Lessons in Courage: Peruvian Shamanic Wisdom for Everyday Life - Softcover

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.

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 as well as numerous scholarly and popular articles on the topics of shamanism and transformation. 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 don OscarOMQ's life-work to a wide audience. She is an endorsed teacher of the Pachakuti Mesa and an avid practitioner of earth-honoring traditions in her home community of Logan, Utah.