Conscious Choice: Embracing Anyi on the Inca Trail

July 1998

Embracing Anyi on the Inca Trail

by Richard Sandore, M.D.

Dedicated to the Ancients of The Inca Trail, those who have come before, and those who have yet to come, and to the Apus who guided our path and held us tenderly.

At ten thousand feet cold takes on new meaning. Wet cold ushers forth another dimension altogether. But we had been in a different reality since two days before when our plane touched down in Cusco. We were in the Land of the Incas, the Children of The Sun.

There are many Inca trails, but there is only one Inca Trail, the route traversed for hundreds of years by the pacos, the lineage of Inca medicine men and women extending backwards for centuries. The Inca Trail twists through the Apus, the sacred Andes, climbs over 14,000 foot high passes, and descends into mist-shrouded chasms from the Urubamba valley to the high temples of Machu Picchu. The seven of us were on a pilgrimage, a word that became real during the four day trek. By the end of the journey we would understand why men and women travel the route of the Buddha, or walk barefoot for days to bath, in the Ganges. The Inca say that everyone has a future, but only some have a destiny. We were traveling to our destiny.

Inti Taita, the Father Sun of the Incas, was with us when we broke camp near the ruins of Llactapata the second morning of the journey. We had spent a leisurely first day. At noon we’d lunched on a grassy knoll next to a tributary leading from the apu Salcantay into the Urubamba River. Then after a short hike we meditated at a temple to the sun near Llactapata and performed a short ceremony to remove from ourselves the heaviness we carried in from the world. Then we made camp. The next three days weren’t going to be as serene.

By midmorning of the second day the Kay pacha, the middle world of Inca cosmology, was becoming less hospitable. Clouds, a constant part of the landscape at 10,000 feet, had coalesced and were with us to stay. The temperature had dropped. The rain had come. It is an exercise in meditation walking up a 60 degree incline of stone steps at an altitude where the air is half as thin as at sea level. In the cold, when those steps are slick with rain and mud it becomes an exercise in passion.

History indicates that Machu Picchu and The Inca Trail were discovered by Hiram Bingham in the early 1900’s. Like most of the cities and ruins we consider‘lost’, the existence of Machu Picchu and The Trail were known to families who have found life in the Andes for centuries. The significance of The Trail and many of the ruins were not really appreciated until the appearance of the Q’ero, the last of the Incas, in the 1950’s.

At the time of the Conquest the Inca empire was roughly the size of the United States. At its peak 16 million people lived, farmed, and built terraced cities in the clouds throughout the Andes extending from the Pacific Ocean to the Amazon jungles, and from the Rio Maule in Chile to modern day Ecuador. There have never been any satisfactory theories put forth on how stones, some weighing over a hundred tons, were quarried, carried hundreds of feet up treacherous inclines, and cut and fit together with such precision that today, 500 years later, a razor blade cannot be slipped between them. Legend has it that the pacos spoke to the stones and they moved up the mountains themselves. That the apus had stories to tell was apparent in their soft whispers when we first set foot on The Trail.

When the Spanish touched shore in the 1500’s and it became apparent to the Inca that they were not the saviors of their prophecies, a group of the Inca fled to the mountains. They made their new homes at 14,000 feet in the desolate, remote, wind swept shadows of Ausangate. The holiest of the apus, Ausangate stretches itself to the sun at a height of over 20,000 feet. The Q’ero, as they are now known, remained isolated in the embrace of Ausangate for five hundred years with their traditions intact. They are the sole keepers of a body of knowledge and power and ritual which has been completely unenculturated by the West.

For the Q’ero life is rooted in anyi with nature, with each other, and with the universe at large. Ayni is the Qechua word for reciprocity, or balance. It means having a synchronous relationship with nature, with others, with all three layers of the Andean cosmos, and with one self. Life for the Q’ero is a mirror of one’s relationship with nature, and ayni is walking with beauty and love through life. It also means stepping with grace and tenderness on the surface of our true mother, the Pachamama, the Mother Earth.

Our legs carried us slowly up the stone stairs that centuries before had been trod by sandal-clad initiates into the Andean medicine tradition. As the cold Andean rain found its way into every crevice of our rain gear and our socks squished inside of wet boots, we tasted the energy of the universe. In each cell of our bodies we felt those things that can be known, but not spoken. We had put on our Jaguar bodies — relinquished part of ourselves to the archetypal energy of Otorongo, the Great Jaguar of the Andean traditions. Otorongo is the quintessential being who leaps between the worlds, and the one who sits in the west of the Inca Medicine Wheel.

The Medicine Wheels of indigenous cultures are a way of organizing the world and relating to the powers of nature that we are all intimately bound. Every native culture has a version of the medicine wheel which places their perception of the world into a framework accessible to them. The Incan Medicine Wheel is the Four-fold path to knowledge and enlightenment which a medicine person initiate walks. In the south of the Incan wheel the apprentice sheds the past like a serpent sheds its skin, all at once as an act of love, and an act of power. In the west the initiate rides on the back of Otorongo, the Rainbow Jaguar, through the crack between the worlds, faces death, and returns to be claimed by life. In the north, the initiate meets with the Ancient Ones, learns the mystery teachings, and engages the energy of Kenti, the hummingbird, who does that which cannot be done. The east is the place of the visionary, and here the initiate learns to soar on the wings of the Condor and bring the gifts of magic and vision into our world.

The day before we had touched on the work of the south of the Inca Medicine Wheel. We had shed our past, removed ourselves from paradigms that no longer serve us, and broken ties with conventions we were given at birth but never agreed to. For the Inca, relinquishing a past that doesn’t serve us, that never can serve us, is not done in bits and pieces. It’s not a process of dropping some off here, testing the waters, then dropping off more. It’s done all at once, as an act of love, and as an act of power. For the Inca this is symbolized by the energy of the archetypal serpent, Sachamama. The serpent is the one who sheds its skin in one motion, totally and completely, as an affirmation of life.

In the Q’ero tradition, we who had given up our collective past were now being carried by the Otorongo. To the Inca, the Jaguar is the embodiment of the luminous warrior who lives without fear, and who lives without need for enemies in this world or those worlds beyond. We felt the breath of Otorongo moving deep into our bellies with each inhalation as we treaded over the slick stones glazed by the feet of the many who had taken the journey centuries ago. Our hearts pumped energy-filled blood into muscles contracting to move limbs we had never quite felt before. Our eyes keenly found every foothold as we drank in the wet forest with all of our senses. By the time we made camp just below Warmiwanuscca, the highest pass on the Inca Trail, our Jaguar bodies had carried us 16 kilometers and had taken us almost 4000 feet closer to the sun.

The next morning the rain had stopped but the clouds continued weaving their way around the peaks of the apus, and in and out of the valleys. We broke camp by 7:00 a.m. and began the final 1500 foot ascent to Warmiwanuscca. Clearing the pass would mark the beginning of our descent to Machu Picchu.

Slowly, every breath a gift, we stepped over stones polished by centuries of rain and sun towards the Pass of the Eternal Woman. In our hands we held the small stones we had picked up at the beginning of the trail. It is a custom to make offerings to the apus as you reach a pass. A stone that you have carried, that you have held onto and made a part of yourself, is the traditional gift. During the prior two days the stones we carried had become our friends and companions. They had told us their stories, and we had shared ours with them. They had lent us energy when we needed it, and we had given them a taste of our world.

As we reached the pass, the clouds grew thicker and a light mist filled the air. The sound of an Andean flute broke through the cool dampness as our leader called on the spirits of the apus to recognize our presence and accept our offerings. We each found the right place for our own private ceremony of gratitude and left our stones, our companions, in their new homes on Pachamama. With them we left a part of ourselves, a luminous thread connecting us to the consciousness of the mountains. We bid our stones‘until soon’ because we knew we would be back with them, whether in this time, or another. We looked back toward where and what we had been, then forward to who we are becoming. Without any hesitation we began the descent of our journey home.

As we descended from Warmiwanuscca we looked back. From a distance the rounded hills that flank the pass transmuted into the silhouette of a prone woman. The largest hill, to our left as we looked back, became her face-Angelic and serene. The next, from left to right became her breasts, followed by her belly. We had truly walked across the belly of the Mother. And we had done so with grace and beauty and love. Our next stop would be Sayacmarca, the Temple in the Clouds, to taste the north of the Inca Medicine Wheel, and summon knowledge. In Sayacmarca we would call on the Ancient Ones, the ones who have come before and the ones who have yet to come, to share their knowledge and mysteries with us.

That the Inca truly did build cities in the clouds was evident as we made our approach to Sayacmarca. Another member of the group and I were walking together. Some of the group was in front of us, others behind. We decided to have a sit on a wider part of the trail that afforded a particularly majestic view of the mountains and valleys. After scanning the area, Sayacmarca not in sight, we sat down. We had talked for about 30 minutes when some other people joined us. "Is that Sayacmarca?" asked a member named Susan, pointing in the direction the trail was leading. Luther and I turned around. A city, no more than a ten-minute hike from where we were, appeared out of the clouds. We watched in quiet awe as Sayacmarca magically disappeared and reappeared as the clouds swirled gently around us.

The archetype of the north of the Inca Medicine Wheel is kenti, the hummingbird. Hummingbirds migrate thousands of miles, but aerodynamically they shouldn’t be able to fly. The hummingbird represents the returning to Source, and the ability to do that which cannot be done. Kenti is said to whisper in the ears of those who will listen its sweet song of knowledge. Its melody is a song of mystery and love and power. Legend has it that whole roofs of buildings in Machu Picchu were covered with hummingbird feathers, and that the light of the morning sun reflecting off of them cast a glow of knowledge over the surrounding apus.

We sat against stone walls in the oval chamber at Sayacmarca, walls that have been alive for centuries, and felt the energy of knowledge swirl around us. We closed our eyes and meditated, listened to the whispers of the Ancients as they slipped past and told us tales of knowledge and power. Drifting through realities we’d never dreamed of, we occasionally felt the gossamer touch of those who had come before and those who had yet to come.

At dinner we shared our visions. One member of the group described the ceremony he was led through in non-ordinary reality. He told of how he had been gifted a shield which was etched with a black sun and golden rays. We all gasped as our paco informed us that the black sun with golden rays was the symbol of the Pampamesayoq, the "Guardian of the Earth". The knowledge that our companion had stepped outside of time and accessed the realms of silent knowledge, Jung’s collective unconscious, or the akashic record of the Buddhist scriptures seeped to the core of our beings as we graciously stared into each other’s eyes.

The next morning we woke to a gentle mist. By the time we finished breakfast and broke camp the mist had cleared and we were treated to a gentle rainbow stretching towards Machu Picchu. We hefted our gear and set off towards it. We were going home.

Cleansing and purifying is extremely important in the Andean traditions. This is evident by the number of ritual baths located in the ruins along The Trail. Water was worshiped as a purifying source by the Inca and they built complex systems of stone canals within their cities to carry water from the belly of the apus to the baths.

We stopped at Winay Wayna, named after an Andean orchid with red, yellow, or violet flowers. The plant blooms year round and its Quechua name means "forever young." At Winay Wayna we only were able to partake in two of the series of ten ritual baths that cascade down the 45 degree hillside. In the first bath we washed each other’s feet, a sign of community and of equality. In the second we cleansed our chakras. Our paco‘s love opened our hearts to the vision of our destiny and the power to realize it in our world. We had begun the work of the east of the Inca Medicine Wheel.

The east is the place of the visionary. The place of emergence. The place of power where magic is brought into the world of everyday life. Its archetypal energy is represented by the Condor, the being who lives above the clouds and whose vision extends beyond the horizon, beyond the field of time and space. The Condor teaches us to soar to those places we have never dreamed of going before.

The final leg of our pilgrimage was in silence. Walking over rivulets cutting through the stone trail and past fragrant colored flowers we were able to reflect on the journey: the journey we had just taken, and the journey of our lives that had brought the seven of us together in a place where the stones speak, birds whisper sweet melodies of knowledge, and ancient echoes are heard ricochetting between the apus. We were seven strangers when we met at the Miami airport. Now, hardly a week later, we were more than friends. We had become companions, journeyers connected by the luminous bonds we had woven between ourselves. We had all become lovers of knowledge, of truth, of the beauty ways of the peoples of the earth.

During the silence it was easy to reflect on who we had been, and what we had shed. It was easy to say good-bye to all of the old ways that no longer served us. It was much more difficult to grasp our destinies because in the Andes, in the world of the Jaguar and Condor, the Serpent and Hummingbird, nothing is impossible. Our destinies would be something we chose — but oh that infinity of possibilities!

In silence we reached the last climb of our journey. Known to some as the Jaguar staircase because it cannot be walked, but usually has to be climbed on all fours, the seventy foot long, 80 degree inclined series of steps would carry us to the limits of the city of Machu Picchu. One by one we pulled ourselves up the smooth stone steps. At the top we gathered inside of Intipunku, the Sun Gate. The late afternoon sun cut a luminous golden path across the green lawns and finely placed stones of the buildings of Machu Picchu. The whole of the city, set on a gentle plane situated between the apus, shimmered and vibrated with the energy and power of the region.

As a group we walked to the edge of the outcropping on which we were standing. We stood shoulder to shoulder, arms around each other, and drank in the beauty and the power of creation. Together we gazed into our destinies. And we were already home.

Richard Sandore is a western trained physician who now practices Andean Shamanism and Energy Healing. He also writes, lectures, and through Soaring Spirit, Inc., teaches the Shaman’s Path workshop series, and provides inspirational and creativity workshops for businesses designed to bring Spirit back into the workplace. He can be reached at 847-599-1885.

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