A Woman's Journev of Self-Disco very through the Medicine Wheel
MARCELA LOBOS
Praise for
AWAKENING YOUR INNER SHAMAN “In challenging times, it is a gift when a teacher appears to lead us back into the light after we have been walking the hero’s journey. This requires someone who knows the path and has lived it, not just studied it. In Awakening Your Inner Shaman, Marcela Lobos brilliantly shares her personal story of initiation and how she stepped into the woman of power she is now. Her journey illuminates an incredible map that will guide you into the truth of who you are and your unique gifts and destiny.
“Alongside her stories of bravery and exquisite growth, she leads us step-by-step into transforming our dark night of the soul into an amazing journey of healing. This book is so timely and important for all of us awakening to the truth of
our soul.”
—Sandra Ingerman, MA, renowned shamanic teacher and award-winning author of 12 books, including Walking in Light and The Book of Ceremony “This beautifully written and profound mystical memoir is a delight for all seekers on all paths. Read it and be inspired to discover the purpose and meaning of your own amazing
life.”
—Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope and co-author with Carolyn Baker of Radical Regeneration “Marcels Lobos takes the reader on a profound journey from the mundane to the extraordinary, providing 13 archetypal milestones that will transform, empower, and open up a new dimension of fulfillment that causes us to become masters of our own lives.”
—Anita Moorjani, NewY ork Times best-selling author of Dying to Be Me and What if This Is Heaven?
“Follow Marcela Lobos’s riveting, courageous story as she weaves her hero’s journey with the Medicine Wheel to create a unique and thrilling map that leads from despair to daring. In the pages of this inspiring book, we accompany Marcela through her extraordinary, authentic shamanic initiation to becoming a Medicine Woman. She offers us hope that the abundance and magic we seek is hidden in plain sight all around us—and this book will show you how to find it. I couldn’t put it down!”
—Colette Baron-Reid, internationally acclaimed oracle expert, intuitive, and best-selling author of The Map “What you hold in your hands is like a sacred talisman that offers protection on the spiritual path. Awakening Your Inner Shaman is Marcela Lobos’s quest to discover wisdom and meaning when facing her dark shadows, despair, and suffering. She weaves the insights of the hero’s journey together with the Medicine Wheel teachings to offer you portals to profound realizations of truth. Take Marcela’s teachings with you on your spiritual journey to discover your own courage and strength!”
—Matteo Pistono, meditation teacher and author of In the Shadow of the Buddha and Meditation: Coming to Know
Y our Mind
Wakening
vour Inner
ALSO BY MARCELA LOBOS
Mystical Shaman Oracle
(co-written with Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., and Colette Baron-Reid)
HAY HOUSE TITLES OF RELATED INTEREST
YOU CAN HEAL YOUR LIFE, the movie, starring Louise Hay & Friends
(available as a 1-DVD program, an expanded 2-DVD set, and
an online streaming video)
Learn more at www.hayhouse.com/louise-movie
THE SHIFT, the movie, starring Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
(available as a 1-DVD program, an expanded 2-DVD set, and
an online streaming video)
Learn more at www.hayhouse.com/the-shift-movie ·)«(·
The Heart of the Shaman: Stories and Practices of the
Luminous Warrior by Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D.
Kindling the Native Spirit: Sacred Practices for Everyday
Life
by Denise Linn
Light the Flame: 365 Days of Prayer by Andrew Harvey
Uncharted: The Journey through Uncertainty to Infinite
Possibility
by Colette Baron-Reid
All of the above are available at your local bookstore, or may be ordered by visiting:
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A Woman’s Journey of Self-Discovery through Ihe Medicine Wheel
MARCH LA LOBOS
HAY HOUSE, INC.
Carlsbad, California · New York City T.ondon · Sydney · New Delhi
Published in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com
Published in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.: www.hayhouse.com.au
Published in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk
Published in India by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in
Cover illustration: Jena DellaGrottaglia
Cover design and Interior design: Bryn Starr Best
Interior images used under license from Shutterstock.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use —other than for "fair use” as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews—without prior written permission of the publisher.
The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.
As a memoir, events are re-created to the best of the author’s memory. While all the stories in this book are true, some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved. In some cases, timelines have been adjusted for the sake of the narrative.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress
Tradepaper ISBN: 978-1-4019-6032-2 e-book ISBN: 978-1-4019-6033-9
To Mother Earth and to all courageous souls who say yes to their call to become her Stewards
CONTENTS
Preface: Rites of Passage Introduction: Quest to Self
PART I: SOUTH MILESTONE 1: The Call from Spirit MILESTONE 2: Refusal of the Call MILESTONE 3: Auspicious Synchronises
MILESTONE 4: Crossing the Threshold MILESTONE 5: Into the Heart of the Womb MILESTONE 6: Tests and Tribulations
PART III: NORTH MILESTONE 7: Meeting the Goddess MILESTONE 8: Atonement with the Father MILESTONE 9: Apotheosis
MILESTONE 10: The Ultimate Boon MILESTONE 11: Refusal of the Return MILESTONE 12: The Magic Flight
PART V: MASTER OF THE MEDICINE WHEEL MILESTONE 13: Sharing the Gift
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What can never be stressed too much or meditated on too deeply is that the journey to Origin, the journey to our divine nature, is in its own way just as natural, just as inherently part of the fullness of nature and creation as growing roses in a garden or wheat in a field.
- Andrew Harvey, The Direct Path
WHEN I AWOKE ON THE MORNING of my 49th birthday, I greeted it as one of the most auspicious days of my life. Mystical traditions speak of the completion of the seventh septennium as a significant rite of passage into life’s golden years. I would celebrate the achievement, for better or worse, of having gone through the seven main energy centers (chakras) of my body. What this means is that my psyche had had the chance to cultivate all the essential themes of humanity: starting from survival at the root chakra up to spiritual connection at the crown chakra, passing through love at the heart.
Great astrological significance was soon to coincide. The centaur Chiron, something between an asteroid and a comet, would line up right with my sun. This celestial body represents the deepest issue of wounding in one’s life; it returns to the same place in our natal chart every 50 years. One astrologer had recently warned me: “The months after you turn forty-nine, your essential wounding will ooze
and fester in the hope that you reach deeper places of wisdom, love, and strength.”
How wonderful! I thought, reflecting on the astrologer’s words. As I lay in bed, a hot flash overcame me. The heat rising up my spine, drenching me with sweat, was almost delicious. I thought of my past burning away to make space for a bolder and wiser me. Welcome, menopause! My friends who had already undergone this rite of passage warned me that it wasn’t easy, but the sense of freedom that comes with it is worth all the trouble.
After a difficult childhood and young adulthood, every gift I could hope for on my 49th birthday was here: My two sons were healthy and independent; my parents were well. My first book was written and turned in to my publisher. I was waking up next to my beloved husband, Alberto, with whom I’d spent the last 16 years. Soon, as he did most mornings, Alberto would bring tea so we could share our dreams of the night and set the intentions of the day. This morning, he also brought flowers, a gift, and a poem he wrote for me.
It is my ritual anytime I feel deep emotion to go out and soak in the earth and nature. So, after relishing my husband’s loving words, I put on my favorite gardening dress. I felt inspired to plant new daylilies for the many hummingbirds pirouetting around the house.
On my way to get the plants, I stopped to speak with our housekeeper. I found her in the laundry room, ironing sheets while listening to local news. The reporter was just announcing that new cases of COVID-19 were being discovered in a town near the mountains where we live. Right then, I knew that new struggles had begun: quarantine.
My immune system was still delicate after an awful fungal infection in my lungs had almost killed me three years earlier, and Alberto was already in the third age of life. Both of us were considered to be “at risk.” So when we’d first heard news of the pandemic, we decided then that we would be cautious.
Alberto and I live in Central Chile on 60 acres of land, upon which we’d built a retreat center to teach our shamanic and health programs. In order to care for the grounds and day-to-day business, we had a full-time staff that included two managers, cooks, carpenters, gardeners, and housekeepers. Now we had to quickly cancel our upcoming programs, downsize our operations, and redistribute all the logistical responsibilities.
Thus began a tumultuous period in our lives, which coincided, of course, with extreme, far-reaching changes around the world. In parallel to this outer stress, my inner world was battling hot flashes and extreme exhaustion. A few weeks later, while coming to terms with my adrenal fatigue, Chiron began pressing unrelentingly on my deepest soul wounds. Sadness inundated me frequently; I felt pushed to the side, replaced and forgotten as a teacher, and unrecognized for my contributions.
As the days went by, thousands of people died of COVID-19 while millions protested for social injustice around the world. . . . Millions of acres of Siberian forest burned, and Greenland’s ice melted to a point of no return. . . . My sadness turned from cold, paralyzing melancholy to boiling, active rage. At the worst junction, I felt an unbearable sense of betrayal and an urgent need for justice and revenge. How could I, a peaceful person who teaches goodness and spirituality, be thinking such harmful thoughts?
Three months of isolation with my husband turned our loving sanctuary into a pressure cooker—along with all the ingredients for intense transformation. Soon, I understood that the offense I felt was beyond my rational mind. Karmic memories had been unleashed; this was all coming from a past-life trauma, generational trauma, and cultural trauma.
I knew that no matter how painful this rite of passage was, I would have to endure the process with all the wisdom and grace I could bring forth from all my years of work. I had to embody now every bit of understanding I had cultivated for over 20 years as a yogi and a shaman, and later as a self-taught student of depth psychology. This was not something I would accomplish by ruminating but by engaging in the great alchemical process my soul was pushing for. Would I heed the call?
Depth psychology and shamanism teach that going through rites of passage requires a death of the ego to enter into a higher consciousness. Thus, I knew from long ago that at some point in my life, the middle-age working mama would need to die, offering me the opportunity to embrace my wisdom as the crone. Yet, from facing my past rites of passage, I knew this to be a bloody or terrifying experience. Waking up at age 13 smeared in blood, birthing two children at home, and experiencing a painful divorce left an impression on me at the deepest level. My work with guiding women for the past 14 years had also taught me a great deal about fear around the letting-go process and facing an unknown future.
All these understandings contained wisdom to help me birth my new self. It was vital not to resist, but to breathe intensely through each of the unbearable contractions. Yes, there would be a birth canal. My pain, rage, and great anxiety—not far from the anxiety of so many other people going through terrible challenges in the world —squeezed me to my core, so I would eventually emerge into a bigger and more compassionate reality.
To avoid becoming completely lost in the madness of my emotions, I practiced the art of witnessing. In my 20s, my heartful yoga teacher taught me how to take up residence in the awareness that observes thoughts, feelings, and surroundings without reacting to any of it. “Be aware and stay with your breath,” was the instruction. Then, a few years ago, my practice acquired a new depth of “let it be” as I began training with a Bhutanese lama in the unsurpassable Dzogchen meditation. “Leave it as it is,” were his words. “Even the breath. . . . Do not try to control or follow your breath.” This happened as he had me rest my eyes and my awareness in a symbol that represents the vast expanse of the primordial nature of the mind—unconstrained by the daily burdens of one’s life.
Thus, when I viewed the world through the eyes of a deeply offended human being living in a terribly upset world, I had to truly meditate. It was one thing to sit on a warm cushion while all was dandy around me, and another to let the heat of my rage boil without setting my house or my relationship on fire (which is what I truly felt like doing at moments).
Recognizing the karmic consequences of acting with rage, I focused on my own dying and my own rebirth. I did everything needed: I spoke to wise, older women; shed many tears in my beloved gardens; danced until I could step no more; and said what I needed to share with my partner. In this last regard, I did it with the utmost respect I could manage, while taking responsibility for my own emotions. In the end, it was not anyone’s fault, but rather one of the deepest purifications I would ever have to face in my life.
Crossing a portal from jealousy and insecurity to claim my selfworth, without expecting it to be handed to me, felt so immense that I am sure it was not about me alone. By letting the process be exactly as it needed to be, honoring each step of the way, and feeling every emotion at its fullest, I liberated so much energy. It was not just my own energy from this life and other lives, but also that of my mother, sister, nieces, and generations before and after. Through this book and sharing my own story, I hope to show you that as we embrace our healing and awakening, with all the beauty and horror that comes with it, we end up in service not just to our individual souls but to all others—and the world. It becomes our task to continue owning everything that goes into our cauldron of transformation so we can continue shining in our own majesty, no matter what external circumstances manifest.
The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is just how it is and it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think they know how the universe could have been had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without death, are unfit for illumination.
- JOSEPH CAMPBELL
IN OUR POSTMODERN, MATERIALISTIC, technological era, it is not uncommon to find people in some sort of crisis, whether emotional, psychological, or spiritual. We might hear from a friend, a family member, or other person we know that they are feeling distressed, neurotic, anxious, disturbed, obsessed, depressed, absent, or utterly confused. These feelings are signs of inner conflict crying out for resolution, which requires shifting one’s perception and adjusting one’s attitude and actions accordingly. When this is happening on such a wide scale, we can clearly see that our entire society is screaming for a healthier way of relating to life.
In my early 20s, my own inner conflicts led me to the healing and mystery wisdom of Eastern traditions, especially the practice of yoga. Then an unexpected turn of events led me to the deep exploration of the shamanic path, mainly in the context of the Andes and the Amazon spirituality. Through my journey of initiation into shamanic wisdom, I encountered ancient maps of reality, with their visible and invisible components.
Maps of reality help us navigate the vast territory of our psyche in relationship to others and to the world. Myths and religious narratives are also maps, connecting us to a foundation that grounds us and gives us a sense of belonging. In this book, I share with you two powerful maps that have been used since ancestral times to help practitioners face the crucial questions of life.
The first map is the Medicine Wheel from South America. When perceived as a holographic configuration superimposed on reality, it is more than a map and instead becomes a vehicle that is able to drive us out of our fear and immobility into a meaningful life path.
The second map is the Hero’s Journey, often superficially portrayed in Hollywood movies. While the narrative of the hero has long been discussed, the term “hero’s journey” was coined in 1949 by professor Joseph Campbell to encapsulate an archetypal enrichment of one’s personality that ripples out to society. However, the roots of this journey are deeply steeped in ancient traditions from around the world. It tells of the moment we are invited to step out of ordinary life into the extraordinary quest that will bring great wisdom to the individual and the community.
The Medicine Wheel came to my life when I was a distraught young wife with two small children. Through following its signs and symbols, I healed chronic discouragement and vulnerability, and I found the way to my inner strength and certainty. Later, the Hero’s Journey gave me a more detailed understanding of each milestone I endured to come home in my own bones, heart, and soul.
When I learned of the concept of individuation as described by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, I realized that both maps are rich in guidelines toward this process. Our technological global society does not offer a sacred and transcendental purpose to the individual. While our ancestors looked at the stars in the sky, the mountains, the rivers, and to the plant and animal life for guidance and inspiration, we look at the screen for facts and information.
As Jung described it, “Individuation means becoming a single, homogeneous being, and, in so far as individuality embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s self. We could therefore translate individuation as . .
. ‘self-realization.’” The individuation process is a remarkable, complete, and detailed vision of how we can attain the emotional, psychological, and spiritual grace our humanity yearns for. Accordingly, it is crucial for each person to integrate all aspects of oneself to become a cohesive personality: someone who is not fragmented, but indivisible, while striving for wholeness and completion. This would result in healthy, vibrant individuals who grow up psychologically independent from their parents and who find purpose in what they do, while contributing in a meaningful way to society.
The individuation process propels us toward the realization of our broader Self. We evolve from an immature self-centered view of the world to a holistic and all-encompassing perception of reality. To understand the Self, we must first understand that we are conscious of only a very small percentage of our total beingness. Just as we cannot see the full size of an iceberg by examining only the tip that sticks out of the ocean, we cannot understand our full consciousness by examining only what we pay attention to. Under the surface is what Jung calls the personal unconscious merging with the immeasurable waters of the collective unconscious, which constitutes the timeless and universal forces that influence all humans’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
On one end of the unconscious, we find the inner biological urges driving us to survive. On the other end, we have the dynamic energies that show up in the mind as persuasive images known as “archetypes.” Although archetypes belong to the collective, each person or culture forms and dresses them according to their own beliefs. Primordial examples of these are the mother, the wise man, the child, and the hero.
The individuation process drives us to realize the Self that encompasses our entire being. In doing so, the ego, the regulating agent of our conscious awareness, begins to notice and accept reality exactly as it is rather than trying to manipulate it to what it wishes to be.
To this end, we must admit reality in all its shades from bright to dark. We must recognize all our reactions from joy and freedom to terror and anguish. We must face the aspects of our personality that make us feel insecure, awkward, shameful, or afraid—everything that we push away because it is uncomfortable, to say the least. Jung called this unrecognized area the “shadow,” which becomes bigger and darker the more we ignore our totality in all its forms: good, bad, ugly, and infinitely fabulous.
Jung also emphasized the need to acknowledge the mask we wear to show up in the world: the “persona.” This is not our authentic self, but the image that we pretend to be. For our individuation, it is crucial to distinguish how the opposite gender lives in each one of us. As women we have a masculine essence known as animus; as men, we are accompanied by the feminine spirit, or anima.
These are all fundamental milestones in our innate quest to Selfrealization. This pursuit is at the core of our human existence, yet it is ignored by the greed of civilization and forgotten by our materialistic society. Thankfully, there are curious individuals and wise traditions that never gave up the quest for meaning and solace. Today, these are oases of sacredness in a profane world, offering us true guidance to become individuals with a sense of value and belonging.
The Medicine Wheel is an ancient and universal map, the essence of which has been depicted and used by many cultures since prehistoric times. In its most fundamental representation, it consists of a circle with a middle point from which four or more spokes radiate to connect with the outer ring.
The circle is the most powerful symbol of our collective psyche to represent wholeness, inclusiveness, and the connectivity of all life. It can symbolize our Earth, our cosmos, or smaller units like a tribe or a village. It also represents completion, fulfillment, and ripeness in nature as in images like a pregnant belly, the full moon, or ripened fruit.
Likewise, the Medicine Wheel speaks about time as a continuum, where there is no beginning and no end . . . a time that acknowledges the cyclical essence of nature observing the full rotations of the moon, the sun, the stars, and the breath . . . a time that sees death as renewal, and ripeness to be followed by decay.
In this way, the Medicine Wheel may be seen as both a spatial platform and a calendar. The divisions within its circle mark regions like the four cardinal directions (South, West, North, and East) or the influence of the five elements in Chinese philosophy (Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood). These regions can also represent time: the solstices and equinoxes; full, waning, dark, and waxing moon phases; the disappearing of the Pleiades in the winter sky and its return in the spring; or dusk, night, dawn, and midday.
In this book, I present a particular expression of the Medicine Wheel assembled by Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D. This is based on the wisdom and cosmology of the Andean and jungle peoples of Pern, shamans abroad, and Western studies in psychology.
As a medical anthropologist, Alberto traveled extensively throughout the Peruvian Andes for more than three decades. In his early 20s, he went to study the ways indigenous people healed and performed healings in their communities, and he discovered that their methods were inextricable from a rich mythology.
The Andean tradition recognizes three parallel levels of existence: the Hanaq Pacha, or upper world; the Kai Pacha, or middle world; and the Ukhu Pacha, or lower world. These offered a vertical dimension to the Medicine Wheel that was gestating within Alberto’s awareness. Furthermore, in this mythology, each level of consciousness, or domain, has a guardian spirit animal that guides a medicine person through the corresponding landscape to connect with vital elements. The spirit of Condor is custodian of the upper
world. The spirit of Jaguar or Puma is the keeper of the middle world. The spirit of Serpent is the protector of the lower world.
While Alberto was in the jungle in the early 1980s, working with visionary plants and master herbalists, he conceived a whole picture of the Medicine Wheel that he would soon present to the Western world. In this vision, Serpent slithered to the South to bring a visceral connection to Earth through our physical existence. Jaguar stalked the West to guard the veil between the dark and the light, between death and rebirth. And Eagle soared to the East to welcome the new day and the new beginnings in the luminous meadow of all possibilities.
But who would guard the North direction?
As Alberto received the complete map, the spirit of Hummingbird fluttered toward the North to guard the life force that nourishes the soul and all existence. After all, for the Nazca civilization that flourished in Pern between 100 b.c.e. and 800 c.e., the hummingbird was an essential totem to remember how life blossoms. They dwelled in the Atacama, the driest desert in the world, while on the other side of the Andes mountains lay the lush jungles of the Amazon. They knew that despite the aridity all around, they could summon that life force, asking hummingbird to bring its bright colors, fertility, and abundance of food and water.
Each quadrant of the Medicine Wheel is alive with teachings. Together, they offer us a map of a wondrous journey that assures our transformation toward a healthier life and a conscious destiny. We begin in the center with a prayer; then we step into the South as we invoke the spirit of Serpent to be our protector and guide. From here we go in a clockwise direction, passing through the West, the North, and then the East—perhaps to then restart our journey with more awareness.
We can traverse the Medicine Wheel more than once, especially if one is to become a master or sage of its wisdom. The first time around, we are engaged primarily in our own self-discovery and healing. The second time, the Medicine Wheel reveals its hidden knowledge, and we begin to intellectually understand the processes. The third time we truly embody the medicine and the connection with the spiritual lineages. The fourth time, we finally perceive the subtle energetic threads of all the components while quickly transcending all that is happening.
This Medicine Wheel is a timeless spiritual path, strongly rooted in gratitude for life and generosity with others.
Now, let’s explore the interconnection of the Wheel with the Hero’s Journey—the other map I intimately connected with while on my own inner adventure, and while teaching this wisdom to others in the past few years.
To make our passage through the Medicine Wheel richer and more dynamic, we venture through the Hero’s Journey, another effective compass guiding our journey of spiraling transformation toward a more awakened and generous Self.
Myths are sacred stories that reveal quintessential truths. When we look beyond the unique traits of the settings, actors, and actions, we can see that underneath each myth is a yearning to provide the audience with a sense of belonging to their time and place and, moreover, with a sense of purpose.
The late American professor, Joseph Campbell, remains one of the world’s foremost authorities on mythology. In his own words, myths have “the symbols to carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those constant fantasies that tend to tie it back.” He became aware that in all myths revealing a hero, there are common steps that transfigured the original individual into the champion.
Campbell referred to these parallel stories as the “Monomyth,” a term he borrowed from the Irish writer James Joyce. In his description of this universal initiatory journey, Campbell discusses 17 steps organized into three main parts:
• First, the departure or separation: The individual is summoned to change his or her close-fitting routines, status quo, or wrong living.
• Second, the descent and initiation: The character undergoes difficulties or tests and trials; faces death of the ego; encounters a transpersonal force or divinity; and receives new powers, wisdoms, and gifts.
• Finally, the return: The individual must go back to his ordinary world and share his new knowledge and gifts.
Although aspects of Campbell’s Monomyth have been called into question by many, for me it is still a remarkable map that helps us reflect on our inner quest for wisdom and Self-realization. Throughout this book, I share how it guided my own journey toward wholeness and self-awareness.
Without trying and in the most organic manner, I received the Hero’s Journey map as a natural complement to the Medicine Wheel that was already in me. It fit my experience of surrendering an outdated self to be reborn into deeper wisdom, confidence, and creativity. When I encountered the Hero’s Journey for the first time, I felt its essence rather than trying to understand it in my head or overanalyze it. I saw how it rotates perfectly with the Medicine Wheel, and I started filling in the blanks with my own journey through both maps.
In Milestones 7 and 8, I speak in detail how within our human psyches we carry the feminine and masculine energies, and how important it is for each one of us to find our own healthy dance. In this book, I share how I reconnected with my feminine power and how I made peace with the masculine. Therefore, I offer my experiences to anyone who resonates with them, regardless if you feel more like she, he, them, or anything beyond or in between.
In my embrace of the Hero’s Journey, I adapted Campbell’s 17 steps to a loop of 13 milestones. These stages rotate alongside the four directions of the Medicine Wheel, honoring the 13 moons of a year.
After I introduce the direction of the South on the Medicine Wheel,
I relate the first three milestones of the Hero’s Journey. I then introduce the West, along with the next three milestones; then the North and the next three milestones; and finally the East and the next three milestones. At the end is milestone 13, holding the place of being in one’s own sweet spot, in perfect flow with creation.
It’s important to remember that the Medicine Wheel and the Hero’s Journey are maps. As with any other map, learning their lines intellectually doesn’t mean that we know the territory. We must still cross through our own landscapes of doubt, fear, and pain to arrive to further wisdom, love, and light.
If our journey toward a more conscious and loving Self is like a spiral, we must go all the way around to get to a new level of understanding. We must get married, have kids, get divorced, lose a job, lose a loved one, get sick, and so on. This is the long or painful route. But when we listen to the voice calling us to embark on our quest, then we have the chance to quantum leap into the next level, or even many levels up, all at once—like peeling many layers of an onion instead of one at a time to arrive to the core.
Another key point to keep in mind while learning about the milestones of the hero or the directions of the wheel, is that we can experience them in all different kinds of orders. Sometimes we might be given a divine gift to share with others, which is at the end of the loop I depict here; and then much later we feel the need to free ourselves from a senseless status quo, which is at the beginning of this work. It could also happen that we experience a dark night of the soul as the start of our quest, and then meet the divine aspects of ourselves, all of which I present in the middle.
Consider the stages of this journey as being presented here in a “default” sequence, to make it easier to follow along and understand. This is the same structure I use in my workshops. My students also receive exercises to energetically and symbolically go through each step. When they go home, they experience the ripples from the work we did in class, and their lives become more authentic and
meaningful. Through the wisdom they acquire, they can traverse the stages of their quest with added grace and courage.
As described by shaman Lynn Andrews in Crystal Woman: “Shamanism is a subtle and alchemical process designed to transform and elevate the spirit beyond the constructs of the known limits of reality. It is the space program of the soul and launches you out into the uncharted territory of the stars. It teaches you to experience the wisdom of the Pleiades and the Universe, not just the physical of the planets.”
Nowadays, with great justice, the title “shaman” can trigger serious confusion. According to Finnish linguist Juha Janhunen, the term is believed to come from the Tungusic and Evenki word saman from Siberia, which means “one who knows.” In the 17th century the term was first taken to Europe and later became popular when anthropologists began using it as an umbrella word for indigenous medicine people who contact the spirit world while in an altered state of consciousness.
Yet nowhere in the world does a traditional healer call herself saman unless she is from Siberia. For example, the people I studied with in the Peruvian Andes are known as pacos; the ones in the Peruvian jungle are merayas; and the medicine women in Southern Chile are machis.
However, I am personally fond of the term “shaman,” and since it has already taken roots in the Western world, I am eager to raise the bar for anyone striving to become a “shamanic practitioner.” Therefore, when I speak about awakening your inner shaman through this book, I’m referring to your answering the call to become a healer in your community or to cultivate a purpose bigger than yourself that can benefit others. I’m also alluding to how important it is to cultivate a high level of ethics and generosity, and not to pursue knowledge or power for personal gain alone.
One reason why shamanism has brought up confusion and mistrust in the Western mind is because too many individuals wear the role of shaman to manipulate or abuse others. For me and the tradition I studied with, this abuse of power is recognized as sorcery, and the people who practice it are seen as sorcerers.
In his work, Dr. Villoldo has extensively referred to the master shamans of the Quechuan Andes as Laikas. According to him, it was the term used to denote the most accomplished medicine men and women before the Christian Inquisition accused them of being witches and sorcerers to catechize their people. For this reason, I often intermingle the name Laika when speaking about the highly realized shaman. However, everyone does not need to claim the mantle of “shaman” to awaken their inner power and live a self- realized existence that blesses those around them.
•)tC
Both the Medicine Wheel and the Hero’s Journey are circular, and in this book I turn them in parallel motion like two wheels joined by an axle. As we go around both wheels, I share my personal story and the stories of others to clearly illustrate how each step affects our psyche and creates substantial ripples in our lives. As you read, you are invited to recognize when and how you have been in each landscape and to reflect on where you are now. At the end, I hope that you are able to identify what psychic, emotional, and spiritual milestones you have already realized. Then, moving forward, you will begin to see what dangers loom before you and what opportunities you must claim and not miss.
Another point I want to highlight before diving into our heroic journey has to do with the idea of the extraordinary. I am offering you a compass to help you live a remarkable life, not because of material or outer success, but for the ability to cultivate presence and courage in the face of challenges and deception. Likewise, I offer personal experiences that are not relatable from a linear and reductionist mindset; it takes a level of openness and sensibility to perceive the world beyond appearances. My story is about an intimate initiation to a spiritual tradition, and many of the events I narrate are indeed outside the conventional world. I also give plenty of examples of other people crossing the fine veils between the visible ordinary and the invisible extraordinary.
In my own story, you will recognize the difficulties I went through while growing up with financial and emotional instability in a narrowminded society. Rebelling from the repressive atmosphere of dictatorial Chile, I arrived in hippie California in 1992 at the age of 20. Wheatgrass juice, hang-loose surfing, and women’s hairy armpits offered me a freedom I did not know was possible. Yoga, massage, and Ayurveda opened my eyes to a holistic life. Despite all these awakenings, marriage and motherhood revived my childhood traumas and generational wounding. At age 30, while miserably drowning in the dark pool of my fears, I washed ashore, exhausted, and found the shamanic path. With the force and speed of lightning, my life took a sharp turn toward my own healing and understanding of the Hero’s Journey.
After a decade I had completed the core work of alchemizing my pain and sorrows into sources of wisdom and compassion. I was first initiated into the mystery teachings within the framework of the Four Winds Society, and then directly by the wisdom keepers of the Peruvian Andes and Amazon jungle. I returned to Chile, studied with the medicine women of the south, and created a retreat center in the mountains together with my husband, Alberto Villoldo, shaman, author, and founder of the mystery school I attended. During all these years, my eagerness to feel and connect with the deepest truth of reality kept expanding in my heart.
Today, it is my passion to teach about the maps that guide us toward Self-realization, and I am delighted to craft rites of passage for women to step into their own beauty, power, and wisdom.
I invite you to use this book as a mirror that helps you see where you are in your unique quest for deeper truth. Blessings while you read and beyond!
To the Winds of the South,
Great Serpent,
Wrap your coils of light around us.
Teach us to shed our past the way you shed your skin,
All at once.
Teach us the way of the Earth, the beauty way,
To touch, everyone we touch, with beauty.
IN THE SOUTH, we do not disown our past; rather, we are no longer owned by it. The image of a serpent shedding its old skin all at once is a metaphor for the shamanic act of letting go of our limiting and constricting story.
Often, the story we have crafted about our lives is made of excuses for why we are the way we are today. We use these tales to justify and determine so much of our behavior and decision making. As we break free from our personal story, we have an opportunity to move from a biased past to an authentic present. In so doing, we set free the ghosts from our past who are still haunting us. (This does not necessarily refer to people who have died, but the actions and influence of people who are trapped in our psyche and continue to affect us in the present.) This is a crucial step to awakening your inner shaman.
If we wish to have a genuine relationship with each moment, then every time we have acquired a thick and heavy story, we must undergo the exercise of releasing the past. From there, we can step fresh into the now, like the serpent slithering over the earth with her tender underbelly. There are three common roles, however, that many people fall into that keep them stuck in their stories.
• The victim: Nobody wants to suffer. However, when we are deeply disempowered, sheltering our shame or guilt, we can become addicted to some level of pain. Making victimhood glamorous is our unconscious strategy to manipulate attention from others and thereby feel special.
• The rescuer: Ignoring our own wounding and needs, we yearn to feel better by helping others. Our sense of importance is subject to the level of reliance that others place on us. To feel valued and connected, we create dependency. Eventually we become tired and resentful, and easily slip into the role of victim or perpetrator.
• The perpetrator: Out of our own insecurities, we become judgmental, angry, or self-righteous. To feel safe, we want to impose our own order and discipline, even punish others. We fear the loss of control and maintain a defensive attitude.
Together, these roles form what is known as the triangle of disempowerment—a perfect recipe for perpetuating tragedy. As long as a perpetrator finds a victim, soon there will be a rescuer. As in the following example, when we play any of these three roles, it is easy to slide from one position to the next within the triangle.
In a class I was teaching, one of my students shared how she had moved from one role to another in relationship to her partner. Ella had met her wife at a school where they both worked, so they were able to spend most of the day together at the beginning of their romance. A few months after they married, her partner found a different job and started spending more time in soccer training. While Ella was happy that her wife was earning a better salary and playing the sports she loved, she also missed the constant contact. Her sadness gradually turned into a sense of abandonment, and her mind began to spin the stories of a victim: “She doesn’t really love me. . . .” “She loves to play soccer more than she loves me. . . .”
Soon, Ella’s sadness shifted into resentment and anger. When her partner arrived home late from practice, Ella pretended to be busy and gave her the cold shoulder. She entertained ideas of revenge for how she was treated. Other times, Ella felt guilty and told herself she was being selfish. Then she would make a special effort to clean the house and prepare delicious meals.
Ella felt caught in a vicious cycle and did not know how to break free from the maddening feelings that overpowered her. Fortunately, in the context of the South direction, she was able to step out of the triangle—and the drama—altogether. Of course, it required great courage and awareness from her part, but the spirit of the Serpent was present at all times to lead the way. And the wisdom of the South direction created the context for her to carry out such a task, as it does for all of us.
How do we disengage from drama? How do we let go of our stories—not only ones we feel very ready to release but also those with which we strongly identify?
The first step is to make a conscious and courageous decision to strip ourselves naked of the excuses that determine our attitudes and actions.
The next step is to take a sincere look at our personal story by speaking with a friend or a therapist, or simply by writing in a journal about what feels important. Throughout this process, we must recognize the moments of our story that hold the most energy; this is where we feel the strongest emotions.
When a memory from our past still awakens uncomfortable feelings in us—meaning we still experience jealousy, anger, or anxiety when we think about the story—this indicates there is an imprint in our psyche that has not yet found healing or resolution. Each imprint from our story is like a scale in the skin of the Serpent. These scales represent information stored in the energy field of a person, all of which are affecting one’s entire expression—body, mind, and soul. As Albert Einstein said, “the field is the sole governing agency of the particle.” As explained to me by the shamans I studied with, the personal energy field is an archive of information telling the stories of whom we have been, how we will live, and how we will die.
The third step involves healing the imprints we uncovered in the previous step. Now, it could be a lengthy and laborious task to attempt to heal and transform every imprint in our field. Imagine a serpent trying to change one scale at a time rather than stepping out of its hoary skin all at once. Thus, to disengage from our entire story, we must identify three episodes that have the strongest charge. We must reflect on each wounding one at a time until realizing its precious lessons, which in turn become sources of wisdom and compassion.
The shaman knows that all the events in our lives are related, just like the scales of the serpent are connected. This wisdom allows us to transmute three painful occurrences and immediately “unstructure” the rest of the imprints, so they all crumble away like a pillar of blocks losing their foundation. Each of the three events, and the stories around them, act like a hook to pull and shed the whole skin.
Once we have gone through this healing process with each of the three imprints, we might feel lighter and more peaceful. However, in this step we have only detached our story; we have not yet released it.
In the final step, we generate the clear and steadfast intention to become free from the grip of the past, and to fully step into the gifts of the present. To do this, we must create a simple but meaningful ceremony. Sacred rituals take us beyond mental logic to deeply touch our soul, which in turn affects our feelings and thoughts.
There are several options available for your ritual here. First, you need a physical manifestation of your stories, such as the sheets of paper that you wrote upon in step two. If you don’t have your stories written on paper, then you can blow the energy of your stories into stones, leaves, or sticks, and discharge that instead.
Next, you work with nature by choosing one of the elements. For example, you can build a fire and proceed to burn your stories, while pouring some olive oil on the flames as an offering. Another option is to sail your stories to the expanses of a lake or a sea by tying them to floating wood with offerings of flowers. You can bury your stories in the earth with some red wine. You can also blow them to the wind while burning some incense.
In all cases, what is really important is that you summon the spirit of Serpent to aid you in carrying out your intention. As you release your story, repeat, “I am grateful for my past, but I am no longer owned by it. I am grateful for each of my ancestors, and now I set them free.” Add anything else that resonates truth with the purpose of becoming fully present in the now. At the end, finish with a prayer for the times to come.
On our journey to wholeness, we recognize that if we do not heal and release our stories, then we remain hostage to our imprints, which behave like invisible scripts, instigating us to repeat the same painful patterns. We might even be condemned to unhealthy relationships, accidents, or diseases, in order to learn our lessons— so to have another opportunity to mend our unresolved physical, emotional, or spiritual issues.
My own story begins in Chile. In the winter of 1984, when I was 13 years old, my mother picked me and my siblings up from school one afternoon. After a short visit with our grandmother, we rushed home so as not to break the curfew that our military government had, once again, ordained to start in the late afternoon. My older brother rode in the front seat of our little Fiat while I sat with my two younger siblings in the back. Normally, we jabbed each other with elbows and knees for more room, but that day the distractions were outside. My mother maneuvered around mounds of tires blazing in the middle of the street. Protesters threw rocks at the policemen who hid behind their shields and waved their truncheons and guns. On the news that night, I heard that a few people were injured.
At home, my mother began to make us once, a traditional Chilean tea-time ritual inherited from British settlements in the 1800s. I stayed outside to listen to the distant clatter of pots and pans as they began to ring out into the cold dusk—a strangely exhilarating anonymous protest. I did not really understand what they meant, but I liked the feeling of the sound.
As my siblings and I sat around the table to do our homework, the lights went off.
“The terrorists blew the electrical towers again,” said my mother as she rummaged for candles in the cabinets. “They shut off the whole city.”
I finished my homework by candlelight, then went back outside in total darkness and noticed the stars shining brighter than ever. Now the pots and pans were being played by thousands of people. I wondered what it was like in those homes where the mothers played the pots and pans.
My family was never part of any protest. I was born into a family with military connections two years before the Chilean coup d’etat. As a teenager, the curfew imposed by Pinochet’s military dictatorship and the frequent power cuts were simply facts of life I was never taught to question. My life, and the life of my immediate circle, was defined by the categorical commands of those in power.
As my siblings and I got ready for bed, I thought of my father. His business dealings took him away for weeks or months at a time, and though I missed him, I had no choice but to get used to it. This was no different than the life of my cousins whose mothers were responsible for the home while their dads were gone. One of their fathers died. One left the country with another woman. One did not admit he had a daughter. Another was an alcoholic. My gay uncle left for Paris the same year I was born, seeking safety from the bigotry in Chile.
Except for my doctor grandfather, who died when I was five years old, the men in my early life exemplified either tremendous repressive power or pathetic weakness. The men in charge of the country led a crushing dictatorship. (Over 4,000 people were judged as dissidents and executed by the time I turned 18 and Chile recovered its democracy.) The men of my family exhibited an appalling incapacity to provide comfort and security for their families. Meanwhile, the women had to become strong to raise the children on their own, while inside they cultivated great resentment. These were the imprints engraved in my body and mind as I stepped out into my life as a young woman.
CARRYING MY IMPRINTS ACROSS COUNTRIES
As a teenager in high school, I found myself fantasizing about a different reality. If men could not be relied on to provide for or protect me, I was going to find my own power and be strong like my mother and my aunts. Although, unlike the women in my family, I was not going to build a life of stifled dreams or silent regrets. I had always been a rebel even as a child, railing against the pointless rules and rigid conformity at school. I remember asserting myself in sly ways, following orders to pick up toys, for example, but doing it excruciatingly slowly, which drove my teacher to despair.
When my mother would make me do chores at home, I would point to my brothers and ask, “Why me and not them?”
“Because they are boys and you are a girl.”
“Well, I am not going to make my bed until they make theirs.”
I mostly got away with being a rebel because I was attractive and talented. In high school, I was always among the top three academically, yet my behavior record was often the worst. Sports became my passion, and I pushed my body to its limits as a swimmer, runner, and cyclist. I was fitter and tougher than many of my male friends, and I loved nothing more than to beat them in competition.
Despite my defiant attitude, I took my studies seriously, and I was accepted into the best journalism program at the Universidad Cat0lica de Chile. At the same time I was starting university in March of 1990, our militaristic government was transitioning to a democracy as a result of the 1988 national plebiscite. Being among curious intellectuals, I awakened to a new reality. For the first time, I heard the stories of exiles and human rights abuses that were never told in my conservative school and home. Still I chose a neutral stance on all I heard.
I remained focused on my academic performance while also training as a triathlete. While at the pool I became friends with a Peruvian surfer who introduced me to the sport. Soon, we fell in love and together traveled the long Chilean coast on holidays and weekends, looking for waves.
Surfing can be very simple to learn in small, warm waves with a longboard, but it can be almost impossible to learn in frigid currents with tall waves in which just paddling to get to the peak requires an expert’s skill. Because of my strength as a swimmer, I could get out there even in 20-foot-high waves a half-mile from shore. But when it was time to take off in the wave and stand up in its moving peak, I would inevitably fall off into the void. Then I’d get tumbled with such power that there was nothing else for me to do but surrender until I could resurface and gasp for air. For months, I tried to learn to surf in those conditions with no success.
In the meantime, I became close friends with a girl named Claire, who had come from the United States for a one-year exchange through our journalism department. Like me, she liked to study hard and play hard—and that is exactly what we did together. She introduced me to peanut butter, mountain bikes, and LSD; I took her to my favorite surfing beaches. Though the top of her head barely reached my nose, she matched me point for point in sports.
Together we felt like the coolest chicks in town, but there was a fundamental difference between our attitudes. She came from a country where everything seemed possible and it was natural for her to follow her fancy. If she wanted to do something, she just did it, while meeting every challenge with ease, playfulness, and a confident smile. In my case, while I was often successful in my aspirations, underneath I had the ingrained drive to compete and survive. Growing up within Chile’s chauvinistic values, there were always social limitations to overcome, such as family name, gender, and educational background.
The purity of Claire’s nature was a very moving example to me. I competed in sports to win; she competed with only herself, with a priority to have fun and meet others. Her view of friendship was not just about favors delivered and owed but about giving for the pure joy of it, without conditions or expectation. My experience of that kind of unconditional love had been strictly limited to my immediate family, but Claire showed me it can exist outside one’s house, too.
Claire’s friendship opened my mind and broadened my horizon. For the first time, I set my heart on seeing the world beyond my country’s borders. After Claire’s one-year exchange was over, she returned to her hometown in Utah, and visiting her was an obvious priority for me.
Surfing was a challenge I had still not conquered at this time, but I was determined to learn. I decided to go on a surfing adventure along the Pacific coast. I thought I’d start in California, buy a surfboard, and continue from one beach to the next, moving south through every country along the coast until I reached Chile.
I invited Beatriz, a mutual friend of Claire and me, and she agreed to join me as far as Utah. All my other friends thought I was insane. “For sure, you’ll get lost; very probably, you’ll get raped. And perhaps even killed!” But I didn’t listen. Growing up with brothers who had often brawled with me, I knew how to stick up for myself, and I was fitter and faster than most guys I knew, anyway. This was an opportunity for me to prove myself and show the world I could make it.
When the U.S. Embassy in Santiago granted Beatriz and me indefinite tourist visas, we danced out of the embassy building, clutching our brand-new Chilean passports with their precious visa stamps inside.
We had little money and even fewer details of our adventure planned, but we had our dreams and our friend Claire’s address. We bought two plane tickets, packed all our beach clothing, and headed off.
I left behind my father’s secrets and my mother’s preoccupations without a second thought. It never occurred to me that I carried their stories with me and that the imprints of the authoritarian country I came from lived in my blood. To my mind, I was free and the power was all mine. It was December 1992, and I was 21 years old.
Years later I would find out how my past had followed me for thousands of miles. No matter how much physical and external power I had built in my youth, I ended up at rock bottom and had to figure out a new kind of strength altogether.
How do the geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans, know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within, if only we would listen to it, that tells us so certainly when to go forth into the unknown.
- ELISABETH KOBLER - ROSS
AT ONE POINT OR ANOTHER IN OUR LIVES, we are gifted with the urge to break free from the exhausted present situation. Just as the serpent must shed its too-tight skin, we realize our lives are too small for us. How we spend our time no longer satisfies us or feels too constraining.
We might discover that our job is draining our life force or that our relationship with a partner has become one of practical convenience and the sweet love is long gone. We might realize that our diet is making us sick or that our family is abusing our good will. We might come to a point where we do not know why we do what we do on a daily basis. We feel like zombies or robots. We feel we are not making a difference in the world. We feel empty.
Eventually this sense of being constrained in our lives makes us sick or even kills us. As I’ve said, in our postmodern society, it is very common to find people in some sort of emotional, psychological, or spiritual crisis. Of course we become stressed, neurotic, anxious, or
depressed when we forget the deeper meaning of our own lives—we feel trapped on the merry-go-round of a consumeristic culture.
When we have outgrown our skin and feel impatient or frustrated with our lives, we must listen to that voice calling us to change our ways. It is pleading with us to update our reality, so that once again (or for the first time) we may create a life with meaning and purpose. This voice can be felt like a longing from deep within or like a whisper from a friendly source. In the shamanic tradition, this is recognized as the “call from Spirit,” engaging us to step into a new level of understanding of our human nature. Ultimately, it is where we can recognize our interconnectedness with all life and the need to be in service and co-create.
In the words of the Laika, we did not come to this life to only grow corn; we came to grow into our godly nature. Many of the traditional Quechua communities, where the Laika come from, base their sustenance in agricultural practices, mastering the adaption of their seeds to high elevations and a variety of climates. They created over a thousand varieties of potatoes and a few hundred types of corn— white, yellow, orange, red, purple, black, and mixed. It is not surprising then to receive their corn-based metaphor.
The Laika realized we did not only come to feed our physical being (grow corn) but to cultivate our spirit. In this Quechua society there is a foundational philosophy to maintain the health and the harmony of the individual and the community. They call this philosophy ayni, and it translates as “today for you, and tomorrow for me”—to be in reciprocity with life. In a deeper sense, ayni means we make ourselves available, giving what we can in each moment, and not necessarily to the same source from which we received (similar to how a river pours its waters freely as it goes).
For example, when someone is constructing a house, the neighbors show up to help; when someone else is building a corral for the animals, everyone helps this other person. In this manner, people in a village show up for each other when and where they are needed. Goodwill is the basis of community living. Each person gives according to one’s means. Ayni is not a mathematical equation, but rather a spiritual one. Only the individual knows in her
heart how much she has given in relationship to her own abilities, and only Spirit can keep record of each person’s heart.
In this traditional setting, ayni also entails that a person takes her dutiful place within the community according to her talents and character, and to the needs of the moment. Yet, at a spiritual level, ayni implies that we renew our vows when Spirit calls us to upgrade our life’s purpose.
In our Western paradigm, uprooted from ancient wisdom, many people are ignorant about our human need to deeply revitalize our lives. These people misinterpret the call from Spirit as the need to get a new car, a new lover, a new house, a new pet, or to go on a vacation. And although many times an outer adventure results in personality growth, it is not a condition of embarking on a more awakened journey toward Self-actualization.
An example of hearing the call comes from Karen, who became my friend while she was on the road to transformation. In her case, the call came with the tragic death of Ben, her only son, at the age of 27.
Karen had been a federal judge for 13 years and a lawyer for 30 years when she got the call. She was successful and respected, living a life that many would envy. However, for years she dreaded waking up each day. She felt like she was on autopilot and living someone else’s life. When she was young, she’d dreamed of being an archaeologist, but her parents persuaded her that it was too risky. Better to be a lawyer with a secure future, they said. Now she felt trapped in a job that paid the bills and constantly worried about her son’s struggles.
When Karen learned of Ben’s fatal overdose from heroin, her body froze; everything around her felt surreal. She felt disconnected and also suicidal. Surprisingly, she began feeling Ben’s presence communicating with her, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying.
So she did the unthinkable in her logic-driven world and searched for a medium.
With the medium’s help, Ben told his mother that he was okay and how sorry he was to make her suffer. While this was deeply healing for Karen, she became eager to continue the dialogue with Ben. This led to Karen beginning her own mediumship training and, thirsty to know more, exploring all kinds of avenues to understand the spiritual world. When she found the path of the shaman, she literally burned her judge’s robes, retired, sold her home, and traveled the world, fulfilling the dreams she had for herself long ago.
Her friends in the legal world thought Karen was grieving and would regret her decision to retire. But her son encouraged her from the afterlife to create a new and purposeful life. Her only daughter also supported her in answering this calling from Spirit. “Mom, do not listen to those who do not understand. Instead, shake your rattle and flap your butterfly wings.”
Today, Karen thrives as a spiritual guide and teacher of the shamanic path. She moved to sacred grounds where she is part of a conscious community. She has also written a book about grieving and living and has become a happy grandmother. It took the death of her son to give her the courage to leave the trap of her old life and embrace a new and wholesome life.
In my case, I was a teenager when I first identified the call to explore new horizons. As I described earlier, my answer led me to chase waves along the Pacific coast. It wasn’t until a decade later that I recognized this as a call for the inner journey.
The first month of my and Beatriz’s adventure was spent visiting Claire in Park City, Utah. The heavy skies emptied their load of snow every day, falling in billowy gusts, while Beatriz and I shivered in our thin T-shirts. In Chile, Christmas happens in summertime, so I’d never considered snow when I packed for my surfing trip. Claire
wrapped us in her thermals and fleece, which mirrored the warmth of her heart and had a powerful effect on melting mine.
One morning, Claire, Beatriz, and I decided to do LSD before cross-country skiing. The three of us had done it together once before in Chile, and it had been a truly eye-opening experience. We could not resist the opportunity to do so again, even though we had to start our second day of work at El Cheepo, a Mexican restaurant, that afternoon. We popped the little squares of paper containing LSD into our mouths around noon as we drove to the local cross-country skiing course. We got set up as quickly as possible before the effects began.
As soon as we got out the door, the three of us agreed there were rainbows in the snow. As we marveled at the beauty of the many colors coming out of the crystalline flakes, we tried to coordinate our progress with two skinny skis and two poles. It felt so awkward that we began to giggle, and in two hours we had only advanced a few hundred feet, our cheeks aching from so much laughter.
Suddenly my sense of duty pierced our colorful bubble, and I insisted we fulfill our responsibilities at the restaurant. It had taken us a couple of weeks to get those jobs, and we desperately needed the money. Neither of us had brought much cash for our adventure, and we needed to start paying our way. Beatriz reacted like a girl who did not want to go to school, pleading with Claire as if she were our guardian and could get her off the hook. But my sense of duty prevailed, and I succeeded in convincing Claire to drop us off.
“Good to see you!” said the manager, ushering us into the kitchen. “You need to do really good today. We’ve got a big party and it’s going to be very busy.” Beatriz was handed a terrifying knife to chop tomatoes, and I was told to go fry tortilla chips at the other end of the big kitchen.
My armpits felt clammy with sweat. Every fiber in my body tried to focus on the job with the oil and the chips, but I suddenly had no idea what color they should be. How were you supposed to know when they were cooked? I asked myself, dazed. The shades of golden brown in the bubbling oil gave me no clue, and panic began to claw at my throat. The hands of the kitchen clock stood still or moved too fast. How was I supposed to time the cooking when the clock did nothing but confuse me more! When I thought I was looking at the big hand, it would suddenly become the little one. In my confusion, I had no idea if it had gone around once or many more times.
“You know, I don’t feel so good,” I heard Beatriz telling the manager. “I think I need to go home,” she whimpered. I listened in disbelief.
“C0mo me haces eso?” I hissed. How could she do this to me, I asked her, while our manager looked at us with suspicious concern.
“Just tell him you need to go home too,” Beatriz continued in Spanish.
“But you just told him that! I can’t say the same thing.”
“Sacate el delantal. . . . Sacate el delantal,” she insisted. Take off your apron, she said, as if doing so would liberate me. I did as she asked, and we ran away like naughty children. We shouted promises to our bewildered manager that we would come back the next day, if he still wanted us to work for him.
After running away from the “danger,” the giggles returned in full force. We laughed hysterically, recalling Beatriz’s knife entering the tomatoes like a snake and my confusion with the nachos. As we tripped and stumbled down the street, our focus shifted to finding our darling friend Claire. She had dropped us off at the restaurant wishing us luck and nothing else. In our altered state of perception, though, it was obvious to us that she must be back at the crosscountry skiing course, and we set off for the long walk just out of town.
By the time we reached the reception office, it was closed, but we found Claire there, still staring at the snow. “I knew you would come back,” she said with a sweet smile, and we all jumped into her little car, grateful to get out of the cold. We headed back to Claire’s cabin, 20 miles outside town. It was a basic house, but it was cozy. We sat around a large wood-fired stove, each of us mesmerized by the golden glow of the flames.
The idea came to Beatriz and me to ritually burn the teachers we had known in Chile. Every stick we held in our hands represented
one of our school teachers or university lecturers, and we took turns saying what we had disliked about each and every one.
It was a symbolic burning of our past and a rejection of our Chilean education that had denied us our individuality and asked us mostly to conform. We recognized that in the stories we were carrying, nothing we had to offer beyond being potential wives and mothers was considered important. Original thinking was frowned upon; only our obedience and learning by rote was required.
It was a very cathartic ceremony and totally instinctive, but it felt essential. We had no idea what we were doing that night, but we continued on and on for hours, uncovering stories and imprints we had brought all the way from our country. For me, it was a euphoric experience, but Beatriz sobbed inconsolably. By the time we fell into bed, it was 6 am., and the space inside our minds was mirrored by the dark sky, lit only by the shimmering stars.
Beatriz dissolved in sadness as she beheld that void, yet to me the infinite void felt familiar. It’s the same place I looked up to so many times during my childhood, when there was nothing but the starlit night and the insistent sound of the pots and pans. I had often thought about the concept of death on those nights. Despite growing up in a Catholic society that had a very rigid idea of the afterlife, it was never clear to me what happens after death.
Our little ceremony in Park City had brought me closer to finding my place in the world. With my body totally relaxed, I closed my eyes and savored a new and unfamiliar sensation. . . . It was a feeling of trust that things were as they should be.
I tasted a kind of life in Park City I had never known before. People seemed to take me at face value, without the hidden agendas and suspicion that I was used to. I felt empowered to be whatever I liked. So when Claire said I was the new Spanish-speaking snowboarding instructor, I was. The new job came with a ski pass for the entire season, and so I spent every day on the superb powder of Park West, which would later become the Canyons Resort. I had only snowboarded once in Chile before, and I had fallen hard in that day’s icy snow. In Utah, with all the new snow, it felt just like surfing, but
with the advantage that I could do so many more turns without having to wait for a wave.
I had come to America to surf, but Park City’s mountain world was exhilarating, and I had the rest of my life to go surfing. The joy of the winter playground provided me with an irresistible sense of freedom. The world was my oyster and there was nothing I could not do!
Convenience doesn’t have much space for the bigger questions that jump-start and fuel true transformation: Why am I here.? How does the Universe work? Who am I really?
How can I relieve suffering—in myself or in the world at large? When we live a life of quiet compliance, these questions themselves feel dangerous. Breaking away is a marvelous invitation to stay with the immanent freshness of life, an opportunity to not be blinded by the given, and to follow our inner fragrance like a treasure hunt.
- ANNETTE KNOPP
SPIRIT CALLS US WHEN IT IS TIME to evolve and shed our worn- out skin. To guide us in answering this calling, we can turn to the indigenous wisdom that sees life as a continual process of death and rebirth.
Our weary Western paradigm often does just the opposite by wanting to preserve the exhausted status quo. Politicians and corporations impose an order that benefits the few and does not protect life on our planet. Many are stuck in the rigid belief that their religion is the only path to salvation. Disempowered people think doctors are the only answer to their health problems. Schools encourage us to be creative, but only to the extent in which we do not shake the conventions. Humans have a longing to be loved and
accepted, and so we will compromise our own values and ideals in order not to be rejected.
Thankfully many people around the world are waking up from this programming. However, there is still a mindset that creeps into our psyches from the time we are born—perhaps delivered in a sterile clinic by a male doctor who “knows” what is best for mom and baby. We are taught to not trust our intuition and inner guidance, and instead we look outside for answers.
Also, we must not forget the impact of forced cultural assimilation and government oppression of free thought in our societies. Many countries experienced eras in which disagreeing with the dominant powers meant you were cruelly tortured or executed. For instance, the Spanish Inquisition, which lasted from 1478 to 1834, led to the torture and death of thousands suspected of “heresy.” The witch trials that spread across Europe between the 15th and 18th centuries, peaking between the 16th and 17th centuries, sentenced more than 50,000 people, mostly women, to torture and death. You can hear this condemning voice still echoing in the heart of our Western societies. In North America and Australia, among other countries, indigenous people were systematically stripped of their spiritual practices by European settlers and the government. Children were torn from families and placed in boarding schools or put up for adoption in the name of assimilation. Many languages and some sacred and ceremonial indigenous practices were prohibited by law until recently.
Today, however, just as we are individually called to renew ourselves, our collective psyche also senses the urgency for a renaissance. Our exhausted cultural model must be transcended as we integrate the important lessons of the past and anticipate the needs of a healthy future for all life on the planet.
In shamanic lore, there is the notion of a shattering, even cataclysmic, moment in which a new world is born. For the Quechua peoples, this event is known as a Pachakuti, which literally means the space-time (Pacha) turned upside down (Kuti). The last Pachakuti happened with the coming of the conquistadors 500 years ago. Today it is happening again as dramatic changes are turning our world upside down. Climate change, massive extinction of species, migrations of people, pollution, technological leaps, and social movements are rippling throughout our planet.
While many people feel the call to become part of the solution to a healthier world, most feel disempowered and do not know how to begin. Andean shamans recognize that to be an effective healer in the collective, we must first learn to bring healing to our own path. We must respond to the calling to look within and find our life purpose, which is not disconnected from offering goodness to others and the Earth. Further, we must discard what is not serving us and what is making us numb, miserable, or ill.
Once we embark on a journey of self-discovery, we make space in our lives to explore beyond what is familiar. Many of us get stuck, afraid to step outside the conventional and defy what others expect of us. We might even convince ourselves that something detrimental “is all right” for us or for our family or “is not too bad.” In this way, we live in a mediocracy in which we are hesitant to stand out with our own colors and gifts. The voice of the inner Inquisitor and the outer conventions just gets louder and louder, trying to silence the gentle yet firm whisper of Spirit.
One of my mentors, Machi Gloria, shared with me how for many years she refused the call from Spirit to become a medicine woman. Her grandmother had been a machi, a native medicine woman from the Mapuche peoples of southern Chile, and she knew how difficult and demanding the role would be if she took on the responsibility. She was very afraid to impose that lifestyle on her husband and family.
She’d had lucid dreams of initiations by the lineage and by Spirit since she was seven years old. Her dreams taught her about the different healing plants of the area, how to pray with a particular drum, and even how to dress herself and behave with her patients, among many other matters.
Machi Gloria’s persistence in resisting the inner voices for so many years made it impossible for her to function as a young mother and wife. Eventually, she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for two months. When she was released, she felt physically weak and emotionally depressed—and still refused to answer her calling. At this point, she was saying to Spirit, “Take my life if you wish, but I will not be a machi.”
Then something unexpected happened: the youngest of her five children, a two-year-old boy, became gravely ill. Machi Gloria loved her son more than she loved herself, and so she finally answered “yes” to her most empowered destiny. She would not let her son die even if it meant she had to listen to that call to become a medicine woman.
After the boy’s recovery, the whole family gladly became immersed in a mystic atmosphere that supported the machi’s sacred duty. At night, the children received dreams with instructions on how to play the traditional instruments that accompany the special drum beat of the machi. The husband learned to decipher the messages that she babbled in ancient tongues when she went into a trance. They all thrived amid the respect of the surrounding community.
I met Machi Gloria 25 years after she had answered her calling, and I have only ever seen her deeply grateful for her life and the opportunity to serve others with her medicine and wisdom.
For more than a decade, I also refused the call—not because I was afraid of the consequences like my mentor, but because I was ignorant about the possibilities and did not recognize the voice of my own destiny until it was louder than my hesitations.
After four months of snowboarding and a love adventure in Utah, I had a birthday and goodbye party with the many friends who had become my new family. I was missing the waves and my treasured Pacific Ocean—after all, had I not come to surf? I hugged Beatriz, who loved it so much in Park City that she would stay there for another year. I woke up at dawn the next morning and drove 15 hours, stopping only for fuel, until I made it to the beach in Santa Cruz, California.
My days at the shorelines brought new experiences of natural health and freedom. Best of all, I did learn to stand up in the waves and surf! But my journey was not free of mishaps. The worst was my encounter with poison oak, after which I developed excruciatingly itchy open sores everywhere but my face and feet. I was in agony, and for the first time in my several months of travel, I missed my family.
I no longer saw my parents through the narrow lens of dullness as I had done by the time I left Chile. Instead, I felt vast appreciation for my mother’s ability to maintain the warmth of our home no matter the hard circumstances she faced from the outside. I thought of my father, who despite all his misadventures was never unkind to me. He had always encouraged me to pursue my dreams. And I wondered about my good-natured, sometimes confused, and oftentimes mischievous siblings.
In June of 1993, after three months of driving up and down the Pacific coast, I flew home. Although I was a rebel, my childhood sense of duty never left me, so I returned to school to continue my journalism studies, alternating between classes and snowboarding. After the ritual of releasing my teachers to the fire, it was interesting to feel a healthy distance toward them. It was now easier to see them as humans with all their brilliance and all their struggles. At the same time, I felt they showed me a new sense of respect and curiosity.
At the end of the academic year in December, I set my heart on seeing how far north I could travel along the coast during the two summer months ahead. I imagined making it to Pern, perhaps Ecuador. While I mulled over my plans with friends in the street cafes of Bellavista in Santiago, we were joined by an American girl named Amber.
“Hi, where are you from?” I asked.
“Park City,” she said.
“Cool! I spent four months there last year.” I smiled.
We quickly established that she, too, loved surfing. By nightfall she’d decided to join me on my trip north. She had only $100 U.S. (and I had about $300), but we didn’t let that stop us. Our first stop would be my friends’ place in northern Chile, where we could stay for free and borrow their surfboards.
Our journey together was a wonderful girls’ road trip that took us to mystical Lake Titicaca and the ancient ruins of Tiwanaku in Bolivia, as well as to the jungles east of La Paz, and even to Cusco in Pern. I can’t remember why our surfing trip diverted to the mountains— maybe it was easier on our pockets, as the highlands can be very cheap. Even then, deep within, I felt a mysterious fascination for those places.
We traveled on the back of trucks, hitchhiked on canoes, and walked when we had to. There were days when we were forced to fast, especially when hiking in the jungle; but there were also days when the combination of my charm and Amber’s blond hair and blue eyes provided us with five-star room service at the owner’s expense. We took it all in stride.
The mighty landscapes we encountered amazed me, and the built legacy of our ancient South American civilizations also touched me deeply. I sensed the spiritual power still emanating from the sacred buildings at Machu Picchu, even while I didn’t yet know much about Pre-Columbian spirituality. I experienced the mighty presence of the mountains in a deeply visceral way, and I felt as strong as ever. While it normally takes four days to hike the famous Inca Trail, I ran it in one afternoon and a couple of hours in the morning, knowing I could have done it even faster if it weren’t for Amber, who came panting behind.
While walking through a street market in Cusco, I fell in love with a colorful mastana, a traditional altar cloth used by the hereditary descendants of Inca healers. I spent every last bit of money I had on it, with no idea why it was so important to me. All I knew was I needed to own that piece of textile.
Today, it is obvious to me that my destiny was there all along, waiting for me. But I was not ready to see my connection to the healing tradition of the Andes. I still needed to learn important life
lessons that would teach me about true humility, surrender, and compassion.
A handsome anthropologist invited me to travel into the jungle to take a mystical brew and experience the visions within. “When you take ayahuasca, the spirit of the jaguar will come so close to you, you’ll hear it breathe!” he said, trying to capture my imagination.
The image intrigued me, but I was on a different mission. I had come for surfing, not soul searching, and so I headed with my friend for the beaches of northern Pern instead.
Ten years would pass before I could begin to meet my calling.
Just over a year after leaving Park City, I returned to my many friends and familiar places there. I met up with Amber, who’d agreed to accompany me on my dream of surfing from California to Chile. We immediately began a search for the right vehicle and sponsors. We created a company, and it was wonderful how many people were inspired to help us. Someone sold us a VW camper van cheaply, and our project took off.
Exhilaration fueled our every day. It seemed the world was at our feet, and I knew I could live a life of adventure. Sponsors supplied us with all the toys we could hope for, and we were the proud owners of no less than five surfboards, two paragliders, two bicycles, snorkel and diving equipment, and even a couple of skateboards! For additional support, I found clothing sponsors and also sold lapis lazuli jewelry I’d brought from Chile.
I was full of joy. I was in top physical form and savored the knowledge that my crazy surfing adventure was finally going to happen. While Amber fulfilled her last work commitments before handing in her notice, I enjoyed revisiting friends.
One evening, I found myself at a table in an upscale restaurant with no less than five handsome men, but it was the waiter who caught my eye. Tall and blond, with piercing Nordic eyes, he charmed me with his attentive service and friendly smile.
The night continued at a nearby party, where I bumped into the blond waiter again, Bryan, and we got talking. He was quickly fascinated by my prospective adventure. Like me, he was passionate about adventure sports. I didn’t need much persuading to go snowboarding with him the next morning . . . and the morning after. There was an intoxicating combination of adrenaline and physical attraction, and I knew straight away I had met my perfect match. If it had been part of my vocabulary at that time, I would have called him my soul mate. Instead, I just knew he was someone I wanted to spend more time with. Being with him felt like home to me, and our love of sport was the perfect bond.
Bryan was very enthusiastic about my dream to surf the Pacific coast. “I’ve thought about it myself,” he said, turning his gorgeous blue eyes on me, “but I never thought of going farther than Costa Rica.” The magic I felt while being with Bryan was not something I could share with Amber; Bryan and she took an instant dislike to each other. A happy threesome was out of the question, and I knew very soon I had to make a choice.
In truth, there was no contest. I chose Bryan. My dream was to buy land and make a home in front of a beautiful surfing point in Chile. Joining with Amber would not take my life’s path in that direction, I believed. This beautiful man, on the other hand, was immediately captivated by the idea, even though he had never been farther south than Mexico, nor did he speak a word of Spanish. With his sharp intellect and fascinating artistic streak, Bryan seemed to embody the prince I had never dared to dream of in my youth. Underneath all my outer strength, I carried profound insecurities I did not dare examine.
When Bryan and I went snowboarding, it was never enough to just reach the highest point on the mountain. He also had to make the most perfect tracks, and it filled him with indignation if any lesser mortal spoiled his artwork in the snow. He was a fighter too. Nothing was allowed to get the better of him, whether it was a wave or a mountain, or even something as harmless as a flat tire. He was a man of action—a complement to my superwoman.
Bryan converted his sports wagon into our mobile home, with a bed and enough secure storage for a six-month expedition. He bought and studied maps for each of the countries we were going to traverse: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, and Pern. I marveled at his thoroughness. Chileans either travel up or down, left or right. The narrow strip that is my country has several thousand miles lined by the Andes on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. Orientation is a matter of looking east at the mountains or west to where the sun sets. A map is not part of anyone’s travel arrangements.
By the time we set off, on June 1995, Bryan and I had known each other just over six months, and I was the happiest girl in the world. At last, after three years of dreaming about it, I was going on my big adventure to surf the west coast of the Americas. Even better, I was setting off with a gorgeous man who was as committed as I was to catching the best waves between California’s San Diego and Chile’s Pichilemu.
Our first challenge was to drive down the west coast of Baja California, past the madness of Tijuana, all the way to remote southern beaches beyond the reach of any road. It was crazy to head off-road in the dangerous conditions of the Baja California desert, but we had maps, didn’t we? We also had a compass, so of course we would be all right, according to Bryan.
Except I, who had never read a map in my life or used a compass, was the one who was supposed to navigate. It was the first time the cultural gulf between us opened, and I was shocked by the violence of Bryan’s reaction to it. I had never experienced that level of male aggression firsthand. Despite growing up during Pinochet’s dictatorship and experiencing all the dangers I had exposed myself to while traveling alone, I had never been threatened so directly by a man.
In my innermost heart, I knew right then and there I should pull out of our venture. But we were in the midst of the desert heat, dozens of miles away from the closest town. Plus, my dreams, my money,
and months of great efforts were all tied up in that vehicle with Bryan. Quitting in that moment was not an option.
Yet, the shock was inexplicable to me, something I did not understand. Bryan, the first man I believed to be my true companion, who had held me in his loving embrace just hours before, had been ready to punch me for not knowing how to read a map. In fact, the only way I could understand the experience was to view it as a single event. I assured myself that it was an aberration that was not going to repeat itself—but it did.
In early November, we finally crossed the border to my home country, and suddenly my surfing days were over. An ultrasound confirmed what I had suspected: I was pregnant. Even though we had spoken about the possibility a few times throughout the journey, it was still a surprise for both of us.
My intention was to stay in Chile to finish my studies, and Bryan’s intention was to return to Park City for the upcoming winter season. When he heard the news, however, he beamed an empathic smile and shared enthusiastic thoughts for the future. Meanwhile, I sent our baby my most welcome feelings. But this positive attitude did not last long. My rapidly declining interest for dangerous sports was met with Bryan’s impatience. The maternal instinct to protect my unborn child had kicked in, but he still wanted me to be a superwoman. It made him angry if I failed to meet his mark.
Though I was not sure about my destiny with Bryan, I was more afraid to be a single mother living in my mother’s house, not knowing how to provide for the baby. It had never been an issue to stretch myself thin to the limits of pure survival, but it wasn’t something I would do to my baby. I knew in the long run, I could not count on my family. Everyone was too busy solving their own problems and trying to pay their own bills. There were no resources to spare.
“Also, it would be unfair to deny my baby the chance to have a father, ” I told myself to justify my fear-based decision.
Bryan and I married within two weeks of arriving in Santiago, and the family gathered to congratulate us. Everyone admired the handsome gringo with his tanned skin and sun-bleached ponytail. How beautiful and glamorous we must have seemed.
Little did I know that almost a decade later, I would find myself in a domestic-violence shelter.
I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.
- ROSALiA DE CASTRO
ONCE WE HAVE ANSWERED THE CALL, the universe conspires on our behalf to show us we have made the right decision and that we are at the beginning of a more transcendental path. At this point, we experience miraculous signs as if the cosmos were clapping its hands to encourage us to step into the unknown.
After the withdrawal from the refusal comes the sense of an opening: we encounter the magic that shows up when we say yes to our highest destiny available in the moment, despite the fear we had felt. It is like we have all the stars aligned to support an initiation, and to support a letting go. There is a sign right in front of us saying, “Jump!” or “Go for it!” We hear the voices telling us: Leave that old job behind; it’s not good for you. It’s killing you. It’s toxic! Leave that unhealthy relationship behind. Don’t have children with that person. Step out right now!
All these signs are saying, Here is the opportunity. Now is the time!
In shamanic lore, this is saying yes to our highest calling, the unique way in which we are supposed to be in service to life. We are stepping into ayni, and nature reflects its magic and grace back to
us. We experience auspicious synchronises, and we recognize these to be confirmations of our decision.
In one of my later trips to Pern, I met a woman who had very little money but had felt a strong calling to experience this shamanic initiation. She told me she really set the intention to be there, although she was clueless as to how she would manage to pay. Just a month before the trip, she received an unexpected tax refund check in the exact amount needed.
This is an example of how the Universe mirrors back our level of courage and commitment to reclaim our sacred purpose. We are rewarded when we embark on an inner and perhaps outer journey that allows us to find deeper meaning in life.
In our culture, there is so much fear of the unknown that we would rather compromise our physical or emotional health. Sometimes we even sell our souls in the name of knowing what is going to happen next. We are terrified of losing control of our surroundings and our future.
When we answer the call, we might have to leave the safety of a warm house with three meals a day, the money-making job, or the partner who saves us from the terror of being alone. In other words, we leave our known territory to step toward unknown horizons.
At this stage, Spirit shows up through signs that seem to applaud us for our courage. They can be as majestic as rainbows, hummingbirds, angel voices, initiatory lucid dreams, and mysterious apparitions. We might also have a mystical encounter with a person or a being of another realm—such as the animal or invisible realms —who provides us with crucial wisdom, keys, or amulets that will help us navigate the next steps or even save us from later dangers.
Spirit makes an extra effort to conspire on our behalf by manifesting messages so that we trust we are supported on this journey. However, we cannot expect fireworks and special effects to be our constant companions. Once we are shown that there is a higher intelligence co-creating this life-changing opportunity, we must have the confidence that we are capable of making it through the coming challenges. Then we emerge on the other side wiser and more realized.
As we move through the following milestones in the next quadrant of the Medicine Wheel, the signs revealing that we are fully supported by Spirit might get very subtle, if they appear at all. What is to come in the later phases of the journey involves facing our deepest fears, including death and being utterly alone.
But, for now, it is time to be truly courageous, as everything is lined up for us to jump through the portal. There is a garden of flowers waiting for us on the other side, and life can only get more meaningful and brighter if Spirit has called us to embark on this epic journey.
Which tomatoes should I buy? Those round beefsteaks, or the roma, which are best for pizza! What about if we want to make a salad? There are also heirlooms. . . . Which ones would Bryan choose? The vine-ripe clusters or yellow? Hmmm . . .
For what seemed like hours, I stood in front of five kinds of tomatoes, unable to make up my mind. People would come near to grab their own tomatoes while I would pick one up, but then Bryan’s voice inside my head would cause me to pick another one, and this process repeated itself again and again. In order to keep the peace in our house, I had learned to second-guess all my thoughts and try to reflect Bryan’s mind instead.
Finally I grabbed some tomatoes and pensively walked outside the market, in that moment realizing how low I had sunk. How far I was from the Marcela who broke records and believed in herself! I had frozen in the simple task of buying tomatoes at the supermarket. It was shockingly banal, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I’m really messed up! I thought to myself, feeling completely defeated and incapable of finding my way out of the maze. After seven years of marriage, my husband owned me. My most important task had become to try to read his mind and avoid waking his rage. No chains or locks were needed to imprison me. The fear and
shame I felt, along with the conviction that I could not survive in the world as a mother on my own, held me down just as well.
The self-help books I read all seemed to apply to someone else, and suicidal thoughts started to creep in with force. Every time I drove down from our home in Park City to Salt Lake City, I searched for the perfect cliff to drive over. The decision to commit suicide was one of the few decisions belonging to me alone, and the only factor I struggled with was whether I should take the kids with me or not.
When I imagined leaving my two young sons, Miles and Abel, behind, tears of terrible grief flowed from my eyes. But when I imagined taking them in the car with me, an overwhelming feeling of unfairness forced me to stop that thought.
For weeks, while keeping busy with chores, I muddled through these recurring feelings of putting an end to the life I knew. Then one day, it came to me in a flash: before I ended it all, I might as well try the one thing I had never tried before.
Marcela, why don’t you leave the guy? I asked myself. 'You tried “love conquers all.” Why don’t you try the one thing you have not done so far?
Face your biggest fear, Marcela. Try to make it on your own with the kids and pay your own bills. If it doesn’t work then you can always kill yourself later, anytime really.
Go for it!
It was only a tiny spark left in my solar plexus, but it was enough to revive my will to survive and begin to imagine a life on my own with my sons. Thinking of how I could be a bread-winner and a mother to my children intimidated me more than anything. But my priority was no longer trying to save or please my husband. Now it was life or death for me and my children. This gave me the extra courage and resolve I needed to finally begin to look for a way out of my situation.
I would need help—that much was obvious. And the first sign of the outer world responding to my resolution came as a surprise in the local newspaper: “Soul Retrieval with Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D.” It was an ad for a weeklong class with the intriguing author of the book I had recently been gifted, Shaman, Healer, Sage.
On the first page of the book, I had read:
For twenty-five years I studied with the finest Inca medicine men and women. The rites I underwent in the high mountains of the Andes and the Amazon adhered to ancient tradition and sometimes required months of preparation. They freed the apprentice from living in the grip of fear, greed, violence, and predatory sexuality.
This promise of living free from the “grip of fear” rang like a bell in my innermost self. It felt like exactly what I needed to save my life and thus the lives of my children. And for some reason the author photo on the back cover had hypnotized me. It was not just that he was handsome; when I looked into his eyes, it felt like he was speaking directly to me. I would read a few pages and look at him before reading another page. I had kept that book next to me like a sacred treasure.
Though his teachings were still so new to me, his personal story resonated deeply. Here was someone who had changed his destiny by taking a course of action no one else approved of at the time. Walking away from a promising university career, he had spent 25 years studying with Peruvian shamans in the Amazon and in the Andes, and had reinvented himself as a healer. Not only that, but through his organization the Four Winds Society, he was helping hundreds of others benefit from what he had learned, adapting traditional shamanic wisdom and practices to make them accessible to people in our Western culture.
Somehow, I persuaded Bryan to allow my mother to come and help with the kids so I could focus on work and make more money for the family. But really what I wanted was for my sons to be well taken care of while I took the Soul Retrieval course. The fact that she agreed to travel to the U.S. to help me seemed miraculous at the time, though it all made sense with the first thing Alberto taught during the Soul Retrieval class: “When you call, Spirit answers—not 80 percent of the time, not even 95 percent of the time, but every time!” A great deal, he assured us, though he was quick to point out that the contract runs two ways. For the other side of the bargain is:
“When Spirit calls, you answer—not 80 percent of the time, not 95 percent of the time, not 99 percent of the time, but every time!”
My mother’s unexpected willingness to help me was the result of deeper forces I was only dimly aware of at the time. Today, I am in no doubt that when I found that tiny little spark of light in my darkest hour, it was Spirit answering my call for help. It was also the turning point when I became ready to answer my calling 100 percent.
My determination to take that class was not just a daydream, it was a firm commitment that sharpened my focus and revitalized my confidence. The children were the main means through which Bryan could manipulate me and make me feel inadequate. If I knew they were looked after by someone who loved them, I could focus on planning my first steps toward independence and freedom. I knew if I could not support myself, I would never be able to take care of them.
I needed time out from motherhood to help myself—to become a survivor instead of a victim, a provider instead of a doormat.
After a couple of weeks with us in Utah, my mother and sons left for Chile to spend a few months there with family. The Soul Retrieval class was due to begin just days later. When I told Bryan I was going to take that course, he realized I had been planning it all along, but I was no longer afraid. The boys were my Achilles’s heel when there was confrontation between us, and now they were safely far away. I knew I had to be in that class. I knew something was protecting me: this something allowed my mother to come. It allowed Bryan to agree to the children going to Chile. This something was bigger than either of us, so I was not afraid.
Unbelievably, the course was taking place just a block from our house in Park City. I did not have to fly halfway around the world to meet Alberto, as so many of his students did. Spirit brought the class and him to me—almost to the very spot where I lived!
The night before my first session, I dreamed that I was standing on a distant mountaintop, casting my eyes across mighty gorges cut into the landscape. Yet my focus stayed tight on the deep vertical drop directly in front of me. The immense void made my heart race, yet I was reassured because I was not alone. Behind me, there was a man who seemed oddly familiar, though I was sure we had never
met. I sensed he was older, kind, and deeply wise. Still, when he suddenly said, “Jump!” with a firm yet tranquil voice, I hesitated.
“Are you sure?” I asked, the void twisting my guts.
“Jump!” he repeated, gesturing with his chin.
“What have I got to live for, if I don’t jump?” I asked myself. And as I launched into thin air with my arms wide open, I woke up.
On the first day of the course, I timidly picked an empty chair to sit in the circle. Soon, an attractive man just older than I sat next to me and introduced himself as Jay. He immediately took me under his wing when I told him this was my first time with the Four Winds. Soon I learned this was an advanced class and everyone else had already taken the foundation classes of the Medicine Wheel. I thought, How strange that people from the office let me sign up. . . . But, again, it was Spirit answering my call.
Our lead teacher was Lynn, an affable lady in her 50s who shared the subject with natural ease and generosity. On the second morning, Alberto Villoldo walked swiftly into the classroom, and we all perked up.
He is much taller than I had imagined, and thinner too! I was surprised as well to find that he was older than I was expecting. The photo in the book and the ad were not recent ones!
After his in-depth explanation of the shaman’s agreement with Spirit, he let everyone out for a break. “Let me introduce you to Alberto,” said Jay, inviting me onto the terrace.
As Jay and I walked out to find Alberto, I felt a few butterflies of excitement in my belly. I was about to meet in person the intriguing author of the book that had been my companion in the past few weeks.
“Nice to see you, Alberto,” said Jay as they warmly shook hands. Turning his body toward me, he continued, “This is Marcela, and this is her first class.”
“Welcome to the Four Winds, Marcela! Where are you from?”
Soon we were chatting in Spanish. Alberto was born in Cuba and had to flee to the United States at the age of 10 because of the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, but he still spoke his native tongue perfectly. When he discovered I taught snowboarding during the winter months, he immediately asked for a lesson. “Would you teach me, Marcela?”
“Absolutely!” I replied, my breath catching. “As soon as there is snow!”
On the last day of the Soul Retrieval course, Alberto demonstrated destiny retrieval, an advanced process in the shamanic training. He asked if I would volunteer. Feeling nothing but trust, I gladly sat down before him in the middle of the room.
We were silent as he opened sacred space around us, and then he asked me to look into his eyes. He held me in the depths of his gentle gaze and began to shake his rattle. After a couple of minutes, he closed his eyes, inhaled, and blew into my solar plexus with sweet force. No words were spoken, but great warmth glowed in my torso and spread throughout my body, even to my face, where it manifested as a huge smile that just grew and grew, until I could not help but laugh out loud.
“What do you feel, Marcela?” Alberto asked, but I was unable to answer with words, only an unexplainable laughter.
For weeks after the class, I could sense the light Alberto had retrieved from the upper world gleaming in my solar plexus. For the first time, I felt immune to my husband’s reproach, blaming, and criticism. Rather than perceiving myself as a victim, I could recognize Bryan’s pain, and I realized it was not my duty to carry it for him. I had a different destiny now pulling me forward to a new life!
Alberto and I had exchanged phone numbers, and while he was away in Europe, I asked him for a shamanic session by telephone to help me face the current challenges in my life.
“Go to a place where you can be quiet and no one will disturb you,” he counseled. So I decided to head up to the mountains where I used to live while pregnant with my son Miles. It was still summer and the road was open, allowing me to reach the ridge from which I could see over the other side into a beautiful green valley.
I stepped out of the car into a light drizzle and silently invoked the four directions with my eyes shut. I opened my eyes when my phone rang and was confronted by the most amazing sight.
“Alberto,” I said before he could speak, “The biggest moose I have ever seen is staring me right in the eye!”
“A moose?”
“Yes, a gorgeous moose!” I said while standing no more than six feet from the colossal animal.
In the next instant, a bright rainbow appeared just above the moose, while the sun shone golden light through the sparse clouds. While I marveled at the whole scene, I lost the phone connection. I quickly bowed to this majestic manifestation of nature and got in the car to find better reception.
After five minutes driving in the opposite direction, I reconnected with Alberto and we continued with my session. He asked how I was feeling and listened carefully. Soon he began using shamanic tracking to see beyond the physical into the energetics.
“I see a toxic cord going from going from your kidneys to your father, which has been draining your energy for years. And another one going from your liver and solar plexus to to Bryan. This has allowed each of your fears, sadness, toxic energies, and limiting beliefs to travel back and forth, keeping you in codependency.”
“So, what do we do about it?” I asked, feeling the weight of my problem.
“With my guidance, you are going to grab the cord to your father and deeply thank him for your life and all the love he has offered you,” replied Alberto. He gave me a moment to follow his instructions. “Now take a deep breath and, with a strong exhale, pull that cord away from you, giving it to nature.”
As I finished severing the toxic connection with my father, Alberto prompted me to say the final magic words: “Father, I love you and I release you to your own destiny.” A deep, natural inhale filled me up with new life.
“Well done, Marcela! Now let’s release Bryan’s.” Alberto guided me through the same protocol of holding the cord and finding gratitude toward Bryan for all the lessons learned and, most important, for the life of our beloved sons. Then, with a big inhale and a powerful exhale, I pulled away the cord and shouted my intent with all my might for the mountains to witness me. “Bryan, I release you to your own destiny:”
Slowly I started to feel as if I had unshackled myself from a deadly addiction: a false sense of security gained at the expense of my freedom.
In that moment, another rainbow arched over the valley with all its bands of color in perfect focus. Incredibly, a second rainbow mirrored the first, even higher in the sky, and I understood right then and there that they represented the portal to my new life belonging only to me. It felt like being reborn without the heavy ties of my roles as daughter or wife.
A hawk soared into my sight, and then another, dancing in the air together in front of my rainbow portal. What more confirmation could I have asked for? Spirit was there for me.
Alberto invited me to take a deep breath and come into the present moment while he reset my energy body. He proceeded to pour light from above the crown of his head—that place of radiance we all have—and nurture my second chakra with new energy. He erased the old imprints in my luminous body that had kept me in place as victim or prey.
I returned to Park City awestruck by the events and feeling steadfast about my decision to cross the portal to my new life.
To the Winds of the West,
Great jaguar, Otorongo,
Y ou who have no fear and no enemies,
Teach us how to be luminous warriors.
Y ou who know the way beyond death,
Teach us how to journey through the rainbow bridge.
Protect our medicine space.
IN THE WEST, WE FACE OUR DEEPEST TERRORS, including death— a necessary step toward renewal and rebirth. We understand we cannot hope for a slightly better version of ourselves, but instead we are owed an utter regeneration. We must die to our current identity and release the old ways of relating to the world and others. Only by letting go of our outdated structures do we make ourselves available to a new destiny rather than continuing toward a predetermined fate.
In this direction we receive the wisdom of the luminous warrior, one who recognizes that one’s only enemy is to collapse in fear. Thus, in the midst of terror, we choose not to forget our own light, wisdom, and strength. We realize that wherever we put our attention, that is what we feed. If we focus on a subject of terror, we are adding energy to that subject, making it stronger while simultaneously making ourselves weaker. But if we can find our own light—no matter how small it may seem at the moment—and give it our breath, that light gleams brighter and bigger with each minute. The intentional breath stokes the fire within until we can see with greater clarity what is trying to cast a shadow over us.
In the West, our great ally is Jaguar since it inspires us to live with no fear and to act with prodigious certainty. The luminous warrior practices fearlessness. This doesn’t mean we are never afraid, but that we do not feed that fear; instead, we nourish our courage.
The shaman of the West aspires to be like Jaguar, agile and alert while unperturbed and serene. Jaguars have no predators in their natural environment. They can be at great ease while relishing in the abundance of the rain forest. They can deeply rest under a tree, occasionally lifting their tail to feel the air stirring. With great stealth, jaguars can track their prey from a distance without being seen or heard. And then, without missing their mark, they catch it in one leap.
Shamans speak of the luminous warrior as the one who has no enemies in this world or the next. To understand this notion, it is key
to address the concept of shadow and the corresponding defense mechanism called projection.
SHINING LIGHT UPON OUR SHADOWS
It was Jung who first popularized the term shadow, a notion he took from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Originally, it was his metaphorical way of referring to the totality of the unconscious, but over time it evolved to become the rich concept that it is today.
The shadow refers to all aspects of our ego that we have a difficult time seeing or acknowledging as ours. It is the traits of our personality that we hate to the point of denying they exist in us. It is also those magnificent attributes we have, but that we feel too much shame or unworthiness to believe we embody. Either way, we suppress those aspects from our conscious awareness, and eventually they emerge as instinctive behavior. Often, this lack of awareness leads to difficult situations in which we prefer to point the finger at others rather than take responsibility. This is how we end up projecting on others what truly belongs to us in the first place.
We are specialists in noticing other people’s mistakes or imperfections while we are experts in hiding the same from our own nature. At the same time, we can praise a good talent in someone else while being hesitant to develop or show an ability we have.
Jung wrote: “The pervasive defense mechanism known as projection is how most people deny their shadow, unconsciously casting it onto others so as to avoid confronting it in oneself. Such projection of the shadow is engaged in not only by individuals but groups, cults, religions, and entire countries, and commonly occurs during wars and other contentious conflicts in which the outsider, enemy or adversary is made a scapegoat, dehumanized, and demonized.”
As luminous warriors, we cultivate no enemies because we choose to find within ourselves the trigger of what is hurting us, rather than blaming the outer world. We place love and awareness where we encounter abandonment and hate; we calm our anger and examine our limiting views before responding to a situation. It is our intention to be impeccable and find a noble outcome in all difficult situations.
It is crucial to face the most difficult aspects of our personalities so we can shine light and heal the source of what keeps us reacting from our shadow. At the least, we must better comprehend who we are and how we function, thus becoming less prey-like to our own predatory tendencies. Jung says, “The conscious mind is then able to free itself from the fascination of evil and is no longer obliged to live it compulsively. The darkness and the evil have not gone up in smoke, they have merely withdrawn into the unconscious owing to loss of energy, where they remain unconscious so long as all is well with the conscious.”
On the other hand, we must open our arms to embrace our own aptitudes and make an effort to develop our genius rather than staying comfortably below those whom we put on a pedestal. Often, we are more afraid of connecting with our genius than with our demons. As a matter of fact, many people are too comfortable dancing among angry and destructive forces while terrified of accessing their loving and creative sides.
Marianne Williamson elaborates on this point with great clarity in her book A Return to Love: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do.”
It takes courage to face our insecurities and great work to cultivate our virtuous potential. For this reason, it can be easier to remain a victim of negative patterns—and “live” with our excuses of why we do not do more to discover our essential goodness.
The luminous warrior remembers that a victim is just the other side of the coin of a perpetrator, or a rescuer, as we learned in the South
direction. She clearly understands this triangle dynamic as the perfect recipe for drama and simply stays out of it.
Again, Jaguar is our fierce guide empowering our courage and skills to see and track within the black places of our lives and souls. It has the capacity to perceive in the dark at least six times more than humans do. Furthermore, according to Andean mythology, Jaguar sees beyond death, knowing how to leap out of this life alive. It is a companion and a guide when it is time for the shaman to cross the rainbow bridge, from this life to the next.
In this sense, Jaguar is truly our ally as we go through the utter renewal of the West direction. It guards our sacred space and assures our return to life after our symbolic death. Jaguar resets our instincts, so we discriminate between what brings us livelihood and what drives us to decay.
After my vivid phone session with Alberto on the mountain, I never wavered again about my decision to build an independent and honest future with my children. Still, I knew I should overcome deeper fears, strengthen my self-esteem, and acquire keener vision, so I signed up for the Medicine Wheel training by the Four Winds Society. I trusted Alberto and his teachers, and conveniently it was still happening in Park City.
My determination to experience the Medicine Wheel awoke my instinct for financial independence for the first time. I’d been a massage therapist for the past three years, and all along, I had proudly handed my entire wage to Bryan so he could decide how to best distribute the money. As a child, my family suffered great distress due to my father’s lack of financial savvy: he often managed to lose what he had just earned. Consequently, I grew up with apprehensions about handling cash, especially when I felt responsible for other people. This insecurity is what led me to hand over all the decisions to my husband, giving my opinion about
investments only when asked. Now, however, I began stashing a third of my income aside.
The class I registered for was the South direction, and I was able to complete it just before my sons returned from Chile. In the South, I encountered the Serpent’s wisdom in a deep, visceral way, and with all my might, I shed my disempowering story. As we were taught in class, we did this to write the book of our destinies, rather than trying to edit the old one, which contains all the genetic and karmic imprints.
Alberto came to town at the end of the class and asked me if we could go for a nature walk. Immediately, I felt excited to show him one of my favorite mountain trails, right by the plateau where I had experienced the magic of our session. I agreed to pick him up in the evening, after he would be done teaching for the day.
Precisely at eight, nervous butterflies fluttering in my belly, we got in my jeep and drove 20 minutes of curves up to the ridge. Soon we were walking under a magnificent full moon. As we both relaxed, Alberto asked me for further details about my life. Sensing I had nothing to lose, I did not try to embellish the picture I painted about myself and my family. After all, he had shown himself to be a master healer and might offer me further insight.
As we casually chatted, we began traversing thick forest via a smaller trail, and I managed to get us lost, even though I knew every track and footpath up there. Alberto held my hand as we searched for a way out. At some point we arrived at a charming little clearing and paused to sit side by side on a log and catch our breath. While still holding hands, we looked into each other’s eyes, and I felt an intimate warmth, naked of any thoughts. After a few moments, with the same ease with which we had sat down, we stood up and kept searching for the light of the moon until we made it to a clearing where we found the main trail again.
It was after midnight when we returned to the Jeep. It had been a magical time, and while driving down the mountain, Alberto suggested, “Marcela, come to Pern with the Four Winds this summer. First, we go to the jungle, and then we pilgrimage to the holy Ausangate mountain. Every year I pick two of my students to go to a huaca, a place of power. To get to it, you have to walk through a dangerous moraine of ice to get to a huge rock underneath where people have left their offerings for hundreds of years.” He added, laughing, “I’ll make you pay for this tough hike you just put me through.”
Nothing more needed to be said. Though I had only two months to prepare, it was a done deal. I knew I had to be one of those two students to go with him. It was set in my soul!
Ten years had gone by since I had turned down the invitation to take ayahuasca in the jungle with that anthropologist in Cusco, preferring to go surfing instead. Now, another handsome anthropologist in his 50s had invited me to meet Jaguar in jungle visions. This time, I answered with a resounding yes!
Through this invitation, the medicine and wisdom of the West direction was already calling, asking me to go further in my purification. It was not enough to just let go of my story. Now I needed to surrender my whole being so I could discover who I was meant to become.
Go out in the woods, go out. If you don’t go out in the woods, nothing will ever happen and your life will never begin.
- CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTES
BY THIS TURN OF THE WHEEL, we have experienced the grace of Spirit supporting our decision to embark on an epic journey of transformation. We have received all the positive signs, even supernatural help, stating we have made the right choice. We have lived through auspicious coincidences, such as meeting a stranger with just the right message for our quest, seeing our lucky numbers played in front of us again and again (like 2:22 on a digital clock), experiencing a double rainbow at the exact time we are pondering our destiny, or witnessing a shooting star when thinking about a loved one.
All these providential synchronicities make us realize there is a presence far greater than ourselves encompassing us while we quit a draining job, let go of a toxic relationship, move out of a spiritually barren city, or come to terms with the emptiness of purpose we feel inside. For the shamans, this is the Great Spirit and Mother Earth reassuring us that we are stepping in a propitious direction.
At this point, we are fully committed to our departure from the old, and we feel vital confidence to face the unknown. Therefore, we are ready to pass through the threshold: the veil between the known and
the unknown, the ordinary and the extraordinary, the conventional and the magical, and our comfort zone and the shaking grounds.
Beyond the veil extends a mysterious domain containing all the flawless ingredients for our renovation. We could conceive this enigmatic terrain if we imagine ourselves at the edge of a thick forest; about to sail in deep, shadowy waters; or at the verge of a vast desert. These are mythical landscapes capable of holding the terrible horrors and precious treasures the hero must encounter. From fairy tales and dreams we know this to be certain. However, we also know that the heroic initiation and transformation doesn’t happen by only peeking from the periphery or just dipping a toe. We must cross the veil and fully plunge into the great adventure held in the arms of the unknown. Once on the other side, we are swallowed by outlandish rules asserting that we cannot return home until utterly transformed.
Beyond the threshold there is a “zone of magnified power,” as Campbell often referred to it. A space of such tremendous initiatory potential undeniably deserves custodians of its magnificent resources. In all shamanic lore, we find examples of gatekeepers guarding the vital treasures of places and communities.
We have been speaking of the Medicine Wheel as a vehicle and a territory offering deep transformation. If we choose to be initiated by its wisdom, initiations, and mystery, we must befriend the keepers of each directions: Serpent, Jaguar, Hummingbird, and Eagle. Furthermore, we must also gain the favor of the custodians of the three worlds in order to access extra dimensions. We must knock on the gateless gates of Andean mythical beings as we look for resources in the underworld, journey to the upper world, or summon auspicious synchronicities in the middle world.
When we meet the custodian of a place with magnified power, we are tested in our determination. We might be asked to pay a price or
give a token of recognition that we are entering into a sacred or exceptional landscape.
The mythic passage of the Sumerian goddess Inanna descending to the lower world eloquently speaks about this idea. In order to visit her sister Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld, she has to go through seven gates. One by one, she is met by the custodian who demands she removes and hands over a piece of clothing or jewel: each item is an emblem of her worldly power and sovereignty as the goddess of love, fertility, and warfare. She arrives at her sister’s domain naked; then she is judged and killed, emerging three days later with renewed power and wisdom.
In crossing the veil, we might have to face a strong presence or wrathful protector of the treasures beyond. Such is the case in tales speaking about the doorways to paradisiacal landscapes like the Garden of Eden in Christian mythology, El Dorado and Paititi in indigenous America, the island of Avalon in Arthurian lore, and Shambala and other beyuls in the Himalayas. There are fascinating true stories about Tibetan lamas known as tertons, or treasure revealers, searching for a beyul—precious hidden lands, the coordinates of which were left encoded in sacred texts by the great mystic Padmasambhava during the 8th century. These are spiritual sanctuaries superimposed upon physical geography that can only be entered with a high degree of spiritual attainment. According to legend, these would serve as refuges in times of great strife and pain in the region.
However, if the time and the conditions are not right, the guardian spirits of the beyuls can manifest storms, avalanches, mists, or fierce animals in order to protect such pure lands from worldly greed. A terton attempting to enter a beyul is well aware of the need to be unsullied in his intentions and at the same time, the need to befriend the wrathful protectors by making extensive ritual offerings.
In the beautiful book A Step Away from Paradise, author Thomas K. Shor vividly documents the remarkable adventure of terton Tulshuk Lingpa preparing for years to enter a beyul in the mountains of Sikkim. Hundreds of people gave up all their possessions and followed the charismatic lama, eager to go “through a crack in the very fabric of reality and enter a land we would all wish to inhabit if it were only there—a land of peace and concord.” Taking just one of his most trusted disciples, Tulshuk Lingpa neared the doorway right after climbing a steep and treacherous glacier. In the account related by this other lama, they heard a sound “and it took him a moment to realize he was listening to a gyaling, the clarinet-like instrument the lamas use. At first he thought he was hallucinating from the altitude. But he heard it and so did Tulshuk Lingpa. ‘It is the gatekeepers of the Beyul,’ Tulshuk Lingpa said. ‘The Dharmapala and the dakinis are coming to greet us.’”
Both Tulshuk and his companion experienced the veils parting and the greetings from the gatekeepers—the Dharmapalas and the dakinis. When interviewed by the author, the second lama confided, “Never did I feel disappointment so acutely in my life. We were so close. We were standing in the snow but above us, beyond the glacier, there was no snow. It was so beautiful on the other side, green, and we were almost there. I kept thinking I was hallucinating.
I even put my fingers in my ears to see if the sound of the gyalings came from inside my own head. The sound was real. The rainbows were real. And so was Beyul.”
Tulshuk Lingpa, faithful to his word, chose not to enter and went back to a cave where his other closest disciples were waiting. It was well understood that once the veil is crossed there is no return. The next day, twelve followers and the great terton headed up the steep glacier with much excitement after so many years of yearning for this moment. However, on this occasion, the wrathful deities decided not to open the gates to the mystical treasures beyond.
Approaching the last white slope, before the gates to Beyul, Tulshuk Lingpa left most of his followers resting on a rock and headed up with his consort and two lamas. The others would be signaled when it was their time to catch up. As the lead group was breaking trail up the final notch of the glacier, suddenly they became engulfed by a thick mist pouring over the pass. As they experienced confusion and vertigo, most unexpectedly the white ground gave way under their feet and they got caught in an avalanche. The terton’s consort and one of the lamas ended up covered by snow and gravely injured, while the second lama, in charge of reciting mantras, was only buried to his knees. At age 49, the great Tulshuk Lingpa was instantly killed.
We cannot say if Tulshuk Lingpa entered the beyul with his consciousness after leaving his body. Yet we do know the gates did not open for his closest disciples or for about 300 people who had been waiting in a valley below for word that the doorway was open. There are many theories as to why the gatekeepers reacted wrathfully at that point, but it is not something we can resolve. Instead, it is important to acknowledge the existence of guardians that treasure the resources of an extraordinary beyond—and know they will test our worthiness. Once allowed to cross the veil, these protectors might turn into our allies and offer wisdom or strength for the journey ahead.
MEETING THE SPIRIT OF THE JAGUAR
When the bright colors, warm temperatures, and sweet fragrances of summer arrived in Park City, it was time for me to journey to Pern. My mother-in-law had agreed to care for the boys during the three weeks I would be gone. I had cashed airline miles for my tickets, emptied my private bank account for the cost of the trip, and looked in every corner of the house for some spending cash.
Bryan neither encouraged nor thwarted my decision. He was staying busy at work and had also picked up a few summer projects as a carpenter. In general, he seemed cheerful—maybe the longer sunny days were a positive factor for his mood or perhaps he preferred not to go against the certitude and tenacity I was exuding.
My day of departure came, and I was filled with excitement for this new adventure. I felt transported to the good old days of my youth. While traveling, I reflected with much gratitude on the few people who supported the uncertain but necessary changes in my life. I especially cherished my sons’ paternal grandma for her wise understanding and kindness. Also, I marveled at my girlfriend Claire’s loyalty, as she had never stopped reminding me of my own
strength. Third, I felt grateful for my parents, who always accepted me exactly as I was.
Once in Lima, I hopped on a morning flight to the jungle town of Puerto Maldonado. Though I had not slept much on the last two flights, my eyes widened as I peered through the window at the snow-capped mountains below, wondering if any of the tallest were Ausangate. I was excited to meet everyone in the group, and especially eager to see Alberto again.
After a bit of a jumble arriving at the airport, I found my fellow travelers. Alberto was friendly but quick in his greeting as he focused on getting everyone to board our buses to the Madre de Dios riverbank. Then, for two hours, we rode motorized canoes to our ecolodge. Time seemed to speed by as I chatted with people, ate perfectly ripe bananas, and enjoyed the light spray from the sides of the boat.
Screaming macaws in towering trees greeted us as we docked the boats. An exotic fruit drink quenched our thirst, and a popular Peruvian fish dish left us all satisfied. Alberto encouraged everyone to rest through the heat of the afternoon and requested our presence at the main maloca, or gathering hut, at 5 pm. to meet our master herbalists or shamans.
Feeling sticky and heavy from the lack of rest the past couple of nights, I made it to our gathering of 50 or so folks. Others also seemed tired, but we all perked up when the two legendary herbalists walked in. After welcoming everyone, Alberto gave us a concise introduction about jungle cosmology and then let the two men explain their work. Swiftly, he translated from Spanish to English.
Projecting natural confidence, Maestro Panduro described his initiation into the plant world during his early 20s. He experienced a two-year solitary retreat in the heart of the jungle, eating only oats and rice while ingesting specific plants whose spirits became his teachers and allies. In the end, he assured us that the psychoactive brew he would share that night was nothing but pure medicine for the body, mind, and spirit.
Maestro Ignacio had a more humble presence. After greeting us with just a head bow, he timidly shared the way he prepared his herbal brew. He explained how he mixed the leaves of the chacruna plant with the ayahuasca vine, boiling them together for different periods throughout two days of fasting and prayer.
That first night I chose to work with Maestro Panduro. Together with half of the group, we crossed the river by boat to a nice sandy beach on a little island. Under a pristine starry sky, we followed Maestro’s guidance and sat in a circle. Adhering to his own protocol, he soon went around serving his sacred brew to each of us. He continued with prayers to install spiritual protections, and began chanting songs to summon the spirits of the jungle and his spiritual allies.
About half an hour into the ceremony, giggles bubbled up within me, soon transforming into uncontrollable laughter. Trying not to bother the people next to me, I walked about 150 feet away. With an enormous sense of freedom, I twirled and danced, tracing circles and designs in the sand with my bare feet. So far, I had seen only agreeable images like eagle wings and beaming ancestral faces, culminating with all my senses gathered around an exquisite chocolate cake.
At this juncture, most unexpectedly, nausea overwhelmed my body. A voice said, “Now you are going to get rid of all the sweet things in your life that are not good for you.” While the visions of the dark cake were still strong, I recognized how I had traded my integrity to enjoy the material comforts and security of my life in Park City: the nice home, nice clothes, nice lifestyle in the mountains, and all my bills paid at the end of each month. Yes! I had all those nice things but at the highest cost: my soul.
Soon I was gagging, retching, and finally vomiting the chocolate cake in my vision, which became liquid and indistinguishable from the Mother of God river itself. It was a timeless purification, and in the end I felt incredibly relieved! Ever so slowly, I made it back to the circle and lay in peaceful bliss until the end of the ceremony. I could hear others vomiting or singing while the stars kept shining, as if saying: we are blessing everyone and everything with our light.
This first experience with jungle spirit medicine boosted my work in the South quadrant. It prompted me to detach even deeper from the material and emotional ties that kept me in codependence. It kindled my commitment to reconnect with my inner strength and skillfulness, so I would stop exchanging my freedom for breadcrumbs.
The second night, I was inspired to work with Maestro Ignacio. He looked like a fragile man in his late 70s, but in action he proved to be as sturdy as a jungle tree with deep roots in the belly of the great mother. We each sat against the walls of a rectangular maloca and went through the same protocol of summoning sacred space and ingesting the brew. Soon, colorful kaleidoscopic visions surrounded me, changing and dancing with the vibrations Maestro Ignacio was producing. Rather than singing, the old man guided the ceremony with a chacapa, a native leaf bundle rattle, and by whistling.
About an hour later, I had the urge to pee, so I stood and held my balance as best as I could as I walked out and down the wooden stairs to the ground level. There, I quickly pulled my pants down, squatted, and felt relief.
As I lifted my gaze, two intense, almost fluorescent green eyes appeared in front of me. I became paralyzed when I realized those eyes belonged to a large black jaguar standing six feet away from me, half its body hidden behind the leaves of forest bushes.
Incredible! Unsurpassable! I exclaimed in my head. Right then I recalled the words of the anthropologist I had met years ago, inviting me into the jungle with him: “The spirit of the jaguar will come so close to you, you’ll hear it breathe.”
While I stood there, fascinated, static, and terrified, all in one instant, two more eyes appeared next to the first ones. Then two more eyes appeared just to the side, and another two, until black cats with fluorescent green eyes filled the space 180 degrees in front of me.
My heart pounding, I managed to make my way back to my corner inside the shack. Hearing the rattle, I sat and looked around in the dark to try to form a sense of “reality.” Then, feeling introspective, I hid my head between my bent knees, and all went black for a few moments until I sensed something calling my attention. I lifted my sight and, to my awe and surprise, the black jaguar with vivid green eyes was jumping through the window in full extension. Its front paws came first, then its head, neck, and the rest of its body.
It all happened so fast, yet I could see in slow motion: the jaguar leaped and landed inside my body, entering through my head. It rapidly rearranged itself so its paws became my paws, its legs became my limbs, and I suddenly had a black furry tail. Its whole body merged with mine, while I instinctively stretched to let it in.
Now, looking through its eyes, my sight became sharper in the dark. Soon, I felt like going for a walk on my four limbs and wagging my tail. So I did. I went for a walk in the dark jungle, a mythical walk, an energetic walk through the thick forest, feeling my jaguar heart palpitate with strength, feeling each paw as it stepped on the almost wet earth below. I was not afraid anymore; nothing could eat me, for I was at the top of the food chain.
I woke up the next morning feeling fully alive in my skin. At breakfast, as the juice of a mango ran down my chin, I savored my promising jungle initiation. The guardian of the West direction had personally come to cheer my crossing into the dark mysteries of life. While perfectly eager about my journey beyond, I completely surrendered to the simplicity and beauty of the present moment.
Y ou’ll realize then, if you have not learned it before, that darkness is not simply a lack of light. Darkness is alive, and its life is obscured by light. Darkness puts out its tentacles and touches your face; darkness licks at your eyes and grants you a different kind of sight. Darkness is the voice of the shadow, a voice which words can only fail. Listen. Is it the drumming or your own heart that you hear, or the long, slow heartbeat of the Earth? Reach out, and there is nothing there. There is only you, whatever you might be, face-to-face with the long
dark.
- SHARON BLACKIE
AS SOON AS WE HAVE ENDURED the encounter with the custodian and successfully passed through the threshold, we are swooped into the unfathomable domain of death and renewal. Just like the cocoon of a caterpillar giving way to a butterfly, we have said yes to a new way and agreed to depart from our old and stifled lives.
We signed up for the journey, and at this point it is impossible to escape the expansions and contractions of the deconstruction of the old identity and birthing of the new. Our only option is to remain and go through the process. The more we accept and surrender to the ebbs and flows of this phase, the less painful and faster it is. The
more we resist, kick, and scream against it, the lengthier and more laborious it is.
We have come to an unfamiliar landscape over which we do not have control and where we feel lost, confused, and doubtful about our capacities to carry on with our lives. Let’s remember that more important than the outer adventure are the inner feelings that are happening while we continue going to work, tending our children, or making dinner. At this point we might feel hopeless about our future, helpless about a job, powerless in relationships, or distraught over a lack of meaning in our lives. The way we thought the world spins doesn’t work anymore; the way we thought we needed to behave doesn’t apply in the least. Nothing seems to stand on the same ground; old structures start falling apart. Who we have been doesn’t fit the surroundings any longer.
Thus our quest is set in motion. We start questioning how, when, and why—our families, our jobs, our friends, our lifestyle, and, overall, our existence. Who and what am I anyway beyond all of those people, those roles, and those material possessions?
As we imagine ourselves without the components of the life we have lived so far, all of a sudden there is space. The more we come to terms with the undeniable fact that the past ways are not the new ways, the wider the space becomes, the bigger the emptiness.
I tasted this emptiness deeply when I was just 11 years of age. My best friend’s parents took us to the neighborhood theater to watch the horrifying film The Day After, a fictional account of a nuclear attack on the United States. My friend and I were exposed to extremely disturbing images, from sordid radiation blisters to piles of bodies scorched by flames. My vision blurred with horror as my stomach tightened. I barely breathed the entire time.
That night, I became bewildered by the question of death. Would I die.? This was not difficult to answer: Yes! I had seen death: my grandfather, el Tata, had died when I was five, and one of my favorite teachers died when I was seven. But what will happen to “me” when I die? I wondered. For the next three months, once in bed and alone in the dark, the same question would inevitably rise. Believing this matter was taboo and feeling like I had no one who could really
answer it anyway, I would agonize through the exercise of trying to figure it out on my own.
Every night, I imagined my body stopped breathing and that I ceased to see, hear, touch, taste, or smell. And when there would be nothing for me to see or sense, then all around me it would grow dark and empty. No floor to stand on, no walls to protect me, no ceiling to cover me, and no family or friends to accompany me. I would feel myself like a pendulum in a hollow void, moving my arms in a frenzy to find something to hold on to. First, I looked for something or someone familiar, and then anything at all, but there would be absolutely nothing to grasp and nobody to talk to.
Why am I alive? Why do I go to school and study hard? To disappear? I would ask, flooded in anguish, waiting for an answer that never came. All I would receive was more emptiness, more darkness, and more existential nonsense. My throat would become tight with a knot, my chin would tremble, and tears of sadness and terror would flow down my cheeks. Eventually I would fall asleep.
I visited this same space 10 years later with my friend Beatriz when we took LSD in Park City, and we went through the ritual of putting our university teachers and our past in the fire. After our intuitive ceremony, there was nothing left but space and darkness, and Beatriz collapsed into sadness as she faced this unknown. Meanwhile, I sat in perfect peace next to her, realizing I knew this void so well. It had become such a familiar place where I could float like an astronaut in space. . . . I had nothing to do, nothing to accomplish, but to remain . . . so peaceful . . . almost ecstatic.
Joseph Campbell refers to this stage as the “belly of the whale,” reminding us of the biblical story of Jonah, who spent three days inside a whale after his futile efforts to escape from his divine mission, which was to prophesy the destruction of the city Nineveh. He spent three days in the unknown, the uncertainty, the lurking of death, and the projection of all his fears. It is also commonly known as “the dark night of the soul,” a phrase from the 16th-century poet and mystic Saint John of the Cross.
I decided to call this phase the “heart of the womb,” understanding that this black void is a place of complete deconstruction of the old and at the same time incubation of the new. Just like a womb that sheds the blood of the unborn with every moon, this is a time of shedding and this is a place that can handle it. Just as the blackest and most fertile soil of a jungle forest can rapidly devour anything dead, transforming it into food for the living, this place is a void, an empty space, but it is not devoid of life. It is just the opposite: it is palpitating like the most vital pulse of the heart.
These are the reasons to remain in the hollow dark as long as it is needed. Long enough for the old structures to fall apart, as they have no ground, no walls, and no ceilings to sustain them. And long enough for the being to be infused again with the grace of life and reawaken. Just like a dormant seed in the soil that germinates and sprouts only once it receives precious water, nutrients, and sunshine. Just like the Goddess Inanna who remains dead for three days in the underworld while her servant Ninshibur beats the drum of life, then manages to sprinkle the water of life into her body. Thus, Inanna emerges back to the middle world, entirely renewed in her power and wisdom.
The heart of the womb implies life is a continuum; only when we truly know how to die or surrender to our metamorphosis, have we learned to live.
We all know people who go through the motions of their obsolete routines, resisting any change and missing all new possibilities of health, work, and love. For example, if we want to give health a chance, then we have to let go of our dependence on sugar and junk food. If we want to find a new job, we need to quit the one that is draining all our energy. If we want love, we need to overcome our old beliefs of not being worthy while also working on ourselves to be a good partner.
Remember that as the hero or the shaman, we do not yearn to improve just one or two aspects of our life: we surrender entirely to a new existence.
After our rich time in the jungle of Pern, our group relocated to the highlands in the Sacred Valley, at the heart of the ancient Inca empire. For the next week, we visited remnants of sacred temples and participated in ceremonial offerings to Spirit and Mother Earth to cultivate ayni. During these events, we received initiations to a shamanic lineage and empowerments to become a medicine person. However, the highest point of the initiations was reserved for our time at the holy mountain.
The first three days were filled with magic as we hiked, prayed, and ate together like one big family on a spiritual holiday. On the fourth day, we took the train to Aguas Calientes, the town just below the magnificent archaeological site of Machu Picchu, nicknamed the “little city in the clouds.” After settling in our hotel, we rode buses to the complex, for about 25 minutes of steep zigzagging. Three quarters of the way up, against pristine blue skies, I recognized the erect cone of Huayna Picchu mountain. I had been there in my youth, but also I had seen it in my dream right before my first class with the Four Winds.
Feeling exhilarated and a bit shy, I found Alberto a few seats in front of me and softly shared, “I dreamed about that mountain.”
His immediate response was a few gentle nods, followed by a certain and plain answer. “Then you must climb it.”
Once the whole group had entered the citadel, our four local guides divided us into smaller groups to begin a guided tour. Alberto discreetly pulled me aside and escorted me to a little checkpoint leading to the climb of Huayna Picchu. The guard there announced the gate had just closed for the day, since his watch marked the official closing time of two o’clock. “But my watch says one fifty-five,” argued Alberto with a friendly smile and a ten-dollar bill. Without a pause, the guard took note of my name and passport number, and advised me to be careful and not to prolong my return. I assured him I was in prime physical shape.
The ancient granite and limestone path was really steep and often slippery, yet I felt compelled to sprint and race when possible. I strongly felt the wind and spirit carrying me up, and even though my
muscles were aching, I forced myself to keep the pace and reached the top in half the time the gatekeeper had estimated.
Still panting, I looked for the highest rock hanging over the precipice, then stood near the edge to contemplate the boundless landscape, with the river and valley below, and the lush, precipitous mountains all around. How fantastic that this moment had come in my dreams! Alberto was at the ruins below instead of behind me as in my vision; nevertheless his words from the dream were more present than in the dream itself. It is time to open my wings and fly again, I thought. If I don’t fly, I will surely die.
As I looked out to the highest peaks on the horizon, I sensed the presence of the condors and spontaneously imagined being one of them. A vivid caress of the wind in my inner feathers opened my heart a few inches wider with an overwhelming feeling of gratitude toward Alberto.
“I dedicate this moment to you,” I whispered into infinity, sending him a kiss through the air to where he was at the stone temple of Pachamama, Earth Mother, below.
I was not yet living independently at home, but I knew without a doubt, from that day on, I would never again forget what it felt like to be free. My soul would not let go of this commitment, and I etched this eternal moment into every atom of my being.
With a deep inhale, I took in everything the moment had to offer me. With the exhale, I said goodbye to the condors and rushed back down to the gate. With my heart pounding from the physical effort, I found Alberto outside the gate waiting for me.
“You sent me a message from up there, didn’t you?” he said confidently.
“Yes! I did,” I replied with a smile.
That night our ritual would take place after all the tourists had left. Thanks to Alberto’s relationship with the custodians of Machu Picchu’s gates, we had exclusive access to the temples. This ritual was a deeply sacred death rite ceremony, and needed to be kept secret from all outsiders.
It was performed on a flat rock known as “the death bed” by the main temple. Alberto began with his advanced students, asking them, one at a time, to lie face up on the stone. Their personal altars (sacred cloths filled with medicine objects) were positioned under their heads like a pillow. The ritual involved detaching each person’s luminous body from their physical body and sending it on a transformative journey around the world: going out to the West, the place of the setting sun and death, and emerging anew from the East. It all happened under a crisp black sky displaying the Southern Cross constellation with pristine perfection. Once the luminous body returned from the direction of the rising sun, it reunited with the physical body in a new state of being, forever changed.
As each person was taken through this spiritual journey, the rest of us sang an indigenous incantation. I waited my turn, repeating the same chant for about an hour, slipping into a world of trance. Then it was my turn, and I lay there while Alberto shook his rattle, disengaging my luminous body by unwinding each of the chakras, and sending it on its journey around the world. The lightness of my being and the vastness of the sky were all that were present for me during this ritual. According to a regular watch, this took a couple of minutes; but for the energy body, it meant a lifetime.
When it was over and I stood up, I felt disoriented and suddenly very emotional. I stumbled to a nearby stone structure, and as soon as I was alone in the darkness, I fell to my knees and sobbed. I wept from a place deep in my soul I’d had no idea existed, a place where my conscious mind and will had no role to play. In fact, I was completely unable to understand what was happening, but it didn’t matter.
“Pachamama,” I cried, “please take my ego away!”
Unexpectedly, my skin felt too small to contain me. Urgently something needed to go; something had to die and I needed to take it off me immediately. I knew beyond logic I was not the same person I’d been just minutes ago.
“Whatever it takes, take this false self away,” I begged, as if my life depended on it. Tears soaked the soil as I bent over, my forehead pressed against a cold stone. My hands involuntarily rubbed the earth, as if to reinforce my plea.
On our way to the town Aguas Calientes, I felt very close and warm toward Alberto, and excitement bubbled inside of me. In a few days, we would hike Ausangate, just like Alberto had invited me to do. Again, I remembered reading in his book of how he kissed the bottom of a glacier at a sacred lagoon and how that gave him power.
I wanted to do that too. I longed to be one of the only two students he would allow to hike through a dangerous moraine to perform a ceremony by a powerful huaca at the belly of the glacier.
However, once we got off the bus and were walking to the hotel, Alberto turned to me and said, “I think you should go to the mountain Salcantay, not Ausangate. It is the wild feminine energy of Salcantay that you most need.”
I faked a smile of understanding, but after a few more steps, the warrior inside me disintegrated into a million pieces on the ground and my heart bled. I would not be one of the two chosen ones going up the most sacred place of power. Instead, I was being sent away with another group. That night, I was unable to sleep as my sadness mixed with a profound sense of betrayal. I had been invited to come all this way, only to be deemed inadequate for reasons I didn’t understand.
On the bus to Salcantay, trundling along a rugged dirt road, I reflected on what had happened, trying to comprehend. Hadn’t Alberto asked me to come.? Hadn’t he felt a connection between us just as much as I had?
As we approached the magnificent reflection of the morning sun over a still lake, I had to admit that I had fallen in love with Alberto, something that was not permissible or possible. Who was I compared to this great master? Plus, we both had unfinished business with partners at home.
Nevertheless, as long as the bus kept its wheels turning, my mind also kept rolling with confusing thoughts. Had I been looking for salvation in the wrong place? Had I put Alberto on a pedestal? Would we still be friends after all? Heaviness in my chest was the only answer. The fact that Alberto turned me away hurt more than I could have imagined.
This was definitely a kick to my ego, exactly what I had asked Pachamama for at the ruins. “Take my ego away!” I had begged. I just didn’t realize it would begin so fast!
I sobbed silently in the back of the bus, my head turned toward the window to pretend I was sleeping. Finally, I decided to gather some courage. I took deep, re-enlivening breaths, and promised myself that this expedition to the salca mountain—the wild, untamable, feminine one—would not be a waste of time.
When the three-hour ride was over, we got off the bus and admired the sparkling glaciers of Salcantay and its neighboring mountains. With a picnic lunch, water, and other essentials in our day packs, we began hiking an easy trail with a gradual incline. In the meantime our porters would carry the big loads on mules and settle our base camp ahead.
Soon, I received a break from my emotional turmoil when my competitive impulses sneaked in. I couldn’t help but notice how many people in my group seemed out of shape compared to the athletes I was accustomed to hiking in the Andes of my youth and in the Wasatch of Park City. If these people think they can make it over the pass, then it should be a piece of cake for me. I advanced to the front of the pack and made sure I stayed there. The physical movement of the hike plus the soothing sound of a creek, the chirping and swift flight of birds, the dance of the clouds, and the chitchatting of my new friends all calmed my nerves.
By the time we made it to camp, my heart still ached, but I was now able to truly marvel at the synchronicity of my prayers for my ego to be taken away and the occurrence of Alberto sending me off. Now, I just had to honestly figure out what else it meant—besides pain—to have my ego taken away.
That night after supper, we each made a kintu, a little bundle of coca leaves with a few flower petals, and there we anchored our prayers. In our exhale, we blew our intentions on the kintu and then offered it to the mountains, Spirit, and Pachamama: “Though I do not understand the full extent of what it is to shed my ego, may I accomplish so while in these mountains.” As I prayed, I felt a tightness in my belly. I sensed that fear and shame still remained as obstacles to live the freedom I was shown in Huayna Picchu. I continued, “May I also leave my fears and my shame in these trails, Pachamamita!”
The next day, we left early since the hike would be longer and more demanding. Now three other girls had proved to also be in top shape, but only one of them strove like me to be in front.
On our first break, our group teacher, a lady in her late 40s, gave us the task to pick a stone from the trail. She told us to blow on it anything we felt that needed to be left behind. This was our homework for the rest of the hike, while approaching the mighty glacier. Just before arriving at a flat area where our camp was already set, we gathered for the last instructions. “Now blow on that stone anything else you don’t want to take home, and leave the stone where your intuition tells you.”
We each followed the guidance at our own pace. I found a boulder about my size, and with my back resting against it, I sat under its shade. I blew my fear and shame again into the stone, visualizing how often I felt one or the other.
Finally, I left my prayers over the same boulder, sensing how the energies I blew would be taken by the rocks, the winds, and the mountain itself. As I settled in my tent after supper, my heart was no longer heavy with resentment toward Alberto, Bryan, or other men. Instead, it was flooding with sadness and melancholy about my lost dreams of a happy home with a partner.
It snowed that night, and the temperatures were below freezing, reaching degrees my sleeping bag was not built for. It was the coldest night of my life, and I tossed and turned, coughing and hearing others cough in their own tents. Also, unexpectedly, at three different times during the night, came a roaring sound, building from a soft rumble to a loud thunder. These turned out to be avalanches, the mountain freeing itself of the weight it could no longer carry. “What a powerful release!” I thought, feeling like an ant among elephants.
The sun finally began warming our tents at about 8 am., and after a breakfast of warm porridge, we got ready to cross the highest pass at about 5,300 meters (17,300 feet). I strove to be in the lead, but
this time I had a hard time keeping up. It must be because I did not sleep last night! I wanted to believe.
Once we reached the pass, we built an apacheta—a cairn of many stones stacked on top of each other toward the sky. Once more we gave our prayers to the mountain. I said: “May I truly find my inner power so I don’t try to obtain it from outside, especially men. I released Bryan, and now I do not want to seek Alberto for his protection. Thank you, Salcantay!”
Afterward, I barely made it with the others to our campground on the other side of the pass. That night, it was a lot warmer, but terrible cramps and diarrhea kept me awake. When it was time to get up in the morning, I was so dehydrated and weak I could no longer walk. I crawled out of my tent and barely made it to the nearest bushes to relieve myself.
I noticed people finishing breakfast and getting their packs ready to continue down the mountain, yet I had not even started to dress myself. I felt so tender and helpless. I collapsed from my squatting position into what is called child’s pose in yoga, my forearms, forehead, nose, and lower legs pressed into the ground while my hips rested on my heels. Sobbing silently, not knowing exactly why, I curled my fingers and dug them into the earth. I shed a river of tears while feeling an overwhelming sense of surrender, which I had never known before. Now I felt even smaller than an ant, like dust itself.
“Marcela, let me help you . . .” I heard suddenly. It was a middle- aged lady who had been a friendly presence throughout the journey. With her support, I made it back to my tent where a staff nurse was waiting to assess me. “Amebic dysentery,” he soon declared and gave me an anti-diarrhea pill and an electrolyte drink.
That day, I hiked ahead of no one, not even my own shadow. I walked slowly, accompanied by a guide who would make sure I made it to our final camp. I felt every little stone under my feet, every bush brush against my body, every ray of sun in my eyes and on my skin. It was like being naked, exposed, with no energy to defend myself against anything anymore.
“. . . and what is there to defend, anyway?” I asked while taking a step down the narrow valley. After a few more steps under the
soothing sun, “Nothing, really” came as the answer.
Naturally, without forcing, I arrived at the thought, This must be what it feels like to shed my ego.
My breath became deeper, my chest felt more spacious, and a sense of peace began to take up residence in my body. Nothing to defend, no competition to win; just breathe and walk. This was my rhythm until I caught up with the others, who were taking a lunch break and soothing their feet in a cold creek coming down from the fresh melted snow.
Instead of lunch, I kept drinking electrolytes and assured my new friends I was much better and there was nothing to worry about. Then I lay back in a grassy area with my legs and arms wide open to soak up some more warmth while covering my face with a scarf. I felt empty, but it was not a bad emptiness. Instead, I felt a spaciousness that allowed me to expand. There, I rested.
It was time to move again, but before I got out of my trance, I turned onto my belly and spoke softly to Mother Earth, as if whispering in her ear. “Pachamama, give me another chance to walk with Alberto in the mountains. Offer me this gift, beloved mother. But please don’t let me do it if I still put him on a pedestal, if I still feel inferior. Only allow me this opportunity when I am ready to see him as my equal. Thank you, Pachamamita!”
When all thoughts were gone and nothing was left in my mind, this was the prayer that spontaneously arose from the deepest place in my heart. At this moment, I asked only to walk in the mountains one more time with Alberto. Not in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that he and I would one day build a life together in the mountains of Chile.
I did not conquer Salcantay as I had conquered many mountains in my youth. This time, the mountain conquered me. I had set the intention to learn about my inner power, and I had to lose all my physical strength to begin comprehending it. This was my squeeze, my contraction, my crossing through the womb of transformation. Dying to who I no longer was, and beginning to palpate my tender, raw, new self. Now, I could feel my heart beat, my connection to nature, and my voice within. I had been in the depths of the wheel.
Sometimes the elements of our life present us with a challenge that is an initiation in disguise, a fire walk that burns your lower nature right out of you so that you are able to adapt to a higher level of consciousness.
- CAROLINE MYSS
WE HAVE REACHED A BASIN in the landscape of the bottomless unconscious; we went as far as we were meant to go this time around on the heroic journey. In the dark, we projected and faced our deepest fears until they lost their strength and their grip on our psyche. Layers of worries, anxiety, doubts, and rigid thinking fell away, dissolving timeworn structures and our old identities. Now there is nothing to defend, nothing that keeps standing that cannot stand on its own.
Now we sense the primordial pulse of life inside us, feeding only that which endured the death process, that which is crucial to our essence. The old carcass has fallen away and now we feel light like a feather, in our newborn skin, looking out to the world with fresh eyes.
Though we are on the other side of terror, and we survived our date with death, we are still far away from departing the zone of magnified power and great initiations. What lies immediately beyond
is not our sweet dreams, but remarkable opportunities to test the deeper truth embodied in our new being.
We have come out of the cocoon, but we have not flown yet. We flap our new wings, and flap them again, to realize their size and to feel their power. But we will not really comprehend them until we encounter the first breeze midair and then our first storm.
We have come out of a period of incubation, of ending the old and germinating the new. Now we have to continue the initiatory path of tests and trials that lies ahead. It doesn’t really matter in what direction we go to try to escape, because there is no exit until we have proven ourselves pretty, strong, or worthy—whichever qualities our new skin is all about.
The first challenge may come when we realize that our new awakening does not translate into an immediate change of our outer circumstances. For example, we might wake up feeling ready for a nutritious breakfast, or a thoughtful relationship, or a meaningful job, but we find only the same sugary muffins in our kitchen, a bitter partner, and a desk piled high with unfulfilling tasks.
In the past, before our dark night of the soul, even if we had tried a fresh approach to these situations, it would have been very difficult to sustain a new order. The old programming of thoughts and feelings in our brain and nervous system would end up taking control anyway as soon as we let our guard down. Eventually, we would eat the muffin, and then feel guilty for all the sugar; or snap at our partner’s bad mood; or feel resentful for spending so much time on insincere work behind a desk. But now, thanks to the experience of spacious openness inside the heart of the womb, we’ve greatly expanded our capacity for change. Thanks to the inner alchemy that also occurred in that period, we developed a new hypothetical relationship with reality; we’ve sketched new neuropathways, which when put into practice become our new default responses.
Starting with the muffins, you might discover that your dark moments have led you to recognize your self-destructive patterns, face your anxiety, and understand the underlying fear. Then you may move on from those emotions toward forgiveness, compassion, and love for others as well as yourself. As a result, your new self-esteem
yearns for a more nutritious breakfast, and you no longer automatically reach for the easiest and sweetest.
For the moody partner, in the midst of your dark quest, perhaps you realized how you have been acting out with the same frivolous attitude your grandmother had with her husband. Then you recognize how you’ve deprived your partner of the love he so longs for. Now you understand that he doesn’t know how to ask for what he needs except by becoming frustrated and upset like a child. Seeing your own role in the situation allows you to create the necessary changes to overcome a harmful dynamic.
And to finish with the unfulfilling job, your quest could have wired you to a different way of how you perceive your responsibility. For instance, now you may see your position brings you freedom rather than bondage. It is thanks to this job that you are able to pay your bills, and pay for the nice apartment and pillow where you can peacefully rest and dream. You also realize this job is not forever, but it is supportive until you can gather enough courage and vision to fulfill those dreams of a new stage in your career. So now you can sit at your desk with gratitude instead of resentment while infused with enthusiasm for the next chapter of your creative expression.
Health, intimate relationships, and jobs or careers are very common challenges in people’s lives. When we encounter difficulties after our symbolic death, we find a different inner drive from which to address situations and people. And each time we take action from our fresh self, we further discover our gifts, capacities, and skills, and strengthen the new neuropathways that soon become our default responses.
A real danger for any newborn hero is to forget about the new agreements or contracts of the soul and to slip back into old patterns and molds. Facing an unknown situation or destiny, one may succumb to fear or other emotions and be seduced back to the obsolete reality, no matter how detrimental or shady, because it feels familiar and less frightening than something new.
This is the reason why the “heart of the womb” or “dark night of the soul” is imperative; we must be stripped of our fears so they will not sabotage our newborn truth later. This danger is linked to the inner doubts that can arise when facing upcoming challenges. Infinite possibilities of inner doubt exist; we all know this intimately, since it is part of having a mind that constantly speaks to us. We might find ourselves doubting if we are fit for the new job, or if the new job is the right one for our newfound freedom. We might question if we are capable of love or worthy of being loved. Or maybe we have misgivings about our physical or economical resources to complete a task.
FROM INNER CHANGE TO OUTER CHANGE
Within days of coming back from my first trip to Pern with Alberto and the Four Winds Society, my mother-in-law returned my sons to me and Bryan. Because I lacked the money to rent my own place, I moved back to the family house in Park City, reassured by Bryan that he would soon move out. However, he never did!
Thankfully, I had negotiated from the beginning that we would sleep in separate bedrooms, and my increased self-esteem and confidence surely had a positive impact on our dynamic. Bryan became more agreeable, and between picking up extra work and taking more time to do sports, he was rarely at home. This gave me plenty of peaceful space to be me. I could wake up to my yoga and shamanic practice, take my sons to our favorite hikes or skiing when not at school, see a few massage clients or visit with friends, and relax in the evenings.
The seeds of freedom and inner strength I had sown during my journey to Pern still needed to germinate and grow to offer me their ripe fruits. Yet, without hesitation, I spoke to Bryan about my commitment to continue with my shamanic training. He answered with approval, and when the West class of the Medicine Wheel was offered by the Four Winds the next year, in the spring of 2004, he went along with my plan, supporting my babysitting arrangements and my spending on class tuition.
My experiences in Pern had been a powerful prelude for the wisdom of Jaguar; nonetheless, I arrived at class hungry for the formal teachings and initiations of the West direction. I also wondered if Alberto would come. Since Salcantay, I had never stopped wondering when we would meet again. A part of me ached to see him soon, but the truth in my prayer to Pachamama spoke with greater force: “Not until I am ready to see him as my equal.” Therefore, when he didn’t come, I was more relieved than sorry since I did not feel ready. Now I would have the precious opportunity to keep peeling my layers of insufficiency, helplessness, and hopelessness without any distractions. One day, I will be ready, and Alberto and I will walk again in the mountains together, I thought, comforting myself.
During the class, I came to understand with greater clarity how I ended up as a victim, and how I constantly colluded in creating drama in my life. I then came to not only understand but shift these deep-seated patterns. My classmates and I were guided to recognize and embrace our shadows and underlying fears. By way of shamanic journeying, we healed past-life memories to uproot our tendencies within the triangle of disempowerment so as not to fall again in the roles of perpetrator, victim, or rescuer. We also learned to identify intrusive energies and voices, and how to release them. We worked on our unconscious contracts with our ancestors, freeing them and ourselves from toxic bonds. At all times, Jaguar was our loyal companion.
Once at home, I was less defensive and less reactive, and more patient. In this calmer state, I could no longer ignore the hurtful impact that the past drama had on the foundational years for our boys. With Bryan’s consent, I found a child psychologist, and the children began their therapy.
During one of their sessions in the summer, something peculiar happened while they were busy drawing with their therapist. We were on the third floor of a brick building in a small room that had only one window, which I was facing from my seat. My phone rang, and without looking at the number I reached into my purse and silenced the call. Right at that moment, a sparkling green and blue hummingbird with golden orange on top of its head appeared, hovering in the window. It faced me for at least 30 seconds.
In that moment, I thought it was a sign that everything would be okay with my sons. Furthermore, I reflected that perhaps Hummingbird was already connecting me with the North teachings since that class was coming up in just a few weeks. Finally, I wondered who had called me at the exact moment the little bird had peeked in to say hello.
My eyes widened, my jaw dropped, and my body froze when I finally checked my voice messages. It had been Alberto announcing his presence for the North class, saying that he was looking forward to seeing me. Am I really ready to meet him as an equal?
For the boys to be in loving hands while I went through the North teachings, Bryan and I agreed they would visit his mother on the East Coast for a month. This would also allow me a few extra days to work without worrying about babysitters. While I was still giving massages, my clients were requesting my shamanic sessions more and more. The timing proved to be decisive for what was to come.
It was now almost a year after my destiny retrieval in my first Four Winds course. The light Alberto had brought from the upper world into my solar plexus would soon bear fruit: a reality I could not have imagined possible. However, that light would never have been able to orchestrate such events had I not done my homework of the South and West directions to become available.
When Alberto arrived in Park City a couple of days before the North class began, my plea to Pachamama was answered entirely and beyond what I dared imagine. He asked if I would take him for a walk in the mountains since I knew the trails. “It would be my pleasure!” I replied. That afternoon, my sons were already with grandma, so I gave my massage appointments to another therapist, and headed over to the condo he had rented.
I could not believe the warmth and recognition that arose as soon as our eyes met. Though I didn’t want to reveal so much excitement,
I probably exuded a nervous enthusiasm when we hugged under the hot sun. Alberto, on the other hand, seemed light and adventurous. As we drove toward the mountains, he revealed he had ended his five-year relationship just a couple of months earlier.
This time, I took us to a steep trail going to the top of Iron Mountain, only a five-minute drive from his house. He was in great shape and walked at a fast pace, but every few minutes we would both need to stop and catch our breath. In one of those pauses, he looked me in the eyes and shared what came as an even bigger surprise: he was moving to Park City, where Four Winds had had an office for the past few years.
When the North class began, I was thrilled by its rich teachings, inner discoveries, and community. Alberto came every day to lead part of the class. During class breaks, we would have a tea and a chat. As soon as the class was over, we resumed our mountain exploration, each time a different favorite trail of mine.
I had snowboarded and trekked the Wasatch and Uinta mountains for a decade, so I knew them well. We would walk through forests of aspens and pines, and come out to open fields of purple verbenas, orange Indian mallow, and white yarrow. We would often spot blue jays, magpies, and sparrows, and less frequently we would meet a forest grouse, a hummingbird, or a woodpecker. Deer were common, and seeing an elk or moose felt like a gift.
Magic was definitely in the air, and we felt so easy and comfortable with each other. Pachamama was so right in her timing. Alberto and I were walking hand in hand, touching each other’s hearts, and abiding in a place where no one was above or below the other. Soon, we kissed and started a romance.
Days after my sons returned, Alberto left to teach in Europe and begin a book promotional tour. It would be six weeks before I would see him again, and between our responsibilities and the time zone differences, a couple of long days would pass without hearing the other’s voice. Flip phones with prohibitively expensive international calling rates were our only means of communication. Our eagerness to share lyrical words and our deep feelings became intensely frustrated.
About a month into Alberto’s travels, we got the rare opportunity to speak calmly for more than two minutes. He firmly told me, “Marcela, you know that our relationship is impossible.”
My whole body deflated, my soul punctured by his shocking words.
He continued, “You have two very young children to raise, three meals a day to provide, a job, a community, and so much more. You are bound to one place, while in my case, teaching and promoting my books put me on the road for ten months a year.”
I could not disagree. As he continued to voice his concerns, my heart dropped to the floor, dejected, defeated, and speechless. I had often wondered how long our bubble of magic was going to last. It looked like our time had just run out.
Then he said, “But because you and I love the impossible, then our relationship is perfect.”
My soul soared. In that moment, my passionate character—the same one that led me to surf the entire Pacific coast and to hike and snowboard a 23,000-foot volcano—signed up to be with him for the rest of my life. The only thing we needed to make our relationship work was tremendous courage, to dive with our hearts and arms wide open into the unknown. I felt as if I had nothing to lose; I could only win my life back.
As quickly as I had deflated, my luminous body expanded three times in the open patio of the house as my children played inside. What a lightness and excitement I felt! My exhilaration dropped, however, when I realized it was time to face Bryan and let him know about my new life prospects.
I did it as carefully and with as much kindness as I could embody, though I remained steadfast in my intention. He was shocked. For the first few days, he responded with his best imaginable behavior in an attempt to make me “come back to my senses and to our family.” After a week, when Bryan realized I was determined to start a new life on my own that included another man, his fury took over. In that moment, I knew I had put up with all the violence I was going to tolerate in my life. “Enough!” I said to myself and sought refuge with my children in our town’s Peace House, a domestic violence shelter.
I asked my mother to come and support my life transition. She did, moving right in to the Peace House with us. With naive confidence, I thought I could just carry on with my usual routine while figuring out our next living situation. So, just a few days after moving into Peace House, while my mother cared for my kids, I decided to take the East direction class, which was being held just a few blocks away.
On the second day of the seminar, a snowy afternoon, I was sitting in class with dozens of other students, carefully listening to our teacher, when I heard the main door open. I turned and froze when I saw my mother peeking through the opening, her face streaked with tears.
I jumped up and ran out to her, choking out my question through the knot in my throat: “What happened, Mom?”
As soon as she could deliver her words between sobs, she answered, “The boys refuse to go inside the house.”
Together, we rushed through heavy snowfall and arrived minutes later at a scene I will never forget.
Red and blue lights spun on the rooftops of police cars, piercing the fog. Their headlights, diffuse in the mist, were aimed at the three- story shelter. My already brisk heart rate accelerated, and I broke into a run, eager to get the full picture. What was happening with my little ones?
As I turned the corner, I saw them: little Miles and Abel with their heels dug into a wall of snow, each falling snowflake burying them deeper. Though they wore jackets and hats, their hands were naked and red in the frigid cold. Not their sweet and loving grandmother, not social workers with candies, and not even six police officers in uniform could convince my sons to go inside a warm house that wasn’t their home.
What have I done.? Leave for class when my sons need me the most? I asked myself with the knot still in my throat. Instantly, I decided to postpone my training to give Miles and Abel the love and attention they deserved.
In a matter of days, Alberto, who had been again on the road, helped me find and rent my own place to avoid any further situations and conflicts. He also offered me a steady job at the Four Winds office so I could make a reliable salary and start feeling independent.
I accepted his offerings with gratitude, and we were able to spend Christmas in the new house.
The new year motivated Bryan and me to negotiate our divorce. This was no easy task when our ideas of what was fair and what was the best future for the children were so distantly apart. We each hired a lawyer, then turned to mediators after weeks without an agreement.
The only thing Bryan and I had in common after the third mediation session was a tight sense of confinement. We each felt challenged by their suggested micromanaged schedule of the kids going back and forth between two nearby homes. It definitely didn’t resonate with my newfound perspective of a free woman ready to do some traveling for my new job and my new love.
At the end of the winter, Bryan and I still had not made much progress in reaching a divorce agreement. I was tired of being in limbo, not knowing for sure where and how to invest my energy. I wanted to find a more permanent place for me and the boys, and to know exactly when I could plan on accompanying Alberto on some of his travels. The East class was coming up soon in Ireland, and that faraway country sounded like my chance to claim my new life and destiny. I had never crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and just the idea of doing it felt like that rite of passage that would open me to the gifts of the East.
I made a firm decision to come to an agreement with Bryan, one way or another. Something in me just knew I could do it this time all on my own: no lawyers, no mediators. We cleared out several hours on a day to meet and chose a neutral place where I felt safe. From the beginning, I felt my Jaguar present with great resolution and stealth, determined to accomplish the daunting task of settling this deal.
Bryan and I went back and forth for four hours, exchanging different ideas. We both knew another series of court battles was around the corner if we did not find a mutually satisfying answer in that moment. Great tension built up in my shoulders and neck, but Bryan and I finally shook hands. We agreed that he would move to Hawaii with the boys for the next school year, and I would visit them often. In the meantime, I would finish my training with the Four Winds and find a place in Chile to settle near my family. After that first year was over, I would take the boys with me to Chile for four years. Then they would go back to Hawaii to finish high school with their father.
Our families and friends thought we were crazy to create this arrangement, but it was the best we could come up with on that day. It was not only me who was feeling the need to start a fresh life.
Just a couple of days after signing the divorce papers, I arrived in Ireland utterly exhausted to meet Alberto and begin my learnings of the East.
And thus I traversed the road of trials, testing my inner rather than my outer strength. I tapped into that earthly, feminine pulse I learned to feel while in the belly of Salcantay: intelligent patience instead of push through force. And just like Jaguar had helped me envision, I arrived in Ireland as a free woman ready to learn, love, and explore.
To the Winds of the North,
Ancestors, our children’s children,
Come to warm your hands by our fire and whisper what is important for us to remember. Siwar Kenti, royal hummingbird, teach us how to keep still while in flight.
Guide us to the land of flowers and remind us how to drink from the wisdom of life.
IN THE NORTH, we recover our wholeness as we awaken from the nightmare that cast us out of the Garden of Eden—a metaphor for a collective wounding that separates us from Spirit and Mother Earth. In this direction, we discover just the opposite: not only have we not been ostracized from paradise, we have been bestowed the land to be its stewards while entirely sustained by Spirit.
However, this wisdom is only a romantic aspiration if we have not released our old story in the South and faced our shadows while honoring death in the West. We need to be free and open in order to reclaim our belonging and unity with the essence of all life.
On our return to being part of the whole, our prodigious ally is Hummingbird, who embodies the sagacity of the epic journey. The smallest birds in the world, hummingbirds are known to fly over 1,200 miles without stopping. Some species of hummingbirds cross the entire Gulf of Mexico on their tiny wings to avoid the bare winter of North America and reach the season of blossoms. By example, this exceptional little bird inspires us to point our compass in the direction of our sacred garden while helping us transcend all our excuses.
Hummingbirds do not stop to think “my wings are too small” or “there are no flowers across the sea”; they simply migrate toward the promised land that is wired in their memories, a legacy from their ancestors. In this same way, Hummingbird invites us to go beyond “My children are too young,” “My job would not allow it,” “My husband needs me at home,” “I need more money,” or any other pretext. It encourages us to embark on the quest toward wholeness.
In shamanic lore, the separation from Spirit and from its manifestation as Mother Earth is felt as a collective amnesia from which we must wake to remember our origin, our life’s purpose, and our destiny. At the same time, shamans recognize the individual need to “re-member” the aspects of ourselves that became cut off by fear or trauma. Where psychologists speak about “disassociation,” shamans speak about “soul loss,” which is when an aspect of our singular psyche splits off due to intolerable pain or distress. As these feelings linger in time, the fragmented soul withdraws to a protective cavern or womb-like space in the inner landscape of Mother Earth or the lower world, so as to remain unharmed.
In this direction, we learn to navigate the depths of the unconscious to find our personal inner garden enfolding the safe space where our splintered soul has retreated. Again, Hummingbird is our helper, guiding us to remain on the life-sustaining route and not stray away to ghostly paths and traps of the collective lower world. This little bird is programmed with the best instinct for finding the sweet nectar of flowers; hence it keeps us focused on our mission to recover our vital soul fragment.
Many Western religious traditions zealously reach up to the heavens for salvation while anxiously expecting to bury any hellish terror and death down in the lower world. This approach is the exact opposite of that of the shamans, who courageously dive into these lands, knowing that rich treasures lie safely exactly where people are most afraid to go: among the dead, the insane, and the hungry ghosts. It is here where they are sure to find the many seeds of our potential.
So, when we journey to recover our lost soul, we also discover a few gems along the way that become significant resources to support the retrieval and, later, the integration of our yearned-for soul aspect. Those precious gifts from the depths of the earth steer us toward our soul’s North, so we can start revealing our unique beauty and passions while connecting to the larger web of life.
When we retrieve our missing soul, we gain feelings of aliveness and enthusiasm. Our recovered self brings back long-lost passion and infuses us with a new sense of purpose and belonging. Once again, we are plugged into the cycle of life, ready to plow the earth and sow seeds for our destiny.
The more we recognize the significance of our soul recovery, the more we realize how important it is to embrace aspects of ourselves that have been inhibited in the shadow, as we spoke about earlier in milestone six. These two powerful and effective practices are potent tools on our journey to wholeness. And again, we are not alone but supported and guided by nothing less than our Earth Mother and the Heavens, together with attentively selected allies from the natural world.
Pamela, an 80-year-old from Australia, came to our retreat center in Chile to attend one of our programs. While having tea together, she revealed how she endured a remarkably vivid soul loss at the age of 12 and, 51 years later, an extraordinary soul retrieval.
In 1949, while Papua New Guinea was under the rule of the Australian government, Pamela’s father, Cecil F. Cowley, was given the assignment of resident district commissioner at the rural Higaturu locality on the lush slopes of Mount Lamington. Her mother, Amalia, went with him while Pamela and her brother, Erl, stayed at a boarding school in Australia.
In December of 1950, 12-year-old Pamela and almost-16-year-old Erl flew to Papua to spend their Christmas school holidays with their parents.
At the end of the fourth week after the enthusiastic family reunion in Higaturu, Mount Lamington, which was not even known to be a volcano, surprised everyone with intensifying signs of an imminent eruption. Cecil notified the authorities in Port Moresby, asking for an evacuation of the whole district. His request was denied. He asked for a volcanologist to come and assess the volcano’s activity. That was also denied.
One day, the family went to visit their friends, Mr. and Mrs. Stevens, who lived four miles down the road. While there, Mrs. Stevens asked Amalia to stay the night, as she hadn’t been sleeping well at home due to the tremors. Amalia agreed after Pamela also decided to stay and Cecil said he would pick them up the next morning.
Pamela recounted for me what happened the next morning from her perspective as a young girl:
“When we saw the hot pumice rolling toward us at a shocking speed from all sides, while a cloud of ash showered from above, we rushed for the truck, but it stalled and just would not move. So my mother and I sat on a knoll and just waited to die.
“Then I began screaming, ‘I am too young to die! I am too young to die!’ Mr. Stevens demanded, ‘Stop that child from crying!’
“So my mother took my head, turned it toward her shoulder, and said, ‘Don’t look, Pammie, we are going to God.’
“In that moment, I split off. And from then on, I felt nothing at all.
“Immediately after, like a miracle, the rushing pumice stopped only a hundred yards from us and started receding because of the vacuum caused by the blast that sucked it all back into the mountain. Nevertheless, thousands of people instantly perished, and hundreds more were soon to die of their burns.”
Eventually, they were able to start the truck again, and the ladies were transported farther down the road to Popondetta, the main town of the province, picking up survivors on the way. Pamela and her mother were housed by a couple who were friends. Soon trucks started arriving with victims, most of them severely burned and dying. The hosts could do little without any medical facilities or supplies. They tried to alleviate the suffering by putting oil and fat on the burns, and by feeding hot beef tea and bread to the ones who could take it.
Amalia instructed her daughter to stay inside the house to avoid seeing such horror, and the hosts offered Pamela the bathtub as a bed. Pamela described her night: “I lay there and felt nothing at all during this horrible nightmare.”
The next morning, a small plane made a difficult landing at the local airstrip of Popondetta to bring medical help and evacuate a number of people, including Pamela and her mother. Amalia, who had been calm until now, became hysterical, crying that she was not going to abandon her son and husband. A doctor who had come with the plane sedated her, and she woke up hours later in Port Moresby’s hospital.
Meanwhile, Pamela was taken to the governor’s house and kindly given a toothbrush, a dress, a bed, and meals. She recalls little from those days: “There were nice people, but I don’t remember the people. It was like I was walking around in a nothingness, where nothing mattered, no one mattered, and nothing was happening. Everyone and everything familiar had gone. There was just me, and even that didn’t feel like anything at all.”
When Pamela went to visit her mother at the hospital, Amalia was still in shock, but she managed to carefully break the news to Pamela that her father’s and brother’s bodies had been found. “Again, I felt numbed,” Pamela recalls. The doctor asked her to leave the room for a moment, and she overheard him say to her mother, “There is something wrong with that child. She should be crying.”
As soon as Amalia came out of the hospital, she and Pamela returned to Sydney, unsure how life would continue. In just two weeks, Pamela began her first year of high school in the same school she had boarded for many years. As the days and months went by, she found it very strange that nobody asked her about the volcano episode. Years later, a classmate explained that they didn’t know what to say.
As an adult, Pamela felt a longing to visit her father and brother’s grave in Papua New Guinea, but Amalia was unhappy about it, fearing Pamela’s reaction. Nevertheless, when Amalia passed, five decades after the eruption, Pamela gathered the courage to go. Her husband accompanied her.
From her visit, she recalls, “I found their burial in Popondetta beneath overgrown grass. I knelt down to kiss the plaques with their names, and like a tsunami came a huge wave of grief, totally unexpected. All my repressed pain, tears, and sorrow from fifty-one years back surfaced as unstoppable sobbing. At that moment, I found myself watching the whole scene from above, and soon I noticed people gathering around my husband and me.”
Eventually, Pamela stood up and realized those people were also crying. They had followed her from a distance, simply knowing she was the young Australian girl who had survived with her mother. Without thinking, Pamela instinctively walked over to meet them. Soon, she was being held in each person’s arms like a long overdue family reunion.
Word traveled quickly in the village, even without any phones. Within half an hour, other survivors from the area had rushed to the scene to hug Pamela and to shed tears together. With each heartful encounter, Pamela felt more and more present and alive, like she was waking up from a long dream. And each beat of her own heart was like a drum calling and welcoming her soul back into her life.
Through this extraordinary meeting with other survivors of the volcanic eruption, for the first time, Pamela realized that it had not been all about her and Amalia. Hugging people with serious physical scars from their burns and emotional scars from their loss, she quickly transformed her sense of powerlessness into an appreciation for all the blessings she has had in her life, including a loving and supportive partner and three wonderful children.
As I interviewed Pamela, I clearly sensed she had done the work of the South by freeing herself from the old story of victimhood, an important milestone to step out of the triangle of disempowerment. She did the work of the West when she finally went back to Popondetta to face her memories of terror and death.
From her last day on the island, she recounted, “Although I was dressed to board the plane, I walked into the sea, complete with my hat. The warm water wrapped around me like a mother to her child. I felt cleansed. No more pain, terror, or distress. Simply soothing and comforting.”
On a second visit to the island and specifically to Higaturu, Pamela further reconciled with the intense events of her past. Now she had not only dissolved her repressed emotions and recovered her soul, but once again she felt like the daughter of the lush landscape of her childhood. Mount Lamington stood no longer like a menace but settled in her as a source of compassion and inner strength.
When we retrieve our missing soul, we gain feelings of aliveness and enthusiasm. Our recovered self brings us back the long-lost passion and infuses us with a new sense of purpose and belonging. Once again, we are plugged into the cycle of life, ready to plow the earth and sow seeds of our destiny.
The more we recognize the significance of our soul recovery, the more we realize how important it is to embrace aspects of ourselves that have been inhibited in the shadow, as we spoke about earlier in chapter six. These two powerful and effective practices are potent tools on our journey to wholeness. And again, we are not alone, but supported and guided by nothing less than our Earth mother and the Heavens, together with attentively selected allies from the natural world.
DISCOVERING MY FRAGMENTED SOUL
How did I retrieve my soul? It didn’t happen the first time I went to look for her during the Soul Retrieval class I took in September 2002. What Alberto had accomplished on the last day of that class was the retrieval of an auspicious quantum of energy from my destiny. In that moment, this offered me great protection and fueled my life’s new direction, but it was more than three years later that my lost soul came back to dance with me again.
During this first Soul Retrieval course, our teacher Lynn taught us how to quest through the lower world, how to find our lost self, and how to access precious resources from the same depths to help integrate the process. When Lynn determined we were ready, she asked that we journey on behalf of a partner.
On the spot, my classmate Jay, who had taken me under his wing, offered to quest for me. Down through the roots of the tree of life he went, all the way to a pristine underground river feeding the mighty tree. There, he cleansed himself from all energies that do not belong in the lower realm and allowed those waters to carry him deeper, all the way to my inner garden. There he summoned the gatekeeper of those domains, who became his guide after Jay paid his respects. Together, they explored the chambers of my soul. First they visited the wounding that derailed me from my life’s sacred purpose. They witnessed scenes of masculine competition, oppression, and violence—all themes I had brought with me from past lives as contracts and beliefs that inhibited my feminine creativity and expression.
After carefully understanding the rivalry of the players in their hostile grounds, Jay and the wise guide continued the quest to find my lost self. Finally, they saw me dancing, young and vital, flowing carelessly and free with the winds, the waves, and the trees. She was ever so connected, beautiful, and vibrant.
Jay carefully asked, “Would you follow me to meet yourself at thirty-one years old?” Looking into his eyes, she answered by spiraling away. The gatekeeper encouraged Jay to remain unattached and to continue looking for a gift for me. Jay found a drum and a rattle to help me find my own voice and power, and eventually be able to call my dancing soul back.
Finally, before ascending from my gardens within the netherworld, the gatekeeper called the spirit of an animal to assist me in the process of integration of my power and medicine. Promptly, a bald eagle came, flapping with vigor as it landed next to Jay. To return from my inner garden, Jay followed the same route through which he entered, so as not to get lost in the phantom landscape outside the clear river and the deep roots of the tree of life.
Jay had been softly shaking his rattle throughout the whole journey to help him stay in a self-induced trance. As he gently brought the shaking to a stop, he softly whispered in my ear, “I found you, Marcela!” and began to describe my dancing girl. As I listened, tears of deep melancholy flowed down my cheeks. I knew I had no place for her spontaneity and no time for her uninhibited demands without getting into deep trouble within the confines of my little submissive life. As I reached for a tissue to dry my face, I wondered, How many lives ago did I abandon myself in order to make it in a world of adversity?
Judging from my young soul’s reaction and my tears, Jay knew I was not ready to respond to her gifts and demands. Tenderly, he went on to reassure me that with a little time and healing, she would soon come back. Then he introduced me to the drum and the rattle, explaining that I should play those instruments to call my deep longings and chant them out to Spirit, like a prayer. Finally, he blew the essence of the eagle into my heart, inviting me to feel the power
of her flight and of her sight, to eventually open my own wings and see with greater vision.
More than three years of significant inner transformation and outer changes would transpire before I was able to find my dancing girl again.
After I’d taken my East course in Ireland, I found a charming house in bucolic central Chile near a Waldorf school where I wanted to educate my sons. At the same time, my sister Carolina had separated from her partner and agreed to live with us. She brought her two children and also enrolled them at the Waldorf school. While the four cousins were thrilled to get to know one another, Carolina and I were excited to share the responsibility of nurturing them and coordinating all logistics from cooking to paying bills. We also supported each other’s individual needs and aspirations.
Alberto visited us every few weeks while I traveled about four times a year to the U.S. or overseas to learn and teach by his side. As I gained experience, my confidence steadily grew, and I began to share my shamanic wisdom in well-attended classes or in conferences with a few hundred people. I also became skillful in giving private consultations, which I mostly did from home over the phone for clients around the world. Soon I was earning a reliable income, which gave me a sense of stability and freedom like never before.
During a trip through Europe, I found myself with Alberto, frolicking and laughing with abandon. We had just ended a successful teaching tour and now were just relaxing in a charming little hotel by a lake. It was a moment of utter tranquility. Looking back, it feels like I was melting in deep rest and joy after lifetimes of battles. At some point, Alberto said, “I have never seen you laugh so wholeheartedly before.”
As I kept dissolving in those expansive feelings with a smile on my face and my eyes closed, the unexpected happened. I sensed a presence moving toward me. My inner vision revealed a young woman in a beautiful flowy dress, whirling like a Sufi dervish. Instinctively, I relished in her delightful life force. Soon I experienced a kind of ecstasy, and my heart recognized that she was my long-lost soul. Spontaneously, with deep longing, I whispered, “I love you— please come home.”
It felt like an orgasm, a brief moment with a taste of infinity. She passed through my skin and wiggled herself inside my body, merging her energy with mine. The vitality I felt was so strong, it lifted me up to dance, from the bedroom through the glass doors, out to the edge of the lake. There we made music as I cavorted over the fallen, crackling leaves of autumn.
In the end, I saw Alberto sitting in a wooden chair on the porch. Together with the birds, a gentle breeze, and perhaps a neighbor or two, he had witnessed the retrieval of my dancing soul.
Even today, this girl lures me out of bed to play her favorite rhythms and songs, to salute the sun while sensuously moving my body to awaken my inner essence and connect with the energy of life all around. From this experience, I understood that to suffer soul loss and to lose one’s passion is all part of the archetypal human journey. The task is to remember that we still live in the Garden of Earth, and that we must plunge into the depths of our being to find our vital selves again.
In this way, we recover our yearning to be alive and to participate in the miraculous course of creation, along with the knowing that we belong and that we are loved. In other words, we recover our innocent trust of the world, but this time it is a wise innocence rather than naivete. We have been hurt, betrayed, abandoned, shamed, and so on. Now, however, we know it doesn’t need to be that way.
We acquire discriminating wisdom that recognizes beauty and goodness, but we can also tell deceit and treachery. And when falling into a painful situation, we are aware that it is only a lesson that we have not yet mastered—something we must face wholeheartedly so as not to repeat it. Furthermore, these new painful situations do not stop us from trusting universal love and goodness. Hummingbird keeps steering us to the land of flowers to find nectar
and delicious scents, reminding us to see beauty where others see only pain and to shine our light instead of being consumed by fear.
The Mother Goddess, wherever she is found, is an image that inspires and focuses a perception of the Universe as an organic, alive, and sacred whole, in which humanity, The Earth, and all of life on Earth participate as her children. Everything is woven together in one cosmic web, where all orders of manifest and unmanifest life are related, because all share in the sanctity of the original source.
- ANNE BARING AND JULES CASHFORD,
THE MYTH OF THE GODDESS
IT WOULD BE A GREAT TASK to provide a total and accurate recounting of our human relationship with the divine feminine, even if we focus only on the origins of Western civilization. My intention here is to offer you a glimpse of how the stories and myths of the past run deep in our psyche even when we are not aware of them. I share my perspective on how we came to adopt a distorted religious perception in which the divine feminine is shadowed under an almighty masculine god.
To be born under the umbrella of our Western paradigm is not only to fall away from our primordial bountiful existence, the Garden of Eden, but also to be placed in a dubious relationship with the feminine principle. The all-life-giving goddess from ancient times was ousted from her place of honor and supremacy, made to share the
shrine with her son or husband, and ultimately defeated by the divine male presence at the beginning of what we call “history.”
Significant archaeological findings of Paleolithic art combined with meticulous scholarship of that period reveal the worship of a Great Mother Goddess as the Creatress and renewing power for all forms of life. In The Myth of the Goddess, the authors conclude: “For at least 20,000 years (from 30,000 to 10,000 b.c.e.) the Paleolithic cave seems to be the most sacred place, the sanctuary of the Goddess and the source of her regenerative power. Entering one of these caves is like making a journey into another world, one which is inside the body of the goddess. To those who would have lived in a sacred world, the actual hollowed shape would have symbolized her all- containing womb, which brought forth the living and took back the dead.”
For Neolithic expressions of the Great Goddess, we turn to Lithuanian archaeologist and author of The Language of the Goddess, Marija Gimbutas. She speaks about well-established matrilineal societies characterized by a peaceful disposition and a great appreciation for art and creativity, revealing an enduring worship of the sacred feminine. Gimbutas tells us that “the hybrid bird-snake goddess was the great goddess of the life continuum, the goddess of birth, death, and rebirth; she was the creator and the destroyer, the maiden, the crone, and the goddess in the prime of life who mated with the young god in the hieros gamos, the sacred marriage, and gave birth again, again, and again to creation.” Thanks to archaeological achievements, the Neolithic image of the goddess has been unearthed from Siberia to the Pyrenees of Spain.
Then came the Indo-European invaders riding their horses from the East, originally as the Kurgan tribes from the steppes of Russia. They were half pastoral, half nomadic people who began venturing into the West in the sixth millennium and were homesteading in eastern Europe by the third millennium. Gradually these peoples dominated over the agricultural peoples, imposing their stratified administration, their language, and their Sky-god religion. They brought with them the importance of the individual over the tribe, the warrior-hero values, individual rather than collective graves, and the fortification of settlements. They brought the hard mixture of copper and arsenic, giving origin to the Bronze Age. The hoe was fortified for agriculture; daggers, swords, axes, and spears were created for battle.
The image of the supreme Goddess, bringer of life, death, and rebirth, underwent a fundamental transformation. She was no longer one circular continuum, but two separate forces: death became a despairing product of war, detached from its regenerative function. In the past, her life-taking attributes had never been portrayed without a sprout, a branch, or some other sign of renewal. Now, as a consequence of this split, the great goddess emerged either as queen of life or in her opposite role as goddess of death and war.
At the same time the primordial goddess begins to be portrayed with a son on her lap who grows up to be her brother or lover and sometimes husband through a sacred marriage. In the Paleolithic, male attributes where also part of the Goddess since she contained all creation. For example, as Anne Baring and Jules Cashford describe in The Myth of the Goddess, we would find “carved or clay figurines with breast or egg-shaped buttocks and long, phallic neck and head. But it is not until 7,000 or 6,000 b.c.e. that the androgynous figure separates into female and male elements. The male becomes the fertilizing power, and the female, the gestating womb.”
Gradually, the Great Goddess kept losing sovereignty as the all- encompassing Mother of Life, suffering further fragmentation into her different aspects. She became maiden, mother, or crone; lady of fertility and crops or lady of beasts; muse of arts or patron of war; mistress of beauty and love or queen of mysterious witchcraft and magic; protectress of births or ruler of fates; and a monarch of death and beyond.
The last place in Old Europe where the myth of the universal goddess survived was with the Minoan culture in Crete and on a few other islands like Malta, until the masculine new order shadowed the original tradition. By the time the Greek pantheon was well established on Mount Olympus, the already-fragmented goddess was shuffled to a secondary place by the authority of the thunder god Zeus, absolute ruler and dispenser of justice. Though still a queen, she was made to conform to the constricted roles of wife, sister, daughter, mother, or lover so she could become exemplary to the new societal system.
This scenario repeated itself in every goddess-revering society whenever the paradigm of a male god came to sit hierarchically above her, demanding attributes of an almighty creator. Ultimately, in our Western male-dominated religious world, the image of the divine feminine became reduced to a chaste heavenly Madonna, who is servant to the masculine’s divine mission.
Merlin Stone says in When God Was a Woman, “The priests of the male deity had been forced to convince themselves and to try to convince their congregations that sex, the very means of procreating new life, was immoral, the ‘original sin.’ Thus, in the attempt to institute a male kinship system, Judaism, and following it Christianity, developed as religions that regarded the process of conception as somewhat shameful or sinful.”
Aspects of the goddess that are naturally wild, sensual, and fierce were declared demonic and mollified in appearance. The Babylonian myth of creation I describe in the next chapter, and Sumerian tales that place the feminine below the masculine deity, later become the basis for the book of Genesis in the Old Testament.
In Genesis, God created the first man and then the first woman from earth in His own image. Later Eve is created from one of Adam’s ribs. Who, then, was this first woman? She is known as Lilith, and she became known through the Alphabet of Ben Sira, a satire of Hebrew origins written between the 8th and 10th centuries. Lilith refuses to submit to Adam, saying, “We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.” She then becomes a demoness who can only birth demons and is responsible for killing newborn babies. In this way, she is portrayed as an example not to follow, a warning to those women looking to become independent from man and not submit to his will. An independent woman can bring forth only demonic creations, and she is a threat to the most vulnerable members of society.
UNDERSTANDING AND HONORING ALL ASPECTS OF THE DIVINE FEMININE
On our journey to wholeness, it is important to reflect on how we relate to the feminine. Do we worship her only among angels in the sky and run away from her presence in the dark? Are we scared of her invitation to discover sensuality as part of our human experience? Do we recognize her body in all nature and hear her voice in the wind, or do we keep her within a frame in the Louvre? Is she wild and undomesticated, or is she fully groomed, eluding any mischief?
We ought to understand that the Goddess is the mother of her creation; she is not separated from it. She embodies the cycles that transform and renew nature from one season to the next, from decade to decade, from eon to eon. To love and understand the goddess is to accept her in her total expression—not only in her nurturing, life-giving image, but also in her decaying and devouring aspects. These we can feel in the fall and winter seasons, or in bigger cosmic events like ice ages that have caused the extinction of species while incubating new forms of life.
Nowadays many people in our Western culture, including myself, embrace the practice of yoga and other tantric modalities from India. In this manner, we become familiar with the Hindu pantheon and its goddess Kali. She is widely remembered because of her frightening and awe-provoking darkness contrasting with her sharp white teeth, red lolling tongue, and fierce look in her three eyes. Her depiction might certainly awaken fear and apprehension in us, but as we come to understand Kali’s true essence, we realize she is the embodiment of fierce love and compassion, as she shows up to destroy and annihilate those things whose time has come to be renewed. Just like a geyser bursting with tremendous force to liberate the boiling pressure within the Earth, Kali can bring great and sudden destruction—not because she hates, but on behalf of making space for a new way of life.
On the contrary, when the masculine has lost his soul and connection to the mother, he can find himself fighting for the illusion of achieving something with no real substance. In this way, he causes pain, death, and barrenness to the world.
We must remember the goddess in full circle, honoring all of her aspects. We must shine light where she has been suppressed and demonized so we can relate to her in a sacred way: finding ourselves as the children who still play in her garden and as the responsible adults who take on the role of stewards of life in our home planet. All in all, recognizing ourselves as part of the magnificent web of life.
To encounter the Goddess in her entire magnitude would be an extraordinary and perhaps too overwhelming experience: something that could be achieved in a moment of peak lucidness or under the effects of strong psychedelics. Imagine seeing the birth and death of galaxies while feeling the love a grandmother has for her little one— or feeling the ferocious winds of a hurricane while a sweet rain falls in the forest, and so on. It would be impossible to function in such an infinite reality, but for a mature soul it could be a tremendous gift to momentarily witness or merge with.
Encountering any one aspect of the Goddess in an intimate way is a tremendous opportunity to enter her deeper. Any one of her forms is a doorway to her infinite self and ultimately to our own infinity. She is not separated from her creation, looking and judging from above; she speaks, loves, and teaches from within and from all around. We are not foreigners to her; she is the mother who never abandoned us.
If we know ourselves only to be the children of a masculine god, then we naturally feel unsure of being loved and anxious about how we are going to find our next meal. After all, God doesn’t have nourishing, life-sustaining breasts. He is too busy making sure that all planets stay in their orbits while the Universe is expanding and the moon is rotating around the Earth.
On the other hand, when we know in every cell of our being that we are the children of the Goddess, then we feel as safe as a baby who is lovingly embraced and regularly fed by her mother. We feel a part of her and we feel our belonging in the Garden of Eden, and so we lack nothing. Our energies can focus on our growth and creativity, and we can become co-creators of the world we long for.
My life in Chile found its unique rhythm. Every few months, I would travel with Alberto to teach abroad, for two or three weeks at a time, and my kids would stay at home with their aunt and cousins. My sister Carolina, a talented silversmith, was happy working from her studio in the house. We both felt we had created a win-win arrangement. She was a reliable and loving co-parent for my children, and I paid all the main expenses, so she felt supported.
During one of my early journeys to teach with Alberto in Europe, we decided to take a romantic detour to Paris. For five pleasantly sunny October days, we walked and bicycled at our own easy pace to and from the most iconic and alluring sites in the city. On the third morning, after a leisurely breakfast, we arrived at Notre Dame, the 12th-century cathedral. Before entering through its west fagade, we stood a few feet back and stretched our necks to view the majestic towers on each side. The great rose window in the middle shone like a halo, enhancing the statue of virgin Mary just below.
We entered through the middle of the three portals, crossing under the dramatic multilayered carved scenes of the last judgment. Inside, the soaring vaulted ceilings invited me to take a deep inhalation. The inner spaciousness of the main vessel, softly illuminated by the intricate stained-glass images, expanded my lungs along with my curiosity. I allowed myself to wander carefree through the side pillars, peeking at the many chapels encircling the central nave. I felt mesmerized by the details in the murals, statues, and reliquaries.
As I cherished the white marble sculpture of Mary cradling baby Jesus’s body behind the choir altar, I was suddenly touched by a presence beyond physical reality. Like a veil of boundless compassion, it draped me from head to toe, and I heard, “Don’t worry about your children; they are well looked after.” Instantly, my
eyes became blurry with emotion, and I couldn’t focus any longer on the outside. Rather, I kept listening to her velvety voice. “I am with you and them anytime you call me,” she said.
Trying to hold back my tears, my chin trembling, I drifted my attention to the mass that had begun a few minutes earlier. Since the priest was speaking in French, I had not bothered to listen, but now I knew the words did not matter.
As soon as I walked around to sit among the few dozen churchgoers, they began lining up in the main aisle to receive communion. I felt the impulse to follow. As I waited for my turn, Alberto turned up by my side.
“I feel the loving presence of Mother Mary, and I want to receive her blessings,” I gently explained to him.
“How beautiful! I will also take the communion,” he whispered.
“Are we committing sin by not confessing?”
“Well, if she has come to you, she already knows what is happening in your heart. Nevertheless, let’s take a moment to pray.”
When I was 13 years old, my agnostic mother gave in to social pressure and baptized my siblings and me in a Catholic church. Until that point, we had been the only kids in the extended family and the only children in our schools that had not been through this purification ritual. Though she had taken us to church a handful of times, after our baptism we never went back as a family. Never again had I attended a Catholic mass until this very moment in Notre Dame.
“Dear Mary, if anyone can understand how much I adore and care for my children, it is you. Please help me release this heavy weight in my heart, this guilt I feel for going with the man I love, pursuing my calling, and leaving my children behind.”
I knew I had done everything in my power for my children to be loved and well cared for while I traveled. But, on every trip, if I was not working hard enough to pay the bills, at some point, I would feel remorse for not being at home like “a good mother.” The indoctrination of the conservative society I grew up in along with the words of some of my family members resonated with reproach in my own head. In this leisurely detour to Paris, I had already shed silent tears the night before, thinking of the bedtime stories and the kisses I had missed giving my sons one more time. For this reason, Mother Mary’s words brought comfort and reassurance to the depths of my soul.
As I was breathing through my emotions, my turn came to receive communion. While opening my mouth, I closed my eyes in sweet surrender. Feeling the wafer on my tongue, I pressed it against my palate and let it gently dissolve. Slowly, Alberto and I made our way out through the portal on our right side, and as I looked back, I saw the sculpture of Mother Mary in her ascension to heaven. Just above the statue, she was portrayed on a throne receiving a scepter from Jesus while being crowned by an angel. I bowed my head while saying in my mind, Thank you, great lady!
Through my shamanic training, I had found my roots on Pachamama, the earthly embodiment of the Goddess. I had learned to connect and pray to the four elements—earth, water, fire, and air —and summon forces from the stone, plant, and animal realms. But I had remained oblivious to her subtle celestial presence.
Now, every time I left my children with others, I asked Mother Mary to put her halo of protection around them, and to whisper at night my love and best intentions. I came to realize my legacy to my sons would not be memories of mom cooking three meals a day, seven days a week, and driving them around to birthday parties or sport games. My gift would be the example of how to follow the beat of one’s heart, respecting and considering others, but not falling slave to the incriminating voices of the past.
Suddenly everything was fortified; the warrior was honored; we followed a Sky God; and we have a patriarchal social system. I don’t think you can understand patriarchy unless you look at the fact that fear is at the core. Fear that female sexuality would somehow become this chaotic force; that nature would become this chaotic force overtaking us. So, we have to have everything very tightly controlled, and hierarchically ordered.
- CHARLENE SPRETNAK, IN THE DOCUMENTARY
GODDESS REMEMBERED
HOW DID WE DISCONNECT from 20,000 years of Goddess worship and become the children of a supreme masculine deity? Who is this God who often is too busy and distant to pay attention to us, but who can also offer the warm fatherly embrace every soul needs?
It all began with a change of attitude during the domestication of four-legged animals. In Paleolithic and Neolithic times, hunting wild animals was a sacred pursuit, understood within the cycle of death and life. The animal died so the person could live and vice versa when the hunter did not succeed.
Around 6,200 b.c.e. sheep and cattle, which had been domesticated in Anatolia a few centuries before, were taken from
Greece and Macedonia to the forests of southeastern Europe. There, some communities had already domesticated grains—mostly barley, spelt, millet, peas, and wheat—and now were happy to welcome domesticated female animals for milk products and males for reproduction.
This novel relationship with four-legged animals rapidly caught the attention of neighboring peoples and expanded until a new political arrangement and a new mythology were born. The more animals one owned, the more power one acquired, establishing oneself over the will of others. But this required a new sense of ethics: in this understanding, one would not sacrifice the breeding stock and the seeds that needed to be saved for the year to come, even in the face of starvation.
Farther north, in the Eurasian forest-steppe, the foragers much preferred the immediate generosity and sharing of their daily sustenance. Though they adopted a few cultivated plants and slowly embraced domesticated cows, but not sheep, they continued to gather nuts and wild plants, fish in the rivers, and hunt wildlife. This contrast in values with the incoming attitude of domestication made the transition much slower than one would think.
At any rate, with the domestication of livestock came the incremental sense of personal power and the foundation of chieftainship. Chiefs exhibited their importance by wearing tooth, tusks, bones, or shells as pendants or as beads sewn to their belts or clothing. Also, they did not hesitate to ornament themselves with stone or bronze bracelets or rings at the arrival of the Bronze Age. Finally, stone maces appeared as a symbol of power.
This is all obvious to us when individual burial grounds from those times are found with the bones of a man accompanied with his glorious adornments. In parallel, the forager still buried their dead in communal grounds, so all bones returned to the womb of the Earth together.
The new pastoral values and lifestyle migrated over the centuries to Mesopotamia, trickling deeply into the minds of its people. By the time the Babylonian creation myth was written in cuneiform tablets around 1580 b.c.e., the primordial mother goddess Tiamat had been
destroyed by Marduk, her great-great-great grandson and male successor.
In the myth, Marduk is given the throne, the scepter, and a ring. Also, he receives the mighty weapon of the thunderbolt and the alliance of all the winds. He takes his bow, spear, and mace, and mounts his chariot in hot pursuit of his mission, fulfilling the meaning of his name “son of the sun.” As he rides, a bright halo glows around his head. Meanwhile, Tiamat is transformed into a monstrous dragon who gives birth to a dozen poisonous beasts to defend herself. In their encounter, Marduk catches Tiamat in a net, and his arrow splits her body into two parts. As described in The Myth of the Goddess:
Half of her he set up and ceiled it as sky. . . . The other half of Tiamat’s lifeless body became the earth. A greater contrast between this harsh myth and the poetry of early Sumeria can be hardly imagined. The goddess no longer brings forth heaven and earth as the cosmic mountain: now heaven and earth are made from her carcass by a god. No longer is the net an image of the interweaving of all life but a trap for the one who wove it into being.
In this myth, Marduk becomes the forerunner sky god who could be like a warm protective sun or like a punishing desert storm. After he creates heaven and Earth with the goddess’s corpse, he shapes humans from the remains of the defeated gods and becomes the god of justice, predecessor of Zeus and his Roman inheritor Jupiter.
The mindset within this story is not separated from the one that wrote the book of Genesis and other stories in the Bible. Every part of it establishes the new moral order in which God’s power is absolute and nature is to be subjugated and conquered. This is at the core of the patriarchal religions that expanded to all corners of the world throughout the centuries, with the exception of a few isolated earth- and Goddess-revering traditions.
In our initiatory journey to wholeness, just like we had the opportunity to encounter the feminine in a transcendental form, we can also meet Spirit in his divine masculine expression. In this case, he might appear like a merciful and protective father or, in contrast, as a wrathful and punishing almighty God.
William C. Chittick in his book Sufism shares, “A famous prophetic saying tells us that God’s mercy takes precedence over his wrath, which is to say that God’s essential nature is mercy and gentleness, and that wrath and severity pertain to the domain of created things. The rather stern forbidding face of the Sharia, which demands that people follow its commandments or taste the chastisement of hell, displays God’s majesty and severity, but lurking beneath its surface is the promise of the precedent mercy. All things came from mercy, and all will return to mercy in the end.”
Both aspects of God, and everything in between, can be found in so many stories and myths from around the world at different times. In the Bible, we see a sensible and kind God creating a gorgeous and plentiful paradise for humans. But he also shows a tricky side by presenting to Eve and Adam the tree of knowledge and stating that it is forbidden to eat its fruit. We know that soon Eve and Adam are tempted by the serpent—a symbol of the feminine—and God responds with a most severe punishment. In the story that follows, we see a grateful God welcoming their son Abel’s offering while disdainfully rejecting the offering of his brother Cain; he then punishes Cain for killing Abel.
The Hebrew bible, Christian Old Testament, and Koran all speak of Job, a righteous man and faithful servant of God, who experiences extreme challenges. This story—written sometime between the 600 and 300 b.c.e.—raises fundamental questions like “Is God just?” “Does God run the world according to the principle of justice? If so, why does Job endure so much pain?”
It all begins when “Satan”—a “prosecutor” or “accuser,” according to the Hebrew meaning of the name—tells God: “Job is only righteous because you bless him with prosperity. Let him suffer and we’ll see how blameless he is.” Next, God accepts this bet with Satan to test Job’s integrity.
In the beginning, while experiencing misfortune, Job shows great patience with life and God. But after he loses everyone and everything he cares about, including his wealth, his family, and his health, he can no longer bear the pain. Job then challenges God to explain the reason for the devastation he has placed upon his life.
God appears to Job in a storm and offers a surprising answer. He starts speaking about the infinitely vast and multifaceted nature of reality and how he oversees every minuscule detail from the beginning of the world. Job feels extremely humbled, and at the end of the story, God restores Job’s health and family, and rewards him with twice as many animals as he had before. The Book of Job advises us to believe that God is just after all and that we should trust him no matter what hard times we are facing in the present. Let’s remember that God is extremely busy managing the whole Universe, but that eventually he will attend to our needs if we remain faithful.
Jung could not reconcile with God’s avoidance of responsibility in the face of Job’s great tragedy. In his book Answer to Job, he reflects: “At one moment Yahweh behaves as irrationally as a cataclysm; the next moment he wants to be loved, honored, worshipped, and praised as just. He reacts irritably to every word that has the faintest suggestion of criticism, while he himself does not care a straw for his own moral code if his actions happen to run counter to its statutes.”
However, Jung eventually finds peace in the recognition that God cannot be only virtuous because that would mean denial of half of his expression. “If . . . God is absolute beauty and goodness, how should he encompass the fullness of life, which is beautiful and hateful, good and evil, laughable and serious, human and inhuman? How can man live in the womb of the God if the Godhead himself attends only to one-half of him?”
In shamanic lore, there is the notion that we live in a benign Universe that conspires on our behalf to mirror the quality of our intentions. If we have a closed heart and let negative passions like anger and jealousy take over, sooner or later we’ll feel in our own skin the detrimental effects of that vibration. Likewise if we open our hearts to feel compassion and love for ourselves and others, then we’ll perceive beauty and opportunity even in difficult situations.
In June 2005, now partnered with Alberto, I traveled to Pern for the second time with the Four Winds. Again, I was looking forward to ascending the holy mountain Ausangate, which I didn’t get to visit on the previous journey. I wanted to finally be at the heart of its glacier, paying homage and receiving guidance from its immense wisdom.
My experience at Salcantay two years earlier taught me a new way to approach mountains. I should not “hike” them like I did in my youth. Instead, I should walk with great respect, treating each step as a prayer. This is the difference between going on a pilgrimage rather than a climb—a vision quest rather than an ego conquest. From this new perspective, the mountain becomes an altar to life and to Spirit.
The day before beginning our expedition, I gathered with Alberto, four Q’ero shamans, and 24 other students at the Sacred Valley near Cusco. In ceremony, we called upon the Great Spirit and Mother Earth, and made offerings to the Apu, the tutelary spirit of the mountain. My whole body was tingling with excitement. In our prayers, we asked permission to visit the glacier and its lagoons, and we asked to be safe throughout the journey.
After a 5 a.m. departure and a winding, high-altitude, five-hour drive, we made it to Tinqui, a town where we switched from our 30- seater buses to six worn-out vans that could better navigate the uneven and narrow dirt roads ahead. Jam-packed in our seats, soon we saw the base of Ausangate appear in the near distance. Its massive upper body was surrounded by heavy clouds and gray skies.
After our teeth-rattling drive, we arrived at Pachanta Pampa, the last settlement before base camp. Our porters had been there since dawn that day, waiting to take our luggage. While they loaded their horses, we visited the very modest local school, each one of us helping to carry warm clothing and school supplies we had brought from our home countries. At once, the children and their teachers came out to receive our gifts. They were ecstatic, not just for the gifts, but to realize that people from the other side of the world were thinking of them. In gratitude, they offered us a song, praising the beauty of their mountains and flowing glacial streams.
Afterward, we hiked for about half an hour under the gray clouds to our first camp. At 4,000 meters (about 13,000 feet) altitude, that was enough walking to be out of breath. Donning some warmer layers, we joined the shamans for prayers. We made offerings of grains, wine, and flowers and asked Apu Ausangate to open the way and to show us its face.
Later, we snuggled tightly inside a large dining tent. While eating a vegetable soup, we shared our intentions for the journey. Excitement and curiosity hummed among us, but also much respect for the Apu and the altitude.
Early the next morning, we were up and ready to go. We began our ascent with two shamans at the front and two shamans at the tail end. Pacing ourselves, we walked a narrow trail surrounded by the low, compact evergreen plants known as yaretas, which were very soft to walk over when we had to ford the stream and change trails.
The higher we ascended, the bluer the skies ahead. Halfway up to our next camp, the horsemen carrying our food and equipment passed by—a great chance to take a break and regroup. The shamans charmed the occasion with the sounds of their flute dancing in the wind.
When we arrived at our camp by Azul Cocha, or “blue lagoon,” at 4,500 meters (about 14,800 feet) altitude, Ausangate’s glacier was shimmering under the sun. Lying on my back on the rocky ground, I admired the snow-capped peak. I heard one of the shamans speaking about the lore of this great Apu: “The masculine spirit of this mountain fertilizes the Earth with its melting waters. Its snow become streams, which fill the lagoons and lakes, flowing all the way to the remote jungle below. At night, these waters come back to the heavens, nurturing Ausangate and restoring its glacier.”
Soon after sunset, I saw how the stars shined so much light into the glacier. And though it was terribly cold outside, my spirit soared in hopes of shedding more of my past and becoming clearer about my future.
By dawn, the peak remained vigilant and unobstructed by clouds. After breakfast, we followed Alberto and the shamans to a relatively small but very deep lagoon, just a few hundred feet away. Its name is Otorongo Cocha, or “jaguar lagoon,” because if feels like it’s ready to swallow you if it is not approached with respect. There, we partook in a ceremony to release what we felt had died or needed to die within us. As we made offerings to the mountain and the spirit of Jaguar, we dropped stones holding our intentions into the deep blue waters.
In the afternoon, we visited a pristine little lagoon called Otorongo Warmi Cocha, or “female jaguar lagoon,” just a few minutes away from the first one. This time we cleansed and charged our three energetic centers—our bellies, our hearts, and our vision—washing them with waters the shamans claimed contain the untamable spirit of the female jaguar. We also meditated, after which most people wandered off to dress more warmly before dusk. However, remembering what Alberto wrote in Shaman, Healer, Sage, I decided to stay behind. His mentor, Don Manuel, had challenged him to go into the icy waters in preparation for Alberto to receive his karpay, or transmission of knowledge. Don Manuel had murmured, “Let’s see if the Apu lets you live.”
Guessing my intentions, Alberto also remained behind to admonish me. “If it is your ego calling you to jump, you’ll get terribly sick, and you are risking your life and our group’s pilgrimage. If it is truly the mountain inviting you to cleanse, you’ll be purified and gain great clarity and strength.”
I sat on a rock and triple-checked my impulse to dive into the icy waters. The images of my dream above the Huayna Picchu peak kept flashing in my mind, together with the words “If I don’t jump into
my destiny, then I am not fully alive.” Right then, I knew with certainty that I wanted to jump!
Chilled by the freezing air, I stripped down to my naked, goose- pimpled skin. With my mind singularly focused on my goal, I took a deep inhale; on the exhale, I dove into the glacial spring. Instantly, every inch of my body stung like it was being pricked by a thousand needles. Pushing beyond all physical sensations, I swam for about 10 seconds until I reached the white sandy bottom with my lips and kissed it. Hastily, I stroked and kicked to resurface and swam to the edge. Standing again on the stone, the air was no longer frigid. My heart pounded, not just with blood, but with a sense of owning my life. As the water from my long hair dripped down my spine, I bowed to Ausangate, refreshed to my core.
After a hot vegetable soup, I left the group at the dining tent. I sought the warmth of my sleeping bag, hoping my hair would finish drying under my woolen cap. After Alberto told stories and checked in with every student, he came to our tent. His words surprised me: “Tomorrow, you can go with two of the shamans and Peter to the huaca at the belly of the glacier.”
This news landed like the cherry on top of the cake after such a momentous day. Alberto knew how much I was looking forward to meditating at the heart of the glacier. However, he had advised from the first time I stated my desire to him: “I cannot choose you because you are my partner. You need to be in right relationship with the Apu. Otherwise, it can be dangerous to walk over the treacherous moraine.”
Two years earlier, I had been eager for this moment that never came. Instead I was sent to Salcantay, where I was humbled and purified to get in touch with my deeper purpose, rather than staying trapped in the web of fate. Now, in this very instant, I could feel that fresh destiny clicking under my feet. I felt so excited it was hard to fall asleep.
Once I drifted into the land of dreams, the spirit of the mountain appeared to me. Ausangate showed me its grandfather face in the glacier, wise and compassionate. The light and the shadows in the ice revealed his eyes, nose, mouth, and wrinkles, framed by his
snow-white hair and beard. Then, without words, but with a feeling, he said, “I will protect you!”
At first light, I rose with enthusiasm to meet my companions. Peter was a filmmaker in his mid-30s. He was very fit, but more important, he had shown great sensibility toward our ceremonies. The two shamans were familiar with the mountains, so for them it was just like being home. Nevertheless, their faces showed excitement as we spooned our porridge.
Making sure we had all the proper supplies for a great ceremony, the four of us waved goodbye to the rest of the group. They would be going to another lake to make offerings and receive initiations.
When not scrambling through loose gravel, we had to check our balance walking over big stones, even leaping from one rock to another, avoiding the cracks between. Two hours later, we finally made it to the huaca. It was an impressive boulder, bigger than a school bus, and beneath it sat a cave-like space at the edge of the glacier. The shamans commented on how the ice had receded from just a year ago, not to mention 10 years before when a third of the boulder was buried under the snow.
Scattered all around were fragments of old ceremonial cloths, remnants of offering ceremonies that had taken place for hundreds of years. We sat next to each other, sheltered by the big boulder but facing the majestic body of the Apu, which was shrouded in its white, icy robes. Pouring red wine in one little wooden cup and white wine in another, the four of us began calling the spirit of the Earth, of the heavens, and of all the mountains around. Lifting the cups to salute the sun and the moon, the rivers, the lakes, and all nature, we continued our prayers, our voices and intentions echoing and overlapping in the deafening silence.
Then came the time to open a despacho—a premade bundle containing a melange of grains and seeds, llama fat, a seashell, a small condor feather, and other little things we would offer with our prayers. Everything would be placed on a flowery wrapping paper, which in turn was laid on top of a ceremonial cloth woven by the wife of one of the shamans. After placing a layer of coca leaves and coca seeds, the shamans continued creating a heartfelt mandala with each little thing to offer our gratitude, to ask for forgiveness, and to state our petitions and longings. Suddenly, one of the shamans discovered a sacramental wafer, like the ones used in Christian communion, inside the package. Holding it up for the other shaman to see, they both looked baffled, their faces seeming to say, “Who would put a wafer in this offering kit?” Or perhaps they were dazzled, thinking how far the church was intruding in their indigenous rituals.
While the shamans were having their moment of hesitation, I reached my moment of absolute certainty. That wafer was for me. Despite being baptized at the age of 13, I had never received my first communion. Now, Ausangate had come in my dream offering me its protection, and I felt a total eagerness to let its spirit merge with mine. I nodded to the shaman and opened my hand. He passed the wafer to me and I took it, allowing it to dissolve inside my mouth as I surrendered to the wise, strong, and compassionate masculine presence of the Apu.
I had not felt such a protective embrace since the last time I sat in my grandfather’s lap. But el Tata died when I was only five years old, and his image as the great doctor and provider had withered as I came of age. Now I could set him and my other male ancestors free.
I had the mighty strength, wisdom, and love of an Apu protecting me.
For the rest of the day, Ausangate’s glacier glistened under blue skies, and later, beneath the spill of stars against the black night.
CALLING UPON THE DIVINE MASCULINE
A few years later, I met the divine masculine again in an equally unexpected fashion, this time in the jungle in Pern. At the time, I was leading a group of 24 people to work with plant medicine, as I had done for the past ten years.
On this occasion, I had chosen to work with three medicine women from the Shipibo tribe and with a sturdy mestizo medicine man, the grandson of a master herbalist. I had worked with these ladies for two years, and I loved their chants and the pitch of their voices praying to the spirits of the jungle to bring healing and blessings to participants. I had also worked with the medicine man a few times and found him to be solid at holding sacred space and guiding a ceremony. This was my first time working with all four together, and I hoped their strengths would complement each other.
The first night, we ingested the brew the man had prepared for our particular group. In general, the group experienced mild visions, but not many purged. For the second night, I had decided that we would drink the ladies’ brew. Because of the soft experience from the night before, people were eager to have a more powerful journey. Overall there was a sense of “give me a bigger dose.” Even our shaman was encouraging the medicine women to serve extra, and he himself took a good dose. I knew their medicine to be generally more concentrated, but I did not imagine that this particular batch would be as intense as it turned out to be.
About 20 minutes went by while we prayed with songs and set our intentions in silence, and then the effects started for a few people. With each passing instant, someone would start having psychedelic roller-coaster visions. Even though we were in sacred space and taking the best precautions, the medicine came with such vigor that several people became frightened. One called out loudly for the shaman to help him, which prompted someone else to call the shaman and so on. For a moment, there were four or five people shouting for assistance. I went to help the person who was having the hardest time. The visions continued arriving furiously for each participant, and our shaman ran around trying to give aid while the ladies started singing.
The atmosphere inside our maloca, or dwelling, became chaotic. But everything took a turn for the worse when our shaman became scared of the Shipibo medicine and asked the ladies to stop singing.
In this tradition, it is believed that singing guides the energy of the ceremony, and different chants summon the spirits of the healing plants, the medicine lineage, and powerful deities. But our male shaman thought the singing was amplifying the effects of the brew, and he felt insecure about the “spells” the Shipibo were casting. On the other hand, I totally trusted the Shipibo medicine women and their chanting, and I felt it was a complete mistake to quiet them.
With their silence, the fear and the chaos prevailed and offered no assurance of a way out.
I asked the ladies to resume their medicine songs; the shaman made them stop again. A second time, I asked them to continue singing, but now the shaman sent me a discouraging vibe. Though I could not see his face in the dark, my psychic eyes could read his mind. I knew the situation would only get more difficult if our egos started clashing.
At this point, I felt responsible for the safety of the participants, and I decided to just be patient with the shaman and let him feel in control. Nevertheless, I was feeling so much for the people having difficult journeys, including a lady who had lost sense of where she was and another one who sensed her body was on fire. While trying to help them both and hearing a third one cry, as the shaman was attending a fourth person, I felt utterly overwhelmed.
The darkness of the new moon and the crackling sounds of the wild forest did not bring any truce. I had felt this encroaching chaos before, not only from the last few years working with medicine plants in the jungle at night, but as a child growing up in a civil war, and as a young wife married to another confused soul. In my life, I had tasted extreme emotional pain and terror, and I had found my way to peace. I trusted I could always do it one more time. But in this instant, it was not about me; it was about my fellow students facing scary internal movies, for which I felt mortified.
And that is how I found myself pleading—not timidly, but wholeheartedly—for God to help us. Of course, I had already desperately summoned the Goddess to hold us in her sweet embrace. But that feeling never came; instead, I sensed we were passing through her dark twisting and turning entrails. The divine feminine was not in the mood to breastfeed sugary tenderness and calmness. It was just the opposite: she was in her full expression of tough love.
Speaking with the group the following morning, I learned that many had experienced hellish visions like being attacked or molested by demonic figures, being lost in a ghostly landscape, seeing cold-blooded extraterrestrial beings, and all sorts of nightmares. Knowing the spirit of ayahuasca and the effects of the brew on my own body, and working with so many groups over the previous 10 years, I knew it was not unusual to experience such deep fear and terror; it is often a necessary stage on the way to liberation. But what made it very difficult that night was the collective panic. It wasn’t one or two people caught up in their deepest frights —the whole group was vibrating in terror, which was heightened by the shaman’s own apprehension.
This is how I came to feel as humble as I had ever been and gave God a chance. Would you bring order to this chaos? Can you bring calm in this storm? Would you help us feel safe while the wild feminine has gone mad? I started recalling all the times when my pride didn’t allow God to exist because he had never been there for me after all, nor had he been there for my mother, my family, and my people. But now in my desperate situation, my heart longed for God to be there—and in that yearning, God began to acquire substance.
I realized how beyond all the difficulties in my life, there had always been great lessons and blessings. I started trusting that, once again, there would be great medicine to squeeze out of this. As I reached that faint peace, God came to life even further. Holding tight to our connection, I kept pleading, “Don’t leave us now! Help my friends!”
While going around to assist others, I secretly shed plenty of tears. My heart summoned God like a drum, requesting him to fill in for all those moments when my people and I had not been protected. All those nights when I faced sinister demons at the age of five, or death at the age of nine. All the anguish my mother endured in times of uncertainty, not sure how to provide food and shelter for my siblings and me. All the grief my father felt pleading guilty to himself for his incapacity to be present and provide for his family.
No longer did I doubt whether God existed. It wasn’t about that anymore; it was about allowing the natural counterpart of the Goddess to have its place in my psyche and beyond. If the Goddess is real, so is God, I learned that night. The Goddess is the Creatress, not separate from her creation. She is mother, she is maiden, she is crone, and she is death. She embodies the cycles of the Universe from the small to the large; she is the ebb and the flow of life. I adore her out in the wild and within my body and soul, no doubt about that. But she is also happy to have a son, a consort, a companion; someone to be yin when she wants to be yang, and someone to be yang when she wants to be yin. Someone to be the sun when she wants to be the moon, and someone to be the moon when she wants to be the sun.
Ausangate brought me closer to God by opening my heart to accept that the masculine can also protect and be kind and not just be a punishing force from above or a weak and cowardly presence, as I had grown to believe. Now, in the jungle, I made sweet peace with God, giving myself completely to be held in His love and compassion.
As I write my stories, I hope to inspire you to reflect on where you are in your relationships to the feminine and masculine. Simply becoming more conscious opens you to a deeper and more expanded integration of both transcendental aspects of your Self. Notice your yearning to understand and commune with one, the other, or both at the same time.
Once the feminine and masculine live in us with great wholeness and freedom, they come together in what is known as the sacred marriage.
In the East, as we have seen, although good and evil are recognized, the divine is not exclusively identified with the good; rather, the divine is “beyond good and evU’ (to borrow Nietzsche’s term), beyond all opposites, beyond all categories of thought. The divine ground encompasses both male and female, good and evil, being and not being. There is an awareness in the East, that is, of the ground of being as greater than any human ethical standard or conceptual
distinction.
- KEIRON LE GRICE, THE REBIRTH OF THE HERO
IN ITS GREEK ORIGINS, the term apotheosis means “to deify or to make divine.” In the 4th century b.c.e., King Phillip II was glorified next to the Olympian gods—and his divine status was passed on to his son Alexander the Great. Three hundred years later, the first emperor of Rome, Julius Caesar, was deified posthumously by a Senate vote. In the same fashion, later emperors were also elevated to a state divinity if considered worthy. The acknowledgment of apotheosis was intended to strengthen the imperial lineage and to provide moral, political, and religious values for new rulers.
The same tendencies occurred in societies around the world. Egyptian pharaohs were thought to be incarnations of the god Horus. The emperors of China were considered to be the sons of heaven.
The emperors of Japan, up to the end of the Second World War, were treated as descendants of the Goddess Amaterasu. Inca rulers presented themselves as direct children of Inti, the sun god. Mayan kings from the classical period were identified with the god of maize.
In every one of these examples, there’s an outer recognition of the divine attributes these leaders had to impersonate to impel trust and obedience. As with rulers of all times, some of them indeed embodied great strength and wisdom in their reign of their people, while others left a lot to be desired. However, for our journey through the North direction, what truly matters is not how we are perceived from the outside or how we impress somebody. Instead, we relate apotheosis to the inner experience of tasting our own divine nature— of melding our individual consciousness with the spring of all life. We understand that we are not separated from the God or the Goddess, and our psyche merges—in body, mind, and spirit—with the fountain of consciousness that permeates through the entire cosmos and is beyond gender altogether.
What Eastern traditions like Taoism and Buddhism have in common is the de-emphasizing of our personal will or desires in favor of cultivating awareness of the vast quintessential quality of reality. Buddhism speaks about liberating the self from the grip of the ego while Taoism invites us to become one with the mysterious flow of existence. In general, all mystical teachings persuade us to outgrow our small personal drama so we can participate in creation with a higher and broader perspective.
When we see ourselves only as bodies, feelings, and thoughts, we become active and reactive in relationship to physical existence and emotional reality. Furthermore, we identify with our name, our personal character, our family and friends, our career and projects, and our possessions. And when something disturbs that reality, we become joyful or upset—depending on whether we perceive that event as positive or negative. However, when we have glimpsed how our existence transcends life in the present body, present family, and actual occupations, then we can take ourselves lightly, something that shamans of the North master so well.
The Laika know how important it is to follow the calling to a sacred life, and they take on this task earnestly. At the same time, they know how critical it is to cultivate inner stillness to slow down time and perhaps taste infinity. Through relaxing the mind, the Laika enter the stream of transpersonal reality and can witness reality from different perspectives.
In my late 30s, I unexpectedly underwent the transcendence of my ego identity as Marcela to the point of discovering “me” as “someone else.” I was on a retreat in a small cabin in the mountains, training one-on-one with a mentor. She had mastered stillness after two decades of meditating from two to eight hours a day. I had worked a little here and there with her for the past five years, but this was the first time we would be together all day for a whole week.
On the first couple of days, a dull pain in my knees and a few sharp sensations in my back demanded my attention. However, I strove to keep my mind present, not labeling or judging, witnessing reality as it rose naturally. On the third day of our retreat, after 90 minutes of sitting and concentrating on the same point on the wooden floor, I felt completely done; I wanted to go hiking or painting! When my teacher insisted we get right back to our seats, I impulsively responded, “But I am already so bored. . . . I am not sure I can stand another minute looking at that point on the floor.” With a mischievous smile, she waved me over to my meditation cushion. “But you are not bored enough!” I laughed and resumed my position, softly staring at the same area on the floor.
After a few minutes of struggling to stay present, I was able to surrender to my task and not get swept away by rebellious thoughts. I could perceive ideas, views, or opinions streaming through my mind, inviting me to go somewhere, but each time I chose not to go and stayed focus on my point of concentration. Soon my awareness was suspended in time like a fly standing for a long time on a wall
going nowhere and doing nothing. At this point my meditation became effortless. Without noticing, “I” dissolved into another “I.”
I heard a deep murmur coming out of my mouth and joining the murmuring of others. I was one of five Tibetan monks chanting in deep trance while sitting cross-legged on cushions in the snow. Then a thought crept into my mind: How amazing that I am here. In that instant, when I checked who was having that thought, I was no longer a monk in the white snow but Marcela in the mountains, feeling absolute awe for what had transpired. My teacher immediately recognized I had momentarily transcended my ego identification, or sense of self.
The dissolution of the ego consciousness is an auspicious transpersonal experience. But it really does not guarantee us apotheosis, or divine communion with Spirit’s most numinous qualities. It simply means that we glimpsed facets of existence beyond our ordinary perception.
We can have a moment of ego dissolution because we fainted or had a blackout, but that simply means we lost continuity of thought. It doesn’t translate necessarily into a transcendental awakening, though it doesn’t impede it either.
Apotheosis is more than just shrinking our sense of selfimportance or perceiving beyond ordinary reality. Its most significant aspect is the merging of our consciousness with divine consciousness, which also means to awaken to our own divine nature.
THE LAIKA- CHILDREN OF THE SUN
In the shamanic cosmology of the Andes, the Laika speak about five tiers of life in the upper world, representing the different levels of consciousness. The first level is completely dark and everything happens extremely slowly, so it is a natural place for minerals and stones. On the second level, the light and the plants are born, including grasses, trees, cacti, and ferns. On the third level, there is more speed and movement, and we find the animal realm with every species, from the smallest insect to the largest creature. The fourth level is distinctively human with a capacity to reflect and reason, and we can find our ancestors there. On the fifth level, we have direct access to the light of our sun, known in Quechua as Inti-taita, Father Sun.
For this reason, the Inca claimed to be children of the Sun, insinuating that they were the most luminous beings one could aspire to be in this life. To a peasant, being touched by the light of the fifth level meant to be stroked by one’s supreme destiny. For the emperor, it meant one was born with this divine nature and could merge one’s consciousness with the Supreme light—apotheosis.
Within the temple of the sun of Sacsayhuaman on the northern outskirts of the city of Cusco was the effigy of Punchao, a gold and silver figure of a child who represented the embodiment of the sun. When the Spanish conquistadors found this symbol, they manipulated the natives to replace the resplendent Punchao with the image of baby Jesus. Today, the indigenous golden child is barely remembered, while Christmas is widely celebrated.
According to Christian creed, Christ is already God and he is made flesh by being conceived in the womb of Mary. Jesus of Nazareth was identified by the first Christians as the messiah foretold in the Old Testament. Christ became Jesus’s new name and title, meaning the “anointed one” but also “God anointing,” according to the notion that he is completely human and completely God.
The figure of Christ brings up the question of how someone can embody the perfect nature of God and the imperfect nature of a human at the same time. This paradox was explained in the Council of Chalcedon in 451 c.e. as a mystical union of his two natures “with neither confusion nor division.” The image of Christ is a blueprint of the potential that lives in every human to embody the wise and compassionate character of God—superseding all egotistic urges and instincts while cultivating generous and kind thoughts, feelings,
and actions. Christ is a luminous archetype who descended from a perfected heaven to redeem us from our faulty nature.
We must symbolically die to our sinful state and resurrect with a pure and open heart to be reunited with our godly nature— apotheosis.
BUDDHA AND THE POTENTIAL WITHIN US ALL
The story of prince Siddhartha Gautama awakening to become Shakyamuni Buddha also echoes an important reflection about our innate potential. In contrast to Jesus’s divine conception and humble birth, Siddhartha was born in a magnificent kingdom, but to entirely human parents.
Only days after Siddhartha’s birth, his mother died; meanwhile a hermit seer prophesized an important destiny for the newborn. Siddhartha was to become either a great king or a prodigious spiritual master. To ensure his son would become his successor, his father shielded him from any religious teachings and situations that would evoke compassion while he was asked to fulfill his prince’s duties.
By the time Siddhartha turned 16, his father had arranged his marriage with a cousin, and together they had a son. Though the king kept providing everything a young man could desire, Siddhartha felt curious about what lay beyond the palace boundaries. Eventually, the prince asked his charioteer, Chana, to take him away, and that was the beginning of a great departure to another way of life.
Buddhist scriptures account that in his outings, Siddhartha saw people of old age, a diseased man, and a decaying corpse, and was told by Chana that this eventually happens to everyone. After these realizations, Siddhartha didn’t feel comfortable going back to his sumptuous life. An ascetic he met in his explorations taught him about the path of renunciation to search for deeper truth. With this insight, at the age of 29, Siddhartha decided to leave his family and wealth and explore life’s ultimate goal.
After wandering in extreme asceticism, Siddhartha almost drowned in a river because he had become very weak from eating only a leaf or a nut a day. A young woman rescued and fed him, and because of the incident, Siddhartha recognized that neither riches nor severe mortification were conducive to the realization of the essential truth. A middle way between total austerity and complete indulgence is the proper attitude to cultivate transcendence.
At this point of his quest, Siddhartha decided to sit and meditate under the legendary Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, India. He was committed to remain in contemplation until he could realize what lay beyond all suffering. After 49 days of meditation, overcoming all temptations and obscurations, Siddhartha became a Buddha—fully awakened to the true nature of reality. Because Siddhartha came from the Shakya lineage, he became known as Shakyamuni Buddha, to differentiate him from Buddhas before him and Buddhas to come.
Shakyamuni Buddha shared the Four Noble Truths, explaining the means to find freedom from suffering. He also explained the empty nature of all phenomena and affirmed that every being has the potential of enlightenment. He created a community of disciples and taught until his death at 80 years old.
In the end, Buddha’s legacy inspires us to keep surrendering our ego and letting our minds open to a naked state, unobstructed by judgment—so that we may also see life beyond the thoughts that make us suffer.
The stories of Shakyamuni Buddha and Jesus Christ offer us two supreme examples of being one with the source of wisdom. Now, we’ll reflect on the case of someone who does not fall into the category of superhuman: Jalal al-Din Muhammad, best known in the Western world as the great poet Rumi from 12th-century Konya (today Turkey). He reached a supreme state of communion with the divine by giving himself fully to love.
Rumi was the son of a religious scholar and preacher who was a consultant for any concerns about Islamic law. From Rumi’s early youth, his father encouraged him to sit by his side while he gave lectures, and eventually entrusted to Rumi all his followers. Rumi also had a few other important mentors who polished his understanding of Islamic law, the hadith, and the mystical path of Sufism. Rumi became a very fine scholar, and a gifted teacher and preacher (outgrowing his father’s audience).
Though Rumi had been a seeker of truth and God throughout his entire path, he did not reach highest communion until his encounter with the eccentric mystic Shams of Tabriz. From the moment they first conversed, they recognized in each other a spiritual peer. During their well-cherished and close relationship, Shams became the catalyst for Rumi’s transformation from an accomplished teacher and jurist to the world-renowned poet he is today.
Shams of Tabriz stirred Rumi to step out of his comfort zone again and again so he could break free from the envelope of the holy texts and the good mores of society, and cultivate direct access to God by giving himself wholly to the experience of love. Shams took Rumi to a tavern to taste wine for the first time, introduced him to a man with leprosy, and brought a homeless prostitute to live in his family home.
Rumi deeply trusted Shams’s wild wisdom and loved him without hesitation. Together, they explored an exquisite intimacy. Not a physical one—Rumi was monogamously married and had two sons —but a profound merging of intellect, soul, and heart. In loving Shams, free of any judgment, Rumi found true love—and in this love, he found God.
Many people within Rumi’s circles felt very uncomfortable, judging Shams to be an odd wandering dervish or even a brazen heretic. Eventually Shams disappeared from Konya. (Some suspect that he was murdered, although there is strong evidence that he secretly left and died in Khoy, where a tomb exists with his name.) When Shams disappeared, it is said that Rumi mourned him with despair.
Eventually Rumi was able to translate the same quality of the love he found with Shams to later mystical companions. It was through that boundless and wild form of love that Rumi found an endless well of inspiration to write his poems. Though he wrote about everyday life’s situations to portray spiritual insights, his theme of the lover dissolving with the beloved in Oneness was fundamental, offering us another perspective into the concept of apotheosis.
Throughout our human written and unwritten memories, we can find countless other examples of courageous heroes, humble sages, and righteous saints who had experienced apotheosis to a certain level. But, if the idea of something as profound as apotheosis eludes us, it can be helpful to explore the idea of epiphany instead.
We speak about epiphany when we experience an enlightened realization about a situation we have been pondering, especially when it feels like we have been graced from a higher level of consciousness. This feeling has roots in the original meaning of the word epiphany, which in ancient Greece referred to striking insights bestowed by divine benevolence.
Writers, poets, painters, musicians, philosophers, and other individuals of the ancient world appealed to the gods or goddess of arts for inspiration. In Greece, there are nine well-known muses who inspired Homer while he wrote the stories in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Later, in the Renaissance, artists dedicated their works to the muses, eager to receive their inspiration.
It is critical to recognize that apotheosis and divine epiphanies are true gifts from spiritual realms. No amount of wishing and willing can bring them to us. The very nature of unifying with a higher consciousness or awakening to our true nature has more to do with a natural and organic surrendering than having an eager intention. It comes when we least expect it and when there is a serendipitous alignment of mysterious forces. These experiences offer us a grand new perspective of the world, and we are forever changed.
After four years of raising my children in Chile, it was finally their time to return to the United States and live with their father. Though I felt sad, I was tremendously grateful that I had the gift of being with them in my own house and country, under my terms. Now I could be at peace, knowing that I was able to transmit my personal values about life to them. First, Miles left at age 13, and a year later Abel left when he was about to turn 12.
During my shamanic training, I had learned from the grandmothers in the jungle that until age seven, children need most their mother or a “mother” figure who nurtures them unconditionally. Through this, they develop a sense of safety and the assurance that life is abundant. Then, in the next cycle of seven years, through the age of 14, children need a “father” presence to grow their sense of power in the world, outside the intimacy of the home. Furthermore, the grandmothers explained that in the jungle, this is when the boys start accompanying the men in their chores rather than staying home with the women.
From ages 14 to 21, it is time to find out who we are. If we never had a father, instead of embracing or rebelling against his character, we are going to be stuck looking for a father rather than looking for ourselves. Also, at this age, boys need to go on a vision quest or go through a rite of passage that allows them to surrender their child- self and make space for the grownup self—someone who is able to respond to his own needs and be part of the adult community.
These teachings from the grandmothers gave me the perspective and courage I needed to send my sons to their dad with my heart full of love and trust. At this time, my sister and her children moved to their own place in town since I would soon be selling the house. One morning, I woke up alone in a bittersweet melancholy and decided to go for a walk in our nearby mountains.
Though the forest covered much of the path, the sun shimmered through the branches. Once in a while, a bigger clearing appeared. I enjoyed the play of shade and light and the rainbow colors that the sun shone in front of the clear blue sky. The warmth of those rays also felt deeply healing and relaxing. Without thinking, I took deep and long breaths, naturally letting go of everything that was ready to go after years of battle and efforts. With each inhale, I embraced the spaciousness life was offering me. Soon, I reached a profound sense that my life belonged to me and that I was in charge of my destiny.
The golden rays of the sun beaming through a little clearing suddenly gave the appearance of a gilded being with a luminous halo. This being bestowed a light in me, which my mind heard as, “You are done learning and teaching like Christ on the cross. . . . You can step out of that path right now and follow my footsteps to Illumination.” Instantly, my mind recognized this emanation as an initiation from a Buddha consciousness. However, it took me many days to understand the full meaning of this epiphany.
Eventually, I realized the uneducated and narrow perspective I had about the legacy of the great master Christ, seeing him only on the cross and only as a martyr—missing the deep teachings about complete surrender to be resurrected in divine love. I had grown up carrying such heavy baggage, believing that everything needed to be accomplished with great effort and sacrifice. In my Christian country, where the church was married to the state, to sacrifice yourself for others or a situation meant goodness and valor. For the pious, being a martyr was encouraged as a way of reaching God.
My epiphany opened my eyes and heart to the possibility of giving and receiving with natural flow, just like creation expands and contracts without hesitation. Moreover, it deepened my understanding of the North teachings: we can step directly from wisdom rather than through pain and suffering as I had been taught to believe in my childhood. Hummingbird drinks only from the sweetest nectar of life; it doesn’t go around sticking its beak in shit. Hummingbird migrates to find flowers and has no excuses of being too small.
It was time for me, once more, to reclaim my place in the mythical garden of existence. May this story help us reflect on what keeps us from drinking the nectar of life and what beliefs we hold about not belonging in the Earth’s Eden.
FROM FEAR AND INSECURITY TO LOVE
A couple of years before the boys left to live with their father, I became friends with Rachel, a woman who had also spent a decade in the United States and now lived in Chile a few minutes walking distance from us. She was fun, smart, and physically attractive, and her two kids often played together with mine.
A year into our friendship, I could no longer ignore how I felt regarding healthy boundaries between us. Her sense of common space was a lot different than mine. She would enter my house as if it were hers, and then walk straight into the kitchen to see what was for lunch. Other times, she would send her kids over right at mealtimes so I would have to feed them. She also asked me to teach her about shamanic practices, which in general I was happy to share. However, what really raised warning flags for me was the day she asked Alberto to create a healing center together in Brazil, after she had offered him private yoga classes.
At this point all my jaguar hairs stood straight up along my spine, and I knew something needed to be done. Coincidently, two powerful machi, indigenous medicine women, came to visit me around those days. When I told them about my situation, they gave me the extra courage I needed to let Rachel know my boundaries. I needed my private space, and I believed she should not come around my house any longer.
Today, I recognize that my reaction was extreme. Yet back then I didn’t know how else to handle it. When I finally spoke with her, I tried to be polite, but I was also direct and left no space for doubt or confusion. Rachel acknowledged my position. As she departed from my garden, she wished me happiness—and never came back.
A couple of months later, I still felt uneasy about everything that had transpired. I missed spending fun time with Rachel, yet I could still feel resentment. Deep inside, I knew that my relationship with her had been tainted not just by her lack of consideration for my space but also by my own insecurities as a woman. She was
beautiful and talented, and I feared that she would easily replace me at Alberto’s side.
Then, one night, right at the veil between awake and asleep, I felt a sublime male presence in my room. Quickly I recognized him as the Hindu god Krishna, of whom I have been a devotee since my past lives.
“I am with you, Marcela,” he said with innate grace.
“I know that you are just saying that. This is just an emanation of you while the real you is with Radha,” I responded humbly but honestly. “You cannot fool me, like you had fooled the milkmaids.”
In one story that I used to tell my children, Krishna was very mischievous and playful with the gopis, or milkmaids, and he wanted to keep them all happy. So at one point, he sent many emanations of himself to be with each of the milkmaids, but deep in his heart he chose to be with one particular gopi, Radha.
“Marcela, let me gift you a boon,” he kindly replied. Immediately I felt warmth in my heart. “It would take you a long time, perhaps many reincarnations, to purify your heart. If you have never known what a pure heart is in its true vibration, then it would be very difficult for you to be free from jealousy and resentment.”
From his words, I understood that if one does not have a close role model or a blueprint with this information, then it is not possible to access it. Today I understand this is the reason why mystical and shamanic traditions offer empowerments or energetic transmissions to their apprentices: to awaken what is dormant or not there at all.
“Tonight, we are going to purify your heart,” Krishna assured me with great kindness. I sighed in complete surrender and trust. Lord Krishna guided me to think of Rachel and impelled me to wish for her all the same goodness I wished for myself.
I found it extremely difficult to wish her all the same abundance I knew was coming my way. Although it was not difficult to wish her to find her own beloved, it was very difficult to wish her a retreat center like the one Alberto and I were going to build on our land in the mountains. It was easy to wish for health for her children, but it was tough to wish her to be a successful healer in the same community where we both lived.
I hesitated for many minutes, feeling the resistance in my body, especially in my heart. My heart was obstinate and just did not want to do it. In those moments, Krishna would encourage me to go against that opposing force, which probably lived with me from many lifetimes or generations back. Lord Krishna coached and cheered me until I created a sincere wish of goodness for Rachel, and I prayed for her to receive the opportunity to fulfill the same kind of gifts that I longed for in my own life.
It took me a real effort to arrive at a genuine wish of grace for her, but at the end my heart had opened like a lotus flower, petal by petal. In a timeless space, I had been able to send Rachel loving wishes, and each time my heart acquired a new petal, and each petal gave me a new sense of lightness and peace. At last, my heart felt wide open, holding nothing but the most profound love and gratitude for Krishna.
Then I had an extraordinary realization. “Oh, my lord! Now I know you are with me! I am Radha, as she is pure of heart.”
Thus, I had my moment of apotheosis, embodying Radha’s divine love, tenderness, and compassion.
In the years after this experience, my selfish and fear-based survival impulses have arisen again—sometimes with a fury. However, I am extra meticulous in not letting my anger and jealousy control any situation. Just like Krishna taught me, I breathe into my heart and go through the exercise of feeding my love for all.
To the Winds of the East Place of the rising sun, of new beginnings,
Bless us in this new day.
Eagle, Condor, come to us.
Show us how to nest in the highest mountains,
And teach us how to fly wing to wing with the Great Spirit.
IN THE END, WE ARRIVE AT THE EAST, the last of the four quadrants of the Andean Medicine Wheel.
We began this extraordinary journey of self-discovery in the South, freeing ourselves from old stories and letting go of a stale identity. We continued to the West, crossing a threshold from the known to the unknown, facing our fears and even death so we could be renewed and later test our new strengths. Then came the North, offering us the retrieval of our innocence and the return to the Garden of Life, while inviting us to become whole by embracing the divine feminine and masculine, and realizing our own infinite nature.
So, when we arrive in the East, we are lighter, renewed, and wiser. At the same time our passion has been rekindled, and we are left with the question of what to do with our vitality. This inquiry is fundamental to flow into the wisdom of the East, since it is not a shallow question but the urgent quest to awaken from a small, individualistic, and trivial life to a meaningful destiny.
As we traverse this direction, we learn to appreciate all life’s lessons and blessings and realize that we are endowed with a unique gift that is meant to be shared with others.
We comprehend that life is not only about me: my family, my dog, my job, my desires, and so on. Instead, we are part of the great web we call consciousness and life. We realize what happens to me happens to others, and what happens to others happens to me.
A great metaphor from the Hindu tradition speaks about the god Indra’s net, an infinite grid with glittering jewels in each vertex, each jewel reflecting all the other jewels. The great mystical thinker and British writer Alan Watts eloquently explained this metaphor: “Imagine a multidimensional spider’s web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum.”
This openness to a greater perspective is certainly enriched by our allies of the East, Condor and Eagle, the largest winged creatures in their inhabiting territory.* Each bird has its very distinctive qualities, but together they reveal to us the wisdom of transcendence. As medicine totems, Condor and Eagle inspire us to see life from an elevated outlook, to appreciate its ebbs and flows, its expansions and contractions. This vast view allows us to remember what truly matters in our lives so we can remain faithful to our quest for sacred meaning and not get caught in irrelevant burdens.
It takes great vision and a great heart to see beyond one’s own nose, and again Eagle and Condor demonstrate how to keep this vast perspective while opening their chests wide in flight. Both birds ensure their dominion by nestling in elevated places. Eagles often nest in a tall tree or at the edge of a cliff, but condors prefer even higher locations in mountains 3,000 to 5,000 meters (about 9,800 to 16,400 feet) tall. Eagles have a sharp ability to see in the distance— at least three times farther than humans—allowing them to hunt with great precision. Eagle’s keen eyesight and condor’s ability to outreach the eagle’s flight in height and distance offer a perfect blend for us to entrust them with a glimpse into our future.
When contemplated from the eyes of either totem, our day-today challenges reveal a clear outcome. To learn from these allies, however, we must be willing to see and act from outside our own box of conventions. Both birds help us realize that really there are no obstacles in life, but opportunities to soar higher, as we said in our prayer, “wing to wing with the Great Spirit.”
In the shamanic lore of the Americas, a prophesy spoke about a time when the condor and the eagle would fly together, referring to the reunion between the sacred wisdom of the peoples of the North and the sacred wisdom of the peoples of the South. This gathering would revitalize the voice of the Earth, strengthen the peoples, and brighten the future.
Nowadays, we recognize the fruits of these predictions as indigenous people from all over the Americas gather to share their ways of communion, prayer, and offering. Each ethnic group has its unique forms of expression, but they all share the intention of a sustainable life that heals and honors all our relations on this planet and beyond. Dozens, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of people from different regions assemble to remember the voice of the ancestors and envision a healthier future for our children, knowing that together we are stronger and wiser.
Today, this coming together is a fact not only for the whole Americas, but also for the post-modern Western world and the mystical traditions of the East. We are privileged to have access to both valuable technological and scientific advances and the most profound wisdom of the ancient world. Though we are far from being a just global society, able to educate and care for all citizens, at least we are sensing a common ground with millions of other people who truly care for all life.
Condor and Eagle align us with this possibility of feeling like citizens of the world, being sensitive to what is beyond our house’s walls and beyond our nation’s boundaries. This doesn’t mean that we must pack our brains with information about exactly what is happening in every country, or that we consume a 24-hour cycle of international news. Instead, we recognize in every human a common essence and feel compassion for both those who are dominated by their selfish passions and those who suffer as a result of others’ short-sighted ignorance. It also means we feel the cry of nature as it is objectified and abused, harming life at all levels.
To traverse the East is to remember our interconnectedness with all existence, and our oneness with the animating life-force shamans call Spirit. From this perspective, we understand our participation in organizing reality, and recognize this as a responsibility as much as a privilege.
For the shaman of the East, co-creating with Spirit has more to do with envisioning than with hands-on doing; this requires a sublime awareness born out of profound inner stillness. It’s as though we are in muddy water, and we want to cultivate being relaxed and quiet so that the mud can settle and the water above it clears. Our mind must clear, must become open to receiving inspiration: letting Spirit come in. Eagle and Condor can support us here, helping us calm and transcend our daily needs, desires, and distractions, so we can achieve great spaciousness in our consciousness.
In that peaceful state, we are capable of “dreaming the world into being,” meaning we can create from serene awareness. This sublime perspective offers a spiritual solution to any situation, a vision of divine order and harmony, no matter how terrible, ugly, or difficult a situation might appear from a collapsed, day-to-day perception. Eagle and Condor help us see the real priorities of life while contemplating the dawn of our destinies. From this vantage point, we realize the goodness that is possible no matter how improbable, and as we see it, we feed those auspicious probabilities.
Crafting one’s destiny by dreaming the world into being is an art of the highest understanding. We must endure life lessons that align us with that auspicious outcome. It requires profound humbleness since often we must pay and harmonize spiritual debts.
We also comprehend that we are dreaming the qualities of our becoming rather than concentrating on the details of what exactly it will look like in tangible form. For example, we might envision peace by contemplating the feeling of peace rather than worrying about the details of how to end a war. We allow that peace to permeate our being and to ripple out in all directions. There is a sense of trust and surrendering: letting the peace come to us instead of forcefully imposing it on our surroundings. Ultimately, we know that we are creating our destinies by choosing the qualities of life that we invoke, spend time with, and embody.
When we attempt to dream the world into being for a community or nation or the entire Earth, we must realize that we are putting our grain of sand into the large sand painting that is being dreamed by everyone involved. But if our grain shines with beauty and harmony, we might inspire others to add a grain of sand with similar goodness. The more people aligning with kindness to the well-being of the
entire planet, the more love we’ll all experience, even in the face of hardship.
An extraordinary example of someone who is envisioning a healthy destiny for the planet—inspiring millions of people while exasperating others—is Greta Thunberg, the young climate change activist from Sweden. After she spoke at the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference at the age of 15, a professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester said Thunberg “demonstrates more clarity and leadership in one speech than a quarter of a century of the combined contributions of so-called world leaders. Willful ignorance and lies have overseen a 65 percent rise in CO2 since 1990. Time to hand over the baton.”
To act and speak with such power, surely Greta reached a deep place within. She was eight years old when she first heard that climate change was accelerating because of the way humans live. Then she kept learning about the consequences of global warming, including the extinction of many species, and she could not believe the lack of urgency with which this matter had been treated. In a TED Talk in August 2018, she shared these words: “So when I was eleven, I became ill. I fell into depression, I stopped talking, and I stopped eating. In two months, I lost about ten kilos of weight. . . . Later on, I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, OCD, and selective mutism. That basically means that I only speak when I think it’s necessary. Now is one of those moments.”
In her piercing message, we can feel the way she reached bottom, and how her actions are sourced from deep within. From her example, we can imagine what it is to root down, to be inspired with new possibilities, and to act accordingly. But we must not forget to also take up residence in high peaks like the condor, so we do not lose the vast perspective of what human life is all about. Otherwise, we can be devoured by pain and frustration when events don’t seem to go our way.
Condor and Eagle are totems of transcendence, not only to overcome difficulties and visualize an auspicious destiny for this
lifetime, but to connect us with the timeless essence we share with all life. This is an experience that brings profound peace.
To master the East direction is to know this state of awareness and to let it be the aquifer that feeds all other states of awareness. Then we can do the work we are inspired to do while realizing that we are just a drop of water in the big ocean of consciousness—so we must also relax and surrender to the tides. And from that profound inner calm we remember that a drop of water is also the entire ocean, so we must not give up the rhythms or ripples we are inspired to create. Lastly, we understand that the ocean has existed and will keep existing for longer than we can imagine, and consciousness is boundless beyond our lifetime.
This wisdom allows us to freely commit to our inspired visions while not getting caught in the emotional traps of apparent failure or success. We pulsate between being active and being in total surrender to what is happening (that which we cannot change). When our awareness relaxes beyond any constrictions, our hearts also relax and we feel an organic and instantaneous generosity, which can similarly be called ecstatic love. Without trying, we develop patience, kindness, and compassion, although we can still be decisive, firm, and swift. We find it more and more alien to be harsh, judgmental, or abrupt.
At this juncture, we recall that quest that is much greater than a simple question: a profound search for our place of dignity in the world. We realize that this place is not different from our sacred contribution to life. When we find our deeper essence, we also find an inner gift we must share with others. Or the other way around, when we discover our sacred offering to life, we feel peace and a sense of homecoming.
As masters of the East direction, we rest our awareness in the infinite skies while acting with total presence and wholeheartedly in the daily domain. We have made it through a heroic journey to discover our exclusive way to be in ayni with life. This is an exquisite balance between being sustained by the world and being in service to the world.
How much we receive or give is a personal contract with Spirit, but we know just the right amount when we feel in the flow. Nevertheless, the medicine person measures the greatness of one’s destiny by the meaning and purpose it bestows upon his or her life.
As Alberto and I planned our calendars for 2017, he suggested we go to his mother’s home in Miami for the holidays around Christmas. His request was reasonable; she was in her 90s and still cared so much for her family, and we had spent many other holidays with my sons and my family. I announced that I would rent my own place to have a quiet space for myself and have alone time with my two sons. My husband and his mother, with the best of intentions, persuaded me to stay with them. Alberto said nobody else would stay in her house and that she would feel offended if we didn’t. Trying to be flexible and generous, I agreed. After all, I had stayed with her and her husband a few times in the past and it had been fine. It was a large house, and Alberto, the kids, and I would have an entire wing with two bedrooms, an office space, and two full bathrooms.
We arrived a few days before Christmas and found every nook of the house filled with festive decorations on top of the already crowded tables and shelves. The inside patio was already set with tables and chairs for about 40 guests. Two ladies were running around, choosing the wine and finding more Christmas accoutrements, which unnerved my body. Alberto and I settled in the best we could, but in our room, every drawer was filled with memories, the closet was stuffed with mysterious boxes and outdated clothing, and the surfaces were crowded with a small television, big lamps, a vase, candles, and photos of past generations. As I unpacked, I realized that I had set a strong intention to have a pleasant time with everyone. Simultaneously, I thought that if I had to set such a firm intention, it must be because I had serious doubts about what I had signed up for.
At our first family meal, there were so few vegetarian options available, I had to make do with white rice and blunt iceberg lettuce. Immediately after, I took a trip to the market and returned with organic greens, but then I had to struggle for space inside the fridge.
I didn’t mind moving around the gallons of cow’s milk, a big bowl of white eggs, and cheeses of different shapes and shades. However, it was not so easy to deal with chicken parts, pork sausage, and other raw meat.
At this point my mind started wandering in judgment: How is it possible that people consume so many products of animals’ suffering? I managed to dissolve these thoughts with my daily evening meditation, but the annoyance returned when the loud volume of the television next door kept me from sleeping. I have never owned a TV, and so was not used to that background clatter.
Incriminating thoughts were right there with me when I awoke the next morning to the stink of fried bacon being prepared by the housekeeper. I asked my husband to please bring me coffee to uplift my spirit and went out into the yard to sip it and take some fresh breaths to alleviate my nausea. However, there was little peace to be found even outdoors. Right away, I heard loud hammering from construction at the neighbor’s house.
Then there was another abrupt change of conditions. Alberto’s son and daughter had first said they couldn’t make it, but now they confirmed they would be staying with all of us. While I was very happy for everyone to see one another, I was nervous about the sleeping arrangements. The house had only one more free room, which had two twin beds, so the office space got set up with two futons. All right, I thought, all for the good cause of a loving family Christmas. Then of course, a shower in one of the two bathrooms broke, and we could find no plumbers to fix it. So Alberto, four young adults, and I would have to share the two bathrooms, but only one shower.
Intellectually, I knew that this was nothing terrible in the big scheme of life. Plenty of people in the world don’t even have a toilet.
I knew I should be grateful to even have water for a shower when many don’t have this luxury. Indeed, I had gone to Miami from my comfortable, spacious, and quiet home in the mountains of Chile ready to make concessions to be with family—but reality was pushing me well beyond the margins I had established. The delightful chaos of my child-rearing days had long passed. While I had known that I would have to prepare myself to be generous and patient, each little thing was adding up until it was more than I had expected.
As a spiritual practitioner, I recognized that if I had to consciously prepare to be generous and patient, obviously, I was not sufficiently generous and patient at my core. So this whole situation was a wonderful opportunity for spiritual growth. Admitting I was feeling claustrophobic—in a beautiful, but old, dark home with low ceilings, and full of the foreign habits of dear people—I sensed it was time to summon my allies, Condor and Eagle, to help me see outside the box of my own rigid expectations.
With the aim of sending my consciousness out of the house, high into the skies, I closed my bedroom door and ignored all the agitation from outside. I created sacred space and called my allies until Eagle’s eyes merged with mine. (Other times it is Condor who comes, and occasionally both.) Immediately, my vision zoomed out from the house and soared over the great city of Miami. In the skies above is where my repressed feelings emerged. The superfluous and consumeristic atmosphere of the holidays frustrated me. So many lights adorning megastores, inflatable Santas and reindeer out in the yards, and home delivery trucks everywhere, filled with boxes. I thought sadly of the trees that had been sacrificed, and all the plastic toys that would be discarded after a week yet take a thousand years to decompose, and all the people on the planet who were hungry that day.
Then Eagle ushered me to a broader perspective of the whole planet. At this height, I did not transcend my feelings, but started seeing my own hypocrisy. Alberto, our children, and I had traveled by planes to this reunion, knowing how enormously those emissions contribute to climate change, especially when flying business class. And though I did not buy Christmas presents, I did order a few things
I wanted to take back to Chile, and those things came heavily protected and wrapped up in plastic and cardboard.
Who am I to judge? I reflected from Eagle’s perspective. Simply moving with the waves of civilization increases one’s carbon footprint.
Then Eagle and I flew into the quiet expansion of the dark space beyond planet Earth, beyond the confines of my mindset that day, the day itself, even the year 2017. In that space, I finally transcended not the wrongdoings of others but my own self-pity. In that space, I couldn’t help but laugh about the detour I had taken through tunnel vision and egotistic superiority.
Once I had enough expansion, Eagle floated me back to my body, seated in the bedroom. Now I was truly generous and patient, ready to spend quality time with our children and with Alberto’s many relatives who would come for the Christmas party.
That afternoon I invited the children to a yoga class, and we all stretched our limbs and came out smiling. The next morning, we walked within a large botanical garden and saw nature up close, including egrets, herons, turtles, and an eight-foot crocodile sunbathing by a lake. On Christmas day, we biked the length of Miami Beach, soaking up the atmosphere of people just happy to be under the sun. Once I opened my mind, there were plenty of opportunities to get out of the house and experience our family in a spacious, nourishing atmosphere.
I was not feeling claustrophobic anymore but excited for the affectionate bond of our family. On Christmas Eve, Alberto’s extended family came to celebrate, and we enjoyed lots of fun far beyond sharing a meal and unwrapping gifts. In lieu of physical presents, I donated ten trees in the name of each person who attended the party, almost 500 trees all together. I thought of it as a way to give to them by giving to the planet.
The morning after Christmas, Alberto and I woke up earlier than anyone else. As usual, we made coffee and sat in the living area to share our dreams. In the middle of our conversation, he felt a strong urge to go outside with me, so he drew me by the hand to the front porch. What we saw in the skies was better than Santa Claus. A perfect rainbow shone bright; from the East we counted about 200 vultures, the mother species of the condors. This moment appeared to me as an auspicious sign, confirming that the medicine of the East had surely been with me. Until we all parted a couple of days later, only kindness was in the air, even as we shared the one and only shower.
We humans are only a possibility when we are born. We must discover our purpose and meaning and then we must find the courage to follow that purpose.
- AGNES WHISTLING ELK
AS WE TRAVERSE THE HEROIC Medicine Wheel, unexpectedly we might be blessed with an unforeseen gift beyond our wishes or desires—even outside our imagination. This is the ultimate boon given by a divine source to committed seekers who have a sacred and unselfish task they must discover.
An intrinsic quality of this gift is that it has the power to bless many people and not just the hero who receives it. If we anticipate or desire such a thing, however, then we would taint the boon with our hunger for power, fame, or some sort of recognition. Hence, Spirit bestows this blessing when we are free of any selfish motivations regarding the gift. On the other hand, the nature of the gift itself could send us on a quest to clear such a selfish attitude, making us pure vessels able to offer the blessing to others. In truth, none of us is completely empty of all selfish motivations. If we were, then we would already be realized Buddhas. Therefore, virtue in this context is mainly in consideration of embracing and sharing the boon.
At the end of a spiritual day, we are not champions for just answering the call, for leaving the known for the unknown, for surviving the heart of the womb, for meeting God and the Goddess, or for experiencing apotheosis. We are heroes and medicine people only when we truly understand our gifts and learn how to offer them to the world, especially when we have been entrusted with the ultimate boon.
Sometimes we understand immediately what the boon is about; other times it can take us years to find out. At a certain point, we discover that this gift is not for us alone, but something we must comprehend and then deliver to our community in a manner that allows them to integrate it.
To better understand the ultimate boon, it helps to look at how it differs from the unique qualities we are born with or the talents we later develop in life.
As we grow up, knowing what we like and being clear about our abilities makes it easier for us to manifest a suitable setting for our creativity at school, at work, and in society. However, our interests and skills do change or evolve with time, and it is natural to experience intervals of confusion. We are not always certain of what we want, and doubting how good we are at what we do is part of life. We can be grateful for the times when we feel clear about our enjoyments, and even more grateful when those align with the opportunity to manifest our creative expression. In doing so, we find ourselves working with gladness, gratitude, or ease, and if we run into challenges, our sense of purpose keeps us going.
In this context, when a space or a job doesn’t feel appropriate any longer, we strive to change the setting but continue with our passion. When we lose curiosity and love for what we do and fail to feel purpose, however, we search again for what inspires and motivates us to get out of bed each day. If the seeds of change are sprouting in our soul, we discover ourselves back in our juicy quest for meaning, purpose, and belonging. But if those seeds are not sprouting or not even sowed, we feel or act depressed.
As seen from shamanic wisdom, depression relates to the inner journey we must take to release what has expired, and to retrieve what needs to come forth. It is the call from Mother Earth for us to reenter her belly, to be dismembered and reassemble in our new form. It entails surrendering to a symbolic death to create new space for our renewed passion, and sometimes for a soul retrieval as we discussed earlier in the North’s teachings. Then we are deeply rooted in the consciousness of Mother Earth and filled with vitality to co-create life.
In today’s world, we are suffering from a collective soul loss. Our personal depression might not make sense if we do not take into consideration the need for our whole society to take a plunge into the mighty wisdom of the Earth so we can co-create beauty and health rather than just working to pay bills and accumulate wealth. For this reason, when we think that we just need to adjust the chemistry of our brains to come out of depression, we must not forget that our brains are not disconnected from the intelligence of our planet, and our world is strained and in great pain.
With these considerations, it is a great blessing when we are living our passion. When our purpose relates to helping the Earth and others, we experience greater motivation and satisfaction. We find ourselves flowing and blossoming with the infinite love pouring from Pachamama and Spirit. We feel deeply immersed in the dance of giving and receiving and being part of the grid that connects us all. In this setting, we are strong and supple and can face any challenges. We become like the waters of a river passing around and over any obstacles in its course.
This idyllic picture is the birthright of every person on the planet, although it takes a high level of awakened awareness to heal the inner obstacles and face the outer challenges. For this reason, we first journey through the cleansing and empowering directions of the South and West, so if we have been born in unfavorable conditions, at least we can develop the mindset to believe that living with meaning and purpose is possible. This then sets us on the quest that eventually puts us on the hero’s path.
RECEIVING THE BOON AND UNDERSTANDING OUR MOTIVATIONS
Now, as part of the extraordinary journey of the hero, we might receive an exceptional boon from a spiritual or divine source. In this context, this is a gift filled with power and grace meant to be discovered in its full potential, but not to be used for selfish reasons. It is a blessing for a greater purpose, entrusted to the person who has been summoned to satisfy a noble task.
Sure, every person in the world receives divine blessings every day, such as the food that nurtures us or the health of one’s family. But, also, the Universe mirrors back our genuine level of love, courage, and commitment for life, and we are given gifts matching our own stature.
When my children were young I used to read them many different stories about the gods of the Hindu mythology. One of the stories written by Harish Johari in his book The Monkeys and the Mango Tree speaks about the God Shiva bestowing boons to those who offer prayers with devotion.
At one point, Shiva runs into a starving family and asks them what they want, and because they are so miserable, all they can think about is a cart full of fresh loaves of bread, which they get immediately. Just moments later, Shiva hears a blind beggar calling him with the sacred chant “Aum Namah Shivaya,” and the God also offers him a boon. After a brief moment of deliberation, the man answers, “If you really are Shiva, please grant my wish that I might see my great-grandson eating sweets from a silver plate with a silver spoon.”
With this story, we can reflect how Spirit is always listening and answering the deep prayers of our hearts. Yet if we cannot articulate what we really want in life, then we might end up like the starving family, with just bread for the day. This translates into having barely enough to pay our bills and always struggling to survive rather than living our passion.
On the other hand, if we clearly express our yearnings, then we are open and ready to receive our boon no matter how improbable it seems, as in the case of the blind beggar. In just one sentence he received four precious gifts. When he says “that I might see,” he is asking for his eyesight. The gift in “my great-grandson” is twofold; it implies that he has a woman to love and to have children with as well as a long life. Lastly, he is inviting abundance with the words “eating sweets from a silver plate with a silver spoon.” We might even notice that he is also suggesting a sweet life.
However, if we desire something extraordinary, but that wish is shaded by feelings of unworthiness and doubt, then we are rejecting the gift even before we ask for it. How many times do we hear people say, “I’d wish for . . . but I don’t deserve it”? They set an obstacle in front of the desire so it doesn’t have a chance to ripple out to the Universe. When we do this, we keep running into all our reasons why we cannot have what we want.
When praying for our deep desires, we must also reflect on our underlying motivation. Is this a generous aspiration for us and others, or is it a craving from selfish feelings? If the answer is generosity, then we have the support of all positive creative forces. It is like adding clear water to a pristine river so there is even more room for beauty to flow in our lives. In this same context, if our prayers bring no visible outcome, then we must dig into the hidden gifts of the seemingly empty reply and realize that at the end, the blessing was there all along. On the other hand, if our motivation is selfish or heavy with revenge, lust, or power, then we enter into a game with obscure forces that might concede our wishes, but also drag us to the corresponding consequences.
The wheel of life from Buddhist teachings offers us images of how we feel when we are under selfish passions. When we hate, we end up in a hellish realm overcome by anguish and pain. In the case of greed, we fall into the state of mind of a hungry ghost with its insatiable appetite. When we are ignorant, we become reactive like animals, running away from pain and clinging to pleasure, without creative thinking. If we have all the comforts of life but are nervous that someone else might be better than us or might take what is ours, then we are in the jealous god realm and can never relax. Finally, when we have been good in the past and gain all the pleasures and blessings of life but fall to pride, this is the state of mind of the god realm, and we’re in danger of becoming lazy, indolent, and uncaring.
Consequently, we must strive to purify our passions and turn them into the opposite qualities so we can be kind, generous, thoughtful, trusting, and dedicated. In this way, we unblock the recognition of our gifts, our purpose, and our place in the mesh of creation.
Again, we receive blessings every day of our lives. We may consider being alive a blessing in itself, even in the face of pains and sorrows. The Laika looks for the gift in every seemingly adverse situation, transforming the challenge into opportunity, the illness into medicine, and the poison into nectar.
Embodying this understanding, we can further appreciate the ultimate boon as the elixir of life that Spirit offers, not just as a guest knocking from outside, but also as a presence whispering from within our own hearts. In other words, this divine boon implies an expansion of consciousness and a superior understanding of the laws of the Universe.
Three of the stories I share here in the East direction describe instances in which I received a boon. In the first story, once I surrendered in absolute trust to a great health challenge, I found my inner blessings. In the second tale, I describe a numinous experience in which I was given a Shiva lingam, a mystical object of great power. Within the thirteenth milestone, I explain the “rite of the womb,” a third boon I received, containing each and every quality of an “ultimate boon” or “elixir of life.” In that instant I also speak about how I have shared that blessing with thousands of women all over the world.
In late March 2017, I developed all the symptoms of a highly debilitating pneumonia that wouldn’t go away. After six weeks, my doctors discovered that I had contracted an infection called coccidioidomycosis while teaching at a retreat in Southern California. This is a fungus that resides in the desert’s soil, and its spores become airborne when the earth is disturbed. Not knowing this risk existed, I walked by a construction zone every day for two weeks, from my room to the classroom, and I inhaled too many of these spores. The mold grew inside my lungs, and two months later I had lost 80 percent of my breathing capacity. I dropped 10 pounds, bringing my body to a weakened state, and I couldn’t walk more than half a mile within an entire day.
At this point I started taking an antifungal medication, but my doctors were not sure I would make it. Though it was autumn in Chile, most days were sunny in our mountain home, and my intuition guided me to lie naked by a large window in a quiet room, to receive the light and warmth of the sun. I embraced this practice every possible day for at least 20 minutes and sometimes more than an hour.
One particular morning I woke up feeling very gray and out of breath. Slowly I made it to the window to soak up the rays of the sun. While resting there, aware of each breath and facing the opposite window in the shade, suddenly I felt the presence of death. Her bone-chilling shadow peeking through the glass gave me a shock. Not sure of what to do, I finally asked, “So . . . have you come to take me?”
Noticing each breath like it was a precious gem, I waited for my fear to rise, for panic to strike—but there was nothing. All I could feel was a peaceful sense of completion: My sons had grown to become independent, healthy, and compassionate men. I had lived with great passion all my life. And every night I rested in the arms and heart of my beloved husband.
With the same suddenness with which she’d come, death left me with the unsurpassable gift of peace. I could feel my chest and my heart expand, and I could breathe a little bit deeper just by the gratitude that arose with my realization of wholeness and completion. Still not sure if death would take me, I was now certain to appreciate every new moment as an opportunity to further embody the core practices of my life’s spiritual journey—to keep feeling compassion for, and realizing my infinite essence as not disconnected from, all life.
The next day, while inviting the sun to warm my body in the same quiet room, behind the sound of my laborious breaths I could hear the mundane buzzing of a restless fly. There was nothing exciting or glamorous about this moment, but this very fact steered me into a deeper surrender. There was nothing to accomplish but another breath. There was nowhere to go but to stay in communion with the sun, the air, and the plants around me.
In the end it felt like such a moment of paradox. On the one hand, my lungs were so compromised, I could die any day. On the other hand, because of death coming so close, I had dropped all my agendas, and I was able to just be in each breath. I tasted a state of mind that is deeply cherished in all mystical paths, fully awake in the present while in a timeless surrender. For me it was a profound peace colored by bliss.
Obviously I did not die, and it took me over a year to feel somewhat functional in the outer world. Nevertheless, the serenity I felt in those sunny moments by the window became the most lucid north of my inner compass.
Since then, I have never gone back to the busier and more external-oriented lifestyle I once had. The dream of a retreat was no longer just the concrete manifestation of a nice building in the mountains of Chile but the guiding principle of my everyday life. Though I do get busy making and manifesting plans, I never close the curtains of death’s favorite window in my house. She reminds me to deeply rest in the perfection of what is in the moment without falling into the regrets of the past and the wishes for the future. Just breathe.
DISCOVERING THE DEPTHS OF A SACRED BOON
Years ago, I received a boon from a luminous being but failed to recognize its meaning and purpose for over a decade. I am just now learning to put this boon in service to life. It happened in 2005, soon after Alberto and I decided to create a life together. He offered to take me anywhere in the world, and I immediately proposed India.
A few months later we landed in Delhi, which felt overwhelmingly crowded and hectic. We quickly escaped to my dream places in the North: first, to the source of the Ganges river and later to the origins of the Yamuna river. It was the beginning of fall, and we hardly saw any tourists as we walked a dirt path along the newly born river. Soon, the beauty and power of the mountains, the centennial trees, the great boulders by the riverbank, and the pristine blue skies transported us to a timeless sense of awe. Further, we felt the transmission of a different state of mind, perhaps more ample and infinite, every time a local mystic greeted us with his gaze and a gentle bow.
During this pilgrimage, I had a few lucid dreams about existing in this landscape in another time. I saw myself as a woman at different ages bathing in the river, carrying food on my head, chanting with other women, and praying to the Hindu gods. In some of the places we visited, we slept in beds of straw, bathed with buckets of cold water, and ate lentils three times a day. All throughout, I had a warm feeling of homecoming.
After our magical journey by the Ganges and the Yamuna, we arrived at Krishna’s ashram in Vrindavan, a small village where the god had spent his childhood years. We went there to visit our musician devotee friend Shyamdas, and to learn from a pandit, or master in yogic philosophy.
On our first night at the ashram, I was fast asleep when I perceived a male presence trying to hand me an elliptical stone. Not recognizing what it was, I startled and woke up. To my astonishment,
I saw a radiant masculine manifestation in the wall ahead of me. The light was so bright, it made me turn my head to the right—but there he was as well, seated cross-legged and shining bright. Instinctively, I peeked behind me, and there he was again, beaming like a sun. Over to my left side was his equally luminous presence. I closed my eyes to make him disappear, but I still felt his light all around me.
This exquisite light rapidly melted away my initial mistrust. Awestruck, I softly called Alberto’s name to include him in the experience. But before he could wake up, the luminous presence had gently disappeared. I told Alberto what had occurred, and we agreed to discuss it more in the morning. Soon, we were both fast asleep again. Within a couple of hours, however, I got stirred up by another dream:
I am walking in an expansive landscape of light sand. Shortly,
I run into a wide red carpet, which I follow for what seems to be a few hundred feet until it reaches a broad stairway made of stones. Before I can look all the way up, I become blinded by the same luminous man I saw earlier in the room. Looking down and really slowly, I go up seven steps, one step at a time, until I reach the top, where he sits on a sort of throne. Spontaneously I fall to my knees, bowing my head at his feet, with the most exquisite humbleness I have ever known.
I woke up again with a sense of absolute veneration and wonderment. Not wanting to stir Alberto this time, I went back to sleep a third time, and rested until a final dream woke me with the first light of dawn.
I am on a dirt street among a few modest houses along each side. I see an older man sitting peacefully on a bench on one of the borders. Telepathically he reminds me about the stone I rejected during the first dream of the night. I realize how vital it is for me to have it, and I look at him with a question in my eyes: Where is that black stone? Wordlessly, he makes me understand that he has been sitting there just so he could direct me to find the stone. He points with his chin toward the window of a house. Immediately I can feel the stone is inside, and I know with certainty that I must act quickly before someone else comes. I find the window half open, and with my right arm I reach through the curtains and feel around until my hand finds it. Carefully, I bring it out, knowing that I am holding something precious. I run down the road with all my might. But just before I am gone, I catch a glimpse of the old man, staring at me with an approving smile.
In the morning, after a few sun salutations, Alberto and I set out to visit our friend Shyamdas, yearning for his insights. In local fashion, we sat cross-legged on flat cushions over the cool floor. While sharing a traditional breakfast, I related to our host the occurrences of the night. Shyamdas listened very attentively, then replied, “You were gifted a Shiva lingam, a divine gift that so many people would die to have. I know Westerners who have been here for twenty years praying to experience something similar, and you received it on your first night. Just amazing!” Shyamdas explained that a Shiva lingam has the authentic energy and potential of God Shiva himself.
Despite these insights regarding the Shiva lingam, it took me 14 years to begin understanding why I received this boon.
After leaving India, I resumed creating my new life in Chile with my children and working abroad with Alberto. I knew I’d been given a significant gift, but I did not realize that I had to flow into a quest to find its meaning. I simply put the lingam on my metaphorical shelf of spiritual accomplishments.
I must confess that it was only as I prepared to write this chapter that I felt the crucial need to understand my boon. With careful prayer and dedication, I spent more than a month creating a large labyrinth of stones in the garden. I used the template of the legendary labyrinth of Knossos on the island of Crete, the birthplace of the hero Theseus. Once my labyrinth was physically ready, a full moon arrived, bringing an auspicious feeling to activate it with further prayers and offerings. Under a luminous night sky, I stood by the entrance of the labyrinth and asked: “What does the Shiva lingam mean, and how I am to use it in service to life?”
As my bare feet touched the dry, cool earth, I walked all my rounds toward the middle of the labyrinth, repeating again and again the same question in different ways and from different angles, directing it to different faces of Spirit. Once in the center, I spontaneously kneeled to touch Earth and ask her to sustain my quest. Before heading out, I reached up to the bright heavens, to Shiva in particular, calling for my answer. Then my mind became purposely silent so I could listen while slowly walking back, one little step at a time.
As soon as I made it out of the labyrinth, I sat on a wooden chair to write in my journal the words echoing in my mind:
The lingam is a seed of the God Shiva, enclosing the total faculties of his power-including his immeasurable generating, influencing, and destroying potential. Y ou must understand that these powers are not loosely handled but are restrained in the sacred vessel of the feminine. Therefore, the force and vigor of the Shiva lingam is in perfect balance with the yielding and receptive qualities of the Cosmos. At the same time, the forces of Shiva do not dance alone but in divine choreography with his counterpart gods, Brahma and Vishnu. The lingam also holds the wisdom of this relationship in which the Universe is infinitely born, sustained, and destroyed.
For the next few days, my awareness of the lingam as an energetic quantum residing in my body and psyche flourished exponentially. I began feeling it like a pillar supporting my spine from the tailbone up. At the same time, I developed an earnest commitment to become a skillful manifester in the outer world.
Until that point, I had functioned more from intuition. I was happy to give up logistic responsibilities to my husband. As a child, I did not have an efficient role model of how to provide for a family and pay bills in an orderly fashion. Within my first marriage I became afraid of making mistakes, transferring many decision-making responsibilities to my husband. Now, with the lingam, I finally acknowledged that it was my time to heal all those insecurities—not by looking for the wound, but by carefully thinking, planning, and carrying through every enterprise that was mine to initiate, maintain, or solve.
It was now time to look at my resources, understand their value, and invest them wisely. I must be mindful of not only my financial resources but also my time, my relationships, and my wisdom. The mountain Ausangate and others offered me protection; still, that means I sought outside myself for masculine qualities. With the Shiva lingam, I am to develop my own skillful means, strategic wisdom, patience, and strength. As I become a steady sustainer and provider in my own life, I am able to till and fertilize the ground to offer my gifts to my community.
I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does
away with fear.
- ROSA PARKS
ONCE WE HAVE EXPERIENCED communion with the gods, tasted apotheosis, or received the ultimate boon, we might feel exceptionally enlivened and truly afraid of collapsing into an ordinary reality that is stripped from the sacred. We dread the idea of going back to a dull or superficial lifestyle like the one we experienced before we dove into a magnificent journey of discovery. It hasn’t been easy—actually we faced great terror in the belly of the whale and major challenges along the path—but in the end, we have awakened to a richer and more meaningful existence.
Now we feel that we are at the end of a road and it is time to return home. We have been entrusted a boon of sacred elixir and know it can help others. We realize that it is our duty to return to our community and be generous in offering the blessings and the wisdom we have gained. Still, we might be sincerely concerned that in doing so, we will lose our connection with the divine or the excitement of the adventure.
It is vital not to deny our feelings; it is healthy to inquire into our underlying concerns. From my experience, having mentored hundreds of people in their journeys, I often see the need to revisit one of the earlier stages before jumping with confidence into the full expression of the East. One might have to revisit the South and illuminate another old wounding that flared up; step into the West to dance with one’s present fears and shadows; or dive into one’s depths in the North to recover another soul aspect that now is ready to come back.
However, in the end we must do what is necessary to transcend our greedy neediness and mature into generosity. Then we enter the flow where giving is receiving and vice versa. There are aspects of our lives that will only heal once we are in service to life and not just in service to our demanding little egos. There are areas of our psyche that will only be realized once we strive to fulfill our purpose.
An image of illness and health shared with me by Emilie Conrad, an accomplished dancer and founder of Continuum Movement, can be used to understand this need to be in service to life. When we are vibrant, she said, the dendrites from our neurons spread out with curiosity; they reach out to others, to the rest of the world, and even to the stars. We feel tall, open, and satisfied. Just the opposite happens when we are sick; our nerve branches stop blooming to connect, and instead they retreat to themselves. If we are like this for too long, we become stooped, wrinkled, and hunched. In just this same way, if we do not return home to participate creatively in our communities, we become stuck. If we keep making excuses for why we do not return, we can get sick. Just like we manifest an illness or another type of crisis to make us answer the call to adventure, we can suffer a crisis that will send us home.
RECOGNIZING THE CALL TO RETURN HOME
The story of Rossi perfectly embodies this narrative of the call to return home. She was a pretty and courageous girl I met in Chile when I was 20. She had traveled from Mexico in the most peculiar way after reading Carlos Castaneda’s earlier books and genuinely
taken the Toltec teachings to heart. Without any further mentorship, she attempted to embody the wisdom.
Feeling tightly confined within her family’s formal and traditional attitudes, Rossi decided to begin with Castaneda’s proposal of erasing one’s personal story in order to live in the total freedom of the present moment. Rossi left her family and friends with just a casual goodbye. She took her modest savings and a medium-size backpack containing one change of clothes, some essentials like a toothbrush, and a lightweight sleeping bag, and began walking south. She left the only world she knew with the idea of shedding the persona she had become and finding her deeper essence.
Mostly walking, although occasionally taking a bus or a boat, Rossi crossed valleys, mountains, rivers, and immigration borders for an entire year. Finally, she stood at the edge of the mighty Patagonian ice fields, contemplating a fact: it was the end of the southbound road unless she took an expensive boat ride and kept walking through to Antarctica!
I met Rossi as she wandered in central Chile. Although she had been on an epic adventure to erase her past, the voices of her family haunted her day and night: “Where are you, Rossi?” “Why have you left us?” “Are you safe?” “Please call us.”
She had tried to escape the inescapable; our past is something we can only honor in order to integrate and transcend it. Rossi had never told her parents where she was going, and never called them since she left home. Throughout her adventure, Rossi had tasted the four directions of the Medicine Wheel, moments of great epiphany and moments of tremendous challenge. So many nights she slept outside under the stars, sometimes in a blissful here and now, and other times miserably cold, lonely, and hungry.
Soon after leaving her parents’ home, Rossi had realized that it was best to wear simple, worn-out boys’ clothes and to cut her hair very short, as to avoid being molested by men. Now she felt exhausted from pretending to be a tough, self-sufficient warrior to remain safe.
She spent about a month in my mother’s home in Santiago, unwinding from all the hardships she had gone through while walking
alone down the Americas. “I long to feel pretty and like a girl again,” she told me.
“Please call home and let them know you are well and ready to return!” I advised.
At this point, Rossi understood that in order to complete her journey, she needed to go home. She could not remain going around and around in circles in a place that was not offering her a future. At the same time, Rossi realized that she would not be going back to the small reality of a year before. It was impossible; her perspective of herself and of the world was much broader.
From the moment Rossi decided to honor her feelings and return home, her skin acquired more color. Without trying, she was flushed with visions of how her new life would be in her town among her people. During her journey, Rossi learned how much she appreciated simple, natural, and honest beauty; she grew excited over the idea of studying feng shui. More and more, she felt eager to grow a garden and to create beauty in her life, her relationships, and her surroundings.
In Rossi’s case, home meant the same physical place from where she began her journey—the same town, the same community. However, this is not always how the call to return happens. Sometimes, while on our journey, we fall in love with a place far away from our original home, or we meet people who feel like our new family. Thus, the call to our return is to a new physical setting.
Nevertheless, in all circumstances, we arrive at the conclusion that it is time for us to settle in a situation that allows us to share our wisdom and boons. This is the most mature and courageous answer, especially when our motivation is not about attaining praise and acclamation but to revitalize our communities.
At this point it is important to remember that while I am offering a step-by-step journey toward self-realization in this book, in reality each milestone doesn’t necessarily occur in this exact order. In addition, we could have a few experiences of one milestone and none of another. For example, we could feel the call to return home after a sublime and sacred experience (milestone 11), and then while sharing the boons with our community, we could have a lucid encounter with the divine father (milestone 8). Or we could return home and dive into the dark of the womb (milestone 5) for a second time. In the end, each milestone, no matter the order, brings us closer to our essential wisdom.
CONNECTING WITH THE SACRED EVERY DAY
In my work, I have come across countless folks who went to the Andes or jungles of Pern and experienced outstanding healing or spiritual realizations—and then did not want to go back home. Some of these people had an authentic call to adventure in this part of the world and stayed for a long time or permanently moved there. Others were just seduced by the mystical feelings and were concerned about collapsing from the sacred to the mundane.
When we find ourselves with the feeling that going home means losing the sacred or the excitement of life, then we must cultivate exactly those qualities within ourselves so our lives become sacred and exciting no matter where we are and what we do.
Recall the Zen koan: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” Before our first departure toward the hero-shaman journey, we had our daily routines and obligations—maybe wash dishes, look after children, and pay the bills. Now, as we return home, again we have to fulfill practical tasks, which may be similar or different to those we had before. In any case, what is always different is the new approach we bring to performing our responsibilities.
Understanding that chopping wood and carrying water is fundamental for our survival, we must show up with an open heart and natural mind to complete our housework. Thus, we create daily instances to revitalize this momentum in us and reconnect with Eagle and Condor’s higher perspective, sensing our place in the great web of life. We remember the great cycles of the Universe, the movement of galaxies, and the setting of the sun and moon. We remember that taking the garbage out, cleaning the kitchen, or fixing the car is not important in the big scheme of things, but it does make a tremendous difference in our own lives and the lives of the people around us. And so we do it because we want to offer our love and because we can.
There are so many books and teachers discussing all the different ways to reconnect with the essence of life, such as walking in nature, dancing, calligraphy, and sitting in meditation. The way we choose is not what matters; the key is to periodically reinject ourselves with love, perspective, and calmness. This is how we avoid collapsing into a dull and mechanical routine once we return from an epic journey. And of course, if we ever feel really stuck again and hear the call to adventure, then we must go again—and again and again, until everything we look for we find within.
There is a story about a monk asking for instruction when he first arrived at a new monastery. The Zen master asked him, “Have you eaten breakfast?” When the disciple answered yes, the master replied, “Then wash your dishes.” And it is said that the young monk suddenly became enlightened, comprehending the true meaning of Zen. Enlightenment already exists within us; there is nothing to look for outside.
Going home with a generous and calm heart really helps us to contribute in our communities and wake up with a sense of purpose every day. However, we must surrender any fantasies of an ideal world and show up with an open mind to face reality exactly as it is. As hero-shamans, we do not expect our new situation to be fuzzy and warm, ready-made for us. Instead, we look forward to personally making a difference, bringing the sacred and beautiful to the place we call home. With the medicine of the East direction, we envision what is possible for our people and surroundings, and we apply our wisdom and tools to manifest our divine dream—one that is good for us and good for the world.
In June 2006, I found myself back in the sacred lands of Pern after a good-hearted, wealthy man named Peter hired me to guide him for
three weeks into an initiatory shamanic experience. The first week, I took him to the jungle to work with native master herbalists and their indigenous psychedelic brew in private ceremonies. We experienced great purging of stale energies and outdated life patterns and left the jungle feeling lighter, stronger, and excited for the moments to come.
The second week, we made an expedition to the legendary Espiritu Pampa, identified in 1964 as the long-sought “lost city of the Incas.” It had been the last refuge of the natives while they resisted the invading Spaniards. In order to get there, we drove from Cusco for a whole day through mountains and sinuous valleys; then we walked for four days through an enclosed narrow valley surrounded by the pristine and lush Vilcabamba range. We saw no tourists and only a few locals, who confirmed that this area had been a hideout for Shining Path revolutionaries, making it sketchy for any outsiders.
This time, our traveling companions included a Q’ero shaman, a high-level medicine man from the Sacred Valley, our logistics guide, four porters, and two cooks. On our first night, we camped among overgrown garden terraces by an ancient ceremonial site called Nusta Hispana—an impressive carved boulder thought to be an Incan oracle. We made offerings while praying for a safe and auspicious adventure.
During the next three days we walked through wild, uneven terrain. With each step, we felt as if we were going backward in time; it felt as if we were seeing ancestral faces carved all around in boulders of different sizes and hearing their voices whisper in the wind. At night we camped by a stream so we could comfortably cook and wash ourselves. The water was pure and cold, coming down from the higher snows just behind the green mountains next to us.
We finally arrived at the fabled Espiritu Pampa, still largely unearthed. Beneath large trees, crisscrossed by lianas, and with moss growing over the rocks, the place felt as ghostly as its name, espiritu. Guided by our two shamans, our ceremony there lasted many hours. We ritually honored and fed the hungry spirits of the place so we could have their permission and blessings. Afterward, the shamans attuned us with the natural elements to be in harmony
and inwardly balanced. Last, they initiated Peter and me in their medicine and connected us with their lineages.
On the third week of our adventure, we pilgrimed to Pachatusan, a mountain whose name means “axis of the world.” From the summit at almost 5,000 meters (16,000 feet), one can see 360 degrees and distinguish the most sacred peaks of the Inca, including Ausangate in the east and Salcantay in the west. Peter and I took the same crew and were delighted that one of our shamans was the spiritual keeper of this mountain.
After we made it to our base camp, we made offerings to be in reciprocity with nature and prayed to receive wisdom and strength from the mountain. Every day we visited a new huaca, or power place, usually by a big boulder with a singular shape resembling an animal or Pachamama’s breasts. There we received energetic transmissions to enhance our vision, strengthen our relationship to power animals and spiritual allies, and increase our ability to manifest.
On the fourth morning we left our tents by dawn, and after five hours of steep climbing, we made it to the top. At the pinnacle of our journey, we held the most important of all ceremonies: the calling of our greatest possible destiny. At that moment, a few white clouds gathered above us, forming a ring and sparkling with rainbow colors. It truly felt as if a portal opened in the sky to bestow us with such blessings. Our hearts and minds expanded with gratitude and confidence for the times to come. Before too late we began to carefully descend in a mood of contemplative silence.
After dinner, by the fire and under the stars, Peter and I connected over the great journey we just had, and then we continued speaking about our plans and resolutions once we returned home. I told Peter about the arrangement Bryan and I had come to the year before, explaining that my sons had just finished a school year with their father in Hawaii and I would be flying back to the United States to take them to live with me in Chile. I also shared that throughout these weeks in Pern, I had seriously considered their father’s offer. “Bryan has insisted that our kids are happy with him in Hawaii and
that his new partner loves them. He feels that the boys would be very content to be raised in this new family constellation.”
I revealed to Peter that it crossed my mind to let my children stay with their father so I could keep exploring the world and immersing myself in my passion for shamanism. In the few months after my divorce, I had been able to travel and explore the shamanic path with no distractions. “This could be my new life. . . . Do I want to collapse again into the responsibilities of maintaining a home and a routine for my children?” I questioned out loud.
To this, Peter gave me an answer, with crystal clear clarity and absolute certainty, for which I am forever grateful. “Marcela, you are a mother. It is your dharma [right way of living] to reclaim your children. You might have a great time going around free from responsibility at first, and your children’s father would have exactly what he wants. But after the party is over, you’ll regret it like nothing else in your life. It is your dharma to be a mother; you must go and pick them up.”
Two weeks later, I was landing in Chile with my two sons ready to start school in the countryside. Together with Alberto, my sister, and her kids, we began a new chapter in our lives. To this day, I feel vast gratitude for Peter and his words, which steered me back to my absolute ayni with life.
I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?
- CHUANG TZU
ONCE WE KNOW THAT IT IS TIME to go home, and Spirit signals to us in its own mysterious way that we have reached the end of the road, then our return happens swiftly, in an instant, as if waking up from a dream. We have been given a boon—like a ripe fruit that we have plucked and must now be shared with our community lest it spoil. For now, there are no pending engagements or tasks to be completed in the zone of the great transmutation. Divine winds propel us fast into a world that seems ordinary and perhaps boring, devoid of danger or adventure in its dreary day-to-day-ness. It is this world that we can infuse with exceptional sacredness and grace.
Our quest has been long, perhaps years or a lifetime, and we find ourselves as if by magic crossing the threshold to a new but familiar everyday reality. At first, we recoil at the density or obtuseness of a world that is struggling to survive. However, we remember that we have changed: we are no longer the innocent that embarked on the journey. We realize that we have the ability to uplift and inspire those around us to dance with the sacred.
When the time comes, we fly home after the great journey— metaphorically and sometimes literally. An eloquent example of this milestone happened to my sister Carolina after she left my mother’s home at the age of 17 to attend a folk festival in Bolivia. She asked our parents’ permission to take a bus across the border. Once she was en route, she just kept going, hitchhiking and riding buses from adventure to adventure until she made it to Colombia several months later.
Our parents were very concerned about Carolina, and I missed her, so I volunteered to check on her. In Bogota, I discovered to my amazement that Carolina had become a woman who made her own decisions and smoothly refused my advice to return home. Instead, I agreed to go with her to the pristine white sand beaches near Santa Marta. At this time, the Medellin drug cartel was still very active, and so we found no tourists in the area. We spent two exquisite weeks swimming among colorful fish, drinking freshly opened coconut water, and sleeping in hammocks to the soothing sound of the waves.
Recharged and happy, I took a plane to the United States on my way to starting my own adventure of surfing the Pacific Coast. Meanwhile Carolina continued traveling at her own pace through Central America. Six months later she entered Mexico City with the idea of going to the U.S. Embassy and applying for a visa to visit me. However, when she saw the monstrous building with hundreds of people standing in a line that stretched for blocks, her soul deflated. For an entire year she had crossed mountains, valleys, deserts, jungles, and rivers—and never stayed in a big city. The noise and chaos seemed like an ordeal and a hassle bigger than what she could endure. She was told that after hours of waiting in the heat, you received a number, and then must get into another line after you had obtained two passport-sized photographs, your birth certificate, and a copy of a current bank statement. . . .
This concrete obstacle, both literally and symbolically, was a sign for Carolina to return home. A journey that had lasted 12 months saw its conclusion in less than a day. In a matter of hours, she had boarded a plane and was back in Chile. She left as a child and
returned home as a woman. Carolina was in her new skin ready to experience life in a new way.
I want you to experience how powerful this concept is in your own life. It has taken you many hours, days, or weeks to reach this paragraph . . . and now this section is going to be so short that it might even startle you.
This is because the return journey happens in a flash. You blink twice and you are there—but you are not the same person who left. You crossed a portal during your epic journey into a world of magic, and now you are suddenly thrust back into the mundane and ordinary. Like waking up from a dream and bounding out of bed, you need a moment to get your bearings. But unlike a dream, the adventure you have gone through does not fade as you make your way to the coffee machine.
You look into the mirror to be sure that it is really you, as the magical and surreal aspect of the adventure gives way to rinsing your face, plucking a stray hair, and finding a shirt that is not too wrinkled.
We are not allowed to linger. We have been ordered back to share the wisdom we acquired, or perhaps a simple gift of kindness and forgiveness. And it is in sharing the boon that the magic appears again, unsummoned, unexpected, and completely familiar.
RECONNECTING WITH MY SACRED DUTY
In 2008 I left our cozy home in Chile to teach and spend the holidays overseas with Alberto. After extensive planning and dreaming, we landed in Hong Kong and then traveled through Taipei, Bangkok, and the beaches of Thailand. At every stop, beauty and novelty pleased our curiosity; often people’s kindness touched us deeply. It all added up to a dream vacation.
At the end of the second week of our travels, we were riding an elephant through a lush dirt path in the mountains in Chiang Mai, and for some reason I felt unsettled. I was not able to shake that feeling all day. By sunset I had to admit that I was missing my sons. I felt like exchanging all the fun to come for the priceless opportunity to kiss them goodnight. Nevertheless, I thought of how much we had planned this trip and how we were on opposite sides of the world. Might as well get in a good mood and continue the journey, I told myself.
Our next destination was the touristy beach town of Phuket. We stayed in a fabulous hotel in a private casita with its own swimming pool, and Alberto had arranged a romantic dinner by the sea. However, with each delicious dish, I became sadder and more melancholic. Feeling sympathy for me, Alberto agreed to shorten our trip.
We left Phuket several days earlier than planned to travel to Australia, where we had a teaching engagement in a week. On the day we left Thailand, I realized that it had been four full days since I’d had a bowel movement. So when we arrived in Sydney the next day, I went to the pharmacy and bought three different kinds of pills. I took a double dose of laxatives, but when I woke up the next morning, they still hadn’t taken effect, so I took more before leaving for lunch at the spectacular opera house. A fine musician was playing the piano and a beautiful female voice filled the air while our waiter served sophisticated champagne and delicate food—and yet my throat was blocked with a lump of anguish I could not get rid of.
After lunch, Alberto and I went for a walk in the adjacent Royal Gardens, and there I could stay silent no more. I burst into tears, explaining that as illogical it might seem, I had to go back home to be with my children. While the connection was beyond reason, I knew that my guts’ refusal to evacuate for almost a week was my solid witness of my inner truth.
By nine the next morning, after very little sleep, I was in the air, homebound. As soon as we reached cruising altitude and the pilot turned off the seatbelt signs, I felt the powerful urge to go to the bathroom. A week’s worth of waste came out in less than five minutes, and my menstruation came rushing behind. I returned to my seat, and tears of relief flowed down my cheeks for two hours—at times, from sadness and at other moments, from gratitude and hope.
The entire 14-plus-hour flight to Santiago, my blood flowed like an abundant river of emotions.
My heart filled with joy when I hugged my sons. I found more delight in fixing a meal, doing dishes, and reading bedtime stories than in any fancy moment of the exotic journey I had just returned from. In my magic flight home, I had connected with the most sacred duty of being a mother.
Another example of a magic flight that took so many of us home in a flash happened during the pandemic in 2020. As travel became restricted, we became bound to our own homes or perhaps trapped elsewhere on the planet. Reflect on how you felt as the new parameters of a wildly different world began to materialize. Were you peaceful, frightened, excited, sad, or flabbergasted? What milestones did you walk through then and afterward? Were you ready to offer your gifts and boons? Or, like me, did you have to face further purification, perhaps a symbolic death and a reawakening?
In the preface of this book, I shared how I quickly fell into an emotional pressure cooker. I needed to face my inner demons once again while also experiencing isolation, dealing with health challenges, and taking on loads of extra work. In the end, I reached deep within myself to retrieve the effective tools, sacred wisdom, and powerful resources that I had cultivated for years while on my quest.
When I came out of my shocking difficulties, I felt even stronger in my light and medicine. Once I found my feet again, I dedicated this homecoming to cultivating and sharing my gifts with more authenticity and greater love. I have been studying the great mystics of the past, connecting with my local community, teaching events online, and helping people through private sessions.
Take some time reflect now: What gifts have blossomed in your life since your magic flight?
If we can live in both the material and sacred worlds, we can bring symbols of the divine light into manifestation through art.
An attitude of materialism shuts off a person’s intuition, by which the spiritual world is apprehended, because spirituality is labeled as delusion. Once a person has a mystical experience, spiritual consciousness becomes associated with the ground of being and reality.
- Alex Grey
DURING OUR JOURNEY through the Medicine Wheel, we plunged to the depths of our being and kissed death, only to be reborn pregnant with our destiny. We tasted wrathful purification and guiding luminosity so we could become worthy recipients of the ultimate boon, and then were sent home to realize its potential for our own self and for our community. As we settle at home, we arrive at the center of the Medicine Wheel where the wisdom of each direction pulsates under our skin and the experiences from each milestone swiftly direct our motivation, moods, and actions.
Having gone around the wheel is to have gone deep and high, far and wide. Now, in the middle, we are sustained by the core of the Earth and the heart of the Sky. It is similar to the way Sufi dervishes can whirl for hours in ecstasy; they establish a vertical beam of light that keeps them rooted above and below. And so these dancers spin with great speed, without getting dizzy or falling, around a luminous axis that keeps them upright. Another analogy is the tree of life; it is deeply grounded to drink from crystalline waters and rises with strength and flexibility to the skies.
In all cases, at the end of our journey, we are open to the immense wisdom of the heavens and at the same time we are connected to the pulse of the Earth. We can sense what is good for us, when, and how. We develop an intuition for what nurtures us from below, above, and all around. Our wisdom is rooted in the great initiation we underwent, which lives in every cell of our being and cannot be shaken away. Our knowing comes from healing our suffering, from being struck open to our deeper essence, and from being rewarded with divine grace.
Although we are ecstatic to receive further inspiration, and respect beauty and wisdom in any color or shape it comes to us, we no longer yearn for heroes outside. We have awakened our own love and courage to create the glory we desire in our own lives. In this way, we have learned to put the center of gravity in our own feet and
elevate our minds to the infinite potential waiting to take form in our conscious and benevolent dream.
According to the Laika, at this juncture, we are given the key to participate with eyes wide open into the destiny of humanity. As we master authoring our personal destiny, we understand the tacit instructions to become midwives of the collective new times.
To be in the center of the Medicine Wheel is a great privilege and a great responsibility. We receive great inspiration to navigate easy and difficult times, and great spiritual strength to persevere in our sacred tasks. It is the sweet seat that every mystical tradition offers, where we can be masters of our own lives while boldly inspiring or kindly helping others.
Though we take up residence in the center of the wheel, we naturally accept the challenges that life brings every so often. We understand the need to visit each one of the directions, once or many times again. Perhaps the death of a love one sends us to the East to ponder the journey beyond. The revelation of a dirty family secret sends us to the West to clear emotional pain. The activation of an ancient wounding about scarcity flares up, and we must enter the South to illuminate the oppressing feelings. Or the return of our passion floats us to the North in ecstatic celebration.
Every time we return to any of the directions to work through a life lesson, we are sure to acquire an even deeper realization of our Self; we become even more expanded in our inspiration, and become stronger in our roots. In Jungian terms, we achieve greater individuation as we integrate more of our shadow and more of our greatness and connectedness with others.
Though everyone’s life is a journey, and many steps of the hero might be accomplished along the way, not everyone has the maturity or the keys to realize it. Consequently, insights can fade or recede due to the lack of vision on what to do with the fruits we’ve harvested. For this reason, it is a great blessing to be aware of what our spiritual journey entails, to understand where we are at, and ultimately to also be comfortable with being surprised as we remember how to surrender to the unknown.
When the day comes that we realize our infinite Self, we transcend the wheel altogether. We no longer need this or any other map to support our growth and integration, nor do we need guidance to navigate this vast existence. Ultimately, we understand that we are not just the vessel navigating this mystery—we are the mystery itself. We aren’t just the dream and the dreamer of reality. . . . We are one with the matrix sustaining the dream.
We undertake the tremendous journey of return to Origin not to vanish into Origin or simply rest in its peace and glory, but to be infused with its sacred passion and power and become so saturated with its energy and love that we can “re-enter’ reality and become agents with and in God of a massive transformation of all the conditions of the Creation.
- ANDREW HARVEY
NOW, AT THE CENTER OF THE WHEEL, we are to let the ultimate boon blossom. May we feel its qualities, know its purpose, and create accordingly. The confining walls of our individualistic lives from before have collapsed. This heroic journey and initiation have showed us the importance of adding our own grain of beauty to the world. This is how we become true heroes, by embodying the wisdom attained throughout the journey and letting it be medicine for those who need it or long for it.
In giving us the boon, Spirit is not just inviting but urging us to cocreate, to become its partners. Throughout a decade of apprenticing with the medicine people of the Andes, I came to understand some of the spiritual mechanics of this co-creation, especially when in regard to sharing boons. The higher the wisdom of these medicine men and women, the greater their humbleness. They recognize that
the elixir of life they hold doesn’t belong to them but was merely entrusted to them. Just as it was given, it could be taken away.
This calls to my mind a man I met who was the best masseur in a fancy European village. He was also a wonderful artist, and I remember seeing a piece he did of one of his hands drawing the other one. As I came to know him, I understood how precious his hands were to him and for all the people who benefited from his healings. However, he also used his gifts to self-serving ends, seducing a married client and being generally careless with the hearts of those who fell in love with him. Then one day, while cutting wood in his art studio, he cut off half of a finger by accident. While mourning his loss, he surely felt the warning from Spirit to not take his boon for granted.
When the Laika offer their boons, they never fail to say “in the name of Spirit” or “in the name of Mother Earth” as they recognize a boon’s divine origin. They also understand how its purpose transcends them as individuals and how it must be offered openheartedly for the well-being of the community.
In this same way, we must share our wisdom as one or many gifts with profound humbleness, recognizing that the root of this word, hum, relates to “down to earth” as in the words hummus and human. This means we are still on this planet learning to be our Self, and not as fully awakened Buddhas, so we do not pretend to be further than we are along our journey; we show up exactly as we are in the moment. “We do not puff and we do not shrink,” said Brene Brown, a social worker and best-selling author, in a presentation I attended. She explained so well how we also don’t make ourselves smaller than we are with the pretense to be humble.
When we are truly humble, we feel dignified and not humiliated. This also entails that we accept our errors along the way as evolutionary lessons of how to best be in the world. Sometimes our mistakes cost us a great deal emotionally, socially, or financially. In any case, we are still dignified when we acknowledge the facts, mourn the losses, and move on rather than becoming eternally stuck in guilt and blame. Often, our sense of being a hero has more to do with overcoming our failures than counting our successes.
What is not part of being a hero is the immature desire to be recognized as one, or the craving to stand on a pedestal to be revered as superior to everyone else. There are so many images in our collective psyche about muscular superheroes with puffed-up chests, saving victims and being applauded by a large crowd. In all these cases, the superhero is not looking forward to empowering others. Instead, he is stuck in the role of rescuer within the triangle of disempowerment—and as we discussed in the South, this only perpetuates drama.
In the many years I have been teaching the Medicine Wheel, I have noticed how certain people foster co-dependency with their clients. To feel good about themselves, they provide their insights and gifts, but expect to be praised and hope to be needed again and again. True heroes or healers must do just the opposite; bestowing the elixir of life must be an act of immaculate generosity and impeccable deed. We do our part by taking the necessary steps to manifest the boon’s potential while knowing that we are co-creating with Spirit.
There is an Arabic tale that explains how important it is for us to be the hands of God. A wise old Bedouin was traveling with his young servant in a caravan through the desert. Every night the boy had the task to organize their campsite and tie their only camel. One night, after finishing all his tasks, the servant felt too tired to tend to the camel. Exhausted, he thought, Well, my master has always taught me to trust in Allah, so I will have faith and let Him look after the camel.
The next morning, the boy awoke to his master screaming, “My camel is gone! Why didn’t you tie it?” Jumping out of his sleeping rug, the young servant quickly explained what happened. The old Bedouin answered, “Yes! We must never fail in trusting Allah, but our hands are his hands. So you tie the camel and then trust Allah!”
This little tale vividly portrays how we must be responsible, as in “able to respond,” to our side of co-creating. We must not be seduced by our own laziness or any emotion that might make us fall into delusion.
When we act from flawless intention and wholeheartedly, we may reside in the peaceful knowing that anything that happens after is divine will. At the end of their work, the Laika never fail to say, “Thy will be done.” We have tied the camel and then we trust Allah. The destiny of the boon we were given is not entirely our liability. Our human minds and bodies cannot take for too long the weight of being saviors of the world.
It is an amazing experience to feel the light and power of God in a human hour. When we take psychedelics, it is not unusual to feel like supermen or superwomen. But we cannot pretend we have advanced to that level when we have just had a taste.
Carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders, sooner or later, fries our nervous system. It is so important to invoke our full divinity as we pray and act, but then we must let Spirit hold us in our human weakness and vulnerability. By doing this, we have a chance to recover and repair so we can be strong for our next move in cocreating. We must show up exactly as we are not just to the eyes of other people but also, most important, in our own eyes and the eyes of Spirit.
In the light of this last teaching, I have poured all my love and my most sincere effort into this book, hoping it will inspire many. Now I say, “Thy will be done!”
And I surrender to the peace of my heart and the love of the divine.
SHARING MY BOON WITH THE WORLD
In these final pages, I share how I was bestowed a boon and how it has rippled around the world. It all began in 2002 with a dream:
I am about six months pregnant, but I know my baby is no longer alive. I try to balance on a skateboard, careening down a windy road that ends in thick jungle. As I approach the green canopy, guerrilla fighters shoot at each other from behind trees.
My heart racing, I arrive to flat ground covered in green and brown leaves. Four women appear out of nowhere, dressed in white diaphanous gowns. They urge me to quickly follow them into a little white cabin as they tenderly explain, “We are your midwives, and we are going to help you deliver your dead baby.” Embraced by their radiant warmth and wisdom, I surrender to their help. I follow them to a cozy room in the back with a comfortable bed, surrounded by veils. I lay down in total trust and open my legs—bang! I hear the sound of a bullet so loud, I’m startled awake . . .
But it was no gunshot that I heard. Instead, it was my husband coming into our bedroom and closing the door behind him.
Three years later, I was negotiating my divorce and preparing to visit Alberto on his birthday. As I reached for his present high on a bookshelf, I accidentally knocked down my old journal, which fell to the ground and opened exactly on the page where I wrote that dream. I picked up the book and read about my dream and also my conclusion at the end of the page: “I cannot imagine what this means.”
Pensively I left for a romantic evening at my boyfriend’s home. After a relaxing bath we sat unclothed by a warm fire in his bedroom upstairs and began dreaming about our future. Suddenly, someone rang the bell and knocked firmly at the door. Alberto peeked through the second-floor window, then asked, “Is Bryan’s car a blue van?”
In one jump, I joined him. My two young children sat in the back of the van. My heart and throat clenched, and my mind raced with doubts, judgments, and terrible fear. What had he told the kids? Was he brainwashing them about me not being a fit mother? How did he even find the house? What if I lose them in court? What is he going to do this time? I panicked as my mind brought up all my worst-case scenarios.
Just as in a theater before a movie begins, everything around me went black, and soon I could see only the dreadful pictures projected by my brain. My body froze while Alberto and the bedroom disappeared. Taken over by my anxiety and fear, I transcended the present moment, and I was transported to the distress and terror of my childhood. Shootings and chaos all around . . . my father hiding and running away from the men in black . . . my desperate, sobbing mother facing uncertainty with four children . . . the threat of a nuclear war . . .
As these images swirled in my mind, a voice stirred me away from the trance: “Marcela, apply what you have learned! Let me remind you of the way of the luminous warrior.”
Promptly, I identified the source of the voice as coming from the spirit of Jaguar. He appeared as a robust black male, diagonally to my left side. Startled, I perked up and heard: “Where is your light?” And then came a friendly but firm command: “Find your light!”
Since the room and everything around me had turned black, it felt like a very interesting proposition to find my light. Deeply vulnerable,
I listened carefully to Jaguar. Although my fear was still there, it moved out of the driver’s seat.
After a few moments, I found a tiny flicker of light in my solar plexus. It was all I had left after my panic.
“Put all your attention on your light! Do not stop focusing on your light,” insisted Jaguar.
Like magic, the more I concentrated on my own light, the more it grew. In a few moments, it became a reliable flame between my ribs, and soon it reached up to my heart and down to my belly.
“Keep doing it, Marcela!” cheered Jaguar as I reconnected to my power.
Before long, my light radiated throughout my whole being, like a warm sun sparkling peace and hope from my solar plexus.
“Do not stop there! Continue, Marcela!” urged Jaguar.
In amazement, I witnessed how my own luminosity began lighting up the space around me until the whole room became clear again. I saw Alberto still sitting by the window, his gaze down, calmly praying. Suddenly, we heard the sliding door of the van closing, then the engine started, and the tires squeaked on the asphalt as it drove away.
I deeply sighed as my heart and body released tension. Closing my eyes, I thanked Jaguar for teaching me so clearly the powerful wisdom of the luminous warrior. Then I heard women’s voices softly calling my name: “Marcela! Marcela! Come closer to the fire. We are those midwives who have been waiting to help you give birth to your dead baby.”
I opened my eyes. Could Alberto hear what I was hearing? His eyes gently met mine, and with a subtle nod he encouraged me to continue my work. I returned my focus back to the women as I drew myself next to the fire. I wondered, What does this baby mean?
Four women in ethereal form kindly embraced me while putting their hands over my belly. Right then, I understood my dream with crystal clarity.
“Of course! I am carrying death!” I exclaimed. “All the terror I have felt throughout my life, I have been storing in my womb—a perfect container.”
“Keeping your knees slightly bent, open your legs wide. With your breath, send light into your belly,” the midwives instructed me. After a few conscious breaths they urged me: “Now push your dead baby out, Marcela!”
Together, my hands and their hands pushed that ball of fear and death out through my birth canal, giving it whole to the flaming fire. I sighed, feeling lighter, and a tingling spread across my body. Tears of gratitude streamed down my cheeks as I sensed the fear and death burn and the heavy smoke rising through the chimney. My emotions swelled as I tried to imagine who I was without that terror and death residing in my womb.
One of the women gave me a flower, then another woman brought me another flower, then the third one did the same, and the fourth woman followed. Just when I thought that was the end of it, more women started flowing down the chimney with more and more flowers, transporting my soul to a prairie of infinite blossoms. “We are a lineage of women who freed themselves from suffering . . . and we have come to teach you.”
As my mind pictured the energy of everything happening, the women danced and whirled, their colorful dresses flowing. We went from a prairie of flowers to a warm hollow cavern resembling a womb where I was invited to dance with dozens of them. “This is your initiation, Marcela! Come whirl and twirl with us!”
I physically stood up from my birthing position and joyously accepted their invitation to dance. Eyes half closed, I danced in circles around the room, lifting my arms up in the air, and occasionally jumping to feel the lightness of my being. After a few minutes of loose, heart-opening dance, I slowly lay down by the fire again to hear their last message from that evening: “We will be by your side to keep teaching you how to free yourself from suffering.” “Why me?” I timidly asked, wanting to know the truth but hesitant to break the magical spell.
“Because you have deeply suffered, and you have the love and the courage to heal! We want you to work with women—to let them know about us and about our message. One day you’ll write a book!” As they smoothly crossed the veils of time and space back to the invisible where they came from, their words echoed in my head, my heart, and my belly.
With a long exhale, I bowed my head to honor them and said, “Until you visit me again.”
Smiling, I slowly turned my attention back to Alberto, who smiled back at me. We were both ready for a nice glass of wine to celebrate his birthday and my return to joy and life.
•)tC
A decade would pass before I was ready to share my midwives’ wisdom. In March 2014, I was leading a group of women to the jungles of Pern to work with plant medicine. During a nighttime ceremony, I heard the voices of my midwives: “Marcela, you are ready to offer our initiation and medicine to women. We’re going to give you a transmission.”
The space around me turned into a laboratory filled with plants and clear glass containers. I could see the women as they extracted the bright-green juice of carefully chosen plants. Then, using energetic tubes, they poured this juice into my veins so it would run throughout my body. Finally, they directed the juice to envelop my womb until it looked like a vibrant neon sphere; it felt like a laser clearing any residue of clotted or knotted energy.
They said: “The womb is not a place to store fear and pain. The womb is to create and give birth to life.”
In that moment, with those words, they transferred the rite of the womb to me, the elixir of life that I should share with as many women as possible. “All life comes from the womb; this will also heal men and will help heal the world,” they explained.
Six months later, I had the opportunity to share the rite of the womb in New York, Miami, and California with more than 200 women in each place. After these three events, the initiation spread with great swiftness throughout the four directions. Soon there were women from more than 60 countries around the world sharing the initiation. The women who receive the rite of the womb are called womb keepers. Today, together with other lineages of women sharing their own boons about womb wisdom, the awareness of women’s health and power increases every day.
I am forever grateful to the lineage of women who freed themselves from suffering—these midwives who have been by my side in my heroic journey, and who smile today as I write these last words. I am grateful for those who have joined me on my journey and brought me the lessons I needed to learn along the path. I offer love to all the courageous souls who have picked up this book and are saying yes to their call.
May your journey bless you beyond your wildest dreams!
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Jung, Carl. Answer to Job, as it appeared in the first edition of Psychology and Religion: West and East (New York: Meridian Books, 1960), from The Collected Works of C. G. Jung Volume 11 Bollingen Series XX. New York: Bollingen Foundation, 2010.
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It took many cycles of increasing and dwindling inspiration, through many years, to complete this work. I am most grateful to my beloved husband, Alberto Villoldo, for his steady acceptance of my process and for his kind reassurance when I collapsed in doubt.
I owe much gratitude to Patty Gift, Hay House vice president, for believing in my story and my message. To my editor, Nicolette Salamanca Young, for her intelligent and caring handling of my manuscript. To Reid Tracy, director of Hay House, and to the rest of the Hay House team for warmly embracing me as part of the community.
Artist Jena DellaGrottaglia created my dream image for the cover of this book. My heart bows to her exquisite sensibility and vision.
Years ago, author Natascha Scott-Stokes helped me voice and write the lows and highs of my personal story. Later, as I incorporated the medicine teachings, writer Jennifer Gandin Le gave me an attentive ear and asked vital questions that allowed me to dive deeper into the matter and then return to my purpose. I am infinitely grateful to both!
My acknowledgments extend to every person I mention in my stories, especially those who stem from my past. Although I didn’t reveal your real names as to respect your privacy, you can recognize your role in my life. Thank you for walking by my side, for years or for
an instant, so I could experience the many lessons delivered by my journey.
I give thanks to dear friends who cheered me on throughout my writing process: Jo Bowlby, Vera Bollag, Luzclara Camus, Charlene Engelhard, Helen Fost, Lisa Goldman, Lisa Kock, Fo-Lan Lay, Leize Perlmutter, Monika Nataraj, Erna Ripoll, Rochelle Schieck, and Martina von Retig.
More than a decade ago, I founded the school Los Cuatro Caminos to share shamanic wisdom in Spanish. I am grateful to my wonderful staff and dedicated team of teachers.
I acknowledge all my fellow teachers and friends at the energy- medicine school the Four Winds Society. I offer my deep thanks to the hundreds of students who have shown up with a sincere heart to reconnect with their own wisdom and passion for life. Each one of them is like a thread in the sacred fabric of our collective offering.
I honor the indigenous medicine women and men who constantly remind me how to rest in the grace of the Great Spirit and how to love and care for our Mother Earth. Special thanks to the Q’ero shamans from the Andes, the master herbalists of the Amazon, the machis of Southern Chile, and all the courageous yogis and mystics from today and throughout the past who inspire my journey.
My deepest gratitude is to my mother, my father, and my family for accepting and loving me just as I am. Special thanks goes to my sister, Carolina, who is also my best friend in this life.
Finally, I say thank you to my sons, Miles and Abel, for showing me the way to true love and authenticity. Nothing in my journey compares to the extraordinary experience of being their mother, including all the hair-splitting moments and the ecstatic joy of seeing them become heartful, cheerful, and responsible men.
MARCELA LOBOS has been extensively initiated in the healing and spiritual traditions of the Amazon and the Andes. She was born and raised in Chile, where she leads shamanic journeys for women to awaken their own power, grace, and wisdom. Marcela travels internationally teaching the wisdom of the Munay-Ki and the Andean Medicine Wheel.
Website: www.marcelalobos.com
·)·(
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What Self-Discovery
Path Should You Start This Year?
Where is Your Heart Leading You? —
You were born with unique, undeniable gifts. In your quietest moments, you can feel them yearning to awaken.
You long to express them and show the world what you’re truly
capable of.
By discovering more about yourself, you’ll naturally understand how to fulfill the wonderful potential you know lives deep within you.
This self-discovery quiz will help guide you on your next steps to sharing your gifts with the world.
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