mysticism

A Review of Core Andean Energy Dynamics

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ 2 Comments

As we begin a new year, it might be useful to review some of the main teachings of Andean mystical practice. I am focusing on core principles that most of us learn early in our training but are easily overlooked, forgotten, or misunderstood. These principles may be less well known to those of you who have studied with teachers other than Don Juan Nuñez del Prado or teachers trained by him.

Ours Is a Path of Practice, Not of Philosophy

Don Juan has stressed how the Andean mystical tradition is not a training in “why” but in “how.” It is not a path of intellect, but of experience. The paqos do not prompt us ahead of time to understand the meaning of a practice; we are told how to do the practice, and by doing it we come to learn what we can accomplish. Through the repetitive experience of the way the energy moves, we come to understand the consequences of that energy dynamic. As Don Juan says, each practice “provides a specific experience; not just anything can happen. Certain experiences contribute to our growth, and the paqos planned it that way.”

The training is a sequence, a protocol for accumulating personal power: for having the will, flexibility, and resiliency to meet life with well-being despite all its vagaries. It also is a protocol for stepping up the qanchispatañan: the stairway or pathway of the development of human consciousness. We make the choice for developing ourselves, and the qanchispatañan shows us what is possible: that we can become enlightened human beings.

Similar Names, Different Practices

Do you know that saminchakuy refers to two different practices? And that mikhuy and hucha mikhuy are not the same? A lot of students and even practitioners of the tradition either do not understand these distinctions or forget them.

Let’s break the word saminchakuy down and look at the context for its use. Chakuy literally means to hunt, or to chase down and capture. Figuratively, it refers to taking intentional action to achieve an objective. Don Juan defines it as “to take action with” or simply “to make.” So, saminchakuy is the act of “doing something with sami.” And it is the name of two different sami practices.

As a quick review: Sami is the light living energy, the animating energy; we are always absorbing and radiating sami. When, for various reasons, we slow or block sami from flowing through us, we call that slow sami “hucha,” which literally means “heavy” energy. It detracts from our well-being over time. So, we want to transform it back to its natural state. Saminchakuy is our primary practice for transforming hucha. We direct a flow of concentrated sami over our poq’po (energy bubble) and through our physical body to clear our hucha.

However, saminchakuy also can be practiced independently of hucha transformation. In its second sense, it is the simple act of receiving sami. When we connect energetically with a source, we may feel its sami flowing freely toward us or we may intentionally pull that sami into our energy field. So, the mere reception and intake of sami is also called a saminchakuy.

An example of this kind of saminchakuy is when I and a small group of others arrived at dusk at the Q’ero village of Chua Chua. We had been on horseback all day, riding through rough mountain terrain. We were exhausted. Don Juan told us that when we met later with Don Manuel Quispe, who was the top Q’ero paqo at that time, we should pull sami from him to rejuvenate ourselves. When I asked him about the ethics of doing that, he explained that anyone who is or claims to be more energetically developed than us (and therefore more powerful, more sami-filled) automatically is a source of sami for others. This dynamic operates outside the principle of ayni (reciprocity or an interaction of mutual giving and receiving); instead, it is a one-way flow of sami from a source to us for empowerment, strengthening, rejuvenation, and similar benefits. (I should note that we do not have the right to draw sami from anyone who is at our same developmental level or a lower level, although we are free to take their hucha, as explained later in this post.)

Now let’s turn to the distinction between hucha mikhuy and mikhuy. Mikhuy means to eat or consume. Our advanced practice for transforming heavy energy is called hucha mikhuy: the act of “eating” or, as Don Juan defines it, “digesting” hucha. During this practice, we draw another person’s hucha—or even our own—into our qosqo ñawi, the energy center at our belly, where it is transformed. The qosqo area of our body is our mystical or spiritual stomach. Just as the physical stomach processes food, the qosqo digests heavy energy. Through hucha mikhuy, the qosqo metabolizes the hucha, returning a portion of it back into its natural sami state. Any hucha that cannot be processed is released to Mother Earth, who effortlessly digests and transforms it. 

We also can practice mikhuy in a way that has nothing to do with transforming heavy energy; instead, it serves as a method of deepening our experience of sami, whether from a tree, cloud, spirit being, or sanctuary. We draw the source’s light living energy into our qosqo, for a restorative empowerment and a more profound, even visceral experience of the quality of the source energy. Sometimes we call this kind of mikhuy “tasting” energy. It is similar to the second meaning of saminchakuy (the taking in of sami), only it is a more robust way to sense and experience the quality of that sami. Don Juan once said that using mikhuy to “taste” energy is the difference between being told what an apple tastes like and actually taking a bite.

Hucha Is Public Domain; Sami Is Not

As the light living energy, sami animates and revitalizes us. We are always flowing sami through us, absorbing it and radiating it. However, we humans are the only creatures who can slow or block the life-force energy; when we do, we create hucha for ourselves. Fortunately, we have practices to transform, and thus reduce, our hucha. And we can help each other do that. As Don Juan points out, “Hucha is in the public domain,” meaning we are free to use our hucha-transforming practices, such as saminchakuy or hucha  mikhuy, on others to enhance their well-being. When working on someone’s poq’po, we clear hucha from its outer surface. Because we are not entering into their energy field, we do not have to ask permission to work on their behalf. However, to work on transforming hucha within a person’s poq’po, we do have to ask permission.

We have a different set of ethical rules for working with sami. With the one exception as mentioned above (the Don Manuel Quispe example), sami is not public domain. A fundamental principle of the tradition is that no can access or take our sami without our conscious or unconscious permission. So, what do we do if we believe someone is draining our sami?

To answer that question, we first need a bit of context. The qanchispatañan is comprised of seven stages of human consciousness. From the fourth-level perspective, we are seeking to be masters of our energy environment and our own wasi. We take total responsibility for ourselves. If we believe someone is trying to take our sami, we first question our own belief, entertaining the possibility that the problem is with us: at some psychological unconscious level we are allowing that spirit or person into our field or we are projecting our own denied fears outward onto someone or something else, such as a malevolent spirit. So, we do our personal work to regain our psychological equilibrium and energetic integrity.

The situation looks different from the view of the third level. At this stage of development, the belief is literal that there are powerful malicious spirits or people who can trap us and violate the integrity of our poq’po by stealing our sami. If that is our belief, it is true for us. And we will want to do something about it. So, what’s the solution?

Radical generosity: Give them exactly what they want—some of our sami.

As counterintuitive as that action may seem based on our third-level beliefs and self-interest, it makes perfect energetic sense. The energetically greedy spirit or person wants or needs sami and is attracted to ours. Since we continuously absorb sami, as all living beings do, and the supply of sami from the living universe is inexhaustible, we can share ours freely. We can never be depleted, so we have plenty of sami to share. And if we feel a need for more sami, we simply absorb more from an available source, such as the earth or the living universe at large.

However, Don Juan counsels that we should share our own sami only if we feel comfortable doing so. If we do not, then we can still give that spirit or person the sami they want by pulling it from an outside source (a tree, the earth, and so on) and streaming it to them. When we know ourselves and our capacities well, we can make the choice that is within our comfort zone and act with confidence and generosity.

The Paqo Way of Power

The way of the paqo is to practice ayni, reciprocity. However, ayni is not just intention; it is intention put into action. So, the paqo path is a path of action. However, our ability to act in the world is not dependent only on our will, passion, stamina, and such. It also is dependent on our atiy, our ability to measure our power. We must determine if we have sufficient power to fulfill an objective or not. We do this at the siki ñawi, the mystical eye at the tailbone, although the way we measure our atiy is beyond the scope of this post. The point here is that we might want to do something, but not have the personal power to succeed. Knowing that in advance prevents us from needlessly wasting our energy or feeling frustrated. If we determine that we have insufficient power to fulfill our intention, then we redirect our intention and action to our practices to hone our power, until we know we are not only ready to act, but are able to.

Using our power wisely is another aspect of the paqo path. Before we take on too much, such as attempting to use our personal power to act on behalf of others or address a problem out in the world, we deal with our own issues. Doing so is essential, because accumulating personal power requires the transformation of our own hucha. Heavy energy acts like a screen, obscuring our clarity and limiting access to our full potential and aptitude. So, Don Juan advises that before we “stick our noses in other people’s business,” we must use our power to attend to our own inner and outer affairs. Once we have cleared our own field and put our own house in order, we can share our energy and power freely to act on behalf of the well-being of others.

Not having sufficient power in the moment to fulfill an objective does not mean we cannot work toward that objective at all. We simply need to moderate our ambition or enthusiasm, extend our time line, and take small steps toward that goal. No matter what our capacity, we have some measure of power, and we can use it wisely to work toward the fulfillment of our goals or in helping support others’ interests and well-being. Although the following quotation is not about the Andean tradition, it certainly applies to how we use our personal power, “If you do not have the opportunity to do great things, do small things in a great way.” (From Brian Weiss’s Messages from the Masters: Tapping into the Power of Love.)

Beyond the Mirror: Perceiving Spirit and Nature Beings

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ 2 Comments

“. . . with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.”

                                        —  William Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” 

My guess is that most people who practice shamanism or mysticism would have no objection to my adding another line to this stanza of Wordsworth’s poem: “And they see into us.” The Andeans tell us that everything is a “being,” so if we see into the life of all the things of this world, they see into us as well. In the Andean mystical tradition, this reciprocity is called ayni.

Ayni is neither transactional nor casual. It is about seeing into the heart of another being, whether that is a human being, tree, or mountain. We see through our mystical vision and connect through our feelings—in the Andean way through munay, or conscious caring or even love. Wordsworth description of an “eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy” is a beautiful rendering of the energetics of ayni. He speaks of a perceptual connection that is conscious, humble, respectful, and curious.

Continuing with my blog posts about mystical abilities both within and outside of the Andean cosmosvision, developing this quality of perception into the “life of things” is of paramount importance. A core goal of many types of mystical practices is to develop a perception that can look into the life of things, achieving a direct, unmediated connection to the physical and non-physical reality of this world. This kind of awareness, this contact, is a verifiable reality for mystical practitioners. But is truly unmediated awareness possible?

I believe it is, but only rarely. For most of us, most of the time, the answer is no. This is the great paradox of mystical perception: Our “seeing into the life of things” is, overwhelmingly, an act of seeing ourselves reflected in the things we observe. Our human brain is hard-wired with a perceptual habit to anthropomorphize—to project human abilities, behaviors, emotions, and qualities onto non-human beings. For many scientists, especially evolutionary biologists, we are structurally incapable of doing otherwise. As Reza Aslan writes in God: A Human History: “We are . . . evolutionarily adapted to implant our own beliefs and desires, our own mental and psychological states, our own souls, in other beings, whether they are human or not.” (Italics in original.) We are the ultimate mediator. Our personal experience is the lens through which we apply meaning to the entire universe, blurring the line between pure observation and self-projection.

Let us drill down into a few of the profound implications of anthropomorphization: of projecting human traits onto spirit and nature beings. The core philosophical challenge is the limits of knowledge. We must confront the fact that we can only ever know our perception of the world, not the world itself. While mysticism suggests that everything is connected—for example, that knowing a tree is a deep-down way of knowing ourselves—moments of such “at-one-ment” are exceptional. More commonly, our connections with non-human beings are exchanges that reveal more about ourselves than them. Despite how mystical training can increase our capacity to sense and apprehend non-human beings, I am suggesting that most of the time we cannot know their true nature beyond the lens of our own projection.

As meaning-making creatures, our human perspective is the absolute starting and ending point of all sense-making. Even in moments of perceived reciprocity with a spirit or nature being—when we hear them speak or feel a shared emotional connection—it is impossible to know if the dialogue or feeling originates from the non-human entity or if it is mostly or entirely self-constructed. The mere act of hearing a tree “talk” is, by definition, an anthropomorphism.

Given this limitation, perhaps the term that best defines mysticism is “preternatural.” In its more theological and philosophical definitions, it refers to our apprehension of spirit or nature beings as unexplainable and unverifiable independent of our own minds. That said, mystical experiences are not intellectual; they are phenomenological. Their reality is undeniable to the experiencer, but their meaning and value are inherently personal, determined by our own state of consciousness, feelings, and beliefs.

This dependence on the self does not diminish the worth of mystical encounters, but it requires that we approach them with qaway. This Andean mystical capacity helps us see reality as it “really” is, forcing us to acknowledge the predominant energy dynamic: the inherent tendency to overlay our humanness onto everything. Poetry best captures the essence of this point. Wallace Stevens’s “Tea at the Palace of Hoon” explores the fluid boundary between the inner and the outer, showing how self-realization stems from our own conscious, creative power to shape ourselves through shaping the world: “I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw / Or heard or felt came not but from myself; / And there I found myself more truly and more strange.”

Given the inherent limitations of the human perspective, how can we approach mystical communion with spirit and nature beings with less self-projection? How might we achieve greater comfort with the fact that although these entities may possess some measure of consciousness, they may or may not be aware of or even much interested in human beings? While mysticism holds that we and they are expressions of a larger, interconnected web of being, or likely of an uncharacterizable One Consciousness, the question remains: How do we respect that their conscious existence might be profoundly different from our own? Here are three suggestions for easing ourselves into this frame of reference.

Release Agendas

Observe, connect, and be in union with non-human beings free from the expectation that they can, will, or want to act on our behalf. When we seek out connection mostly to have personal needs or wants met (e.g., insight, problem-solving, learning)—or even when we approach making a connection so we can have an “experience”—we are centering the interaction around ourselves. We are being more transactional than we are genuinely reciprocal. We are in danger of making ourselves dominant and even superior to the nature or spirit being. We don’t know the Mind of God, but it is likely that nature and other kinds of spirits do not exist to bring us pleasure or to serve our needs. We are certainly free to ask for counsel or guidance, and our experience tells us that they do assist us. But we must remain aware that the tree, mountain, or other non-human entity is under no obligation to assist, may not be able to assist, and even may be entirely indifferent to us. It is far more likely that what we “receive” from our connection to a spirit or nature being is an opportunity to listen to the voice of our own unconscious—to our own inner knowing, and even inner wisdom. At the very least, we must remain aware that the nature or spirit being may be functioning more as a mirror than as a human-like problem solver or teacher.

Allow Nature to Reveal Itself

Mystically, everything is a being and possesses some measure of consciousness, although not necessarily one resembling human consciousness. Nature may be a teacher (a metaphor), and if we approach a plant, for example, with an openness to receiving its true nature, sometimes information may be exchanged in ways that are currently unknowable. We might receive the inspiration that this plant, when prepared as a tea, aids human digestion or relieves pain. The key is the shift in approach: We do not approach it with an expectation that it will reveal its “secrets.” Instead, we approach it with respect and humility, simply seeking to know it as itself. Sometimes, from that pure knowing, insights into how the plant can serve our needs will spontaneously arise. The crucial attitudinal difference is that this is not an “ask,” but a reverent connection from which a “receiving” may sometimes emerge.

Honor Selflessly

It is a common spiritual or sacred practice to make offerings—such a sage or tobacco, or in the Andean tradition a despacho—to Nature or specific nature or spirit beings. Usually, we do that as an act of ayni (reciprocity): an offering precedes a request or is an expression of gratitude for the fulfillment of a request. While the act of making an offering embodies our respect, we must guard again allowing a genuine feeling to become merely performative. Too often, a ritual becomes centered on the one saying “Thank You” rather than on the one who is due the thanks. The energy dynamic of projection is subtle: In the act of honoring, we can easily connect more with ourselves than with the being. I am making this offering. I am giving thanks. Genuine honoring is a selfless form of connection; it is a way of connecting that moves us beyond the ego.

Trees, mountains, rivers—they existed for millions of years before human beings did. Even if mystically we acknowledge that they have their own kind of consciousness and intelligence, their form of “beingness” is fundamentally unknowable to us. As ancient entities, their lifespans extend across time scales we cannot possibly imagine. Their form of consciousness may have evolved in radically different ways than ours and may take forms bizarrely distinct from human thought. Very simply, they are highly unlikely to be humanlike.

Perhaps a river’s reason for being is simply to flow. A star’s is to shine. A mountain’s is to rise. That is enough; they do not require any more purpose.

They know their own true nature. If we desire genuine mystical connection, these admissions are necessary. Releasing our human projections frees us to be our authentic selves, and allows them to be authentically theirs. This respect for their profound autonomy is the minimal starting point for establishing an ayni connection with spirit and nature beings.

A Mystic’s Sense of Wonder

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

What are mystical sensibilities? A core one is to perceive and feel the sacred in the mundane—to find the joyous and even the miraculous in the everyday. For the rest of this year, I will be exploring how we can cultivate various mystical sensibilities, starting with the simple, profound act of wonder. As Emily Dickinson writes, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant— / Success in circuit lies.” Her words are a reminder that wonder, like truth, often comes to awareness subtly and obliquely. As she says of truth, wonder might “dazzle us gradually.” While wonder can strike unbidden, more often it is a sensibility we actively choose to develop.

The word “wonder” has two core forms and meanings. As a verb, it means to think about, speculate, be curious. As a noun it means to be astonished by or marvel at something. Many of us begin our mystical pursuits because we are curious about aspects of the world that fall outside of consensus or scientific reality. We are keen to experience the supernatural, witness the unusual, touch or be touched by the magical. So, where do we start? Right where we are. As poet E.B. White advised, the key is to “always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.” It is good advice. And it is confirmed by generations of wisdom-keepers from a variety of cultures and spiritual traditions who tells us that wonder starts when our attention and awareness are focused on the here and now, particularly on the mundanities of life.

How often do we truly notice the world around us? Williams Carlos Williams’s most famous poem may be “The Red Wheelbarrow,” which although rife with layers of meaning, on its face asks us to simply notice the thereness, the beingness of what is in front on us. In this case it is a well-used wheelbarrow sitting in a barnyard in the rain: “So much depends/ upon / the red wheelbarrow / glazed with rain / water/ beside the white / chickens.” Instead of overlooking the familiar wheelbarrow, if we bring it into awareness, we appreciate its centrality to the harmony of the universe as a farm. From the way Williams deliberately breaks the lines of this poem, we also are asked to notice the rain itself and the chickens, things that normally do not catch our attention but that possess their own kind of marvelousness.

How much we overlook in our everyday lives! Is not the weed that sprouts in the crack in the cement a testament to the ferocity and fecundity of life? Is not the hammock strung between the trees the holder of sweet memories of lazy days and daydreams? When we pay attention, not all of what we perceive is pleasant but still may be profound. Is not the dumpster stuffed to overflowing with trash bags and household cast-offs a container for our causal and even thoughtless relationship to abundance, our voracious appetites, our aloofness to frugality?

When that dumpster image came to me, I almost immediately rejected it, because, really, how can trash provoke a sense of wonder? Then I discovered A.R. Ammons’s monumental book-length poem “Garbage.” He set me straight! He writes, “. . . the bulldozer man picks up a red bottle that / turns purple and green in the light and pours / out a few drops of stale wine, and yellow jackets / burr in the bottle, sung drunk, the singing / not even puzzled when he tosses the bottle way / down the slopes, the still air being flown / in the bottle even as the bottle / dives through / the air! the bulldozer man thinks about that / and concludes that everything is marvelous, what / he should conclude and what everything is: on / the deepdown slopes, he realizes, the light / inside the bottle will, over the weeks, change / the yellow jackets, unharmed, having left lost, / not an aromatic vapor of wine left, the air / percolating into and out of the neck as the sun’s heat rises and falls: all is one, one all: / hallelujah: he gets back up on his bulldozer / and shaking his locks backs the bulldozer up.”

If we have the eyes to see and the heart to feel, wonder may erupt out of the background noise of nature and life and crack us open. I recently experienced the unbidden arrival of such beauty. Last spring, I was sitting in my screened porch drinking my morning coffee when a single bird sang beauty into existence. What usually captured my attention were the green fields, the massive century-old oak trees across the fields, the rising sun. And when I think of wonder and birds, I own my bias toward the hummingbirds, hawks, and owls that I share this land with. But this! A song I had not heard before from some kind of bird unknown to me. It was a wonder! Even as other birds began to sing the same song, this bird stood out; it was the Bocelli of this flock. A capella simplicity, clarity, and purity—the closest sound to angelic I had ever heard. I felt I was in the presence of the holy; that I was being infused with the holy. Morning after morning, this wonder repeated: a single bird’s song like a prayer offered to the sunrise, to the giant oaks, to the green intensity of the fields, and to me. It was a mystical experience made more profound because it was inseparable from the mundane, inserting itself into my routine: me sitting in my chair in a screened porch at sunrise sipping coffee. Then one morning nothing. As abruptly as it had arrived, this wonder of a song ceased. This bird and its mates had moved on. How I miss it! And how grateful I am that I was witness to it and in some way imprinted by it. I eventually identified the bird and its song via YouTube: a white-throated sparrow. Theirs is a rather pedestrian call. But not from this bird. Its variation was at a level of artistry far outside the norm. I can assure you that if you go online to hear the trill of the white-throated sparrow, you will find nothing that compares to the wonder of this one bird’s hymnal song.

It might seem cliché to suggest that we cultivate wonder as a mystical sensibility by appreciating the marvelous in the mundane and, more importantly, feeling that marvelousness. Wonder is more of the body than the mind, and there is  nothing cliché about experiencing it. As poet Mary Oliver declares in “The Plum Trees,” “. . .Joy / is a taste before / it’s anything else, and the body / can lounge for hours devouring / the important moments. Listen / the only way / to tempt happiness into your mind is by taking it / into the body first, like small / wild plums.” She asserts this truth again in “The Roses,” “. . . there is no end / believe me! to the inventions of summer, / to the happiness your body / is willing to bear.”

Many of us have lost our childlike capacity for wonder. So, when we are adults, sometimes it takes a child to be our teacher. I remember a lesson I received while visiting some friends. I was drawing with their daughter, who had several severe developmental challenges. We were sprawled on the floor; we each had a huge sheet of paper and a plastic bucket crammed with crayons. When she finished her drawing, she tugged on my sleeve to show it to me. There across the top was a narrow horizontal swath of blue sky. Most of the paper was blank, until down along the bottom was an equally skimpy swath of green grass and two stick figures: her and me. I was taking it all in, so I did not immediately comment. And I admit that my attention was on the blank expanse of the paper. Then our eyes met, and without giving me a chance to speak, she said, “Don’t worry. We’re closer to the sky than you may think.” Whoa! I could not have been more surprised, nor more humbled, if a wizard had hit me upside the head!

William Wordsworth reminds us of the importance of cultivating a childlike wonder (“Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”): “There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, / The earth, and every common sight, / To me did seem / Apparelled in celestial light, / The glory and the freshness of a dream.” When was the last time you felt like this? That the common things are harbingers of delight? That the mundane is magical, such that a simple pine tree can sweeten your body; a white iris can beautify you? (Paraphrase from Wallace Stevens’s “In the Carolinas.”) When was the last time your everyday surroundings and the activities of your common life felt fresh and glorious?

How easy it is to take our lives for granted. It took a friend to remind me that I was so busy, I was missing my life. How about you? Shall this blog post be a wake-up call—a friend’s gentle reminder to take a break from all the “doing” and refocus on “being”? For to choose wonder—to notice the marvelous and even the divine in the everyday—is to choose everything important.

Deep Dive Into Rimay

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

Quechua is an oral language; there was no written form of it until after the Spanish Conquest. It is a language rich in expressiveness, especially for conveying emotional depths, complexities, and subtleties. Rimay is the primary word for speech. In its various forms it means language, voice, word, discourse, conversation, to talk, to communicate, to express, and to explain.

Within the mystical tradition, rimay gains additional meanings. It is sacred sound and sound as a power. It is in yanantin relationship with yachay (knowledge). They are different but complementary powers that together refer to our ability to share the knowledge and wisdom we have gained through personal life experience. It comes as no surprise that rimay as communication is associated with the kunka ñawi, the mystical eye of the throat. Because of rimay, we can charge our vocalizations—words, songs, prayers—with our personal power to lift them beyond the mundane to the spiritual. In the context of rimay, spiritual not only means holy, sacred, or reverent, but filled with life force. (The root meanings of the word “spiritual” are breath and life). This is not some abstract life force, but our personal life force. Put more simply, rimay reveals our kanay: our beingness. With accuracy, clarity, and integrity, we give voice to who we are as unique human beings living unique human lives.

Rimay is a power of the kay pacha: of the human world. This exchange from the 1970s dark-comedy film Harold and Maude could be about rimay:

“Harold: Do you pray?
Maude: Pray? No. I communicate.
Harold: With God?
Maude: With life.”

Using the power of rimay, we can express anything about ourselves and our lives: our joy and despair, our love and fear, our compassion and indifference. . .  Doing so means that in that moment, through our feelings, we touched a truth about ourselves and had the courage to express it. In this way rimay is more about the self than others. If we are owners of the power of rimay, we mean what we say and say what we mean. Our word is reliable, such that we follow through on our commitments and promises. We take responsibility not only for the content of our speech, but also for its volume and tone, for how we place emphasis, and for explicit and implicit intent and effect. We all have heard what lack of rimay sounds like: the polite put-down, the snarky compliment, the disingenuous assurance, the hypocritical judgement.

Rimay as a power asks us to be conscious communicators. Self-awareness and self-control are at its core, for sometimes our power lies in what we restrain ourselves from saying. Actor and writer Craig Ferguson offers wise advice when he says, “Ask yourself these three things before you say anything. 1) Does this need to be said? 2) Does this need to be said by me? 3) Does this need to be said by me now?”

In its highest vibration, rimay as communication is healing. Victor Zea, a Peruvian photographer and hip-hop artist who seeks to preserve the Quechua language through his music, uses the term hanpiq rimay, which is speech that heals. (Hanpiq is more commonly spelled hampeq, which means healer.) Our words, of course, can lift others up. They can be soothing, restorative, inspirational. But as with all our work, we first attend to ourselves. When we marshal the will to speak our truth with honesty and clarity, we bring healing to those denied or wounded parts of ourselves we previously had kept hidden or protected. Our healing might be as simple (and powerful) as reclaiming our integrity around the words “yes” and “no.” It might be learning to say “yes” to ourselves when for most of our lives our lack of self-worth led us to say “no.” Or learning to say “no” to others when previously we had begrudgingly said “yes” from a sense of obligation or fear of rejection.

The paqos tell us that while our use of Andean practices for self-development is serious work, it is not only that. It also is pullkay: undertaken with a sense of playfulness. This is true of rimay as well. Don Juan Nuñez del Prado reminds us that “our work is cosmic games. It is a mix of munay and rimay. Munay as love and will, and rimay as the ability to express yourself.” But, he says, “rimay is more than that really: it is the ability to manifest yourself. To express yourself in all forms, including expressing and living your destiny and inviting others to do the same. All of this takes you to kanay, the power to be yourself. If you discover kanay, you reach atiy, the power to change reality around you. After you manifest yourself, you can drive kawsay to influence [reality], but not control it; you can [push] energy to follow more harmonious flows in more harmonious directions for you. And then [you can] play in the world of living energy.”

Although rimay primarily relates to communication, in the mystical tradition it is the personal power to express any of our capacities. The evolutionary process don Juan explained above starts with munay—with cultivating it for ourselves. We learn to love ourselves just as we are. We recognize our inherent value and become the owners of self-worth. We express who we are without the need for putting on false faces: without illusions, excuses, apologies, justifications, or explanations. We neither devalue our strengths and gifts nor inflate them. We acknowledge our weaknesses and shortcomings, yet we do not fixate on them. When we accept ourselves just as we are, then we can relate to others just as they are. Our inner state conditions our outer reality.

Mastering this first harmonization of munay and rimay leads us to kanay: I am. Moses asked God, “Who are you?” God replied, “I am that I am.” Kanay confers this level of clarity. When we know “This is who I am” and are unafraid to express ourselves, we gain the power to live according to our true nature. Our Inka Seed—the energetic repository of our full potential—flowers. Although we cannot help but be shaped by aspects of life that are beyond our control, through kanay we also become shapers of life. Andeans aspire to attaining “sumaq kawsay”: a beautiful life, a happy life. I agree with Lucille Ball, who said, “It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.”

Once we expand our understanding of ourselves to include kanay, then we can begin to use another of our primary powers: atiy. Atiy is our capacity for acting in the world. Through kanay we know who we are and what we want from life. Through atiy we begin to manifest that life. It is a short hop from atiy to the final stage of development: khuyay. Khuyay is the passion, the joy of being alive as you. And so we come full circle, back to rimay: the exuberant expression of ourselves in our unique version of this cosmic game called life.

On Being a Chakaruna

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ 3 Comments

Chakaruna means “bridge person,” and its meaning is self-evident: one who discerns connections and brings together or harmonizes two things, groups, traditions, ideas, and the like. We tend to think of this as an energy dynamic that occurs out in the world, and it certainly is that; however, the core energy dynamic starts inside of us.

The first bridge we build is within ourselves. The core energy dynamic of the Andean tradition is ayni: reciprocity. Bridge-building is a reciprocal endeavor. It does little good to establish a connection if the party with whom you have connected has no desire or ability to reach back to you and form a relationship. Reciprocity, therefore, is at the core of all kinds of chakaruna endeavors.

Anyi operates on many levels: socially among people and communities; ethically between ourselves and other people; and energetically between ourselves, other people, nature, the spirit beings, and, ultimately, the living universe. We are always in energetic interchange, although the bulk of our energy exchanges are driven by our unconscious needs, desires, beliefs, and such. Bringing consciousness to our ayni is essential personal work, and we cannot even begin to do that until we understand that ayni is a tawantin (comprised of four factors): intention, intention acted upon, awareness that there will be a reciprocal return (feedback) from the other party or the living universe, and then seeing and understanding that feedback when it comes so that we know whether to continue with our intentional action or whether we have to make some adjustments to it.

In addition, we understand ayni as an exchange in which both parties seek and receive fulfillment. The shared concern always is that each party in the interchange receives benefit. So, ayni is not any kind of interchange, but an interchange of mutual well-being. Many people new to the Andean tradition talk about ayni is generalized ways, thinking it is any kind of energy interchange. But it is not—it is special, and it is not so easy to achieve true ayni. In fact, there are plenty of other kinds of interchanges we can make that do not rise to the level of ayni. An example is chhalay. Chhalay is a transaction. It is an exchange devoid of much feeling (munay), and so tends to be based mostly on self-interest. If you see a sweater in the window of a store, you might go in and purchase it. There is a tacit agreement that you will pay whatever price the seller has determined. You pay that price, take the sweater home, and the storeowner pockets your money. That is chhalay.

I will use myself as an example of a more nuanced difference between chhalay and ayni. I teach online, and I set a price for a course. Students who sign up are agreeing to pay that course fee. That is a chhalay transaction between us. The ayni comes into play when I begin offering my service. My ayni is how I teach that course. It is expressed in the ways I devote myself to my students and their needs, in how prepared and engaged I am when I am teaching, in how committed I am to providing a stellar learning experience for my students. The other half of the ayni exchange comes from each student: they either reciprocate in ayni or not (their enthusiasm for learning, their engagement with me and fellow students, and so on). In contrast, if I am robotic because I have been doing this a long time, if I keep my emotional distance from my students, if I rarely interact with them except in class, and so on—that is not ayni on my part. It is chhalay.

I am focusing so heavily on ayni because it is widely misunderstood and too often not practiced. Yet it is at the heart of the Andean tradition and certainly at the heart of being a chakaruna. Ayni is how we bring the quality of ourselves out into the world. It is dependent on many things, not the least of which are our personal values and the acuity of our self-awareness. When we know ourselves and accept ourselves (with compassion even for our flaws and character deficits), we have the ability to see others for who they are and accept them exactly as they are. The inner chakaruna bridge helps us to not stand above others, but eye to eye with them. It is how we overcome the stubborn psychological dynamics of perceiving differences and begin cultivating the recognition of similitude and fellowship. Chakarunas see themselves in others and others in themselves. As the saying goes: as within, so without.

Ayni also is at the heart of being a chakaruna because it involves our will but not our willfulness. We must apply will to put our intention into action, yet we must not willfully impose our own intentions, beliefs, desires, opinions, judgements, and aversions onto others. Too often bridge-building is imposition or, more rarely but not unheard of, it is a disguise for coercion. We tell ourselves we are doing good works, when in reality we may be seeking (consciously or unconsciously) to impress our will upon others. It is a rare person who has no preference for one party or the other, who is not projecting onto one party or the other, or who is not judging one party more worthy, right, good, deserving (whatever) than the other.

Don Juan Nuñez del Prado has advised me and others over the years that our work as “paqos” is to assist those we discern might need our help (usually energetic assistance, if we have the personal power to extend such help), but we do not go around sticking our noses into other people’s business. It is not our business to try to build a bridge without the explicit or implicit consent of both parties. It is not our business to build a bridge because we deem it “for the best” for two parties.

So, what is our business as a chakaruna? It is about our own state of energy first and foremost: building a bridge within from which we can see both shores (both parties) without favor or prejudice. It means getting past any drive to fix or heal one or both parties. A chakaruna doesn’t do anything to others, but acts on behalf of others. In this view, the chakaruna is not the one who builds the outer bridge; the chakaruna holds the space within so that the two parties are able to imagine a bridge between them and begin to build it themselves: one toward the other until they meet in the middle and stand together upon it. 

My friend, former student, and now colleague Katy O’Leary Bagai shared the translation of a discussion she had with paqo don Claudio Quispe Samata that beautifully explains this approach to being a chakaruna. Her gathering of the clusters of translations into cohesive notes includes the following perspective, which provides the perfect conclusion to this discussion: a chakaruna chooses to live within the intersection between spirit and matter, quietly holding coherence between the tension that is often created by humans within that intersection. A chakaruna listens for the alignments and watches for the invitation to bring cohesion into any perceived tension. A chakaruna does not reject action, but understands that wisdom lies in knowing when to act and when to hold. The chakaruna at heart is a vessel of potential. He or she becomes a conduit for the world remembering how to change itself.