An excerpt from “Lessons of the Inca Shamans Part II: Beyond the Veil,” (Forthcoming publication, Idyll Arbor Books)
Sunday, May 19th, 2013
Above everything, we are children of the land. And the basic understanding is that we’ve always been children of the land, and as children of the land we need to, to remember the old way of dialoguing with that that supports us and nurtures us. Everything around us has kausay, is infused with life force. (Don Alarijo, 2011)
As I grow older, it becomes clearer to me that human beings have an inherent need to find meaning in their lives. Based upon my experience as a psychologist and a Jungian analyst, working with people are in the process of deep soul searching, this is what brings people a sense of well-being. In the West, many of us attempt to find meaning through discovering new ideas, establishing and achieving individual goals, and by developing our personal and professional identities that formulate our own individual belief systems as a function of our personalities. Our personalities are created from our genetic makeup and temperament, as well as from our experience and subjective interpretation the life events. The combination of all of these variables together cast a template that arranges who we – as we are living in this lifetime. Our understandings and perceptions of our individual life events influence our approach to making meaning, bringing us to our own conclusions of what is important to us.
Beyond our personal development in our outer world, making meaning can also come through connecting with something that is bigger than we are in our inner as well as outer world. Most of us have a certain proclivity towards introversion or extroversion, which will effect what we consider meaningful. Feeling a sense of meaning may emerge in creative expression and play, being in nature, and through spirit connection.
Of course, all our meaningful conclusions can change at just a moment’s notice because as living beings, we are energy, and energy movement is a fluid process running through the template of our personality. The flow of energy may alter the personality template as it comes in contact with it – and vice versa – and this can potentially change who we are. By being in close relationship with family, friends, animals, nature we connect and we change. We change through contact and connection. Q’ero p’aqos experience the connection of kausay (life force) with Pachamama (Mother Earth), the energy of life that is everywhere. , as Westerners, we tend to only access small parts of this vast energy source that is available to all of us, because our culture has forgotten what it is like to live in connection. We are all part of the living energy, that Inca shamans call kausay.
Rather than encouraging people to learn to “stand on their own two feet” as we do in the West, medicine people develop a very different understanding of their exterior world because they live close to nature. Instead of placing value on personal achievements, and individualism, p’aqos develop a strong bond with Pachamama through serving their community, or ayllu. Because most Inca shamans grow up in small villages high in the Andes, they depend on Pachamama for their survival. Through maintaining a physical and spiritual relationship with Pachamama through the daily activities raising corn and herding llamas, learn and grow. In the pa’qo’s world, everything in life begins, exists and ends with Pachamama.
Unlike those of us raised in the modern world of Western culture, shamans serve their experience rather than trying to make meaning from it. Trying to understand everything using our logical mind is not necessary. It can sometimes even hinder our growth because we miss things. Growing up in a village, or ayllu, they learn to rely on their hearts and bodies to make sense of the world rather than minds. Depending on their feeling senses provides them with a broader range of perception because there are things that exist in the natural and spiritual world that cannot be understood using reason. As Westerners, we sometimes “throw the baby out with the bathwater” when we count on our logical minds to determine what is real. The medicine people believe that thinking about something brings separation while a heart-centered focus of kausay brings connection. Shamans believe that feeling connected through the heart leads to truth.
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