The Lake Harriet Vortex

Related article: Understanding the Vortex by Michelle Mayama
Read below — Lake Harriet Vortex Timeline

The Earth and a spiritual community co-create a future for all of us

A brilliant stained-glass image, that of Jesus standing at a door knocking ever so humbly, catches my attention within this sanctuary but my spirit is drawn to the spiraling energy felt deep within my being. Sitting still under an imposing dome, I am clearly moved. Going within, I see the door open and I am welcomed with outstretched arms and a warm heart.

Amid this joyful, swirling energy that speaks the language of light and love, the congregation of Lake Harriet Community Church gathers for spiritual growth and shared intention. But weekend services and weeknight meditations hardly tell the whole story of this sacred site in Linden Hills.

It is here where one of the most unique spiritual projects of our time has been initiated, in relative obscurity. This is a story of how the Earth has interacted with a people and how a people have responded. The result, some say, has been nothing less than introducing heaven on earth.

A thirst for energy
It has long been known that energy runs along the Earth’s surface like meridians in our bodies, and that energy like geysers from beneath the ground all across the planet’s surface. This release of energy can be as small as a stream of water from a garden hose or as expansive as an entire city.

These energy or power centers, known as vortexes or vortices, have long been respected and considered sacred by indigenous cultures because of the transformative effect they have on human consciousness. Westerners traditionally have dismissed the value of such places because their eyes could not see, their ears could not hear and their hearts could not feel.

But these are changing times, and more people are acknowledging the effect of the Earth’s energy, though they may not understand it. These sites have become a growing tourist commodity. The conglomeration of vortexes in Sedona, Ariz., attract thousands of meditators, seekers and messengers of the Gods each year. For some such visitors, their bodies become abuzz with a satisfying energy. Others go there to connect with other dimensions or aspects of themselves, to create art and to learn.

There are many major vortexes on the planet, but Minneapolis is hardly one that comes to mind. Yet, the very nature of the city, with its yearning to perform and design and advertise and entertain, has led some local visionaries to explore the energy in more depth. Local resident Suzie Black, a leading teacher of Light Body, says Minneapolis sits on the Earth’s throat chakra, which releases a creative force energy-the mode of expression out into the world.

“It’s a very spiritual center,” she explains. “That the Tibetan monks come here is not a fluke.”

Lake Harriet’s voice
In the Linden Hills area in south Minneapolis, just west of Lake Harriet, shady Upton Avenue runs south from 44th Street to a hilly public park, which contains a unique collection of trees that grow in clumps and at odd angles rather than upward pointed to the sky. Pendulums, affected by the Earth’s energy, spin wildly when carried along a walk through these trees. Those who have dowsed this area to chart the natural ley lines, or energy meridians, discover a convergence of at least three meridians at the southeast comer of 44th and Upton, directly under an impressive, domed church building. This 80-year-old structure is now in its third incarnation as a place of worship. It was built by the Lake Harriet Methodist-Episcopal congregation and became the First Divine Science Church of Minneapolis in the 1950s. Five years ago, it became known as Lake Harriet Community Church.

It is here, a site believed to be used for spring ceremony and summer tribal gatherings among Native Americans who lived on this land many years ago, where a community of spiritual beings have embraced the natural outpouring of the Earth’s energy and have never been the same since.

“This place, in my own personal opinion, is an accelerator of growth,” says Gretchen Hansen, president of Lake Harriet Community Church.

“How much you are consciously aware that that’s one of the benefits of this place, the more that piece in your life is accelerated,” she says. “And whichever piece of you and your experience at the moment you want to shift, through intention and focus, is the piece that shifts in that energy the fastest.”

A bolt of lightning
It is understood by those sensitive to energy that the dynamic interplay between the Earth and people at Lake Harriet did not really begin until Sept. 17, 1992, when a lightning bolt reportedly appeared unexpectedly from a gray but dry sky, snaked down Upton Street and struck the dome of the church.

“It was out of the blue, nothing to indicate that it was going to happen,” says healer Michele Mayama, who would become an important figure in the awakening of the energy at Lake Harriet.

“The lightning happened within weeks of the big hurricanes on Kauai and Andrew down in Florida,” she says. “It was my sense at that time that the Earth was opening vortices. I was really aware when I was in Hawaii that that’s what was happening. The physical event had opened up the etheric. And I would bet down in Florida that both the Atlantis and Lemurian energies were opened up.”

It was then, in the Lake Harriet area, that “an activation was set in motion to serve the planet’s new gridwork and unfolding plan of joy,” she says.

Among the first of the sensitive healers who heard the call to assist with the activation was Suzie Black who began presenting her Hawkwind channelings at the church after the lightning had sent an electric charge directly into the vortex.

“I was in meditation one day while teaching a class,” she says, “and all of a sudden there was this huge opening That was when the lightning struck the dome at Lake Harriet. I was a couple blocks away, close to the major vortex, which is a very sacred place unknown to most. Nearby is the Lake Harriet vortex, which is a minor one. Then I was told (by spirit) to go into the church and start opening the energy.”

She was told energy needed to be brought into the area, but not just to serve the church. If was much bigger than that.

Her instructions, to open her channelings to the public rather than to select students who were adept at advanced energy work, mystified her, but she complied. The involvement of a wide variety of people in activations during the past four years proved to be a common theme at Lake Harriet, regardless of the healer facilitating the gatherings.

“The idea is,” Ms. Black explains, “when you bring in energy for an area, to open it up, you want as many frequencies as possible. Each person is a different combination of frequencies of energy, so the more people you have, the more they can open it up for people who are like them.

“Then we had all these frequencies coming in and, all of a sudden, they told me it was done. Whatever energy needed to come in was finished. It was open. And I didn’t have to be there anymore. And then I did no more channelings there.”

Light activation
The vortex at Lake Harriet may have been opened, but it had not hilly awakened. Ms. Mayama, a healer who was familiar with working with vortexes, became a leading facilitator of healing the church and activating the energy at the church by the fall of 1993.

Her first task was to clean the energy of the building, which had become so laden with strong, negative, astral forces that she and others could not stay in the building for any great length of time. After much healing, with assistance by others in the city, Mayama performed an activation on Jan. 11, 1994, to reclaim the vortex.

Four months later, the first of five major channelings or activations took place in the church sanctuary. Cumulatively, during an 11-month period, the ceremonies helped to construct a new matrix or structure by which people could connect with the new energy for this time.

“It’s a balance of the masculine and the feminine,” Ms. Mayama says. “It’s a true unification of the Mother/Father aspects of the Divine. It’s birthing new forms, and it is assisting people to know their part, or their place, in the whole, in this new time.”

Her partner and co-creator of Lightsmith, Chris LaFontaine, says the process of activation is intended to awaken people.

“It is a location where both the blueprint or matrix of the emerging structure of consciousness and the connection and plan of the earth, herself, are anchored,” he says. “People can access the new grid simply by sitting in a vortex area and asking with intention to be aligned with the new matrix of creation. This will begin or assist a process of rebalancing in the person’s life. In other words, expect some changes.”

Mr. LaFontaine says the work done at Lake Harriet, which simultaneously was broadcast out to mass consciousness, is a tool by which people can ascend-but not by leaving their bodies.

“This notion of ascension really means that our perceptions are changing,” he says. “It’s an evolution of consciousness. There’s been some confusion about people thinking they’re going to be lifted off the planet and things like that, but it’s really about how we really begin to see things differently and awaken to who we truly are in this form we call the body.

“The work that was done here and broadcast out through the mass consciousness field enables people to begin their shift in perceptions. This will happen to them. Those who wish to use this energy consciously will be able to do it more quickly by coming into the energy field itself.”

The Earth Mother
What Ms. Mayama and Mr. LaFontaine did not expect was that they would soon be conducting channelings with the Earth Mother energy herself.

They did two such events here, and others around the country and in Mexico, earlier this year. The first involved the release of the death matrix in the collective masculine within our consciousness and the second was the release of the victimization matrix in the collective feminine part of consciousness. The goal was to clear fear and regain balance for the greater good of all.

The information came from the Earth, who Ms. Mayama says is a being who is largely ignored.

“My sense is, the consciousness of the Earth itself is largely in charge of a lot of what’s going on on this planet as a whole,” she says. “She’s the biggest consciousness. Her body feeds all of the information all of the time into her consciousness as a whole. Beings outside in spirit are assisting, as well as bringing that alignment of the intention of the Creator so that continues to be broadcast here.

“But how it actually unfolds? My sense is the Earth, herself, is in charge of that. We call her the Mother, but she probably has a masculine aspect, too, just like we do. Tapping into the Earth consciousness is where we find our synchronization and our way of moving around and become at ease without knowing everything. We know what we need to know as we know it.”

Radiating and resonating
With shoes sitting empty on the floor by their chairs, members of the Radiant Circle at Lake Harriet sit silently, in conscious connection with the energy emanating from the Earth below them, with assistance from the spiritual beings above them.

With their feet on the ground, they become the connection — as above, so below.

The Radiant Circle was formed last November to serve as a vehicle to expand and radiate the energy of the spiritual community out beyond the walls of the church. It is just one of a number of groups within the church that intentionally connect with the energy during meetings. Lake Harriet member Leah Skurdahl says the idea of radiating is not as much a sending as a resonating.

“At first we were intentional about specific places to which to send it,” she says. “And then there was a sense of an energetic gridwork forming. And we connected beyond the dome at first to other like-minded spiritual communities and beings, and now it is much bigger. And now it feels like it surrounds the Earth. That we have been an active partner in strengthening this spiritual gridwork and connecting our piece with the other pieces around the world. And all of a sudden we created the critical mass that connected it together.”

And in serving as a relay tower, between the energy chakra in the Twin Cities and the grid surrounding the Earth, Lake Harriet has become a magnet for people, and even disembodied beings, who want to shift to a higher expression of themselves, Ms. Skurdahl says.

Local healer and teacher Alana Ray, who attends the Radiant Circle meetings, says all those who participate bring their own pieces of energy to the experience. She says it is all a co-creative process of sharing with each other, and with higher beings, that ultimately benefits everyone and everything.

“It is through the talking and the discussion that we come to terms with shifting our own personal piece, which then has an impact on the whole, she says. “And through that we are anchoring it down in our hearts. This very human process is connected to all the subtle body levels. It is an activation of all the chakras. As we facilitate that for the earth body and the collective, we also are dealing with whatever comes up for ourselves.

“If we are to engage in traversing dimensions and bring important processes, activations, energies and consciousness from other realms of ourselves, as well as from the spiritual hierarchy, the Inter-Galactic Federation, all of those energies need and most naturally interface with the Earth consciousness. She holds many of the records of all light that has been within this particular realm. So we actually are like the gods of this dimension, in a sense, as we interface with the Earth.

“The time we have moved into, entering into the Aquarian experience of accelerated evolution, it is all about anchoring that experience and being it — expressing that heaven on Earth.”

Ms. Skurdahl nods in agreement. “And finding that aspect of divine light, the spark in the fiery will of God, the drop in the ocean of God, finding that aspect of oneself and aligning perfectly with it and resonating from that place of centeredness, having that place and centeredness within each of us.”

“There are many tools to find that alignment with oneself. That’s namasté, I’m in that place in me and you’re in that place in you and we’re one. We’re in an evolving process of anchoring that in ourselves — and being it.”

“It’s time to anchor soul light in the physical form,” Ms. Skurdahl says. “Each one of us is called to let go of the levels and layers of yuck, old stuff, whatever is in the way of letting that soul light shine through. And that’s what we work with when we radiate outward.”

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Lake Harriet Vortex Timeline

• 1991 — Lake Harriet Community Church is adopted as new name.
• Sept. 17, 1992 — Lightning strikes church dome, reportedly charging and activating the energy vortex.
• Fall 1992 — Suzie Black of Hawkwind begins channelings at church to open up energy for the greater area.
• September 1993 — Michele Mayama is hired as growth coordinator. She advises that the buildings fractured energies must be cleaned and cleared.
• Jan. 11, 1994 — Energetic fragments of the church building that were draining the natural energy of the vortex are repaired. An activation takes place to anchor the vision of how the Earth energy would be channeled into focused service to the planet and collective evolution.
• May 14, 1994 — First of a series of five channelings at the church by Ms. Mayama to introduce a model of co-creation. The throat chakra was opened and cleared. Three spiritual beings spun energy impulses and sent them down a multi-dimensional corridor from Source to the heart of the Earth, where it was received and distributed by angelic beings. This was the seeding of the impulse of the Creator into the gridwork.
• June 18, 1994 — Second channeling worked with the root chakra. A new gridwork was introduced to the tightly controlled patterns currently on Earth. Three Alpha Centuri light ships, positioned in a triangle, beamed light to Earth. This process anchored new energy into the planet
• July 9, 1994 — Third channeling was a synchronization of pure light and emanation with matter, or the manifested reflection of that pure light This process will allow those aspects at our lives that are not of the truth to fall away. This process made it possible for groups to radiate intentions out of the vortex at Lake Harriet to the connecting gridwork, Ms. Mayama says.
• Sept. 24. 1994 — Fourth channeling or activation helped to unlock density in the DNA, using the original eight cells at the base of the spine. It released an inheritance that had been coded into the DNA but had not been able to be accessed.
• Dec. 10-12, 1994 — Three nights of anchoring a platform in consciousness that would assist those who were working to free themselves of rigid perceptions and beliefs New frequencies were intoned by participants to anchor them into mass consciousness.
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