As we begin a new year, it might be useful to review some of the main teachings of Andean mystical practice. I am focusing on core principles that most of us learn early in our training but are easily overlooked, forgotten, or misunderstood. These principles may be less well known to those of you who have studied with teachers other than Don Juan Nuñez del Prado or teachers trained by him.

Ours Is a Path of Practice, Not of Philosophy

Don Juan has stressed how the Andean mystical tradition is not a training in “why” but in “how.” It is not a path of intellect, but of experience. The paqos do not prompt us ahead of time to understand the meaning of a practice; we are told how to do the practice, and by doing it we come to learn what we can accomplish. Through the repetitive experience of the way the energy moves, we come to understand the consequences of that energy dynamic. As Don Juan says, each practice “provides a specific experience; not just anything can happen. Certain experiences contribute to our growth, and the paqos planned it that way.”

The training is a sequence, a protocol for accumulating personal power: for having the will, flexibility, and resiliency to meet life with well-being despite all its vagaries. It also is a protocol for stepping up the qanchispatañan: the stairway or pathway of the development of human consciousness. We make the choice for developing ourselves, and the qanchispatañan shows us what is possible: that we can become enlightened human beings.

Similar Names, Different Practices

Do you know that saminchakuy refers to two different practices? And that mikhuy and hucha mikhuy are not the same? A lot of students and even practitioners of the tradition either do not understand these distinctions or forget them.

Let’s break the word saminchakuy down and look at the context for its use. Chakuy literally means to hunt, or to chase down and capture. Figuratively, it refers to taking intentional action to achieve an objective. Don Juan defines it as “to take action with” or simply “to make.” So, saminchakuy is the act of “doing something with sami.” And it is the name of two different sami practices.

As a quick review: Sami is the light living energy, the animating energy; we are always absorbing and radiating sami. When, for various reasons, we slow or block sami from flowing through us, we call that slow sami “hucha,” which literally means “heavy” energy. It detracts from our well-being over time. So, we want to transform it back to its natural state. Saminchakuy is our primary practice for transforming hucha. We direct a flow of concentrated sami over our poq’po (energy bubble) and through our physical body to clear our hucha.

However, saminchakuy also can be practiced independently of hucha transformation. In its second sense, it is the simple act of receiving sami. When we connect energetically with a source, we may feel its sami flowing freely toward us or we may intentionally pull that sami into our energy field. So, the mere reception and intake of sami is also called a saminchakuy.

An example of this kind of saminchakuy is when I and a small group of others arrived at dusk at the Q’ero village of Chua Chua. We had been on horseback all day, riding through rough mountain terrain. We were exhausted. Don Juan told us that when we met later with Don Manuel Quispe, who was the top Q’ero paqo at that time, we should pull sami from him to rejuvenate ourselves. When I asked him about the ethics of doing that, he explained that anyone who is or claims to be more energetically developed than us (and therefore more powerful, more sami-filled) automatically is a source of sami for others. This dynamic operates outside the principle of ayni (reciprocity or an interaction of mutual giving and receiving); instead, it is a one-way flow of sami from a source to us for empowerment, strengthening, rejuvenation, and similar benefits. (I should note that we do not have the right to draw sami from anyone who is at our same developmental level or a lower level, although we are free to take their hucha, as explained later in this post.)

Now let’s turn to the distinction between hucha mikhuy and mikhuy. Mikhuy means to eat or consume. Our advanced practice for transforming heavy energy is called hucha mikhuy: the act of “eating” or, as Don Juan defines it, “digesting” hucha. During this practice, we draw another person’s hucha—or even our own—into our qosqo ñawi, the energy center at our belly, where it is transformed. The qosqo area of our body is our mystical or spiritual stomach. Just as the physical stomach processes food, the qosqo digests heavy energy. Through hucha mikhuy, the qosqo metabolizes the hucha, returning a portion of it back into its natural sami state. Any hucha that cannot be processed is released to Mother Earth, who effortlessly digests and transforms it. 

We also can practice mikhuy in a way that has nothing to do with transforming heavy energy; instead, it serves as a method of deepening our experience of sami, whether from a tree, cloud, spirit being, or sanctuary. We draw the source’s light living energy into our qosqo, for a restorative empowerment and a more profound, even visceral experience of the quality of the source energy. Sometimes we call this kind of mikhuy “tasting” energy. It is similar to the second meaning of saminchakuy (the taking in of sami), only it is a more robust way to sense and experience the quality of that sami. Don Juan once said that using mikhuy to “taste” energy is the difference between being told what an apple tastes like and actually taking a bite.

Hucha Is Public Domain; Sami Is Not

As the light living energy, sami animates and revitalizes us. We are always flowing sami through us, absorbing it and radiating it. However, we humans are the only creatures who can slow or block the life-force energy; when we do, we create hucha for ourselves. Fortunately, we have practices to transform, and thus reduce, our hucha. And we can help each other do that. As Don Juan points out, “Hucha is in the public domain,” meaning we are free to use our hucha-transforming practices, such as saminchakuy or hucha  mikhuy, on others to enhance their well-being. When working on someone’s poq’po, we clear hucha from its outer surface. Because we are not entering into their energy field, we do not have to ask permission to work on their behalf. However, to work on transforming hucha within a person’s poq’po, we do have to ask permission.

We have a different set of ethical rules for working with sami. With the one exception as mentioned above (the Don Manuel Quispe example), sami is not public domain. A fundamental principle of the tradition is that no can access or take our sami without our conscious or unconscious permission. So, what do we do if we believe someone is draining our sami?

To answer that question, we first need a bit of context. The qanchispatañan is comprised of seven stages of human consciousness. From the fourth-level perspective, we are seeking to be masters of our energy environment and our own wasi. We take total responsibility for ourselves. If we believe someone is trying to take our sami, we first question our own belief, entertaining the possibility that the problem is with us: at some psychological unconscious level we are allowing that spirit or person into our field or we are projecting our own denied fears outward onto someone or something else, such as a malevolent spirit. So, we do our personal work to regain our psychological equilibrium and energetic integrity.

The situation looks different from the view of the third level. At this stage of development, the belief is literal that there are powerful malicious spirits or people who can trap us and violate the integrity of our poq’po by stealing our sami. If that is our belief, it is true for us. And we will want to do something about it. So, what’s the solution?

Radical generosity: Give them exactly what they want—some of our sami.

As counterintuitive as that action may seem based on our third-level beliefs and self-interest, it makes perfect energetic sense. The energetically greedy spirit or person wants or needs sami and is attracted to ours. Since we continuously absorb sami, as all living beings do, and the supply of sami from the living universe is inexhaustible, we can share ours freely. We can never be depleted, so we have plenty of sami to share. And if we feel a need for more sami, we simply absorb more from an available source, such as the earth or the living universe at large.

However, Don Juan counsels that we should share our own sami only if we feel comfortable doing so. If we do not, then we can still give that spirit or person the sami they want by pulling it from an outside source (a tree, the earth, and so on) and streaming it to them. When we know ourselves and our capacities well, we can make the choice that is within our comfort zone and act with confidence and generosity.

The Paqo Way of Power

The way of the paqo is to practice ayni, reciprocity. However, ayni is not just intention; it is intention put into action. So, the paqo path is a path of action. However, our ability to act in the world is not dependent only on our will, passion, stamina, and such. It also is dependent on our atiy, our ability to measure our power. We must determine if we have sufficient power to fulfill an objective or not. We do this at the siki ñawi, the mystical eye at the tailbone, although the way we measure our atiy is beyond the scope of this post. The point here is that we might want to do something, but not have the personal power to succeed. Knowing that in advance prevents us from needlessly wasting our energy or feeling frustrated. If we determine that we have insufficient power to fulfill our intention, then we redirect our intention and action to our practices to hone our power, until we know we are not only ready to act, but are able to.

Using our power wisely is another aspect of the paqo path. Before we take on too much, such as attempting to use our personal power to act on behalf of others or address a problem out in the world, we deal with our own issues. Doing so is essential, because accumulating personal power requires the transformation of our own hucha. Heavy energy acts like a screen, obscuring our clarity and limiting access to our full potential and aptitude. So, Don Juan advises that before we “stick our noses in other people’s business,” we must use our power to attend to our own inner and outer affairs. Once we have cleared our own field and put our own house in order, we can share our energy and power freely to act on behalf of the well-being of others.

Not having sufficient power in the moment to fulfill an objective does not mean we cannot work toward that objective at all. We simply need to moderate our ambition or enthusiasm, extend our time line, and take small steps toward that goal. No matter what our capacity, we have some measure of power, and we can use it wisely to work toward the fulfillment of our goals or in helping support others’ interests and well-being. Although the following quotation is not about the Andean tradition, it certainly applies to how we use our personal power, “If you do not have the opportunity to do great things, do small things in a great way.” (From Brian Weiss’s Messages from the Masters: Tapping into the Power of Love.)