peru

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.

Musing about K’ara

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ 1 Comment

When I was conducting the interviews with Q’ero paqos back in 1996, they spoke about k’ara, which Quechua translator Riccardo Valderrama, don Juan Pauqar Espinosa and Joan - book interviews - 1996excited the anthropologists who were there. They had not heard this term before, and so they probed the Q’ero for more information. What we learned is that they make a distinction between two energies in a person’s or spirit being’s energy body: k’ara and sami. In this post, we take a deep dive into k’ara and its significance.

The distinction the Q’ero paqos made is that sami (the light living energy, the life-force energy) is the essence of a person, and k’ara is the visible manifestation of their sami and thus of their essence. For example, k’ara is what we see when we say that a sixth-level person literally glows. The Andean qanchispatañan is an upward progression of development of human consciousness. A sixth-level human being is one who is enlightened. The meaning of “enlightened” is two-fold: the quality of the person’s consciousness is such that they create no hucha (heavy energy) and the characteristic that identifies an enlightened person is that they visibly glow. With k’ara, we now have an explanation for that characteristic: the glow is the visible sami essence—the k’ara—of the person.

Not everything has k’ara. The paqos insisted that we “ordinary” people do not have k’ara. Of course we have a sami essence: we are light living energy and we all have an Inka Seed (which is our Spirit, a drop of God/the Mystery). But, according to these Q’ero paqos, we don’t have k’ara. Our essence not of sufficient quality or power to become visible. The extrapolation from this information is that we don’t have what is commonly called an aura. Some nature spirits do, as I will discuss below, but more of us do not.

Simply from this minimal amount of information, we can determine that k’ara can be thought of in two ways: 1) as the inherent high-quality power of a person and 2) as the visible manifestation of that quality and power. The paqos told us that as a power, k’ara can be invoked and utilized. Juan Pauqar Flores explained that a paqo or spirit being who has k’ara can share it with us. By using their k’ara, we can dofull-moon ring glow Pixabay cropped -2055469_1920 things, such as heal. (To understand the following quotation, you need to know a bit about the paqo he uses as an example: don Andres Espinosa. He was deceased by the time of our interview, but had been one of the top Q’ero paqos. In fact, he was a rare kind of paqo—a chunpi paqo, which is a specialized kind of paqo known for having especially powerful healing skills.) Don Juan Pauqar Flores said, “The moon has k’ara. The apus have k’ara, and by calling the k’ara of an apu you can heal a person. Don Andres Espinosa healed diseases by invoking the k’ara of the apu. The apu has more k’ara than a paqo. My master, Andres Espinosa, healed by invoking the k’ara of the condor and the apu. But I do not believe that ordinary men have k’ara.” The other Q’ero paqos concurred: “Only great men [or women] have k’ara.”

The larger discussion was difficult to understand for many reasons, but don Juan Nuñez del Prado came to feel that an accurate interpretation of what the Q’ero were saying overall is that all beings have k’ara, but most of us have too much hucha (energetic heaviness) for that light to shine through our field and become visible. Great men [and women], however, are those who have mastered their personal energy and stepped up the qanchispatañan of conscious development. The quality of their essence is such that they have visible k’ara and can share their power with others.

According to the Q’ero, the same dynamic holds true for nature beings and spirit beings: some have k’ara and some do not. For example, although there was confusion and even disagreement among the Q’ero, the ultimate consensus was that only the lead condor, the condor apuchin, has k’ara, while the rest of the Condorcondors in the group do not. There was further disagreement about whether the k’ara of the condor apuchin glowed red or white (with white being the likely color). The k’ara as the visible energy of the apus comes in different colors, according to that apu’s “quality,” which we took to mean power. The highest quality energy is white, followed in descending order by red, yellow, and black. The k’ara of an apu alsorelates to its dominant capacity. One apu’s essence might be to confer healing, whereas a different apu’s specialty might be to help resolve family problems.

What I took all of this to mean for those of us practicing the tradition is that our ayni connection (reciprocal energy exchange) is not to a spirit being itself as an outer form but to its inherent power. That might seem obvious, but it is a good reminder, for I have seen plenty of students mistake form for function. As an example, we are not so much connecting to an apu itself as a mountain or whatever form it takes (not all apus are mountains). Our connection is to the apu’s quality and power: its k’ara is what we call to us and the apu shares with us. We invoke, receive, and use its k’ara, and when it shares that with us, we can do things we might not otherwise be able to do. We get beyond form to function. The apu (or whatever spirit we are connecting with) is first and foremost a source of power. To “carry the k’ara” of something, as the Q’ero paqos characterized this kind of ayni, means to be with it, to be connected with or resonating with it its essence, so that its power is accessible to us and can be used. Therefore, we can refine the two meanings of k’ara: it refers both to the quality of a human being’s or spirit being’s power and the availability of that power to be shared.

If that interpretation is even halfway correct, it has a few significant ramifications. One that I will call out here is that it means we should never hesitate to reinforce our own personal power with that of a more developed paqo or spirit being, both of whom presumably have k’ara. This view is supported by something don Juan Nuñez del Prado said once: if a paqo (an Andean or non-Andean who practices the tradition) has more power than us or even claims to have more power than us, we can take some of his or her sami to empower ourselves (if we feel we need empowerment). We don’t have to ask permission. That person is a source of power for others. But if a person is the same level as us or lower, no! We cannot partake of his or her power.

A final musing is about ayni dynamics. When we are in ayni with a paqo, nature being, or spirit being with k’ara, what is happening? From what the Q’ero paqos said, we are touching their core essence and they are sharing that essence (quality and power) with us. Is something different happening in our ayni with a being who does not have k’ara? My guess is that it is: we are simply sharing a resonant field we have set up between our poq’pos (energy bodies). Although we may not be accessing their essence directly, we can be empowered just by being resonant with their poq’po—with their karpay, which is the power they have available to share at the moment. Of course, this is all speculation. Yet perhaps these are musings that help us understand at a deeper level what we are doing as practitioners of “driving the kawsay” (the life-force energy) and being in ayni with human beings, and nature and other kinds of spirit beings. Q’ero paqos, and other paqos of the Andes, acquire knowledge and understanding through yachay—personal, firsthand experience. Maybe our knowing about k’ara can motivate us to refine our perceptual abilities so that we can begin to detect it and have our own firsthand experience of it. For, as don Juan says, don’t believe a word I say. That is willay, which is secondhand knowledge. Instead, we must find out for ourselves. We must practice and become the masters of ourselves through our own experiences. Then we can decide for ourselves how we can best honor the quality and level of power that is k’ara, and we can learn how to use it for what we most need or want to do when it is shared with us. And, of course, we might even realize, despite what the Q’ero paqos say, that we have k’ara ourselves.