I have been waiting for days to hit “Publish” on this blog post. Thankfully, about an hour ago Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were declared the winners in the U.S. presidential election. The mayor of Paris expressed my feelings exactly: “Welcome Back, America!”

At the risk of stretching a metaphor too far, this blog post speculates about one perception of the new administration in the United States. Is it too much of a leap to think the election our new President and Vice President could signal a national pachakuti, even a Taripy Pacha, for the United States?

We are living in the time of the Andean prophecy of the rise of a new humanity, the Runakay Mosoq. A time when all the children of God will share their gifts. The Andeans gift to the world is munay, love as a choice, love under our will. The indigenous peoples of the world and the “blue collar” workers of contemporary society teach us llank’ay, action and doing, work and productivity. What are so often disparagingly called the “elites” of the world, usually those white-collar and highly educated people, can share their yachay, or knowledge. Those characterizations are not meant to be stereotypes, but rather as a possible way to look at the weighting of how the three human powers are distributed across contemporary social groups. The bottom line is that when we share these gifts and use all of them ourselves, we move toward becoming complete human beings: people who are skilled at using and sharing all three of their human powers: munay, llank’ay and yachay. This is what the Taripay Pacha is all about: meeting ourselves again, only this time as more fully developed human beings.

During a pachakuti—which can be translated as a great overturning or energetic reorganization, a period of momentous transformation—we have the opportunity (there is no guarantee) of consciously evolving as individuals and societies. The questions that arise are: Can we in the U.S. capitalize on what may be a Taripay Pacha, an age of meeting ourselves again, or a time of potential reformation, reconciliation, advancement, even healing? Can we see the razor-thin election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as such as opportunity to right a country that has tilted badly askew from its founding values (some might say, a country that experienced temporary insanity) and that might once again be a model for the world of rule by the people, for the people, and of the people?

The points I am about to make are not about policies or politics. They are about energetics. About potentiality. About a new start, a  new attitude, a reality check about what has been and a vision for what might be. I invite you to check your doubts or skepticism at the door and come with me on a short journey to the frontier of possibility.

Part of the Andean prophecy is the rise of a new Inka and Qoya: a ruling yanantin of a male and female who can serve as national role models and rule for the good of all the people. (A yanantin is the energetic interplay of two different but complementary energies.) For the first time in American history we have a leadership team of a man and a woman. We have a yanantin as our rulers. This is no small or inconsequential achievement for the American people. It is revolutionary.

And this ruling couple, if you will our own Inka and Qoya, represents not just one yanantin, but many. We have a yanantin of ethnicity at the top of our government: a white man and a mixed race woman (Black and East Asian/Indian). We have two generations (an elder and a middle-ager) from opposite coasts (East and West coasts). We have a Qoya in a mixed race and mixed religious marriage (Christian/Hindu and Jewish). This pair as rulers represent many fourth-level qualities, as the fourth level of consciousness and power is one in which the operative energy dynamics are those of connection, inclusion, bridge-building, acceptance of differences, and the welcoming of diversity. As president-elect Biden has said so many times: He seeks not to be the leader of blue states or red states, but the representative of the United States. He calls for seeing those who did not support him or are of an opposing political party or persuasion not as enemies but as opponents, and even as potential allies. Some call him and his calls for unity and cooperation—and those like me who applaud such values—naive. I call it fourth-level speech and behavior.

Such qualities are frightening to those still at the third level of consciousness, which in its heavy aspect is the dynamic of duality: right-wrong, us-them, ally-enemy, Democrat-Republican, and all the other divisive labels that have driven our politics and ethics for the last four years, although, truthfully, this has been the growing ethos of the United States and its politics for at least the last decade.

Trump displayed the unhealthiest characteristics of the third level. This characterization has nothing to do with his policies and everything to do with his personality and character as a man: bully, blamer, complainer, victim, paranoid conspiracy theorist, isolationist, confabulist and even liar, transactional, materialist, divider, angry, narcissistic, tribal, and the like. As I said, at his best Joe Biden displays fourth-level tendencies, although time will tell if he lives up to his rhetoric: alliance-building, empathy, kindness, consensus seeker, collaborator, inclusive, tolerant, and so on. This is a sea-change in the quality of the energetics at the top of the political hierarchy here in the United States. But Biden has no mandate. Although he won the popular vote, his electoral college victory looks like it will be achieved by a thin margin (all the votes still are not counted). Biden will be dealing not only with a divided populace but a divided government.

Still, we can’t overlook how momentous it is that we have elected our own version of an Inka and Qoya—meaning rulers, but not enlightened rulers (that remains to be seen). Let me take another leap: Looking through our three uppermost ñawis at the three human powers, we will see that metaphysically, looking through the qanchis ñawis (seventh eye), this potential for transformation is happening in 2020, which numerologically adds up to the number 4, the tawantin or symbol of wholeness, harmony, and completeness. (And Bidden was declared winner on 11/7/2020, which numerologically also adds up to 4; there’s that tawantin reference again). More realistically, looking through the paña ñawi (the  right eye of rationality) and lloq’e ñawi (left eye of practicality) at our three human powers, which in the prophecy must be developed and used together, the path forward toward the energy of tawantin appears difficult. The US population of voters expressed their llank’ay, their action, like never before. There was an historic number of votes cast in this election. But our yachay, or that of so many of the electorate, and munay are sorely lacking and underdeveloped. We have divided into factions and too many of us have bought into ridiculous and unfounded conspiracy theories of voter fraud and corruption of the election. It goes without saying that munay also is sorely lacking in huge swaths of our populace.

Donald Trump, the greatest threat in recent American history to our nation’s democratic values and to the checks and balances of our institutions of government may be gone soon, but division looms large: vast income inequalities, a reckoning for systemic racism, the resistance of global-warming deniers, a seemingly intractable political tribalism, and on and on. These divisions demonstrate just how far we have to go not only in national healing but to achieving any measure of national unity. A pachakuti, a cosmic transmutation, provides only the potential for change. Nothing is a given. Which is why paqos in the United States, and around the world, can help energetically support the positive potential of the United States by committing to practicing hucha miqhuy on the poq’po of the nation and its citizens over the long term. We have a lot of hucha to release.

Hucha miqhuy not only releases hucha, it increases strength and power, and fosters the potential for evolution. My teacher, don Juan Nuñez del Prado, has said: Hucha miqkuy “propels the process of evolution of everything. One of the ways Mother Earth propels the process of evolution is to accept your [or all human beings’] heavy energy and transform it into the light energy. She recycles the energetic remainders of the actions of humans, our hucha. She transforms human weakness into human virtue. We feed her. But if you use that power yourself, the power of hucha miqhuy, you are a co-creator with her. You become a recycler of heaviness, which is the factor that insulates human beings. It’s the factor that prevents the possibility of really creating something new and beautiful.”

Performing hucha miqhuy will help us take advantage of this election result, this return to sanity and opportunity for reconciliation and growth. (Thank you to those outside the U.S. who decide to do this for us). Obviously, what happens is up to us, and up to our elected leaders in the three branches of government (most importantly the Congress). We get to decide what this opportunity births, if anything. Where we go from here is at least partially under our will. If we develop our three human powers, then we will give this administration a chance to succeed. In my eternal optimism, I think if we see this change as a Taripay Pacha—the rise for the first time in our history of our own Inka and Qoya as leaders of our country—we can contribute as fourth-level citizens. It’s just a thought, maybe even a challenge I am of putting out there for consideration by other Americans. Who do you want to be? What do you want the character of our country to be? How do you envision our national future? And, most importantly, how will you either detract from or contribute to this possible Taripay Pacha?