And do you see how beautiful and graceful the birds are when they are flying and soaring? The ground has many comforts for them to enjoy . . . But in the sky they are truly what a bird is meant to be. So it is with the human heart.

— Aleksandra Layland, novelist

Birds are common metaphors for the loosing of spirit, for the untethering of an earthbound soul. There is a similar use of this metaphor in the Andes, where there is a bird spirit helper associated with many of the levels of human consciousness. According to the teaching of don Benito Qoriwaman, there are seven levels of consciousness that can manifest in humans on earth, although currently we have manifested only four and are eagerly awaiting the fifth level, which is part of prophecies that foretell the rise of the New Humanity.

While Andeans generally don’t work with totem animals in the way that many Central and North American  indigenous and Native peoples do, they have a concept of spirit helpers that include animals and birds.

There is a specific kind of bird associated with a specific level of conscious, and they can assist you in at least two ways in your personal growth to a higher level of consciousness:

1) If you have already achieved that level of conscious development, you can choose to work with the bird associated with that level as a spirit guide, to learn more about that state of consciousness and to continue to develop.

2) If you have not yet reached that level of development, you can be called by the bird of that level. If you accept that bird as a tutelary guide, it will help you grow to that level of consciousness.

Before discussing the levels of consciousness, however briefly, and identifying the bird associated with it, it’s important to understand that we tend to slip back and forth between levels in our daily lives. We tend to be inconsistent in our behavior and mindset, which change depending on context. Rather like the “persona” of psychology—the face we show the world in order to fit in and be accepted—our “lived consciousness” can be context dependent. We might act from the second level at work and from the fourth level at church. We might slip into third-level consciousness in our politics and descend back to the first level in our love relationship.

Generally, however, we seek to grow and develop by stepping up the qanchispatañan—the Stairway of Seven Steps. This stairway of consciousness starts at the zero level, which is the ground floor from where you step up and onto the first step.

Here are the levels of consciousness and the birds associated with them. It’s a valuable exercise to see which “step” you are on in various areas of your life. If you want to climb the qanchispatañan, then you might consider working with the bird spirit helper of that level.

The 0 level is how we all come into human form as a baby, where we have no sense of a separate self or individuality, no “I.” However, people may be at the 0 level later in life. The qualities of the zero level include having little sense of personal power or autonomy, of going along with the crowd or with the majority at the expense of making up your own mind or finding your own identity. It’s the herd mentality, where you prefer what others prefer, seek to fit in at almost any cost, and are most comfortable being part of a group. In its worst expression, this is the mob. In its more positive aspects it can vary from being almost totally identified with a group (a hippie, a Goth, a war protester, an environmental activist, a Catholic, a humanist) to the extreme of being immersed in oceanic consciousness so deeply that you remove yourself from human interaction or renounce the world (the guru in the cave). There is no bird associated with this level.

The 1st level allows for greater autonomy but your sense of self is still heavily influenced by others, and your own need for others makes you dependent. This behavior includes codependence in all its forms. You are especially invested in those you see as authority figures (doctors, ministers, teachers) and you rely on them (consciously or unconsciously) to help direct your thinking, mold your belief system, and form your sense of self. You can tend to take more than you give, as you don’t have a strong will or the personal power to think you can help yourself. You think you need a teacher, leader, or guide and, in this respect, this is the level of the fetish—whatever the fetish is (a person, religion, organization, ideal) if you lose it or it is taken away, you feel you have lost your power and the ability to direct your own personal destiny. In the Andes, the bird of the first level is the killichu, a small falcon.

The 2nd level can be understood as the adolescent (this can be applied, as can all the levels, to an individual, society, nation, or culture). It’s the power of the “in group” and the clique. It’s the belief that “You’re either for us or against us.” It’s black and white thinking, but also contains the element of group-think. You can put your teacher or authority figure on a pedestal (hero worship), but then complain about the authority figure or teacher behind his or her back while not having the courage to face that person and speak your truth. It doesn’t feel safe to upset the apple cart of your belief system or threaten your status as an insider. You are making an effort to learn, expand, and grow, but you may quickly latch on to one truth at the expense of other possibilities, because you are less open to testing or questioning. This us-versus-them mentality can create discord and foster jealousy, incite conflicts of ego, and promote unhealthy competitiveness. The Andean bird associated with this level is the waman, the royal falcon.

At the 3rd level, you have more personal power and autonomy, are more open to acquiring diverse knowledge, and tend to at least listen to or consider the views of many teachers and authority figures. However, you tend to  eventually attach yourself to or identify with the power of one tradition at the expense of others. You feel an exclusive connection and think you have found the “right” path; all others are wrong or misguided. Whereas people at level two are more group minded, the people at level three are more single minded, although the “single mind” is attached to a specific group or a particular belief, etc. It’s the “There is one truth and I have finally found it” mentality. This is the level of consciousness most common in the world at the current time. It drives the most common religious and political agendas. It displays as stubborn nationalism (democracy is the best system, the U.S. is the best country), narrow views of spirituality (“X” is the only path to salvation), and intensely committed political affiliation (the rabid communist, socialist, Libertarian, Republican, Democrat). Very often this mindset drives one to become the “savior” of others, who don’t yet have the truth and so must be shown the way. The anka, or eagle, is the Andean bird of the third level of consciousness.

At the 4th level, you move toward what may be called the mystical mindset: you trust your personal experience, have the capacity to transcend symbolical and ritual patterns, and can overcome boundaries. You can find common cause and connections. You develop a sense of harmony with self and cosmos. You can, for example, experience the power of the “God” connection in a church, mosque, synagogue, teepee, or cave because you can look deeper than outward appearances, symbolic constructs, and particular doctrines. You take responsibility for your autonomy, so that at this level you understand that authority figures and teachers can be guides but can’t solve problems for you—you need to find the answers through your own personal experience and insight. A fourth-level teacher guide students but allow students total freedom; they teach so the student can leave and walk their own walk. While you find your own way and see beyond boundaries, this is not an “anything goes” level of consciousness. You choose your personal beliefs and have opinions, but they are subject to change as you change. You stand up for what you believe in, but you don’t insist others believe as you do and you never belittle or ostracize others who hold different views. You are totally yourself and allow others to be totally themselves. The kuntur, or condor, is the Andean bird of the fourth level.

At the 5th level, you are so in tune with nature and have acquired such personal power that you can push the kawsay to dramatically influence the material world, especially as a healer. This is the level of the infallible healer, who has the ability to heal any disease or condition every time. This is the level of the “miracle.” Healing examples would include those found in the Bible in the Book of Acts, including raising people from the dead. At the fifth level you can also manipulate matter in others ways (such as manifesting a gemstone out of thin air) and can overcome the constraints of time and space as we know it (such as by teleporting or bilocating yourself). You can move in realms beyond the current known laws of physics. The bird of the fifth level is the q’enti, the hummingbird.

The 6th level is that of the Inka Seed and the Taytanchis Ranti, where you become nearly the equivalent of the God of the seventh level. At this level of consciousness you are recognized by others as an enlightened being, literally as one who glows. This is the divine potential within each of us, but sixth- level beings are living that power in the human world. They are “awakened.” Buddha and  Jesus are examples. There is no bird associated with this level.

The cosmovision of the Andes does not provide information or description about the 7th level of consciousness except to say that this is more than a level of god-consciousness. It is a level where god is actually in human form and humans are gods. It is my personal speculation that this could be the level where we live in the human world as pure energy beings. It might also be what happens to humans when, in the words of Terence McKenna, we evolve such that we experience an “exteriorization of the soul.” There is no bird associated with this level.

There is a clear path to personal development in the Andean tradition as I have learned it and teach it. It’s a path of conscious evolution, both for each of us individually and for us collectively as a species. According to the prophecies of the tradition, we are accumulating the personal power to birth a grander self and the “new humanity.”

As metaphysical as this goal seems, it is actually a path of sobriety. It requires that we do our sacred inner work. And that begins with a commitment to our practices as paqos.

Let me review some of the core practices.

1) Ensure your energetic “cleanliness.” Bring coherence to your energy body to accumulate personal power, perfect your ayni, and increase your ability to push the kawsay on behalf of yourself and others. The practice is saminchakuy.

2) Practice ayni. Your responsibility as a paqo is to use your personal power on behalf of yourself and others. If you see others in need, address that need, whether that is to foster healing, empowerment, or something else. The practice is saiwachakuy. If you feel hucha in your relations with others, cleanse that stream of energy. The practice is hucha mikhuy.

3) Harmonize the three human powers. To be in harmony within, you must master the three primary human powers—llank’ay, the ability to do work and make an effort; yachay, the ability to reason, use logic and intellect; and munay, making a choice for love, compassion, empathy and non-judgment. The supporting powers are rimay, kanay and atiy.

4) Live your life as the treasure that it is, and live fully and passionately no matter the outward circumstances. Seeing the world as a awe-inducing creative experience is a point of view that comes from the inside and can change everything about the outside. As some Hindu mystics say, you are not in the world, the world is in you. You project awareness out into the world and into your experiences, which colors all the meanings you give to what is happening around you, to you, and through you. In the Andean tradition, the goal is to engage all of life with passion, and the power is khuyay.

To live these principles is not about seeing through rose-colored glasses or living a fairy tale. It is about being the passionate yet sober energetic warrior who lives from his or her Inka Seed. Expanding your personal power may not be easy or comfortable. For whatever reason, we humans tend to learn and grow through challenges. As paqos we strive to “see reality as it really is,” and sometimes reality appears to be a opponent rather than a ally. Our work as paqos is to look beyond appearances to what physicist Bruce A. Schumm calls the “deep down things.” The power is qaway.

Gloria Karpinski, a wise friend of mine (and a gifted author and international teacher and lecturer), provides a pithy way to understand one of the common ways spiritual and energetic intention (ayni) works in the real world. She writes, in her book Where Two Worlds Touch, “Once we start paying attention to what’s happening in our own environment, we begin to see that the universe is giving us all sorts of clues about our path. If we believe in love and we are making a commitment to being love, there’s a good chance the universe will send us thirty people in a row whom we don’t love. Our assignment: Love those thirty people.”

The law of ayni can be surprising! Using Karpinski’s example, as we develop munay, we may indeed draw to us those we can easily love. But we might just as easily draw to us those whom we struggle to love. Both results fulfill the law of ayni, although the latter is decidedly more difficult a lesson in the ayni of self-awareness and growth. No rose-colored glasses here! But no need for them either, as you, as a paqo, have all the practices and tools you need to meet the challenge (or, more accurately, the opportunity) the kawsya pacha has seen fit to offer you.

You don’t need to be a philosopher to be a paqo, but I do think that you can more easily and quickly master the practices of the tradition if you dive down into the deeper levels of what you are doing and why. When you seek those deep, down things, then you must take off the rose-colored glasses because will not see your life as a paqo as one-dimensional or single-hued. The kawsay pacha is rich in creativity and blessings beyond your wildest imaginings. Why would you think that your life, and indeed our human world, would be any less so? Even your cruelest challenge can be turned to good if you approach the world “as it really is,” which is under the guidance of your munay and ayni.

The whole point of this post is to urge you to pay attention to more than the surface roads of your work as a paqo along life’s journey. Your destination is certain—you will one day return the gift of your life back to the kawsay pacha. The question is if you will have evolved as much as you can through your practice. Have you discovered and then used all of your gifts? Have you shared them with the world?

I love this quotation from Erma Bombeck: “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’” An Andean paqo can speak no truer words than those!

God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.
― Voltaire

I heard a former military flight engineer, Tony Woody, say in his YouTube video about his spiritually transformative experience that the message he received was plain but powerful: “God is insanely in love with you. He is insanely in love with you.”

That’s a lot of love!

Do you know that? Believe it? Live from it?

That God (Universal Intelligence, Wiraqocha, Great Spirit) loves us is the spiritual message of the Andes. Paqos play at the level of the kawsay pacha—the Godhead revealed in the material world. They play at that level of munay, where love is sacred and the sacred is love—a level that is not solemn and serious but deeply and wildly passionate. This kind of passion is called khuyay (you can learn about it in my past post about it: “Khuyay: Living with Passion”).  It’s a passion that arises from the certainty that you are a Drop of the Mystery, as encoded in your Inka Seed, and you choose to live powered by the sacred thrill of being an integral and participatory part of the living universe, or God if you will.

As I have said so many times in these posts, the Andean tradition is a path of joy. Pukllay is sacred play, which is the spirit of our interaction as paqos with the kawsay pacha. The universe of living energy is woven from the fabric of love and joy; it is overly abundant and we can take from it anything we want with no limits. There is no scarcity at all—not of love, not of joy, not of anything. And it all starts with our relationship with who we really are—which is a part of the Godhead.

You might not be used to hearing a teacher and practitioner of the Andean tradition talk about God (or whatever you want to call the Great Intelligence of the Universe). I am the exception. I talk about God all the time, because the Inka Seed inside me is my energetic connection to God. I am, and you are, a Drop of the Mystery manifest in human form. But how much do you live from that knowing? How does that wildly amazing truth infuse joy into your practice as a paqo?

As paqos we are learning to be at play in this grand, infinite field of energy, knowing that energy must follow intention. It must! That is the law of ayni. Yet as much as I know that, I also know that too often I am shy about marshalling my personal power to meet God on this equal playing field of love, joy, and manifestation.

Sometimes I feel the best thing we can do as paqos is to lighten up—figuratively in terms of our approach to our Andean practices and literally in allowing our individual soul light to shine brilliantly for all the world to witness and share.

Now that I am on the road teaching the Andean mystical tradition, I am aware that if there is one “error” people learning the tradition make it is being too serious. They work so hard! They wonder to the point of worry about images and perceptions they see or feel: What does it mean? How should I interpret this? How should I react? If there something I have to do? Am I being called to Peru or by an Apu? They stress themselves about doing the practices correctly or not. They admonish themselves if they judge that they are not “perceiving” the energy clearly enough or at all.

I say. “Relax!” Yes, practice—and take your practice seriously, as that is the commitment to growth and conscious evolution. But breathe into the practice—play and have fun. Pukllay doesn’t mean you are not being serious about your intent; it’s more about living that intent with joy, playfulness,  self-nurturance, and so on. To put it boldly: Don’t be afraid to laugh your way to enlightenment!

This is a message I have to constantly remind myself of. I am aware that I do not laugh enough in my life. I feel joy, but I tend to keep the expression of that joy inside. Too often my joy is private. That’s like keeping a light under a bushel basket. The glow barely escapes. . .

We can fake a laugh but we can’t manufacture true feelings of joy. We have to cultivate the playful and passionate aspects of ourselves just as we cultivate other skills and talents. The first step is awareness. By observing ourselves we can sit outside ourselves not as critics but as cheerleaders. Heller Keller said, “One can never consent to creep when one feels the impulse to soar.” Our path as paqos is conscious evolution so that we stop creeping and start soaring—and not only as individuals but as a species.

Joy is generated as much from the sacralized world as from the purely human one. Paqos are focused like a laser on the human world—on living as a fully realized human being. The writer and adventurer Jon Krakauer, writes: “You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances.”

I would add that it is more than circumstance and a desire for the unconventional that facilitate an openness to experiencing joy; it is a developing awareness. It is a way of looking at and perceiving the world, even in its most conventional guise. The Andean tradition can help us cultivate both a new approach to engaging the world and greater levels of awareness to perceive it through. Then we can witness and, more importantly, experience what Pierre  Teilhard de Chardin says of joy: “Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.”

We can wait for joy or we can cultivate it. Writer Shauna Niequist gets to the heart of the matter when she says: “I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift.”

Your life is a gift from the kawsay pacha. One day you will have to return that gift. The question is what the “in-between” of that ayni exchange is going to look like, feel like, be like. I propose that we burn the candle of joy from both ends: laughing through this life along with our joyful God and living our joy in honor of God’s gift of our life.

Of all the spiritual traditions that I have studied, I find that the Andean tradition best embodies this dual point of view that we are both recipients and givers of joy. My counsel to those learning the path is to strip Andean mysticism down to this deep playful and passionate core, and from there to develop their practice. All the rest will fall into place more effortlessly and naturally—and joyfully.

A different kind of post today. . .in this spring season of renewal, a reminder of the blessings of the Andes.

You are a drop of the Mystery. There is no one else like you. Your life is a gift of the cosmos. In ayni, some day you will give that life back. Your goal as a paqo is to ensure that you return as a grander, more marvelous, and fully realized you.

Questions for contemplation: Are you living the mission of your Inka Seed? Have you taken the quiet time necessary to get in touch with your core divinity? Are you aware that you live in three worlds simultaneously—the upper world of the Godhead, the fully human world in which you often wear many masks, and the inner world of the hidden you. Are you bringing light to the you of each world and integrating these three selves to live as “who you really are”?

Munay is the treasure of the Andes. Love is not an impulse but a choice. It is under the control of your will. It is an energy in which you are always self-sufficient and that you can make more of at any time. It is beyond the needs of the self. It is a force of personal and natural evolution.

Questions for contemplation: Have you taken an inner and outer love inventory in your life lately? Do you love yourself as the universe loves you? Are you making a choice to move beyond projections, judgments, and unconscious selfish needs to bring loving kindness to your relationships?

The only thing that is absolutely yours in this lifetime is your poq’po— your energy body. No one can enter it without your permission—not even God. Your intention, through ayni, activates your relationships with all beings, from God and the Spirit Beings (teqse paqos) to your fellow humans to the creatures of this world. Cleansing your poq’po and bringing coherence to it propels your conscious evolution and enhances your capacity to live with khuyay (life passion).

Questions for contemplation: Do you treasure your poq’po as among your most precious possessions and treat it accordingly? Are you maintaining a practice of saminchakuy (releasing hucha and filling with sami) to bring greater coherence to your poq’po? Have you invited God/Creator into your bubble and allowed that Universal energy to touch your Inka Seed and heart?

Your responsibility as a paqo is to live with joy and well-being, and to foster joy and well-being in others. A paqo is always striving to be a fully developed being in the human world. So whatever personal power you have accumulated, it is your duty to use that power on behalf of yourself and the world. You don’t have to ask permission to use your power for the well-being of another. Well-being is fueled only by love/munay, and you never have to ask permission to share munay to another.

Questions for contemplation: Are you taking responsibility for your own well-being? Are you working to “heal” yourself before you worry about “healing” others? What’s your inner quotient for joy? Can you increase it for yourself and for others? If you were to examine the ayni flow of joy and well-being between others and yourself, and vice versa, would you be content with the strength of that flow? If not, how can you increase the flow?

The kawsay pacha is gloriously abundant! Energy has no moral overlay except the ethical and moral code you choose to live by, so you can manifest anything you want from the universe of living energy according to your own values.

What you can manifest is proportional—through the law of ayni—to your personal power. As you increase your personal power by bringing greater coherence to your poq’po, you will increase your ability to influence the kawsay pacha on behalf of yourself and others.

Questions for contemplation: Do you trust the universe? Do you trust your relationship to the universe? Do you believe that everything possible is available to you through the law of ayni? If not, have you spent time clearing both the field of your beliefs and the field of your energy body? If you believe everything is available, are you willing to receive from the kawsay pacha? Are there any hidden blocks to your feelings of deserving and your readiness to receive? When was the last time you expressed gratitude to the living universe for the blessings of your life?

It is almost a cliché in the metaphysical community that to focus your intention you speak an affirmation. After all, words have power and a spoken affirmation sends the vibration of your intention out into the universe so it can be more easily manifested.

Andean mystics would agree—to a point. They certainly would agree that:

• intention drives kawsay, the animating energy of the universe; energy must follow intention because ayni (reciprocity) is the organizing principle of the cosmos and the driving force of evolution
• words have power; rimay is the capacity of the qolqe chunpi, the energy belt at the throat, and that capacity is all about speaking with power so that your words influence the material world
• embodiment, in any form, from dancing to singing to acting out your desires and dreams, is a power that can influence the kawsay pacha and help manifest your intentions

However, the caveat is that in Andean mysticism affirmations alone are not enough. Personal power drives your ability to influence the world of living energy, so without adequate personal power, your affirmations are at best ineffective and at worst useless.

There are many ways to talk about personal power, and the one I like best is as coherence of your energy body. The more sami (refined, light living energy) you have, the less hucha (heavy, slow energy). Hucha causes disruption to the free flow of energy through us—we are always absorbing and radiating kawsay—and as a result we lose coherence. By “cleansing” our poq’po—our energy bubble—we divest it of hucha and infuse it with sami and so increase our coherence. With more coherence comes an increased capacity for interacting with the kawsay pacha.

Another helpful metaphor is that of a filter. When our filter is clogged, not as much energy flows through us. When our filter is unclogged, we can freely absorb and radiate kawsay/sami and so have more unrestricted personal power. As our personal power increases, so does our effectiveness at influencing the cosmos. Energy more effortlessly follows our intentions and we become better at manifesting our desires.

So what kinds of affirmations would an Andean paqo use? Good question, and not one I actually have a lot of examples to share. But I do have some, and they can provide clues to what an Andean affirmation is like.

More than 15 years ago, I had the good fortune to work with and interview many Q’ero paqos. Most have passed on now, but they were among the most highly regarded Q’ero paqos at that time. In a few instances, when they gifted me a sacred stone—a khuya—from their mesas, they would describe the use of that khuya and would provide what I call an “incantation” to use with it. The incantations all had the same structure: the wording was such that what I was asking to manifest or do was expressed as already having happened.

Here are two examples. I was given a khuya by don Julian Pauqar Flores for which he described a host of uses, one of which was for blessing someone about to set out on a trip. Part of the incantation during the blessing is that the person who is traveling say, “May the walk that I take be walked. May the wish that I make be wished. May the walk that I do be done.”

In another instance, one of the Q’ero paqos was relating a ceremony that paqos do yearly on August 1 (See my blog post “Independence Day Andean Style.”). It’s a ceremony to transform the past by stating your intentions for the coming year. During it you intone, “I am what I speak, not what I spoken.”

As you can see in the first of these two affirmations, the attitude and belief fueling the incantation is that whatever it is you are asking for has already been completed or accomplished successfully. In the second, the incantation cancels the past and refocuses energetically in the present, so that you make a fresh start. These affirmations are not concrete in the sense that they are describing all the details of the desire; they are open-ended in the sense that the quality of the desire (successful completion of a trip, launching of new intentions) is expressed and the details of manifestation are left to the universe.

I find this approach to be an excellent one to take when making affirmations that embody intentions. I know from years of experience that the universe is incredibly creative and much wiser than I am! So I express the general quality of what I desire and leave the fine print to the universe.

Following in the footsteps of the Q’ero approach to incantations and affirmations, my life affirmation is as follows: “I serve the universe and its highest vision for me. Keep me on the path of my highest soul growth.”

By keeping my affirmation general in content but crystal clear in quality, I allow the universe to direct me toward my goal of becoming the most consciously evolved human being I can and of living with the greatest amount of well-being. I know the kawsay pacha is overly abundant and that joy is the natural state of human nature, so I don’t sweat the details because I know that by affirming to the universe that I want to realize its highest vision for me it will no doubt infuse that journey with its own highest qualities: abundance in all forms, love and joy, and overall well-being.

The second sentence of my affirmation is one that includes my personal power and responsibility. I agree implicitly to live with courage to follow the course the universe directs, knowing as I do that no matter what that path looks like or what happens as I walk it, the universe has my back. I give up control for the certainty that as I follow this path, my destination is always clear. If energy follows intention, then I am being led to the highest expression of myself, which in the Andean tradition is the flowering of my Inka Seed (my human expression of my divine self).  My responsibility is to cleanse my poq’po to be in the most refined state of coherence possible so that I have the personal power to follow the universe’s lead.

There are all kinds of ways to think about intention, affirmations and incantations. While the form of your affirmation may not matter, what does matter is that you have clarity of intention and the personal power to push the kawsay in support of it. Techniques of the Andes—such as saminchakuy, or cleansing your energy body of hucha—can help ensure that you do.