A Note About Vocabulary: The suffix “-kuna” designates a word as plural in Quechua: apu is singular, apukuna is plural. Apu can be translated as “superior” and in the mystical tradition is most commonly associated with a mountain that is a spirit being. In this respect, it can elevate that spirit being to a level of greatness—to the appellation “Lord.” Apu Ausangate refers to the Spirit Lord of Ausantage. Among other meanings, the word teqse means “the most fundamental,” and in the mystical system means “universal,” as in the most fundamental energies of the cosmic realm. So, in the post below, the term teqse apukuna can be loosely translated as “the most powerful universal spirit beings” and does not refer specifically to mountain spirits. Taytacha refers to a universal or sacred father, whereas Mamacha refers to a universal or sacred mother.

Sun, moon, wind, water, earth . . . in many mystical traditions, the elements are found not only in the material world, but are spirit beings of the metaphysical world. This is true in the Andean tradition, where there is a hierarchy of seven universal spirit beings called the teqse apukuna.

In order, starting from the highest level of these universal beings is the Taytacha, Father God (usually as Father Jesus Christ); Mamacha, Holy Mother Mary; Mama Killa, Mother Moon; Tayta Inti, Father Sun; Tayta Wayra, Father Wind; Mama Allpa, Mother Earth; Mama Unu, Mother Water.

It might appear odd that two Christian figures occupy the top of the teqse apu list. However, the paqos easily took to Christianity because, at least according to the New Testament, the message is one of love—of munay. In the New Testament, Jesus gives three commandments, each about love: love your God with all your heart, mind and strength; love your neighbors as you love yourself; and love your enemies. This is munay—loved grounded in will, love beyond impulse and subject to conscious choice. Christianity’s Golden Rule to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is ayni, the universal law of the cosmos according to the paqos. Jesus and Mary easily represented the core principle of yanantin (the complement of differences), which most fundamentally in the material world is the universal masculine and feminine.

As teqse apukuna, the Taytacha (Father Jesus) and Mamacha (Mother Mary) are spirit beings we can connect with, learn from, and receive blessings from. As an example, when Q’ero paqo don Manuel Q’espi was ill with kidney problems he went to Wanka, an ancient temple site of healing. There the Taytacha appeared to him and healed him. He also told don Manuel to go to Q’oyllurit’i, a sacred sanctuary in the mountains, and there he would give don Manuel the karpay, or initiation, of the tukuymunaynioq, the karpay of munay. Don Manuel went to Q’oyllurtit’i and there had a vision of Christ, who bestowed the karpay on him.

During the past year I have been working deeply with the Taytacha and Mamacha, and I can attest to how generous they are with their blessings!

The other teqse apukuna also bestow blessings. As a paqo, you can work with them in any number of ways and for various reasons. For example, you can determine what capacities are lacking or undeveloped within you and work with the associated teqse apu to learn those capacities, heal, and grow. If you need flexibility and openness, fluidity and strength, you might work with Tayta Wayra, Father Wind. Or perhaps Mama Unu, Mother Water (she is associated especially with rain).

If you seek to bring light to a dark situation or to an aspect of your unconscious, or if you need to increase your life force and vitality, you could work with Tayta Inti, the sun. You get the picture. You choose the universal elemental being that can fill you with what you lack or strengthen within you what is weak.

How do you work with them? By using saminchakuy or saiwachakuy, respectively the cleansing energy practice or the empowering energy practice. This blog can’t teach you those practices, even though they are simple to learn and you can get an idea of how to do them from the descriptions below. If you know them, use them with the teqse apukuna and see what kind of result you get. Remember, this tradition is practical. We want results! So expect them. If one practice is not working to your expectations, then adjust that practice or try a different one.

Let’s say you want to bring clarity to a situation that is confusing, that is stopping you from moving forward with well-being and joy. You might decide to connect with Tayta Inti, Father Sun, and bring his light into the situation through a saminchakuy practice. Really, what you are doing is bringing his sami into your bubble and pushing out hucha, the result of which is a cleansing that can heighten your ability to see the situation clearly and deal with it better. To use saminchakuy, you could connect with Tayta Inti through any of your mystical eyes (ñawis) or chunpis (energetic belts) and draw in his sami. As you do, you cleanse your bubble of hucha (heavy energy) down through your lower spine (siki ñawi) or feet and feed it to Mama Allpa, Mother Earth.

You could use saiwachakuy to empower yourself. Perhaps you are up for a promotion or you are unemployed and seeking a new job. In either situation, you might want to empower yourself. You might be seeking stability, strength, focus, concentration, nurturing, and support to grow in new ways and directions. You might then decide to work with Mama Allpa, Mother Earth. In saiwachauy, you connect through your bubble to her and pull up her sami, filling your bubble with her sami.

Saminchakuy is always about cleansing and saiwachakuy about empowering your energy bubble, and you can use these practices with any of the teqse apukuna. As in all Andean practices, you use your intention. You intend to connect with a particular teqse apu, you communicate with him or her and ask for what you need or want, and you expect that in the spirit of ayni you will both give and receive. In both saminchahuy and saiwachakuy you give your hucha as a gift and receive the teqse apu’s sami as a gift.

This is just a taste of how you can work with the teqse apukuna. Find your own way of getting to know them, for instance by “tasting” their energies through a seqe you extend from your qosqo. Find your own way of working with them, using the Andean techniques you know and molding them to fit your needs. There are no mistakes in the Andean tradition. There is only the state of your energy and the clarity of your intention. Love is met with love. Giving is met with giving. The teqse apukuna are there, waiting to get to know you. Begin introducing yourself to them today.

In one of my recent blog posts, “Valuing the Body,” I talked about the importance of the body to the Andean tradition. In this post, I extend that topic to discuss our humanness.

If you have taken a workshop in the Andean sacred arts with Juan and Ivan, or with me, you know that we stress that everything we are learning as paqos is for one purpose—to live fully in the human world with greater well-being.

Why is that goal so difficult to wrap your mind around?

Of course, I am assuming a lot here, so forgive me if you are not a paqo that constantly forgets that! I know I do. And I see in working with people in trainings that it is a point I have to make over and over. It’s so important that I am stressing it again here.

As paqos we are not striving to develop supernatural powers, to overcome the ties that bind us to our bodies in order to live as “spirit beings,” to drop the mind to reach nirvana, to be shamans who travel the multidimensional realms, or to be anything else except to be exactly who we are!

Who are we? Human beings.

That is definitely not a sexy metaphysical marketing statement or enticing advertising angle, but it’s the teaching of the old masters. It’s what Juan, Ivan, I and other teachers of Juan’s lineage teach. You are human being. Be that first! Fully, fully, fully human. Gloriously human.

Instead of seeing yourself as a spiritual being having a physical experience, try flipping that equation on its head and work toward being a consciously evolved physical being who naturally expresses your spiritual nature.  Making that flip makes all the difference in how you engage the practices of the Andean path, because they are all about—and I really mean all about—developing as a human being.

The focus of the Andean path, including the cosmovision, is on the material world. The kawsay pacha is the infinite field of living, animating energy. It expresses itself in the material as Pachamama. Pachamama is not just the earth. It is the entire material universe. (Mother Earth specifically is called Mama Allpa.) Ayni is what drives the evolution of the Pachamama, the material universe, and everything in it, including our own human evolution both personal and collective.

When we learn to “push the kawsay” (influence the energy of the kawsay pacha), all of our focus is on doing so in a way that matters in the material world, and especially in our human lives. We work the energies to cleanse our poq’pos to evolve to a higher level of consciousness here in the body as a human being. We perform hucha miqhuy to improve our relationships. We foster munay (love grounded in will), hampe munay (healing energy), and khuyay (passion) to improve our relationship with ourselves and with others.

Even the spirit beings are material aspects of the Pachamama, the material world. An apu (perhaps not all, but many) is a mountain, such as the Apu Manuel Pinta, into which the local people have invited a great paqo to live after his death. So when we “talk” with certain apus, we are communicating with the energy field of a human being. Likewise, when we tap into the lineage of paqos, we are tapping into the energy field they have left behind in the Pachamama. A khuya is a stone infused with the energy of human affection. Our energetic anatomy (cones, belts, mystical eyes) are integrated into our physical anatomy and impart increased perceptual abilities. The three “powers” are mind (yachay), body/action (llank’ay) and love (munay), all distinctly physical or emotional human expressions.

Our spirit incorporates energetically as the Inka Seed in our human body. According to the Andean mystical teachings, our spirit is our divinity. It is already and always perfect. So there is nothing we have to do with it—except evolve to express it fully as a human being.

All of our work is at the level of our humanness. I don’t know about you, but evolving my humanness is taking a lot of work! That’s why I love this tradition and practice its techniques. They help me evolve as a more conscious human being. They help improve my relationships with others. They help me to more fully engage my immediate environment, nature, and the cosmos on a level both material and energetic. They help me accumulate the personal energetic power to do what I am here to do, as encoded in my spirit.

I invite you to really drop into this core aspect of the teaching. I invite you to eschew the pull of the supernatural, even of the ceremonial, if it distracts you from what matters the most—discovering who you really are and learning to express the fullness of who you really are. You are a human being—and your human life is sacred from the furthest reach of your mind down to the smallest cell of your body. As a paqo, joyously expressing your humanness is your top priority.

There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life.

— Federico Fellini

Khuyay is passion. It is passionate love, but not necessarily romantic love. It is, according to Juan Nuñez del Prado, the link between two people whose relationship in life takes on the character of a life-enhancing cosmic dance.

Khuyay is the energy that links lovers. It is the connection between a beloved teacher and student. It is the bond between parent and child. It defies easy definition or description, because it cannot be manufactured but it is within our control.

Khuyay  is a passion informed with munay—it is the ayni relationship of munay. Because munay is love grounded in will, khuyay is both a feeling and a choice. It is not passive, but active. Khuyay is the art of life as well as the action of life. Because it involves action, it is one of the primary  expressions of the lloq’e, the left side of the Andean path. (Yachay is a primary goal of the right side.)

As paqos, we seek a life infused by khuyay. We want our relationships— or at least a few of our core relationships—to be partnerships of khuyay. We want to be taken care by others and we want to care of others. We want to be nurtured and we want to nurture. We want to go deep into the experience of the mystery of others and we want others to go deep into the mystery of ourselves. We want to be seen, honored, valued, appreciated, and celebrated not only at the level of our basic human needs but at the level of our creativity, wisdom, joy, and spirit. And we want to see, honor, value appreciate and celebrate others in the same joyful way.

Seem like a tall order? It is! Which is why the energy of khuyay emerges most often far into the  process of self-evolution (energetic evolution) that begins with rimay, expressing the true self; kanay, having the energetic power to know and be your true self; and atiy, having the energetic power to manifest and live as your true self. Only when we have accumulated this kind of personal power can we express the fullness of khuyay—a life infused with passion—because “true” passion presupposes being your “true” self.

Khuyay as passion means engaging life as who you really are. But it is not necessarily happiness. It doesn’t mean everything becomes perfect, that you live life without doubt, disappointment, challenge, and even struggle. It does not free you from your humanness, but helps you express it despite circumstances. According to Juan Nuñez del Prado and his Andean teachers, while khuyay is not happiness, it can be the beginning of happiness.

Happiness is a state of mind. One moment we are happy, and the next moment something happens that makes us unhappy. Happiness tends to be transitory. Khuyay is an energetic stance, not an emotional one. It is having munay for life itself, so it always chooses a “live and let live” attitude. When we feel disappointment or discouragement, we can marshal the energy to lift ourselves up. When we feel misunderstood, we can seek reconciliations not blame. When we feel betrayed, we can hate the act but not the actor. When we feel repelled by those wildly different from ourselves or whom we deem hurtful or even evil, we can choose to forgo condemnation even as we choose not to condone them or their behaviors.

Khuyay is munay and passion under our control. This is where we have to delve deeper into consciousness, for in psychology we can talk about both conscious choice and unconscious choice. It is said that our consciousness is like an iceberg, with one-tenth of it above the water line and thus knowable, and nine-tenths below the water line and thus less knowable or even unknowable. The part of consciousness below the water line of the observing self is the unconscious, which informs most of our beliefs, actions, thoughts, and feelings. Falling madly in love at first sight feels largely unconscious. It feels like an energy outside ourselves is in control and we are being swept into its flow. There appears to be a primal energy, something that is generating our impulse as a kind of Platonic first cause.

Here is where will/choice comes into play. Despite our immersion in that wild energy flow that appears to be outside ourselves, we can step back and be witness to ourselves. We can place ourselves inside the scope of our own introspection. In other words, we can become conscious of this impulse. We can bring awareness to ourselves, and through that awareness choose a response. Using the example of passion as falling madly in love at first sight, we can bring our awareness to the impulse to mediate it. We can temper our feelings and behavior. We can ask if it is healthy or wise. We can slow it down or even ignore it. We can seek to test it, explore it, reject it, dive fully into it, or take a host of other actions. The point is that energy must not master us; we must master it, even as we remain open to the richness and surprise of both human and cosmic play.

Khuyay, to my mind, is the difference between pleasure and wisdom. Deepak Chopra talks about this difference in his book The Future of God (pages 108-117). He says, quoting Eastern spiritual texts, that wisdom is the “pathless path.” It is hard to define it and there really is no roadmap. It’s a matter of faith that wisdom exists and can be attained. The way to attainment is self-awareness. The same is true of khuyay, the passion of life.

In terms of khuyay, physical passion is fleeting whereas energetic passion (khuyay) is enduring. Both depend on the self, but are also beyond the self. In this way, khuyay is about passion at the macro level of life itself. It helps us gain a larger perspective, one that allows passion to infuse the scope of our lives even while we are experiencing ennui or unhappiness during individual hours of our lives.

We can no more force ourselves  to feel passion for life than we can force ourselves to feel love. But we can learn to generate the impulse both toward khuyay and munay by consciously cleansing our energy body so that we are more truly ourselves. The work of rimay, kanay and atiy are part of the training in the chunpis, the belts of power and the mystical eyes, which are called ñawis. These are deep cleansing practices that help us divest hucha and fill ourselves with sami. Sami helps foster greater self-awareness. Greater self-awareness makes the choice for love and passion more attainable and sustainable. When we bring consciousness to our relationships, we can choose empathy, nurturing, kindness, openness, playfulness, and other life-enhancing emotions and actions that strengthen the bonds of the relationship and, perhaps, even evolve it into one of khuyay. Having khuyay relationships makes all the difference both to our moment-to-moment happiness and, more importantly, to the joy that spans the scope of our lives.