Marco

The point is to live a quality life, recognizing individual rights.

I met Marco near Quito, Ecuador where he works as a shaman with natural medicinal plants of the Andes like San Pedro, Ayahuasca or mushrooms. We will dive into his approach to be happy, his path towards becoming a healer and his view on the most important values in life.

What is most important in your life – what do you get up for in the morning?
Well, I get up every day in order to work and to heal, I work with sacred plants, with the medicine. And to take care of my family, to make sure that she´s fine.

What have you done that you’re proud of?
I managed to start a family. I have a wife, I have two children, I have a house. And to know that they are all well is most important to me.

Has there been a person or a thing, be it a book or something, that had a great influence on your life?
Well, there was a time in my life when I began to seek knowledge and find teachers. And I am fortunate that I have met some very important ones in my life.

I remember a few. For example Tomio Kikuchi, a Japanese. So I did about 3 years of apprenticeship, sucking up the knowledge of this teacher. This teacher taught me a lot: I studied philosophy, I studied anatomy, I studied some traditional Japanese medicine, I also studied Aikido, martial arts … I really think he is an important influence. Through this I got in contact with other martial arts masters as well and then sometime the path of the sacred fire opened for me. I met my master, and he showed me the path of the sacred fire, the path of the heart. It is the ancient knowledge of our grandparents. He is a man of ancestral knowledge, of the peoples of America. So this has led me to do the work I do now, which is to work with the medicine, with plants, with healing, with the ancestral knowledge. So basically they are the most important ones who have passed through my life. There are others.

Very interesting. I did not know that it all started with Japan and martial arts … Does Aikido have anything to do with what you do today?
Yes, it’s a vision … there is a connection, it has its origin in the ancient Japanese knowledge of Shinto Taoism, in the laws of Yin and Yang. Universal laws, cosmic laws. So through this you understand many things about the movement of life. So yes, it has a lot to do with what I am doing now because basically it all comes from the same original source of knowledge. Knowledge is universal. So this is like the foundation on which all extends from.

If you could ask for a wish – what would that be?
Well, my wish would be that life may continue on this earth, for all beings, for all forms and that this may not stop. There are great concerns about this because life right now is beset by mankind. There are many imbalances that are expressed in the climate, in the wheel of life, so what I want is that life goes on.

And what advice do you have for your children and grandchildren, what do they have to learn in life?
This ancestral knowledge to based in a structure of knowledge of universal laws. These laws are simple, there are 4 and this is what the creator of the great spirit asks for in order to have a good quality of life. Then you teach them to learn this in life in order to know everything that is necessary, to be very humble, humility.

And it’s also to be honest. To say and do everything with the the truth within oneself, the personal truth.

The third would be that we may people of integrity. That is to live and act with sincerity, with humility, respect for life, with respect to the forms of life, with respect for institutions, respect for nature, mother earth… so in order to practice this one must be of integrity, be aware of oneself and this sacred space that is the space of life.

And the other, the fourth, would be the willingness. The willingness to do things always in a good way. We call all this the suma causa or the good life.

We all have the right to have a good life. And there are rights that are individual, there are family rights, rights as a citizen … One way is to live in freedom. But these rights are for example the right to housing, the right to education, the right to health, the right and respect we grant our ability to think as we want and also to make decisions according to these thoughts. This means freedom of conscience.

So what I practice and I help my family and people understand is basically that the point is to live a quality life, recognizing individual rights, all this, no? The right to housing, the right to work, the right to health, the right to knowledge, the right to freedom of thought, the right to live well in freedom. So this would be the message I want my family and my descendants to understand so that they can live in peace on this earth.

The work that I’m doing is always working with sacred plants, with the sacred fire, with the medicines. The work is a marriage of the knowledge of our grandparents in order to sustain a good life, live in peace and harmony with nature and the earth. So all this is about maintaining a relationship and living in happiness, living with love, that´s it.

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