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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.

On Being a Paqo

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

“What does it mean to be a paqo?” “Is it okay to call ourselves paqos?” These are common questions asked by people interested in the Andean sacred arts or who are studying the tradition. They are curious about the different kinds of paqos, how paqos go about their daily lives, what their responsibilities are, and the like. In this post I have gathered together many of these questions and provided my answers to them. The information I provide is my own understanding and knowledge of this tradition, and so nothing I share should be taken as anything more than my opinion.

Question: There are two levels of paqos: pampa mesayoqs and alto mesayoqs. What are the differences?

Pampa mesayoq and alto mesayoq are not designations of “levels,” but simply different kinds of paqos. They practice in similar ways, with a few distinct differences that characterize them as two different types of paqos. Pampa mesayoq can be translated, or understood to mean, the keeper of the earth signs or low signs. Alto mesayoq means keeper of the high signs. Both kinds of paqos share common knowledge, such as of making and offering haywarisqas (despachos), carrying a misha (mesa), healing, and so on. The main difference is that, according to the “old ways,” an alto mesayoq has mystical capacities that a pampa mesayoq does not. For example, alto mesayoqs can “talk” directly to spirit beings, such as an apu (mountain spirit), whereas a pampa mesayoq can only communicate with the spirits indirectly, such as through their misha or dreams. I don’t know if this distinction holds true today, but according to my teacher don Juan Nuñez del Prado, this has always been the main distinction between the two types of paqos.

That said, there is a specific way to think about paqos—both pampa mesayoqs and alto mesayoqs—as having “levels,” because there are stages to their development as paqos. These stages correlate to their accessing and being able to use more personal power. The levels, which are most commonly applied to alto mesayoqs, are: ayllu alto mesayoq, llaqta alto mesayoq, and suyu alto mesayoq. Usually paqos are “in service” to an apu, which is their guiding spirit. The apu teaches them and so helps them develop. All paqos start out in service to an ayllu apu, or an apu whose range of power is limited, such as to a village or town, or a small cluster of them. Hence, they are known as ayllu alto mesayoqs. As they develop their abilities, they may eventually be called by a more powerful apu, usually a llaqta apu, whose range of power reaches wider and farther, encompassing a larger region. Those paqos have reached a stage of development so that their power is equivalent to that of the apu, and so the paqo is recognized as a llaqta alto mesayoq. As paqos continue to learn and grow, they may be called by the greatest of apus, a suyu apu, whose power reaches across a vast region or even an entire nation. Once in service to this highest level of apu, these paqos are recognized as suyu alto mesayoqs.

There are two more stages of growth. After paqos become suyu alto mesayoqs, they might go on to reach the stage of the teqse paqo, or universal paqo. This is a paqo whose power can reach the entire world. Finally, there is the kuraq akulleq, which translates to something like the Elder Chewer of Coca or the Great Chewer of Coca. To my knowledge, at any one time there is one paqo who holds this position. Kuraq akulleq is a title conferred on an exceptionally wise and highly developed alto mesayoq through the consensus of a community. It is not something a paqo calls him- or herself. Rather, it is an honor bestowed by the community in recognition of that paqo’s expertise and experience and how he or she can serve that community.

Q: Who determines what kind of paqo someone is?

I am sure there are many ways to be called to the paqo path, but from what I have heard from the paqos I have interviewed or talked with (through translation), a paqo is called to be a particular type of paqo by an apu, another spirit being who serves as the representative of the apu, or by Taytanchis/God. When a person feels the call, he or she may go to an already established paqo, particularly an alto mesayoq, to discover if the call is real and, if so, what it means. The alto mesayoq may do a coca-leaf reading or consult with his or her misha, the spirit beings, or an apu to determine if this person’s call is to the path of pampa mesayoq or alto mesayoq. Sometimes, the person will intuitively know which type of paqo he or she is being called to serve as. That person has a choice to accept that call or not. For instance, as one paqo told me, when he consulted an established paqo about anomalous (and challenging) events that were happening in his life, the elder paqo told him he was being called to the path of the alto mesayoq. But this young man did not want the responsibility of being an alto mesayoq. If he was going to learn to be a paqo, he felt he would best fit into the role of a pampa mesayoq. And so that is what he trained to become.

Q: Should we call ourselves paqos? What kind of paqo are we training to become?

Although we might call ourselves paqos, what we mean by this is something different from what that title means in the Andes. For most us, we call ourselves paqos simply as a convenient way to indicate that we are learning or practicing the Andean sacred arts. But we are not literally paqos.

Paqo is a term rooted in the Andean culture. Thankfully, this is a culture that freely shares its tradition and practices. So, we are not in danger of cultural appropriation, for the paqos freely share the tradition. Today, they are almost always compensated for their time and expertise. However, payment does not negate the “ayni” (reciprocity) that truly drives their intent. They feel the energy practices are for everyone: we are all human beings and the goal of the work is to consciously evolve our humanness. However, we are at risk of cultural appropriation if we think of ourselves as either a pampa mesayoq or an alto mesayoq. These are not roles applicable to or recognized within our own cultures, and we risk misunderstanding what we are doing as practitioners of the Andean sacred arts if we think of ourselves as being either of those. An exception might be made if we spend time in the Andes apprenticing with a paqo and that teacher confers one of those titles on us. Still, if we come back to our communities, we no doubt will undertake that role in our own culture in ways that are distinctly different from what it looks like in the Andes.

The bottom line is that we are not training to be paqos except in the most utilitarian sense of using the same techniques that Andean paqos do to foster our ayni and fertilize our personal development. Therefore, calling ourselves “paqos” is mostly just a convenient way to talk among ourselves and acknowledge we are learning and practicing Andean energy dynamics. We likely would not use the term outside of our common community of practitioners since it would be meaningless to anyone else. 

Q: What are the duties and responsibilities of a paqo?

Paqos are first and foremost regular human beings, regular members of their communities. They are farmers, herders, weavers, husbands or wives, parents, friends, and neighbors. Their focus is on the duties and responsibilities that occupy daily life. No paqo whom I ever met is engaged full-time in his or her role as paqo. So, paqos are not spending most of the day communing with the spirit beings or performing rituals. They are going about their mundane daily lives until someone needs them to serve in their paqo capacity. What is that primary capacity? To serve their community.

Being a paqo means a person has knowledge and skills (and hopefully wisdom) that are above and beyond those of other community members. Although most Andeans understand and practice ayni and know how to make a despacho and so on, paqos are specially trained. When they are serving in their paqo capacity, they might be doing any number of things. While they may perform a ritual such as a despacho or undertake a healing, mostly they offer advice or solutions to people’s problems, sometimes gaining insight into the problem and the solution by throwing and reading the coca leaves. They may lead life-transition ceremonies such as the hair-cutting ceremony or some other coming-of-age ceremony,. They might lead a festival on a holy day or perform blessings for a wedding or death. Most of what they do is not “mystical” or “shamanic,” but practical. If I were to choose one primary responsibility that a paqo has it would be to foster social cohesion. That in turns helps ensure the well-being of all the members of the community. Don Benito Qoriwaman called the mountain spirits, the apus, the Runa Micheq, the shepherds of human beings. That, too, is the primary duty of an Andean paqo.

 

What Is an Andean Initiation?

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ 4 Comments

In the Andean mystical tradition, the Quechua word karpay usually is translated as “initiation.” How reliable is that translation? Is that the primary meaning of the word? Just for the heck of it, over the years I have searched this word in various Quechua dictionaries and online translation programs. It never comes up, although recently an artificial intelligence-assisted online translation program returned an answer: its result was that karpay means “tent.” I suspect that is because the Quechua word is close to the spelling and pronunciation of the Spanish word carpa, which does indeed mean “tent.” I also searched spelling variations such as qarpay and qharpay, but if those words appeared, their meanings had no relevance to karpay as initiation. (I purposefully excluded from my online search books, articles, glossaries, and blogs by people who are studying or teaching the Andean sacred arts, as they would likely know the term. I was looking for independent verification of its meaning, and I found none.)

For good measure, in my most recent search I reversed the terms and put the English word “initiation” into a few English-to-Quechua translation programs, and most of them returned the Quechua word qallariy, which was variously defined as “source,” “start,” or “begin.” Ok, fair enough. An Andean initiation opens us to something, such as personal growth or an energetic capacity. But qallariy is not the word the paqos use. 

The failure of this recent search was not surprising, since, as I said, I have done this kind of search before and not found this word. And I knew why. Many years ago, I asked don Juan Nuñez del Prado about its absence, and he explained to me that karpay is a term used only by the paqos within the context of their work in the Andean sacred arts. It does not appear in Quechua dictionaries (as far as we know) because it is not known or used by others.

So, just what are the core meanings of the word karpay? And what is an Andean karpay? We turn to our teachers and the paqos for explanations. This blog post covers the basics, although no doubt there are many other ways to understand the term karpay and carry out a karpay than what I cover in the space allotted here. As always, I focus on the two lineages (Q’ero Wachu and Cuzco Wachu) that I learned through don Juan Nuñez del Prado and on his explanations over the years.

Let’s start with the meaning of the word itself. Karpay can indeed be translated as “initiation,” although that translation provides only a rudimentary sense of the word, which is rich with nuance. There are at least three more expressive definitions of karpay. If we follow a specific sequence of discussing these three meanings, we also will gain an appreciation for what is happening during a karpay.

First, karpay refers to our personal power. We say that our full potential is held within our Inka Muyu, or Inka Seed. Everything that is possible for human beings to express is held as potential in this energetic field. Our work as paqos is wiñay (to germinate) and phutuy (to bloom or flourish): to germinate our Inka Seed, nurture its growth, and bring our human and metaphysical capacities to full flower. Our karpay as our personal power is how much of our Inka Seed potential we have developed and have access to right now. (See my blog post of June 20, 2016, “All About Karpay,” for a specific discussion of karpay as personal power.)

Second, karpay refers to a sharing or transmission of energy between two people or entities (such as a person and a spirit being). Which begs the question, “What energy is being transmitted?” That is the third facet of the definition. What is being shared is some aspect of our personal power, such as our sami or munay. So, the core meaning of the word karpay for paqos means to share their personal power with another person or entity through an energy transmission of some aspect of that personal power. To sum up using the term itself, a karpay (initiation) is the energetic sharing of a particular quality of our karpay (personal power). It is a process somewhat similar to the Hindu practice of shaktipat.

Here’s the rub. During a karpay as an initiation (karpay as verb, we might say), we can only share according to how much personal power we have in the moment (karpay as noun for personal power). If a person is sharing munay during a karpay as an initiation or transmission of energy, that person can only share as much munay as they have developed within. If that person has developed their capacity for love only a little, then they can share only a weak love energy. The same goes for any of our personal powers: if we have a lot of sami available, we can share a lot; if only a little, we can only share a little.

When the sharing is reciprocal—when the teacher shares their energy with the student and then the student also shares their energy with the teacher—it is called a karpay ayni (or sometimes the word order is reversed: ayni karpay). Ayni means interchange or reciprocity. So, a karpay can be either a unidirectional sharing of personal power from a teacher or paqo to a student or other person, or a reciprocal exchange between the two parties.

As I said, a karpay or karpay ayni as a transmission of personal power does not have to involve two human beings. It might occur between a human being and a spirit being or nature being, such as between an apu and a person, or vice versa. The karpay of an apu can, like a human being’s, vary from a small amount of power (as from an ayllu apu) to a midrange level of power (as from a llaqta apu) to an enormous amount of power (as from a suyu apu). Or, a karpay might be a transmission of sami from Creator to a person. There are all kinds of possibilities, but as a transmission or sharing of personal power, any of these situations could be considered a karpay.

So what do karpays among paqos look like in the Andes mountain and Cuzco regions of Peru? I am sure there as many variations as there are paqos, because as a sharing of personal power a karpay can take many forms. I have talked with various paqos who report that during their training they were given karpays that involved being sent by their teacher to spend a night in a cave or on top of a mountain to receive the energies there. Or that they and their teacher went to a specific sacred site or sanctuary and performed certain kinds of energy work there. The most common form of karpay that paqos have shared over the years is the receiving of sami through the immersion in water, such as at the sacred lagoons on the slopes of Apu Ausangate. Karpays tend to be fairly simple in form. That is why I advise people who are working in Peru today to be at least a little wary when a karpay is an elaborate ritual. In the Andes, one of the cardinal rules is to never waste energy. The energy work, even during a karpay, tends to be simple rather than complicated and invisible rather than having much of an outward form.

All that said, there are a few recognized formal ways that karpays are performed or occur. Don Juan has said that according to his paqo teachers, within the overall framework of the tradition there are only five traditional ways to be “initiated” as a paqo. These are the core traditional karpays by which paqos are called to the path or karpays that they receive during their training.

Karpay Ayni: the way of the paña, the right-side practices as taught by don Benito Qoriwaman. The Karpay Ayni takes the form of the teacher sharing their energy with an apprentice and then the apprentice, in ayni, sharing their energy with the teacher. There is another paña karpay form that is unidirectional: the paqo puts his misha (mesa) on the apprentice’s head (or sometimes over their sonqo ñawi or qosqo ñawi) and shares sami with that apprentice to empower them.

Chunpi Away and Ñawi K’ichay: the way of the middle work, the chaupi practices as taught by don Andres Espinosa. The Chunpi Away and Ñawi K’ichay are the joint karpays to become a chunpi paqo (a specialized kind of paqo known for exceptional healing ability, among other abilities). These karpays are done together, and they involve the “opening” of the mystical eyes, the ñawis; and the weaving of the energetic belts, the chunpis. However, it is not really the paqo who is giving this combined karpay. The paqo is pulling up Mother Earth energy, and she is doing the energetic work of the karpay.

Unu Karpay: the way of the lloq’e, the left-side practices as taught by don Melchor Desa. During an Unu Karpay, an apprentice receives the teacher’s sami as transmitted through water. Sometimes hucha is also purposefully released. Often, a paqo teacher will take an apprentice up to the sacred lagoons to do this type of karpay. But it can be done through any source of water.

Kaypacha Qaqya: The extreme left-side karpay is kaypacha qaqya: being struck by lightning and, of course, surviving and being changed. This is one way to be called to the paqo path.

Hanaqpacha Qaqya: A rare kind of this same left-side karpay is being struck by hanaqpacha qaqya, which is to be touched by a metaphorical “lightning” from heaven. As don Juan explained to me, this is not regular lightning, but “lightning” as a white light that comes down from the upper world (from Taytanchis or God) and touches the person, changing them and calling them to the paqo path.

There are other kinds of less formal or traditional karpays. They are more variable because they are used by teachers who happen to do things a certain way. Whatever the form, generally a karpay is some kind of infusion of energy that empowers us in our development. A karpay does not raise us to a new level of personal power; it supports us so that we can better develop through our own efforts. For example, the karpay ayni is the karpay to the fourth level of personal development (which is a stage on the qanchispatañan, a word referring to the stairway of the seven stages of the development of human consciousness). As explained above, usually it is the reciprocal sharing of energy between teacher and apprentice. However, the realization of that karpay to the fourth level comes only when we have our own personal experience of that level of consciousness. That experience might occur soon after the karpay ayni or years or decades later. It all depends on our own developmental process.

To conclude, karpay refers to how much of our personal capacities we have so far developed and thus have available for sharing or bringing to the world. The same word, karpay, refers a form of “initiation” that is a purposeful or even formal sharing of specific aspects of our power to help an apprentice grow on the path or for some other specific reason. It also might be a transmission of energy—usually sami—to us from a spirit being or Creator, or vice versa. At heart, an Andean karpay is an opportunity: it is an infusion of energy that prepares us for growth and even fertilizes our growth. Receiving a karpay or participating in a karpay ayni conditions us to be in more conscious ayni with the living universe, with spirit and nature beings, and with our fellow human beings. Ideally, it helps us develop ourselves so that we can move up the qanchispatañan.

Honoring Mama Allpa

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ 3 Comments

Note: In this post, I refrain from interrupting the flow of ideas with definitions of the Andean practices that are mentioned. If you have been studying the tradition through the two lineages I write about, you will know them. If you are new to the tradition, there are nearly ten years of posts in the archives that you can search for explanations and additional information.earth- Pixabay 5486511_1280

I am closing out this year by writing about hucha, “heavy” energy, and how our practice is to transform our own hucha back into sami, the light living energy that empowers us. Let us end a year that has felt heavy in so many respects—from climate disasters to war and conflict to a spreading politics of cynicism and even violence—by shifting our perspective from feelings to action. Because the good news is that we do not have to deal with our hucha alone. As we close out the year, let us honor Mother Earth, who is always available to assist us.

Of course, we always start by taking personal responsibility for the state of our own energy. We all have hucha, and if we have studied the Andean sacred arts, we have tools to deal with it. When we block or slow down sami—the life-force energy—and so create hucha, we have our core daily practice of saminchakuy. To undertake a deeper clearing of hucha or to reduce hucha we feel between ourselves and others, we have hucha miqhuy. If we are carrying hucha from our personal past, we have wachay. If we have restructured our mystical body by weaving the chunpis (energetic “belts”), we have heightened our capacity to move energy upward through our ñawis, our mystical eyes. As our hucha moves up, it becomes more refined, dissipating its heaviness and regaining more of its lightness. This refinement improves the energetic quality of our wasi: our body and poq’po.

There is one constant in all these practices: Mother Earth. She is called both Pachamama and Mama Allpa. However, I prefer to make a distinction: Pachamama is the Mother of the Cosmos, of the entire created world, whereas Mama Allpa is the sacred being that is the planet Earth. There is a reason Andeans call the Earth by both names, but in the interest of brevity, I will not explain these nuances and will simply state my preference for calling her Mama Allpa.  

Mama Allpa has no hucha. Nor do any of the creatures of the natural world. Only human beings block or reduce the flow of the life-force energy and so create hucha. But Mama Allpa is our greatest ally in dealing with our hucha. She is known as the Great Eater of Hucha. Although ayni—reciprocity, giving and receiving—is the natural law of the universe, Mama Allpa is always ready to receive our hucha without asking anything of us in return. We do not have to earn or deserve her help. Our relationship with Mama Allpa is not one of chhalay, meaning it is not transactional. She does not require a bargain. She gives without condition. She is part of a tawantin that freely sustains all life: the universal spirit beings of the Earth (Mama Allpa), Sun (Tayta Inti), Wind/Air (Tayta Wayra), and Water (Mama Unu). From this tawantin of life-force power we are given our hanchi, our physical body, and they freely sustain us physically and energetically throughout the span of our lives. Of course, if we are sensitive and generous, we always honor these spirit beings and choose to be in ayni with them. But as the foundations of life, they do not require anything of us.

Although I said that only human beings create hucha, it is useful to take a moment to understand that hucha also can be seen as the natural cycle of life. As don Juan Nuñez del Prado explains, the life cycle begins with sami and continues in a long arc of increasingly more robust expressions of sami until a peak pear-Pixabay 3519397_1280is reached. Then the arc curves downward, with a continuing reduction of sami, which we can see as hucha in that it is the slowing of life-force energy. Finally, the physical life force is extinguished. A seed geminates, a seedling grows, a plant flourishes until it reaches the apex of its growth, perhaps flowering and fruiting, and then slowly, over time, it begins to lose life force, until it collapses to the ground and its physical constituents are reabsorbed into the earth. We are in relationship with Mother Earth in the same way. She is one of the tawantin of powers that support and sustain the body in which we exist. When our life force is extinguished, our body returns to her. She asks nothing of us during this cycle of life.

In our hucha-transformation energy practices, however, we understand that we are in a kind of ayni with her. Mama Allpa’s core specialties are life, growth, evolution, change, transformation, support, and empowerment. When we give her our hucha, we are giving her an energy that she welcomes. Don Juan and some of the paqos have said that our hucha is “food” for her—one of her favorite foods! When we give her our hucha through such practices as saminchakuy and hucha miqhuy, she takes that slow life-force energy and performs her magic, returning it to its natural vibrant state. This may seem an unusual or unfair exchange to us with our Western mindset. We think of the things we “excrete” as dirty or negative. But Mother Earth is the great composter—one of her most robust powers is transformation through recycling and redistribution. Dung becomes fertilizer. The decaying wood of a tree revitalizes her soil with nutrients. The dead husk of a beetle becomes components for new life. From this perspective, our hucha is another form of life-force energy. It is only when we forget that hucha is sami (simply slow sami) that we misrepresent Mother Earth’s largesse to us by thinking we are hurting or burdening her by giving her our hucha to transform when we cannot fully do that for ourselves.

As don Juan has said, “Mother Earth is a co-creator with the cosmos. She fuels our evolution. She recycles our hucha, helps propel us forward. She feeds us [through the food she helps us grow, the animals whose lives she supports] and we feed her hucha.” In hucha miqhuy, a similar dynamic is in play. Don Juan says of hucha miqhuy, “We take control [of our hucha] following her example. We learn to recycle energy as Mother Earth recycles things. We become Mother Earth’s ally, helping her to digest human beings’ heavy energy.” In both practices—saminchakuy and hucha miqhuy—our hucha is a form of ayni that we engage in with Mother Earth.

Just about everything in our practice involves Mother Earth coming to our aid and enabling our greater well-being. For example, the energetic belts we weave into our mystical and physical body—the chunpis—are earth energy. It is not the chunpi paqo alone who creates the belts. Neither are the mullu khuyas the chunpi paqo uses to weave the belts responsible for their creation. The chunpis are created through the power of Mother Earth’s sami. Before the chunpi paqo begins the karpay to weave the belts, he or she connects with and pulls up Mother Earth’s energy, and that is what is used to create the belts. As don Juan has said, “The belts are not ‘natural’ [meaning, naturally a part of us], but are an energetic addition that improves us.” That addition is Mother Earth’s energy, the sami of the one who lovingly and without condition sustains us and supports us in cultivating ourselves.

In the left-side work—the lloq’e aspect of the tradition—we even plant our Inka Muyu (Inka Seed) in the earth. Our Inka Seed is an energetic structure and information field that holds within it our full potential. ItEye in Leaves or Earth - Pixabay ai-generated-7783062_1280 is the Self, the core “I” that is both our humanity and our divinity. To use the Hindu terms, it is both Atman (God Within) and Brahman (God Without). We literally use intention to move our Inka Muyu outside of our body and plant it in the earth. Once in the ground, Mother Earth helps fuel our Inka Muyu’s development. We could say she is fertilizing it with her sami. What she is really fertilizing is our capacity for self-inquiry, self-awareness, clarity of intention, and efficiency of action—all the aspects of the self that help us climb the qanchispatañan, the stairway of the seven levels of human consciousness. According to the tradition as passed on by don Benito Qoriwaman, we are under no obligation to develop ourselves. However, if we choose to, we can refine our consciousness and energy until we reach the sixth level of human consciousness—that of the enlightened human being—and even the seventh level—that of a human with godlike capacities. We do not undertake the process of our expansion alone. Mother Earth lovingly helps us.

As we close out this year, I invite you to join me in appreciating—in celebrating—Mother Earth and all she does for us. We honor her. As we go into the new year, no matter what is going on in the world and how much hucha we feel around us—we know that we are free to consciously condition our own inner state and that we have help. Mother Earth is always assisting us, feeding us, even energetically fertilizing us to be the most glorious human beings we can be.

Postscript: This discussion would not be complete without mentioning ecology, so I am addressing it briefly here. We are in an environmental crisis because of our lack of ayni in caring for the natural world. We have polluted the land, oceans, and air. We have damaged or obliterated vast swaths of the habitats of animals, birds, and insects. We are creating conditions that threaten our own well-being. The Andean tradition teaches that we must see reality as it really is, and the reality is that we are degrading and even destroying much of the natural world as we know it. We can make no excuses for ourselves.

The reality also is that Mother Earth will be just fine. The rallying cry of “Save the Earth” misstates the problem. What we are seeking is to save ourselves. Our lack of ayni with Mother Earth may hasten our own demise and that of other species as we create environmental conditions less conducive to human life and other forms of life. Our lack of ayni, to be brutally realistic, is both potentially suicidal and murderous. However, Mother Earth will survive whatever we do. She has persisted through countless environmental stresses and ecosystem collapses from Ice Ages to massive asteroid strikes. She absorbs death, and she fuels life. Gone are the velociraptors and the wooly mammoths, and here are the birds and elephants. A thousand years ago there was a desert, and today there is a verdant forest. Mama Allpa— wondrous Creatrix that she is—adjusts, survives, and thrives.