I ended Part 1 of this discussion about the Inka Seed with a few lines from a Mary Oliver poem. Now, I start Part 2 with lines from another of her poems, which is called “Sometimes.” She writes: “Instructions for living a life: / Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it.”

For the purposes of our discussion of the Inka Seed, rather than just telling about our capacities and experiences as human beings, I would amend that last line to “Act on it.” For paqos, kanay means not only knowing who we are, but having the personal power to live as who we really are. That means being fully engaged in the world.

As I said in Part I, we are working toward expressing more of the fullness of the self that is held in potential in the Inka Seed. Our personal power—our karpay—is measured by how much of our capacity we have available to use and express right now. There are many Quechua mystical terms that refer to how we put our intentions and capacities into action. They define how we understand the energy dynamics related to our Inka Seed. So, let’s take a look at some of these energy dynamics.

What might first come to mind is the energy dynamic of ayni: the interchanges we make with the living universe, the natural world, other human beings, and more. Ayni often is described as reciprocity: we have a conscious or unconscious intention that we send out into the world and the living universe reciprocates energetically. But intention is only part of the interchange. Ayni is intention applied. To put it another way, ayni is intention followed by action. As don Ivan Nuñez del Prado stresses so frequently: “No action, no ayni.” We don’t just think about calling a friend, we call. We don’t just intend to improve how we engage with someone we don’t really like, we actually make the effort. We don’t just intend to strengthen a relationship with an apu or a ñust’a (or any spirit being), we actively work to cultivate mutual communication.

Once an intention has been put into action, then the energy dynamic continues in that we must be aware that the living universe, the spirit beings, or our fellow human beings will provide a response or feedback. We don’t fixate on watching for that feedback, but we do remain perceptually open so that we can consciously register any feedback. Once we receive that response, we might realize we are being asked to refine our intention and adjust our actions. Then we begin a new cycle of ayni. Ayni involves many aspects of ourselves, but at the heart of all our ayni flows is our Inka Seed.

Ayni asks us to source from our Inka Seed. The whole cycle of ayni requires that we be in dynamic relationship with our personal power, which is another way of saying with our Inka Seed. But how exactly do we get in touch with our Inka Seed?

Let me start by saying that we are always in touch with our Inka Seed. Everything we are right now, we are because we are expressing some of the potential that is available to us. Yet, it helps to be concrete, rather than conceptual, about how we engage our Inka Seed or source from it. This goal requires that we use other kinds of energy dynamics.

The Andean tradition is a path of conscious evolution, so our work always starts with self-inquiry. One concrete way to gauge how well we are relating to our Inka Seed is to bring self-inquiry to how we are using our three human powers. These are yachay, munay, and llank’ay. Here I will talk only about yachay and llank’ay, and for reasons of space limitations the discussion will be rather brief.

Yachay refers to knowing—to thought, reason, logic, intellect. More specifically, it refers to what we learn through personal experience—not just through any experience, but from first-hand experience. Our yachay is not what we learn through second-hand sources such as conversations, books, lectures, YouTube videos, blog posts (such as this one!), and the like. It is what we know because we have experienced it or perceived it directly.

As a consequence, it is obvious that yachay and llank’ay are tightly correlated. Llank’ay is action. You know because you have experienced something. Of course, we can accumulate all kinds of valuable knowledge from secondary sources, but they are not yachay. We may know all kinds of things about starting and running a successful business, but until we actually start and run a business, we won’t know if we have the capacities available to us to be a successful businessowner. Although there are all kinds of factors that affect the success or failure of a business, a major one is our access to our Inka Seed. If we succeed, then that likely means that we have accessed and learned to use the necessary capacities from the vast store of capacities held within our Inka Seed and to capitalize on other factors outside of ourselves that helped support our business. If the business fails, it would be remiss not to bring self-inquiry to ourselves by asking how our lack of ability might at least partially have contributed to the demise of the enterprise.

Both success and failure can be amazing teachers if we use each as feedback about how intention and action work together. For example, sometimes we want something so badly (the intention) that we rush to do it before we are truly capable of doing it. We misjudge our atiy, which is a capacity at the root ñawi (siki ñawi) where we “measure” our power. The Quechua word atini (or in one variation, atinim) means “I can” or “I can do it.” But the truth is that sometimes we cannot do—or are not ready to do—what we set out to do. Sometimes we passionately want to do something, but a barely conscious or completely unconscious belief prevents us from taking action. Or, if we do act, we sabotage ourselves. Perhaps we procrastinate starting a business or we unconsciously undermine our own efforts because somewhere deep down we are running the limiting belief that we are not worthy of success. Each of these dynamics tell us something about how we are in relationship with our Inka Seed. If we go within and pay attention to the flux of energies we are running, we are being shown how we have or have not yet accessed the qualities and capacities of our Inka Seed that are relevant to manifesting a specific intention.

In this context, atiy is how much of our Inka Seed we have so far realized and are capable of using. It is our karpay, our personal power. And personal power is what we are accumulating in our walk through life. We move from mostly unconscious base impulses to directed intention, and ultimately to conscious action. The journey of self-development is the unfolding process of accessing more and more of our Inka Seed’s potential and bringing it through our atiy and out into our lives and into the world.

Self-development itself is a conscious choice, and as such it takes us to the very heart of the Inka Seed, because the Inka Seed is the repository of our will. Will is an energy dynamic. Don Juan Nuñez del Prado explains self-development, especially as relates to atiy and will, this way: “Will in a certain way is the center of the other pathways, according to don Melchor. Will is something conscious. Like the saying, ‘where there is a will, there is a way.’ Will belongs to your conscious mind. Atiy is more from your unconscious, and it is very basic. It is what we call an impulse. An impulse is something very basic. . . . It’s a spark, but it is a tiny spark that comes from a very basic part of you. Yet because of that it can trigger a lot of things. When you use that spark, you can trigger anything! But to move beyond that basic spark, you need another path. This is the will, and it is related to your Inka Seed. The Inka Seed contains all your potential. The Inka Seed is your Spirit, which drives everything—your impulses and everything. It owns your being, your Spirit does. Your potential is everything you can become, everything you can realize in your life. This potential is a driving power in itself. Because this potential [as a thing in and of itself] wants to develop—it is willing to be expressed or manifested. It triggers every possible thing that can happen or be expressed through and by a human being. Through the will of the Inka Seed, you move the living energy. You learn to express what is in you, what is in your own Inka Seed, and to send that out into the world. That is the whole goal of the Andean path—to express your whole self, all that is within you.”

Don Juan and don Ivan call the Inka Seed our inner compass, which is always pointing to true north. We can think of our Inka Seed as our truth-meter, because, as don Juan also says, “Your Inka Seed will always tell you the truth.” Your true north is how you bring yourself to the world:  what you are here to express and contribute. Your true north is different from my true north, or anyone else’s. We are each unique in that way. But the process of discernment of our personal true north is the same for all of us—we perceive it through our body. Remember that our wasi—the house or temple of the self—is comprised of the poq’po (which we think of as the psyche, the mind both conscious and unconscious), the physical body, and our Inka Seed. In don Juan’s words, our Inka Seed is the owner of our wasi. To discern what the “owner of the wasi” is trying to tell us, we listen to our body. The mind informs the body. The body then records and transmits through feelings how our psyche, especially our unconscious, is either aligning us with or deflecting us from our Inka Seed.

It is almost always our psyche that causes us to create hucha. We may be running scripts in largely unconscious ways that undermine what we consciously intend. These scripts can run the gamut from “I am so talented that there is no way I can fail” to “Dad always told me I was a loser, and I probably am.” We have all kinds of limiting beliefs, and this subject is much too complex to do to justice to here. But these are the kinds of energies deep down within ourselves that are difficult or impossible to access directly. We perceive them indirectly. And the body is one of the best ways to read the inner script to reveal how our hucha can steer us away from aligning with the true north of our Inka Seed.

Knowing this, we can now turn all of these concepts and energy dynamics into a practice. By developing a perceptual sensitivity of our body, when we set an intention or are about to take action, we can drop into our body and viscerally feel whether we are in alignment with our Inka Seed. Do we feel inner resonance? That is our Inka Seed pointing to true north. Our truth-meter is pointing to “Yes.” Do we feel inner dissonance? That is a clue that we are acting contrary to how our Inka Seed is telling us to drive our energy. When we feel an inner dissonance, we would do well to bring self-inquiry to our intention and delay any action until we can achieve some measure of insight about what is causing the dissonance. Exactly how inner resonance and inner dissonance feels will vary for each of us. But if we learn to discern the difference between the two states, there will be no mistaking one for the other. So, while it takes time and practice to develop the perceptual sensitivity of how our body is revealing our alignment or not with our Inka Seed, it is well worth the effort.

In terms of the energy practices related to our Inka Seed, a related question is “How do I access and express more of my potential?” The primary answer is that every practice we learn in the Andean tradition is devoted in the most fundamental way to helping us more fully, deeply, and easily access our Inka Seed. We have more than thirty practices that are each designed to help us develop. Each one is in some way helping us open to the greater potential of our Inka Seed. If we know and understand the specific goal of each practice, then we will be able to choose and use the perfect one for a specific situation. And, practicing the entire protocol of the Andean training multiple times will help us develop a greater mastery of our inner state.

Using all of our Andean practices, we initiate the process of phutuy—the flowering of the Self. In this case, it is the flowering of our Inka Seed. The tradition tells us that our practices are enough, but I believe that coupling our energy techniques with some form of insight-related psychological work (such as Jungian shadow work) can supercharge our perceptual awareness and self-development. I have found that using both approaches—energetic and psychological— speeds up the process of increasing our karpay so that we can truly express our kanay. We can more robustly know who we really are and have the power to live as who we really are. After all, kanay—which is the expression of our Inka Seed—not only is the promise of the Andean paqo path, it is the realization of it.

Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.

– Henri Frederic Amiel, Swiss Philosopher and Poet

I am grateful that I live in a nation that sets aside a day of thanksgiving. And . . . you know what I am about to say . . . every day is a perfect day to appreciate our blessings. Among my favorite aphorisms is one I saw posted on a message-board outside a small, rural North Carolina church: “Millions of people are praying for what you take for granted.”

Kind of stops you in your tracks, doesn’t it? It did me.

We who have so much tend to take our bounty for granted. So as our Thanksgiving Day approaches, let us explore gratitude not as something that we need a national holiday to prompt us into feeling, but as an aspect of our kanay—of our beingness—that permeates all that we think, say, and do.

The English word “gratitude” comes from roots meaning “thankfulness,” “pleasing,” and “grace.” It is usually defined as our feeling thankful for all the good things, people, and situations in our lives. But just feeling gratitude does not do justice to the meaning of this word. As the Amiel quotation at the top of this post reminds us, gratitude is thankfulness in action.

From the Andean mystical perspective, gratitude engages all three of our human powers, which are yachay, munay, and llank’ay. Yachay is knowledge gained through personal experience. It is the doorway to gratitude, for we experience something and feel good about that or even feel blessed by what happened. We are uplifted by having had that experience. The experience could be anything: from winning the lottery to meeting an amazing person to overcoming a bad habit to surviving a terrible accident or a dire health diagnosis. If our acknowledgment of our good fortune is not fleeting, as most emotions are, then it blossoms into a deeper feeling.

Feelings take us to our power of munay, which is love under our will, the conscious choice to think, speak, and act from love. It is the capacity at our sonqo, which is the energetic heart center. The sonqo is the center of our feelings, and munay in its fullest expression is the pinnacle of human feelings. However, munay can be expressed along a continuum of intensity, from tenderness at one end of the spectrum to devotion at the other. If the energy of gratitude expands from our thoughts into our feelings, then we really begin to “own” the state of gratitude as an aspect of our kanay, not only as how we know ourselves but also as a power that we are capable of expressing out in the world. We not only feel gratitude, but can act from gratitude. As American writer William Arthur Ward once said, “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”

What does it mean to be gratitude in action? I claim no expertise! This is work I continue doing within myself. But I can imagine that like munay, gratitude expresses itself along a spectrum, in gestures small and large, and everything in between. To act from gratitude is to make the choice to find something, no matter how small, that is “pleasing” in every person and every situation. We don’t have to wear rose-colored glasses, repress heavy feelings, or deny reality, but even taking a homeopathic dose of “pleasing” can reduce the power of a knee-jerk judgement that a person or situation is going to be difficult, disagreeable, upsetting, or challenging. Through the choice to acknowledge that there is something “pleasing” even in the ugliest of situations, we make room for the “grace” that underlies gratitude. Grace cannot be earned. It is not offered only to those whom we deem worthy or deserving of it. Grace is given from one person to another freely, without condition. Grace may be what gratitude in action actually is: If we are looking, grace may be the crack through which we glimpse even the tiniest light of something “pleasing” shining through and into our awareness. As the Leonard Cohen lyric goes: “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack, in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

However we choose to express our gratitude and to act from that gratitude, I think that if we keep practicing it eventually we come to a realization, as the Buddhist proverb goes, that “enough is a feast.” That proverb may have been referring to material possessions, whereas I am applying it to what we think of ourselves and others. I am suggesting that by acting from gratitude, we change not only how we engage others and life, but how we engage with ourselves. Gratitude shows us how we are always already “enough,” whatever condition we find our life in or whatever the current state of being we are experiencing. We each are a feast of enoughness! If we really believe that, then we will give thanks for whatever measure of grace we are capable of offering in our relationships, our work, our service, and more. And if we believe we are “enough” right now, just as we are, then we increase our capacity to receive grace from others. This is the ayni, or reciprocity, of gratitude as action.

When we say we are looking for a spiritual path to follow, whether it be the Andean tradition or some other tradition—I say that we don’t have to look for a spiritual path. We already have one. Our life is our spiritual path. An “attitude of gratitude,” as the saying goes, is among the spiritual superpowers—not just as an attitude in our thinking and feelings, but in our actions. The biblical concept of spiritual gifts as charismata is defined as “grace coming to visible effect in word or deed.” One of the aspects of the Andean tradition that I love most is that it is rooted deeply and firmly in the human world. We are seeking to develop ourselves not just for our own benefit but to the benefit of others and as a visible effect in the world. When others develop themselves, we benefit from their having made the choice to have their own sami-filled visible effects in the world. Again, this is ayni. Practicing gratitude as ayni prompts us to look and engage both inwardly and outwardly: we recognize our own uplifted state and we acknowledge the source person or event that fostered our upliftment. Through the continuing cycle of ayni—which is always a two-way exchange—we can then give back what we have received.

So, as we gather around the Thanksgiving table, let us realize that “enough is a feast” and find something pleasing “enough” in everyone and every event—and then let us express it through our actions. If Uncle Joe is telling the same old family story again, for the tenth year in a row, let him know that the yearly retelling has created a tradition and a person has to be pretty special to create a tradition. When the gravy runs out—as it inevitably does—instead of complaining or looking accusingly at those who overindulged to everyone else’s expense, compliment the chef on a spectacular gravy that is always, without fail, every year, the most popular food at the feast. Of course, there is no “gratitude” unless it is real and in integrity. But seeing the “enough” in everyone and every situation always, somehow, in some amazingly unexplainable and magical way, fosters just enough gratitude that by its own force it easily flows out of us and into the world. And for our choice—and ability—to do that, we give thanks.

Postscript: My gratitude to all the seekers and light-bearers who have attended my classes this year and in years past, and who follow this blog. I am enriched by you as I hope you are by me. May we continue to work together to create a sami-filled forcefield that spills out with visible effect in the world.

In last month’s post, we talked about virtue—about cultivating tolerance, kindness, and concern for the well-being for ourselves and others. I described how virtue is not just a moral value that we hold but is the active practice of that value. “A value is a choice about what who we want to be. Virtue, like ayni, is an application of will to apply that value—or cluster of values—to reveal how we actually show up in the world.”

In this long post, I want to follow up on that thought with a discussion of an energy dynamic for developing our virtue and refining how we show up in the world. The process involves our ñawis (our mystical eyes) and a capacity called qaway—clear-seeing, which we develop and access at the three uppermost ñawis: the physical right eye or paña ñawi, physical left eye or lloq’e ñawi, and the seventh eye in the middle of our forehead, the qanchis ñawi (what is called in some other traditions the third eye). Qaway is, as don Juan Nuñez del Prado has said, “seeing reality as it really is.”

To be like the hummingbird as a bringer of sami, rather than only the condor who eats hucha, we want to practice virtue without also screening ourselves from the harsh realities of the human world. While optimism is a worthy value, it serves no one if we wear rose-colored glasses. Clear-seeing means facing the human heaviness—and even horrors—that we inflict on each other.

It can be emotionally challenging to focus on our heaviness. Yet if we won’t bear witness to our own and humanity’s heaviness, we won’t cultivate the will to work for inner and outer change. By cultivating qaway, we strengthen our ability—and also our willingness—to see what is real, no matter how difficult. By developing and using qaway, we not only understand more accurately what is happening, we also reinforce our ability to not be buffeted—or brought to despair—by circumstances and conditions. Qaway allows us to acknowledge hucha—and even human depravity and evil—but not be overcome by it. Don Juan counsels us that only by turning toward human heaviness can we bolster ourselves to dispassionately deal with the world as it is. As former Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan once said, “We must meet the challenge rather than wish it were not before us.”

Qaway is an energetic power that helps us meet challenges. It is a capacity distributed among the three uppermost ñawis. The qanchis ñawi allows for mystical and creative vision: to see the world of energy, poq’pos, seqes, and spirit beings, as well as to inform us through visions, imagination, dreams, and creative insight. The two physical eyes add more worldly energetic capacities to the mix. The right eye (paña ñawi) mystically helps us to see what is happening around us and to respond with rationality and yachay (knowledge and the wisdom that can come only through personal experience). It helps us to see past all the extraneous data, drama, and diversions so that we can become laser focused on the relevant facts of the matter. Once we understand the core of the issue, then the mystical aspects of the left eye (lloq’e ñawi) help us to respond with practicality and llank’ay (action). Instead of being overwhelmed by a dizzying array of possible responses, we quickly grasp the essentials of the issue and respond in the most efficient and effective way to deal with, diffuse, or resolve the situation. If we can learn to simultaneously process the input from all three of these uppermost ñawis, then even as we stand witness to human heaviness, we can think, feel, and act with greater understanding, effectiveness, impact, sobriety, and tolerance.One way to develop qaway is to move our energy up from the base of the body—from the siki ñawi (the mystical eye at the root of the body)—through all of the ñawis until we reach the top of the body and the three uppermost mystical eyes. This is a long and usually difficult energetic journey. It asks that we be self-aware and self-motivated. But it is worth the effort, for if we don’t raise our energy to use our qaway, instead of bringing sami to the world we tend to generate more heaviness. Let me provide an example from the Israel-Hamas war.

When destruction rained down on the courtyard of the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, the response, rightly so, was outrage and horror at the hundreds of needless civilian deaths and injuries. The next response for tens of thousands of people in the region and around the world was—without any forensic or other evidence—condemnation of Israel for either deliberately or errantly bombing a civilian target. The belief that the Israeli Defence Force was to blame prompted calls for protest and a push for retaliation. That reaction was a purely siki ñawi response, as it usually is when we are shocked, outraged, or traumatized.

The siki ñawi is the place of our impulsive and instinctual energies, our raw humanness, and our survival instincts. While this energy is usually left unexamined and so unconscious to us, it is felt powerfully when it is stimulated by such things as a strong primal desire or a perceived threat. When this energy erupts, it activates our atiy—our capacity for action—and the energy rushes from the siki up to the qosqo ñawi—the eye of the belly or naval, which is our primary power center from which we then take action. If we perceive a threat and the need to defend ourselves through the siki ñawi, we act to counter the perceived threat and defend ourselves and our loved ones through the energy of the qosqo ñawi. There are times when we must marshal these energies, when defending ourselves is necessary. However, too often this siki ñawi energy flares because we have misperceived someone or some event as an enemy or threat when, in fact, they were not. Sometimes we don’t wait to determine who is responsible and instead unthinkingly react by lashing out at someone, anyone. That someone or anyone usually is a person or group against which we already hold prejudices and toward whom we already feel suspicion or animosity. So, the energetic process at the siki ñawi in its hucha-inducing aspects is an impulsive, almost animalistic reaction that usually is unhinged from our yachay (rationality).

What are we to do? We can train ourselves to move the energy of our base impulses up to higher ñawis and give ourselves the opportunity to refine the energy so that we act less harshly, unproductively, or even incorrectly. Don Juan calls this process of refining our energies “taming” our “wildness,” with our wildness being our more animalistic, overly emotional, and non-rational siki ñawi impulses. If we can move these energies up all the way to the three uppermost eyes, we can stimulate our capacity for clear-seeing. In the case of the Gaza hospital tragedy, doing so would have meant alleviating the suffering of the wounded while withholding blame about who and what caused the destruction until evidence was available to do that rationally. It turns out that current evidence suggests, not conclusively but persuasively, that the destruction was caused not by a bomb dropped by the Israelis, but by a missile misfired by a jihadist group sympathetic to Hamas.

That is one current situation where qaway—clear-seeing—was woefully lacking. We can all name countless others. This kind of impulsive reaction is unfortunate although understandable, as there are so many ways that we in our humanness prevent ourselves from refining our siki ñawi energies. In the aftermath of the Gaza hospital tragedy, doing so would not have lessened our outrage and grief at the loss of life, but it would have prevented bias and untruth from becoming more fuel for the fire of conflict.

Following this example, how might moving our siki energy up through the other ñawis influence our potential reactions to such things as threats and challenges?  Let’s move the energy and see. The next ñawi is the qosqo ñawi, the eye of the naval or belly. This is our primary power center, from which we take action in the world. The main capacity at the qosqo is khuyay, a passion that motivates us to do things in the world and to persist even when the going gets tough. Khuyay also is related to what we call our emotional intelligence, particularly to how we make emotional attachments. Our attachments to people, groups, beliefs, opinions, ideas, causes, and so on can be healthy or unhealthy, sami-filled or hucha-inducing. By examining this aspect of our khyuay and personal power, we can probe how we are acting in the world. Are our relationships supportive or controlling? Are we stubbornly attached to a belief even when the facts run counter to it? Are we asleep to our own biases, but awake to everyone else’s? If we can bring some measure of clarity to the many kinds of attachments we make (and how and why we make them), then we can use our will to make other choices for how we use our personal power. In the case of the hospital tragedy, we might have been able to see that placing blame and raising calls for protest were premature since there was not yet any evidence indicating who the perpetrators were. Instead, in the throes of a siki impulse, many people were blindly attached to their animosities and biases, which led to erroneous assumptions and actions that heightened the hostilities.

We can refine our siki energy higher still, from the qosqo to the sonqo ñawi. This is the mystical eye of the heart or, more accurately, the eye of our feelings. Having engaged our personal power at the qosqo to become aware of the often unexamined (and unhealthy and even destructive) ways we are blindly attached to groups, ideas, beliefs, and so on, we can now bring the capacity of munay to bear on the impulse.

Munay usually is translated from Quechua to English as “love.” A better translation is “love under our will.” Munay involves the conscious choice for cultivating the range of feelings associated with being loving, such as tolerance, respect, kindness, and compassion. Munay doesn’t ask us to like everybody, but it does ask us not to hate anyone. Munay, even in its most tenuous expression, is transformative.

One way that transformation might unfold is as follows. Having moved our outrage at an injustice up from the siki ñawi to the qosqo, we tamed the impulse toward an unthinking or even violent reaction with a choice of how to use our power—to not allow ourselves to be controlled by our outrage but instead to exert some personal control over it. We still feel outraged at the injustice, but rather than tear the house down in a wild rage, we can direct our energies in a more productive way to tip the balance toward actions that support both reasonable accountability and greater justice. When that energy then moves into the sonqo, we can further temper our outrage by deliberately using our will to bring compassion to the equation. We don’t have to condone an action, but we can begin to generate sami toward both parties: for those who are suffering from the injustice and for those who for whatever reason have rationalized their need to perpetuate it. This equanimity is the doorway to transformation. Munay helps us build a bridge from our raw, undeveloped selves to our more conscious and equanimous selves.

The next ñawi is the kunka ñawi, the eye of the neck. The two main capacities here are yachay and rimay. Yachay is what we know and understand through firsthand experience. Our experiences and what we make them mean have led to us to being in the world in particular ways that make us who we are, different from everyone else. Rimay is our ability to communicate what we know and who we are with clarity and integrity.

When our outrage is tempered at the kunka ñawi by yachay, our perception of the cause of the outrage morphs from the abstract to the personal. Through both munay and yachay, we are able to identify vicariously both with those who perpetrate injustice and those who are subject to it. Our self-righteousness is softened by the realization that at some time we all have abused our power and acted unjustly toward others, and we all have been on the receiving end of being treated unjustly. Through this personalization, we can admit that we all have hucha and have acted from that heaviness. We are able to feel and understand more truly, deeply, and honestly how we all are imperfect human beings. And with this understanding, we can seek accountability in a more productive way: instead of taking sides we can put our own preferences aside and begin to consider the need for reconciliation between the parties. We can use our energy to work toward understanding the root wounds underlying the conflict. No doubt both parties contributed to the conflict, so both parties must be part of the solution. Communication goes from being one-way to two-way. This is the gift of rimay, the other capacity of the kunka ñawi. Rimay’s power is embodied through the honesty and integrity with which we express ourselves and allow others to express themselves. Rimay speaks truth, while acknowledging that there may be a gulf between our truth and another’s truth. Yachay and rimay together make room for both truths and reveal the common ground between the two.

The final lift up the ñawis is to the three uppermost eyes, the two physical eyes and the seventh eye, which together confer the capacity for qaway, clear-seeing. Following our example, by the time our outrage reaches the upper ñawis, we still feel the pain of a tragedy, but we are not subsumed by it. Through qaway, we can, as don Ivan Nuñez del Prado says, hover high above the storm: we see it clearly below us as present and real, but we are not swept up in its fury. From the vantage point of qaway, the world feels and looks different because we feel and see not only with our human eyes but also with all seven of our ñawis, our metaphysical eyes. We are of the world but not in the world, at least for a time, and a host of insights can arise to help us find our way when we feel lost and bring light to both our inner and outer darkness.

The physical human world and the metaphysical realm of the living energy are in yanantin relationship—they are different but complementary. If we can develop qaway, we can eventually achieve a japu, a perfect harmonization of these two aspects of reality. Perceiving from both realms—the physical and the metaphysical—we double our capacity for creative insight, honest and effective communication, and productive action. We can become chakarunas—bridge builders. We can realistically acknowledge the hucha that drives people apart and use our energies artfully to foster the sami that helps draw people together. Rather than stoke the energies of separation and condemnation, we work the energies of reconciliation and understanding. This truly is how we walk not between two worlds, but simultaneously in both worlds.