“You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7 X 10^18 joules of potential energy—enough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.”
―Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

How’s that quotation for a statement of your energy potential! You have the force of 30 hydrogen bombs within! Bryson is talking about the energy contained within your physical body. When you add in your poq’po, your potential energy is unlimited.  In the Andean mystical tradition, you learn how to both liberate and harness your “personal power,” but Bryson’s question remains: What “point” do you wish to make through your energy exchanges?

In other words, Why are you a paqo?

Have you ever asked yourself this question, never mind definitively answered it?  I mean, what’s the point of choosing to practice this tradition if you have not ever wondered, “Why this and not that?”

Without at least meditating upon this question, you are likely following a whim, because there can be no commitment to that which you don’t consciously choose. Practicing as a paqo presupposes not only having a commitment but also following through on it.

It’s perfectly okay if you are exploring the mystical terrain. A little Andean romp today, a foray into Buddhism tomorrow, a detour into Celtic magic next week. Roaming the inner landscape without a map or destination can be fun, and occasionally it’s even useful. It’s perfectly desirable to satisfy your spiritual and metaphysical curiosity. But making a commitment is making a point. You expect a result. And you undertake that practice to benefit from that result.

So what’s the point of your Andean practice?

If you don’t have one, you might want to spend some time deciding upon one. Or two or three. . . .

If I had to declare one overall goal of the tradition, I would say it is:

• Perceiving, experiencing, and become a master of your energy body so that you can direct your intentions to drive energy consciously and with predictable outcomes.

Encapsulated in this thematic statement are all the subgoals of the tradition:

• Learning ayni (reciprocity), which is the organizing force of the universe.
• Consciously evolving to become a more fully realized (enlightened) human being.
• Fostering well-being in your own life and in the lives of others. Living with greater joy, health, creativity, awareness and whatever else you deem necessary to your well-being.

If we reduce each of these statements down to a single word, it would be ayni. Ayni is the “golden rule” of the universe and, thus, of human life. Don Benito Qoriwaman said that we don’t have to wonder what Christ will say to us when he returns in the Second Coming. We know what he will say because the metaphysical God has always given humankind the same message no matter what guise he takes when he makes a physical appearance in our world. That message is ayninaquichis, or “Practice ayni.” Making ayni is not only a results-driven materialistic undertaking, but a spiritual pursuit and an energetic practice.

Ayni is an energy exchange. Energy is driven by intention. So we come full circle back to the question of what “point” you want to make in your practice—of the Andean tradition or any other mystical or spiritual tradition. I can’t answer that question for you, but I do urge you to spend some time thinking about it. Here are some questions to help you drill down to your underlying desires:

• Why did you choose the Andean tradition over other traditions?
• How committed are you to the practices of this path?
• What results do you expect from your practice? Your intentions drive energy, so examine if your intentions are coming to fruition.
• Are you experiencing those results? If not, why not?
• What in yourself and your life is still “heavy?”
• If there is hucha (heaviness) in yourself or your life, where is it coming from? What are you doing about it?
• What in yourself or your life is “light”?
• If there is sami (lightness) in your life, where is it coming from? What are you doing to maintain or increase it? Where else do you want to bring that light?
• What about the tradition or its practices don’t you understand? Where can you find answers to your questions? Do you trust the answers?
• What are the most compatible (masintin) relationships and energy flows in your life?
• What are the most incompatible (yanantin) relationships and energy flows in your life?
• Is there hucha around the yanantin relationships and energy flows? If so, what can you do to get that stuck energy going again? Do you know the practices that can help?
• How are you consciously evolving? If you track the evolution of the self, what are the most significant changes you have experienced? What within you or your life is not evolving? Do you know what to do to re-energetize your inner evolutionary process?
• Do you have an ayllu (community) to share your practice with? If not, how can you create one?

These are only a few of the many questions you can ask yourself about the “point” of your practice. At the launch of this new year, I invite you to do some internal housekeeping about your Andean practice and your life in general. The benefits can be enormous not only for you, but, since we are all connected energetically, for your family, community and the world as well.

(Note: To work with the chunpis and ñawis, you have to have undergone the Chunpi Away and Ñawi K’ichay karpay.)

In the Andean tradition, intention drives energy and words have power. Rimay is the energetic capacity that sits at the throat center—the kunka chunpi—and that infuses your words with power. It is “right speech” in the sense that you speak with truth, clarity, and integrity. But it is more than that, too. Rimay is a vibration that can affect the material world.

When you are using your capacity for rimay, you are speaking from personal experience and knowledge, not from second-hand experience or knowledge (called willay). You speak what you know, you express your true nature, you articulate lucidly and precisely. Rimay is not about being polite, socially or politically correct, or overly positive  and inspirational. It is about personal power and energetic integrity. Rimay is an energy that perfectly expresses verbally who you truly are, moment by moment, no matter what the situation or what you are feeling.

Your words have more power when your intentions are clear. If you know who you are and what you believe, then your intentions and spoken words are in alignment. There is little room for ambiguity or misunderstanding.

And, since words have power, rimay can also mean knowing what not to say or when not to speak. Holding your tongue can be an art!

If you have a lot of hucha at the kunka chunpi, your words will not have power. Or they will have a power in opposition to your intent. To discern your own capacity for rimay, pay attention not only to your thoughts but to what comes out of your mouth. Do you tend to be pessimistic? Negative? Judgmental? If that is the vibration you are sending out into the world—if that is the way you are pushing the kawsay through speech—then that is the world you will experience. It is the law of ayni, or reciprocity.

So, pay attention to your verbal tendencies. Do you find yourself saying, “I can’t. . .,” “That won’t work. . .,” “It will never happen. . .,” “I’ll never. . .,” and other self-defeating statements? If so, then you know that you have hucha accumulated in your poq’po, and probably a lot of it at your throat center.

Andean paqo Fredy “Puma” Quispe Singona once told me “Words are beings. Be careful who you are calling to sit in council with you.” Those are wise words. Are you calling in the beings of “No,” “Can’t,” “Won’t,” and other potentially defeatist beings?  If so, begin a deep saminchakuy of your poq’po, working especially thoroughly at your kunka chunpi and its mystical “eye,” the qolqe ñawi.

Rimay is not false speech, so it is not about being falsely positive. If you feel down, blue, discouraged, disappointed, angry, it’s in your energetic truth and integrity to express those feelings (without dumping them on others). You have to be who you truly are in the moment, and occasionally that will be someone who is impatient, hurt, troubled. The key here is to be “in the moment.” To get the energy out of you in a timely way so it doesn’t become stuck and create hucha. The problems arise when self-defeating words become a habitual pattern. You can quickly become blind to your habits and, as a result, lose your qawaq ability—the capacity to see yourself and reality as it really is. When that happens, you get stuck in a rut, lose coherence in your energy body, and accumulate hucha.

When you cleanse your poq’po and especially your kunka chunpi, speech and verbalization can be infused with almost miraculous power. Juan Nuñez del Prado tells of walking in the marketplace with one of his teachers, don Melchor Desa, who was carrying a package of goods he had purchased. A thief bumped into him, grabbed his package, and ran off. Don Melchor stopped and directed his voice toward the fleeing man, blasting a sound toward him. The thief stopped, frozen in place. Don Melchor walked up to him, took his package back, and then touched the thief on the shoulder. He immediately become reanimated and ran off. This is an example of a master of rimay!

If you have spent any time exploring shamanic and mystical traditions, you have heard a thousand times that words are sacred or that words have power. Too often these sentiments are put into practice through affirmations or incantations, as if it is the words themselves that carry the power. They don’t. It is your energy that empowers the words. Words are one of the vibrational materializations of your energetic self. They can only carry the power that you have to give them. If you have accumulated a lot of hucha in your poq’po and especially at your kunka chunpi, you can say affirmations until the cows come home but they will have only a weak or negligible effect on your life. Pay attention to the state of your energy body, and then as one part of your work see how that condition effects your capacity for rimay. As always, if you don’t like what you find, cleanse, cleanse, cleanse. Saminchakuy is always your go-to practice.

 

A Note About Vocabulary: The suffix “-kuna” designates a word as plural in Quechua: apu is singular, apukuna is plural. Apu can be translated as “superior” and in the mystical tradition is most commonly associated with a mountain that is a spirit being. In this respect, it can elevate that spirit being to a level of greatness—to the appellation “Lord.” Apu Ausangate refers to the Spirit Lord of Ausantage. Among other meanings, the word teqse means “the most fundamental,” and in the mystical system means “universal,” as in the most fundamental energies of the cosmic realm. So, in the post below, the term teqse apukuna can be loosely translated as “the most powerful universal spirit beings” and does not refer specifically to mountain spirits. Taytacha refers to a universal or sacred father, whereas Mamacha refers to a universal or sacred mother.

Sun, moon, wind, water, earth . . . in many mystical traditions, the elements are found not only in the material world, but are spirit beings of the metaphysical world. This is true in the Andean tradition, where there is a hierarchy of seven universal spirit beings called the teqse apukuna.

In order, starting from the highest level of these universal beings is the Taytacha, Father God (usually as Father Jesus Christ); Mamacha, Holy Mother Mary; Mama Killa, Mother Moon; Tayta Inti, Father Sun; Tayta Wayra, Father Wind; Mama Allpa, Mother Earth; Mama Unu, Mother Water.

It might appear odd that two Christian figures occupy the top of the teqse apu list. However, the paqos easily took to Christianity because, at least according to the New Testament, the message is one of love—of munay. In the New Testament, Jesus gives three commandments, each about love: love your God with all your heart, mind and strength; love your neighbors as you love yourself; and love your enemies. This is munay—loved grounded in will, love beyond impulse and subject to conscious choice. Christianity’s Golden Rule to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is ayni, the universal law of the cosmos according to the paqos. Jesus and Mary easily represented the core principle of yanantin (the complement of differences), which most fundamentally in the material world is the universal masculine and feminine.

As teqse apukuna, the Taytacha (Father Jesus) and Mamacha (Mother Mary) are spirit beings we can connect with, learn from, and receive blessings from. As an example, when Q’ero paqo don Manuel Q’espi was ill with kidney problems he went to Wanka, an ancient temple site of healing. There the Taytacha appeared to him and healed him. He also told don Manuel to go to Q’oyllurit’i, a sacred sanctuary in the mountains, and there he would give don Manuel the karpay, or initiation, of the tukuymunaynioq, the karpay of munay. Don Manuel went to Q’oyllurtit’i and there had a vision of Christ, who bestowed the karpay on him.

During the past year I have been working deeply with the Taytacha and Mamacha, and I can attest to how generous they are with their blessings!

The other teqse apukuna also bestow blessings. As a paqo, you can work with them in any number of ways and for various reasons. For example, you can determine what capacities are lacking or undeveloped within you and work with the associated teqse apu to learn those capacities, heal, and grow. If you need flexibility and openness, fluidity and strength, you might work with Tayta Wayra, Father Wind. Or perhaps Mama Unu, Mother Water (she is associated especially with rain).

If you seek to bring light to a dark situation or to an aspect of your unconscious, or if you need to increase your life force and vitality, you could work with Tayta Inti, the sun. You get the picture. You choose the universal elemental being that can fill you with what you lack or strengthen within you what is weak.

How do you work with them? By using saminchakuy or saiwachakuy, respectively the cleansing energy practice or the empowering energy practice. This blog can’t teach you those practices, even though they are simple to learn and you can get an idea of how to do them from the descriptions below. If you know them, use them with the teqse apukuna and see what kind of result you get. Remember, this tradition is practical. We want results! So expect them. If one practice is not working to your expectations, then adjust that practice or try a different one.

Let’s say you want to bring clarity to a situation that is confusing, that is stopping you from moving forward with well-being and joy. You might decide to connect with Tayta Inti, Father Sun, and bring his light into the situation through a saminchakuy practice. Really, what you are doing is bringing his sami into your bubble and pushing out hucha, the result of which is a cleansing that can heighten your ability to see the situation clearly and deal with it better. To use saminchakuy, you could connect with Tayta Inti through any of your mystical eyes (ñawis) or chunpis (energetic belts) and draw in his sami. As you do, you cleanse your bubble of hucha (heavy energy) down through your lower spine (siki ñawi) or feet and feed it to Mama Allpa, Mother Earth.

You could use saiwachakuy to empower yourself. Perhaps you are up for a promotion or you are unemployed and seeking a new job. In either situation, you might want to empower yourself. You might be seeking stability, strength, focus, concentration, nurturing, and support to grow in new ways and directions. You might then decide to work with Mama Allpa, Mother Earth. In saiwachauy, you connect through your bubble to her and pull up her sami, filling your bubble with her sami.

Saminchakuy is always about cleansing and saiwachakuy about empowering your energy bubble, and you can use these practices with any of the teqse apukuna. As in all Andean practices, you use your intention. You intend to connect with a particular teqse apu, you communicate with him or her and ask for what you need or want, and you expect that in the spirit of ayni you will both give and receive. In both saminchahuy and saiwachakuy you give your hucha as a gift and receive the teqse apu’s sami as a gift.

This is just a taste of how you can work with the teqse apukuna. Find your own way of getting to know them, for instance by “tasting” their energies through a seqe you extend from your qosqo. Find your own way of working with them, using the Andean techniques you know and molding them to fit your needs. There are no mistakes in the Andean tradition. There is only the state of your energy and the clarity of your intention. Love is met with love. Giving is met with giving. The teqse apukuna are there, waiting to get to know you. Begin introducing yourself to them today.

In one of my recent blog posts, “Valuing the Body,” I talked about the importance of the body to the Andean tradition. In this post, I extend that topic to discuss our humanness.

If you have taken a workshop in the Andean sacred arts with Juan and Ivan, or with me, you know that we stress that everything we are learning as paqos is for one purpose—to live fully in the human world with greater well-being.

Why is that goal so difficult to wrap your mind around?

Of course, I am assuming a lot here, so forgive me if you are not a paqo that constantly forgets that! I know I do. And I see in working with people in trainings that it is a point I have to make over and over. It’s so important that I am stressing it again here.

As paqos we are not striving to develop supernatural powers, to overcome the ties that bind us to our bodies in order to live as “spirit beings,” to drop the mind to reach nirvana, to be shamans who travel the multidimensional realms, or to be anything else except to be exactly who we are!

Who are we? Human beings.

That is definitely not a sexy metaphysical marketing statement or enticing advertising angle, but it’s the teaching of the old masters. It’s what Juan, Ivan, I and other teachers of Juan’s lineage teach. You are human being. Be that first! Fully, fully, fully human. Gloriously human.

Instead of seeing yourself as a spiritual being having a physical experience, try flipping that equation on its head and work toward being a consciously evolved physical being who naturally expresses your spiritual nature.  Making that flip makes all the difference in how you engage the practices of the Andean path, because they are all about—and I really mean all about—developing as a human being.

The focus of the Andean path, including the cosmovision, is on the material world. The kawsay pacha is the infinite field of living, animating energy. It expresses itself in the material as Pachamama. Pachamama is not just the earth. It is the entire material universe. (Mother Earth specifically is called Mama Allpa.) Ayni is what drives the evolution of the Pachamama, the material universe, and everything in it, including our own human evolution both personal and collective.

When we learn to “push the kawsay” (influence the energy of the kawsay pacha), all of our focus is on doing so in a way that matters in the material world, and especially in our human lives. We work the energies to cleanse our poq’pos to evolve to a higher level of consciousness here in the body as a human being. We perform hucha miqhuy to improve our relationships. We foster munay (love grounded in will), hampe munay (healing energy), and khuyay (passion) to improve our relationship with ourselves and with others.

Even the spirit beings are material aspects of the Pachamama, the material world. An apu (perhaps not all, but many) is a mountain, such as the Apu Manuel Pinta, into which the local people have invited a great paqo to live after his death. So when we “talk” with certain apus, we are communicating with the energy field of a human being. Likewise, when we tap into the lineage of paqos, we are tapping into the energy field they have left behind in the Pachamama. A khuya is a stone infused with the energy of human affection. Our energetic anatomy (cones, belts, mystical eyes) are integrated into our physical anatomy and impart increased perceptual abilities. The three “powers” are mind (yachay), body/action (llank’ay) and love (munay), all distinctly physical or emotional human expressions.

Our spirit incorporates energetically as the Inka Seed in our human body. According to the Andean mystical teachings, our spirit is our divinity. It is already and always perfect. So there is nothing we have to do with it—except evolve to express it fully as a human being.

All of our work is at the level of our humanness. I don’t know about you, but evolving my humanness is taking a lot of work! That’s why I love this tradition and practice its techniques. They help me evolve as a more conscious human being. They help improve my relationships with others. They help me to more fully engage my immediate environment, nature, and the cosmos on a level both material and energetic. They help me accumulate the personal energetic power to do what I am here to do, as encoded in my spirit.

I invite you to really drop into this core aspect of the teaching. I invite you to eschew the pull of the supernatural, even of the ceremonial, if it distracts you from what matters the most—discovering who you really are and learning to express the fullness of who you really are. You are a human being—and your human life is sacred from the furthest reach of your mind down to the smallest cell of your body. As a paqo, joyously expressing your humanness is your top priority.

There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life.

— Federico Fellini

Khuyay is passion. It is passionate love, but not necessarily romantic love. It is, according to Juan Nuñez del Prado, the link between two people whose relationship in life takes on the character of a life-enhancing cosmic dance.

Khuyay is the energy that links lovers. It is the connection between a beloved teacher and student. It is the bond between parent and child. It defies easy definition or description, because it cannot be manufactured but it is within our control.

Khuyay  is a passion informed with munay—it is the ayni relationship of munay. Because munay is love grounded in will, khuyay is both a feeling and a choice. It is not passive, but active. Khuyay is the art of life as well as the action of life. Because it involves action, it is one of the primary  expressions of the lloq’e, the left side of the Andean path. (Yachay is a primary goal of the right side.)

As paqos, we seek a life infused by khuyay. We want our relationships— or at least a few of our core relationships—to be partnerships of khuyay. We want to be taken care by others and we want to care of others. We want to be nurtured and we want to nurture. We want to go deep into the experience of the mystery of others and we want others to go deep into the mystery of ourselves. We want to be seen, honored, valued, appreciated, and celebrated not only at the level of our basic human needs but at the level of our creativity, wisdom, joy, and spirit. And we want to see, honor, value appreciate and celebrate others in the same joyful way.

Seem like a tall order? It is! Which is why the energy of khuyay emerges most often far into the  process of self-evolution (energetic evolution) that begins with rimay, expressing the true self; kanay, having the energetic power to know and be your true self; and atiy, having the energetic power to manifest and live as your true self. Only when we have accumulated this kind of personal power can we express the fullness of khuyay—a life infused with passion—because “true” passion presupposes being your “true” self.

Khuyay as passion means engaging life as who you really are. But it is not necessarily happiness. It doesn’t mean everything becomes perfect, that you live life without doubt, disappointment, challenge, and even struggle. It does not free you from your humanness, but helps you express it despite circumstances. According to Juan Nuñez del Prado and his Andean teachers, while khuyay is not happiness, it can be the beginning of happiness.

Happiness is a state of mind. One moment we are happy, and the next moment something happens that makes us unhappy. Happiness tends to be transitory. Khuyay is an energetic stance, not an emotional one. It is having munay for life itself, so it always chooses a “live and let live” attitude. When we feel disappointment or discouragement, we can marshal the energy to lift ourselves up. When we feel misunderstood, we can seek reconciliations not blame. When we feel betrayed, we can hate the act but not the actor. When we feel repelled by those wildly different from ourselves or whom we deem hurtful or even evil, we can choose to forgo condemnation even as we choose not to condone them or their behaviors.

Khuyay is munay and passion under our control. This is where we have to delve deeper into consciousness, for in psychology we can talk about both conscious choice and unconscious choice. It is said that our consciousness is like an iceberg, with one-tenth of it above the water line and thus knowable, and nine-tenths below the water line and thus less knowable or even unknowable. The part of consciousness below the water line of the observing self is the unconscious, which informs most of our beliefs, actions, thoughts, and feelings. Falling madly in love at first sight feels largely unconscious. It feels like an energy outside ourselves is in control and we are being swept into its flow. There appears to be a primal energy, something that is generating our impulse as a kind of Platonic first cause.

Here is where will/choice comes into play. Despite our immersion in that wild energy flow that appears to be outside ourselves, we can step back and be witness to ourselves. We can place ourselves inside the scope of our own introspection. In other words, we can become conscious of this impulse. We can bring awareness to ourselves, and through that awareness choose a response. Using the example of passion as falling madly in love at first sight, we can bring our awareness to the impulse to mediate it. We can temper our feelings and behavior. We can ask if it is healthy or wise. We can slow it down or even ignore it. We can seek to test it, explore it, reject it, dive fully into it, or take a host of other actions. The point is that energy must not master us; we must master it, even as we remain open to the richness and surprise of both human and cosmic play.

Khuyay, to my mind, is the difference between pleasure and wisdom. Deepak Chopra talks about this difference in his book The Future of God (pages 108-117). He says, quoting Eastern spiritual texts, that wisdom is the “pathless path.” It is hard to define it and there really is no roadmap. It’s a matter of faith that wisdom exists and can be attained. The way to attainment is self-awareness. The same is true of khuyay, the passion of life.

In terms of khuyay, physical passion is fleeting whereas energetic passion (khuyay) is enduring. Both depend on the self, but are also beyond the self. In this way, khuyay is about passion at the macro level of life itself. It helps us gain a larger perspective, one that allows passion to infuse the scope of our lives even while we are experiencing ennui or unhappiness during individual hours of our lives.

We can no more force ourselves  to feel passion for life than we can force ourselves to feel love. But we can learn to generate the impulse both toward khuyay and munay by consciously cleansing our energy body so that we are more truly ourselves. The work of rimay, kanay and atiy are part of the training in the chunpis, the belts of power and the mystical eyes, which are called ñawis. These are deep cleansing practices that help us divest hucha and fill ourselves with sami. Sami helps foster greater self-awareness. Greater self-awareness makes the choice for love and passion more attainable and sustainable. When we bring consciousness to our relationships, we can choose empathy, nurturing, kindness, openness, playfulness, and other life-enhancing emotions and actions that strengthen the bonds of the relationship and, perhaps, even evolve it into one of khuyay. Having khuyay relationships makes all the difference both to our moment-to-moment happiness and, more importantly, to the joy that spans the scope of our lives.