I was recently reading Dean Radin’s new book Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and a Guide to the Secret Power of the Universe. Aside from my interest in staying abreast of current research into human consciousness and my planning to teach a workshop in September 2019 on supercharging your intuition, I was struck by how this book confirms so much of our practice as paqos—especially that the “secret power of the universe” that Radin mentions in his subtitle is intention. The “beauty teaching” of the Andean mystical tradition is that energy must follow intention. All we need to interact with the universe of living energy is our intention. What we call ayni, Radin calls magic.

If you have taken the lloq’e training (the left side of the path), we call the practical application of our intention the “magical” aspect of the work. It’s magic to us because we are learning to take action in the world—to be in greater, more effective, and increasingly effortless ayni through our actions.

As paqos, our entire practice is based on learning to be in more perfect ayni. Ayni is the interchange of our intention with the conscious universe. The effortlessness and effectiveness with which we manifest anything through ayni—from something as abstract as joyful well-being to something as concrete as a new house—is proportional to our personal power. Our personal power is a state that arises from the coherence of our energy body (more sami, less hucha). In other words, the more sami-filled our poq’po, the more clarity we bring to our ayni and the more effective it is. With less hucha we are able to do more. This focus on llank’ay—doing—is also the magic that Radin talks about.

Using “magic” as his metaphor for “psi” (psychic) abilities, Radin writes: “The word magic comes from the Greek word magos, referring to a member of a learned  and priestly class, which in turn derives from the Old Persian word magush, meaning to “to be able” or “to have power.” That just about sums up what a paqo is and our goal of increasing our personal power (which is another way of saying perfecting our ayni).

But ours is not a practice of intense effort. It is pukllay, or playfulness. It is a playful, relaxed state of bringing consciousness to our three human powers: yachay (what and how we know), munay (what we feel, especially love under our will), and llank’ay (how we apply ourselves—and our consciousness—in the world). As we evolve our consciousness, and thus experience a greater state of energetic coherence, we discover that our power as co-creators increases—we enhance the effectiveness of our ayni. Our “magical action” left-side powers become charged.

This energetic coherence (less hucha, more sami) is similar to the state that Radin identifies as optimal state for psi functioning. Radin writes that the most successful participants in psi experiments (in this case to influence random-number generators, but it applies to all “magical” intention) are those who feel “resonance” with the machines (feeling at one with it, softening of boundaries between the self and other) and who experience “effortless striving,” which is intense desire or focused concentration that is devoid of anxiety. This, to me, is a way of saying being in ayni.

In addition, as paqos we want to have such energetic coherence that we are open to all the “flavors” of energy. As my teacher Juan Nuñez del Prado says, we never want to put ourselves into an energetic jail, where we are afraid of energy. Energy, according to the Andean tradition, is amoral—beyond the moral overlay that we humans impose upon it. Radin confirms that view when he writes about the nature of elementary particles and the forces of nature. They are not subject to moral overlay. However, our use of our powers (the application of our intention) is dependent on our ethical and moral system: we make a choice how to use it and to what ends. We can be paqos who work for the well-being and benefit of ourselves and others, or we can be layqas who are only interested in satisfying our own desires, often at the expense of others. Radin’s view mirrors our own as paqos. He writes: “[T]he way magic is used is completely up to the magician. The power itself, like any fundamental force of the universe, is morally neutral.”

While Radin believes that an altered state of consciousness—a deep meditative state, a hypnotic-like state, or an emotionally charged state—enhances psi abilities, we as paqos learn to be in effective ayni in a normal state of consciousness. Still, the mechanisms that Radin sees in play are just like ayni—there is a two-way interchange: you project outward your intention to influence the energy of the universe, and the living energy of the universe reaches back to you and responds. While the laboratory effects of psi abilities are quite small, they are statistically significant to an irrefutable degree.

According to Radin’s and others’ experiments, this intentional interchange—what we call ayni—can be applied in almost unlimited ways, from “intending” that your food be supercharged for your health, to sending healing energy to another person across time and space, to drawing toward you the object of your desires, such as a new house. As already mentioned, Radin says that those who are in conscious coherence (such a long-time meditators) have better results than the average person. For us as paqos, this laboratory result leads us back to our basic practice of saminchakuy—reducing your hucha and increasing your sami. Saminchakuy increases what we could call the coherence of your energy body, which in turns helps you evolve your consciousness.

So, if you need a nudge of motivation to keep working the basic techniques of the Andean tradition, you have it—from science. Radin’s experiments have led him to the same place paqos, and other mystics, have discovered: that, as Radin says, “the secret power of the universe is not made out of matter and energy and physical stuff, but is probably made out of consciousness. . .”

 

(For information about the Intuition Intensive Workshop in North Carolina in September 2019, please visit the web page http://www.cfcchange.com. This is the first offering of my new endeavor, The Center for Conscious Change. I will be teaching with my friend and fellow intuitive-medium Randi Eaton. We plan to offer this workshop in Northern California over the weekend of October 11-13, 2019. Information should be on our page http://www.cfcchange.com within two weeks or so.)

When teaching the Andean mystical tradition, I often say we each are the center of the universe, because we perceive only through our own body, mind, and consciousness. We are each, in reality and at the core, a mystery to each other, and we can’t truly know how others perceive the world.

Yet, according to the Andean tradition, we each share in creating the cosmos. The cosmos is the Pachamama. She is much more than the planet Earth, who has her own name, Mama Allpa. The Pachamama is the mother of space-time, the mother of the entire material cosmos.

In a sense, we, too, are Pachamama or Pachapapa—mother and father creators of the world. We don’t control the universe, but we certainly influence its unfolding evolution, manifestation, and condition. Our primary tool is our consciousness—our attention and intention. According to Andean mysticism, energy must follow intention. Intention is a byproduct of consciousness, and so as conscious creatures where we place our attention and how we direct our intention are always creative acts and, to one degree or another, impactful ones. We are in some real sense building the universe with each attentional and intentional act. Since my attention and intention are only one small combined flow of the energy of the more than seven billion human flows of attention and intention, it remains to be seen how much influence I have—or you have. But we remain resolute, we persist, and we seek to contribute.

All of this musing was prompted by reading one of my favorite poets, the late Mary Oliver. In one of her poems, “Song of the Builders,” she writes about placing her attention on a cricket, and then she soars on the updraft of a visionary imagination to declare the primacy of intentions, from the most humble to the most glorious.

In this post there will be no explication, no long-winded teasing out of meaning and application. This Mary Oliver poem speaks for itself, and, I hope, inspires you to see your Andean practices in both their humble and glorious aspects. Ask yourself, as a human being and as a paqo, “What am I helping to build in my life, in my community, in my county, in the world, in the cosmos?”

One a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God—

a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside

this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope

it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.

 

 

Our dramas are an indestructible part of who we are. No matter what we do or how hard we try, we cannot get rid of them. The only choice we have to make is whether we are going to use them or they are going to use us.
—Debbie Ford, The Secret of the Shadow

If you view the spiritual realms through rose-colored glasses, then a life still plagued with disappointments, difficulties and challenges must mean you are doing something wrong. You are not deserving enough, evolved enough, energetically coherent enough, or sufficiently clear enough in your intention to create a life of love, passion, fulfillment, joy, abundance, or whatever a “perfected” life looks like to you.

Well, no, not really. . .

As a paqo, you certainly know that the kawsay pacha is overly abundant and you can manifest what you want according to your capacity for personal power and the clarity of your ayni exchanges. But like all of us, you are still human—and not a sixth-level human yet. As a third- or fourth-level human being, you are far from perfected. As a paqo, you have energy practices to reduce your heaviness—including emotional dramas and life’s challenges—to a minimum, but you still have them. As a qawaq, you can use your physical and mystical vision and perceptions to learn to see reality as it really is, and that means owning the disappointments, difficulties, strife, and even traumas that you experience. After all, if you don’t see them, you can’t put your practices to work to shift them (or rather, to shift your own energy).

Being a dedicated paqo means using what you know. Once you “see” (qaway), then you can understand (yachay) and act (llank’ay). You can do saminchakuy, saiwachakuy, hucha miqhuy, call on the assistance of a helper spirit, and use many other practices to improve your inner and outer reality. But “seeing” is the foundation stone upon which all your practices rest.

What is there to “see” about the difficulties in your life? Certainly not personal failure. Rather, personal opportunity.

Debbie Ford, in her book The Secret of the Shadow, likens each of us to a recipe. You have different ingredients—traits and life experiences—in your recipe than I do. My ingredients are perfect for me, as yours are for you. From a spiritual viewpoint, each and every ingredient is necessary to your living your life mission and fulfilling your promise in this life. Therefore, if you can see everything as necessary to your being who you really are and growing to the fullness of being, then you will reject nothing. You will shift your perspective and embrace life’s challenges (inner and outer) as opportunities to more deeply understand yourself and evolve your consciousness.

Author and human potential guru Napoleon Hill concurs with Ford. He wrote, “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” Finding the benefit is what escapes most people. They just can’t see what good can come from pain or trauma. But from a spiritual perspective, there is always a compensatory benefit or gift.

In your work as a paqo, what Ford and Hill are talking about is the energy dynamic of yanantin. Yanantin energies are dissimilar energies. Good-bad, male-female, friend-enemy, boss-employee, conservative-liberal, and so on. While many people see only opposition, as a paqo you learn to see complementarity. Yanantin does not mean “either-or” but “both-and.” By examining the yanantin energy of your difficulties and challenges (admittedly, this often is easier from hindsight), you can follow Ford’s and Hill’s advice to see the drama or trauma for what it is—something hurtful or challenging or painful—but also to seek the compensatory gifts—the hidden opportunities—in the difficulty. Let’s look at a few examples.

As a young boy, your father drilled into you that boys can’t be sissies. You had to be tough, take your lumps like a man, not back down from a challenge, always push ahead. As a result, you learned to be bold, outgoing, even a risk taker. The yanantin dynamic may play out in myriad ways. We’ll look at one possibility. The downside is that your father’s programming may have caused you to incorporate untrue, unrealistic, and unhealthy beliefs about manliness into your unconscious that hamper your emotional growth and take a lot of self-work to transform. The compensatory gift is that as an extrovert and a risk taker, when you chose sales as a profession, you persisted, met every challenge, and used your competitive edge to be among the top salespeople in your company. In this context, your emotional trauma as a child translated into professional gifts as an adult.

Here’s another example. You are a busy, passionate person involved in all kinds of activities, from family to volunteering. You are outward directed and don’t want to waste a moment. Then you come down with an autoimmune disease and are in pain, can no longer work, and must rely on others in a way you never did before. One aspect of the yanantin energy is that you suddenly lose your health and even your sense of a vibrant, independent self. Life as you knew it (and your sense of self as you knew it) is over. The other aspects of the yanantin are the compensatory gifts that your new situation bestows: You pay more attention to your body and to what you eat and how you move; you learn to be humble and not only to give but to receive; your capacity for empathy for others deepens; and you learn to be still and go inward, to appreciate the small, quiet moments.

As is true for each of us, you create hucha for yourself when you see only one side of the yanantin energy dynamic—usually the loss, pain, failure, hurt, etc. Your challenge, as is true for most of us, is to enlarge your vision and understanding to see that a yanantin always involves twoness: the bad and the good, the loss and the gain, the “punishment” and the “reward.” If you can work both sides of the yanantin, you can reach a place of wholeness. This harmonization of yanantin energy is called a japu, wherein no hucha is created.

By working the whole yanantin, you can even be the generator of your own transformation. You can move closer to achieving not only a restoration of harmony, but also of wholeness—no matter what is happening. Without that bullying father, you may have never developed your gift of perseverance and persistence. Without that disease, you might never have learned greater empathy and humility, appreciation for simplicity and inner stillness. In the yanantin dynamic, if you can achieve japu, you are holding a scale of justice, with the two scales equally balanced.

Do you have to learn your lessons and gather your gifts through strife or sickness? No. But, seeing things as they actually are, as a human being you are not yet a perfected being and none of us is living in a perfected world. At the level of your eternal spirit, you are a perfected, divine being. But in this third-dimensional, material world in the body of flesh and blood, you are an imperfect human being. The core spiritual yanantin of the sixth level or seventh level of consciousness is: god in the human, human as god. However, here in the Pachamama—in the material realm—we must deal with the level of consciousness we are actually at, which is third or fourth level.

But we don’t have to be victims. We can be victors! Whatever feelings and experiences you need in your “recipe” will come to you in a way that allows you—if you choose—to continue developing toward the completeness and wholeness that is encoded in your Inka Seed. As Ford writes, when you understand each “painful event as the perfect ingredient to make your recipe complete, you will witness the magic of transformation. You will bless what you formerly saw as a curse. You will watch as the horrid becomes holy.”

As we work to evolving our consciousness to the fourth level, we can’t help but reframe our views about what it means to be a human being, revise our beliefs and values, and generally act in the world in more efficient, practical, and impactful ways. And if we strive to achieve the level of a teqse paqo—a universal paqo—we refine our capacity for yachay (knowledge), llank’ay (ways of acting) and munay (expressions of love and of our highest feelings). It’s not too hyperbolic to say that we seek to live our godliness. So, in this post I would like to explore what we can learn from how Andeans named God and understood certain characteristics of godliness.

The Andeans had many names for God, among them were:

• Runa Camac: Runa means people/humanity, and camac means “to make.” Therefore, this name for God means Creator of the People or Creator of Humanity.
• Pachacamac: Pacha means many things, but in this context it means cosmos; camac as defined above means “to make.” So this name for God would translate to Maker of the Cosmos. Another translation is Invisible Ordering Creator.
• Hatun Taqe Wraqocha: Wiraqocha is used by itself as a name for God. It’s translation is disputed by scholars and is not important for our purposes here. Hatun means “high” or “great.” Taqe means “to join.” So translated this is the Great Joiner God. This is the translation of the name for God that I want to focus on for our benefit as paqos.

Holding the thought that the Andeans, through this name for God, saw God as the “one who joins,” let’s take a look at the other great being of the cosmic world: Satan. Under the influence of Christianity, many Andeans now believe in and talk about the devil and sin. However, in the past, they may not have. See my blog post “Evil and Andean Mysticism” (April 24, 2017) for a discussion of the closest figure I could find in the Andean pantheon of spirit beings to the Christian devil. His name is Supay. He actually was the guardian god of miners and of minerals and was associated with the underworld (ukhupacha) and so came to be associated with mortality and thus death. But he was not a personification of evil. However, it appears this is the figure the Spanish Chroniclers morphed into an Andean devil, wrongly as far as I can tell.

Most religions teach some form of opposition in these two energies: Good versus Evil. The energy of God is expressed as creator, ultimate authority, righteousness, benevolence, and so on; and Satan, as the fallen angel Lucifer, is the Evil One, whose expends his energy to draw us away from God, tempt us to sin (create hucha for ourselves), and so on.

If we trace the origins of certain words—such as Satan and the Devil—we will discover that those root meanings provide us insight into this being’s energetic influence on us and in the world. In Hebrew ha–satan means “the adversary.” The Hebrew Bible was first translated into Koine Greek, and the Koine Greek word for what came to be translated as “Satan” was kategoro, which means to “categorize” or to create a “division.” The Greek word for “Devil” was diabolos, which means “accuser” or “slanderer.” I think you can immediately see that the meanings of these words are a far cry from “evil.” Mostly, if we rely on these root meanings, the devil is our adversary because he is the one who seeks to cause us to divide or separate ourselves from our true nature—our godliness.

Here is the question that all of this information is leading you toward: As a human being and as a paqo, are you expressing the energy of “joining” (God energy) or of “dividing” (Satan energy)?

This is a profound question to answer, for your answer can shift your view of everything: from seeing people and events as “good or evil” to “that which brings us together or that which drives us apart.” What a shift this creates in how you see your responsibilities as a human being—as a parent, sibling, friend, boss, coworker, citizen. What a shift in how you view your work as a paqo. What a shift in how you think about the sami and hucha within you, and within other people. What a shift in how you decide which leaders, spiritual and political, to support or not. What a shift in understanding what is going on in our world today.

When we view people and situations according to this view of “joining” or “dividing” we can release the too-rigid judgments of good and evil and instead see people and their words and actions as either furthering our cooperation or fostering our separation. What a kinder—and less accusatory—way to view the world. Most important, as paqos we can examine our own thoughts, words, and deeds to ask: “Is this a joining energy or a dividing one?” As Kahlil Gibran counsels: “Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.” Imagine the possibilities if we all adopted the attitude of being Great Joiner Gods.

Lord, when I feel that what I’m doing is insignificant and unimportant, help me to remember that everything I do is significant and important in your eyes, because you love me and you put me here, and no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it.
― Brennan Manning, writer and speaker

I’ve written about your Inka Seed many times. Now, here I am writing about it again, only this time in terms of living your purpose. It’s worth remembering that within your Inka Seed is not only your life mission but the whole of you.

• Your Inka Seed is your birth certificate. It’s your paqarina, your place of dawning. It encodes your origin in the Great Mystery. Your lineage goes straight back to God.
• At the level of your human self, your Inka Seed encodes what you—and you alone from among the more than seven and a half billion people on Earth—are designed to do in this human life. Maybe that is still a secret you are keeping from yourself. But it is not a secret to God, from whom you received this assignment.
• Your Inka Seed also is the treasure chest of gifts, skills, and capacities that you need to fulfill your life mission. You possess so many more qualities than you may yet know or use.

If you choose to ascribe to these beliefs, how do you feel? (Answer truthfully!) Intimidated or inspired? Fearful or blissful? Panicked or peaceful?

Like most of us when thinking about what we are really here to do, you probably feel a bit of both extremes. Being frightened or intimated can motivate you to change, discovering and then living your life purpose. Feeling inspired yet peaceful can foster trust in yourself and God that you are indeed on a journey of personal fulfillment. We humans tend to be motivated both by “fleeing from” and “being drawn toward.” Movement is still movement, even if it is one small step instead of a giant leap. And if you are not yet embracing and living your purpose, then move you must.

Two of the feelings that can prevent or block you from being who you really are and living the life God inspired within you are indifference and complacency. Indifference keeps you static and uninterested in self-engagement and self-realization. Complacency breeds low standards toward the self, causing you to settle for a “good enough” self and life instead of reaching toward grandeur. Both indifference and complacency dampen your imagination about what it means to be alive and to be you.

Also consider that your purpose might be outwardly modest but inwardly momentous. Maybe it’s being a fantastic parent. Really, is there anything more precious than guiding the growth of a child’s mind, heart, and spirit? Your purpose might not be about getting your name in lights, but about bringing light to others. Maybe it’s playing music—not in a concert hall but in a retirement home or at a winery. Your music might be the means for you to live a mission of bringing pleasure to others. If you know what your mission is, you can be living it no matter what the outer circumstances, as the following story illustrates.

I remember reading once that Marianne Williamson, writer and inspirational teacher of human potential, worried that she might be wasting her time serving drinks as a waitress instead of living her mission, which she envisioned to be helping people discover love for themselves and others, and embrace their inner greatness. But there she was—a cocktail waitress. Then she had her ah-ha moment, which totally shifted her perspective. She thought something along the lines of, “I get it! This bar is my church and serving the spirits of these patrons is my mission.” So she began to “serve her flock,” practicing kindness, fostering happiness, inspiring others—right where she was, right at that moment.

Maybe you, like so many of us, don’t know what your mission in life is. Usually that lack of clarity arises because you think your  mission is a way to “do” rather than a way to “be.” You can go back and read my November 29, 2018, post about calling your future to you and cleaning the energetic cords to your future. As I point out there, it’s the qualities of yourself that you want to express and that you want to manifest in your life mission that you call to you, not a specific profession, job, or career.

The process of discovering what you are here for is at least threefold. First, you start by appreciating where you are and what you are doing and how you are “being” right now, at this very moment in time. Part of this first step is realizing that (or at least allowing for the possibility that) there are no mistakes. Nothing in your life—the triumphs and the tragedies—is extraneous or wasted. Everything has served to make you who you are right now and to prepare you for realizing your life mission.

The second step is to decide to bring your best self to whatever you are doing, no matter what currently occupies your time. Bring your humor, your generosity, your understanding, your will, your focused intention, and your love to those around you and to yourself. Be the finest self you can be at every moment and seek to encourage others to be their finest selves. If you feel you have not yet realized your life mission, there is no better preparation for discovering it than acting as if you are living it right now.

Finally, make a choice to experiment. Boot yourself (even gently) out of your comfort zone. Explore the world, starting in your own community. Go new places, meet new people, learn new things, think different thoughts, cultivate different feelings, shift your beliefs. Sweep the dust of sameness from your mind, heart, and actions. Life is made up of life experiences (both inner and outer), and even within the scope of your own community there are no doubt amazing things happening and inspiring people to meet. One of my favorite quotations about remembering to drink with gusto from the fountain of life is from Henry de Montherland: “There is only one way to be prepared for death: to be sated. In the soul, in the heart, in the spirit, in the flesh. To the brim.” So don’t wait! Start savoring life now.

None of what I have suggested is specific to our work as paqos. It is universally human. But as a paqo, you have at the ready additional tools to help prepare you to live your grandest self and realize your life’s purpose. Your go-to tool is always saminchakuy. Bring in the life-force energy of sami and release any hucha that is reducing both your clarity and the impact of your intentions on the kawsay pacha. You also can undertake practices to pop your Inka Seed, fertilize it, and nutrure its growth. You can work energetically to connect to your future self, especially your sixth-level self.

But your future self can only emerge from one place—the ground of the self you are right now. Your mission in life is rooted in the present, in the spiritual realization expressed by Manning in the quotation at the start of this article: “no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it.” Your mission is found in the singular combination of skills, attitudes, feelings, and experiences that come together only in you. As writer Val Uchendu states so simply: “When you apply that gift you possess that comes so easily to you and can be used anywhere, anytime to help someone else; maybe your family, your community, your city, state, country or the world in general . . . that is your PURPOSE.”