by Dr. Alberto Villoldo: The first insight is called The Way of the Hero because the most effective healers recognize that they were once deeply wounded themselves, and as a result of their own healing, they’ve developed compassion for others who are hurting…
Non-judgment
To practice non-judgement, we must transcend our limited beliefs, even those concerning our ideas about right and wrong. We make sense of the world by judging situations as right, wrong, good, or bad, according to rules defined by our culture, which we know as our moral code. But an Earthkeeper is amoral — note that they are not immoral, they simply are not ruled by mores. They believe that it’s important to let go of these sorts of judgements and maintain their ability to discern.
When we practice non-judgement, we refuse to automatically go along with the opinions of others. In doing so, we begin to acquire a sense of ethics that transcends the mores of our time. This is especially important in a society that is constantly bombarded with images of reality filtered through an ever-present electronic media, where our values — liberty, freedom, love, and the like — are reduced to sound bites and empty platitudes.
Sit in silence for a moment and contemplate who and what you are judging and what ideas about right and wrong you have internalized from your family, culture, or community, blow them into a stick and then take them to a fire and release them
Non-attachment
To practice non-attachment, we let go of the roles we’ve bought into and the labels we’ve stuck to ourselves. While our new stories can be far more interesting and productive for us than the old ones, our goal is to stop identifying with any story whatsoever. When we shed all of our stories, with their limiting roles and confining identities, and become a mystery unto ourselves, we’re practicing non-attachment.
Non-attachment requires you not only to let go of your roles and your stories, but to also let go of the part of yourself that identifies with these dramas. When you stop attaching your ego to the small identity of a spouse, child, student, teacher, and the like, you let go of your preconceived notions about who you are, and you stop fretting about whether you’re pleasing or displeasing others. You stop needing validation from people and becoming upset or sad when you don’t receive it. You’re free to simply be whoever you want to be.
Sit in silence for a moment and contemplate all of your roles, blow them into a stick and then take them to a fire and release them.
Non-suffering
When we practice nonsuffering, we do not write stories about our pain; because when we wrap a story around the facts, suffering happens. At some point, we are all going to lose a parent, a romantic partner, or a job. When the facts are hurtful, of course we will feel that pain, but we shouldn’t spin these facts into a dramatic yarn. For example, when you tell yourself “Now I am left motherless, with no one to look after me,” others will see you as walking under the sign of the motherless child.
Instead we embrace the facts of our life and the lessons that are there to teach us. We make ourselves available to learn directly from the infinite wisdom of the universe, so that we no longer have to endure the same misfortunes again and again.
Sit in silence for a moment and contemplate the stories you have woven around painful events, blow them into a stick and then take them to a fire and release them.
Practice of Beauty
To practice beauty is to perceive loveliness even when there’s ugliness. For example, instead of thinking of a coworker as an endless complainer who makes the workplace unbearable, we can perceive him from the level of hummingbird and recognize that he’s a perfect symbol of our need to learn how not to personalize other people’s unhappiness.
Seeing beauty is not a passive act—it is an active and empowering deed. When you see beauty above all else, you are transforming the map you carry of reality, and that most likely you inherited from your parents when you were young. When your internal maps are filled with beauty, your outer world is likewise infused with splendor.
Sit in silence and think of people, places, and things that you choose to transform from ugliness to beauty. Blow them into a stick and then take them to a fire and release them.
Are you ready to step into the Way of the Hero?
