KIDS & GRANDKIDS OF FAMOUS Q’ERO PRIESTS SCUBA DIVING!
Karina is the Granddaughter of Don Humburto, and Dona B Aurelia is the daughter of Don Francisco, and Dona Ramosa is the Granddaughter of Don Mariano Apaza, along with Ruben and Rina Marta!
Can you believe this? For kids that never saw the Mamaqocha until a few weeks ago? Amazing!
Paqo Travelers Performing a Spiritual Service: Travels Through Italy and Greece
The time we spent in Rome was a fantastic experience for us. I, and our dedicated group of Paqos worked together to create a powerful collective bubble.
When we think of Rome we associate her with the GREAT FOOD. The INKA TRADITION is about eating, but not the tasty cuisine. It is rather about eating LIVE ENERGY! We worked together with the powerful forces of nature to fill ourselves with the finest energies she has to offer—SAMI. We discovered we could achieve this in the PANTHEON, a magnificent edifice built with a perfect sphere atop a cylinder. Its construct automatically boosts energy and elevates thought when inside.
We charged ourselves with REFINED SAMI ENERGY preparing for the next step, which was to eat the HEAVY HOOCHA ENERGY. These heavy energies are a result of the discord that has existed for eons between man and nature. As very experienced Paqos, we work together, choosing to help the world by consuming collectively these harmful energies and digesting them through the UMBILICUS of the world. We chose the powerful site of OMPHALOS located in the ROMAN FORUM, which forms the ‘BELLY BUTTON’ of the city. Together we successfully pulled the heavy energies from Rome and beyond.
At our next stop in Greece we took our beginners from my class to the cave below the ACROPOLIS and used the power there to eat and digest all the heavy HOOCHA energy of each group participant. It is truly a wonderful experience to be able to use these ancient temples as was intended by their creators for their energetic purpose. Greece is still a place that resonates the power of the GODS, the goal of the collective energies of the people who built the city and temples 2,000 years ago. WOW!
In our spare time we visited the TEMPLE of POSEIDON at SOUNION. We went to a lovely beach where we immersed ourselves in the healing waters of Mother Ocean and swam.
We returned to Italy and went to a place on the Adriatic Sea called Udine which is located in ‘THE ‘BELLY OF TRIESTE.’ There with our Paqo friends we got to work once more. This is a place of exquisite beauty. When we arrived, an ocean filled with jellyfish greeted us, an unusual occurrence as the water was too warm for them. Shamans view jellyfish as a power tool for acceptance and faith. They represent the emotional body and tell us to float through trying times. It was an honor to be greeted by them.
This was my 15th year, teaching in Italy and the 14th teaching this group in Udine. These dedicated Paqos intrepidly crossed a freezing river to enter a wonderful deep cave, sanctuary of Pacamama We had worked in total darkness the year before and these Paqos, as initiates, faced some of their deepest fears.
This time the cave was filled with about 8 inches of deep layer of mud. What was incredible was that we entered a completely dark cave and when we exited the cave was filled with clearly visible orbs. This transformation was incredible. The ancestors had arrived!
Viva Roma! Our First European Seminar, and Magical Experience
We just finished the first seminar here in Roma. We went to the PANTHEON to absorb all the power of all the Gods. The Pantheon is the first temple where in about 300 AD common people were allowed to come and worship the Gods directly; prior to that, only the priestly class was allowed to worship Gods directly.
Then, we were off to the Roman Forum. YES! Just like in the movie, and we used the OMPHALOS, which is the QOSQO of ROMA to eat all the heavy energy along this great and powerful LEY LINE from the Great Pyramid of Giza to STONEHENGE. We cleaned the line of all the hoocha and filled it with the sami of Giza and Stonehenge.
We did all this in the rain, and then we performed a powerful KARPAY ceremony at the CAMPIDOGLIO. One of our group members realized, after we finished the ceremony, that there is a prophecy that a group of healers will perform a ritual in this very spot to save ROMA! This prophecy is from 30 years ago. We ended up there only by “coincidence” and because of the rain!
Viva Roma!
Q’ero Kids Attend Connections Charter School in Hilo, HI
Aloha everyone! Here is an update for the Q’ero Kids Program.
Principle Charter School Children
Just last week we got an urgent update from our highly qualified teachers. Jorge and Cindy had volunteered to come and teach our Kids at Ka’u, and to lead the Q’ero Kids Program. Jorge, from Venezuela, is a wonderful PhD in psychology, and certified ESL teacher, and his wife is an expert Montessori teacher for 25 years. They were going to come and teach our kids in exchange for nothing more than room and board. We had lots of excited kids and parents ready to participate by learning Spanish in eager anticipation of the Q’ero Kids who have been preparing to come here to our farm by learning English since January of this year 2011.
Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, that did not work out. WHAT TO DO?
I felt a small, still voice speaking inside of me. It said, “Ask him…. just ask.” I had been considering asking the principal of Connections Charter School in Hilo, Mr. John Thatcher, if he would consider hosting our Q’ero Kids for a few months for the following school year, to let them stay here on our farm for the first visit and get used to Hawaii slowly, a little at a time.
Next year I was going to see if it was possible to work out an arrangement for visiting international students from Peru – our Q’ero Kids! I reasoned that by doing this we were paving the way for them to be able to come and study for a whole year, even possibly graduating from Connections High School, giving them the possibility to attend the University of Hawaii for college.
Principle Thatcher of Connections Charter School
So, I decided to take the risk and send an email to Principal Thatcher. I was amazed to receive a phone call within hours of my email wholeheartedly inviting our Q’ero Kids to attend CONNECTIONS CHARTER SCHOOL for THIS September and October. I was thrilled! By coincidence or synchronicity, it turns out the Principals own brother-in-law is the famous Peruvian born astronaut CARLOS NORIEGA who now works for NASA.
As soon as Principal Thatcher saw PERU in the email he was immediately willing to help!
This is truly a BIG THRILL for us at Wiraqocha Foundation as this gives the Q’ero kids a Rare opportunity to attend a HAWAII Charter School that has MULTICULTURALISM as one of it’s basic philosophical tenets. The school has middle school programs in Hawaiian, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese.
We are SO EXCITED the kids will get to attend school in HILO, Hawaii and now I have to run over to Hilo and rent a house for them this week!
What are some positive aspects of the children attending this new school?
A great thing about this new opportunity is that the kids will have total immersion with English speaking kids in a real US school environment that is almost like an international school, as it is about 37 % Hawaiian or part Hawaiian/Polynesian kids, about 33% Caucasian and the rest is a mix of Black, Latin, and other mixed races. This will give the Q’ero kids a real look into the mixing bowl of cultures that is the United States, and particularly Hawaii. The kids’ cultural heritage will be honored and they will be sharing and exchanging their viewpoints with all these different children. This school offers Hawaiian language and culture classes, along with Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese. They already have exchange programs with kids from Korea.
Every Child Should Know a Hill
Every child should know a hill,
And the clean joy of running down its long slope
With the wind in his hair.
He should know a tree…
The comfort of its cool lap of shade,
And the supple strength of its arms
Balancing him between earth and sky
So he is a creature of both.
He should know bits of singing water…
The strange mysteries of its depths,
And the long sweet grasses that border it.
Every child should know some scrap
Of uninterrupted sky, to shout against;
And have one star, dependable and bright,
For wishing on.
~Edna Casler Joll
A Q’ERO WEDDING!
Here is a romantic true-life story about a beautiful Q’ero couple, Don Ricardo Apaza Flores and his bride Dona Rosita!
When I first met Ricardo Apaza in the year 2000 he was just a boy of less than 20, one of three sons of the famed Q’ero Paqo DON MARIANO APAZA. I had been working with Don Humberto Sonqo and Don Mariano Apaza from the Q’ero Nation already for many years. We had brought Don Manuel Q’espi, one of the all time great Paqo’s from Q’eros, as the keynote speaker to the 1995 INTERNATIONAL TRANSPERSONAL ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE held in Manaus, Brazil.
In 2003 we brought Don Mariano Apaza Flores and Don Humberto Sonqo to Europe as KEYNOTE SPEAKERS and Guests of HONOR to the FIRST WORLD CONFERENCE ON THE INKA TRADITION held in Grado near Venice, Italy. Then we met Don Mariano and Don Humberto in Cuzco during the Fall 2003 HATUN KARPAY–the 10-day INITIATION CEREMONY in the SACRED GEOGRAPHY of PERU.
In our traditional “AYNI meeting” with about 30 paqo families of the Q’ero Nation during which Wiraqocha Foundation trip participants give away to the people of Q’eros, Ricardo, don Mariano’s young son–at the urging of his father DON MARIANO–shyly came forward and asked me to be the “MADRINA” or GOD MOTHER of his wedding with his beloved Rosita. They were a very sweet and shy couple with HUGE smiles and brilliantly shining black eyes. I immediately fell in love with them both but had to ponder the request as I did not know what it meant to be the “GODMOTHER” of someone’s wedding, especially a Q’ero. I was aware that I did not want to commit to something I didn’t understand and perhaps could not accomplish. So by the time I had a chance to ask our translator what was involved in this request and receive an answer I could understand, the Q’ero had packed up and were gone.
I didn’t see Ricardo again until the fall of the next year 2004 when he again repeated his request. I was hesitant to make such a committment as I later found out to be the GOD MOTHER of the wedding means you make a DEEP LEVEL OF COMMITTMENT to the family on a monetary as well as a spiritual level. I hesitated. One month later I heard the shocking news that Don Mariano had died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident and somehow that tipped the scales and I found myself ready to make this deep committment.
In 2005, when we met again, we planned to take some time out during the busy schedule of the HATUN KARPAY to perform the wedding ceremony, little did I know this was more complicated than it seemed. Ricardo had to arrange for the REGIDOR (REGISTRAR) from Q’eros to come all the way to Cuzco (a journey of 3 days walking) to make it really legal and formal and authorized in the traditional style of the Q’ero wedding.
For many circumstances our meeting never worked out, and this continued to be the case for the next 5 years. Each year, we would plan for the wedding ceremony to happen, and something would occur to prevent it. The Regidor would get the date wrong and come after the we had already left. The Regidor arrived but I was sick and could not participate. Don Ricardo got the date wrong and the Regidor came two weeks too early. Unbelievable comedy of errors would somehow always prevent the wedding from happening. I couldn’t believe the tenacity of don Ricardo, for it had been his fathers wish for me to be the God Mother of his wedding.
FINALLY in 2010, as we were making plans to bring the film crew from DIscovery Channel to Ricardos own village of Qolpacucho, we realized this would be the PERFECT time to have the wedding and REGISTRAR would only have to come a few hours from a nearby village.
We planned the wedding, and I was happy to agree as GODMOTHER to subsidize the ALPACA BARBEQUE for the whole village.
It was very exciting and the emotion of Ricardo, Rosita, myself and all their family members was so powerful as we had been waiting SEVEN YEARS FOR THIS EVENT!
They already had three children but had waited for the moment when I could be present in the Q’ero Community to officially hold the wedding ceremony. It began as all traditional wedding ceremonies do, with us excitedly putting on our best clothes in their house and being led in a formal musical procession from their house, across the open field, to the ANCESTOR stone or HUACA where DON MARIANO APAZA used to make all his ceremonies and hold despacho ceremonies for the village.
Once we arrived at the altar you can see in these photos MANY MANY MANY of the ANCESTORS WERE PRESENT and I cried throughout most of the wedding ceremony, which lasted for several hours. We were escorted officially back to the house by the musicians and sat insides in a circle with the whole family where we toasted the couple repeatedly with several bottles of traditional Q’ero “white lightning”, making wishes for their life together, danced to the ongoing music by smokey firelight, and ate the most delicious barbecued alpaca I have ever tasted. The celebrations went on ALL NIGHT LONG and only stopped with the coming of the first light of dawn. A truly long awaited celebration and well worth the seven years!
Our Beloved Juan Nunez Del Prado to Speak at THE JUNG INSTITUTE in Zurich!
Dear Friends and WORLD WIDE PAQO FAMILY:
Our beloved JUAN NUNEZ DEL PRADO, the foremost authority in the world on the Andean mystical tradition and the Q’ero Indians of Peru, was recently invited to speak at the Jung institute in Zurich, Switzerland.
Of course this was quite an honor for both Juan and the Jung Institute I believe!
We owe Juan a huge debt of gratitude as he is the one who has been able to help create the framework in which we can understand the ANDEAN COSMOVISION and what it means to walk the path of an ANDEAN PAQO. WE LOVE YOU JUAN!
And thanks to Hans Martin from Germany for making this available on youtube! Http://www.youtube.com/watch?V=_o_fdeldttq
The Return of the Inka (Part II)
The Inka posit seven levels of what we would call “psycho-spiritual development” which lie dormant within our “Inka seed.” The spiritual tools of the Inka help us unfold each level of our development in an organic succession. While the first three levels consist of a kind of spiritual childhood and adolescence, it is at the fourth-level initiation that one takes one’s first steps toward becoming a true “adult.”
At each level, the initiate gains an ever-widening sense of identity with larger and larger human groups, as well as a correlating ability to resonate their personal “bubble,” aura or energy field with ever increasing areas of geography, or Pachamama. For example, at the first level you identify with
your immediate family, local town and accompanying nature beings—the spirits of the local mountains, lakes or rivers. At the second level you identify with your state or province including the environment, and at the third level you identify yourself with your country and the spirit of its highest mountain, or biggest river or ocean.
At the fourth level initiation (which traditionally takes place inside an ancient cave in Peru) you become able to resonate your energetic field with the entire field of living energy that is Mother Earth and her inhabitants. This is the level at which every other human being literally becomes your brother or your sister because you have the same mother, Pachamama, and the same father, Inti Tayta, Father Sun. The next three levels delineate the unfolding of the complete potential of humankind right up to the seventh level at which a human may become fully vested with creative power, manifest “the equivalent of God on e
arth,” and resonate with the energy field of the entire universe.
Most of us are considered to have barely arrived to the third level or perhaps to be teetering on the edge of the fourth level. Fear, conflict, dependence on authority and victimization are the hallmarks of the third level. Harmony, independence, happiness and self-direction are the hallmarks of the fourth. The simplest way to proceed in one’sspiritual growth is through direct, conscious cooperation with the living energies of Mother Nature.
The fourth-level initiate takes on the responsibility to become an active participant not only in the creation of his own life, but also in the unfolding of the Inka prophecy, as this prophecy requires our active participation. The wisdom of the fourth level holds that in our abundant, life-filled universe there is no such thing as positive or negative energy; there are only relatively heavier energies, hoocha, and relatively finer energies, sami. Sami, in the Quechua language of the Inka, means “nectar.” It is literally a spiritual food that we as humans endowed with free will, can choose to create and to channel, or not.
All of nature produces sami. Think of how you instinctively want
The simplest way to proceed in one’s spiritual growth is through direct, conscious cooperation with the living energies of Mother Nature.
to go out for a walk when you feel out of sorts. Only we humans produce hoocha. But as the generators of heavy energies we are also equipped with the capacity to direct living energy and to “eat and digest” or transmute hoocha. When we become initiates of the fourth level in this ancient spiritual tradition of the Andes, we develop an ever-increasing capacity to direct and channel the flow of sami, the finest living energy, and to absorb and redirect heavy energy to Pachamama—the place where it can become useful as kind of spiritual compost. Certainly without our sacred reciprocity of breathing with trees and plants our lives would soon be extinguished.
It is the sharing that is important. It is the sharing that makes our next step in evolution possible, if and only if humans and nature can cooperate to create the conditions to make the leap to the next level, the fifth level. The spiritual cosmo-vision of the Q’ero holds precious, even life-saving, information for today’s world. The perspective of the fourth-level teachings offers a way out of the many woes of modern society. For example, the fourth-level teachings can forever end the “war between the sexes” by providing a personal experience of male and female as complementary and harmonious living energies.
The fourth level can offer new perspectives to those who think only in terms of “good” and “bad,” and give legs to the modern “new age movement” that often promotes philosophies of escape from earthly existence, when our salvation is right here in front of us encoded in our very physiology, and in Mother Nature. The most exciting thing is that once enough of us truly step on the path of the fourth level, together and in cooperation with Mother Nature, we can create the conditions for one of us to break through to the fifth level and become a master healer as the prophecies tell us is our potential.
According to the prophecies, the first fifth-level healer is due to appear anytime at an Ice Festival on top of a glacier in Peru. This festival represents a huge gathering of human beings (over seventy thousand people) participating in a sacred ritual (producing loads of sami) at a powerful sacred site (on top of an ice peak) in cooperation with a powerful force of nature, the mountain spirit known as Apu Senq’a. It is precisely this collaboration of human living energy with a great force of nature (the ice peak) that provides the energetic ‘womb’ from which the fifth-level healer/priest can emerge. The prophecy states that all twelve healers will emerge in connection with sacred festivals that take place all over Peru at different times of the year. The Q’ollorit’I (Ice) Festival, for example, takes place at the last full moon in May or first full moon in June every year. Don Benito Qoriwaman, a famous Andean healer and keeper of the full prophecy, once told a student that a fifth-level initiate could walk into the United Nations, and by their presence alone, transform every human interaction of conflict, into a solution session.
The prophecies of this organic spiritual tradition provide us with a window of opportunity that began when the Andean priests first saw the signs in 1990. This window of opportunity stands open, according to the prophecies, from 1993 to 2012. It is our invitation to a new and wonderful golden era that must be even better than the Inka Empire that came before it. Whether or not we seize this opportunity is up to each one of us. Who will step through that window with me? Will you step through?
The Return of the Inka (Part I)
…………….
Something dawns
Golden
Warm and spreading
A spiritual nectar
At once sublime and earthly
Instinctively
We turn toward it
Intoxicating
Irresistible
Startling in its beauty
Completely natural
Supernatural
We face into it
Receive its smooth force
Soft, relentless
Slowly washing over the world
Polishing, renewing
Revealing to us what has always been there
As familiar and alien as our own unignited DNA
A gift as yet unopened
A treasure unexplored
The hand of God held out to us
Our own hand
Filled with promise
…………….
The Return of the Inka (the Quechua prefer this spelling) is a prophecy that has been preserved for
us thanks to the Q’ero Indians of Peru—the modern-day descendants of the Inka—and anthropologist Juan Nunez del Prado. Juan says that in January 1990, Don Manuel Q’espi, one of the most powerful Andean Masters of the Q’ero Nation, came to his house early in the morning wearing his most splendid ceremonial garb. He had walked all the way from Q’ero to tell Juan that he had seen the signs in the mountains—the time of the prophecy was at hand. After the “cosmic reordering” period, from 1990 to1993, the first phases of the prophecy would begin and could potentially reach culmination in the year 2012.
The Inka Empire, possibly the largest sub-continental empire on earth, had one of the best systems for the gathering and redistribution of resources (in other words, one of the best social security systems) the world has ever known. There was no hunger, no unemployment and no poverty. The Sapa Inka and Sapa Qoya (high King and Queen) were experts in social engineering, agriculture, the arts— and, of course, spiritual matters. The Sapa Inkas and Qoyas were Priest-Kings and Priest-Queens who revered nature as their greatest teacher.
The Inkan prophecy carried down through the lineage of Sapa Inkas and Qoyas to modern times is actually a kind of map that not only reveals something of such tantamount importance as our own spiritual heritage, but also marks the pathway to our very future— complete with road signs—for the potential evolution of the human race.
The Inkas’ wisdom rivals modern physics in its understanding of the world as living energy; but, unlike modern physics, the Inkas evolved a highly sophisticated, yet simple, set of spiritual tools teaching us how to interact with, and even direct, the flows of this world of living energies.
First, the cosmo-vision of the Inkas reminds us who we are as human beings. Their wisdom holds that, contrary to modern Judeo-Christian thought, we are born from original virtue, not original sin. We can therefore trust ourselves, and know that we live in an overabundant cosmos that is full of life rather than inert matter.
According to the Inka, we inhabit a living universe called Kausay Pacha, “world of living energy,” a world in which everyone and indeed everything is alive and has consciousness. In this overabundant universe, Pachamama—Mother Earth—is a generous, fecund and loving mother. We are only able to grow and develop our “Inka seed,” the potential in every person, with the help of this loving mother.
Seeing Through The Eyes of the Q’ero (An Indigenous Peoples of Peru)
Someone recently asked me about the difference between the Q’ero spiritual and life perspective versus our western perspective, or even that of other indigenous people. Here’s the short version…
Most indigenous people in Peru (Peru is 89% indigenous or mixed indigenous people) believe in a LIVING COSMOS and that PACHAMAMA—Mother Earth—is a living, generous, loving being that takes care of us but also has her natural laws. Many in the cities have taken on the Western worldview that our world is full of “inanimate objects” like rocks and rivers, etc. But scratch a Peruvian and you will find most in their hearts, still feel a love/protection and a personal relationship with Pachamama.
Imagine a world in which you are taught every day by your elders that everything around you is alive, that you inhabit a living cosmos filled with an overabundance of life force, living energy that the Inkas called “Kausay.”
Imagine growing up knowing that rocks, trees, rivers, mountains, springs, caves are all living beings with which you can have a conversation, a friendship, a deep and personal relationship. That these “things” just like you, are made of living energy, they emit a field of living energy and, just like you, they have a ‘spirit’ and you can exchange energy with them—in much the same way that you can have a conversation/exchange of energy, with your neighbor, Mom, or best friend.
Certainly many people talk to their dogs, and we all know that in some way, dogs can understand us. The Inka extend this courtesy to the entire natural world, and all beings in it. In the Quechua language there are no “its” no object. Even if you are speaking about a piece of paper, the language reflects the value system…. you say “can you please pass me the “paper being” because the paper just like you, is also alive in some way, it has “beingness.”
The indigenous people called the Q’ero who are the modern day living descendants and closest practitioners of the life style of the Inkas of 500 years ago, still feel, speak, think and act in this way, from this point of view. When they look at a hillside they see, feel, and perceive a hundred or a thousand living beings with whom they can have a conversation. They don’t see “real estate.” When they look at mountains they see living beings that deserve honor and respect, food and communication, beings that deserve love and that can help humans in a great interrelationship of mutually beneficial exchange.
Imagine for a moment that in our “modern” world, we extend this outlook to things/beings like buildings, cars, houses, cities, computers, etc., all are alive and can be communicated with in a direct and very personal way.
When we begin to perceive this way, we begin to live the laws of modern physics which in fact have proven the Inka worldview to be a fact; that everything in our cosmos is indeed alive, emits a field of living energy, and therefore has some form of consciousness—granted not human consciousness—rather its’ own form of consciousness and thereby deserves our love, respect, and relationship.
This worldview is healing for a society that has begun to believe in and treat the world as a bunch of “its” rather than innumerable BEINGS. We treat places and nature as “its” and we have even begun to treat other people as objects. This has created a great sickness of the soul in modern society.
I am certain that the precious INKA worldview, this cosmovision held by a few indigenous people, has the power to heal and regenerate the bond that has been so sorely lost in the face of neglect and detachment. May we all take a moment, or a lifetime, to see through the eyes of the Q’ero.
For In-depth information please check out my books: THE RETURN OF THE INKA and JOURNEY TO Q’EROS.
