Wake Up, Human
Wake Up, Human is an exploration of the native powers of the human being. This podcast examines the ways we humans have become disconnected—from our innate wisdom, from each other, and from the natural world—and explores practical strategies for reconnecting to wholeness. Drop in for information and inspiration to help us reawaken and heal ourselves, our relationships, and our planet.
Wake Up, Human
Ep.20: The Prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor
In this episode I explore the prophecy of the Eagle and Condor, which in its different iterations offers a powerful framework for understanding humanity's divisions between "north and south," and a possible path toward reconciliation and healing.
- This particular teaching of the prophecy originated with Quechua tribes of the Andes and speaks of a 500-year separation between two human paths of the eagle and the condor.
- It describes the eagle (North) as representing individualism, rationalism, and materialism, while the condor (South) embodies collectivism, intuition, and spirituality.
- The 500-year cycle (Pachakuti) of separation began around 1490 with Spanish colonization.
- Colonial exploitation continues today through extractive industries, destroying indigenous lands and traditional ways of life
- Reconnecting with our own indigenous roots can prevent cultural appropriation while healing our disconnection.
- Supporting indigenous communities to stay connected with their lands preserves irreplaceable wisdom and cultural continuity.
- Creating balanced exchanges between "eagle" and "condor" cultures benefits both through mutual respect and reciprocity.
- • The fulfillment of this prophecy depends on our conscious choices to bring these separated aspects of humanity back together
If you'd like to learn more about me or Wake Up, Human, visit my website at shannonwills.com. Please share this podcast with someone who might benefit from the conversation.
Hello everyone and welcome to episode 20 of the Wake Up Human podcast. Yep made it to episode 20. It seems like it took a really long time to get here, but hey, I'm grateful to be here, I'm grateful I made it and I'm so glad you're with me. I think this is a very special episode to celebrate the 20th episode of the podcast. I'm going to be talking about something that feels really important to me right now. It's really on my heart. It is the prophecy of the eagle and the condor. You may have heard of this, you may not have heard of this, but it is something. I think that if we dig into it and allow it to be a shared story or narrative that can guide us during this crazy time in our world, toward a more harmonious, spiritual, aligned, connected way of living on our planet, I believe the prophecy of the eagle and the condor could be a very potent narrative for our time to help us do that. So come along with me, let's explore this prophecy, and I hope it will be of some benefit to you and, if you're someone who's been with me for all of these 20 episodes and since the very beginning, I want to thank you for sticking with me for supporting me and for evolving with me on this changing journey. And if you're someone who's brand new or recently come to the podcast, I just want to say a very special welcome to you. I hope it's serving you and I hope you'll find something very special in this episode for you as well. Thank you so much for being here and I'll see you on the inside.
Shannon W.:Welcome to the Wake Up Human podcast. I'm Shannon Wills, a curious wanderer with a passion for digging into life's mysteries and mining them for wisdom to apply to our modern lives. This podcast explores the ways we humans have become disconnected from our native ways of knowing what we have lost and what we can gain by coming back into wholeness. Each episode will explore this theme of reconnecting with our innate human power in order to heal ourselves, our relationships and our planet. Thanks for spending some time with me today.
Shannon W.:Now let's jump into the latest installment of Wake Up Human. Hello, brothers and sisters, and thank you for joining me for this episode on the prophecy of the eagle and the condor. Hope that my headphones are okay. I'm still just using my Apple headphones. I talked about that a couple of episodes ago that it's so much easier for me to just do a quick and dirty episode on my Apple headphones rather than trying to make it perfect with the fancy podcast microphones that I have. I'm just really enjoying jumping on and rolling with it in a more fluid way with these headphones, so I hope they're sounding good for you. If they're not, please let me know. If you want me to go back to the fancy microphone and this is just not working for you, I want to know about that.
Shannon W.:So I'm talking today about this prophecy, the prophecy of the eagle and the condor, and that was inspired by a recent trip to Ecuador that I took. I've mentioned it a little bit on the podcast and I'm going to be talking about it more as weeks go by, I'm pretty sure, but it was during that trip to Ecuador that I was made aware again of the prophecy of the eagle and the condor, and it's been on my mind ever since, and I want to share some things that I learned about it here and some things that I think can be really beneficial that come from that prophecy for the people of Ecuador, for the indigenous peoples of the world and for all of us on the planet. I'm just going to say right off the top that by sharing this prophecy, as a white American who was able to go and have the resources and the time and the privilege to travel to South America, I want to recognize that privilege. I feel a responsibility to use my privilege to talk about the things that I learn in a way that can bring some voice or some support to people who don't have the same privileges that I do. So I do feel I've got a responsibility to talk about this, which you'll understand probably as you hear what I'm about to say, and it's not just a responsibility, it's also very close to my heart. I believe deeply in the things I'm going to be talking about today and some of the content and the philosophy and the ideas underlying today's episode are exactly the type of ideas and mindset that's underlying Wake Up Human in general. So, with that in mind, I do also want to give some thank yous here to, first of all, to my teacher and guide on the trip, itzhak Biri. The content of this podcast episode is heavily influenced by things I have learned from Itzhak what I've learned from him and his 25 plus years of studying at the feet of Indigenous teachers and living and breathing and working as a bridge between cultures and a conduit for this prophecy himself. Thank you, itzhak, for the inspiration, the guidance and the little kick to share this information with the world in the best ways that we know how. I also want to express my deepest gratitude to Don Manuel of the Satchula tribe of the Andes, don Basilio of the Sekopai tribe of the Amazon, and their family members and community, who welcomed us and trusted us with their teachings and their medicine during our visit. May my words honor and uplift your message. And, just a side note, something I want to say that's very important is that this is not my lineage, that I'm speaking as a conduit for this information, and if there's something that I say that turns out to be incorrect or misinformed, please assume that the error is mine. So, with all of that said, let's talk about this prophecy, shall we?
Shannon W.:The prophecy of the eagle and the condor is a prophecy that is believed to be originated by the Quechua tribes of the Andes in South America. It's an ancient prophecy could be thousands of years old actually, but the prophecy specifically speaks of a time when the peoples of the world are going to split into two different paths, we could say the path of the eagle and the path of the condor, the path of the eagle being the path of the north, the path of the condor the path of the eagle being the path of the north, the path of the condor being the path of the south. And the prophecy states that, after an era of a 500 year separation, that the eagle and the condor, after being separated for 500 years, will change course and move back toward reconciliation and that, after that 500 years, that turning back toward one another and that time of reunion will represent a rebirth, a reawakening for humanity, a reconnection between the great earth lineages that will actually result in a transformation to a higher state of consciousness for all humanity. I mean, it's a beautiful prophecy. And so around this prophecy, specifically, there is this idea of the Pachakuti. The Pachakuti is a 500-year cycle, in the Incan way of perceiving time, and the Pachacuti itself, a 500-year cycle, is a cycle of transformation. It's a cycle of destruction, transformation and renewal, and that in this particular Pachacuti cycle, there's one that just ended. And this cycle is one that is thought by this prophecy to have begun in the late 1400s, around 1490, at the onset of Spanish colonization of South America, and if we count forward 500 years from 1490, the. The other side of that is the 1990s. And it was during the 1990s, at that 500 year culmination of that pachacuti, that we began hearing more about this prophecy.
Shannon W.:This is not something that came from new age spirituality about the eagle and the condor. No, this actually came from the quechua people themselves and some of the indigenous peoples who recognized that the time had come for that cycle to come to an end and the transformation to a new era to begin. And of course we know what that 500 years of destruction and transformation was. It was a 500-year period of colonization and within that 500-year period the indigenous peoples of South America and North America were largely wiped out, largely destroyed. It was a time of domination, destruction, slavery, annihilation of entire cultures. And actually one way of looking at the prophecy of the eagle and the condor says that at that split between the two lineages of humanity that the condor would come to be nearly annihilated by the eagle. And you know, blessedly, the prophecy also states that there would be a potential at the end of that 500 years to come to bring those two lineage back toward one another and to end that cycle of colonial destruction and enter into a cycle of brotherhood, sisterhood, reconnection, harmonization and equal valuing of both human lineages. This is not to say oh well, because, oh, maybe 500 years has ended and now things have the potential to reharmonize. This is not to undermine in any way the last 500 years of brutalization that indigenous cultures in the Americas have suffered, and one of the reasons that this prophecy is so important to speak about is because it recognizes that truth and it also then has the opportunity to re-center those indigenous cultures as part of the story that they are an equal voice in humanity that over the past 500 years has been cut off and silenced and minimized and not given the deep respect that it deserves. And, let's make no mistake, the project of colonization continues.
Shannon W.:For example, when I was down in Ecuador with the group I was traveling with, we stopped at a refinery a petroleum refinery in the middle of the jungle. So here we are in the gorgeous Amazon rainforest, beautiful verdant, and we turn off a road and go back a mile or two off the road, maybe not even that much and from the road we could see the refinery fires coming up from the stacks where the petroleum is being burned In the middle of the rainforest. There's fire shooting into the sky from this refinery and we went and stopped and parked and got out and looked around a bit at the edge of this refinery and side note I looked to my left and I saw a truck drive by and the truck said on the side, halliburton. We all know what Halliburton stands for Colonial corporate interests coming into other countries and imposing its will in the name of profit and decimating land and culture and people in its wake for the sake of that profit. So there was that Halliburton truck right in the middle of the Amazon and that drilling and refining of petroleum is only one of the extractive industries that is destroying the rainforest. There's also logging and there's also palm oil corporations.
Shannon W.:And what has happened with the palm oil corporations? There is that the corporations come in, they pay off the indigenous people who live on those lands, convince them to lease out a part or all of their land in return for money, and then the company comes in and cuts down everything that's on that land and replants the land with palm oil trees. Now the palm oil trees then become a monoculture, and what we know about a monoculture is that when you have a monoculture, you no longer have diversity, you no longer have the same ecosystem that was there before and the variety of plants and animals that were there before. And so the people who maybe thought they were getting a good deal by being given some money from the palm oil companies now they've got the money, but they no longer have their land. They're not able to now hunt on their land, they're not able to access food from their land in the same way that they were before, because those food plants are no longer there and the animals who came to feed on the food plants are no longer there. And so for indigenous peoples who in whose entire, you know, livelihood and survival is dependent upon the biodiversity of their landscape, they're left living in basically a food desert surrounded by palm oil trees. And that food desert, even if it were replanted or repopulated with food or animals over time, it's going to take a very long time. So, basically, that colonial structure of a corporation coming in and disconnecting a culture from its lands in the name of corporate profit and then sucking that profit back out of those lands and back into the pockets of shareholders on Wall Street, that's ongoing colonization. That's still happening today. So I just want to name that. So one of the things that the prophecy of the eagle and the condor is doing is also naming that that there has been a time of separation, and that separation is not only between the eagle and the condor. The separation is also between the eagle and the heart, because to be able to go in and cut down the Amazon rainforest, in all its beauty and diversity, for the sake of profit is a sign that the humans have become disconnected from their hearts, and learning about this prophecy, I think, can help to highlight that and to heal it.
Shannon W.:So let's talk about the symbol of the eagle and the symbol of the condor. What are they, the symbol of the condor, what are they? Well, this is a prophecy of two birds. The prophecy would say the eagle, the northern bird, is the symbol of individualism, of rationalism, materialism. It's a representative of the masculine energy of the world, whereas the condor is more of a symbol of the collective, the intuitive, the spiritual, the feminine energies of the earth. When we look at the eagle itself as a bird, look at what the eagle is like. The eagle is powerful. The eagle is a killing bird. It kills for its food, it builds nests, it flies alone, it competes for its territory, it competes for its prey. Symbolically, it is the symbol of empires. It's the symbol of the Roman Empire, it's the symbol of the Empire of the United States of America. It's also one of the symbols of the Aztec Empire.
Shannon W.:And if we look then at the condor, what is the condor? The condor is not an individualistic type of bird. The birds live more communally. They fly in pairs, they share space, they share food. They don't hunt for their food and kill, but they eat the dead. And not only do they eat the dead, but they eat only what they need. They eat what they need and they leave the rest for others. So there's a difference in the energies here between the eagle and the condor.
Shannon W.:And something else symbolically about the two birds that I find especially touching is the condor is the highest flying bird, at least the highest flying bird in the Americas, and the eagle has the sharpest eye right. So if we look at the two together from the vantage point of the condor, we have a wide view and perspective of what's happening, whereas the eagle may have a lot more narrow view of what's happening and yet might be very clear-sighted and perceptive and sharp, and we can see this actually metaphorically in the indigenous cultures of the world and the indigenous cultures of the quechua in south america. This wider perspective of interconnectivity and movement within the larger ecosystem of the world, the perspective of the place of the human being within the larger ecosystem and the interconnection and web of relationships and web of time that connects us backward and forward with our ancestors and horizontally with all of the other beings that we share the planet with. Whereas if we look at the eagle, in contrast, and that sharp-eyed, pointed vision, it makes sense why the eagle is also sort of symbolized as something that manifests through materialism, rationality, specificity, individualism and technology. There's a sharp focus that's very clear and powerful. So you know, in the prophecy, with these two sort of powers of the human being separating off, we could see the benefit already of bringing those two back together and endowing ourselves with the combination of wide perspective and clear, clean focus. Put those two together and you get a very powerful being in the human being. You know, the eagle is not evil or bad. This isn't about right or wrong, eagle, bad, condor, good.
Shannon W.:The eagle symbolically and the eagle as a cultural lineage is also supremely connected to its ecosystem. It's just that the eagle can become so focused on its prey that it zones out everything around it in order to capture that thing that it wants. But its nature, its true nature, is still interconnection and being deeply embedded within the web of life. So let's just remember that too, we're all embedded in the web of life and we're all interdependent on every other being, whether we recognize it or not. So it's a. This moment is a potential moment of rebirth. Like this is a time that we all have opportunities, if we should choose to become midwives to birthing a new Pachacuti. It is time and we're all needed for it. The level of power and control that colonial and capitalist systems have over the entire planet is so powerful. It's so strong that the condor is not going to be able to save the world alone. The eagle has to sign on big time for that to happen and take responsibility. I mean speaking of some of that responsibility.
Shannon W.:Last year I attended the psychedelic science conference here in Denver, a massive conference on psychedelics, which was pretty amazing, but it was also disappointing in the way that, in the lack of Indigenous voices that were present at the conference and the lack of centering of those Indigenous voices, and partly because of that, there were events that were happening off-site from the conference that were specifically geared toward centering Indigenous voices, and I was absolutely blessed to be invited to one of these events, which was titled the Eagle and the Condor, and there was a panel of Indigenous speakers at this event and they were speaking about the prophecy of the eagle and the condor from their own perspectives in the condor, from their own perspectives, and part of the purpose of their sharing was to express to eagles who were there mostly white Americans we need you to hear our voices, we need you to honor our voices and we need you to use your voices to help amplify our voices, because our voices are not being heard. So, basically, if you're a white Westerner in America, you have a more privileged voice, whereas indigenous voices might be silenced and de-centered, a white voice may have some power. And so what was being said there was not. You know, look what you all have done. It was we need you back in our tent, we need you back in our camp, we need you to say the same things that we're saying. And there was one man who spoke eloquently on this theme and some of the things that he said really touched me, and I went to him afterward and I said thank you so much for what you've said. It was quite impactful. I hear you, I get the importance of the message you're sharing. And he said you're very welcome, please go, use your voice to amplify my message. And I said I will.
Shannon W.:And then, after the conference was over and after the event was over, I thought about that and I said, well, how do I do that? I'll find a way. I would like for this podcast to be one way that I do that. And so I'm really pleased to be talking about this topic, because that was last June and shortly after that event. You may or may not know this, but my life really kind of blew up and fell apart, and even the notes that I took at that conference I don't even know where they are. They're in a box somewhere, because everything got unraveled and went topsy-turvy. And when I get back to my notes I hope I can find my notes from that event, because some of the things that the Indigenous panelists said were absolutely powerful and profound and necessary to share and I want my voice to amplify those messages. So hopefully I'll find those notes sometime soon.
Shannon W.:So there's so much more I think I could say about the prophecy, but what I really want to give some time to is the question of what can we do. What can I do as an eagle who wants to be part of this solution? Well, I do have a couple of ideas and things I want to share with you. Some of them are pretty straightforward, and that is we can support indigenous communities to stay connected to their lands. I saw a quote the other day on a video that I was watching where there was an indigenous man and he said An indigenous person without their land is not indigenous. So just think about that.
Shannon W.:The identity of an indigenous person is absolutely linked to their lands. Their ability to practice their traditional ways of life is completely embedded in their landscape, and when you separate an Indigenous person from their land, you separate them from our identity. It's no wonder that the people of the world, who largely have been separated from our traditional lands, have forgotten who we are. I'm going to step out and say very confidently that the mental health crises that we have and so much of the depression, anxiety, trauma and other deep psychological, emotional, spiritual pains come from this lack of connection to our traditional life ways, which necessarily were connected to our lands, and one of the things that the colonial experiment did very well was to separate people all around the planet from their traditional lands. Indigenous people who are still able to live within their ancestral landscapes are precious. They are precious. They are people who are still connected to their original identity as human beings and they are our teachers, because so many of us have lost that connection and we don't even know how to get back there.
Shannon W.:So any way that we can support Indigenous peoples to stay connected to their lands or to be allowed to return back to their native lands, that is imperative. One way we can do that is to support organizations that help them to do so. There are a lot of organizations that are supporting Indigenous peoples to connect and to reconnect to their traditions, and I will put some of those resources in the show notes for this episode. Another thing that we can do is to show interest in those traditions that in a way, that is not cultural appropriation. So we know what cultural appropriation is right. Cultural appropriation is when we take learning or wisdom from a tradition that is not our own tradition and then we use it for our own benefit, whether it's to make money from it, turn it into a business, and we do that without permission from then. Using it in a way that benefits us, without some kind of reciprocal offering to the source of that knowledge, is cultural appropriation.
Shannon W.:So if we want to learn about other cultures, honor other cultures, respect other cultures, it's absolutely appropriate. And if we want to share the knowledge of those cultures, we need to do it with very clear permission and we need to do it with reciprocity. And we do not want to use those teachings without honoring and naming the teachers themselves. That said, if we can share what we've learned and if we can share the names of the teachers and the sources of the teachings, and if we can share the names of the teachers and the sources of the teachings, and if we can do that with reciprocity and honoring, that is something that we can do. We can act as a conduit or we can act as a bridge for sacred information, so that if we're fortunate enough, for example, if I'm fortunate enough to travel to Ecuador and to meet and study with indigenous healers, as I did on that trip, one way to honor that and to have it be of service is to come back and to speak about that with other people who didn't have that opportunity. But I need to do that in a reciprocal, respectful way. Now there's something else that we can do and this is something that's very important to me personally and that is we can connect with our own indigenous traditions.
Shannon W.:Even though we may have been separated from our traditional lands and cultures, every one of us is indigenous to this planet. Every one of us is indigenous to Mother Earth. We all come from Earth-honoring ancestors. We all carry ancient indigenous knowledge systems in our DNA, and there's a reason it's so tempting to appropriate the indigenous cultures and traditions of others. It's because when we don't have them ourselves, we recognize that there's something missing Right. It's because when we don't have them ourselves, we recognize that there's something missing right. Something deep down in our bones knows that we belong to the earth that we are wise and connected to, and we're hungry for that. And so what I would suggest to anyone who wants to be helpful in this process and wants to be a responsible eagle reconnect with your own traditions. Reconnect with your own traditions, reconnect with your own lands.
Shannon W.:And I know we can't all for people who are from the European diaspora. I know we can't all move back to Europe, for example. That's not available to us, but we can find out as much as we can about where we come from and we can attempt to learn about those traditions and those lineages. And there might be blind spots and there might be places that we come up against walls, but that, in my view, is better. That exploration is better than appropriating another culture and it will teach us about ourselves and it can feed us in a way that someone else's culture can't, or at least can't fully right, because we're wanting to know who we are. We're not going to find that out unless we turn around and look into it. So let's look into our own earth-honoring, ancestral cultures and lineages and let's find the wisdom that can be gleaned within those, and then we can bring that to the conversation. Indigenous people are asking us to do this. Certainly many of them are anyway. They're saying specifically find your own culture, bring that to the conversation. So let's do it.
Shannon W.:Another thing we can do is to foster connection through specific forms of reciprocity is to foster connections through specific forms of reciprocity, and what this can look like is sharing what we have with what they need. And so it's no secret that the eagles have a lot more money than the condors in general, and that the condors can benefit. Those indigenous communities can benefit from some infusion of financial abundance, and the eagles have plenty of financial abundance to share en masse. And so what does that look like in a way that it could actually be honoring? So it doesn't look like handouts, but it can look like exchange, mutual exchange, exchange. It can look like them offering their services for their creations and us paying money for those. So, um, going down and paying for healing or paying for, um, a beautiful, a beautiful piece of artwork or other, some kind of service that is offered. We're actually in relationship in exchange. The eagle and the condor are in exchange, so, um, both sides have some value, because we're not trying to create dependence, right. What we're trying to create are opportunities for mutual exchange where both sides recognize they have something to give, and that's a form of rebalancing.
Shannon W.:Another thing that we can do and this is especially true if we're traveling in indigenous areas but we can become ambassadors for the eagles. It feels kind of funny to say, but what I mean by that is the condors have seen a lot of suffering at the hands of the eagles. That is an understatement, and that continues to be the case of Ecuador, the area where the palm plantations abound is that there are children growing up in that culture whose only experience of a white person is someone who either represents the palm oil corporations or someone who comes as a Christian missionary wanting to convert them from their indigenous traditions and life ways. And so to be an ambassador is to be a person who shows up differently than that, a person who shows up without an agenda other than to learn and respect and befriend. One of the things that I think Itzhak was saying was you know, we can show these kids that white people from the North are not all palm oil salesmen and missionaries, telling them that they're evil. We can show them that we're people who, who value and respect and love what they have to offer. And we can reconnect with sort of the true, the true and beautiful eagle spirit, right, the clear sight, the freedom, the independence, and bring that sense of brotherhood and sisterhood between the eagle and the condor to bear on those relationships when we're coming, and we're not asking for anything other than to know them, and I love that.
Shannon W.:In the eagle and the condor prophecy they are both birds. This is not accidental, I I understand, but the eagle and the condor are very different, but can we see where they're more similar than they are different? And so if we can live according to this prophecy, that means living with the perspective that we are more same than we are different and that we can complement each other and that we can be stronger together than we are apart each other, and that we can be stronger together than we are apart. You know, there's a whole generation of condors up and coming, and if they can be shown by our interests and our mutual respect that their traditions are valuable and honored, if they can see, oh, eagles are coming to visit because, not because they want to take something from us, but because they respect us.
Shannon W.:This is something that I've been taught by Itzhak and others that this is giving an opportunity for young people growing up within indigenous cultures. Knowing that their tradition is valuable gives them another option. They don't necessarily have to go and work for a palm oil plantation. They don't have to lease out their land to a corporation. They don't have to leave their families and their traditional lands to go work as a computer programmer or a banker in the city. There's actually a potential that the young people who are growing up into the shamanic traditions and becoming shamans and teachers and healers could actually make a living doing that work. And that's it's imperative because what we're also hearing from elders I've heard this directly and I've heard and seen it spoken elsewhere is that if the young people don't believe that they're going to be able to have a safe and secure livelihood from following their traditional ways, they're not going to follow those traditional ways.
Shannon W.:They're going to be able to have a safe and secure livelihood from following their traditional ways. They're not going to follow those traditional ways. They're going to go to where they need to go to have the money to be able to survive. And that's where the lineage gets broken. That's where the knowledge of the elders is in danger of not being passed to the younger generations and that cord of connection is pretty fragile right now in a lot of places. So supporting young people to stay with their lands is also supporting those cords to stay intact so the knowledge doesn't get lost. And this comes back to that theme of reciprocity again, because if there's an equal exchange or if there's a balance of exchange, where there's a cultural exchange from south to north, and if there can be a financial and a technological exchange from north to south and indigenous people, having access to some of those technological advances could actually be beneficial for them in helping them to maintain their connections to their land and their traditions.
Shannon W.:An example of this is that one of the young people we met when we were there in Ecuador, an indigenous man who his name is Arley, and he is an indigenous young man who, because of the interconnection between North and South and the fact that now they do have access to the internet in the plants and he's learned how to be a specialist in planting trees and reforestation. And not only has he reforested, along with his sister reforested and replanted their own land, which they had previously cut down, because they were convinced they needed to cut it down to raise cattle. And then that didn't work for them for the same reason that I mentioned before, because it turned out that they might be raising cattle, but then they didn't have access to the plants and the animals who they had previously relied upon for their survival. And so he recognized this within his own home space and they began reforesting their own land, and they began replanting fruit trees and starting to have access to the fruits as they began to fruit again, and then he began to start replanting in other areas around, not only their family home but other areas nearby, actually helping his neighbors to reforest their own lands as well. And he's now working with a non-profit organization in the area that is empowering people through reforestation to refuse those enticing offers of the palm oil corporations that are coming and attempting to buy them out. And they're saying we recognize the value of our biodiversity and we know how to take care of ourselves. We don't need your money and we don't want it because we know what you're trying to do.
Shannon W.:So the technology of the eagle, in a very real and tangible way, can equip the condor with the education they need to defend their lands and their traditions from the outside influences who are working to take it away. And, in fact, the organization that Arle is working with is also making use of technology. They have some amazing technological tools that they're using to map out the areas of reforestation and deforestation and the encroachment of the palm plantations into the Amazon and, using their technology, they are able to reveal the extent of the devastation that's happening and also map out their strategies to be able to help the people in the communities to be able to make good choices to protect their lands, and right now I can't think of the name of the organization that Arlea is working for. I promise I will get the name of that organization and put it in the show notes with the rest of the resources. So that's just an example about how we can see how the eagle and the condor might be able to dance together in a way that is beneficial for both, because, you know, the preservation of the Amazon and the ability of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon to push up, to push back against multinational corporations that are coming in and deforesting the Amazon. I hope everyone listening understands that that's a benefit to the entire planet.
Shannon W.:Okay, I think I'm getting toward the end here, so just bear with me. I only have a couple more things to say. So we just need to recognize this is happening. The world is transforming. Yes, there's a lot of resistance. There's a lot of resistance coming from the people who already have the power and don't want to lose it. There's also a lot of resistance from people who are afraid of change, who don't know what this will mean. You know, centering someone else's voice does that mean de-centering my own? Does that mean I lose my voice? There's some, there's a lot of people who are white knuckling and say you know, over my dead body, are you going to change the tradition that I've grown up with and tell me I need to be different? And there's my understanding that there's older generations of condors who also are saying that would never happen. We can't imagine that white people will ever be any different and that colonialism could ever end. And they're just not. They don't have the language of the eagle and the condor, so we can have some compassion for that.
Shannon W.:I did ask Itzhak about this, for white people who feel guilty about this whole thing. Right, we've got a lineage. We come from a lineage of settler colonialists and we've seen what our ancestors, or people like our ancestors, have done to the planet. There can be a lot of guilt about this and it can leave us questioning. There can be a lot of guilt about this and it can leave us questioning where do I have a right to be? Do I have a right to say anything about what happens next?
Shannon W.:And what Itzhak said was he was like hmm, well, maybe it's okay to feel a little guilty about this, or a lot guilty. It's good to feel the pain of that. That means we're informed, that means we care. But he said we don't want to get stuck in that guilty feeling because that's not going to help us or anyone else. And he said it's helpful to remember that it's not specifically us who did this 500 years ago, 300 years ago, 200 years ago, it's our ancestors and and we being downstream of those lineages, now we have the opportunity to heal that.
Shannon W.:So, yes, we recognize where we came from, but we also recognize that we are not them. You know, it makes sense that the prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor came from the Condors, because the Condor has the higher perspective and the prophecy itself. If we look at it in large scales of time, it can help us to frame what's happening today within that larger perspective. Freaking out because of everything that's happening right now, we can stay calm, we can work together and we can recognize that what we're in right now doesn't last forever. We can make a change, a new cycle can come, and if we're working with that bigger perspective in mind, we're not trying to solve every problem immediately right now. I mean there are problems that need to be solved right now, but if we're freaking out about them with a short-sighted perspective, we're more likely to cause more damage than we are. To be able to find really thoughtful, workable solutions to the problems we have, we need to be clear, thoughtful, steady, compassionate. We work together and we can change the world. And what I hear is it's not a change that's going to happen in our lifetimes, but our children and our grandchildren can see a different world if we do it right. So, instead of feeling guilty, we can feel committed. What our ancestors did, we can help to heal. And so I think what Itzhak said was something like recognize it wasn't you see it as part of the bigger story and then build bridges. So I want to share just one last thing that we can do to help out toward this prophecy.
Shannon W.:Something we can do and I think we should be doing anyway is we can get off the mainstream media, completely off. The mainstream media feeds so much negativity in us. It feeds so much division. It feeds hopelessness, depression, apathy, a lack of agency. There's nothing I can do. Like things are just too bad. What can little old me do? I might as well just keep shopping at Walmart and Amazon. And, importantly, it also feeds divisiveness, hatred, us versus them thinking, and to the extent that we allow our consciousness to be fed by that narrative of separation and conflict and division.
Shannon W.:We're just buying into the agenda behind the mainstream media companies that wants to keep us all asleep so it can continue unabated with that capitalist agenda that includes profiting from whatever it wants to, including the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and the corporate takeover of indigenous lands. So if we want to contribute to the disassembling of that agenda that is so destructive, we need to be able to extract our minds from the control that that agenda is having over us via the mainstream media. Let's bring ourselves back into a place of the larger perspective that the condor can give us. Let's bring us back into the place of the clear seeing and the pure power of the eagle. That is our birthright also as human beings our own personal power, and that power is needed from every single one of us as an individual if we're going to contribute to healing this world. And to do that we need to unplug from the mainstream media and take our power back.
Shannon W.:There's so much more I can say, but I know I've said enough and I hope that what I've said has been valuable to you. I'm trying to do what that indigenous man asked me to do last year outside the psychedelic science conference, when he said please use your voice to share this message too. You know? One more thing I learned about the prophecy is that the prophecy is not guaranteed the reconnection and the transformation and the birthing of a more harmonious next chapter on our planet. It depends on what we do. It's our choices that are going to make or break the manifestation of that prophecy. So that's why we all need to use our voices, and that man at the conference was correct. I'm just one voice, he's one voice, but if all of us speak together and we combine forces in body, mind and spirit together, we can help the prophecy of the eagle and the condor come true.
Shannon W.:That's it for this episode of the Wake Up Human podcast. Thank you so much for listening and I especially appreciate you being here for episode number 20. If you'd like to learn more about me or Wake Up Human, you can visit my website at ShannonWillscom. I will endeavor to put some resources into the show notes for this episode to highlight some of the people and organizations that I talked about during the episode. If you know someone who you think might enjoy this episode or this podcast, please forward it to them. This podcast is a labor of love for me and I'm thrilled when it can be a benefit to someone else and reach someone new. May my words contribute to the upliftment of humanity and all creatures. Many blessings, best wishes and I'll talk to you next week.