Conrad SatalaJune 19, 2025

Thursday, 19 June 2025 — Nawal Aq’abal Reflections from Conrad

Conrad SatalaJune 19, 2025

Thursday, 19 June 2025 — Reflections from Conrad Nawal Aq’abal

Elder of the Bones, Walker Between Two Lands

“I Carry the Mountain in My Breath”

A Ceremonial Introduction to Living Within Two Lands

from the Earth Remembers Series

Reflections from Conrad

Toward the end of Fall 2024, my inner reflections began turning

toward the New Birth of Wisdom that I felt rising with the closing of

the year and the first days of 2025. These sacred lunar and solar

cycles of Emergence have been guiding my life since the late 1970s—

for nearly fifty years. Over this half-century, the meanings, both inner

and outer, of these ceremonial celebrations have changed deeply—

transformed by the living river of time.

Throughout this journey, I have shared reflections in many ways:

through blog writings, through seminar papers and pilgrimages into

Mesoamerica, through sacred celebrations created with Ilene, and in

my personal journals. Though many of these early writings have been

lost, I still carry more than 5,000 pages of recorded material from the

last 25 years—alongside thousands of pages of notes, interviews, and

ceremonial insights that have not yet been published or shared.

As 2025 began, I was drawn to reflect on the Daily Nawals of the New

Dawning. I gathered nearly 500 pages of earlier writings and began

weaving them into four oral ceremonial stories, now emerging in

written and visual form. I chose the oral ceremonial format because it

reflects the living way we develop Emotional Intelligence—not only as

individuals, but as collective beings walking with Earth. This form of

learning—through story, image, breath, and ritual—has guided the

human spirit for over 5,000 years. And since the shift that began

around 2012, we are entering a new cycle of how we perceive and live

life.⸻

Four Stories of Remembering

These ceremonial stories emerge through four individuals—each a

reflection of a diﬀerent path of remembering:

1. Ix

A young Tz’utujiil Maya girl, 8 years old, who has begun to slip away

from the inner foundations of her ancestral way of living. Through her

grandmothers’ love and guidance, she begins to remember the Voice

of the Great Grandmother’s Light, and the Daily Nawals of the New

Dawning return to her—through her dreams, her weaving, her walks

through the natural world, and her inner vision. Her story reflects how

children carry the seed of Emotional Intelligence already inside them

—and how remembering can awaken through the wisdom of the body

and the land.

2. Yaxper

A young Tz’utujiil Maya woman, between 20 and 22 years old, who

has nearly forgotten her inner wisdom. She lives caught between two

voices—struggling with how to think, speak, feel, and love. But

through her weaving, her rituals, her connection to the elders, and the

sacred presence of Nature, she begins to return. She remembers the

Light of the Great Grandmother and learns that she can live from her

Emotional Intelligence, not just her mind. Her story reflects the sacred

turning point that occurs in what I once called the “post-biological

development” stage—from age 15 to the early 20s. This is a time

when the inner nature within the body weaves with the inner Nature

within the Earth, forming the true foundation for emotional maturity.

3. ya Mri’y

An 80-year-old Tz’utujiil elder and grandmother. She has lived through

the struggles and shifting of the world, but she carries deep within her

the Art of Remembering. She chooses, over and over again, to live

from the Voice of the Great Grandmother’s Light, and to embody the

Daily Nawals of the New Dawning through her breath, her weaving,

her rituals, and her deep relationship with the sacred Medicine Tree ofLight. Her Remembering often arrives through her breath, where a

subtle shift opens the door to emergence. Her life story is not only her

own—it is mirrored in the lives of Ix and Yaxper, and becomes a living

ceremonial teaching on how Emotional Intelligence is woven into

elderhood.

4. Myself

I am a 77-year-old Tz’utujiil elder. Ten years ago, I was told by the

elders, “You carry the blood of the Tz’utujiil people. You are part of the

heritage of the great grandsons of the Rilaj Maam.” These stories are

my Remembering—of the inner Tz’utujiil way, and the outer

landscapes two thousand miles away. They are also the stories of

living this heritage through ceremony, day by day, in the middle of the

concrete rhythms of an urban world.

⸻

Stories as Mirrors and Invitations

I oﬀer these four ceremonial voices as sacred mirrors—to invite you,

the reader, into your own Remembering. These stories are not meant

only to be read, but to be lived—through movement, vision, silence,

and breath. They invite you to feel again what your body already

knows: how to live from the Light of the Heart Within.

The illustrations accompanying these stories reflect my path as a

visual storyteller. They are not merely art. They are spiritual windows.

Even a single glance, or sustained gaze of receiving its inner Heart

Light, upon one thread of these images—while placing your

awareness in your sacred heart and sacral center—will awaken the

Light of Remembering within you.

Each day, at any age, you are invited to choose from these five

threads—four stories and one self—to engage in the sacred act of

Remembering the Heart Within.

⸻This Blog: I Carry the Mountain in My Breath

This living blog, I Carry the Mountain in My Breath, is where I am

learning to be woven into the tapestry of Remembering. I do this

through the Voice of the Great Grandmother’s Light—ya Mri’y

Kastilyaan—and the subtle transmissions of the Rilaj Maam. It is

through this interweaving of inner and outer Nature, and through the

return to Emotional Intelligence, that I come into deeper relationship

with my mind—so that thought and feeling can become sacred again.

My words, my actions, my encounters, and my perceptions are all

becoming part of this changing tapestry of wholeness—woven

through relationships with people, nature, family, work, and the great

turning of global and local worlds.

⸻

The Weaving of the Living Bundle

This blog is a living ceremonial weaving—a sacred bundle of stories

rising from:

• the Daily Nawals of the New Dawning

• the Light from Paq’alib’al

• the presence of ya Mri’y Kastilyaan and the Rilaj Maam

• the bundles of the Martin, the Mri’y of the Placenta,

• the Nawal Skirment-Gaia

• and the ceremonial remembering through fire and light

—drawn from the mountains, prairies, fields, volcanoes,

streams, lakes, and caves of the Tz’utujiil Maya, and now

breathed into the urban landscape wherever I am.

These are the stories of my inner nature’s way, lived through the

changing body, in sacred relationship with people, places, and

the transforming political and planetary shifts of Earth.

This is how I carry the mountain in my breath.

This is how I live the altar that walks.

Conrad Satala