Conrad SatalaJune 15, 2025

An Introduction to these Blogs

Conrad SatalaJune 15, 2025

“I Carry the Mountain in My Breath”

A Ceremonial Introduction to Living Within Two Lands

from the Earth Remembers Series

Spoken from Conrad, Elder of the Bones

Walker of the Medicina Tree of Light

Walker of the Streetlight

Keeper of the Tz’utujiil Maya Light

Come close.

Let me speak to you as one who walks with two lands inside him.

One land — Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala — where the mountains remember me.

The other — Fort Wayne, Indiana — where I remember the mountains through breath.

I carry the mountain in my breath.

The lake in my spine.

The cornfields in my bones.

The threads of light between the sky and the cement.

I carry them all, not as memory,

but as breath that walks.

I am 77 years old.

An elder of the Tz’utujiil Maya people.

I have walked long upon the sacred landscapes of my village —

among the people, the customs, the Rilaj Maam,

the Nawals, Paq’alib’al, the Nab’eysiil’s of the past, and the voice of ya Mri’y Kastilyaan’s Light.

I have breathed with the mountains and feel their voices of Light move through my ribs.

Now I walk among buildings.

Among cars and wires and asphalt skies.

But the sacred is not gone.

It is different.

It is hidden sometimes, but not lost.

Here, I too can Breath within these urban landscapes and feel a parallel Light within these voices moving through my ribs.

This blog is a weaving.

A ceremonial walking between two sets of lands:

The first pair:

Two outer physical landscapes —

The volcanic highlands of Santiago Atitlán,

and the flatlands of Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Each different in shape and sound,

yet both carrying threads of the Earth’s light.

Each woven uniquely into the great Tapestry of Biodiversity,

expressing the Light of the Heart Within in its own form.

The second pair:

Two inner subtle landscapes —

The sacred inner terrain of the Tz’utujiil Maya,

where the ya Mri’y Kastilyaan, the Rilaj Maam, the Nab’eysiil,

and the living Nawals rise from the Paq’alib’al

to nurture and sustain all forms of life.

And the inner landscape of this urban place I now inhabit —

which I have not yet fully come to know,

but which still receives my breath.

Here, the universal forces of Light —

woven through the sky, the wind, the soil —

join the thread of my Maya lineage.

This is where I live.

Between the known and unknown.

Between pain and possibility.

Between Voice 1 — the sharp voice of suffering —

and Voice 2 — the quiet voice of emergence.

I live in both voices now.

And through breath, I hold them together.

I receive the Light of the Heart Within,

not only in ease and beauty,

but in my body’s struggle, in its aging,

in the daily acts of rising, walking, grieving, and opening.

The Great Grandmother’s Voice —

through ya Mri’y Kastilyaan —

still speaks through me.

And the Rilaj Maam still opens his cords of Light

to weave and embrace me into the unknown possibilities

of Light available for me in this life I am still living.

This is a story of weaving.

Of walking the sacred thread through family, government, work,

organizations, and the ordinary moments that shape my day.

I offer these stories

as pathways of remembrance —

for you, and for all who walk this Earth.

May you see the Light that lives

beneath the pain,

within the land,

and through the quiet thread of breath

that carries us all back into Wholeness.

These are my stories.

Of the tapestry of Light within my own being,

woven into the larger fabric of humanity,

woven into the great Tapestry of the Earth,

woven into the sacred Light that lives in all forms.

Blessings.

With love,

Conrad

Nab’eysiil — Elder of the Bones

Conrad Satala