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The Four Insights: Wisdom, Power, and Grace of the Earthkeepers QUOTES

The Four Insights: Wisdom, Power, and Grace of the Earthkeepers QUOTES

1 " We often confuse love for a warm glow we sense in our bellies and as something we can offer and withdraw, like a cat who comes and goes at its pleasure. It’s easy for us to extend love toward those who are lovable, but loving people and situations that are not to our liking isn’t so easy. We give our love “unconditionally,” but when we don’t receive what we feel we deserve, we withdraw it. We then reinvest our love in a new person or situation that we think will give us a better return, but we find it difficult to maintain when we don’t feel recognized or acknowledged. If things don’t work out the way we want them to, we too readily exchange our loving feelings for hatred and resentment. Our initial excitement over a new job, for instance, may sour and become disappointment and bitterness. When we’ve been jilted by a lover, the intense, starry-eyed passion of infatuation can turn into loathing so great that it consumes us. To an Earthkeeper, love is not a feeling or something you barter with. Love is the essence of who you are, and it radiates from you as a brilliant aura: You become love, practice fearlessness, and attain enlightenment. "

― Alberto Villoldo , The Four Insights: Wisdom, Power, and Grace of the Earthkeepers

2 " 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