Back in 2015, I wrote a post about the significance of the date of August 1 in Andean mystical practice. I am going to revisit that topic here so that you can prepare for this auspicious day.

August 1 is called Pachamama Day, the day on which the Apus and Pachamama “awaken” to hear our prayers and accept our offerings. Of course, they are always “awake” and available to us, but on this day they lend an ear in an especially attentive way. In a sense it is a kind of mystical New Year’s Day, one on which paqos undertake personal work and ritual from feeding their mishas to honoring their spirit guides. (As a note of reminder, the word Pachamama, while commonly used to refer to Mother Earth, is really the name for the Mother of the Cosmos. She is the entire material, physical universe. Mother Earth as the planet is Mama Allpa). So, this is the day we set aside special time to be in ayni consciously and purposefully with the universe of living energy and with all the physical manifestations of that living energy, such as the various spirit beings. But most importantly, at a personal level, it is about undertaking a conscious, personal mast’ay, a reordering of the self.

When I was interviewing the Q’ero for my book Masters of the Living Energy, don Julian Pauqar Flores gave me a gift of a khuya, a stone from his misha that I was to place in mine. He explained all the ways the khuya could be used, which I won’t go into here except to say that it has more uses than any other khuya I have. During his explanation, he mentioned the August 1 date, explaining this day of awakening along with a simple but powerful incantation that paqos can say to renew themselves. I pass this incantation on to you, with my added ideas, instructions, and explanations for working in ceremony on this auspicious day. You can work the order of the parts in any way you want, and I change it up year to year, but this is a basic framework for working on Pachamama Day.

As the Apus and Pachamama awaken, we, too, can re-awaken or rebirth ourselves. We let go of the past and proclaim our intentions for the coming year. We claim our independence from who we were and declare who we are going forward. We cut the seqes, the energetic cords, to what no longer serves us and project forward toward the realization of our perfected selves. Thus, it is a day when we tap into the energy both of the living universe and of our personal power to nurture our potential to become enlightened, sixth-level human beings. This work involves personal recapitulation, a personal mast’ay (reordering of the self), and the mast’ay of the misha (personal power bundle).

You can start with a wachay, a rebirthing or recapitulation practice. As with all our of work, it is invisible energy work, done using your intention to move energy and undertake a mast’ay, a restructuring or reordering of the self.

First take a moment to feed yourself and your poq’po with sami to settle and empower yourself. Then, to do a wachay, you use intention to release your hucha (heavy energy), working from the present moment back to the moment of your birth. This process, as you can imagine, can take some time. Don’t rush it. Seek quality and clarity in your energy work. Working back from the present moment, you draw sami into your poq’po while releasing hucha down to Mother Earth, also using your intention to cut the seqes (energetic cords) to anything you feel you need to release or disconnect yourself from—emotions, events, people .  .  . whatever has felt heavy to you. Honor what you have learned, yet also let what is finished be finished both emotionally and energetically. You can choose not to carry this hucha any longer, and Mother Earth is happy to accept your hucha as a gift of her favorite food. This is not an analytic practice, so don’t get bogged down in reviewing situations or reengaging emotions or memories from the past. Simply note where you feel hucha as you recapitulate your life and at each point release that hucha to Mother Earth.

When you are done releasing the hucha through your personal timeline, it is time to renew yourself and focus energetically on your continuing growth as a human being. This is the work that don Julian described in his interview with me back in the mid 1990s. It is time to state your intentions for the coming year—to configure energetically your new inner personal mast’ay. I usually hold my misha while I do this part of the ceremony.

Sit quietly and mull over what you “intend” for yourself in the coming year. Be clear-eyed and sober about this. Distill your intentions down to the absolute most important essentials. Then stand, holding your misha, and declare aloud to the living universe the incantation that don Julian gave me: “I am what I speak, not what I have spoken.” Then speak aloud your essential intentions for the next year.  Speak aloud with clarity who this new you is: your expanded personal capacities and qualities, how you want to serve in the world, the kind of relationships you choose, and so on.  You are stating that from this moment forward you are renewed, you are reformed, you are revitalized, you are realized in a new way.

Once that part of the ceremony is done, you can elect to “reintroduce yourself to yourself,” since you are a newly organized you at the energetic level. Sit quietly with your misha and drop into your poq’po. Be alone with yourself and establish a relationship with the renewed you, the potentially more consciousness and developed you. Get to know yourself and perceive the state of your poq’po at that moment. Take all the time you need.

Because you have “reordered yourself,” at least in potential through your stated intentions, you now need to work with your misha, the bundle of sacred objects that connects you with the lineage of paqos and with your own growth as a paqo. The misha represents your personal power—as it is now. Since you have just released and restructured yourself, it is likely that your misha must be renewed and restructured as well.

The misha is a great eater of hucha, so take a moment to release more hucha from your poq’po into the misha. Then connect your munay (love) with your misha, honoring the lineages of paqos in which you work; any spirit beings, such as an Apu, you feel connected with; or any or all of the seven teqse paqos, or universal paqos/spirit beings. They are Taytacha (Father God/Jesus Christ/Divine Masculine), Mamacha (Mother Mary/Divine Feminine), Tayta Inti (Father Sun), Mama Killa (Mother Moon), Tayta Wayra (Father Wind), Mama Unu (Mother of the Waters, as in hail and rain, not lakes and rivers), and Mama Allpa (Mother Earth). Then sit with your misha and honor how it has served you as a representation of your personal power and a hucha-cleansing bundle. Then open your misha and undertake a mast’ay, a new ordering of the contents of your misha.

Your misha is a living thing—it represents your personal power. As you grow and change, so does your misha change to reflect who you are. August 1 is a day to open the bundle, connect with the khuyas inside (sacred objects), and feel what kind of changes are necessary to reflect your current state. Some khuyas may be ready to leave your misha. Maybe none will, but commonly you will find that some will. Put them on your altar or return them to nature with gratitude. You might also find that other objects want to be added to your misha. They reflect your progress on the path or important events and relationships that have had meaning for you since the last time you opened and reorganized your misha. Place these new khuyas into your misha with your attention and affection. Remember, misha is the Quechua word for “sign” or “symbol.” Your goal is to have a misha that reflects the current state of your being, of your personal power. When you are finished with the mast’ay of your misha, then “feed” the khuyas, sprinkling them with pisqo (a Peruvian alcohol), wine, water . . . whatever. It is the intention that counts. Your ayni matters more than the outward form of the ceremony. When you are finished, fold the sacred bundle back up in its covering cloth.

You may end the ceremony here, or you may want to offer a despacho. Actually, you can incorporate the despacho at any point in the ceremony. You may offer one after the wachay, to mark the cleansing of hucha and release of any heaviness from your personal past. Or after the incantation and statement of your intentions, honoring your commitment to be a “new you.” Or at the end, to mark the conclusion of the entire mast’ay and honor the spirit beings. Decide what feels right for you. Ceremony should never be robotic. There are no absolutes, especially in method. The Andean path is one of ayni, and ceremony is best seen as the externalization of your internal state, not of following some schematic touted by others. That’s why I say you can do this series of rituals in any order and, really, any way you want. Find what is true for you—that approach is why we call this work the Andean sacred arts. In any case, Pachamama Day is the perfect time not only to reflect on your gratitude for the knowledge offered by the masters of old and through the grace of God and the Spirit Beings, but also to purposefully work your energies as a growing, evolving paqo and human being.

Notes: Photo of mishas copyright Lisa McClendon Sims 2018. Also, this is the last post for about a month, as I am off to Peru.

To consistently live at the fourth level, you have to express all three human powers at that level. Those powers are yachay (intellect, perception, reasoning), munay (love under your will) and llank’ay (action in the world). To monitor my own state of being in reference to these three powers, I try to rotate through them, spending a few months working on each one, seeing where I am deficient and acknowledging where I am sufficient. As part of my recent work with yachay, I checked on my related power of qaway, which amounts to “seeing reality as it really is.” That means perceiving the world stripped of my own projections, beliefs, misconceptions, and so on. As part of this practice, I realized I really have no idea what the state of the world is. I feel concern for my own country and our apparent backsliding in our political and cultural maturity, and I certainly am aware that there are conflicts and wars, climate change, racial and gender inequalities, famine, disease, poverty—the list of human challenges seems endless. It’s hard to remain positive. . . However, I had no real yachay and qaway (accurate and clear-eyed) sense of the world. Then, metaphorically speaking, a book fell into my lap. . . . Hans Rosling’s Factfulness. There is a lot of carefully vetted data in this book about both our challenges and our triumphs as human beings and societies.

Rosling challenges us to test our knowledge and emotional-based perceptions (yachay) about the state of the world. So I am going to do that here, asking you seven questions that are pitched to readers in the book or that I have devised from data in the book. See how well you do.

1. In low-income countries across the world today how many girls finish primary school?

• A: 20 percent
• B: 40 percent
• C: 60 percent

2. In the last 20 years, the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has. . .

• A: almost doubled
• B: remained more or less the same
• C: almost halved

3. How many of the world’s 1-year-old children today have been vaccinated against some disease?

• A: 20 percent
• B: 50 percent
• C: 80 percent

4. Where does the majority of the world population live?

• A: Low-income countries
• B: Middle-income countries
• C: High-income countries

5. How many people in the world have some access to electricity?

• A: 35%
• B: 50%
• C: 85 %

6. In 1900, only 0.03% of the Earth’s land surface was protected as national parks and other reserves. How much is protected today (2016 statistics)?

• A: 0.06%
• B: 7%
• C: 15%

7. In 1800, of 194 countries counted, 193 permitted forced labor or it was practiced by the state. In 2017, how many countries still sanction forced labor?

• A: 3
• B: 76
• C: 193

 

Here are the answers. How did you do?
1. C   2. C   3. C   4. B   5. C   6. C    7. A

If you are like me, you saw the state of the world in a more negative light than it actually is. The truth is, there are major reasons to celebrate. What I didn’t tell you before the test was the subtitle of Rosling’s book, because I didn’t want to hint at the nature of the answers: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think.

As I read this book and educated myself, I was amazed to count the number of areas where we humans have made enormous progress. Are there still countless injustices? Yes. Is there still needless suffering? Yes. For example, while the majority of the world lives at a much higher standard of living then they did a hundred years ago, there are still more than 800 million people living in extreme poverty. There is so much work to do. . .

Still, we are not “seeing reality as it really is” if we focus on only one or the other of these ways of seeing the world: the seemingly intractable inequities and problems, or the astonishing gains that humankind has made. As paqos, we want to see both. We seek to tackle challenges and contribute to the continued well-being of the world, while we acknowledge the benefits that have been gained by so many.

Having learned that the world is a much better place than it has ever been in the past, how do we continue our progress?

Individually and together. Through gestures grand and modest.

This blog is not an advertisement for the organizations I choose to support in order to increase the well-being of the world, but I present two of them as examples of how we can help—at least in part by applying our yachay. We can’t be led only by our emotions. We can’t rely on advertising and media appeals. We have to dig in and educate ourselves if we want to make the greatest impact. So, we would do well to spend a little time getting to know what the problems are, the contexts and challenges, the potential solutions and their unexpected ramifications.

Of course, we start with ourselves, improving our own state of being and evolving our own consciousness, and then we seek to expand the circle of well-being to those around us, our communities, and our nations. But today each one of us truly can have a global reach. We can be teqse paqos, or universal paqos. Here are two examples of how.

Chickens! I researched chickens. Raising chickens can have enormous benefit to both the health (protein-rich eggs, meat) and financial condition (selling eggs and chickens) of people currently living in poverty. If they have access to some land, people can easily raise chickens, which can almost immediately improve their health and economic circumstances. Chickens don’t need elaborate upkeep, they multiply rapidly, the kids can help tend them, and there is always a market for them and their eggs.  I love the relative simplicity of chickens as a partial antidote to both poverty and low nutrition. I donate flocks of chicks. So does billionaire Bill Gates,  who has heralded raising chickens as one of the quickest and most long-lasting ways to improve the condition of millions of impoverished people. Gates supports the same organization I donate to: Heifer International (www.heifer.org). You can give a struggling family somewhere in the world a flock of chicks for $20. The return on such as small investment is incalculable.

I like to go for maximum impact. Using my yachay, I asked “How can my modest donations or efforts improve conditions for the most people?” Another answer: clean water. I recently signed up with an organization that is visionary in their mission of providing millions of people with clean water and stellar in the execution of that mission.

One of the most pressing problems in the world is unnecessary deaths from treatable diseases. The number-one culprit for causing such disease is contaminated water. There are hundreds of millions of people who still don’t have access to clean sources of water. That’s right—hundreds of millions of people are still drinking filthy water and suffering the consequences: sickness, blindness, deformity, and even death. And most have to spend hours a day walking to the water source (a lake or stream) and hauling it home. This is the job mostly of women, many of whom suffer from degenerative neck and spinal conditions from years of carrying such weight (up to 40 pounds for one jerry can of water).

Dozens of organizations are on the front lines of providing potable water by building wells, but they have had mixed results because many of them don’t stick around to train local people on how to maintain the wells or how to get the parts to fix them. According to one statistic, at least 40% of all wells are idle at any one time, or permanently out of commission, due to maintenance issues. But at least one organization has tackled that problem: Charity: water. I urge you to check them out (www.charitywater.org). Read founder Scott Harrison’s book Thirst, about how he went from being a drugged-out partying nightclub promoter to building one of the most effective organizations for providing millions of people access to clean water. His yachay is impressive! As is his llank’ay (action) and munay (love).

There’s another, indirect, yachay issue connected to Harrison and his organization that I learned about while doing my homework on the organization. He is a disrupter in the non-profit sector, and many non-profits are attacking him, mostly because they perceive a marketing and perception problem with how to address to the public the need for raising money for administrative costs. Harrison ruffles the feathers of many people in the non-profit sector because they fear they are at a disadvantage, but this too is part of the process of change. This “where does the money go” debate helps us all to understand the practical problems an organization faces when mounting an effort to tackle a complex, global problem. Harrison is innovating a sector that has not changed much over decades, and it is causing some painful ripples across that universe of organizations. But in the process, he is helping all of us dive deeper into the realities of what “charity” is and how it is best administered. But delving into how I could best contribute to clean water, I learned a lot not only about the consequences of not having clean water but about the world of the non-profits who mostly provide the solutions. My yachay increased, as did my llank’ay through my ability to select the best organizational fit for my donations.

All charity begins with munay. But cultivating your yachay is a necessary precursor to deciding with clear-sightedness how to use your llank’ay. Together your three human powers fuel your own growth and well-being and can help keep the curve of “goodness toward” and “great results for others” heading upward, helping to increase the positivity in the world. Paqos want to work with both hands: working the mystical side and the magical sides of the path. The mystical is perception/yachay; the magical is action/llank’ay. Performer and writer Sam Levenson has said something that reverberates for all of us as paqos as we seek to work with both hands: “Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm. As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands: one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.”

Over the centuries all the individual hearts and hands have collectively had a profound impact on increasing the quality of human life the world over, as Rosling so clearly documents for us with his yachay approach to data. Myriad problems still plague our world—some are incredibly complex and severe, whereas others are easily addressed if we would only find the will. Still, we should be heartened by the progress we have made. When we apply our yachay and qaway, we acknowledge and celebrate that hundreds of millions of people are healthier, happier, freer, and able to express their greater potential than at any other time in human history. Let’s keep the goodness going. . .

I have been reading a stunning book by Ariel Burger about Holocaust survivor and humanitarian Elie Wiesel in his role as professor. There is so much in this book, titled Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom, that resonates with the fourth-level of consciousness according to the Andean tradition. It is especially applicable right now in US history because the current administration—all branches of our government: executive, congressional, and judicial—display so many qualities that are not third level, never mind fourth level. Wiesel warns us about and urges that we not turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to what is happening around us, in the US and around the world. With the rise of extremist politics, especially the “alt right” and “white nationalism,” and with the growing demonization of anything that is “other,” Wiesel’s warning are more pertinent than ever.

Although the book is heavily influenced by Wiesel’s and Burger’s Judaism, the themes are universal across cultures, religions, and politics. The theme that weaves through all of Wiesel’s wisdom is “to invoke the past as a shield for the future.” It is the stance grounded in what he calls “witnessing.” Witnessing starts with memory—of not forgetting, of learning from events that have passed about what may be or what may come.

He taught that “If anything can, it is memory that will save humanity.” How does memory “save” us, especially when history is revisionist and when, especially for young people, the past is only remotely known, is not very interesting, or seems too overwhelming to deal with. How do we remember and stand “witness” to colonial atrocities to the Inka, the indigenous North Americans, and so many other peoples? To the unspeakable genocides of Nazi Germany, Rwanda, Bosnia, or Cambodia, among others? How can we bear to make real the suffering in Yemen and so many other countries that is occurring as I write and as you read this? How do we respond when we see children torn from their parents’ arms at the southern border of the United States and processed into a bureaucratic system that has few or no mechanisms for ever returning them? As Wiesel’s student Ariel Burger asks, how can we “become custodians of memories that are not our own?” One of Wiesel’s many answers is as follows: “Our connection to the past is weak; it may be distant, at a remove. All we can do is tell the story, and we must. But in order to tell the story, we first must hear the story.”

In order to hear, we must be curious, we must inquire, we must educate ourselves, we must care, and we must be courageous.

This kind of engagement, starting with memory and extending to examining our own place in the world and our individual and collective engagement with our times, got me thinking about two foundational tenets of the Andean mystical path—to take personal responsibility for ourselves and to foster greater well-being in the world. We are not mystics that turn our face away from the world to other realms, mystical or otherwise. We immerse ourselves in the world, improving ourselves and contributing to the Runakay Mosoq, the rise of the New Humanity. To fashion an improved “us,” we have to know not only our current state, but our past as well. We have to use qaway, the mystical perception to see reality as it really is.

Many Native and indigenous wisdom traditions advise that you must know where you have come from to know where you are going. How many of us have been paying attention to where we have come from? How many of us find the current tumultuous present too divisive, painful, or tiring to pay close “witnessing” attention to what is going on all around us? How, as paqos, do we take personal responsibility not only for the state of our own energy bodies, but for the state of the collective energy?

With those questions as our launching pad, I will let Wiesel speak for himself. I trust that you will see, as I did, that this philosophy is the stance of a fourth-level consciouness.

“I don’t like the word tolerate,” Wiesel says. “Who am I to tolerate you? I prefer the word respect. I must respect you even if I do not agree with you. In fact, my disagreement may be an expression of my respect for you. If I truly respect you, don’t I owe you my honesty?”

But what about respecting those whom we deem evil or suspect are capable of evil? There may be no evil or negative energy in the kawsay pacha, but there certainly can be human beings with evil intent. Wiesel says, “For my own sake, I must still acknowledge their humanity. To act as if a perpetrator of evil is not human is too excuse him too easily. Animals do not commit mass murder. Not only that, animals do not make promises. We must remember to believe the enemy’s promises, for whatever he says, he will eventually do. If you think of him as simply an animal, it will be too easy to dismiss his words. The killer is as human as we are, but he has chosen to betray his humanity. Therefore, I must oppose him, stop him where I can, protest where I cannot.” He goes on to add, “. . .the most inhuman person is still human and will be judged accordingly. The ultimate other is a human being who has renounced his humanity, and we must bring him to justice. But this is the ultimate, the extreme. In our lives, . . . we encounter simply the other, someone with vastly different beliefs. And we must struggle to understand him, to learn from him. The distance between us is necessary, not something to turn away from.”

When we encounter the other—those different from us or with what we deem offensive beliefs or behaviors, Wiesel says, “The choice is to listen, or not. I hope that you listen, really listen, not to find the other’s weakness but to find his strength. To disagree, to engage with controversy, does not mean to refuse to listen. On the other hand, to agree with someone does not mean to merge with the other. We are different; we have our own histories, our own destinies.”

There is a concept in mysticism and other spiritual traditions of spiritual madness. It is often defined as a breakdown that leads to a breakthrough to spiritual rebirth. Wiesel tells us that this kind of madness may be the appropriate response to facing evil, suffering, and injustice. He says, “. . . if you look away from suffering, you become complicit, a bystander. Silence never helps the victim, only the victimizers. If you do look, you risk madness. Faced with a choice, madness is the better option. It is a better option because at least you will not be on the side of the killers.” He elaborates, “We study madness in order to learn how to resist. Madness holds the key to protest, to rebellion. Without it, if we are too ‘sane’ by the standards of our surroundings, we can be carried along with the world’s madness.”

What is the protester’s madness that counters the world’s madness? As I indicated above, it is a type of “mystical madness.” According to Wiesel, there are many types of madness. “There is clinical madness, which is destructive and which isolates and separates people. In its collective form, there is political madness, when nations give in to hate and lose their way. And then there is the opposite: mystical madness, which is an obsession with humanity, with redemption, with the union of people, with the messianic element in human life. One must be mad to believe that we can make the world better, that we can save humanity, or even a single life. It is unreasonable, irrational. But I am for that madness.”

Wiesel’s cites a story about why “madness” matters. The central character preaches to his fellow citizens about the dangers of what is happening around them and the evil of their own ways, but no one listens. When someone asks him why he persists, he says, “ I know. No one will listen, but I cannot stop. You see, first I thought I had to preach and protest in order to change them. But now, although I continue to speak, it is not to change the world. It is so that they do not change me.”

As paqos, we know that all of our work starts with ourselves, including the work of improving the world. As the Eastern sages say, you are not in the world, the world is in you.

Responding to his students’ questions about personal responsibility and related topics, Wiesel addresses issues that to me are the past revisited upon the present in terms of the current state of the US political system. We are witnesses to the actions of an executive branch that are unlike anything we have experienced in the past. We are witnesses to the decay, and perhaps even incremental dissolution, of our constitutional republic with its precious checks and balances. But other countries have gone through what we are now experiencing. We would do well to heed Wiesel’s words. Here he is speaking about Nazi Germany, answering questions about evil and the common person’s betrayal of his or her values, about those who blindly support those in power and those who watch their leaders go against their values but do nothing. He says, “Those who intend evil do not want others to ask these questions, and the bystanders who watch the evil happen avoid such investigation. This is the front line of the battle against fanaticism. The fanatic believes he has all the answers, and he has no questions. I have only questions, so I am their enemy. Questions save us from the certainties that lead to fanaticism. To be human is to ask questions, to ask why, to inquire, to interrogate each situation in a search for the truth, the truth of how we must act. We must face such questions rather than turn away from them; we must unmask and confront evil rather than reduce it to something comfortable. It is not comfortable to name and confront evil, but we cannot be too attached to comfort if we want to make the world better.”

If we detect injustice, deception, even evil, how do we make a difference? How can we be both witness and activist? Wiesel has many answers, but the most human one, the one that can apply to us all, is: “[O]ur success in responding to world changing events is often measured by the small moments and encounters. If we can act with greater sensitivity to others, if we can act with courage and choose humanity over inhumanity, it does not seem that it can affect the larger trajectory of history. But I believe it can.”

We can protest by knowing, and remembering, and recognizing the pattern in our own city, state, or country. We resist and act for change by giving our money, supporting a candidate, casting a vote. Before we can do any of those things, though, we must look and listen to see what is right in front of us and name it for what it is, and then lift up our hearts and voices if need be. We may feel small in the face of events, we may feel nameless in the vast sweep of history, and we may feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems of our times. We can choose any number of options to contribute good to the world, but the one thing we cannot ever allow to take hold within ourselves is apathy. A paqo engages life with khuyay, passion. Passion does not have to be grandiose, only sincere. Every day we can make a difference if we cultivate our munay and share it. We can, as Wiesel says, echoing so many other wisdomkeepers throughout history, simply “touch one person every day with compassion.”

That advice might seem cliché, but if we feel that it is, it only shows us how jaded we have become. If we can’t be compassionate, helpful, and respectful to someone who is right in front of us, how can we feel compassion for, stand witness to, and act to alleviate the suffering of those whom we know only through a newspaper, television, or Internet story? Near or far, suffering is suffering. Injustice is injustice. Prejudice is prejudice. Evil is evil. We have to take the world as we find it, which means each of us must take ourselves as we find ourselves. The world is not “other”—each of us is the world. So we change ourselves first. We put into practice our ethics, our compassion, our listening, our voicing, even our mystical techniques. Then we seek out our ayllu—our community of compatriots—and together we witness and act.

 

Photo credits:

Elie Wiesel  World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org), http://www.swiss-image.ch/Photo by Sebastian Derungs

Bhutan, Child: By I, Tyabji, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2470746

Sebrencia Massacre Victim Skull: Photo by Adam Jones, adamjones.freeservers.com

 

 

In my last few posts, I have been culling the scientific literature in support of the cosmology and practices of the Andean mystical tradition. I am returning to Dawson Church’s book Mind Into Matter in this post to talk about coherence.

When teaching the Andean mystical tradition, I stress that all of our practices help us become more energetically coherent. We are turning what are separate, and often chaotic, aspects of our energy, mind, and matter (human bodies) into a interconnected system. We are harmonizing our three human powers of yachay (knowledge), llank’ay (action) and munay (love). We are awakening, strengthening and perfecting our “magical” capacities, such as qaway, rimay, kanay, and atiy. As our poq’po increases in coherence, we can be in more effortless and efficient ayni, interacting with the living energies with greater power and grace.

But what exactly is coherence? How does science support the benefits of coherence?

Both the science of consciousness and Andean mysticism support the notion that intention (consciously directed mind) is foundational to what is created in the material world (in Andean terms, the Pachamama). Stressed and chaotic mind/intention equals stressed and chaotic life, and even a stressed and chaotic biology. In his book, Dawson Church states unequivocally, as do Andean paqos, that “energy directs matter.” He writes, “Energy fields are the templates around which matter condenses. Change the field and you change matter.”

But the effect of coherence goes beyond matter. Dawson says, as do I (based on my years of Andean practice), that “we can . . . choose the path of energy.” Echoing paqos, he declares: “As we free our attention from fascination with matter, we perceive the intelligence innate in energy. Shifting to the level of detached consciousness opens us to the infinite possibilities contained in the nonlocal field of infinite intelligence.” In the Andean tradition, we would call this field of intelligence “the field of living energy,” or the kawsay pacha. Once we habituate ourselves to living consciously connected to the kawsay pacha, we can, as Dawson says, “create entirely different lives than are possible when we remain bound by the limitations of material thinking.”

As paqos, we know that we are always in ayni (interacting with the kawsay pacha/nonlocal field of infinite intelligence), but what Dawson, other scientists, and the paqos tell us is that there is a huge difference between being in ayni and being in conscious ayni.

We are always in interchange with the kawsay pacha. However, most of us are oblivious to how we are making these energy exchanges. They are mostly unconscious. As a result, the chaos of our mental field (reactive emotions, unruly thought processes, lack of focus, diminished self-awareness, etc.) expresses itself outwardly in the condition of our health, our family and social life, our ability to know and express our gifts, and on and on. In Andean terms, we have a lot of hucha (heaviness, slowed life-force energy).

However, once we are in conscious ayni, then we can begin to bring coherence to our energy field (poq’po), which influences everything from the function of our physical bodies, to the emotional harmony we feel in our relationships, to the productive expression of our talents, to the power with which we can manifest desires (for a baby, a house, a car, more love, greater prosperity) into material reality. In Andean terms, we have more sami (lightness, life-force energy) than hucha.

In Andean terms, hucha is dissonance; sami is coherence.

Let’s now look at just what coherence is. For this, I turn to a scientist with whom I have spent time at conferences and whom I interviewed for an article: Rollin McCraty. McCraty is the head of research at the Institute of HeartMath, where some of the most ground-breaking research into coherence has been conducted, especially heart coherence. Coherence is a state of awareness, but it is mostly measured scientifically via its affects on the body: heart-rate variability, respiration, blood pressure and other physical parameters. When the mind/consciousness enters a more coherent state, the body follows. As McCraty writes in one research paper, “Coherence implies order, structure, harmony, and alignment within and amongst systems—whether in atoms, organisms, social groups, planets, or galaxies.” As he points out, coherence of mind and body means one has entered what other psychologists and human performance researchers call “flow,” the “zone,” “oneness.” When you are coherent, you are more connected with everything, including the field of infinite intelligence (kawsay pacha).

This image from the Institute of HeartMath shows what just a few minutes of a coherence-inducing practice does to biological markers. The baseline measures start on the left and the shift to coherence that occurs after only a five minutes of undertaking a coherence-inducing technique is apparent in waves forms.

You can train yourself to be in greater conscious and biological coherence. HeartMath and others have developed practices, as have Andean paqos. We use saminchakuy as our basic practice to reduce hucha and increase sami, which is another way of saying to increase the coherence of our poq’po. But we have other, advanced practices, too. In Andean terms, when we do the work of increasing our coherence—of shifting from energetic dissonance to energetic harmony—we call this the process of undertaking a personal mast’ay—a restructuring or reorganization of the self.

As paqos, we know that when we are in greater coherence (have more sami, less hucha), we accumulate personal power, which is a way of saying our intent can more easily influence energy. We can be in a more powerful, effortless, and efficient ayni exchange with the kawsay pacha. Scientists agree, for as Dawson Church says, “In the scientific literature, the word for efficiency is coherence.”

If there is one word that describes Andean practices it is “efficient.” They are simple, elegant, and direct. There is no fluff, no ceremony, no fetishes (feather, crystal, drum, rattle, whatever) needed—not even your misha. Your misha is a symbol of your power, but itself has no magical power. Your power is your directed intention, expressed from the field of a coherence energy body/poq’po.

Unknowingly echoing the basic tenet of Andean mysticism, Dawson says that coherence makes everything in life work better. There is no wasted effort or energy. He says, “In highly coherent states, our minds are able to create effects in the physical world that are astonishing.” And, “A coherent mind focuses the power of attention the way a laser focuses the power of light. People who achieve high levels of coherence are able to do extraordinary things. Remarkable research now shows that a coherent mind can literally bend the forces of the material universe.” In Andean parlance, when our poq’po (energy state) is coherent, the influence of our ayni can be astonishing.

 

I was recently reading Dean Radin’s new book Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and a Guide to the Secret Power of the Universe. Aside from my interest in staying abreast of current research into human consciousness and my planning to teach a workshop in September 2019 on supercharging your intuition, I was struck by how this book confirms so much of our practice as paqos—especially that the “secret power of the universe” that Radin mentions in his subtitle is intention. The “beauty teaching” of the Andean mystical tradition is that energy must follow intention. All we need to interact with the universe of living energy is our intention. What we call ayni, Radin calls magic.

If you have taken the lloq’e training (the left side of the path), we call the practical application of our intention the “magical” aspect of the work. It’s magic to us because we are learning to take action in the world—to be in greater, more effective, and increasingly effortless ayni through our actions.

As paqos, our entire practice is based on learning to be in more perfect ayni. Ayni is the interchange of our intention with the conscious universe. The effortlessness and effectiveness with which we manifest anything through ayni—from something as abstract as joyful well-being to something as concrete as a new house—is proportional to our personal power. Our personal power is a state that arises from the coherence of our energy body (more sami, less hucha). In other words, the more sami-filled our poq’po, the more clarity we bring to our ayni and the more effective it is. With less hucha we are able to do more. This focus on llank’ay—doing—is also the magic that Radin talks about.

Using “magic” as his metaphor for “psi” (psychic) abilities, Radin writes: “The word magic comes from the Greek word magos, referring to a member of a learned  and priestly class, which in turn derives from the Old Persian word magush, meaning to “to be able” or “to have power.” That just about sums up what a paqo is and our goal of increasing our personal power (which is another way of saying perfecting our ayni).

But ours is not a practice of intense effort. It is pukllay, or playfulness. It is a playful, relaxed state of bringing consciousness to our three human powers: yachay (what and how we know), munay (what we feel, especially love under our will), and llank’ay (how we apply ourselves—and our consciousness—in the world). As we evolve our consciousness, and thus experience a greater state of energetic coherence, we discover that our power as co-creators increases—we enhance the effectiveness of our ayni. Our “magical action” left-side powers become charged.

This energetic coherence (less hucha, more sami) is similar to the state that Radin identifies as optimal state for psi functioning. Radin writes that the most successful participants in psi experiments (in this case to influence random-number generators, but it applies to all “magical” intention) are those who feel “resonance” with the machines (feeling at one with it, softening of boundaries between the self and other) and who experience “effortless striving,” which is intense desire or focused concentration that is devoid of anxiety. This, to me, is a way of saying being in ayni.

In addition, as paqos we want to have such energetic coherence that we are open to all the “flavors” of energy. As my teacher Juan Nuñez del Prado says, we never want to put ourselves into an energetic jail, where we are afraid of energy. Energy, according to the Andean tradition, is amoral—beyond the moral overlay that we humans impose upon it. Radin confirms that view when he writes about the nature of elementary particles and the forces of nature. They are not subject to moral overlay. However, our use of our powers (the application of our intention) is dependent on our ethical and moral system: we make a choice how to use it and to what ends. We can be paqos who work for the well-being and benefit of ourselves and others, or we can be layqas who are only interested in satisfying our own desires, often at the expense of others. Radin’s view mirrors our own as paqos. He writes: “[T]he way magic is used is completely up to the magician. The power itself, like any fundamental force of the universe, is morally neutral.”

While Radin believes that an altered state of consciousness—a deep meditative state, a hypnotic-like state, or an emotionally charged state—enhances psi abilities, we as paqos learn to be in effective ayni in a normal state of consciousness. Still, the mechanisms that Radin sees in play are just like ayni—there is a two-way interchange: you project outward your intention to influence the energy of the universe, and the living energy of the universe reaches back to you and responds. While the laboratory effects of psi abilities are quite small, they are statistically significant to an irrefutable degree.

According to Radin’s and others’ experiments, this intentional interchange—what we call ayni—can be applied in almost unlimited ways, from “intending” that your food be supercharged for your health, to sending healing energy to another person across time and space, to drawing toward you the object of your desires, such as a new house. As already mentioned, Radin says that those who are in conscious coherence (such a long-time meditators) have better results than the average person. For us as paqos, this laboratory result leads us back to our basic practice of saminchakuy—reducing your hucha and increasing your sami. Saminchakuy increases what we could call the coherence of your energy body, which in turns helps you evolve your consciousness.

So, if you need a nudge of motivation to keep working the basic techniques of the Andean tradition, you have it—from science. Radin’s experiments have led him to the same place paqos, and other mystics, have discovered: that, as Radin says, “the secret power of the universe is not made out of matter and energy and physical stuff, but is probably made out of consciousness. . .”

 

(For information about the Intuition Intensive Workshop in North Carolina in September 2019, please visit the web page http://www.cfcchange.com. This is the first offering of my new endeavor, The Center for Conscious Change. I will be teaching with my friend and fellow intuitive-medium Randi Eaton. We plan to offer this workshop in Northern California over the weekend of October 11-13, 2019. Information should be on our page http://www.cfcchange.com within two weeks or so.)