Transformative Eagle Wisdom

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Monday, 27 March 2023

Written by Alberto Villoldo PhD

Eagle medicine is the gift of knowing that you are significant despite how very small you are. It’s knowing that each step you take, each word you speak, can be an expression of love and that this lays the foundation for a new vision, a new way of being.

The shaman who has acquired eagle medicine lives her life with the perspective of the peaks and valleys and the curvature of the Earth, soaring over the land and taking in the big picture, the context for the details of life. She concerns herself with the crises her children are suffering, the pests destroying the village harvest, and the challenges facing all her people, yet she knows her task is to look to the horizon and beyond it to where opportunity lies. She is like the ancients who gazed into the distance to where the Earth met the sky and observed the subtle signs that encouraged them to journey in a particular direction, to a destiny beyond where the eye could see, a destiny the soul could recognize.

The promise of eagle medicine is vision, to free yourself of a continual focus on problems so that you open to possibilities. This is very difficult to do, for you have been trained from birth to find what’s wrong, to pick up on flaws in others, on problems with your circumstances, or to notice a missed note in a symphony. When you focus on what’s wrong, the universe will mirror back to you what you believe and what you perceive, and you will indeed live surrounded by messes and obstacles.

Deep down, many of us believe that if we can fix our problems, perfection will prevail, making us safe and happy. Suffering is part of the human condition; it is valuable and can help us to learn and evolve. Denial and the false security of toxic positivity aren’t what any of us need. Beyond the erroneous hope that the clock can be turned back and the old normal reclaimed lies something extraordinary for us all.

Having mastered time and tasted invisibility as a result of doing the work of the North and hummingbird, the shaman enters into perfect ayni with the three worlds: the lower world, where she can access the wisdom of the past; the upper world where she can engage with the sages of the future who offer guidance on crafting a fulfilling destiny; and the middle world, where she is a steward of the Earth and a keeper of wisdom. The gift of eagle vision is to be able to see the landscape for miles around yet spot the tiny mouse scurrying toward its hiding place far below and dive down toward it with precision, taking the perfect action at the perfect time. All the meditating and intention-setting in the world can’t take the place of being in ayni with both the visible and invisible realms. You can’t get caught up in everyday problems or sit on a meditation cushion forever. Before taking form in your mother’s womb, you chose to be here, in this world, participating in life on earth and acting as a steward and caretaker of the planet and a co-creator of our shared reality.

We don’t need everyone to access the gift of eagle vision if we want to ensure that humanity’s destiny on earth involves evolution rather than extinction. We only need to reach a tipping point of enough: enough people transforming, evolving, and dreaming anew, freed from the suffocating grip of fate.

At this time, more than ever, we are called to create a new vision, a new reality of life on earth. Will you answer the call?

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Alberto Villoldo PhD is a medical anthropologist who has spent the last 30 years investigating the healing practices of the shamans of the Amazon and the Andes. He is the founder and director of the Four Winds Society, and author of Shaman, Healer, Sage, Mending the Past and Healing the Future with Soul Retrieval, The Four Insights and Yoga, Power and Spirit. Alberto is founder of the world-renowned Four Winds Society and of the Light Body School. In his teachings and writings, he shares the experience of infinity and its ability to heal and transform us, to free us from the temporal chains that keep us fettered to illness, old age and disease.