The Condor and the Eagle

[phusion]

Kind of a long passage, but I thought this was important enough to type up and share...You MUST read this book.

From Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins:

"It seemed that Amazonian tribes had a great deal to teach us, that despite all our schooling and our many hours of reading magazines and watching television news, we lacked an awareness they had somehow found. This line of thinking made me think of "The Prophecy of the Condor and the Eagle," which I have heard many times throughout Latin America, and of similar prophecies I have encountered around the world.

"Nearly every culture I know prophesies that in the late 1990s we entered a period of remarkable transition. At monasteries in the Himalayas, ceremonial sites in Indonesia, and indigenous reservations in North America, from the depths of the Amazon to the peaks of the Andes and into the ancient Mayan cities of Central America, I have heard that ours is a special moment in human history, and that each of us was born at this time because we have a mission to accomplish.

"The titles and words of the prophecies differ slightly. They tell variously of a New Age, the Third Millenium, the Age of Aquarius, the Beginning of the Fifth Sun, or the end of old calendars and the commencement of new ones. Despite the varying terminologies, however, they have a great deal in common, and 'The Prophecy of the Condor and Eagle' is typical. It states that back in the mists of history, human societies divided and took two different paths: that of the condor (representing the heart, intuitive and mystical) and that of the eagle (representing the brain, rational and material). In the 1490s, the prophecy said, the two paths would converge and the eagle would drive the condor to the verge of extinction. Then, five hundred years later, in the 1990s, a new epoch would begin, one in which the condor and eagle will have the opportunity to reunite and fly together in the same sky, along the same path. If the condor and eagle accept this opportunity, they will create a most remarkable offspring, unlike any ever seen before.

"'The Prophecy of the Condor and Eagle' can be taken at many levels - the standard interpretation is that it foretells the sharing of indigenous knowledge with the technologies of science, the balancing of yin and yang, and the bridging of northern and southern cultures. However, most powerful is the message it offers about consciousness; it says that we have entered a time when we can benefit from the many diverse ways of seeing ourselves and the world, and that we can use these as a springboard to higher levels of awareness. As human beings, we can truly wake up and evolve into a more conscious species.

"The condor people of the Amazon make it seem so obvious that if we are to address questions about the nature of what it is to be human in this new millenium, and about our commitment to evaluating our intentions for the next several decades, then we need to open our eyes and see the consequences of our actions - the actions of the eagle - in places like Iraq and Ecuador. We must shake ourselves awake. We who live in the most powerful nation history has ever known must stop worrying so much about the outcome of soap operas, football games, quarterly balance sheets, and the Daily Dow Jones averages, and must instead reevaluate who we are and where we want our children to end up. The alternative to stopping to ask ourselves the important questions is simply too dangerous."

[prairierose]

1. I'm almost done with it...

it's a great book and very readable. I liked this passage too. Very thought provoking.