Home > Author > Alberto Villoldo
41 " You can also do this exercise in nature, drawing a circle on the ground and decorating your despacho with leaves and stones, and then erasing it at the end of your meditation. We want to give form to our prayers, to reengage that playful part of ourselves that creates through art, just like when we were children. The logical and reasoning faculties we spend so much time with will not respond to the giveaway in the same way. These faculties can write a check to a charity or a note to a friend in need. But to give form to a sacred dream you have to create something with your hands—a mandala, a poem, a meal. "
― Alberto Villoldo , The Heart of the Shaman: Stories and Practices of the Luminous Warrior
42 " As your brain is upgraded, you will discover that you can let go of your fixation on what you think is absolutely vital to your safety and happiness and essential for your survival. As you release your old, fear-based approach to life, you will find you have more faith in your ability to handle uncertainty. You will gain a sense of living in a world that is safe and welcoming, and a universe that supports your intentions and what you value as truly important. "
― Alberto Villoldo , Grow a New Body: 21 Days to Releasing Self-Doubt, Cultivating Inner Peace, and Creating a Life You Love
43 " soul retrievals to recover parts of myself I had lost to trauma, "
― Alberto Villoldo , One Spirit Medicine: Ancient Ways to Ultimate Wellness
44 " After morning yoga a luminous being appeared to me in broad daylight. She walked out of the river, and I saw her "
45 " When the sages of old sought to heal disease, they observed that the problem with becoming ill, other than it making for an unpleasant few weeks, was that you could die. Death was inevitable, or so it seemed. As they continued learning about the plants and remedies that healed disease, they also set about healing death.They tried all the solutions available to them—the plants, the spells, the chants, the ceremonies—and found that none would keep death at bay. Then they discovered that death stalked everyone within time. Time was the problem. Time ran out and all good times, including ours, came to an end. So they set about solving the problem of time.They discovered infinity.They defeated death by breaking free from time. Then death became a friend, an ally, a companion that taught you to savor every moment, every breath. Even though the journey was infinite, this moment would never happen again.Infinity is different from eternity, which is what religions promise us—suffering or ecstasy for all time. Eternity is an infinite number of moments, still trapped within the river of time. Infinity is before time, beyond time. The river of time, eternal as it is, runs through the valleys and meadows of infinity. "
46 " Love is only for the brave,” he said. “Frankly, I recommend you stay away from it. You are too soft to endure love for very long.”I disagreed with him, explaining that I had been in love numerous times in my life, and knew the pain and the ecstasy of the feelings.“That’s not love, that’s romance,” he said.“Love is like a mill,” he explained, “Love grinds you down. It cracks you open and breaks you out of your shell, so you no longer recognize who you are. You become like a fine dust that can be blown away by the wind if you are not careful. Love then mixes you with a dash of spring water and pummels you, kneads you, and then places you on a hot stone by the fire to bake, so that you can become like the corn bread in the sacred feast of the Inti Raymi.”“I’ve experienced that,” I mentioned to Don Manuel. I was thinking of my recent divorce, and how painful that had been. I had felt the heat of the fire and been singed by the flames.“You know little about love,” he said. “You are like a kernel of corn that got too close to the fire and exploded, like a canchita” (popcorn). "
47 " First, you must break the habit of searching for your “true” soul mate. This habit is so deeply ingrained that even after we are married we continue scanning the horizon in case the person we were really meant to be with should suddenly appear. And if they do appear, and you lock eyes and recognize each other, then you will risk everything, including your marriage and family, to join them in a journey into a nightmarish realm.This person is often someone you tortured in a former lifetime and you are irresistibly attracted to in order to repair, heal, and mend from these misadventures. When you meet them again in this life, you feel as if you have known each other forever (you have), that you have been waiting for them your entire life (you have), and that you have finally found someone you can be happy with (how wrong!).I am convinced that this is why monks and nuns take a vow of celibacy—they are choosing to stop learning and growing along the hazardous path of the kind of love that you fall into or out of. Meanwhile the rest of us continue searching for the mate who is our perfect fit, our twin flame who totally gets who we are, who knows us better than we know ourselves.The Laika believe that we reincarnate to learn specific lessons and to be of service. We are irresistibly attracted to people we failed to learn a lesson with in the past. "
48 " It is not unusual to be drawn into a love relationship with a person we hurt in the distant past in an attempt to heal. The problem is that instead of healing an ancient wound, most often we end up reinjuring each other. That person who once burned you at the stake for your beliefs in a Christian or pagan god, and whom you confuse for your beloved, ends up lighting the kindling under you once again. And you’re left wondering why you are choking from the smoke of the relationship.When you are sure that you have met your dream lover, your soul mate, and every cell in your body is quivering with excitement, run away as fast as you can. Unless, of course, you are ready to sign up for another lesson in the school of emotional storms.We never got the best parents, only the right parents for us. We never got the best spouse, only the right spouse. The sooner we recognize this the faster we will be able to move on to more interesting engagements with the world. Learning to love the people you do not necessarily approve of or agree with is a challenge, but they are often our greatest teachers. They hold the mirror up to us so we can see hidden and neglected parts of ourselves in them.As for your soul mate, accept that you will never find that person perfectly designed to your romantic specifications. They do not exist. But know that you can become the right partner. This will only happen once you stop looking for him or her. "
49 " When I eat at restaurants in Peru, I always load up my bag with the extra rolls that are served, because I know I’ll have an opportunity to help someone out by giving them a roll that may be their only meal of the day. Once when I was traveling with a Laika elder, I found myself in a bus station surrounded by several children who had gathered around me in the hopes that I might give them some coins or candy. I began to take the rolls out of my bag and distribute them, but the elder told me, “This is not the bread these children need. The kind of food my people need is the food of the soul, not the stomach.” He took the rolls from me and distributed them to the children himself, but as he did, he also began telling them stories about their Inka ancestors. Afterward, the elder explained, “These stories are the nourishment that they are craving. I gave them not the bread that will feed them tonight, but the bread that will feed them throughout their entire lives.” He was perceiving with the eyes of the hummingbird—to him, the stories were nourishment for the soul. When he saw me handing out rolls, he intervened at the level of the sacred by offering these children the mythology of their people. "
― Alberto Villoldo , The Four Insights: Wisdom, Power, and Grace of the Earthkeepers
