Flordemayo is a Mayan healer living New Mexico who is a member of the Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers and is a director of The Institute for Natural and Traditional Knowledge, which among other activities, is developing a seed bank for heritage foods and medicinal seeds.

AM: How did you become a healer?

Flordemayo: It’s not so much that you become, but you are born. The way that I do the healing is I’m a seer first. I see. If somebody comes to me with a question I ask their permission. In asking for permission, I can look at the person’s light body. When doing that, I get information through a movement of color. There’s color all around the inside and outside of the body. That’s how I do my analysis. It all comes from experience; it’s not anything that anyone taught me.

AM: Is this a form of traditional healing?

Flordemayo: Many people around the world do healings this way. It’s not something that is just happening to me. In my travels I’ve met people that say I see colors, too, and I know what you’re saying. I’ve been doing healings since I was four. I became my mother’s apprentice at the age of four.

AM: How do physical, spiritual, and emotional energies effect disease and healing?

Flordemayo: I’m not looking for anything. What happens is that I am shown only what is. I am shown only what the person allows me to see. I start a dialogue with the person. I say, I see this, I see that, etc. The person at this point starts a dialogue of trust. When the trust happens, that’s when the magic happens, because when the trust happens, you go into a place of surrender. It is only in a place of surrender that you could actually have a healing, because you’re letting go of any kind of boundary that you might have, and you allow the light of the cosmos to heal you. When we do healings, it’s about connecting the strength of the light with this individual. So I’m like a person that is watching a dance between this person and the cosmic light. I’m a mediator of sorts to introduce the person, to allow themselves to trust and to allow the healing to happen. It’s like a sacred dance between the person and the cosmic light.

I don’t make suggestions to the person—you need to work on this level, or you need to work on that level—because I am not pulling any kind of strings for the healing. It really is between the person and their Beloved. I guide them along. Sometimes I see almost instantaneous change within the person. Instant healings take place when there is that solidness of belief. When the belief is so great that they unconditionally trust everything that is happening. This is how we receive these instantaneous healings, because the person has already come prepared to accept that with every cell of their being. They trust and they know that this is going to happen.

AM: How does that work collectively in terms of healing the Earth. I read a quote of yours, “we can heal Mother Earth, but we need a whole bunch of people who really believe”.

Flordemayo: We go back to the light. If there is only one person in the world with a tiny candle, that’s a small light, but if you multiply that 100,000 times, a 100,000 lights, it becomes an enormous light collectively. Everything has to be done collectively. One person alone cannot make the change. Also the change takes time. It’s not anything that’s going to happen instantaneously. That’s why indigenous people say it’s for the seventh generation. It’s for that and beyond, because everything has a process of change. Nothing happens instantaneously. When we do instant healing, the person actually has been working on healing on their own prior to coming to the healer. So they’re prepared for that magical fusion that happens with the healing. When we talk about prayer and the healing of the Earth, we have to do it collectively. It’s a collective effort. Absolutely.

AM: You talk about people who have lost touch with the connection between earth and sky.

Flordemayo: We live in a fast-paced society full of distraction. These distractions take us away from every day and every moment. We lose the concentration of thought. What that means is that when we are working collectively on healing, the thought has to be there, like the prayer, it has to be an ongoing thing. It’s like stoking a fire. You’re always going to bring wood into the fire to keep it going. So the prayer has to keep going. When we walk away from it because we’re too busy in our lives, it becomes very foreign to us whether we’re Westernized or non-Westernized. It doesn’t matter. It’s happening all over the world. And it has happened for millennia.

What the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers are trying to do is have people try to remember for one split second, to all think collectively and try to repair the damage that we have done unconsciously to the Earth, unconsciously to the air that we breath. If something has happened to the environment it affects all of us. It’s about all of us. If we don’t come together collectively as a whole, then we’re going to lose it. So this is what the Grandmothers are trying to do—to remind people. It’s only a reminder. We have to change. We’ve done enough damage. The damage started quite a while ago, before any of us were born. And so we’re at a point of danger right now. We need to stop and we need to think. The voice or the presence of a grandmother, it’s kind of a sweet presence. I mean real sweet. Regardless of who we are, there are grandmothers all over the world. When we were in Dharamsala, His Holiness [Dali Lama] said he learned about compassion at the bosom of his mother. How sweet is that?

There’s a connection that we make trying to remember. It’s the grandmother’s role to tell the children, “Don’t do that.” or “Don’t do it like that. It’s not going to get you anywhere. Try to do a better job.” It’s the role of the grandma to help the rest to remember, to do something better, not only for yourself but also for your family and for the rest of the children, for the community. So that’s the sweet presence being put in front of us. When you look at the counsel [of Indigenous Grandmothers], there are grannies that come from all over the world. So there’s a reminder no matter who you are.

AM: You speak of women as the bearers, the holders of the seed. You are in involved with a project that is preserving seeds. Why are seeds are so important?

Flordemayo: One of the things that women have done, and are still doing in certain parts of the world, is that they feed the Earth. What that means is that when they go into their cycle, they’re able to give this monthly menses back into the Earth. That is called the feeding of the Earth. Women are the only ones that can do that. Women play such an important role in feeding their families. They automatically become the treasure keepers of the seeds within a community, within a family. This is the woman’s job to take care of them. So other than being the seed carriers, the feeders of the sacred Earth, we also become the keepers and the nurturers of the seeds because of the passion of wanting to feed the children and making sure that everything is good for everybody. That’s not to say that it’s not also a masculine role, but it’s a role that has been put upon us to do this from the beginning of time.

In New Mexico, with the Institute of Natural and Traditional Knowledge, we’re teaching people. We started last year. It’s not too late, not too soon. It’s just the right time. Nothing has been done in vain. We do that by sharing the information of the seeds. The prayer is that if people can take care of seeds and look at that as a metaphor for taking care of themselves. Be concerned about the sunlight. Be concerned about the air that we’re breathing. Be concerned about the water that we’re drinking. Be concerned about the Earth. In essence, what we’re doing is reminding people through embracing the seeds how we can take care of ourselves, and become better surviving humans. You can do it; you can take care of yourself. You can take care of your family. You can take care of your community. But how sweet it is for everybody to know. That’s the key. And then implement with this knowledge.

AM: Can prayer affect seeds?

Flordemayo: Oh absolutely. They’re alive. They have spirit. Not only that, but there’s also the enormous spirit of the Earth and the spirit of the waters.

AM: When we talk about healing the Earth, you obviously come from a very nurturing, healing, spiritual perspective. At times it feels like a battle. It feels like we’re at battle with a lot of ignorance and a lot of greed. How do we mesh the battle and the spiritual aspects of this kind of work?

Flordemayo: That is a really, really difficult question because there has always been battles from the beginning of time. As humans we’re always going to see things differently. As humans we’re always going to feel that one person’s answer is better than the other. How do we come together with that? I think that the best way to do it is to listen to yourself and to really understand if this is really who you are. Is this the kind of person that you want to be or do you want to be a little more open to everything in the world around you so that you can listen to be a better instrumental human? Or do you want to keep yourself in the darkness and in ignorance? It’s not really ignorance; it’s more like incapacity to see.

AM: That’s what we’re up against—people who don’t have the capacity to see that the healing of the Earth needs to take place? How do we change that?

Flordemayo: Through the power of prayer. We go back to the light. We’re all made of light. We’re children of the light. And as children of the light some of us emanate more or less light depending on what it is that we do. The prayer is that those who are emanating more light will merge with the other people so they will become more conscious. This is the opening of consciousness, breaking the barriers, and having a different understanding.

Nothing can be done in one moment. We’re always praying and doing for the seventh generation and beyond. Even with holy people, when you have a priest or a priestess that is first, second, third generation, and now they’re 15th or 19th generation; there has been this unfolding of karmic life, a shedding that occurs through these lifetimes. So things take a process of change. Human beings are not the only ones. The Earth goes through that, and so does the cosmos. Everything is moving at the same time living, breathing, and changing consciously. Everything is happening all at once. That’s the magic.

I have this chronic dialogue with my Beloved all the time. I’m just a real pest. I’m a real nag. If my beloved had a long skirt, I would have pulled it off by now because I’m always yanking and saying, “Okay, Beloved wait a minute. How does this work? Please you’ve got to show me.” I don’t give up. I will ask the question over and over and over again until I get an answer. That’s the power of prayer.

Finally, my Beloved would say, “Oh my goodness, there goes that pesky woman again. Let’s see if I can shoot her down some answers.” And then I would get this very, very dramatic and very way out there kind of feedback, that could take me a lifetime to decipher the abstract vision that I received. And sometimes I would receive an answer maybe 10, 15, 20 years down the road, the second part of this answer. So you know, forget about being in a hurry, there’s no such thing.


Photo bt Kitzia Howearth