Intent in the Castaneda sense is to surrender and to be in the flow, to be connected with the greater force or the Indescribable Force that surrounds us at all times. To softly touch upon infinity with barely a ripple.

My own experience with manifesting has strengthened my ability to manifest. Each time I “put it out there” and manifest something serves to further validate the endless possibilities and potential that we each have to fully construct and create our reality. It has become clear to have no attachment to outcome and to be careful what you ask for.

While in the Yucatan this month, my traveling companion and partnered warrior on this path of knowledge and awareness joined me in simultaneous connection with intent and we walked an amazing tale of power into existence. Months ago, in the early planning stages of our journey to the Yucatan we created the intention of sharing in sacred ceremony with a Mayan shaman to further open the gateways to higher levels of awareness. We had asked several people if they knew of anyone and did some research on the internet to no avail.

Spending an afternoon in Tulum led us to a beautiful store of esoteric hand-crafted items, artwork and jewelry. It was the only store of its kind amidst the typical wave of tourist type wares that are available. The owner was clearly Toltec, an artist of awareness. We had each located an item that seemed to be made specifically for each of us. As we sealed our transaction with the artist it occurred to me to inquire about the ceremony. He directed us to someone that he himself had done ceremony with. Now our task was to find this shaman, somewhere out in the jungle.

We traveled to a locale that seemed to vibrate with luminosity and approached a gentleman who collected an entry fee into one of many cenotes in the area. A cenote (say-no-tay) is essentially an underground, fresh-water river that houses its own eco-system and is accessible through sink holes that reveal crystal clear water. Sometimes called a cenote sagrado or sacred well, they were once thought to contain offerings to the Mayan god of water, Chac, a rain deity.

Seconds later another man literally materialized out of nowhere and was standing to my left. He asked, in Spanish, if we could give him a ride to the cenote. Sure, why not and he got into the car with us. We asked him if he knew of a local Mayan shaman and he said yes then told us a series of methods through which we may find him. We dropped him off, explored the cenote and followed one of his leads by chatting to yet another person. She tells us she only speaks Mayan and then laughs and lets us know, in Spanish, that he is inaccessible at the time, to come back the next day. We get back in our car to leave realizing that, perhaps, this is not meant to be when we notice two Mayan men hitchhiking. We pulled over to let them in and realized immediately that they were extremely intoxicated as the whole car began to reek of alcohol.

They were friendly and we offered them some tortilla chips. As we started to chat we asked them if they knew where we might locate the shaman. Excitedly they said yes and the older one starts to animatedly give us directions telling us to turn left here and to the right there until we approach a clearing surrounded by a beautiful lush area and he directs us to pull in. The four of us get out of the car and a small Mayan woman walks towards us. The older of the two men we had picked up starts to tell her, in the Mayan language, that we are looking for the shaman. She begins to tell us he is not around when suddenly he appears, emerging from the jungle, seemingly out of nowhere.

The long of the short is that the two of us wound up doing a beautiful and powerful ceremony the following evening with a Mayan shaman who, in the beginning, was so elusive and once we were able to truly connect with intent and the original intention set so many months before everything unfolded as it was obviously meant to be.

The shaman has his own private cenote not too far from his ceremonial space. He told us that once the ceremony ends he will lead us there so we can dip into the cool, dark waters as a means of grounding and closing the portals. This reminds me very much of how don Juan used to bring Carlos back from his journeys.

We arrived the next evening promptly as he had requested and he presented us with a spread of fresh, tropical fruit and water as a means of hydrating ourselves in preparation of the temazcal we would be entering. A temezcal is similar to a sweat lodge. We had brought traditional offerings of loose tobacco, pure cocoa chocolate, copal and corn. He had us place these upon his alter and then later gave us each a bit of everything to offer to the fire along with our intentions of healing and wholeness for mama tierra (mother earth). He called in the energies and directions of Jaguar/east, eagle/south, humanity/west and plumed serpent/north all the while the sounds of the jungle surrounding us.

Then we entered the temazcal and as he began singing a song in Spanish to honor our human connectedness to earth, water, air, and fire we began our beautiful, gentle, spiraling plunge into the unique but familiar realm of non-ordinary reality. As his words in both Mayan and Spanish guided us on this journey we knew that we had not met just any Mayan shaman but had, in fact, met a Toltec Warrior who is committed to la consciencia (awareness) and el conocimiento (knowledge) and el libertad (freedom). His energy and ours merged in a way that we knew that we knew each other and he said, “somos hermanos” (we are brothers), and he took us deeper into the journey.

Warriors speak of shamanism as a magical, mysterious bird which has paused in its flight for a moment in order to give man hope and purpose; warriors live under the wing of that bird, which they call the bird of wisdom, the bird of freedom. ~ Carlos Castaneda, The Wheel of Time