Love & Light and everything bright...

FROM URUBAMBA, PERU

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Day 5: In Quest of Vision at Temple of the Visionary (Pisaq)

Pachatusan (Mtn) - Holiest of Hollies

MT. URUBAMBA, Peru, July 2, 2008 - Yesterday's sore throat turned into a full-blown laryngitis this morning.  I could barely talk.  Also, last night, I gave myself another gash on the same (right) shin as I did my own midnight ceremony in the field next to the monastery.  In pitch black, I crashed into one of the stone benches.  So that's now three strikes against me - two on the shin, one on the chest.  They say trouble comes in threes.  Hope this is it for me, therefore, for this trip anyway.

This morning's drive from our monastery to the Temple of the Visionary in Pisaq took us upstream along the Urubamba river (left below).

Along the way, we saw some interesting sights, such as this waterfall that gushed out of the mountain side (middle left), or this road to nowhere (middle right).  Jose Luis, our expedition leader (right), explained that modern day engineers tried to build a road to the top of that mountain where an ancient Inka city once existed.  But they were stymied by the mountain and gave up the challenge.  "They did not ask for permission from Pacha Mama (Mother Earth)," Jose Luis summed it up.

Nor was this just some throwaway expression among the Inka shamans in Peru.  Everywhere you go, you feel that the mountains and the earth are alive, not just some inanimate objects.  Perhaps that's hard for someone from the West to comprehend.  To understand it and feel it, one has to get out of one's head and entrust one's heart for guidance.  And in the West, that's a lost art that we are now trying to regain.

As we started to climb up the mountain toward Pisaq, the Inka's agricultural and engineering prowess was becoming abundantly evident.  Take a look at the whole mountain sides that had been terraced so they could grow corn and other produce (three left photos).  The rightmost shot shows the view toward the Temple of the Visionary where we were headed this morning.

You can see a close up of it in the left photo and some more terraced mountain sides nearby (middle left).  All of these things were build some 600 years ago or so.  From this height (around 12,000 ft), view of the valley and the Pachatusan mountain are magnificent (two right shots).  Pachatusan, which towers over Cusco on the other side, is considered the Holiest of the Hollies among the Peruvian Andes.  its name stands for "Axis of the Earth" (Pacha = Earth; Tusan = axis).

We proceeded to climb a narrow steep trail till we reached a top of the hill on which the Temple was based. 

That's where we held our morning ceremony during the which the three of the four Inka Pampamesayok (stewarts of the land who are in charge of fertility) shamans shared with us their vision of the vision quest.

Don Sebastian (the one from the "Andean Codex" - www.andeancodex.com, in the middle in the right photo), said that the vision always takes place before gathering of oneself.  "A journey always entails a vision," he said.  "One must have a joyous heart to make the vision more visible."

"You encounter life through envisioning," he continued.  "My journey is to live that vision through encounters (which he first envisions, before they happen!).  The condor, the hummingbird... are embodiments of vision.  We can incorporate them into our vision just like the sun and the moon and other celestial objects."

"Vision is our connection to all objects in nature," he said.  "The light that's shining onto us (from the universe) already carries a vision.  We can shine it right back out." 

This comment was particularly poignant for me.  For, those of you who have been following my personal spiritual journey, may recall that "Love and Light" that I receive from and then shine right back out at the universe have been my sign off messages at the end of each mediation or letters.  And now, I was hearing the same thing from an esteemed Pampamesayok.  Obviously the same Spirit was speaking to both of us even when we were continents apart.  And that felt reassuring.

As if trying to reconfirm this notion, Don Sebastian added that, "every day can be a living embodiment of light."  "If we draw into us the vision of the land, we can do great things when we go back home," he summed up at the end.

Don Francisco (right in the above photo, also playing the flute) is the current president of the Quero nation as well as an accomplished Pampamesayok shaman.  "Whenever we are in dialogue with the mountain spirits we are requesting vision," he said at the outset of his "sermon."  "The land also envisions us.  When a vision comes forward, we need to feed the vision."

"We need to be in our hearts to understand the vision," he said.  "It's always about love.  The mountains understand that."

"It's always about love" - echoed in my ears.  Many times in the next week or so, we were to hear that over and over again from the mountain spirits, shamans, the land itself. "Get out of your head and open your heart," is another way of putting it.

"You need to come up with an organic vision," he Francisco continued.  "And that only comes from the land.  Short-term vision will always lead to disgrace."

"The Apu's (mountain spirits) are also sitting together and envisioning life and the way we are going to die," he summed it up.  "And that's all I can say with sweetness of my heart."

Donna Bernardina (right photo) is another famous female Pamamesayok.  A mother as well as a shamn, is the most playful woman I have ever met.  Even though we could not talk to each other using common words, our spoke volumes.  She was with me on the bus that took us from Cusco to the Sacred Valley.  We exchanged snacks, smiles and signs at the back of the bus. 

As we were getting ready to disembark, she gently touched my hair.  Guess she had never touched blonde hair before.  Then this tiny woman flung two heavy bags on her back and jumped out of the bus.  Once in the lobby, seeing that both of my hands were full of luggage, she grabbed one of my suitcase and dragged it through the courtyard to my room.  I felt so embarrassed that I dropped one of my bags and rushed back to help her.  Yet this gesture showed a big golden heart beats inside this tiny body.

Back at Pisaq's Temple, Donna B. said that we need to be constantly in a dialogue with nature.  "Breath comes from light that can bring vision into reality.  We have to harness haipai - the energy that comes from the land."

"The vision has to be a voice (not a silent prayer or thought)," she continued.  "Words carry power. We need to feed the vision and tell the universe what we need to realize that vision."

"The land is a major database of knowledge.  It has better memory than our minds. The Spirit will slap you around if you forget and stray from your vision."

Machu Picchu is fundamentally built in relationship to the mountains around it.  It draws in the energy from the surrounding peaks via the ceke lines.  Just how connected the Inkas have been to the land was evident in the walls built around this temple.  They have been designed to mirror the shapes of the surrounding mountains.  Later on, we were to see the same thing at Machu Picchu.

We then proceeded with our own prayers and vision requests from Pachatusan (left two shots).  As you can see, James was here with us, along with his wheelchair.  It was marvelous to see this young man never give up no matter how tough a mountain challenges he faced.  Of course, we all also rallied around him to help him.

From there on, we proceeded to climb to an old burial site that also had some other fascinating structural elements.  This was our first hike at such altitude (about 12,000 ft).  Everybody did very well.  The young woman on the right is Maria, now of Florida, but actually a Peruvian native who was adopted as young child by American parents.

To my great surprise, given the high elevation, this is where I also saw some cacti that could have come from the Sonoran desert in Arizona (two left shots).  The views from this site were spectacular, as you can see from the two right shots.  Donna Bernardina's playful spirit was also evident in the middle right shot in which she is pretending as if she was going to leap off that cliff into the abyss below.

As you may have noticed from my earlier reports from Cusco, the Inka flag is a rainbow color.  The Inkas were also sun-worshippers. The left shot synthesizes both ideas.  Looking down at the old ruins of Pisaq, at least 600 years old, some of them predating the Inkas (the three right shots), one gets a sense of history and celestial powers that these ancient cultures have probably harnessed. 

If you take a closer look at the giant circular stone in the left shot that looks like a sun dial, and a close up of it with Don Sebastian and I posing (two middle shots), you may notice a crumbling conic point in the middle that was probably used as an antenna to draw in the celestial energies and store it in the rock for subsequent use.  That's one of the theories that can help explain how these allegedly "primitive" people were able to move and fit together perfectly such giant stone as those that are built into their walls here, at Machu Picchu, at Saqsaywaman and other ancient sites.  Jose Luis and I spent some time here discussing these theories as well as those that dealt with the destruction of Atlantis and Lemuria.  According to some sources that I have read, the latter is connected to Peru, while the former led to the ancient Egyptian culture.

This was also a good place to pose for some picture before starting a very long and steep descent down to modern day Pisaq.

Just how steep that descent was can be best seen from the three left shots. On the way down, we were able to catch a glimpse  of the red facade of Senor de Huanca Basilica at the bottom of Pachatusan that we were to visit in a few days (right).

After we returned to the monastery in the Sacred Valley, our base camp the first week in the mountains, we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in classroom lectures.

During dinner, we enjoyed beautiful Andean flute music.  I requested two of my favorite songs - "El Condor Pasa" - Espiritu Andino video (5 mins); and “Sound of Silence” video (3:19 mins). The musicians were happy to oblige.  As you watch the first video (El Condor...), you will also be able to see some of the sacred sites we had visited during our journey.  Enjoy!

And that's all she wrote from this Day 5 of our Peru adventure.

Love  Light 

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