Alberto Villoldo - The Wisdom Wheel: A Mythic Journey through the Four Directions

ALSO BY ALBERTO VILLOLDO

The Heart of the Shaman

Courageous Dreaming

Dance of the Four Winds (with Erik Jendresen)

The First Story Ever Told (with Erik Jendresen)

The Four Insights

Healing States (with Stanley Krippner, Ph.D.)

The Illumination Process

Island of the Sun (with Erik Jendresen)

Millennium: Glimpses into the 21st Century

One Spirit Medicine

Power Up Your Brain (with David Perlmutter, M.D.)

The Realms of Healing (with Stanley Krippner, Ph.D.)

Shaman, Healer, Sage

Soul Journeying

Yoga, Power & Spirit

Available from Hay House

All of the above are available at your local bookstore, or may be ordered by visiting:

Hay House USA: www.hayhouse.com
Hay House Australia: www.hayhouse.com.au
Hay House UK: www.hayhouse.co.uk
Hay House India: www.hayhouse.co.in

Copyright 2022 by Alberto Villoldo

Published in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com Published in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.: www.hayhouse.com.au Published in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk Published in India by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in

Project editor: Anna Cooperberg
Cover design: Jordan Wannemacher
Interior design: Nick C. Welch

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private useother than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviewswithout prior written permission of the publisher.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4019-6280-7

E-book ISBN: 978-1-4019-6281-4

Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-4019-6282-1

To my wife Marcela,
and to our four children
Ian, Alexis, Kelly, and Meric

The teachings of the medicine wheel have existed in different forms throughout the world and been handed down through many generations of peoples since the beginning of time. This sacred map is an Indigenous spiritual technology for healing by connecting with Mother Earth, the energies of nature, and the cosmos.

The medicine wheel is also a wisdom wheel: think of it as an advanced tool or a process for working toward personal and planetary transformation. When you work with the wisdom wheel, youre healing not only your personal traumayoure healing the trauma of all humanity and the Earth. You are interacting with actual energies and catalyzing a biological and spiritual evolution.

If we do whats required of us, we access the gifts of the wisdom wheel, freeing ourselves from predetermined fates and co-creating a new destiny. Then we can do more than merely fix the problems in our lives that drive us to vent, drink too much, and grouse about the people we blame for all our miseries. We can experience radical self-honesty. We will feel discomfort as we enter the growth process, but working with the wisdom wheel is key to transformation.

In doing the work of the wisdom wheel, we will interact with power animals, who are associated with each of the four directions and can help us. If we are willing to accept the wheels challenge to further our evolution, we can awaken the master within: our potential to become a wisdom keeper, sage, and visionary. We can learn to help not just ourselves but all who are in need and even Mother Earth and all her creatures.

The wisdom wheel takes many forms. The one I use and teach is the one I learned over decades of working with the shamans of the Andes. The first time you pass through the cycle of the wisdom wheel is a journey of healing the self. As you go deeper, beyond healing from trauma and repairing the body, you discover your place around a sacred fire and take a seat that has been held for you since time immemorial: the seat of a shaman.

Shamanism is the exercise of power, born of knowledge, with the goal of service to and compassion for all creation. Nowadays, shamanic wisdom that had been carefully guarded for centuries within Indigenous societies is being disseminated to a receptive world that urgently needs it. As a spiritual tradition rather than a religion, it adapts itself easily to the present. As a feminine tradition, it is sensitive to the needs of the vulnerable as well as the powerful.

Our goaland challengeas modern shamans is to do more than simply imitate the outer form of tradition. Instead, we must create new paradigms that incorporate the wisdom of science, both ancient and modern, and that are founded on the stewardship of the Earth and the health of the body and the village. The teachings of the Four Winds Society that I founded years ago and the medicine wheel within this book draw from the more than 25 years I spent working with shamans in the Andes, the Chim and Mochica in Peru (known as Seers), and the Aymara of Lake Titicaca, as well as from my Western studies in psychology, neuroscience, and anthropology.

Years ago, to the amusement of my mentor Don Manuel Quispe, I would fret about getting everything absolutely right. For example, when reciting a prayer, Id become so caught up in my desire to be respectful of the wisdom ways that Id get stuck in the details and reduce a rituals meaning to a formula. When we remain too much in our heads, we miss feeling the shift into a new kind of perception that is sacred, integrative, and inclusivethe goal of all ceremonies.

Its important to honor and respect the traditions we learn from, making sure we are appreciating and understandingwithout appropriatingthe sacred practices of any Indigenous peoples. Its also important to know that your experience and interpretation are inherently valuable. For the shaman, the ultimate authority is Spirit, not words in a book or those spoken by priests.

The shamans I studied with in the Andes say that if we master how we see ourselves, the events in our lives, and our relationships with others, we can start to dream a new world into being. Doing so requires that we work with the energies of the invisible realms, which have far more power over and influence on us than our will, intentions, or actions do.

The challenge is to avoid limiting our awareness to me and mine. While its natural to want to fix our personal problems, there is also deep healing work that urgently needs to be done on behalf of the planet. When we heal the Earth, we feel the repercussions in our own lives; as the fate of the Earth goes, so goes our fate.

As someone who teaches people to become modern shamanic practitioners, I know how easily a sense of self-importance can take over, corrupting motives and making aspirants obsess over the right way of doing things. Knowledge can be seductive, feeding the mind at the expense of nourishing the soul. Students who become fascinated with their own interests instead of humbly doing the work of alleviating suffering and creating health are certain to fall under the spell of the ego.