Prism of Light and Crystal City of Light
By Jo Mooy
The idea of Sarasota as a spiritual city of light is not unusual to the many people from all over the country who have been spontaneously drawn to this area of southwest Florida. The stories of their arrivals are varied and unusual. They didn't come for the climate; they didn't come to retire; they didn't come for a career change. They came because during a vacation or brief visit they experienced a high spiritual vibrational frequency followed by a specific feeling that they "had to be here." And so they came, by ones and twos, unknown to one another, swelling the numbers of spiritual seekers and giving rise to more than a dozen metaphysical or spiritual centers in this small artistic city.
In December 2005, I too was drawn to Sarasota, selling my home, restructuring my life and moving here in a spontaneous feeling of surrender, freedom and knowing. I never dreamed at the time that this move would bring me into contact with hundreds of members of what I came to call my "soul family" and thrust me into a role of community leadership that I could not have anticipated.
After settling into my new home, I had a dream in December 2007 where I was shown a prism of light that was suspended ethereally over the city of Sarasota Florida. I saw that this "prism" was to be anchored and grounded to earth and would, in some way not entirely clear to me, bring into form a future spiritual city of light. It was to be "one of twenty-two future cities of light around the world" said a voice in the dream.
The nine-point design of the Prism unfolded over several months. It was drawn and redrawn many times then a transparency was placed over a map of Sarasota as more information about the design was revealed. Eventually the Prism was shown to be of a diamond shaped design with vertical facets covering sixty-five square miles. There was a circular opening in the center of the Prism that aligned with the Sufi spiritual center known as Rising Tide International which is home to Shahabuddin David Less, an internationally known esoteric teacher and counselor in the peace movement in the middle east. This center became the transcendental 10th portal opening in the Prism.
Further research revealed that the outer shape of the Prism aligned north, south, east and west with four major Native American sacred sites, including Warm Mineral Springs, a site sacred to the ancient native population. It's a spring with the highest mineral content of any spring in the US ranking third in the world. Warm Mineral Springs, called "one of the most important underwater archaeological sites in America" by the Smithsonian Institute, was also the fabled "fountain of youth" that Ponce De Leon was looking for when he arrived in Florida.
The vertical facets which gave dimension and substance to the diamond prism also aligned with seven spiritual centers that flowed along a main north-south street and documented ley line known as Swift/Tuttle.
As spiritual leaders in Sarasota learned about the Prism of Light they responded to support and embrace the vision. Many of them recalled similar "feelings about Sarasota being a city of light" and so were compelled to join in. The key leaders agreed to be present at the ten prism locations on the summer solstice of 2008 to anchor the Prism that would birth the crystal city of light. They told their groups and their groups told other groups. And so it grew to be a community wide vision. Two hundred and twenty-two people gathered across sixty-five square miles at 12 noon on June 21, 2008, the height of the influx of the sun's rays in the northern hemisphere. The group held the vision and the design of the prism for twenty-four minutes, part of the original dream information. They drummed, chanted, toned or set sacred direction, each anchor guided by their own intuition.
Previous to the daytime ceremony on June 21, 2008, Shahabuddin David Less was asked to contact the Abrahamic Reunion Peace Initiative in the Middle East of which he was a member, to see if they would hold a circle of peace in Old Jerusalem on the evening of the Solstice. Our intention was to gather again that evening and open the portal in the center of the Prism which represented the opening of the New Jerusalem. The Abrahamic Reunion is a group of 25 spiritual leaders of the four main faiths in the Holy Land that find their roots in the prophet Abraham. They host gatherings all over Israel to bring people of many faiths together to share food and stories and get to know one another. For many who attend, it is the first time to break bread and speak heart to heart with a Jew or an Arab as these communities do not normally connect. The group supports school visits where an entire Arab school visits a Jewish school and vice-versa. They also promote the importance of women in the peace process and one Israeli Muslim member has started a women's peace education center in an Israeli Arab town. These community interactions are softening the images that sworn enemies have for one another.
On the night of the Solstice the group gathered again at Unity of Sarasota's large labyrinth to again hold sacred ceremony in honor of the Prism and the work that had been done at noon. This time more than three-hundred and fifty men, women and children assembled. Children read their blessings for the new earth that they envisioned. A fire was lit in the center of the labyrinth and a Peruvian Despacho, a ceremony of blessings and connections between all beings and the earth, was offered up to the fires and to Spirit through the heartfelt gifts of so many in the community. We united ethereally with those in Old Jerusalem and held open the portal of light that would ignite a new earth, a new world of harmony and peace and a new dawning for all beings.
After the Solstice another part of the dream unfolded that we honor the Prism of Light in more material form by planting Peace Poles at the established anchor locations. The community began a grassroots collection effort that resulted in the purchase of nine Peace Poles which had the words "May Peace Prevail On Earth" in sixteen different languages on their four sides. The Peace Poles were dedicated in sacred ceremonies across the Prism locations on the Vernal Equinox of 2008 which coincided with International Peace Day. Again, the children of the community came together. They anchored the Peace Poles and spoke to the gathered adults about their vision for the new world and offered tokens of appreciation to Mother Earth for the blessings we had all received in this community.
The Vision of the Prism which had been so vivid and vibrant throughout most of 2008 became dormant for a few months after the Peace Poles were installed. Then while watching an internet interview between Drunvalo Melchizedek and Consciousness Media recorded in May something engaged. He spoke about his new book, Serpent of Light and about a worldwide gathering of indigenous elders to be held in Sedona in April of 2009. Subsequently, the Prism Anchors were called together in October 2008 to watch the video and to explore what we as a community would do as we moved forward towards 2012. Some of us explored the idea of going to Sedona for the Return of the Ancestors, but after several months of discussion, we decided we would remain in the Crystal City of Sarasota and do the work individually or collectively through the ordinary ceremonies of our day to day lives.
And so we did, until January 2009 when a mandala appeared to me in meditation with an indication that it be called the Crystal of Peace. In the center of the mandala was the diagram of the diamond Prism of Light from 2008 radiating light across the mandala. In the center of the Prism was an octagonal portal with a faceted Flower of Life design in the center of the portal opening. The mandala was drawn in black and white outline on a three foot square canvas. It felt as though the ethereal Prism of Light we'd anchored in June of the previous year had come alive in the images coming forth out of the mandala. A gentle feeling emerged that the mandala was not only tied to the Prism of Light work of the previous year but that it would involve the entire spiritual community of Sarasota in its creation. Still in its original uncolored state, the mandala was taken to the many spiritual centers which had participated in the original vision so that it could be imbued with the energies of the anchors and people who were part of those centers.
In February of 2009 a synchronous event happened when I learned about a new spiritual celebration called WellnessFest that was going to be held in Sarasota in May. This festival would be the first of its kind in the area and would present to the community astrologers, alternative healers, tarot readers, visionary artists, intuitives and mediums, musicians, artists and various other spiritual practitioners. I was asked to participate with a "mandala that the community could help to create." The director of the festival said there was sacred Native American land on the grounds of the festival site that could not be used for vendors or booths. She decided that the mandala, two Tibetan Prayers Wheels and several prayers for peace panels were going to be set up near that sacred ground. It was then that the importance and resonance of the spiritual vision of the Crystal of Peace mandala began to take more concrete form.
By the Equinox of March 21, 2009 it became clear that the still black and white Crystal of Peace mandala should be presented to the community. In honor of the Spring Equinox we organized a ceremony at Unity's labyrinth. The children of the Peace Poles and the extended spiritual community were invited to attend the ceremony where the Mandala and its story would be introduced.
Shahabuddin David Less of the Sufi International Order opened the Equinox ceremony by leading the group in blessings of renewal and for the rebirth of a new dawn of peace in our hearts. Over one hundred people came out for the ceremony, holding candles and offering their individual hopes, desires and blessings which were taken to the fire in the center of the labyrinth by all the children. The Mandala was placed on an altar in the western location with a large 9"x5" citrine colored quartz crystal placed in front of it. The community was told the story of the Crystal of Peace Mandala and that it represented not only the opening of the Prism of Light but the opening of a crystal of peace within each of us. As dancers, musicians and ceremonialists performed, those gathered were invited to help paint the colors of the mandala at Wellness Fest by bringing their unique intentions for peace on earth and placing those intentions into the colors they selected to paint the mandala.
The powerful energies of joy, love and peace that held us together on the evening of the Vernal Equinox was evident when twenty four hours after the ceremony the large quartz crystal which had been placed on the altar in front of the mandala split in half, leaving both pieces as perfect stand-alone bookends. When the pieces are pushed together, the crystal still looks perfectly aligned and whole. Yet that opening of the large quartz crystal signified for everyone that indeed we had opened up the crystal portal within ourselves that was represented in the drawing of the mandala.
Meanwhile, the leaders who had gathered in early October 2008 to see Drunvalo's video had intuitively moved forward with their lives. Sometimes our journeys overlapped, other times we worked independently, yet we were always in harmony with one another and with the original vision. Several started new spiritual or healing centers in town. Another started an alliance of spiritual alternative healers. One began to work with college students by coaching them in ways to declare majors that would allow them to be in service to the world. Still another began teaching meditation and offering counseling to disenfranchised women who had no advocates and who had been abandoned by well-meaning government agencies. Amid the financial collapse, foreclosures, and all the dire global news, something was stirring in the community at large to work cooperatively in service as contributors instead of as consumers. Behaviors were changing as many turned from looking outside for useless trinkets to looking within and finding the jewels in each of us that could be freely shared with others.
The Crystal of Peace Mandala, still in its black and white state, began a new phase of its journey in April 2009. Guidance came that the central portal opening should be blessed and colored by spiritual leaders and by the Prism of Light anchors from throughout the area. Another synchronous event happened when Rising Tide Spiritual Center organized its 12th annual Caravan of the Beautiful festival which brought internationally renowned speakers, mystics and teachers to Sarasota. Just one week before the Return of the Ancestors were to gather in Sedona, this gifted international group was going to be present in Sarasota.
On April 16, the mandala was taken to Rising Tide where Jamyong Singye, Tibetan Buddhist monk and a master artist in Tibetan Thangka and Mandala Painting to his holiness, the Dalai Lama, consecrated it in a sacred ceremony. He invoked the lineage of the Llamas and the Tibetan Deities, asking that the mandala guide and open hearts for peace and love in ceremonies to come. A day later, Pandit Mukesh Desai, a world renowned classical Hindustani musician, blessed the mandala with sacred chants of Om, Om Shivai, and Al-Lah-Hu. Throughout the week, the mandala was blessed in Hindu Sanskrit ceremonies, by Balinese priests ringing holy bells, by the leader of the Sufis, by a Native American and by Prism of Light anchors in beautiful ceremonies at their various spiritual centers. The Mandala was being sanctified and prepared for its appearance at Wellness Fest when the extended community would be asked to offer their intentions for peace and to color it.
Members of Sarasota's spiritual community had opportunities to participate in many ceremonies over the past three years and to virtually and ethereally join with others all over the world. We gathered groups in the north, south, east and west to Fire The Grid in July 2007. We held sacred ground when the call went out from the Otomi for a worldwide gathering to heal Mother Earth by drumming 8000 Drums for Peace in March 2008. We joined in a sunrise celebration of service to the community by being part of the Solar Wave in summer 2008. On February 14, 2009, we offered a Sonic Healing Valentine for mother earth joining with Jonathan Goldman's Temple of Sound for healing.
Knowing that the ancestors were gathering in Sedona, we set aside Earth Day, April 22, to join ethereally in the realm of no-time, no-space with the ancestors. As a sunset ceremony was planned in Arizona we organized a corresponding gathering in the Crystal City of Sarasota to link ethereally with the ancestors. We held sacred ceremony at the "Grandmother Tree" on Siesta Key Beach, whose white powdery sand is made of 99% quartz crystal. Peruvian Incan shaman Jorge Luis Delgado who visited Sarasota, had honored the "Grandmother Tree" in December 2007 and blessed the gulf waters in a sacred Despacho ceremony at the same location.
With the intention of linking us to the sacred rituals being performed by the elders in Sedona, we set a circle with a small fire in the center of a sand mandala. An altar with the large citrine crystal which had split in half on the Equinox was placed next to the fire along with flowers, a buffalo skin and a rattle. Over seventy people joined in this ceremony, which included singing, drumming, a blessing of the earth's waters, and a guided meditation by Joseph Rael, Beautiful Painted Arrow, called "Mother Earth is Calling." As we united with the elders in Sedona, we held our sacred space in the circle, allowing for endless possibilities to open out of the womb of the mother for all her children on earth. We offered to the children who were part of our circle the wisdom to treasure the earth, to walk in balance with her, and to care for her as respectful guardians and stewards.
The story continues. After Wellness Fest in May, the fully colored Crystal of Peace Mandala will be smudged then sealed with all the blessings that have been poured into it. On the first anniversary of the Prism of Light — summer Solstice June 21, 2009 — the mandala will once more be dedicated in sacred ceremonies at Unity's Labyrinth. The intentions this community set forth in 2008 that we birth the vision of a Crystal City of Light will have come to pass. After the summer solstice, the Mandala will be made available to all spiritual centers and to those who intend to use it for sacred ceremony, gatherings, earth blessings and meditations.
What is the essence of this story and the synchronous events that have brought us to mid-2009? What do these events mean for spiritual pilgrims and seekers throughout the world? The entire story has not yet unfolded but we know these things. A call was heard deep inside the souls of hundreds of people — a resonance that would not be ignored — that brought them together to a small, relatively unknown city in Florida. Unquestioningly and sometimes at great hardship these very ordinary people came when they heard the call, and joined whole heartedly when they saw the vision. They embraced the possibility that in their lifetime they could truly live in a place of beauty, compassion, love and harmony supported in all endeavors by an extended spiritual community. They saw the future world that their own grandchildren and great-grandchildren could inherit. Without hesitation they stepped forward to create it.
And in Sarasota as in other cities around the earth, in the simple act of stepping forward to support the creation of the Crystal City of Light, these "ordinary" people have become extraordinary pilgrims in their own right. They have become the vanguard of the new peace-workers, visionaries, and beings of light who embrace their spiritual roots and destiny in service to one another.
Surely more will happen here. But for now, perhaps this is the most important part of the message that Sarasota offers to the world. It is that each person hearing a call can step forward to play their unique part in creating the New Earth, no matter what that part may be. In doing so, person by person will activate the next one, and eventually we will create a tidal wave of hope, harmony and the long prophesied golden peace on earth.
About Jo Mooy
Jo is a visionary artist, lecturer, writer and a national award-winning photographer whose work has been published in magazines and books. She has a BA in advertising design & studied painting with the Cape Cod School of Art. Her landscape paintings and visionary mandalas are in collections around the world and carried at several galleries on Cape Cod and in Florida.
While spending 30 years in middle management at a Fortune 100 corporation, her spiritual studies & practices continued as she traveled worldwide and lectured across the US. She's studied with many mystery and esoteric schools including Builders of the Adytum — The Rosicrucians — Lucis Trust — The Association for Research and Enlightenment — Yogananda's Self Realization Fellowship. She's studied with Drunvalo Melchizidek, Gregg Braden, Tom Kenyon, Jamyong Singye and is currently an initiate of Shahabuddin David Less of the International Sufi Order.
Jo's devoted more than four decades to meditation, dream journaling, writing and art. Her spiritual mandalas which come while in meditative states of consciousness are used by alternative healers, as well as allopathic dentists and doctors in their practices. Her soul-interpretation mandalas, which are like an intuitive reading, are available by private consultation.
As a visionary and community organizer, she and her life partner lead community ceremonial gatherings, teach spiritual workshops in Sarasota, including the highly acclaimed Purpose Presence & Vision and offer counseling. Jo writes & publishes a weekly online nationally-distributed newsletter called Spiritual Connections. She's a frequent guest on many radio programs and is founder of a very large Women's Meditation Group in south Florida. She's also Director of Spiritual Cinema at Unity. In her spare time she's working on two books: The Messages of the Mandalas and one with her partner called Synchronicities Out Of Time and Space.
Jo@starsoundings.com
Sarasota, FL - 941-866-5752
www.starsoundings.com
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