Pilgrimage to Sacred Mountains in Tibet and My Experience of Divination

Chapter Two of Earth Song

[Read Chapter One here]

I was born in Shanghai in 1973 in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, a time of chaos, confusion and destruction that affected one billion people. My mother is from Beijing and my father is from Sichuan. We belong to the Han ethnic group, the largest ethnicity group in China[1]. However, since I was a young girl, I have felt homesick toward Tibet, yet I never set foot there until I was 31 years old.

I remember hearing stories of Tibet as a child. This mysterious world situated on the high plateau felt like a realm closer to heaven, drawing me like a magnet. My feeling about Tibet was more than just a Han girl's curiosity. Tibet drew me and felt like a place I had lived in “past lives.”

Pictures of Tibetan landscapes, the majestic mountains and the jade-like blue mountain lakes felt more familiar and home-like than Shanghai, my birthplace. Everything about Tibet cast a potent spell on me. When I saw Tibetan words, tears surged up even though I didn’t understand the meanings of the words. When I heard the singing of Tibetans, the sacred chants, I felt transported to a high peak, like a snow lotus flower, blooming quietly in a noble silence. I didn't know where these feelings came from.

My appearance reminds people of Tibetans. People have inquired if I have Tibetan ancestry. I wonder if I had been Tibetan in a previous life? As a child, I thought so, but told no one how I felt.

Being born into a family of scientists in China with a materialist worldview characteristic of the 1970s did not allow me to entertain the idea of any "past life". I locked this sense of myself in a deep chamber in my heart.

As I grew older, I developed my own intuition around this inner sense. I believe that each person is a unique embodiment of life, one of a kind in space and time. However, I also believe that after death, the information stored in the human nervous system, equivalent to what spiritual language refers as “soul,” is released from the body and re-distributed into the universe. The undying love and joy, unfulfilled dreams, ungrieved losses, unresolved sadness and hatred, all forms of energy, pervade the time and space we inhabit, not unlike how Wi-Fi signals fill our surroundings in modern life.

Following this idea, our psyches may work like a “cell phone” unit, receiving, processing and transmitting these energy forms permeating space. Just like each cell phone is unique, we are also each a unique transceiver, attuned to specific frequencies according to our individual dispositions, physiques, family history, beliefs, and mental and emotional make-up. For reasons unknown, the “transceiver” of me tuned to signals specific to Tibet. [i][see note]

For a long time, this “transceiver” notion only stayed as a flicker of intuition. The Matrix I lived in, the super-materialistic, mega-capitalistic societal machine, holds the Newtonian view of a cold, lifeless world as a religious dogma, leading us to believe each person is an isolated, separate being. Within this belief, the notion that we are intrinsically connected with one another as a super organism sounds absurd. Fearful of being ridiculed, I buried my intuition like a seed underground, not speaking about it to anyone. However, I treasure my intuitions, knowing that intuition is the origin of all scientific discoveries. I had no idea how to further develop my intuition into something concrete. Trapped by the Matrix, I felt isolated and anxious. I was motivated to seek a way out.

When I visited Tibet for the first time in 2004, I was a mountaineering enthusiast. Climbing was not just a hobby, but my core identity. I lived in Seattle, the mega outdoor capital. Home to athletic, outdoorsy, well-off middle-class people who hike, run, bike, climb, ski, sail, paddle and all sorts of outdoor activities, Seattle is surrounded by more than ten million acres of national forests, national parks and endless wilderness.  In addition, oceans, rivers and lakes complete the landscape. As I fought my inner battle with my scientist identity, I held a tight, tenacious grip on my climber identity, a strong and silent protest against my nine-to-five job.

I spent most of my non-working time, holidays and weekends on training, trips, or activities related to mountain climbing. Obsessed with high-risk adventures, I took on both high altitude climbing and rock climbing, feeding on the adrenaline and endorphins produced by my body when I was in the mountains. Over time, the highest peaks in the continental United States, such as Mount Whitney in California, and the famous Mount Rainier in Washington State, did not challenge me enough. I wanted to go to real snow-capped mountains and climb one no one else had ever climbed! In my search for this challenge, I found the Chola Shan Mountain, which rises to 6000 meters (nearly 20,000 feet) in Ganzi County, Sichuan, above the border between Sichuan and Tibet. Since mountain climbing was just emerging in China, this mountain had only been ascended once.

In 2004, A year after Tao and I got married, we took our honeymoon trip to climb the Chola Shan Mountain. A startling, unexpected change happened when I stepped into Tibet. I began to hear a voice arising from my heart, an unfamiliar voice.

At first, the voice emerged vague and deep. It registered as a faint, percussive sensation in my body, like when a truck drives by in the distance or the huge kettle drum in a symphony is struck. My body shook as if a very low-frequency shock wave moved through me.

Under the influence of this vibration, I felt a deeper Self, who seemed to have been asleep for decades, slowly but surely waking up. This deeper Self, awakening from a long, long sleep, felt thick, gray and sluggish. Silent, she did not utter a word. Her presence felt more comforting and maternal than anything my adult self had experienced. She cradled me as if I were an infant.

In this slow, swaying cradle, my normal identity, the special-force-elite-scientist-plus-weekend-climber-warrior retreated into the background. In the empty space, a bone-deep wave of fatigue and empty sadness engulfed me. I knew these feelings were there, but I pushed them to the background to pursue the treadmill routine of my life. As I surrendered to this fatigue and sadness, the part of me attached to my normal identity curled up in the cradle like a baby, as if clinging to a mother’s arms. I’m reluctant to admit that to my surprise, the ambitious – almost neurotic – craving to climb high mountains started melting like a glacier under the spring sun. I was alarmed and confused.

A well-loved Chinese poet, Xin Qiji, living in the 12^th  and 13^th centuries wrote a famous line, “The green hills look charming and enchanting to me. I guess I must look the same way to the green hills.”[2] Traveling among the mountains in Tibet, I felt as if the mountains observed and examined me, whispering, "You are finally here. We have been waiting for you … "

Xin Qiji’s poem illustrated a key perspective underlying ancient China’s philosophy and worldview. Nature, a conscious being, observes, sees, senses and experiences humans, as much as we observe, see, sense and experience her. The attitude we hold towards Nature reflects back to us. This philosophy permeates the poetry I read and loved as a young girl.

However, when I was growing up, few people around me read ancient poetry anymore. The entire society, caught in frantic competition with the West, fixated on scientific and technological development. Caught by the spell of the materialistic worldview, Chinese people discarded traditional knowledge and wisdom of our own culture into trash bins. In my twenties, when the massive waves of industrialization forces hit China, I felt repulsed and shocked by the violent and mindless disruptions to ecosystems all over China. The green hills my ancestors once loved and sang poetry to fell into grievous silence. The rivers dominated by dams and darkened by pollution boiled with repressed anger. A voice in my heart told me It is only a matter of time when Nature’s force will reflect this violence back to humans.

In 2004, the mountains in Tibet were still largely isolated from the disruptions of industrialization. Their Spirits remained alive and well, honored and held with respect by the Tibetan communities living around them. In contrast, the Spirit of many mountains I visited in the civilized areas of China felt subdued and tired, withering.

That year, Tao and I and four American teammates climbed to the top of Chola Shan. As a high-altitude adventure experience, it made a memorable climb. But when I returned to my usual life, I found I had changed. I thought that after climbing Chola Shan, I would hit the next higher peak on my bucket list. But after this trip, my ambition melted away like ice, revealing a much deeper, aching longing, like a secret, underground waterway.

The sheer scale of the Tibetan landscape gripped my heart. The sense of slowness and simplicity, the deep blue sky and profound stillness hypnotized me. The Tibetan life preserved a sense of wholeness, full and rich all by itself. I found myself recalling the fragrance of freshly picked wild mushrooms in the farmer’s markets, the red cheeks of Tibetan teenagers driving yaks and the broad smiles on people’s faces. Amid this immense landscape, the Nyima piles, stone planks carved with Om Mani Padme Hum[3], surrounded by oceans of white Khata[4], mesmerized me most.

I could not forget that low-frequency vibrational tone I felt in Tibet. However, back in Seattle, the vibration got compressed, turning into an agitated voice in my heart, speaking in a language I couldn't understand. It spoke in a tone eager and sincere, as if begging me to go back again.

The following year, 2005, I returned to Tibet alone. I wanted to do a solo trip and Tao agreed. This time I did not scale high peaks. Instead, I wanted to do a Kora, the Tibetan pilgrimage and meditative practice which involves circumambulation of a né, considered a “sacred abode”, the dwelling of deities or the Spirit of a power place. The most momentous né are sacred mountains and lakes. At that time, the Tibetan areas I travelled through still maintained the cultural tradition where people related with the natural world as a sentient being. Sacred mountains, the abode of beings from other realms, often stand as the “protector” of the place.

Climbing and circumambulation pose such a contrast! One requires a linear ascent; the other, a circling around the mountain. One conquers the height of the mountain peak; the other venerates the mountain as a deity. In Kora, the pilgrims circle the mountains in a meditative state of mind. Serious pilgrims perform full-body prostrations every step along the arduous mountain trek while carrying sleeping gear and food in a rucksack to endure the harsh elements at high altitude. Pilgrimage of this scale can take years to complete. Tibetans consider this kind of pilgrimage a high honor and peak experience of one’s life.

After doing research around the Tibetan sacred mountains, I felt an inexplicable draw to the Kora circuit of Meili Mountain range in Zhong Dian area of Yunnan Province in southwest China. There are several famous sacred mountains in Tibet. Each sacred mountain has its own Kora route. While most other sacred mountains form abodes of a male deity, Meili Mountain range is the home to a mountain god and goddess: husband, King Kawagebo, and wife, Mother Miancimu.

There are two Kora circuits here, one large, one small. The large circuit, an arduous trek of 150 miles, passes through landscape averaging above 10,000 ft. It would take two weeks to complete. As a beginner, I chose the less ambitious smaller circuit, a trek of 30 miles. From Seattle, I flew to Kunming, the last metropolitan city that serves as a hub for outdoor enthusiasts. There, I teamed up with a couple of young trekkers who also set out to do the same pilgrimage circuit.

For three days, the bus, starting from 6000 ft, inched up the narrow and treacherous road, often without guardrails, carved into the steep slopes of the eastern Tibetan Plateau. Slow travel gave our bodies a chance to acclimatize to thinner air at the high altitude. The Tibetan driver who drove us into the Tibetan area taught us not to point at sacred mountains with our index fingers. We should instead face our palms upward and, with respect, point to the peak using the whole hand. The expression in his eyes when he looked at the mountain while showing us the gesture was as respectful and loving as looking at an elder grandfather of his own family.

On the evening of the third day, we arrived at a Tibetan Buddhist temple at 11,000 ft. This four-hundred-year-old temple’s fantastical name, Feilai, means flying-over. According to legend, at the time the temple was to be built, all the materials had been collected at different sites. One day, the building materials suddenly flew away, assembling themselves perfectly at the present location.

Feilai temple offers a panoramic view of twelve snow-capped peaks, towering from 15,000 to 20,000 feet, parading in a straight line with Mount Kawagebo and Mother Miancimu at the center. Mount Kawagebo, rising to a height of 22,113 ft, resembles a majestic king sitting on his broad throne. A crown-like peak sits in his left hand. The surrounding mountains bow down to him, like subjects bowing down to their lord. His partner, Mother Miancimu, the daughter of the Sea God, rises to a height of 19,862 ft. She carries a demeanor resembling a graceful and untouchable goddess gently holding a baby in her arms. However, her peak is extremely steep, almost vertical like a knife at the top, formidable to any mountain climber.

No human climbers have set foot on the summits of all twenty peaks above 15,000 ft in this mountain range. This is due to its remote location, extreme weather patterns, steep and unstable terrain, as well as the local efforts to preserve the pristine quality of the environment. After conflicts with climbing teams who intended to conquer the summit in the 80s, local officials issued a law forbidding climbing teams to trespass in this sacred mountain range.

The spectacular view from Feilai temple is only visible during a small window of days each year when clouds part, revealing the sacred mountains. The locals believe only blessed ones will arrive at Feilai temple on a bright day with a full view of the mountains.

On that day, we were blessed. When we arrived at Feilai Temple, the mountain range stood in its most full, splendid display. Sunset painted the mountains as if aflame. Every minute, a different hue of intense red and orange hit the viewers’ nervous systems with intense, psychedelic-like pleasures. Drunk with what we witnessed, we were unable to speak. It was the first time I experienced a being so powerful its mere presence could alter and transform me.

The second day, we found a steep path away from the highway and started the Kora circuit trek. After that, we trekked for two days, passing rhododendron forests, climbing down steep ravines and up exposed ridges, visiting temples and villages buried deep in the valleys, further and further away from modern amenities. Although I traveled along the high plateau with high intensity exertion, I felt lighter and lighter.

As a climber, I had grown accustomed to the rustic way of living, camping in the open and carrying everything I needed in a backpack. However, this wilderness experience felt different than the weekend and holiday excursions in the Pacific Northwest. Around Seattle, those excursions were a choice, a privilege, a moment of levity out of the gravity of city life. Whereas here, living in simplicity and close to the elements is a way of life sustained for generations after generations. No modernity exists. There is a sense of weight in this way of life, a sense of gravity which grounds the modern life I was used to. I felt humbled.   

After two days trekking, we arrived at a mountain pass called Nazongla at 12,139 ft. A sea of white Khata and colorful prayer flags rolled in the wind under a balmy sun. The Khata and prayer flags hung so thick that at one point, I could not see anything but endless flapping, colorful fabric. As I found my way through this rolling sea, in front of me appeared a sudden, full-body view of Mother Miancimu.

I had never seen a mountain this beautiful, this dangerous-looking, and this pure and other-worldly. She embodies the enchanting quality of beauty normally associated with feminine figures, while emitting a formidable sense of power and command usually associated with masculine authority. Miancimu embodies both a feminine and a masculine Spirit. Her beauty and power took my breath away. I felt an immediate impulse to kneel and surrender myself to her. But my modern ego was too embarrassed to prostrate myself in that moment.

We discovered a surprise “tea house,” a makeshift structure built out of wood planks on top of Nazongla Pass. Pilgrims and villagers rested there, drinking yak butter tea, a high caloric, staple drink available in every Tibetan household. This tea has a strong, pungent smell that permeated not just my body, but also my clothes and backpack gear. This smell accompanied me for a long time after I left the Tibetan Plateau.

We lingered at this mountain pass for a long time. The beauty and serenity surrounding us was so intense we did not want to leave. I experienced an odd feeling telling me this was “my special place”, but I didn’t know why. As time passed, although reluctant to go, we needed to find lodging in the Yu Beng Village, a village only accessible to foot-travelers like us. The village lay another two hours down on the other side of the Nazongla pass.

Yu means rain, and Beng means collapse. Rain Collapses. This name contrasts the soft, gentle rain with the intensity of a collapse like an avalanche, arousing my imagination of a mythical dream world! Only we weren’t dreaming. Located in the valley between Kawagebo and Miancimu, Yu Beng Village lives up to the mysticism of its name. At the edge of the village sits a Tibetan temple with a white stupa guarding it as a sacred place. The ancient village appears to have been sleeping for thousands of years in the glacier of time, indifferent to world affairs. We stayed at a villager's home, a wooden house, lit with a dim light bulb for a few hours in the evening. The frigid wind from the glacier blew through the cracks in the thin wall. The simplicity here fed me with the joy of a pure, uncluttered experience in human existence. Comforted, I felt I had returned home!

I felt drunk as I inhaled the refreshing air and let my body soak in the broad silence on the plateau. My gaze wandered back and forth along the glacier on the snow-capped mountains, admiring every line and every engraving drawn by the ridges and valleys covered with ice. The two ivory-colored monuments of Kawagebo and Miancimu anchor the vibration of an ancient myth, a memory sealed deep in the dark glacier of my own unconscious. As I stood at the foot of these two sacred mountains, the black ice of this glacier started melting and an old, old memory, much older than my own life began to awaken. This awakening did not register in words. It arose as a sensation, as if my body were immersed in a magnificent, silent symphony of many, many voiceless vibrations. The symphony played in the sky above Yu Beng Village, day and night, in my waking dreams and dreamlike wakefulness.

The pilgrimage circuit ended in front of a cliff in the valley at the foot of Mt. Miancimu. To my surprise, a wooden house sat as if inlaid in the cliff, with icicles hanging from the gutter. Inside the simple house lived two female nuns in red robes, immersed in their spiritual practice. Delighted by our arrival, they welcomed us, and we took photos together under the light of the sun. In a daze, I felt as if, in meeting these nuns, I met myself in my previous life.

During the few days we spent in the village, often I sat on the bed in the wooden house, gazing into the snow-capped mountains for hours. The flow of time stopped. In those moments, I touched the texture of eternity.

One afternoon, holding a cup of tea, I stared at the pure white and proud peak of Mother Miancimu, lost in that world between dreaming and wakefulness. A very thin wisp of white cloud-mist rose from the peak. My heart filled with admiration and yearning for the goddess in front of me. Her pure and quiet presence became like a mirror. At once, I saw all the dark and imperfect parts of my soul that made me feel ashamed. "She is so noble, clear and pure. What about me?" Thinking these thoughts, I seemed to see a small, pearl-like ice ball rolling down from the top of the mountain, then falling through the crown of my head and into my body. In that instant, I shivered with the cold, as if I had caught a chill.

***********

After returning from the Meili Snow Mountain range to Seattle, I fell quite ill. A cold lingered and developed into a lung infection, leading to a nasty cough lasting for a couple of months. I plummeted into a low ebb of depression.

The pure presence of Meili Snow Mountain mirrored back to me the restlessness and confusion in my heart. The two journeys to Tibet awakened the self who felt at home in the Tibetan village at the foot of the snow-capped mountains. This self could not find her place in the nine-to-five grind in the metropolitan city of Seattle.

My social identity sat at the top of the working class, but my heart was weighed down by a job in which I had a hard time finding meaning. Every day I questioned my conscience, “Am I working toward better human health, or to extract wealth from sick people and make more profits for the drug industry?” I couldn’t shake off the feeling I was meant to serve human health in a very different way. Facing the leaping data in the computer, the vehicles shuttling on the highway, the concrete jungle of the city, along with the overly pretentious perfume smells in malls filled with consumer goods, my heart felt lonely, hopeless, and frustrated with my inability to answer these big questions. The winter rains in Seattle did not help. Everything was so gloomy, boring and noisy!

My job could not provide me with the kind of fulfillment I longed for, not even one bit! But what could I do? What profession could make feel alive and provide me with a good livelihood? What was it I was meant to do?

The vibration from the earth, the vibration of the silent symphony that once played in the presence of the Meili Snow Mountain range, turned into an agitated voice sitting in a pit at the bottom of my heart. The voice paced like a trapped madman, back and forth alone in the middle of the night, saying something rushed and indistinct from time to time.

I didn’t know how to relieve such psychological pressure. One weekend, in a Seattle newspaper, I noticed an article about the Tibetan New Year celebration to be held by the Sakya Monastery and Tibetan immigrant community. The location of this celebration was near the East West Bookshop. My heart skipped a beat upon seeing this news. I immediately jumped in the "white horse" and drove to the event site.

The Tibetan immigrants rented the two-story building of a community activity center and decorated it in full Tibetan style. The way Indigenous people decorate their clothes, utensils and jewels often reflects their natural surroundings. The landscape of the Tibetan Plateau features a vast expanse of white snow, endless blue sky, yellow dirt and massive green meadows. Tibetan décor emphasizes primary colors of red, blue and yellow. As soon as I entered the community center, waves of scarlet, dark blue, crimson, orange stripes, burgundy robes, and rainbow-like prayer flags rushed toward me. For an instant, I thought I was being transported to the other side of the earth.

The community center bustled with Tibetan people dressed in bright colored Tibetan robes adorned with agates and sapphires. Curious white people milled around, mingling among them. There were performances offered by community members, and small stalls selling Tibetan snacks, Tibetan jewelry, Tibetan clothes, and Buddhist ritual instruments.

The Tibetans joviality displayed a palpable kinship among community members. Like the Han Chinese New Year, everyone reveled in high spirits, talking and laughing, pushing and teasing each other. The atmosphere so lively, it offered a stark contrast to the grey, cold February weather and the polite-and-distant Pacific Northwest cultural ambience. I wandered aimlessly through the crowd, unnoticed. I felt like a discarnate soul walking in the world. I could see others, but they could not see me.

Somehow my feet took me away from the crowd and I found myself in a small room in the much quieter basement. Gentle music played, warm and soft. A temporary sign hung on the door: "Tarot Divination: Decipher Your Life's Purpose". I walked in. Behind a screen sat a white woman in a blue-purple satin robe, with a clear complexion. Her blue eyes emitted a mystical serenity like a mountain lake.

That was Monica.

Noticing the empty chair facing her, I sat down. This became my first experience of divination in this lifetime.

************

At the time, I didn't know the moment I sat across from Monica was my first face-to-face conversation with my destiny and purpose in this incarnation. I didn’t know I was about to take the “Red Pill”, activating the switch to pop me out of the “Matrix”. I didn’t know I would leave the paved road arranged by society, expected by parents and approved by the general public, and veer onto a winding, untrodden, dirt path through an uninhabited wilderness. I didn't know the white woman in front of me would be my guide at this crucial junction of my life. I also didn’t know that five years after we met, my identity, marriage and the world I built for myself would collapse to ruin and Monica would suddenly fall ill to a mysterious disease and depart from this world, leaving me alone to traverse through the dark unknown. And I didn’t know that three years after she passed away, I would receive signs at East West Bookshop indicating her spirit had been helping me from the other side of the veil all along!

After so many years, I often try to recall the specifics of my conversation with Monica. But the memory of the moment, like an impressionist work, is blurry and jumpy, without clear-cut shapes, only large blocks of strong emotion, spreading like watercolor on an empty canvas.

Monica placed the Tarot cards in front of me and asked me to think of a question. Into my heart, I asked, as a Han woman, why do I yearn for Tibet so much? Why do I feel so repulsed by my current job? What is the true purpose of my life?

Following Monica's instructions and holding the questions in my heart, I shuffled three piles of tarot cards in front of me and then selected three or four cards from each pile. Monica arranged these cards in a rectangle on the table. She pondered for a moment, then raised her head to look at me, her green eyes deep and placid as a lake. In the lake, I saw the reflection of a place in my heart I had never visited. She began to speak. In essence, I recall her saying:

"You were a philosopher, thinker, and a priest in your previous life. Not only that, you have been a priest serving many civilizations on earth. Earth civilization is about to enter a major turning point in evolution. Values, ethics, and the construction of traditional cultural meaning will all be affected. You need to let go of expectations placed on you by others and overcome the gravitational pull of social inertia. Return to the source of life and use your life to rethink how the culture you live in is constructed. Explore the meaning of life.”

Dumbfounded, I felt her calm words set off an atomic explosion in my heart. I could not say I believed her. I did not understand what she was saying. What do priests and priestesses do anyway? The rational part of me, the responsible self who managed my life initiated a loud protest. This protest arose with strong backing. My hard-won skills as a highly valued data analyst taught me not to trust random data. All the scientific training I received screamed. This is nonsense! How could a random draw from a pile of cards show anything about my purpose! The trillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry I served along with the rationality controlling material reality appeared to be built on a scientific cornerstone: randomness means nothing.

While this rational self yelling in protest, another, much younger voice spoke in my heart. This voice, like a seed buried deep in the ground, awakened by a spring rain and loud thunder, sprouted in front of my eyes. She absorbed every word Monica said, stretched her tiny green leaves, growing delicate branches in the gap under the giant rock of my rational self.

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[1] There are currently fifty-five ethnic groups in China, most of them with a distinct language, culture, myth and religious beliefs. For thousands of years, the dynamics between diverse ethnic groups has always been an essential ingredient in shaping the history and culture of China.   

[2] The original text is我见青山多妩媚，料青山见我应如是

[3] Buddhist mantra, meaning “Hail to the jewel in the lotus of my heart.”

[4] Khata is a traditional ceremonial scarf used predominantly in Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal and India. It is a symbol of honor and respect. People use Khata in ceremonials and traditional dances and offer it to monasteries and temples and honored guests.

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[i] This intuition of the “transceiver” model of the psyche developed under the influence of traditional Chinese culture. Within traditional Chinese culture, there is a belief that whatever we see outside, be it natural elements such as fire or water, or human systems including social structures or technological development, can all be seen as reflections of our inner worlds. Influenced by this perspective, as a cell phone entered my life when I was in my late 30s, I wondered what part of my inner self was being reflected by this amazing gadget.

Cell phones connect 85% of human beings through a simple dialed call, even when we travel to some of the most remote corners of the world. What if this level of interconnectedness mirrors an aspect of our own consciousness with which modernity has lost touch? This possibility strikes such a chord in my heart. The mythical stories I read about the powers possessed by ancient shamans suggested that they were able to tap into the collective psyche of their culture and community. But can we modern people access this “cosmic Wi-Fi” signal through our sensory capacities, direct experience or intuition? 

The Matrix, the super-materialistic, mega-capitalistic societal machine, built upon the Newtonian view of a cold, lifeless world, leads us to believe each person is an isolated, separate being. Under this premise, we turn our attention away from our innate ability to connect with the world around us through direct, sensory experience. Instead, we pour our attention outward, especially when consumerist culture inundates our senses with myriads of material manifestations. Gradually, the inward pathway of interconnection atrophies and we are left with a black hole of hunger and loneliness, rendering us vulnerable to be hooked and obsessed with the cell phones in our hands!

The story of Earth Song is my journey tracing back along the inner pathway of interconnectedness. In the old times, the hermits did that. They retreated into the deep of the mountains, going inward to find the point of consciousness that “plugs into” the web of interconnectedness. I very much wanted to experience that consciousness myself. However, what Earth Song showed me is also a pathway different from the ancient hermits. Instead of retrieving into the mountains, this is a pathway emphasizing relationships, intimacy, and creative expression,  a more feminine way of being and living.

I believe that when we are reattached to the internal sense of interconnection, we will become less susceptible to the detrimental effect of technologies. Nor do we necessarily need to shun technologies. Instead, we will have a chance to harness them towards building a thriving life.