My last few posts have been about kawsay and how it supports your intentions to live as your grandest self. In this post I want to focus on kawsay in relation to moral and ethical frameworks.

Because most of you reading this post have been raised in a Western or Westernized culture, you likely have incorporated into your life, implicitly or explicitly, two core values or beliefs (among a host of others):

1. Scarcity is the norm: There’s not enough for everyone, so if I get more, you get less.
2. Riches and material possessions are valorized as emblems of success, but wanting material things is shallow and not spiritual.

According to the Andean tradition each of those values or beliefs is false. To live by them is to misunderstand the nature of the kawsay pacha and deny yourself its blessings. Here is what the Andean masters teach.

Abundance is the norm. The true nature of the kawsay pacha is that light living energy is overly abundant. There is more than enough for everyone. Kawsay cannot be depleted, so you can have as much as you want.

Absorbing kawsay is never selfish. In fact, it is your natural propensity. Kawsay is the fuel of life and evolution. You can’t do anything without it. Your ability to “push” the kawsay to manifest your intentions is directly proportional to how much sami—the most refined kawsay, the “nectar” of the universe—you have in your bubble and thus at your disposal. So it is always to your benefit to fill yourself to the brim with sami.

Your having more of anything does not mean anyone has to have less. The kawsay pacha has no accountants on duty, tallying up the books to see if you have taken more than you are due. It also has no referees, because there is no need for competition. There are no spiritual scorekeepers awarding you bonus points because you have lived ascetically or squelched your worldly desires.

Of course, the condition of your heart is as important as the condition of your energy body, but your morals and ethics are independent of the kawsay pacha as a fount of sami. We are social creatures, and to live in harmony we have to have rules and agreements. We seek to foster well-being at all levels of our lives, from our family to our community to our nation and the world. Because we live on the material plane—on Earth—it is to our benefit to take care of our planet and use our resources wisely and for the benefit of all of us, not just some of us. As humans we can accumulate hucha, and we often do because of we don’t live according to the “golden rule.” But at the fundamental energetic level of the kawsay pacha, everything is available to us, whether we know it or not, accept it or not, or partake of that abundance or not.

Remember, energy is just energy; it has no moral overlay. Since kawsay is the raw material of everything in the universe, then everything that is created from it in the material realm is devoid of moral labels. From an energetic perspective, the desire to live in a mansion or drive an expensive sports car are not “less than” the desire to build an orphanage or farm a field of organic vegetables. A diamond ring is the same energetically as a sacred book. There is no energetic difference between a diva’s fur coat and a Tibetan monk’s robe. Energetically, the universe will just as soon support your efforts to accumulate a mega bank account for security in your old age as it will to fund your non-profit to help people in need or right a social injustice.

You can have anything you want. While you are the arbiter of what objects and endeavors mean to you and thus whether they are worth attracting into your life, those things themselves are readily available and energetically equivalent. You can deny yourself or fill yourself to the brim, and the kawsay pacha has no judgment either way.

I leave you with two quotations that I hope will inspire you to both take abundantly and give abundantly, to both fulfill your grandest desires and to live with meaning, fully and deeply.

“Whatever we do in life starts with us. To be replenished, we need to keep emptying ourselves to receive more. In that way, we become vessels, holding up one hand to receive the blessings and then opening up the other hand so that we become channels, letting those blessings flow into the lives of others.”

—Bear Heart, The Wind Is My Mother

“There is only one way to be prepared for death: to be sated. In the soul, in the heart, in the spirit, in the flesh. To the brim.”

—Henry de Montherland, “Explicit Mysterium,” Mors et Vita