Beyond the Ordinary Dot Net-Martin Prechtel

~~~ Martin Prechtel ~~~
"Spirituality is an extremely practical thing, it's not just something you choose to do on the weekends...
It's an everyday thing, as essential as eating or holding hands or keeping warm in the winter."

Eloquent and delightful, Martin Prechtel makes you happy to be in his company. We thoroughly enjoyed meeting he and his lovely wife Hanna. His interesting and unique experiences are the subject of his books. He is a half-blood Native American from a Pueblo Indian reservation in New Mexico, but his intuition took him to the village of Santiago Atitlan where a strange man came up to him and said, "What took you so long? For two years I’ve been calling you. Let’s get to work!" So began his apprenticeship to Nicolas Chiviliu, one of the greatest of the Tzutujil Mayan shamans.

One of his roles with the Tzutujil was instructing the young people in the meanings of their ancient stories that took place in the rituals of adult rights of passage. All human beings come from the other world, but we forget it a few months after we’re born. This amnesia occurs because we are dazzled by the beauty and physicality of this world. We spend the rest of our lives putting back together our memories of the other world, enough to serve the greater good and to teach the new amnesiacs — the children — how to remember." Often, this lesson is taught during the initiation into adulthood. "If this world were a tree, then the other world would be the roots — the part of the plant we can’t see, but that puts the sap into the tree’s veins. The other world feeds this tangible world — the world that can feel pain, that can eat and drink, that can fail; the world that goes around in cycles; the world where we die. The other world is what makes this world work. And the way we help the other world continue is by feeding it with our beauty."

Martin's insight and wisdom are not clouded by, though it pains him deeply, what so many indigenous people have endured at the hands of those that do not understand the beauty and richness of traditions different from their own. Through his writing and workshops Martin is helping people reconnect with their own sense of place and the sacredness of ordinary life. Robert Bly describes Martin as “A short kind of pony that gallops through the fields of human possibility with flowers dropping out of his mouth.” We like this description, it suits him.

Martin's Website: www.floweringmountain.com< See Martin's books which include, Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, Honey in the Heart, Ecstasy and Time... his art and exquisite music, which you hear on BTO.