Spiritual Spotlight Series
Discover a world of healing, holistic, and spiritual modalities with the Spiritual Spotlight Series podcast. Every week, we introduce you to diverse spiritual practitioners, including psychics, energy healers, life coaches, spiritual thought leaders, and witches. Each episode offers inspiration and enlightenment through the unique journeys, experiences, and divine abilities of our guests. Perfect for those on a path to spiritual awakening, this podcast blends science and mysticism to expand your understanding of spirituality. Our mission is to open your eyes to the world around you, making complex concepts accessible and enlightening for anyone seeking spiritual growth. Whether you're new to spirituality or looking to deepen your knowledge, the Spiritual Spotlight Series is your go-to resource for awakening and transformation.
Spiritual Spotlight Series
Connecting with Your Song: Discovering Balance and Purpose with Kay Cordell Whitaker
Imagine finding yourself on a wild stormy night with a medicine storyteller who invites you into his world, one filled with ancient wisdom and sacred practices. This is the captivating tale of our guest, Kay Cordell Whitaker, who stepped away from her life as a housewife and mother to embrace a spiritual journey under the tutelage of Peruvian shaman elders.
Kay's transformation is nothing short of extraordinary, and we're thrilled to have her share her story.
Step into the intriguing world of the Ka Ta See tradition, a culture thriving on spiritual energy referred to as medicine. Kay paints a vivid picture of this ancient tradition, exploring their unique language and the potent power of song in healing and awakening.
We dive into the fascinating history of the pre-flood culture of Lemuria and how its lessons have permeated globally. If you're keen on expanding your knowledge of such ancient knowledge, this discussion promises to be deeply insightful.
As we wind down our fascinating conversation, Kay stresses the importance of mastering our attention, a theme that resonates strongly in her books, The Reluctant Shaman and The Sacred Link.
She explains the transformative power of song ceremonies and how they can reframe our memories and spur personal growth.
Discover how you can harness this power and bring about your own transformation.
Don't miss this enlightening episode, rich in wisdom and packed with nuggets of truth that may just change how you view the world.
Connect with Kay Cordell Whitaker Here
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Hello everyone, welcome to our spiritual spotlight series. Today I am joined by Kate Cordell Whitaker. She is a medicine storyteller, she's an author, she's a podcaster, she is a teacher, she is probably. She is so multifaceted I can't even put her into a box. Kay, thank you so much for coming on the spiritual spotlight series. I'm so happy you're here.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. I'm really happy to be here, thank you.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited. So your journey from being a housewife and mother to becoming an apprentice of Peruvian shaman elders is fascinating. Can you maybe share a pivotal moment when you decided to embark on the spiritual path and what drew you to it?
Speaker 2:Well, I met the first two teachers. Actually, it was one of the first two teachers. That was Damano Hedica, in Santa Cruz. I was in my 20s and it was storming and lightning and nobody was out of it. You know, it was just a crazy storm. The road is actually kind of a cliff down to the beach and the waves are coming up on the path in the road. But I drove there anyway because I just absolutely had to be in the lightning, because this is Santa Cruz, california, you never get lightning. They never. They never have lightning. I just had to be in it. I don't know why. I hadn't started studying it or anything, but I just was drawn and he was walking down the beach. That was the only other person on the beach there and on the top of the cliff not the actual down in the beach was buried underwater because the storm was just blowing the water straight up over into the whole parking lot. It was crazy to be there. I could have been swept off really easily.
Speaker 2:Well, here's this guy. He was actually smaller than me but he was just really marching down and he was all wet. He had white like Mexican peasant clothes. I'm sure there's a name for him, but I don't know what that is, and his hair was long and it was really wet, he was soaking and I thought he was a vagrant.
Speaker 2:At that time in Santa Cruz there was a lot of vagrants, people living under the bridge and with a lot of drugs and alcohol, and you had to be careful in certain places that you went, of course, and I thought that that's what he was and he's yelling out to me I have something for you and I, oh no, I just I ran as best as I could back to the truck and I was driving this really old, raggedy truck and I was going to go please start, please start. I was really really, really scared. The guy just really scared me and nervous me and even though his hair was down, it was mostly white, but he was old but strong and fast and agile like a young man. And I didn't think about that till later. But I put the pieces together, thinking about that and, and you know, it just didn't end up people with the white hair like that I never knew. I never had ever known anyone that wasn't kind of stuck in a rocking chair and tripled and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So later I met him again. I don't think that was actually an accident, but he invited me to his house near the beach and meet his wife and he wanted to teach me. He wanted to give the tribal teachings to me and that's that interesting, but I don't think so. So he kept trying to get me to go to his place and I didn't intend to but I didn't want to be rude. So I know I kind of said, oh yeah, yeah, sure, Tuesday I'll be there, but I didn't intend to go.
Speaker 2:I ended up going long story short and I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to continue. Even after the first meeting I met his wife. She scared me more than he did, but the more they taught me you know I kept going back the more they taught me. I just I knew something was there, they had something. She was, just as you know why, hered and wrinkled, but very strong, very agile and and physically able, alert, you know, just spot on with a focus I didn't know how to add that up Like the old ladies and men that that I was familiar with, that were my relatives were sitting on a rocking chair together with, and you know, rocking and sipping on something, and they rarely get up out of their chair, and they don't you?
Speaker 2:know, very sedentary and and not all, not fast, but, you know, mentally clever like that. So that's, that's how I decided was the proof? As a tomorrow used to say, the proof is always in the pudding. And those two, the pudding was just mind twisting and they had something that I wanted. I mean, I realized it. It took me a while to put my finger on what that really was, but they had something big that I wanted, something important, and I studied with them for 13 years.
Speaker 1:And that was the question I was just about to ask how long you study with them? For, wow, 13 years. Wow, that's impressive. Now, did we're? Would they consider themselves to be medicine storytellers? Oh yes, can you tell us a little bit about what that means and how does it contribute to personal transformation and healing?
Speaker 2:So it's kind of like a title in their own language. That would be kind of like the title of what kind of medicine person they were. They were both medicine people. They were both colloquial nurses. That means medicine storyteller.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:And a medicine storyteller. For them, medicine is energy and it's what we are giving and receiving all the time to each other, to the world around us. The word medicine is used to describe the quality of the energy that it is health giving, health restoring and awakening. And for them, in their culture, to be a medicine person, you have to be very strictly on this path to do what they call waking up, which it means being enlightened, reaching nirvana, having any karma anymore, all those kinds of words that are used from the east. But to compare waking up because it's used a lot, that face is used a lot with a lot of modern spiritual people.
Speaker 2:And for the headachas it means getting rid of all the programming. All the programming, all the blind beliefs that we've ever held and what they call a mask. And the masks are the programming. This is what people have taught you since you were literally born, or possibly in the womb still, and we are brainwashed. We're programmed to think we're a certain person, a certain way, that the world is a certain way, and I'm the kid, they're the mother, that's a teacher, that's authority, everything around us, everything in our world. And so waking up means to just break that open like Humpty Dumpty's egg, just cracking out of the egg and letting it go.
Speaker 2:And what happens to people? Being programmed like that from birth, they're very addicted to that programming and the way of thinking and the way of feeling and all of that interior life, that interior way of being, has to change in order to be able to understand the medicine, understand the teachings and be able to receive it like take it. They talk about it as taking it. In soaking it up, becoming it, you become the medicine. And they have a very beautiful, poetic way of talking, and in their whole language. If you could imagine this in the whole language. They have no word for judgment or condemnation.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:There's a bunch of words that are like that. They're more aggressive and violent and controlling in our language. They don't have that in their language. Wow.
Speaker 2:And so they grow up without those concepts and they grow up with the medicine talk. And their tribe was very remote, right, and the way they raised their children. All of these teachings are available to anybody, free, to anybody Wow. In their tribe they don't interact with other tribes very much, just a couple of local people who have some similar language and that kind of stuff. But they've stayed away from other people because they want to keep the teachings pure, wow. And so they've been able to keep the teachings where their teachings come from, pre flood as well. They come from La Maria, the continent of La Maria, and that was sinking.
Speaker 2:A lot of people ran in every direction and they made their new homes.
Speaker 2:This was a group that went to central Peru and they, they went to La Maria's and eventually up the mountains and eventually over the mountains and way into the valley. And when I first told people the story that they had big villages and stuff that they brought from La Maria, brought from home, and they just had huge, many thousands of people living in a town, those with these were sophisticated, yeah, and it was crazy because only, but everybody had only seen jungle and they didn't think there was anything out there. But in recent times they've been discovering these huge towns in the Amazon, just on the east side of the Andes and spreading out over, which is a much flatter land, but it's thick, thick jungle, it's very heavy, dense jungle. Then, for some reason I don't I don't know exactly why, but certainly partly because they had other people moving in and they didn't want to mix with them, so they would just get up and move and leave and go into a more remote place and they moved back up into the jungle on the east side of the Andes.
Speaker 1:It's amazing that they've been able to keep this so pure for so many, many, many years, like that's their path.
Speaker 2:That was their, their promise, their path, and they were vigilant. And their whole tribe is based around keep the teachings pure. Yeah. If you're going to learn the teachings, it has to be accurate. You have to learn it, the full teachings. You can't just learn a little piece here, a little piece there. You have to learn the whole thing and incorporate it.
Speaker 2:Right the pre-Soled Egyptians were the exactly the same. They did the exact same thing Somewhere around 10,000 BC. They sent the priests and the priestesses and people of the. The temples didn't like the people who were coming in and they knew times were changing and they were corrupt their teachings and their temples and the temple people and they were. They just didn't want to be around them and be influenced by them. So they got into a bunch of different groups and went all all over the world. They sent themselves to remote places and Tibet was one of those places. There's places in Africa like the Dogon people, and North and South America, probably Australia as well.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. It's like discovering, like different ways of being. That's more enlightened. You know that's phenomenal.
Speaker 2:And they were. They were there. That was a very brilliant culture that got destroyed somewhere around the younger dryest 10,000 ish years ago.
Speaker 1:Right, right, oh, thank you. This is phenomenal. So let me ask you this Can you explain the concept of song that is taught by your teachers and its significance in the process of healing and waking up in the I don't want to mispronounce it Cadasi tradition, cadasi Cadasi, thank you, tradition.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it has an unusual accent to it. Everybody always pronounces it wrong it's, but it is simple. It's just Cadasi, cadasi. Yeah, cadasi means balance, or the long version of the translation is you and me together are setting the world in balance. That's what it means, and they knew that these times were coming, that we would reach the day that we are in right now, and they call this the end of a world, an era, the end of this era. They do use the word world, but you know they're not talking about terrible destruction. They mean the culture has to change, the old world has to die away because it's just falling apart.
Speaker 2:So to get to song, song is how they describe their totality, their spirit, their soul, however, those kind of words that people want to use or they understand.
Speaker 2:It's that energetic consciousness as well as your physical body. And they use the word song because it is a poetic reference. It doesn't have anything to do directly with songs or singing, but it describes the nature of our whole being, our energetic entity that we are, and they believe that we are very, very, very old, that our entities go back for countless ages and we are very vast. The song is very vast, very ancient and full of memories. We've been to a lot of places on earth, but the world's a big place, that's a big universe out there, absolutely Real, big and real old, and we've been around for who knows how long. We've had many different kinds of lives. We've been on different planets. We've spent time doing things like hanging out in the nebula and just to make a planet, you know, help the planet get made and things like that. So we have that knowledge and the memories inside us and we can tune into them.
Speaker 1:So let me ask you this, because I've read this is one of your things that you talk about is about to control our attention. So why is it so important to learn to control our attention?
Speaker 2:Because our song is pure attention. It is pure attention, your awareness. We learn to focus our song, our attention, and we have different goals. We have intent, and that's where our power as a human, as an entity that has lived through the ages, that's what our power is. It's our attention and it is quite remarkably powerful. And that's one of the things that we are learning when we're studying this medicine tradition.
Speaker 2:In order to get rid of our masks, to get rid of the old programming, you have to learn who you actually are, who you really are, excuse me and who we really are is our song. And we learn about what our song is, because it has a certain feeling to it. It has a very, very unique and special feeling and all we have to do is turn our attention to feel that. And the way we do that is with a song ceremony, and that's the most important ceremony of the Hedekas, because they do the song ceremony for sunrise or for the beginning of some other ceremony, or to celebrate a marriage or any excuse whatsoever, and everybody, even tiny kids, are encouraged to join the song ceremony. And what the song ceremony teaches you is to take your attention and get it as focused as you can and focus it on something that happened in your life. That's happy, happy, fun, exciting, and it could be something you know, if you really love roller coasters, and it's very exciting, very happy for you, that's something to use. And it could be just seeing a flower in the snow that just caught you and gave you this feeling. It could be seeing a brand new baby, puppy or kitty and getting to hold it and cuddling it.
Speaker 2:That feeling, that happiness, that falling in love I mean you're falling in love with that little puppy or the kitty, or if you have memories of falling in love with a person and you're falling in love with that little puppy Just the love that you feel, just in it engulfs you, it just swoops over you and you're just really enjoy. What that is is the feeling of our song. That's who we are. We are that feeling. That's what our song feels like and it has a unique signature. So in the ceremony we turn our attention to this moment of happiness and bring it back. We bring it back and bring it back and we feel it and follow it and in the song ceremony we could be whoever is guiding. It could guide us anywhere, into ourselves, into the cosmos, into our old memories. We feel it, we engage it, we explore it, we learn who we are and what the feeling of our own song is. It's very key. The feeling of your song, the feeling of that happiness, is absolutely key.
Speaker 1:That's very profound because I feel a lot of people don't even feel into themselves. They don't even know what that is to really truly feel into themselves. So to feel into your song and how that is in you, that's very profound. I agree. I agree, it's amazing. Yes, that's amazing. Everyone should do that. I want to shift gears just a little bit. You have two books the Reluctant Shaman and the Sacred Link. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about both of these books?
Speaker 2:The Reluctant Shaman is the first one and the very beginning chapter I tell the story of meeting Damano on the beach and just being super terrified and running away. And then I kept meeting him and he invited me to his house and to meet his wife and to receive these teachings and I go through in a way it's sort of like an autobiography of about three years, my first three years of being taught by them and some of the things that they taught me and what they asked me to do just before they left. After the 13 years, they asked me to write these books. I was not allowed to write anything about them. The whole 13 years, not a single note, no recordings, no writing things down. When I got home to try to remember them, I had to promise that I wouldn't do that and that was in order to train my mind and my perception out of college.
Speaker 2:I just started college and I was very, very linear. I was a good note taker, I was a good list maker and a note taker and I'd do the same thing with that. It would just keep me stuck in the linear mind and I wouldn't be able to incorporate it or feel it or really remember it in my body, in my mind, my song. So I wasn't allowed to write record anything, tell the kids couldn't talk to the kids, couldn't talk to the guy that I was with. Yeah, that was hard, that was hard and I slipped a couple of times but, you know, wiggled my way out of that.
Speaker 1:You are human. So after 13 years they allowed you to then put some information.
Speaker 2:They asked me to, and when an elder asks you to do a favor which is something they rarely do you say yes, you do not say no. It just would be beyond impolite, it would be the worst thing that you could say. So they're asking me would you write this down and you write about your experiences? You write about us and what we taught you as best as you, accurately as you can, and tell about your experiences of it. What were you feeling, what were you thinking, in the middle of those sequences of learning the teachings and doing certain ceremonies or exercises? Some of this stuff was really difficult for Westerners to do and I thought, ooh, I never got that good of grades in English, in literature and writing. And I said, oh, gee, you're asking me to do this. Well, of course I said yes and of course I immediately started some sort of organized plan to do the writing. And they asked me to teach and I was scared to get in front of a class, oh I or an audience, but whoo, yeah, but you love to teach now.
Speaker 2:But I do now, yeah, because you do you do?
Speaker 1:teach these now you have the call of your song. You have the weeding, you have the apprenticeship. Like you, offer all these amazing programs.
Speaker 2:I've been teaching ever since and you know, these things happen in kind of funny ways Sometimes. When I was telling them, yes, yes, I thought I'm not going to advertise. I'm the Egyptian lady she advertises around town and you know I'm not going to do that. I you know I don't want to have to get up in front of people and do any of that kind of stuff. But here comes these my friends that I've had known in the Native American culture, the North American culture, and we went to sweat lodge together in Sundance and all that stuff. And they just came up to me out of the blue and asked me for, like a divination, and the head of cause called out a bone reading.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, okay.
Speaker 2:That's part of the teachings. So another thing that I do as a part of the teaching takes a long time to do, because you have to apprentice with all these different animal spirits in order to acquire each bone and they tell you you know what the bone means and how it's going to play and everything, and I hadn't told anybody about the bones ever. Wow, the whole time I had studied and I was like, hmm, hmm, yeah, I can't do that. So I was. I was just flabbergasted.
Speaker 2:But she, you know, what do you think I'm going to do? And what's your question? Don't tell anybody else. I'll do it for you, but don't tell anybody. I love it. But of course that's the Indian community. They're going to gossip about it, they're going to talk around about it, yeah, yeah. So I was asked to do healings and asked to do bone throws and asked to teach individuals and teach a class, put a class together. I didn't have any idea how to do it, but I immediately found friends that did and that's it just took off from there. It sort of did itself.
Speaker 1:It's amazing, like all of the programs that you offer. They're all on her website. I strongly encourage everybody to go and check it out, like just because they're just, they look profound, like amazing. I was, I was sitting there looking at them and like, oh, I'll send it for that, I'll send it for that, I'll send it for that. It's just amazing. Um, before I ask you the last question, if anyone is willing or willing interested in oh my goodness, I'm so like all this energy is like too much for me right now. If anyone is interested in working with you and learning more about you, what is the best place for them to go to?
Speaker 2:our website. Yeah, and your website is we have world in balancecom and we have katasicom and from there um any other uh subsequent, um sub subhead websites or helmet that my husband helmet does that. Well, he did a really good job on your website.
Speaker 1:This is awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he does that. He's fabulous at that and keeping it going and and doing all that stuff, and he does have, um, you know, everything is is there. All the links are there and we have a an archive library of of many videos that we've done and we got the classes.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:The and individual healings, individual bone throws yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's awesome. So I love this question that you have up. It says what are the secrets? Sustain balance and centered in our crazy world.
Speaker 2:Hmm, well, the secrets of that. And to to help yourself to kind of learn to shed all the stuff that keeps you wound up and and and closed off and worried and uh, full of anxiety.
Speaker 2:Um, tired all the time, uh, having uh, uh moods and attitudes that you just, you don't know where. They pop up, they're just coming out of someplace and all of a sudden you're angry or you're, you're just all withdrawn and hurt and, uh, that's what we call masks. And to do that, to learn how to undo them, to clean them out and to find out who you actually are, that starts with that first class, that first class. And sometimes we offer a free gratitude ceremony, usually followed by a song ceremony, and that would be most of the time.
Speaker 2:It's a Saturday or a Sunday morning with our sunrise, which is, I guess, that we're in Mountain Time, united States Mountain Time and doing the song ceremony is the first thing that you learn in the first class. It's free when you go to the gratitude ceremony and do that song ceremony and that teaches you how to find the feeling of yourself. And if you keep following it, if you keep pursuing and reaching into that song, into the feeling of it, that's where all the knowledge is. That's where all your experiences are, your memories, everything the knowledge that you carry, the gifts that you gained along the way. It's all there, and this knowing who you are is the beginning to answer all the questions, it comes first know who you are. Know your song.
Speaker 1:I love that. I am so excited. I definitely want to learn my song 100%. Kay, I want to thank you so much for coming on the Spiritual Spotlight series. You are amazing. Thank you so much again.
Speaker 2:Thank you, it has been a delight.
