spirituality

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.

Hucha: A Mundane and Mystical Approach

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

The goal of spiritual life is not altered states,
but altered traits.
— Huston Smith

I have written many times about hucha—heavy living energy, which only human beings create. Today, I want to look behind the term to tease out nuances of its meaning. I believe this can help us appreciate what hucha is, how we create it, and why our main energy practices address it. I offer a deep-dive class on Quechua mystical terminology and concepts, and one of the terms we examine is hucha. In this blog post I expand on what is discussed in that class.

When the paqos explained to don Juan Nuñez del Prado, who is my primary teacher, what hucha is, they described it as llasaq kawsay, which means “heavy living energy.” Of course, it is not literally heavy. It just feels that way to us, primarily because we are reducing the efficiency and effectiveness of our ayni (which is explained below). To really understand hucha, we must parse several other terms. We start with kawsay, which comes from the root Quechua word ka, which means “to be.” Kawsay refers to existence, to being alive. Thus, kawsay is referred to as “living energy.” The paqos tells us that everything in the created, physical world is comprised of kawsay. In its most refined form as “light living energy,” it is called sami (variously spelled samiy). Kawsay’s and sami’s natures are to flow unimpeded. But we humans can slow down this life-giving and life-empowering energy. That slow sami is called hucha. So hucha literally is sami, just slowed, filtered somehow, or even blocked from flowing through us. We take in less life-force enegy than we could.

The reasons for how and why we block sami, and so create hucha, are varied and beyond the scope of this post. However, core reasons are that we are evolved mammals and we still can be driven by our impulses and survival needs. We may engage in the world and with our fellow human beings in ways that are based in fear, competition, selfishness, and other kinds of unconscious or barely conscious (instinctive) behaviors and emotions. Even when we are engaging from our highest sense of self, this coherent state of being can be upended by all kinds of conscious and unconscious needs, desires, beliefs, and the like, such that we fall out of ayni. Ayni is reciprocity. For our purposes here, we can think of it as the Golden Rule that takes us beyond self-interest to mutuality: instead of attitudes such as “for me to win, you must lose,” we seek ways for everyone to benefit. Ayni is much more complex than that. However, the easiest way to understand why we slow sami down and create “heaviness” for ourselves and others is that we are not acting from ayni.

Ok, so far so good, even though this discussion is by necessity skimming the surface of why we create hucha. But let’s look at the word itself from the perspective of the mundane, by which I mean the common, everyday world. Trying to understand a mystical concept from the viewpoint of a non-paqo can easily can get us off track. But I like to probe into the more mundane definitions of the Quechua terms we use in our mystical practice to get a sense of the fullness of meaning. We must be aware that those mundane definitions usually are analogous and not literally in one-to-one correspondence with the word’s mystical meanings. Hucha is a concept that I think is particularly illuminated by examining its non-mystical, mundane meanings.

Let me say that I have discussed the value of making such correspondences between the mundane and mystical with don Juan. He cautions that I cannot go to Quechua dictionaries and the anthropological literature to find definitions for our mystical terms because the paqos were using many of these terms to mean something different from their more common meanings. This is a caution we must always take to heart. Still, I cannot help but wonder: if the paqos could choose any term they wanted for various aspects of the mystical work, why did they choose a term that is commonly used and that has an already accepted meaning that is different from what they meant by it? I find—and I speak only for myself—that looking at those common meanings does, in fact, help me understand the contexts and even nuances of the mystical use of the term. I often find that the common definition, or what I am calling the “mundane” meaning, of a mystical term provides a world of associations that can be useful and even enlightening to my practice. They help me peek behind the curtain of a language that is not mine, of a mystical cosmovision that originally was foreign to me, and of possible nuances that can help me understand conceptually what it is I am doing when I use many of the practices of the Andean sacred arts in my daily life.

Ok, that is a lot of explanation and more than a few caveats. Let’s get to examining sami and hucha, for we cannot understand one term without looking at the other.

What are the common dictionary meanings of sami/samiy? Sami is defined as good luck, good fortune, happiness, benefit, favor, dignity, contentment, success, and other terms that relate to having well-being. Samiy means benefit, favor, good luck, dignity, and blessing. For me, those definitions reverberate wonderfully through the more abstract meaning of sami as “light living energy.” Kawsay is life, and the goal of life as described by many Andeans is allin kawsay, living a “good life.” Another common term is sumaq kawsay, which in its various meanings describes living a “beautiful,” or “good,” or “amazing” life. So that is our aspiration: to be the owners of sami and live in ayni, and thus to cultivate the most amazing life we can.

Now let’s look at the word hucha. What are its common definitions? Sin, offense, crime, infraction, guilt/guilty, error, fault, transgression. Reducing the flow of sami—creating hucha—reduces our well-being. These terms bring some clarity to the consequences of our creating hucha: We have made some kind of energetic mistake or caused some measure of energetic offense such that we have transgressed the codes of human moral conduct and the universal energetics of ayni. We have reduced our own, and perhaps someone else’s, well-being. It is interesting that the word “hucha” is part of all kinds of Quechua terms relating to justice, law, and even the criminal justice system. As examples, the term hucha churaq means “prosecutor” and hucha hatarichiy means “lawsuit.” From the mystical point of view, I think it is not too much to say that when we create hucha we are at fault or guilty of violating personal, societal, universal, and even energetic “laws.” Hucha (as filtered or reduced sami) weakens our inner equilibrium, lessens our sense of contentment and happiness, and diminshes our dignity and generosity of spirit.

I don’t know about you, but for me, knowing the common “backstory” to the terms sami and hucha brings a lot of “flavor” to their mystical meanings. We all create hucha for our own reasons, most of which relate to our personal shadow wounds, limiting beliefs, emotional proclivities, and such. When we create hucha, we, and not anyone else, have transgressed the law of ayni. That is why we say the Andean mystical tradition is a path of personal responsibility. However, it does us no good to blame ourselves; instead we must be self-aware enough to notice our lack of ayni and the reasons we are creating hucha. Then we can take responsibility for ourselves, and we can use our practices to transform the state of our energy. While there is no moral overlay on energy, we can see how there might be moral overlay on how and why we create hucha—we are all developing human beings and have work to do on ourselves. As don Ivan Nuñez del Prado explains [slightly edited for clarity], “I think hucha is like a [inner] filter. Your personal background, family background, all of that is a filter, [which gets] in the way of the light of your Inka Seed. So, you have a source of light within you and then what comes out will go through the filter, what comes out is a projection of the filter [rather than of your] light.” Our filters are mostly all the unconscious ways we are holding limiting beliefs, living from judgment about ourselves and others, deflecting our pain, projecting out onto others what we refuse to see in ourselves, and running the energy of many other kinds of largely unconscious psychological and emotional dynamics.

As we relate to the world, the state of our own poq’po (think of this as our psyche) is of the utmost importance. We bring self-inquiry to our own state of being, for we can only know the world through our own perceptions. That is why the paqos tell us that what is heavy for you, may not be for me, and vice versa. It is why don Juan says, “If something is heavy for you, you need to trust yourself. It’s heavy for you! Even if your teacher comes to you and says, it feels light. No, it’s heavy for you.”

Reducing our hucha means increasing our karpay: our personal power. Our personal power relates to how easily we can access our human capacities (all of which are held as potentials within our Inka Seed) and how well we use our capacities. Sami and hucha are ways we display and use our personal power. Remember, hucha is sami—life-force energy—although it is slowed, filtered, or blocked. But make no mistake, hucha is a “power” to the same degree that sami is a “power.” Don Ivan provides a good explanation about this: “Power is the capacity to do something. You can use hucha or sami. When you grow, it is good to [reduce] your hucha because you release the [blocking energy of] past mistakes and everything and raise the level of sami in you. Then your actions will be more elevated. But you can do things with hucha. It’s not a moral judgment.”

It’s all energy. What partially, although impactfully, determines the quality of our lives is the proportion of hucha to sami in our poq’po and how we are “driving” either or both of those energies. Our core energy practices are designed to reduce the amount of hucha we have and that we create, and how skilled we are at using our energy in the world. Don Juan reminds us: “You always have the capacity. You can release all the hucha you have. Remember hucha sapa? If you are a hucha sapa, you have a lot of hucha. You focus on your Inka Seed, and you have the power to release it. Your capacity is determined by your Inka Seed, which has no hucha. Your Inka Seed is the place in which you have the potential and capacity to drive the energy.” And this is why so many of our practices—saminchakuy, hucha miqhuy, wachay, wañuy, and others—are focused on reducing our hucha (and thus increasing our sami). By using these practices, we have the means to redistribute our energy by transforming hucha back into its natural state of sami or releasing stubborn hucha to Mother Earth, as she will help us by digesting our hucha and returning it to its sami state. We have spirit assistance and our many energy practices to help us drive energy from our Inka Seed (our highest self), increase our sami, and improve our ability to live a good and happy life—at both the worldy/mundane and spiritual/mystical levels.

The Yanantin of Yachay and Llank’ay

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

The Andean sacred tradition identifies three primary human powers. They are, in order of prioritization, munay (feelings), llank’ay (action), and yachay (knowledge). I find it interesting that although yachay is at the bottom of that hierarchy of three human powers, it is the first human power that we develop in our training. Our training begins with understanding the Andean cosmovision and energy dynamics, especially the core dynamic of ayni, or reciprocity.

From the Andean view, understanding fuels action. And through that action and the resulting experience, understanding deepens. We tend to translate yachay into English as knowledge, reason, logic, or understanding. However, for the Andeans, and specifically for the paqos, yachay has a more precise definition: our accumulated knowledge as gained through personal action, and thus through direct personal experience. Llank’ay, or action, is embedded in the very meaning of yachay, and vice versa.

In this way, yachay and llank’ay form a yanantin. A yanantin is a pairing of entities, items, or energies that appear to be oppositional or contradictory but are complementary. The two are relationally bound one to the other to create a unified whole, such as night and day, up and down, male and female. If we probe into the yachay and llank’ay human powers, we will see that everywhere in our work with the Andean sacred arts, they are yanantin in nature.

Our training usually begins with learning the core energy dynamic of ayni. In the larger Andean society, ayni is defined as reciprocity and explained using the phrase, “today for me, tomorrow for you.” It is the personal and social ethic of giving and receiving for mutual benefit. In the sacred arts, as in the social sphere, ayni means we do not just think about helping someone or promise that we will, we express our willingness and we follow through.

In the sacred arts, the meaning of ayni expands from a social energetic reciprocity with our fellow human beings to energetic reciprocity with nature, spirit beings, and the world of living energy. Ayni is a two-way flow of energy: a back-and-forth flow between the two entities. But it must be initiated by one of the parties to get the energy moving. That initiating dynamic is what we will look at here.

Our focused awareness—our intention—moves energy, or as don Juan Nuñez del Prado often phrases it, “drives the kawsay.” When he uses the word “drive,” he does not mean controlling energy or willfully forcing energy in one direction or another. Rather, he is suggesting only that our intention can influence energy, gently nudging it here and there in our favor. Despite the maxim that “energy must follow intention,” don Juan and the paqos tell us that intention by itself is not enough to drive ayni. We are not going to think (yachay) the living energy into partnering with us in this dance of ayni. We must act (llank’ay) as well. We want to move energy in an intentional way that is useful to us. This takes both yachay and llank’ay working in unison.

One way to view this yachay–llank’ay initiating dynamic is through the following sequence of practice. Ayni as “intention put into action” arises from feelings and will (with “will” meaning choice). Ayni as intention is informed by our sonqo ñawi (feelings, including munay), our Inka Seed (the seat of our will), and our siki ñawi—an energetic center, or “eye,” at the root of the body, where the capacity is atiy. Atiy is, among other things, how we measure our personal power. Checking in on our abilities through the siki ñawi, we ask, “Do I have the capacities available to realize my intention through action?” Asking and answering this question is process governed by yachay. If we believe we have sufficient personal power to achieve our intention, then we go to the qosqo ñawi, the mystical center at the belly. Ayni as action is influenced mostly by the qosqo ñawi. This is the energy center where we enlist our khuyay (passion, motivation) and follow through on our intention by taking action.

From this sequence, we can see how the prerequisite for engaging in ayni is a well-developed yachay: our knowledge about ourselves. We must be able to honestly assess the state of our feelings, will, atiy (capacities), khuyay (motivation) and karpay (amount of personal power). Ideally, through yachay we undertake a realistic, honest self-assessment. That assessment then determines whether we go on to initiate our llank’ay energy and take action.

This yanantin of yachay and llank’ay comes into play even when ayn is not involved: when, for example, we have a completely spontaneous energetic or mystical experience. During such an event, we will be fully immersed in it perceptually and viscerally; we will not be actively processing it intellectually or analytically. Doing so would keep us from fully experiencing it. Once the event is over, however, we might seek to understand its nature and value. If it has meaning for us, the lived experience itself and its meaning are incorporated into our yachay. Remember, yachay is knowledge gained through personal experience. So, that experience enlarges our yachay. This expanded yachay adds to our kanay—who we know ourselves to be— and increases our karpay—our persona power, which is our capacity to act in the world day by day, moment by moment.

Although yachay literally means to have knowledge of or to know, don Juan reminds us that it also means “to learn, to find out, to have skill, to realize, to have experience, to have wisdom.” Yachay as one of the three human powers is the capacity at the kunka ñawi, or the mystical eye at the throat. It is paired there with rimay: the power to communicate with honesty, integrity, and a sense of the sacred self. Rimay is entwined with our yachay and llank’ay: we express who we are because of what we have learned throughout our lives from our first-hand personal experiences. Ideally, over a lifetime of experience we move from knowledge to understanding to wisdom. Part of what Andean pasqos mean when they say they want to be able to “work with both hands” is to work simultaneously with both the right-side yachay aspect of the sacred path and the left-side llank’ay aspects of it. Working this yanantin fuels their aspiration to be hamuta: a wise man or woman.

What Is an Andean Initiation?

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ 4 Comments

In the Andean mystical tradition, the Quechua word karpay usually is translated as “initiation.” How reliable is that translation? Is that the primary meaning of the word? Just for the heck of it, over the years I have searched this word in various Quechua dictionaries and online translation programs. It never comes up, although recently an artificial intelligence-assisted online translation program returned an answer: its result was that karpay means “tent.” I suspect that is because the Quechua word is close to the spelling and pronunciation of the Spanish word carpa, which does indeed mean “tent.” I also searched spelling variations such as qarpay and qharpay, but if those words appeared, their meanings had no relevance to karpay as initiation. (I purposefully excluded from my online search books, articles, glossaries, and blogs by people who are studying or teaching the Andean sacred arts, as they would likely know the term. I was looking for independent verification of its meaning, and I found none.)

For good measure, in my most recent search I reversed the terms and put the English word “initiation” into a few English-to-Quechua translation programs, and most of them returned the Quechua word qallariy, which was variously defined as “source,” “start,” or “begin.” Ok, fair enough. An Andean initiation opens us to something, such as personal growth or an energetic capacity. But qallariy is not the word the paqos use. 

The failure of this recent search was not surprising, since, as I said, I have done this kind of search before and not found this word. And I knew why. Many years ago, I asked don Juan Nuñez del Prado about its absence, and he explained to me that karpay is a term used only by the paqos within the context of their work in the Andean sacred arts. It does not appear in Quechua dictionaries (as far as we know) because it is not known or used by others.

So, just what are the core meanings of the word karpay? And what is an Andean karpay? We turn to our teachers and the paqos for explanations. This blog post covers the basics, although no doubt there are many other ways to understand the term karpay and carry out a karpay than what I cover in the space allotted here. As always, I focus on the two lineages (Q’ero Wachu and Cuzco Wachu) that I learned through don Juan Nuñez del Prado and on his explanations over the years.

Let’s start with the meaning of the word itself. Karpay can indeed be translated as “initiation,” although that translation provides only a rudimentary sense of the word, which is rich with nuance. There are at least three more expressive definitions of karpay. If we follow a specific sequence of discussing these three meanings, we also will gain an appreciation for what is happening during a karpay.

First, karpay refers to our personal power. We say that our full potential is held within our Inka Muyu, or Inka Seed. Everything that is possible for human beings to express is held as potential in this energetic field. Our work as paqos is wiñay (to germinate) and phutuy (to bloom or flourish): to germinate our Inka Seed, nurture its growth, and bring our human and metaphysical capacities to full flower. Our karpay as our personal power is how much of our Inka Seed potential we have developed and have access to right now. (See my blog post of June 20, 2016, “All About Karpay,” for a specific discussion of karpay as personal power.)

Second, karpay refers to a sharing or transmission of energy between two people or entities (such as a person and a spirit being). Which begs the question, “What energy is being transmitted?” That is the third facet of the definition. What is being shared is some aspect of our personal power, such as our sami or munay. So, the core meaning of the word karpay for paqos means to share their personal power with another person or entity through an energy transmission of some aspect of that personal power. To sum up using the term itself, a karpay (initiation) is the energetic sharing of a particular quality of our karpay (personal power). It is a process somewhat similar to the Hindu practice of shaktipat.

Here’s the rub. During a karpay as an initiation (karpay as verb, we might say), we can only share according to how much personal power we have in the moment (karpay as noun for personal power). If a person is sharing munay during a karpay as an initiation or transmission of energy, that person can only share as much munay as they have developed within. If that person has developed their capacity for love only a little, then they can share only a weak love energy. The same goes for any of our personal powers: if we have a lot of sami available, we can share a lot; if only a little, we can only share a little.

When the sharing is reciprocal—when the teacher shares their energy with the student and then the student also shares their energy with the teacher—it is called a karpay ayni (or sometimes the word order is reversed: ayni karpay). Ayni means interchange or reciprocity. So, a karpay can be either a unidirectional sharing of personal power from a teacher or paqo to a student or other person, or a reciprocal exchange between the two parties.

As I said, a karpay or karpay ayni as a transmission of personal power does not have to involve two human beings. It might occur between a human being and a spirit being or nature being, such as between an apu and a person, or vice versa. The karpay of an apu can, like a human being’s, vary from a small amount of power (as from an ayllu apu) to a midrange level of power (as from a llaqta apu) to an enormous amount of power (as from a suyu apu). Or, a karpay might be a transmission of sami from Creator to a person. There are all kinds of possibilities, but as a transmission or sharing of personal power, any of these situations could be considered a karpay.

So what do karpays among paqos look like in the Andes mountain and Cuzco regions of Peru? I am sure there as many variations as there are paqos, because as a sharing of personal power a karpay can take many forms. I have talked with various paqos who report that during their training they were given karpays that involved being sent by their teacher to spend a night in a cave or on top of a mountain to receive the energies there. Or that they and their teacher went to a specific sacred site or sanctuary and performed certain kinds of energy work there. The most common form of karpay that paqos have shared over the years is the receiving of sami through the immersion in water, such as at the sacred lagoons on the slopes of Apu Ausangate. Karpays tend to be fairly simple in form. That is why I advise people who are working in Peru today to be at least a little wary when a karpay is an elaborate ritual. In the Andes, one of the cardinal rules is to never waste energy. The energy work, even during a karpay, tends to be simple rather than complicated and invisible rather than having much of an outward form.

All that said, there are a few recognized formal ways that karpays are performed or occur. Don Juan has said that according to his paqo teachers, within the overall framework of the tradition there are only five traditional ways to be “initiated” as a paqo. These are the core traditional karpays by which paqos are called to the path or karpays that they receive during their training.

Karpay Ayni: the way of the paña, the right-side practices as taught by don Benito Qoriwaman. The Karpay Ayni takes the form of the teacher sharing their energy with an apprentice and then the apprentice, in ayni, sharing their energy with the teacher. There is another paña karpay form that is unidirectional: the paqo puts his misha (mesa) on the apprentice’s head (or sometimes over their sonqo ñawi or qosqo ñawi) and shares sami with that apprentice to empower them.

Chunpi Away and Ñawi K’ichay: the way of the middle work, the chaupi practices as taught by don Andres Espinosa. The Chunpi Away and Ñawi K’ichay are the joint karpays to become a chunpi paqo (a specialized kind of paqo known for exceptional healing ability, among other abilities). These karpays are done together, and they involve the “opening” of the mystical eyes, the ñawis; and the weaving of the energetic belts, the chunpis. However, it is not really the paqo who is giving this combined karpay. The paqo is pulling up Mother Earth energy, and she is doing the energetic work of the karpay.

Unu Karpay: the way of the lloq’e, the left-side practices as taught by don Melchor Desa. During an Unu Karpay, an apprentice receives the teacher’s sami as transmitted through water. Sometimes hucha is also purposefully released. Often, a paqo teacher will take an apprentice up to the sacred lagoons to do this type of karpay. But it can be done through any source of water.

Kaypacha Qaqya: The extreme left-side karpay is kaypacha qaqya: being struck by lightning and, of course, surviving and being changed. This is one way to be called to the paqo path.

Hanaqpacha Qaqya: A rare kind of this same left-side karpay is being struck by hanaqpacha qaqya, which is to be touched by a metaphorical “lightning” from heaven. As don Juan explained to me, this is not regular lightning, but “lightning” as a white light that comes down from the upper world (from Taytanchis or God) and touches the person, changing them and calling them to the paqo path.

There are other kinds of less formal or traditional karpays. They are more variable because they are used by teachers who happen to do things a certain way. Whatever the form, generally a karpay is some kind of infusion of energy that empowers us in our development. A karpay does not raise us to a new level of personal power; it supports us so that we can better develop through our own efforts. For example, the karpay ayni is the karpay to the fourth level of personal development (which is a stage on the qanchispatañan, a word referring to the stairway of the seven stages of the development of human consciousness). As explained above, usually it is the reciprocal sharing of energy between teacher and apprentice. However, the realization of that karpay to the fourth level comes only when we have our own personal experience of that level of consciousness. That experience might occur soon after the karpay ayni or years or decades later. It all depends on our own developmental process.

To conclude, karpay refers to how much of our personal capacities we have so far developed and thus have available for sharing or bringing to the world. The same word, karpay, refers a form of “initiation” that is a purposeful or even formal sharing of specific aspects of our power to help an apprentice grow on the path or for some other specific reason. It also might be a transmission of energy—usually sami—to us from a spirit being or Creator, or vice versa. At heart, an Andean karpay is an opportunity: it is an infusion of energy that prepares us for growth and even fertilizes our growth. Receiving a karpay or participating in a karpay ayni conditions us to be in more conscious ayni with the living universe, with spirit and nature beings, and with our fellow human beings. Ideally, it helps us develop ourselves so that we can move up the qanchispatañan.

Honoring Mama Allpa

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ 3 Comments

Note: In this post, I refrain from interrupting the flow of ideas with definitions of the Andean practices that are mentioned. If you have been studying the tradition through the two lineages I write about, you will know them. If you are new to the tradition, there are nearly ten years of posts in the archives that you can search for explanations and additional information.earth- Pixabay 5486511_1280

I am closing out this year by writing about hucha, “heavy” energy, and how our practice is to transform our own hucha back into sami, the light living energy that empowers us. Let us end a year that has felt heavy in so many respects—from climate disasters to war and conflict to a spreading politics of cynicism and even violence—by shifting our perspective from feelings to action. Because the good news is that we do not have to deal with our hucha alone. As we close out the year, let us honor Mother Earth, who is always available to assist us.

Of course, we always start by taking personal responsibility for the state of our own energy. We all have hucha, and if we have studied the Andean sacred arts, we have tools to deal with it. When we block or slow down sami—the life-force energy—and so create hucha, we have our core daily practice of saminchakuy. To undertake a deeper clearing of hucha or to reduce hucha we feel between ourselves and others, we have hucha miqhuy. If we are carrying hucha from our personal past, we have wachay. If we have restructured our mystical body by weaving the chunpis (energetic “belts”), we have heightened our capacity to move energy upward through our ñawis, our mystical eyes. As our hucha moves up, it becomes more refined, dissipating its heaviness and regaining more of its lightness. This refinement improves the energetic quality of our wasi: our body and poq’po.

There is one constant in all these practices: Mother Earth. She is called both Pachamama and Mama Allpa. However, I prefer to make a distinction: Pachamama is the Mother of the Cosmos, of the entire created world, whereas Mama Allpa is the sacred being that is the planet Earth. There is a reason Andeans call the Earth by both names, but in the interest of brevity, I will not explain these nuances and will simply state my preference for calling her Mama Allpa.  

Mama Allpa has no hucha. Nor do any of the creatures of the natural world. Only human beings block or reduce the flow of the life-force energy and so create hucha. But Mama Allpa is our greatest ally in dealing with our hucha. She is known as the Great Eater of Hucha. Although ayni—reciprocity, giving and receiving—is the natural law of the universe, Mama Allpa is always ready to receive our hucha without asking anything of us in return. We do not have to earn or deserve her help. Our relationship with Mama Allpa is not one of chhalay, meaning it is not transactional. She does not require a bargain. She gives without condition. She is part of a tawantin that freely sustains all life: the universal spirit beings of the Earth (Mama Allpa), Sun (Tayta Inti), Wind/Air (Tayta Wayra), and Water (Mama Unu). From this tawantin of life-force power we are given our hanchi, our physical body, and they freely sustain us physically and energetically throughout the span of our lives. Of course, if we are sensitive and generous, we always honor these spirit beings and choose to be in ayni with them. But as the foundations of life, they do not require anything of us.

Although I said that only human beings create hucha, it is useful to take a moment to understand that hucha also can be seen as the natural cycle of life. As don Juan Nuñez del Prado explains, the life cycle begins with sami and continues in a long arc of increasingly more robust expressions of sami until a peak pear-Pixabay 3519397_1280is reached. Then the arc curves downward, with a continuing reduction of sami, which we can see as hucha in that it is the slowing of life-force energy. Finally, the physical life force is extinguished. A seed geminates, a seedling grows, a plant flourishes until it reaches the apex of its growth, perhaps flowering and fruiting, and then slowly, over time, it begins to lose life force, until it collapses to the ground and its physical constituents are reabsorbed into the earth. We are in relationship with Mother Earth in the same way. She is one of the tawantin of powers that support and sustain the body in which we exist. When our life force is extinguished, our body returns to her. She asks nothing of us during this cycle of life.

In our hucha-transformation energy practices, however, we understand that we are in a kind of ayni with her. Mama Allpa’s core specialties are life, growth, evolution, change, transformation, support, and empowerment. When we give her our hucha, we are giving her an energy that she welcomes. Don Juan and some of the paqos have said that our hucha is “food” for her—one of her favorite foods! When we give her our hucha through such practices as saminchakuy and hucha miqhuy, she takes that slow life-force energy and performs her magic, returning it to its natural vibrant state. This may seem an unusual or unfair exchange to us with our Western mindset. We think of the things we “excrete” as dirty or negative. But Mother Earth is the great composter—one of her most robust powers is transformation through recycling and redistribution. Dung becomes fertilizer. The decaying wood of a tree revitalizes her soil with nutrients. The dead husk of a beetle becomes components for new life. From this perspective, our hucha is another form of life-force energy. It is only when we forget that hucha is sami (simply slow sami) that we misrepresent Mother Earth’s largesse to us by thinking we are hurting or burdening her by giving her our hucha to transform when we cannot fully do that for ourselves.

As don Juan has said, “Mother Earth is a co-creator with the cosmos. She fuels our evolution. She recycles our hucha, helps propel us forward. She feeds us [through the food she helps us grow, the animals whose lives she supports] and we feed her hucha.” In hucha miqhuy, a similar dynamic is in play. Don Juan says of hucha miqhuy, “We take control [of our hucha] following her example. We learn to recycle energy as Mother Earth recycles things. We become Mother Earth’s ally, helping her to digest human beings’ heavy energy.” In both practices—saminchakuy and hucha miqhuy—our hucha is a form of ayni that we engage in with Mother Earth.

Just about everything in our practice involves Mother Earth coming to our aid and enabling our greater well-being. For example, the energetic belts we weave into our mystical and physical body—the chunpis—are earth energy. It is not the chunpi paqo alone who creates the belts. Neither are the mullu khuyas the chunpi paqo uses to weave the belts responsible for their creation. The chunpis are created through the power of Mother Earth’s sami. Before the chunpi paqo begins the karpay to weave the belts, he or she connects with and pulls up Mother Earth’s energy, and that is what is used to create the belts. As don Juan has said, “The belts are not ‘natural’ [meaning, naturally a part of us], but are an energetic addition that improves us.” That addition is Mother Earth’s energy, the sami of the one who lovingly and without condition sustains us and supports us in cultivating ourselves.

In the left-side work—the lloq’e aspect of the tradition—we even plant our Inka Muyu (Inka Seed) in the earth. Our Inka Seed is an energetic structure and information field that holds within it our full potential. ItEye in Leaves or Earth - Pixabay ai-generated-7783062_1280 is the Self, the core “I” that is both our humanity and our divinity. To use the Hindu terms, it is both Atman (God Within) and Brahman (God Without). We literally use intention to move our Inka Muyu outside of our body and plant it in the earth. Once in the ground, Mother Earth helps fuel our Inka Muyu’s development. We could say she is fertilizing it with her sami. What she is really fertilizing is our capacity for self-inquiry, self-awareness, clarity of intention, and efficiency of action—all the aspects of the self that help us climb the qanchispatañan, the stairway of the seven levels of human consciousness. According to the tradition as passed on by don Benito Qoriwaman, we are under no obligation to develop ourselves. However, if we choose to, we can refine our consciousness and energy until we reach the sixth level of human consciousness—that of the enlightened human being—and even the seventh level—that of a human with godlike capacities. We do not undertake the process of our expansion alone. Mother Earth lovingly helps us.

As we close out this year, I invite you to join me in appreciating—in celebrating—Mother Earth and all she does for us. We honor her. As we go into the new year, no matter what is going on in the world and how much hucha we feel around us—we know that we are free to consciously condition our own inner state and that we have help. Mother Earth is always assisting us, feeding us, even energetically fertilizing us to be the most glorious human beings we can be.

Postscript: This discussion would not be complete without mentioning ecology, so I am addressing it briefly here. We are in an environmental crisis because of our lack of ayni in caring for the natural world. We have polluted the land, oceans, and air. We have damaged or obliterated vast swaths of the habitats of animals, birds, and insects. We are creating conditions that threaten our own well-being. The Andean tradition teaches that we must see reality as it really is, and the reality is that we are degrading and even destroying much of the natural world as we know it. We can make no excuses for ourselves.

The reality also is that Mother Earth will be just fine. The rallying cry of “Save the Earth” misstates the problem. What we are seeking is to save ourselves. Our lack of ayni with Mother Earth may hasten our own demise and that of other species as we create environmental conditions less conducive to human life and other forms of life. Our lack of ayni, to be brutally realistic, is both potentially suicidal and murderous. However, Mother Earth will survive whatever we do. She has persisted through countless environmental stresses and ecosystem collapses from Ice Ages to massive asteroid strikes. She absorbs death, and she fuels life. Gone are the velociraptors and the wooly mammoths, and here are the birds and elephants. A thousand years ago there was a desert, and today there is a verdant forest. Mama Allpa— wondrous Creatrix that she is—adjusts, survives, and thrives.