The shamanic gifts revealed - jaguars and the mysteries of peru

Book - Gift of the Jaguar Drs. Franklin

Recently I had the opportunity to chat with John Franklin about his book, Gift of the Jaguar and the shamanic energies of Peru...

Kala: Hi John, you've written a book, Gift of the Jaguar, which is set in the Andes Mountains of Peru. What inspired you to write about Peru and shamans?

John: Both my wife, Sharon, and I have a strong spiritual bent, especially in relationship to nature. Our dates before and after we were married were often driving up into the mountains and hiking. Once we had our own veterinary hospital, our lives became a 24/7 focus on our patients, their people, and our employees. The nearby Blue Ridge Mountains became our refuge for hiking, running, motorcycling, and camping. After our TV set broke, Sharon started to bring home books on spirituality like The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Peace in Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh, and others outside our usual Christian background. One in particular was a “how-to” book on shamanic journeying by Jose and Lena Stevens. The simple exercises resonated with us so strongly that Sharon began looking for nearby workshops on shamanism. She found one in North Carolina taught by Dr. Alberto Villoldo who had trained extensively with shamans in Peru. We were hooked and spent the next three and a half years studying with Alberto and traveling with him to Peru on a number of memorable trips. We were struck by the beauty of the people and the wisdom of an ancient culture based on an ethical relationship with nature. The next years of our life were spent finding ways to integrate this magical, mystical world we had discovered on our shamanic journeys into our small-town veterinary practice and into our traditional Catholic faith. Our animal patients responded beautifully to our energy work, and we even shared our work with a few clients. But for the most part we kept this part of our life to ourselves, afraid of what our clients and people in our church might think if they found out.

And as much as we loved the magic of shamanism, we wanted to integrate what we’d learned into a larger frame. We wanted the ability to speak openly from our hearts about our joy and passion for creation in a way that others could understand, regardless of their beliefs or background. We attended workshops at the Monroe and Omega Institutes, and the NICABM mind-body-spirit conferences for medical professionals.

Hungry for a life of adventure and ready to live fully from the power of our hearts’ dreams, we took a serendipitous journey to the Copper Canyon in Northwest Mexico, traveling by public buses to a remote area larger than the Grand Canyon. After a harrowing trip into the canyon and back, we sat at the top and asked each other the most important question of all: “what would you like to do more than anything else in the world?” Sharon wanted to fly airplanes. I had always loved to write and wanted to write a book. Within a few years, we sold our animal hospital and began the next stage of our life. Over the next five years, Sharon became a flight instructor with a brief stint with the airlines. Stalled in my writing, I dove into the world of healing and became certified in a variety of modalities, including Zero Balancing, Feldenkrais, and Esalen Massage. It was Zero Balancing where I rediscovered my passion for our work in Peru. Dr. Fritz Smith, the founder of Zero Balancing, is a retired osteopathic physician, and was among the first in this country to become a master acupuncturist. His system of bodywork balances the structure of the body with the energy that flows through it. Zero Balancing uses a unique touch at the level of bone, joints, and ligaments, to promote harmony at the level of body, mind, and spirit.

I discovered that the state of consciousness in a Zero Balancing session mirrored the sense of magic I felt working with shamans in Peru. Gift of the Jaguar began as a couple of short stories for my certification in Zero Balancing and evolved into a book during my teacher’s training. I wanted to explore what the common denominator was and to create a journey in which the reader experiences an altered state of consciousness where heart-felt dreams become possible again. In the middle of my massage training at Esalen, we were asked what our dream was. Out of the blue, I said that I wanted to take “a thousand of our closest friends to Peru, fifteen at a time.” I still don’t know where that came from, but it resonates with my heart every time I say it. It was a year later when Dr. Smith, fascinated with our previous work in Peru, asked Sharon and me to take a group of Zero Balancers on a journey there to work with indigenous healers.
Peru is a third-world country. For a successful journey there, we needed to find a guide who could insure our guests a wonderful experience. Another synchronicity occurred and we discovered Dr. Theo Paredes. Don Theo is a native of Peru and a cultural anthropologist with a life-long passion of working with the sacred plants. Shaman is really too small a word for Don Theo. He is a master teacher of consciousness.

Over the past eight years, we have led numerous groups of Western-trained health care practitioners and spiritual seekers on journeys to Peru to work with Don Theo and other indigenous healers. From the Andean Mountains to the Amazon Rainforest, we have experienced the joy of sharing the Andean secrets to vibrant health and harmony. These “secrets” are really ways to perceive life from a higher perspective and to create joy whether at home in a small, conservative community or working in ceremony at Machu Picchu and other sacred sites in Peru. Gift of the Jaguar is a pathway for the reader to discover these secrets on a unique experiential journey into the healing traditions of an ancient culture, but from a leading-edge perspective of body-mind-spiritual wellness. The story is a spiritual parable with the Andean version of the law of attraction (ayni) as popularized by the Abraham teachings of Jerry and Esther Hicks and The Secret.

Kala: The main character in the book, Juan, deals with a huge amount of guilt over the death of his sister. What did you wish to portray in this book about the process and purpose that guilt serves in life?

John: This is a great question about guilt you’ve asked and one that mankind has been asking ever since we got kicked out of the Garden of Eden. And on the flip side of guilt is our journey back to redemption. These two great themes are at the heart of Judeo-Christian faith and other spiritual traditions and are ones which theologians and philosophers and writers have written countless books about across the ages. The journey from guilt and regret to redemption and acceptance also fits into the hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell talks about in classical mythology. Certainly, this theme plays a big part in Juan’s journey in Gift of the Jaguar. My intent was to deal with this classic theme in a “novel” way. (Pun was unintended but it fits.) I use it throughout the story as part of the emotional journey Jerry and Esther’s Abraham talks about. Our friend Don Theo talks about living our life from an emotional or “feeling” perspective. Our emotions provide our quickest and most accurate feedback to the vibration of our thoughts and are the key to managing our personal energy.

When what we are thinking resonates with the perspective of our own unique connection to Source, we feel joy beyond description. When our thoughts come from less than that pure connection, we feel a lesser degree of satisfaction. Our emotions can range from joy all the way down to depression. Guilt or shame is one step above depression from an energetic point of view, but still a far cry from appreciation or joy. Blame, rage, anger, pessimism, hope, faith, trust, knowing are part of a broad range of feelings in between these opposite ends of the spectrum of human emotions. I like Abraham’s way of talking about emotions. Instead of being negative or positive, each feeling is a sensitive indicator about where we are on the emotional scale. We can use them to guide our thoughts back to internal sense of what feels better, to align with who we are from the perspective of Source (which is always one of joy). In Gift of the Jaguar, Juan discovers his guilt is self-imposed and that redemption or his freedom from the bondage of guilt is an inside or an emotional journey.

Kala: Gift of the Jaguar is being described as a journey of mysticism, focusing on the law of attraction. How does the law of attraction appear in the book?

John: Another great question. Gift of the Jaguar seeks to create a “vibrational” experience of the law of attraction for the reader on Juan’s journey to redemption. Key scenes throughout the story are interwoven with the energetic essence of animals, plants, earth, wind, water, and fire. Juan discovers how to use the Andean version of the law of attraction “ayni” to create harmony in his relationship with himself, his family and friends, and his environment. And, of course, his relationship with the jaguar is a key theme. The jaguar represents his relationship with death, especially the death of his sister Marta. In Gift of the Jaguar, I write so that the reader will use all of their physical senses to feel the vibration of the characters and the events of the story unfold. When a person can feel vibration through any one or all of the physical senses, especially the signature vibrations of their emotions, then they can manage their personal energy and create their destiny with conscious awareness. Juan discovers creation is made of vibration and when he begins to understand the law of attraction or ayni, he creates the destiny of his dreams. Hopefully, the reader is inspired to become a more deliberate creator of health, wealth, and relationships in their own life.

Kala: What does the energy and culture of Peru offer to travelers? How about Machu Picchu?

John: I think that Peru offers enchantment and a sense of magic, a reawakening of sorts to even the casual tourist. You see pieces of granite that weigh several tons so exquisitely carved and fitted against one other, yet not a drop of mortar is used between them. Many stone walls in these sacred sites like Machu Picchu built thousands of years ago are still standing, despite several massive earthquakes. Peru has a greater amount of biodiversity than almost any place in the world. From the coast, the highlands, the Andes Mountains, and the Amazon Rainforest, is unbelievable beauty. A mixture of the indigenous peoples with the Spanish, African, and Asian influences, have created an extraordinarily rich culture. Machu Picchu is considered to be one of the great wonders of the world. In recent years, massive numbers of tourist from all over the globe have visited this sacred site in the midst of the mountains of the rainforest. Why? And even the Dali Llama has traveled to the Sacred Valley on the way to Machu Picchu. A variety of spiritual traditions, including Buddhism, are building temples and ashrams in the Sacred Valley and near Cusco, the ancient capitol of the Inca Empire. Why? Machu Picchu is also known as the “Crystal City,” for the high content of crystal in its granite stones. It is but one of hundreds, perhaps thousands of sacred sites built in remote places away from even ancient population centers. Why? I think that the Andes Mountains and Peru are an important part of the energetic shifting of the earth on its axis of rotation around the sun, which is putting the electro-magnetic fields surrounding our planet in flux. We are being drawn to attune our vibrational frequencies in such places as Machu Picchu to help us better adapt to these changes, if not consciously, then intuitively. Our friend Don Theo believes that Machu Picchu and other sacred places were deliberately built around vortices of powerful energy. Dr. Paredes refers to Dr. Emoto’s research with water and suggests that the ancient cultures used the stones to contain and harness these frequencies of vibration to change the electro-chemical properties of water. This special water could be used for health and healing and for developing new varieties of plants for agriculture. Hundreds of varieties of the potato were developed in Peru from a previously inedible plant of the nightshade family.

Kala: Do you find that people are connecting more with spiritual traditions from ancient cultures or have you found that people are leaving traditional teachings to create new traditions?

John: Both. I see a more and more people in our culture “customizing” their beliefs from a multitude of sources. But even ancient spiritual traditions continue to evolve. We can never return to the “pure” essence of what something was. Change is the one constant in creation. Yet I do believe we stand on the shoulders of those who have come before. Especially in the Andean traditions, the people who built Machu Picchu and thousands of other sacred sites had a profound understanding of energy, sustainability, and ecology. Amidst unprecedented changes in weather and climate, we might want to take a closer look at their relationship with creation.

Kala: You and your wife Sharon work together. Is she what you would describe as your soul mate? How has working together as a couple intensified your spiritual experience?

John: We have worked together since we first owned our veterinary hospital. I joke that the time working in a small business with your spouse is akin to dog years. Every year that you work together is really seven years. This felt especially true, given the intense attention we gave to our patients and to their people over the course of combined 35 years of practice. Along with sharing our spiritual paths, we’ve learned to value what makes us unique as individuals, which creates a stronger and more honest relationship. After almost 30 years of marriage, I guess this qualifies us as soul mates. We are best friends when aligned with our own personal vortex and have a lot of fun together. And when we aren’t, I try to focus on getting back into alignment with me.

Kala: How are we stewards of the earth? Describe the relationship between humanity, the earth and the creatures of earth?

John: We might want to think of ourselves as part of earth, connected in an organic network of relationships. I think part of our shift of consciousness will come when we begin to see ourselves as a part of creation, not apart from. That makes our co-inhabitants, two and four-legged, winged, etc., our co-creators of a very diverse world.

Kala: Holistic healing is growing in popularity in the Western world. It has been a mainstay in asian and indigenous cultures for centuries. Where do you see healing work going in the future?

John: I think it is expanding in beautiful ways that will follow the path of physics, understanding that we live in a vibrational universe. We will learn, regardless of the modality, to see the human being existing in a complex electro-magnetic field. To reach beneath the symptoms of disease and to balance a person’s vibration alignment with well-being will require a conscious recognition of a person’s emotional state of being. The diagnosis will come from understanding the desires of their heart and their emotional relationship to those desires. This, in my opinion, is what affects the balance between health and the lack of health.

Kala: 2012 has received so much attention as a marker for a shift in consciousness collectively here on the earth plane. Do you agree with the significance of this date or do you have a different theory?

John: Consciousness is already shifting, and the rate of change is accelerating. 2012 may well be the “birthing” of a new collective consciousness, but the mother is well into labor. Now is always the moment of power. And no one has to wait until 2012 to get up to speed with the evolution of their own conscious awareness of how they are creating reality for themselves.

Kala: Thanks John, it was a pleasure to speak with you.

John: Kala, thank you for the generous gift of your time.
For more info: Doctors John and Sharon Franklin, licensed veterinarians, shared a combined 35 years in private practice before selling their animal hospital in 1999. Doctors John and Sharon have explored the realms of ultra-marathon racing (Sharon won the “Mountain Woman” award as the fastest local woman in this Blue Ridge Mountain Race which is over 50 Miles), studied experiential psychology and other transformational work in programs at Awakening and at the Monroe, Omega, and Esalen Institutes. They have traveled and studied with healers and teachers in Peru since the early 90’s. Inspired by a dream to “take a thousand of their closest friends to Peru, fifteen at a time,” Doctors John and Sharon Franklin lead groups of western-trained health care professionals and others on trips to Peru to explore the leading edge of mind-body-spirit. The wisdom they’ve accumulated from native healers and teachers have helped them to create their own path to joy, health, and success. It also inspired their new book Gift of the Jaguar.  Since the sale of their practice, John now writes and works on the people side of the human-animal bond. He is a certified practitioner and teacher of Zero Balancing, a system of transformational bodywork, and is a Feldenkrais and Awareness through Movement practitioner. A Gold Seal Certified Flight Instructor, Sharon teaches the principles of wellness and financial success through XanGo, a leader in all-green health and wellness products.