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A Mystic Welcomes Paradox

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

It was the late 1990s, and a party was in full swing—music blaring, drinks flowing, and conversation and laughter filling the rooms. But I was in a quiet corner deep in conversation with Gloria Karpinski, a global teacher of human development. I have no memory of how we got on the subject, but we were discussing what it means to be spiritually mature. We finally agreed on a concise definition: spiritual maturity is the ability to sit comfortably in the lap of paradox. With that weighty issue settled, we rejoined the party and all its merriment. I have never forgotten that definition, and it is the perfect way to introduce the next mystical sensibility on my list: cultivating comfort with paradox.

Drawing from various definitions, paradox is a statement that seems contradictory or nonsensical on the surface but with deeper reflection reveals a profound truth. It often requires us to reconcile two opposing ideas by reconsidering our initial assumptions.

Some paradoxes do not cause us any inner tension; we simply “get them.” We all have heard and used these kinds of statements:

  • Less is more.
  • The only constant is change.
  • The more you know, the less you understand.
  • The only certainty is that nothing is certain.

However, many spiritual paradoxes are designed to create inner dissonance. They make us pause and ask to be taken into contemplation. They challenge our conventional thinking and push us to a deeper understanding.

  • Be in the world but not of the world.
  • You must lose yourself to truly find yourself.
  • If you meet the Buddha on the road, slay him.
  • Nothing is everything, everything is nothing.

One thing is certain about paradox: it is not something to be figured out. In fact, the harder we try to solve the seeming contradiction, the further we get from insight. Determination is not our way in. A classic Buddhist story illustrates this point. A student asks a teacher how long it will take to master his teachings. The teacher replies, “Ten years.” “But,” the student promises, “I will be the most diligent, dedicated pupil you have ever had.” “In that case,” the teacher says, “twenty years.”

While logic often seeks clear, definitive answers, spiritual paradox offers a different path. It is a powerful tool designed to loosen our rigid attachment to logic and cultivate respect for uncertainty. By moving us beyond either/or thinking toward a more integral both/and perspective, paradox challenges the ego’s need for strict categorization and simplistic or superficial meaning. It encourages a more reflective, contemplative, and expansive awareness. Ultimately, paradox helps us cultivate the humility and grace to honor life’s mysteries, fostering a greater tolerance for abstraction and a deeper trust in inspiration.

Words—naming, defining, characterizing—are totally inadequate to mystical pursuits. Among the greatest gifts of paradox is that it teaches us that “knowing” is not intellectual, but phenomenological. We must feel our way toward “truth” and insight. In fact, mystical perception is more a “cloud of unknowing,” as the title of a classic Christian mystical text tells us. Beyond all thought, imagery, and intellectual concepts is the liminal space where the soul meets and experiences the divine.

Most readers of this blog practice the Andean sacred arts. We meet paradox in this tradition, although it makes mostly subtle appearances. Practices such as saminchakuy and saiwachakuy, along with reflection and contemplation, help us perceive the deeper spiritual truths that words and logic cannot express. They are methods that move us inward to the quiet, luminous places where we listen rather than talk, feel rather than think, and absorb rather than learn. The paradox of these practices is that they are both passive and active, and neither passive nor active. Embedded within the stillness are creational energies, what in the Andean tradition we call ayni, or reciprocal interchanges. As Christian mystic Thomas Merton explains, “One of the strange laws of the contemplative life is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you.”

Partnering with life is at the heart of the Andean tradition, and ayni is one of its central tenets. This Andean principle of reciprocity and mutualism is a foundational concept for Andeans within multiple spheres of life: the personal, the communal or social, and the spiritual. At the personal and social levels, it is commonly explained as “today for you, tomorrow for me.” Indigenous Andeans live agrarian lives, and this kind of ayni means that when you need help in your fields or with your herds, I will be there for you, and vice versa. However, even at this personal level ayni is never a purely transactional exchange. It always involves the increase in each party’s well-being. Ayni teaches that our well-being is intrinsically linked to the well-being of others, including that of the natural world. It is a deep-seated worldview that everything is interconnected and that reciprocity empowers both parties.

At an energetic level, ayni’s paradoxicality lies in its dual nature: it is a practical, physical action in life whose roots spring from a profound, non-material spirituality. This paradox includes the understanding that ayni first and foremost is a state of consciousness; however, without action there is no ayni. Ayni involves will, choice, awareness, and intention, yet its deep-down dynamic is the flow of one’s essence within larger energetic fields, from that of the human social sphere to that of alignment with the cosmos. Practicing ayni reveals that we are an integral part of the living universe, not separate from it. In this way, ayni is a conscious alignment with our own true nature.

In the Andean cosmovision, the spiritual and material are seen as two aspects of one reality. The Quechua word for this complementary polarity is yanantin. The concept of yanantin in Andean philosophy presents a powerful and often misunderstood paradox. Western dualisms (such as good versus evil, right versus wrong, me versus you) tend to emphasize a struggle for dominance of one over the other. Yanantin views seemingly opposite forces (such as male/female, light/dark, inner/outer, me/you) as essential, interdependent parts of a unified whole. Yanantin is not about achieving balance, but harmony. In any given situation, one aspect of the yanantin may be more prominent, active, or dominant, but still there is no fundamental asymmetry. The shifting energy dynamics of the yanantin pair create the conditions for growth, change, variety, and novelty. The essence of yanantin is not a focus on its twoness, or the different though complementary aspects of the two individual elements, but on their oneness, on the wholeness are arises from their essential relationship of complementarity. In essence, yanantin is the paradox of being the mirror of itself: of simultaneously perceiving Multiplicity and Oneness, and understanding they are not mutually exclusive. (Andean paqos would not venture into the Buddhist landscape of multiplicity being an illusion, although they would acknowledge that “separateness” is a misunderstanding of the fundamental nature of reality.)

Whatever the paradox, as a spiritual tool it is useful in all kinds of ways. Feeling comfort with paradox, and therefore being willing to embrace it, can heighten creativity. It pushes us to think, feel, and even be in ways that are outside the consensus norm—we wander into the land of creative insight, innovation, and novelty. If we spend any time there, we realize this is an environment of delight, revelation, and even joy. Paradox invites us to be curious and creatively adaptive: when we are face to face with the non-rational and even illogical, we quickly make friends with uncertainty, fluidity, and nuance. Arm in arm, they guide us toward innovative ways to know, understand, ponder, perform, problem-solve, feel, express, and choose. As we seek to harmonize what feels like the tension of opposites, we cultivate the capacity to reframe and reconceptualize: not only about the nature of the cosmos and the world—and our relationship to them—but about our own human nature. We must face our own inconsistencies; and when we do, we are more accepting of others, and even of life in this oh-so-human world. Perhaps the most impactful aspect of embracing paradox is that we open ourselves to a kind of reverence for the polarity in which we are steeped: our simultaneous physical and metaphysical beingness; the astounding complexity and astonishing variety of the world and of ourselves, and their inherent elegance; the stubborn “isness” of mundane material form and the palimpsest of the sacred that informs everything.  As Buddhist philosopher Dōgen Zenji so plainly states this paradox: “In the mundane, nothing is sacred. In sacredness, nothing is mundane.” This is the stance of the mystic, which is why when we befriend paradox, we make a friend for life.

 

A Mystic’s Sense of Wonder

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

What are mystical sensibilities? A core one is to perceive and feel the sacred in the mundane—to find the joyous and even the miraculous in the everyday. For the rest of this year, I will be exploring how we can cultivate various mystical sensibilities, starting with the simple, profound act of wonder. As Emily Dickinson writes, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant— / Success in circuit lies.” Her words are a reminder that wonder, like truth, often comes to awareness subtly and obliquely. As she says of truth, wonder might “dazzle us gradually.” While wonder can strike unbidden, more often it is a sensibility we actively choose to develop.

The word “wonder” has two core forms and meanings. As a verb, it means to think about, speculate, be curious. As a noun it means to be astonished by or marvel at something. Many of us begin our mystical pursuits because we are curious about aspects of the world that fall outside of consensus or scientific reality. We are keen to experience the supernatural, witness the unusual, touch or be touched by the magical. So, where do we start? Right where we are. As poet E.B. White advised, the key is to “always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.” It is good advice. And it is confirmed by generations of wisdom-keepers from a variety of cultures and spiritual traditions who tells us that wonder starts when our attention and awareness are focused on the here and now, particularly on the mundanities of life.

How often do we truly notice the world around us? Williams Carlos Williams’s most famous poem may be “The Red Wheelbarrow,” which although rife with layers of meaning, on its face asks us to simply notice the thereness, the beingness of what is in front on us. In this case it is a well-used wheelbarrow sitting in a barnyard in the rain: “So much depends/ upon / the red wheelbarrow / glazed with rain / water/ beside the white / chickens.” Instead of overlooking the familiar wheelbarrow, if we bring it into awareness, we appreciate its centrality to the harmony of the universe as a farm. From the way Williams deliberately breaks the lines of this poem, we also are asked to notice the rain itself and the chickens, things that normally do not catch our attention but that possess their own kind of marvelousness.

How much we overlook in our everyday lives! Is not the weed that sprouts in the crack in the cement a testament to the ferocity and fecundity of life? Is not the hammock strung between the trees the holder of sweet memories of lazy days and daydreams? When we pay attention, not all of what we perceive is pleasant but still may be profound. Is not the dumpster stuffed to overflowing with trash bags and household cast-offs a container for our causal and even thoughtless relationship to abundance, our voracious appetites, our aloofness to frugality?

When that dumpster image came to me, I almost immediately rejected it, because, really, how can trash provoke a sense of wonder? Then I discovered A.R. Ammons’s monumental book-length poem “Garbage.” He set me straight! He writes, “. . . the bulldozer man picks up a red bottle that / turns purple and green in the light and pours / out a few drops of stale wine, and yellow jackets / burr in the bottle, sung drunk, the singing / not even puzzled when he tosses the bottle way / down the slopes, the still air being flown / in the bottle even as the bottle / dives through / the air! the bulldozer man thinks about that / and concludes that everything is marvelous, what / he should conclude and what everything is: on / the deepdown slopes, he realizes, the light / inside the bottle will, over the weeks, change / the yellow jackets, unharmed, having left lost, / not an aromatic vapor of wine left, the air / percolating into and out of the neck as the sun’s heat rises and falls: all is one, one all: / hallelujah: he gets back up on his bulldozer / and shaking his locks backs the bulldozer up.”

If we have the eyes to see and the heart to feel, wonder may erupt out of the background noise of nature and life and crack us open. I recently experienced the unbidden arrival of such beauty. Last spring, I was sitting in my screened porch drinking my morning coffee when a single bird sang beauty into existence. What usually captured my attention were the green fields, the massive century-old oak trees across the fields, the rising sun. And when I think of wonder and birds, I own my bias toward the hummingbirds, hawks, and owls that I share this land with. But this! A song I had not heard before from some kind of bird unknown to me. It was a wonder! Even as other birds began to sing the same song, this bird stood out; it was the Bocelli of this flock. A capella simplicity, clarity, and purity—the closest sound to angelic I had ever heard. I felt I was in the presence of the holy; that I was being infused with the holy. Morning after morning, this wonder repeated: a single bird’s song like a prayer offered to the sunrise, to the giant oaks, to the green intensity of the fields, and to me. It was a mystical experience made more profound because it was inseparable from the mundane, inserting itself into my routine: me sitting in my chair in a screened porch at sunrise sipping coffee. Then one morning nothing. As abruptly as it had arrived, this wonder of a song ceased. This bird and its mates had moved on. How I miss it! And how grateful I am that I was witness to it and in some way imprinted by it. I eventually identified the bird and its song via YouTube: a white-throated sparrow. Theirs is a rather pedestrian call. But not from this bird. Its variation was at a level of artistry far outside the norm. I can assure you that if you go online to hear the trill of the white-throated sparrow, you will find nothing that compares to the wonder of this one bird’s hymnal song.

It might seem cliché to suggest that we cultivate wonder as a mystical sensibility by appreciating the marvelous in the mundane and, more importantly, feeling that marvelousness. Wonder is more of the body than the mind, and there is  nothing cliché about experiencing it. As poet Mary Oliver declares in “The Plum Trees,” “. . .Joy / is a taste before / it’s anything else, and the body / can lounge for hours devouring / the important moments. Listen / the only way / to tempt happiness into your mind is by taking it / into the body first, like small / wild plums.” She asserts this truth again in “The Roses,” “. . . there is no end / believe me! to the inventions of summer, / to the happiness your body / is willing to bear.”

Many of us have lost our childlike capacity for wonder. So, when we are adults, sometimes it takes a child to be our teacher. I remember a lesson I received while visiting some friends. I was drawing with their daughter, who had several severe developmental challenges. We were sprawled on the floor; we each had a huge sheet of paper and a plastic bucket crammed with crayons. When she finished her drawing, she tugged on my sleeve to show it to me. There across the top was a narrow horizontal swath of blue sky. Most of the paper was blank, until down along the bottom was an equally skimpy swath of green grass and two stick figures: her and me. I was taking it all in, so I did not immediately comment. And I admit that my attention was on the blank expanse of the paper. Then our eyes met, and without giving me a chance to speak, she said, “Don’t worry. We’re closer to the sky than you may think.” Whoa! I could not have been more surprised, nor more humbled, if a wizard had hit me upside the head!

William Wordsworth reminds us of the importance of cultivating a childlike wonder (“Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”): “There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, / The earth, and every common sight, / To me did seem / Apparelled in celestial light, / The glory and the freshness of a dream.” When was the last time you felt like this? That the common things are harbingers of delight? That the mundane is magical, such that a simple pine tree can sweeten your body; a white iris can beautify you? (Paraphrase from Wallace Stevens’s “In the Carolinas.”) When was the last time your everyday surroundings and the activities of your common life felt fresh and glorious?

How easy it is to take our lives for granted. It took a friend to remind me that I was so busy, I was missing my life. How about you? Shall this blog post be a wake-up call—a friend’s gentle reminder to take a break from all the “doing” and refocus on “being”? For to choose wonder—to notice the marvelous and even the divine in the everyday—is to choose everything important.

Deep Dive Into Rimay

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

Quechua is an oral language; there was no written form of it until after the Spanish Conquest. It is a language rich in expressiveness, especially for conveying emotional depths, complexities, and subtleties. Rimay is the primary word for speech. In its various forms it means language, voice, word, discourse, conversation, to talk, to communicate, to express, and to explain.

Within the mystical tradition, rimay gains additional meanings. It is sacred sound and sound as a power. It is in yanantin relationship with yachay (knowledge). They are different but complementary powers that together refer to our ability to share the knowledge and wisdom we have gained through personal life experience. It comes as no surprise that rimay as communication is associated with the kunka ñawi, the mystical eye of the throat. Because of rimay, we can charge our vocalizations—words, songs, prayers—with our personal power to lift them beyond the mundane to the spiritual. In the context of rimay, spiritual not only means holy, sacred, or reverent, but filled with life force. (The root meanings of the word “spiritual” are breath and life). This is not some abstract life force, but our personal life force. Put more simply, rimay reveals our kanay: our beingness. With accuracy, clarity, and integrity, we give voice to who we are as unique human beings living unique human lives.

Rimay is a power of the kay pacha: of the human world. This exchange from the 1970s dark-comedy film Harold and Maude could be about rimay:

“Harold: Do you pray?
Maude: Pray? No. I communicate.
Harold: With God?
Maude: With life.”

Using the power of rimay, we can express anything about ourselves and our lives: our joy and despair, our love and fear, our compassion and indifference. . .  Doing so means that in that moment, through our feelings, we touched a truth about ourselves and had the courage to express it. In this way rimay is more about the self than others. If we are owners of the power of rimay, we mean what we say and say what we mean. Our word is reliable, such that we follow through on our commitments and promises. We take responsibility not only for the content of our speech, but also for its volume and tone, for how we place emphasis, and for explicit and implicit intent and effect. We all have heard what lack of rimay sounds like: the polite put-down, the snarky compliment, the disingenuous assurance, the hypocritical judgement.

Rimay as a power asks us to be conscious communicators. Self-awareness and self-control are at its core, for sometimes our power lies in what we restrain ourselves from saying. Actor and writer Craig Ferguson offers wise advice when he says, “Ask yourself these three things before you say anything. 1) Does this need to be said? 2) Does this need to be said by me? 3) Does this need to be said by me now?”

In its highest vibration, rimay as communication is healing. Victor Zea, a Peruvian photographer and hip-hop artist who seeks to preserve the Quechua language through his music, uses the term hanpiq rimay, which is speech that heals. (Hanpiq is more commonly spelled hampeq, which means healer.) Our words, of course, can lift others up. They can be soothing, restorative, inspirational. But as with all our work, we first attend to ourselves. When we marshal the will to speak our truth with honesty and clarity, we bring healing to those denied or wounded parts of ourselves we previously had kept hidden or protected. Our healing might be as simple (and powerful) as reclaiming our integrity around the words “yes” and “no.” It might be learning to say “yes” to ourselves when for most of our lives our lack of self-worth led us to say “no.” Or learning to say “no” to others when previously we had begrudgingly said “yes” from a sense of obligation or fear of rejection.

The paqos tell us that while our use of Andean practices for self-development is serious work, it is not only that. It also is pullkay: undertaken with a sense of playfulness. This is true of rimay as well. Don Juan Nuñez del Prado reminds us that “our work is cosmic games. It is a mix of munay and rimay. Munay as love and will, and rimay as the ability to express yourself.” But, he says, “rimay is more than that really: it is the ability to manifest yourself. To express yourself in all forms, including expressing and living your destiny and inviting others to do the same. All of this takes you to kanay, the power to be yourself. If you discover kanay, you reach atiy, the power to change reality around you. After you manifest yourself, you can drive kawsay to influence [reality], but not control it; you can [push] energy to follow more harmonious flows in more harmonious directions for you. And then [you can] play in the world of living energy.”

Although rimay primarily relates to communication, in the mystical tradition it is the personal power to express any of our capacities. The evolutionary process don Juan explained above starts with munay—with cultivating it for ourselves. We learn to love ourselves just as we are. We recognize our inherent value and become the owners of self-worth. We express who we are without the need for putting on false faces: without illusions, excuses, apologies, justifications, or explanations. We neither devalue our strengths and gifts nor inflate them. We acknowledge our weaknesses and shortcomings, yet we do not fixate on them. When we accept ourselves just as we are, then we can relate to others just as they are. Our inner state conditions our outer reality.

Mastering this first harmonization of munay and rimay leads us to kanay: I am. Moses asked God, “Who are you?” God replied, “I am that I am.” Kanay confers this level of clarity. When we know “This is who I am” and are unafraid to express ourselves, we gain the power to live according to our true nature. Our Inka Seed—the energetic repository of our full potential—flowers. Although we cannot help but be shaped by aspects of life that are beyond our control, through kanay we also become shapers of life. Andeans aspire to attaining “sumaq kawsay”: a beautiful life, a happy life. I agree with Lucille Ball, who said, “It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.”

Once we expand our understanding of ourselves to include kanay, then we can begin to use another of our primary powers: atiy. Atiy is our capacity for acting in the world. Through kanay we know who we are and what we want from life. Through atiy we begin to manifest that life. It is a short hop from atiy to the final stage of development: khuyay. Khuyay is the passion, the joy of being alive as you. And so we come full circle, back to rimay: the exuberant expression of ourselves in our unique version of this cosmic game called life.

The Tukuy Hampeq: The Infallible Healer

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ 4 Comments

Healing is a mystery. We don’t understand the human body, mind, emotions, or spirit. Yet no doubt each plays a role in healing. We don’t understand the nature of physical or metaphysical energy flows, yet each likely plays a role in healing. Whatever healing is, we can make a distinction between it and curing. Healing often means finding peace of mind with “what is,” which can range from physical or emotional limitations to impending death. Curing most often means turning a diseased body into a disease-free body. Yet these distinctions hardly matter, because we don’t fully understand either healing or curing.

In the Andean mystical tradition, paqos develop a range of mystical capacities and assist their communities in a variety of ways. At the top of the paqo hierarchy are the fourth-level alto mesayoqs, and one of their most consequential roles is as hampeqs (healers). Andean prophecy tells us the time is ripe for the emergence of a new level of healing mastery—that of the Inka Mallku, or fifth-level paqo. None has emerged as far as we know. And we would know—for a fifth-level paqo is a tukuy hampeq, a total healer. The astonishing capacity of tukuy hampeqs is infallible healing. With a touch of their hand, they cure every disease, ailment, and condition every time, without fail.

Paqos cannot train to be tukuy hampeqs. The karpay to the fifth level is said to be a transmission of energy directly from Taytanchis (God). Paqos become candidates for this karpay when they are tukuymunaynioqs, total masters of munay, which is defined as love under our will. This kind of love is not a feeling or an emotion—it is a power. And munay is the primary power for healing.

Although fifth-level healers have highly developed capacities for love, and so for healing, the tradition tells us that healing does not come from the paqos, but through them. Tukuy hampeqs channel the powers of Mama Allpa (Mother Earth), Pachamama (the Cosmic Mother), Pachatayta (Father Cosmos), and Taytanchis (the metaphysical God). They are channeling the combined energies of the four great Creators to activate the ill person’s own self-healing capacity. At least that is what the tradition suggests, although we have no idea what the actual mechanisms for healing are.

Tukuy hampeqs would appear to be performing miracles. Conventional medicine would call these healings “spontaneous remissions” of disease or, more cynically perhaps, the placebo effect. A less pejorative characterization might be “anomalous.” But these terms are at least half empty, because no one yet knows what causes a spontaneous remission or which psycho-biological processes are at play in the placebo response. Yet they happen. The same is true for energy or spiritual healing: although there are plenty of rigorous scientific studies and reams of anecdotal evidence supporting the reality of both, no one knows how they work.

I have spent time thinking about fifth-level healing, and although I have no experience of it and only a little knowledge about it, I do have speculations. From the little we know about tukuy hampeqs, I think it is fair to say they are performing a mast’ay: through just a touch they are reordering or restructuring the person’s body-mind. (More accurately, they channel the power of the four Creator powers mentioned above to reorganize the body.) When I wonder about what is being restructured, I think of Jungian analyst Robert Johnson’s description of psychological shadow work: there is nothing wrong with us, nothing to fix, there is only the right thing in the wrong place. Perhaps with their touch, tukuy hampeqs initiate a mast’ay such that everything in the body once again is in the “right” place and operates in the “right” way. Even though we don’t know how they might trigger the mast’ay, it seems reasonable that cells, organs, or biological processes that are dysfunctional somehow regain their normal, natural operations.

I lean toward this view because I have had my own experiences, few as they are, performing energy healings. In one case, after only two sessions there was an astounding result (to me, to the person on whom I was working, and to that person’s team of doctors). Some of my students also have shared the impressive, and in some cases astonishing, effects of their sessions. From their reports and my own experiences, I have come to believe, as many energy healers do, that a highly effective way of working with body-based illness is not to try to extract a disease or eradicate the “wrong things” (such as kill tumor cells). Instead, robust healing responses seem to occur more frequently when we marshal the life-forces of everything that is “right” in the body.  On a wave of munay, we broadcast energy and intentions to all the well-functioning aspects of the body, supercharging them to deliver whatever signals (biochemical, bioelectrical, ionic, and so on) that help dysfunctional neighboring cells, organs, or whatever “remember” how to be normal. We not only honor, but work with the intelligence of the body. The mast’ay is the restoration of the community—of the natural interdependence of cells, processes, signals, and such. Healing happens when the rogue elements that have split off from the community return to it. The word “healing,” after all, comes from an Old English root meaning “to make whole.”

Science slowly is validating the healing force of love and amassing persuasive support for energy healing approaches that emphasize a return to wholeness. In one laboratory study using different healing intentions on three lines of cultured tumor cells, the intention that most diminished their growth (by 39 percent) was “Return to the natural order and harmony of the normal cell line” (p. 268, Spontaneous Evolution, Bruce H. Lipton and Steve Bhaerman). Adding visual imagery to the intention doubled the effect. Many other laboratory studies, including those involving William Bengston, the author of The Energy Cure, have shown the same robust effects of what are variously called wholeness, coherence, or resonance healing intentions.

From his own experience with hands-on healing, Bengston believes we are not working directly with energies of the physical body, but within a unitive consciousness field: an energy-information field he calls “Source.” As he so artfully and succinctly puts it: “Consciousness has no plural.” He humbly admits he does not know what his own statement about Source means. Nor does he know what Source is. Nonetheless, he is sure that all he is doing is channeling Source energy. He uses a metaphor about traveling through this unitive field to explain what he thinks might be happening during an energy healing. His speculation dovetails with Robert Johnson’s analogy of psychological problems arising because the right things are in the wrong place. Bengston says, “When I am treating you, what I think of as my consciousness and what you think of as yours may be traveling through concurrent existences together. If mine is an experienced traveler, perhaps I can nudge yours into a place where your body would prefer to be . . . You may think I am changing something physical in you the way a doctor would, but maybe you get better because I take you to the right place . . .”

I was given a similar type of message from Q’ero paqo don Juan Paquar Flores, although the context had nothing to do with healing. Back in 1996, while I was conducting the interviews for my book about the paqos, don Juan pulled me aside to gift me a khuya (a stone or object charged with a particular intention.) He explained how it was to be used and then provided an invocation or prayer to say while using it. The invocation reminds me of Bengston’s idea of healing as travel through space-time (or consciousness). Don Juan’s invocation was translated from Quechua to English as “May the path that I walk be walked; may the words that I say be spoken; may the wish that I make be wished: that the walk that I do be done.”

Both Bengston’s form of traveling and don Juan’s prayer are imbued with two core Andean sensibilities. First, that space and time are energetically intertwined (or even a singular state within consciousness). And second, that consciousness (intention) influences or even directs energy. While channeling the four Creator powers, perhaps tukuy hampeqs have power over time itself (or the illusion of time). Through their touch the journey from illness to wellness happens in an instant. With a touch, “so it is.”

Currently, there are healers across the globe who occasionally display fifth-level abilities. Their rare successes are evidence that it is possible to heal with only a touch. William James, author of The Varieties of Religious Experience, has addressed the doubt of those who rely on inductive reasoning (think scientists!) to dismiss these experiences: all swans we have ever seen are white, so we can assume all swans everywhere are white­—until we see our first black swan. Still, we end where we began. We don’t know what energy healing is. We can do nothing but speculate about the mechanisms of infallible healing. However, Andean prophecy tells us the emergence of fifth-level healing abilities is imminent, so if we put our faith in that prophecy we may soon find out.

On Being a Chakaruna

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ 3 Comments

Chakaruna means “bridge person,” and its meaning is self-evident: one who discerns connections and brings together or harmonizes two things, groups, traditions, ideas, and the like. We tend to think of this as an energy dynamic that occurs out in the world, and it certainly is that; however, the core energy dynamic starts inside of us.

The first bridge we build is within ourselves. The core energy dynamic of the Andean tradition is ayni: reciprocity. Bridge-building is a reciprocal endeavor. It does little good to establish a connection if the party with whom you have connected has no desire or ability to reach back to you and form a relationship. Reciprocity, therefore, is at the core of all kinds of chakaruna endeavors.

Anyi operates on many levels: socially among people and communities; ethically between ourselves and other people; and energetically between ourselves, other people, nature, the spirit beings, and, ultimately, the living universe. We are always in energetic interchange, although the bulk of our energy exchanges are driven by our unconscious needs, desires, beliefs, and such. Bringing consciousness to our ayni is essential personal work, and we cannot even begin to do that until we understand that ayni is a tawantin (comprised of four factors): intention, intention acted upon, awareness that there will be a reciprocal return (feedback) from the other party or the living universe, and then seeing and understanding that feedback when it comes so that we know whether to continue with our intentional action or whether we have to make some adjustments to it.

In addition, we understand ayni as an exchange in which both parties seek and receive fulfillment. The shared concern always is that each party in the interchange receives benefit. So, ayni is not any kind of interchange, but an interchange of mutual well-being. Many people new to the Andean tradition talk about ayni is generalized ways, thinking it is any kind of energy interchange. But it is not—it is special, and it is not so easy to achieve true ayni. In fact, there are plenty of other kinds of interchanges we can make that do not rise to the level of ayni. An example is chhalay. Chhalay is a transaction. It is an exchange devoid of much feeling (munay), and so tends to be based mostly on self-interest. If you see a sweater in the window of a store, you might go in and purchase it. There is a tacit agreement that you will pay whatever price the seller has determined. You pay that price, take the sweater home, and the storeowner pockets your money. That is chhalay.

I will use myself as an example of a more nuanced difference between chhalay and ayni. I teach online, and I set a price for a course. Students who sign up are agreeing to pay that course fee. That is a chhalay transaction between us. The ayni comes into play when I begin offering my service. My ayni is how I teach that course. It is expressed in the ways I devote myself to my students and their needs, in how prepared and engaged I am when I am teaching, in how committed I am to providing a stellar learning experience for my students. The other half of the ayni exchange comes from each student: they either reciprocate in ayni or not (their enthusiasm for learning, their engagement with me and fellow students, and so on). In contrast, if I am robotic because I have been doing this a long time, if I keep my emotional distance from my students, if I rarely interact with them except in class, and so on—that is not ayni on my part. It is chhalay.

I am focusing so heavily on ayni because it is widely misunderstood and too often not practiced. Yet it is at the heart of the Andean tradition and certainly at the heart of being a chakaruna. Ayni is how we bring the quality of ourselves out into the world. It is dependent on many things, not the least of which are our personal values and the acuity of our self-awareness. When we know ourselves and accept ourselves (with compassion even for our flaws and character deficits), we have the ability to see others for who they are and accept them exactly as they are. The inner chakaruna bridge helps us to not stand above others, but eye to eye with them. It is how we overcome the stubborn psychological dynamics of perceiving differences and begin cultivating the recognition of similitude and fellowship. Chakarunas see themselves in others and others in themselves. As the saying goes: as within, so without.

Ayni also is at the heart of being a chakaruna because it involves our will but not our willfulness. We must apply will to put our intention into action, yet we must not willfully impose our own intentions, beliefs, desires, opinions, judgements, and aversions onto others. Too often bridge-building is imposition or, more rarely but not unheard of, it is a disguise for coercion. We tell ourselves we are doing good works, when in reality we may be seeking (consciously or unconsciously) to impress our will upon others. It is a rare person who has no preference for one party or the other, who is not projecting onto one party or the other, or who is not judging one party more worthy, right, good, deserving (whatever) than the other.

Don Juan Nuñez del Prado has advised me and others over the years that our work as “paqos” is to assist those we discern might need our help (usually energetic assistance, if we have the personal power to extend such help), but we do not go around sticking our noses into other people’s business. It is not our business to try to build a bridge without the explicit or implicit consent of both parties. It is not our business to build a bridge because we deem it “for the best” for two parties.

So, what is our business as a chakaruna? It is about our own state of energy first and foremost: building a bridge within from which we can see both shores (both parties) without favor or prejudice. It means getting past any drive to fix or heal one or both parties. A chakaruna doesn’t do anything to others, but acts on behalf of others. In this view, the chakaruna is not the one who builds the outer bridge; the chakaruna holds the space within so that the two parties are able to imagine a bridge between them and begin to build it themselves: one toward the other until they meet in the middle and stand together upon it. 

My friend, former student, and now colleague Katy O’Leary Bagai shared the translation of a discussion she had with paqo don Claudio Quispe Samata that beautifully explains this approach to being a chakaruna. Her gathering of the clusters of translations into cohesive notes includes the following perspective, which provides the perfect conclusion to this discussion: a chakaruna chooses to live within the intersection between spirit and matter, quietly holding coherence between the tension that is often created by humans within that intersection. A chakaruna listens for the alignments and watches for the invitation to bring cohesion into any perceived tension. A chakaruna does not reject action, but understands that wisdom lies in knowing when to act and when to hold. The chakaruna at heart is a vessel of potential. He or she becomes a conduit for the world remembering how to change itself.