The Four Insights:
The Way of the Earthkeepers

From the book by Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D.

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According to the prophecies of the Maya, the Hopi, and the Inka,
we’re at a turning point in human history.

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For millennia, secret societies of Native American medicine men and women carefully guarded their wisdom teachings and acted as stewards of nature. These “Earthkeepers” existed in many nations and were called several different names; for example, in the Andes and the Amazon they were known as the “Laika.”

     In 1950, a group of Laika from high in the Andes traveled to an annual gathering of shamans that occurred at the foot of one of the holy mountains. The local natives looked at the ponchos the Laika were wearing and instantly recognized the markings of the high-shaman priests. They realized that this was a group of medicine men and women thought to have vanished after the time of the Conquest. These high-shamans, knowing that humankind was on the verge of a huge upheaval, had finally come out of seclusion to offer all people the wisdom that would sustain us through the great changes we were about to face, which would help us alter our reality and give birth to a better world.

Conquistadors and Cover-ups

     The Earthkeepers teach that all of creation—the earth, humans, whales, rocks, and even the stars—is made of vibration and light. Nothing we perceive as material and real exists, other than as a dream that we’re projecting onto the world. This dream is a story, and we believe it to be real ... even though it isn’t. Earthkeeper practices and wisdom teach us how to rewrite our stories about our lives, to do what the shamans call “dreaming the world into being.”

     These invaluable teachings, known as the four insights, were kept under wraps for a very good reason. With the arrival of the conquistadors (the European pilgrims and immigrants who first looted and plundered and then settled the Americas), the Laika were relentlessly persecuted. Many, particularly the women, were branded witches and sorcerers; and they were imprisoned, tortured, and killed. Their knowledge was considered so dangerous and threatening to the Catholic Church that even now, 200 years after the Spanish Inquisition shut down everywhere else in the world, the Church continues to keep an office active in Lima, Peru. The Office for the Extirpation of Idolatries is run by the Dominican Order, who, in the 15th century, declared Joan of Arc a heretic and sentenced her to death by burning at the stake.

     The Laika realized that this knowledge about human beings’ capacity to manifest our dreams is tremendously powerful and could be easily abused by those lacking ethics. Thus, they concealed the knowledge not only from the conquistadors, but even from most of their fellow indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, they recognized that the four insights belong to all—so when the Laika met a white person who didn’t possess the arrogant, hostile mind-set of the conqueror, they were willing to share their wisdom teachings. Shortly after the Conquest, for instance, they took into their fold a Catholic priest, a Jesuit by the name of Father Blas Valera, who also happened to be a mestizo (half Indian and half Spanish).

     Father Valera became initiated into the mysteries of the Laika and wrote four books about their teachings, but unfortunately, three of these tomes mysteriously disappeared during the Inquisition (the fourth remains in a private collection in Italy). Valera claimed that the Inka were as civilized as the Europeans because the Inka were able to write by using a complex system of colored strings with knots tied in them know as Quipus. When Valera’s order discovered what he was up to, they incarcerated him for six years until his death. Why did the Jesuits silence one of their own priests? Why were they so afraid of the wisdom he was recording for the benefit of all? And why did they forbid the ordination of any more mestizo or indigenous priests after Valera was defrocked?

     I was another non-Indian taken into the fold of the Laika, initiated into the lineage of the Wisdomkeepers in the Amazon near the Inka city of Cusco. Yet it was never my intention to become part of this lineage—as a medical anthropologist, I was only interested in studying the healing practices of the shamans. As fortune or destiny would have it, I ended up meeting my mentor, don Antonio. He was one of the last of the living Laika, and he took me under his wing and trained me for nearly 25 years. He was a man of many lives—during the day, he was a university professor; in the evenings, a master medicine man. He was born in a high mountain village and worked with the tools and ways of the 15th century, yet he was conversant in the ways of the 21st. Although he was a descendant of the Inka, he would tell me that the Laika are much older than the Inka, whose culture was masculine and militaristic. The Laika’s teachings were from an earlier time, when the feminine aspect of the divine was recognized. I once told him that I felt lucky to have found him, and he said, “What makes you think you found me, if the Church could not find us for the last 500 years?”

     This book is the result of the seed that don Antonio planted in me—and now, as an Earthkeeper myself, I share a major shift with you that was predicted by the ancients, in order to help you prepare for the time of evolution we’re now entering.

Homo Luminous

     According to the prophecies of the Maya, the Hopi, and the Inka, we’re at a turning point in human history. The Maya identified the year 2012 as the culmination of a period of great turmoil and upheaval, one in which a new species of human will give birth to itself. We’re going to take a quantum leap into what we are becoming, moving from Homo sapiens to Homo luminous—that is, beings with the ability to perceive the vibration and light that make up the physical world at a much higher level. For the first time, all of humanity will be able to evolve not between generations but within a generation, which contradicts our beliefs about how evolution works. We’ll take a biological quantum leap within our own lifetimes; and the physical, emotional, and spiritual traits we acquire will be passed on to our children and our children’s children.

     If this sounds hard to believe, consider that you create a new copy of your body about every eight months, as your cells replace themselves. By following the four insights contained within this book and implementing their practices, you can manifest a physical body that’s free of the tyranny of the genes you inherited from your parents and the medical maladies they bring you. But even more important, you can unchain yourself from the limiting emotional and spiritual stories you’ve inherited or bought into over the course of your life.

     Thanks to the discoveries of quantum physics, we’ve come to understand that all matter is densely packed light. But the Laika have known about the luminous nature of reality for millennia—they know that vibration and light can organize themselves into a thousand shapes and forms. First, there is a luminous matrix, and then this blueprint gives birth to life. Vibration and light swirl and condense around the luminous matrix and give birth to a whale, for instance, and then whales can give birth to other whales.

     The human body also has a luminous matrix: We’re enveloped by a luminous energy field (LEF) that manifests the form and health of the body. The LEF organizes the body in the same way that the energy fields of a magnet arrange iron filings on top of a piece of glass. Just as with the example of the whales, humans can give birth to other humans, but a new kind of human has to come from a new luminous matrix. Over millennia, the Laika learned to access the biological blueprint of light and assist Spirit in the unfolding of creation. They also learned how to heal disease and create extraordinary states of health, as well as to craft and shape their personal destinies, by changing the LEF.

     We can think of the LEF as the software that gives instructions to DNA, which is the hardware that manufactures the body. Mastery of the insights lets us access the latest version of the software and allows each of us to create a new body that ages, heals, and dies differently. Without the ability to reprogram the LEF, we’re trapped in the stories we inherited; that is, we age, heal, live, and die the way our parents and grandparents did, reliving their physical ills and emotional ailments. The four insights contained in these pages allow us to break free of the tyranny of our familial curses, the stories that haunted our ancestors.

     Mastery of the insights even allowed the Laika to create new life on Earth—to bring forth a new species of butterfly in the Amazon, for example. It allowed them to move gigantic boulders up the side of mountains, as was required to build the Inka cities in the clouds. The Bible tells us that our faith can move mountains, but we’ve forgotten that we have the ability to do so. The insights teach us that the first mountain we must move is the one that blocks our perception of our own luminous nature.

     In becoming Homo luminous, we’ll give up the ways of the conquistador and discard the masculine theology that values command, control, and dominion over nature, a theology that justifies the exploitation of the earth’s rivers and forests because they’re seen merely as resources for human consumption. Instead, we’ll embrace an older mythology that has become lost to most humans, a feminine theology of cooperation and sustainability.

The Four Insights

     The wisdom of the Laika consists of four insights, each of which has four practices within it that allow us to move beyond mere understanding to actually experiencing shifts in perception—thus, helping us to transform ourselves and our world. The insights and their practices are:

• Insight 1: The Way of the Hero

     Practices: Nonjudgment, Nonsuffering, Nonattachment, Beauty

• Insight 2: The Way of the Luminous Warrior

     Practices: Fearlessness, Nondoing, Certainty, Nonengagement

• Insight 3: The Way of the Seer

     Practices: Beginner’s Mind, Living Consequently, Transparency, Integrity

• Insight 4: The Way of the Sage

     Practices: Mastering Time, Owning Your Projections, No-mind, Indigenous Alchemy

I learned the four insights while under the tutelage of don Antonio. Together, we traveled from Lake Titicaca, the “sea on top of the world,” through the Amazon, to the ruins of the desert kingdoms of Peru. He believed, as do I, that the new Earthkeepers will come from the land of the eagle—that is, from America and Europe. Now is the time for full disclosure of the insights. I believe that don Antonio trained me so I would become a bridge, bringing these wisdom teachings from the ancient Laika into the 21st century.

     For the last twenty years, I have taught my students to use the insights for their personal healing and to assist others by working with the luminous blueprint of the body. Many of them have reported extraordinary results, healing themselves and transforming their lives and the lives of others. The insights have allowed them to become people of power and grace, and to walk the way of stewardship of the Earthkeepers.

     If you want to begin living your life differently and perceiving your experiences through new eyes, it’s important to go beyond mere understanding of the insights and actually follow their practices. This will allow you to change the core architecture of your luminous energy field. If you don’t follow the practices, you may be inspired by the insights, but you won’t be able to truly transform yourself. Mastering the energetic practices of the insights will free you from the confines of the story that has been written for you by your culture and your genes—the story of how you will live your life, react to the world around you, and die. You can become the storyteller of your own life, defying the old ideas about cause and effect and the limits of time.

     In the following chapters, you’ll learn about the four levels through which vibration and light creates all life: those of the serpent, jaguar, hummingbird, and eagle. What’s more, you’ll learn practical tools that will help you dream a healthy, abundant, and joyous world into being—for yourself, for your loved ones, and for all people and creatures. You will become an Earthkeeper.           

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Excerpted from The Four Insights by Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D. Published by Hay House, it is available now at retail and online bookstores.

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