Silence of the Universe

Coming out of my meditation journey, I shake with fear. The other, unseen world has never been so vivid and real. What will happen to me as I pass through these doorways? Do I really have it in me to learn this way of seeing? Tears of elation and terror run down my face as I walk arm in arm with Américo, telling my experience in halting Spanish. He pats my hand. The earth receives me back on her ground, and I breathe deeply again.

Ten months later I am back, sitting on the same hillside above the Sacred Valley in Peru. We have walked far beyond the carefully fitted Inca stone walls and sixteenth century Spanish colonial church with its wonderful folk art paintings in the entryway. We're on a stone outcropping crisscrossed by underground passages and caves that emanate the mysterious energy of these mountains. The ancient, high-backed thrones near us, carved from boulders a thousand years ago, hold the palpable power of uninterrupted shamanic use; the surrounding rich brown furrows sprout bright green potato plants. I am profoundly happy to have returned to this sacred and mundane earth.

I've come on this journey with Américo Yábar, a shamanic teacher and my guide to Andean mystic traditions. Traveling with him is a bit like crossing the chasm of my meditation: it's an exhilarating experience so long as I stay totally in the moment, alert, and aware, not trying to explain it to myself or anyone else; it's an adventure of unknown destinations, both emotionally and spiritually.

This morning, inviting us to find a place on the lumpy stone huaca at Chinchero, Américo instructs our group to do a meditation.

I am stunned. I know enough to understand that this vision has profound meaning, but these images have nothing to do with any conscious expectations. In the days that follow, I move in and out of a range of responses, from anxiety to calm to excitement. I don't relish the thought of disintegrating, literally or figuratively, when we travel to Manu Jungle Reserve later in our trip. I think of Inanna's descent into the underworld as she sheds her "garments," her symbols of power and ego; I think of Osiris dismembered, his body parts scattered. I reflect on the Dzogschen chod practice in which one offers the illusion of self, or ego, to be consumed at a banquet. I remind myself frequently that all my reactions are mental constructs.

In anticipation of our upcoming jungle trip, I try to gather my energy. I let myself be open and unprotected; I focus on the transformative potential of my seed image.

The second leg of our journey takes us to Salk'a Wasi [Quechua for wild house], in the Cordillera Oriental range above Paucartambo. The protected grounds offer a safe space for going inward, a quiet place for exploring essence. The surrounding landscape is alive with spirit. Proximity to the Quechua village of Mullu Mark'a, where the women spin and laugh as constantly as the wind blows, provides opportunity for cultural exchange, and a direct experience of mystery and the mundane intertwined. A Spanish monastery before it became a hacienda, Salk'a Wasi now receives small groups working with Américo from all over the world.

The morning after our arrival, I am sitting on a three-hundred-year-old crumbling adobe wall surrounding the rangy, sloping garden. It is spring in the Andes; apple trees and roses are budding, and fresh-earth smells fill the air. Below me, an hour's walk through steep, geometrically tilled, clay-brown fields, weaves the wild Mapacho Mayu on its journey towards the Amazon River. The dry undulating ridges across the river-carved chasm are thinly populated with thatched-roof adobe Quechua villages.

A chill wind blows down river from Ausangate, a mountain sacred to the Inca and their descendants. I shiver and rise. Suffering from a four-day altitude headache, I've been instructed to walk slowly during my meditation. I regulate my breathing with my pounding head, imagining the pressure flowing out with each step; I finger the mint-scented Muña stalk, sniffing it to clear my head as I would a bay leaf at home.

I sit again, luxuriating in this opportunity for stillness. I have no obligations here. My other life--child, partner, work--is distant as dream. The scent of sunlight on grass fills my nostrils; the wind shifts, caressing my skin. Suddenly the air is warm and feathery. Seeing nothing changed in the visible world, I extend my fingers, trying to feel--energy, atmosphere?--what's caused the change.

Shortly the wind shifts again, blowing cold from the mountains. Then another humid pillow of warmth wafts upriver. I think: jungle. This warm wind is coming from the jungle 400 miles away! Over and over for the next two hours, I observe this mysterious ebb and flow of wind, this magical mingling of mountain and jungle energy.

The long morning meditation prepares us for group healing work in the afternoon. Our ponq'o, or medicine circle --literally, a dark place in the water where trout gather--takes the form of an energy exchange from the point of non-existence, the waynu, just below the belly button. In Andean tradition, the waynu is the band from which rivers emanate. It is the same as the Yogic hara; the place from which luminous fibers emanate in the Yaqui shamanic tradition; and the place where I find balance when walking.

We divide into groups of three. The person at the head sends energy through her point of non-existence, the person lying down transmits that energy, and the person at the feet receives it. In time we switch places, so each person works in each of the three positions.

In my group, there seem to be no energy blockages. The energy flows through and between us like a soft wash of light, spiraling into ancestral, cellular memories. The energy turns into luminous filaments; we're connected in an oval bubble of light, a communal healing of shared peacefulness and bliss unlike any other I've experienced.

The next morning we walk down to the Mapacho Mayu. The path takes us past the 400-year-old adobe chapel; past graves decorated with corn, beans, and plastic flowers on the recent Day of the Dead; and past two villagers plowing a field with their ox. The woman's bright red and black woven clothing against the fresh earth is beautiful, but she hides when she sees our cameras. We put them away.

The packed-earth trail moves steeply down the mountainside. I take one breath with each step, concentrating on being present in the moment. Américo's 19-year-old son Gayle and nephew Fernando are like bookends for the group, protecting our energy field.

At the river, we hunt for healing stones and cool our feet. The men skip rocks across the cold, fast-flowing water. We're surrounded by a harmony of the elements: wind from the jungle, water from the mountains, heat from the sun, earth beneath our feet. We find places and do a meditation.

Two shamanas come from the village in the evening to do a cleansing and protection ritual for us. Américo has always said there are both male and female shamans in the Andes: "The women do essential work, even though the men are more known in the world." Yet this is our first actual meeting in two years of working with him.

The shamanas begin with familiar Andean rituals: lighting copal incense, reading coca leaves to see how things are, sharing coca leaves with each participant, doing a despatcho [offering] for Pachamama, and passing around Pisco [Peruvian alcohol].

Then the shamanas do a healing on each of us. When it's my turn, I stand barefoot on the straw cross they have made and tied with ferns. The elder shamana ties handspun yarn around my left big toe, then slowly wraps it around my body, chanting. Holding the yarn in her left hand, she moves to her left, circling my calves, belly button, heart, the "triangle of death" between my mouth and nose, and my third eye. She breaks the yarn above my head, mumbling some words I cannot quite hear. Still moving to her left, she breaks the yarn at each of the crossing points, collecting the pieces in her left hand. As she breaks the yarn, I feel one of the blockages in my heart break open; it feels as if fresh air is rushing in. After handing the broken yarn pieces to her assistant, she cleanses my etheric body with downward hand motions. When everyone is cleansed, the yarn collector runs quickly to the creek in the village, offering the broken threads with her left hand to the water, which will carry them to the sea. There, Mamacocha [mother ocean, the original source of feminine energy] will eat and transform them.

Later I learn this healing, called lloq'e nacuy, is described as "getting rid of bad witchcraft" by the indigenous people. In the west, Américo tells us, that's equivalent to getting rid of our neuroses and depression. The magic of lloq'e nacuy uses threads to represent filaments of light. The healer's work is to connect a person's filaments with the light of the stars [hanaq' pacha]. As filaments of a person's heavy energy--pain, sadness, depression, envy--are cut away, the filaments of her etheric body and those of Pachamama rise up and mingle with the filaments of the stars, creating feelings of being cleansed, energized, peaceful, filled, and rejuvenated.

Wrapping the body with yarn and cutting it is an elemental cleansing practice I know from the Celtic Wiccan tradition. What moves me deeply during this particular ceremony is the power of the unbroken spiritual lineage. Despite the Spanish conquest, people in the high Andes--especially the Q'ero, and to a lesser extent many Quechua-speaking people--have retained ritual, prophesy, and meaning from pre-Inca times. I feel empowered by experiencing the similarity of their rituals to ours, the filament bridges that connect us through time and space. Our DNA feels strong: we keep knowledge in our bones no matter what.

In parting, the shamanas tell us there are two important things: world peace, and cleaning the filaments between men and women. They gift us each with a crystal from Valley of the Moon, instructing us to hold our crystal in meditation.

For two of us in the group, this crystal will become the most important q'uya [sacred stone] we're given on the trip. We will use it almost daily to strengthen our filaments of connection, the light bridges between sacred places and between worlds; we will use it to shift our consciousness to encompass the unseen. The crystal q'uya will become a vehicle for reminding us of our underlying intent.

Weaving in the Andes is a concrete expression of intent, combining the etheric, spiritual, and natural world connections people live. The elements of the Andean world--llama and alpaca wool, natural dyes from local plants, ancient pattern symbols for flowers of the lake, the jungle, the eyes of the moon, condor, duck, potato fields, and so on--become physical manifestations of spirit connection in cloth, field, and ritual. People do not have special meditation practices, as we do, they simply live with attention, fluidity, fusion. "The child watching sheep all day meditates in action, with no positions, no immobility." We, coming from a culture so bereft of spirit, notice everywhere the fields tilled in geometric patterns, the women spinning constantly; it is easy to see that the weaving of light filaments on a spiritual plane segues naturally from the weaving of cloth.

It is also easy to see why stars are so important to people in the Andes. On clear nights they are more brilliant than any I've seen in North America. The night of the shamanas' healing, after everyone else retires, I stand in the garden watching; I'm filled with their vastness, quietude, and depth. When I exchange energy with the great mother eucalyptus tree, I travel to the stars.

After the meditation, we collect filaments of everything--cosmos, sky, mountains, wind, plants, earth--with our fingers, tracing the edges of the mountains towards the jungle, asking permission to enter that new place. I focus my intent on the disintegration I experienced in my meditation, preparing myself to be open to whatever happens.

The next day, our huge rented bus begins to negotiate the single-lane gravel road from Paucartambo to the vast Manu Jungle Reserve. I expect the unexpected on both the transformative and practical planes. We will drive for twelve hours, but don't know whether the road will be washed out, or where we'll stay when we arrive. We don't care, really. The unknown holds wonder and excitement.

Out of Paucartambo we drive up and up, past spectacular valleys falling off the mountainside. Over the top, about 15,000 feet, we stop for laughter-filled group pictures and a fantastic vista of mottled green rainforest vegetation. We then descend through steep cloud forest, past myriad waterfalls, driving down, down. We catch glimpses of flattening jungle, opening into distant muddy river arteries flowing into the vast Amazon basin. Hundreds of butterflies, like tropical fish, hover at each puddle in the road; we hang out the windows of the bus, in our shirtsleeves now, trying to capture their fluttering, ethereal beauty. Yellow, orange, and black ones are joined by huge iridescent rainbow-hued and turquoise-blue butterflies as we descend. This landscape of dreams has become our reality.

We're promised a tea stop, but the only building we see is a boarded-up wooden shack perched on the edge of a precipice. After many miles and hours of steep descent, we stop at a bridge and pile out of the bus, carrying picnic baskets. The crystalline water of the San Juan River flows swiftly over great bleached round boulders that remind me of the Sierras. Shedding shoes and socks, the Americans race to find flat stones in the river to eat and stretch out on. The Peruvians remain, more sedately, on shore next to the picnic baskets.

While we eat, a delicate butterfly alights on my foot, quiet in body warmth, still as a soul. I hold my breath. I can see, literally, through its delicate transparent wings, black-edged and black-veined, to my other toes. When I wiggle, the butterfly doesn't move; I breathe again and begin to eat. When I'm ready to explore the river, I transfer the butterfly gently to my friend's toe, where it seems equally content.

Around a bend in the river, I find a place invisible to the group. Shedding my clothes, I sink into the fast cold current up to my breasts, wedging my bottom between small boulders. The river cleanses and holds me at once.

I eat hucha--heavy energy, the garbage of our egos and social interactions--as they do in the Andes, channeling all the "junk" into my belly button, or qosco, and imagining it digested and expelled. I breathe my anxiety about the unknown, and the frustration of sitting too long, out and into Pachamama. She consumes hucha as easily as she feeds on leaves, transforming everything into compost.

Refreshed, I return to the group as everyone prepares to leave. We collect lovely pale turquoise river stones and dance with abandon on the bridge before boarding the bus. We descend further into Manu in high spirits.

As dusk closes in, the land flattens; jungle canopy is replaced by the scrubby second growth that follows logging. When we arrive in Pillcopata, at the junction of two large rivers--each the size of the Sacramento in California--a small nighttime outdoor market is lit by scattered lanterns. Life is lived differently in this humid climate: trade is carried on in the cool of evening; workers rise at 4 AM; and nothing looks very permanent. Inhabitants stare at us, rare tourists and foreigners, as if their memories of white invasion are too recent or too painful to allow the friendliness we've experienced in the mountains. We cruise the single lit block before returning to our lodging, an unmarked inn and boarding house. The bunk beds in each room are attached directly to the 2-by-10 boards that visually separate neighbors but provide no sound privacy. There's no mosquito netting, so I encase myself in the protective mesh of my screened tent on top of my bed and put in my earplugs.

My roommate tries to take a walk in the night and finds she's locked in; by morning she's in a barely contained hysterical state. We've all slept restlessly, and some of us are covered with bug bites (I'm not). At breakfast down the street (we've brought our own), everyone but Américo looks groggy, but no one complains. The joy of the journey and our meditative work seem to dissipate any impulse to focus on the negative.

In the humid late morning, we board our now luxurious-seeming bus and drive to a tiny settlement on the river. After standing around for a half hour, we're told to pack overnight gear into our day packs in five minutes. We pile into a 20-foot skiff. Leaving the familiarity of our bus and the security of our many suitcases, it feels like all boundaries are broken.

Entering the wide river, we drink in the beauty of the jungle, marveling at a green-blue flock of parrots, a dark-stone "eye of the mother," and abundant waterfalls tumbling down steep banks. When we land near a wide wedge of stony beach, and wade through the knee-deep water to shore, we know we are in a wilderness.

Walking for the first time under the dusk-like jungle canopy at midday, we stretch out our arms and fingers to sense this foreign, mysterious place overhung with vines and filled with thorn-embedded tree trunks. The pathway is gooey with mud. Sweat runs down our bodies in rivulets. We breathe in unfamiliar damp smells.

Single file, we pass from the dark narrow trail into the planted grounds surrounding the plantation-turned-Amazonia Lodge. Sinking into the unexpected luxury of cushioned white rattan armchairs on a deep verandah, we sip lemonade like colonials and watch black and gold Chestnut-Headed Oropendolos gurgling melodiously while they fly in and out of their hanging woven nests.

Rather than letting us sleep or explore, Américo keeps us in suspense in the verandah. He negotiates for what seems like hours before we're shown to our rooms. Are these obscure, delicate negotiations of his an intentional test of our ability to ignore the mundane and concentrate on the ecstatic, an intentional effort to keep us off balance and unable to settle into our ordinary patterns? We never know, for we are always in the dark about what's happening next, always kept hanging in the times between our shamanic work. That work becomes easy in comparison.

At night, we gather on the verandah to sense the vastness that surrounds us. In starless, electricity-free darkness, we listen, smell, and breathe; the unseen takes form in the silence of our meditation.

Reluctantly, I return from my meditation journey, but am unable to listen to anyone. The bliss is like nothing I have ever experienced, and I do not want to leave it. As I sit in the darkness with the others, I understand that I must have more compassion towards my roommate, the one group member who sets herself apart. If "we are all needed for this work," who am I to judge how she acts or what work she is doing in her own way?

I understand, too, that my disintegration has to do with non-attachment: I must have an open heart, keep an open heart, and let whatever happens, happen. I need to be fluid, impeccable--not consuming energy with self importance, but being alert and fully present.

After a deep, blissfully quiet night's sleep, we rise at four AM to look for tapir and the nearby troop of monkeys. The lodge keeper, with decidedly scientific and unspiritual gruffness, guides us on our hike. When he stops and asks us which direction we'd take to find our way back to the lodge, I have absolutely no idea. I realize I have put my normal habits of survival aside, and have totally relied on him to lead us. I'm intrigued to notice this level of trust.

By midmorning, we've traversed the river, boarded the bus, and arrived at Villa Carmen, another lodge belonging to one of Américo's tios--he claims so many uncles we tease him about being related to everyone in Peru. The old horse ranch retains the feel of a self-contained hacienda. The owner and guests both stay in the two-story main house, which is surrounded by a cluster of typical jungle houses--boards roofed with tin--for the ranch and kitchen workers. A parrot, a pet monkey, giant caracols, beautiful healthy ponies, and roving chickens--running free so they devour the baby vipers hatching under the house, Tio tells us--are our morning's entertainment. After hanging around for a few hours, we hike through half a mile of orchard and cleared land. At the Piñi-Piñi river we board Tio's skiff.

It's exhilarating to feel the wind in our faces as the boat powers through the waves. "Like the serpent mother moving the river into waves of power, the total cosmos," Américo tells us. Group energy is high as we land and begin our steep hike up a clay mud trail, nearly free of fallen leaf mold--everything in the jungle breaks down and gets reused almost instantly. We have to walk consciously, avoiding the Solitario ants whose bites can kill, looking for thorns before grabbing a tree branch for help up a steep incline.

Tio points out a tree that heals cancer, another that provides enough protein in its milk for a person to survive on for a year. His respect and love for the jungle feed our group's sweat-drenched euphoria. When he whacks a long bamboo with the omnipresent machete, slashing a V in one section and handing it to us to drink, our euphoria bubbles over. Four people get their fill of clear liquid, more thirst-quenching and refreshing than coconut milk, before he slashes another V. The liquid dribbles down our chins and onto our soaked shirts. We laugh in amazement when he tells us these bamboo grow one meter a day!

Seventy percent of the jungle's moisture is in the air, and we feel it. By the time we reach the first spectacular waterfall, which drops 50 feet down sheer dark stone into an inviting pool, we are ready to jump in. Peeling our sopping clothes off, we slip into swimsuits and run into the surprisingly cool water with relief, splashing and playing like children.

Too soon, they tell us we must leave; we're grumbling and reluctant until they tell us there's another, more beautiful waterfall we're hiking to. There we find clay-like, crumbly striated stone filled with iron oxide. Rubbing it on the rocks, we discover we can make paint paste; we decorate each other's faces and arms with red-orange triangle, circle, and line designs.

I begin to climb up the slippery black rocks under the waterfall. Intense water pressure forces me to close my eyes. I move entirely by feel, finding a foot grip and balancing my body before each movement up under the pounding water. I climb, step by careful step, until my head finds an air space between waterfall and stone. Water pummels my shoulders as I open my eyes. I am fully in my body, but have no sensation of separateness from the stone or the water.

Once again, suddenly, Tio says we must leave, that it's about to rain. Since we're wet already, his concern seems strange, but we hike fast, slipping in the now-gooey mud, feeling the trail turn to mush under our feet. As the downpour becomes deluge, we almost run. When we reach the palapa, exhausted and sopping wet, we light a fire and hover around it, waiting for the storm to end. Immobile, I stare out through sheets of rain at the roiling, muddy, rising river.

In my fatigue-altered state, the heat, the light, and the rain are intense, as if I have entered into another dimension. Then lightning strikes very close, shaking the ground under our feet, illuminating everything. Américo tells us to welcome it, to reach up our arms and pull it down with the thunder. Three times we reach up and pull in those electrified moments of brilliant flash and rumble. I complete the motions in a daze, barely able to concentrate on lifting my arms.

In the Andes, they believe that if the first ray of lightning hits near you and doesn't kill you, it breaks your etheric body into pieces and spreads it out. Like my meditation disintegration, I think. The second ray of lightning brings the etheric body back together; the third ray produces ecstatic contemplation and returns you to an incorruptible unity, kaka haypicha. Rays of jungle lightning, el raio, come from the fire of the cosmos, entering and changing our consciousness of everything.

Américo calls our lightning experience alchemical. He says the elements were in charge, producing a karpay, or initiation, putting our group into "the dimension of lightning." Our meditations, and the conjunction of waterfalls, river, wind, jungle, and now lightning, have illuminated everything. In a way I don't quite understand, the lightning has given us a deeper experience of the interconnectedness of all beings.

When the rain lets up and the river calms, we quietly pile into the boat and return to the lodge, each in her own sensory world. I retreat to my room, the first I haven't had to share, to sleep and dream. When there's a knock on the door, inviting me to the bonfire and barbecue our host has prepared, even the remnants of my social graces disintegrate: I refuse to join in. I am outside time, promises, commitments. No mind, just body, the sound of rain battering the tin roof above my room, rats running back and forth outside the screen, and more lightning in the night.

The sensory jungle deluge washes away all vestiges of my shields, defenses, self-protection. My habitual perceptions are worn down, like a stone chiseled by wind and rain over geologic time. There's no separation. I begin to experience "the profound silence of the interior light," a heart fullness where everything is in alignment, and my spirit soars. I feel at one with the mystery of the cosmos, without fear.

On one of our last evenings in Cusco, we gather in our largest hotel room. Soft candlelight flickers over the exquisite Q'ero weavings we have collected, decorating the floor with Andean symbols of the cosmos. We begin with the most essential of exercises, connecting our heart energy with the energy of the cosmos, before performing the "opening into other dimensions" blessing. Facing another person, we place our hands around her temples and the soft spot of her skull. We whisper Quechua words, "Hampui hatun espiritu" and the person's name, blowing the breath of the cosmos into the soft spot on top of her head. We slide our hands down over her ears briefly, containing the energy. Then our partner does the same to us.

Moving around our small circle, we trade the blessing with everyone. Then, holding hands as a group, we share the energy. Raising our arms to sky, we breathe together three times, and part quietly for the night.

I sleep lightly, waking often to float in the cocoon of realignment. My whole body is engaged in a subtle vibration; my breath comes slowly, as in deep meditation. In previous meditations I have traveled with spirit guides, seen my double, received important messages, but I have never physically felt the separation of body and spirit as I do this night.

I return home with a wondrous sense of possibility and a sense that working with light filaments is a tangible way to heal the earth. Integrating my Peruvian journey with the rest of my life flows smoothly. I am clear and calm in a new way. Every time I work with stones, trees, water, and the mountains around my bay, my connections deepen and I feel good, nurtured. I want to meditate; I want to weave filaments between people and places. I am unable to talk to people about these experiences, so I become more silent. I concentrate on being rather than doing.

The Western fabric of connection has been rent, torn, disintegrated, buried. My task is to sew threads of reconnection patiently, like the old women bent mending under lamplight, the old women bent laughing, the old women weaving baskets decorated with tiny exquisite feathers. My task is to let my energy come from vast universe and cosmic consciousness while I function in the mundane, everyday world of relationships, work, child rearing. My task is to keep my bones and cells open, keep a soft belly, make that physical shift where I loosen the shields and let the molecules move freely so I can, in the words of the Q'ero, "be connected with everything."

First printed as "Filaments of Connection: Weaving Between the Worlds" in SageWoman No. 63, December '03 - March '04