In SHAMAN, HEALER, SAGE, Alberto Villoldo spells out practices for personal and collective transformation of consciousness. The techniques elaborated are his own synthesis and interpretation of ancient healing practices. He strongly emphasizes that they must be employed with the highest code of ethics and integrity. What can heal can also hurt. Therefore, much of shamanic training is dedicated to developing ethics and values grounded upon a deep reverence for all life. To Villoldo's mind, energy healing from someone with inadequate training is basically black magic, regardless of one's good intentions.
Shamanic energy healing is not about rules or ideas. It is about vision and spirit - about realizing our luminous nature in infinity. It is about being caretakers of the Earth - speaking with thundering rivers, whispering mountains, and hearing the voice of God in the wind. In the world of the shaman, there are no divisions between mind, spirit, and matter. There is nothing to transcend and nothing in need of yoking. Said his teacher, Don Antonio, "We are luminous beings on a journey to the stars."
As Villoldo portrays it, the Illumination Process of the shaman is a direct interaction with the forces of Spirit. It allows us to taste infinity and renew ourselves from the source that animates and informs all life. In experiencing infinity, the illusions of old age, disease, and death are shattered. Every cell in our body is informed and renewed. Our immune system is unfettered, healing is accelerated, miracles and spontaneous remissions become common occurrences.
According to Villoldo, The Luminous Energy Field contains an archive of our personal and ancestral memories. That informs the chakras which organize our physical and emotional world. Erasing negative imprints in the Luminous Field enable the immune system to efficiently eradicate an illness. Amazon shamans believe that when all the chakras are cleared, one acquires a "rainbow body." One can visit the spirit world and die consciously because one knows the way home. One is not stalked by death, but claimed by life.
In the shamanic view, the four survival instincts - fear, feeding, fighting, and sex - are mirrored in the first two chakras. An unbalanced first chakra manifests as feelings of scarcity. When cleared, we know with every cell of our body that we are cared for and sustained by the universe. The second chakra has the capacity to digest negative emotions and expel them as waste. The tool of the third chakra is visualization. Balancing the third chakra improves the surrounding world since, according to the shaman, we dream our world into being. The nature of the fourth chakra, the heart, is impersonal love. The fifth chakra, the throat, gives voice to the feelings of the heart. In the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth chakras, development becomes transpersonal as we explore ever more subtle domains. We master death, time, invisibility, and the ability to keep a secret. It is said that all the desires of one with an awakened third eye come true. Therefore, a number of healers holding the same vision can manifest its truth for the planet.
To develop the shaman's way of seeing, we need to see with the eyes of the mind and the heart. Villoldo gives visualization meditations as to how to develop and strengthen those connections. The result is primary, direct, immediate, multisensory perception (synesthesia). The seer learns to track the origin of illness across time by finding the wounded "face" of the patient. Once it appears, it will reveal its story.
Before healing, the shaman summons the organizing principles of the Universe and aligns himself with them. He invokes a sacred space for healing and maintains it through the purity of his intent. That protects him from absorbing negative energies. After completing his work, he closes the sacred space so that it will not become contaminated. Otherwise, the forces of nature would no longer respond to his call. Villoldo says that he has seen healers who neglected to close their own sacred space absorb toxic energies from their client and become ill themselves.
Villoldo gives detailed steps for the Illumination Process of energy healing. It works by combusting and digesting toxic wastes that obstruct chakras and fuel imprints. Clear light is employed to overwrite information contained in the blueprint to prevent reorganization of the disease. Thus, the Illumination Process integrates and transforms emotional wounds into sources of knowledge and wisdom.
According to Villoldo, every form of energy has consciousness and frequency of vibration. Just as the brain has receptor sites for specific chemicals, we have receptor sites for specific energies. Villoldo cautions his students that negative energies are attracted to those with whom they share an affinity. Students may be drawn to work with those having similar psychological issues. In that case, an afflicted energy might change hosts -- passing from the patient to the healer.
According to Inka prophecy, we are now in a period of great chaos and upheaval. It will last until the year 2012, when "the paradigm of looting and pillaging the Earth brought by European civilization will end and the ways of the Earth peoples will make a comeback. The conquistador will perish by his own blade." The Inkas speak about a new human, Homo Luminous, being born - a being connected by luminous threads spanning across time, anchored in infinity. Says Villoldo, "We are that new human. Our question no longer is can we make a quantum leap into who we are becoming, but rather dare we do so."
In that dynamic, courageous vision, SHAMAN, HEALER, SAGE offers great hope and promise for our world -- for the individual and collective transformation of consciousness necessary to heal our planet. It inspires and encourages us to realize our luminous nature in infinity -- in the birth of a new humanity in harmony with the forces of nature, at one with all life, and at peace with the world.
