As I travel around the country teaching, I hear over and over how angry, worried, upset, even sick to their stomachs people are with President Trump and his administration and how much fear they feel imagining what the next four years holds for our country.

I say, take a deep breath. Calm down. Let’s look at the situation from the perspective of a paqo.

Let me say upfront that I did not vote for Trump, and I don’t support most of his platform or approve of many of the people he has surrounded himself with in his staff or Cabinet. But from a perspective larger than that of his personality and his administration’s policy, I am rather upbeat about what his election means for our country.

It’s out with the old and in with the new. A renewed activism on the part of the people—and let’s admit it, for the past few decades most of us have been missing in action on the political front. A renewed time of caring what happens in politics—at the local, state and national levels—instead of apathy or the “let someone else take care it” or “there’s nothing I can do” attitude many of us have shared. A renewed time of self-reflection to determine personal opinions, beliefs, and boundaries. A renewed sense of civic duty and purpose. A renewed demand that our elected officials have to give up partisan power plays for a return to good old-fashioned statesmanship.

The times, they are a’changing. . . And Trump is the alarm clock that has rudely awakened many of us from our peaceful and rather oblivious slumber—perhaps just in time!

If collectively we are individually and collectively awakening to a renewed sense of civic duty, we had better pay attention to how we wield our power. I propose that it’s never been so important to integrate our political beliefs, words, thoughts, actions and emotions with our Andean work as paqos. Here’s why:

The Tariypay Pacha

According to Andean prophecy, we are living in the midst of a cosmic transmutation, a period during which we can individually—and collectively—consciously evolve. But a chick isn’t born without cracking its eggshell; a snake doesn’t grow without shedding its skin, and a butterfly doesn’t exist unless a caterpillar first unmakes itself. In other words, change isn’t easy. And during change, there can be a messy transition as the old morphs into the new.

So, if as paqos we strive to “see reality as it really is,” we have to start by perceiving that we are in the midst of potentially messy change. We need not resist this change, but see it for what it is—an opportunity to remake ourselves. We are at the cusp of—or, rather, in the midst of—an opportunity for significant conscious evolution, with a stress on the word conscious.

The Quechua noun and adjective hamutaq applies here. It means to be a thinker, one who can reason and reflect. For me it means we would be smart to apply our reason to what’s happening around us, but not to forget to reflect on ourselves.

I remember something author and change agent Marianne Williamson said: You can’t march for peace if you have war in your heart. When I see people at all these town hall meetings with their elected officials roiling over with anger, shouting, and fist-waving, I think of her words. I also think of something Wayne Dyer said: “When you squeeze an orange, what do you get?” Orange juice, of course. Exactly what you would expect. In other words, the quality of your “beingness” is commensurate with the effect you can have in the world.

So a potentially insightful question to ask yourself is, “What do you get when Trump squeezes you?” Anger so rampant that reason can’t gain a toehold? Worry so deep that hope or optimism is flagging? Hatred or rejection of Trump and others that exactly mirrors (when stripped of your self-righteousness) what you perceive to be their problem? Activism so strident that it becomes an excuse for acting out rather than reaching out?

You certainly can have an opinion. But you have to take responsibility for how you express it. Are your actions and words adding hucha to the situation? How can you redirect your passion so that you increase sami? The answers to those questions really start with your state of mind and energy. So practice hamutaq to shift your inner world and more positively help change the outer world.

The Individual and Collective Shadows

It is no surprise that anger, and even hatred, are rearing their potentially ugly heads. If you step back and look at this from a larger perspective, what you see happening is a collective evolution, and as Carl Jung said, the “gold is in the dark.” To heal emotionally, one way—a very powerful way—is to descend into your shadow self. It’s the place within where you stuff everything you reject, dismiss, ignore, dislike. To be whole you have to own not just your light but your shadow. We usually don’t dive into our shadows unless forced to. Donald Trump can be the impetous for many of us to dive into—and begin to own up to and heal—our shadows. He can be seen as the perfect foil to force us to inquire about and explore our individual and collective shadow.

We have to do our shadow work—for our individual and collective evolution and for that of our planet. After all, with technological connectivity and economic and humanitarian globalization, we are a bunch of caterpillar nations that are morphing into a collective butterfly. So let’s thank Donald Trump! If we understand how he can serve our conscious evolution, we will celebrate the dark night of the soul we are being forced to traverse, individually and together. Hopefully, with self-reflection, civility, and creativity, we can eventually emerge into the light all the better for our difficult journey.  All mythic journeys involve a hero/heroine and his/her nemesis. Both are equally necessary. Don’t lose sight of that. . .

The Seven Levels of Consciousness

According to the Andean tradition, there are seven levels  of human consciousness. Most of the world is at the third level, and we as paqos hope to operate most of the time at the fourth level. But if I had to place Donald Trump on the stairway of seven steps, I would say he is at the second level. (If you don’t know the levels, see my post of May 11, 2016, “Birds of Consciousness.”)

As a paqo, you know that when you are interacting with someone, or devising a strategy to communicate with someone, it pays to know or discern as best you can what level of consciousness they are at. You cannot reason at the fourth level with someone on the second level. It’s like talking French to a Hindi speaker. So don’t waste your energy. You would be better off trying to deeply understand where that person is—and where you are—and acting from the level you are on rather than descending to the other person’s level (as so many protestors are). Better yet, find a fourth-level way to communicate at the second level so that person will hear and understand.

Same goes for tactics. In our activism, if we are fourth level, our activism should display that. There is no place for attack rhetoric, insults, outbursts fueled by frustration, or violence in word, thought or deed at the fourth level. Resistance can be non-violent, communication powerful but respectful, emotion tempered by virtue and compassion, and action for change motivated by community-building rather than enemy-bashing. Civic vigilance doesn’t have to descend to second-level political us-versus-them judgments. The best defense is a great offense—at the ballot box. Resolve to work to encourage fourth-level people to run for office, and then get out the vote for them.

Hucha and Sami

Don’t hate the hucha you feel while creating more of it. Generate sami.

In terms of Andean prophecy, the condor was the totem of the old times, when there was an extravagance of hucha. The condor, after all, is the eater of hucha. It has plenty of work to do.

For the new times, the totem has changed to the hummingbird, which is a producer of sami. While there is still plenty of hucha around, the focus has shifted from eating hucha to making sami—and that’s a seismic shift.

If you are having trouble dealing emotionally with Trump, understand that you are in touch with an incompatible energy. Incompatible energy is not bad, but it can increase the probability of creating hucha. But that hucha creation is not a given. Start by divesting your own energy body of hucha. Then return your focus to sami—focus on creating sami, not increasing the hucha, as you express your political views.

What does not creating hucha look like? Well, for starters, it means being a hamutaq: a thinker as well as a doer. In the mystical system, a hamutaq is one who uses discernment in determining not only what’s “out there” but also what’s “in here.” A hamutaq considers both what is happening out there in the world that is affecting the self and others, but also owns how his or her own actions (and words, emotions) affect the self and others. It’s vision coupled with personal responsibility. It is not knee-jerk reactive. It is “feel what you feel, then act from a higher place.”

This stance doesn’t mean you turn a blind eye or mute your voice. Absolutely not.  But a hamutaq values virtue over vitriol. Compassion and consensus over conquering. Bridge-building rather bridge-burning. It’s about being a chakruna—one of a group who, rather than tearing down bridges, seeks to build them between traditions or groups. You don’t only engage  with those with whom you have a common cause, but you simultaneously work to find common ground with the people you can hardly stand being around and who can hardly stand being around you.

Working to increase the sami in an already hucha-filled field doesn’t mean you won’t be distressed by the words and deeds of Trump and Bannon and others when they espouse discriminatory and even hateful views or try to pitch lies and half-truths as policy. But it does mean that you don’t do similar things—such as shout vile slogans or get emotionally overheated by your own rhetoric. The stance of the paqo is that we do a personal mast’ay—we organize ourselves. And once we do, then we can contribute to the collective mast’ay. A mob cannot create a state. But a group of individuals who are doing their own inner work—and doing it as a paqo within the field of the Taripay Pacha—can come together and fuel an incredible transformation in the public body.

We can be paqo protesters! God knows we need our voices to be heard. We just have to remember that our emotions can fire us up, but a fire can just as easily burn a house down as heat and light it. . .

Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage, the theological stage, and the metaphysical or abstract stage.
—Auguste Comte

When people are new to the Andean mystical tradition, I like to introduce its richness by distilling the tradition down to five words. To me, they encompass the core of this metaphysical tradition. These five words are: energy, intention, invisible, efficient, and universal.

Energy

Most spiritual traditions and cultures discovered that underlying the material world there is an energetic one. The Andeans were no different. However, their unique take on the kawsay pacha—the world of living energy—is impressive in its relevance to modern science. For instance, the word pacha means, among other things, both space and time as two aspects of one field, just as modern physics discovered with the fourth dimension, that of the space-time continuum. The kawsay pacha is an immaterial energy field, but from it arises the landscape of space-time—the Pachamama, which is the material world.

For Andeans,  energy is just energy, devoid of moral overlay and thus with no intrinsic qualities such as good or bad, or positive or negative (as in beneficent or maleficent). Just as there are no good or bad electrons or photons, the energy of the kawsay pacha is beyond moral labeling.

Andean paqos train to become masters of energy exchanges—of ayni, which is the reciprocal exchange of energy between the kawsay pacha and human beings and vice versa. Everything depends on their “personal power,” which means the quality and efficacy of their ayni. Most cultures, when they divined the reality of this foundational energy field, sought to interact with it through the body: yoga, martial arts, fasting, breath, ecstatic dancing, drumming and sound, etc. For Andeans, ayni mostly comes not through the body but through something else—which brings me to the second word to describe the tradition.

Intention

Andean paqos say that the prime mover of energy is our intention. A fundamental teaching of the tradition is that energy must follow intention. We are all masters of using our intention. The quality of our lives, say the Andean paqos, is a reflection of how we are using intention to move energy. We cannot not be using intention if we are a thinking, feeling, interacting human being. However, the key is that most of us are unconscious to how we are in ayni with the kawsay pacha. Unlike cultures that first went through the physical body to learn to move energy, Andeans go through the poq’po, or energy body. Thus, the practices of the Andes are all about refining the state of our energy body—our poq’po, or personal energy bubble—and aligning our energy with our intention. We must be conscious of how this dynamic interplay works. This is why I say so often that a paqo is someone who is on a path of conscious evolution.

Many other cultures eventually got to this insight that intention alone moves energy, and modern metaphysics is rife with methodologies for marshalling intention to manifest thoughts, desires, and more. The Andeans, having come to this insight early, have developed ways to perfect ayni, which brings me to the next word to describe the tradition

Efficient

Efficiency means two things in relation to being a paqo. First, the practices move you along the path of personal power and conscious evolution relatively quickly, so they are in efficient in methodology. And second, the practices produce results. So they efficient in effects.

Because ayni—energetic interchanges—are at the heart of all the practices, these two meanings of the word “efficient” are tightly bound. Let me speak to both of these meanings together.

Andean mysticism is a practical path comprised of energy techniques that provide excellent results—both in terms of personal development and of manifestation of intention—relatively fast. You are not expected to spend years or decades learning what to do, why you are doing it, and perfecting your technique. If you are true to the practice, you should see improvement in your well-being quickly. Furthermore, the practices—from saminchkauy and saiwachakuy to hucha mikhuy to despachos—are not complex, but, in fact, are rather simple and, certainly, direct, even as the cosmovision that underpins them has an impressive level of richness and comprehensiveness. The practices are ones that use intention to move energy, so there is no long learning period of complex techniques. The primary “technique” is perfecting your ayni exchange and the various methods of becoming conscious of those exchanges and using them to improve the condition of your energy body can be taught quickly. In fact, I would say that one of the biggest surprises to those new to the tradition are just how simple (but not simplistic) the core practices are.

Going back to effects of applying the practices: This is not a path of wishful thinking or hope. It is one based on producing results right here in the human world as quickly as possible. If you are not getting results, look not to the cosmos but to yourself and the quality of your personal power. Remember, personal power is about the condition of your energy body first and foremost and how that condition supports or undermines your ayni. If you find your results lacking, you take personal responsibility, and go back to the basics of the simple, direct, and efficient practices for empowering your energy body and, thus, increasing your personal power. (“Responsibility” could have been another word used to define this tradition as it goes hand in hand with efficiency.)

Invisible

An interesting aspect of this tradition is that because it is purely personal energy work, it is invisible. No one will ever know you are doing saminchakuy, saiwachakuy, hucha mikhuy. You can even learn to offer a despacho using your energy body as a living despacho. There need be no outward sign that you are working—and working gloriously and fruitfully—as a paqo. Thus, it is a path of power but not of ego.

The Native North American Sun Bear once said something to the effect that if you can’t work without your feather or crystal, then you are not working at all, or at least not very well. I find this especially true of the Andean tradition. In the lloq’e work we learn to turn our body into a living despacho, so you never have to be caught short if you don’t have all the physical items for a material despacho. Everything you can do with your mish (mesa), you have to be able to do without it, or else you are turning that misha into a fetish. A fetish is an object in which you have invested your power, so if you lose the fetish or it is taken away, you lose your power. That is not the way of the Andean paqo. Ayni is the core energy dynamic of the cosmos, and to make an energy exchange you need only your intention. Even with healing, the practices are such that you do not have to be with the person or doing anything physically with them or to their body. You can use pure intention to move energy on behalf of activating another person’s well-being. In all of these ways, this is a path of invisibility.

Universal

Walking the path of Andean mysticism does not mean that you have to forgo exploring other paths simultaneously. It is not a tradition that asks you to be exclusive. It does not ask you to believe in any dogma, doctrine, or theology. While to practice well you have to understand the cosmovision that underpins the energy practices, you can be a Buddhist paqo, a Christian paqo, a Jewish paqo, or any other kind of paqo. You can practice the Andean techniques without having to give up Reiki, holotropic breathwork, meditation, yoga, Wiccan or shamanic techniques, or any other set of practices you keep in your metaphysical toolbox.

Andean mysticism also is a path of universality because it is all about your personal relationship with the kawsay pacha. Energy is universal and impervious to the imposition of human moral labels. The way to move energy is common to all humans—using intention. Thus, the practices require only a belief that there is a world of living energy and that you are interacting with that energy. That’s it—and that makes it pretty universal!

There are other words I could have chosen to describe the basic, foundational aspects of the Andean mystical tradition, but these five serve nicely not only to describe the tradition but to distinguish it from others. By referring back to these five words, you can check in from time to time to ensure you are staying true to the path of the Andean paqo.

The real ceremony begins where the formal one ends, when we take up a new way, our minds and hearts filled with the vision of earth that holds us within it, in compassionate relationship to and with our world.
―Linda Hogan

Mast’ay is a Quechua word that in daily life refers to unfolding and spreading out a cloth or weaving, perhaps on the table or a bed. In the mystical tradition, it refers to bringing order, organization, or structure to something. When you make a despacho, you are doing a mast’ay. When you arrange the khuyas in your misha, you are doing a mast’ay. But you don’t only bring order to things outside yourself. You can apply mast’ay to your own beingness. When you bring greater organization to the inner self, everything in your life is affected in positive and productive ways. The inner mast’ay furthers your awareness and, thus, your potential for conscious evolution as a human being.

In the Andes, the primary ceremonial or ritual practice is the despacho, which itself is a teaching about ayni.  In my training I learned that there can be no mistakes in Andean ceremony. There is no proscribed way of doing things such that if you do them differently from your teacher or others you are committing an error. Quite the opposite is true. You may learn a ritual in a certain way (and it is in integrity to be a good student and learn well), but you must ultimately make it your own.

All ritual is ordered by your intention and thus the quality of your energetic interchanges with nature and the spirit beings. Because ayni is personal, so is your ceremony or ritual. It must embody the quality of your inner awareness and the state of your own energy, heart, mind, and intention. That is why every paqo’s despacho, while following a certain ritual structure, actually looks different from everyone else’s.

If someone insists that you do a ritual in one specific way, following an exact protocol, we would call this third-level behavior and thinking. As a paqo, you want to move to the fourth level of consciousness, transcending outer forms and boundaries so that you can deeply immerse in the inner aspects of the practice. So every ritual or ceremony has to have your personal stamp on it—it is your mast’ay, not someone else’s. It represents your state of being, the organizing energetics of your soul and spirit. It is the offering of your truest self to the spirit beings and the cosmos of living energy.

Of course, there are formal ceremonies in the Andes that follow rules and are repeated much the same way year to year. There are religious festivals based on Christian forms and Andean ones, such as Qoyllurit’i. There are rituals to honor the animals and herds, and the planting and harvesting of crops. There are ceremonies for coming-of-age and joining the community as an adult instead of a child. But unlike these, the mystical ceremonies, no matter what their formal outward appearance, ultimately must embody your own state of consciousness and ayni. They rely on your making an intimate and personal exchange with the kawsay pacha, not a rote one.

There is a viewpoint among many teachers of metaphysics that all the formalities of ceremony—the outward mast’ay, or structuring—have a sole purpose: to occupy the ego so that the spirit can get to work. I agree with the viewpoint, although I honor the ego and do not want to dismiss or negate it. I want all of me involved in ceremony, but not in an egoistic way. I want to marshal all of my three human powers—intellect, actions, and feelings—and make them resonant with my spirit. I want my offering to be about content, not form. So no matter what the ceremony, it is the state of the self that is the fundamental organizing principle, the mast’ay.

Mast’ay is not so much about what you do, but how you do it. You don’t even need anything outer—a poncho, a k’intu, a despacho, a misha—to make an offering or perform a ceremony. Because you are first and foremost offering yourself—your energy and intention—ritual and ceremony in the Andes is, at heart, invisible. It is an exchange that is unseen in the outer world. The spirit beings don’t really care about the gift wrapping of the self. They are concerned only with the contents of the self.

I think of the inner mast’ay as the reordering of the self whereby the whole is greater than the parts. Anthropologist Ashley Montagu has said that “the deeper personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.” In this process of becoming all that we can be, each of us has to undertake the task of the personal mast’ay. We stem the tide of inner chaos by bringing our awareness to our own inner state and then work to bring order to the many worldly selves we are, so that our one wondrous “original” self shines through.

This inner mast’ay is always more important than the outer forms in ceremony and in life. The inner not only germinates the outer, it births it.  While we can honor the old saying, “Actions speak louder than words,” we also understand that, as Plutarch said, “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” That is the power of mast’ay in action.

The concept and practice of soul retrieval is millennia old and spans cultures, especially in relation to spiritual, mystical, and healing traditions. It refers to a condition in which a shock, trauma, and other severe physical, emotional or spiritual upset causes a part of the self to split off and flee. It’s the condition when the soul splinters and the wounded aspect of the self goes into hiding. Soul retrieval is just what the term implies—the process of coaxing the split aspect of the self to return and integrate back into the self.

In Andean mysticism, soul retrieval is called animu waqyay. The Quechua speakers borrowed the word animu from the Spanish, where it means “soul” or “spirit.” Waqyay means “to call” in Quechua. In this sense, soul retrieval Andean-style is a calling back of the soul, restoring the partial or  fractured self to a whole self.

To tell the truth, in all my queries to paqos (which, frankly, haven’t been a lot), I was never able to learn much about soul retrieval. I hear now that a lot of the younger paqos who travel and teach in the United States and Europe talk about it and teach it, but a lot of what I hear (which,  frankly, also hasn’t been a lot) sounds like information tainted by beliefs and practices from other cultures. I am open about my bias that I tend to trust what the older paqos (who had little contact with modern, outside cultures) say more than I do what the younger, most modernized paqos say. So I am a bit skeptical of at least some of what I hear, and I continue to try to sort through information and learn more from reliable sources.

I recently was in Peru and had a chance to talk, over a three-hour dinner, with two anthropologists about many subjects, including both soul retrieval and “secret knowledge” among the Q’ero. One of them has been living among and gathering information from the most respected and reliable paqos in Q’ero. Still, I was not provided much information, really only a few minutes of our hours’ long visit, but what I was told is intriguing.

Let me start with making a distinction between the spirit and the soul. In the Andes, the spirit is that drop of the Mystery that becomes “you” at the moment the sperm and egg meet and the egg is fertilized. It resides in or is encoded in your Inka Seed. Your spirit is pure sami, indestructible and incorruptible.

Your soul, in contrast, is that which informs you at the moment you are born. At that moment of separation from your mother, you become a singular human being and your soul starts to develop. Your soul is growing, changing, responding as you grow. It is the sum total of all your thoughts, desires, experiences, relationships, etc. It is your decidedly human aspect in contrast to your untainted divine spirit. The condition of your soul can cause you to produce hucha. Soul retrieval, thus, is about an assault to the soul that causes a significant fracture to your sense of self as a whole human being. What is being  retrieved is the split-off part of your soul. So, to be clear, it deals with the soul and not the spirit.

Like most Q’ero and Andean practices, the form of soul retrieval I was told about many years ago is incredibly simple. To call back the split-off aspect of the soul, the paqo simply marshals his or her intent and then whispers into the person’s ear, speaking to the split-off self, “Come back. Come back.” Using his or her intent and qaway (mystical seeing and knowing) the paqo intends to draw back the wounded aspect of the self. Like all Andean practice, there is no elaborate ceremony. Soul retrieval is all about how energy must follow intent. Just like a paqo talks to an apu, in a normal voice with little fanfare (but with reverence), so too do they call back the split-off soul. It is like a mother calling a son or daughter home to dinner. It is matter-of-fact and practical, but infused with munay (love grounded in will). The power is in the paqo’s intent and munay, not in any ceremony. That’s all I ever knew about soul retrieval for almost twenty years.

This year I learned things are a bit more complex! First, let me say that part of my discussion with these two anthropologists touched briefly on secret knowledge. Over the years there has been a lot of hype about secret knowledge among the Q’ero and others, and yet no paqo I ever talked with (or others I know talked with) ever said anything except that if someone asks for a teaching it is the obligation of the paqo, through ayni, to pass on that knowledge. Of course, they use their judgment about passing on information to others. But they denied there was anything secret in their tradition, and, in fact, stressed that keeping secrets was against the belief system of the tradition, founded as it is on ayni, or reciprocity.

When I talked to the anthropologists, I understood that “secret” is the wrong word to use or ask about. There is not much, or perhaps anything, that is “secret,” but there is knowledge that is “private.” That nuance immediately struck me as important. For instance, in terms of the poq’po (your energy body), we never have anything to fear from kawsay (the living energy) so there is no reason to ever have to “protect” our poq’pos. However, there are plenty of times when we want to be “private,” and so we will pull our poq’po in close to our body and close the “eyes” of the energy centers (the ñawis). So I immediately understood this subtle difference between “secret” and “private.”

I learned that, yes, there is knowledge that is “private” and so not openly shared with others. This is knowledge and practice that has to be earned through long apprenticeship and by gaining the confidence of your teacher.

So what was this “private” knowledge in terms of soul retrieval? Well, since it is private I did not get many details! What I did learn was that there are “levels” of practice when it comes to soul retrieval. The practice moves from the simplest and fastest approach to coaxing the split-off part of the soul home to increasingly complex methods. Or, more accurately, the practices moved from “informal” to “formal.” You try the informal, and quickest, method first, and if that doesn’t work move to the more formal methods. I received only the broadest outlines, but my interpretation is that the calling back of the soul by whispering in the ear is the first approach—the most informal—of practices for a soul retrieval. Another first-line practice is to throw the coca leaves to try to divine what has happened, why the soul split, and how best to recover it.

If those methods don’t work fully or at all, then the paqo moves to a more formal, and elaborate, practice. When I inquired about what some of these more formal practices were, I was given only one example. (We were at dinner, in a crowded restaurant, and so conversation was free-flowing but also interrupted often and disjointed as we skipped from topic to topic). In this example, a paqo would have to do a lot of preliminary work before even undertaking the soul retrieval. He or she would have to determine how and why the split occurred, and where the soul had fled. This information might be divined by throwing the coca leaves. I learned that the soul almost always flees into Mother Earth, so it could be hiding just about anywhere, such as on a mountainside or in a cave.

The paqo then has to determine what the best means of communication is to that spirit being of Mother Earth (the apu, the cave, etc.) where the split-off aspect of the soul is hiding. Before the soul can be called back, that spirit being has to be persuaded to give up that part of the soul, to release it. Only then can the soul be talked to directly and, hopefully, persuaded to come back and integrate into the person. It appears that all the work done by the paqo is with the nature spirit and the split-off aspect of the soul, and not much is done directly with the person for whom the soul retrieval is being conducted (in terms of energy work on their body, ceremony, etc.).

Wow! I don’t know about you, but I found that information incredibly interesting. And hearing about it provoked myriad feelings. I felt humbled by how little most of us who are not native to the mountains of Peru actually know about the tradition. I marveled at how deeply connected to nature and energy the paqos are. I felt chagrin that so much misinformation is flying around the Internet about Andean soul retrieval (at the very least, as regards claims that certain practices are Andean when they clearly are not). I felt honored to have learned this information. And, despite the incredible Italian food and wine I was consuming, I felt hungry for more information, for renewed contact with the paqos, and for an even deeper understanding of the tradition. So, ever the student, my practice continues, as does my learning.

The chaskas—stars. The apus—mountain spirits. The ñust’as—female spirits of rivers, lakes, and caves. Andean practice is rooted in developing ayni relationships with others, including the beings of the spirit world and nature. Three of the most elemental relationships you want to establish are with your guiding star, itu, and paqarina. Over the years, I have not been able to amass a lot of information about this aspect of the path, but what I have been able to learn is sufficient for our practice as paqos. So if you have not yet met and opened a dialogue with these three most personal and intimate tutelary spirits, I invite you to do so now.

The Guiding Star

Back in the 1990’s, when I was working in Peru just about every year, I remember hearing about the guiding star for the first time. I cannot remember the paqo’s name, but he was an alto mesayoq who explained that we each have a guiding star and if we can discover which one it is, then we can read our destiny through it. Over the years, I have inquired about the guiding star, but I have not received much in the way of details. Mostly what I learned is that we don’t have to “discover” our star, we choose it.

Most of us at one time or another have gazed upon the starry skies and found ourselves drawn to a particular star. That attraction is enough to claim that star as your guiding star. Today, having done the lloq’e training—the left-side work of don Melchor Desa, as taught by Juan Nuñez del Prado and his son Ivan—I know that the Andean tradition works very much from choice. In the lloq’e training, you work with eight helper spirits. They don’t choose you, you choose them. With one exception, the process is the same with your guiding star. There is no magic to it, except the magical pull of connection you feel with one particular star. Don’t discount that attraction. Introduce yourself and invite the being of that star to be your guiding spirit. Then open a dialogue over time.

Long ago I heard another a paqo, perhaps it was don Manuel Q’espi, describe his guiding star as his “luck.” That makes sense considering some of the more literal translations of the word “sami,” which in the tradition refers to refined living energy. Among its meanings is “nectar,” with the light living energy being the nectar of the universe. But sami has other meanings, including “fortune” and “luck.” So it makes sense that a guiding star, which is made of pure sami, would also be your luck or good fortune.

The renowned master don Benito Qoriwaman had a guiding star. In fact, he worked with it regularly, using a dark dish filled with water. He would stare into the water, which reflected the starry heavens, to work with his guiding star, in a type of scrying. I have no idea why he didn’t work directly with his star—he may well have—but scrying is an ancient practice and I find it interesting that it was used in the Andes, at least by this one paqo.

Elizabeth Jenkins, who was one of Juan Nuñez del Prado’s first students, describes an Andean belief that says our spirits enter the earth plane through a cosmic doorway—a star. That star remains as our guiding star, connected to us always. It is the doorway through which we will one day return to our celestial home. I haven’t heard that from any paqos directly, but it sounds compatible with other aspects of the guiding star that I have heard firsthand.

Interestingly, the term “guiding star” is also metaphoric. It can refer to an apu. In this case, however, the apu usually chooses you, instead of you choosing it. Juan tells of a time he spent the night at the summit of Apu Manuel Pinta, and during the night he unexpectedly heard the apu speak to him. When he told don Benito about this, the master declared, “Apu Manuel Pinta is your guiding star.”

The Itu and Paqarina

The itu and paqarina are spirit beings connected to your place of birth, most commonly by being associated with prominent natural formations, such as a mountain or river.

The itu is the male energetic spirit of the natural formation closest to the place where you were born. The paqarina is the female equivalent. In the Andes, the understanding is that at the moment of your birth, you not only have two human parents but also two energetic parents: your itu and paqarina. As reference points for your entry into the material world as a human being, they become your guardian and tutelary spirits. They remain with you for life. In this sense, they also serve as forms of guiding stars.

In the Andes, the itu usually is a mountain or large hill (although not all apus are considered male; examples are Apu Veronica and Apu Mama Simone). The paqarina is usually a body of water, river or a cave. However, here again there are exceptions. Rivers may not always be female. The Urubamba/Vilconta river is, according to its ancient name, called the Willkamayu (sacred river or river of black light) in Quechua and the Willkanuta in Aymara, which means “house of the sun.” The sun, or Inti, is a male spirit being. As you can see, things can get a bit complex.

Generally, however, in the Andes it is relatively easily to identify the male and female guardian spirits of your birth. If you are Andean, there is always going to be a mountain nearby! But what about the rest of us? What about someone born on a flat savannah of Africa or plains of the mid-western United States? What about someone born in the middle of a bustling modern city, where everything is asphalt and skyscrapers?

Obviously, we have to expand our ideas of what an itu and paqarina are. But that is not a problem, because everything in the material world has a poq’po (energy bubble) and can be thought of as an energy being—including buildings. This means the hospital building in which you were born could be your itu! I admit that doesn’t sit well with a lot of people, especially those who are inspired by nature. But that’s part of our work. If everything is an energy being, then the hospital in which you were born is more probably your itu than is a mountain this is 100 miles away.

Speaking to this point, I remember watching a video of author and teacher John Perkins relating a story about a paqo he brought to New York City. The paqo went up to a huge skyscraper apartment building, rested his hands on it and put his ear to the bricks, as if he were listening to it. He reported that the spirit being of the building was lonely. He seemed to be indicating that the people who lived in that building did not think about it, care for it, or consider it a being. He seemed appalled at the state of our ignorance that buildings are beings and that we need to have relationships with these beings.

Because we are more comfortable identifying natural formations as housing our spirit guardians, it can be a stretch to admit otherwise and confusing to idntify our own guardian spirits. Some of my students, especially those born in the Midwest, have no point of reference, coming as they do from flat, featureless plains. Even I have had difficulty. I was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There are no mountains close by. The closest hills are about 30 miles away, and they barely qualify as hills. So I have no idea what my itu is. My paqarina obviously is the Charles River. But, wait! Is this river male or female? Rivers are usually female spirits, but this river has a male name and local identity. If male, it would be my itu! And if it is my itu, then my paqarina would have to be the Atlantic Ocean—and that felt like a stretch.

To try to clarify this dilemma, I talked with Juan when I saw him recently in Peru. He, as usual, got right to the point. He said that being so hung up on the right or wrong of things, of compartmentalizing things so rigidly, is third-level thinking. We need to be fourth-level about our guiding stars, itu and paqarina.

What does that mean? It means to get past categorization and labels and establish an ayni relationship with your broader place of origin. He used the term “paqarina” as all-encompassing, getting beyond labels of male or female and using it to refer to the spirit of the general place of your birth. He explained that this place is the earthly-energetic womb from which you emerged. “Don’t complicate things,” he counseled. “Just connect with your place of origin. That is your paqarina. That is your guiding spirit.”

That advice settled the issue for me. Instead of two guiding spirits (an itu and paqarina), I accepted that the Charles River is my “womb” place. I no longer concern myself with whether it is literally a male or female spirit; it is simply the spirit guardian of my birth with no labels attached. That’s the fourth-level approach. I no longer worry about finding another spirit being to form a male and female yanantin pair. This one is enough. It is my earthly (kaypacha) guiding star.

For those of you who can’t easily identify your itu and paqarina, resolve to take a fourth-level approach and identify with the general landscape of your birth. And remember, that may be the city in which you were born or even the hospital building! They have energy bubbles and are energy beings in their own right.

You also don’t have to be near your place of birth to open this relationship. You can send a seqe (cord of energy) to it to work with it from wherever you now live.

One final point. Elizabeth Jenkins has written that don Humberto Sonqo has said that to be healer one must know and work with your itu and paqarina. There is no reason to doubt him, although without knowing more from don Humberto himself or from other paqos I would consider this a personal opinion. Forgive what may seem like a judgment, but this is counsel that seems to me to be third-level thinking. If you have personal power (clear and efficient ayni), you can use your power for whatever purposes you want, including healing. You may indeed be a better healer with the help of your itu and/or paqarina, but you can be a healer without knowing them as well. Plenty of people in the helping professions prove that point.

That said, working with your guiding spirits in all their manifestations is part of playing in the field of the living energy. Your celestial guiding star and your earth-based spirit of origin are tutelary spirits, beings from whom you can learn, grow, evolve. If you don’t already work with them, I suggest that your New Year’s resolution be to make their acquaintance and open a dialogue with them. Make 2017 a year of deepening your work as a paqo by allowing your guiding spirits to help advise you during your one-of-a-kind earthwalk.