The Pyramid Academy 2016

The Pyramid Academy at Teotihaucan

We are pleased to announce Year Three of The Pyramid Academy in the fall of 2016. This learning circle is unfolding  over a four year period, and it  offers an initiatory pathway into Toltec skills of descending and ascending spheres of consciousness through the pyramids. You are welcome to come to one journey individually, or all four as a yearly series. If you are new to the process, you can join in easily because this pathway is a spiral. You will have the advantage of building on the previous years, and, if you decide to complete the four years, you will come around the circle and touch all the bases of power, awareness, and love.

pyramid of the sun AljosaThe Pyramid Academy seeks to give modern form to perhaps the most comprehensive learning system for consciousness known to the ancient world. The Toltecs—likely builders of the pyramid complex at Teotihaucan in Mexico– gifted the planet with architectural forms and artistry embedded in a landscape of mountains, lakes, and clear water. These Toltec masters were scientists, artists, and shamans collapsed into one system; they emerged from the evolutionary mists so advanced as to cause us to question our usual paradigms. They were and are teachers of perception, expanded awareness, and profound compassion largely lost to the arrogance of Western Civilization.

As scientists they gave us the zero as a working mathematical concept years before it was used in India. They knew the radius of Earth millennia before Europe struggled to know our planet rotated around the Sun. They formed the pyramid complex as a massive planetarium with solar system precision, capable of tuning us into the cosmos under skillful and aware conditions. As artists their works still adorn archeological walls that transform us as we encounter them. As shamans and teachers of perceptual awareness, they were without equal. In recent times their teachings have emerged in Don Juan with Carlos Castaneda, Don Miguel Ruiz and others.

Most important, the pyramids themselves form an eco-field, along with the landscape, that sprouted the Toltec path of planetary transformation—personal, environmental, and social.

 Four Year Pathway

The Pyramid Academy invites you to apply for our awareness and compassion process. This learning circle unfolds over a four phase/year journey, and new participants can join the pilgrimage at any point since it is a spiral. For those new to Teotihaucan, the pilgrimages will be an initiatory pathway of powerful substance. For those who have been attending Toltec initiation rites on the site of the pyramids over the years, it will be an opportunity to sink into this pathway as a powerful practice and into a learning climate of profound skills in a fresh way. We follow Toltec persistence and discipline, as well as other wisdom traditions, including the newer sciences. You can participate in the full series and receive a certificate of completion and an amulet made by our resident Toltec artist, Alberto Romero, or attend any one of the years.

Our Intention

Our intent is to create with you a knowing eco-field in collaboration with the Toltec ancestors, the pyramids, and current teachers. This knowing eco-field can propel us on a journey to return humans to the circle of life. On the journey we can learn to speak the Mother Tongue, practice ancient skills and create new ones, and invite the keepers of the circle of life to accept us back after a 5200 year absence. We will make our entry as humble human participants rather than as dominants. We will enter through the portal of the mysteries of the pyramids and their master builders and teachers. Along the way we will cease to be consumers of consciousness and become skilled practitioners of an integration of Toltec wisdom and newer sciences.

Intellectually-based learners will be profoundly challenged to move out of their heads into their hearts. Experientially-based learners will be challenged to pivot rigorously in a new way of thinking and feeling.

Here is a brief look at the 4 phase pathway. Keep in mind that we are following a pathway laid down several thousand years ago. It takes time and repetition to sink into its mysteries. Every year is very different as the sacred web of fields present profoundly different possibilities with each pilgrimage. Faculty and students who have been on the journey as many as 25 times discover that there is a similarity in process but also total surprises that stimulate new inner and outer vistas.

The Descent

Year One  Initiating the Journey: The Flying Serpent and the Angel of Death

Early in our journey we  enter the body of the temple of Quetzalcoatl for the purpose of deconstructing our current life patterns, ones that may have served us well (or not so well) to date, but no longer are adequate for the emerging era. We will collaborate with the pyramids in creating a knowing field beyond whatever perceptual reality we bring. We will learn how to leap into the unknown, using coherent and intimate community as support. As part of this immersion into initiation, we will take the Angel or Ally of Death, rebirth, and transition as a primary teacher.

 Year Two  Initiating the body, the material world, and the emotions: Earth and Water

PlazasIn 2015 we directed our complete attention to stalking the meanings and mysteries of our bodies, the material world, and our emotions within a deeply spiritual context.  We will return to this emphasis in future years as we make the journey. Many of the wisdom traditions tend to push away from our physical world and existence, as well as our emotions. These plazas of reference in the pathway leading to the Pyramid of the Moon take us fully into an appreciation of our physical manifestations without getting lost in them. On the other hand, mainstream culture is dominated by fear and over indulgence in the material as a distraction from the fear created by that same culture. Our aspiration will be to find the golden balance.

Year Three  Initiating the mind as intellect and the soul: Air and Fire

While we will touch on this phase in our 2015 pilgrimage, it will be the focus in 2016.  What is the relationship of the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine now that we have been through 5000 years of the patriarchy?  How can we find balance?  How can we let go of the wounds caused by the domination of current patriarchal civilization?  How does this new balance and subsequent harmony fit in intimate relationships with ongoing partners?  We will build on the shoulders of powerful experiences in past years and embrace persons who are with us for the first time.

The Ascent

Year Four  Integrating the sacred feminine and the masculine: Pyramid of the Moon and Pyramid of the Sun

Each year we move to and then through the Pyramid of the Moon; indeed, we fly physically and spiritually from the Moon to the Sun. These two pyramids bring us to an integrating of the feminine and masculine energetic forces in our beloved Universe. This last year we discovered a startling possibility in a founding narrative of the pyramids. The man and woman who are the seed spirits of the pyramid complex reached out to us, and we hope to deepen that relationship in 2016. Possibilities abound in moving much deeper into that integrating point this year.

Our Consciousness Expanding Learning Community: A Map

ComidaAs we co-create our eco-field of learning and leadership, we draw on many possibilities. It is important for our learning pilgrims to note that this pilgrimage emphasizes experience first and foremost and then reflection. We begin with the heart and then move to the head. Each day we will have a morning practice that includes body/mind/soul healing, including dreamwork. After a breakfast prepared by the beautiful Casa de Suenos (House of Dreaming) staff, we will wrestle with and experiment with substantive cosmic maps.

Dreaming House with peopleThen, around 11:00 a.m. we walk to the pyramids in meditation. (Transportation is available if you have physical limits). Once at the pyramids, we will move through the ancient Toltec consciousness path, one that requires us to delve deeply into ourselves and the eco-field. The main meal of the day is about 4:00 p.m. Following that ceremonial meal, there are interest and integration groups that shift each year. At 7:00 p.m. we build coherence and intimacy with dialogue and reflection on the day. At 9:00 p.m. we have a beautiful snack and interact with key resource people from the larger community and village. We likely will have indigenous dancers one or more evenings. It is important to note that an emerging emphasis will be on indigenous, shamanic figures both of Toltec and other tribal groups in the area. Landscape field trips in which we explore the matrix of fields out of which the pyramids flow will be a key to our process.

Aztec dancer PedroWe integrate rigorous substance and transformative art into the day. For example, we will have a field trip to a village to learn the ancient tradition of altar building for the Day of the Dead. Then, we will build altars with colorful flowers and longstanding practices to connect us to the ancestral domain. Singing and dancing are infused throughout the week, including indigenous dancers and visionary songs from our own community.

Depending on what rises from the field in the sensitivity of the moment, we may visit ceremonial caves and celebrate the belly of the Mother, participate in the Moon Dance, move with the Day of the Dead shamanic dance in a near-by village, journey to the mountains for a day of ceremony and circle sitting, walk the labyrinth, participate in an ancient temescal lodge, to name a few possibilities. Keep in mind that we will dive into an eco-field that will inform and transform.

Evolutionary Community and Leadership

The Pyramid Academy is an experiment in developing new forms of leadership and community. We work with the hypothesis that our week together can embody a field-based leadership. The ignition switch of this field-based leadership is the coherence and, thus, intimacy that unfolds in our time together. Our aim is for participants to carry home with them an experience and unfolding map for leadership and community. In such a model the role of the leaders is to read the field for what is arising. As the knowing field develops throughout the week, various competencies arise in different individuals and groups naturally.

Cosmic University

Some scientists and mystical investigators of Teotihaucan have called the pyramid complex a Cosmic University. Our first year will include the integrating of three separate but related groups—TOCI – The Toltec Center of Creative Intent, CCR-Earthtribe, and Wisdom School of Graduate Studies. We aspire for these three groups to maintain individuality while at the same time transcending through a speaking of the Mother Tongue and, thus, a practice of the Toltec pyramid pathway. We hold that a crucial need in our planet is for different groups and traditions to be able to create larger communities while valuing their own perspectives.

Certification of Completion

The Pyramid Academy offers a four year cycle and results in a certificate of completion and an amulet created by Toltec artist Alberto Hernandez Romero specifically for the student.

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