Juan Nuñez and his son, Ivan, teach that the Inka Seed and heart (the qori chunpi and sonqo ñawi) have no hucha. Therefore, there is no need to ever “clean” these areas. They are pure sami, and so while you can bring more sami to them for additional empowerment, you never have to clean them.

As paqos we have no problem understanding that the Inka Seed is pure sami. After all, it is our connection with Wiraqocha, or God, or whatever you call the metaphysical first cause of the universe. It is our link with our divinity and encodes our fullest potential, and as such it  always has been and always will be pure, no matter what we do as human beings in the course of our lives.

But the teaching that the heart center has no hucha has met with resistance by some of the students learning the tradition in my classes. After all, who has not experienced heartache or heartbreak? Who does not carry the hucha from failed relationships and emotional hurts of all kinds? This teaching also has caused quite a bit of confusion among those who are healers or work in healing capacities with clients. They know, as do most of us, that a lot of what ails us physically finds its roots in our emotions. How can we not have hucha in our heart center when we are so burdened, consciously or unconsciously, by our emotional baggage?

When Juan and Ivan recently visited me here at my home for a few days, I took the opportunity to clarify this issue with them.

The confusion arises because we all have our emotional scars—some wounds healed and some not—and we are used to associating these emotions with the heart center. In so many Western and Eastern traditions, the heart is the repository for our emotions: love, hate, admiration, jealousy, joy, disappointment, and on and on.

But this is not true for the Andean mystical tradition. In this tradition:

• The heart center is the repository of our feelings.
• The qoqso is the repository of our emotions.

What’s the difference between feelings and emotions?

Feelings are those high-level states of consciousness that are beyond the circumstances of the purely human. They are states of being that include love as agape, joy, generosity, justice, compassion, empathy and so on. Emotions, in contrast, are our individual responses to life circumstances and relational interactions: love as eros, happiness, satisfaction, contentment, worry, rejection, envy, approval, disgust, and so on. I think you can easily see the difference—and that makes all the difference to understanding your poq’po.

The feelings are generated at the level of the Inka Seed and sonqo (heart). Emotions are responses from our gut level, our qosqo. This is the center from which we engage the everyday world, from which we send out seqes that connect us to places and people, and through which we exchange energy with them. It is the place of kinetic action, which includes that often volatile flux of our emotions. Emotions arise in reaction to circumstances and behaviors and are our reaction to and interpretation of them. They tend to be easily influenced by what we are experiencing and they change over time. Emotions, thus, are a major generator of hucha.

Emotions as hucha can affect many of our centers. When our words create hucha, we may accumulate that hucha at our throat (kunka chunpi). When our emotions deplete us of personal power, we may accumulate hucha in both our qosqo and siki (qori chunpi and yana chunpi). But we never accumulate hucha at the heart center or Inka Seed. They are generators only of munay. And while we may not be living fully from munay, we nonetheless have these energetically pure centers by which to generate it.

So when we seek to cleanse ourselves—realizing that hucha is not bad or dirty but only kawsay that is slowed down—we must go to the centers where hucha accumulates, which in the case of emotions generally means the qosqo, although it may be any of the other centers (excluding the qori chunpi and sonqo).

It will be interesting to see how this insight between feelings and emotions might change your approach to cleansing your poq’po. Perhaps you will see progress with emotional hucha that has until now been intractable. When you work on the centers that really matter—especially the qosqo—perhaps you will find your well-being radically increased. As interesting will be the effect in clients for those who work in the healing fields. If you are working at the level of the heart with clients, perhaps your effectiveness at helping them activate their self-healing capacities might be enormously increased through this shift of awareness and focus to the qosqo as their emotional energetic center. I would love to hear from you about this!

And do you see how beautiful and graceful the birds are when they are flying and soaring? The ground has many comforts for them to enjoy . . . But in the sky they are truly what a bird is meant to be. So it is with the human heart.

— Aleksandra Layland, novelist

Birds are common metaphors for the loosing of spirit, for the untethering of an earthbound soul. There is a similar use of this metaphor in the Andes, where there is a bird spirit helper associated with many of the levels of human consciousness. According to the teaching of don Benito Qoriwaman, there are seven levels of consciousness that can manifest in humans on earth, although currently we have manifested only four and are eagerly awaiting the fifth level, which is part of prophecies that foretell the rise of the New Humanity.

While Andeans generally don’t work with totem animals in the way that many Central and North American  indigenous and Native peoples do, they have a concept of spirit helpers that include animals and birds.

There is a specific kind of bird associated with a specific level of conscious, and they can assist you in at least two ways in your personal growth to a higher level of consciousness:

1) If you have already achieved that level of conscious development, you can choose to work with the bird associated with that level as a spirit guide, to learn more about that state of consciousness and to continue to develop.

2) If you have not yet reached that level of development, you can be called by the bird of that level. If you accept that bird as a tutelary guide, it will help you grow to that level of consciousness.

Before discussing the levels of consciousness, however briefly, and identifying the bird associated with it, it’s important to understand that we tend to slip back and forth between levels in our daily lives. We tend to be inconsistent in our behavior and mindset, which change depending on context. Rather like the “persona” of psychology—the face we show the world in order to fit in and be accepted—our “lived consciousness” can be context dependent. We might act from the second level at work and from the fourth level at church. We might slip into third-level consciousness in our politics and descend back to the first level in our love relationship.

Generally, however, we seek to grow and develop by stepping up the qanchispatañan—the Stairway of Seven Steps. This stairway of consciousness starts at the zero level, which is the ground floor from where you step up and onto the first step.

Here are the levels of consciousness and the birds associated with them. It’s a valuable exercise to see which “step” you are on in various areas of your life. If you want to climb the qanchispatañan, then you might consider working with the bird spirit helper of that level.

The 0 level is how we all come into human form as a baby, where we have no sense of a separate self or individuality, no “I.” However, people may be at the 0 level later in life. The qualities of the zero level include having little sense of personal power or autonomy, of going along with the crowd or with the majority at the expense of making up your own mind or finding your own identity. It’s the herd mentality, where you prefer what others prefer, seek to fit in at almost any cost, and are most comfortable being part of a group. In its worst expression, this is the mob. In its more positive aspects it can vary from being almost totally identified with a group (a hippie, a Goth, a war protester, an environmental activist, a Catholic, a humanist) to the extreme of being immersed in oceanic consciousness so deeply that you remove yourself from human interaction or renounce the world (the guru in the cave). There is no bird associated with this level.

The 1st level allows for greater autonomy but your sense of self is still heavily influenced by others, and your own need for others makes you dependent. This behavior includes codependence in all its forms. You are especially invested in those you see as authority figures (doctors, ministers, teachers) and you rely on them (consciously or unconsciously) to help direct your thinking, mold your belief system, and form your sense of self. You can tend to take more than you give, as you don’t have a strong will or the personal power to think you can help yourself. You think you need a teacher, leader, or guide and, in this respect, this is the level of the fetish—whatever the fetish is (a person, religion, organization, ideal) if you lose it or it is taken away, you feel you have lost your power and the ability to direct your own personal destiny. In the Andes, the bird of the first level is the killichu, a small falcon.

The 2nd level can be understood as the adolescent (this can be applied, as can all the levels, to an individual, society, nation, or culture). It’s the power of the “in group” and the clique. It’s the belief that “You’re either for us or against us.” It’s black and white thinking, but also contains the element of group-think. You can put your teacher or authority figure on a pedestal (hero worship), but then complain about the authority figure or teacher behind his or her back while not having the courage to face that person and speak your truth. It doesn’t feel safe to upset the apple cart of your belief system or threaten your status as an insider. You are making an effort to learn, expand, and grow, but you may quickly latch on to one truth at the expense of other possibilities, because you are less open to testing or questioning. This us-versus-them mentality can create discord and foster jealousy, incite conflicts of ego, and promote unhealthy competitiveness. The Andean bird associated with this level is the waman, the royal falcon.

At the 3rd level, you have more personal power and autonomy, are more open to acquiring diverse knowledge, and tend to at least listen to or consider the views of many teachers and authority figures. However, you tend to  eventually attach yourself to or identify with the power of one tradition at the expense of others. You feel an exclusive connection and think you have found the “right” path; all others are wrong or misguided. Whereas people at level two are more group minded, the people at level three are more single minded, although the “single mind” is attached to a specific group or a particular belief, etc. It’s the “There is one truth and I have finally found it” mentality. This is the level of consciousness most common in the world at the current time. It drives the most common religious and political agendas. It displays as stubborn nationalism (democracy is the best system, the U.S. is the best country), narrow views of spirituality (“X” is the only path to salvation), and intensely committed political affiliation (the rabid communist, socialist, Libertarian, Republican, Democrat). Very often this mindset drives one to become the “savior” of others, who don’t yet have the truth and so must be shown the way. The anka, or eagle, is the Andean bird of the third level of consciousness.

At the 4th level, you move toward what may be called the mystical mindset: you trust your personal experience, have the capacity to transcend symbolical and ritual patterns, and can overcome boundaries. You can find common cause and connections. You develop a sense of harmony with self and cosmos. You can, for example, experience the power of the “God” connection in a church, mosque, synagogue, teepee, or cave because you can look deeper than outward appearances, symbolic constructs, and particular doctrines. You take responsibility for your autonomy, so that at this level you understand that authority figures and teachers can be guides but can’t solve problems for you—you need to find the answers through your own personal experience and insight. A fourth-level teacher guide students but allow students total freedom; they teach so the student can leave and walk their own walk. While you find your own way and see beyond boundaries, this is not an “anything goes” level of consciousness. You choose your personal beliefs and have opinions, but they are subject to change as you change. You stand up for what you believe in, but you don’t insist others believe as you do and you never belittle or ostracize others who hold different views. You are totally yourself and allow others to be totally themselves. The kuntur, or condor, is the Andean bird of the fourth level.

At the 5th level, you are so in tune with nature and have acquired such personal power that you can push the kawsay to dramatically influence the material world, especially as a healer. This is the level of the infallible healer, who has the ability to heal any disease or condition every time. This is the level of the “miracle.” Healing examples would include those found in the Bible in the Book of Acts, including raising people from the dead. At the fifth level you can also manipulate matter in others ways (such as manifesting a gemstone out of thin air) and can overcome the constraints of time and space as we know it (such as by teleporting or bilocating yourself). You can move in realms beyond the current known laws of physics. The bird of the fifth level is the q’enti, the hummingbird.

The 6th level is that of the Inka Seed and the Taytanchis Ranti, where you become nearly the equivalent of the God of the seventh level. At this level of consciousness you are recognized by others as an enlightened being, literally as one who glows. This is the divine potential within each of us, but sixth- level beings are living that power in the human world. They are “awakened.” Buddha and  Jesus are examples. There is no bird associated with this level.

The cosmovision of the Andes does not provide information or description about the 7th level of consciousness except to say that this is more than a level of god-consciousness. It is a level where god is actually in human form and humans are gods. It is my personal speculation that this could be the level where we live in the human world as pure energy beings. It might also be what happens to humans when, in the words of Terence McKenna, we evolve such that we experience an “exteriorization of the soul.” There is no bird associated with this level.