Maya Wisdom and Sacred Air

Maya Wisdom, Sacred Air, and Anima Christi

By the Daily Meditation Team

3/22/2026

This is a summary of the previous week’s daily meditations. Some are written by Matthew Fox (MF) and some are written by his colleague, Gianluigi Gugliermetto. (GG)

March 16, 2025: Our Sacred Air: An Original Blessing We Dare Not Take For Granted (MF)

In the wake of the bombing of oil depots in Iran and the subsequent horrific poisoning of our sacred air, we reflect on this necessity of life.

Matthew very much respects the book Caesar’s Last Breath by Sam Kean. Kean tells us that The air we breathe bears traces of Cleopatra’s perfumes, German mustard gas, particles exhaled by dinosaurs or emitted by atomic bombs, even remnants of star dust from the universe’s creation. Earth made our air.

We don’t usually think about air as being created—it seems like it just is—but all planets have to manufacture their atmospheres from scratch. Everything—even mountains, and the floor beneath us—started as a gas—you are an ex-gas.… Oak trees, birds of paradise, cyanobacteria, we’re all in this together.*

Diagram of thermohaline circulation, showing how the ocean is a respirator of oxygen for the entire planet. Blue lines are deep-water currents; red lines are surface currents. NASA image by Robert A. Rohde. Wikimedia Commons.

March 17, 2026: Wisdom From José Argüelles and the Mayan Mind (MF)

In times of crisis like ours, it is good to call on ancient wisdom. One indigenous wisdom keeper who touches Matthew deeply is José Argüelles, Ph.D. His book on The Transformative Vision: The Nature and History of Human Expression has been for me a Bible of art as meditation.

Argüelles says: “When a man is deprived of the power of expression, he will express himself in a drive for power.”** In his final book, Manifesto for the Noosphere: The Next Stage in the Evolution of Human Consciousness, Argüelles writes about how humanity is moving from biosphere to the noosphere and, in doing so, is “literally passing from one time to another.” The “old mechanistic time” will give way to “the Galactic Maya” time, which he characterizes as “the natural time of universal synchronization.”***

March 18, 2026: From ‘Time Means Money’ to ‘Time Means Art’: A Mayan Perspective on Time (MF)

Today we continue to reflect on the teachings of Mayan scientist José Argüelles. The Mayan sense of Time includes the cycles of the different life forms, the rotation of the seasons, the oceanic times, and the waxing and waning of the moon…. The Mayan Law of Time maintains everything in synchronous relation to everything….***

By naming synchronization as central to the time of noosphere, Argüelles is emphasizing the important role of mysticism. Our deep, unitive and mystical experiences occur in a synchronistic sense of time. Matthew notes that pre-modern mystics like Hildegard, Aquinas, Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, etc. all lived before mechanistic time dominated.

Phases of a lunar eclipse. Image by AnetteWho on Flickr.

March 19, 2026: Deep Sources of Creativity (GG)

Gianluigi exhorts: I believe that we are called to thoughts and actions equal in depth to the catastrophe that we are living through. In the first chapter of his book Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet, Matthew elucidates who we are as a species.

The list he offers may help us to identify those areas that deserve attention and deep spiritual work: We Are Not Consumers. We Are Not Addicts. We Are Not Passive. We Are Not Boring, and We Need Not Be Bored. We Are Not Cogs in a Machine. We are not Lazy. We are not destroyers.

March 20, 2026: Anima Christi (GG)

“Anima Christi,” a Catholic hymn composed by Msgr. Marco Frisina, touches the soul of the listener. Filled with references to the Passion of Christ, it could easily be used to instill a faux piety based on the glorification of suffering.

But a cosmic element is present in this text, as the faithful individual hopes to be called after death to the company of the saints and Christ himself. The believer is not invited to imitate the suffering of the man Jesus. Rather, the believer asks to be saved, sanctified, washed, inebriated, comforted, and sheltered within the wounds of Jesus. There is ecstasy here, together with a deep yearning for peace.

Anima Christi (Marco Frisina)

“Anima Christi,” composed by Msgr. Marco Frisina, sung by the Choir of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception at the closing Mass of the National Prayer Vigil for Life. Ad te levavi animam meam.

March 21, 2026: The Wound Giving Birth (GG)

In the late Middle Ages, a mandorla shape was often used to depict both Christ in glory, and the breast wound of Jesus. The latter unmistakably recalls the shape of a vulva.

In the medieval mind, especially in the writings of Julian of Norwich, Jesus was seen as both a man and a mother. If one juxtaposes the images of the two mandorlas — Christ in glory and the Christ wound — something quite powerful happens.

Deep joy (via positiva) and deep suffering (via negativa) are conjoined. The result is a bi-gendered image of the Savior, whose body gives birth to the faithful by means of the water and blood that flow out of the wound.

* Sam Kean, Caesar’s Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us.

** José Argüelles, The Transformative Vision: The Nature and History of Human Expression.

*** José Argüelles, Manifesto for the Noosphere: The Next Stage in the Evolution of Human Consciousness.

Banner image: “Maya Village Daykeeper Burning Copal.” Photo by Ann Wuytz on Flickr.

Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action, by Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jennifer Listug

The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance

Passion For Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart

Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Time