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Courageous Dreaming: How Shamans Dream the World into Being

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Modern physics tells us that we’re dreaming the world into being with every thought. Courageous Dreaming tells us how to dream our world with power and grace. The ancient shamans of the Americas understood that we’re not only creating our experience of the world, but are dreaming up the very nature of reality itself—that is, "life is but a dream." When you don’t dream your life, you have to settle for the nightmare being dreamed by others. This book shows how to wake up from the collective nightmare and begin to dream a life of courage and grace, a sacred dream that shamans throughout time have known and served.Alberto Villoldo reveals ancient wisdom teachings that explain how to birth reality from the invisible matrix of creation; and reveals how we can interact with this matrix to dream a life of peace, health, and abundance. He shows us that courage is all that is required to create the joy we desire!

204 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2008

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531 people want to read

About the author

Alberto Villoldo

71 books353 followers
By his mid-20s Alberto Villoldo was the youngest clinical professor at San Francisco State University. He was directing his own laboratory, the Biological Self-Regulation Lab, investigating how energy medicine and visualization could change the chemistry of the brain.

One day in his biology laboratory, Alberto realized that his investigation had to get bigger instead of smaller; Alberto needed to find a system larger than the neural networks of the brain. The microscope was the wrong instrument to answer the questions he was asking. Many others were already studying the hardware – Alberto Villoldo wanted to learn to re-program the SYSTEM. Anthropological stories hinted that there were people around the globe who claimed to know such things, including the Inka in Peru, the few remaining “shamans” in today’s modern civilization.

As he did initial research into the Inka, Alberto decided that he needed to personally investigate the roots of the Inka civilization itself to collect the vestiges of a 5,000-year-old energy medicine known for healing through Spirit and light.

A few weeks later, knowing this investigation was not going to be a “part time” pastime or a brief sabbatical for a few weeks’ time, Alberto Villoldo resigned his post at the university.

University colleagues thought Alberto Villoldo was absolutely mad.
Not to be dissuaded, Alberto Villoldo traded his laboratory for a pair of hiking boots and a ticket to the Amazon. He was determined to learn from researchers whose vision had not been confined to the lens of a microscope, from people whose body of knowledge encompassed more than the measurable, material world that Alberto had been taught was the ONLY reality. He wanted to meet the people who sensed the spaces between things and perceived the luminous strands that animate all life.

Scattered throughout the remnants of this ancient Amazonian empire were a number of sages or “Earth Keepers” who remembered the ancient ways. Alberto traveled through countless villages and hamlets and met with scores of medicine men and women. The lack of a written body of knowledge meant that every village had brought its own flavor and style to the healing practices that still survived.

For more than 10 years, Alberto Villoldo trained with the jungle medicine people. Along the way, he discovered that his journey into shamanism had actually been guided by his personal desire to become whole.

In healing his own soul wounds, Alberto Villoldo walked the path of the wounded healer and learned to transform old pain, grief, anger and shame to sources of strength and compassion.
From the Amazon, Alberto Villoldo trekked the coast of Peru, from Nazca, the site of gigantic markings on the desert floor that depict power animals and geometric figures, to the fabled Shimbe lagoons in the north, home to the country’s most renowned sorcerers. Then, in Lake Titicaca – the Sea on Top of the World – Alberto Villoldo collected the stories and healing practices of the people from which, the legends say, the Inka were born.

Through it all, Alberto Villoldo discovered a set of sacred technologies that transform the body, heal the soul, and can change the way we live and the way we die.
These ancient teachings and understandings explain that a Luminous Energy Field (LEF), whose source is located in infinity, surrounds us. The LEF acts as a matrix that maintains the health and vibrancy of the physical body.

Today, Alberto Villoldo is a best-selling author and founder in the world-renowned Institute of Energy Medicine, The Four Winds Society. In all of his teachings and writings, Alberto shares the experience of infinity’s easy ability to heal and transform us, to free us from the temporal chains that keep us fettered to illness, old age and disease.

Over the course of two decades with the shamans in the jungles and high mountains of the Andes, Alberto Villoldo would discover that we are more than flesh and bone, that we are a

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5 stars
140 (41%)
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125 (36%)
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58 (17%)
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
Profile Image for D.M. Webb-Benjamin.
Author 1 book
September 17, 2020
One of those magical books...
It took a load off my shoulders when he says: We can't and shouldn't try to save the world. We will save the world if we save ourselves and the rest will fall into place with us. Something like that if I remember correctly. And that's what I did. I fixed myself.
Profile Image for Pat.
226 reviews1 follower
August 25, 2021
"In Inka, Hopi, Tibetan, Mayan, and other aboriginal societies throughout the world, the elders carry on the tradition of gathering around a fire when the moon is full and dreaming of a world that they’d want their children’s children to inherit.... At serpent, they know they need only sit by the fire. At jaguar, they realize they must bring with them their love and curiosity. At hummingbird, they offer their contribution without comprehending how it fits in to the collective dream. At eagle, they see the larger picture before them and understand the totality of the dream without being able to express or define it. They feel immersed in love, connected to all." This could be a description of my book study group. I'll be proposing this to be our next read. It will focus our intent. I foresee significant change after adopting the practices and doing the exercises, change not only in individuals and in the group, but radiating out into our community and bringing into being our collective dream of living in love and peace.
Profile Image for Claire.
811 reviews366 followers
April 13, 2020
After having already read a few of his books, and in particular The Four Insights: Wisdom, Power, and Grace of the Earthkeepers which is excellent, I immediately turned to this to be my daily morning read during this period of confinement we are currently in and what a Godsend.

It may help to already be familiar or acquainted with the four levels of perception within shamanic philosophy, but perhaps not. Being already familiar with that way of seeing, this book beautifully expands it further into ways of dreaming, levels of consciousness, levels of courage, of beauty.

It shows us how we are all living within our own stories and that they can either stay stuck in the past and put on repeat, or we can rewrite them and courageously dream a better version of ourselves and of our future.
Our situation may be a difficult one, but it's only a nightmare if we choose to make that our reality. By taking the facts and writing a new story with them, we can script a different experience of reality.

Holding on to old stories creates imprints in our energetic body or LEF (luminous energy field) even after the facts and circumstances change, those resentments and bad feelings create energetic cords that tie us to the players in the drama, which is why we then get triggered so easily.

Alberto Villoldo uses illuminating metaphors to help s see our situations from a different perspective and provides suggestions for how to change. Understanding our own tendencies is the first step, rewriting a better narrative of our lives follows. Learning to sever unwelcome ties and clear karmic baggage, all the better.

Seeing our lives as river with a accumulation of silt and how to clear it is liberating, decoding the symbols and metaphors of our dreams, where our subconscious solutions lie, tipping us off to what our conscious mind resists recognising.
We fight the current, yet we never clean the river.

Especially now, we are all being forced to confront what lies within us, the build up of silt that requires clearing, so the crystalline waters of our lives can flow more easily.
When you start pouring beauty into your river, you'll find that the waters are becoming clearer every day. To practice beauty, you must give up the ugly stories in which someone is a victim and someone else is the perpetrator. practicing beauty means recognising what is pure and of value in every situation and in every person.

We are not in control of where the river flows, only of how clean we keep its waters.

I think I may have to go back to chapter one and read it again, to be sure the message sinks in, I think that might help the waters flow clean.
Profile Image for Roy Madrid.
164 reviews2 followers
June 8, 2021
I noticed that I’ve read a lot of self-help books this year. This is one of the better ones.

There are two key features of this book that I think make it unique from anything else you’ll read on the topic: the forthrightness of his questions/exercises and the ideological framework used to explain the ideas.

This man doesn’t really waste time in getting to the hard-hitting questions that make you really get to the bottom of your sufferings and that is SO MUCH APPRECIATED. The best part, though, is that the questions feel kind/loving in their delivery rather than targeted. You can sense that this man really just wants to share his knowledge to help.

That said, the 4 factor framework he used to organize the ideas was great but something that takes getting used to. As he notes, these are the teaches of ancient traditions of Peruvian shamans so the ‘labels’ might not jive with hardcore westerners. Nonetheless, they are incredibly effective at communicating not just an idea but a feeling.

I would recommend this to few simply due to the audacity of being the book represents and the word choice for the labels as both could be major turn-offs for some.
Profile Image for Janette.
Author 44 books16 followers
September 20, 2024
A stunning and miraculously beautiful read

This is the second title that I've read by Alberto Villoldo and it has been even better than the first one I read, Shaman, Healer, Sage. Saying thank you does not feel sufficient so I say bless you, dear author, for this book.
5 reviews1 follower
April 19, 2009
I enjoyed reading this book.This book talks about our dreams and how, through our stories, we make them reality. Four levels of consciousness are discussed that we may dream(physical, mind, spirit, universal). By dreaming differently, it discusses how we can change our nightmares. This book discusses how courage (at four levels) plays a significant role in changing our dreams. It delves into
cleaning up our thoughts and emotions rather than fighting events in our lives. Some steps are shown so one can start co-creating again.
185 reviews1 follower
December 29, 2019
I have had this book on my bookshelf for at least a year. I finally took the time to read it. It has very little to do with the shamans but more about how to improve your negative thinking. One can approach any difficulty with his analogies of an eagle, hummingbird, jaguar or reptile consciousness. In the end I was more relieved than gladden that I had read this book.
Profile Image for Mousellina.
72 reviews
February 1, 2025
TRIGGER WARNING: mental health, PTSD, childhood abuse

DISCLAIMER: This will be a long rant with a hopefully useful summary of the useful but kind of spoiler key points at the end.

In short, this book is like pop psychology for those who want something a bit more mystical and exotic and generally are doing okayish in their life. Maybe slightly bored, maybe wanting more money or a better love life, etc. This is NOT a book for people with anxiety, depression, troubled childhood, chronic illness, etc.

This book has been constantly provoking a lot negative response in me and I wish I gave up on it before I started properly hating it. I usually don’t hate books. I love books. Sometimes I find certain titles boring or useless, I might get outraged by a statement but I quickly move on, and I might dislike them but I do not hate them.

I have been trying everything under the sun to help myself for the last 10 years, I am definitely not stuck in a victim mentality and I persevered with the book hoping that perhaps I will find something useful that can be applied. This book kept triggering my nervous system to go into fight or flight. I really should’ve listened to my body instead of my brain! Lesson learned, but not from the book itself…

There definitely are some really good ideas in here and I will summarise them at the end of my review. However the big bulk of the book is just a disorganised rambling, judgement, hypocrisy and toxic positivity.

Author is trivialising mental health problems,
according to him being autistic with severe lifelong C-PTSD is the same as being a healthy person bummed out about a minor nuisance of daily life, that a severe psychosis where person would scream in agony is kind of the same as feeling like you don’t have enough in life and want to prove your worth by buying a fancy car. Lol, excuse me?

And did you know that the way to shift it is like a snap of a finger? Because if you are not doing it then you are choosing to suffer. Very little of actual “how to” and lots of victim shaming. Great.

If you are writing a book with an intention of healing people (as you have repeated yourself several times) then perhaps try to be more empathetic and more helpful? So far instructions on how you can actually put something in practice are vague and scarce. For example; the first exercise tells me how to let go:

Imagine a person and forgive them.

Who would have thought! Look, if you are upset over a minor thing, I get it, it makes sense. But if you are literally clinically disabled because of an amount of trauma your mother put you through, do you really think that simple thing like that will work? I swear, you can find better techniques of letting go for free online (google shamanic cord cutting). Way before I picked up this book, I have sat down and I have went through intention of forgiveness many times and guess what, it didn’t work, it still comes back at every opportunity it gets.

Another one was - practice mindfulness. That one is very true, but are you aware that people with trauma need to titrate it so they don’t retraumatise themselves due to the low nervous system capacity? Ask any nervous system expert. So imagine someone haven’t had much reading done on the subject and they trust the author and do what he says and they end up needing to go to ER as a result? What a great healer.

Author seems to be completely out of touch. He seems to be dreaming his wonderful dream which is great and good luck to him, but he doesn’t know how to teach someone else to do the same. He lumps everyone together, judges, uses mocking language in few parts of the book and thinks that everything is simple and self explanatory. Basically if he understands how to do something he is under no obligation to explain it to another. What he feels inspired to do is point out all of our mistakes and judge even his own friends. When I picked up this book I expected it to be a more kind and spiritual vibe…

If you are looking for a good book on how to feel better and live a happier life - I suggest Wild Creature Mind by Steve Biddulph. It’s intelligent, compassionate and practical. It’s also trauma informed and backed up by the up to date science. That person will make even the most anxious individual feel safe within minutes of reading. Straight into parasympathetic which makes reading and assimilation of the information effortless. That is what healer energy should be like.

THE FOLLOWING IS A KEY POINT SUMMARY OF WHAT YOU CAN DO TO DREAM A BETTER LIFE

Practice forgiveness
Set intentions
Rewrite your story
Don’t be rash
Infuse your actions with meaning
Celebrate achievements
Practice gratitude
Practice mindfulness, listen to bodily sensations Perhaps try yoga, or at least meditate
Don’t fixate on details
Do not judge
Write haikus about your struggles
Do small acts of kindness
Be honest
Pay attention to signs and patterns in your life
Don’t try to control
Practice non attachment and don’t be afraid of death

More or less, sorry if I forgot to add anything. All good points but get easily lost among lots of blabbering, if I didn’t have some previous experience with mindfulness and psychology, I wouldn’t even register many of those points because it was so hard to stay engaged. I am giving the extra star for those little nuggets of wisdom but to be fair they are not that unique.







This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Dianadumitru.
2 reviews
September 30, 2011
A how-to-live-brave book, about our power to change the dreams we are experiencing as so called reality everyday into something beautiful and great, for our greater good. I see things differently now. Read it. Alberto is a very gifted writer and spiritual guide.
Profile Image for Lana.
5 reviews
December 9, 2014
Too much focus on the negative sides of human nature, creating a negative feeling while reading this book. Nothing I found inspiring. Sadly, it actually has very little to do with Shamans or their teachings. All in all, a waste of time.
Profile Image for Andee Marley.
213 reviews17 followers
December 7, 2013
I liked this book. I like all of his books. They are hard to review with words.
Profile Image for Corrine Ardoin.
Author 6 books27 followers
March 11, 2022
In Courageous Dreaming, Alberto Villoldo guides his readers away from the habitual behaviors and thought processes, beliefs and perceptions that keep us, at the very least, stuck in old patterns or, worse, making our lives miserable. Through the use of helpful exercises and clear explanations with examples, he offers a way to find the courage within ourselves to not only begin to see what we are doing to stall our dreams, but to also rise above the day-to-day perception of what we commonly call “reality,” into our highest dreaming capabilities. Engaging the lessons offered in his book, each reader has the gracious opportunity to become aware of what they are doing to muddy the waters of their perception and learn instead how to step in to a better way of engaging the broader reality previously unknown to them.

Published in 2008, Alberto Villoldo continues to provide us all with a way forward into healing and improving our lives, and all life, if we dare to courageously dream a world of beauty into being.
Profile Image for Rein .
200 reviews2 followers
Read
March 27, 2025
Na het lezen van De vloek van de nootmuskaat van Amitav Ghosh wilde ik meer weten van het sjamanisme en het boek van de Cubaan Alberto Viloldo, die onderzoek heeft gedaan naar de spirituele kant ervan, leek me een geschikt boek daartoe. De schrijver gaat ervan uit dat we in een nachtmerrie leven en dat we daaraan moeten ontsnappen. De tekst is erg omslachtig en het duurt lang voordat hij uitkomt bij de vier bewustzijnsniveau’s die er zijn. Het slangenbewustzijn staat voor het instinctmatig handelen, het jaguarbewustzijn heeft betrekking op ons denken en handelen, het kolibriebewustzijn strekt zich uit tot onze zielskant en het adelaarsbewustzijn verschaft ons een ruimere blik op onszelf. Hiermee corresponderen vier soorten van moed. Tenslotte noemt Vivoldo nog drie kerndisciplines, waaronder het leven in waarheid en de bereidheid elk moment te sterven. Vooral het krachtige einde van het boek haalt het geheel op.
Profile Image for Socrate.
6,745 reviews269 followers
January 13, 2022
Cosmosul este astfel creat, încât orice viziune avem despre noi sau despre lume va deveni realitate. De îndata ce suntem constienti de puterea pe care o avem, începem sa ne antrenam muschii curajului. Atunci putem sa visam cu curaj: sa lasam deoparte credintele care ne limiteaza si sa trecem dincolo de fricile noastre. Astfel,putem începe un vis cu adevarat original, care germineaza în sufletul nostru si da roade în viata noastră.
331 reviews
October 17, 2024
Walking with the archetypes

A walk around the wheel with courage by dreaming into existence the world free of our stuff. The author takes the reader through the four archetypes as we look at everything in our lives. I did the lessons as I went through the book and found it in depth work.
Profile Image for Alice.
Author 3 books38 followers
September 16, 2019
Really great introspective exercises, beyond the insights and the message to live life more fully.
Profile Image for Gwen Fricker.
63 reviews
February 26, 2016
Must say it was not really what I expected.....but it really hit the spot at this point in my life. This book will definitely affect each person differently....it all depends on where you are in 'your soul's progress'. I have started another one of Villoldo's books.
5 reviews6 followers
October 7, 2009
One of the better books I've read this year. Very inspiring.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews

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