Cosmic Convergence 2012

Cosmic Convergence is an annual gathering incorporating art, music, education for conscious living, and Mayan culture & traditions. It is a convergence of past, present, and future, envisioning the new paradigm of a technological-tribal society that is becoming more tangible each day. The objective is to expose the attendees to ancestral and post-industrial ways of living in order to provoke a shift in consciousness to rethink what lifestyles are possible in post-2012 reality. The gathering forms part of an ongoing international tribal revival. The event is 100% non-profit and all proceeds go towards supporting social projects on Lake Atitlan, where we work with indigenous communities to grow a greener future.

Cosmic Convergence 2012 was a resounding success, with over 700 attendees from countless countries. For three days, we experienced a series of workshops, movement classes, documentary films, a visionary art gallery, a regally adorned teahouse, and two stages of tribal-inspired music, to a backdrop of three majestic volcanoes behind a crater lake. The event was set on the lakeside outside Panajachel, neighboring an easily accessible nature reserve to explore with waterfalls and lush greenery.

Local Maya culture was presented in an interactive form through ceremonies, local cuisine, workshops on natural dyeing and weaving, and practical information about local medicinal plants and their applications. Local indigenous womens' cooperatives and social projects were in attendance, such as JUSTA, an organization empowering indigenous women, and Mayapedal, an appropriate technology organization pioneering pedal-powered models for off-grid living.

The workshop series incorporated a grand diversity of subjects, including non-violent communication techniques, permaculture, raw food preparation, how to plan an international bicycle voyage, and a number of varieties of yoga.

The visionary art gallery featured surreal vistas from artists Guillermo Sierra, Stefano Gypsy, and Jessica Perlstein. Jessica also shared a live digital painting presentation during the night of 31^st December.

The music was selected for diversity of sound, and there were artists from over 15 countries sharing electronic and live music projects. One of the most beautiful moments witnessed a world-class Moroccan belly-dancer performing to the Indian-infused dub sounds of the Desert Dwellers, with the backdrop of a crimson sunrise on new years' day, bringing the lake and its ring of volcanoes back into the visual landscape.

We enjoyed full support from the municipality in the form of donated trash bins and collection services, and increased security to ensure that everything proceeded smoothly.

Thanks to this event, we were able to raise approximately $2000 which was donated to select local charities, including Comida Vida, and Maya Traditions, an organization working for the preservation of Mayan culture through production of traditional crafts and medicinal plants. We also got very positive feedback from local hotel and restaurant owners, and the taxi drivers were extremely satisfied as well. We thank everyone who made this beautiful convergence possible through their contributions, energy, and presence.

Planting seeds

2012 is a year of cultivating new beginnings. Our partner Atitlan Organics has been working on an inspiring community garden project in the local communities: "Shad Qudsi, Co-Founder of Atitlan Organics, has been hired as the Agricultural Specialist to oversee the design and installation of four community gardens in and around the Tzununa Valley. Working with Amigos de Santa Cruz and several other organizations, the group managed to successfully receive funding for the Local Food Production Project. The goal of this project is to work with local families in producing nutritious, organic food to supplement the daily meals that are prepared at each of four nutrition centers in the valley. Through the creation of four demonstration gardens, we in affect developing a platform for future workshops that have to do with organic cultivation and sustainable lifestyle choices. The one-year project started on February 1st, 2012. We will keep you updated with our progress at each site." We have teamed up to collaborate with Atitlan Organics and the Instituto Mesoamericano de la Permacultura (Mesoamerican Permaculture Institute) to create a permaculture design course weaving indigenous Mayan traditional plant knowledge into modern agro-ecological techniques.

The 2-week course offers the internationally recognized Permaculture Design Certificate curriculum and covers a broad range of themes to provide a holistic overview of permaculture practices, biodiversity and sustainable living. Topics include: Introduction to permaculture: history, ethics & principles Mayan culture and biodiversity Reading and understanding the landscape Natural principles and Permaculture design Natural and cultivated ecosystems Developing productive systems with permaculture Social permaculture and community self sufficiency Drawing techniques and hands-on design projects We train people of all backgrounds, ages, experience and skills to design using natural patterns based on ecological principles. Our graduates leave ready to apply what they’ve learned in their yards, on their land, and in their homes and businesses. Ronaldo Lec Ajcot (IMAP) and Shad Qudsi (Atitlan Organics), as well as many other local guest teachers, will be leading this course. For the transition from 2012 to 2013, we have planned an international tribal gathering that incorporates art, live and electronic music, conscious workshops and lectures, and a series of Mayan cultural and ceremonial events. The festival will take place from December 30 - January 1. More information can be found by visiting the Cosmic Convergence website. Email cosmic convergence@gmail.com if you are interested in getting involved as a volunteer or artist!

Love & Light

Guatemala 2012

To welcome 2012, we teamed up with the Psy Family Guatemaya to bring our event production to another level for the occasion of Universal Dance. A hard-working decoration team arrived despite blowing a flat tire en route from Guatemala City, and a beautiful bamboo shade structure was erected over the dance floor, which beheld an epic view of Lake Atitlan.

The event was opened with a Mayan ceremony invoking the 20 nahuales, and asking for guidance and protection. The ceremony was overseen by Tata Juan from San Juan la Laguna.

The outdoor trance stage featured an international lineup of producers including Egnogra (Mexico), Digitech/Natural Perception (Mexico), and Manipulation (Portugal) and Digo (Guatemala). A downstairs stage was opened to accommodate diverse tastes in electronic music, featuring Guatemalan producer Maximon.

We turned this area into a visionary art gallery featuring the work of Jessica Pearlstein and Raj, and a non-alcoholic health bar serving fruit shakes, raw chocolate, homegrown coffee, and coconut water.

January 1st, 2012 witnessed a breathtaking sunrise above the Lake, with many friends old and new. Over 400 people were in attendance to celebrate the new year.
A compilation of the producers presenting this year was handed out to the first 50 attendees; it is available for download here.

This year we will be deepening our collaboration with the Psy Family Guatemaya to create a series of events leading up to a climax in late December of 2012 in the jungle near the ruins of the ancient Mayan civilization.
We are now experimenting with natural dyes and recycling indigenous clothing to create cutting-edge visionary fashion, which we will be presenting at various festivals around the world this year, such as Envision (Costa Rica). Presentations on our work will be shared as well.

Universal Dance 2012

Hello world!
2012 is coming up, it's going to be an interesting one. Many gatherings are planned around Central America, weaving future and tribal heritage into manifesting our present.

We will be welcoming the new year with a series of Mayan and other ancestral ceremonies, workshops on medicinal plants and natural dyeing and weaving techniques, jungle treks to Mayan ruins, and a new year's bash.


Psy.Family-GuateMAYA & Nuevo Mundo
present
UNIVERSAL DANCE 2012
(the Beginning)

Return to the source of Mayan ancestor wisdom.
Portals open and paradigms shatter.
Past, present, and future meet in Guatemaya at the dawn of 2012, as the stargate opens to unite the threads of time.
So start preparing yourself for the AWAKENING OF THE MAYA CONSCIOUSNESS FOR THE END, AND THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW ERA 2012. Open your third eye and share with us the different activities to start the 2012 full of bliss and magical vibe.

-Tour of Mayan archeological ruins:
- EL MIRADOR (5 day´s trip walking on the Mayan Biosphere to reach the Biggest pyramid in the world LA DANTA).
- TIKAL (3 day´s trip with Spiritual Guide and Mayan Ceremony at Tikal).

-Indigenous Mayan workshops:
- SAN JUAN La Laguna (1 day trip learning about the Natural dyeing and textile production of the Mayan handicrafts, and medicinal plant walk).
-Available workshop in designing and dyeing your own garment using ancestral methods

-Volcano hikes:
- SAN PEDRO (1 day trip hiking on one of the guardians of the Holy Lake Atitlan).

-Closing Party: 31.12.2011 to 01.01.2012 in a Secret Garden around the Holy and Magical Lake Atitlan.
18 hours of different types of beat´s from DubStep to Psytrance in 2 Stages.
With Mother Nature Sounds, Experimental, dubStep, PsyTrance, FullOn, HighTech, PsyHigh, Morning and the special guest !
Entrance 100 - 150Q
EGNOGRA

And …
Mayan Ceremonies.
Mindbending visual sequences channeled from the dream world.
Background on Maya cosmovision and Calendar.
Healing ceremonies with shamans and spiritual guides from diverse traditions.
Introduction to permactulture and tour of gardens.
Contemporary and indigenous art exhibit.
Live performances: belly dance, fire poi, and more.
Mayan Deco.
Chai Kitchen & superfoods-energy drinks & organic salads from garden & chillspace.
Tribal market: medicinal plants and seed nursery, natural dyed traditional Mayan textiles.
Yoga.

And remember, this is just only THE BEGINNING for the different activities schedule for 2012 according to our Tzolkin.

Dates of activities, Line Up an More info coming soon … !


FRIENDS AND FAMILY OF PROJECT NUEVO MUNDO

December 2011 - Universal Dance Guatemala and corresponding events (Project Nuevo Mundo & Psy-Family Guatemala, Guatemala)


January 30 - February 24, 2012 - Ecovillage Design Gathering (Inan-Itah, Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua).
Responding to current global challenges by designing and modeling opportunities for long-term sustainable and evolutionary living


February 3 - 17 - Permaculture Design Course (Project Bonafide Institute for Regenerative Agriculture, Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua).
Permaculture intensive covering a wide variety of topics.


March 1 - 4 - Envision (Dominical, Costa Rica). By bringing people together through music, art and sacred movement Envision Presents opportunities to celebrate our spirits, heal our bodies and minds, and revitalize our souls to face the challenges and realize the opportunities of our rapidly changing world.

March 8 -11 - Hypnoza Festival (Costa Rica). You are invited to interact with paradise for a few days, under the biggest full moon in 2012.
This is the 3rd time that we celebrating our tradition, Uniting people from all over the world and enjoying amazing Music, Nature & Cultural experiences.

November - December 2012 - World Rainbow Gathering (Guatemala & Chiapas, Mexico).
Caravans from North and South America will meet in Guatemala to manifest new beginnings.

December 21 - 28 - Tribal Gathering 2012 (Geoparadise, Kuna Yala Islands, Panama).
Gathering of indigenous and psychedelic tribes. Inspired by the art and wisdom of ancient civilizations combined with cutting-edge modern culture from all corners of the planet. In 2012, we´ll be exploring the first chakra and Our Roots in Mother Earth, setting the foundations of this evolutionary movement. workshops, talks, rituals, stories, dances, etc to help the global party community understand their culture and realize how many common elements we share and how we can help one another. Our aim is for this gathering to provide a creative sacred space for peoples and cultures of the world to harmoniously step together into the new cycle of existence that the Mayans anticipated.

More to come!

Love and Light,
Moksha

Summer Rains and Seeds!

In anticipation of the planting season, it was decided that it would be appropriate to coordinate the first annual seed exchange fair here on Lake Atitlan.


Permaculture groups and womens’ natural production cooperatives were invited, and a series of workshops was offered.

Permaculture groups in attendence included the Instituto Mesoamericano de la Permacultura (IMAP) and the School of Natural Living. Two womens’ cooperatives specializing in medicinal plants and cosmetics also showed up, the Fundacion Tradiciones Mayas giving a workshop on basic preparation of natural medicine, and Q’omanel presenting their natural cosmetic product line. Another womens’ cooperative, the Maya Weaving Women shared a demonstration of natural weaving and dyeing techniques.


Many a seed exchanged hands; interested restaurant owners showed up from nearby towns to augment their culinary cultivation. Original genetic material was obtained from Santiago Atitlan, a lakeside town populated for 800 years continuously. The event was capped with a ceremony led by Tata Juan, in honor of the medicinal plant Goddess Ixchel.



Come Semana Santa, it was decided that it would be appropriate to celebrate along with the rest of Guatemala. We celebrated in style with sixteen hours of electronic music and chai tea (organic coffee from our farm was also served). Downpours threatened to spoil the fun, but the powerful Tata Juan gave supplication to the water spirits and the skies cleared and dusk, revealing fireflies and later the Milky Way. Several Guatemalans congratulated us on our idea to give free water (a novelty in this country, where water is often confiscated at the door and participants are made to pay up to $2 for each small bottle of water).



Most recently, we hosted our first superadobe natural building workshop, coordinated by our resident master builder. Workshop participants hailed from North America, Guatemala, Germany, and France. A sauna was deemed to be an appropriate test model, and if we are satisfied with the technique and its applicability to the subtropical highlands, we may just construct an entire eco-village employing these super-resistant dome structures! Superadobe is a very labor-intensive but cost-effective natural building technique developed in order to create appropriate buildings for disaster-rich zones. The structural integrity of the dome allows it to resist earthquakes of high magnitude, as well as floods. If it would defend us adequately against the nearest volcano erupting is yet to be tested.

With the rainy season already here, we are busy bees planting papaya, banana, taro, macadamia, and other water-loving edibles. It is bound to be a bountiful and colorful growing season! This week, we will also be playing host to a medicine retreat with a Peruvian healer.

Love and Light,
Moksha

La Finca

la finca: it's a place where the sky is always the bluest of blue and the waterfalls perfectly frigid. it's a place where work is fun and play is rugged. a place where ideas are exciting and creativity thrives, where food is fresh and local and hand-made. where hikes lead you to rock cliffs where you can watch the sun both rise and set. it's a community you can feel in your bones. and it's a home, on a lakeside mountain in one of the most beautiful places in the world. the energy from this place is almost tangible and every day can see the benefits of your labor as the garden produces and the house becomes more beautiful and interesting. it's a place that gets harder and harder to leave the longer you stay. and a place i dream of returning to over and over again. forever.

-Michelle, volunteer :)

Ecological Design

Every February, Project Bonafide, an ecological farm and community outreach program, hosts a permaculture design course on Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua. Being one of the few permaculture courses oriented towards tropical agriculture, yours truly decided to seize the opportunity and get up to speed on a number of ecological design themes ranging from erosion prevention to water management to appropriate technologies to integrating animals into cycles of resources and energy. Permaculture is a system of regenerative agriculture and harmonization with the natural elements. The foundational ethics are care of the earth (preservation of functioning ecosystems and rehabilitation of damaged ecosystems), care of people (creating human-centered ecosystems), limits to growth and consumption, and a sharing of surplus.



The project serves the local community in various ways: stimulating the local economy through the creation of on-site jobs and providing business to local hotels and restaurants during the courses offered, diffusing knowledge of permaculture through the provision of permaculture education scholarships to interested community members, hosting a seed and plant exchange event at the beginning of each planting season, and financing and managing a community center that serves nutritional meals to seventy children daily and hosts workshops and language classes open to the public.



The site was designed with the intention of serving as an education grounds, clearly illustrating the concepts of ecological design. A notable point in the workshop model was the redirection of tuition money towards local hotels and restaurants, rather than building on-site accomodations for guests, which would cut the local economy out of the loop.

The class for 2011 consisted of approximately ten North Americans and five Nicaraguans from various parts of the country, including one from the local community of Balgue. The Nicaraguans are given a scholarship to attend the course, which would otherwise be prohibitively expensive. During the course, hands-on workshops were offered in composting, bamboo propagation, animal management, tree grafting, preparing fermented foods, analysis of oppressive societal structures, and soap-making. One morning, we toured local food forest gardens, which can be found in the front yard of almost any family compound on the Isla de Ometepe, generally comprising papaya, banana, mango, among other tropical fruit.

The soap workshop facilitator was a young Costa Rican chemist whose primary job was to simultaneously translate the course from English to Spanish, for the hispano-hablantes. He also offered the workshop to a group of local women, with the idea of forming an economically productive cooperative. At the end of the course, I invited him back to Guatemala, where he is scheduled to come give a workshop on our farm in utilizing avocado (a crop that we are harvesting upwards of 10 000 annually) in the production of oil, shampoo, cosmetics. Indigenous Guatemala is fertile ground for womens’ cooperatives, where there is already a storehouse of ancestral knowledge working with plants in the elaboration of medicines, cosmetics, artesanal products and dyes.



At the end of the course, the students were divided into four presentation groups, and "given" each a piece of land and an objective to implement, incorporating permaculture principles into the design. Projects ranged from a self-sufficient tropical retirement center to an ecological soap production center. Our group consisted entirely of Nicaraguans (excluding myself), and we have high hopes that our proposal will be put into action in the local community, where the very same Costa Rican chemist is planning to start a soap-making cooperative sourcing locally available natural materials as production inputs. The course concluded with a mandatory talent show, every student being obligated to perform as a precondition to receiving the permaculture design certificate. Humiliating and degrading experienced were predictably had by many!



Before returning to Guatemaya, I took the opportunity to visit a neighboring ecological community that we had been swapping volunteers with for almost a year, Inan Itah, only an hour away by foot. The newly formed community is spiritual in focus, and facilitates a number of diverse workshops, most notably tantra. Yoga classes were also offered on a daily basis while I was on the site. They have also created a local economic initiative training local women in massage therapy, and then placing them in hotels around the island catering to foreign tourists. Inan Itah hosts an annual ecovillage design gathering, which was in full swing when I arrived. I was given the opportunity to present the work that we are doing, a summary of existing resources and information on traveler/work-exchange/volunteer internetworks, and the concepts and principles underlying the ecovillage network movement. After the discussion, I was approached by a beekeper and a software developer, who both expressed their desire to contribute their skills to the project.



Passing through Managua, I revisited an organization that I had been acquainted with previously, CEPREV (Centro de Prevencion de la Violencia). A group of psychologists doing beautiful work with at-risk youth and gang members, these ladies patrol Managua daily from one end to the other, quickly responding to crisis situations as they come up. Youth come to receive workshops at the CEPREV headquarters, where an integrated approach of personal counseling, group self-esteem exercises, and sharing sessions have proven so effective that the World Bank has supported the spread of this model to other Central American states.

Returning home on a chicken bus curving through the Guatemalan highlands, a back tire suddenly exploded and we careened forward with two tires up in the air, the conductor fighting to keep the bus from flipping over completely and descending down the mountain. By a miracle, the conductor managed to keep the bus grounded as the frame’s metallic screeching against the road eventually brought the bus to a halt. The bus was full of citizens of San Pedro la Laguna, and this was apparently the third or fourth hairy incident with a bus full of Pedranos, of whom it is said that angels are watching and protecting. Safe at home, we are now launching our first super adobe housing prototype, with the volunteer assistance of four professional architects.

Love and Light,
David