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From The Shaman's Wife: A Mystical Journey of Surrender and Self-Discovery
I’m excited to share an excerpt from my soon-to-be-published memoir recounting my time in Ecuador.
Allow me to tell you a bit about the book.
When Alicia Rodriguez, a successful entrepreneur recovering from divorce and loss, accepts an invitation to Ecuador to help a friend who is studying with a shaman, she has no idea how profoundly the decision will change her life’s course.
In Ecuador, Alicia meets Napo, a powerful shaman, and they begin an extraordinary relationship that spans two continents and eight years. Alicia learns the principles of shamanism and witnesses Napo’s remarkable healing abilities. Confronted with the illusion of her life in the United States, she decides to move to Ecuador to be with him, and they plan to build a healing center together on the coast. Within a short time, however, she realizes that she has surrendered her power and agency to Napo—who now wields it as a weapon against her. After years of inner struggle, she finally finds the courage to leave Ecuador and moves to Portugal, where she finds peace . . . until an unexpected phone call rekindles old memories.
An extraordinary memoir steeped in spirituality, shamanism, and metaphysics, The Shaman’s Wife is the story of a woman who, through a daring journey of self-discovery, reclaims and embraces her feminine wisdom—and realizes that love is the answer to her lifelong spiritual quest.
In Chapter Five, What the Pyramids Blessed, I am taken to Cochasquí, a well-known archeological complex of fifteen pyramids about twenty miles northeast of Quito. Archeologists believe that Cochasquí was a ceremonial and astronomical center built by the Quitu-Cara people and used to calculate solstices and determine the planting and harvesting seasons. But little beyond that is known.
It is on one of the pyramids that Napo, the shaman, conducted a bonding ceremony with me. This chapter describes this event and the effect it had on my life.
Excerpt from The Shaman’s Wife: A Mystical Journey of Surrender and Self-Discovery.
Chapter 5: What the Pyramids Blessed
You don't negotiate with destiny.
Your path will emerge, surprising your best-laid plans. You'll live for years with the illusion of control over your life. You'll believe in your dreams and be meticulous about your decisions, assuring you reach your goals.
That is until they're hijacked by the simplest decision, made on a whim, with no apparent significance. Then, suddenly, you find yourself groundless, uncertain about everything, and if you allow fear to overtake you, you'll lose out on the unexpected experience that life has gifted you.
My week in Ecuador was that turning point, the crossroads I didn't even recognize.
The choice made on a whim was an upheaval in my life that I could never have foreseen. And yet, I chose to take this alternative path despite the fear of the unknown, avoiding the well- intentioned comments from friends and rejecting the attachments I had to the way my life should be.
The clues of a different kind of life were there all along. Like threads in a tapestry woven by an omniscient weaver, my life was being created with each experience, with each dream, bringing me to Ecuador, a country I had never considered visiting, and to a shaman, one who would heal me with his light and wound me with his shadow.
After a history lesson from José, where he recounts the stories of the Quitu-Cara tribes and the site's significance, we leave to walk the land. As we enter the main complex, a panorama of hills appears in front of us. Hundreds of llamas, black, brown, and white, graze over the expanse of the complex. The land is covered in brush, and yellow-green grass covers the mounds. Cochasquí is 9,970 feet above sea level, and with an unobstructed view, we can see Quito in front of us. The Andes beyond Quito protrude under the downy clouds covering the sky and through the haze from the city below.
It's very cold and windy, and it begins to drizzle. Undeterred, we start our walk with Napo explaining the significance of the complex and his ancestry. Carlos and Megan quietly separate from us despite moving in the same direction. Napo looks briefly toward them, then returns to his storytelling.
"We come from the Quitu-Cara tribe, a tribe of warriors and wisdom keepers. Our lineage is through our mother. In our culture, the land was passed down through the women, and the women governed. The Quitu-Cara tribe disappeared with the arrival of the Spanish in the 1500s. We refused to give the Incas or Spanish the secrets of the Shyris, the people of light from which we are descendants. We have kept the secrets of Cochasquí hidden.”
As we walk, I feel the energy of the place surrounding me. Hidden in the sounds of nature and the words Napo speaks is silence as old as these pyramids. I imagine what ceremonies may have occurred here in ancient times, the songs for the harvests, and the blessings that connected its people to the Pachamama, as the earth is respectively known in Ecuador.
I walk this ancient place with a man I met only a few days ago. This man has touched my heart and discovered the soul in hiding, reverently holding a space for love to appear.
I am near tears listening to Napo's stories when we stop, and he says simply, "Here."
We are at the top of the seventh pyramid on a flat space of earth facing out towards the Andes. I watch Megan and Carlos step toward the edge of the area, turning their backs as they sit, looking toward the horizon. I realize this is what Carlos meant when he argued with Napo in the kitchen. They choose not to participate or approve of the ceremony.
Napo spreads the blanket on the ground with each corner facing one of the directions, north, south, east, and west. He reaches into his leather pouch and carefully removes several items. He places seashells, pieces of wood, miniature carvings of animals, symbols on stones, flowers, rattles, and an ocarina on the blanket. Pulling out a colorful headband from the pouch, he wraps it around his head, protecting his shoulder-length hair from the wind. In a stone bowl, he places sticks of palo santo, a sweet-smelling wood burned to sanctify an area and clean its energy. He lights the palo santo, and with a large feather, he fans it so that the smoke rises as he walks around the blanket chanting. The wind plays with the smoke as if greeting an old friend with a hug that spins the friend around and around.
"Come and kneel here," Napo commands as he motions for me to come to the middle of the blanket. He blows the palo santo around himself and me, then places the bowl down and kneels to face me.
"Alicia, we are connected and have always been connected. I've seen our past lives and now understand why I felt the surge of energy when you hugged me at the airport when you arrived. I invite you to bond with me through this ceremony to formalize the connection between our souls so I can forever protect, teach, and heal you. From me, you will learn the true meaning of love, not human love, but amor propio, the universal love."
Tears stream down my face. I feel lightheaded, drunk from the energy rising from the ground as I kneel on this sacred land. The shaman has appeared. It was as if Napo had transcended physical space and emerged as an ancient one. I lose all time, all sense of physical space. I see and hear him from somewhere else, not entirely in my body.
"Do you accept my invitation?" His question echoes through my trance, and I hear my voice say, "Yes."
Napo stands and begins to chant in Quechua, the indigenous language of his people. He chants and dances with the rattles while the wind blows clouds of palo santo and sprays raindrops, enveloping us in an otherworldly mist. He opens the bottle with the dark liquid and herbs and, without swallowing it, takes it into his mouth, then sprays me and the area around us with this liquid that smells of cinnamon and roses. He then raises the ocarina to his lips and plays a tune unlike anything I had ever heard, the notes vibrating in the wind, raindrops dancing to the music.
I don't know how long the ceremony lasts. It seems as if all that exists is this moment on top of a sacred pyramid in the middle of the world, a blessing witnessed by the ancestors and ancient wisdom keepers. As tears slide down my face, Napo kneels next to me, hugs me, and taking my face in his hands, whispers into my ear, “El amor vence todo.” (Love will prevail.)
His words jolt me out of the trance. Around my neck, I wear a small locket I have carried for seventeen years, bought when my son was born. Tucked inside the locket is a small piece of paper with a prayer I had written. The prayer is only three words: "May love prevail."
What readers are saying about The Shaman’s Wife:
“Reading this I’m actually transfixed. Is it because your words actually transport me into the room you’re in? I swear that I could actually FEEL/HEAR/SENSE so much of the “setting” through your words. Brave. Warrior. YES YOU ARE BOTH I.want.more. More words to digest and feel. I am enjoying this new Saturday morning “ritual” that I’ve unconsciously created around your emails. "
"I’d like to take a moment to express my appreciation of your courage to embark on your soul path, your lyrical writing and your urge to share and serve. I believe that any and all of us who take a moment to reflect on "who we really are" are contributing to the awakening underway in the human collective. "
"As you know, it's a sacred time for me to read these passages so I waited until the quiet of this morning. This was deeply moving. You have turned your experiences into powerful insight and created lessons for all of us. This book already has the strong possibility of a best seller and movie or series. "
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