On Identity
Our identity as a people has been changed irreversibly, no matter how hard our government or the media try to convey a return to some pre-cultural moment when our way of life, our values and convictions seemed to carry the moral weight they no longer have. The fact is that our image has been tarnishing for a long time, yet we were incapable of seeing that simple fact.
On Divination and Power
Throughout history, peoples have sought the intervention of divine power to understand their fate and resolve problems. The term divination describes efforts to foretell future events or to discover hidden knowledge by supernatural means. As the term implies, divination is closely associated with cultivation of the spirit or supernatural realm, often understood in the form of deities, spirits of place, or ancestral relations. It can be said that the degree of success of the diviner is closely related to the quality of her or his relationship with these powers.
On War and Peace
Peace is a manifestation of Love, and because Love in the physical realm is derived from our relationship to the earth, it also includes other earth-based energies such as community, relationships and nurture. War destroys these manifestations of the human spirit, and replaces them with ideologies and dogma. Indigenous peoples agree that war, particularly the kind of war that is waged against the laws of nature, is a manifestation of a lack of Power, a disconnect from true self, true belonging.
On Gratitude
I was born in Peru, of a middle class family, but even though we had enough of everything, I still remember my mother admonishing us when we wasted food or left our meals uneaten. “Every seed”, she used to say, “can grow into a full plant and feed a family for many generations”. She had learnt this wisdom as a young child; she had seen hunger first hand and still remembered the faces of the needy who came to plead for grain from her father, a successful farmer. No caller ever left empty handed, even though that meant that her family would have to do without.
On the Spirit World
During the course of my consultations I have run into cases of “spirits”, “ghosts”, or “presences” inhabiting a residence or building. These cases have been of great interest to me for they seem to confirm the ancient idea that all things are connected and that there are more dimensions to our existence than we can comprehend. They fascinate me with their mystery and have been great sources of learning for me as well.