Changing the Dream: A Pilgrimage to Machu Picchu

By Laura Anderson and Michael Anderson

Changing the Dream is a true story where two spiritual seekers drawn to Machu Picchu, Peru, to energetically save the world found among the beauty of the ancient ruins personal initiation, epiphany, and a sense of completion. Their pilgrimage to change the dream of the planet changed their own dream.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Oct 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781452580623

Laura Anderson

Michael and Laura have been working and teaching with various energy healing modalities since the early 1990’s. Reiki Master Teachers and Shamanic practitioners, they are Natural Health Facilitators, intuitive consultants, energy workers/healers, readers and teachers. They practice Nature Spirituality and profess the Unity principles. Along with their classes in yoga, T’ai Chi, meditation, and Reiki, they teach Ceremonial Shamanism while sharing the Munay-Ki Rites. After completing the nine Munay-Ki Rites of the Peruvian Mountain Shaman they felt called to Machu Picchu, Peru where their pilgrimage led them both to be initiated by the Guardian Spirit of the area. This experience was so life changing and profound that when they returned, their main focus became sharing the teachings of the Beauty Way, Ceremonial Shamanism. This book is compiled from their lectures, to be used by readers for self-empowerment, and for teachers of the Munay-Ki Rites. Laura is degreed with a Masters in Holistic Nutrition, a Bachelors of General Studies from Texas Christian University, and in Professional Interior Design through the Sheffield School of Interior Design. They are both certified as Sei Chem and Tibetan Reiki Master Teachers and in T’ai Chi, Yoga, and Hwal Ki Do Korean Acupressure. Along with their classes, they provide private healing sessions using Hwal Ki Do, Reiki, Crystals, Feng Shui, Shamanic Soul Retrieval, Numerology, Animal Cards, Runes, Andean Sol Rocks, and lifestyle/nutritional counseling. Contact the authors at WalkingtheBeautyWay.com or Ftha-ul.com

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Copyright © 2013 . Laura and Michael Anderson.

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ISBN: 978-1-4525-8061-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-8062-3 (e)

Printed in the United States of America.

Balboa Press rev. date: 12/04/2013

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Contents

Forward By Janeda Easter

Introduction - Changing The Dream

White Buffalo Dream, Beginning The Pilgrimage

Stepping Stones To Peru

Animal Revelations

The Children Kept Calling

Fears Of The Unknown

In Peru

Cusco And The Sacred Valley

Train Ride And Day One At Machu Picchu

Offerings And Messages

Back To Cusco

Lima And The Museums

Reflections On The Journey

For Michael,

my husband, best friend and constant companion.

Your unconditional love and support has made me who I am today. Thank you.

And for our Children and Grandchildren,

You are our legacy! May your dreams also manifest and life be an adventure.

A special thank you to Janeda Easter,

my good friend and magazine publisher who loved my photos and story so much she both encouraged and helped me compile them. Her assistance made this book possible.

All photos including the cover were taken by Laura and Michael Anderson.

Forward by Janeda Easter

When my beautiful friend, Laura Anderson, asked me to help her compile her notes and photographs into a book I was thrilled. Her husband, Michael had been my T’ai Chi instructor and I had always admired his gentle spirit. Laura had been to fairs I had worked and had read my animal spirit cards. I felt honored she would consider me for this task.

She showed up with a flash drive full of some of the best photographs I had ever seen of Machu Picchu and two sets of notes. I was a bit confused with having to follow two accounts from one person but as we worked our way through the book we realized that there were two people inside of Laura. This made the book more intriguing to me.

Laura insisted we use her Journal and writings for this book. You will find her personal Journal in italics, as you read you may also see the alternate personality coming out on the pages.

It was a unique challenge to compile this work with Laura and I believe it also makes for a unique read. This is such a special spiritual journey I know you will be as touched as I was with her openness and her self-revelations.

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Introduction - Changing the Dream

This is a story of an obsession which progressed until I found myself in Machu Picchu, Peru doing ceremony to ‘save the world’. I had been working and healing with energy since the early 1990’s. Like many healers I know, I wanted to heal the world. I believe in peace, love, brotherhood, and the salvation of humanity. After I began a healing practice, seeing people shift and their lives changed dramatically, my childhood dream of saving the world began to grow into an adult obsession.

I knew it could be done energetically, not literally or physically perhaps, but with energy I believed the dream could be changed. I was not just determined to do it, I was compelled. When I am compelled to do anything, I am blessed to have the most wonderful man, my husband Michael to assist me. So suddenly I found I had become obsessed with ‘Changing the Dream of the Planet’ and we began to make plans to do just that.

I have been working with energy most of my life, knowingly and unknowingly. As a child I was internally motivated to save the world. I was the one that wanted to go to church, that prayed, embodied the rescuer, and who at six years old wandered through the neighborhoods asking for money for the poor, sincerely wanting to help. It is no wonder I would grow up to have my undercover job as a healer and oracle, a professional rescuer.

When the church could no longer satisfy the need in my heart to communicate directly with the Divine, I began secretly to search out different ways. I found myself hanging up my robes as a lay minister and driving to the holistic fair to do readings. My husband, Michael had recently had his midlife crisis, but instead of buying a sports car he took Shaman classes which soon led to Reiki (Spiritually Guided Life Force Energy) attunements and classes. When he became a Reiki Master he taught and attuned me to Reiki. It wasn’t long before we were doing healing work, drumming, and divination readings on the side, hiding our secret new life from the people we knew in the ‘real world’ that we were concerned would not understand.

Slowly I was able to allow the world I was raised in to know who I was and what I was doing. Soon I had Reiki clients, worked with crystals and was doing Numerology professionally. Michael taught T’ai Chi and I began to teach Yoga. Michael and I lived for many years with one foot in each world, a balancing act but a continual learning experience.

I continued my obsession with being the rescuer and found myself caring for my elderly uncle Harold. He had no children of his own, and after he had a stroke I began a different type of rescue mission that lasted about six years. It was while caring for my Uncle Harold that my mother, who also had Parkinson’s disease, began to need assistance. We had been very close in the past, running a dancing school together for over ten years. I knew what to do, I was experienced with the elderly and with Parkinson’s so I jumped in with both feet to help care for her, to rescue her!

What I was not prepared for was her rejection, for the family dynamic that turned what I saw into a rescue mission into a family war. When God finally told me, or rather I finally listened to her tell me to let it go and walk away, I did. It left me with a deep emptiness and a sense of confusion which made the great rescuer begin to question the validity of her role. I was able in time to forgive, cleared my own heart and released the confusion I had from the situation but I still carried scars.

Michael, my loving husband had taken the Munay-Ki Peruvian Shamanic Rites just prior to my personal family war that year, and he had began to accumulate many of the books of this Mesoamerican thought. As I read and studied them as well, it was Alberto Villoldo’s book, Mending the Past and Healing the Future with Soul Retrieval where I finally found myself. It was his book that launched my personal healing, something so many healers forget to work on.

I had been a Western Shamanic practitioner for many years. In my practice I had recovered client’s soul parts, journeyed for others, cleared their energy, even energetically mediated for the group. The Peruvian Shamanic path was different. I learned from Alberto’s teachings to journey for myself. It was the quote I have framed on my wall from that book that opened me to my new life. The journey is about you now, not about anybody else asking for your help. The most important tool to use is the newfound ability to say yes to your calling and no to the things that will distract you Alberto Villoldo, Mending the Past and Healing the Future with Soul Retrieval. As I found my own original wound and released myself from my personal myth, a new chapter of my life began for me. Uncle Harold passed. I accepted my mother’s rejection of my assistance. I allowed my siblings to live in complete denial. I moved on, or so I thought.

I didn’t realize it then, but I had encountered the great Serpent and shed my past. Oh, I had met her before, I had defended her, I had agreed with her, but I had never embraced her. This Pilgrimage to Machu Picchu was my embracing of the great Serpent, and it was to change my life completely.