In the metaphysical community, there is a widespread belief—a judgment, really—that a person can be an energy vampire, sucking the life energy from others. Or there are situations where someone walks into a room and, just through his or her presence, crashes a computer or stops a clock. What’s the Andean tradition’s take on these “conditions?”

Let’s start by reviewing energy. In “Break Out of Energetic Jail,” I talked about sami and hucha. As you may remember, kawsay is the animating energy of the universe. All things are made of it, and all things radiate it. It’s nature is to be unrestricted and free flowing. We have another word for it in this state, sami, which means “nectar.” It’s 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.

But here’s the rub. The perceptions of sami and hucha are different for each of us. It all depends on the state of our energy bubble. Our relationship to energy is entirely personal.

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; it’s hucha to you. That’s 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, free-flowing state. There’s nothing you have to do to energy “out there.” The Andean practice primarily is about “in here.”

There’s a story Juan Nuñez del Prado tells about being with his master, I believe it was don Benito, doing some energy work at a sacred site. They entered cisterns where in Inka times the paqos may have performed energy cleansing practices. Juan was in a cistern down the hill from don Benito, and as they got ready to perform the hucha release work, Juan was worried. Wouldn’t all don Benito’s hucha flow down and onto him? When he asked, donBenito just laughed, saying, “Juan, my hucha is sami to you!” Such was the refined state of his energy body that his heavy energy would be perceptible to Juan as sami. It’s all relative.

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. It’s 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.