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Find the Thread. Reclaim your Heart. Follow the Wobble.

The Kogi are an Indigenous people who live deep in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Mountains in an intact pre-Columbus society. They understand they exist to care for the world and the Earth. They experience Earth as a living body who “feels what we do to her.”

Their spiritual leaders, Mamos (enlightened ones), are trained from early life, living for years in darkness, to “stay with the thread” so they can communicate with Mother Nature and be her intelligence through ceremony, prayer, and action. They understand that the earth has special power-spots where living energy pours into the world and maintains the balance in nature. When those spots are desecrated, then destruction and chaos are unleashed. Their message to us is “Earth is dying, wake up quickly.”

The shift of consciousness we are being inducted into, at speed, is waking us up to our sacred bond with nature. The natural world isn’t a mechanistic function of dead matter; it is an expression of living intelligence, of the Dharma. In the worldview where all is conscious, we are not “outside” looking in; we are in intimate relationship with a speaking, knowing, en-souled world.

It’s interesting that the original translation of Sutta, meaning the ancient Buddhist texts, is “thread.” The thread we follow through words on a page lead us back into our original wisdom. There we hear the messages from the heartbeat of our zeitgeist. We are no longer going towards a precipice; we are already in free fall, like those desperately sad scenes of Walruses falling from the rock face where once there was snow. It’s unbearable and unfathomable in its intensity.

Our teacher Ajahn Chah said practice is preparation for times of intensity, for when we are really up against the wall. The astonishing truth is that when we move to meet “what is” directly, however awful, energy is released. The gift in the fire of our burning down world is that to find our ground, we have to grab that thread and trace it back to our original hearts impulse, then act accordingly.

It is possible to move from despair to the joyful freedom of action born of a heart aligned with deep renunciation, passionate protective love, and fearlessness. It is possible to finally know what was truly important all along.

The unexpected
is a gift from reality.
She is the deeper impulse
carrying the ace card.
When she plays it,
to whatever outcome,
you will know
she always held the power.

So, soften your belly.
Relinquish it all.
Be the silent space, listening,
as the orphans of consciousness
trudge to your door,
begging for a morsel of kindness.
Don’t be perfect.
Instead:
Reclaim your heart
and follow the wobble.
Like an arrow moving to its mark.


— Thanissara