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Posts on the Andean Cosmovision

Tag: hucha (page 2 of 2)

Saiwachakuy

November 6, 2012 / / 0 Comments

While I learned this unnamed meditation from don Americo it seems to fit the definition of a saiwachakuy as described in Joan Wilcox’s excellent book Masters of the Living Energy, so I am calling it that. On the whole, the meditations I have covered in this blog help us explore the full essence of who we are, or nourish the beauty and quality of our dance with Nature and the rest of the Cosmos, or both. This meditation to me feels more like a service to the Cosmos and the Pachamama. It returned to my meditative practice after hurricane Sandy and it feels like something well worth doing both as a response to that as well as for upcoming times of change.

I usually begin with the Touching Pachamama and Releasing Hucha meditations (the latter also fits Wilcox’s description of a saiwachakuy). The meditation then proceeds as described below. I do this while sitting on the Pachamama.

With intent (sincere pretending) open the energy center at the crown of your head and let the refined energy of the Cosmos flow down through your head and into your munay. When the energy enters your munay use your intent to transform the energy into love. Open up the energy center at the bottom of your spine and let the love flow into the Pachamama. For as long as you like sit there and serve as the conduit of energy from the Cosmos to the Pachamama, transforming the energy into love as it flows through your munay.

Joan Wilcox describes a saiwachakuy as a column of energy that connects the the three worlds of the janaq pacha, kay pacha, and uju pacha.  In this meditation I frame it as being the Cosmos, our own body right here and now, and the Pachamama (which is how I learned it from Americo).  Joan describes a saiwachakuy as being an important service we can provide at this time of necessary and inevitable change.  When I do this meditation it feels like an act of love for the Pachamama and the Cosmos. I have an “I’m happy to exist just so I can do this” moment. If you play with it I would appreciate hearing your own experiences.

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Inside / Outside

April 11, 2012 / / 0 Comments

The Andean path that I have learned from don Americo Yabar has an inherent appreciation for natural balance. There are times, for example, when we want to be fully engaged in the energy of what is going on around us, dancing with it, being influenced by it and influencing it in return. There are also times when we may want to take a break from the dance and withdraw into the sanctuary of our own Being, to be contemplative rather than active, to rest. Here is a simple meditation which gives you that choice.

Begin by standing with your weight evenly balanced on your feet, and notice your present state, how your energy feels, what it is like to be you right now. Then, take one step forward and spread your arms in a gesture of opening up your energy field. Do this with the intent (sincere pretending) of letting your energy flow out and connect with the environment around you. Remain in this position long enough to perceive how this shifts your experience. Then, step back and bring your arms back in to a shielding position (e.g. cross your forearms on your chest). Do this with the intent of drawing in your energetic connections and creating a protective wall between you and your environment. The flavor of this latter position is not that of putting up a siege barrier, it is more that of entering a haven where you can relax within yourself.* Spend some time getting in touch with how this affects your experience.

The movements and gestures are like training wheels that support the corresponding intent, making the shift more obvious and thus easier to learn. You may find that other movements than the ones I described help you to shift into the appropriate state of being. After you have practiced this for a while the supporting physical movement can become more and more subtle until you can work with intent alone.

Source: don Americo Yabar

* This meditation can be used to avoid picking up hucha from what is going on around you, but I don’t want to presuppose that if you don’t like what is going on around you that the best option is to withdraw. There are also different meditations/processes that can serve you when you specifically want to protect yourself from hostile energy in your vicinity.

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Shedding Hucha

November 8, 2011 / / 0 Comments

‘Hucha’ is heavy, discordant, chaotic energy. If you haven’t yet, I recommend that you read the earlier post dedicated to hucha. For me the prototypical example of hucha is how I feel when I come home from a bad day at the office. Unfortunately, not only does it sour my experience of reality, I can see the effect on my family when I arrive home full of hucha. There is a beautiful scene in one of the Commissario Brunetti books (by Donna Leon). Brunetti arrives home after a day when something terrible has happened at work (he is a police commissioner). He comes in the front door and his daughter greets him from the other end of the hallway with a happy ‘Hello pappa!’ He greets her back with the happiest voice he can manage, and turns to put his coat away so she can’t see the expression on his face. He hears her say “Mamma, something horrible has happened to pappa!”. The people I love pick up on my hucha even when I am trying to put it behind me when I arrive at home. My wife seems to notice it right away. My sons, when they were younger, would soon begin to bicker and fight.

This is a quick way to shed hucha before entering the house. Quick is not necessary a virtue, but it does make it easy to routinely do this after getting out of the car and before entering the house from the garage. As we will see in future posts, this is also a good way to get rid of your own hucha before working with other people’s energy.

While standing raise both your arms above your head with the palms of your hands facing the sky. With intent (sincere pretending) connect to the energy of the Cosmos with your right hand and let that energy flow into the right side of your body. When you feel that your right side has filled up with this energy, and still keeping your arms raised, bring your two palms together and with intent let the energy flow through your right hand into your left hand and down your left arm into the left side of your body and from there into your heart (munay), where you transform the energy into love.  This is simply accomplished with intent.

Now, bring your hands slowly down over your body, from your head down to your toes, with the intent of gathering up all of your hucha with your hands. When you finish at your feet put your palms down on the Pachamama (the great Being who is the planet Earth) and ask her to take all of the hucha from your hands. One of the great gifts of the Pachamama is to take our hucha and recycle it into refined energy.  This is basic paqo work.

Do this process just slowly enough to maintain the intent of what you are doing. If you do it too quickly it can become a mechanical process without intent and will lose its quality. Still, this is something that doesn’t take very much time and it can easily be tacked onto your arrival at home.

As always, remember, this is not just a way to get rid of hucha, it is a dance step in your relationship with the Pachamama, a relationship guided by ayni (reciprocity). In love she has taken your hucha, remember to at least express to her your gratitude, and next time you are having a drink perhaps pour a little first onto the Pachamama in thanks. A fundamental aspect of the Andean Cosmovision is the balance of giving and receiving. The full expression of the Andean approach is a life where that balance is maintained not out of a sense of obligation but out of love and mutual respect and gratitude. It is a relationship from which special and beautiful things can arise. The larger content of this meditation, then, is our relationship with the Cosmos. As I crank out future posts I will be sharing more ways for living a life of balance with the Cosmos, especially through ‘despachos’.

Source of this meditation: don Americo Yabar.

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Releasing Hucha

June 21, 2011 / / 0 Comments

This simple meditation is my favorite way of getting rid of my own hucha (heavy energy). It feels good (I’m not sure ‘good’ quite encompasses it) and it provides a doorway through which to experientially explore the Andean Cosmovision. Getting rid of hucha is also a preliminary step for other Andean meditations and it is a particularly important thing to do before working with other people (so you don’t give them your hucha). This meditation comes from Joan Wilcox’s excellent book ‘Masters of the Living Energy: The Mystical World of the Q’ero of Peru‘. Here is how to do it.

Sit on the ground, it is ok to sit on a blanket or sitting pad. Sit as upright as you comfortably can, with your spine vertical (as that is the direction the energy is going to flow).

First, notice how your energy feels, what it feels like to be you right now.

Then, with intent (sincere pretending) open up your energy field at the bottom of your spine and with intent let your hucha begin to flow down into the Pachamama. Don’t be concerned about giving the Pachamama your hucha, it is not like polluting her, the Pachamama accepts our hucha and recycles it into refined energy, releasing it back into the Cosmos, it is one of her great gifts to us.

Right after you open up your energy field at the bottom of your spine open up your energy field at the top of your head and invite the light, refined, energy of the Cosmos to flow down into your body to replace the hucha that is flowing into the Pachamama.

Feel the hucha leaving your body and the refined energy of the Cosmos flowing in to take its place. Continue until you sense that all of the hucha has been released. If there are places where the hucha seems stuck just be patient, keep up your intent of letting the hucha go. I sometimes through intent ask the Pachamama to send her energy up into that spot to gently wash the hucha away.

When all of your hucha has left thank the Pachamama and the Cosmos. Then, notice how you feel now.

The difference between how you felt when you started and how you feel when you have completed the meditation comprises your knowledge of what the meditation has accomplished. Any description you read about what a meditation accomplishes is completely irrelevant, what a meditation actually accomplishes for you is what it accomplishes, and it may not be the same each time, but over several times you will begin to know what the meditation is all about. This won’t be an intellectual knowledge (or you could just read about it) but instead will be knowledge at a deeper level of your being. This is what the exploration of the Andean Cosmovision is all about…an exploration that takes place in a something-other-than-intellectual level.

As with all of the Andean meditations this meditation is performed within the context of our relationship with the Cosmos. The Pachamama accepts and recycles our hucha, the Cosmos gives us refined and beautiful energy to replace it. It is a wonderful Cosmovision where the earth, the wind, the trees, the rivers, the stars, the mountain peaks, the Cosmos itself are willing to support our own evolution. This same Cosmovision has as an essential element the principle of ‘ayni‘ (reciprocity) where to receive is always balanced by giving in return, and to give is always balanced by receiving in return. I would like to refer you back to the post Touching Pachamama for some ideas about how to give to the Pachamama and the Cosmos in return for what they give you in these meditations. It is all about relationship.

Note: I prefer to do this meditation while sitting on the ground and I recommend this while learning the meditation and becoming familiar with its effects. It can also be done while sitting in a chair on the top floor of a skyscraper but I prefer to do it (and I have a stronger experience) in the intimacy of being in physical contact with the Pachamama.

Source of this mediation: Joan Wilcox.

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Hucha

June 18, 2011 / / 3 Comments

There are many Andean meditations for getting rid of ‘hucha’ (pronounced ‘hoocha’). Hucha can be translated as ‘heavy’ or ‘discordant’ or ‘chaotic’ energy (‘heavy’ describes how hucha feels while ‘discordant’ or ‘chaotic’ describes more what it is). For me the prototypical example of hucha is how I feel after a bad day at work, my energy feels heavy and unpleasant and I feel disconnected from the underlying beauty of the world. Note that hucha is not ‘evil’ or ‘negative’ energy, which are concepts I have not encountered in my studies of the Andean Cosmovision. Hucha is not accompanied by a moral evaluation and there is no moral imperative to get rid of hucha in yourself or in others. Getting rid of hucha simply moves us from an unpleasant state to a much more pleasant one.

In addition to getting rid of hucha simply because I feel better when I do, I also get rid of my hucha as a preliminary step before moving on to the meditations that involve coming into harmony with various elements of Nature and the Cosmos (to be covered in later posts). I will be sharing at least a couple of ways of getting rid of hucha, first in ourselves and then in others. As hucha is such a fundamental aspect of the Andean Cosmovision I wanted to present it on its own so that I can refer back to it in later posts.

If I may wax theoretical for a moment, hucha is the byproduct of our society and of our ego when they place demands upon us that take us out of harmony with our natural state of being. Society has created a world where for us to live and succeed we need to follow rules that are disconnected from our relationship with Nature. Our ego (all of our concepts about ourselves) primarily involves our identity within that separated-from-nature realm. Our society is what it is, and we need to act within it, and to do so may sometimes generate hucha within ourselves; leaving us feeling heavy, disconnected, out of harmony. When we get rid of hucha we are free to be in harmony with the larger system of Nature and the Cosmos.

[A subsequent post Releasing Hucha gives a meditation for getting rid of hucha within ourselves].

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