Note: To work with the chunpis and ñawis, you have to have undergone the Chunpi Away and Ñawi K’ichay karpay.)

The light within. The light of the self. The lamp of the soul. The metaphors of self-realization are predominantly ones of light. In the Andes, there is a concept of the Black Sun within that also is about self-realization, as related to a concept called kanay. Kanay is not an easy term to define and much of the explication I am about to offer is my own, not based directly on the tradition of the lineage of paqos whose teachings I follow. However, it is infused with the spirit of their teachings.

Kanay means to know who you truly are and then to have the personal power to live as who you truly are. As you know by now, if you have been reading the posts on this website, “being who you really are” is a primary goal of an Andean paqo. But kanay is a fairly ambiguous concept, so let’s explore its meanings by roaming through the terrain of the Andean tradition.

We start  by situating ourselves in the landscape of the energy body (the poq’po), and specifically at the qori chunpi, which is the gold belt at the chest. The eye of this belt, the sonqo ñawi, literally means the “eye of the heart.” This belt is associated with munay, which is love grounded in will, and with kanay, the impulse to know and live as the highest expression of your true human self. The chest area is also the location of your Inka Seed, the energetic “seed” of the divine self that encodes your potential—all that you can be in the fullness of your humanness.

Literally, the Quechua word “kanay” means something like “to suffer intense heat.” That’s rather an odd concept to try to relate to the Inka Seed and heart. But it makes sense if we link it to other teachings indirectly related to the heart.

There is a phrase from the mystical tradition of the Andes—Noccan Kani—that means “I am.” The Noccan Kani—the great “I am” declaration of the self—is visualized as the Black Sun within. It shines its intense light from our hearts.

The black sun that lives within your heart is the light of the cosmic within you. It is your original light. It is your link to Yahweh (YHVH), to use the ancient Hebrew name for God. Leaving aside any religious affiliations, you are a drop of the Mystery—a drop of God that has taken human form. That is who you really are—and it is part of your work as a paqo to cleanse your bubble to help you evolve to the seventh level of consciousness. The seventh level of human consciousness is ineffable. The paqos provide no description beyond the explanation that it is somehow the fully realized consciousness of God in human beings in the material world.

Knowing that this drop of the Godhood exists within in you as your Inka Seed and is also conceptualized in some parts of the Andes as a Black Sun helps you to understand kanay. Achieving kanay is to suffer (in the mystical and religious sense of ecstasy and awe) the intense power (metaphorically, as heat) of this integration of the divine and the human. In addition to other things, a seed needs light to grow. Your Inka Seed is germinated and nurtured by your inner light, and its growth is commensurate with the increasing light of your ever-evolving consciousness.

But why a black sun? That’s a bit odd, isn’t it?

Not if you remember that in the Andean mystical tradition the highest energy vibration is willka, the black light. Willka is considered to be the most difficult energy to master.

If you do the chaupi training of don Andres Espinosa, as offered by Juan Nunez del Prado, his son Ivan, or me and other teachers who have been trained by Juan and Ivan, you will know that willka energy is present in the natural world, but there also is a way to create this energy yourself. It manifests through the melding of the sami of the universe with the sami of the earth within the human body.

In the Chunpi Away, the karpay to weave the chunpis, you pull two cords of cosmic energy into your poq’po—a gold one and a silver one. You move them from the top of your head to the base of your spine.  Then you pull a cord of green energy from Mother Earth up into your poq’po at the tailbone through the eye of the lower belt, the siki ñawi, and pull it up your spine.  You then merge the gold, silver, and green cords to create a single cord of black energy. This is the willka energy. You created it by integrating specific cosmic and earth vibrations in the interior of your poq’po and physical body.

The black sun within is this willka energy at the heart center. Just as your Inka Seed encodes the divine within the human, and just as the merger of certain cosmic and earth energies form willka along the spine, the black sun represent the integration of cosmic and earth energies within the human being at the level of munay, which lives in the heart center.

Kanay, then, can be understood as achieving the japu of two yanantin energies within the heart. Yanantin refers to dissimilar energies. In this case the energy of the cosmic self and the energy of the human self. A japu is the perfect integration of dissimilar energies. When you work at the qori chunpi to engage the spirit and energy of kanay, you are, in effect, stoking the fire within so that you can one day realize the ecstatic yet fully conscious integration of your divinity with your humanness. This new cosmic-terrestrial self is who you really are. And kanay is not only knowing that True Self, but having the personal power to be it and live it.