mysticism

Good Vibes, Bad Vibes: Avoiding Spiritual Bypassing

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

Over the past year, I have lost count of the number of conversations I’ve had with students and friends about how to stay centered and hopeful in a world that feels in radical disarray. How do we remain light-bearers when there is so much darkness around us?

It is a fair and urgent question. While there are dozens of ways to address it—many of which I have explored in lectures, podcasts, and classroom discussions—I want to focus here on a specific, common tendency: Our urge to concentrate on the light while avoiding the dark.

Is this focus a form of spiritual bypassing?

Before I define spiritual bypassing, let me address the two core terms: the light and the dark. I admit it is not an easy task to define them because there are many important layers of meaning that coexist without hierarchy and that are relative to context. Everything I am about to write is premised on two fundamentals: first, that light and dark are aspects of the same energy along a spectrum; they are expressions of one life-force energy; and second, that they are not oppositional but complementary: Just like up and down or right and left, one has no meaning without its complement in the pair. So, to be brief, at the expense perhaps of oversimplifying, I am mostly talking about spiritual positivity and negativity. Spiritually, the light is considered a refined vibration and indicative of a developed consciousness, and it is associated with wisdom, goodness, unity, compassion, even holiness. Darkness is most often considered a low vibration or indicative of an underdeveloped consciousness (or the unconscious “shadow”), and is associated with ignorance, disruption, corruption, solipsism, and the like. However, you are free to define these terms as you prefer within the same complementary parameters, because like the perception of Andean sami (light living energy) and hucha (heavy living energy), the perception of light and dark is relative to our own state of being, and to our personal beliefs, ethics, morals, and such. So, what is dark (or like hucha, heavy) for you may be lighter (or more like sami) for me. And, to be really “real” about this discussion, most of us feel we know what represents the light when we see or feel it; the same for the darkness.

And so back to spiritual bypassing. . . This is the tendency to use spiritual beliefs, perspectives, and practices to avoid facing distress, whether that distress arises from painful emotions, psychological wounds, or harsh real-world problems. The term was coined in the early 1980s by psychotherapist John Welwood. He used it to describe a behavior he noticed among a subset of spiritual practitioners who insisted on focusing on positivity regardless of what was happening around them—usually as a way to avoid dealing with reality.

The reality is that humans are messy, complex, and often confounding creatures. This description includes every one of us. No matter how much we focus on “awakening” or “ascending,” we cannot make genuine progress as spiritual beings until we acknowledge and, ultimately, own the ways we are still far from the light. True resilience doesn’t come from pretending the shadows don’t exist; it comes from having the courage to meet them head-on.

Recognizing spiritual bypassing in our own lives requires radical honesty, because it often wears the mask of high-vibe wisdom. The even trickier thing about spiritual bypassing is that it is remarkably easy to spot in others, but almost invisible to us within ourselves. Here are several classic behaviors and beliefs that either constitute spiritual bypassing or easily pave the way for it:

  • Destiny over Will: Believing that everything happens for a reason or things are exactly as they should be. This view bypasses a critical examination of how our own choices, actions, and beliefs shape our reality. It effectively abdicates our free will to fate.

  • Excessive Positivity: Focusing exclusively on positive vibes at the expense of our authentic, messy emotions. By valorizing the good vibes over the bad ones, we reduce our ability to honestly and safely process fear, anxiety, anger, worry, despair, or other “heavy” emotions. Essentially, we bypass the fullness of our humanness. That which we deny in ourselves has only one place to go: into our unconscious, our shadow.

  • Spiritual Blind Spots: Ignoring clear warning signs in other people’s behavior—such as gaslighting, manipulation, or deception. Because spiritual blinders can constrict our vision to seeing only (or mostly) the light in others, we tend to frame even the most egregious behaviors in the most generous way. We rationalize, giving others the benefit of the doubt when they don’t deserve it, often to our own and others’ detriment.

  • Ritual Action as Panacea: Relying on rituals, ceremonies, affirmations, and the like to influence or solve real-life issues. While our sacred practices are essential, overreliance on them can lead to delaying necessary action. It can keep us from personally participating in creating the real-world conditions to enact solutions.

  • Hyper-Spiritualizing Reality: Elevating intuition, inspiration, or optimism over a sober, grounded acknowledgment of “what is.” We then tend to favor abstract spiritual conceptualizations over commonsense and reason. Just as we are both physical and metaphysical beings, we are both spiritual and rational beings.

  • The Elitism Trap: Believing that our spiritual practices, experiences, or knowledge make us “special” or provide us drastically heightened insight or understanding. This spiritual and ego inflation often manifests as assuming we possess above-average perceptions about life that the “unawakened” or “average” person simply cannot grasp.

  • Spiritual Benchmarking: Declaring “truths” about another person’s inner state or spiritual development to validate our own opinion of them. Similar to the Elitism Trap, this tendency has us labeling others as “old souls,” “young souls,” “advanced,” “beginners” and such, or claiming that others’ paths are “ego-based” rather than “heart-centered.”

While spiritual bypassing manifests in the many ways I have listed, and plenty of others, the core issue I want to zoom in on is our tendency to ignore, deny, avoid, or harshly judge the darkness, whether we perceive it within ourselves, someone else, or the world at large. Which raises a potentially perplexing question: Do other people and the world actually need our light?

 Plenty of spiritual teachers and philosophers would tell us the answer is an emphatic “No.” They say that when we cultivate the light within ourselves, we are doing so first and foremost for our own evolution. Consider a metaphor, as imperfect as it is, from nature: Every plant in a field turns toward the sun based almost entirely on its own unique state of being—its physical condition, the condition of the soil, its position relative to the sun, and so on. Each grows according to its own nature and necessity. This is the stance inherent in Mahatma Gandhi’s famous wisdom: We must be the change we want to see in the world. Our light is ours to cultivate. We have plenty to do to develop ourselves without worrying about how everyone else is doing. Yet, also embedded in Gandhi’s statement is the payoff for self-improvement: How we each cultivate ourselves determines the health and beauty of the entire field. One plant does not a field make. So, our primary work as individuals contributes to the state of the collective. When each of us grows strong and resilient, we can better thrive individually and collectively whether we find ourselves in a fertile environment or a blighted one.

The world needs us to cultivate the spiritual fortitude to experience the dark without feeling overly anxious, trying to banish it, or panicking. The real practice is learning to accept “what is” without reservation. To paraphrase author Lysa TerKeurst, we don’t have to be the world’s saviors; we just have to be willing to sit with the world in all its beautifully ugly reality.

When we favor only the light, we turn the dark into something oppositional to it rather than complementary. Our impulse shifts to resistance—we want to ignore it, deny or resist it, or fight against it. Yet, as Carl Jung, developer of the concept of the unconscious shadow self, warns us, when we refuse to acknowledge or explore our own inner darkness (and by extension, the world’s), we give it power over us: “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” In other words, what we avoid about our own heaviness and the world’s not only persists, but tends to intensify. 

By viewing darkness as the absence of light or, mistakenly, as oppositional rather than complementary to light, we miss the reality that darkness is the bearer of its own unique beauty. It is associated with many of the same profoundly life-giving qualities we ascribe to the light: creation, incubation, fertility, depth, imagination, inspiration, transformation, revelation. When we stop bypassing the dark, we stop fighting reality and allow ourselves the freedom to explore, and perhaps even to play in, the darkness. It takes an almost brutal honesty to acquire the spiritual strength to experience the complementary nature of human existence—its awe and its agony—with equanimity and to accept “what is.” While we naturally, and commonsensically, prefer to experience what is light, bypassing experiences of the dark suppresses the essential labors of self-evaluation. Our spirituality becomes more like a denial of our complex nature rather than an appreciation of it. In this way, spiritual bypassing serves as a coping mechanism at best and an outright refusal to immerse ourselves in the crucible of reality at worst.  

The process of spiritual transformation, which is often seen as only or mostly a turning toward the light, actually requires that we be willing to linger in the darkness that lives within us. This is the proverbial dark night of the soul. It is a kind of shamanic or mystical descent: one driven not by trepidation but anticipation. Darkness has a purpose and a function, just as light does. It has its own kind of transformative brilliance, for it is not a featureless, sterile void, but a realm of intensity and power. When we are willing to explore without judgment or fear how the darkness lives within us, then we can use it in furtherance of our own evolution, which admittedly is no easy undertaking. Still, when we grow more comfortable with our own darkness, we are less likely to despair at seeing it in others or the world.

It is true that, as the late Wayne Dyer famously said, “You can’t discover light by analyzing darkness.” And it is equally true that most spiritual traditions lean toward the wisdom of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who taught: “Don’t fight the darkness—bring the light, and the darkness will disappear.” Within certain contexts, I agree with both views. However, my point here is that we cannot live in the light or be the light unless we are first willing to face the darkness. The reality is that none of us individually can bring enough light to make the world’s darkness vanish entirely. No single figure—not Christ, Buddha, nor Muhammad—possessed enough light to permanently banish the dark from our human existence. What they did do was acknowledge it, face it, and ask us to do the same. None of them would have ignited a spiritual or religious revolution by simply pretending the dark wasn’t there; the very tension between light and dark is what defines their philosophies.

Ultimately, spiritual bypassing is a diversion from—or an outright refusal of—the difficult work not only of mediating both the light and dark aspects of human experience, but of honoring them. It is a forgetting of a core truth of both the self and the universe: growth, transformation, and movement of any kind require contrast. As the artist Bob Ross beautifully observed about painting: “Put light against light—you have nothing. Put dark against dark—you have nothing. It’s the contrast of light and dark that each give the other one meaning.” Spiritual bypassing is, in the end, a kind of sentimentality. It is an emotional shield that blinds us to raw reality, flattening the beautiful, agonizing complexities of human beings and our world into simplistic, comfortable binaries. In this way, it stalls or even blocks our development rather than nurtures it.

Mystical Relations with Cities

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

In my last post, we explored our mystical relationship with nature. That reflection left me wandering down an unexpected path, thinking about cities. Urban areas are rarely the places people flock to when seeking personal respite or rejuvenation, spiritual connection, insight, inspiration, or the transcendent. But why should an urban environment be considered any less sacred than a natural one?

I am not talking about the world’s widely recognized spiritual centers, such as Jerusalem, Medina, Vatican City, Varanasi, Cusco, Kathmandu, or Kyoto. I am talking about everyday cities, such as Boston, Edmonton, Siena, Hamburg, Córdoba, Anatalya. I am talking about any city, really—large or small, well-known or entirely anonymous to anyone but the locals.

I guess what I am really exploring is not a specific location, but a particular kind of environment: the entirely manmade kind. And what I am exploring in a broader way is the sense of pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is an intentional journey to a place deemed holy or sacred, undertaken for spiritual, creative, or inspirational reasons. Because modern environments limit our daily exposure to nature, we often—and rightly—seek out green spaces for this kind of respite and rejuvenation. We head for the mountains, the forests, the oceans, or the jungles. But beyond recognized cities that are spiritual centers, why do so many people assume they will not (or cannot) find the sacred—or connection, respite, rejuvenation, insight, inspiration—in what is pejoratively labelled a “concrete jungle?” Other than our own learned biases, what truly makes the manmade less holy than the nature-made?

One of the strongest pulls of wilderness immersion is the ability to step (almost) entirely outside of society. When we are alone in nature, the social cacophony mostly ceases, allowing us a quiet space in which to connect with the self and better hear (and listen) to our inner voices. We also expand our awareness beyond ourselves. Instead of harried and complicated interchanges with people, we slow to the simpler rhythms of the wind, water, sun, and moon. We shed the social masks we wear and the cultural mores we serve. We become more aware of our wasi: the temple of the self, which comprises both our physical body and our poq’po (energy body). Naked to ourselves, we deepen our relationship with our own souls and the soul of the world.

Yet, the sacred is not out there. It is always and everywhere within ourselves.

So, I wonder why we cannot so easily shed those same social costumes and psychological masks while standing on a crowded street corner surrounded by brick buildings and the honking horns of cars? Isn’t it true that the challenge isn’t the concrete beneath our feet, but our willingness to “be” wherever we are, in whatever conditions, whether the dizzying action of a large city, the bland homogeneity of a suburb, or the insular timelessness of a backwater town? 

Landscapes by themselves are devoid of meaning. We are the meaning-makers. If we cannot “be”—centered, calm, aware, in wonder—in the middle of an urban rush, well . . . that tells us something about ourselves. If we can marvel at the power of ocean waves surging toward shore, can we not find a sense of majesty in a crowd of people propelling themselves with purpose along the city blocks? Why is sunlight brilliantly streaming through a thick tree canopy any less mesmerizing than one streaming down between a cluster of skyscrapers?

There is a term I once heard don Juan Nuñez del Prado use while discussing the Andean tradition: the egregore. It was how don Juan described some energy dynamic—I forget now what he was talking about—back in the very early days of my training. I haven’t heard him use it since. But it has stuck with me. It’s a term that refers to the spirit of a group, to how their energy coalesces into a shared psychic structure. We might think of it as a city’s dream body or its ayllu poq’po (group bubble or energy body). The egregore is formed from the collective beliefs, thoughts, emotions, needs, desires, dreams and such of the group, and so the egregore is the holistic impression we have of a place. It is a signature energy, such that the “feel” of London’s egregore is different from New Delhi’s, which is different from Buenos Aires’. There is a reason we feel the glow of romance in Paris and the welcoming, family-like familiarity of Bologna.

Most cities use taglines to brand themselves for tourism and commerce. However, from an energetic perspective, they are actually advertising their egregore: I live near Winston-Salem, NC, whose egregore is “The City of Arts and Innovation.” New Orleans is the “Big Easy,” Tokyo is where “Old Meets New,” and Geneva is “The Peace Capital.” You can “Find Your Heart” in San Francisco and know that “What Happens Here, Stays Here” in Las Vegas.

For every one of our shifting passions there is an urban egregore that perfectly resonates with it and so can deepen our feelings about whatever is sacred to us in the moment. There is a place vibrating at the perfect frequency to sweep us into the indulgence of physical pleasures, or into freeing our inner child or unleashing our inner comedian, or into supercharging our creativity or immersing ourselves in futuristic technology. When we choose to view every place on this planet as sacred, even a simple day trip to a bustling urban center transforms into a pilgrimage. Just like a verdant forest or an imposing mountain, a city can serve as a powerful bridge between the mundane world and the liminal space of the divine.

Mystical Relations with the Earth

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

Hike through the high plains of the Peruvian Andes, and you might notice your guide pausing before a towering peak or beside a rushing stream, whispering softly and offering a few coca leaves or spilling a few drops of water. To an outsider, this gesture might look like a quaint ritual—a nod to folklore. But to the paqos (practitioners of the Andean mystical tradition), this isn’t a performance. It’s a vital connection, even a sacred communion. While Western spirituality often focuses on ascending out of the world, and many Eastern traditions look inward to find the divine, the Andean paqos do something entirely different. They look directly at the landscape and bridge its materiality to touch its energetic essence. Andeans in general, and paqos in particular, are kawsaypa llikapi, which literally means “within the network of life.”

In modern society, many of us view ourselves as separate entities moving through a space. Even if we admire our surroundings as we walk through a valley, many of us traverse the terrain essentially as observers or visitors. In contrast, in the Andean tradition we understand that our energy field (poq’po) is directly enmeshed with the surrounding landscape and its features. The valley in its own right has a poq’po, as do the creatures who live there and each of the trees, rocks, rivers, flowers, and other natural features. The paqos teach that humans possess three main forms of perception: yachay: mind; munay: feelings; and llank’ay: action. When these three ways of perceiving are aligned, a human being becomes a chakaruna—a living bridge. We literally become a conduit through which we and the sky, the mountain, the river, or the stones share energy. This is ayni, or reciprocity. As modern physics tells us, and the paqos show us, the created universe is relational. As Margaret Wheatley, a writer and speaker who incorporates systems science into her leadership seminars and books, says, “Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation.”

Without humans consciously performing rituals of reciprocity, Andeans believe the universe loses its harmony. So, we humans, despite our woeful behavior as stewards of the Earth, are not cosmic tourists visiting the Earth for a time but vital expressions of the Earth. Humans, the Andeans tell us, are allpa camasca: animated earth. Energetically, when we engage in an ayni relationship with Mother Earth, we not only honor her but become an integral aspect of her body and serve as ritual caretakers. The physical landscape is not just terrain; it is the altar upon which we cherish our “mother” and take to heart our roles as attentive “children.” By caring for the Earth, we care for ourselves and all creatures.

Most people, when they first begin to practice Andean mysticism, tend to gravitate toward Pachamama, which usually is translated as “Mother Earth.” However, Mother Earth as a being in her own right has her own name: Mama Allpa. Who, then, is Pachamama? The Cosmic Mother. In a beautiful imagistic rendering, Andeans see Mama Allpa as the womb of Pachamama. From this Earth womb all living things are birthed into being. However, our Original Mother is of cosmic origin. Pachamama is the mother of the entire material universe, of which Mama Allpa and we are just a small a part. When we are in ayni with Mama Allpa, by extension we also are in ayni with Pachamama, the entire material cosmos.

A logical question is why Andeans tend to call Mama Allpa (planet Earth) “Pachamama.” One reason is a function of the Quechua language. Allpa literally means “earth,” as in soil or dirt. Pacha has many definitions: dirt, soil, earth, realm, world, space, time. But it also functions as a kind of honorific. When Andeans are planting seeds in their fields, they are digging furrows in the allpa, the earth, the dirt. Allpa tends to be used within common language as a reference to the mundane. The word Pacha, however, lifts the mundane to the sacred. So, when Andeans shift to referring to the Earth as the giver of abundant life gifts (crops, animals and herds, water, and such), they refer to her as a sacred being, and they use the term Pachamama, the Sacred Earth Mother.

There is a similar language transformation with how Andeans relate in ayni with water. The Quechua term for water is unu, although many Andeans use the Spanish agua. In fact, they tend to use the word agua when referring to water in its mundane form as an element of rain or a stream. When they add the word unu (agua unu), they are referring to water in its sacred nature. The water flowing down from a snow-capped mountain to irrigate their fields is agua unu; it is considered the fertilizing blood that flows thru the veins of the mountains or as the sweat of Mother Earth. Referring to water as unu imparts the notions of divinity, unity, fertility, and sanctity. Likewise, yaku means river in its mundane sense, or refers to any mundane type of flowing water, such as that in an irrigation ditch. But when referred to as yaku unu, this water is elevated to the realm of the sacred. The water is honored for its sacred life-giving properties.

Living these kinds of relationships turns the landscape into a kind of living altar. Just about everything in nature is considered a waka, a repository of the sacred. Andeans don’t just live on the land; they are in continual, dynamic reciprocity with it. If we want to experience this mystical immersion into a network of living relationships with nature, the Earth, and even our entire cosmos, we don’t have to practice the Andean or any other mystical tradition. We can simply walk outside of our house and shift our perspective. Instead of looking at nature, we feel into nature. And perceive how nature is looking at and feeling into each of us. By transitioning our conscious awareness from our mind to our poq’po (our energetic, perceptual body), we learn we are integrally woven into the living web of nature. We cease being spectators and become partners in the world’s unfolding.

The Value of Spiritual Questioning

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ 1 Comment

In the Andean mystical tradition, knowledge and proficiency are not destinations reached through logic, but are a joint path carved by repetition. This indigenous lineage prioritizes embodied knowledge over theoretical frameworks. Unlike Western pedagogical styles that favor “the why,” the paqos (Andean mystical practitioners) focus almost exclusively on “the what.” Their style of practice is:

Action Over Analysis: Techniques are rarely accompanied by logical explanations or philosophical discussions.

Experiential Repetition: Students are expected to perform techniques time and time again, bypassing the analytical mind and accessing personal perception. The work is phenomenological rather than intellectual.

Experiential Mastery: The energy dynamics of a practice—its purpose and its potential—are revealed through the lived experience of doing the work.

In this tradition, understanding is not an intellectual exercise; it is an interior state of being achieved through the rhythm of sustained practice. This raises a natural tension: Is there any room for the questions themselves? If you are like me, you are likely bursting with them. Fortunately, my primary teacher, don Juan Nuñez del Prado, occupied a unique position as both a former university professor and a master practitioner. Because of his background, questions were always—well, mostly—welcome. There were certainly moments when don Juan would simply say, “Just do it. Discover the answer through the practice itself.” But more often than not, he graciously and patiently entertained my inquiries. Because we both had one foot in the academic world, we were constantly balancing two distinct ways of knowing: pure experiential immersion and logical, informed speculation. This dual approach—bridging the mystical and the analytical—has served me well. So, in this post I want to explore the value of questioning as a vital component of the spiritual path.

I view mystics as a specialized kind of scientist. They begin with a fundamental hypothesis: Is there more to this world than the purely physical? To test this, they devise an experiment: If I consciously share my energy with this mountain, will it respond? They run multiple trials, observe the results, and sometimes the mountains “talk back.” From those results, a host of new, rigorous questions arise. I suspect the paqos, while not analytical, asked the following kinds of questions in their own way:

Verification: Were those responses objective reality or projections of my own mind? How can I discern the difference?

Replicability: If other paqos perform the same energy practice, will they achieve the same result?

Variables: Are the mountains who responded sentient, or am I tapping into a broader field? Why do some peaks respond while others remain silent?

I believe the mystics of antiquity must have held a perspective much like that of Albert Einstein, who famously remarked: “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.”

To me, this is more than just a quotation; it is a vital, even precious, stance for the modern seeker. By embracing this Einsteinian curiosity, we don’t just “do” the practices—we engage with the marvelous structure of the energetic world. We honor the mystery not by silent acceptance, but by sustained, awe-filled attempts to comprehend just a little more of it each day.

Questioning is a skill, a kind of spiritual practice itself. There are ways to form questions, and what I am proposing here is a type called “open inquiry.” Rather than seeking definitive answers or reaching absolute conclusions, spiritual inquiry acts as a bridge beyond the intellect. It isn’t about solving a puzzle; it’s about staying curious enough to bypass our mental filters. In the realm of the spirit, questioning serves as a catalyst for wonder rather than a search for facts. By moving past the analytical brain, inquiry allows us to touch reality directly, favoring raw connection over mental labels. Questions can move us from only from knowing “about” a practice to “being within” it, turning the question itself into a tool for direct energetic engagement.

Adopting a stance of “I don’t know” acts as a solvent for the ego and the analytical mind; it is a form of inquiry that Masters across many mystical traditions regard as a valuable spiritual discipline in its own right. The “I don’t know” stance can be a power move for the soul. It bypasses the intellect’s need for control and plunges us into the raw, mysterious reality of the moment. When we “live the question,” we treat the strange, mysterious, and illogical not as problems to be solved, but as fertile landscapes where spontaneous insight can take root. It is in this space of radical uncertainty that our old habits soften their stubborn hold, and our true potential begins to bloom.

Questions as self-inquiry can serve as a vital compass, allowing us to gauge the depth and trajectory of our practice. As our karpay (personal power and proficiency) expands, our inquiry naturally evolves; the questions we ask grow alongside our shifting values, capacities, and goals. Most importantly, this process facilitates an expansion of the self. We all carry a “story” of who we are, but as we expand access to our Inka Seed—our core potential—that narrative must be rewritten to accommodate a larger reality. The fundamental questions of identity and purpose become essential:

Identity: Who have I become in this new light? Beyond my personal history, how do I consciously choose to be in the world now? As a Drop of the Mystery, do I recognize myself as an integral thread in the fabric of creation?

Direction: Where is my expanded Inka Seed now leading me? Am I honoring my Inka Seed as my ultimate truth-teller and following its guidance as my inner compass? Am I expressing my essence in my own unique way—acting as the “energy artist” of my life—and walking the path of my own heart?

Intent: What is the quality of my ayni (reciprocity) with the living universe, nature, and my fellow human beings? Where are my intentions—both conscious and unconscious—driving me? Am I open to being flexible enough to make necessary course corrections?

Challenges: What remaining internal filters or personal energetic blocks are stalling further growth? In what ways am I still choosing to play small or hide my power?

Contributions: In what ways am I failing to honor my own needs or neglecting the “service” I owe to my own well-being? In what ways can I offer more of my authentic self to my family and friends, my work, and the world?

Mysticism is an unfiltered, direct encounter with the Mystery—a relationship that naturally overflows with inquiry. Rather than separating us from our practice, spiritual questioning deepens our connection to the universe and ourselves. Questions don’t distance us; they facilitate the very experiences they seek to understand.

Preserving the Andean Mystical Tradition

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

In last month’s blog, I explored the concept of hucha miqkhuy through my personal transcripts of private conversations with don Juan Nuñez del Prado or notes taken at his training courses. This month, I am diving back into those records to review what the situation in the Andes looked like in the early to mid 1990s, when it was much more difficult to learn the tradition. Because of the dedication of academics such as don Juan, Theo Parades, and Oscar Miro-Quesada—who not only studied the tradition but practiced it—the opportunities for study, although scant, were possible. Over the past several decades, there has been a revival of the tradition. We are fortunate today that dozens of Andean paqos directly share their knowledge and practices with people across the world. But back in the early 1990s, the young people were not very interested in learning the tradition and becoming paqos. While they no doubt respected their elders and their cultural heritage, the majority wanted to live in Cuzco, get educated, and integrate as Peruvian citizens into the “modern” world.

The heart of this material comes from conversations I had with don Juan in 1996 in Arizona when two Q’ero paqos met with a half dozen Hopi Elders. I was fortunate to be there alongside don Juan and a small group of others, and I had time alone with him to discuss the challenges of learning the tradition when there were so few paqos available to teach us. Our impromptu discussion shares one perspective of the situation, drawn from our experience. Of course, there are others.

I have included context and explanations pertinent to our discussion in square brackets.

Joan: I want to follow up on the women paqos. Back in Urubamba don Julian [Pauqar Flores] said that spirit beings—the apus, Pachamama—listen more to women than to men. But women are said to work more on the left side, with practices such as healing, and not the right side of the path. If the spirit beings have a better dialogue with women, wouldn’t that mean they are just as skilled on the right side, the side of perception and mystical communication?

Don Juan: Yes, the natural capacity of women is the left side. That is the practical, nurturing, and healing principle. If we use Jungian psychology as a guide, men have a natural capacity for logos and women for eros. Logos is the natural capacity to interpret and challenge and so on; eros is the impulse for life, to establish relationships, for nurturing and healing. For men the eros is in their unconscious, for women the logos is in their unconscious. So, each must work to develop the complementary capacity. Because men naturally have the right side, they must develop the left; because women have the left, they must develop the right. And it is difficult to do that. So, the most difficult thing for women is to develop the right-side skills. But if they do the work, then it is said they become more powerful than the men.

But remember what some of the other paqos said when you asked them why there are so few, women paqos? They said the women don’t want to do it, to study. They said they are too lazy! They do not want to do the work to become paqos. Some of the men teach their wives a little, like don Mariano with doña Augustina. She just helps him a little, as a kind of assistant.

But don Juan Paquar Espinosa is training his daughter to be an alto mesayoq. She is very smart. I think one day the daughter of don Juan will be one of the most important female paqos in Q’ero. [As far as we know, tragically, when don Juan died unexpectedly several years later, his daughter’s training ended and she is not working as a paqo.]

Joan: Ok, shifting gears. . . You were with me that night when I purchased the set of mulla khuyas in Cuzco. I am grateful I have them, but it also feels odd, because it means some paqo died and there was no one to pass them on to. Or there was some other situation in which they went unclaimed by a paqo. The chunpi knowledge appears to be dying or even lost, as none of the Q’ero we have talked to know about the mullu khuyas or practice as a chunpi paqo. These are some of the most well-trained and experienced paqos. What’s going on? [Mullu khuyas are a set of five stones used to perform the Ñawi K’ichay and Chunpi Away karpay to weave the chunpis, or mystical “belts.”]

Don Juan: I have not found anyone who does the karpay. The thing is there is so much resistance. The indigenous people like the Q’ero became Peruvian citizens only twenty-five years ago, and everyone was looking to become a real citizen. As a result, a lot of paqos were abandoning the ancient knowledge. That’s why you can sometimes buy these mulla khuyas in the city, because paqos are giving them up. Not the paqos really, but the descendants of the paqos. They don’t know what to do with these khuyas.

Joan: Is there anyone in Q’ero who knows the chunpi practice as don Andreas taught it? [Don Andreas Espinosa was a Q’ero chunpi paqo and the primary teacher of this practice.]

Don Juan: No.

Joan: The tradition is being lost. . .

Don Juan: Yes! You know, I will give you an image, a picture. Don Jesús, a paqo from another village, one outside of Pisac, when I met him, he was totally isolated. Nobody believed in his techniques. He performed ceremonies only for himself. Everybody laughed about his ceremony and techniques. This is not the situation in Q’ero, but in a community near Pisac. But in Q’ero, there are evangelical groups. Two of the sons of the top paqo belong to this group, and for them these techniques belong to the devil!

Don Andreas Espinosa was the Q’ero chunpi master. Don Manuel Q’espi is his son-in-law. Don Manuel does not want to remember this, but don Manuel had a misunderstanding with don Andreas, a big disagreement about the left-side work. These things belong to the left side. He was looking for this teaching, and I don’t know what happened, what the disagreement was about, but don Andreas denied the teaching to him. Don Manuel, on the other hand, is a very special person because he is kamasqa: he received the teachings directly in a vision from Christ.

Joan: You have told me and others how special don Andreas was and don Manuel is. But this is an example of how the knowledge did not get passed on. At least not to any of the Q’ero we have worked with and learned from.

Don Juan: Absolutely, don Andreas was a master, and he was the teacher of don Manuel and others, including me. I met him in August 1979. The next year he taught me the chunpi knowledge. I spent only thirty days with him. I was to go back in 1981 to receive the karpay for the munaynioq [owner of munay] but I got involved in some business in Cuszo and so did not return.

Joan: I am thinking of how things work elsewhere, or at least of how we think things work. Many of us think of a mystical or shamanic system as being a body of knowledge, and that body of knowledge—maybe not in total, but in least in part—gets passed on over and over from teacher to student in a systematized way.

Don Juan: Yes, and in the past that was the way it was in Q’ero.

Joan: But Christianity and the pressures of social development have changed that?

Don Juan: No, it was not Christianity so much. In fact, the Christians have finally made an agreement for understanding the indigenous beliefs. It was more the pressure of development, of progress, of becoming citizens.

Joan: So it was cultural.

Don Juan: Yes. Everyone was beginning to be educated, to go to school. And another thing—it was terrible in Peru—was the influence of the Marxists. The Marxists were like the Evangelicals.

Almost all the school teachers in Peru at that time took a Marxist position, for the last twenty years or more. They saw this knowledge as foolish things that belonged to the ancestors and said they are lies and deceptions. Some people in don Jesús’s community laugh at him, because the teachers tell them that his knowledge is foolish knowledge, superstitions.

Joan: Except for the chunpi work, there seems to be a somewhat robust tradition in Q’ero.

Don Juan: This is the place where it is the strongest.

Joan: Still, when I asked the Q’ero paqos about so many of the things you have taught me and that the old masters taught you, they don’t know most of them. This situation is so unfortunate. And the prophecies, such as the prophecy of the Three Children of God and the rise of the Runakay Mosoq [the New Humanity]—it was told to you by don Andreas, and also I think by don Benito. . . Don Andreas was a master Q’ero paqo, most people studied with him. Yet the Q’ero paqos we have talked to don’t know that prophecy.  

Don Juan: Well, don Mariano Apaza Marchaqa talked about the three eras.  

Joan: Yes, but only in the most rudimentary way. And in Christian terms, in Biblical terms. How did you gather this prophecy, from whom? Don Andreas, don Benito, and don Manuel Q’espi?

Don Juan: Don Andreas had a very complete version. Don Benito, too. Don Andreas talked about the three eras as those of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. He had some very nice thoughts about the Taripay Pacha.

[The three children of God, which can be thought of as the rise of three civilizations, also can be equated with three World Ages. They are the Dios Yaya Pacha, the Age of God the Father; Dios Churi Pacha, the Age of God the Son; and Dios Espíritu Santo Pacha, the Age of God the Holy Spirit. They correlate to the older Andean version of the three World Ages; the Purun Runa Pacha, the Age of the Wild Men; Wari Runa Pacha, the Age of the Solar Men; and Wiraqocha Runa Pacha, the Age of the Metaphysical Men. The Taripay Pacha is part of the third World Age, which we are currently in, during which we have an opportunity to individually and collectively evolve spiritually.]

Joan: And don Manuel?

 Don Juan: No, he had only pieces.

Joan: Well, I am still stuck in this stubborn loop of incredulity about what appears to have been forgotten or lost. I can’t help but think that if the prophetic tradition is strong in the Andes, most of the paqos, or at least the alto mesayoqs, would know this prophecy. How else can it live? It must be sustained if it is considered essential, as this prophecy seems to be.

Don Juan: I think that in the last generation you could find almost all the paqos of Q’ero carried the prophecy or parts of it. But almost all those people have died. The next generation are for the most part focused on other things, not on preserving the knowledge, techniques, or prophecy.

You know the way we must work! I am an anthropologist, and you are like one. We take all the information we have the opportunity to gather, and we organize the information to view the whole of the different pieces. It’s an amazing thing that usually people who participate in a tradition don’t know the big picture.

When we meet with the paqos, we ask them to give us the big panorama, with a lot of details. In some ways they give us a lot of details. Remember their talk [during the interviews for my book] about death: the trip after death, the life in the volcano, the people there, the role of the priest, the angel helping people to go to the other side? We are always asking for more. I think with the material you have, if you integrate it harmoniously, you have an incredible story to share. Try to handle to material you have now.

Joan: Yes, that’s what I am trying to do. Despite the interviews for the book and all we learned, I am fairly new to the tradition. And so, of course, my knowledge is so much less than yours that it’s a challenge for me to integrate it. You can make interpretative leaps that I cannot. I worry about the very big likelihood that I will misunderstand.

Don Juan: Let me tell you something. One day I went with don Manuel [Q’espi] to Moray. In Moray, there was a group of workers of the National Institute of Culture. They were fixing the ruins of Moray. I asked don Manuel what he thought about the work of these men. He told me, “They are fixing this place for the return of the Inka.” These are Inka houses, and they were working to restore them so the Inka could return. That is what he thought, and that is the way you find new information. The thing that is very interesting is that the workers don’t have any interpretation about this. They are simply doing their jobs because they receive pay. But for this alto mesayoq, for don Manuel, they were preparing the way for the Inka. Don Manuel is coming from a totally different perspective.

With only this piece of information, we have the right to affirm the prophecy of the Return of the Inka. This is real for this man! The Inka is alive and going to return. You know, in your records from your interviews in Urubamba [for the book], you have a part that says something direct, like “The Inka is alive and living in Paytiti.” They say, “We are his grandchildren” or something like that. That’s what they say. They never say, “We have a messianic prophecy that says the Inka is going to return. We are his descendants and we are waiting for his return. The Inka is alive and we will restore his houses so he can come. . .” In only a few cases will we get that type of information. We need to infer and interpret from the short, direct information.

Joan: Okay, Maestro. I will continue to do my best. And there is always the challenge of the Quechua translations. Remember the guinea pig mess with don Juan [Paquar Espinosa], when I was asking about his misha [personal sacred bundle] and the khuyas [sacred stones and other objects] in it? And he said there were no khuyas in his misha. And I asked again, and he said the same thing. And then we realized that instead of using the word “khuya,” the Quechua translator had been using “quwi!” Poor don Juan thought I was insisting there must be guinea pigs in his misha! This is not easy work, Maestro. It’s a good thing we can laugh!