Are You Willing?

On Mission and the Work That Asks to Be Built

I was guiding a plant medicine ceremony.

Not in some distant jungle or retreat center, but in a penthouse villa at a private members’ club overlooking the city.

My client had rented the space specifically for us to create something sacred together.

The living room was transformed into a sanctuary.

Dozens of candles flickered across various surfaces, their light catching the edges of fresh flowers arranged for the ritual.

My altar rested at the center, a mandala of objects that held the prayers of every ceremony I’ve ever guided.

The tones of crystal singing bowls moved through the air like invisible hands, creating a sonic embrace. I guided her into meditation. She dropped into the medicine.

This is what I do. I create the conditions for transformation.

I have held hundreds — more than 800 — of these spaces.

People arrive carrying their intentions, questions, and the unspoken weight of their lives. They come seeking clarity, healing, answers, direction.

We meet. We circle. They go within.

And with the support and intelligence of the sacred plants, in a responsibly held ceremonial container, something shifts.

The mind quiets.

The signal clarifies.

Her intention was clear and specific: she wanted to know her purpose. An intention I’ve witnessed countless times. People from all walks of life have come to ceremony with this same fundamental question burning inside them.

Five minutes into her process, she shot upright from her nest.

“Vonetta, you’re not going to believe this,” she said, her voice trembling with the kind of certainty that arises when you’ve touched something true. “It all came. The entire roadmap. Action steps. Everything.”

She was smiling from ear to ear, looking upward with awe.

“I got my purpose.”

We shared a long, silent moment together.

Suddenly animated, she looked at me.

“Oh! I forgot to tell you the most magical part,” she exclaimed. “The download came in golden codes that fell from the ceiling and landed in my heart.”

She raised her right hand and traced their spiraling movement through the air.

I paused.

I had seen them too.

Neuroscience calls this coherence. Indigenous cultures have understood it for millennia as alignment with the unified field.

It happens when the default mode network quiets and the brain enters a state of integrated knowing.

Her nervous system had found its way home. Her consciousness had accessed what was always there, waiting for her. I just happened to witness it.

Inside myself, I asked a quiet question: Why did it come so quickly for her?

The response came immediately, effortlessly, through clairaudience—actual words spoken within me with startling clarity:

‘When you’re aligned with the divine will, it comes that easy.’

And then a question turned toward me.

‘Are you willing?’

Not, are you ready.

Not, are you capable.

Not, do you have the resources or the platform or the perfect timing.

Are you willing?

Willing to carry something that will stretch you.

Willing to build something that may take a lifetime to tend.

Willing to complete what you’ve already started before reaching for what’s next.

There was no lightning strike.

No theatrical moment.

No voice booming from the heavens.

It was almost inconvenient in its simplicity—the way truth often is.

The question felt clean. Adult. Like responsibility.

And that’s when I understood something deeper about mission—something the cultural anthropologist in me recognizes across every tradition, every culture, every time a human has answered a call larger than themselves.

Mission is not about being important. It’s about being available.

Available to the divine will. Available to the work. Available to what is asking to be built through you—emerging from the unified field that is moving through all of us, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Mission, for me, is my promise to God.

It is the promise of my soul’s fulfillment, my destiny. It is not driven by ego or visibility, but by integrity. Showing up for what is mine to do before I leave this blessed Earth.

My response to the question was soft and humble: yes, of course.

Immediately, a rush of information came through—a clear architectural blueprint:

The New Dawn Institute for Peace and Harmony.

A network of regenerative research and community healing centers, one on every continent, each deeply rooted in the Indigenous cultural heritage of that land.

Minimally designed with profound respect for the land’s ecology, orientation, and energy. I saw Earth domes.

Each center would be anchored to its local community, sharing the rituals and songs of that culture—preserving the living, embodied knowledge carried by its people.

Each would have its own apothecary, utilizing sacred healing plants native to that land, prepared and offered by practitioners trained in that tradition.

But here is the deeper piece—the part that brings the vision into harmony:

These centers would function as both research and community healing spaces.

A mandala of experts—neuroscientists, psychologists, biologists, psychoacousticians, physicists, Indigenous knowledge keepers, somatic healers, chemists, educators, artists, and land stewards—would collaborate to develop educational frameworks and integrated learning processes that explore human flourishing within thriving communities and ecosystems.

Not extracting Indigenous knowledge and repackaging it for Western consumption. Not appropriating sacred practices. Rather, creating genuine dialogue between traditional wisdom and contemporary science. Building new relational structures that honor both the ancient and the emergent.

The vision unfolded all at once. Vast, clear, and undeniable.

But the path was not.

For two and a half years, I didn’t chase it.

I didn’t launch the institute.

I didn’t start fundraising or building the nonprofit structure (though the nonprofit is formed).

I didn’t skip ahead.

Instead, I finished what was mine to do.

What was already in my hands.

In between, I took time to ask questions.

I spoke with mentors, philanthropists, scientists, professors, and other visionaries who had followed through on the dreams they were called to build.

I interviewed people I trusted—Matthew, Katie, my shaman—seeking clarity about what this work might become.

I completed and published my book The Shaman’s Apprentice: A Memoir, so that my story—the story of how I came to this work, the initiations, the struggles, the sacred lineage—could be a map for others.

I built the Shamanic Practitioner Certification to train practitioners capable of holding real transformational processes with integrity. Not simply to teach techniques, but to cultivate perceptual depth, ethical responsibility, and the discipline required to hold ceremonial space.

Before I fully step into building the vision of the New Dawn Institute, I stand publicly as an advocate for sacred plants and the Indigenous knowledge that shaped me, even when it’s uncomfortable and controversial.

Mission does not stack. It completes.

You don’t get to skip chapters because the next one looks bigger or more compelling. You don’t abandon what’s in your hands because something more impactful appeared.

That’s not alignment.

That’s fragmentation. That’s the ego reaching for the next shiny thing.

Alignment requires integrity.

The greater prayer is the work before you.

Over these years, I’ve taken steady steps. The nonprofit is formed. Early collaborations are emerging. Research proposals are being drafted. Land partnerships are being explored. The centers are not yet built, and that’s okay. I’m learning something that every wisdom tradition teaches:

Mission unfolds in seasons.

A week ago, I was invited to a conscious leadership gathering. When I stepped onto the land of the retreat center, something in me stilled. It was pure recognition.

A confirmation.

This already exists.

Someone else has built a regenerative, ecological center with a remarkably similar vision. The two additional locations they are currently developing are two of the same regions that appeared in my download—as if the field itself was aligning the pieces.

I didn’t feel an ounce of competition, the response our society often defaults to. In fact, I felt pure joy, inspiration, and a deeper commitment to collaboration. When you’re on mission, competition simply falls away. It stops mattering. There is only the work that needs to be built.

What I know is this:

It’s not just my mission. It’s our mission.

When a vision belongs to the field—emerging through many people in many places, in many ways—it becomes inevitable.

It’s not dependent on any single person. It’s the culture shifting. It’s something life itself is bringing into form.

And there is something moving through the world right now. You can feel it if you’re quiet enough. A reorientation toward land. Toward coherence. Toward Indigenous wisdom as infrastructure. As the foundation for how we live, how we heal, how we build community.

The question isn’t who thought of it first.

The question is:

Who is willing to steward it?

Who is available?

Who will do their part, complete their chapter, and surrender with trust into the whole that is being built for all of us?

Maybe that’s the deeper invitation.

Not “What is my purpose?”

But:

Am I willing?

Willing to complete what’s unfinished.

Willing to collaborate with others who are building similar visions.

Willing to let it take time.

Willing to live your promise to God with integrity, even when the vision is bigger than your lifetime.

Willing to be part of something larger than yourself.

Alignment makes the vision clear.

Willingness makes it real.

It is the most active, most courageous thing we can do—to say yes to the path we know is ours.

Are you willing?

—

This is the first in a series of Field Notes—reflections on shamanic practice, cultural wisdom, the integration of science and spirit, and what it means to build a life and a work in alignment with something larger than ourselves for the greater good of all.

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