I loved this excerpt about the fiery shamaness Doña Laura in Alberto Villoldo's book, Shaman, Healer, Sage. I know it seems a tad violent, yet its also a humbling lesson in being cautious when demanding tangible proof of a sage or the Universe itself. Go find out for yourself rather than cast aspersions of doubt on those with first-hand knowledge. The book details Villoldo's training with the highly-trained Inka healers whom work well beyond the physical plane at the level of Infinity and the luminous energy field.
"Whereas most shamans could travel in the shape of a spirit eagle or jaguar in dreams, Laura could do it while awake, in broad daylight. She could merge with a condor and fly the giant bird according to her will, diving into ravines and flying miles above the ground, contemplating the landscape below. Once, at the base of Mt. Ausangate, she was challenged by one of her students, a short, pudgy Indian fellow named Mariano who had a great sense of huor and a knack for gathering medicinal plants but who managed to do most everything else wrong. "How do I know you are really inside the body of the condor and not imagining it?"he asked. I was a dozen feet away, at our camp with Don Antonio. The air suddenly became electric, and I saw a faint smile cross Antonio's face. We all knew better than to challenge the old woman, and all of us were waiting intently for her response.
"Is there a difference between reality and imagination?" she answered in a gentle tone. We looked disappointedly at each other.
It was getting close to dusk, and a half dozen of us set out to collect brush and masto, the dried llama droppings that are used for fuel so high in the mountains. Half an hour later we were all back at camp except Mariano. Most of Laura's students were women, and they had given the two male apprentices women's names, which they used when they were not around. "Where is Maria?" they taunted playfully. "Maybe she has gotten lost," one snickered.
I could tell that Antonio was getting worried. It was wintertime on the second highest mountain in South America. In a half hour the temperature would fall below freezing. He motioned to me and another man to go search for him. As we were setting out we noticed Mariano staggering toward camp. His face was bloodied, and he was barely able to stand. I carried a first-aid kit, which I kept stowed at the bottom of my bag, for situations like these. My mentor [Don Antonio] did not life to use Western medicines, but at that altitude no medicinal plants grew. We were so far about the tree line that no plants of any kind were to be seen. We were surround by barren, icy landscape punctuated by patches of bare rock. We brought Mariano into our tent and saw that the back of his jacket had been slashed; the white filler was stained red with blood. The gash had gone through his clothing and torn his skin, leaving three deep gouges on his back, like those made by the talons of an animal. We asked Mariano to tell us what happened, but all he would do was shake his head and say that he had fallenn and cut his face on the ice. Later that night we overheard him apologizing to Doña Laura. It seemed a giant condor had swooped down from the sky and tried to carry him away. Condors have been know[n] to abduct a fully grown sheep, fly several hundred feet into the air with the animal in their clutches, and drop it to its death on the rocks.
Over the years Dona Laura and I became friends. One day she told me that the secret of shape-shifting was to realize that you were no different from anything else in the universe, no better and no worse. Once you understood in your cells that you were exactly the same as everything else, no more important than an insect, no less important than the Sun, you could change into any shape you wanted, whether a condor or a tree. You could even become invisible to others. She explained that the shaman had to master the art of invisibility in order not to call attention to herself. Antonio had mastered this. He was invisible to the Catholic Church [unbelievably still has an office of Inquisition in Peru]. No one knew who he was, so he was free to change the world. "You can accomplish anything," she once told me, "as long as you are willing to let others take credit for it." -- pages 36-37, Alberto Villoldo, Shaman, Healer, Sage
This blog is an accompaniment to the main blog at Crossroads Dispatches by Evelyn Rodriguez.
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