During the interviews for my book, Masters of the Living Energy (originally in hardback, Keepers of the Ancient Knowledge), don Juan Pauqar Espinosa said, “We are all just human beings, only our clothes are different.” How true. The Q’ero may be masters of their mystical tradition, but they also are just like you and me.

Jello—What is this weird stuff? Okay, we’ll try it. Wow, sugar! More, please!

Foosball—game on!

A round of pisco—bring it on!

While we rightly put them on a pedestal and honor their knowledge, there’s also every reason to view the Q’ero for what they are—human beings with the peculiarities, peccadilloes and propensities we all share.

I remember a language lesson at one of the breaks during the book interviews. The two youngest paqos, don Agustin and don Juan, were teaching me and two other women words in Quechua, and we, in turn, would teach them the same words in English. They would say a Quechua word, and we would repeat it back, sometimes several times to get the accent or emphasis correct. When we nailed it, they would point to what that word meant: nose, mouth, throat, ear, arm. Then don Agustin mischievously slipped in the Quechua words for breast, big breasts, and vagina, and we all cracked up laughing.

I had rented a lodging for the group during the interviews. We had the entire place to ourselves. In a front courtyard was a foosball table. The Q’ero had no idea what it was, but don Agustin and don Juan were intrigued. With only a little instruction, they were expertly spinning the rods—addicted! Two of the older Q’ero, the brothers Juan and Julian Pauqar Flores, were the cheering section. They were too timid to try the game themselves.

Don Mariano, like most of us, didn’t pay much heed to his elders when he was a kid. During the interviews, when we were talking about Q’ero history and the Inkari lineage, he said, with regret in his voice, “If I had known as a child that I was going to have the opportunity to talk about these things, then I would have listened better. But I was a child who listened to these things and they went in one ear and out the other! If I had known then that I was going to have this opportunity to speak with you, maybe I would have spent even a day learning these stories. I would have asked for these stories, even offering the elders a drink to tell me these stories!”

One time in Cuzco, a few of us were at Juan Nuñez del Prado’s house with some Q’ero. Lunch was served. The Q’ero were decidedly uncomfortable, furtively watching how we used the cutlery to eat. They obviously felt unsure of themselves, not having experience using forks and knives. We made light of it, keeping things playful, but it was obvious that they sometimes felt as uncomfortable in our world as we felt when in their villages, where we were unfamiliar with many of the ways and customs of their daily life.

Masters of the living energy. Yes! Playful, kind, humorous, fallible, self-effacing, doubting, regretful human beings just like you and me. Of course. . .

This blog’s overall theme is conscious evolution, as facilitated through the Andean mystical tradition. The tradition talks about our evolving through seven levels of consciousness. In our world today, we are mostly at the third level, with growing numbers of people at the fourth level.

However, Andean paqos are eagerly awaiting the manifestation of the fifth level: people who have so mastered their interchanges with the cosmos of living energy that they are infallible healers.

The key word here is “infallible.” There can be no imposters to the fifth level because they must be capable of healing every condition, every time—from regrowing an amputated limb to healing cancer, perhaps even raising the dead. We have heard of fifth-level abilities being manifested before—by Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) and his disciples, and by Jesus Christ and, through the power of the Holy Spirit, his apostles. So we know infallible healing is possible, and the prophecies tell us we will regain this level of consciousness and energy mastery.

In the Andes, the title of a fifth-level being is Inka Mallku, or more generally Tukuy Hampeq, which means “total healer.” According to the prophecy of the New Humanity, there will be an initial group of 12 Inka Mallkus that appear and band together, six men and six women.

For Juan Nuñez del Prado; his son, Ivan; me and other of Juan’s students, the motivation to share this tradition is partly self interest. As Juan says, “Maybe one of my students will reach the fifth level, and then he or she can pull me up to it!” The more people who are consciously evolving, the greater the chance that the fifth level will manifest in our lifetime—and that we will be helped to attain this level ourselves!

When the Tukuy Hampeqs appear, they will be able to teach and pass on the energy of the fifth level. But while our energetic efforts help raise us to this new level of human expression, at this evolutionary transition point the “initiation” to the fifth level is given only by the metaphysical God, through the bestowal of the Mosoq Karpay.

I know there are paqos out there now who are giving something they call the Mosoq Karpay, but it is not the initiation to the fifth level. Karpay is a transmission of energy; for the sake of convenience we call a karpay an “initiation.” Mosoq simply means “new” in Quechua. So, really, any transmission of energy a creative-minded paqo devises can be called a Mosoq Karpay. The Mosoq Karpay to which I am referring is a special karpay that is foretold in the prophecy of the New Humanity and, initially at least, is transmitted directly from the Holy One. It is not yet manifest on Earth, but we are eagerly awaiting its appearance.

So keep working the practices, refining your energy, evolving your consciousness. The fifth-level beings do not have to be Andean. They could be me, or you, or him, or her . . .

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.

According to the Andean tradition, we live in a world of living energy, called the kawsay pacha. Like so much of this tradition, the conception of energy is simple yet elegant and powerful.

The animating energy of the universe, kawsay, is just that—energy. It has no moral overlay. There is no good or bad energy, no negative or positive energy, no angelic or demonic energy. There is only energy that is moving freely or slowed down.

Sami is the energy of the cosmos and everything in it. It is refined, free-flowing energy. Another meaning of the word sami is “nectar.” Energy is the nectar of the cosmos on which everything feeds.

However, we humans have a singular talent. We alone can slow energy down, and we can even cause it to get stuck or blocked within us. When that happens, the energy is called hucha, or heavy energy. Only humans create hucha. But here’s the rub. It’s not bad or negative energy. It’s just sami that is slowed down and so not flowing freely. There is nothing to fear about it. If you feel weighed down by heavy energy, you simply cleanse your energy body, using simple intentional techniques.

You never have to fear energy. You never have to protect yourself from energy—unless you believe you do. What you may perceive as “negative” energy is energy onto which you have projected fearful beliefs. It’s not really negative, and you do not have to fear it or protect yourself against it. It’s just energy constrained from moving freely, and it has no capacity to harm you. If an energy feels too heavy for you, just leave it alone. Empower yourself so that one day you can freely interact with it. This is the liberating news of the Andean mystical tradition. So if you are in protective mode, if you have put yourself in an energetic jail, it’s time to break out, permanently.

It’s time to stop wasting your energy by being fearful of what can’t hurt you. There’s no need to surround yourself with white light or a golden shield or whatever symbol of protection you favor. It’s time to determine what about your awareness is causing the nectar of the universe to slow down and become heavy. The Andean tradition has simple intention and energy techniques to cleanse your personal energy body of hucha and empower it with sami. In fact, according to master paqo don Benito Qoriwaman, using only the two primary cleansing and empowering techniques, you can reach enlightenment. How’s that for simple yet powerful?

The bottom line in the sacred, mystical work of the Andean path is that any energetic jail sentence is a self-imposed imprisonment. You can set yourself free at any time. In fact, the goal of the sacred work is to cultivate such a refined energy body that you can freely interact with the energy of the universe in all its permutations. You want to joyfully “taste” every cosmic “flavor” of energy,  be open and receptive to the experiences of life, and be in free and unrestrained ayni (interchange) with the animating field of living energy.