Salka Wind Blog

Posts on the Andean Cosmovision

Year: 2015 (page 1 of 3)

Recover the Night

I believe this is the first time I’ve posted something about the Andean Cosmovision that was written by someone else.  This beautiful essay is from my friend Angela Rhinehart.

“Recover something of the night that is within you.” These words from Don Americo Yabar are resonating strongly today. Last night I did recover something of the night that is within me. I was feeling afraid of the dark, curled up, hiding away, aching.

He said, “It is beautiful to fill yourself with night.” I had not been feeling that beauty, I was filled, yet not open. It is as if it was there and I was curled up on the ground, eyes squeezed shut, suffering the oppression of the night. Until the pain of that moved me towards the night. Once I rolled over, began to rock and expand, then I realized that I could find my way in the dark. I could open my eyes and be soothed by the darkness, the cool, expansive night. Once my eyes adjusted, then the soft light of the moon and stars could fill me with the cosmic stars of my mystery.

I am recalling a dark night in The Andes of Peru, next to a river with Don Americo. We were meditating, but there was a light across the way and all of a sudden he invited us to go to a different spot. “Vamanos?!” I arose and began to follow, without a headlamp or flashlight out into the dark, he led us on a meandering path, scrambling through bushes, and finally arriving at the river’s edge once again, this time the night was uninterrupted by the harsh, electric beaming. The expanse of stars danced and swirled.

I recall the cold stone beneath me and the rushing water, the breeze caressing my cheek, silence behind it all. Sitting in the dark, next to my companions, being with the night, filling myself with the night, connecting with my stars. There is always the light within the night. My soul was soothed by the night, expanding, breathing.

My soul craves the dark. Yet, if I am only diving into the depths and don’t allow the expansion into night, then I am buried by the weight of darkness. I may go into the cave to find solace and protection, but I also need to emerge from that and have courage, know that I can find my way through the dark of night. There is a thrill in that, the mystery that my soul knows is important.

If I care for my soul, then I am gifted by wholeness and expansiveness, connection. My whole self includes the night and it is there whether I acknowledge it or not. The night will exert itself. The more I honor the night, the less afraid I become. If I soak in the wet night then the light and warmth of day becomes more welcome.

So, I turn towards the night that is calling me. I welcome the dark, I recover that. I fill myself with the stars of my mystery.

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Initiations

The Andean Cosmovision cannot be described or encompassed with words. It can, however, be experienced and thus it can be explored. The two essential pieces of this exploration are; the various meditative processes that take us into that territory, and the special relationship with nature and the Cosmos that this path nourishes. That is all you need. The meditations, and the relationship, open a portal into profound, new, unbounded territory. Your life and the Cosmos become a great mystery that you will never solve. The path leads nowhere. It doesn’t make sense to try to go as far as you can. The beauty and the value are in the walking of the path. Distance traveled fades in favor of making our walk through life a work of art.

The meditations are great and wonderful. They have effects that are apparent immediately. They are new steps in our dance with the Cosmos. The real magic, however, comes from our relationship with nature and the Cosmos. When we connect to the Pachamama, or to the Apus, or to the stars, or to Mama Tuta in a relationship of ayni, directed by our munay, and stop our “doing” and begin to “not do“, then everything changes. If the time is right, then a deep facet of our own Being gets into cahoots with the Cosmos, and we change. It is an initiation, not in the sense of joining a club, but in the sense of being initiated into another way we can be in the world.

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Peru Trip: 2015

Another great trip to Peru!  This time I went with 11 waikis to work with don Americo and Gayle Yabar, and other paq’os and healers with whom they arranged for us to meet.

11986993_1492555424389890_2733276932443929310_nPart of the beauty of following a path of heart is the company I get to keep. Here we are at Molino, Gayle’s place in the Andes that he has converted from an old mill into a wonderful setting for groups to stay and connect to the river and the Apus and the stars and the Cosmos.

IMG_0485Our first meeting of the trip with the Q’ero, here the men are creating a despacho (offering).

working with the female paqos from Qero.
Our second meeting with the Q’ero (at 15,000 feet) focused on the  ñustas (powerful feminine energies).

12006116_1492556284389804_7585939602780060350_n A special moment.  We passed this old man carrying a large sack up into the mountains. Americo stopped to connect with him and give him some food.  Things like this happen a lot when we travel with Americo, what a path of heart!  Photo by Pia Ossorio.

Barbara connecting with the energy of an Apu.Connecting with an Apu.  We were at 16,000 feet, the Apus tower much higher still.

I have a much more comprehensive slide show of the trip which I would be delighted for you to see.  If you would like to view it go to the Andean Cosmovision (the Facebook page for my book) and scroll down to the album.

This trip had a big effect on me and I have returned with some information that I would like to share with you.  I am still struggling with how to organize what I want to say, but that is what this blog is all about, to give me a place where I can play around with how to get the information out.  I will be tackling this in subsequent posts.  My intent is to help us refine our understanding of how to explore the Cosmovision back here in the West, for as much as I love going to Peru, it simply isn’t necessary to go to Peru to explore the vast, mysterious, and beautiful territory that is the Andean Cosmovision.

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Impeccability

Hi everyone. I haven’t been posting here a lot recently. My energy is going out to a rather diffuse number of outlets. I am presenting a three day workshop on the Andean Cosmovision in Grand Junction, Colorado this coming weekend. My web site www.SalkaWind.com has served as the hub of my internet efforts but had gotten of date and so I have rewritten it. I have created a Facebook page for my book, The Andean Cosmovision, and I have been posting there recently to see if I can get the word out on my book to more people.

I have been waiting for something to come to me that I would like to share on this blog. And today it arrived. I would like to share some thoughts and energy about ‘impeccability’.

I first ran into the idea of walking through life with impeccability in the earlier books of Carlos Castaneda. My favorite way of expressing it is through the following story that don Juan told Carlos, which I paraphrase below

One day you will be walking down an arroyo and you will stop to tie your shoe. When you do, a huge boulder will crash to the ground right where you would have been if you hadn’t stopped to tie your shoe. Another day you will be walking down the arroyo and you will stop to tie your shoe and a boulder will land right on top of you and kill you because you stopped to tie your shoe. Given a world like this, the only thing you have control over is tying your shoelace with impeccability.

Acting with impeccability adds a great deal to life, exactly what I have a hard time putting into words. It can also be, in my experience, too stern a task master. The resolution I have arrived at is that my being impeccable includes not having to be impeccable all the time. I would like to share a story about that.

One time when I was in Peru by myself with don Americo he told me that the president of the Q’ero people was also in town and would like to meet me. He added that this was purely optional and I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to. When I paused, wondering why the president would possibly want to meet me, Americo added softly that it would be rather rude to say no. Of course I said yes.

When I went to meet him I didn’t know what to do or say, so I decided to just open my heart and interact with him. I ended up showing him a photo of my sons on my cell phone and asking him about his family. Afterwards Americo chuckled and said that was an interesting and rather refreshing way for me to act. He also said that he had watched me slip into my ‘impeccable mode’ right before I entered the room, and that he has seem me do this other times as well, he complicated me on my ability to be impeccable. I replied that in all honesty it was much easier for me to be impeccable after a couple of cups of coffee in the morning. Americo laughed and said that Carlos Castaneda might not approve, but that it was very salka of me.

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A Few Thoughts

Just a few thoughts I would like to share this morning.

There are ideas, or phrases, or concepts from my readings in the past that still inform my life toward beauty. I find, at times, that when I go back and find the exact words that I read so long ago that my memory of them is not correct, and that I like my memory’s version more than the original words. This, I suppose, is the power of an oral tradition over a written one. The following two thoughts originate in the writings of Carlos Castaneda.

  • Humility, the sense that we are less than others, is as much a product of our ego as the sense of being superior. Rather than having humility as a goal, seek instead for humbleness. Bow your head to no one, and let no one bow their head to you.
  • When it really counts, when you really need it, words (and concepts and beliefs) will let you down.

One semester when I was teaching a class in the psychology department there was a student with whom I had a very difficult time communicating. It was as if we were from two different planets, it was obvious to me that I didn’t understand his questions and it appeared that he didn’t understand my answers. At one point he mentioned he was a philosophy major and I replied that I personally would never trust a philosophy that could be put into words. That was a defining moment for us.

Today, like everyday, I wake up lonely and afraid. Pass by the door to the study. Take down a musical instrument. Let what you love be what you do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the earth. (my paraphrase of a poem by Rumi)

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