Spiritual Traditions of the Andean Shamans

Preparing for the Future, traditional Andean healer Doris Rivera Lenz

Howard G Charing & Peter Cloudsley

Doris Rivera Lenz talks to Howard G Charing and Peter Cloudsley about the effect of belief on health, how we get sick, and how she helps patients recover, and she looks to a future when we will need to keep balance as material values no longer isolate us from the Earth

What would you say was your understanding of divination? It is meeting with the spirit of the element that you are working with, whether it is coca, tarot cards, maize or a mountain. In the case of coca, you meet the mother spirit, soul, or power of the plant, which is the sacred part which never dies. The practitioner must be in total communication, spirit-to-spirit. It is more like listeningto the coca leaves than reading them. It is a higher state of consciousness. You have to be prepared to integrate yourself spiritually to help another spirit. Human beings are sacred cosmic seeds in evolution. The coca is a sacred seed like us, only of the vegetable kingdom. As with Ayahuasca, or San Pedro, they have been created by Mother Earth to guide and heal their younger brothers - ourselves. Similarly we have been created to help other people. As we become more open we discover plants like coca, for example. Not everybody sees the spirit of coca, Ayahuasca, or San Pedro, but they are here to help us.

What about the cause of disease, and how is it cured? Illnesses do not exist, we create them with our minds according to our attitudes and the things we do - our karma. Resentment, for example, causes cancer; a woman whose ovaries are unwell may be resentful of being a woman and suffers trauma. People who do not have the freedom to express their feelings suffer from throat problems and so on. So how do we heal them? First we need to look at them through the coca leaves, to know what has happened. Why are they resentful, fearful or anxious? What is causing their problems? Difficulties existing outside their body, such as a theft, disillusionment, or being lied to affect them because they are predisposed to have this pain. Then they get ill because they are not in equilibrium with themselves. The coca shows when and how this began, it tells the story of how they got ill.

Is there a difference between the kind of condition which develops over a long period of negativity, like cancer, and a disease which you can catch from someone very quickly? The first seems to be created by oneself, the latter is biological. Human beings are always predisposed by their attitudes, this is why you need to know their story. Someone who has a superiority complex, or is aggressive and violent, is on a downward spiral. They are weakened in their heart, stomach, and solar plexus - the ñawi or naira(equivalent to chakra) where emotional attitudes are held. So for example, you eat a dirty apple, and immediately you are ill. A person who harbours feelings of hate may feel perfectly well for a time, but problems with their children, their husband, or lack of money, intensify their emotions, which degenerate their body on a cellular level. So they create their illness because they were already out of equilibrium. This is why two people might eat the same apple but only one falls prey to the illness.

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