, and so, I had that experience and going back to see her and but coming down the mountain the same mountain that I had found my question, my guiding question, coming down that same mountain on that, that next trip back, I fell and I fell over the edge of the trail and I thought I left my body. I mean, I thought it was dead because it was a you know Very steep all the way down thousands of feet to the bottom And there's nothing stopping me and I tumbled and but then all of a sudden I came to a stop and I didn't know How that happened how I was, you know spared And I had to come to terms with that and it took a while, but because I was not that badly injured, I was a little injured, but I, I was able to with the help of a Sherpa porter who was up above on the trail that I yelled for help. I was afraid I was going to fall. Anyway, it's a whole story, but and that too is in the book. But so I had some help getting up after that. And it was it was it was a very intense and powerful experience because it really was a near death experience. But I realized in reflecting on it that yes I had fallen off the path. Literally, and that it was the earth who caught me, because I could feel her on the back of me going, you know, like this, just grabbing onto me going, no, it's not time for you to go yet. You're with me. And so after that, I realized I had to own this calling to bring the sublime mother Gaia into the world and to share her mantra and to invite others to make that connection and to really stand up for what this whole journey has been for me in relationship to the earth and the times and the need for us to listen to her voice, you know, and to respond in our own way, however we can as holy vessels.

Yeah, I'm so glad you spoke to that. And it seems to me that there's, and this is a theme that I think has come up this year on other episodes of the show of and maybe it's probably because it's a theme in my life is that dance of the rootedness of deep spiritual teachings that have been passed down through a lineage by people who are devoted and devoted to carrying that wisdom forward generation after generation and the value of that Which I really can't overstate. And yet the, the reality that the feminine is so vastly underrepresented in so many of them and how deeply, and I mean, that's like deeply painful that can be for women. And I think it's painful for men too, whether or not they know it. But just how deeply painful that can be to feel drawn and connected to teachings and to not see yourself in them, and I've, I've. I've seen kind of, and I've done it in my own path, like the kind of the reactive will like screw all of this if I'm not in it, you are not a representation of God to me, you cannot be because I, I belong here too. And it's, you know, it's been, of course, years like we evolve right but it to me, I think the more interesting question to me now is in this is the feminine as well to me is the yes and. Like, how do we hold the both? How do we hold the wisdom of the teachings and the dedication of those teachers and the love and all that was poured into that over time and the reality that, that we need this feminine perspective that just, you know, Perhaps hasn't been there, and it makes me even wonder if it's the infusion of the feminine and kind of in the way that you're describing, I know you didn't say it's an infusion, but I'm imagining it that way. Helps those traditions evolve and survive and be relevant because Goddess knows we need some kind of spiritual grounding for what we're headed for. You know, like I don't think that it's wise to throw everything out. I don't know how you feel about that, but Yeah, no, I'm,

I'm, I'm right with you. And you know, that's actually one of the teachings of the, of the holy vessel, right? Because if you're a vessel, the, the a a vessel needs to be able to hold it all. And, and we don't want to contribute to more polarity in the world. We got enough of that. So we're not wanting to say, you know, be reactive in that way. I mean, of course, there's like, okay, everybody, time's up. This isn't, this isn't serving anymore. But we want to do that in a way we want to make the change and, and transform in such a way that we come together. We hold each other. We have love as our guiding force, not hatred, you know? And, and so, how do we do that? How do we do that? And that's, that's our assignment in these times. You know, and I can really relate to what you're saying because when I was writing the book, I I was very interested in this whole notion of, of summoned by the earth, which if you're familiar with the story of the Buddha, when the Buddha was in the process of, of becoming enlightened, he was sitting under a tree and he had been, you know, pretty much he hit bottom, let's say. And he was then recovering from starvation and all of these ascetic practices that he had been doing. And he took food from a young girl who fed him and kind of brought him back to life. And then he had this, this awakening. And in the process of his awakening, he was being challenged, you know, in his psyche by all the forces that wanted to stop him and put him down. And in that moment, he summoned the earth, he touched the earth to summon the earth to witness his his experiences awakening, which I find so such an incredible gesture, you know that that he would have summoned the earth. So I was curious about that because my own experience, not that I'm enlightened at all, but I feel, you know, I had been summoned and also at a certain point along the way, it was actually in Australia when we were completing a certain phase of this whole practice of this mandala with the treasure vases. I did summon the earth and I, I asked the earth, you know, to come and to, like celebrate the moment, you know, like I had, I realized I had done this thing, on behalf of her and that it was this offering. It was just an offering, you know, and it was just such a moment and it, it's also in the book. But when I was writing about it, I wrote this whole story about the Buddha, this experience I just told you, and something about it was just sort of like, eh, okay, well, whatever, you know, and then all of a sudden, out of the blue, I found myself rewriting it as if the Buddha were a woman. And it had never occurred to me to even think about the Buddha being a woman, because the Buddha was the Buddha. It was a man, historically. And yet there I was, reframing it just enough so that it was a woman's story instead of a man's story. And I realized that I had needed that so deeply to have a to not have to make that adjustment, you know, around what I'm identifying as the great teacher showing the way. And instead to see that it's part of me, you know, as a woman, that I could have that experience. And I, I got some pushback from some of the men who read, read the book and, you know, commented like that wasn't okay with them. They didn't like it and, and wanted me to change it because the Buddha was not a woman. The Buddha was a man. Well, I said, well, I'm not saying the Buddha was a woman. I'm saying, let's just imagine for a second what it might be like if the Buddha were a woman, you know, just for the sake of the conversation. Anyway, it changed the ground for me a lot. And I hope for others who will read it.

Yeah. Oh, that's such a beautiful story. I was just thinking about like, wow, what if we did that with other stories? Like, what if Jesus were a woman? Hmm. Quite fun to consider. Oh my gosh. I feel like I could ask you lots and lots more questions, but I, I think this might be a good place to stop. 'cause I think we're gonna run outta time. Mm-Hmm. Oh, Cynthia, thank you so much. I just feel like that that whole and just even just wrapping it all up for us by explaining the title of your book, Summoned by the Earth, and drawing the Buddha into that. I'm going to be with that. I'm going to be with that for a while. So thank you so much for your time and for your gifts and what you've been offering the world. Such a pleasure to be with you.

You're so welcome. It's wonderful to talk with you and to connect with your listeners through our conversation and just Yeah, hope for all the ripples to go out where they need to go and be received in the ways that will be of benefit.

Yeah, may it be so. And Cynthia's book is Summoned by the Earth, Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing Our World. And your website to learn more about you I had it written down and it's Gaiamandala.net. net. GayaMandala. net. Not to worry if you didn't catch that, I will put that in the show notes. And thanks to all of you for listening as always. I'm so grateful that you're along on this sacred feminine journey with me. And if you liked the show, you could do a few things. You can give it a favorable review. You can subscribe. You can tell all your friends about it. And until next time, take very good care of yourselves and I'll be with you again soon.

Home to Her is hosted by me, Liz Kelly. You can visit me online at hometoher. com, where you can find show notes and other episodes. You can read articles about the Sacred Feminine, and you'll also find a link to join the Home to Her Facebook group for lots more discussion and exploration of Her. You can also follow me on Instagram, at home to her, to keep up to date with the latest episodes. Thanks so much for joining us and we'll see you back here soon.