THE MOUNTAIN

To understand why this dream mattered, let me take you back to the very beginning. I began dreaming intensely in 1999. In September of that year, I resigned from my job at an advertising agency effective December. On that final Friday, with no one around but the two guards at the building’s entrance and my loyal friend Ricardo walking beside me down the grand staircase, a double rainbow hit me straight in the heart — marking the end of an era.

I began my early sabbatical by flying to Cancún, where my two sisters continue to live, to celebrate, with my family, the coming of a new millennium.

Upon my return to Mexico City, I landed the job of my dreams — doing strategy for the many brands of a global media conglomerate. We did a great job cleaning the corporate image, but a power battle between light and dark in 2004 provoked a schism that left us, shining Souls, half alive and crawling out from under the wreckage (an event worthy of its own tale). It was then I heard that voice saying, “We didn’t come for this.”

My first impulse was to walk the Camino. (Little did I know then the true significance of that decision, for that path was meant to be walked two thousand years before.) To do so, I dismantled my apartment and sent my carefully packed belongings to a warehouse. I had savings for years, you see, not knowing how long I would wander around.

Life, however, had its own plans and the old joke among the Ascended Masters — “On the way to Ascension, I lost everything” — fit me perfectly, though it wasn’t funny for the longest time.

By the end of 2010, six years later, my heart was broken to the point of allowing my body to leave the planet. In fact, it had split in half — I heard when it did while witnessing a devastating scene. And one fine winter afternoon, my mother and I sat on a park bench and cried out of helplessness.

I called 2010 “The year I died,” but it wasn’t only me going through this. Months later, I found out that on the Shoud of that very December, Adamus himself was asking Shaumbra to stay. But coming back from the dead was a painfully slow process; I suffered from full-body skin disorders for years and was exhausted.

In 2013, I yelled to my Soul in desperation. Only by unleashing my fury did my humanness make itself heard — and I entered remission. But the skin thing reignited in 2018, forcing me to stay at my sister’s in Cancún for thirteen months!!! …until I couldn’t take it any longer.

Even knowing that I was delicate, even feeling that my every organ was about to collapse — the heart, the kidneys, the liver, the lungs — I chose to go to San Miguel to do branding and marketing for a Congress about healing and the unconscious. It seemed a great fit.

Giving credence to a dream, particularly if following its advice seems so out of reach, is difficult. But a week before the Congress, I had a powerful dream that told me to go to a mountain — and I knew I should follow.

I immediately reached out to two friends in the U.S. — one, the keeper of a northern forest; the other, connected to a retreat center near Santa Fe — telling them I urgently wished to retreat for three months. Neither path led anywhere.

The Congress of the Unconscious began the following Saturday — a fascinating mix of monks, constellators, biodancers, and healers, beautifully advertised by me and my team — one of the best brands of my career, I might add. 

Among the speakers was Don Lauro, a world-famous shaman from Chiapas who had integrated the Tibetan and Maya traditions into the core of his teachings.

Ironically, it wasn’t until a week after the event that I discovered — or perhaps finally allowed myself to realize — that he owned a mountain on the outskirts of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas.

Oh, yes… As a matter of fact, everyone calls it The Mountain.

Twice a year, followers and spiritual tourists from all over the world gather for four days at the foot of The Mountain for ritual dances performed three times a day. There, Don Lauro, dressed in ceremonial attire, senses the precise moment when the energetic shift occurs and brings the event to its close, regardless of how long it takes.

I called the shaman’s wife only two days before the beginning of the December ceremonies. I did not know her, but Don Lauro was beside her at the time of the call, and right then and there, she offered me a cabin on the mountainside at no charge. It was beautiful but primitive, having no running water, only a well, and no electricity but a fireplace for heat. It was a harsh winter, but I couldn’t believe my luck! That was the final push for me to embark upon this dream-adventure.

Besides the Tibetan-Maya standing, I never really understood the core of Don Lauro’s teachings; when I asked his followers, they dismissed me with clever comments. “You don’t need to understand this with the mind,” one of them said. Indeed, I didn’t. And I didn’t care, really; I just knew Don Lauro efficiently moved energy.

Through the dances in those healing ceremonies, through every drumbeat at the gatherings, through the aura-cleansing that Don Lauro performed for me on various occasions, through every step I took up and down that mountain, and through the minimum of three hours I spent lighting and tending to the fire every day, each day I healed a little bit more.

Some days, I could literally feel how the flames absorbed my physical imbalance.

Notably, during my time at The Mountain, everything I needed appeared as if by magic: the wood for the fire seemed to have been chopped just for me and left only a few meters from the cabin; there was always the right person or vehicle bringing potable water to my doorstep when I needed it; even the food was leftovers from previous visitors; and, uncommonly, Don Lauro remained at The Mountain as many days as I did, helping me further along.

When getting back to civilization, my spine had forgotten how to walk on cement, but I was no longer in danger of leaving the planet. The fire, the air, the birds, the moon, the silence, the several freezing showers, new friends, the mountain itself, and my dream – these did indeed save my life.

After only three weeks, knowing I already had a new and sizable branding project, I hurried back to the big city.

Interestingly, only a few months later, our client collapsed under the weight of the pandemic. Yet what we had already completed and invoiced allowed me to spend the confinement back in San Miguel de Allende, finally focusing on my catalog of dreams.