Many initially come to the work of the medicine wheel hoping to heal from physical and emotional ailments. They might not realize there are other gifts of the wheel too: opportunities for reconnection with Spirit, access to the wisdom of sages past and future, and mastery over the fears that hold them back from experiencing greater freedom and well-being.
The wisdom wheel helps you discover that fear is part of life – it’s unavoidable. Learn to master your fear and you may still face some terrifying circumstances right up until you’re on your deathbed. However, your life won’t be ruled by fear. Fear will serve you as a warning system, as it’s meant to, but it will never have you in its grip for very long.
Fear is a primitive response to a real or perceived threat. The body responds instantly to danger so that we can flee to safety, put up a fierce fight, or freeze in the hope that a predator will think we’re dead and leave us be. The problem is that in the face of an imagined danger our brains begin operating like a software program that starts up automatically and sucks up our computer’s processing capabilities, completely distracting us from what we want to achieve. To live consciously, free from the perceived fears that weigh us down, including old baggage about how we are supposed to respond and act that has been handed down through the generations, we need a software upgrade. It helps if we also get a hardware upgrade to run the new programming and we can do this by making dietary and lifestyle changes. You can learn more about the value of those changes in my book Grow a New Body.
In your journey through the wisdom wheel, you can release your fear of sickness and dying young and choose a lifestyle and spiritual practice that will lead to a long and healthy life. You can also surrender to the unknown possibilities that you are currently oblivious to because you’re afraid of transformation – afraid to change your job, afraid of your living situation, your relationship, your image of yourself, and so on.
Medicine people see the universe as actively conspiring on our behalf. We just have to let ourselves be guided by a vision co-created with Spirit. The universe collaborates with us in many ways. When we align with it, we are in ayni – in harmony with its loving and wise ways, giving and receiving in balance. Contrast this with a greed-driven way of living in which there’s never enough to quell your fear and let you relax into the peacefulness of knowing that the universe supports you. There is never enough money, security, or power to keep the fear at bay. It seems something or someone is always nippng at your heels, ready to pounce and take away all you have. The only real cure for that feeling that life’s an endless battle for survival of the fittest is to be in ayni.
When you work with the wisdom wheel you will encounter gateways into the invisible realms: the lower world and the upper world. You will work with serpent, jaguar, hummingbird, and eagle. You will retrieve a power animal that can lend its energy to you. The wisdom wheel allows us to use our healing, exploratory, sage, and visionary powers to co-create a much better world for ourselves, for other people, and for Mother Earth.
Are you ready to let go of fear and co-create beyond you and yours?
