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Con afecto.
A.D.R.
El Misterio de Munay
En la tradicin andina, hay tres aspectos necesarios para ser totalmente humano :
yachay, llankay y munay. Yachay es la mente, el intelecto, el raciocinio, la lgica.
Llankay es el cuerpo, la accin, el esfuerzo productivo. Munay es el amor basado en la
voluntad.
Aunque es raro encontrar jerarquas en la tradicin, en este caso si que se da : yachay
ocupa la base del triunvirato, llankay la posicin del medio y munay la parte de arriba.
Munay es la ms alta expresin energtica de nuestra humanidad
Dicho esto, estas tres expresiones de nuestra humanidad tambin operan circularmente,
donde una alimenta a las otras, necesitando dominar cada aspecto del ser para ser seres
humanos completos. Aunque, hemos de reconocer que tendemos a estar predispuestos a
destacar a una de las tres, aun cuando busquemos armonizar las tres expresiones de
nosotros mismos. Por ejemplo, Don Benito Qoriwaman era un tukuyyachaynioq, un
maestro de yachay, a quien se identificaba como paqo supremo de la prctica del lado
derecho, del paa. Don Melchor Desa era un maestro del llankay, un tukullankaynioq.
Su maestra era sobre el lado izquierdo, el lloque. Don Andres Espinosa Qero- era
maestro de munay, un tukumunaynioq y su maestra era en la prctica del chaupi, el
sendero del medio. Don Benito deca, tambin, que los Qeros eran dueos del munay.
No es sorprendente que el munay amor- sea la cumbre de la expresin humana. Pero,
qu es exactamente munay?
Sabemos lo que no es munay.
No es una emocin. No es un sentimiento. No es solo amor
Si sabemos algo de lo que munay es.
Es el fundamento de la tradicin mstica andina. Con frecuencia, se le describe como
amor incondicional, y los paqos andinos lo definen como amor fundado en la voluntad.
Sabemos de su importancia en nuestra prctica energtica. En el cuerpo energtico, el
munay no se encuentra en el corazn, sino que es una fusin de la energa de nuestro
corazn con la semilla Inka que todos tenemos. Cuando estos dos centros se fusionan,
algo mas grande emerge, y eso es munay.
Munay tambin se conforma de los flujos de energa de todos los chunpis (cinturones de
energa) y con el kawsay fuera de nosotros, del cosmos. Nuestra semilla Inka se puede
considerar como el Dios/Cosmos que tenemos dentro; y el kawsay pacha como el
mundo, Dios/Cosmos que est fuera
La unin de dentro y fuera ocurre a travs de munay. Solo nuestro munay puede
integrar a las dos.
Debido a esta energtica de ida y vuelta, de dentro y fuera, es por lo que tenga sentido
que munay deba incluir a la voluntad. Pero, no se trata de algo relacionado con la
Parte 2 El aura
En la parte 1, me refer al absorber e irradiar las energas de luz blanca y negra. En este
artculo, me enfocar en el aura. No soy un experto en el aura, por lo que pido disculpas
si cometo algn error o malentendido. Teniendo fijado el objetivo de llegar a ser un
paqo ser capaz de absorber e el irradiar toda forma de energas- me es inevitable
reflexionar acerca del aura, desde punto de vista andino.
El aura es una luz visible, usualmente coloreada, localizada alrededor del cuerpo fisico.
Mucha gente que la ve sostiene que el color de tu aura refleja quien eres, la calidad de
tu energa y otras cosas mas. Sin embargo, me estoy empezando a cuestionarlo.
Si los andinos tuvieran razn en que estamos en un continuo intercambio, consciente o
no, con la energa, y que siempre estamos absorbiendo e irradiando energa, entonces
Cmo es que sabemos lo qu significa el color del aura? Me aventuro a decir que
podra haber dos diferentes interpretaciones :
1) Podra significar que, realmente, estamos irradiando un predominante tipo o
sabor de energa, el cual tendra que ser una forma de sami, ya que es la
energa que fluye libremente a travs nuestro y no se queda atascada.
2) Pero, tambin, podra significar que no estamos absorbiendo ese sabor de
energa la cual seria incompatible con nuestro cuerpo energtico- siendo, as,
potencialmente, una forma de hucha para nosotros.
No creo que podamos saber, realmente, cual es la interpretacin correcta. Tendremos
que regresar al artculo anterior sobre la energa, a la metfora del espectro
electromagntico de la luz visible para entender el porqu.
Si vemos colores, estamos detectando el espectro de la luz visible (las frecuencias que
aparecen em forma de colores diferentes que vemos con nuestros ojos fsicos). Para ver
el color, esa frecuencia de luz debe rebotar sobre un objeto. La luz dejada a si misma,
fluyendo libremente, sin interactuar con un objeto, es invisible a nuestros ojos. Se
podra decir que es negra. El espacio exterior est lleno de luz, pero solo la vemos
cuando se refleja en algn objeto, superficie, como la luna. O, mejor dicho, solo vemos
el objeto a causa de que la luz que lo refleja entra en nuestros ojos.
Por tanto, la fsica anatmica nos dice que los colores que vemos son aquellos que no
son absorbidos por el objeto.
Un pato de color amarillo es de ese color debido a que est absorbiendo todas las otras
frecuencias de luz visibles excepto la amarilla. Podra decirse que rechaza la
frecuencia del amarillo.
Es posible, ahora, ver como se aplica esto a la concepcin andina, de cmo trabajan
nuestros cuerpos energticos. Ser mas claro con un ejemplo. Para ello, usaremos el
color verde, asocindolo con el amor/munay para examinar las posibles
interpretaciones.
Si vemos que el aura de una persona es de color aura verde, deduciramos que esa
persona sera un maestro del amor. El o ella sera capaz de absorber la energa verde
fluyendo libremente, como sami puro, a travs de su burbuja energtica. Es tanta la
energa fluyendo a travs de esa persona que l o ella se ilumina de verde.
Pero, alternativamente, ese aura verde podra ser seal de que esa persona tendra
dificultad con la energa del amor al no poder absorberla, rebotando en su burbuja
energtica, que es incompatible con su estado actual de energa.
Podemos darnos cuenta, entonces, de cul es el dilema. Basndonos nicamente en el
aura, a no ser que seamos qawaq (capaces de ver la realidad tal como es), no podemos
saber cul de los dos estados es el correcto. (no podemos confiar, totalmente, en la
intuicin, ya que es, tambin, dependiente del estado de nuestro cuerpo energtico.
Qaway es diferente del conocimiento intuitivo)
Lo nico cierto es que no podemos hacer ningn juicio. No podemos afirmar lo que
significa el aura con una luz verde. Solo podemos dejar que esa persona tome
conciencia y determinar lo que, energticamente, le est ocurriendo a l o a ella.
Y ese enfoque est, perfectamente, en lnea con la mas amplia cosmovisin andina que
dice que solo podemos saber y ser responsables del estado de nuestro propio cuerpo
energtico. No etiquetamos ni juzgamos energticamente a otra persona; solo sentimos
si somos compatibles o no energticamente con esa persona.
Aunque la tradicin andina es simple en la prctica, su concepcin de la energa es
profundamente sofisticada y de gran alcance. Ofrezco este punto de vista sobre el aura
para recordar la importancia de la sensibilizacin de la conciencia de su propio cuerpo
energtico y no etiquetar a otros de acuerdo a ideas preconcebidas acerca de los estados
de energa.
Todo lo que se puede asegurar respecto al aura desde el punto de vista de los maestros
andinos es que un ser del sexto nivel de conciencia emite, usualmente, una luz blanca o
dorada. Ellos no crean, prcticamente, nada de hucha. De acuerdo, entonces, a la
tradicin andina, podemos decir que un ser de sexto nivel no rechazara a ninguna
frecuencia, sino que las absorbera e irradiara de manera perfecta.
Mas all de eso, y hablando solo por mi mismo, me inclino a no tener juicio alguno
sobre el aura debido a que no creo posible, ni es de mi incumbencia, interpretar la
condicin energtica de otra persona. Simplemente, no puedo saber (solo viendo con
mis ojos externos) lo que, realmente, significa el color del aura de una persona
colocar conchas en el centro del papel, coronndolas con una cruz y con cuatro kintus
colocados alrededor de ellas. La concha y la cruz representan el ncleo de las energas
yanantin de los principios divinos masculino y femenino. Los cuatro quintus
representan a los cuatro puntos cardinales y rinden honor a los cuatro suyus apus
(Ausangate, Salcantay, Saqsaywaman y Wanakauri). Incluso si un despacho fuese mas
elaborado, este mandala tawantin es siempre la base sobre el cual se edifica.
La representacin andina mas obvia del tawantin es la chakana, la cruz andina, la cual
tiene 4 lados o brazos de 3 escalones, cada uno alrededor de un circulo central.
Segn la tradicin andina, estos dos valores o creencias son falsos. Vivir de esta forma
para ellos es malinterpretar la naturaleza del kawsay pacha y negarse a usted mismo sus
bendiciones.
He aqu lo que los maestros andinos ensean.
La abundancia es la norma. La verdadera naturaleza del kawsay pacha es que la energa
de luz viviente es, excesivamente, abundante. Hay mas que suficiente para todos. El
kawsay no puede disminuir, por lo que puedes tener todo lo que quieras de ella.
Nunca es egosta absorber lo que se pueda o quiera de kawsay. En efecto, tal es la
propensin natural. Tu capacidad para provocar que el kawsay manifieste tus
intenciones es directamente proporcional a cuanto sami el kawsay mas refinado, el
nctar del universo- tengas en tu burbuja a tu disposicin. Por tanto, es siempre en tu
beneficio el llenarte a tope con sami.
Tener mucho de algo no significa que otro deba tener menos. El kawsay pacha no tiene
contables que lleven unos libros en los que se refleje que usted ha tomado mas de lo que
debera. Tampoco tiene rbitros puesto que no hay competicin alguna. Ni hay
anotadores espirituales que te recompensen con puntos por haber vivido asceticamente o
habiendo reprimido tus deseos mundanos.
Por supuesto, la condicin de su corazn es tan importante como la condicin de su
cuerpo energtico, pero su tica y moral son independientes del kawsay pacha como
fuente de sami. Somos criaturas sociales que, para vivir en armona, tenemos reglas y
acuerdos. Buscamos fomentar el bienestar en todos los niveles de nuestras vidas, bien
sea en nuestra familia como en nuestra comunidad, pas y en el mundo. Debido a que
vivimos en un plano material en la Tierra- es para nuestro propio beneficio cuidar del
planeta y utilizar sabiamente los recursos para beneficio de todos, no solo del nuestro.
Como seres humanos es bastante posible que acumulemos hucha y lo hacemos por no
vivir de acuerdo a la regla de oro. Pero en el nivel energtico fundamental del kawsay
Todos tenemos esos momentos de estar al borde del acantilado. He tenido un montn de
ellos, algunos en el Per. No me pondr a contarlos, pero si dir que la tradicin andina
me ha enseado que la espiritualidad bien puede descender desde los cielos o emerger
desde el lodo. Hacemos crecer a nuestra semilla inca usando el sol y el lodo. No se trata
de que siempre nuestras cabezas estn equivocadas y que nuestros corazones tengan
razn. Se trata de que, frecuentemente, tendemos a escuchar y a vivir- en monoaural en
vez de en stereo.
Si hay una cosa que todo paqo aprende es que hay una sobre-abundancia de kawsay en
el universo. Podemos coger toda la que queramos. Es preocupante que la mayora de
nosotros tomemos tan poca de la energa vital accesible a nosotros.
Hay una historia sobre kawsay que Juan siempre cuenta que tuvo en uno de sus viajes.
Su grupo terminaba una agotadora jornada en la Cueva de la Luna, tras una larga
caminata subiendo y bajando cuestas. Y se complic an mas pues el grupo de Juan
tena solo una hora para coger el autobs y casi no tenan tiempo para subir una
empinada cuesta. Una mujer mayor de su grupo estaba especialmente preocupada pues
pensaba que no conseguira ir a buen ritmo. Pero la mujer se sorprendi mas cuando
Juan le dijo que ella tenia que ir al frente del grupo, marcando la senda. Ella sinti un
pnico aun mayor, pero Juan le explic que tendra ayuda. Mientras ella avanzaba deba
jalar kawsay de la tierra y ponerla en su poqpo. Y todos los de la fila detrs de ella
deban alimentar de kawsay a la persona que tenan delante durante todo el camino.
Asi, la mujer tendra toneladas de kawsay ayudndole a subir la cuesta.
Ella tom el lugar que le asignaron, aunque escpticamente. Y funcion. Hicieron la
cuesta y les sobr, incluso, tiempo para otras cosas. No hace falta decir que la caminata
fue un momento revelador para esa mujer. Lo que ella encontr dentro de si misma fue
algo mas alla de sus expectativas, y lo encontr con la ayuda del kawsay que descendia
de los cielos y que ascendia de la tierra, lodo y piedras debajo de sus pies. Tambien
encontr el kawsay dentro de si misma y como regalo el de sus compaeros de grupo.
La leccin, la inspiracin, consiste en que si todos bebiramos libremente del kawsay
que tenemos dentro, fuera, arriba y abajo, exploraramos, soaramos, descubriramos y
viviramos a quienes, realmente, somos. Seria la norma, no la excepcin. Y cuando
sintamos lagrimas o temores la erupcin de nuestro verdadero yo elevndose desde sus
sombras- no ignorariamos ni rechazaramos ese llamado, y cogeramos esos vientos
alisios para zarpar
Viva su Grandeza
Ud es mucho mas de lo que usted cree que es. Usted es mucho mas de lo que otros creen
que usted es. Su grandeza va mas alla de su mas exagerada imaginacin. El mundo le
necesita y necesita de su mayor grandeza posible.
Estos son los tiempos. Somos la gente. Asi es como Jean Huston lo deca cuando se
referia a la evolucin consciente de la humanidad.
Secundo esta cita de Jean y apuesto en pedirle que sea dueo de su grandeza.
Hace casi 30 aos escribi un largo poema, cuyo final he tomado como el lema de mi
vida (aunque en la practica el sentimiento del necesito saber se ha convertido en un
mas consciente elijo vivir)
Necesito saber que mi vida chispe luz
Y que mi danza fugaz en la oscuridad
Envie una lluvia de estrellas fugaces
Temblando como un beso
A la columna vertebral del universo.
Me repito esto a mi mismo durante esos inevitables momentos en que me siento
pequeo y me ataco a mi mismo. Es mi mantra, mi cancin, mi llamado a la naturaleza
para empezar de nuevo, levantarme de nuevo, renacer de mis cenizas, de cantar con los
pulmones de una estrella de rock que estoy aqu, en el mundo, y que no solo importo
sino que el mundo me necesita. Nadie mas puede traer al mundo lo que yo puedo
aportarle. Asi como nadie puede traer lo que usted al mundo. Cada uno de nosotros es
una parte necesaria, vital e irremplazable del kawsay pacha. Eso es lo que la tradicin
mistica andina ensea. Es por eso por lo que somos paqos, y le pido no olvidarlo.
El objetivo de nuestro trabajo es la evolucin consciente. Como Gandhi deca : S el
cambio que tu desees ver en el mundo. Ese proceso de profundo cambio interior y
exterior es producido por el refinamiento de nuestro cuerpo energtico y por el
crecimiento de nuestra semilla inca, la cual es nuestra conexin con el Misterio del cual
venimos y al cual retornaremos un dia. Nuestro ayni mas sagrado es el de retornar al
Misterio lo mas plenamente realizados que cuando venimos a este mundo. Aumentando
la grandeza de nosotros mismos, contribuimos todos y cada uno de nosotros- al
nacimiento de la Nueva Humanidad, al amanecer de una Nueva Era.
Si eres un paqo con alguna otra metaadelante!. Resolvamos en este mismo momento
profunda y tranquilamente dentro del corazn de la tradicin, un corazn que bombea la
sangre suya, mia, de l, de ella, a travs de las venas del cuerpo universal.
El trabajar la energa andina le empodera y desnuda hasta los huesos. Le ayuda a
descubrir quien realmente es. Pero para ver su verdadero yo, primero debe quitarse los
muchos disfraces que os habis puesto a lo largo de su vida disfraz de ser menos que,
de no ser bueno en, de no valer, de falsa modestia.y tambin los disfraces de la
vanidad, de la arrogancia , del juzgar, de la exclusividad.
El otro dia alguien me recordaba una historia de Juan Nuez del Prado que deca en uno
de sus talleres. Ya haba escuchado esa historia muchas veces pero la haba olvidado.
Escucharla de nuevo me anim a escribir este articulo. Aqu va:
Cuando Juan era un nuevo aprendiz de don Benito Qoriwaman, fue a una tienda en
Cuzco y compr un poncho y otras vestimentas tradicionales incas. El le mostr a don
Benito su nueva compra, luciendo como un autntico paqo andino. Se sent fuera de la
casa de adobe que le servia a don Benito como una pequea clnica, esperando a que
ste le llamase como asistente en sus curaciones. Era lo que normalmente sola ocurrir.
Pero esa vez no fue asi. Don Benito pasaba cerca de Juan una y otra vez pero no pareca
darse cuenta de su presencia. Juan se mostr muy paciente, pero tras unas horas
esperando se iba enojando cada vez mas por la indiferencia de don Benito. Finalmente,
ya exasperado, Juan le pregunt a su maestro porqu lo estaba ignorando. Don Benito
pareca sorprendido y haciendo como si no lo reconociera le dijo No sabia que tena un
aprendiz indigena
Juan capt el mensaje. S tu mismo. No trates de parecer y actuar como alguien que no
eres. No te pongas disfraz alguno, el mundo necesita de personas reales, autnticas.
Freddy Puma Quispe Singona cuenta la historia de un paqo que entr en una cueva de
noche durante una iniciacin. Muchos espiritus aparecieron y le preguntaron Quin
eres t?. El respondi diciendo su nombre. Pero le preguntaron nuevamente Quien
eres t? . Esta vez se detuvo un poco a pensar y finalmente dio el nombre de sus
padres, aadiendo que era el hijo de ambos. Los espiritus, todava insatisfechos,
preguntaron de nuevo. Quien eres t? El tuvo una inspiracin y contest Soy un
paqo. De nuevo, su respuesta result insatisfactoria. Finalmente, los espiritus le
dijeron Ya ves, incluso tu mismo, a veces, no sabes quien realmente eres. Aunque
nosotros si lo sabemos
El espritu siempre ya sabe. Ahora, depende de usted el conocerse a si mismo. Podria
no ser algo fcil. Pero cuando lo sepa, descubrir que usted es un ser maravilloso de
principio a fin. Esta usted listo para mostrarse en el mundo tal como, realmente, es?
Usted y Su Poqpo
Y cada chunpi tiene, tambin, un cono energtico dentro de si mismo. En todos los
chunpis, la abertura grande del cono esta en la parte delantera/frontal del cuerpo, y la
raz en la parte posterior prxima a la columna vertebral. La excepcin a esto se da en el
cinturn mas inferior, el yana chunpi, en donde el cono tiene su abertura grande en la
parte posterior y la raz en la parte frontal del cuerpo.
Hay una larga practica saminchakuy (y de saiwachakuy en algunos de los chunpis) en la
cual se limpia a todos los chunpis a travs de estos conos, haciendo circular la energa a
travs de ellos y luego entretejiendo los chunpis unos con otros y con la columna
vertebral, proyectando, incluso, la energa desde los awis para conectarla con el mundo
exterior. Se trata de una profunda practica de limpieza que ayuda a activar las
capacidades de cada chunpi, a la vez de despertar o activar toda la estructura
energtica de su poqpo. Me complace pensar en ello como un proceso de sintonizacin
de la anatoma energetica
En vista de que no somos seres humanos plenamente desarrollados, todos tenemos
trabajo por hacer para empoderarnos a nosotros mismos y a nuestro poqpo. Todos
tenemos ocho espiritus o asistentes energticos que nos ayudan. Ellos representan
aquello que hemos perdido o tenemos subdesarrollado en nosotros. Trabajamos con
estos asistentes en cada uno de los chunpis para que nos enseen lo que necesitamos
hacer crecer y desarrollar.
Dentro de nuestro poqpo, adems, tenemos una semilla a la que llamamos la semilla
inca. Esta semilla nos conecta con el Misterio, conteniendo dentro de ella a todo nuestro
potencial, igual que una semilla de roble tiene dentro de si misma todo el potencial de
un roble poderoso. La semilla inca nunca ha tenido hucha, pero aun asi debemos
trabajar intensa e intencionadamente con ella para afinar/sintonizar nuestra anatoma
energtica. Incluso saliendo de nuestros cuerpos energticos por un tiempo, dejndoselo
a los 8 asistentes energticos que tenemos en la Tierra, mientras trabajamos,
energticamente, nuestro poqpo para limpiarlo y prepararlo para que recobre nuestra
semilla inca. Esto se trabaja con las practicas chaupi y lloqe (los lados izquierdo y
medio de la tradicin )
Como puede verse, trabajar con su poqpo es una responsabilidad primaria de todo paqo.
Siempre debe tratar de refinar su energa y de aumentar sus capacidades (pues juntas
generan su poder personal) para que pueda vivir plenamente comprometido y con mayor
productividad y alegra.
Si ha descuidado a su poqpo, este es un recordatorio para que se reenfoque en l por lo
menos, para que use su intencin. limpie su poqpo y pueda evolucionar, sin mucho
esfuerzo, en la plenitud de su ser. Sus socios en este proyecto son el kawsay pacha, la
fuente de sami, y la Pachamama, la limpiadora de hucha. Estos socios solo responden a
su intencin. Por tanto, siempre recuerde que su poqpo es su nica verdadera posesin.
Atesorelo. Honrelo. Trabaje con la intencin para refinarlo.
Como tradicin viva, los trabajos sagrados cambian con el tiempo. Mientras lo
fundamental ha de permanecer invariable, pueden crearse nuevas practicas conforme
vayan muriendo las viejas. La perspectiva de un tonto es la de pensar que una tradicin
debe permaneces estatica, sin cambios. Como el kawsay, la energa viviente cuyo estado
natural es el fluir (y se convierte en hucha cuando se estanca), la tradicin andina es una
tradicin viva.
Estos y otros factores entran en juego cuando eliges o evaluas a un maestro, por lo que
sugerira que te sirva para recordar que su enseanza es solo una versin de una
tradicin viva multifactica. Todos nosotros como paqos nos esforzamos en acumular
poder personal para evolucionar conscientemente al cuarto nivel. El cuarto nivel es
donde aceptamos nuestras experiencias sin tener que juzgarlas en contra de las de otros.
No pensar que tenemos la nica y sola verdad, y asi no tener que defenderla y no
sentir la necesidad de proselitizar. Podemos encontrar oro en cada vena de la tradicin
Es decir, como paqos esforzndonos para ver la realidad tal como realmente es,
necesitamos hacer elecciones conscientes y entender que la restriccin puede causar
hucha. Para los maestros, es importante dejar que los estudiantes conozcan las
variaciones, componentes interculturales, ademanes personales que son expansiones
mas alla de la tradicin central. Sin tal comprensin, los estudiantes se quedan confusos
entre lo que es el bizcocho de la tradicin y de lo que es el glaseado. Las enseanzas del
cuarto nivel significa cultivar a estudiantes para que se graden y se abran a nuevas
iniciativas, nuevas exploraciones, otros maestros, e, incluso, ellos mismos se conviertan
en nuevos maestros. Los maestros de cuarto nivel empoderan a sus estudiantes, no los
esclavizan. Y, ciertamente, no necesitan protegerlos de puntos de vista alternativos o
dificultar sus opciones personales.
Como estudiantes, nos corresponde elegir a los maestros y tradicin que mas nos
resuene en el momento, de acuerdo con la condicin de nuestro cuerpo energtico, sin
rechazar, por sistema, otros ofrecimientos. Como estudiantes tenemos que ser
conscientes que nuestro maestro actual puede ser perfecto en un momento dado pero
puede no serlo dentro de un par de aos. Un maestro no reemplaza a otro; ambos han de
ser honrados por su contribucin a nuestra evolucin personal.
Hablo de Juan e Ivan cuando digo que amamos esta tradicin, y creemos que es lo mas
eficiente en trminos de trabajo energtico y la via mas rpida para acumular poder
personal, para vivir un mayor bienestar y alegra. Creemos que estamos en los albores
del nacimiento de una Nueva Humanidad, y que la tradicin andina esta en el centro y
delantera para ayudar a promover esta evolucin. Por eso, queremos que usted aprenda
la tradicin de quien usted desee hacerlo. Queremos que la comparta, con quien lo
desee. Nos sentimos honrados si lo aprende de nosotros, pero no lo juzgamos si no lo
hace. Sobretodo, queremos que tenga los ojos bien abiertos al tomar las decisiones que
toma y porqu, y le instamos a que aspire, como nosotros, a la percepcin del cuarto
nivel, para lo que no nos sirve el miedo, los celos, la competicin, la restriccin y el
excesivo control. Aun mas importante, todo ello no sirve a la tradicin mistica andina.
En este articulo, adelantar algo del material que utilizar en mi prximo libro,
tentativamente titulado Andes Misticos : El Mundo Sobrenatural de los Andes.
Trabajo en describir la historia de vida y enseanzas- de Juan Nuez del Prado y de
algunas historias de su hijo Ivan. Ser una detallada narracin de la tradicin que pas a
Don Juan desde don Benito Qoriwaman, don Andres Espinosa y de don Melchor Desa
entre otros paqos. Se trata del relato real de la tradicin, y me honro en ayudar a que
don Juan preserve la tradicin, de hacerla accesible a todo el que quiera aprenderla.
Aqu un breve adelanto de esta historia , en la cual Juan habla en primera persona,
Durante el viaje de vuelta en coche de Machu Picchu, don Melchor me cont la historia
del colibr como el mensajero de Dios. Era algo como lo siguiente : Cierta vez las aves
se reunieron para elegir a su rey. Como aves andinas, decidieron tener una reunin
comunitaria ayllu. Acudieron aves de diferentes tipos. Al ser aves andinas no tenan
falsa modestia. Todos ellos exhibieron sus poderes, capacidades y virtudes particulares.
Uno por uno hablaron de su karpay, de su poder personal. La ultima ave en hablar fue el
cndor, quien dijo Yo debera ser el rey porque puedo hacer algo que ninguno de
vosotros puede. Puedo volar mas alto casi hasta el mismo borde del hanaqpacha.
Las otras aves quedaron muy impresionadas, admitiendo que no podan volar tan alto, y
decidieron que el cndor deba ser el rey de las aves. Pero, justo en ese momento lleg
un pjaro muy pequeo quien dijo Esperen! No pueden hacerlo rey, porque yo si puedo
volar hasta el mismo centro del hanaqpacha. Y l no puede.. Este pjaro era el colibr,
y todas las aves quedaron asombrados de ver como el pequeo colibr desafiaba al
cndor. Pero, mas all de eso, siendo aves andinos, eran escpticos. No crean que el
colibr pudiera volar mas alto que el cndor. Por eso queran pruebas, una
demostracin, pero decidieron pedirla mas tarde. Todos estaban cansados y
hambrientos, y queran descansar o comer o irse a casa para reponerse. Y asi decidieron
posponer la demostracin hasta un prximo dia.
El prximo dia, muy temprano por la maana, el primer ave en llegar fue el cndor.
Luego llegaron las dems aves. Pero no lleg el colibr. Ya que eran aves andinas, eran
aves muy pacientes. Esperaron y esperaron, pero el colibr no apareci. Ya era casi de
noche y todos tenan hambre y cosas que hacer en sus casas. Y acordaron no esperar
mas. Pero siendo aves andinas, no solo eran escpticas sino que haban dado su palabra
y tenan que cumplirla. Y, as, le dijeron al cndor que tenia que probar todo lo alto que
poda volar.
El cndor empez a desplegar sus enormes alas, y luego se elev hacia el cielo. Fluia
con las corrientes de viento, volando cada vez mas alto. Pronto, volaba muy alto pero,
tambin estaba muy cansado, casi exhausto. Estando a punto de llegar al borde del
hanaqpacha cuando entre sus plumas apareci el colibr. El colibr vol mas y mas alto,
dejando al cndor detrs, hasta que lleg al centro del hanaqpacha.
En el centro del hanaqpacha estaba Wiraqocha. Como buen jardinero, l se encontranba
regando las flores, podando los arbustos, quitando las malas hierbas, cuando apareci el
colibr volando tan rpido que choc con Wiracocha, conectando directamente con la
energa de l.
A causa de su logro de volar tan alto, hasta el mismo centro del hanaqpacha, y a causa
de su conexin energtica con Wiraqocha, se eligi al colibr como el rey de las aves. Y
tambin se convirti en el portador del Mosoq Karpay el karpay del quinto nivel de
consciencia- para los paqos. Los paqos son las flores de Wiracocha, y cuando un paqo
refina sami una finsima calidad de nctar- atrae al colibr que bebe de la energa del
paqo. A travs del contacto del colibr, el paqo establece una conexin personal con
Wiraqocha.
Es por eso que creo que las practicas andinas tienen el secreto detrs de la Ley de
Atraccion/El Secreto. Ensean practicas energticas que refinan su conciencia, limpian
y empoderan su burbuja, y proveen la energa para manifestar sus intenciones
empujan/fuerzan al kawsay
En realidad, no tiene porque desear que su alma brille mas. Es algo que sucede de forma
natural al aumentar su vibracin cuando acumula poder personal. Viviendo mas
plenamente como quien, realmente, es (revelando su alma) el brillar es una
consecuencia natural de comprometerse a realizar las practicas de los Andes, que son el
sendero de la evolucin consciente. Por esa razn, practico y enseo la tradicin,
incluso aunque medite, rece y utilice otras herramientas energticas y espirituales, todas
me son tiles. Aunque, para mi, ninguna es tan simple, elegante y consigue poderosos
resultados como las practicas energticas de los Andes. Los andinos son, realmente,
maestros en energa viviente.
Aqu un ejemplo que ilustra este punto. Mientras hacia una lectura intuitiva a una mujer,
vi que ella haba sufrido de abusos cuando era joven, y le describi su herida como una
cadena alrededor de su tobillo, la cual se extendia detrs de ella y estaba clavada en la
tierra. Ella pensaba que solo poda ir tan lejos como la cadena le permitiese. Ella
reconoci que era esa su situacin encadenada al pasado y a las creencias en las que se
basaba su vida, retenida tenazmente por su herida. Pero no poda imaginar como
quitarse la cadena del tobillo de una buena vez.
Yo le dije : Puedes deshacer lo que se hizo. Y quizs puedas quitar la cadena de tu
tobillo. Para ello debes arrancar la estaca!. Una vez que lo hagas, podras ir a donde
quieras, tan lejos como lo desees, aun teniendo la cadena en tu tobillo. Ella se qued
algo sobresaltada, como si nunca se le hubiera ocurrido algo asi. De repente, supo que,
incluso, sin haber curado del todo su pasado, no tenia porque estar inmovilizada por l.
Una vez que cambio su creencia, tambin cambi su vida.
El camino andino es algo parecido reconocimiento de que tenemos una estaca en el
suelo, e incluso una o dos cadenas en nuestros tobillos, y que, de alguna forma,
podemos removerlas. Hay kawsay mas que suficiente para todos. No importa lo que
usted piense o crea, o si tiene otras practicas que encuentra tiles y disfruta de ellas, o
cual sea su historia personal puede liberar su energa para impulsarse tan lejos como
pueda imaginar. Cuando tiene poco que proteger y defenderlo de otros, tiene una casi
irrestricta libertad de movimiento y una mayor paz en mente y corazn.
De todas las tradiciones sagradas de las que creo conocer, el camino mistico andino es
el mas abierto e inclusivo. No hay nada en esta practica que lo lleve a excluir a alguien,
ni tampoco que lo excluyan. No hay nada que le impida a usted (o a cualquier persona)
aumentar su humano gozo, de cumplimentar su divina naturaleza.
Como paqo posees multiples herramientas que te ayudan a negociar este paisaje de
forma hbil y conscientemente : saminchakuy, saiwachakuy, hucha mikhuy, despachos,
la misha. Tienes acceso a los seres espirituales. Tienes tambin tus capacidades qawaq :
tu clara visin a travs de tus siete ojos misticos y energticos (a travs de los chunpis y
el awi Kichay, del karpay que abre los awis y entrelaza a los chumpis en un sistema
coherente). Mientras que tus ojos fsicos y emocionales pueden estar viendo solo dolor,
desafos y derrotas, tus ojos misticos ven el juego de hucha y sami, atestiguando una
posible y rpida germinacin de tu semilla inca, y registrando la victoria que llega con
la mas grande auto-revelacion y auto-consciencia.
Por tanto, como paqos ni usted ni yo podemos estar dispuestos a decir Hurra por este
desafio ! , pero si que debemos estar preparados para llamar oportunidades a los
desafos, para aprovecharlas como puertas abiertas a experiencias energticas y a
fomentar el desarrollo de nuestras almas.
En muchos artculos he escrito acerca de quien, realmente, eres. Es una frase que
suena a New Age, algo ambigua, incluso un poco difusa. Solo queria decir Cmo
podrias ser algun otro que no eres?. Sinceramente, no puedes.
Aqu, la palabra clave es realmente. Quien eres ahora puede ser la pieza esencial para
tu espritu y alma. O, por el contrario, podras ser un puzzle de influencias que poco
tengan que ver con tu espritu y alma. Puedes, literalmente, ser la creacin de lo que
otros quieren que seas sucumbiendo a las presiones paternas, sociales, religiosas,
culturales, profesionales o de otras ndoles, cediendo a la rutina de lo que siempre has
conocido o de lo que te demanda menos esfuerzo, posponiendo tus metas al albur de las
circunstancias, sacrificando capacidades inexploradas debido a auto-engaos. Si este es
tu caso, probablemente no estas viviendo como la persona que, realmente, eres.
Recuerdo un sueo que tuve en el 2001, estando en un viaje de tres semanas por la
Amazonia. En el sueo, me vea empujando, descalzo, un carrito de la compra en una
tienda. Sabia que tenia que llenar mi carrito, pero no haba nada que quisiera comprar o
necesitara. Por lo que dej el carrito vacio en su sitio. De repente, apareci mucha
gente, viniendo en mi direccin de forma no amenazante. Ellos empezaron a llenar mi
carrito con cosas y mas cosas hasta llenarlo por completo. Me sent muy frustrado
porque haban puesto cosas que no quera comprar pero me sent impotente de
impedirlo.
Para mi, este sueo estaba relacionado con la identidad. Quin soy yo? Tras un autoanalisis, termin por admitir que mi vida era, en gran parte, una respuesta a mis
inseguridades. Yo era alguien que trataba de complacer a su familia,a compaeros de
trabajo, amigos y el cumplir las expectativas de lo que crea debera ser como respuesta
a la sociedad, a los medios, a la espiritualidad y dems. Era un puzzle sintiendo que la
mayora de las piezas haban sido colocadas con poca auto-conciencia, a pesar de todos
mis aos de trabajo chamanico y espiritual. Solo estaba seguro de una sola cosa no era
quien realmente soy.
Me ha tomado 14 aos llegar a ser un poco mas como, realmente, soy. Ha sido en los
tres o cuatro ltimos aos, especialmente en el ltimo, que me he despojado de muchos
de mis delirios e ilusiones y de tener el valor de ser yo mismo. Y vaya diferencia
Sospecho que esta lucha por ser autentico es idntica a la que tienen la mayora de
ustedes.
Reconozco que el quien, realmente, soy no es algo estatico. La vida se mueve, y yo
me muevo con ella y viceversa. El dramtico movimiento hacia una mayor autenticidad
viene con el cambio en quien lo lidera y en quien lo sigue. Antes, la vida se movia y yo
la segua, con frecuencia, inconscientemente o con resistencia, o porque tenia mucho
miedo o estaba inseguro de mi mismo para dibujar mi propio curso. Ahora mi yo
dirige, y es mi vida la que responde en consecuencia. Y es eso lo que hace toda la
diferencia.
El quien realmente eres esta codificado en tu semilla inca. Don Benito deca que en el
momento en que se unen el huevo de tu madre con el espermatozoide de tu padre, la
fuerza animada del universo llega al cosmos y desciende una Gota del Misterio en ese
huevo fertilizado. Esa Gota del Misterio eres t. Ciertamente nica en su clase.
Completa, con todo lo que necesitas dentro para ser quien realmente eres. Contando
con todo lo que necesitas para expresar tu mas profunda, mas sagrada naturaleza para
vivir una vida nica en su clase.
La cuestin es si estas listo para creerlo, reclamarlo y realizarlo. Este proceso alqumico
de transmutar el plomo de el estar cerca de ser quien, realmente, eres al oro de quien
realmente eres no es ciencia sino arte. No es una nica formula que todo el mundo
pueda seguir para obtener un resultado garantizado, sino un viaje personal de
aprendizaje para conocer, honrar y expresar su Gota de Misterio. Como tal, el
calendario del viaje es nico para usted. Puede llevarle diez horas, diez meses, diez
aos
Para la mayora de nosotros, nuestra semilla inca esta latente dentro, esperndonos a que
la fertilicemos y pueda germinar, crecer y florecer. Las practicas andinas nos ayudan a
nutrirnos para revelar el pleno florecimiento del hermoso, estupendo, sorprendente e
increible t. Qu trabajo hay mas importante o valioso que el de recobrar el
recuerdo de quien, realmente, eres y de vivirlo? Igual que en mi caso, le podra llevar
casi sesenta aos a tu semilla inca florecer, y puedo testificar que si vali la pena
esperar
Qu es el bienestar?
La manera en que describi el objetivo central de la tradicin mistica andina se resumia
en que es un camino de bienestar. Y describi al paqo como una persona de gozo, alegra.
Aunque advirtiendo que ello no implicaba tener sentimientos Pollyanna (termino que se
refiere a una persona con un optimismo desbordante y con una tendencia a ver el bien
en todo). Este es un camino simple pero sobrio cuyas capacidades fundacionales son
estar en consciencia ayni y cultivando qaway la capacidad de ver la realidad tal como
es. El bienestar cabalga en la ola de nuestra visin y conocimiento mistico
Una de las mejores formas de entender el bienestar es haciendo una distincin de lo que
parece ser un sinnimo la felicidad. Pero son dos cosas diferentes e igualarlas es un
error.
Se puede tener bienestar y no ser completamente feliz. Pero si tienes bienestar tendras
que aceptar lo que sientes en ese preciso momento como lo que, exactamente, es. Por
tanto, manten tu bienestar, aun cuando reconozcas tu, actual, infelicidad.
La felicidad o la infelicidad es un estado de la mente. Tu estado de felicidad fluctua dia
a dia, hora a hora, momento a momento. Puedo, por ejemplo, estar feliz cuando como
una barra de chocolate y luego, inevitablemente, una hora despus ya me estoy
lamentndo por mi falta de disciplina con la dieta- lo cual no tiene nada que ver con mi
estado de bienestar.
Cuando te encuentras en un estado de bienestar, eres capaz de cabalgar sobre las olas de
las emociones, sentimientos, circunstancias cambiantes y dems sin perder tu
coherencia energtica central. Estando en bienestar dejas que el kawsay incluso el
kawsay que se expresa a si mismo dentro de ti como infelicidad- fluya a travs de ti sin
que se estanque y convierta en hucha. Tu bienestar es como el tefln todo se desliza en
l sin adherirse.
Tener bienestar es una seal de poder personal. En la tradicin andina, el poder personal
es tu capacidad de ver la realidad tal como es y tomar accin tener la energa y la
claridad de percepcin para hacer lo que quieras, cuando quieras y sin crear hucha.
Lleva esfuerzo mantener un centro estable de bienestar. Conviene pensar en el bienestar
como si fuera un musculo. De la misma forma que se tiene que entrenar los musculos
para fortalecerlos y puedan ser capaces de resistir grandes esfuerzos, has de mantener tu
coherencia energtica para dar solidez a tu bienestar interior. Mientras mas limpies tu
burbuja energtica de hucha (haciendo saminchakuy) mayor sera tu capacidad (poder
personal) de mantenerte en bienestar, sin importar lo que haya alrededor tuyo o lo que
sientas, emocionalmente, en algn momento.
El bienestar arraiga en tu nucleo o centro ya que refleja el estado de tu poqpo. Puedes
tener un centro dbil o un centro fuerte. Limpiar la hucha de tu poqpo fortalece a tu
centro. Y como consecuencia de ello, tu sensacin de bienestar es cada vez mas estable.
Con el tiempo pasa de durar veinte minutos a dos horas, luego dos das, dos meses
hasta que tu estado natural pasa a ser el del bienestar, sin importar las emociones que
pueda estar sintiendo o las circunstancias que experimente.
Al generar menos hucha, tiendes naturalmente a un mayor bienestar y a ser mas feliz.
Fluyes mas fcilmente con la vida, te entiendes a ti mismo mas profundamente, y tienes
mayor claridad de mente y visin.
Tu capacidad para ver a travs de los siete awis los ojos de los cinturones chunpi- esta
ntimamente relacionada al bienestar. Cuando eres qawaq y puedes ver con tus siete
ojos misticos- puedes percibir, con precisin, nuestro ser al completo todo lo que has
sentido y experimentado. No solamente puedes ver mejor quien realmente eres, sino
poseer a quien realmente somos con claridad y valenta.
Se libera de tener que repetir pesados patrones y equivocaciones del pasado, y liberarte
de tus improntas energticas. Percibes menos a travs de la lente de la auto-ilusion y
disfrutas de una auto-conciencia acrecentada.
Recapitulando, el bienestar no es solo una palabra o un concepto. Es una consecuencia
energtica de traer coherencia a tu poqpo. Ahora, esto no le motiva a seguir con su
practica diaria de saminchakuy?
A esta visin acrecentada se le llama Qaway, que es ver a travs de los ojos misticos.
Vuestra meta como qaway es ver la realidad tal como es, sin una pantalla de autocreadas proyecciones, ilusiones ni limitaciones. Como qawaq, usted ve el pasado y
presente con claridad, sin impulsividades o emociones sentimentales. Se puede, incluso,
ver el futuro
En contraste, el futuro qayapacha- esta detrs de usted, porque no puede verlo. En
relacin a los awis, usted solo tiene un ojo, el siki awi del yana chunpi, por el cual se
ve el futuro. Por lo tanto, es menos incognoscible, aunque cuando haya desarrollado su
qawaq/capacidad de ver, podr sentir lo que est por venir, especialmente si incrementa
su maestria en conducir/mover el kawsay (influenciando al mundo de la energa
viviente). El futuro est, tambin, asociado con el izquierdo fsico, el lloqe awi.
Aunque el sptimo ojo mira hacia adelante, y, por tanto, mira al pasado, tambin posee
una capacidad integradora. Cuando usted sea un qawaq y ve con claridad y sobriedad a
travs de -sus ojos misticos y fsicos, el pasado y el futuro alimentarn a su visin a
travs del sptimo ojo, localizado en el medio de su frente (conocido como el tercer ojo
en muchas tradiciones metafsicas). En el sptimo ojo, pasado y futuro se unen en el
ahora (kunanpacha). Por tanto, mejora su capacidad de ver la realidad tal como,
realmente, es en su vida en este momento. La visin mistica, emparejada con el poder
personal, le permite estar en un mayor bienestar al poder pensar, hablar, y actuar de
acuerdo a lo que es necesario en el momento, sin ser conducido de manera impulsiva o
inconscientemente por los caprichos de las circunstancias.
Ser qawaq no significa que usted sea clarividente, aunque, ciertamente, podria
desarrollar una capacidad similar. Ser qawaq tiene menos que ver con la prediccin y
mas con vivir con bienestar en el presente. El famoso adagio de Ram Dass Estar aqu
ahora es una buena forma de describir lo que implica el qaway, pero va mas alla del
solo estar atento a lo que esta haciendo o de lo que esta ocurriendo alrededor suyo en el
momento actual. Se extiende a poder ver mas alla de la historia del yo, el cual la
mayora de nosotros coloreamos, generalmente, en tonos rosados. Ver la realidad como
realmente es le lleva mas alla de las circunstancias y de su historia. Esto cae muy
profundo en el centro de su poder personal, por lo que no solo puede intentar ser quien
realmente es, sino vivir mas plenamente como quien, realmente, usted es. Se libera la
energa para que usted pueda crecer y cambiar, ayudndole a elevarse por encima de las
limitaciones autoimpuestas.
Todo el camino andino tiene que ver con ser capaz de vivir mejor para elevar tu
potencial como ser humano en este mundo. Desarrollar su poder personal, lo cual
incluye mejorar su visin mistica, le permite tomar una mayor responsabilidad de su
vida, encarar con arte y sin esfuerzo las circunstancias de la vida. Lo mejor de todo es
que desarrollando su capacidad de qawaq le permite establecer una relacin mas
profunda, verdadera y real con usted mismo.
Gretchen Rubin
El miedo es el mayor creador de hucha. La energa pesada o hucha, siempre desvia su
energa, reduciendo su poder personal. Le sobrecarga e impide avanzar hacia el
bienestar, la gracia y la tranquilidad.
Al igual que el miedo como derrochador de energa- hay otras dos emociones que la
mayora de nosotros hemos sentido alguna vez y, probablemente, todava llevamos con
nosotros en nuestro poqpo en forma de hucha : la vergenza y la culpa
Vergenza es lo que siente cuando ha violado sus propios standards de herirse a si
mismo. La culpa es como se siente cuando ha herido a alguien.
En la tradicin andina, a su capacidad de actuar se le llama poder personal. El poder
personal es equivalente a su libertad personal e incluso sabidura. Se puede tener un
poder personal fuerte o dbil. Si lo tuviese fuerte, tendr un mayor grado de libertad
personal debido a que sus capacidades le permiten mayores opciones de accin.
Mientras mayor sea su poder personal, mayor ser su capacidad de influir el kawsay
pacha en favor suyo y en el de los dems. A mas poder personal, mas claramente ver a
la realidad tal como, realmente, es y hablar y actuar con mas sabidura.
Todos podemos volver la vista atrs y darnos cuenta las veces que hemos actuado con
un poder personal disminuido y desde una nublada percepcin. Todos tenemos cosas de
las que avergonzarnos o de las que sentirnos culpables. cosas que hemos pensado,
dicho, y hecho que nos mantienen atados al pasado al haber creado hucha en nosotros
mismos o en los dems. La tradicin andina nos pide que liberemos esas culpas y
vergenzas (o mas, precisamente, que no creemos hucha en nosotros mismos debido a
la culpa o la vergenza). La tradicin andina nos dira que no deberamos sentirnos
culpables o con vergenza por cosas, que en un tiempo, no tenamos la capacidad de
hacerlo de forma distinta. Esto es el qawaq el ser claro- el ver y percibir la realidad tal
como, realmente, es (o fue)
Generalmente, los sentimientos de culpa y de vergueza llegan con la comprensin
retrospectiva. Con la claridad que da el paso del tiempo, puede ver el impacto de sus
palabras y hechos y juzgarlos como tiles o perjudiciales. Y entonces sentir culpa o
vergenza, o no. Si bien es valioso que admita sus errores y cambie su comportamiento,
no perdonarse a si mismo por ellos simplemente es crear mas hucha.
Cuando se juzga a si mismo, lo hace desde el presente, cuando ya ha pasado algun
tiempo y, probablemente, ha desarrollado mayores capacidades y, por eso, espera mas
de usted mismo. Sin embargo, no debera juzgar su yo pasado de acuerdo al poder
personal de su yo presente. Si lo hace, se equivoca al mirar atrs para preguntarse De
qu fui capaz en el momento del hecho?. Si tiene claridad de visin, usted admitira
que hizo lo mejor que pudo en ese momento, incluso si lo que entonces hizo no fue
beneficioso para usted o para los dems. Aun vindolo con la perspectiva del ahora. La
tradicin andina le da el beneficio de la duda Deberia hacer algo menos por usted
mismo?
Una forma de discernir si la culpa o la vergenza es un sentimiento justificable o no es
desentraando, en los hechos pasados, cuanto de la situacin ocurri debido a su poder
Valorando a su Cuerpo
En que lugar jerarquico se encuentra el cuerpo en el esquema cuerpo-mente-espiritu?
Para mucha gente que est en un camino mistico o espiritual, el cuerpo apareceria
relegado a la base del templo espiritual. La mente ocupara el lugar intermedio mientras
que el espritu se instalara en la parte superior. Pero en la tradicin andina, poner al
espritu primero es como poner a las carretas delante del caballo. El cuerpo importa
inmensamente tanto como la mente son inseparables, dado que la mente es una funcin
del cerebro fsico. En los Andes, a la mente se le asocia con el alma. El alma es la suma
de sus experiencias vividas, de su cultura, sus creencias y dems. El alma es diferente
del espritu, ste es su semilla inca, su conexin con la divinidad. El espritu es
perfecto. El cuerpo y el alma estn sujetos a la influencia de hucha y de sami, de ambos.
La tradicin andina, como enseanza de misticismo, tiene que ver con el ser plenamente
humano. No se trata de ir ms alla de lo humano. Por tanto, todo lo que usted hace se
relaciona, de alguna forma, con su parte mas humana de su ser fsico, incluyendo a su
mente/alma
Todo trabajo energtico pasa por su cuerpo. Todos sus sentidos misticos son extensiones
de su cuerpo. Los chunpis, o cinturones de poder, se localizan en el cuerpo. Los ojos de
los chunpis los awis- se localizan en el cuerpo. Todos los otros ojos como el uma
(en la cima de la cabeza), los chakis (un punto en la planta de los pies) y el makis (un
punto en la planta de las manos) tambin estn en el cuerpo. Los seqes, o cordones de
energa que emite para interactuar energticamente con el mundo, vienen del cuerpo. El
pouyu la abertura por donde el espritu entra y se comunica- es parte del cuerpo. Su
semilla inca, que es su conexin con el mundo, esta en el cuerpo.
Se puede confirmar que el cuerpo es muy importante en la practica andina. Y he aqu mi
pregunta : Cunta atencin le presta usted a su cuerpo en sus practicas como paqo?
En sus estudios y practicas como paqo, en lo esencial, esta reentrenando su cuerpo. Esta
reconociendo un aspecto no-material de su cuerpo, su contraparte energtica. Demos
nuestra atencin a la palabra contraparte, pues confirma que tenemos dos cuerpos,
uno fsico y otro energtico, y ambos no estn separados.
Dado que lo que maneja la energa, segn la tradicin andina, es la intencin, su
mente es, tambin, un aspecto vital de su practica. No hay intencin sin cerebro y
mente. Tampoco enfoque, atencin, concentracintodos cruciales en sus practicas
energticas. La meta ltima es la evolucin consciente con especial enfoque en la
palabra consciente.
Por consiguiente, se debe atender, en igual proporcin, a cuerpo-mente-espiritu si se
quiere evolucionar en las prcticas como paqo y en el crecimiento como ser humano.
Leyendo, recientemente, un libro de Deepak Chopra El futuro de Dios encontr algo
que me impact por su relevancia respecto a nuestras practicas como paqos el
cerebro no puede formarse a si mismo; funciona como un mecanismo que procesa lo
que la mente quiere, teme, cree y suea. Al ir siendo cada vez mas conscientes, usted
empieza, de forma automatica, a conducir su cerebro adonde quiera que vaya.
Su cerebro, a pesar de sus maravillas, requiere de un entrenamiento bsico para
aprender una nueva habilidad y encontrar a Dios es una habilidad. Han de formarse
nuevas autovas neuronales, las cuales, automticamente, se formaran en cuanto ponga
su enfoque, atencin e intencin en ella.
Este razonamieto sobre la parte del cerebro para encontrar a Dios se aplica, tambin, a
su prctica como paqo, aprendiendo a evolucionar conscientemente, a dirigir el kawsay
usando solo la intencin, y vivir con gozo y bienestar. Todas sus prcticas energticas
surgen de su intencin cerebro/mente y la afectan (cambindola, remodelndola). Y la
practica hace la perfeccion! A veces, estas en contacto profundo con el kawsay pacha y
a veces te sientes separado de ella. Deepak Chopra llama mundo sutil al kawsay
pacha, y sabiamente aconseja : ..hasta que el mundo sutil se convierta en su casa, no
podras evitar el ir y venir. La repeticin y la practica forman parte de la curva del
aprendizaje
Asi que a practicar Saminchakuy, saiwachakuy, hucha mikhuy, sintiendo a travs de
sus awis, y dems.
Perocon qu fin? En efecto, nos gustaria vivir en el mundo sutil aun cuando los
andinos no hablan de ir mas alla de lo humano. Como paqos, nos esforzamos en
expresar la plenitud de nuestra humanidad, lo cual va mas alla de lo que el realismo
material cientfico nos dice que es posible conseguir. Es por eso que llamamos mistico a
lo que hacemos. Pero no es algo no-humano. Es una parte natural de quien eres y como
se puede estar en el mundo y en el kawsay pacha. Y mientras estes aqu en tu forma
humana, la cima de tus prcticas debe ser alcanzar el sexto nivel de conciencia humana
aquel de la Conciencia de Cristo o de la Naturaleza de Buda. (el sptimo nivel es algo
difuso puesto si bien, todava es humano, se trata del dios-humano o diosa-humana, y no
tenemos idea de lo que pueda ser. O, por lo menos, no tenemos alguna descripcin por
parte de los maestros andinos.
Es hora de invitar a su cuerpo y mente/alma a esa habitacin donde su espritu vive.
Estos tres aspectos del yo son la trinidad tres es uno, uno en tres, individuales pero,
tambin, separados. Juntos son quien usted, realmente, es
Percibir el kawsay puede llegar a ser un desafio. A veces, quizs, tome meses o incluso
aos desarrollar la percepcin del kawsay y sus movimientos. Por si tuviese problemas
en percibir el kawsay, aqu van algunas sugerencias para mejorar sus capacidades de
percepcin.
Practicar Ms
Ya sea que practique saminchakuy, saiwachakuy, hucha mikhuy o alguna otra tcnica
que mueva la energa, la prctica es la que hace la perfeccion. Cuando practique,
asegurese de haber entendido bien la tcnica como hacerla, lo que esta intentando
conseguir, y como se mover el kawsay. Por ejemplo, con el saminchakuy, el flujo de
energa se mover hacia abajo, mientras que con el saiwachakuy se mover hacia
arriba. Con el hucha mikhuy, se puede esperar a sentir un flujo dividido, tanto hacia
arriba como hacia abajo, dentro de su poqpo.
No necesita pasarse horas practicando. Diez minutos al dia para una tcnica estara bien.
Al comienzo, no enfocarse mucho en conseguir el efecto (sea limpieza,
empoderamiento, etc), sino solo el percibir el movimiento de la energa. Pero no se
esfuerce demasiado. A veces un leve esfuerzo es mejor que uno intenso. Refrene sus
expectativas. Sea amable con usted mismo. Sea paciente.
Limpie su Poqpo
Mientras tengas gran cantidad de hucha, es mas difcil que desarrolle sus capacidades
qawaq percepcion mistica y visin mistica. A mayor cantidad de hucha, menos podrs
percibir y ver la realidad tal como, realmente, es, porque estars proyectando muchas
cosas inconscientes en el mundo. Por consiguiente, utilice el saminchakuy para
limpiar su burbuja.
Recordemos que saminchakuy es como tomarse una ducha, limpiando la piel de su
poqpo, el lugar donde mas se acumula la hucha. Envie la hucha a la Madre Tierra y baje
sami del cosmos. Hgalo durante cinco o diez minutos al dia y ver como su capacidad
de sentir el kawsay aumenta.
Examine sus Creencias
Si ha construido fronteras conscientes o inconscientes entre usted y el mundo, es
improbable que desarrolle una clara percepcin del mundo, y de sus energas sutiles. El
miedo, la necesidad de proteccin, el anticiparse a ser herido o el tomar ventaja por ello,
el ser excesivamente critico o sentencioso, confiar demasiado en su egoica opinin, e
incluso una baja auto-estima podran crear una pared entre usted y el mundo,
disminuyendo su capacidad para percibir, verdaderamente, los flujos de energa. Cuando
duda de su propia capacidad de estar en el mundo, el mundo se le retrae. Haga su
psicolgico trabajo en la sombra y dibuje el mundo de nuevo para usted y aprenda a
aceptarlo. Encontrar que su trabajo de percepcin metafsica se hace ms fcil.
Impulsese con su Misha
A veces, un toque extra de sami es todo lo que se necesita para abrir sus capacidades
perceptivas, y un gran lugar para conseguirlo es de su misha. La misha solo contiene
sami, por lo que es un gran almacen desde el cual puede recogerlo o tomarlo. Coloque la
misha sobre su uma (encima de su cabeza) y traiga el sami hacia su poqpo. Por medio
de esta practica, estar repitiendo la experiencia de un largo linaje de poderosos paqos y
de la ancestral profundidad de la tradicin andina. Siempre que trabaje con su misha,
nunca estar solo. Permita que los ancestros le ayuden y asi lo harn.
Aprenda a ver, fsicamente, el Kawsay
No todo el mundo es capaz de hacer lo siguiente debido a ciertos requisitos, pero si
usted pudieseadelante con ello! A medida que aprendamos a percibir el kawsay con
nuestros ojos metafsicos (los awis), es realmente posible verlo, tambin, con nuestros
ojos fsicos. Para ello, necesita estar en una habitacin totalmente a oscuras. No debe
haber ninguna luz ambiental.
Don Melchor Desa tenia una habitacin asi en su pequea casa : las paredes, suelo y
techo estaban pintados de negro, la puerta estaba bien sellada y no haban ventanas. Fue
en esa habitacin donde Juan Nuez del Prado aprendi a ver el kawsay simplemente,
sentandonse y mirando en la oscuridad. Le tom muchas, muchas horas durante muchos
das hasta que vi, por primera vez, el kawsay en forma de diferentes tamaos de
esferas luminosas que se movan libremente en el aire, llegando, incluso, a
saborearlas llevandolas dentro de su qosqo y percibiendo su sabor fsico real,
Esto era un entrenamiento y no un truco de saln. Debido a como funciona la naturaleza
humana, esto es algo muy valioso : pues el ver algo nos lleva a la creencia, y la creencia
en la realidad fsica del kawsay impulsa el desarrollo de la percepcin en un nivel
puramente energtico, cual es nuestra meta ultima. No obstante, tengamos cierta
precaucion. No intente llevar el kawsay adentro de su poqpo (comindolo y
digeriendolo a travs de su poqpo) a no ser que domine la tcnica del hucha mikhuy.
En su lugar, envie seqes (cordones) de energa fuera de su poqpo para llegar al universo
vivo para percibir y probar los sabores del kawsay.
afueras de Boston, y la nica vez que haba estado con caballos fue en una visita que
hice a una granja. No sabiendo hacer algo mejor, solo caminaba detrs de los caballos y
cuando intentaba montarlos, al poco rato me vea por los suelos con golpes en mi frente.
Sobrevivi a ese encuentro, pero no estaba seguro si lo hara en este viaje a Qoylluiriti.
Casi desisto de ir al festival, pero fue mas fuerte mi deseo de asistir al festival andino
mas sagrado que mi miedo de tener que subirme a un caballo para llegar all.
Los caballos eran andinos; la mayora de ellos eran pequeos y gruesos. Tenan una
gran resistencia . A veces, poco poda hacer para controlar al mio. Casi todos los das
tenia alguna cada, padeciendo de heridas, hematomas,etc. Pero lo peor era la ruta, con
los precipicios tan cerca. Una verdadera odisea. Fue un viaje en el cual cre gran
cantidad de hucha por las situaciones vividas y por no practicar saminchakuy para
restablecer el equilibrio en mi poqpo.
Hice dos largas sesiones de limpieza de hucha. La primera, la noche que pisamos Chua
Chua mientras visitaba a don Manuel Quispe, me liber de hucha y obtuve sami de l.
Mi maestro y gua Juan Nuez del Prado me dijo que cuando estas con un paqo mas
avanzado que t, puedes beber sami de su poqpo (recordemos que sami quiere decir
nctar). Cuando estuve con don Manuel, beba y beba!. La otra vez fue en Hatun
Qeros, donde pasamos una noche. Ah practiqu saminchakuy en la forma habitual,
enviando mi hucha a la Madre Tierra y recibiendo sami a travs de mi una (en la corona
de mi cabeza) llenando mi cuerpo y burbuja.
Los humanos tenemos la dudosa distincin de ser las nicas criaturas que podemos
detener o disminuir nuestro flujo de kawsay, creando hucha. (los antiguos nombres de
sami y hucha eran llanthu kawsay, literalmemte energa viviente fina y llasaq kawsay,
literalmente energa viviente pesada). Aunque creamos hucha siempre que no
estamos viviendo en ayni, o reciprocidad, con el kawsay pacha, la forma mas comn de
producir hucha son las emociones. Las emociones alimentan a las palabras, acciones,
pensamientos e intenciones que pueden desorganizar el ayni. El creador numero uno de
hucha en los humanos es el miedoaunque no cualquier miedo.
Instintivamente sentimos miedo adoptando una respuesta de huida o pelea- cuando
somos, fsicamente, amenazados. Si estas de excursin y te encuentras con un oso,
probablemente, sentiras miedo. Reaccionas fsica y naturalmente a una amenaza
potencialmente significativa para tu vida. Tu emocin esta en perfecto ayni con las
circunstancias. Por tanto, este miedo no genera hucha, aunque la experiencia haya
alterado tu energa. Los hechos difciles que vivi durante mi viaje no eran causantes de
hucha por si mismos. Era un miedo normal, respuestas apropiadas a las circunstancias.
Pero mas all de ese miedo justificado estaba el miedo que si creaba hucha. En mi caso,
llevaba conmigo la huella de la hucha de mis primeras experiencias con los caballos. Yo
ya no era un nio y podra haber manejado bien al caballo si hubiera actuado como
adulto y con confianza en mi mismo. Mi hucha me perseguia desde el pasado y yo
malinterpret que mi pasado era mi presente. Aparte de haber tenido, en esos momentos,
problemas de baja auto-estima y padecer una constante ansiedad de baja intensidad
debido a problemas familiares que no poda controlar. Todo ello me llevaba a producir
una gran cantidad de hucha.
Cuando liberamos hucha, siempre nos refrescamos con sami la fuente de sami es
ilimitada. Aunque en el saminchakuy tendemos a recibir/extraer la energa viviente fina
del cosmos, en realidad la podemos obtener de cualquier elemento de la naturaleza de
un rbol, un animal, una nube, un rio. Todo en la naturaleza esta compuesto nicamente
de sami, por lo que tenemos fuentes ilimitadas de varios sabores de sami, pudiendo
elegir el sabor mas apropiado para nuestra condicin.
Por ejemplo, si se siente inestable y a merced de los caprichos de las circunstancias de
la vida, cuando practique saminchakuy podra obtener sami de una gran formacin de
rocas, cuyo sami esta conectada a la tierra, estabilizada, vigilante como una solida
roca. Si sientes que estas estancado y que no puedes moverte en la vida, quizs debas
obtener sami de las nubes, que siempre se estn moviendo y estn llenas de agua que
sostienen y dan la vida. La nica limitacin es la imaginacin para beber sami del
mundo natural y del cosmos. Su primera responsabilidad es la de hacer practicas que
liberen hucha y le ayuden a restablecer coherencia en su poqpo. Escuche lo que le digo :
s lo difcil que es recordar hacer las practicas cuando, realmente, se necesita. Pero es
mejor tarde que nunca.
Cuando lleg a ese lugar, hall que la vida se despliega milagrosamente, encajndose
todo como por gracia divina. Singer seala Una vez que estas listo para dejarte ir, la
vida se convierte en tu amiga, tu maestra, tu amante secreto. Cuando la senda de la vida
es tu propia senda, se detiene todo ruido, y surge una enorme paz.
Propongo trasladar el viaje de Singer desde la meditacin y enseanzas budistas a las
prcticas energticas y conceptos andinos para entender que lo que estamos aprendiendo
del camino andino es exactamente de lo que l habla de lograr a travs de las tradiciones
contemplativas.
Cuando la senda de la vida se convierte en tu sendaesta es una gran definicin de
ayni, de reciprocidad. A la enorme paz que sobreviene, nosotros le llamaramos
bienestar. Cuando Singer habla de aquietar la voz basada en el ego que bloquea el
flujo de la energa de vida, entenderamos eso como la liberacin de todas las
proyecciones conscientes e inconscientes que crean hucha. Singer se libera a si mismo a
travs de arduas practicas de meditacin; nosotros lo hacemos mas rpidamente y sin
esfuerzo a travs de saminchakuy.
En el camino andino, sabemos que el estado natural de kawsay es el fluir sin trabas.
Entendemos que nuestra meta es permitir que la vida/kawsay fluya a travs nuestro para
ver la realidad tal como, realmente, es. Aprendemos a ver no solo a travs de nuestros
ojos fsicos/mente/ego, sino, tambin, a travs de nuestros ojos misticos (awis).
Contando con la posibilidad de poder ser qawaq, sabemos que necesatimos abrazar
nuestras experiencias directas al kawsay pacha y no ser engaados por la ilusin y las
proyecciones.
El enfoque de Singer es, en gran medida, ser consciente y permitir. Desde la perspectiva
andina, lo llamaramos intencin. Intencion no tiene que ver con el control sino con la
claridad de visin. Singer, por ejemplo, establece una clara intencin de aquietar su
egoica voz personal (liberando hucha), estando en reciprocidad con el universo
(practicando ayni), y siendo consciente a lo que esta, realmente, ocurriendo y dejando
que se despliegue (qaway). Todo esto conduce a actuar con integridad y poder personal.
La intencin y el poder personal nos permiten no solo seguir la direccin del kawsay
pacha, sino tener la capacidad de actar cuando la oportunidad aparezca. El ayni no es
pasivo, sino activo es un intercambio clarividente. La intencin sin energa no es
eficaz, y viceversa.
Singer toma accin a raudales! Tal como hacen los paqos. Hay veces en que la accin
es, simplemente, permitir. Otras veces consiste en hacer algo. Una de las capacidades
culminantes del trabajo energtico de los andes, especialmente cuando se trabaja los
chunpis, es atiy. Atini significa Lo puedo hacer en quechua. Man atini significa no lo
puedo hacer. Su poder personal energia emparejada con la intencin- determina su
capacidad para el atiy, entre su ser capaz de danzar con el universo o tener que sentarse
a un lado de la pista de baile solo observando. La clave esta en saber cuando permitir y
cuando actuar.
Singer al comienzo crea que el camino a la iluminacin requeria de la pasividad. El se
retir de la vida, recluyndose, obsesionndose en estar solo en el bosque en meditacin
para acceder a su ms alto ser. Tras un esfuerzo tedioso, descubri que el universo no
Integridad y su Poqpo
Si tiene integridad, nada ms importa. Si no tiene integridad, nada ms importa.
Alan Simpson
La palabra integridad tiene varios significados en la tradicin andina del linaje de
Juan Nuez del Prado. El significado esencial de integridad como paqo significa estar
en coherencia energtica, en el sentido de que las corrientes de kawsay que fluyen por y
El arte de recordar quien, realmente, eres. Eres una Gota del Misterio, y tu vida
un regalo o don del cosmos viviente. En lo que dure tu vida, entre la llegada y el
retorno, tu propsito primario es vivir la plenitud de tu ser. Dentro tuyo llevas la
semilla de la perfeccion, y todas las artes andinas estn para que accedas y hagas
crecer la semilla de tu Ser Original .
Felizmente Humano
En un reciente articulo al cual titu Valorando tu cuerpo, describa la importancia que
la tradicin andina da al cuerpo. En esta ocasin, retomar algo de lo que escrib para
reflexionar acerca de nuestra humanidad.
Si has tenido ocasin de estar en algn taller en las sagradas tierras andinas con Juan e
Ivan, o conmigo, ya sabrs que nosotros enfatizamos que todo lo que aprendemos como
paqos es para un solo propsito el de vivir plenamente con el mayor bienestar en este
mundo.
Porqu es tan difcil que esa meta se adhiera a tu mente?
Por supuesto, estoy presuponiendo algo que, quizs, no te ocurra. En ese caso, te pido
disculpas si eres un paqo que recuerda, constantemente, el propsito de todas nuestras
prcticas energticas. Pero por mi experiencia, este es un punto en el que debo incidir
una y otra vez en mis talleres. Lo considero tan importante que es por eso que lo reitero
de nuevo.
Como paqos que somos, no nos esforzamos para desarrollar poderes sobrenaturales, ni
tampoco para superar los lazos que nos unen a nuestros cuerpos para vivir como seres
espirituales, ni en vaciar la mente para alcanzar el nirvana, ni en ser chamanes que
viajen a reinos multidimensionales, o alguna otra cosa parecida que no sea la de ser
exactamente quienes, realmente,somos.
Quines somos?. Somos seres humanos
Esto no es un slogan de marketing metafsico ni un clich publicitario, sino la enseanza
de los viejos maestros. Es lo que Juan, Ivan, Yo y otros maestros del linaje de Juan
enseamos. Tu eres un ser humano. S eso primero Plena y completamente humano.
Gloriosamente humano.
En vez de verte a ti mismo como un ser espiritual teniendo una experiencia fsica, trata
de darle vuelta a esa ecuacin, trabajando para ser alguien fsico que evoluciona
conscientemente expresando, espontneamente, tu naturaleza espiritual. Conseguir
voltear esa ecuacin es lo que hace toda la diferencia en como empleas las prcticas
del camino andino, puesto que stas lo son todo y cuando digo todo es que,
realmente es asi- en el desarrollo como ser humano.
El camino mistico andino, incluyendo a la cosmovisin, se enfoca en el mundo
material. El kawsay pacha es el campo infinito de la energa viviente y animada Se
expresa a si misma como Pachamama en el mundo material. La Pachamama no es solo
la Tierra. Es todo el universo material (a la Madre Tierra se le llama, especficamente,
Mama Allpa). El ayni es lo que conduce la evolucin de la Pachamama, del universo
material, de todo lo que hay dentro de l, incluyendo a nuestra propia evolucin
humana, tanto individual como colectiva.
Cuando aprendemos a conducir/mover el kawsay (influir en la energa del kawsay
pacha), toda nuestra atencin se centra en hacerlo de una manera que importe en el
mundo material, y especialmente en nuestras vidas humanas. Trabajamos con las
energas para limpiar nuestro poqpo y poder evolucionar a un nivel mas elevado de
conciencia, aqu en nuestro cuerpo de ser humano. Realizamos el hucha mikhuy para
mejorar nuestras relaciones. Fomentamos el munay (el amor basado en la voluntad), el
hampe munay (energa sanadora), y el khuyay (la pasin) para mejorar nuestras
relaciones con nosotros mismos y con los dems.
Los seres espirituales son, inclusive, aspectos materiales de la Pachamama, del mundo
inmaterial. Un apu (quizs no todos, pero si la mayora) es una montaa, como la del
Apu Manuel Pinta, a la cual un gran paqo fue invitado para que viviese all despus de
su muerte por la gente del lugar. Por tanto, cuando hablamos con ciertos paqos nos
estamos comunicando con el campo de energa de un ser humano. Similarmente, cuando
nos conectamos a un linaje de paqos, nos estamos conectando dentro del campo de
energa que ellos dejaron en la Pachamama. Un khuya es una piedra infundida de la
energa de afecto humano. Nuestra anatoma energtica (conos, cinturones, ojos
misticos) est integrada en nuestra anatoma fsica y con ella es posible aumentar
nuestras capacidades perceptivas. Los tres poderes son la mente (yachay),
cuerpo/accin (llankay) y amor (munay), todas ellas, claramente, expresiones humanas
fsicas o emocionales.
Nuestro espritu se incopora energticamente como la semilla inca en nuestro cuerpo
humano. Segn las enseanzas misticas andinas, nuestro espritu es nuestra divinidad.
Ha sido y es siempre perfecto. Por eso mismo, no hay nada que podamos hacer con ello
excepto el evolucionar para expresarlo plenamente como ser humano.
Todo nuestro trabajo es a nivel de nuestra humanidad. No s si usted lo lleva bien, pero
evolucionar mi humanidad me supone un enorme trabajo!. Es por eso, que amo a esta
tradicin y practico sus tcnicas, pues me ayudan a evolucionar como un ser humano
mas consciente. Me ayudan a mejorar mi relacin con los dems. Me ayudan a
participar mas plenamente en mi entorno, inmediato, con la naturaleza y el cosmos tanto
a nivel material como energtico. Me ayudan a acumular el poder energtico personal
para realizar lo que debo hacer aqu, tal como est codificado en mi espritu.
Te invito a que reflexiones en este aspecto central de la enseanza. Te invito a que evites
la atraccin por lo sobrenatural, incluso de lo ceremonial, si te distrae de lo que mas
importa el descubrir y aprender a expresar la plenitud de quien realmente eres. Eres un
ser humano y tu vida humana es sagrada desde el punto mas recndito de tu mente
hasta la celula mas pequea de tu cuerpo. Tu mximas prioridad como paqo es la de
expresar, gozosamente, tu humanidad.
Khuyay es munay y pasin bajo nuestro control. Aqu es donde tenemos que
profundizar en la consciencia , reflexionar acerca de la eleccin consciente e
inconsciente. Se dice que nuestra consciencia es como un iceberg, con solo una muy
pequea parte visible, y el resto totalmente velado, lo que conocemos como el
inconsciente, el cual impone la mayora de nuestras creencias, acciones, pensamientos y
sentimientos. El amor a primera vista es un hecho totalmente inconsciente, en el cual
sentimos como una energa fuera de nosotros que nos controla y que somos barridos por
su fuerza y fluidez. Parece haber una energa primigenia, algo que genera en nosotros un
fuerte impulso platnico
Es aqu donde la voluntad/la eleccin entra en juego. A pesar de estar inmersos en ese
flujo de energa salvaje que parece estar fuera de nosotros, es posible retroceder un paso
y ser testigos de nosotros mismos, de situarnos dentro del alcance de nuestra propia
circunspeccin. En otras palabras, podemos llegar a ser conscientes de este impulso.
Traer esa consciencia a nosotros mismos y, por medio de ella, elegir una respuesta.
Volviendo al ejemplo del amor a primera vista, podramos traer nuestra consciencia a
ese impulso para mediar en l, atemperar nuestros sentimientos y conducta. Y
preguntarnos si es algo sabio o saludable. Podramos bajar la intensidad del impulso o,
incluso, ignorarlo. O elegir buscarlo, explorarlo, rechazarlo, bucear en l, o tomar otra
serie de acciones. El punto es que la energa no nos debe dominar, sino nosotros
dominarla a ella, incluso permaneciendo abiertos al asombro y la riqueza del juego
humano csmico y humano.
Para mi mente, el khuyay es la diferencia entre el placer y la sabidura. Deepak Chopra
habla de esta diferencia en su libro El Futuro de Dios. El dice, citando a textos
misticos orientales, que la sabidura es el camino sin camino. Es algo difcil de
definir, sin mapa alguno que nos ayude. Es una cuestin de fe que la sabidura exista y
pueda alcanzarse. La via para conseguirla es la auto-conciencia. Lo mismo es cierto con
el khuyay, la pasin de la vida.
No podemos obligarnos a nosotros mismos a sentir pasin por la vida de la misma
forma que no podemos obligarnos a sentir amor. Pero si podemos aprender a generar el
impulso hacia khuyay y munay a travs de una limpieza consciente de nuestro cuerpo
energtico y asi, llegar a ser mas, verdaderamente, nosotros mismos.
El trabajo de rimay, kanay y atiy son parte del entrenamiento con los chunpis, los
cinturones de poder y los ojos misticos/awis. Son profundas prcticas de limpieza que
nos ayudan a despojarnos de hucha y a llenarnos de sami. El sami nos ayuda a conseguir
una mayor auto-consciencia. Y una mayor auto-conciencia hace que sea mas asequible y
sostenible una eleccin por el amor y la pasin. Cuando traemos conciencia a nuestras
relaciones, podemos elegir la empata, la amabilidad, la apertura, la consideracin, la
alegra y otras parecidas emociones y acciones que fortalezcan los vinculos de las
relaciones y, quizs, evolucionen en relaciones de khuyay. El tener relaciones khuyay
es lo que hace toda la diferencia entre la felicidad del momento y la alegra/gozo que
abarca el mbito de nuestras vidas.
Si tu bsqueda tiene que ver con dar luz a una situacin oscura o a un aspecto de tu
inconsciente, o necesitas aumentar tu vitalidad y fuerza vital, podrias trabajar con el
Tayta Inti, el Sol. Consigue una imagen. Elige al ser elemental universo con el cual
puedas llenar aquello que carecer o que fortalezca dentro de ti aquello que sea dbil.
Cmo se trabajara con ellos? Usando al saminchakuy y/o saiwachakuy que son la
practica de limpieza energtica y/o la practica de empoderamiento energtico. En este
blog no podemos ensearte estas practicas, aun cuando son practicas muy simples de
aprender y puedas darte una idea de como hacerlas cuando las describimos. Si sabes
como, salas con el teqse apukuna y vers los resultados que obtendrs. Recuerda, esta
tradicin es practica. Queremos resultados! Por lo que debers esperar que ocurran. Si
una practica no cumple tus expectativas, corrgela o prueba otra diferente.
Supongamos que quieres traer claridad a una situacin confusa, que te impide ir hacia el
bienestar y la alegra. Es posible que decidas conectar con el Tayta Inti, el Padre Sol, y
llevar su luz a esa situacin con la practica de saminchakuy. En realidad, lo que estaras
haciendo sera llevando su sami a tu burbuja y depurando la hucha, cuyo resultado seria
una limpieza que elevara tu capacidad de ver la situacin con claridad y resolverla
mejor. Al usar el saminchakuy, conectaras con el Tayta Inti a travs de alguno de tus
ojos misticos (awis) o de tus chumpis (cinturones energticos) y arrastrarlos hacia su
sami. Mientras lo haces, limpias la hucha (energa pesada) de tu burbuja hacia debajo de
tu espina dorsal (siki awi) o pies y alimentas con ella a la Mama Allpa, la Madre
Tierra.
Podrias usar el saiwachakuy para empoderarte a ti mismo. Quizs te encuentres
promocionando a algo o ests desempleado y buscando un nuevo empleo. Sea cual sea
la situacin, te gustara tener mas poder. Es posible que ests buscando estabilidad,
fuerza, enfoque, concentracin, asimilacin y apoyo para crecer en nuevas formas y
direcciones. Y decidir trabajar con la Mama Allpa, Madre Tierra. En el saiwachacuy te
conectas tu burbuja a ella para recibir su sami, llenando tu burbuja de esa energa fina.
El saminchakuy que limpia y el saiwachakuy que empodera a tu burbuja energtica los
puedes usar con cualquier de los teqse apukuna. Usando tu intencin, como en todas las
practicas andinas. Si intentas conectarte con algun teqse apu, comuncate con l o ella y
pdele lo que necesitas o quieres, esperando que, de acuerdo con el espritu ayni, dars y
recibirs. Tanto en el saminchakuy como en el saiwachakuy tu das tu hucha como un
regalo y recibirs el sami del teqse apu, tambin, como regalo.
Esto es solo un ejemplo de como podras trabajar con los teqse apukuna. Encuentra tu
propio modo de conocerlos mas, por ejemplo, probando sus energas a travs de un
seqe que extiendes desde tu qosqo. Encuentra tu propio modo de trabajar con ellos,
usando las tcnicas andinas que conoces, adaptndolas a tus necesidades. No existen las
equivocaciones en la tradicin andina. Tan solo el estado de tu energa y la claridad de
tu intencin. El amor se junta/conoce con el amor. El dar se junta/conoce con el dar. Los
teqse apukuna estn all, queriendo conocerte. Comienza presentandote ante ellos hoy
mismo.
Si reducieramos cada uno de estos enunciados a una sola palabra, sera ayni. Ayni es la
regla de oro del universo y, asi tambin, de la vida humana. Don Benito Qoriwaman
dijo que no tenemos que preguntarnos lo que Cristo nos dir cuando retorne en su
Segunda Venida. Sabemos lo que dir porque el Dios metafsico siempre ha dado el
mismo mensaje sin importar la apariencia que tome cuando aparezca en nuestro mundo.
Ese mensaje es ayninaquichis, o Practica el ayni. No solo es algo orientados a
conseguir resultados materialistas sino una practica energtica y una bsqueda espiritual
Ayni es un intercambio de energa. A la energa la conduce la intencin. As se cierra el
crculo de nuevo a la cuestin de cual es el "punto" que deseas hacer en tu prctica -de
la tradicin andina o de cualquier otra tradicin mstica o espiritual. No puedo responder
a esa pregunta por ti, pero te insto a que pases algn tiempo pensando en ello. Aqu hay
algunas preguntas que te ayudarn a profundizar en tus deseos subyacentes
Qu es la luz en ti y en tu vida?
Estas son solo unas cuantas de las muchas preguntas que te puedes hacer respecto al
punto de tu prctica. Te invito a realizar este mantenimiento interno de tus practicas
andinas y de tu vida en general. Los beneficios pueden ser enormes y no solo para ti,
sino, en vista de que todos estamos conectados energticamente, para tu familia,
comunidad y el mundo.
El punto es que el servicio que ofreces, ya sea en una clnica mdica o en una
tienda, se ofrece a travs del mecanismo de intercambio del mercado, que en
nuestra sociedad es el dinero. Es un intercambio challay. Como ser humano con
necesidades humanas -comida, vivienda, ropa, etc-, necesitas dinero para
sobrevivir. Es posible que tengas una familia que mantener, y que sin duda
quieres cuidarlos a ellos. Tambin es posible que desees crear abundancia que te
permita poder ayudar, libremente, a los dems, apoyar buenas causas, y tener el
tiempo libre para disfrutar de la vida en todas sus maravillas.
Si bien el comercio de bienes y servicios por dinero es ch'allay, tal pago monetario no
es todo lo que est implcito en este tipo de intercambio. Tambin existe el espritu en
lo que ofreces en tus bienes o servicios -imparcialidad, amabilidad, buena relacin
calidad-precio, cuidado, compasin, etc. Ese espritu tiene su propio valor energtico,
separado del valor material. Es un intercambio energtico ms all de ti mismo y de tus
necesidades materiales, lo cual es el ayni. De esta manera, se puede ver cmo el ayni y
ch'allay estn correlacionados -los bienes o servicios reales y el espritu con el cual
ofreces tus bienes o servicios van de la mano, se correlacionan.
No hay absolutamente ninguna vergenza en ganarse la vida con tus dones, y no slo
para tener una vida tranquila sino una fenomenal. De acuerdo con la tradicin andina, el
cosmos de energa viviente -pacha kawsay- es muy abundante. Hay ms que suficiente
para todo el mundo. Puedes tomar toda la que quieras, la cual es concedida, libremente,
en relacin a tu poder personal, que es tu capacidad energtica con la cual consigues
que la energa siga/apoye a tus intenciones. El hecho de que alguien tome para s una
gran cantidad de energa no siempre significa que alguien tenga que recibir menos. Esto
es una falsedad perpetuada por quienes piensan en trminos de escasez. La energa es
solo energa. No tiene ninguna implicancia moral. Tu sistema tico y moral te gua en la
eleccin de lo que deseas y en la cantidad que deseas manifestar o tener. Pero no te
equivoques al respecto-pues, energticamente, puedes tener todo lo que quieras.
Por lo tanto, esforzarse y esperar tener xito en ambos niveles del ser en lo material y
energtico. Depende de ti el valorarte lo suficiente para poder prosperar
abundantemente en el plano material y evolucionar conscientemente como ser humano
para aumentar la belleza y la alegra en el plano inmaterial.
accediendo a los teqse paqos, es tal como incrementas tu capacidad para ver con
claridad, especialmente a uno mismo.
Qu tiene esto que ver con encontrar alegra en el trabajo? Todo! Cuanto ms te
conoces a ti mismo, mejor te expresas. El conocimiento puede ser poder, pero la autorrealizacin energtica es capacidad suprema de tener poder
Puedes hacer todo tipo de tests de habilidad y hacer todo tipo de ejercicios exploratorios
para descubrir tus fortalezas personales, o puedes hablar con consejeros durante horas, o
ir a las ferias de empleo y encontrar mentores y seguir y seguir haciendo cosas, pero si
no ests profundizando dentro de ti a nivel energtico, es posible que te pierdas la
"verdad" de lo que realmente eres y, por lo tanto, hacer aquello para lo que, nicamente,
estas aqu.
S que es una respuesta bastante ambigua. No es fcil "concerse a si mismo." Pero, en
realidad, cmo es posible hacer lo que amas, si no sabes quien eres realmente?
Para ir en pos de la felicidad que hay ah fuera en el mundo, primero tienes que explorar
lo que hay dentro de ti -tocar la dicha del ser. De acuerdo con la tradicin andina,no
tienes que descubrir tu trabajo ideal, es suficiente con descubrir a tu ser divino. Y esto lo
haces fertilizando y haciendo crecer a tu Semilla Inca. Y toda la obra de la tradicin se
dirige hacia ese objetivo. Cuando aumentas tus habilidades qawaq, te ves a t mismo y
al mundo con claridad tal como realmente es- con menos turbidez de sus proyecciones,
menos deseo basado en el ego, menos apegos inconscientes, menos falsas expectativas,
y demas. A medida que aumentas tu luz (Sami), mas pura y brillantemente te reflejas a ti
mismo. Todo en tu vida cambia
Puedo dar fe de los cambios que ocurren. Mi propia vida es un testimonio de los efectos
transformadores de hacer las prcticas energticas andinas. En m misma y en los
dems, encuentro que, a medida que nos volvemos mas energitacamente empoderados y
desarrollamos mayores capacidades qawaq desarrollando el ser- surgen las siguientes
tres generales consecuencias :
1. Un cambio en las relaciones fundamentales de tu vida.
2. Un movimiento geogrfico
3. Un cambio de trabajo o dar un paso a una nueva profesin o manera de servir.
Estos cambios ocurren de forma natural como resultado de la evolucin consciente. No
tienes que descifrar nada. En su lugar, presta atencin a la llamada del ser divino
codificado en la Semilla Inca. Ya sabes. Acta. Cosecha los beneficios. Y lo mismo
ocurre con el mundo en general, porque cuando ests alineado con tu alma las
reverberaciones se sienten csmicamente
Por lo tanto, si no ests satisfecho con lo que ests haciendo, esa agitacin enrgetica y
psicolgica mejor tomarla como prueba de que tu Semilla Inca se est agitando en tu
interior. Te llama para que hagas crecer a tu propia alma. Por lo menos, hacer
saminchakuy todos los das. Debes ser claro en tu intencin de vivir como un ser
iluminado, porque de acuerdo a la cosmovisin andina, la energa debe seguir a la
intencin. No puede ser de otra forma. Adems, debido a la ley del ayni, la energa de la
Tierra el cosmos viviente- te enviar energa, la cual puede tomar diversas formas.
Podrias conocer a una persona, recibir una oferta, or hablar de una oportunidad que va
a transformar tu vida. Las circunstancias de cambio son infinitas, y la energa de la
Tierra es infinitamente creativa. Debido al Ayni, tienes que dirigir tus intenciones y
tambin saber escuchar y ver las seales del universo. Aquellos mensajes csmicos
pueden estar en directa contradiccin a tus actuales intenciones. O podran ser tan
sorprendentes e incluso disparatadas que dudes de ellas o incluso las rechaces. Lo haces
bajo tu propio riesgo. (un buen ejemplo de este intercambio ayni puede encontrarse en
el libro de Michael Singer El experimento de la Entrega. Y ms sobre esto en mi post
"Danzando con el Universo.")
En mi experiencia, las practicas de energa andinas es la forma mas eficaz de
evolucionar conscientemente. De ah que te hago esta pregunta : Porqu pasar otro da
mas ignorando a tu malestar e infelicidad? Empieza, ahora mismo, por limpiar la hucha
y aumentando el sami El sami es el alimento de la semilla Inca. Es posible que te
sorprendas de cuan rpida y vigorosamente la semilla haga crecer una vida totalmente
nueva para ti
El sol negro que vive dentro de tu corazn es la luz de lo csmico dentro de ti. Es tu luz
original. Es tu enlace a Yahweh (YHVH), por usar el antiguo nombre hebreo de Dios.
Dejando a lado a cualquier creencia, eres una gota del Misterio una gota de Dios que
ha tomado forma humana. Eso es lo que, realmente, eres y es parte de tu trabajo como
paqo el limpiar tu burbuja energetica para evolucionar al sptimo nivel de consciencia.
El sptimo nivel de consciencia humana es algo inefable. Los paqos no dan alguna
descripcin mas all de la explicacin de que es, de alguna manera, la plena conciencia
realizada de Dios en los seres humanos en este mundo material
Saber que esta gota de Divinidad existe dentro de ti como tu Semilla Inca y que,
tambin, se le conceptualiza en algunos lugares de los Andes como un Sol Negro te
ayudar a entender lo que significa kanay. Alcanzar el kanay es sufrir/padecer (en el
sentido religioso y mistico del extasis y admiracin) el intenso poder (metafricamente
calor) de esta integracin de lo divino y lo humano. Adems de otras cosas, una semilla
necesita luz para poder crecer. Tu Semilla Inca es germinada y alimentada por tu luz
interior, y su crecimiento es proporcional a la creciente luz de su conciencia siempre en
evolucin
Pero, porqu un sol negro? Es un poco raro, no?
No si recuerdas que en la tradicin mistica andina la mas alta vibracin energtica es
willka, la luz negra. A Willka se le considera como la energa mas difcil de dominar.
Si hicieras el entrenamiento chaupi de don Andres Espinosa tal como lo ensea Juan
Nuez del Prado y su hijo Ivan, o yo misma y otros que hemos sido entrenados por l e
Ivn, sabrs que la energa willka esta presente en el mundo natural, pero, tambin, hay
una forma de crear esta energa en ti. Se manifiesta a travs de la fusin del sami del
universo con el sami de la tierra dentro del cuerpo humano.
En el Chunpi Away, la iniciacin que entrelaza a los chunpis consiste en jalar dos
cuerdas de energa csmica hacia dentro de tu poqpo una dorada y otra plateada. Las
mueves desde la cima de tu cabeza hasta la base de tu espina dorsal. Luego, jalas un
cordon de energa verde desde la Madre Tierra hacia dentro de tu poqpo, a la altura del
coxis a travs del ojo del cinturn inferior, el siki awi, y lo jalas hacia arriba de tu
espina dorsal. Luego, unes los cordones dorado, plateado y verde para crear un solo
cordon de energa negra. La energa willka. La cual has creado integrando especificas
vibraciones csmicas y de la tierra en el interior de tu poqpo y cuerpo fsico.
El sol negro interno es esta energa willka en el centro del corazn. Asi como la Semilla
Inka codifica lo divino dentro de lo humano, y asi como la unin de ciertas energas
csmicas y de la Tierra forman willka a lo largo de la espina dorsal, el sol negro
representa la integracin de las energas csmicas y terrestres dentro del ser humano en
el nivel de munay, que vive en el centro del corazn.
Kanay, entonces, puede entenderse como el alcanzar el japu de las dos energas
yanantin dentro del corazn. El yanantin se refiere a las energas no similares. En este
caso, a la energa del ser csmico y a la energa del ser humano. Japu es la perfecta
integracin de las energas no similares. Cuando trabajas en el qori chumpi para acoplar
a la energa y el espritu de kanay estas avivando el fuego interno para que un dia
realices la estatica y plena integracin consciente de tu divinidad con tu humanidad.
Este nuevo ser csmico-terrestre es quien realmente eres. Kanay no es solo conocer al
Ser Verdadero, sino el tener poder personal para serlo y vivirlo.
energa. Las dos posibilidades son que no puedas tener la capacidad energtica el
poder personal- para hacer lo que intentas o no puedes tener la integridad coherencia
energtica- para concretar tus intenciones.
Cuantas veces alguien te ha pedido hacer algo y solo has parloteado?. Y digas Bueno,
quizs. Careces de claridad. Eres ambiguo y evasivo. Al no podes valorar/medir a tu
voluntad, intencin y energa para asumir un compromiso de forma inmediata, empleas
tcticas dilatorias. Ahora vuelvo contigo. Dejame ver mi agenda. No puedo
contestar ahora. Necesito un tiempo para pensar en ello.
Ayti no tiene que ver con el ser irreflexivo. No se pide algn compromiso sin un previo
anlisis o reflexin. Lo que se hace es pedirte que seas claro respecto a tu estado
energtico. Sabrs, ahora mismo, con certeza, si estas interesado en hacer algo o no, y si
tienes la capacidad de hacer algo o no. Cuando alguien te pregunte, Vas a ayudar en la
recaudacin de fondos de la escuela el prximo sbado?, podras decir con decisin Si,
lo har o No, no puedo. Si tu respuesta es Si, entonces no tendrs ninguna duda el
viernes por la noche con tu voz interna dicindote Por qu acept ir? No quiero
hacerlo! Que tonto fui en decir que si.
Al actuar desde Ayti, te mostrars feliz y como un activo tremendamente positivo en la
recaudacin de fondos debido a que tu intencin era clara desde el momento en que
asumiste el compromiso. De esta forma, el yana chumpi puede ser una medida de tu
poder personal en ese momento, en el momento actual. Sabras, a travs del Atiy, si estas
en coherencia e integridad con tus intenciones y acciones, y en tus pensamientos,
palabras y acciones.
Al yana chumpi se le asocia, tambin, con la sincronizacin. Aunque el cinturn a la
altura del ombligo y del qosqo, el puka chumpi, es el que est mas asociado con la
energa kinetica (la toma de accin), el yuna chumpi es el cinturn que te ayuda a actuar
en el momento mas propicio. Estos dos centros trabajan juntos Estos dos centros
trabajan juntos para ayudarte a fomentar el sentido de lo que es "accin correcta" y para,
luego, llevarla a cabo. No podras concretar nada si no tienes el poder fsico y energtico
para hacerlo, pero el saber cuando actuar es casi tan importante como saber que accin
tomar, teniendo la energa para ello.
La energa en el yana chumpi, si esta suficientemente limpia y sintonizada, te ayuda a
obtener una ventaja integrando accin y sincronizacin en una danza mistica que alguno
podra llamar suerte. Cuando tus acciones y sincronizacin estn perfectamente
alineadas, aumentas tus oportunidades de tener xito. Estaras en el lugar justo en el
momento justo o diras las palabras justas a la persona justa en el momento justo.
Podras juzgar tu nivel de poder personal evaluando tu puntaje de los resultados
obtenidos. Haces lo que quieres hacer? O solo sueas despierto en conseguir algo y
nunca llevas a cabo tus intenciones?. terminas lo que has empezado? Tienes una
buena reserva de energa tras haber planificado un proyecto o hecho un cambio en tu
vida? Son los resultados los que hablan por si mismos, siendo un buen medidor de tu
poder personal. Pero tu yana chumpi es el calibrador energtico de tu capacidad
energtica global por el poder. Si no tienes un cuerpo energtico coherente, no tendras el
poder personal para llevar a cabo tus intenciones. Aumenta tu coherencia, limpia la
hucha de todos tus cinturones, especialmente del puka chumpi y yana chumpi.
Cada chumpi tiene un awi, un ojo mistico a travs del cual percibes, energticamente,
el mundo. Seis de ellos estn orientados hacia delante del cuerpo. Solo uno mira hacia
atrs el siki awi de este cinturn inferior.
Cuando los andinos se situan en el tiempo dicen que el pasado esta delante de ellos
porque ya se conoce, mientras que el futuro esta detrs de ellos ya que se desconoce. En
el sistema mstico, sin embargo, tenemos un ojo en el futuro, al no ser, completamente,
desconocido. Limpiando el yana chumpi y el siki awi mejorars tu capacidad de ver el
futuro. El futuro no es fijo, sino que cambia de acuerdo a tus intenciones, acciones y
elecciones presentes. Sin embargo, podras ver lo que es mas probable que ocurra a
travs de tu siki awi, y si no te gusta lo que ves, tendras herramientas misticas para
mejorarte a ti mismo y, por tanto, a tu futuro. Cuando puedas sentir, con precisin, el
flujo del tiempo viniendo del futuro hacia ti y sacar provecho de esta visin mstica para
influir en tus acciones de manera positiva, lo que mejorar enormemente no slo la tasa
de xito de tus acciones, sino tu estado general de bienestar .
con tu poqpo. La hucha convierte tu liviandad en algo pesado e incomodo. Por tanto,
has de limpiar la piel de tu poqpo tal como limpias la piel de tu cuerpo. Se siente bien,
no?. Podemos decir que nuestra piel esta sucia pero no podemos decirlo de nuestro
poqpo hucha no es suciedad, sino, simplemente, pesadez.
El otro aspecto de esta metfora de la limpieza/ducha es la que se refiere al
direccionamiento. El flujo de energa en la practica del saminchakuy va hacia abajo,
hacia el suelo, tal como el agua al caer del cielo o de la ducha. Recibimos o jalamos
sami del cosmos hacia nuestra burbuja y sacamos la hucha de nuestro poqpo hacia la
Madre Tierra, la cual la transmuta en sami. Bsicamente, el libre flujo de sami hace que
la hucha, nuevamente, se mueva, y la Madre Tierra finaliza el trabajo de retornarla a su
estado de movimiento sin obstrucciones.
Don Benito Qoriwaman deca que si tu limpias la hucha todos los das, con el tiempo
podras retornar a un estado de absorber e irradiar, perfectamente, el kawsay. Por eso,
bien practicando solo el saminchakuy, o bien con el saiwachukuy cuando lo necesites,
se podria, eventualmente, alcanzar el sexto nivel de conciencia.!
Y, de donde viene la practica del hucha mikhuy? en qu se diferencia del
saminchakuy? Cundo usar hucha mikhuy en vez de saminchakuy?
Mientras que el saminchakuy se puede hacer en los dems, es la prctica
fundamental a utilizar en si mismo. Y mientras que el huchamikhuy se puede hacer
del si mismo, es la prctica fundamental a utilizar en los dems.
While saminchakuy can be done on others, it is the essential
practice to use on the self. And while hucha mkihuy can be done of
the self, it is the essential practice to use on others.
Ambas son formas de limpiar lo energtico, pero se usan para propsitos diferentes y en
situaciones diferentes.
Primero, como se hace el hucha mikhuy. Es una tcnica por la cual te conectas con la
burbuja o poqpo de otra persona y diriges su hucha hacia dentro de tu poqpo,
generalmente esto se hace a travs de tu qosqo el centro de energa situado alrededor
de tu ombligo. All, lo que hayas jalado del poqpo de la otra persona se divide en dos
corrientes: extrayndose el sami de la hucha y envindolo hacia arriba dentro de todo tu
poqpo empoderndote a ti mismo. La otra corriente alimenta a la hucha de la otra
persona envindola hacia abajo y fuera de tu poqpo hacia dentro de la Madre Tierra, que
la transforma en sami. Como puedes ver, es una energa totalmente diferente del flujo de
energa que se obtiene del saminchakuy.
Aunque puedes usar el hucha mikhuy contigo mismo, es fundamentalmente una tcnica
para limpiar a los dems o mas exactamente hacer fluir los flujos de energa de los
dems que experimemtes como pesados hacia ti mismo. Por lo tanto, es muy bueno
tanto para trabajar las relaciones en las que experimentes una gran cantidad de hucha y
en entornos o situaciones que sientas que, para ti, estn llenos de hucha. Recuerda que
eres el centro del universo. No puedes saber el estado del poqpo de otras personas, pero
siempre puedes saber como el flujo de la energa se siente en ti. Si sintieses la presencia
de hucha, no te preocupes por la otra persona, preocupate de tu experiencia. Posees
herramientas, como el hucha mikhuy, con la cual limpiar los flujos de modo que estn
llenas de sami para ti en vez de con la pesada hucha.
Hay etapas en el aprendizaje de esta tcnica. Los paqos aconsejamn que, primero,
trabajes en alguien con el cual tengas alguna dificultad o con quien tengas una buena
relacin (todo el mundo tiene hucha con quien practicar), luego pasar a aquellos con
quienes seas, emocionalmente, neutral, y finalmente, una vez que has experimentado
con la tcnica, empezar a trabajar con aquellos con quienes sientes pesadez.
Juan Nunez del Prado dice que hucha mikhuy te mueve con mucha rapidez En cierto
sentido, puedes conseguir mas limpieza de la inversin que te animes a hacer. Usando
una metfora, dice que saminchakuy es como un nio que empieza a crecer comiendo
alimentos blandos, mientras que huchamikhuy es como un nio que crece ya comiendo
alimentos slidos Puedes masticarlos una vez que ya tengas dientes! Hucha mikhuy es
para quienes tengan los dientes!
Juan cuenta la historia de un colega con quien no tenia casi ninguna relacin. Ambos se
tenan poca simpata. Juan us hucha mikhuy en/con esa relacin y aunque le tom unos
8 meses conseguir que la hucha se transformase y para que esa relacin fuese cordial.
Desde ese estado libre de hucha, los dos construyeron una solida amistad.
En otro ejemplo, hace mucho tiempo los pueblos Qero fueron invadidos por una
epidemia de viruela. Un paqo, llamado Garibilu Qespi, fue el nico sobreviviente de
una familia de siete hijos. Como vea que los pobladores moran en grandes cantidades
se dijo a si mismo que tena que hacer algo. E intent lo del hucha mikhuy: comiendo
la energa de la epidemia de viruela y as salv de la desaparicin a su pueblo. Este
paqo es reverenciado como hroe en su comunidad.
Que el hucha mikhuy sea algo poderoso no significa que el saminchakuy no lo sea. Lo
es. Pero, cuando la pesadez sea sustancial y, especialmente, si lo es entre tu y otra
persona o entre tu y una situacin, entonces sera el hucha mikhuy la practica a realizar.
Con la limpieza de hucha de las relaciones y situaciones, no solo empoderamos a la otra
persona sino a nosotros mismos. Juan dice que te impulsa a ti y a la otra persona y
aporta un combustible diferente al del saminchakuy. Conduce tu vida con mayor rapidez
al haber mas sami en tus relaciones y en ti mismo.
Como paqos estamos obligados a usar nuestro poder personal en nuestro propio
beneficio y en de los dems. Como Juan lo dice : Si caminas en medio de la basura del
terreno, detente y recgela. De forma similar, si te topas con la pesadez de quienes
tienes cerca de ti, limpia esa hucha
Tus herramientas fundamentales para la limpieza de hucha son el saminchakuy y el
hucha mikhuy. Una vez que domines el hucha mikhuy (aprendiendola en la forma que
los paqos aconsejan) tendras un medio poderoso de mejorar tus relaciones aumentando
tu bienestar y el de los dems.
Andean mystics would agreeto a point. They certainly would agree that:
intention drives kawsay, the animating energy of the universe; energy must
follow intention because ayni (reciprocity) is the organizing principle of the
cosmos and the driving force of evolution
words have power; rimay is the capacity of the qolqe chunpi, the energy belt at
the throat, and that capacity is all about speaking with power so that your words
influence the material world
embodiment, in any form, from dancing to singing to acting out your desires and
dreams, is a power that can influence the kawsay pacha and help manifest your
intentions
However, the caveat is that in Andean mysticism affirmations alone are not enough.
Personal power drives your ability to influence the world of living energy, so without
adequate personal power, your affirmations are at best ineffective and at worst useless.
There are many ways to talk about personal power, and the one I like best is as
coherence of your energy body. The more sami (refined, light living energy) you have,
the less hucha (heavy, slow energy). Hucha causes disruption to the free flow of energy
through uswe are always absorbing and radiating kawsayand as a result we lose
coherence. By cleansing our poqpoour energy bubblewe divest it of hucha and
infuse it with sami and so increase our coherence. With more coherence comes an
increased capacity for interacting with the kawsay pacha.
Another helpful metaphor is that of a filter. When our filter is clogged, not as much
energy flows through us. When our filter is unclogged, we can freely absorb and radiate
kawsay/sami and so have more unrestricted personal power. As our personal power
increases, so does our effectiveness at influencing the cosmos. Energy more effortlessly
follows our intentions and we become better at manifesting our desires.
So what kinds of affirmations would an Andean paqo use? Good question, and not one I
actually have a lot of examples to share. But I do have some, and they can provide clues
to what an Andean affirmation is like.
More than 15 years ago, I had the good fortune to work with and interview many Qero
paqos. Most have passed on now, but they were among the most highly regarded Qero
paqos at that time. In a few instances, when they gifted me a sacred stonea khuya
from their mesas, they would describe the use of that khuya and would provide what I
call an incantation to use with it. The incantations all had the same structure: the
wording was such that what I was asking to manifest or do was expressed as already
having happened.
Here are two examples. I was given a khuya by don Julian Pauqar Flores for which he
described a host of uses, one of which was for blessing someone about to set out on a
trip. Part of the incantation during the blessing is that the person who is traveling say,
May the walk that I take be walked. May the wish that I make be wished. May the
walk that I do be done.
In another instance, one of the Qero paqos was relating a ceremony that paqos do
yearly on August 1 (See my blog post Independence Day Andean Style.). Its a
ceremony to transform the past by stating your intentions for the coming year. During it
you intone, I am what I speak, not what I spoken.
As you can see in the first of these two affirmations, the attitude and belief fueling the
incantation is that whatever it is you are asking for has already been completed or
accomplished successfully. In the second, the incantation cancels the past and refocuses
energetically in the present, so that you make a fresh start. These affirmations are not
concrete in the sense that they are describing all the details of the desire; they are openended in the sense that the quality of the desire (successful completion of a trip,
launching of new intentions) is expressed and the details of manifestation are left to the
universe.
I find this approach to be an excellent one to take when making affirmations that
embody intentions. I know from years of experience that the universe is incredibly
creative and much wiser than I am! So I express the general quality of what I desire and
leave the fine print to the universe.
Following in the footsteps of the Qero approach to incantations and affirmations, my
life affirmation is as follows: I serve the universe and its highest vision for me. Keep
me on the path of my highest soul growth.
By keeping my affirmation general in content but crystal clear in quality, I allow the
universe to direct me toward my goal of becoming the most consciously evolved human
being I can and of living with the greatest amount of well-being. I know the kawsay
pacha is overly abundant and that joy is the natural state of human nature, so I dont
sweat the details because I know that by affirming to the universe that I want to realize
its highest vision for me it will no doubt infuse that journey with its own highest
qualities: abundance in all forms, love and joy, and overall well-being.
The second sentence of my affirmation is one that includes my personal power and
responsibility. I agree implicitly to live with courage to follow the course the universe
directs, knowing as I do that no matter what that path looks like or what happens as I
walk it, the universe has my back. I give up control for the certainty that as I follow this
path, my destination is always clear. If energy follows intention, then I am being led to
the highest expression of myself, which in the Andean tradition is the flowering of my
Inka Seed (my human expression of my divine self). My responsibility is to cleanse my
poqpo to be in the most refined state of coherence possible so that I have the personal
power to follow the universes lead.
There are all kinds of ways to think about intention, affirmations and incantations.
While the form of your affirmation may not matter, what does matter is that you have
clarity of intention and the personal power to push the kawsay in support of it.
Techniques of the Andessuch as saminchakuy, or cleansing your energy body of
huchacan help ensure that you do.
Their answers vary from energy blocks to negative energy to dark entities.
My response then is take them back to the basics of the Andean understanding of
energy. The bottom line is that, according to the Andean tradition as I have been taught
it, there is nothing to extract.
Andeans (at least the paqos of my lineagedon Benito Qoriwaman, don Andres
Espinosa and don Melchor Desa) view the kawsay pacha as streams of free-flowing
energy. Sami is the highest frequency of this free-flowing kawsay. Hucha is kawsay
that human beings have slowed down. Hucha is not bad, negative, dark, contaminating,
or harmful. Its just slow energy. So what is there to extract?
The primary technique for healing I have witnessed or learned about from the Andes is
to sweep the poqpo to get hucha moving again. You know when you see a paqo
moving his or her misha over a persons body, usually moving it in downward strokes
over the body? Thats pichay, which literally means to sweep. The misha is a great
eater of hucha. Sweeping it over the body gets the kawsay moving again, turning that
hucha into samifree-flowing energy. Thats all. Its that simple. You either sweep or
strengthen the poqpo so it can more effortlessly absorb and radiate kawsay without
slowing the kawsay down. So, there is nothing to extract.
Healing in the Andes is like being a conductor of a symphony. You direct the energies.
You get it moving coherently. You help the person playing the instrument of their
poqpo to keep more perfect time with the rhythm of the kawsay pacha. Your
conductors baton is your intention.
That said, way back when I was first starting on this path, I spent time with a few
women friends and Amrico Ybar on the Island of the Moon learning about khuyas.
Amrico imparted all kinds of information about the uses of khuyas, what their shapes
and appearances might mean and how to use them, and I passed this information on in
my Masters of the Living Energy. Although I used the word extraction there once, that
is not a accurate word choice. We are not extracting anything, even though we use all
kinds of linguistic metaphors to describe getting the kawsay to move freely again. We
talk about cleansing hucha, eating it, digesting it, pulling it, pushing it, unblocking it,
and so on. Really, all we are doing is helping people get what is slow within them to
move more naturally, which means faster. You are helping them unlock their own selfhealing potential, which is subject only to their will, not to yours.
If extraction is found in Peru, it likely comes from the Northcoast or Amazonian healing
traditions, not from the Andes area.
Very simply, from the Andean perspective, kawsay either moves freely or it doesnt.
When it doesnt, the reason is something in the person (fear, worry, judgment, etc.).
While it is true that the person is responsible for invoking their will and personal power
to heal himself or herself, it is also true that a healer may need to meet the expectations
of that client. Expectation has a huge impact on the propensity to heal or not.
Sometimes a client has an expectation that you must use gemstones, crystals, feathers
and so on in order to heal them. However, according to the Andean tradition those
things are not doing anythingonly you are through your intent and your own ability to
push the kawsay on behalf of the client.
I always joke that I dont want to be known as the killjoy of the Andean mystical
tradition! Joking aside, I am profoundly serious when I insist that students learn to
interact with the kawsay pacha using nothing but their intent. I ask them to view
everything outside of their intent as a fetish. Using fetisheswhether a khuya, feather
or even the mishacan be fun, but they are not necessary. Using them is a choice, and
as consciously evolving human beings we want to make conscious choices. Once you
can move energy using your intent, then you are free to do anything and use anything
because you know you dont need it but simply choose it. In this way you always
maintain and act from your own personal power and you assist your clients to access
and use theirs as well.
Andeans called the metaphysical God by many names, most notably Wiraqocha (also
spelled Viraqocha, and in both the q is sometimes a c), which means foam or fat of
the sea. According to varying accounts in the anthropological record of Andean
mythology, Wiraqocha arose from the sacred lake, Titicaca, and banished the darkness
by bringing forth light. He then created the material world: the sun, moon, stars, etc.
Wiraqocha had a son Inti (the sun) and two daughters (Mama Killa, the moon) and
Pachamama (the material universe, sometimes also the name of the planet Earth).
He created human beings from stone, breathing life into them. There were other beings
before humans, but because they defied or displeased Wiraqocha, he destroyed them
through a great flood. After the flood, he created two new humans: Manco Qapac
(which means splendid foundation) and Mama Ocllu (mother fertility), who
founded the Inka civilization (and, according to the Qero, founded Qero). Then
Wiraqocha walked across the waters of the ocean and disappeared. The prophecy is that
a great white man, a god, would one day return to the Inkas.
If you know anything about Christianity, you dont have to struggle to see the
correlations to the creation of the world in Genesis, a book of the Old Testament. The
God of The Bible and Wiraqocha share many similarities of action and intent, so it
wouldnt have been a stretch for the paqos and indigenous population to remain open to
Christianity.
It is mostly aspects of the New Testament that bear resemblance to the beliefs of much
of the Andes. I wont report on all of them, but will highlight several significant
correspondences.
In the New Testament, Jesus says to do unto others as you would have them do unto
you. This, in the Andes, is aynithe most fundamental construct of social and even
cosmic law. Jesus also delivers three commandments. The first is to love God with all
your mind, strength and heart. You can easily see how the three aspects of love equate
with the Andean concept of the three human powers: yachay (mind, reason, intellect),
llankay (the body, action, the ability to do work), and munay, (love grounded in will).
The second and third commandments are to love others as you love yourself and to love
your enemies. This requires not a sentimental love, but a love that depends on conscious
choice. That is exactly what munay is: love under the power of your will. It is the
willingness to love, even those who are very different from you. It is no wonder that the
paqos and indigenous Andeans could see Jesuss messages as aligned with the most
fundamental of Andean beliefs. Today, Jesus, and Holy Mother Mary, are placed at that
the top of the Andean hierarchy of teqse paqos (universal paqos). Jesus is seen as an
apu, the Apu Jesucristo; and as Juan Nuez del Prado writes, he is seen as the Apuyaya
or Taytacha, the guardian of the universe. He is also seen as a sixth-level being, one who
glows. It is said that the candidate for Inka who glowed was the one who was elected.
Glowing is a hallmark of the sixth level of consciousness in the schema of the Andes,
where there are seven levels that humans can evolve through, the seventh level being
God in humans.
When Jesus was resurrected, the Father sent a new energy to humanity as his
intermediarythe Holy Spirit. This is variously depicted as a tongue of fire or a dove.
In the Andean tradition, the messenger between the upper worldthe hanaq pacha
and this worldthe kay pachais also a bird: qenti, the hummingbird. The
hummingbird also is the symbol of the Taripaypacha, the dawning of the age of the new
humanity, when human beings will integrate their yachay, llankay and munay to birth a
new human who lives in perfect ayni. Qenti is also the carrier of the Mosoq Karpay, the
karpay, as explained by Juan, that is given only by God to those people he considers
appropriate to be carriers of the new capacities. (See An Andean Transcendental
Anthropology at http://www.giurfa.com/inca_religion.pdf .)
Other Christian practices would have seemed familiar to the Inkas and paqos. These
include the Catholic practice of honoring the saints, which would find its correlation in
the Inka practice of the worship of the ancestors, most specifically the mummy bundles.
One of the most obvious correspondences is the way Christians rely on priests
as intermediaries between God and humans. Paqos take on this role in the Andean
culture. In Christianity, there are sacred places and shrines, and holy icons and relics. In
the Andean tradition, there are hundreds of wakas (huacas): natural sites and man-made
objects that are the repositories of the sacred.
I could continue to list correspondences, but I trust that this sampling has helped you to
see that although Christianity was forced upon the Andeans, often quite brutally, there
are deep points of similarity that have allowed Andeans, especially paqos, to choose to
remain Christian or to maintain their affiliation with those aspects of Christianity that
correlate so well with the ancient indigenous belief system and mystical practice. Paqos
are beyond the dogma of the organized Christian church, but they are in alignment with
the spirit of the Christian message.
A different kind of post today. . .in this spring season of renewal, a reminder
of the blessings of the Andes.
You are a drop of the Mystery. There is no one else like you. Your life is a gift of the
cosmos. In ayni, some day you will give that life back. Your goal as a paqo is to ensure
that you return as a grander, more marvelous, and fully realized you.
Questions for contemplation: Are you living the mission of your Inka Seed? Have you
taken the quiet time necessary to get in touch with your core divinity? Are you aware
that you live in three worlds simultaneouslythe upper world of the Godhead, the fully
human world in which you often wear many masks, and the inner world of the hidden
you. Are you bringing light to the you of each world and integrating these three selves
to live as who you really are?
Munay is the treasure of the Andes. Love is not an impulse but a choice. It is under the
control of your will. It is an energy in which you are always self-sufficient and that you
can make more of at any time. It is beyond the needs of the self. It is a force of personal
and natural evolution.
Questions for contemplation: Have you taken an inner and outer love inventory in your
life lately? Do you love yourself as the universe loves you? Are you making a choice to
move beyond projections, judgments, and unconscious selfish needs to bring loving
kindness to your relationships?
The only thing that is absolutely yours in this lifetime is your poqpo your energy
body. No one can enter it without your permissionnot even God. Your intention,
through ayni, activates your relationships with all beings, from God and the Spirit
Beings (teqse paqos) to your fellow humans to the creatures of this world. Cleansing
your poqpo and bringing coherence to it propels your conscious evolution and
enhances your capacity to live with khuyay (life passion).
Questions for contemplation: Do you treasure your poqpo as among your most
precious possessions and treat it accordingly? Are you maintaining a practice of
saminchakuy (releasing hucha and filling with sami) to bring greater coherence to your
poqpo? Have you invited God/Creator into your bubble and allowed that Universal
energy to touch your Inka Seed and heart?
Your responsibility as a paqo is to live with joy and well-being, and to foster joy and
well-being in others. A paqo is always striving to be a fully developed being in the
human world. So whatever personal power you have accumulated, it is your duty to use
that power on behalf of yourself and the world. You dont have to ask permission to use
your power for the well-being of another. Well-being is fueled only by love/munay, and
you never have to ask permission to share munay to another.
Questions for contemplation: Are you taking responsibility for your own well-being?
Are you working to heal yourself before you worry about healing others? Whats
your inner quotient for joy? Can you increase it for yourself and for others? If you were
to examine the ayni flow of joy and well-being between others and yourself, and vice
versa, would you be content with the strength of that flow? If not, how can you increase
the flow?
The kawsay pacha is gloriously abundant! Energy has no moral overlay except the
ethical and moral code you choose to live by, so you can manifest anything you want
from the universe of living energy according to your own values.
What you can manifest is proportionalthrough the law of aynito your personal
power. As you increase your personal power by bringing greater coherence to your
poqpo, you will increase your ability to influence the kawsay pacha on behalf of
yourself and others.
Questions for contemplation: Do you trust the universe? Do you trust your relationship
to the universe? Do you believe that everything possible is available to you through the
law of ayni? If not, have you spent time clearing both the field of your beliefs and the
field of your energy body? If you believe everything is available, are you willing to
receive from the kawsay pacha? Are there any hidden blocks to your feelings of
deserving and your readiness to receive? When was the last time you expressed
gratitude to the living universe for the blessings of your life?
You might not be used to hearing a teacher and practitioner of the Andean tradition talk
about God (or whatever you want to call the Great Intelligence of the Universe). I am
the exception. I talk about God all the time, because the Inka Seed inside me is my
energetic connection to God. I am, and you are, a Drop of the Mystery manifest in
human form. But how much do you live from that knowing? How does that wildly
amazing truth infuse joy into your practice as a paqo?
As paqos we are learning to be at play in this grand, infinite field of energy, knowing
that energy must follow intention. It must! That is the law of ayni. Yet as much as I
know that, I also know that too often I am shy about marshalling my personal power to
meet God on this equal playing field of love, joy, and manifestation.
This is a message I have to constantly remind myself of. I am aware that I do not laugh
enough in my life. I feel joy, but I tend to keep the expression of that joy inside. Too
often my joy is private. Thats like keeping a light under a bushel basket. The glow
barely escapes. . .
We can fake a laugh but we cant manufacture true feelings of joy. We have to cultivate
the playful and passionate aspects of ourselves just as we cultivate other skills and
talents. The first step is awareness. By observing ourselves we can sit outside ourselves
not as critics but as cheerleaders. Heller Keller said, One can never consent to creep
when one feels the impulse to soar. Our path as paqos is conscious evolution so that we
stop creeping and start soaringand not only as individuals but as a species.
Joy is generated as much from the sacralized world as from the purely human one.
Paqos are focused like a laser on the human worldon living as a fully realized human
being. The writer and adventurer Jon Krakauer, writes: You are wrong if you think Joy
emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us.
It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage
to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. My point is
that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your
life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for
it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new
circumstances.
I would add that it is more than circumstance and a desire for the unconventional that
facilitate an openness to experiencing joy; it is a developing awareness. It is a way of
looking at and perceiving the world, even in its most conventional guise. The Andean
tradition can help us cultivate both a new approach to engaging the world and greater
levels of awareness to perceive it through. Then we can witness and, more importantly,
experience what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin says of joy: Joy is the infallible sign of the
presence of God.
We can wait for joy or we can cultivate it. Writer Shauna Niequist gets to the heart of
the matter when she says: I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he
gave life to someone who loves the gift.
Your life is a gift from the kawsay pacha. One day you will have to return that gift. The
question is what the in-between of that ayni exchange is going to look like, feel like,
be like. I propose that we burn the candle of joy from both ends: laughing through this
life along with our joyful God and living our joy in honor of Gods gift of our life.
Of all the spiritual traditions that I have studied, I find that the Andean tradition best
embodies this dual point of view that we are both recipients and givers of joy. My
counsel to those learning the path is to strip Andean mysticism down to this deep
playful and passionate core, and from there to develop their practice. All the rest will
fall into place more effortlessly and naturallyand joyfully.
love, compassion, empathy and non-judgment. The supporting powers are rimay, kanay
and atiy.
4) Live your life as the treasure that it is, and live fully and passionately no matter the
outward circumstances. Seeing the world as a awe-inducing creative experience is a
point of view that comes from the inside and can change everything about the outside.
As some Hindu mystics say, you are not in the world, the world is in you. You project
awareness out into the world and into your experiences, which colors all the meanings
you give to what is happening around you, to you, and through you. In the Andean
tradition, the goal is to engage all of life with passion, and the power is khuyay.
To live these principles is not about seeing through rose-colored glasses or living a fairy
tale. It is about being the passionate yet sober energetic warrior who lives from his or
her Inka Seed. Expanding your personal power may not be easy or comfortable. For
whatever reason, we humans tend to learn and grow through challenges. As paqos we
strive to see reality as it really is, and sometimes reality appears to be a opponent
rather than a ally. Our work as paqos is to look beyond appearances to what physicist
Bruce A. Schumm calls the deep down things. The power is qaway.
Gloria Karpinski, a wise friend of mine (and a gifted author and international teacher
and lecturer), provides a pithy way to understand one of the common ways spiritual and
energetic intention (ayni) works in the real world. She writes, in her book Where Two
Worlds Touch, Once we start paying attention to whats happening in our own
environment, we begin to see that the universe is giving us all sorts of clues about our
path. If we believe in love and we are making a commitment to being love, theres a
good chance the universe will send us thirty people in a row whom we dont love. Our
assignment: Love those thirty people.
The law of ayni can be surprising! Using Karpinskis example, as we develop munay,
we may indeed draw to us those we can easily love. But we might just as easily draw to
us those whom we struggle to love. Both results fulfill the law of ayni, although the
latter is decidedly more difficult a lesson in the ayni of self-awareness and growth. No
rose-colored glasses here! But no need for them either, as you, as a paqo, have all the
practices and tools you need to meet the challenge (or, more accurately, the opportunity)
the kawsya pacha has seen fit to offer you.
You dont need to be a philosopher to be a paqo, but I do think that you can more easily
and quickly master the practices of the tradition if you dive down into the deeper levels
of what you are doing and why. When you seek those deep, down things, then you must
take off the rose-colored glasses because will not see your life as a paqo as onedimensional or single-hued. The kawsay pacha is rich in creativity and blessings beyond
your wildest imaginings. Why would you think that your life, and indeed our human
world, would be any less so? Even your cruelest challenge can be turned to good if you
approach the world as it really is, which is under the guidance of your munay and
ayni.
The whole point of this post is to urge you to pay attention to more than the surface
roads of your work as a paqo along lifes journey. Your destination is certainyou will
one day return the gift of your life back to the kawsay pacha. The question is if you will
have evolved as much as you can through your practice. Have you discovered and then
used all of your gifts? Have you shared them with the world?
I love this quotation from Erma Bombeck: When I stand before God at the end of my
life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, I used
everything you gave me. An Andean paqo can speak no truer words than those!
Birds of Consciousness
May 11, 2016 ~ Leave a comment
And do you see how beautiful and graceful the birds are when they are flying and
soaring? The ground has many comforts for them to enjoy . . . But in the sky they are
truly what a bird is meant to be. So it is with the human heart.
Aleksandra Layland, novelist
Birds are common metaphors for the loosing of spirit, for the untethering of an
earthbound soul. There is a similar use of this metaphor in the Andes, where there is a
bird spirit helper associated with many of the levels of human consciousness. According
to the teaching of don Benito Qoriwaman, there are seven levels of consciousness that
can manifest in humans on earth, although currently we have manifested only four and
are eagerly awaiting the fifth level, which is part of prophecies that foretell the rise of
the New Humanity.
While Andeans generally dont work with totem animals in the way that many Central
and North American indigenous and Native peoples do, they have a concept of spirit
helpers that include animals and birds.
There is a specific kind of bird associated with a specific level of conscious, and they
can assist you in at least two ways in your personal growth to a higher level of
consciousness:
1) If you have already achieved that level of conscious development, you can choose to
work with the bird associated with that level as a spirit guide, to learn more about that
state of consciousness and to continue to develop.
2) If you have not yet reached that level of development, you can be called by the bird
of that level. If you accept that bird as a tutelary guide, it will help you grow to that
level of consciousness.
Before discussing the levels of consciousness, however briefly, and identifying the bird
associated with it, its important to understand that we tend to slip back and forth
between levels in our daily lives. We tend to be inconsistent in our behavior and
mindset, which change depending on context. Rather like the persona of psychology
the face we show the world in order to fit in and be acceptedour lived
consciousness can be context dependent. We might act from the second level at work
and from the fourth level at church. We might slip into third-level consciousness in our
politics and descend back to the first level in our love relationship.
The 1st level allows for greater autonomy but your sense of self is still heavily
influenced by others, and your own need for others makes you dependent. This behavior
includes codependence in all its forms. You are especially invested in those you see as
authority figures (doctors, ministers, teachers) and you rely on them (consciously or
unconsciously) to help direct your thinking, mold your belief system, and form your
sense of self. You can tend to take more than you give, as you dont have a strong will
or the personal power to think you can help yourself. You think you need a teacher,
leader, or guide and, in this respect, this is the level of the fetishwhatever the fetish is
(a person, religion, organization, ideal) if you lose it or it is taken away, you feel you
have lost your power and the ability to direct your own personal destiny. In the Andes,
the bird of the first level is the killichu, a small falcon.
The 2nd level can be understood as the adolescent (this can be applied, as can all the
levels, to an individual, society, nation, or culture). Its the power of the in group and
the clique. Its the belief that Youre either for us or against us. Its black and white
thinking, but also contains the element of group-think. You can put your teacher or
authority figure on a pedestal (hero worship), but then complain about the authority
figure or teacher behind his or her back while not having the courage to face that person
and speak your truth. It doesnt feel safe to upset the apple cart of your belief system or
threaten your status as an insider. You are making an effort to learn, expand, and grow,
but you may quickly latch on to one truth at the expense of other possibilities, because
you are less open to testing or questioning. This us-versus-them mentality can create
discord and foster jealousy, incite conflicts of ego, and promote unhealthy
competitiveness. The Andean bird associated with this level is the waman, the royal
falcon.
At the 3rd level, you have more personal power and autonomy, are more open to
acquiring diverse knowledge, and tend to at least listen to or consider the views of many
teachers and authority figures. However, you tend to eventually attach yourself to or
identify with the power of one tradition at the expense of others. You feel an exclusive
connection and think you have found the right path; all others are wrong or
misguided. Whereas people at level two are more group minded, the people at level
three are more single minded, although the single mind is attached to a specific group
or a particular belief, etc. Its the There is one truth and I have finally found it
mentality. This is the level of consciousness most common in the world at the current
time. It drives the most common religious and political agendas. It displays as stubborn
nationalism (democracy is the best system, the U.S. is the best country), narrow views
of spirituality (X is the only path to salvation), and intensely committed political
affiliation (the rabid communist, socialist, Libertarian, Republican, Democrat). Very
often this mindset drives one to become the savior of others, who dont yet have the
truth and so must be shown the way. The anka, or eagle, is the Andean bird of the third
level of consciousness.
At the 4th level, you move toward what may be called the mystical mindset: you trust
your personal experience, have the capacity to transcend symbolical and ritual patterns,
and can overcome boundaries. You can find common cause and connections. You
develop a sense of harmony with self and cosmos. You can, for example, experience the
power of the God connection in a church, mosque, synagogue, teepee, or cave
because you can look deeper than outward appearances, symbolic constructs, and
particular doctrines. You take responsibility for your autonomy, so that at this level you
understand that authority figures and teachers can be guides but cant solve problems
for youyou need to find the answers through your own personal experience and
insight. A fourth-level teacher guide students but allow students total freedom; they
teach so the student can leave and walk their own walk. While you find your own way
and see beyond boundaries, this is not an anything goes level of consciousness. You
choose your personal beliefs and have opinions, but they are subject to change as you
change. You stand up for what you believe in, but you dont insist others believe as you
do and you never belittle or ostracize others who hold different views. You are totally
yourself and allow others to be totally themselves. The kuntur, or condor, is the Andean
bird of the fourth level.
At the 5th level, you are so in tune with nature and have acquired such personal power
that you can push the kawsay to dramatically influence the material world, especially as
a healer. This is the level of the infallible healer, who has the ability to heal any disease
or condition every time. This is the level of the miracle. Healing examples would
include those found in the Bible in the Book of Acts, including raising people from the
dead. At the fifth level you can also manipulate matter in others ways (such as
manifesting a gemstone out of thin air) and can overcome the constraints of time and
space as we know it (such as by teleporting or bilocating yourself). You can move in
realms beyond the current known laws of physics. The bird of the fifth level is the
qenti, the hummingbird.
The 6th level is that of the Inka Seed and the Taytanchis Ranti, where you become
nearly the equivalent of the God of the seventh level. At this level of consciousness you
are recognized by others as an enlightened being, literally as one who glows. This is the
divine potential within each of us, but sixth- level beings are living that power in the
human world. They are awakened. Buddha and Jesus are examples. There is no bird
associated with this level.
The cosmovision of the Andes does not provide information or description about the 7th
level of consciousness except to say that this is more than a level of god-consciousness.
It is a level where god is actually in human form and humans are gods. It is my personal
speculation that this could be the level where we live in the human world as pure energy
beings. It might also be what happens to humans when, in the words of Terence
McKenna, we evolve such that we experience an exteriorization of the soul. There is
no bird associated with this level.
As paqos we have no problem understanding that the Inka Seed is pure sami. After all, it
is our connection with Wiraqocha, or God, or whatever you call the metaphysical first
cause of the universe. It is our link with our divinity and encodes our fullest potential,
and as such it always has been and always will be pure, no matter what we do as human
beings in the course of our lives.
But the teaching that the heart center has no hucha has met with resistance by some of
the students learning the tradition in my classes. After all, who has not experienced
heartache or heartbreak? Who does not carry the hucha from failed relationships and
emotional hurts of all kinds? This teaching also has caused quite a bit of confusion
among those who are healers or work in healing capacities with clients. They know, as
do most of us, that a lot of what ails us physically finds its roots in our emotions. How
can we not have hucha in our heart center when we are so burdened, consciously or
unconsciously, by our emotional baggage?
When Juan and Ivan recently visited me here at my home for a few days, I took the
opportunity to clarify this issue with them.
The confusion arises because we all have our emotional scarssome wounds healed
and some notand we are used to associating these emotions with the heart center. In
so many Western and Eastern traditions, the heart is the repository for our emotions:
love, hate, admiration, jealousy, joy, disappointment, and on and on.
But this is not true for the Andean mystical tradition. In this tradition:
Emotions as hucha can affect many of our centers. When our words create hucha, we
may accumulate that hucha at our throat (kunka chunpi). When our emotions deplete us
of personal power, we may accumulate hucha in both our qosqo and siki (qori chunpi
and yana chunpi). But we never accumulate hucha at the heart center or Inka Seed. They
are generators only of munay. And while we may not be living fully from munay, we
nonetheless have these energetically pure centers by which to generate it.
So when we seek to cleanse ourselvesrealizing that hucha is not bad or dirty but only
kawsay that is slowed downwe must go to the centers where hucha accumulates,
which in the case of emotions generally means the qosqo, although it may be any of the
other centers (excluding the qori chunpi and sonqo).
It will be interesting to see how this insight between feelings and emotions might
change your approach to cleansing your poqpo. Perhaps you will see progress with
emotional hucha that has until now been intractable. When you work on the centers that
really matterespecially the qosqoperhaps you will find your well-being radically
increased. As interesting will be the effect in clients for those who work in the healing
fields. If you are working at the level of the heart with clients, perhaps your
effectiveness at helping them activate their self-healing capacities might be enormously
increased through this shift of awareness and focus to the qosqo as their emotional
energetic center. I would love to hear from you about this!
At a recent workshop I was teaching, I mentioned that I think doing some psychological
shadow work can propel you along the Andean path toward conscious evolution much
faster.
If we are striving as paqos to be the grandest human beings, then we have to address all
parts of ourselves, the conscious and unconscious. We both address our wounds and
empower our Inka Seed by doing energy work, but it seems to go faster when we couple
this energy process with psychological or emotional work.
What is the shadow? Broadly speaking, it is that part of you that drives your beingness
below the level of your conscious awareness. It is everything within that you will not
accept or acknowledgeor that you outright rejectabout yourself. But it is also a
repository for all of your unexamined and unlived gifts and talents.
Jung identifies many layers of consciousness, one of them being the ego. We are most
familiar with the egothe sense of I. Jung calls the ego a field of consciousness
that encompasses all the personal aspects of consciousness. It is your experienced
self, your empirical sense of self. The ego can both express the contents of self or
repress them.
Two other fields of consciousness are the shadow and persona. As Murray Stein writes
in Jungs Map of the Soul, the shadow is the image of ourselves that slides along
behind us as we walk toward the light. The persona, its opposite, is named after the
Roman term for an actors mask. It the face we wear to meet the social world around
us.
Your ego is usually deaf, dumb, and blind to the shadow, although your ego uses the
shadow. As Stein says, In adapting and coping with the world , the ego, quite
unwittingly, employs the shadow to carry out the unsavory operations that it could not
perform without falling into moral conflict.
The shadow, in one sense, is protective. It saves you from yourself. Your moral and
ethical conflicts, your self-condemnations and self-reprisals, your fears and trepidations,
and so much more of your unlovable self gets banished to your shadow so you dont
have to deal with it and can get on negotiating the terrain of your daily life. But even
though your shadow is not perceived or experienced directly by your ego, the content of
the shadow often finds its way out into the light of day through unexpected behavior
and words. Like most of us, you may sometimes be surprisedeven shockedhow you
act and what you say. What did that come from? you wonder, referring to something
embarrassing or hurtful you did or said. It came from your shadow self.
What you wont or cant own within yourself often gets projected out onto others. You
may see in others, truly or falsely, what you cannot own within yourself. Any blanket
prejudiceagainst a race, religion, gender, whateveris usually rooted in your shadow.
So are other kinds of behaviors. Cant stand a blowhard who only talks about himself?
Maybe you have that same egotistical quality but are too ashamed to own it. Cant seem
to ever make an appointment on time? Maybe there is a self inside that gets its
satisfaction from deliberately keeping people waiting. Have a reckless sense of courage
and daring? Maybe that is a shadow compensation (a gift, in one way) from a self
within who is cowering in fear.
In so many ways, that which you call your reality is shaped by the projections of your
shadow. You can see, then, how important shadow work is to your endeavor as a paqo.
One of your goals as a paqo is to be qawayto see reality as it really is. If you are not
exploring your shadow self, you cannot easily realize that goal.
Your shadow also is a bestower of talents and skills. As Debbie Ford, author of The
Dark Side of the Light Chasers, writes, despite the truth that our shadow is the
repository of what we deny about ourselves, our shadow holds the essence of who we
are. It holds our most precious gifts. When we can bring these rejected or denied
aspects of ourselves into the light, we can be transformed.
But this transformation can be a messy process. Jung says it can be a suffering and a
passion that implicate the whole person. From the point of view of a paqo, it can be
both a mystical and shamanic journey or rite of passage: mystical in that exploring the
secret aspects of the self can be a liminal journey, at once both disorienting and
illuminating; shamanic in that it can feel like a dismemberment of the self or even a
death and then a reassembling or resurrection. The payoff is that this work can, in the
words of Debbie Ford, give us the blessing of our entire sel[f].
As a paqo, you want to live as a whole human being. To do that you must accumulate
personal power, realizing that personal power is about accessing more of the self. It is
an inward driven pursuit of cleansing the hucha from your poqpo to be more of who
you really are. Additionally, accumulating personal power is about being in more
perfect ayni, which is an outward driven pursuit. It is always about relating to other,
whether that other is the cosmos of living energy or a person or group. In this way,
doing your shadow work can illuminate a series of core dyads: the inner and the outer,
the individual and the collective, the human and the supernatural. These are yanantin
energies, the complement of the differences. When you bring harmony to a yanantin
relationship, you can better achieve japu, the union of the two into something greater
than the sum of the parts. This is the achievement of the fourth level of the paqo path,
that of transcending boundaries without erasing them.
In his book High Country: The Solo Seekers Guide to a Real Life, depth psychologist
David M. Alderman quotes Cal Jung about the value of fostering union with the inner
and outer selfthe conscious and unconscious selves. As a paqo, you can think of this
as a yanantin pursuit that reaches japu. Through the union of the opposites within us,
we are able to discover our true selves beyond what our conscious awareness alone
could ever make of us. . . . Through the conscientious union of the opposites within us,
the true self emerges spontaneously into the conscious light of day; the conscious egobased I is literally transcended, and in its place arises a real, self-renewing, living
being.
This post cannot teach you the various kinds of shadow work, but you can explore those
yourself, as there are plenty of accessible books and I am developing a master class that
combines shadow work with the Andean path. However, I hope that this post can help
you realize the value of undertaking this work as part of your Andean path, for the
bottom line is that you have to walk through your own shadowlands to reach the
landscapes of light.
Your karpay is your capacity for personal power at the current time.
It is related to atiy, the capacity at the yana chunpi (the belt around the lower trunk of
the body), where you measure your power at the current time and under the current
conditions. You can only energetically accomplish what you have the personal power to
do, so your karpay is your capacity for pushing the kawsay. The quality and amount of
energy you transmit and receive in a karpay as initiation is proportional to your own
capacity for radiating and absorbing energywhich is another way of saying it is your
personal power.
As one example of karpay in its deep meaning, consider that when you have a goal or
desire you want to accomplish or realize, you can only fulfill that desire according to
your karpaythe amount of personal power you have. Perhaps you want to start a
business. But as you do, you find that you are running into many difficulties and making
a lot of ill-timed or ill-conceived decisions. You cant get the business up and running
smoothly. Of the many factors that are influencing that turn of events, one may be your
capacity to push the kawsay. If it is lacking then you just dont have the power to
accomplish that goal at that time. Realizing this, you can work to accumulate the
personal powerand skills and talents and other factors; and of course, the cleansing of
your poqpo and absorption of samito help you be successful next time you try.
We dont often use the word karpay to refer to personal power, but that is at the heart of
its meaning. When you think of karpay as an initiation, consider that at the root of this
transfer of energy are two people and their capacitiesone must have the personal
power to transmit the energy and the other to receive it and use it well. Both are in an
energetic exchange based on their measure of karpay at the time they are seeking to
make the exchange and on their capacity to share that energy.
Now that you have a fuller appreciation for the word karpay and its meanings, you can
better assess your own karpay. Pay attention to your rootyana chunpi and siki awi
in order to measure your personal power at the current time. Attend to your belly center
puka chunpi and qosqo awito remain aware of how you are engaging your main
power center, the place from which you most interact energetically with the world.
Bring awareness to the condition of your entire poqpo (your energy body) and use
saminchakuy to cleanse and empower yourself.
Doing so will allow you to see reality as it really is in terms of your kapay. You will
better know what you need to do to increase your energetic capacity so that you can
more effortlessly push the kawsay to fulfill your goals and desires. Rather than seeking
initiations, your more profitable work as a paqo is to accumulate personal power so
that you can engage fully and wisely in the world of living energy and in the real,
action-oriented, relationship-rich human world.
Chunpi means belt in Quechua, In the mystical tradition this refers to the four belts
of power of the energy body. More on that later. . . Depending on which Quechua
dictionary you are using, the word may be spelled with an m, as chumpi.
Khuyas as stones that are infused with your affection. The word khuya literally means
affection. The five chunpi khuyas are infused with your sami, personal power, and
munay. In this way, they are holy stones.
Mullu refers to the spondylus, otherwise known as the thorny oyster or spiny oyster. As
far back as 4200 BC, the shell of the spondylus was used to make sacred or ceremonial
items, and during the Inka Empire was fashioned into jewelry for the royal families.
Chunpi stones were originally made from f this shell, which ranges in color from dark
red to an orangey pearlescence. There is some indication that this shell was prized even
more highly than gold. There was plenty of gold in Peru, but the spondylus was scarce.
It lived only in the waters off the northwestern coast of Peru, and most of it was
probably imported or traded into Peru from what is now Ecuador and other countries
north of Peru. The flesh of the oyster was considered as the food of the Gods.
While I am not going to overview the karpay that weaves the energetic beltsthe
chunpisand opens the mystical eyesthe awisI will briefly go over the belts.
There are four of them: one is around the lower trunk of the body, called the yana
chunpi or black belt; another is at the belly area, called the puka chunpi or red belt; the
belt at the chest and heart level is called the qori chunpi or gold belt; and the one around
the throat is the qolqo chunpi, or silver belt. When you open the three eyes of the head
the two physical eyes and seventh eye in the middle of the foreheadyou pull in
violet energy, so this area around the head at eye level is sometimes referred to as the
kulli chunpi, or purple belt, although it is not formally considered a belt.
To perform the karpay, which is called Chunpi Away (the second word means to
weave and is pronounce rather like ah-why), you are literally creating the belts,
weaving them into your energy body. They do not exist before they are woven in the
karpay. Also, they made fade over time, so it is a good idea to perform the karpay
occasionally and to work the belts often. Each belt contains an eye, called a awi.
These already exist in your poqpo (energy body) but they are awakened during the
chunpi ceremony. This aspect of the karpay is called awi Kichay, which literally
means opening the eyes.
The only other point I will make about the karpay itself is regarding the black energy
that is pulled down the spine and then wrapped around the hips and through the legs to
make the yana chunpi. What many people dont realize is that this is willka energy.
Willka is the black light energy that is considered by many paqos to be the highest
expression of sami in nature. In the karpay you actually make willka! This is
accomplished by pulling gold and silver cords of cosmic energy into the head and down
the spine, crossing these cords of light at the neck, and then pulling green earth energy
up into the root of the spine and up the spine to the base of the neck. When you have
these three cords in place, you then blend them into black light energy and pull the
black light down the spine to make the yana chumpi. The important point of
understanding here is that when you integrate cosmic energy and earth energy inside the
human body, you make willka energy.
There are five mullu khuyas used in the karpay to weave the belts. Each has a specific
number of points or protrusions, from one to five. The names of the stones follow the
sequence, using the Quechua word for that number (but beware that dialects of Quechua
vary). The stone with one protrusion is called chulla. According to some scholars, this
word means single foot. The two stone is called yanantin. This stone doesnt use the
literal number of the points as a name, as yanantin refers in the mystical tradition to the
complement of differencesto two things that are different but that can be integrated
harmoniously. The stone with three points is kinsantin, literally three. The one with
four points is tawantin. Tawa means four, but of course this word is loaded with
meaning. The Inka Empire was called the Tawantin because four nations were
integrated into one Empire. It also refers to the sacred integration of four factors. A
despacho, or nature offering, is always based on a tawantin. Many other aspects of the
mystical work are based on a tawantin. Finally, the stone with five protrusions is named
after the number five, pisqantin. (The picture is of my set of mullu chunpis, which,
according to the estimation of my teacher, Juan Nuez del Prado, were probably made
in the late 1800s. The stones are pretty large, with the five stone filling the palm of my
hand.)
Although these khuyas as used during the karpay to weave the belts, they are not
necessary. Remember, nothing outside of your own intent and personal power are
necessary in the Andean mystical tradition. If you think that you lose the power to
perform the karpay because you dont have a set of these khuyas, then you are turning
them into fetishes. Energy follows intent in this tradition, so you can perform the karpay
using only your intent to follow the the instructions for weaving the belts and opening
the mystical eyes. If you receive the karpay from someone who has a set of mully
khuyas and uses them in the karpay, but you dont have a set yourself, no problem
either. You can later refresh the belts using only your own intent and following the
protocol of the karpay.
So thats something about the mullu khuyas. If you have questions about other aspects
of the Andean path, I am happy to try to answer them and share what I have learned
about the tradition.
Tasting Kawsay
July 17, 2016 ~ 2 Comments
I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and dont
notice
it.
Alice Walker, The Color Purple
The worldthe material universe we call Pachamama in the Andean traditionhas a
grandeur we can hardly fathom. It is rich in diversity beyond the scope of our
imaginations. But its grandeur and fecundity are not beyond our means of experience.
Rather than simply noticing the material world, as a paqo you want to have the personal
power to be able to taste itto perceive it energeticallyas if it were a smorgasbord
of goodies laid out to satisfy your personal appetite.
When I teach the tradition, after helping people perceive their poqpo (energy bubble)
and locate their qosqo (primary energy center at the belly), I have them practice sending
out seqes of energy like tongues to taste the world of living energy.
What does the grass taste like? That cloud? That patch of sand? How about a daisy?
Does that daisy taste differently from the wisteria vine? From that patch of poison ivy?
What do you perceive when you taste that plastic lawn chair? Is the flavor of its plastic
different from the plastic of the childs beach bucket? Does a Cadillac taste different
from a Subaru? And on and on. I even ask multiple people to taste the same thingsay,
a particular treeto see if their energetic sense of the tree is similar or not. It may not
be since we perceive the universe through the condition of our own energy body, but it
often is.
Taste is a metaphor the paqos use, because they also use the metaphor of the energetic
stomach for your qosqo. You are not really tasting energy as you would taste food. If
you send a seqe out to a lemon tree, your taste buds wont protest at the acidity. Instead,
you perceive the energetic signature, or personality if you will, of that lemon tree.
Does it feel light, heavy, healthy, sick, coherent, dissonant, or a host of other possible
perceptions? According the Andean tradition, and to many other energy traditions,
everything in the universeeven those things that are inorganichas some semblance
of sentience, of consciousness. So it may well be that you also perceive the
consciousness of that lemon tree. It might even talk to you!
As an example, I once tasted a white plastic lawn chair. My preconceived expectation
was that it would feel stiff and hard. It didnt. It felt malleable, porous, and even a bit
spongy. What most surprised me though is that once I had established an energetic
connection with it, I felt that chair had emotions! It felt immensely happy, even giddy!
What I perceived was a being of plastic that was happy to have been molded into a
chair, not a handle or a hose or something else. It was delighted that it was an object that
could be close to human beings. It loved human energy, and was proud to be an object
they regularly used. Call me crazy. . .
Even if you pick up a story from the object, perceiving in the Andean tradition is not
the same as using your intuition. Perception goes beyond intuitive knowing to a visceral
perceptionit is a feeling at the level of the body, although it also can be of the mind
and emotions.
When you taste an object, you may also pick up the energy imprint of people or animals
or others who interact with that object all the time. For example, I said above that you
might try tasting different kinds of cars. I actually tried that as an experiment. After
doing this exercise or training hundreds of times, I realized I had never tasted cars.
Beyond its basic isness as a metal and plastic and rubber object, I wondered if
different models tasted differently. I tasted a Cadillac (metallic, sinuous almost like
flowing mercury, and more) and a Subaru (felt like a weave of wires, or mesh, and of
wood and smokiness, and more. I ended the exercise by tasting a Nissan sedan. When
I connected my seqe to the Nissan I was overwhelmed with visions of candy and the
taste of sweetness. No matter what I did, I couldnt get past those perceptions. When I
talked about this in the class after we regrouped from doing this exercise, one young
woman smiled and look conspiratorially at her Mom, who was sitting next to her with a
look of surprise on her face. Turns out the Nissan was the young womans carand she
was a candy maker! She delivered a lot of chocolates and other confections from that
car. That was an intuitive overlay, but it was so strong that I never really got a
perception of that Nissan.
As you practice tasting the world of living energy, remember that your ability is
proportional to the state of your energy body. Keep your energy body clean and
empowered by doing saminchakuy every day. If you have clarity of energy, you can
pick up an amazing amount of information through your perceptions. There is a
hypothesis in physics called Phase-Conjugate-Adaptive-Resonance, or PCAR. It says
that everything is made of energy and information fields. Information rides on energy.
When you connect energetically, you can, if you have the power and sensitivity, extract
information from that energy field. There is an ayni exchange, from you to the object
and from the object back to you, and the more concentrated your attention and coherent
your energy, the more information-rich the interchange will be. I think PCAR is a great
way to think of both natural and manmade objects and landscapes as beings. It helps
us understand what we are doing when we taste all the various aspects of the
Pachamama. When our practice is refined, we can go deeper than just tasting the
energy; we can delve into the pool of information contained in that objects field.
If you are not now playing in the field of living energy, I urge you to immediately make
a play date! Get out and notice the glory of the Pachamama, and then plunge in and
taste, taste, taste!
Fourth-Level Politics
July 31, 2016 ~ 2 Comments
One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being
governed by your inferiors.
Plato
No matter what your political party affiliation or where you fall on the spectrum from
liberal to conservative, if you are a person who practices the Andean way, there is a
Andean lense through which to view politics. At the current time, this post may speak
more to those from the United States, who are in the midst of a presidential election
cycle, but it is relevant to all who take their civic duties seriously.
The first lesson a budding paqo learns is about aynireciprocity. The supreme practice
for learning ayni is the hayway, or despacho. Ayni is the natural law of the cosmos and
the driving force of evolution. It is the teaching that is quite literally at the heart of
human conscious development.
Ayni can be restated in many ways: give generously and freely according to the measure
of your gifts and receive generously and freely; as you sow, so shall you reap; love
others as you love yourself; do unto others as you would have them do unto you; treat
others with the respect you would like to receive yourself.
However, ayni is not just any kind of exchange. It is one that moves from the foundation
of feelings, not the impulse of emotions. Feelings are distinct from emotions. Feelings
are the big expressions of our humanity, Platonic in scope and character: compassion,
generosity, empathy, kindness, love as agape. Feelings are energetically connected with
the qori chunpi, or belt of power at the heart.
In contrast, emotions, associated with the belt of power at the belly, or qosqo, are more
transitory, and are situation- and circumstance-driven. You feel happy one moment
when things are going well and unhappy two days later when they are not. You are kind
when people treat you well and are insulting or hurtful to them when they do not. You
are madly in love this month and angrily kicking your lover out the door the next.
Both feelings and emotions drive ayni, and both can be expressed at any level of the six
levels of consciousness. (The seventh level may be beyond human feelings and
emotions. See my May 23, 2016, post, Cleansing Emotional Hucha, for a description
of the seven levels of consciousness.) Because the highest expression of ayni arises
from feelings, it is not just any kind of exchange but an exchange that is larger than the
two people or entities (such as cultures or nations) involved. This kind of ayni is the
opposite of challay, the mercantile, self-interested exchange. Challay is about me, for
my benefit, to enhance or enlarge my own interests. Challay doesnt really consider the
other party except as a means of fulfilling a practical, personal desire. It involves
transactions more than interrelations. Buying a car is challay, but treating the
salesperson with respect is ayni.
As you go to the voting booth, in the United States on November 8 or elsewhere at other
times, ask yourself: Who among the candidates understands and acts from ayni instead
of challay? Also remember that ayni is not a stream of earthbound energy; it has
cosmic ramifications. It is always cosmic in scope because everything, including human
consciousness and its intent, is part of the vast web of a living universe. So ask yourself:
Which candidates platform and vision have the most beneficial impact not only at the
personal level but at the spiritual and cosmic level?
The answers will help you choose to elect a fourth-level public servant instead of a
second-level or third-level politician. Among other qualities and characteristics, a
fourth-level person has personal opinions, beliefs, and stances but doesnt feel he or she
has a monopoly on truth and so is open to others ideas and opinions. This person sees
beyond constructs and symbols to serve as witness to that which unites people rather
than only to that which divides them. Such a person can see Spirit and the sacred
wherever he or she goes, in all kinds of environments and through all kinds of lenses
that are different from his or her own. A fourth-level person has a global vision even if
his or her actions are primarily local or regional.
The Andean mystical tradition teaches about two kinds of relationship exchanges:
masintin and yanantin. In their simplest forms, masintin is a relationship of shared
characteristics whereas yanantin is one of dissimilar characteristics. Yanantin relations
tend to cause the most huchabut only if the person is blind to the energy dynamic. A
person wise in the ways of energy dynamics will be aware of where and how his or her
relations are similar and where they are dissimilar, and act accordingly to prevent
discord and harm. Its easy to act from feelings (empathy, compassion, kindness,
generosity) when feeling kinship with another person or group (masintin). Fourth-level
maturity comes into play when those interactions feel distant and different (yanantin).
When faced with a combative press, a disparaging opponent, a hostile crowd, a fickle
ally or a ferocious foe, the skills of the fourth level are crucial to keeping the yanantin
energies from creating hucha for all involved.
So ask yourself as you go into the voting booth: Which candidate deftly and wisely
handles both those who are similar to him or her and those who are not? Who has the
maturity to show the same respect to each groupto those who are allies and those who
appear to be opponents, to those who share the same values and beliefs and to those
who do not? Being able to negotiate both masintin and yanantin relationships is a good
clue that this candidate is both tolerant and responsive beyond the scope of his or her
own belief system and outside of his or her own comfort zone.
As you cast your vote, carry with you the Andean teachings of the three human powers:
munay (love grounded in will), yachay (intellect, reason, logic) and llankay (the
physical, being able to propose action and then take it; following through on words with
actions). An effective leader will have harmonized the three human gifts within. That
person will say what he or she means, do what he or she says, and both speak and act
(with munay and from ayni) with the larger good in mind. Someone who has
harmonized the three human powers within is someone who has integrity, which surely
is a core characteristic we want in those whom we elect to govern.
There are many more Andean teachings that can help us nurture a fourth-level political
awareness. Those I have written about, however, are fundamental to ensuring that we
not only hold ourselves to high standards, but expect the same, if not more, from our
elected officials.
Usually, when someone asks me a question, about the despacho or any other aspect of
Andean practice, I ask, Why are you doing it that way? or Why did your teacher tell
you to do it that way?
If they cant answer, then we have reached the heart of the problemundertaking a
practice without knowing the foundation of Andean cosmosvision. If you have a
thorough understanding of the essence of the Andean cosmovision, you will almost
always know if a practice is in accord with the tradition or if it is more likely the
personal preference of a teacher, the addition of a teachers non-Andean area of
expertise (psychology, philosophy, etc.) or an overlay from another tradition. That is
why I believe that answering the why questions are paramount to being a skilled
paqo.
Let me start with some disclaimers! Because aynireciprocityis at the heart of the
Andean tradition, personal intent will always trump technique. If your intent is pure,
strong, focused, you really cant go wrong and are almost always on the right track in
your ayni exchange with the cosmos of living energy and the spirit beings. But there is a
more Andean and a less Andean way to do things because practice rests on the
foundation of the Andean cosmovision. Thats why my manner of teaching the tradition
is to always, always, always go back to the cosmovision as it was taught to me through
Juan Nuez del Prado and his lineage of don Benito Qoriwaman, don Andres Espinosa,
and don Melchor Desa. Is this the only lineage worth studying? No. But it is a lineage of
three of the most respected master paqos of the recent past. Is theirs the only way to
practice the tradition? No. But the benefit I find in this lineages teaching is that the
why is always explained, and so my practice can be as simple, essential, efficient, and
practical as the tradition itself.
Thats just my preferenceto strip things down to the essential with no razzle-dazzle.
This preference may not be yours. So, if you dont care that your practice aligns with
the established Andean cosmosvision of this lineage of paqos, then there is no need to
read any further. But if that matters to you, or you are just curious to read another point
of view from what you may be used to, then I hope that you will gain some insight
about offering a despacho from this long post.
Lets begin by acknowledging that there is an Andean cosmovision that has survived the
centuries through oral transmission. Although every living tradition changes over time,
to survive it must retain its core beliefs. In the Andes these beliefs include that:
The universe is one of living energy (kawsay). One aspect of this living energy
is the Pachamama, the material universe. Everything is made of kawsay.
Only humans slow down the living energy (called hucha), which over time may
deplete some of our well-being. But hucha is not negative, bad or contaminating;
it is just slow kawsay: kawsay we dont radiate perfectly.
There are spirit beings, we can communicate with them, and they can teach us,
empower us, and assist us.
These are a few of the core convictions of the Andean cosmovision that will come into
play as we examine our despacho practice. Why and how we do something should be
rooted in these foundational, largely unchanging Andean beliefs.
The how is easy, as we all have our way of undertaking the practices. But too many
times, when people ask about whether one way or another is preferable, they cant trace
the how back to the why. Being unable to do so, they will have to blindly accept
everything someone tells themincluding me!instead of being able to assess its
reliability for themselves. And if they cant make those considered distinctions, then it is
unlikely they will ever master the practices of the tradition. To achieve mastery, at the
very least we have to be fully engaged through our intent, not practice by rote.
Let me be crystal clear: There is not one way to do things, but there are some
explanations and reasons for carrying out Andean practices in a particular way that are
more elemental to Andean cosmovision and, thus, closer to the spirit of the tradition.
So, all that said, I trust we can agree that our understanding and knowledge of the
cosmovision do affect our practice. Lets turn our attention now to the despacho.
Questions and Answers About the Despacho
What Is a Despacho and How Do You Make One?
Despacho is the Spanish word for the nature bundle and offering that in the ancient
Quechua is called the hayway (pronounced sort of like hi-why), which literally means
offering. A haywarisqa is the practice of making the offering and the one who makes
it. The Spanish word despacho is the translation of this Quechua term, although its
meaning depends on context: dispatch, communication, shipment, office or study,
among other meanings. The first two meanings in this list are most appropriate to an
Andean despacho offering.
As an offering, the despacho is a bundle of items infused with your personal power and
intent and offered in ayni to the cosmos or spirit beings. It has a base of paper, which is
covered with natural and manmade items that represent your intent and your state of
mind, heart, and being. The items you select for a despacho have both universal
meaning (shell = divine feminine, cross = divine masculine, etc.) and personal meaning.
Once you have made the despacho, you then close up the bundle and offer it to the
spirits by burning it, burying it, or releasing it in a body of water.
Although there are general guidelines for making a despacho (paper, shell, cross,
kintus, offering items), there is no one set of rules for its structure or organization.
There are no fixed placements for the items because the despacho must be true and
authentic to your intention.
For example, don Manuel Qespis styles included the following: if he wanted to bring
air and openness to something in the intent of the despacho, he would place the items
loosely and spaciously, often out toward the edge of the paper. If he wanted to bring
stability and groundedness to a situation, he would cluster the items close to the center
of the paper. Since the choice for where to place items depends on intent and purpose,
there can be no standardized way to organize a despacho. Because of ayni, a despacho is
by definition personal (between you and the spirit beings) and idiosyncratic (this is your
offering, wish, desire, or whatever, and so like no one elses).
Ascribing meaning to most of the items for the despacho can also be entirely personal.
For instance, in premade despacho bundles you can buy in the market in Peru, there is
usually a little wheel of metal figures and symbols. Among them is the lock and key. I
know some paqos who teach that you never put the lock and key in your despacho, as it
will lock out your intent, countering your ayni. I also know others who teach to always
put the lock and key in, saying it unlocks your deepest ayni and intent. Bottom line: its
your despachowhat you put in it is infused with your meaning, through your own
intent and personal power.
The making of a despacho not only mirrors the intent of why you are making it, but also
reveals your personal style as a paqo. In fact, once you get to know a paqo you can look
at a row of despachos and pick out the one that a particular paqo made. Thats because
paqos develop signature styles. A despacho made by don Manuel would be
recognizable, as would one made by don Mariano Apasa Marchaqa. In the same way,
your style of making a despacho is likely to be different from mine, and we might
change our styles depending on the reason we are making a particular despacho
offering.
In Andean mysticism you never just copy your teacher. Over time, you develop your
own way of making a despacho, and you may have several templates that you follow
purely from personal preference. I have drawings of some of the types of despachos don
Manuel Qespi used to make. He used a completely different placement of kintus and
items in a male despacho than a female one. Sometimes he would not even use a
shell and a cross, instead making a central cross or X with fine granular incense. And
he sometimes arranged the kintus in rows, not a circle around the center.
Bottom line: Be yourself and be true to your ayni. Dont make a despacho by rote.
How Do You Open Sacred Space Before Making a Despacho?
When it comes to an opening ceremony for despacho making, its a personal choice,
not a necessity. There is very little ritual or ceremony in the Andean mystical tradition,
but there is nothing wrong with performing ceremony if you are conscious that it is only
a personal preference. But to get to the heart of the question, I have to ask, Why do
you need to open or create sacred space? and What space is not sacred?
Even if seen as metaphor, the words open or create sacred space hint at a
misunderstanding of the Andean conception of energy. They imply that you have to
open a door to the sublime that has been closed to you. That before your invocation, you
are in a space devoid of or lacking in the sacred. This view is counter to Andean
cosmovision of a universe infused everywhere and at all times with sami.
According to the Andean tradition, there is no place except within the human energy
body that is not pure sami (refined energy), so everything, everywhere is sacred. The
entire kawsay pacha is living energy in its most refined state. And even if you feel
hucha within yourself, hucha is not bad, contaminating, or unsacred. So my point is that
ceremonial space clearing or ordering is not necessary. You might like to do that. Fine,
do it. Performing such ceremony can mark the beginning of the despacho-making
process, help focus your attention, foster a greater sense of beauty, and bring a group
into collective resonance. It might also be part of your ayni to connect with the spirits,
as in opening a dialogue. But it is not required. Ayni is invisible! If you choose to it
make visible, fine, but know that undertaking this kind of initial ceremony is a choice,
not a necessity.
As I said, there is next to no rote ritual in the Andean tradition. You will indeed see
many paqos (at least, those with whom I have worked) whisper into a kintu or their
misha (mesa) before starting to make a despacho. They are communing with their
guiding spirits or the cosmos at large. They are calling the spirits to come closer or
asking that their prayers be received. They may honor the three worlds and the three
human powers. If you want to call this personal communication with spirit guides or
beings by the words opening sacred space, okay. But that is not really an accurate way
of describing what they are doingwhich is deepening their ayni in an intensely
personal and nearly private way.
Why Offer a Despacho?
To understand the why of the despacho, its helpful to realize that when training in the
tradition, the despacho is usually one of the first practices you are introduced to. Why?
Because the despacho is the primary way of teaching about ayni (reciprocity).
There are hundreds of types of despachos, which means that there are hundreds of
reasons for offering an despacho. What underlies them all is ayni. Ayni is always and
only the why of a despacho. The despacho is the outward action and manifestation of
the inward energetic and intentional gesture of personal reciprocity with the living
cosmos.
The intent of a despacho will always be expressing one of these three stances of ayni:
A request. In this kind of despacho you are asking for something. It might be the
help or influence of the spirit beings or the general largesse of the living cosmos.
You might be asking for a blessing such as for fertility to bear a child or
assistance to birth a new business. Or you might be requesting a break, such as
an end to or relief from your suffering or heartache. When you make this kind of
despacho, it is important to be true in your ayni and make a despacho that
reflects your feelings. If you are depressed, make an offering of your depression.
If you are angry, make an offering of your anger. A despacho is not always
pretty. If it is an offering of your depression to the cosmos with a request of
release that means your despacho actually is your depression, not just a mirror of
it or substitute for it.
Every possible kind of despacho falls into one of these three ayni categories, so when
you are preparing to actually make the despacho, knowing this why will guide how
you actually make the despacho, including what you put in it and its design and
organization.
witness the offering and the burning until the despacho is fully consumed
you turn your back so you cant see the offering consumed and you detach from
the outcome of the offering
Admittedly, that is a small sample of paqos. So I wont base my answer only on how I
have seen it done by the paqos I happened to work with, but on what makes sense in
terms of the universal, underlying cosmovision of the Andes through this lineage.
Don Benito Qoriwaman taught ayni through the practice of the despacho. He explained
that when you make a despacho it is like inviting the most honored guests (the spirit
beings) to your house and making and serving them the finest food (everything you put
in the despacho, especially your intent).
(As an aside: Dont misunderstand that the finest food means anything sentimental.
As I indicated earlier, if you are making a request to lift a deep depression, then the
main ingredient of your meal for the spirits will be your dark and debilitating
depression.)
Knowing that a despacho is like preparing the finest meal of yourself and your intent for
the spirits to dine on, I ask, Why would you ever turn your back on these most honored
guests?
You wouldnt. You would serve them and commune with them. You invited them, and
they have come to meet you and dine on your intent. If they accepted your invitation,
then you can be sure they want you there with them. So, you would enjoy, not reject,
their company.
Moreover, there is nothing in the Andean tradition, at least that I have ever heard, that
teaches fear of the spirit beings. Respect, yes. But not fear. They are not intimidating
strangers. They are your friends! You are honoring them, making a meal for themand
that occasion is not complete if you as the host are not fully present.
If it is a group despacho, nothing changes. If possible, you dont send a surrogate (your
teacher or a master paqo) to be with the spirit beings on the groups behalf. If anything
of you is in the despacho, you commune with the spirits yourself (along with the others
in the group) because the despacho is always about ayniand your ayni is part of the
group despacho. The only caveat is if a paqo is making a despacho on your groups
behalf. The group may witness the despacho-making, but is usually not deeply involved.
In this case, the group may not be involved in actually offering it to the fire.
In addition, paqos almost always closely witness the spirits eating their offering. They
assess the color and direction of the smoke, how the bundle burns, if it is fully
consumed, and so on. All of that has meaning in terms of how the spirits accept your
ayni. You cant do that if you have your back turned.
Another aspect of offering the despacho is how you relate to your prayer, request, or
payment. Some say you must detach from the offering, which is another reason to
turn your back while the despacho is burning.
From what I know about the Andean mystical tradition through the lineage in which I
studied, I cant imagine a paqo ever telling anyone to detach from their despacho
offering. A despacho is the deepest expression (outward and inward) of your ayni. Ayni
is inseparable from your intent. You cant detach from ayni, only be unconscious to it.
Plus, from the Andean perspective, when you undertake a practice, you expect results.
You absolutely expect them! Thats the practicality of the Andean tradition. The
expectation is that if your ayni is accepted by Spirit, you will not only get what you
asked for, but you will showered with blessings greater than what you asked for. That
expectation is the furthest thing possible from detachment!
Detachment is a decidedly Buddhist stance, where craving is at the root of human
suffering. That is not even close to the Andean view. In fact, Andean practices are
almost the opposite of detachment. For instance, in the play area at Qoylluriti, people
embody their desire (intent, ayni). They act it out, in great detail and with a spirit of both
intensity and playfulness. Andeans embody to fully immerse themselves in an
experience, not to detach from it or the intent that drives them to undertake the
experience in the first place.
It is true that sometimes we detach from how the ayni is returned to us, but we never
detach from expecting a return or the process of making and offering the despacho. The
universe of living energy is untold times greater in its generosity and creativity than we
are, so how we receive our ayni may not look like we expected it to, but we always
know that ayni is the law of the cosmos and so we never detach from it. I am talking
about attention and intention, not about craving or obsessing, which may be hucha-
producing. We can be humble in our offering and still strong in our intent, but humility
is not detachment. If you are offering a despachothe supreme expression of ayni
then almost by definition you are exercising a stronger than normal intent: the whole
point of a despacho is to concentrate your intent beyond its normal level by embodying
it in material form, so you have every reason to keep your expectations high while also
remaining humble before Spirit.
All of this is why I think detachment is a contamination from another tradition and is
counter to the core of the Andean cosmovision and the spirit of despacho-making and
despachooffering.
I hope that this long post has helped you see that the why of what you are doing as a
paqo is as important as what you do. When you are told to Do it this way, ask
yourself, Is this way in alignment with Andean cosmovision? If it isnt, then you can
safely assume that the teaching is personal to that teacher and not a must do in terms
of the core of the tradition.
There really is no right or wrongits really, really hard, if not impossible, to make a
mistake in Andean mystical practice because intent is at the heart of everything in this
tradition and always trumps ritual. However, there is more Andean and less Andean
and sometimes as a practitioner of this tradition, you have to question your teacher
about the why of a practice. The answer may be in alignment with the ancient
cosmovision or may be simply personal preference, but your teacher should be able to
explain that difference clearly to you.
The Andean tradition is beyond most dogma, but you can layer any kind of psychology,
philosophy, ceremony, or poetry onto its practices without those practices losing effect
(if your ayni is effective and strong). But why do that? I propose that in your
development as a paqo the most productive approach is to strip things down to their
foundation before choosing to dress them up to make them more fun or appealing or
whatever. Doing so, to me at least, is the best way to honor the lineage, respect the
tradition, and become the most effective paqo you can be for your own conscious
evolution and that of the world.
(Note: I am traveling in Peru for a large part of September so will not be available to
moderate comments or questions until my return.)
(Also, thank you to Fran for pictures of some of her despachos.)
Seeking the why of your practice takes you back to basic Andean
cosmovision.
These are the teaching as I understand them and as preserved through the lineage
of Juan Nuez del Prado, and his teachers, don Benito Qoriwaman, don Andres
Espinosa, and don Melchor Desa; or it is information I learned from paqos with
whom I have worked. So it is not definitive beyond this scope.
There is next to no way to make a mistake with Andean practice if your ayni is
conscious and clear.
Because of ayni, most energy work is invisible, so ceremony and ritual are
almost always choices rather than requirements when undertaking Andean
practices; therefore, most must do instructions are personal preferences of
teachers and should be taken as such, especially if the teacher cannot justify the
practice based on the core Andean cosmovision.
When students ask about how to do something, such as how to make or use a misha, my
preference is always to ask the why of what they are doing, leading them back to the
basics of the Andean cosmovision. When you understand the foundation of the tradition,
you will better know how to evaluate what you are being taught, especially when it
comes to ritual or ceremony.
As I said in the despacho post, there is next to no rote ritual in the Andes because the
foundational principle of practicing is ayni, which is by definition intensely personal. I
advise you to go to the despacho post (August 2016) and read the first half so that I
dont have to repeat all of the information about the core precepts of the Andean
tradition here.
So, what is a misha? Its a bundle of objects, mostly stones, which are called khuyas,
that have personal meaning for the paqo. Misha is the ancient Quechua term for what is
called in Spanish the mesa. It means sign. It is the symbol of personal power. It is
not your actual personal power, but is an outward symbol that you are a paqoa
follower of the Andean mystical tradition of Peru. As a paqo, you are in training to
become a master of ayni. The better your ayni, the more personal power you haveand
so the stronger or more powerful your misha, since it represents or embodies your
personal power.
Khuya means affection. The items you gather into your misha bundle are objects
infused with your munay, or love. They represent your ayni connections to teachers, the
most important spirit beings, places you have worked such as temples or sacred sites,
and the most important, loving, transformative events of your life and people in your
life. These khuyas are gathered together and wrapped in a cloth, which is the misha.
Lets now look at some common questions about the misha and its use.
How do you make a misha?
Many beginners on the Andean mystical path ask this question. They see paqos with
mishas and they, rightly, want one, too. The answer is that, generally speaking, you
dont make a misha, it is a gift that you accept, piece by piece, as you engage life.
Think of the misha as a material diary of your life and your journey as a paqo and as a
human being.
Every khuya represents an important event, person, feeling, or learning in your life. So,
khuyas can come to you in myriad ways. They can mark a karpay given you by your
teacher. They may be gifted to you by a spirit being. You may be attracted to a stone
or other item at a sacred place. You may choose an object to represent a significant
turning point or relationship in your life. There are as many ways to receive or choose a
khuya as there are experiences in life.
For instance, the newest khuya in my misha is a small wooden cross that my siblings
and I placed in one of my mothers hands as she slipped away from this life in hospice.
She held it the entire last week of her life, and when she dropped her body, I took that
cross and added it to my misha as a khuya of my deep love for a woman who was not
only an incredible mother but my best friend. She represented the epitome of many
qualities that I try to model in my life. This khuya not only embodies our mutual love,
but serves as a reminder of those qualities that I continue to aspire to in my own
conscious evolution.
What is true of all khuyas is that each is infused with meaning and munay. You care for
that khuya as you do any precious gift: by wrapping it in a cloth or otherwise protecting
or preserving it. With that first khuya you have started your misha.
So the truest answer to the question of how you make a misha is: Live your life.
Does every misha (or khuya) have power?
No, not necessarily. The misha is representative of your personal power. For the most
part, it does not confer power on you, it reflects what is in you at the current time. So,
its power is commensurate with your personal power. If you have very little personal
power, then so does your misha. If you have a lot, then so does your misha.
No matter what kind of khuyas you have in your mishaa small meteorite, a crystal, a
stone from Apu Ausangate, an object representing a person you lovethe individual
khuyas are not really transmitters of power per se. You have to develop a relationship
with each khuya.
Even though in the Andean mystical tradition everything in the cosmos is seen as a
living being, if you do not have an ayni relationship with that item, then it cannot have
much of an impact on you. The ayni relationship is always a two-way flow. If you are
gifted a khuya, its energy cannot penetrate your poqpo if you are not open to receiving
it. And even if you do receive its energy, you can only understand and use it to the level
of your own conscious evolution. So while khuyas can transmit power, receiving and
using that power is dependent on you and the state of your energy and consciousness.
Khuyas can be teachers, even powerful ones. But they cant make you powerful. You
have to accumulate your own personal power. As good teachers, usually they talk to you
only at your level of understanding, or maybe a little higher so that they can challenge
you and help you grow. But you have to have some measure of personal power (clear
and effective ayni) to even open a dialogue with a khuya spirit being or to be able
hear it. It is always wise to work with a new khuya. Its like meeting a new friend.
The relationship may be tentative and even awkward at first, but the more you connect
and spend time together, the easier and more relaxed, deep, and meaningful the
relationship becomes.
All of this is why, it is possible to have a misha of powerful khuyas and yet not have a
misha of power! If you dont have the ayni to relate to the khuyas, they might as well be
powerless because you wont be able to recognize or use the power. Remember, your
misha is representative of your power, not only the power of the khuyas in it. However,
a paradox is that khuyas may gift themselves to you because they represent the potential
within you.
I remember one trip to Peru in which a few of usall relatively new to the Andean path
were sitting around with don Mariano Apasa Marchaqa. Our small mishas were
spread out on the ground around us. He leaned over and picked up one, put the bundle
to one of his ears, and appeared to be listening. After a minute or so, he placed the
bundle down again, remarking, That is a misha of power. Since the woman whose
misha it was didnt feel especially well versed in the tradition or powerful herself, she
and we took his declaration to mean that she had attracted powerful khuyas, even
though she had not yet accumulated a lot of personal power herself. Its as if the khuyas,
as spirit beings, recognized her potential and were patiently waiting for her to catch up!
The core of the interaction is that your misha represents your personal capacity for
power (making ayni) right now in your life, no matter what level of latent power each
khuya has within it. Thus, you can grow into your misha, in effect catching up with the
khyuas in it. They are very patient!
How do you work with a misha?
Let me start by saying anything you can do with a misha, you have to first learn to do
without it.
The misha doesnt necessarily confer power; it mostly channels what personal power
you have. Your focus has to be on perfecting your ayni, which equates with your
personal poweryour capacity to be in relationship with the living universe. Therefore,
you never want to turn anything, including your misha, into a fetish.
A fetish is something in which you project your power. But if you ever lose the fetish,
then you believe you have also lost your power. Dont do that with your misha or any of
the individual khuyas! They are a sign of your power, but are not your actual power. So
whatever you can do with a misha, you can do without it.
At the core of the Andean cosmovision is that energy must follow intent. Intent is your
power/ayni. So no matter how you use your misha, it is only an outward representation
of your intent, whether you use it for healing or blessing or anything else. So when I
discuss some of the uses of the misha below, always remember that it is you and your
intent that is driving the energy, not the misha itself.
The misha is a primary eater of hucha, so you will often see paqos running it over
peoples bodies to reduce their hucha. But it is not really the misha alone that is doing
anything. It is the paqos intent that is driving the energy through the misha. That paqo
is simply using the misha as a repository for the hucha.
If you have experienced this or watched this process, you will no doubt have noticed
that the paqos move their mishas in two primary ways. The most common process is to
run the misha over your body in a downward stroking motion. The other, less common
way is to move the misha upward, from your feet toward your head. You probably wont
ever see a paqo making circles around your body with the misha, or making squiggly
lines around your body, or some other motion. Its almost always a downward motion
from head to toe or an upward motion from toe to head. What are they doing and why
are they doing it this way?
The answer: saminchakuy or saiwachakuy.
In case you dont know, there are two primary practices in the Andes: saminchakuy and
saiwachakuy. Saminchakuy is a downward flow of energy: you use your intent to pull
sami down from the cosmos into the poqpo while releasing hucha down into Mother
Earth. This is the cleansing practice that moves hucha. In contrast, saiwachakuy is an
upward flow of energy. Using intent, you direct sami up from Mother Earth into your
poqpo to empower yourself. It has nothing much to do with hucha.
So look behind the outward movements and the colorful bundle that is the misha and
you will see that the main way to use the misha is to either release hucha or empower
with sami. There is nothing mysterious about this, despite the personal style with which
the paqo may be performing the work. It is saminchaky and saiwachakuy, only using the
misha to bolster and direct intent!
Its a similar situation when you use a misha to open a persons qosqo (or other
center) or use the mullu khuyas to weave the chunpis and open the mystical eyes. The
misha and khuyas are tools that represent or channel power, but are not the power itself.
For instance, when performing the karpay for the chunpis (Chunpi Away), the paqo first
connects with Mother Earth and so is actually channeling her sami up through himself
or herself and the khuya to help the person (along with the persons intent, of course). It
is actually Mother Earth who is doing the karpay, not the paqo (and much less so the
tools of misha or khuya)!
You often see paqos blowing through their misha or talking into it, addressing the spirits
through it. Again, it is not the misha that is conferring power, it is the intent of the paqo
that is passed through the misha. The misha is like the telephone line that is
broadcasting the ayni of the paqo. The paqo doesnt need the misha, but it is a beautiful
practice to use the bundle to outwardly represent his or her munay and ayni.
Do khuyas have specific purposes?
Yes, they do. All of the paqos I have worked with, especially those who have gifted me
a khuya, have explained that khuyas have different powers. One may be especially good
at eating hucha. Another may be able to confer a blessing, and sometimes for specific
reasons such as blessing you for a trip. But everything I said earlier is true to the
tradition as I know it: you have to have the personal power to use the khuya. It cant
give you a power you are not capable of using. You cant even discover the specific use
of a khuya if you cant first establish an ayni relationship to open an dialogue with the
khuya. It can do nothing on its own, and that is the important thing to understand.
Recently while in Peru, I asked Juan about a khuya I havea gift from a Qero paqo
that has an elaborate ceremony attached to its use. Juan smiled and said, All of that is
third level. What I understood him to mean is that at the third level of consciousness
we tend to complicate things, to make the khuyas (and ourselves) special by imparting
ritual and complex magical abilities to them. When we reach the fourth level, we
realize that intent is what drives energy and we have less (or no) need for elaborate
outer ritual. I have found this to be true in my own practice over the last twenty years.
Watch out for the ego! Attaching importance to the self or sacred object can obscure
what really counts, which is your munay and intent (your ayni). Ayni is almost always
invisible. Most of the time, no one will ever know when a master is working the
energies. He or she will not need outward displays.
Do you ever work with the misha open? And if so, how is the misha organized?
I have never seen a paqo from the south-central Andes work with an open misha.
Because the primary purpose is to move energy (outward manifestation of inward
intent), the bundle is usually closed and then run over the body or blown into or spoken
into to establish a relationship with spirit.
I also have never heard or witnessed a teaching where a paqo opened his bundle and
proscribed a particular organization for the khuyas in the misha. The way you configure
your misha is personal to you because your intent and ayni are personal. You may
arrange things according to any kind of structure, perhaps in an arrangement reflecting
the three worlds, the yanantin/mastinin/tawantin, or some other pattern that is your
personal preference and has personal meaning for you.
The situation is very different for paqos from the northwest coastal traditions. They
have elaborate misha configurations and complex symbolic explanations for placement.
But that is not true of the Qero of south-central mountain tradition, at least to my
knowledge and in my experience.
Finally, remember that your misha is a sign that you are a paqo, following the Andean
tradition. As such, it connects you to all the spirit beings and other paqos of the
tradition. You are never alone as a paqo. However, your misha is always and only
representative of youand you alone. If you are following a rote schema, you are
mirroring someone elses ayni relationships, not your own. There is nothing wrong with
agreeing to universal meanings and a teachers instructions for where to place
something and what it means as long as that feels true in relation to your own
beingness and ayni relationships.
If you want to make your open misha into a map of the self or a map of the three worlds
or a map of the universe, there is nothing to stop you from doing so. Just know that that
schema, too, is a symbolic construct. It confers no magical knowledge or powers. What
you can do in your life is what you have the personal power to do. Personal power is
ayni. No magical incantation or symbolic map can change your ayni. It may heighten
your focus to do your work, it may feel good or look beautiful, but it cant in and of
itself change your energy one iota.
Can you change whats in your misha?
Absolutely. As a symbol of your personal power, your misha changes as you change.
Khuyas that had meaning ten years ago may no longer have that meaning today. New
items may call you as you have new experiences and you grow and change. You are not
static, so you misha cannot be either.
Traditionally, it is common to open your misha, feed it, and change anything in it
once a year. Often that is done on August 1, the day, it is said, that Pachamama and the
Apus awaken. They listen more closely, so we have opportunity to be in deeper ayni
with them and state our intent for manifestation over the next year. As we do a self-
review and refocus, we may change our mishas. (See my post Independence Day
Andean Style July 1, 2015.)
What if you lose your misha or a khuya?
Replace it! I asked Juan this years ago and he said, very simply, If you lose a khuya, go
out into your backyard and pick another stone. Then infuse it with the affection and
feelings you had about the one you lost. Remember, khuyas are not fetishes, not
magical totems. They are only representative of what is within you. Simply infuse the
new stone with the feelings you had about the old. Same for the entire misha.
There is much more to say about the misha, but this covers the basics. As I stressed in
the despacho post and again here, dont worry about what others tell you doincluding
mebut drop deep inside and discover what you feel. Your ayni is your guide to your
practice. You can have all the tools of a paqo, including a misha, but they cant make
you a better paqo. Only your ayni can. That said, part of being a paqo is knowing your
lineage and its cosmovision. When you know the elemental and core aspects of the
cosmovision, you will almost always know what is important in your practice. Dont be
swayed by complexity, symbolism, ritual, ceremony. Simply trust your heartand your
results, as they are the measures of your power because they are the direct feedback
about your ayni from the kawsay pacha.
[Note: Photos 1, 6, and 7 were taken by Lisa McClendon Sims. She owns the
copyright, so these photos may not be shared, copied or reproduced without her written
permission.]
Evolution is very much a part of the Andean cosmovision. Its interesting that in the
Andean tradition, unlike many other traditions, the wild is lower down the
evolutionary scale than is the domesticated. Although the Andean tradition is deeply
connected to nature, it values that which grows in refinement, coherence, and
organization. You can think of this as moving from the unformed to the formed, from
the unconscious to the more conscious. For example, sacha is deemed higher on the
evolutionary scale than salka. Sacha is the forest, but in this case it would refer to
domesticated landscapes, where trees are planted and subject to forestry husbandry
practices. Salka is the wild landscape, untouched and left to its own. Sacha is the
landscape to which human effort has been imparted. It evolves through intent and care.
It is not one that has been decimated by humans, but cared for lovingly. It is evidence of
thoughtfulness and even munay, and as such is an evolving landscape.
In the same vein, the symbol of the kaypacha, the puma, follows this pattern. In the
Andean schema, the otorongo, the wild jungle puma, is lower down the evolutionary
scale than is the more domesticated mountain puma. Paqos work with the mountain
cats, not the jungle cats.
This concept of the evolved in nature connects with the continuing development of
conscious human evolution. The idea is that things move toward more perfect versions
of themselves; they move toward greater capacity; they move toward God realization,
which is unlimited potential.
This does not mean that wild things are less than per se. They are simply at the lower
end of their full realization. This is a controversial concept for many Westerners, who
may still operate under the sway of archetypes such as the perfection of unspoiled
nature and the sentimental valorization of the noble savage. But Andean see things
differently. They have a concept of movement toward higher forms of function and
increased capacitygreater ayni. To be in reciprocity, in tune with the cosmos, one
moves from wild to less wild, from pure instinct and uncontrolled urge to selfresponsibility and conscious intent.
There is an Andean concept of the three ages of man, moving from the Age of the Wild
Man to that of the Solar Man to that of the Metaphysical Man. This movement toward a
more refined consciousness and more perfect ayni has parallels to the spectrum of
physical evolution, of humans moving from unthinking apes to thinking, feeling modern
humans. We move from being solely survivalists, concerned mostly with our physical
safety and well-being, to becoming thinkers, such as scientists, philosophers, and poets.
This evolutionary thrust toward more highly evolved (organized, structured, productive,
sophisticated) forms includes landscapes and the creatures of nature, which is why
Andean see salka, the wild, as less evolved than sacha, the domesticated.
Even the symbols of the three worlds have evolved. They have changed as we have
changed, as we have move through these ages. For instance, the old emblem of the
upper world, the hanaqpacha, was the condor, who is the great hucha eater. Today, we
are moving, or have already moved, to a new symbol of the hanaqpacha, the
hummingbird.
The hummingbird is a producer of sami. The entire focus of the age has changed from
one of releasing heaviness to producing lightness. We now are expected to make sami.
While we still need to release hucha, our focus in the Taripay Pacha, as creatures of
conscious evolution, is to increase the sami in ourselves and foster it in others. This is a
huge conceptual shift. It is almost like making a shift from carrying the burden of
original sin to celebrating ourselves as creatures of original virtue. You can see how
massive a change this shift in perspective can engender as we move our focus from
releasing to generating, from reducing hucha to actively increasing sami.
We must bridge the lower worldthe ukhupachain new ways as well. In the Andes,
the ancient symbol of the lower world was the frog. Today it is the anaconda, or snake.
The ukhupacha, contrary to common thought, is not only a place where beings go who
do not practice ayni; it is the place of regeneration. It is where those people who dont
know ayni go to regenerate themselves, to evolve. This, too, is a massive reframing in
our way of conceptualizing our place in the world and in the cosmos. It leads us from
thinking of the ukhupacha as a place that is less than, and passive, or even a place of
punishment (it isnt) to seeing it as a place of doing, and of potential and possibility. No
one is lost. No one is condemned. At the very worst, if you still need to learn ayni upon
your death, you find yourself in a place of self-regeneration. The ukhupacha is a place
of evolutionary movement within. The Andean conceptual landscape is always one of
positivity. There is always a path to growth, change, and transformation. The focus is
always on achieving wholeness.
The symbols of wholeness are the tawanatin and the chakana. The chakana is the
Andean cross, but it is more than a symbol of an empire or a culture. It is a symbol of a
living traditionof a bridge between cultures. As Juan Nuez del Prado says, we are
each a chakanawe are people who are building a bridge between traditions and
fostering the shift from one age to another, more evolved age.
What of this world, of the kaypacha? When we conceptualize the entire landscape of the
Andes in the Three Worldsthe hanaqpacha (upper world), kaypacha (this world), and
ukhupacha (lower world), we see that the whole is divided into three parts, similar to
how space-time is segmented into three ages.
You might say that the kaypachathis worldoccupies the most space. It is itself
divided into two parts, an upper and lower part. In the upper part of the kaypacha is
Pachamama and the stars and galaxiesthe material cosmos. The lower aspect of the
kaypacha includes the planet Earth (Mama Allpa), the apus, ustas and other spirit
beings of earth.
Below the kaypacha is the ukhupacha, the place of regeneration for those who dont
practice ayni. Above the kaypacha is the hanaqpacha, which, contrary to common belief,
is not the cosmos of stars and galaxies but is that which is beyond the material world,
beyond matter. It is a non-material plane of those enlightened beings who always
practice ayni.
We work as bridges between these three worlds, empowering ourselves with the sami
from the enlightened ones of the hanaqpacha and sending sami to the ukhapacha to help
empower the people of the lower world who dont know ayni. Our practice is inherently
evolutionary. We receive from those more evolved from us and we give to those less
evolved than us. You might say we take from the sacha (the refined, the evolved) and
give to the salka (the unrefined, the wild), although that might be stretching the
metaphor a bit.
The truth of the matter is that we cant change other people, we can only change
ourselves. As we reach a higher expression of ourselves, we can become living
examples to others of the benefits of doing so, and we may even be able to inspire
others to do the work of their own inner growth.
While it is important to be an activist and champion for causes that help better the
world, if we focus only on what is wrong in the outer world and with others instead of
what is going on within ourselves, we risk losing perspective of how the process of
change works.
As writer and spiritual teacher Alan Cohen writes, The world is not defective and does
not need fixing; the world is unfolding and needs belief. You will never create a perfect
world by fixing everything that is broken. . . .The only way to attain perfection is to
claim it, right where you are. If it is not here now, it will not be here later. Perfection is
not a condition you attain; it is a consciousness you live from. Changing the world is not
about setting it right, but seeing it right. Inner transformation must occur before outer
change is possible.
So seeking to be a force for good in the world is not about doing, as much as it is about
your state of being. As writer and teacher Marianne Williamson says, every moment is a
choice about your ministry. Will it be a ministry of fear or one of love (munay)? Does
it arise from respect or does it only marginalize or denigrate? Long before Williamson
was a public figure, she was a cocktail waitress. She decided that her ministry was to be
the best, most life-affirming waitress she could be. The bar where she worked was her
church. She started right where she was and as who she wasa waitress in a bar at a
restaurantand did not defer her work until she had a larger stage or a different
environment. Most important, she started by deciding who she wanted to be, before she
started acting on that state of being.
As paqos we know that we are in continual ayni with others, the material world, and the
cosmos of living energy. And we also know that if we are on one end of the ayni flow
and another person is at the other end, all we can take responsibility for is our end of
that flow. For instance, when we do hucha mikhuy, we are not cleansing the other
person, we are cleansing the flow of energy between ourselves and that person. Our
undertaking will indeed decrease that persons hucha and increase his or her sami, but
mostly we are focused on what the flow between us feels like to us and making it feel
better for ourselves, so we can take back our projections from that person. We are taking
responsibility for ourselves, not trying to change the other person. That person may
indeed change as a result of our practice, but that is not our overt intent. Our intent is to
shift the condition of our own life and emotional/energy environment.
This is why we say in the Andean tradition that each of us is at the center of the
universe. This is not a statement of hubris or solipsism. It is a practical focus on where
the work needs to be donein the self. We are solely responsible for ourselves and for
how we are in ayni with the world of living energyfor how we absorb kawsay and
how we radiate it.
Imperfect ayni creates hucha. Like a snake swallowing its tail, by reducing our hucha,
we not only increase our own well-being, but we improve our capacity for more perfect
ayni. All the beings of the hanaqpacha have perfected ayni, and it is our hope as paqos
to one day perfect our own ayni as well. When we do, our own lives will feel more like
paradise, and we will be contributing to the shift collectively that can ultimately result
in our bringing heaven down to earth.
So while it has become almost clich to quote Gandhi, Be the change you wish to see
in the world, that is exactly what our Andean practice is about. Don Benito once told
Juan Nuez del Prado that we dont have to wonder what God will say next time he
appears in physical form on earth. We know what he has said in the past, and that will
be exactly what he will say in the future: Ayninaqichis: Practice Ayni.
The medieval mystic Kabir reminds us that when it comes to outward gestures, Why
run around sprinkling holy water? Theres an ocean inside you, and when youre ready
youll drown. The mystical drowning is not life threatening, but life affirming.
In the same way that is it impossible to separate water from ocean, we are both an ocean
of self and a drop in the cosmic sea of being. We are both separate beings and
inseparable from the All. The Andean mystical practices are first and foremost guiding
principles for the evolution of the self, and from the center of the self our energy
radiates out to touch the world. So think globally but start the process of change by
acting locallywithin yourself.
The formal training follow a three-part track. You must complete one course before
things are made of it, and all things radiate it. Its nature is to be unrestricted and free
flowing. We have another word for it in this state, sami, which means nectar. Its
light, refined energy. But we humans, alone among living creatures, can slow kawsay
down, and even block it. When we do, we call it hucha, heavy energy.
What is hucha for you may be sami to me, and vice versa. Energy that feels compatible
to your own state of energy you perceive as sami. Incompatible energy feels heavy; its
hucha to you. Thats why hucha has no capacity to harm you. It is not bad or negative
energy in and of itself. It is only energy that is incompatible with the state of your own
energy body
The solution to dealing with incompatible energies? Work on your energy body!
Cleanse it of hucha, getting that kawsay moving again so it reverts to its finest,
freeflowing
state. Theres nothing you have to do to energy out there. The Andean
practice primarily is about in here.
According to the Andean tradition there are no energy vampires. There are only people
whose energy is incompatible with yours. According to the tradition, no one can enter
your energy bubble and drain your energy unless you, consciously or unconsciously,
allow it. And if you are messing energetically with electronics, unless you intended to
do those things, the solution is to get control of your energy body. Its all about you, and
the state of your energy.
This is a tradition not of self-absorption but of personal responsibility.
We want to be masters of our energy, always in control of it yet always open to freely
interacting with others and with the cosmos of living energy. As a paqo, if anything
feels amiss, the first order of action is energetic self-awareness.
your heart and your Inka Seed. Cut the energetic cords to your past, releasing any hucha
from your poqpo that you carry from your past, whether that is heavy energy from
childhood or from ten minutes ago. Take as long as you need to do this.
When you are done cutting cords and releasing, it is time to refill yourself. Become
clear about your intentions for the coming year, for who you want to be. Then stand and
declare aloud to the spirits, I am what I speak, not what I have spoken. Speak aloud
with clarity who this new you is: your expanded personal capacities and qualities, how
you want to serve in the world, the kind of relationships you choose, and so on.
With these words you have released the past and declared to the universe that all of the
intentions you have just clarified within yourself and spoken aloud are the new you.
You are stating that from this moment forward, you are renewed, you are reformed, you
are revitalized, you are realized in a new way.
You now need to reintroduced yourself to yourself, since you are a new you. Sit
quietly with your misha and connect with your poqpo. Be alone with yourself and
establish a relationship with the renewed you. Get to know yourself. Take all the time
you need.
When you are done connecting with your newly defined self, open your misha and sit
with your khuyas. As you grow and change, so does your misha, since it is a reflection
of your personal power. As you sit with your misha, sense which khuyas want to be
removed from it. Honor them, thank them, remove them and store them on an altar or
return them to the earth. Perhaps there are other khuyas around your living space that
are asking to be added to your misha. Greet them, honor them, introduce them to your
misha and add them. Now is the time to reconfigure your misha according to your
renewed state of being, according to who you are as you walk toward growing your
Inka Seed and realizing your wholeness.
Once you have reconfigured your misha, feed it. Honor your misha and its khuyas,
then sprinkle some wine or pisco or other sacred liquid over the khuyas, feeding them.
Then close your misha and sit with it, absorbing its new, changed energy. This is your
personal power as a new, improved you.
That ends the August 1 ceremony
chunpis are four main belts (throat, chest/heart, belly, base of spine/pubic area), with the
two physical eyes and third eye making up a quasi fifth belt. The energy concentrated at
each of these belts has its own potentiality, its own particular capacities that you can
express in your life.
Everything is made of sami (the most refined kawsay, or living energy) and the very
term saminchakuy means something like making/working with sami or taking action
with sami. This practice is the basic cleansing practice. Just like the skin on your
body needs to be washed in order to maintain your health, so does the skin of your
poqpo (energy body or bubble) need to be cleaned of hucha. Saminchakuy is like
taking an energetic shower. However, its important to understand that cleansing is a
When you watch paqos work with their mishas, they most often are running it down a
persons body to release hucha. They basically are doing saminchakuy with the misha
(as a result, it is
also called mishachakuy: literally taking action with the misha). Like a despacho, the
misha is a great eater of hucha. The downward movement of the misha (or a despacho
bundle) over the body is a type of saminchakuy. They usually make sure they run the
misha or despacho over all twelve awis (mystical eyes) and four chunpis (energetic
belts), cleansing them of hucha and empowering them with sami. If you dont know or
understand saminchakuy, you might miss the actual intention of what they are doing
with their mishas and despacho bundles.
To benefit from saminchakuy, you need only practice it ten minutes once or twice a day.
The benefit is more perfect ayni. Everything in the Andean mystical tradition is based
on aynimoving energy through intention in reciprocity with the kawsay pacha. The
quality of your ayni is dependent of the state of your poqpothe more sami, the most
effective your ayniand vice versa. Saminchakuy is the core practice
stairway of the seven steps of consciousness. This is why don Benito Qoriwaman said
that with saminchakuy alone (often supplemented with the empowering companion
practice of saiwachakuy), you can reach the sixth (and possibly the seventh) level of
consciousness. Saminchakuy, thus, is absolutely fundamental to your practice as a paqo
and your personal development as a human being.
Can you follow the Andean tradition without knowing saminchakuy? Not really. It is
simply too fundamental a practice.
Have I convinced you that you need to know and practice saminchkauy? I hope so.
Photo 3 is courtesy of and copyrighted by Lisa McClendon Sims.
While I dont agree with all of Vedrals conclusions, his book provides deep insights
that correlate to many of the core aspects of the Andean mystical tradition. So lets take
a look.
1. There is an immaterial and a material universe.
Vedral is not saying in the paragraph quoted above that nothing exists beyond the
material world. There is an aspect to the universe that is immaterial. There may or may
not be a supernatural being or Intelligence as First Cause, but we cannot ever know
about them using the scientific process (natural laws such as the laws of physics,
mathematics, inductive reasoning, etc.). We can, however, know the material universe,
which is a subset of something larger, which he calls the darkness or the emptiness.
The same is true of the Andean traditions cosmovision. There is a unknowable
immaterial universe called the kawsay pacha. A subset of this infinite field of animating
energy and information is the material universe, which is called Pachamama. All we can
really know is the Pachamama, although through ayni we can interact with and even
influence the immaterial kawsay pacha. Quantum allows for the possibility of a
participatory universe. Andean mystics would turn that uncertainty into certainty, as
according to their cosmovision, energy not only is responsive to information (including
intention, human consciousness) but must follow intent.
Energy also is either compatible or not compatible with your energy state. There are no
other core energy dynamics in the Andean system! In this respect, Andean mysticism
correlates beautifully with Vedrals theory of a digital universe at the energy and
information level.
In the Andean tradition, we say that each of us is the center of the universe because all
we can know is our own experienceour own relation to the universe and others. When
we come in contact with another energy body (a tree, building, or human being), all we
can know is our own perceptions of that interaction. That perception can be of a
masintin or a yanantin relation and perceived as an incompatible or compatible relation.
Everything is dependent on relationship in the Andean energy workthe relationship as
you perceive it between your own state of energy and the other energy entity. You really
cannot know anything about the real state of the other. You can only assess your
own energy perceptions in relation to that other. Therefore, the information is contained
not within the self and other, but in the relational interaction between the self and other.
Vedral says, All quantum information is ultimately context dependent. Meaning
comes only through correlationone thing in relation to another. The same is true of
energy perceptions according to the Andean mystical tradition.
Whats more interesting is that the Andean tradition would agree with Vedrals
hypothesis that information is mostly (or only) contained in or on the surface area of the
object. While Vedral is talking about what can be packed into an objects surface area,
we will look at his statement in terms of actual material surface. In the Andes we know
that our poqpos (our energy bodies) have an anatomy, including a surface boundary or
skin. Hucha mostly accumulates on the skin of our energy bubble. It rarely penetrates
very deep. When we experience loss of well-being, it is because hucha has accumulated
on this skinthis boundary between the interior of our bubble and the outer world. We
then use saminchakuy to cleanse this energetic skin, just like we would wash the skin
of our bodies.
One final point. The ultimate relational interaction in the Andean tradition is intention.
Intention is pure information, which influences the energy of the kawsay pacha. The
Andeans stand unequaled in history as having perfected practices for marshaling the
force of intention to drive energy. If in quantum mechanics a measurement (and the
ultimate measuring instrument is consciousness) collapses the wavefunction to manifest
the immaterial into the material, in the Andean mystical tradition intention is that
measurement.
In these ways and others, the Andean mystical traditionits natural laws laid down
thousands of years agoseems to correlate well with the latest quantum theories,
Vlatko Vedrals being only one of many such theories.