Lynn V. Andrews; International Author, Shaman and Founder of the Lynn Andrews Center for Sacred Arts Training

22nd Annual Gathering on the Mesa

"Bright Cloud Woman and the Live Arrow"

Letting Go of Self-Importance of the Ego-Mind
and Living in a State of Well-Being

May 27 - May 30, 2010

at beautiful Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu, New Mexico

About Joshua Tree

"Magicians of the world unite!"

A quote from a letter to Lynn V Andrews from William S. Burroughs

"The person who upsets you the most in your life is one of your best teachers. If that person can get inside your head, turn you around, and confuse you, you know that you still don't understand what you are doing. You need more strength. Learn by seeing that your life is a teaching. like the red lotus healing its pain in inner solitude, gain strength from entering your wounds and learn from them. The Magician remembers the trail and takes a different one, even if it is more difficult. In this way you build strength."

The Strength card from The Power Deck, The Cards of Wisdom, by Lynn V. Andrews

For 2010..."In order to achieve the highest levels of consciousness and spiritual skills, you need to let go of self importance. We are going to journey with bright Cloud Woman and Live Arrow to learn to live in a state of well-being. Learn how to use our abilities to 'stop' the ego from having a starring role in our life. Discover what you want to give up in your life for this new period of history. Learn to re-invent yourself for 2012 and beyond."

Learn to balance your relationships with money, people, and your own health. Restore and refresh your relationship with Mother Earth, and the Great Spirit within us all. Identify what you really want in life, so that you see it clearly and can manifest it quickly.

Since 1989, the Joshua Tree Gathering has been held as an extraordinary gathering of people from all over the world-women and men who come together for ceremony, meditation and healing. This year's event will be held at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Each year Lynn guides us through inspiring meditations, using an ancient tradition of sacred sounds and words, as taught to her by the Sisterhood of the Shields. This unique approach to meditation will catapult you into an expanded awareness of human potential and spiritual abilities. We will immerse ourselves in a rich texture of images, music, ceremony and the creation of sacred art. It is these very elements of beauty and power, woven into one multidimensional, magnificent event, that will be unlike anything you have experienced before!

PROFESSIONAL ADVANCEMENT

Expand your skills by learning how to help your clients:

Understand the essential role of our thoughts in the process of healing.
Explore the connection of mind, body, and spirit in illness and health.
Increase their sense of personal power, self-esteem and self-worth.
Strengthen their personal intent, accountability, and ability to manifest their dreams into reality.
Develop an understanding of the difference between feelings and emotions.
Explore unique methods for releasing suppressed emotions.
Become active participants in their own psychological and spiritual growth.

LOCATION

The location for our gathering this year will be Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico. It will be on the high desert Mesa of the New Mexico wilderness; a beautiful and natural landscape surrounded by spectacular rock formations, ancient energy, fossils and dinosaur bones.

Ghost Ranch is a 21,000-acre retreat and education center run by the Presbyterian church, close to the village of Abiquiu in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico. It is the subject of many landscapes by the American painter Georgia O'Keeffe, who maintained a summer home there in 1934, then her permanent residence on the property from 1949 until her death.

Dinosaur bones were found here as early as 1885. In 1947 the paleontologist Edwin H. Colbert documented the discovery of over a thousand well-preserved fossilized skeletons of the small Triassic dinosaur called Coelophysis in a quarry here.

Ghost Ranch was given by Arthur and Pheobe Pack to the Presbyterian Church in 1955. The 21,000 acres that comprise Ghost Ranch were part of a land grant to Pedro Martin Serrano from the King of Spain in 1766. The grant was called Piedra Lumbre (shining rock). The name "Ghost Ranch," or the local name "El Rancho de los Brujos," was derived from the many tales of ghosts and legends of hangings in the Ranch's history.

"Rancho de los Brujos" the Ranch was called; "Ranch of the Witches," haunted by evil spirits. It is not surprising that today's name for this land is "Ghost Ranch," and the logo is a cow's skull.

For many years only a narrow dirt road led up the twisting Chama River Valley northwest from Abiquiu. The turn-off to Ghost Ranch was marked by an animal skull long before Arthur Pack bought the ranch in 1936.

There were many bones to be seen in this high desert country and artist, Georgia O'Keeffe was entranced by them, painting them, displaying them, and shipping a barrelful back to New York. One of her Ghost Ranch neighbors, a Navaho named Juan de Dios, had a pet steer of which he was very fond. When it died he gave the animal's skull to O'Keeffe for her collection. O'Keeffe made a drawing of this ox skull and presented it to Arthur Pack as a gift. He promptly adopted the artwork as the logo for Ghost Ranch.

Joshua Tree Gathering "On The Mesa" at Ghost Ranch, will be home to an extraordinary gathering of people from all over the world, women and men who have come together at this place of beauty for ceremony, ritual, meditation and healing. Facilitated by Lynn Andrews, the gatherings are profound in nature and magical in spirit. Lynn draws from her decades of apprenticeship with Agnes Whistling Elk and Ruby Plenty Chiefs to deliver a workshop that powerfully impacts each and every participant. As Lynn teaches, we are one with Mother Earth . . . to heal her we need first to heal ourselves.

"Everyone has what he or she needs, the mirrors. Each of us has asked, before being born, for everything needed. The problem is, when we are born, we become caught in the dream. We are born into a kind of sleep. To become enlightened is to wake up from that dream."

Volunteering at Joshua Tree

Thank you for your interest in volunteering.

Lynn offers a limited number of volunteer positions each year for her Joshua Tree Gathering. Please strongly consider attending the event as a full-paying participant if this is your first time. The reason we urge you to do this is that the Sacred Joshua Tree Gatherings with Lynn contain an enormous amount of information, involve very deep inner processing and often a need for extra sleep and personal time.

Though volunteers are guaranteed presence at all meditations and event lectures, they do not always have the time to attend to themselves that participants do. However, if you are unable to pay the full fee, enjoy hard work & being of service we invite you to apply to volunteer!

***Applications are now being accepted until April 9, 2010***

Please click below to obtain your Volunteer application form. Print the three pages and fill them out. Then please fax them to the number listed on the form (954-698-6569). If you would like more information, you can e-mail Julie Hill at the email address listed on the form or by using our contact form and selecting "JT Volunteering".

Julie Hill

Volunteer Coordinator

Applications are now being accepted.

Click the button bleow to download the application form.

Continuing Education Credit for Joshua Tree

For detailed information, please check the Continuing Education Credit information page. Click on the button below to go directly to the Joshua Tree section.

Essay Contest Information

The Essay contest is not yet open. Look for it in March!

How would you like to attend Lynn's

Joshua Tree Event, this year on the Mesa in New Mexico

with your full event fee (valued at $850) paid*?

*Accommodations, meals, and transportation are not included. Onsite room and board starts at $390 for the entire event.
Camping is also available at $19 per night and meals at $30 per day.

Here's how to make it happen for you –

Write a 500-word essay and

submit it according to the instructions below.

If your essay is chosen, you will win full paid tuition to our 2010 Event!

The 2009 Winner!!!

2009 JT Essay Contest

"Calling in the Thunder Beings"

Author of the winning essay

in the Joshua Tree Essay Contest is:

Ursula C. of

Woodstock, NY.

The author of the winning essay in the Joshua Tree Essay Contest is Ursula C. of Woodstock, NY. She talked about herself and her journey on the phone this week. Here is her interview and winning essay for the Joshua Tree Essay Contest.

About Ursula

Ursula describes herself first as a Mother of a seven year old son. She herself feels she has been on a shamanic path since she was born. She said she made her first altar to nature spirits when she was seven years old. She also describes herself as empathic and has found teachers over the years to learn techniques around this innate ability. At 25 years old she realized her clairaudience ability.

Ursula has lived in the Catskills of New York for most of her life. At 23 years old she visited New Mexico for the first time and realized she was home, reconnected.

She feels the word ‘Curandera’ most accurately describes her in the world. And she feels she is here to fulfill her contract on this Earthwalk. That she has been given hints and guidance on the path as far as what she came here to do on earth and for women. She relates that she has been through many life experiences and come through them to reconnect with the power that flows through her.

Attending Joshua Tree

Ursula felt she needed to be at Joshua Tree and her Spirit Guides worked with her to realize this dream. "It’s time to answer the call. Time to gather confidence and courage and jump into the void. I feel frightened because I don’t know what’s waiting for me. There’s a lot of things I don’t know. Time to fulfill what I came here for. My Guides and Ancestors heard my prayers for help and accepted my offerings to make this [trip to Joshua Tree] possible."

Coming to Lynn Andrew’s work

"I had Medicine Woman on a bookshelf at home. One day it was just calling to me. After reading Medicine Woman, I picked up Jaguar Woman. Reading these books gave me the sense I had found the only place where I felt an understanding of where I am. A place where I feel seen and heard and an understanding of what is happening to me on my spiritual path. It made me feel good and it made me feel sad because I did not have a Circle of Women like that. [Then I thought] well maybe I should get out there with others who are going through this ascension and awakening together."

Greater Purpose

"There are a lot of us being called to do this work. Time to let go of the old stuff. As a human species, there is no model for where we are going, this ascension. I can tell you though that I have an excruciating ecstasy of love for this place, Earth."

The Winning Essay

I feel safe when it rains. I long for the darkened sky, the smell of the air as it changes. I say to my son, "It will rain soon." He says, "How do you know, Mom?" I say, "I Know." People curse the rain and I say, "Oh, I love the rain!" And strange expressions cross their faces and I wonder how they don’t understand.

I remember the Rains. I lay with my grandmother, then. I was so small, even still, next to her four foot eleven frame. Cuddled into the warmth of her soft body in the darkness of her room, the rain would make sleep time melodies on the slanted tin roof above her bedroom. I can close my eyes and feel us laying there, hear the sounds and feel the even rhythm of her breath. I can see the far corners of the room, where the foot pedaled sewing table stood- did she have a candle lit? Or was it the glow of Her love as I remember that helps me to see? It was many years after her passing before I understood this- That it is our love and our connection, her everlasting Presence that stays with me, that animates my love affair with the Rain. These memories of our love the ability to feel her soft warm skin pressed against me, come alive and dance again in my soul. As I became older there entered into my affair with the rain, the initiations of shock waves of the Thunderers, like sheets of earthquakes through my center column. And streaks of lightening drawing forth the low rumbling growl from my groin, through my heart to my throat and sometimes I am able to break free and release this sound, echoing back to them, growling, "Yes! Grrraagggh! Yes!" Thunder in my Being. And I laugh and laugh, for I know that they see me, that they hear and feel my love- as I feel theirs. The love we share breaks my heart open.

Rain tells me that I can slow down and Be. That when I feel that I will break from too much Sun beating on me, She will come and heal me. The Waters that heal the Earth. The Waters of our very Being. The trees soften, become innocent, and open. They suckle the rains like a newborn, hungry for the Life Giving Waters. Plants dance in the splashes and droplets on their faces. Some giggle, some weep. The waterfalls rush and overflow their banks, clearing away the human debris. My child and I tuck ourselves away into a corner, cozy, like cats, and sleep. And dream. We dream that the Earth is made new, and She is whole again.

I sorrow to see Rain go, on to the next town that needs cleansing. But I want Her to stay, just a while longer. To stay and Soothe my heart just a little more. Let me curl into my grandmother’s bed that is no longer there, and remember how much I was loved.

Contest Rules are posted in PDF format!