Call of Sedona’s Canyons & Landscape Temples

Call of the Southwest, Pilgrimage

Call of Sedona’s Canyons & Landscape Temples

Article and images of the call to pilgrimage to Sedona and the Colorado Plateau, mystic pathways of direct knowing, and Native American presence, by Sandra Cosentino, founder of Crossing Worlds Journeys & Retreats and participant comment.


Thunder Mountain sunset by Sandra Cosentino

Primordial Force of Nature

Sedona, Arizona resonates with the heart beat of the earth. There is a presence here that quickens your senses, that calls you home. Sedona is a gateway into the Colorado Plateau, the second largest plateau in the world. A place of mysterious beauty, it is alive with Creation stories and with eons of the Earth’s creation exposed in sinuous red and white canyons. A primordial force of crystalline rock embedded with prayers from many millennia of humans honoring this sacred earth, her energies vibrate at a cellular level in those who come in pilgrimage.

The Colorado Plateau is connected to the center of the backbone of Mother Earth, the Rocky Mountains, which extend from Alaska to Chile in a north-south direction. On the opposite side of the earth is the Tibetan Plateau, largest in the world, connected to the east-west chain of the Himalyas. These two great mountain chains form a cross of the 4 Directions. It is no coincidence that two ancient mystical cultures–the Tibetan Buddhists and the Hopi Indians–were guided by Creator to anchor and enhance these powerful natural energies.

Full Moon rising at twilight over Sedona cliffs by Monica Parsley

Here, elemental forces sculpt a dreamscape radiant with sun, quickened by lightning. The wind that shapes the wondrous formations gives voice to the indwelling life that Navajos call Nilchi’i, the inner spirit of humans, the mountains, the stars and all of creation.

It’s easy to have that experience of having left the ordinary world behind and stepping into the non-ordinary world. Here ancient knowing is stimulated. Who am I? Why am I here now?

Still today, the Hopi priests place offerings at ancestral prayer shrine sites all over the region including the Sedona area. The Hopis, the most traditional tribe in North America, settled on the Plateau after thousands of years of migrations to this their place of center. Their presence enriches my experience of this land as an ancient sacred place. And reminds me that we today too have a role to remember our reciprocity to our giver of life, Mother Earth.

The Mystic’s Path of Direct Experience

The slick sandstone shelves and sandy trails invite you to come and be close to nature here in the Sedona area.  Visitors frequently express a feeling of being “at home” here.

Nature and the path of direct knowing has always called me.  Living here in Northern Arizona in the vibrant earth energies of canyon, cliff, sun, I sense the spirit of ancestral peoples whose life was/is informed and nurtured by these arid, craggy big sky landscapes.  And I see more and more modern day visionaries coming to discover direct connectedness to their Source as well.

Walking with deep observing in Sedona red earth and juniper-pinyon tree landscape

Sedona “medicine” walk by Sandra Cosentino.

In a state of expanded now awareness, you sense/invite a merging with vibrational energies from the stars, the earth, the trees, the waters, the bird and animal beings.  You are awake, yet in an expanded state of consciousness where direct knowing can flow in.

As you relax, quit thinking and doing and just be alive to the moment, Nature always gifts us. If you stick with it, you may feel free for a time from the relentless anxious ego self that always wants to be in charge. Flashes of knowing spontaneously occur in those moments of deep connectedness to greater field of intelligence and create soul imprints that stay with you always.

With every in-breathe light energy from the stars, the sun, the mountains feeds you. With every out-breath, the whole of the cosmos knows you.


I share pathways of the modern day mystic with guests to this land, drawing from timeless principals; such as: developing attentiveness to energies and signs flowing within nature and us, becoming your own shaman-seer traveling on the wings of your intention and focused attention, and using ceremony to activate your intention and rebalance.

We go out at dawn, sunset and under the stars–each time of day with its own sensory qualities. Circles with our Hopi, Navajo and other Native American friends deepen for us this ancient sense of being part of the greater circle of life.

We are part of the living body of the Earth—her vibrational frequency, like ours, is increasing.  Direct experience of her energies, grounds and renews us.  Her beauty fills our heart with awe and wonder.  And for the mystic, nature is a portal to expanded awareness.


Sandra Cosentino, native to Arizona, created Crossing Worlds Journeys in 1991 to share her intuitive insights and informed passion for the spirit, lands and cultures of the Colorado Plateau. Her lifelong mystical relation to Nature led her to sharing of friendships and knowledge with Native peoples of the Southwest, Peru and Alaska and with universal wisdom keepers of many paths. She conducts journeys, retreats, and earth-spirit experiences in Sedona, Hopi and on Navajo lands in Canyon de Chelly and other places of natural power and beauty on the Colorado Plateau for individuals and groups from around the world.  A former teacher with an M.S. in Natural Resources Planning, she has worked as a natural resource manager for the State of Alaska and for Native tribes in Alaska and Arizona


Answering the Call of the Desert:

Upon my arrival, a mutual friend introduced me to Sandra Cosentino, owner/operator of Crossing Worlds Journeys & Retreats based here in Sedona. Through excursions of the heart– Medicine Wheel ceremonies, drum journeys and cultural explorations into Hopi and Navajo Indian country, Sandra helped me deepen and further the bond I had with the wild magic here– this ancient land that had courted me from the thick-treed slopes of the Northwest into the soaring rock and wrinkled hills of the Southwest.

We often don’t have any precedent in our lives that suggests that this kind of connection is open to us; don’t know anyone who has these interactive dialogues with Nature, with the wild energies of wind & rock and the ancient voices of the ancestors. Sandra has been in dialogue and soulful connection with this ancient land all of her Life. By example she helped me trust this seemingly unorthodox conversation I had entered into with this place and welcome the Mystery to enter into me.”
Shay Panther, 2002

More articles on mystic path of direct knowing, shamanic practice, vision in nature, the call to pilgrimage, natural history, conservation and nature articles–please see my Spirit of Southwest Blog and Sedona tour-mystic-ceremony index.

article first posted in 2000, updated March, 2013 and Jan. 5, 2017