The history of the Spanish occupation of the new world is preeminently a story of treachery, greed, and wholesale murder. It began in 1519, in central Mexico, with the bloody decimation of the Aztec and Cholulan cultures by Hernan Cortez. At the fantastic native cities of Tenochtitlan and Cholula (the largest cities in the world at the time), Cortez and his soldiers brutally murdered tens of thousands of Indians who had welcomed them in peace. This cruelty continued in 1532 and 1533 when another representative of the Spanish government, Francisco Pizarro, treacherously overthrew the brilliant Inca empire. In the Inca cities of Cajamarca and Cusco, Pizarro and his savage soldiers slaughtered an even larger number of helpless people than Cortez had murdered in Mexico.

With these two bold strokes, Spain effectively put an end to the extraordinary civilizations of the new world. The deceitful and brutal manner in which this was accomplished is certainly one of the worst examples of human cruelty the world has ever seen. And, while it is convenient to lay the entire blame upon the Spanish lust for gold and the pathological behavior of Cortez and Pizarro, it is historically incorrect to do so. The truly astonishing fact regarding both the Aztec and Inca atrocities, and many others that followed, is that they were equally the result of barbarous policies of the Catholic church. The indisputable fact is that Christian soldiers savagely murdered millions of Indians. They did this with the support and full awareness of the Church and in the direct presence of a legion of priests assigned to the conquering Spanish armies. It is a pattern the Church had practiced for nearly a thousand years in continental Europe: murder peaceful people, destroy their rich cultures, and steal their land.

But these atrocities in Mexico and South America did not abate in the least with the overthrow of the native empires. Rather, they continued for another three hundred years as the Spanish were blindly driven by their ever greater lust for gold and power. Perhaps the clearest example of this insanity occurred in a high Andean region of southern Bolivia. Here, in 1545, a rich vein of silver was discovered in a sacred mountain of the Quechua Indians. The city of Potosi was founded (at 4090 meters, the highest city in the world) at the base of Cerro Rico, the ‘rich hill’, and mining began in earnest. By the 18th century Potosi had grown to be the largest and wealthiest city in Latin America, but at a terrible cost. After exhausting the limited supply of local Indians as workers for the mines, the Spaniards imported slaves from Africa. The miners were subjected to the most terrible conditions. All Indians and black slaves over the age of 18 were forced to work in shifts of twelve hours. They would remain underground, without ever once seeing the light of day, for periods of months at a time. They were very literally worked to death. It has been conservatively estimated that during the three centuries of the Spanish era (1545 - 1825), as many as eight million Indians and Africans perished from the appalling conditions in the mines of Potosi.

I had come to Potosi because I wanted to experience Cerro Rico and its mine shafts, where so much pain and suffering had happened. As there is a field or a presence of holiness that saturates and surrounds pilgrimage places, there is also a field of sadness and pain that infuses places like the mines of Potosi. Place indeed has memory. Lands feel, remember, and contain energetic vestiges of the human actions that they have witnessed. It may astonish some of my readers, but these places that have known great suffering, like Potosi, have been for me teachers every bit as essential as the peaceful and lovely sacred sites. For at these places I have been assisted in looking deep within myself to feel and know the source of depravity that gives rise to such things as the greed of the colonial Spaniards and the inhumanity of the Catholic Church.

It is certainly convenient and perhaps personally comforting to place the blame for the atrocities of human history on other people and social institutions. But to do so, is in my opinion, philosophically immature and potentially highly dangerous. For within each of us are the seeds of confusion and selfishness that can give rise to the ugly behaviors of greed and murder. We can arrange our daily lives so that we rarely see these seeds or experience their terrible power, but this does not mean we are free of them. They seethe deep within us, subtly controlling so much of what we say and do. And so, rather than keeping them hidden, or denying their existence (as is so common in ‘new-age’ culture in the United States), I plunge to the bedrock of my psyche in order to more fully know the universal human tendencies that motive me. The awesome pain and suffering of Potosi’s past mirrors my own pain and suffering. Seeing, knowing, and ultimately resting with this in my own being helps me to understand and better live with other people of the world. For though we differ in race, religion and gender, all people are fundamentally the same. By knowing myself, I am better able to know and serve my fellow humans.

It is snowing heavily in Potosi as I write these words. It was a cold night sleeping in the van and my water supplies were frozen solid by midnight. The sun must have risen some hours ago but I cannot see it through the thick clouds and falling snow. Outside all is soft and white. The temperature is dropping and it seems I will sit some more hours typing in the van. Days like this bring me such joy. The van is a magical little writer’s nest and my thinking is aflame with ideas. Well bundled against the cold, my computer on my lap, I can turn my attention in so many interesting directions. Where shall I mentally wander?

These past few days in Potosi I have been thinking much about my past and future work in the world. What exactly am I trying to do and where am I headed? A jumble of thoughts are swimming around my head but they need to be sorted into some coherent order. I feel it is important that I articulate both a concise plan of action and a sort of manifesto of what I stand for. I need this for my own clarity and also to answer the questions being asked of me by more and more people around the world. This, then, is where I will turn my attention for the next few hours, as the snow continues falling all around me. With a working title of "my five year plans," the following thoughts come to me.

In late autumn of 1984, at the sacred site of Izumo Taisha in Japan, I experienced an extraordinary vision which indicated a broad outline of the long-term work I would do with the sacred sites. There were two phases to this work. The first phase was a multi-year education that I would receive from visiting hundreds of sacred sites in a specific and ordered series of geographic regions around the world (more details about this pilgrimage journey may be found in the first chapter of my book, Places of Peace and Power, on my web site). The second phase was the sharing of the education I had received with large numbers of people around the world. Following the completion of my year of travel in Latin America, in February of 1999, I will move from the first phase of my work to the second. It has taken me sixteen years to prepare for this second phase and I am greatly excited by its implications.

Simply stated, during the next five to ten years I plan to serve a teaching and leadership role in hundreds of major cities around the world. I have extensive knowledge of two subjects that are highly compelling to a variety of special interest groups and, thereby, to a large number of people. These specialties are my sacred sites material (including the Places of Peace and Power slide show, writings, and web site), and my Nomadics Movement Meditation courses (for readers not familiar with this facet of my work, a short description of the material may be found on my web site). Using these subjects as platforms from which to speak to significant numbers of people, I hope to strongly access and influence popular culture around the world. What are the essential messages expressed by the teachings I am articulating?

I believe that there is an unseen, mysterious, and mostly unmeasurable field of energy at the power places; that different power places contain and radiate different types of energies; and that these energies assist in the awakening and amplification of spiritual consciousness. I believe that it is important for certain people to physically journey to the power places and that these people will instinctively know which sites to visit simply by seeing the photographs that I show and the hearing information I impart in the slide shows. Furthermore, I believe in the concept of planetary acupuncture, whereby spiritually awakened people visiting the power places have a subtle energetic influence on the sites and, by extension, on the vitality of the entire planet. At my slide shows I teach a simple meditation technique for doing such planetary acupuncture. This meditation technique connects the meditator to the spirit of the living Earth while simultaneously cultivating a lasting sense of peace and well being in the heart and mind.

I believe that there is a grand evolutionary process of awakening human spirituality occurring on the planet. This process seems to be a result of a number of influences including long-term celestial cycles, changing terrestrial energies, the evolutionary momentum of planetary life, and the rapidly increasing level of social and environmental crisis all across the globe. A fundamental effect of these influences is the stimulation of the human mind to a greater spiritual consciousness. Issuing from this evolving consciousness is an expanding civilizational concern with the well being of the environment, with the peaceful coexistence of human beings, and with the spiritual meaning of life. Some of us are conceptually aware that this evolutionary trend is occurring, while the majority of people are not. I believe it is vitally important to widely introduce and discuss these ideas because the very seeding of the ideas into human culture creates a field of probability for their increasing manifestation. Additionally, speaking of such things brings a strong message of hope and inspiration to peoples lives, something much needed in our lately sad and suffering world. Through the agency of my Sacred Site slide shows, Nomadics courses, web site, and writings I am able to discuss these ideas with a large number of people, thus powerfully assisting in the evolution of consciousness upon the planet.

I believe in the importance of people living lives of courage, truthfulness, and beauty in a global social order increasingly mediocre in its actions and aspirations. If we are awakened to the spiritual centrality of human life (and by this I mean the recognition that life is for the cultivation of awareness and the expression of wisdom, excellence, and truth), then we have a responsibility to act as beacons of that knowing to less awakened people in the world. And where are we to carry out this state of beingness other than in the geographical and sociological domains we already inhabit? In order to assist in the evolution of consciousness it is vital that we awakened individuals purposely become teachers and leaders amongst the places and people that contain and surround our everyday lives. Against the backdrop of a mostly unawakened human population, our lives of positivity and respectful earth-living shine a much-needed light of inspiration and education.

At the most fundamental level, I am simply asking people to reflect on the quality of their relationship with the physical world and with their own bodies. We have our existence within these two domains: our body and the body of the Earth. It is by cultivating a more harmonious and enlightened relationship with these inner and outer worlds that we will achieve a restoration of human sanity and environmental health. My two primary areas of knowledge specialization serve to focus people’s attention upon these domains, the body and the Earth.