Continuing the interview with don Juan and don Ivan (See previous post for Part 1), we go deeper into energy and healing. Christina Allen, a fellow practitioner and teacher of the tradition, was on the call with us, and she starts off the questioning.

Christina: I see a lot of students or clients who say their heart center is heavy [has hucha] because they have had broken hearts or love lost and that kind of thing, and it affected the actual physical quality of their heart. In science, there is a correlation physically between heartbreak with the actual physical condition of the heart. So how would you talk about that?

Don Ivan: When people say their heart center is closed, I think they are just turning the energy down. Turning off the natural flow. You can turn it off. But normally people think it is hucha that caused it, they attribute hucha to the situation, but that is not necessarily true.

Christina: Are you saying they have closed their heart center instead of having collected hucha there?

Don Ivan: I would say yes, it’s just closed. You decide to close so nobody can touch you there because somebody in the past hurt your feelings or somehow hurt you.

Christina: Would you say there is a physical correlation to or manifestation in the physical heart? Because you will see correlations with people who are shut down . . . those are the people that nurses say are most likely to have cardiac problems. Or is that just coincidental?

Don Juan: Cardiac problems don’t mean you have an [energetic] block or [emotional] disappointment. And if you have a breaking heart, if you have emotional pain from love, it doesn’t mean you have a cardiac defect. There is no correlation between one and the other. You can have a very healthy love and you have a heart attack. No relationship. One thing is the physical and the other thing is the feelings. The problem is in Western culture, where we use the [heart as a] muscle as the place for feelings. But this is a metaphor. The way you speak is really just a metaphor. Because when you finish your nice, loving relationship [have a break up in the relationship], you are not going to have a heart attack. And if you have a heart attack, you can have a loving husband. Nice, loving relationship and you have a heart attack anyway. These are two levels. Feelings are psychic factors. Feelings are in the sonqo ñawi. The other is anatomical: the heart is just a pump.

Joan: Some confusion can arise because the word “sonqo” is often translated, even in Quechua dictionaries, as “heart.” But we are clear when we teach that the sonqo ñawi is not the heart, which as the organ is pirwa in Quechua. The sonqo ñawi is the energy center, and it’s the center of the feelings. There is no hucha there, or in the organ of the heart. Correct?

Don Ivan: Yes, the sonqo is not part of your heart. The heart, the pirwa, is the organ. The sonqo is a ñawi [part of your energetic anatomy]. The thing is that in our tradition, the sonqo nawi as the center of the feelings is located in the chest area, near where the physical heart is. But in other traditions, as in your teaching Joan in the seminar of the Greek tradition and the kardia, they [the Greeks] attribute to the actual heart muscle the things [feelings] we attribute to the sonqo. Okay? So it can be confusing to some people. In terms of hucha, it doesn’t matter—neither of these [heart and sonqo ñawi] have hucha. In our tradition, and in the case of the Greek tradition, too, there’s no hucha there.

Don Juan: Every culture develops a way of using these energy centers, okay? There is an anatomical structure and then there is energetic structure. This is common to every human being. The words differ. In the Hindu tradition are the chakras, and they have certain functions. We are not working with chakras. The term “chakra” is the linguistic or cultural attribution from a specific tradition to the energy centers. We have slightly different placement of the energy centers, and we call them by different names. So, this way of assigning meaning to energetic centers is not something fixed.

Joan: It seems to me that the siki ñawi, which has the most hucha, would be important in healing—to release hucha from that center. It’s also where “reality” is so to speak: the most human part of the self, the unconscious, the impulses, the natural but possibly least developed aspect of the self. [The siki ñawi is the energy center at the root of the body, a mystical “eye” at the base of the spine in the back of the body.]

Don Ivan: Yes, it’s a fact that when you do the healing process with people, it’s the siki where you find the biggest amount of hucha that they are carrying. A very big part of that is our lack of connection with nature. Lack of awareness of the flows of [energy] of nature and natural things. Moral judgment and things that get in the way of natural thought—these are in the siki and so are other things: all the shame of sexuality, all the shame of our animal nature . . . all these things are part of our deepest nature, the most primitive aspects of the self. That is part of the hucha there in the siki.

Christina: Does hucha create [or cause] illness? Is there a causal relationship?

Don Juan: No.

Don Ivan: There are people who are really packing the hucha and they live in a healthy way, perfectly healthy. And there are really nice, powerful people who get sick and die.

Christina: So, if you were to describe someone who has illness, would you describe them in a vibrational way? Because you are going to change their vibration through the hampi munay [healing energy]?

Don Ivan: When you are ill, the frequency of your energy, the amount of your energy, goes down. But this a consequence of the illness, because you are not in your full power. . .  So, your energy goes down. The disease affects the state of your energy. Of course, when you have a lower level of energy you have less chance to heal yourself or develop the healing faster. This affects your performance. [Your level of energy] can turn your self-healing capacity on or off. So that is one thing. If you are in a good energy, this will help your recovery. This will influence your recovery. But with hucha, you can be very healthy, and as a person with sami, you can still have disease.

Joan: Still, we learn to tune energy, such as raising munay to hampi munay, because it is a higher frequency or vibration. The higher vibration is the healing energy. Correct?

Don Juan: About healing. Just try! It’s not about explaining how. You don’t say “It is the hucha, it’s not about hucha.”  No. It’s not so much about that. It is about tuning, but in certain circumstances you can perceive within yourself that you are capable of doing it.

Joan: But my point is that we learn to tune energy. We speed it up, and there’s obviously a reason to learn to tune energy, so I just want to be clear about that. It’s explicit that if we tune energy to hampi munay we can use it to facilitate the conditions within ourselves for healing.

Don Juan: In every step of development, you are healing something [at some level of the self]! People who are starting out on the path, they can do something and healing happens! But it’s totally random! [Unless you are fifth level, healing is out of your sphere of influence, because you are not controlling that energy.

Don Ivan: All the energies that are needed [for healing or anything else] are there already within you, because of your Inka seed. But when you are growing, you can hit the nail [heal] but randomly. When you arrive to the fifth level, you will know how to tune yourself to that energy. You are going to tune yourself and make it [healing] happen. The power is already always in you, but at first maybe you need some help or it is random. The thing is that when you arrive from the fourth to the fifth level, healing will happen every single time! It’s not going to be random anymore. But I think that all the elements that are needed are there from the beginning, so when you hit the nail randomly, healing happens some times and not others.

We always say that healing is like a symptom of [correlation to] your consciousness level. At the sixth level, you glow: the light [glowing] is a consequence of your consciousness level. So there is something beyond only the act of healing. . . . With the light, it means that your consciousness has arrived at a level where you can manifest that energy—whether to be able to connect with the light or the healing. So yes, you can say there is a goal behind tuning energy, but the healing is not the goal, just like the light is not the goal at the sixth level. There is something more that you can decide to make your goal—and that is your own growth.

Don Juan: The healing is only a measure of your self-development. The goal is self- development. The goal is the level of consciousness. You start by tuning with munay. It’s a tool. But you tune your munay to improve yourself. You are not going to perform a physical healing, but certainly you can heal your own psychic background and your personal story—this is something you can do, and it happens for all people. That’s why you need to learn to tune to hampi munay, too. And sometime maybe you are going to attain the fifth level [that of the infallible healer], but maybe not. But first, you are working [tuning energy] to improve yourself.

Christina: Would you also say it’s learning how to entrain? If you can vibrate at that hampi munay level you can impart that to others?

Don Ivan: Yes, you can do that. And you can teach and share it with other people. But the fifth level is different. It is healing everything, every time. So imagine. . .the thing is I cannot really imagine the fifth level! How satisfying would it be if I were able to go to a hospital and heal someone who was dying and that person walked out of the hospital!

Don Juan: There is a karpay to the fifth level, to the level of the infallible healer, and that is the Mosoq Karpay. We do not yet have that karpay, and it is only given by God. It is given to a person directly from God. We can’t do it [healing] by ourselves. We use the energy of Father Cosmos and Mother Earth, but the karpay is given to us from the Holy One.

In the final interview, Part 3, we talk more about what a fifth-level healer is like, as well as topics ranging from the mind in healing to mental health issues such as depression to healing animals.

On February 13, 2021, I posted an interview with don Juan Nuñez del Prado and don Ivan [don Juan’s son] titled “Interview About Perceiving Energy.” After going through my transcripts of many of our recent conversations, I found that there is quite a bit of material scattered here and there in different conversations about energy and healing. So, I thought I would pull together some of that material into a three-part interview. Fellow paqo and teacher of Andean mysticism Christina Allen was also part of these discussions, and her questions for don Juan and don Ivan are included here along with mine.

Joan: Let’s talk about energy and healing. What is it a paqo is doing as a healer?

Don Juan: When you are a healer, what you are trying to use is your personal power. To be a healer is not a training. It’s the practical use of the power you have achieved before [during your development]. When you become a healer, you take the whole responsibility [for the healing session], through your personal power, in yourself.

Don Ivan: The very definition of personal power is the sum of your capacities and skills. So, it’s all your munay, all your llank’ay and all your yachay together, plus your connections, which means all possible help you can find around you, crystallized around you and then flowing through yourself. That’s personal power. And for that, all your connections count. Not only your family history, your collective history, your group, your religion, the Apus, all the spirits, Pachamama, Wiraqocha—everything. In the moment of a healing, you become a channel for all the connections from your life. That’s your personal power.

Joan: Is there a structured process a paqo typically uses in a healing?

Don Juan: What I saw are four processes: One is hucha miqhuy. If you are a healer, probably the first thing you would like to do with your clients when they arrive is a very big hucha miqhuy, to make a deep connection with your client, because this is very important. Another is saminchakuy, a pichay that you do with your misha on your client. The third is saiwachakuy, which you also do with the misha. It’s hoqari, a pulling up, or a kallpachi, a reinforcement [of the client’s energy/sami]. And the fourth process is animu waqyai, the soul retrieval if you want to call it that. These are the four ways in which you perform healings.

Don Ivan: [In other discussions] we have talked about how don Benito healed, and how we heal, because we learned from him. If you take it analytically, you will go through several steps. The first step is to create a connection with your patient. This can be done through trust, because they trust you; it can be done through hucha miqhuy, making the deep connection. This connection even has a name in medicine. It’s called rapport. This bond between you and your client is actually what allows a healing to take place. For that there is a lot of talking involved: you need to scan the person by talking, trying to decide what the problem is. And when you decide what the problem is, you ask for feedback. You check with the person: “I am seeing this. Is this what you are feeling too? Is this correct? Is this what we need to address?” Then you work together to heal it, to fix it. That’s a lot of talking, but the connection is the most important thing, the most critical thing. And then after that, you address the problem with anything you want: cleaning, empowering, the animu waqyai, the collecting of [a part of] the soul. Whatever you want. Some people use a coca leaf reading, to see what the problem is. We don’t do that.

After using the healing techniques that you know and think are right . . . then we and don Benito used one more step. We always ask the person to take action. We advise the person to make a little ritual by themselves to take control of their own healing, in certain ways to catalyze the healing. So, to make a little ritual, a little offering, maybe with candles or making a k’intu, or something. We always ask the person to take some action in order to take responsibility for their healing. Some people will do it, and some people will not. They may return back [for additional healing], and the first thing you are going to ask is, “Did you do what I told you to do?” It’s always like that—that process. You build a connection, do your healing, ask the person to do something to take responsibility for their healing, and then you start all over again! That’s the cycle of the healing.

Don Juan: Something that is very, very important is what happens when you become really familiar with the levels [of consciousness], when you start to perceive the levels. At a certain point, you are going to perceive what is first-, second-, third-, fourth-level person. This is an important teaching of my master [don Benito Qoriwaman] . . . don Benito started by working with the client and giving him the whole benefit of the doubt. He started by dealing with him as if he were his equal: he dealt with him as if the person was at the fourth level. Then, if the person was not able to engage at that level, don Benito came down a level, to the third level. If the person is still not able to connect, he came down another level to the second. And if not that, he even would come down to the first. The practical aspect is always working at the level [of consciousness] your client is at, but always starting at the fourth.

Joan: What would that look like? How would you approach your client from the fourth, and then come to the third, or lower levels? What kinds of things would you do?

Don Juan: I would say to my client [treating him/her as fourth level], “Okay, take three coca [or other kind of] leaves, go in front of Mount Shasta [or turn in that direction] and blow. You are going to feel the feedback of Mount Shasta [its ayni] and you are going to be healed.” Then your client might start to argue, “I am feeling so bad. You know I am suffering.” Okay, then you tell them to do something else [come down to treat them at the third level of consciousness]. “You are going to make a half despacho.” And if the client starts to argue again, you come down another level and tell him he must make and offer a complete despacho. If he continues arguing that this is not going to be enough to heal him, then [coming down to the first level] send them to do a ritual that lasts the whole night, with smoke or palo santo cleaning himself, pulling a blanket over himself and filling it with the smoke, and so on. If that isn’t enough, if that doesn’t work, then the extreme healing, which was used by my master, is to have the person dig a hole in the ground and get in it and fill it up to the neck and spend the whole night there to try to make a connection with Pachamama. If a client feels that, then you can move up [the levels] again. Make the adjustment for your client, but never start by taking for granted that your client is at a lower level than you.

Joan: One of the things you told me once was that when someone came to don Benito for healing he would first ask, “Is this person for my hand?” Meaning that don Benito asked himself if he was the right healer for this client. That’s not a mindset common to Western healing or medicine, or even common among energy healers. For the most part, doctors or healers usually think they can handle any client, see any client who comes to them. Would you speak to that please?

Don Juan: That is a mindset not only of Western healers, but other healers, Indian healers, Eastern healers . . . they think that everyone is for them. For my master [don Benito], it was absolutely clear that if you have a disease for a doctor, he sent you to a doctor first. If you have pneumonia, he is going to send you to a doctor and you are going to have an antibiotic shot. And then you are going to return to don Benito. If you have a broken bone, he is going to send you to a doctor to help you with that and then you can return to him. He was focused on something that we can call the psychological side of the problem, or the spiritual side of the problem. If you have something related to the rational side of medicine [the physical], he put it aside and sent you to the doctor.

Don Ivan: That’s good advice for all of you. Don Benito was super clear about that. He would say that if you have a broken bone and you need a cast, he will not even touch you if you don’t get the cast first. As a paqo we have to be absolutely clear that we are not medical doctors. We don’t do that kind of healing. We are healers of the soul. That is our part, unless you are at the fifth level [the level of consciousness associated with infallible healing]. You can only think in those terms if you are fifth level, and we know there are no fifth-level healers around yet. In the meantime, let the doctor do his job and you stay as the soul doctor, which is what the paqo is. Don’t overlap your duties and responsibilities. That is not your part.

Joan: Thank you. I think that is important for people to hear: to not reject science and Western medicine, because physical healing and energetic healing are different but complementary domains. We are yanantin: physical beings and energetic/spiritual beings.

Don Ivan: The fourth level is about being able to put things together! Of course, as a patient you can do the energy healing, you can do the soul retrieval, but you also do the casting, the antibiotic. You do both. You take everything, but don’t choose between the two. It is not either-or. It’s both. . . And if something doesn’t help you, look for more things. You keep adding. Third-level thinking is choosing between white or black, right or wrong, separating things. Fourth-level thinking is about putting things together. If you have resources, use them all.

Don Juan: I said [before we began recording this session] that I am so happy today. [He got his second Covid vaccination shot on this day.] Because a lot of people who are reluctant about science, about Western medicine, are not learning a lesson. They need to take their vaccine, which is made using rational resources.

The same thing—if you have something, if you are really sick, the first thing you need to do is go to the doctor, the medical doctor. This is my advice.

Don Ivan: Sometimes we’re a bit heavy on that advice with our clients [and students], but they will remember what we say because we are strong in our statements in that direction.

Joan [Actual question is from a student]: When you were just talking about don Benito asking if this was for his hand, obviously I can’t set a bone, but is there also a component where I ask if this client is for my hand as someone I am supposed to work with in an energetic and spiritual way? Maybe we just aren’t a good fit. Could you further clarify that?

Don Ivan: When you talk about something not being for your hands, it means it is out of your power. You don’t have the capacity to heal that. Or you don’t have the capacity to build a connection with that person in order to heal that. Our rule, what we always do with ourselves, we always take responsibility. When you are going to make a declaration like that, or when you make a decision like that [to not accept a client], we say, “It is not under my power. I cannot help you with this.” We have to recognize we have limited power and some things are under our power and some things are not. And this is the best way to do it in terms of ayni. Don’t create false expectations in your client. That’s not good for your own ayni! Don’t make people waste time! If you cannot help them, just let them go. They will try something else, see someone else. So, maybe that person can heal, but you cannot do it. Our rule is that we always put it on ourselves: we are not powerful enough, it’s not under our power. That’s best for your own ayni. That’s the best way to do it.

Don Juan: There is something else here, too. If you cannot heal something, it’s not because your client has that karma, it’s not the will of God. If you cannot heal him, it’s because you don’t have enough personal power. The responsibility for healing is the responsibility of the healer! To say [or think] about one of your clients, “Oh, you have enormous karma! Because of that I cannot heal you.” You are making the situation of the person worse. Or if you say, “You don’t have enough faith.” Or, “It’s not the will of God.” It’s worse for them. If a person comes to you with a terrible disease, you are putting something else on his shoulders because you are telling him has terrible karma or whatever or that God is not willing to help him. This is a bad way to deal with them. And of course ayni is ayni: if you do that kind of thing with your clients, the universe will do the same kind of thing to you.

As a healer don’t take responsibility for those things you really are in ignorance about. Someone has pneumonia, they need a shot of antibiotics. We are not denying the healing power of the energy. When you flow the living energy in yourself or your client, you are reinforcing their vital processes, which could eventually heal them. But don’t ever say, “I am going to heal you.” Eventually, you may be able to heal even terminal cancer, but until you are at the fifth level, where you can be sure you will have results, don’t make that statement. Don’t allow your client to think you can heal him of everything, because you cannot.

That’s why I prefer to be a teacher! I prefer to teach you, to allow you to grow by yourself, to become your own healer. I am not denying the power or vocation of people who want to be healers for others, but my first priority is show you how you can grow and become your own healer. To become a paqo is to become a healer. And of course, if you are a good paqo the first thing you are going to do is to heal yourself.

Don Ivan: Another part of your question was about if paqos get sick what can they do to heal themselves. Of course, you can do things for yourself: do saminchakuy, hucha miqhuy, etc., but it’s also advisable that from time to time you go to a healer yourself. So you go to another paqo, another psychologist, another therapist to help you with that, because if you work as a healer, there are always going to be little things that you are not going to see, not be able to fix in yourself, and somebody else will have to take care of you. It’s very healthy and advisable [as a healer] to take the help of a healer from time to time. You cannot handle everything.

In a recent conversation with don Juan and don Ivan, they elaborated on the topic of hucha, and, as always, I gained a deeper appreciation for the energy dynamics of the Andean tradition. But I was also surprised by some new information they mentioned during the discussion: there is hucha in nature! I had always heard from them that nature is comprised only of sami. That’s what I learned, and that’s what I teach. But they went into a nuance that clarifies the nature of hucha. This short blog post explains.

Our discussion was about sami and hucha as a spectrum of the movement of kawsay. Kawsay’s nature is to move, and sami represents the top of the spectrum, the light living energy. Sami is kawsay moving in its most refined and unimpeded form. Sami as light living energy refers not to visible light, but to density, to a lightness of substance, a weightlessness. The explanatory term the paqos used to describe sami was llanthu kawsay, and llanthu means “shadow.” So “light” living energy—sami—is like a shadow in that it is absolutely weightless. The spectrum then moves down in motion (getting slower) and in density (gaining weightiness or becoming heavier) to hucha. Hucha is sami, just in a slower, denser, and heavier form. So sami and hucha are not oppositional concepts or energy dynamics, but relative.

When we talk about hucha, we usually—and until now only—referred to it in relation to human beings. We are the only creatures to create hucha. We artificially, if you will, impact the flow of sami to slow it down. Hucha is a consequence of the lack of integrity and congruity in our three human powers, and especially is a consequence of our emotions, particularly our unconscious, “shadow” impulses. But don Juan and don Ivan explained that hucha also is, in fact, an aspect of nature as part of the natural cycle of life. Here’s what they mean.

Nature is comprised only of sami, yet there is a natural cycle of life during which the life-force energy declines, or slows, until it ceases. That’s what we call death. The cycle is one of life arising, persisting for a period, then withering, and finally dying. This is a descending or diminishing energy process, according to don Benito, that can be thought of as an increase of hucha. Hucha increases as sami decreases, as life moves through the natural cycle of arising and ceasing. (We can say the same is true of human life in terms of our physical bodies, of course, but how we understand hucha in relation to human beings also differs qualitatively, as I will soon explain.)

Don Juan said that to explain this aspect of hucha, don Benito used the example of a cornstalk. It grows, flourishes and produces ears of corn, and then it yellows, withers, and dies. This process is one of the slowing of the animating kawsay, or the lightness of sami. Seen in the converse, it is an increase in hucha. Hucha, then, is part of the natural cycle of life and death. I had never heard of hucha used in this context before, and it added a beautiful depth to my understanding of sami and hucha as expressions of kawsay.

When we humans do saminchakuy, we give our hucha to the earth. This is exactly what happens in this natural process as well. Ayni is still operative, because what dies disintegrates into the earth, and Mother Earth composts it back into something life-giving: fertile soil in which new plants can thrive, food for ants and insects, etc. Mama Allpa transforms that hucha back into sami: she speeds the slow sami back up to its most refined form. What was static is again in motion.

Hucha, though, is understood differently in relation to the energy dynamics of human beings, and only human beings. We are self-aware, we use choice and will, we can both be in ayni and out of ayni. It’s when we are out of ayni that we create hucha. We are the only creatures who can create hucha, who can purposefully (although often unconsciously) slow down or block sami.  The emphasis is on the word “create.” We—through our lack of ayni, our incoherent and unconscious emotions, the loss of integrity in our three human powers, and our lack of clarity of intent—block or slow sami to create hucha for ourselves (and potentially for others). We create it through our personal energy dynamics where it didn’t exist before and where it doesn’t “need” to be. This hucha is not something we just touch in nature, we generate it. In this way, our hucha upsets the harmony of nature. It is, in this sense, outside of nature.

Seeing hucha in these two ways not only deepens our understanding of hucha, but it can help us to better understand how we both fit into the natural energetic cycle and how we are above or beyond it because we can create hucha where none existed—which is why it is so useful for us to do saminchakuy on a regular basis. I am reminded of something Samuel Beckett once wrote: “The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.” That’s true both in nature and in ourselves.

The Shamanic Dreamkeepers Summit is a free online event featuring 30+ extraordinary presenters – from ancient indigenous wisdom to evolving new approaches, powerful inspiration, tools and practices from healers with diverse traditions and backgrounds.

I’m delighted to be part of this lineup! 

It has been a treat to share a message of how to dream in a world using tools, practices, wisdom, and power that have worked for thousands of years… for your transformation and healing… and for the planet.

Registrations continued to flow in even late into the evening yesterday.

In response, my event co-hosts (Linda Fitch and Renee Baribeau) are excited to share that the free viewing period has been extended through Sunday night, May 9th. That gives you the entire weekend to register if you haven’t, and experience all the rich, wisdom and messages from the amazing and generous speakers.

Again, if you haven’t already, please REGISTER NOW and get immediate access to ALL four days of the Shamanic Dreamkeepers Summit presentations and bonuses through midnight PST on Sunday, May 9.

Registration link: lindalfitch.ontraport.com/t?orid=15816&opid=19

I look forward to sharing my message with you.
Joan Parisi Wilcox

PS: And don’t worry if you don’t have time to watch it all. Right now, for a super reasonable price, you can purchase a recording of the full summit program, including audio and videos and ALL the bonus material each presenter so graciously shared. Then you can binge watch or listen when it is convenient for you!

REGISTER NOW: lindalfitch.ontraport.com/t?orid=15816&opid=19

Joan: Continuing our discussion of willka. . . As a metaphor, other traditions focus on the white light, on radiating the energy of all visible light frequencies, which results in radiating white light. But for me the power of the Andean tradition is that it is focused on the exact opposite energy dynamic. Before you can radiate all frequencies, you have to be able to freely absorb all frequencies—without blocking anything. The Andean focus is on being a perfect absorber of energy.

Don Ivan: Absolutely.

Joan: Well, the perfect absorption of all the frequencies of visible light, again using the visible light spectrum as a metaphor, is the color black. For us, that is the black light energy, or willka. It moves down our spines and creates the yana chunpi [black energy belt], filling the siki ñawi [mystical eye] at the root of the body. Talk more about actually working the willka energy of the siki, moving it up on what we said previously was like an evolutionary scale.

Don Ivan: We use the mullu khuyas [stones used for weaving the four chunpis] in the Chunpi Away karpay. We use those khuyas as our raw material [for weaving the chunpis]. Then by pulling up the energy [from the siki ñawi/yana chunpi] and making all of the other chunpis, you are going to be developing that energy, tuning it, making it rise higher and higher.

Don Juan: Higher and more vertical.

Don Ivan: You start at the ground, which is the base for everything, and then you go higher. The two most important parts of your psyche are your feelings and your thoughts, but they are not possible if you don’t have a body. So that’s the scale. Feelings and thoughts are the top energies, but our Andean scale is upside down in terms of power. The very top [of the energy power hierarchy] is at the siki ñawi, and the willka that is there is the lowest frequency of energy but the most powerful.

Don Juan: We [understood all of this] basically as a result of practice, of weaving the belts of hundreds of people. After doing that, sometimes you discover you have the whole thing as a protocol. How do you start? What do you do [in the karpay of weaving the chunpis]? You start at the top [of the body/head] and pull in the cosmic energy and then you come down the spine using material cords—the spine is the material. You have connected the metaphysical with human matter. Then you absorb the grounding power of green [earth energy] and pull it up, and you merge them [cosmic and earth energies] together. You are merging the top and bottom. You are becoming the absorber. You are, we could say, becoming the black cord. Then you start to come up again [create the chunpis] at the front of the body. This black belt connects you to the power of your base part, then you move up.

Don Ivan: It’s important that you can tune with this black energy [willka]. It’s the potential state of the absolute absorption of reality—receiving everything directly inside. But this energy can be found outside, too.

Joan: So, according to this process, is that why once you, don Juan, told me that willka is of nature but not in nature? Because we create it?

Don Juan: In a certain way it a phenomenon, an emergence of. There are things that are going to manifest that are not already here. Energies can change and emerge. One of these processes is the emergence of willka inside human beings. But willka as sacred energy is found, for example, in some of the sanctuaries. You can make a connection to a waka [sacred object or place, including the sacred sanctuaries] that is associated with willka and pull it to you, and that will help awaken you. As examples, Waqay Willka [an apu] or Willka Ñust’a [Urubamba/Vilcanota river, also called the Willka Mayu], or more specifically in the left side of the path there is Willka Uta, an apu of the left side that is in the south of Peru. This is the House of Willka, an apu in the south of Peru. [Uta means “house” in Aymara.]

I like to ground these things. So, let us ground this speculation, because the Andean spiritual tradition is always grounded. I talked with a friend, another anthropologist, (Jean-Jacques Decoster, a professor at the university in Cusco) and he has a very interesting statement on the tradition: he says that the Andean tradition is geodesic. He told me about his theory of Andean geodesic spirituality. By this he means that for the Andean people the spiritual power is always grounded in a specific place on the surface of the earth.

If you take a look at the Hatun Karpay Lloq’e of don Melchor Desa, [a formal cycle of rituals and energy work], one of the places we work is Machu Picchu, which is the most sophisticated creation of Pachakuti Inka. It is surrounded by the Willka Ñust’a, the sacred river [known variously as the Urubamba, Vilcanota, and Willka Mayu]. If you follow the course of the river upstream and to the south, you will reach La Raya, which is the point of the watershed between the sacred valley and Lake Titikaka. To the east of the watershed and just above it is the snow-capped mountain Willka Ñust’a, from where the river of the same name goes to Cusco and another river called Pukara is born and goes to Lake Titicaca, making a connection with this. Pucara means “fortress” but this is not a fortress with walls. It is a fortress of energy, a source of power! It is a source of power creating protection around you. If you continue along the shore of the lake towards the south, near the border with Bolivia, you will find the sacred place called Willka Uta, which in Aymara means the house or abode of willka, which is the last sacred place in the southern direction of the Don Melchor ritual itinerary.

In this place there is a vertical rock, whose surface has been carved in a flat square canvas of about four meters on a side, and on the center of the lower side of the square, the negative silhouette of a head that emerges from the ground has been sculpted and the two vertical sides are flanked by cylindrical cavities that resemble two rods, also negative. It is one of the largest representations of the Andean sacred character known as The Lord of the Rods, whose head emerges from the earth [also called the Lord of the Staffs].

So there is a connection between the House of Willka [Apu Willka Uta]and the original image of God, which is represented by the carving of the Lord of the Rods. This is related to the Inkas but also with the more ancient civilization of Tiahuanaco, in the south of Peru.

Joan: So, you are saying that really the whole Inka empire—no, not just the empire, the whole civilization—was connected and surrounded by willka, by this creative and protective energy—and still is!

Don Juan: Yes. For the Inkas, the name of the Creator God is Wiraqocha. The Lord of the Rods in the tradition of Tiahuanaco is called Wiraqocha. But there is a more ancient name for God in the Tiahuanaco civilization and that is Thunupa.

Also at Titicaca Lake, Thunupa created Inkari and Qollari [also called Manqo Capac and Mama Oqllo]. But Thunupa is said to have travelled from Titicaca Lake to Cuzco. He went many other places, and he was seen as a white man with a beard who was dressed all in white. He eventually disappeared, his whereabouts unknown. But the point is that from this geodesic point of view, everything is sacred  and is related with the surface of the earth. And what is the surface of the earth? It’s the meeting of the power of Wiraqocha and Pachamama [the cosmic and earthly], the point of creation on the surface of the earth [which is what willka is].

Don Ivan: I am thinking of the relationship between us and the earth, with places of power and so on. For me, this is our projection, as those places are going to stimulate some part of our psyche. They also will be symbols, many times archetypal structures from the outside that represent the energies inside, or that are projected from inside yourself to the outside. And also, with the work that we do with our body and bubble [poq’po]—all of the energies we create can be thought of as inner projections of yourself outwardly. In a certain way what happens is that we somatize certain aspects of our mind on our body. Those are our ñawis: your psyche, your psychic self, creates a universe from within your body. Parts of it will represent aspects of your mind. There may also be links to physical parts of our brain, of our neurological system, so it’s a whole. You are working with those power places that are related with those energies like willka, and you also at some level may be working with energies that are inside yourself and projected outward onto the place. But you are actually dealing with your inner world and energy. It’s like a big despacho, the world is like a big despacho, and you are relating with the parts and adjusting them, and these energies are going to organize the self.

Joan: This is such a beautiful interpretation and translation of the tradition, one from the fourth-level view. You need to write this down—to include this in the book you are writing to preserve it!

Don Juan: Do you know—this is your fault! We are writing a book with your help, and we are thinking and putting together things. The process with you is reminding us of things. We are generating an overview that was not there for us five or six years ago.

Joan: And I, too, am thinking in new ways and learning so much in the process of these discussions. You have no idea! So, thank you. And I am sure my blog readers thank you, too.