by Dr. Alberto Villoldo: The Medicine Wheel is an exploration into the nature of time, energy and the essential self…
The beauty of shamanism is that it is a direct experience of your own personal dialogue with Spirit. There is no intermediary, and as you explore the mystery teachings in each direction of the medicine wheel, you learn to trust your own experiences, your own intuition and your own inner guide, becoming self-realized. Trusting yourself, you become a self-referencing shaman who does not rely on the opinions of others, knowing that Spirit guides you to where you need to be at exactly the right moment.
The medicine wheel begins in the South, where we learn to walk with beauty on the Earth. The South is also where one goes to confront and shed the past, just as the serpent the archetypal symbol of this direction – sheds its skin.
In the West, we call on the archetype of the jaguar to help us find those things that need to die within us so that we can be claimed by life. Here, one assumes the stance of the spiritual warrior who has no enemies in this life or the next.
In the North, the archetype of the hummingbird helps us learn how to connect to our passion and drink only from the sweetest sources – those that nourish the soul. It is here we learn to step outside of linear time, which binds us to cause and effect, and step into sacred time where all things are possible.
The East is the path of the eagle and condor – the flight to the Sun and the journey back to one’s home to exercise vision and skills in the context of one’s life and work. In the East we learn how to dream our world into being.
We become self-referencing shamans after doing the work of the South and West directions. In the South we leave behind stories coming from wounded places and no longer experience life from the confines of our reptilian brain. In the West we leave behind our karma and our genetic lineage and no longer are prisoners of our limited limbic brain. As self-referencing shamans we engage with life at the mythic and energetic levels using our neocortex and God brains.
As sages and wisdom keepers we have dismembered our ego, the concept of “I”. We allow ourselves to be seen because there is no difference between who we are and who we claim to be. We know we are spiritual beings having a human experience rather than humans trying to have a spiritual experience. Accessing your God brain enables you to experience life as a kaleidoscope of wondrous opportunities and possibilities. Seeing yourself as an agent of transformation, you visualize favorable personal and collective destines. Now is the time to rededicate yourself to the destinies you select and awaken your luminous nature.
