Published in the Echo, Charlottesville, VA, January 2012
DISCOVERING NEW GATEWAYS TO
WHOLENESS AND BEYOND
an article by Deborah Wray
WHOLENESS AND BEYOND
an article by Deborah Wray
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It was an entirely surreal moment. Here I was having a crisis high in the mountains of Peru in the beautiful
ruins of Pisaq. One of our shaman teachers and guides, Pepe, gently took my arm and moved me away from
the group with his quiet voice reassuring me my husband would be fine. Jim was light headed and found it
hard to walk. Pepe, strong and solidly built, had practically carried him up the last ancient Incan stairway (at
least15 steps) with the mountain falling thousands of feet away to the left. He and Don Theo, our primary
shaman teacher and guide, had just attended to Jim’s needs and now they were attending to mine. I was
recently married and fears of losing my husband, some years older than me, in the Peruvian Andes had turned
me into an anxious, quivering amoeba!
I was not prepared for what followed as Pepe maneuvered me away from the group. An eagle wheeled
overhead and the haunting strains of a Peruvian flute player followed us in the ancient ruins. Pepe bent his
head and placed his mouth just under my right collarbone where he began to suck on my skin. The area
became hot and Pepe spat on the ground. I found my consciousness loosening in a pleasant way. The anxiety
began to recede and a heightened lucid peace settled over me. I hardly noticed as Pepe disappeared behind a
boulder and retched. He had performed what I would later come to know as a “sucking extraction,” pulling out
my toxic fear and taking it into his own body to be released.
Later I would ask Pepe how he had become a shaman, otherwise known in Peru as a paqo. I had expected a
recital of the mentoring he had received since childhood among various local medicine men and woman, but he
skipped to the part that he thought would interest me. He explained about his friend and mentor Dr. Alberto
Villoldo, a medical anthropologist who had been coming to Peru from the States for over 30 years to study
and work with Peruvian shaman. Pepe had spent time working with Dr Villoldo and suggested I attend his
school in the US.
I returned to the States and followed his advice enrolling in a 2 year program. My adventures in shamanic
healing and training were like stepping off a cliff. I was in energetic free fall. I wasn’t new to energetic healing,
but the depth of these ancient healing technologies rattled all the bits and pieces I could identify as ME and
reassembled the package gradually over time into something more user friendly to my spirit. I felt myself
becoming stronger, happier, sillier, freer, powerful and more spontaneous! I was profoundly in love with the
earth and optimistic for the first time ever that there was a greater plan unfolding for our beloved planet than
was evident. It wasn’t just that I unplugged from the depressing diet of nightly news headlines; I had been
taught a new ability to “track” or tune into the possibilities for the planet, rather than the dire probabilities we
feast on daily in our news media. I learned there were shaman or “medicine people” everywhere who seriously
spent their time tracking and energizing possible destiny lines for the planet that held clean water, unpolluted
skies and a land where people lived in greater harmony.
And if this wasn’t enough of a “new age” cliché, the Qero shaman of the Peruvian Andes for thousands of
years have been passing down the shamanic rites of passage to become people that grow and heal differently.
These rites were seeded energetically into a person’s luminous energy field to heal and activate potentials
within the DNA. The 9th and final rite most recently received from Spirit to the Qero Elders is said to
activate mankind’s evolutionary potential. Was this truly possible?
Eight years after my first encounter with Peruvian shamanism it has become my experience that many strange
and wondrous realities can be accessed by those who know how. I am convinced that mankind is capable of
achieving and becoming anything that can be imagined. Just look back at our evolution and accomplishments
throughout history. As a working shaman I know it is possible to journey outside of time to different worlds
for the sake of a client’s health and well being, bring back lost quanta of energy commonly known as soul
parts, retrieve energetic gifts and recover power animals. Negative or toxic energies can be extracted from the
physical and energy body and crystallized forms can be removed to promote balance and better health. But
what interests me even more than recovering emotional, spiritual and physical homeostasis is our power to
grow and evolve beyond anything we’ve yet to dream up; To crack open the gateway to our individual and
collective potentials as a species! Could the monkeys have dreamed of the cavemen they would become?
Could Neanderthal men and women glimpse a time when mankind would be painting or sculpting great
masterpieces, discovering the atom, driving cars, flying in airplanes, landing on the moon or contemplating
dark matter?
It has been prophesied that with the approach of 2012 we live in times of great challenge and spiritual
potential. The Indian Vedas point to human kind’s evolutionary potential in what Sri Aurobindo called the
emergence of the supramental body. The Qero Shaman of Peru have passed on the 9 rites of initiation,
energetic codes for becoming a new human, a “homoluminous” being. The prophesies of the Americas speak
of a new species of man who lives free of fear and resides in a transcendental nature. For many of us our
healing journey not only means recovering lost aspects of the self to become whole, but to become more than
whole, to continue the process of our evolutionary Becoming. We are entering the gateway of a new era where
the greatest potential lies in opening to the mystery of the unimaginable, of turning our dreaming up stream to
source from the wellspring of our future, individually and collectively.
ruins of Pisaq. One of our shaman teachers and guides, Pepe, gently took my arm and moved me away from
the group with his quiet voice reassuring me my husband would be fine. Jim was light headed and found it
hard to walk. Pepe, strong and solidly built, had practically carried him up the last ancient Incan stairway (at
least15 steps) with the mountain falling thousands of feet away to the left. He and Don Theo, our primary
shaman teacher and guide, had just attended to Jim’s needs and now they were attending to mine. I was
recently married and fears of losing my husband, some years older than me, in the Peruvian Andes had turned
me into an anxious, quivering amoeba!
I was not prepared for what followed as Pepe maneuvered me away from the group. An eagle wheeled
overhead and the haunting strains of a Peruvian flute player followed us in the ancient ruins. Pepe bent his
head and placed his mouth just under my right collarbone where he began to suck on my skin. The area
became hot and Pepe spat on the ground. I found my consciousness loosening in a pleasant way. The anxiety
began to recede and a heightened lucid peace settled over me. I hardly noticed as Pepe disappeared behind a
boulder and retched. He had performed what I would later come to know as a “sucking extraction,” pulling out
my toxic fear and taking it into his own body to be released.
Later I would ask Pepe how he had become a shaman, otherwise known in Peru as a paqo. I had expected a
recital of the mentoring he had received since childhood among various local medicine men and woman, but he
skipped to the part that he thought would interest me. He explained about his friend and mentor Dr. Alberto
Villoldo, a medical anthropologist who had been coming to Peru from the States for over 30 years to study
and work with Peruvian shaman. Pepe had spent time working with Dr Villoldo and suggested I attend his
school in the US.
I returned to the States and followed his advice enrolling in a 2 year program. My adventures in shamanic
healing and training were like stepping off a cliff. I was in energetic free fall. I wasn’t new to energetic healing,
but the depth of these ancient healing technologies rattled all the bits and pieces I could identify as ME and
reassembled the package gradually over time into something more user friendly to my spirit. I felt myself
becoming stronger, happier, sillier, freer, powerful and more spontaneous! I was profoundly in love with the
earth and optimistic for the first time ever that there was a greater plan unfolding for our beloved planet than
was evident. It wasn’t just that I unplugged from the depressing diet of nightly news headlines; I had been
taught a new ability to “track” or tune into the possibilities for the planet, rather than the dire probabilities we
feast on daily in our news media. I learned there were shaman or “medicine people” everywhere who seriously
spent their time tracking and energizing possible destiny lines for the planet that held clean water, unpolluted
skies and a land where people lived in greater harmony.
And if this wasn’t enough of a “new age” cliché, the Qero shaman of the Peruvian Andes for thousands of
years have been passing down the shamanic rites of passage to become people that grow and heal differently.
These rites were seeded energetically into a person’s luminous energy field to heal and activate potentials
within the DNA. The 9th and final rite most recently received from Spirit to the Qero Elders is said to
activate mankind’s evolutionary potential. Was this truly possible?
Eight years after my first encounter with Peruvian shamanism it has become my experience that many strange
and wondrous realities can be accessed by those who know how. I am convinced that mankind is capable of
achieving and becoming anything that can be imagined. Just look back at our evolution and accomplishments
throughout history. As a working shaman I know it is possible to journey outside of time to different worlds
for the sake of a client’s health and well being, bring back lost quanta of energy commonly known as soul
parts, retrieve energetic gifts and recover power animals. Negative or toxic energies can be extracted from the
physical and energy body and crystallized forms can be removed to promote balance and better health. But
what interests me even more than recovering emotional, spiritual and physical homeostasis is our power to
grow and evolve beyond anything we’ve yet to dream up; To crack open the gateway to our individual and
collective potentials as a species! Could the monkeys have dreamed of the cavemen they would become?
Could Neanderthal men and women glimpse a time when mankind would be painting or sculpting great
masterpieces, discovering the atom, driving cars, flying in airplanes, landing on the moon or contemplating
dark matter?
It has been prophesied that with the approach of 2012 we live in times of great challenge and spiritual
potential. The Indian Vedas point to human kind’s evolutionary potential in what Sri Aurobindo called the
emergence of the supramental body. The Qero Shaman of Peru have passed on the 9 rites of initiation,
energetic codes for becoming a new human, a “homoluminous” being. The prophesies of the Americas speak
of a new species of man who lives free of fear and resides in a transcendental nature. For many of us our
healing journey not only means recovering lost aspects of the self to become whole, but to become more than
whole, to continue the process of our evolutionary Becoming. We are entering the gateway of a new era where
the greatest potential lies in opening to the mystery of the unimaginable, of turning our dreaming up stream to
source from the wellspring of our future, individually and collectively.
| Contact information: Shamans Dream Energy Medicine P.O. Box 6 Batesville, VA 22924 US 540 456-6283 |