This reflection was sparked by a recent Resilience & Possibility in These Times conversation with Arkan Lushwala—Andean ceremonial leader, healer, author, and longtime spiritual guide to Pachamama Alliance. 

As Pachamama Alliance deepens its inquiry into what it means to truly listen for guidance amidst widespread ecological, economic, and cultural upheaval, Arkan offered more than encouragement—he offered discernment. He returned again and again to what makes guidance trustworthy, and what can quietly distort it.

The Trouble with Noble Agendas

Arkan didn’t warn us about weak convictions, he warns us about the strong ones. The noble ones. The ones we chant at marches and sharpen at strategy meetings, the ones we’re convinced are aligned with life. 

“Sometimes very well-intentioned people…When they share what they say they have listened to, to me it’s clear that they were not listening to anyone else but themselves.”

In our longing to help, to be good, we distort the signal without knowing it. Especially when urgency is high and outcomes feel fragile, Arkan was clear:

“We could end up listening to that which we want to listen to. That’s what I’m calling making it up.” 

Arkan warns that what slips in, usually unnoticed, are our personal needs, ambitions and unconscious belief that we already know what Earth or Spirit has to say. Even our most passionate convictions can become a kind of noise.

“I am the one who is going to find the solution—that may be the worst personal agenda possible.” 

Arkan invites us into a different kind of strength. One rooted in humility, not certainty, that opens the door to deeper understanding by setting aside the impulse to lead with our conclusions.

Letting Go Makes Us Stronger

Letting go of our personal agendas doesn’t mean abandoning discernment; listening purifies it. A clear-eyed analysis of power and harm is profoundly important when so much suffering persists. Arkan calls us into a form of discernment that is clear-eyed and permeable at the same time: 

“If we put our personal agenda upfront… what we can listen to is too narrow… too charged with our own needs or preconceptions.”

Because even noble convictions can carry ego. Arkan suggests we expect this to be so. In fact, he says we can expect for our egos to interfere.

“That’s a very difficult one… it’s going to sneak in, it’s going to drive you… maybe be a selfish motivation disguised as the motivation to help the Earth.”

So for people seeking guidance, he’s naming a critical practice: to become more honest, more aware and more available to something beyond our own hopes and fears. 

“The listening happens when we do not bring our personal agenda into the space. Then what we receive is for us—for the wellbeing of all life.”

This space, anchored in humility, is where real guidance becomes possible. And in that space, we begin to sense what can only be heard together. 

Wisdom Comes in Pieces, Not Packages

Because true guidance, he said, rarely comes to just one person.

“Everybody will receive a piece of the instructions. And then we see the whole instruction appear when we are together.”

This is a pretty radical reframing of how we might lead, organize and respond to crisis. In a world trained to reward certainty, charisma, and singular answers, Arkan offers a humbling alternative: coherence through collective listening.

“I got it. That doesn't exist. We got it. When we put together what we all hear. . . what we all receive, then something begins to form in front of our eyes, in front of our heart.”

It is not about one person seeing the whole—it is about each of us becoming trustworthy receivers of what we alone could not access. When we release the grip of personal agenda, something larger can speak.

Listening That Serves Life

Arkan speaks of listening as a way of being in relationship. To listen well is to remember who we are in the web of life—and to allow that relationship to shape how we act.

“Listen to what you belong to—and it will guide you.”

This kind of listening opens us beyond personal insight or ideology. It calls us into alignment with something much older and more trustworthy than what’s unfolding in the headlines or the political headwinds. It’s about our place in the story of life.

“The universe supports life. And we are life… So of course, it’s going to support us. Always.”

What comes through that support is more than direction. It’s a kind of deep nourishment. Like the silence that follows a child being fed, restlessness quiets, and we are fed by life itself.

“We feel fully nourished in the presence of something sacred… silenced by the nourishment.”