This past august I had the opportunity to go on a spiritual pilgrimage to Peru called the Hautun Karpay Chaupi. It is a Quechua phrase that translates roughly to “the great initiation of the path of the heart”. In the andean tradition, there are three paths: the paña (the right path, having to do with the mind), chaupi (the middle path, having to do with the heart) and lloque (left path, having to do with the physical body). The middle path is the path of the heart, that door way that connects us to those around us, our relationships to others, to our environment, to our universe. At the same time, the heart connects us to the great mystery. Those places that are beyond the boundaries of this dimension, that are created by the truth of love that only the heart can see. The heart sees the connectedness of all things, and is not bound by dimensionality. By embodying this path I hoped to take my Andean shamanic training deeper and go to the source of these teachings, the apus (mountains) and scared sites surrounding the Cuzco sacred valley area.
While there I had the chance to meet Joan Wilcox, teacher of Andean mysticism, Ivan and Juan Nunez Del Prado, Andean shamans and lecturers of the Andean mystical path. These teachers were our guides in visiting sacred sites and working with the energies there. Our plan was to visit sacred sites of the Cusco valley and to experience the Apus (mountains) as well as spend time with Andean shamans (paqos) and do ceremonies with them. I also had the honor of meeting and traveling with a great group of students from all over the world who were also on the Andean mystical path.
There were so many amazing mystical experiences on the trip. But the one that stood out was the ceremony we did at Quori Cocha, the Golden Lake. It is located an hours drive outside of Cuzco in the mountains, at an elevation of 13,000 feet. It is at this lake that Pachacuti, the great Inca emperor, became enlightened. At this point in our journey we were joined by some indigenous paqos from the Andean region of Qeros, Don Francisco, Don Ricardo, Don Lorenzo, and the paqo elder Don Martin. With our paqo brothers we traveled to lake Quori Cocha. It was at this sacred and peaceful lake that we had a despacho ceremony. A despacho ceremony is an offering to the earth and the apus (mountains), built from coca leaves, flower petals, and other ingredients. Each of these elements representing some expression of intention.
As the ceremony went on, I could feel the presence of the apus, lifting our own consciousness higher. Our awareness magnified by their timeless and eternal presence. In the middle of our ceremony, we were visited by a condor, circling high above in the sky. Then shortly after, an eagle also payed us a visit, flying lower to get a better look at us. Don Martin said that they had come to greet us and give us their blessing for the ceremony. With that, we began the ceremony, each of us taking a “quintu”, three coca leaves, and whispering in to them our prayers. Prayers for ourselves, for loved ones, for the collective. One by one we would come up and hand our quintu to one of the paqos, where they would super charge it with a blessing of their own and the energies of the apus.
As I watched the paqos working together to assemble the despacho, with my inner sight I caught a glimpse of what they were really doing… The fabric of space time is continuously being woven by our perceptual experience, like a tapestry made of an infinite number of energetic threads. I could see that the despacho was actually an interface of intention that allowed the paqos to operate outside of time. I could see that through their offerings they were bringing in different “threads” of consciousness, adding them to the process that is creating the fabric of space time. In this way, the paqos operate out side of space time, making changes to the energetic fabric of things, which in turn trickle down and create changes in our mental, emotional, physical being. Which in turn are reflected in our outside world.
When the ceremony was finished, we had constructed an offering of intention that was bringing energetic balance to ourselves and our universe. I felt like I had returned from some intra-dimensional journey, some unknowable aspect of myself having been inexorably changed. The fabric of my being rewoven, my very thoughts being reorganized, my heart being shown the path. The container of my being having been enlarged and the ceiling being removed. I was left standing there, overcome with gratitude. In that moment, I had a small glimpse of what Pachacuti, the ancient Inca emperor, had felt. And with that, Don Francisco took the offering of our despacho in to the Golden lake and submerged it. Our intentions becoming one with the eternal waters of that place, under the watch of the sacred mountains.
