The Foundation of Reality: Part 1

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

Human beings have always wondered what is at the foundation of reality, often forming two seemingly opposing camps. Scientists look to theory, experiment, and mathematics to discover answers, while the spiritual community looks to consciousness and the soul. Yet, if we follow either path far enough, they begin to converge.

This two-part post attempts to bridge the gap between science and spirituality by exploring the most prominent approaches to the question of what constitutes the essential nature of reality. Given the ambitious nature of this undertaking, my approach is, by necessity, tightly focused.

In Part 1, we will examine the universe through two scientific lenses: down into the quantum realm and up into the far reaches of the cosmos. One direction leads to the zero-point field and the other to the Big Bang. While key aspects of these two scientific theories of the nature of reality have been verified to impressive levels of mathematical accuracy, deep anomalies persist, suggesting to some scientists that they have not yet reached the absolute foundation of the material world.

In Part 2, which will post next month, we will explore alternative frameworks proposed by physicists, philosophers, and mystics. By moving beyond strict analytics to more philosophic, esoteric, and mystical paradigms, we will look at various arguments that consciousness underlies the physical world. However, as we will see, if consciousness is the most essential aspect of reality, it is nothing like the human mind. It is less like a field of awareness and more like a field of pure “agency.” Everything happens through it, although no one knows what it is.

As different as these two approaches seem, they reveal that our direction of travel doesn’t matter. Whether we look outward or inward, upward or downward, the moment we break past the rigid boundaries of materialism, we arrive at the same destination: an invisible, all-pervasive, fundamental field. Whether the ground state of reality is a matrix of quantum fields or a singular field of primordial agency, tracing its outlines makes for an extraordinary journey. So, let’s go. . .

The Journey Downward and Inward: Into the Heart of Matter

In the material realm, physicists generally seek answers by breaking things down—descending deeper into the fabric of matter and peeling back layers from molecules, to atoms, to subatomic particles, and, finally, to quarks. When they go deep enough, matter disappears entirely. At the most fundamental quantum levels, solid objects dissolve into mathematical probabilities and fluctuating vacuum energy. But abstract probabilities are not solid objects, and a vacuum is supposed to be empty. Leaving math aside, quantum mechanics, through the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle, tells us that space cannot ever be totally empty or devoid of energy. And that’s exactly what scientists found.

What they discovered was a matrix of fields that exists even when space is stripped of all matter and cooled to its absolute lowest state of energy. They call this background matrix the zero-point field (ZPF). And indeed, it is teeming with energy. To understand its theoretical magnitude, physicists once calculated that if you apply standard quantum equations to a single cubic centimeter of empty space—about the size of a sugar cube—it should contain more raw energy than all the stars in the known universe. While astronomical observations show that the actual measurable energy is vastly smaller, this mathematical paradox proves that the vacuum is far from empty.

The “zero-point field” is a term of description for a collection of seventeen fundamental fields in their lowest possible energy states. Each field is associated with a specific fundamental particle of matter or force. There are matter fields, such as various quark fields, the electron field, and the muon field. And there are fields of force, such as the photon field, which is associated with electromagnetism; and the gluon field, which is associated with the strong nuclear force. According to current theory, these fields are the primary reality of our universe.

Yet, because these fundamental fields are not material, they can be hard to wrap your head around. We will look at only one major factor that is important to our understanding of them: These fields do not exist in space; they are intrinsic properties of space itself. Imagine space as an ocean of invisible fluid. Picture each field as an invisible, fluid-like grid extending infinitely in every direction, where every point within it has its own distinct measurement. If you dip a thermometer into any spot in that ocean, you get a unique reading for that specific point, whether it’s the measurement of current speed, water pressure, or water temperature.

So then, where do particles come from? Particles are localized perturbations—essentially excitations, like a concentrated ripple or a wave packet—in this metaphorical ocean of the seventeen fundamental quantum fields. When a region of a field vibrates with a specific, minimum amount of energy, that localized packet of vibrating energy is what physicists conceive of as a particle.

As an example of the dynamic nature of these fields, while a proton is considered a single particle, actually it is a highly localized interplay between quark fields and gluon fields. What does this mean in terms of “reality”? Let’s use ourselves as an example. Protons, neutrons, and electrons are at the core of all elements and chemicals in the material world. Each of us is a massive bundle of these particles: they make up everything we call a “body.” Yet because these particles are just field excitations, we can say that “in reality,” our physical bodies are made entirely of the interlocking dance of quantum fields.

A consequence of how these fields interact is that once particles are created together, they can become deeply linked in a way that transcends distance. Physicists use the terms “entanglement” and “non-locality” to describe this phenomenon, where a measurement made on one particle instantly correlates with its partner, even if they are on opposite sides of the universe. At this quantum level, individual parts of the universe reveal an underlying interconnectedness.

It is worth reinforcing a fine point about the ZPF: It is not a separate underlying field within which the other fields coexist. It is simply a description of the overall state of the seventeen known fundamental fields when they are at their absolute lowest possible energy. Collectively, these seventeen fields are the underlying fabric of the known universe—the current bottom layer of reality. At least for now. . . Physicists have not yet been able to fully unite the gravitational field (the curvature of space-time itself) into this quantum framework. They believe there must be a deeper reality that unifies gravity with these seventeen fields—a more essential master field. Hence, their ongoing search for a Unified Field Theory, which they believe will contribute to their ultimate goal—what is colloquially called the Theory of Everything.

We will take one more quick science journey to prepare us for our exploration in next month’s post: the likelihood that at the heart of reality is a “field of all fields.”  

 The Journey Upward or Outward: To the Edge of Time and Space

Let us take a brief flight up into the cosmos to make a singular point: going up and outwards takes us down and backwards.

While quantum physicists dive downward and inward, cosmologists look upward and outward toward the furthest edges of the known universe. Yet, traveling out in space is famously a journey back in time. By studying the most distant objects, which also are the oldest, astrophysicists discovered a cosmological clock. They could wind it backward from these ancient cosmic formations to see how they evolved. Tracing that development back to its beginning revealed the moment of creation of the universe in the Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago—and led them straight into the lap of mystery. How did a universe of such exquisite “suchness” spring from nothingness? From where did space and time arise? And how? How did matter initially form? Through patience and diligence, they have managed to at least partially answer three of those questions. It’s the first one—how something came from nothing—that remains stubbornly troublesome, stuck thoroughly in the realm of the theoretical.

In classical cosmology, we are told everything happened in a Big Bang, when time began: nothing became something. In a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, this something expanded in a process called “inflation,” and the hot, soupy universe became filled with particles. In a more modern view, inflation happened first—empty space (or whatever you want to call what came before “space”) underwent a hyper-fast expansion that caused the Big Bang, leading to the creation of particles and, after 13.8 billion years, the universe we see today.

What came before this beginning, and even what initiated it, are not really questions for science, at least not how it currently stands. When asked, most scientists’ answers are of the shrug-the-shoulder kind: “We don’t know and can’t know, because it makes no logical sense to ask what came before space and time.” So, most physicists and cosmologists move on—although not all of them, as we will examine in Part 2. Let us stay with what cosmologists do know about the universe, at least as their theories and experiments show. The current model explains the process of how our universe came into being, yet it contains a profound anomaly suggesting the theory cannot be complete; something more fundamental must be included to truly explain cosmological “reality.”

Once inflation halted and that initial hyper-fast burst of expansion settled, the cosmic soup cooled, and the constituents of matter began to form. The universe then began its long evolutionary journey, resulting in the complexity and grandeur of the cosmos as we know it today. But something about that evolution defies the belief of many cosmologists and physicists: The universe is fine-tuned to an astonishing degree. If the core parameters of our cosmos were adjusted by even a fraction, the universe—and life as we know it—simply wouldn’t exist. For many people in both the scientific and spiritual camps, the mathematical improbability of this level of fine-tuning happening by chance not only defies belief but demands explanation. For them, cosmological evolution alone cannot be the whole story.

Where the Macro Meets the Micro

Most mainstream scientific models remain rigidly materialistic, and many scientists prefer to stay firmly within those bounds. We can leave them to their comfort zone. Instead, in next month’s post, we will venture to the frontiers of knowledge with a growing cadre of scientists and philosophers who dare to explore the mystery. It’s a lot more fun, vastly more interesting, and likely where the traditionalists will eventually be dragged—perhaps kicking and screaming.

As we have seen in this post, when we go far enough down into the quantum realm or far enough out in the cosmos, the familiar laws for a mechanical, material universe dissolve. Ultimately, we enter the domain of philosophers. In standard Quantum Field Theory, it makes no sense to ask if there is something underneath or giving rise to the zero-point field. Yet, there are theorists who do ask, proposing frameworks like String Theory or Quantum Gravity. Similarly, for mainstream cosmologists, it makes no sense to ask what came before the Big Bang, because it gave birth to space and time itself; and before that point, all mathematical equations completely break down. But cosmologists of a more philosophical bent have formulated such theories anyway, with most proposing a multiverse (a hypothetical collection of separate but coexisting universes) or a cyclic universe (the continuous expansion, collapse, and rebirth of a single universe). Examples of such theories are Eternal Inflation and the “Big Bounce” of Loop Quantum Cosmology, respectively. Ultimately, however, even these theories may not be enough. For now, it is philosophy, not science, that takes us beyond materialistic boundaries to questions about an absolute foundation to existence—a true First Cause.

In Part 2, we will explore some of the alternative theories gaining the most serious traction inside and outside academia. The majority posit some kind of underlying consciousness field. After reading them, you can draw your own conclusions about which ones hold the most promise and which ones are likely to lead to a dead end. But I can tell you definitively right now: No theory leads to an easy answer. What is fundamental to reality remains exactly what Winston Churchill famously described in a completely different context: “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”

Good Vibes, Bad Vibes: Avoiding Spiritual Bypassing

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

Over the past year, I have lost count of the number of conversations I’ve had with students and friends about how to stay centered and hopeful in a world that feels in radical disarray. How do we remain light-bearers when there is so much darkness around us?

It is a fair and urgent question. While there are dozens of ways to address it—many of which I have explored in lectures, podcasts, and classroom discussions—I want to focus here on a specific, common tendency: Our urge to concentrate on the light while avoiding the dark.

Is this focus a form of spiritual bypassing?

Before I define spiritual bypassing, let me address the two core terms: the light and the dark. I admit it is not an easy task to define them because there are many important layers of meaning that coexist without hierarchy and that are relative to context. Everything I am about to write is premised on two fundamentals: first, that light and dark are aspects of the same energy along a spectrum; they are expressions of one life-force energy; and second, that they are not oppositional but complementary: Just like up and down or right and left, one has no meaning without its complement in the pair. So, to be brief, at the expense perhaps of oversimplifying, I am mostly talking about spiritual positivity and negativity. Spiritually, the light is considered a refined vibration and indicative of a developed consciousness, and it is associated with wisdom, goodness, unity, compassion, even holiness. Darkness is most often considered a low vibration or indicative of an underdeveloped consciousness (or the unconscious “shadow”), and is associated with ignorance, disruption, corruption, solipsism, and the like. However, you are free to define these terms as you prefer within the same complementary parameters, because like the perception of Andean sami (light living energy) and hucha (heavy living energy), the perception of light and dark is relative to our own state of being, and to our personal beliefs, ethics, morals, and such. So, what is dark (or like hucha, heavy) for you may be lighter (or more like sami) for me. And, to be really “real” about this discussion, most of us feel we know what represents the light when we see or feel it; the same for the darkness.

And so back to spiritual bypassing. . . This is the tendency to use spiritual beliefs, perspectives, and practices to avoid facing distress, whether that distress arises from painful emotions, psychological wounds, or harsh real-world problems. The term was coined in the early 1980s by psychotherapist John Welwood. He used it to describe a behavior he noticed among a subset of spiritual practitioners who insisted on focusing on positivity regardless of what was happening around them—usually as a way to avoid dealing with reality.

The reality is that humans are messy, complex, and often confounding creatures. This description includes every one of us. No matter how much we focus on “awakening” or “ascending,” we cannot make genuine progress as spiritual beings until we acknowledge and, ultimately, own the ways we are still far from the light. True resilience doesn’t come from pretending the shadows don’t exist; it comes from having the courage to meet them head-on.

Recognizing spiritual bypassing in our own lives requires radical honesty, because it often wears the mask of high-vibe wisdom. The even trickier thing about spiritual bypassing is that it is remarkably easy to spot in others, but almost invisible to us within ourselves. Here are several classic behaviors and beliefs that either constitute spiritual bypassing or easily pave the way for it:

  • Destiny over Will: Believing that everything happens for a reason or things are exactly as they should be. This view bypasses a critical examination of how our own choices, actions, and beliefs shape our reality. It effectively abdicates our free will to fate.

  • Excessive Positivity: Focusing exclusively on positive vibes at the expense of our authentic, messy emotions. By valorizing the good vibes over the bad ones, we reduce our ability to honestly and safely process fear, anxiety, anger, worry, despair, or other “heavy” emotions. Essentially, we bypass the fullness of our humanness. That which we deny in ourselves has only one place to go: into our unconscious, our shadow.

  • Spiritual Blind Spots: Ignoring clear warning signs in other people’s behavior—such as gaslighting, manipulation, or deception. Because spiritual blinders can constrict our vision to seeing only (or mostly) the light in others, we tend to frame even the most egregious behaviors in the most generous way. We rationalize, giving others the benefit of the doubt when they don’t deserve it, often to our own and others’ detriment.

  • Ritual Action as Panacea: Relying on rituals, ceremonies, affirmations, and the like to influence or solve real-life issues. While our sacred practices are essential, overreliance on them can lead to delaying necessary action. It can keep us from personally participating in creating the real-world conditions to enact solutions.

  • Hyper-Spiritualizing Reality: Elevating intuition, inspiration, or optimism over a sober, grounded acknowledgment of “what is.” We then tend to favor abstract spiritual conceptualizations over commonsense and reason. Just as we are both physical and metaphysical beings, we are both spiritual and rational beings.

  • The Elitism Trap: Believing that our spiritual practices, experiences, or knowledge make us “special” or provide us drastically heightened insight or understanding. This spiritual and ego inflation often manifests as assuming we possess above-average perceptions about life that the “unawakened” or “average” person simply cannot grasp.

  • Spiritual Benchmarking: Declaring “truths” about another person’s inner state or spiritual development to validate our own opinion of them. Similar to the Elitism Trap, this tendency has us labeling others as “old souls,” “young souls,” “advanced,” “beginners” and such, or claiming that others’ paths are “ego-based” rather than “heart-centered.”

While spiritual bypassing manifests in the many ways I have listed, and plenty of others, the core issue I want to zoom in on is our tendency to ignore, deny, avoid, or harshly judge the darkness, whether we perceive it within ourselves, someone else, or the world at large. Which raises a potentially perplexing question: Do other people and the world actually need our light?

 Plenty of spiritual teachers and philosophers would tell us the answer is an emphatic “No.” They say that when we cultivate the light within ourselves, we are doing so first and foremost for our own evolution. Consider a metaphor, as imperfect as it is, from nature: Every plant in a field turns toward the sun based almost entirely on its own unique state of being—its physical condition, the condition of the soil, its position relative to the sun, and so on. Each grows according to its own nature and necessity. This is the stance inherent in Mahatma Gandhi’s famous wisdom: We must be the change we want to see in the world. Our light is ours to cultivate. We have plenty to do to develop ourselves without worrying about how everyone else is doing. Yet, also embedded in Gandhi’s statement is the payoff for self-improvement: How we each cultivate ourselves determines the health and beauty of the entire field. One plant does not a field make. So, our primary work as individuals contributes to the state of the collective. When each of us grows strong and resilient, we can better thrive individually and collectively whether we find ourselves in a fertile environment or a blighted one.

The world needs us to cultivate the spiritual fortitude to experience the dark without feeling overly anxious, trying to banish it, or panicking. The real practice is learning to accept “what is” without reservation. To paraphrase author Lysa TerKeurst, we don’t have to be the world’s saviors; we just have to be willing to sit with the world in all its beautifully ugly reality.

When we favor only the light, we turn the dark into something oppositional to it rather than complementary. Our impulse shifts to resistance—we want to ignore it, deny or resist it, or fight against it. Yet, as Carl Jung, developer of the concept of the unconscious shadow self, warns us, when we refuse to acknowledge or explore our own inner darkness (and by extension, the world’s), we give it power over us: “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” In other words, what we avoid about our own heaviness and the world’s not only persists, but tends to intensify. 

By viewing darkness as the absence of light or, mistakenly, as oppositional rather than complementary to light, we miss the reality that darkness is the bearer of its own unique beauty. It is associated with many of the same profoundly life-giving qualities we ascribe to the light: creation, incubation, fertility, depth, imagination, inspiration, transformation, revelation. When we stop bypassing the dark, we stop fighting reality and allow ourselves the freedom to explore, and perhaps even to play in, the darkness. It takes an almost brutal honesty to acquire the spiritual strength to experience the complementary nature of human existence—its awe and its agony—with equanimity and to accept “what is.” While we naturally, and commonsensically, prefer to experience what is light, bypassing experiences of the dark suppresses the essential labors of self-evaluation. Our spirituality becomes more like a denial of our complex nature rather than an appreciation of it. In this way, spiritual bypassing serves as a coping mechanism at best and an outright refusal to immerse ourselves in the crucible of reality at worst.  

The process of spiritual transformation, which is often seen as only or mostly a turning toward the light, actually requires that we be willing to linger in the darkness that lives within us. This is the proverbial dark night of the soul. It is a kind of shamanic or mystical descent: one driven not by trepidation but anticipation. Darkness has a purpose and a function, just as light does. It has its own kind of transformative brilliance, for it is not a featureless, sterile void, but a realm of intensity and power. When we are willing to explore without judgment or fear how the darkness lives within us, then we can use it in furtherance of our own evolution, which admittedly is no easy undertaking. Still, when we grow more comfortable with our own darkness, we are less likely to despair at seeing it in others or the world.

It is true that, as the late Wayne Dyer famously said, “You can’t discover light by analyzing darkness.” And it is equally true that most spiritual traditions lean toward the wisdom of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who taught: “Don’t fight the darkness—bring the light, and the darkness will disappear.” Within certain contexts, I agree with both views. However, my point here is that we cannot live in the light or be the light unless we are first willing to face the darkness. The reality is that none of us individually can bring enough light to make the world’s darkness vanish entirely. No single figure—not Christ, Buddha, nor Muhammad—possessed enough light to permanently banish the dark from our human existence. What they did do was acknowledge it, face it, and ask us to do the same. None of them would have ignited a spiritual or religious revolution by simply pretending the dark wasn’t there; the very tension between light and dark is what defines their philosophies.

Ultimately, spiritual bypassing is a diversion from—or an outright refusal of—the difficult work not only of mediating both the light and dark aspects of human experience, but of honoring them. It is a forgetting of a core truth of both the self and the universe: growth, transformation, and movement of any kind require contrast. As the artist Bob Ross beautifully observed about painting: “Put light against light—you have nothing. Put dark against dark—you have nothing. It’s the contrast of light and dark that each give the other one meaning.” Spiritual bypassing is, in the end, a kind of sentimentality. It is an emotional shield that blinds us to raw reality, flattening the beautiful, agonizing complexities of human beings and our world into simplistic, comfortable binaries. In this way, it stalls or even blocks our development rather than nurtures it.

Exploring Rimay and Atiy

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

My Andean teacher, don Juan Nuñez del Prado, has said that with rimay and atiy we can do anything. The only person who can stop us is ourselves. If this is true, these two human capacities shouldn’t just be background concepts. We need to bring them front and center into our daily lives. So, let’s take a deeper dive into what these capacities mean and how they work together to potentially transform our reality.

In Andean mysticism, communication is viewed as a sacred, transformative act known as rimay. Encompassing speech, language, and communication, rimay is an inherent capacity of the kunka ñawi (energy center at the middle of our throat). Rimay also is sound as a sacred vibration. Every word we utter is imbued with our personal energy and with our karpay, our personal power. In this context, power does not mean dominance or control; it signifies how much of the vast reservoir of human capacity we have accessed from within ourselves and so can bring out into the world and use in our lives.

To fully understand rimay, we must look to its counterpart at the kunka ñawi: yachay. Unlike theoretical intellect or second-hand knowledge, yachay represents wisdom acquired through direct personal experience. Therefore, true rimay is the voice of lived experience. It is the authentic expression of our kanay—our core identity and unique individuality. When we speak from this place of integrated wisdom, we bring a natural confidence, integrity, clarity, and authenticity to our communication. When fueled by yachay, our rimay engenders trust, because we say what we mean and mean what we say. It engenders precision, because we know ourselves and so can communicate our views, preferences, choices, and decisions without apology, ambiguity, or hesitation. Our words align with our core values, and our core values arise from the integrity of our lived experience.

If rimay is the foundation of knowing and expressing who we are, atiy is the life we build upon that foundation. Atiy literally means “to be able to” or “to have the ability.” It is the capacity energetically associated with the siki ñawi, the energy center at the tailbone. Atiy is action in time: The actions we are capable of taking moment by moment, day after day, which add up to the expression of ourselves as integral participants of the world. Through the concept of ayni, or sacred reciprocity, atiy is our ability to “drive the kawsay”—the living energy—through the integrity of who we are. By “measuring” our atiy, we know what we are capable of doing; we can assess whether or not we have the personal power to accomplish what we say we want to in our lives.

Together rimay and atiy drive the kawsay to shape our lives. One way to look at this paired dynamic is that rimay without atiy is mostly empty talk; atiy without rimay is aimless action. Rimay and atiy themselves are part of a more complex chain of development, yet without them, the links in the chain weaken or even break. Pulling together explanations from various transcripts and notes I have, don Juan explains how self-knowledge and self-expression flow together and influence our ability to act in the world: “Pukllay is play, like children at play and lover’s games; reality vanishes, you become part of the whole. Our work is cosmic games. It’s a mix of munay and rimay. Munay as love and will, and rimay as the ability to express yourself. Rimay is more than that really: It is the ability to manifest yourself. To express yourself in all forms, including expressing and living your destiny and inviting others to do the same. All of this takes you to kanay, the power to be yourself. If you discover kanay, you reach atiy.”

Describing atiy, he says, “Atiy depends on the energy you have available to channel. The siki ñawi is about impulses, but atiy is not an undirected impulse, but a directed one. It’s an impulse that is empowered. It is a measure of how you have developed yourself. Your Inka Seed is your full potential, but you have not developed this all the way yet. Atiy is the measure of your power as you contrast it with your Inka Seed. It is your power in this moment. You contrast your possible full potential with what you have the power to do right now in your life. According to that measure, your atiy is the power to change reality around you: how much or easily you can do that. It is how you can trigger action. After you manifest yourself, you can drive kawsay to influence your life and reality; you cannot control reality, but you can make energy follow more harmonious flows in more harmonious directions for you. And then you can play in the world of living energy.”

These are not only Andean concepts, because, of course, communication and action are universal to human existence. Looking outside the tradition, perhaps it was Albert Einstein and Carl Jung who best defined rimay. Einstein said, “The only source of knowledge is experience.” And Jung said, “Experience is the direct realization of a truth.” And we can turn to Theodore Roosevelt to succinctly describe what the Andeans call atiy: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Whatever tradition or source of inspiration we draw upon, taking rimay and atiy into account matters to the quality of our lives. We tend to focus on developing ayni and munay, and rightly so. However, to be wholly involved in the world as our most glorious selves means mastering our rimay and atiy as well.

Mystical Relations with Cities

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

In my last post, we explored our mystical relationship with nature. That reflection left me wandering down an unexpected path, thinking about cities. Urban areas are rarely the places people flock to when seeking personal respite or rejuvenation, spiritual connection, insight, inspiration, or the transcendent. But why should an urban environment be considered any less sacred than a natural one?

I am not talking about the world’s widely recognized spiritual centers, such as Jerusalem, Medina, Vatican City, Varanasi, Cusco, Kathmandu, or Kyoto. I am talking about everyday cities, such as Boston, Edmonton, Siena, Hamburg, Córdoba, Anatalya. I am talking about any city, really—large or small, well-known or entirely anonymous to anyone but the locals.

I guess what I am really exploring is not a specific location, but a particular kind of environment: the entirely manmade kind. And what I am exploring in a broader way is the sense of pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is an intentional journey to a place deemed holy or sacred, undertaken for spiritual, creative, or inspirational reasons. Because modern environments limit our daily exposure to nature, we often—and rightly—seek out green spaces for this kind of respite and rejuvenation. We head for the mountains, the forests, the oceans, or the jungles. But beyond recognized cities that are spiritual centers, why do so many people assume they will not (or cannot) find the sacred—or connection, respite, rejuvenation, insight, inspiration—in what is pejoratively labelled a “concrete jungle?” Other than our own learned biases, what truly makes the manmade less holy than the nature-made?

One of the strongest pulls of wilderness immersion is the ability to step (almost) entirely outside of society. When we are alone in nature, the social cacophony mostly ceases, allowing us a quiet space in which to connect with the self and better hear (and listen) to our inner voices. We also expand our awareness beyond ourselves. Instead of harried and complicated interchanges with people, we slow to the simpler rhythms of the wind, water, sun, and moon. We shed the social masks we wear and the cultural mores we serve. We become more aware of our wasi: the temple of the self, which comprises both our physical body and our poq’po (energy body). Naked to ourselves, we deepen our relationship with our own souls and the soul of the world.

Yet, the sacred is not out there. It is always and everywhere within ourselves.

So, I wonder why we cannot so easily shed those same social costumes and psychological masks while standing on a crowded street corner surrounded by brick buildings and the honking horns of cars? Isn’t it true that the challenge isn’t the concrete beneath our feet, but our willingness to “be” wherever we are, in whatever conditions, whether the dizzying action of a large city, the bland homogeneity of a suburb, or the insular timelessness of a backwater town? 

Landscapes by themselves are devoid of meaning. We are the meaning-makers. If we cannot “be”—centered, calm, aware, in wonder—in the middle of an urban rush, well . . . that tells us something about ourselves. If we can marvel at the power of ocean waves surging toward shore, can we not find a sense of majesty in a crowd of people propelling themselves with purpose along the city blocks? Why is sunlight brilliantly streaming through a thick tree canopy any less mesmerizing than one streaming down between a cluster of skyscrapers?

There is a term I once heard don Juan Nuñez del Prado use while discussing the Andean tradition: the egregore. It was how don Juan described some energy dynamic—I forget now what he was talking about—back in the very early days of my training. I haven’t heard him use it since. But it has stuck with me. It’s a term that refers to the spirit of a group, to how their energy coalesces into a shared psychic structure. We might think of it as a city’s dream body or its ayllu poq’po (group bubble or energy body). The egregore is formed from the collective beliefs, thoughts, emotions, needs, desires, dreams and such of the group, and so the egregore is the holistic impression we have of a place. It is a signature energy, such that the “feel” of London’s egregore is different from New Delhi’s, which is different from Buenos Aires’. There is a reason we feel the glow of romance in Paris and the welcoming, family-like familiarity of Bologna.

Most cities use taglines to brand themselves for tourism and commerce. However, from an energetic perspective, they are actually advertising their egregore: I live near Winston-Salem, NC, whose egregore is “The City of Arts and Innovation.” New Orleans is the “Big Easy,” Tokyo is where “Old Meets New,” and Geneva is “The Peace Capital.” You can “Find Your Heart” in San Francisco and know that “What Happens Here, Stays Here” in Las Vegas.

For every one of our shifting passions there is an urban egregore that perfectly resonates with it and so can deepen our feelings about whatever is sacred to us in the moment. There is a place vibrating at the perfect frequency to sweep us into the indulgence of physical pleasures, or into freeing our inner child or unleashing our inner comedian, or into supercharging our creativity or immersing ourselves in futuristic technology. When we choose to view every place on this planet as sacred, even a simple day trip to a bustling urban center transforms into a pilgrimage. Just like a verdant forest or an imposing mountain, a city can serve as a powerful bridge between the mundane world and the liminal space of the divine.

Mystical Relations with the Earth

~ Q'enti Wasi ~ Leave a comment

Hike through the high plains of the Peruvian Andes, and you might notice your guide pausing before a towering peak or beside a rushing stream, whispering softly and offering a few coca leaves or spilling a few drops of water. To an outsider, this gesture might look like a quaint ritual—a nod to folklore. But to the paqos (practitioners of the Andean mystical tradition), this isn’t a performance. It’s a vital connection, even a sacred communion. While Western spirituality often focuses on ascending out of the world, and many Eastern traditions look inward to find the divine, the Andean paqos do something entirely different. They look directly at the landscape and bridge its materiality to touch its energetic essence. Andeans in general, and paqos in particular, are kawsaypa llikapi, which literally means “within the network of life.”

In modern society, many of us view ourselves as separate entities moving through a space. Even if we admire our surroundings as we walk through a valley, many of us traverse the terrain essentially as observers or visitors. In contrast, in the Andean tradition we understand that our energy field (poq’po) is directly enmeshed with the surrounding landscape and its features. The valley in its own right has a poq’po, as do the creatures who live there and each of the trees, rocks, rivers, flowers, and other natural features. The paqos teach that humans possess three main forms of perception: yachay: mind; munay: feelings; and llank’ay: action. When these three ways of perceiving are aligned, a human being becomes a chakaruna—a living bridge. We literally become a conduit through which we and the sky, the mountain, the river, or the stones share energy. This is ayni, or reciprocity. As modern physics tells us, and the paqos show us, the created universe is relational. As Margaret Wheatley, a writer and speaker who incorporates systems science into her leadership seminars and books, says, “Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation.”

Without humans consciously performing rituals of reciprocity, Andeans believe the universe loses its harmony. So, we humans, despite our woeful behavior as stewards of the Earth, are not cosmic tourists visiting the Earth for a time but vital expressions of the Earth. Humans, the Andeans tell us, are allpa camasca: animated earth. Energetically, when we engage in an ayni relationship with Mother Earth, we not only honor her but become an integral aspect of her body and serve as ritual caretakers. The physical landscape is not just terrain; it is the altar upon which we cherish our “mother” and take to heart our roles as attentive “children.” By caring for the Earth, we care for ourselves and all creatures.

Most people, when they first begin to practice Andean mysticism, tend to gravitate toward Pachamama, which usually is translated as “Mother Earth.” However, Mother Earth as a being in her own right has her own name: Mama Allpa. Who, then, is Pachamama? The Cosmic Mother. In a beautiful imagistic rendering, Andeans see Mama Allpa as the womb of Pachamama. From this Earth womb all living things are birthed into being. However, our Original Mother is of cosmic origin. Pachamama is the mother of the entire material universe, of which Mama Allpa and we are just a small a part. When we are in ayni with Mama Allpa, by extension we also are in ayni with Pachamama, the entire material cosmos.

A logical question is why Andeans tend to call Mama Allpa (planet Earth) “Pachamama.” One reason is a function of the Quechua language. Allpa literally means “earth,” as in soil or dirt. Pacha has many definitions: dirt, soil, earth, realm, world, space, time. But it also functions as a kind of honorific. When Andeans are planting seeds in their fields, they are digging furrows in the allpa, the earth, the dirt. Allpa tends to be used within common language as a reference to the mundane. The word Pacha, however, lifts the mundane to the sacred. So, when Andeans shift to referring to the Earth as the giver of abundant life gifts (crops, animals and herds, water, and such), they refer to her as a sacred being, and they use the term Pachamama, the Sacred Earth Mother.

There is a similar language transformation with how Andeans relate in ayni with water. The Quechua term for water is unu, although many Andeans use the Spanish agua. In fact, they tend to use the word agua when referring to water in its mundane form as an element of rain or a stream. When they add the word unu (agua unu), they are referring to water in its sacred nature. The water flowing down from a snow-capped mountain to irrigate their fields is agua unu; it is considered the fertilizing blood that flows thru the veins of the mountains or as the sweat of Mother Earth. Referring to water as unu imparts the notions of divinity, unity, fertility, and sanctity. Likewise, yaku means river in its mundane sense, or refers to any mundane type of flowing water, such as that in an irrigation ditch. But when referred to as yaku unu, this water is elevated to the realm of the sacred. The water is honored for its sacred life-giving properties.

Living these kinds of relationships turns the landscape into a kind of living altar. Just about everything in nature is considered a waka, a repository of the sacred. Andeans don’t just live on the land; they are in continual, dynamic reciprocity with it. If we want to experience this mystical immersion into a network of living relationships with nature, the Earth, and even our entire cosmos, we don’t have to practice the Andean or any other mystical tradition. We can simply walk outside of our house and shift our perspective. Instead of looking at nature, we feel into nature. And perceive how nature is looking at and feeling into each of us. By transitioning our conscious awareness from our mind to our poq’po (our energetic, perceptual body), we learn we are integrally woven into the living web of nature. We cease being spectators and become partners in the world’s unfolding.