My Andean teacher, don Juan Nuñez del Prado, has said that with rimay and atiy we can do anything. The only person who can stop us is ourselves. If this is true, these two human capacities shouldn’t just be background concepts. We need to bring them front and center into our daily lives. So, let’s take a deeper dive into what these capacities mean and how they work together to potentially transform our reality.

In Andean mysticism, communication is viewed as a sacred, transformative act known as rimay. Encompassing speech, language, and communication, rimay is an inherent capacity of the kunka ñawi (energy center at the middle of our throat). Rimay also is sound as a sacred vibration. Every word we utter is imbued with our personal energy and with our karpay, our personal power. In this context, power does not mean dominance or control; it signifies how much of the vast reservoir of human capacity we have accessed from within ourselves and so can bring out into the world and use in our lives.

To fully understand rimay, we must look to its counterpart at the kunka ñawi: yachay. Unlike theoretical intellect or second-hand knowledge, yachay represents wisdom acquired through direct personal experience. Therefore, true rimay is the voice of lived experience. It is the authentic expression of our kanay—our core identity and unique individuality. When we speak from this place of integrated wisdom, we bring a natural confidence, integrity, clarity, and authenticity to our communication. When fueled by yachay, our rimay engenders trust, because we say what we mean and mean what we say. It engenders precision, because we know ourselves and so can communicate our views, preferences, choices, and decisions without apology, ambiguity, or hesitation. Our words align with our core values, and our core values arise from the integrity of our lived experience.

If rimay is the foundation of knowing and expressing who we are, atiy is the life we build upon that foundation. Atiy literally means “to be able to” or “to have the ability.” It is the capacity energetically associated with the siki ñawi, the energy center at the tailbone. Atiy is action in time: The actions we are capable of taking moment by moment, day after day, which add up to the expression of ourselves as integral participants of the world. Through the concept of ayni, or sacred reciprocity, atiy is our ability to “drive the kawsay”—the living energy—through the integrity of who we are. By “measuring” our atiy, we know what we are capable of doing; we can assess whether or not we have the personal power to accomplish what we say we want to in our lives.

Together rimay and atiy drive the kawsay to shape our lives. One way to look at this paired dynamic is that rimay without atiy is mostly empty talk; atiy without rimay is aimless action. Rimay and atiy themselves are part of a more complex chain of development, yet without them, the links in the chain weaken or even break. Pulling together explanations from various transcripts and notes I have, don Juan explains how self-knowledge and self-expression flow together and influence our ability to act in the world: “Pukllay is play, like children at play and lover’s games; reality vanishes, you become part of the whole. Our work is cosmic games. It’s a mix of munay and rimay. Munay as love and will, and rimay as the ability to express yourself. Rimay is more than that really: It is the ability to manifest yourself. To express yourself in all forms, including expressing and living your destiny and inviting others to do the same. All of this takes you to kanay, the power to be yourself. If you discover kanay, you reach atiy.”

Describing atiy, he says, “Atiy depends on the energy you have available to channel. The siki ñawi is about impulses, but atiy is not an undirected impulse, but a directed one. It’s an impulse that is empowered. It is a measure of how you have developed yourself. Your Inka Seed is your full potential, but you have not developed this all the way yet. Atiy is the measure of your power as you contrast it with your Inka Seed. It is your power in this moment. You contrast your possible full potential with what you have the power to do right now in your life. According to that measure, your atiy is the power to change reality around you: how much or easily you can do that. It is how you can trigger action. After you manifest yourself, you can drive kawsay to influence your life and reality; you cannot control reality, but you can make energy follow more harmonious flows in more harmonious directions for you. And then you can play in the world of living energy.”

These are not only Andean concepts, because, of course, communication and action are universal to human existence. Looking outside the tradition, perhaps it was Albert Einstein and Carl Jung who best defined rimay. Einstein said, “The only source of knowledge is experience.” And Jung said, “Experience is the direct realization of a truth.” And we can turn to Theodore Roosevelt to succinctly describe what the Andeans call atiy: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Whatever tradition or source of inspiration we draw upon, taking rimay and atiy into account matters to the quality of our lives. We tend to focus on developing ayni and munay, and rightly so. However, to be wholly involved in the world as our most glorious selves means mastering our rimay and atiy as well.