Uncategorized

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.

Hucha: A Mundane and Mystical Approach

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

The goal of spiritual life is not altered states,
but altered traits.
— Huston Smith

I have written many times about hucha—heavy living energy, which only human beings create. Today, I want to look behind the term to tease out nuances of its meaning. I believe this can help us appreciate what hucha is, how we create it, and why our main energy practices address it. I offer a deep-dive class on Quechua mystical terminology and concepts, and one of the terms we examine is hucha. In this blog post I expand on what is discussed in that class.

When the paqos explained to don Juan Nuñez del Prado, who is my primary teacher, what hucha is, they described it as llasaq kawsay, which means “heavy living energy.” Of course, it is not literally heavy. It just feels that way to us, primarily because we are reducing the efficiency and effectiveness of our ayni (which is explained below). To really understand hucha, we must parse several other terms. We start with kawsay, which comes from the root Quechua word ka, which means “to be.” Kawsay refers to existence, to being alive. Thus, kawsay is referred to as “living energy.” The paqos tells us that everything in the created, physical world is comprised of kawsay. In its most refined form as “light living energy,” it is called sami (variously spelled samiy). Kawsay’s and sami’s natures are to flow unimpeded. But we humans can slow down this life-giving and life-empowering energy. That slow sami is called hucha. So hucha literally is sami, just slowed, filtered somehow, or even blocked from flowing through us. We take in less life-force enegy than we could.

The reasons for how and why we block sami, and so create hucha, are varied and beyond the scope of this post. However, core reasons are that we are evolved mammals and we still can be driven by our impulses and survival needs. We may engage in the world and with our fellow human beings in ways that are based in fear, competition, selfishness, and other kinds of unconscious or barely conscious (instinctive) behaviors and emotions. Even when we are engaging from our highest sense of self, this coherent state of being can be upended by all kinds of conscious and unconscious needs, desires, beliefs, and the like, such that we fall out of ayni. Ayni is reciprocity. For our purposes here, we can think of it as the Golden Rule that takes us beyond self-interest to mutuality: instead of attitudes such as “for me to win, you must lose,” we seek ways for everyone to benefit. Ayni is much more complex than that. However, the easiest way to understand why we slow sami down and create “heaviness” for ourselves and others is that we are not acting from ayni.

Ok, so far so good, even though this discussion is by necessity skimming the surface of why we create hucha. But let’s look at the word itself from the perspective of the mundane, by which I mean the common, everyday world. Trying to understand a mystical concept from the viewpoint of a non-paqo can easily can get us off track. But I like to probe into the more mundane definitions of the Quechua terms we use in our mystical practice to get a sense of the fullness of meaning. We must be aware that those mundane definitions usually are analogous and not literally in one-to-one correspondence with the word’s mystical meanings. Hucha is a concept that I think is particularly illuminated by examining its non-mystical, mundane meanings.

Let me say that I have discussed the value of making such correspondences between the mundane and mystical with don Juan. He cautions that I cannot go to Quechua dictionaries and the anthropological literature to find definitions for our mystical terms because the paqos were using many of these terms to mean something different from their more common meanings. This is a caution we must always take to heart. Still, I cannot help but wonder: if the paqos could choose any term they wanted for various aspects of the mystical work, why did they choose a term that is commonly used and that has an already accepted meaning that is different from what they meant by it? I find—and I speak only for myself—that looking at those common meanings does, in fact, help me understand the contexts and even nuances of the mystical use of the term. I often find that the common definition, or what I am calling the “mundane” meaning, of a mystical term provides a world of associations that can be useful and even enlightening to my practice. They help me peek behind the curtain of a language that is not mine, of a mystical cosmovision that originally was foreign to me, and of possible nuances that can help me understand conceptually what it is I am doing when I use many of the practices of the Andean sacred arts in my daily life.

Ok, that is a lot of explanation and more than a few caveats. Let’s get to examining sami and hucha, for we cannot understand one term without looking at the other.

What are the common dictionary meanings of sami/samiy? Sami is defined as good luck, good fortune, happiness, benefit, favor, dignity, contentment, success, and other terms that relate to having well-being. Samiy means benefit, favor, good luck, dignity, and blessing. For me, those definitions reverberate wonderfully through the more abstract meaning of sami as “light living energy.” Kawsay is life, and the goal of life as described by many Andeans is allin kawsay, living a “good life.” Another common term is sumaq kawsay, which in its various meanings describes living a “beautiful,” or “good,” or “amazing” life. So that is our aspiration: to be the owners of sami and live in ayni, and thus to cultivate the most amazing life we can.

Now let’s look at the word hucha. What are its common definitions? Sin, offense, crime, infraction, guilt/guilty, error, fault, transgression. Reducing the flow of sami—creating hucha—reduces our well-being. These terms bring some clarity to the consequences of our creating hucha: We have made some kind of energetic mistake or caused some measure of energetic offense such that we have transgressed the codes of human moral conduct and the universal energetics of ayni. We have reduced our own, and perhaps someone else’s, well-being. It is interesting that the word “hucha” is part of all kinds of Quechua terms relating to justice, law, and even the criminal justice system. As examples, the term hucha churaq means “prosecutor” and hucha hatarichiy means “lawsuit.” From the mystical point of view, I think it is not too much to say that when we create hucha we are at fault or guilty of violating personal, societal, universal, and even energetic “laws.” Hucha (as filtered or reduced sami) weakens our inner equilibrium, lessens our sense of contentment and happiness, and diminshes our dignity and generosity of spirit.

I don’t know about you, but for me, knowing the common “backstory” to the terms sami and hucha brings a lot of “flavor” to their mystical meanings. We all create hucha for our own reasons, most of which relate to our personal shadow wounds, limiting beliefs, emotional proclivities, and such. When we create hucha, we, and not anyone else, have transgressed the law of ayni. That is why we say the Andean mystical tradition is a path of personal responsibility. However, it does us no good to blame ourselves; instead we must be self-aware enough to notice our lack of ayni and the reasons we are creating hucha. Then we can take responsibility for ourselves, and we can use our practices to transform the state of our energy. While there is no moral overlay on energy, we can see how there might be moral overlay on how and why we create hucha—we are all developing human beings and have work to do on ourselves. As don Ivan Nuñez del Prado explains [slightly edited for clarity], “I think hucha is like a [inner] filter. Your personal background, family background, all of that is a filter, [which gets] in the way of the light of your Inka Seed. So, you have a source of light within you and then what comes out will go through the filter, what comes out is a projection of the filter [rather than of your] light.” Our filters are mostly all the unconscious ways we are holding limiting beliefs, living from judgment about ourselves and others, deflecting our pain, projecting out onto others what we refuse to see in ourselves, and running the energy of many other kinds of largely unconscious psychological and emotional dynamics.

As we relate to the world, the state of our own poq’po (think of this as our psyche) is of the utmost importance. We bring self-inquiry to our own state of being, for we can only know the world through our own perceptions. That is why the paqos tell us that what is heavy for you, may not be for me, and vice versa. It is why don Juan says, “If something is heavy for you, you need to trust yourself. It’s heavy for you! Even if your teacher comes to you and says, it feels light. No, it’s heavy for you.”

Reducing our hucha means increasing our karpay: our personal power. Our personal power relates to how easily we can access our human capacities (all of which are held as potentials within our Inka Seed) and how well we use our capacities. Sami and hucha are ways we display and use our personal power. Remember, hucha is sami—life-force energy—although it is slowed, filtered, or blocked. But make no mistake, hucha is a “power” to the same degree that sami is a “power.” Don Ivan provides a good explanation about this: “Power is the capacity to do something. You can use hucha or sami. When you grow, it is good to [reduce] your hucha because you release the [blocking energy of] past mistakes and everything and raise the level of sami in you. Then your actions will be more elevated. But you can do things with hucha. It’s not a moral judgment.”

It’s all energy. What partially, although impactfully, determines the quality of our lives is the proportion of hucha to sami in our poq’po and how we are “driving” either or both of those energies. Our core energy practices are designed to reduce the amount of hucha we have and that we create, and how skilled we are at using our energy in the world. Don Juan reminds us: “You always have the capacity. You can release all the hucha you have. Remember hucha sapa? If you are a hucha sapa, you have a lot of hucha. You focus on your Inka Seed, and you have the power to release it. Your capacity is determined by your Inka Seed, which has no hucha. Your Inka Seed is the place in which you have the potential and capacity to drive the energy.” And this is why so many of our practices—saminchakuy, hucha miqhuy, wachay, wañuy, and others—are focused on reducing our hucha (and thus increasing our sami). By using these practices, we have the means to redistribute our energy by transforming hucha back into its natural state of sami or releasing stubborn hucha to Mother Earth, as she will help us by digesting our hucha and returning it to its sami state. We have spirit assistance and our many energy practices to help us drive energy from our Inka Seed (our highest self), increase our sami, and improve our ability to live a good and happy life—at both the worldy/mundane and spiritual/mystical levels.

Wañuy: An Alternative Use

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ 2 Comments

If you have taken the three-part Andean training with me, don Juan Nuñez del Prado or his son don Ivan, or other teachers trained by them, you will remember that as part of the Chaupi training we learn the practice of wañuy. This Quechua verb literally means “to die.” The practice is used to release any fear we have around our own physical mortality. When we release our hucha, or heavy energy, from around possible forms of our death, we can meet death as a friend. We can celebrate our return to our paqarina—our place of origin, which is with Taytanchis or God, or whatever term you choose to use for First Consciousness or Source.

The beauty and power of Andean practices are that they get to the fundamental dynamics of energy. They are not wholly dependent on form, nor are they restricted by a singular intent. So, while this is a practice used to prepare us for a conscious death, it may be used productively for other purposes. This blog post offers ways to adapt this practice to alleviate any fear, anxiety, or worry.

In the traditional practice, we start by initiating a saminchakuy, and we tune the sami to munay. We may do a general hucha-release of our wasi (poq’po and body), and take the munay through most of our mystical “eyes”—the ñawis—to release hucha from those in which it accumulates. (There is no hucha at the sonqo ñawi.) Then we choose a possible death, that is, we choose one way we think we may be likely to die. (Because there are so many possible ways we can “drop the body,” this is a practice that we do repeatedly.) We begin a visualization: a conscious, creative envisioning of the process of death. For the purposes of illustration, let’s say it is heart disease.  We move slowly from the present moment forward in time, feeling the impact of what unfolds: our initial diagnosis, our worsening state, our slow decline, our physical challenges or suffering, and such. There is no emotional avoidance. We immerse ourselves in the process. We engage our inner vision, our imagination, and, most importantly, our feelings. As we touch points of hucha, we release that heaviness into the saminchakuy stream of munay and give it to Mother Earth to transform.

In addition to releasing the hucha of our imagined physical and emotional decline, we may also become aware of the seqes—the energetic cords—that stubbornly attach us to our lives. We may struggle with letting go of our body. We may feel resistance to leaving our families and loved ones. We may face obstinate attachments to our status, achievements, money, or possessions. As we experience these resistances, we put any of that hucha into the saminchakuy flow as well. Eventually, when we feel as free of hucha as possible and we are ready to drop the body, we see ourselves do just that: our soul and spirit exit the body and we return “home.”

We are complete with the practice when we feel we have released our fears or hucha around that specific death scenario. Of course, we may have to do several sessions to achieve that level of personal freedom. Then we go on to deal with the next type of death we feel hucha around.

When I teach this practice, it is inevitable that some students feel resistance, or outright alarm. The most common questions are, “Isn’t doing this calling in that death? “Are we in danger of creating that reality?” No, we are not. I usually make two main points. First is the focus of our intent. We acknowledge that “energy follows intent” according to the Andean sacred arts. However, our intent is not to die or to die in any particular way, but to be free of fear about any possible way we may die whenever our life span is up. Our intent is hucha release—to be able to pass from this body with beauty infusing our souls whenever our death does occur and in whatever way it happens.

Second, we are giving ourselves a lot of credit if we think a half-hour visualization, despite how richly detailed and feeling-oriented it may be, will create reality. If that were the case, we would all be healthy, rich, famous, and sipping umbrella drinks on the beach of Waikiki. (Or whatever you feel the pinnacle of life looks like.) To be more realistic, we are a mess of contradictions, because our conscious and unconscious (shadow) are driving our energy moment to moment in conflicting ways, expressing our light and our darkness. We have a lot of hucha, which creates all kind of energetic filters that reduce our power. One relatively short visualization session is not going to cause us to acquire the coherence and personal power to call in any fixed version of reality. None of us (or at least no one I have heard of or know of) is free of power-reducing filters, and so none of us has mastered driving energy perfectly, such that a single visualization creates that reality.

Which is why, I like to think, the paqos in their wisdom designed a practice such as wañuy. It is a kind of hucha-filter cleaner or remover, one of many the tradition teaches. Although the paqos may have created the practice to help us deal with hucha around our mortality, I believe it can be adapted usefully to deal with many other common kinds of possible hucha, particularly fear, anxiety, and worry.

Let’s look at how we can adapt this practice to deal with those and similar kinds of issues. Let’s use one of the most common fears as our example: fear of public speaking. The way to adapt the process is to use it in a way that is similar to other forms of fear-reduction—desensitization. Wañuy does this in a purely energetic way, but I believe combining it with action out in the world is a way to supercharge its effects. Ayni, after all, is intention followed by action.

We would begin the way every wañuy session does: begin a saminchakuy, tune the sami to munay (love energy), and clear our wasi of as much hucha as possible. Then we begin the visualization. We move through it step by step, encompassing the entire process and releasing hucha related to any part of that process. We might begin by seeing ourselves accepting the invitation to deliver a speech, preparing the talk, researching and writing it, and then practicing it at home. We release any hucha into the stream of our saminchakuy. We continue by visualizing ourselves dressing to go deliver the talk, driving to the venue, being greeted by the host, seeing the audience as we walk onto the stage, being introduced, and then giving the talk. At every point where we feel hucha, we put it into the saminchakuy. The visualization process ends when we finish the talk and receive applause. We might have to do this process many times before we find our fear of even thinking about giving a public talk diminishing.

Sometimes we might not see results if we go right into visualizing the whole event. It is just too emotionally overwhelming. If that is the case, another way to use wañuy is to undertake, over time, a series of sessions that each desensitize us to portions of the process. We “chunk” the process and do as many sessions as necessary to clear hucha from one small part of the activity. Then we work on the next chunk of the process. And so on, until finally we can visualize the entire process without feeling any significant fear.

We can follow this protocol for any kind of hucha and emotional heaviness that has an unusually tight grip on us: anxiety, guilt, shame, worry, judgement, dislike of or shadow projection onto a person or group, shadow triggers . . . The paqos have provided us a way to release these kinds of emotional heaviness in a non-analytic, non-therapeutic way. Using wañuy, we are tuning ourselves purely energetically, although the effects reverberate through our emotional and physical selves.

Ideally, we will want to follow the release of our emotional heaviness with action in a way that tests the results out in the real world. While not everyone would follow up releasing their fear of public speaking by engaging in a public talk, we can easily find ways to put ourselves in similar situations and check in on whether we are indeed free of anxiety or fear. We might volunteer to give a presentation at work, or offer a toast or give a eulogy. In other, more concrete cases, such as a fear of elevators or snakes, we certainly can put our energy work to the test. We deliberately take an elevator or go to the zoo to see snakes. We might still feel nervous, but we ideally will be free of our normal anxiety or fear. If we find we are not, then we can always engage in further wañuy sessions.

We often don’t think of wañuy outside of the context for which it is used in our training. But it is a hugely adaptable practice that can be a powerful tool for helping us to stop avoiding aspects of the world and instead reengage with life in more expansive, confident ways.

The Yanantin of Yachay and Llank’ay

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

The Andean sacred tradition identifies three primary human powers. They are, in order of prioritization, munay (feelings), llank’ay (action), and yachay (knowledge). I find it interesting that although yachay is at the bottom of that hierarchy of three human powers, it is the first human power that we develop in our training. Our training begins with understanding the Andean cosmovision and energy dynamics, especially the core dynamic of ayni, or reciprocity.

From the Andean view, understanding fuels action. And through that action and the resulting experience, understanding deepens. We tend to translate yachay into English as knowledge, reason, logic, or understanding. However, for the Andeans, and specifically for the paqos, yachay has a more precise definition: our accumulated knowledge as gained through personal action, and thus through direct personal experience. Llank’ay, or action, is embedded in the very meaning of yachay, and vice versa.

In this way, yachay and llank’ay form a yanantin. A yanantin is a pairing of entities, items, or energies that appear to be oppositional or contradictory but are complementary. The two are relationally bound one to the other to create a unified whole, such as night and day, up and down, male and female. If we probe into the yachay and llank’ay human powers, we will see that everywhere in our work with the Andean sacred arts, they are yanantin in nature.

Our training usually begins with learning the core energy dynamic of ayni. In the larger Andean society, ayni is defined as reciprocity and explained using the phrase, “today for me, tomorrow for you.” It is the personal and social ethic of giving and receiving for mutual benefit. In the sacred arts, as in the social sphere, ayni means we do not just think about helping someone or promise that we will, we express our willingness and we follow through.

In the sacred arts, the meaning of ayni expands from a social energetic reciprocity with our fellow human beings to energetic reciprocity with nature, spirit beings, and the world of living energy. Ayni is a two-way flow of energy: a back-and-forth flow between the two entities. But it must be initiated by one of the parties to get the energy moving. That initiating dynamic is what we will look at here.

Our focused awareness—our intention—moves energy, or as don Juan Nuñez del Prado often phrases it, “drives the kawsay.” When he uses the word “drive,” he does not mean controlling energy or willfully forcing energy in one direction or another. Rather, he is suggesting only that our intention can influence energy, gently nudging it here and there in our favor. Despite the maxim that “energy must follow intention,” don Juan and the paqos tell us that intention by itself is not enough to drive ayni. We are not going to think (yachay) the living energy into partnering with us in this dance of ayni. We must act (llank’ay) as well. We want to move energy in an intentional way that is useful to us. This takes both yachay and llank’ay working in unison.

One way to view this yachay–llank’ay initiating dynamic is through the following sequence of practice. Ayni as “intention put into action” arises from feelings and will (with “will” meaning choice). Ayni as intention is informed by our sonqo ñawi (feelings, including munay), our Inka Seed (the seat of our will), and our siki ñawi—an energetic center, or “eye,” at the root of the body, where the capacity is atiy. Atiy is, among other things, how we measure our personal power. Checking in on our abilities through the siki ñawi, we ask, “Do I have the capacities available to realize my intention through action?” Asking and answering this question is process governed by yachay. If we believe we have sufficient personal power to achieve our intention, then we go to the qosqo ñawi, the mystical center at the belly. Ayni as action is influenced mostly by the qosqo ñawi. This is the energy center where we enlist our khuyay (passion, motivation) and follow through on our intention by taking action.

From this sequence, we can see how the prerequisite for engaging in ayni is a well-developed yachay: our knowledge about ourselves. We must be able to honestly assess the state of our feelings, will, atiy (capacities), khuyay (motivation) and karpay (amount of personal power). Ideally, through yachay we undertake a realistic, honest self-assessment. That assessment then determines whether we go on to initiate our llank’ay energy and take action.

This yanantin of yachay and llank’ay comes into play even when ayn is not involved: when, for example, we have a completely spontaneous energetic or mystical experience. During such an event, we will be fully immersed in it perceptually and viscerally; we will not be actively processing it intellectually or analytically. Doing so would keep us from fully experiencing it. Once the event is over, however, we might seek to understand its nature and value. If it has meaning for us, the lived experience itself and its meaning are incorporated into our yachay. Remember, yachay is knowledge gained through personal experience. So, that experience enlarges our yachay. This expanded yachay adds to our kanay—who we know ourselves to be— and increases our karpay—our persona power, which is our capacity to act in the world day by day, moment by moment.

Although yachay literally means to have knowledge of or to know, don Juan reminds us that it also means “to learn, to find out, to have skill, to realize, to have experience, to have wisdom.” Yachay as one of the three human powers is the capacity at the kunka ñawi, or the mystical eye at the throat. It is paired there with rimay: the power to communicate with honesty, integrity, and a sense of the sacred self. Rimay is entwined with our yachay and llank’ay: we express who we are because of what we have learned throughout our lives from our first-hand personal experiences. Ideally, over a lifetime of experience we move from knowledge to understanding to wisdom. Part of what Andean pasqos mean when they say they want to be able to “work with both hands” is to work simultaneously with both the right-side yachay aspect of the sacred path and the left-side llank’ay aspects of it. Working this yanantin fuels their aspiration to be hamuta: a wise man or woman.