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alberto villoldo phd
January 2009 
Jaguar-Jumping Into a New Life
Diane
Recently, I borrowed the book Shaman, Healer, Sage: How to Heal Yourself and Others with the Energy Medicine of the Americas by Alberto Villoldo, PhD from my local library.
As I was flipping through the book, deciding what chapters I wanted to read (I don't always read my books in a linear fashion), I stopped at a section called Power Animals.
I was drawn particularly to the one that discussed Jaguar energy.
Villoldo had this to say:
People generally change not when things are going right but when things are going wrong. Crisis, therefore, becomes a time of opportunity...I have grown to believe in the metaphor that we have nine lives, like cats. When we reach the end of one of these lifetimes (other people would call them stages or phases in one's life), it's important to give the old self a decent burial, and then leap like a jaguar into who we are becoming. Otherwise, we can spend years patching and fixing an old self we have outgrown.
How many people (perhaps yourself) hold on to an old way of being well past any reasonable signals that it is time to let go? There are those who even say they prefer the devil they know to the devil they don't! Yet, I have come to find there is enormous creative energy that makes itself available once you have truly made up your mind to start a new path. And remember, fortune favors the bold.
I recently did a lot of clearing in my own life, and it's led to some uncomfortably quiet situations. Whereas once in a constant state of busy-ness, pursuing a multitude of projects that I truly, deep-down did not want to be involved in, now I had disentangled myself from what were ultimately time-wasting activities - only to not know what to do with the new chunks of time now made available! I know now not to just blindly jump in to new opportunities that present themselves, lest I find myself in the same situation as before. I will jump - like a jaguar (albeit perhaps like an uncoordinated jaguar!) - into new and well thought-out journeys, but only when I am ready.
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Hey, I understand about that quiet place that comes when some of the old energy patterns have been cleared, yet the energy hasn't catapulted forward yet either. It's not always comfortable, but I think there are invaluable lessons to be learned in that silence. I think the more we can relax into that not-knowing space, the more we begin to flower, although it might not become evident immediately. May the jaguar energy continue to fill you!
Thank you, Centria!
I agree, it's like a liminal space – as if I were standing on a threshold.
Take care,
Diane