desert mini sacred site

It’s my novel attempt TO BE OF BENEFIT in this global coronavirus “crisis.”

What am I doing in the desert?! Being an artist, I am creating a mini sacred site, as an unconventional response (besides wash my hands :).

In this coronavirus upheaval, I have had the good fortune, or perhaps it’s synchronicity, to be living for awhile in a relatively remote part of the desert in southern California near Joshua Tree. 

I have been here over the last two weeks, while the coronavirus is causing great dismay and catastrophe around the world. I just made it back from a trip to research nonprofits on the frontlines in Guatemala, just before the coronavirus news hit the big times. 

So, wow, I feel blessed to be in this refuge, yet I am also consciously using my relative safety to give as much good energy and creative expression to my family, friends, communities, loved ones and everyone who right now is going through coronavirus fear. 

One of the ways that I am doing this is staying very spiritually grounded … and also — creating sacred sites with rocks in the desert every morning at sunrise. 

You will see an example of this (and the kind of manual labor involved in this short video. I hope it delights you, as it unfolds by dimensions. 

My purpose is to create sacred art, that serves as a “mini” sacred site, anchoring positive, loving and healing energy, just as a Machu Picchu sacred site does, on a much larger level. 

I am creating this mini sacred site, deliberately, right on the desert floor, in the knowledge that this very desert floor extends out to the ENTIRE surface of the earth, as sacred sites can do. 

The placement of each rock is a conscious and loving act, as it fills in a serpentine, flowing mandala — very different from what we usually think of as a mandala. This one has no symmetry! 

What I am doing with the placement of each rock is, first, experiencing the emerging pattern of the rocks on the desert themselves … and then, second, augmenting that pattern with rocks that I can move into the pattern myself (as you will see). 

I perceive this kind of creating as a true co-creation between myself and the desert. How? I am letting the pattern emerge from the rocks on the desert floor themselves, and only then dancing with that pattern, by augmenting it — or revealing it more clearly. 

As an artist, I see this as part of my role –– to clarify beautiful patterns that are inherent in the beauty of Pachamamma itself, and is also lovingly held in the infinite arms of the Unifying Presence, permeating everything, everywhere, everytime. 

What does all this have to do with “my” Unifying Way (see www.unifying.com)? I hope it’s obvious …

I’m unifying so many different things here — this creation of art, with consciousness, with love, and attempt to be of benefit to all, a mini sacred site, manually touching the Earth and its rocks, sharing it with you now, hoping that the communities that I’m a part of will be inspired to take their own actions to strengthen community. 

Community, and even online communities, at this time of social distancing are so vitally important RIGHT NOW. Terry Patten speaks to this so elegantly! Michael Beckwith also spoke to this point, on his live-streaming of the Agape Church service in Los Angeles 3-15-20 (which had to be live-streamed, because large gatherings have been canceled here by the governor).

 Beckwith said one possible interpretation of the “second coming” is that conscious, intentional, enlightened communities everywhere will grow, flourish and network together — to hold the light of God now. 

Not just any single individual who “shows the way” (and there have been many of them, including Jesus), but now our spiritual communities coming together as collective spiritual light workers. 

As Van Jones likes to say, the Great Turning will occur when activists become spiritual, and the spiritual become activists. 

May this humble creative act of moving rocks around here on the desert floor, every morning — out here on the vast, empty desert — radiate this energy and love to you reading this, and evolving communities we are with.

Blessings, Frederico