Deep in the Waters of Ancestral Truth

It’s been a while! Traversing many zones.

A few days ago Malidoma Patrice Some transitioned, my first human teacher in Ancestral medicine, so I want to acknowledge him for the gift he gave me and the many gifts he left with many people all over the world bringing this medicine from his tiny village to the western world . His name one who makes friends with strangers. He was though couragous. The medicine and the way it was transmitted by him changed my life. 

He was a brilliant eloquent transmitter of ancestral wisdom and indigenous technology and for that he has left a legacy that will reverberate for many generations to come. I fell in love with the Dagara medicine 25 years ago and I am still in love with it. I fell in  love with it because of the way he transmitted it from his ancestors, I fell in love with radical ritual the way he presented it and I understood the meaning of community because of how he presented it in communal work and rituals. “dont”  he said often “think communities are flawless , they are not they and all relationships are where the work is done, personal work. “

Your community is everywhere. 

“It is possible that we have been brought together at this time because we have profound truths to teach each other. Toward that end, I offer the wisdom of the African ancestors so that Westerners might find the deep healing they seek.

The spark of this ancestral flame, which I have brought to the land of the stranger, is now burning brightly. Increasingly, I have been and will be encouraging westerners to embody these traditions as a testimony to the indigenous capacity to assert itself with dignity in the face of modernity. In this way the ancestors will know that this medicine has found a true home- that it is more than an honored guest.

At this critical time in history, the earth’s people are awakening to a deep need for global healing. African wisdom, so long held secret, is being called on to provide tools to enable us to move into a more peaceful and empowered way of being, both within ourselves, and within our communities. The indigenous spirit in each of us is calling for cleansing and reconciliation. The ancestors are responding.”

– Malidoma Somé, PhD

His element is water, and he passed at the end of a water year, and to that I wish to say, reconcile all that is unforgiven in your heart. Move away from victimhood, eye for eye, blame, resentment. Leave the earth how you want your children to discover it with awe and wonder. Find possibilities and potential in the brokeness, the blame, the bitterness, and transform all of it into healing energy for OTHERS , that is true community, time to be done with the poor me’s, the jealousies, the more for me, the endless not enoughness. Look around often and be grateful. Spend time with those who dont have, and be grateful. Wash, steam, rinse, cleanse, make prayers into onto and by the waters often. Sing to her, make offerings of milk to her for the unreconciled and be grateful, gratitude says Angeles Arrien keeps the heart  open. Give thanks and offerings to all who you work with (allies, beings, ancestors, angels, etc) at the end of the year. 

2022 is a DOUBLE fire year. More when I write again on that! but suffice to say burn brightly, heat up slowly and warm not destroy, transform, and step into the fire of purpose  …… do not destruct,  burn up, burn out. 

Transition slowly from water to fire because its going to be big. 

Wishing you all many water blessings for the year end and many beautiful beginnings for the fire year. Be safe.

May all worlds bless and protect you always. Mbali

Attention !

Let us live for the grace beneath all we want, 

let us see it in everything and everyone, 

till we admit to the mystery 

that when I look deep enough into you, 

I find me, and when you dare to hear my fear 

in the recess of your heart, you recognize it 

as your secret which you thought 

no one else knew. 

O let us embrace 

that unexpected moment of unity 

as the atom of God. 

Let us have the courage 

to hold each other when we break  

and worship what unfolds… 

Mark Nepo ( Earth Prayer) 

Paying attention  is to give heed to, to stretch forward 

As earth walkers, we are given the contract to care for ourselves and the earth. Custodians like those who came before who lived in harmony with nature. And a lot of us live in the western world. So when we are not living in a village where at certain point in ones life and its usually very young the initiations begin (“Initiate” to emerge to the light of the moon ) and are a part of life, we are given modern day initiations, through losses small and large. Or we initaite ourselves, gangs, addictions 

If we are not not recognised or seen as such  as in the western world and if we are walking around with the undone spirit work of our ancestors it creates a spirit burden,  illness,carnage, beyond describing,   permanantly spiritual neurotic where the past permanantly overwhelms our capacity  to engage in our present reality. We have numbed out, so we drive for solutions band aids fixes, of any kind. 

Feeling the pain of loss, the horror we are often confronted with daily we wouldnt be able to continue living, so we continue to navigate without registering they are important

Martin Shaw  asks

“How do we glean an opportunity from all this loss, breaking the spell, kicking the predators out of our house? 

Kneeling down, what is beneath us. Lower our gaze examine the weave of the mat there is no one size fits all no template.  With enough room to kneel we make things holy by the kind of attention we give them 

The weave of the mat if we keep paying attention to the little stretch of rug strange things satrt to happen we start to witness a secret history of the earth”

If we work on the water element -Going deeper in the water swimming around in the murky water where we cannot see may cause confusion, fear, resistance lack of focus and yet in that rich container we will either sink or swim. It is what stops the flow of the water,  the barriers the dams . Its the sacred time of chaos where transformation is wanting to come through. Time to kneel down get closer into the deeper water.

The Amount of attention we give to anything ourselves, our   darkness , fears anothers suffering is giving it love. We look for love in so many place and we have these ideas and expectations of how it should look and be, when often its right here in front of us and I include the natural world the earth.

There are forces at work through our lives that are a part of us, (ancestors, elements and elementals, dreams, signs and symbols) and yet we were not taught to acknowledge them, listen to them, and heed their call. These somewhat mythical but very real forces are shaping the  fabric of our beings, our social tissue, and give meaning to our life  through our perception and relationship with ourselves and the earth, the world around us. They speak to us all the time, beckon us follow their lead, beckon us move in rhythm with their dance. How do I drop the veil of conditioned thought and belief, and move a little closer to a purposeful life of divine service? 

The invitation is then to turn attention to, attend to the distractions,  the darkness, 

Larry Yang tells a story  about his experience of his grandaugther “ we can say we love her but unless we actually pay her attention she doesnt feel it”

Direct experience allows us to pay attention to whats unfolding. Energies that pull us away from  diffilcult emotions if unattended,   we  create drama. Direct experience of paying attention to self or another is to feel profound love even though it may be a stranger. 

 States of curiousity are a state of awakening,  being surprised, taking a risk, opening to the mystery.  

When I look into you I see me. Ubuntu, so when we truly pay attention we are attending to what’s real, the inner and outer reflection, ……here I have found love,

Its a state of being that brings us home.. Often  despite being away from everything familiar and known. It is an inner reconciliation; a mending of broken links, wrongdoings , recovering what was lost, and coming home to the self. How does that all happen in the present moment ….the invitation is to be curious enough, not think we have it all know it all or overthink it.   It is in losing our sense of belonging and home, that we find it. And it starts with the journey inward for us all. With a dropping down and a laying bare a falling down to the earth. Angelique Michaels )( Return To Origin Leader) http://www.returntoorigin.org.za 

No easy fixes shortcuts, checklists, theres only the medicine the divine medicine which when we transmute our challenging, painful suffering into divine medicine and find the blessing alongside the wound we allow it to flow towards us. 

Joanna Macy and Chris Johnston in their book Active Hope invite us to choose to honor the pain of loss rather than discounting it ,  “breaking the spell that numbs us to the dismantling of our world” 

Spells you see are everywhere, and we need witches and wizards who come in different forms to assist  guide  us and yet we have been taught to fear and discount them . They are your teachers, mentors, friends, animals, insects, elements and the other worlds.

May all worlds bless and protect you always

Mbali

MAMA

Spring into new beginnings, and here on the otherside of the pond we are preparing to deepen into stillness, darkness. I love both these times and am aware that when Easter comes around I enter a deep remembering and also it’s my favorite holiday of the year, bitter sweet indeed. A few years ago on Easter Saturday my mother was taken to hospice, and I love the magic and the mystery and awareness of the story of life death and rebirth, healing, new beginnings, letting go and resurrection that Easter portrays. Here I can relate to Jesus, sacrifice, unconditional love, grief. It’s all here the greatest love story of all time. 

Before all these beautiful instruments of shapeshifting, change and transformation is the awareness of grief that lingers around me. My mothers passing, the immensity of the holiday and the trial of what seems to be George Floyd as opposed to his murderer.

I am triggered again- the grief that comes with the deep wound that this carries is being re opened, dug into, salt poured onto it and there’s no relief. It still festers, and this is how George Floyd touched us,  so how do I observe and not absorb, work with water to transmute and shapeshift and get through not over. 

The doctor came on Good Friday, he said my mother  had 3 months to live, she was gone in 2 weeks. The last few days with my mother were the most profound I will ever know.  In the last days with her and her advanced lung cancer, we laughed hard, cried together, she was mischievous, wicked on the morphine , told family secrets and stories of my father I had never heard. Our old broken links, mother daughter wounds, grievences and resentments all dissolved when I climbed into bed with her and let her sleep against my chest, where finally she felt safe maybe for the first time in her life, body to body warmth to warmth, touch to touch, heart to heart. I became mother and she my child and as she lay with her head on my heart I fell in love with my mother again with a love I must have had the first time I looked into her eyes as a new born baby. there was no need to speak, only to feel, everything. 

As the days went on I came to understand that I may never hear her voice again or feel the warmth of her body and I had only three months not knowing it was 2 weeks. Words unsaid dispersed, hurts healed, and misunderstandings  became the source of joy. In those few days that I had wanted to hold on to the hurt to justify something, none of that mattered. All that mattered was what we had in that moment everything we had between us became jewels treasures to rememeber and I came to understand I couldnt hold on to any of it. As she struggled to let go I let go for her as she struggled to surrender I surrenderred with and for her until on Easter Saturday as she struggled to breathe I realased I could not breathe for her as she had given me life  she was letting go of hers and me hers. 

How can anyone hear 8 times ( I cant breathe and continue to murder) less than human and nothing near an animal.

As she was wheeled into the house of death on Easter Saturday she turned to me and said, don’t tell me how long, and as the 8month pregnant caretaker settled her in her bed her baby bump huge compared to my now tiny frail mother, I understood the miracles of life death and rebirth, I understood the three days of Easter. Today Good Friday,  I understand  that grief is something incomplete, that its cycle is unfinished until its done, you are forever changed by it with a new way of seeing a new sense of self, a new sense of the cycle of life that death is a part of ife and that I am in and of it all. But grieve we must, its fluid its up and down deeply comforting at times and excruciating at others, but grieve we must.

I moved to the USA soon after each day by the ocean, each day mama water called me to her and there I spoke everything to her and grieved my mother. A sea gull came to sit with me each day and when after months I felt done the sea gull never came again, and it was time to leave that place.

It taught me to move through, bitterness, let go of resentments, and most of all forgive myself.

So in this time of life, death and rebirth go tell it to the waters and speak there what you are done with and remember, none of us know when its our time.

Sending prayers to George Floyd’s family and friends who have to revisit this horrific time and to George Floyd thank you for waking us out of a deep sleep, when you called MAMA. 

May all worlds bless and protect you always

Mbali 

Offerings 2021

Please enjoy my offerings and I hope to see you somewhere.

Offerings -2021

*Sitting by the trees at the edge of the Olive grove I hear: We want to be seen, acknowledged. We do so much for you, everyone who comes here should see us – the land. MM, Lalela

The opposite of a lockdown: Vision Quest, Nature and self care retreats

African Centered VISION QUESTS 2021- A water year in the Dagara Tradition

The passage of time and demands of daily life can result in a sense of loss… loss of the sense of wonder experienced as a child… loss of dreams once so important… lapsing of a commitment to a path, purpose, or practice. In a vision quest, the rules, roles, and routines of normal life are left behind, and — in both simple and profound ways — we experience a resetting of our compass, a renewal of the core truths and commitments that serve to guide us through life. (unknown)

Vision Quests have been taken by many cultures since time immemorial. Solitude, fasting in nature, offers a sacred trinity  to the unbroken link to our origins. Everyone and every quest experiences are  different and yet the thread weaves seemlessly each time.  Remembering our authentic nature is found only when we re-member the primal bonds with Nature herself. And when that happens and our wildness is touched,  remembered, our medicine, the medicine we came in with, pushes through like  the unfurling new leaf on a twig sprouting through to the light after a forest  has gone. 

Your experience is enhanced by the environments I choose and that choooses you. Nature is our primal teacher -reminding us of authenticity, life, death and rebirth

Magaliesberg (Gauteng Provence South Africa) 

 Arrive September 23rd – Leave September 28th 2021 

Beautiful Lalela is a place of listening. An ancient mountain, that offers magical forest and gentle landscape  to re -connect with natures mystery and our own remembering that we are not separate but a part of our natural world. Maia and Niel are our hosts along with 2 assistants.  Only 6-8 spaces

Cost: R4549

Includes: 5 nights camping,  fasting solution, and all foods when at base camp, all teachings and 2 assistants. 2x 30 minute Preparation sessions via whats app calls. All other prep will be through info packets sent only when you have confirmed your commitment. Preparation will begin in May  2021. 1 zoom session with all participants who are confirmed and paid. 

An application form will be sent on request and a vision quest interview will be set up. 

For more information contact;  Mbali –     waterspirit18@gmail.com 

Two Online Retreats informed by the W.African Dagara tradition and led by Mbali Marais and Maia Marie, two South African teachers and guides. 2021 

Deep into the heart of water:

A Crucible for Reconciliation & Belonging

In the W. African Dagara Tradition, 2021 is a significant water year & time for us to explore the Waters of Our Life.

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Mbali Marais and Maia Marie in 2021, a water year in the Dagara tradition, invite us to explore the Waters of our Life. When water is in alignment in the Dagara tradition it shows up as clarity, focus, healing, soul retrieval, peace and reconciliation, and a consciousness so clear you feel you are swimming in the most stunning coral reef. When it is out of alignment we are constantly swimming against the current in polluted, murky water, in the sea of individual and collective trauma and heartache. If we are water, how then do we work with the waters of our life when it is out of alignment – as in unexpressed grief, unresolved losses and unhealed wounds, in short a drought that runs deep. This may show up as depression, resentment, inability to forgive ourselves and others, soul loss and a sense that we are drowning.

This year Mbali and Maia invite you to immerse yourself, take a deep dive and be held in a crucible for healing.

Please Join us

Register on Eventbrite

*To celebrate our water year in the Dagara Tradition our South African Dagara Village is offering -A Water Retreat in Kenton-on -Sea, Eastern Cape, South Africa. 

Healing the Waters of Our Life 

Clearing, reconciliation and flow 

 Arrival Day- Friday  October 15th – Leave Tuesday after breakfast October 19th, 2021. 

10 spaces 

The South African Dagara village are called to hold an immersion in South Africa’s well kept secret- the stunning land of the  Eastern Cape. Our retreat will be held between the Kariega and Bushman rivers, surrounded by the warm Indian Ocean.  It’s  truly magical for water work with times to rest inbetween. Accomadation close to where the river meets the ocean. No swimming is required.  

In the Dagara tradition 2021 is a water year. We are being called after an immense period in this past year of swimming in the sea of individual and collective trauma, grief and heartache to find healing and wholeness in the murky waters of our life, bringing healing,  peace, and reconcilliation where storms and tsunamis came courting. 

Facilitators: Mbali Marais and Maia Marie with Domonique Santos and Tracy du Plessis  (initiated stick diviners in the Dagara Tradition) 

Cost; R10,000 we are offering 1 discounted space for R5,400  first come first served. 

NON REFUNDABLE DEPOSIT DUE and secures your space: R2500 April 9th 2021. Balance due: July 25th  2021 R7500 

Includes:

• Beautiful accomadation close to the Kariega river and Indian Ocean.
• Food: Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Teas, coffee, water and snacks. 
• All teachings and ceremonies  
• Transportation when you are here

Does not include:

• Arrangements or  transportation from your home to Kenton -on -Sea. We can arrange a shuttle or taxi to pick you up from Port Elizabeth Airport ( paid by you) 
• Travel insurance. 
• Special foods.  Once you are here we will not be shopping for “special foods” please bring with you.

Once your NON refundable deposit has been paid, we will send you a full packet of information. We look forward to sharing this incredible journey with you.  

Contact: Mbali, waterspirit18@gmail.com

Divination and Indigenous Healer

Mbali has been a practitioner of the healing arts for over thirty years. She is a seasoned medicine woman, and an Initiated stick diviner in the Dagara tradition.The Ancient Art of Stick  Divining  is a beautiful cosmological portal, that uses the traditional and mystical language of symbolism, icons, and connection to our ancestors and elementals  to offer guidance into crossroads, crisis, transition, change and healing. Mbali has conducted Vision Quests and Healing retreats  for over 15 years where inner and outer work are inseparable. Drawing from the different traditions she is steeped in,  she threads together a tapestry of collective wisdom designed to hold space to hold your stories. Mbali skillfully creates a crucible for healing working with the elements and other worlds, that calls forth the shadow, light, gifts and medicine of those she works with. With a committment to  truth and authenticity she guides each person  to move forward into the world with a renewed sense of purpose and an understanding that we cannot do this alone. When we bring our gifts to community we all thrive. 

https://ourdivinemedicine.wordpress.com/divinations-4/

Mbali: waterspirit18@gmail.com 

What people are saying

To make the commitment to undertake a Vision Quest is to explore your part in the awesomeness of creation.  It is both humbling, and empowering, and it is difficult to put into words the depth of the explorations and realisations which take place.  This is truly life changing work.  Mbali is an impeccable facilitator, her years of experience provides a powerful container for holding space with fierce integrity to birth powerful and long lasting shifts in one’s experience of self , and relationship to community for the greater good.   It is this masterful holding of space that makes the all-important integration of what is expereinced on the quest occur, getting to ever deeper levels of insight. This powerful experience has let me experience strength and courage I did not know I had, and has without doubt changed my life for the better. Dominique Santos Vision Quest Dec 2019

While out there on the land I was alone, I was deeply aware of being held by Mbali and her assistants, my fellow questers and my ancestors and spirits of the land. I am grateful for the incredible container that Mbali creates, by summoning up the healing energies to hold us and supporting us to go deep inside ourselves to gather and make visible the jewels from our experience. This work is truly profound, powerful, authentic and joyful.  M.M  Vision Quest 2019 

The Vision Quest has helped me find the “song that is your life” which Martha Postlewaite describes in her poem “Clearing”. The quest is not a retreat. It is not a trip. It is not a metaphor. It is a quest towards a deeper connection with nature, Spirit and self. A.M Vison Quest 2019 

I had never heard of vision quests and after previously participating in a Visioning Retreat facilitated by Mbali Marais at Lalela, I knew it was pointless to set any expectation. I cannot say when the work of the quest started, and even now, I can feel the power of this work, this homecoming, continuing. I was surprised by how fearless I was. The Quest raised my consciousness of the life around me, the healing potency of nature. I felt held and protected and I know for sure, I am not alone. It was clear to me that something bigger was calling to emerge. It was time for me to shake off the small self. The Vision Quest was all part of my being led closer to my true self and purpose. I have experienced tremendous healing through this process. I have learned to open my heart, to walk with clarity, and to live wholeheartedly. I finally recognise my personal power. Ndi livhuwa vho Makhulukuku (I give thanks to the ancestors). L.T. Vision Quest 2019 

Since I’ve started working with Mbali, my life has been steadily evolving into something joyful and directed by inner purpose. She has a way of holding the space so as to help one access inner guidance and one’s own higher voice, and in time, those of the ancestors. When needed, she brings in messages and divinations of great potency,  seeing results which reverberate outwards, for long afterwards.

In short, a gentle way of working and knowing, which doesn’t allow one to return to a state of unconsciousness. I am very grateful. T D, Cedarberg, 2019

“Thank you Mbali for your divination reading. I found it amazingly affirming and accurate. Without knowing anything about me or my work, you tapped straight into who I am and what I do and high-lighted the next steps of my journey. I am selective of who I counsel for readings and I was most impressed with your skills, and with your warm and caring nature. Thank you for this service you offer- I will certainly consult you again in the future.” Founder Melissa Krige, Platbos forest, South Africa, 

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I see you, Mbali, as a conduit for communication with these forces, a connecter, an elder,  a medicine woman, a visionary, an anchor and a bridge. 

Your presence, counsel and conversation have been impeccable. Lexi Aronson, Cape Town

For more information: Contact Mbali: waterspirit18@gmail.com

https://ourdivinemedicine.wordpress.com

The Time of the No Time

A Dagara water Year 

The Time of the No Time,  is an evolutionary period, short but intense, inside the grand cycles where great changes take place to thrust us into a new age of evolution as individuals and as mankind. The Mayans call it the time of the no time and the prophecy was in fact for Dec 21st 2012, what people were calling the end of the world.   I feel we entered it in this Dagara water year and the changing of US presidents as well as entering the belly of the beast  and the light that is still emerging from it. 

The silence the vastness of Bergplaas gave me an opportunity to really lean into the elements and to feel into water’s qualities. Its peace, our need to reconcile, surrender,  love.

Water then has come in  a slow droplet way, for now. My sense though is it is dammed up in endless loss and unexpressed grief waiting to push through to do its reconiliation and healing work.

I was fortunate enough to be in a very special place, Bergplaas nature reserve on the New Year transition and I am still filled with the peace, the connections and the love of these wondrous encounters in nature. I also felt held by the surrounding Sneeuberg mountains carriers of deep story. The great Karoo has always been a place of re remembering, it’s old, indgenous and wild and to encounter wild animals on foot, in the silence,  demands a hearing, and seeing that always wakes me out of any reverie I might have been in. When I am so close to wildness of such a nature  my bones are literally shaken awake.  It is the opposite of lock down, it calls us to immerse to surrender into an original signature of our origins. People have left us at this time i think to look over us because we need more help from the other world. I lost a cousin after I wrote this, and then I heard of more people I knew. 

 I am reminded that to be in such spaces,  such wilderness has to be a given,  a must in order for us all to rejuvenate, and re habilitate our nerves, bodies, our minds. A place to bring back the fractured pieces of our souls back into alignment, where we can mend the broken links to nature and other worlds. Big thanks to those who made it possible. 

More and more I am convinced that this time of the no time is a gift, a real island in the chaos, a flashlight in the darkness a lightouse guiding us to safe harbours, AND as Dr.Clarissa Pinkola Estes invites us, 

 “In my  bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall. When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.”

May all worlds bless and protect you always

Mbali