Standing Stark: The Willingness to Engage
Chapter Five
Connecting with the Cosmos
I sat waiting silently, idly gazing around the room, taking in my surroundings for the umpteenth time. I wanted to carefully preserve my memory of this place that had come to mean so much to me. I filed away the rough, wide-planked floor of the old hacienda where so many feet had walked over the centuries. Those feet had belonged to spiritual and political leaders, parents seeking baptism of their new-born babies, villagers asking for counsel, visitors like myself from various countries looking for renewal, as well as the domain’s many generations of inhabitants. I smiled to myself as I once again noted the large bowing in the middle of the ceiling, looking for all the world as though it would release its pregnant load at any moment. Listening to the bees buzzing loudly right outside the wide windows that bathed the room in late afternoon light, I wondered if the home they had made in the walls years ago had anything to do with the ceiling’s womb-like appearance. I made a picture in my mind of the weight becoming too much one day soon and golden honey pouring through the cracks to cover the long wooden dining table directly underneath with a sticky treasure.
But my friend and I were safe from an opening of that nature, if not from others. We were sitting at the far end of the long room in a square of padded wooden benches and chairs, a llama skin rug underneath our feet. I glanced over at her. She didn’t look at all worried. She wore the same defocused look I probably had.
I returned to loading my memory bank. Through the windows, I could see the grassy clearing that I knew led to the wildish garden containing surprising rooms made from fallen trees and overgrown vines, the perfect spots to hide away for contemplation. Steeply terraced peaks comprised the backdrop that framed this scene. The ground dropped drastically to a river far below. It was called the highlands of Peru for a reason.
The door to the outside opened. We both looked up in anticipation. A young Quechua girl of about fourteen entered the room carrying a pan that smoked profusely. She had the most serious face I have ever seen on a child. It wasn’t a face of disapproval, pain or fear. It was the face of someone who saw things others didn’t see, and perhaps didn’t yet know how to reconcile that fact with what she might otherwise have been taught.
She looked askance at the man who was seated with us, the owner of the house. Don Américo made a gesture and the girl proceeded to walk around the room. When she got closer my nose picked up the pungent smell of the aromatic wood smoldering on the hot coals. She walked up to each of us, waited for us to bathe ourselves in the smoke and then continued on into each room. Likely having decided that the house was now clear, she walked back to the door and withdrew. I sat, already in a trancelike state, the smell of the incense having put me in a timeless place.
In a short time, the girl re-entered, still with the pan of coals, but without the smoking contents. A woman perhaps in her early thirties accompanied her. Doña Flora held one layer of her multi-tiered skirts in such a way as to make a basket for its load of plant matter. On her head she wore the traditional dish-shaped, brightly colored hat, with a woven chinstrap keeping it in its place. Doña Flora made her way over, dipping her head slightly to each of us, saying something softly in Quechua. Her daughter Yasmin followed closely behind.
The two of them busied themselves quietly in the space between us on the floor. Yasmin began stripping the leaves from their stalks. When she had a handful, she handed them to her mother, who held the bundle over the hot coals. In a few minutes she turned them to their other side, the heat warming and wilting them. After the herb began emitting its comforting sweetish scent, Doña Flora rose with bundle in hand and moved over to my friend who sat with her eyes closed. Starting at the top of her head, she wiped her down with the limp leaves, all the while speaking almost inaudibly what I assumed was a blessing. When she determined the plants held all they could, Yasmin was ready with more. Doña Flora continued the cleaning until she had covered the entire body, down to stocking feet.
As I was aware of Doña Flora preparing the plants for me, I closed my eyes in readiness and sat forward in my seat. Her hands pressed the warm leaves onto the top of my head, holding them there. I could feel her gentle breath expelling itself between words onto my hair as she leaned in close, urging the blessing into my crown. I could feel something inside me respond, taking hold. Although she swabbed my clothed body, something else happened beyond the physical that I couldn’t describe to myself. Not wanting to manipulate its meaning, I just surrendered to the experience. After Doña Flora was through with me, I could hear her moving on to Don Américo. I pushed myself back onto the bench to find the support of its back and remained with my eyes closed. I stayed that way for some indeterminate time, not willing to give up the comforting cocoon in which I dwelt. There I allowed myself to remain, experiencing a continued lightness and warmth. When I finally opened my eyes, it was because I’d heard the sounds of Doña Flora and Yasmin gathering the implements of the cleaning ritual, preparing to leave us.
“Gracias, Mama,” Doña Flora and I said to each other, holding each other’s shoulders and bringing our cheeks to touch. “Gracias,” the word having a soft dipping and shushing sound in the middle rather than the typical harder Spanish pronunciation.
I felt such a profound esteem for this sweet Quechua woman with the wide, open face and shy, unassuming manner. With such a humble demeanor, I wondered if she had any realization of how powerful she was. Perhaps a discernible lack of ego was one aspect that made her even more effective, her healing abilities coming from an inner place of reverence.
My mind glanced over a story Don Américo had relayed to me some time earlier.
“Flora is a paq’o,” he said. He talked about the distinction of the Quechua word paq’o, meaning a person with special gifts who particularly worked with plants, invoking energy through ceremony in order to heal. In recent years in our culture, we’ve come to call someone like this a shaman, although I doubt many understand the true meaning of this designation.
He went on to say how, some years earlier, Doña Flora either didn’t know about or didn’t accept her abilities. She became extremely ill. This sickness continued to worsen. It seemed no one could do anything to help her. The medical doctors were also unable to diagnose anything.
During one of his visits to Salk’a Wasi, his ancestral home, located adjacent to the Mollamarka Indian village, Don Américo went to see her. As she lie prone, he began to work on her with q’uyas, or stones, used for healing and connecting. He labored over her, touching the stones to her physical body and moving through her energy field, wiping away what could have caused her illness. Suddenly a light formed between the stone and her body. The light grew in size and brightness until it became a large ball that moved down her body and then — disappeared. She immediately began to recover. It was after this experience and a return to health that she began to work with plants and undertook her healing work with intent.
I reflected on her story as I trod up the mountain after our afternoon sojourn. At the hour of power — that magic point between daytime and nighttime — Don Américo, his protégé, my friend and I were walking to a high point to witness the sun slip to its rest. As I sat there, I realized that something was different. I couldn’t discern specifically what that difference was, or put it into words. But I knew without a doubt that something in me had shifted to a better place. I carried that certainty with me back down the mountain and to my bed later that night.
The next day Doña Flora and Yasmin returned about the same time. As before, we waited for them in the same place, with anticipation, for the completion of their work with us. First, it had been necessary to clear from us what debris we inadvertently carried with us to that place from the ordinary world. Being as pristine in that realm as possible, we were then prepared for the next aspect, a push to the left side. The left side is the place of connection, the realm of the Mystery, the feminine aspect of receptivity. From that side comes the experience of insight — not the mental noting of it — that can flood the right-sided life with richness previously not lived.
Again, Yasmin cleared the house with her smoking pan. Meanwhile, her mother deposited on the floor a ball of yarn and a few stalks of the same herb used the previous day. When her daughter had exited the room and returned, the paq’o Doña Flora arranged the plants in a star shape on the floor. When she was satisfied with the arrangement, she stood. Inviting my friend to remove her shoes and socks, she motioned for her to come stand on top of the plants. Then, taking the yarn in her hand, Doña Flora put one end under the big toe of my friend’s foot. She began winding it around her body, until she encased her to the top of her head in a string shrouding that passed around her joints and major energy centers of the body. No sooner did Doña Flora complete the wrapping than she immediately begin to undo it, snapping the yarn and breaking it quickly with her hands at each juncture of the body that she deemed necessary. All the while, she spoke softly and rapidly in Quechua, compelling the string to do its work as she stored the broken pieces in her other hand. After all string had been removed, Doña Flora used the yarn bundle to wipe my friend down from head to foot, much as she had the day before with the leaves. When done, she handed the yarn laden with heavy energy to Yasmin, who was crouched on the floor to one side. Yasmin hid the bundle in her skirts to contain it. My friend stepped back to her seat, her body relaxed.
Doña Flora turned to me expectantly. I arose and moved to the ritual space. I felt the leaves cool underneath my bare feet, sticking to them as I shifted to find my balance. Closing my eyes, I perceived the narrow pressure of the yarn being wound around my big toe and continuing in intervals up my body, joining my legs together, pinning my arms to my sides, slightly cutting into the base of my throat and sealing my eyes shut. I was aware of a sense of feeling tied and cut off, something that was not unfamiliar to me in the past if I allowed myself to become unconsciously encased in the right-sided world. Immediately following that fleeting awareness, I began to experience both a literal and a metaphorical loosening and lessening. Hearing the snapping, the breaking of my ties and Doña Flora’s voice compelling something to let go, to shift, generated what I can only describe as an effervescent quality in the interior of my body that surrounded me as well. It was as though something was opened inside that was flowing outward in gentle waves. I knew from past experience this sensation to be an expansion of my subtle energy field. But it was different somehow.
The brushing of the wool over my head and face signaled to me that Doña Flora was collecting any remnants of heaviness that may have remained in my field. When I felt the yarn softly scratching my feet, I knew she was done. I opened my eyes and sensed rather than saw her deliver the soiled package to Yasmin, who immediately departed from the room, the hucha, or heavy energy, safely restrained in her closely held skirts. Doña Flora gathered her simple instruments, dipped her head to us, and soon left as well.
Seated once again, I began to detach myself from my surroundings. But before I completely moved into a meditative state, I heard Don Américo remark that a man was waiting to run swiftly all the way down to the river to deposit the hucha. The river would cleanse the heaviness, eventually carrying anything remaining to the sea where it would be dispersed.
A few hours later when we made our daily journey up the mountain to witness the transition of the day, I remarked to my friend that I felt like I had just emerged squeaky clean from a long, hot shower.
The sun had already set behind the mountain, but it wasn’t yet dark. It truly seemed like the point between two worlds at that moment. The four of us had paired off and were performing Yanachacuy, a process of giving and receiving energy. I was standing back to back with Don Américo, the whole length of our bodies touching, as we passed the energy of what each needed between us. I began to feel a mounting pressure in the top of my head that escalated, but not to the point of discomfort. When we separated I was experiencing a buzzing in my body that was familiar to me.
But no sooner had I moved over to his protégé and our spines touched, than I felt what I could only characterize as a solid column of uncontrollable energy descending through my crown that did not stop. Some potent force was surging into a vessel that felt too small to contain it all. Sudden nausea made me know that I was going to toss my cookies if I didn’t break contact with my partner. I quickly moved away and stood still for a moment to get my bearings, and the nausea lessened. The others looked questioningly at me, but I said nothing.
Don Américo urged us into a circle to further enhance the energy. We joined hands and I gazed over his shoulder at the mountain across the ravine directly in my line of sight. While I have had a number of what some people may view as unusual experiences, up until that time I had never experienced the exponential force and raw power of what happened next.
As I continued to look at the line where the mountain and sky met, a brilliant light flashed from the highest peak. It locked onto my eyes. As though a laser was piercing me and would not let me go, the light got brighter and brighter until it filled my whole head. It filled my whole being. I began to lose the edges of my body and dissipate. I was merging into some vastness that had no form, only light.
With what semblance of the material plane I had left, I broke with the circle and barely stumbled over to a rock where I quickly sat down. I closed my eyes to try to shake what was happening, it seeming again to be too much for me. When I opened them, I saw lightning coming from the mountaintop. Breathless, I turned my head to look at the other mountains around me. Wherever I looked, lightning emerged all along the ridges striking into the sky. This resplendent scene continued for several minutes until it began to fade from my eyes. Finally, only the subtle energy field of the mountains was left to my vision.
I continued to sit on the stone where I had sought grounding until the earth felt firmer beneath my feet. About that time, Don Américo and his protégé rounded the path. Aware that something had been happening, he had knowingly given me the space for it to unfold and was now back to collect me. My friend was doing her own meditation about fifty feet away. He motioned to us and we all picked our way down the darkening trail.
The ground beneath me once again felt solid and I could distinguish my body from its surrounding environment. Yet, something had happened for which my logical mind had no answer. How does someone explain having received a transmission from a mountain? Or perhaps from the Cosmos? If there is an explanation, perhaps it’s that after the clearing ritual Doña Flora performed and the subsequent Lloq’enecuy ceremony, the push to the left side, my frequency more cleanly and similarly resonated with cosmic energies, the ones that birth us all. Whether this is an accurate summation or not, I can only sense my own truth therein. However, I do know the effect that I believe came from it.
Shortly thereafter, I went back to my home from Peru. Upon my return, I became aware that I somehow knew things I hadn’t known in quite the same way before. These were such things about the nature of existence and the ways of the Universe. A deep trust followed that knowing that has led me into increasing clarity and insight into my own life, as well as it having spilled over into my work with others. I am also certain, without a doubt, that this connection is available to everyone who chooses it.
Clearing
Part of choosing this connection is to make a space for it to pass through. The Cosmos and all its subtleties are always present. For most of us, though, it runs in the background like music we barely attune to as we’re doggedly fixated on some chore. When taken as backdrop noise its presence is overlooked. Or, only when our underlying intent becomes overwhelming does it find the slit to slide into awareness. Even so, this correspondence is often passed off as imagination or coincidence or otherwise rationalized. The communication is forever transmitted, but it takes a conscious receiver to catch it.
We are taught to compartmentalize our lives into work, play, family, spiritual, creative time and so on, through the dogma of a materialistic culture and time management gurus so that everything will get done! We have busy lives and the goal is to be balanced and have everything in its appropriate slot!
Since this is the current reality most people are dealing with, so be it. Until we truly realize that all life is meant to be integrated and that compartmentalizing existence is artificial, we will tap into very little except the sharp corners of a life rendered so. Indeed, it is the segmenting, the stop/start, that interrupts a flow.
However, we must all start where we are. Making the literal and metaphoric space — regular time and place — is a necessary step until cosmic connection becomes naturally interwoven in our lives. Making a compartment for it to happen is probably the first aspect of having it for most of us. Merely wishing for a depth of experience generally won’t put it there. Something must signal that intent.
By choosing to engage in a clearing practice at a regular interval and in a particular place, you can create an opening. When you return there again and again with intent, you generate a vibration that begins to resonate outside the ordinary world. Just going through the motions mechanically won’t do it. But giving a practice ritual attention will intensify its power. This kind of focus to meaning and desire enfolds something. It catches us up in a further realm of reality, one that is operating right within the everyday one but generally goes unnoticed.
In order to tap into this aspect of existence, we must shed what would obliterate that opportunity. All of us have things resident within us, like so many parasites living from the life force we generate. If we are unaware of this condition, we perpetuate whatever we have picked up along the way. We invite a feeding frenzy that expands itself, until we finally wake up and wonder why we’re feeling so drained or can’t get where we want to go.
It’s necessary to release any limiting life beliefs that generate the thought forms that keep us stuck. Additionally, if we don’t know the boundaries of the self, where we leave off and others start, it’s all too easy to merge and engage others’ energies as our own or allow our life force to be inadvertently siphoned off. Finally, we can pick up toxicities from environments where we engage, if our fields are permeable in that way, unless we are alert to that possibility.
Energy is related to lightness and heaviness rather than a judgment of goodness or badness. There is a felt sense. We can literally feel if it bolsters us up or weighs us down. If we are able to maintain lightness in our energy field, then we can surf the wave. When we become heavy, it’s much easier to get sucked in by the undertow that may be present in pockets of life.
A practice is a ritual that allows a cleaning to take place. However, the clearing doesn’t follow if we only go through the motions. Then, it merely becomes like the genuflection that we may perform because we were taught to do so when young and the family around us frowned if we didn’t. The level of understanding isn’t there. Without intent, nothing happens. In that case, a practice becomes just another rule to follow in a long string of shoulds.
This failure would become one more thing for which we could say to ourselves, “I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, what the books say to do, what the teachers teach. Why isn’t it happening for me?” A detour from the course happens when people mistake a practice or ceremony for the end. The truth is that it’s a means. The end is the opening and what lies beyond. The end is generated from intent to engage with our true natures. And thus, the end is That.
All events described in this book are true. Some of the names have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.
I will publish chapters every few days until complete. Find links in the Table of Contents below.
Table of Contents
Chapter Three: The Inner Point
Chapter Four: Intentful Existence
Chapter Five: Connecting With the Cosmos
Chapter Seven: The Space of No Need
Chapter Eight: Conflicts on the Path
Chapter Nine: The Edge of Limitation
Chapter Ten: Asking the Answer
Chapter Eleven: Living With Contrast
Chapter Thirteen: Unconditional Being
Standing Stark: The Willingness to Engage
Copyright 2004 by Carla Woody. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be directed to: Kenosis Press, P.O. Box 10441, Prescott, AZ 86304, [email protected].
