Lessons in Courage: Peruvian Shamanic Wisdom for Everyday Life

Buckminster Fuller reminds us, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.” This book provides just that model, as well as concrete practices for living it. The model is derived from ancient wisdom traditions, modeled on the pulses, cycles, and seasons of our beloved Earth Mother. It deeply grounds the reader in a “this world” spirituality that blends indigenous cosmologies, earth-honoring ritual, and time-tested models for living with modern sensibilities. The proposed text presents the biography of an extraordinary man, who has awakened to his own purpose in life as a servant to conscious evolution for all humanity. His life story, full of adventure, cosmic “interventions,” and synchronicity is on par with that of the luminaries documented in these biographies and the time has come for his story to be told. don Oscar’s story is also the story of each one of us. The only reason his story has not been told until now is that he was first charged with creating opportunities for others to awaken to their higher purpose through his teachings as part of an oral tradition. Now, after completing his “compacto” (sacred contract) with his Andean teachers and mentors, he has been released from service to tell his story in writing. And it is an extraordinary story, dealing with nothing less than individual, spiritual, and planetary transformation. OSCAR MIRO-QUESADA originated the Pachakuti Mesa tradition of cross-cultural shamanism, and is the visionary founder of The Heart of the Healer (THOTH) Foundation. He is a respected kamasqa curandero and altomisayoq adept from Peru and has been guiding cross-cultural ethno-spiritual apprenticeship expeditions to sacred sites of the world since 1986, with special emphasis on Peru and Bolivia. He has been a popular faculty member at numerous U.S. educational centers. His work and programs have been featured on CNN, Univision, A&E, and the Discovery Channel. BONNIE GLASS-COFFIN, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized professor of anthropology at Utah State University. She has studied with Peruvian curanderos since 1982 and is author of The Gift of Life: Female Spirituality and Healing in Northern Peru. She began apprenticing with don Oscar in 2005, experiencing the transformative power of these wisdom teachings and integrating these deeply into her life. This deep apprenticeship has enabled her to take a leading role in presenting OMQ's life-work to a wide audience. She currently lives in Logan, Utah. "Oscar Miro-Quesada, my dear friend of over thirty years, is both a Western-educated psychologist and traditionally initiated shaman. His book, Lessons in Courage, is a profound, articulate, and gripping account of Oscar's deep-rooted apprenticeship with don Celso Rojas, a renowned curandero from Salas, Peru. Oscar is a true genius, a genuinely warm and loving individual, and these qualities shine through in the book. A compelling tale about our human quest for wholeness, Lessons in Courage openly chronicles Oscar's befriending of sacred and profane dimensions of life, giving us a brilliant rendition of the uncompromising light so often encountered at the end of the tunnel." — Raymond Moody, M.D., Ph.D., author of Life After Life "This is a great book that can attune the worlds of indigenous peoples with the rational scientific traditions of the modern world. It guides us toward incarnation of all levels of ourselves. Oscar embodies this wholeness and reveals the processes learned in his own epic journey through fields of reality from the Earth to the Star people, from contemporary academic knowledge to the depth and power of indigenous wisdom and ritual, most especially the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition of cross-cultural shamanism. ”Lessons in Courage” is an indispensable classic for our “generation . . ." — Barbara Marx Hubbard, Foundation for Conscious Evolution