I’ve spent my life developing a method of innovation that is higher impact, faster, cheaper and more fun than any other. It’s called KINS Innovation Networks and you can read all about it at KINSinnovation.org. KINS has made solar happen for the world, created the social investment industry, transitioned small towns to local living economies, financed women to own businesses, started the social venture capital industry, introduced the most powerful women to each other, helped grow organics, made micro-enterprise happen in Nigeria, started the corporate social investment industry and taken Tampa Bay green. We’ve successfully started 40 innovation networks in 40 years.

Where it all started…

One person who helped me start a few of these networks with her psychic and spiritual gifts is our French partner, Martine Sweeney. Not too long after we finished building the farm’s community center, Martine wanted to visit the farm, feeling spiritually called. When she came and took her first step, she stopped suddenly and froze. Then she went walking off across two pastures to stop and sit on two non-descript pyramid-shaped rocks 30 yards in front of our house. There she meditated. After a bit, I joined her in meditating somewhat away from her, awaiting a later explanation.

After a very long time, she came excitedly up to me explaining what had happened. She told of a group of children from pre-historic times skipping and running up to her excitedly, holding hands out to her to come with them to visit their Mystery School. The rocks they had her come sit on were where the School had been!!

This then opened her organs of intuition and she told us many spiritual gleanings about our farm and how sacred our whole farm was…and our valley too. This changed our whole understanding of our responsibility and we went into our intuition to understand our opportunities to be of service. This set the stage for everything that happened next.

When Martine left, she handed us a check, out of the blue, as she was our guest. I looked at it and saw it was a large donation! My mouth dropped open and I asked her what it was for. “It is so you will always put the spiritual reality of this farm first,” she said. And we always have.

Anther one of these KINS networks is called The Fountain, which is half global indigenous leaders and half global leaders supporting their mission, which is inspiring indeed. It is:

We are manifesting a global economy of reciprocity, inspired by nature and the sacred.

Meeting the Kogi Tribe

As members of this network, Walter and I met the spiritual leaders of the Kogi tribe of northern Columbia. Miraculously, they had escaped contact with the Spanish and so their spirit-based culture was never destroyed. The elders visited each child’s birth and had the vision to know which babies were to be raised in caves to develop global intuition and vision to guide the tribe. Thus have they thrived for centuries.

Because they’ve kept their culture pristine, the Kogi call the human population their “little brother.” Some 30+ years ago, their elders prophesied that little brother was destroying the Earth that supports us. To save Earth, the elders were to descend from their mountain stronghold to educate us. This they have been doing, with good results.

When the elders met us, they used their divination skills about our farm and shared the news that it was a sacred site, key to restoring the other sacred sites of the Andes. Martine Sweeney had told us this earlier, but this was an important confirmation. A spiritual leader we trust told us that when the Chinese had invaded Tibet for the third time, the spiritual center of Earth moved from the Himalayas to the Andes. But the Kogi said that the Andes sacred sites had shut down over the years from lack of ceremony and care and that the sacred sites on our farm were important to be reopened for the good of the Andes. The Kogi also told us they would have to come 4 times to help us reopen our sacred sites.

Needless to say, it took a while to take it all in, but we did commit to these visits, which were expensive. We became devoted to reopening the farm’s sacred sites and did much ceremony and prayer. We have farm partners who are inspired by the prophesy that the two Americas will be successful together when the Eagle and the Condor fly as one. So we’ve taken on two leading Ecuadorian environmentalists as partners, Virgilio Benavides and Nancy Hilgert and two indigenous Palta partners, both of whom work on the farm so you will meet them: Jose Calva and Cristian Ojeda. Together we’ve thrown our heart and soul into making Finca Sagrada (Sacred Land Farm) a model of intercultural collaboration with healthy land and food using biodynamics.

On the Kogi’s third visit, they shocked us by saying it was important for them to stay in touch with us by having us build a “Spirit House” that was an exact copy of theirs. No nails or metal were allowed and all work had to be done by hand!!! They suggested a round house with a diameter of six meters (18 feet). The structure of the house is built with 12 posts and beams with a door in the east and west. Around the walls, it can seat 30 people on benches that we built out of bamboo. We gathered thatch from the mountains and built the walls with adobe mud from our farm. The rope and string we made from the cactus plants that grow all around us.

Building the Spirit House

When the Kogi arrived, we had the wooden structure up but not the thatch and adobe walls. This was enough to do ceremony to bless and baptize the house. For this, I had invited 15 of my favorite members of various KINS Innovation Networks to join us and they came. Our local friends loved my KINS friends and vice versa. More important, everyone was in awe of the Kogi for the gifts they were giving to the world’s people to change our course in support of our environment.

The most memorable moment was when we built the community fire in the Spirit House for the first time. When it was well lit, the Kogi looked straight into Walter’s eyes and said, “of course, you understand that the fire may never be allowed to go out.” We were all looking at Walter and saw his face register surprise at the responsibility. At that point everyone laughed…and we did too. We didn’t know how we’d ever manage that but the inspiration was so deep that we were going to do our best.

The impact of the Spirit House at the farm

As it turned out, it was probably the most important gift to the Spirit House because it has become the center of the farm. We do ceremony every morning at sunrise to thank the sun for giving Earth life (an “Agni-Hotra” ceremony, done my millions at sunrise around the world). We meditate there at any hour, our partner Jose teaches Palta culture there on various evenings, volunteers meet privately there at will and we could mediate any differences there, although we’ve never needed to. Luckily, there is plenty of wood for the fire from dead wood on the farm and nearby.

Recently, the Kogi felt inspired enough about our Spirit House that they decided to sponsor 12 more around the world at sacred sites in various indigenous communities. They were told in ceremony to rename them thus: “the House of Original Thought” and that’s what we call ours today. Pause for a moment here and feel your way into all of the powerful meanings of that name.

With the farm’s mission that “the Eagle and the Condor fly as one”, we count on the House to manifest that and it is happening. We are already in discussions with U.S. universities about semester-long programs sponsored by Finca Sagrada and I am in discussions with KINS networks about having gatherings here. The evaluations we get from the students that come here to learn are nothing less than scores of 5, the highest offered at Workaway.

To me, the most powerful experience I receive in the House of Original Thought is in meditation. I receive clear specific instructions on who to talk to and what to say, on programs that should be developed, and on developing my own heart and mind. Stress I used to feel about the farm’s success are gone, replaced by gratitude. In summary, I remember with a smile looking at the two wooden sticks placed on the roof of the House because the Kogi told us that was the “antenna” that would keep us in touch with them. When I first heard that thought, I laughed heartily. That stopped almost immediately when I started getting their spiritual transmissions every morning.

Now I simply live in deep gratitude to be here…and I hope you will too.