TRAIL OF THE RAINBOW SERPENT: The Human Journey Of Cosmic Resurrection by Merilyn Tunneshende

The journey begins on the river of life and death, the limbic system of the cosmos, repository of the most ancient memories, fluid of the void and waters of the womb, from whose never-ending flow we must re-emerge purified after experiencing total oneness. It is here that the Mayan Hero Twins, double beings, physical and fully honed energy bodies, resurrect themselves before the lords of death, thus attaining the integrity of their energetic existence and rising above the lower realms to assure their position in the cosmos. This begins our Mayan initiation into ancient Mesoamerican alchemical wisdom and secrets of life and death. A group of cohorts, some of my most respected students and myself, float down this river in silence, following the old roads and timeless currents, seeking the energy directly. We emerge pure and respectful and take time to discuss and honor the generations that have gone before us.

It is winter in the Yucatan, but the climate is like the freshest and brightest of springs, filled with hope and the rebirth of the path of knowledge at the dawn of the new millennium. Everywhere there is ceremony. In each place we are greeted by the presence of the living Toltec-Maya and other native peoples of Mexico, all celebrating and here to witness the same beautiful miracles we are blessed to experience. The energy lets us know from the very beginning of our journey, that it is the tangible manifestation of transformation and it is to be shared. When we arrive at the first feminine temple site, we are asked to make sound offerings of grateful matrix tones for the Lady of Rainbows. Her emerging being is the sacred, light-filled, fluid void of creation, sprouting the spiraling double DNA helix, the tree of life and evolutionary ladder to the heavens. We stand atop the Nohoch Mul, the great place of offering, and look out at the jungle all around us. Our cosmic ascent begins here and the Mayan people of the area come out to tell us of the recent activities of the Aluxes, little spirits who act as intermediaries between the realms of the gods and nature.

We will have to follow the most ancient routes of initiation in order to honor this energy properly. We are invited to experience the ceremony of the descent of rainbows and celestial beings, offered for us by the Totonac peoples, and so we must now proceed to the coast. After one more purification there and an offering to the sea, waters of the earth womb, we will be prepared to make our trek to the Mesoamerican "cosmic university," the highest site of initiations within the world of the living Toltec-Maya; Chichen Itza, Place at the Mouth of the Sorcerer's Well. We will soon journey into a world where raised sexual energy, peerless science and enlightened spiritual attainment merge and co-exist in environmental harmony. We will enter the temple home of the Celestial Rainbow Serpent, crowning Mayan Tantric energy with astronomy, gaze at the platform of the fire within atop the Temple of the Warriors and receive the announcement of the impending birth of the Sixth Sun of Spiritual Consciousness in the cosmic Ball Court. We will undertake the initiatory journeys at Chichen Itza, the place where the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts and all roads lead to resurrection.

To enter into the mysteries of life, death and transformation there, to step upon the threshold of spiritual flight, and have a warrior's initiation into the Eagle and the luminous energy body that transcends death, one must pass through the open mouth of the Ek Balam, the black jaguar, guardian of the first death, the dark creation void and of the first mysteries of creation. Here at the Jaguar Temple we must dream that we are swallowed by the guardian. It is not without reverent awe that we approach this gateway. Each temple at Chichen Itza has levels of initiation prescribed by the ancient seers who encoded their wisdom into manifestation within the living, awakened temples of stone. Many of these initiations occur within the very specific shamanic state called Dreaming, which may, for the modern Western culture, be defined as the ability to enter into a profoundly deep and lucid state of meaningful dreaming and heightened awareness and then to awaken, within that state, into the full potential of the energy body. To know of these initiatory roads and have the keys required to unlock the mysteries, one must first be accompanied by a "sabio" or a "sabia," literally one who knows how, or a man or woman of knowledge who has attained the prerequisite levels of Dreaming and can demonstrate them. This individual must have been initiated into the "Dreaming formulas" as it were, and be able to pass through the temple doorways into the multi-leveled realities that have been transmitted from shaman to apprentice for millennia.

Our group now travels the same roads into and between temples that were taught to me by my mentors years ago when I was a barefoot novice. Each member of our group, which consists of people from as far away as the African continent, has their own opportunity to encounter the voracious black jaguar that night. By being swallowed into the first mysteries, one receives the energetic imprint of the essence of creation and the path to come. In the morning, we must purify further and offer our sweat to the womb of creation in a traditional Temazcal, a Mesoamerican sweat lodge and steam bath, led by an apprentice Nahua curandero (healer) who has come to initiate the lodge. The exterior of the Temazcal is painted as the open mouth of the Feathered Rainbow Serpent. Again we must be swallowed. We bow and enter. Within, the cosmos hovers above us. Comets are portrayed streaking across the dark celestial dome that covers our womb space and we represent the global family. We sit within the initiatory womb and pray that our hearts be open to the energy that is being reborn worldwide. We sweat four rounds of one hour for each of the four directions of the globe, and a silent fifth for the center of all being.

What we discover is that we are being shepherded and blessed as a representative global population of the new millennium. The initiations and ceremonies put us directly in touch with our heart selves and we are asked to receive for all humanity. We offer vocal and silent prayers for all sentient beings. After sweating, we must travel a short distance to the underground Cave of the Jaguar Serpent where we have come to offer our hearts to the roots of the tree of life and to ascend from consciousness that is rooted only in the lower realms, toward states of being that are proper to the upper levels of existence. The tree of life, in Mayan initiatory cosmology, is the triple level, sacred center road at the heart of the cosmos. It is comprised of the underworld realms, the earthly, and the celestial, or, as the Taoists see it, the primordial sexual, the vital, and the cosmic spiritual levels. Through these levels, the serpent of life and awareness, or the kundalini, must ascend. There within the cave, we see the ancient offerings of ascent that have been made before our time. One offering is of a pure white heart of stone that was left by Toltec priests, for whom this site is a most holy place. It is only through the energy of the heart that the lower and the upper forces may connect to beneficial transformation. We become a global family circling the sacred tree of life, loving our existence into upward evolution, spiraling our DNA into ascent around the holy body of the universal tree.

Each of you, every group of friends, every family, and networks of energy workers may make this holy offering worldwide and receive this practice into yourselves. Join with us, and one another in a circle around a sacred tree in your own home land. Come together and offer your heart selves to the tree of life in harmonious song, toning creation into being while holding hands. Feel the energy resonate and elevate from below the earth upward, moving through your umbilical region into your heart and then ascending, overflowing. Then leave a heart offering at the base of the tree to be nourishment for the roots. This ancient Toltec-Mayan medicine was and is still performed in sacred caves where stalactites and stalagmites join to form the cosmic tree. We invite you to share in it with us.

After leaving the Cave of the Jaguar Serpent, the initiatory road leads us into the Heart of the Pyramid of the Feathered Rainbow Serpent, the core of cosmic DNA. Here we see the enthroned Jaguar Energy, the entwining emergence of creation from the void, and the place for the offering of our tears. The loss and the corruption of the original creation has to be mourned at this place of offering, so that we may once again integrate and align with that creation and smell the original fragrance of its intent in the form of a purification with burning aromatic copal. Copal, or "Pom" in the
Mayan language of Yucatan, is said to be the essence of the mind of the gods and the fragrance of the heart of life. Only after offering our tears and being purified by this essence, may we proceed to the Temple of the Warriors divested of the heavy weight of our misdeeds and our old selves. It is only in this rarefied state that one may approach the crowning mystery of that temple, the flaming winged heart.
In keeping with the Toltec-Mayan tree of life, the Temple of the Warriors has three levels. One is of the underworld, one is earthly, and one is cosmic, spiritual, or celestial. This is the level that the uninitiated never see, for awesome knee-bending fear and the courage required of total heart offering form the bodies of two guardians at the gateway to this temple's mysteries. Here the jaguar, guardian of the mysteries of the original creation, and the eagle, guardian of the evolutionary transformation of true spirituality, receive the heart of the initiate. At the first level of this temple there is a council area where these esoteric offerings may be elucidated. The initiates see carved panels in which the jaguar whispers the secrets of creation to the heart and blows life into it before passing it on to the eagle in preparation for its initiation into spiritual and energetic flight.
Now, following the sacred roads, we will travel to be blessed with a baptism in the well of the tears of our own purification, the waters of the womb of the sacred feminine, the waters of life and the waters of celestial medicine, dew of the sky. This is the blessing from the mouth of the Sorcerer's Well. Our heart offerings having been made and accepted, and we are born anew. From this place, in this purified state, emerging from our birth waters, we may view the luminous totality of attainment for the Toltec and the Maya; the double, the

energy body that has the capacity to combine light and life force and exist beyond physical death. This is the evolutionary gem of creation.

As we climb the Pyramid of the Feathered Rainbow Serpent, we are shown that only those who can become masters of their sexual energies, the primordial energies of creation, and can elevate and evolve them into vital energy, and then further into pure Dreaming, will attain the double and become masters of their own luminosity. There are no short cuts. It is a long, arduous, strenuous climb, not for the faint of heart or the short-sighted. From the top of the pyramid, we glimpse this possibility and see the view of this enlightened cosmology and how it has been brought to earth as a sacred potentiality for every being. This is a time of promise for everyone, just as the light, when unobstructed, shines upon all.

As living beings we are all truly blessed with this opportunity to evolve in the right way beyond physical death. The Pyramid of the Feathered Rainbow Serpent stands as the sentinel, the cosmic time piece, marking our emergence into this collective possibility filled with new hope, heralded by the Sixth Sun of Transformation into Spiritual Consciousness. With the death of the old sun, our self important wills and our illusory manipulative egos must be lost. In the life and death game of chance played at the Cosmic Ball Court of Chichen Itza, the dying head, the dominance of the mind, is offered up. The sun, the true energetic being, is now reborn anew, freed from these influences. As the energy moves upward from the old center of will, the solar plexus, it undergoes the blazing heart spiritual initiation at the Temple of the Warriors. It must move to the heart center in order to survive and before it may ascend into a balance between heart and higher mind, between sexual energy and spirituality and between life force and luminosity, atop the Pyramid of the Feathered Rainbow Serpent.
From here, one becomes enlightened in the highest sense, a true being, an Halach Uinic, a realized luminous being who embodies truth and love with their very existence. It is these Halach Uinic, these loving true beings, that the Sixth Sun of Consciousness calls into the service of humanity, of life on all levels everywhere, and into cosmic awareness. These are the priests and priestesses of existence and the new sun, the H'men. These are the spiritual descendants of the energy of
Kukulkan, the Rainbow Feathered Serpent itself, cosmic evolution. This is an offering of our own destiny as living beings, to be shared amongst us as the waters of life. It is an honor to experience this shared wisdom and it is an honor to share it with others.
In my journeys I have found that all Native people possess this core awareness at some level, or retain a piece of it. The remnants are as far-reaching as Siberia, Australia, the African continent, India, old civilizations of the Goddess, Asia, Polynesia, the Middle East and the Native Americas. For some reason unknown to me, in traveling the world, I have always been blessed and seen as a "spirit visitor." Whatever remnants a people may have, they have always offered to share them with me. With this blessing comes the responsibility to share in kind, and to understand how much to share, when to share, how and why to share what has been so freely given to me in trust. With permission, I have endeavored to share beauty from amongst the desert cultures of upper Sonora, Mexico in my new book, fittingly titled DON JUAN AND THE ART OF SEXUAL ENERGY: The Rainbow Serpent Of The Toltecs.
I wish to thank all of you, the readers, for sharing with me and I am especially thankful for this most recent of blessings. We are invited by the energy to rise above our limitations into a realm of hope. This is the time for our new vision and now is the time for our new cooperative spirit. No longer are the secrets of these transformations being held for or by just the few. The offering is a sincere one of global potential now, having been safeguarded for a time to insure its incorruptibility. We are a generation of brightness. Let us act

accordingly. I wish all of us the best on our collective and upon our individual paths. Beauty is before us, beauty behind us, beauty above us, beauty below us. Beauty is all around us.

Merilyn Tunneshende, M.Ed. has degrees in language and comparative religion/philosophy. She is the author of two books on shamanic dreaming, energetic healing and spirituality. Her new book, DON JUAN AND THE ART OF SEXUAL ENERGY: The Rainbow Serpent Of The Toltecs, is now available through Inner Traditions International/Bear and Company.