A Time for Inner Stillness, Healing and Connection

“The Mayan Prophecies speak of November 11th, 2008 as a time of great emergence, of moving into the “Sixth Day”. This new day will be a very fruitful time in preparation for the great galactic alignment of 2012. We are currently in the very darkest hour of the night before the breaking of the dawn. We must be vigilant and attentive without engaging the world with drama. Now is the time to heal ourselves and our culture, to reevaluate and reexamine all belief structures, to cull what needs to be shifted and to allow ourselves to be renewed and reborn with this approaching new day.
If we do not complete this process of purification and healing, the breaking down of old structures, this breaking down will happen at the literal and physical level. The year 2008 is the “shakedown year”. We must bring our power and attention to examine what no longer serves us. We must be dismembered and walk with ethics in the world. The prophecies foretell that the individuals who take this leap will rise out of the creative juices of the rich, dark mother earth and flourish….”
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“An essential practice for any transformational process is stillness. Breathing techniques are used around the world as a tool to guide us into this deep place of stillness –  the place where we can touch infinity. As the world spins with confusion and fear, it is important to spend time each day connecting in stillness and silence. In this place, we touch infinity, where we are no longer bound to the painful stories from our past, and our future is no longer scripted by our history.”
excerpted from The Four Winds Newsletter, October 2008
Alberto Villoldo: The Four Winds Society
“By my mid-twenties I was the youngest clinical professor at San Francisco State University. I was directing my own laboratory, the Biological Self-Regulation Lab, investigating how energy medicine and visualization could change the chemistry of the brain. We were able to increase the production of endorphins, the natural brain chemicals responsible for reducing pain and for creating ecstatic states, by nearly 50 percent utilizing the techniques of energy healing.
One day in the biology laboratory, I realized that my investigation had to get bigger instead of smaller. The microscope was the wrong instrument to answer the questions I was asking. I needed to find a system larger than the neural networks of the brain. Many others were already studying the hardware. I wanted to learn to re-program the system. Anthropological stories hinted that there were people around the globe who claimed to know such things, including the Inka in Peru…”
Alberto brings to the field of shamanic studies his grounding in western science and healing…. I have heard him speak, read some of his work and listened to a number of lectures… and highly recommend his work.
I first addressed the larger topic of shamanism’s relevance to resiliency here: Resiliency and Shamanism.
Shamanism is also one of the blog’s ‘catagories’, and related posts can be accesed through those archives.
Note: I updated the post in response to a question from a reader, see comments.