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.

 

Where is the body in the hierarchy of the term “body-mind-spirit?” For many people on a mystical or spiritual path, the body is relegated to the basement of the spiritual house. Mind occupies the first floor, while spirit hangs out in the upper room with a view. But in the Andean tradition, putting spirit first is like putting the cart before the horse. The body matters immensely as does the mind—they are inseparable, since the mind is a function of the physical brain. In the Andes, the mind is associated with the soul. The soul is the sum of your lived experiences, your culture, your beliefs, and so on. The soul is different from the spirit, which is your Inka Seed, your connection with divinity. The spirit is perfect. The body and soul are subject to the influence of both sami and hucha.

The Andean tradition, while a training in mysticism, is about being fully human. It is not about leaping beyond the human. Therefore, everything you do relates in some way to that most human part of yourself: your physical being, including your mind/soul.

All of your energy work goes through the body. All of your mystical senses are extensions of the body. The chunpis, or belts of power, are located in the body. Their eyes, or ñawis, are located in the body. All the other “eyes,” such as the uma (top of the head), chakis (point in the sole of each foot) and makis (point in the palm of each hand), are in the body. The seqes, or cords of energy that you send out to interact energetically with the world, come from the body. The pouyu—the gap where spirit enters and informs you—is part of the body. Your Inka Seed, which is your connection with your divinity, is in the body.

You can see that the body is very important in the Andean practice. So, here’s my question: How much attention do you pay to your body as you practice as a paqo?

As you study and practice as a paqo, you are in essence retraining your body. You are acknowledging a non-material aspect of your body: its energy counterpart. But notice that word—counterpart. You have two bodies, a physical one and an energetic one, and they are not separate.

Since the “thing” that drives energy, according to the Andean tradition, is intention, your mind is also a vital aspect of your practice. There is no intention without a brain and mind. Nor is there focus, attention, concentration, each of which are crucial to your energy practices. Your end goal is conscious evolution—with a focus on the word “conscious.”

Therefore, you have to attend to your body-mind-spirit equally if you are to evolve in your practice as a paqo and your growth as a human being. I was recently reading Deepak Chopra’s new book, The Future of God, and as I read the following, I was struck by its relevance to our practices as paqos:

     The brain cannot shape itself; it functions as a mechanism for processing what the mind wants, fears, believes, and dreams about. By becoming more conscious, you automatically begin to lead your brain where you want it to go. . .

Your brain, despite its marvels, requires basic training when you learn any new skill, and finding God is a skill. New neural pathways must be formed, which will happen automatically once you put focus, attention, and intention behind it.

His reasoning about the brain’s part in finding God applies to your practice as a paqo learning to consciously evolve, push the kawsay using only intention, and live with well-being and joy. All of your energy practices both arise from your intention brain/mind and affect it (changing it, repatterning it). And practice makes perfect! Sometimes you are deep in touch with the kawsay pacha and sometimes you feel separate from it. Deepak Chopra calls the kawsay pacha the “subtle world,” and he wisely counsels: “Until the subtle world becomes your home, you can’t help but come and go. Repetition and practice are part of the learning curve.”

So, practice! Saminchakuy, saiwachkauy, hucha mikhuy, sensing through your ñawis, and so on.

But to what end? Yes, you want to live in the subtle world, but Andeans don’t talk about leaping beyond the human. So as a paqo you are striving to express the fullness of your humanness, which goes far beyond what scientific material-realism tells us is possible for us. That’s why we call what we do mystical. But it is not non-human. It is a natural part of who you are and how you can be in the world and the kawsay pacha. And while you are here in human form, the pinnacle of your practice is to reach the sixth level of human consciousness—that of the Christ Consciousness or Buddha Nature. (The seventh is somewhat fuzzy, for while it is still human, it is the human-god/god-human, and we have no idea what that could be. Or, at least, we have no description of it from the Andean masters.)

It’s time to invite your body and mind/soul into that upper room with a view, where your spirit lives. These three aspects of the self are a trinity—three in one, one in three, individual yet inseparable. Together they are “who you really are.”

In the Andean tradition, intention drives energy—the kawsay, or light living energy, of the universe. Our aim is not to imagine or intuit that we are pushing the kawsay, but to actually perceive the flow of energy. Perception comes through your senses, through a visceral experience, so that you know without any doubt you are actually achieving your intention.

Perceiving kawsay can be a challenge. It can sometimes take months or even years to develop a perception of kawsay and its movements. If you are having trouble perceiving kawsay, here are some tips for improving your perceptual capacities.

Practice More

Whether you are doing saminchakuy, saiwachakuy, hucha mikhuy or some other technique for moving energy in a specific way, practice makes perfect. When you practice, be sure you fully understand the technique—how to do it, what you are intending to achieve, and how the kawsay will move. For example, with saminchakuy, the flow of energy will be downward moving, whereas with saiwachakuy it will be upward. With hucha mikhuy, you can expect to feel a split flow, both upward and downward, within your poq’po.

You don’t need to spend hours practicing. Ten minutes a day on one technique is about right. At first focus not so much of achieving the effect (cleansing, empowering, etc.), but only on perceiving the movement of energy. But don’t try too hard! Sometimes a gentle effort is better than a strong one. Rein in your expectations. Be gentle on yourself. Be patient.

Cleanse Your Poq’po

The more hucha you have, the more difficult it is to develop your qawaq abilities—both mystical seeing and mystical sensing. The more hucha you have, the less you can perceive and see reality as it really is, because you may be projecting a lot of unconscious “stuff” out into the world. Therefore, use saminchakuy to cleanse your bubble.

Remember, saminchakuy is like taking a shower. It cleanses the skin level of your poq’po, where most of your hucha accumulates. Send the hucha to Mother Earth and pull in sami from the cosmos. Do that for five or ten minutes a day and you should see your ability to sense kawsay improve.

 

Examine Your Beliefs

If you have erected unconscious (or conscious) boundaries between yourself and the world, it is unlikely you will develop a clear perception of the world, and certainly not of its subtle energies. Fear, feeling the need for protection, anticipation of being hurt or taken advantage of, being overly critical or judgmental, relying too heavily on the egoic voice, and even low self-esteem can create a wall between you and the world, lessening your ability to truly perceive energy flows. When you doubt your own ability to “be” in the world, the world retreats. Do your psychological “shadow work” to draw the world back to you and to learn to embrace it. You will find that your metaphysical perceptual work becomes easier.

Get a Boost from Your Misha

Sometimes an extra punch of sami is all that is needed to crack open your perceptual abilities, and a great place to get that sami is from is your misha. The misha contains only sami, so it is a deep repository from which you can freely draw. Place the misha on your uma (top of your head) and bring its sami into your poq’po. Through it, you will be drawing on the experience of a long line of powerful paqos and the deep ancestry of the Andean tradition. When you work with the misha, you are never alone. Allow the ancestors to help you, and they will.

Learn to Physically See Kawsay

Not everyone can do the following because of the requirements, but if you can, go for it! While we generally learn to perceive kawsay as a visceral feeling and through our metaphysical eyes (the ñawis), it is possible actually to see it with your physical eyes. For this you need a completely dark, or black, room. It must be free of any ambient light.

Don Melchor Desa had such a room in his little house: the walls, floor, and ceiling were painted black, the door was well sealed, and there were no windows. It was in that room that Juan Nuñez del Prado learned to see kawsay—simply sitting and staring into the darkness. It took many, many hours over many days before he first saw kawsay as different sizes of luminous spheres that moved freely through the air. He was even able to learn to “taste” them—taking them into his qosqo but perceiving an actual physical taste.

This was a training, not a parlor trick. It can be invaluable because of the dynamics of human nature: seeing fosters believing, and believing in the physical reality of kawsay fosters the development of perception at the purely energetic level, which is our ultimate goal. However, a word of caution. Don’t  taste kawsay by taking it into your poq’po (“eating it” and “digesting it” through your qosqo) unless you are skilled at the technique of hucha mikhuy. Instead, send seqes (cords) of energy out from your qosqo to reach out to the living universe to perceive and taste the flavors of kawsay.

Some of the most hucha-producing days of my life occurred in 1995 while I was traveling, with several others, to Q’oyllurit’i, a festival held in the bowl of a glacier more than 16,500 feet above sea level. We traveled on horseback for four days, and the ride was difficult and even frightening, especially the narrow, precipitously steep trails and drop-offs over the cliffs that led to hundreds of feet of nothingness. As unnerving as parts of the trail were, most of my hucha was created by my fear of horses.  As a city girl growing up outside of Boston, the only time I had been around horses was during a visit to a farm. Not knowing any better, I walked behind a tethered horse and the next thing I knew I was on the ground, having been kicked in the forehead. I survived that encounter, but I was not so sure I would this trip to Q’oyllurit’i. I almost didn’t go, but my desire to attend this most sacred Andean festival was stronger than my fear of having to ride a horse to get there.

These were Andean horses: most of them were slung low to the ground, with barrel chests and lungs that chugged like bellows. They had amazing stamina and were sure-footed, but willful. Sometimes there was little I could do to control my horse. The lead rope was hand-woven and frayed, the saddle—if you can call it that—had no horn so there was nothing to grab hold of to steady myself on precipitous parts of the train, and the stirrups were set for a short Peruvian and could not be adjusted for a tallish American. The one on the left was high, so my leg was uncomfortably bent the whole trip and my balance affected.

Needless to say, whenever my horse encountered an especially difficult part of the trail and stumbled, I went over the top. Almost every day I had a fall and suffered some kind of injury: a large hematoma on my right hip from flying over the horse and smacking into a stone outcropping when my horse slipped going down some wet Inka stone steps; a badly injured knee from another mishap on day two. In some kind of selfish divine justice, I didn’t fall off on the third day—someone else took a tumble instead. Then on day four . . . well . . . let’s just say that because of Latin machismo, and against my vigorous protests, the guides insisted I stay mounted when it was clear I needed to get off that horse. The horses could not climb one portion of the trail that was a huge stone Inka stairway, the steps very deep at the bottom and a struggle for the horses to get up on. Plus, there was a shallow but wide crevasse at the base of the steps. Everyone dismounted and climbed.

But because of my knee, the guys, trying to be nice, insisted they had a way for my horse to make the climb with me on its back. To get around the crevasse, they decided to take me, on the horse, onto a slick round stone to the side that was only a step or two away from one of those terrifying drops to nothingness. Of course, their plan didn’t work. My horse freaked out and tumbled into the crevasse. In one of the few Castaneda-like moments of my life, I leap-frogged backwards off the horse but somehow ended up standing on a tiny ledge just wide enough for my feet that was 90 degrees to the left. How I ended up there defies the laws of physics, but I was incredibly happy to be there. In another miracle, the horse, when they finally were able to extricate him, was unhurt except for a small cut on one lower leg. Anyway, this was a huge hucha-producing trip during which I was pretty rattled and did not remember to do saminchuy often enough to re-establish equilibrium in my poq’po.

I did two major hucha-cleansing sessions. The first night at Chua Chua while visiting don Manuel Q’epsi, I released hucha and pulled sami from him. Juan Nuñez del Prado, my teacher and guide on this trip, had said that when you are with a paqo who is more advanced than you are, you can drink sami from his poq’po. (Remember, sami literally means “nectar.”) When I was with don Manuel, I drank and drank! The other time was at Hatun Q’eros, where we also spent a night and I got some herbal anti-inflammatory help with my swelling knee. There I performed saminchakuy in the regular way, sending my hucha to Mother Earth and pulling sami in through my uma (crown of my head) and filling my bubble and body.

We humans have the dubious distinction of being the only creatures who can slow or stop the flow of kawsay, causing hucha. (The ancient names for sami and hucha were llanthu kawsay, literally “light living energy,” and llasaq kawsay, literally “heavy living energy.”) Although we create hucha whenever we are not living in ayni, or reciprocity, with the kawsay pacha, the most common cause of hucha is emotion. Our emotions fuel words, actions, thoughts, and intentions that can disrupt ayni. The number-one creator of hucha is humans is fear—but not just any fear.

We instinctively feel fear—the flight or fight response—when we are physically threatened. If you are hiking and cross paths with a bear, you probably will feel fear. You are reacting physically and naturally to a potentially significant threat to life and limb. Your emotion is in perfect ayni with the circumstances. Hence, this fear may not generate hucha, although the whole experience may upset your energy. The life-threatening aspects of my trip did not themselves cause hucha. That fear was a normal, appropriate response to circumstances.

But beyond that justifiable fear was fear that was hucha-producing. I was carrying the hucha-imprint of my early experience with horses. Now I was not a girl but a grown woman and could have handled that horse well if I had only acted like an adult and had confidence in myself. My hucha was following me from my past, and I was misunderstanding that past to be true in my present. I also had a lot of self-esteem problems at that time, plus was just generally subject to a low-level constant anxiety about unfamiliar situations where I felt I had little control. So I was producing a lot of hucha.

When releasing hucha, we always refresh ourselves with sami—and we have almost unlimited sources of sami. Although in saminchakuy we tend to pull the light living energy down from the cosmos, in actuality we can pull it in from anything in nature—a tree, a stone, an animal, a cloud, a river. Everything in nature is comprised only of sami, so we have unlimited sources of various “flavors” of sami and can choose the most appropriate flavor for our condition.

For example, if you feel unsteady and at the whim of life’s circumstances, when you perform saminchakuy you might pull sami in from a large rock formation. Its sami is grounding, steadying, vigilant, “rock solid.” If you feel you are stuck and can’t seem to move in life, perhaps you might pull sami from the clouds, which are always moving and full of life-giving and life-sustaining water. Your only limitation is your imagination when it comes to drinking in the sami of the natural world and cosmos. And your primary responsibility is to do the practices that release hucha and help re-establish coherence in your poq’po. Take it from me: I know how difficult it is to remember to do the practices when you really need them! But better late than never. . .