FACILITATED BY: Aki Hirata Quetzalyolotzin
EXCHANGE: $250 - $350 Sliding Scale*
This is a 7 week series that draws inspiration from teachings preserved in the Gospel of Mary. The
7 week ceremony starts Easter Sunday.
Meeting dates (Sundays): April 5, 12, 19, 26; May 3, 10, 17 from 6:30pm-8:30pm EST
*No one turned away for the lack of funds. Email soulflowermedicine@gmail.com to register, and send your donation via VENMO @soulflowermeicine or Zelle akiackee@gmail.com.
The class will be recorded for future use.
This series includes PDF ceremonial guide for the journey
Please email if you want to work with the plant medicine micro-dose along with this journey.
Many of us have been taught to see our struggles—confusion, desire, fear, anger, numbness—as personal failures. We are often encouraged to discipline, suppress, or overcome these aspects of ourselves in order to become “better.”
Yet the teachings attributed to Mary Magdalene suggest something radically different: Our humanness are not enemies to defeat. They are invitations into deeper awareness. They are the raw materials of becoming.
This series draws inspiration from teachings preserved in the Gospel of Mary, an early mystical text from the first centuries of the Jesus movement. I am not a Christian, nor a theologian, and this offering is not a Christian teaching. Participants do not need to identify with any religious tradition. We approach this text as a historical spiritual document whose insights into human experience remain profoundly relevant today.
The manuscript we possess today survives because early seekers refused to allow these teachings to disappear. As Christianity became aligned with imperial power in the Roman Empire and church authorities began defining official doctrine, many mystical writings were condemned as heretical and ordered destroyed. Communities of monks and scribes quietly preserved texts like this one—sometimes hiding them or burying them in the desert for safekeeping. The version of the Gospel of Mary that survives today is preserved in the Berlin Codex (Papyrus Berolinensis 8502).
We inherit these words because someone chose preservation over obedience. Their quiet courage reminds us that the search for liberation has always required both wisdom and bravery. May their courage inspire us to lead through the heart.
I experience this text as profoundly meaningful for the time we are living in. Across many parts of our world, shame and polarization have become dominant forces. In public discourse, in our communities, and even within movements for justice, we increasingly see intolerance for difference—sometimes expressed through forms of cancellation, moral perfectionism, and fear of making mistakes.
While accountability is necessary for collective healing, cultures built primarily on shame rarely lead to wholeness.
Mary’s teaching offers a radically different orientation. Instead of condemning human struggle, it invites us to meet it with awareness, humility, and compassion. The forces that fragment us—fear, desire, anger, ignorance—are not sins to erase but energies that can be transformed through practice.
This orientation reflects what many traditions describe as the feminine principle—sometimes expressed through the language of masculine and feminine energies, or the interplay of yin and yang. These are not references to gender but to two ways consciousness moves in the world.
One mode seeks to understand through separation, analysis, and control.
The other understands through relationship, listening, and integration.
Both are necessary. Yet across much of religious and cultural history, knowing through control has often been privileged over knowing through relationship.
Knowing through relationship vs. knowing through control has shaped religious history for centuries.In many early Christian stories, figures like Peter represent authority and certainty, while Mary represents the capacity to listen inwardly and recognize truth through direct experience.
Her voice invites a question that still feels urgent today: What would happen if we allowed the integrative intelligence of the heart to lead again?
Across wisdom traditions, the movement toward unity consciousness does not happen by cutting away parts of ourselves or each other. It happens through awareness, integration, and courageous tenderness.
This series invites participants into that practice.
The Structure of the Journey
Mary describes the soul encountering seven powers—forces that attempt to claim authority over human consciousness.
Rather than interpreting these powers as sins or failures, this course approaches them as a map of human experience.
The movement of this work is not:
repression → purity
The movement is:
awareness → integration → liberation
Over seven weeks, we explore how the challenges of being human—darkness, longing, ignorance, excess, forgetting, embodiment, and rage—can become pathways toward a liberated heart.
Participants are invited not only into personal reflection but into collective accountability. Liberation rarely happens in isolation. We practice witnessing our own patterns, supporting one another’s growth, and committing to the work of becoming more whole.
Week 1 — Darkness
Darkness often appears as loneliness, confusion, or disconnection. Yet darkness is also where seeds germinate and where the inner light becomes visible. Together we explore the difference between the darkness that isolates us and the darkness that invites us to listen inward.
Week 2 — Desire
Desire can drive both suffering and transformation. We explore the difference between egoic craving and the deeper longing of the soul, learning how to listen for the desires that lead us toward life.
Week 3 — Ignorance
Ignorance in mystical traditions is not stupidity but a lack of vision. Through humility and curiosity, we begin to recognize how the stories we inherit shape our perception—and how awareness can open new possibilities.
Week 4 — Excess
Human beings often cope with pain through excess—numbing, distraction, overconsumption. Instead of approaching these patterns with shame, we examine them with compassion, recognizing the deeper longing beneath them.
Week 5 — Forgetting
We often forget that we are both body and soul. This week explores how dualistic thinking separates us from our own wholeness and how remembering the sacredness of the body restores connection.
Week 6 — The Wisdom of the Body
The body carries deep intelligence, yet habit and conditioning can obscure its messages. Through embodied awareness we practice listening to the wisdom that lives within the body itself.
Week 7 — Rage
Anger is often seen as destructive, yet it can also reveal what we care about most deeply. In this final session we explore how anger can become information rather than reaction—transforming rage into clarity, courage, and compassionate action.
This course is designed for those who are ready to examine their suffering honestly—whether that suffering feels personal, relational, or connected to the wider conditions of our world.
Together we explore how the forces that shape our struggles are not obstacles to awakening.
They are the raw materials of becoming.
The path toward liberation does not ask us to become less human.
It invites us to become fully human, with awareness, courage, and tenderness.
Our human experiences are a path toward the liberated heart.
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Aki Hirata Quetzalyolotzin Jewel Moon Medicine Woman, born and raised in Japan, immigrated to the United States at the age of 18. She is a student of the earth and the cosmos, an initiated medicine woman, and a moondancer. Attuned to various energetic healing frequencies—including Usui Reiki, Earth Evolution Reiki, IET, and 13th Octave LaHoChi—she is also a master teacher of Usui Reiki, cochanneler of Earth Evolution Reiki symbols, and the founder of MINKA Brooklyn. Aki has trained under numerous teachers of ancient traditions including Naina Marballi, Suzy Meszoly, Irma StarSpirit Turtle Woman, Sergio Magaña, Rita Navarrete Perez, Tonia Gonzalez, and more.
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Paying it Forward
We provide most of our community offerings and private sessions by sliding scale. This is based on the idea of ‘paying it forward’ which enables more people to access healing and wellness. This works when people pay as much as they can for our offerings to help others who may be less fortunate be able to gain access, too. We believe everyone is entitled to heal and thrive, and that practitioners deserve to earn a living wage. We are all in this together and choose to do our best to take care of one another. Thank you for being part of the MINKA community!Please email if you want to work with the plant medicine micro-dose along with this journey.