Encounters with Power: Adventures and Misadventures on the Shamanic Path of Healing - José Luis Stevens 2017

Q’eros: Encountering the Power of the Land and Its People
Inspiration—Ceremonialist-Healer

The stories in part II have the central theme of healing accompanied by ceremony (or in some cases without ceremony). A ceremony is sacred time set aside to perform actions that bring about transformation for those participating. Some ceremonies are about initiations, some are to mark sacred time frames, and others are for the purpose of facilitating someone’s healing. A shaman ceremonialist is capable of carrying out either a spontaneous ceremony or one that has the force of tradition behind it.

A shaman healer can bring back harmony and balance among the various forces of nature, restoring resonance between the sick person and Spirit, from whom they have felt cut off. Of course, each one of us is our own best healer and thus the shaman is only a catalyst for that healing, yet an important one. Every good shaman knows that it is not they themselves who heal. The power of Spirit acting through them accomplishes this. Healers diagnose, use allies to conduct extraction techniques, bring back connection and wholeness, and cast out demons, whether physically manifested or perceived. Without the cooperation of the patient, the healer has no power to heal.

Q’eros: Encountering the Power of the Land and Its People

During October 2009, I had the extraordinary opportunity to travel from the Peruvian Andes to the Amazon jungle, visiting first the Q’ero people in the mountains and then the Shipibo of the upper Amazon. This amazing trip was only partially the result of long-term planning. While the trip to the jungle was on our schedule, the Andean part was last minute.

One of our students, Richard, had connected with the Q’ero on a prior trip to Cusco and had become godfather to our guide Torribio’s daughter Angelita. The child was now close to two years old, and it was time for the important haircutting ceremony that signals an infant’s initiation into the community. Because of high infant mortality, it is unclear whether children will even survive. Until age two, despite whether the child is male or female, their hair remains uncut and uncombed and can appear quite scraggly. Being the godparent, Richard was expected to go to Peru, cut Angelita’s hair, and give the proper gifts and financial support. He did not particularly want to make this challenging trip alone and had asked my daughter, Anna; my wife, Lena; and me if we would be interested in going. After brief consideration, we decided that this was an unparalleled opportunity to visit a people we were very much interested in meeting, so we responded with an unqualified yes.

As if by magic, Richard met Carrie, an American woman in Cusco who spoke Quechua and had worked extensively with the Q’ero for more than four years. Her home had become the informal meeting place for the Q’ero during their visits to Cusco. Not only was she very helpful in helping plan the trip, but she agreed to go with us and translate. She helped put together all the complex arrangements for horses, a cook, and staff to accompany us on a trip that would carry us to between eleven thousand and sixteen thousand feet. In the end, our team included Richard; Anna and her husband, Aaron; Aaron’s sister Rachel; Lena and me; and of course Carrie. According to spiritual archetypes, this team included two scholars (Anna and me), one warrior (Richard), one artisan (Lena), two sages (Aaron and Rachel), and one king (Carrie), making for a well-rounded team. Fortunately, the staff included servers, warriors, and artisans, so we were balanced out with expression, inspiration, action, and assimilation role types, the same mapping used for this book. Since we met priests along the way, all role types were represented in some way.

We spent a couple of days in Cusco to acclimate, and while there I stopped by a street vendor who had a tray of exquisite stones from the region. I bought several, including one beautiful and amazing crystal — actually two crystals joined at the base and covered in extraordinary white calcite. This stone felt so good in my hand that I just had to buy it even though weight was a consideration.

We outfitted ourselves with cold-weather gear, although afterward we were headed for the jungle where it would all be useless. Then one crisp morning we crowded into a van along with our accompanying cook and several Q’ero assistants for the six- to seven-hour ride southeast from Cusco toward Ausangate, one of the most powerful apus, or sacred mountains, in all of Peru.

The Q’ero’s land is remote, just south of Ausangate in extraordinarily steep and rugged mountainous terrain, so rough that until recently it had no roads. The same route is traveled by thousands of people every year going to the Q’oyoriti festival, the most sacred of all the Andean festivals, which takes place in June. After driving over a rugged fifteen-thousand-foot pass on a narrow dirt road through extraordinarily beautiful terrain, we camped for the night at the place where we would begin our trek into Q’eros, land of the Q’ero.

The Q’ero live in a collection of communities in the heights of the Andes. There are many other Quechua-speaking peoples with similar traditions all over the Andes, but the Q’ero have earned a reputation for keeping the original Incan traditions alive and are the go-to people for learning the powerful ways of the shaman (“paqo” as they are called in the Andes). While the Q’ero are willing to share their knowledge with all who are interested, they are quite private when it comes to allowing visitors into their terrain. We were made to understand that only six or seven outside groups per year had permission to enter and travel in Q’eros; would-be visitors cannot go there without special permission and they will be turned back if they have not obtained legitimate entry. Thus, we felt much gratitude for our good fortune to have this opportunity, especially in the company of Carrie, a woman well known to the people as one of their supporters and helpers.

In Cusco, Anna had developed a sore throat and bad cough. Although we tried our best to keep it from spreading, by the time we began the actual trek, Aaron had come down with it and I had a burgeoning sore throat on the first day riding the horses. This did not bode well for a trip to such cold and altitude, and a part of me was very concerned because the symptoms were alarmingly like the swine flu going around in the States. I worked very hard to take my mind off fearful thoughts and focused on leaving it all to Spirit to handle. Eventually the fever and cough spread to Richard as well but no further, so those of us who had symptoms were exactly those who were supposed to.

Despite my illness, the trip was so amazingly beautiful and powerful that I was able to override the symptoms and enjoy myself in the extraordinary altered state that came with high altitude, powerful terrain, and fever. We visited isolated communities, collections of stone houses with grass roofs surrounded by huge herds of llamas and alpacas. Being above tree line, the terrain is barren and rocky, with strange thick mists swirling down around the jagged peaks, sometimes completely obscuring everything before lifting to reveal exquisite mountainous terrain. Without a guide one could easily get lost and die at these altitudes, something the Q’ero warn about and that happens to those who are not invited.

Eventually we came to Torribios’s village nestled in a rugged valley surrounded by huge apus all around. Here we participated in a wonderful despacho ceremony. In a despacho, many items are gathered together in a special arrangement, prayed over, and burned as an offering to the spirits of the land. There are hundreds of different kinds of despachos, but this was a simple one of gratitude and a request for safe passage. During the ceremony a severe thunderstorm came barreling up the valley and headed directly for us. Large raindrops fell around us and the thunder rolled ominously. An old grizzled Q’ero pulled out his coca leaves and, making a quintu, holding three leaves like a fan, he faced the storm and began praying semiaudibly. Within minutes the rain had stopped and the storm changed direction. The old Q’ero gave us a wide, toothless grin. The clouds lifted to reveal the expansive beauty of the land.

I couldn’t help but notice that the offering had an immediate impact on the weather and conditions of the mountains. The paqos of this region know their trade and have power way beyond what we may think is possible; they are known for their supernatural abilities such as altering the weather, teleportation, becoming invisible, conducting alchemy, and performing miracles of healing. Some Q’ero shamans have the responsibility for helping balance the energies of the entire planet, but these subjects are way beyond the scope of this story.

In this village we participated in a haircutting ceremony for Torribio’s brother’s child. Modesto, Torribio’s brother, is also a paqo. A wonderful, humble man who in his childhood had been hit by lightning and injured, he has hip displacement and walks with a severe rolling gate that makes his ability to navigate the mountains improbable. Nevertheless, several days later we met him miles away, ambling along as if nothing hindered him at all.

During the haircutting ceremony, the paqos singled out Lena as the chief participant and made much of her presence, giving her gifts and fawning over her. I have seen this pattern repeated many times over the years: indigenous peoples love Lena and not only respond to her favorably, but often elevate her and recognize her for her power. On the other hand, they usually ignore me altogether and I feel completely overlooked until I earn their respect over a long period of time. While I was used to this pattern, I was surprised to see that I was still bothered by the havoc it played with my self-esteem and the old feelings of self-deprecation that arose. I wanted to celebrate the powerful occasion and rise above these petty feelings I thought I had left behind, but try as I might I was plagued by the same old pattern, especially under the influence of fever and flu. I allowed myself to feel diminished and shunted aside, clear evidence that I had not cleared away enough of my own personal baggage yet.

Lena was being honored, and my scholarly introversion relegated me to the sidelines. I felt fatigue, anger, resentment, self-loathing, and a host of other very unwelcome feelings that I wished would vanish forever, made worse by the fact that I knew these were all projections and had nothing to do with what was actually happening. I longed for an open heart and I got one that was shut down tightly. I could not escape my old process, especially here in Q’eros where nothing could hide. This was exactly what my teacher Guadalupe warned me about: a tendency to feel sorry for myself that got in my way of progress. I knew it and I could see it clearly. I became determined to come to some kind of emotional neutrality and because of my intent I managed a modicum of success. With a supreme effort I “put it all down,” as my old Zen master and teacher, Seung Sahnime, used to suggest.

After the haircutting was over, Modesto looked around and asked, “What should her name be?” Prior to this ceremony, children in Q’eros go without a name, strange as that may sound. My monkey mind having subsided, I instantly got her name in my mind. It was Luminosa and I said it out loud. Everyone looked at each other and nodded their heads, knowing this was her name. Modesto said, “Luminosa” and nodded in agreement. And now there is a strong warrior girl growing up in Q’eros with the bright name of Luminosa.

This simple experience shows how quickly the mind can be cleared of its cobwebs and directly tune in. The secret is to be ruthless about energy leaks and deprive them of any indulgence, any mental food whatsoever. This requires much practice but if I had any doubt about whether it was worth it, there is no question as to the difference between indulgence and zero tolerance.

According to the Q’ero, the mountains are filled with spirits and powerful apus who guard and look after their communities. One has to be very watchful of one’s thoughts while traveling through these regions because they may attract either good fortune or dangerous outcomes. I can say that my own experience there verifies what the Q’ero say. My most difficult challenges came at night as I struggled with my health fears and other subconscious material that seemed to be dredged up by the rugged mountains. Deep insecurity, self-deprecation, anger, and victimhood all visited me in the middle of the night at camps sometimes exceeding fifteen thousand feet. From my conversations with the others, I realized I was not the only one having these challenges. Whatever needs to be cleared tends to get pried loose and causes havoc on its way out. Strange dreams seemed to characterize the nights, along with visitations from mountain spirits appearing as old Q’ero men or women, rock creatures, or crystalline beings bearing messages. Lena and Anna had amazing visitations from these apu beings along the way.

One night we made camp at a very high (about sixteen thousand feet) and extremely cold pass amid the peaks. We pitched our tents, had a warm dinner, and turned in very early. I slept soundly until I felt Lena poking me and saying, “José, José, wake up. Look outside.” I reluctantly sat up and poked my head out into the freezing night. There was a major light show going on. Although the sky was absolutely clear and the stars shone brightly, great columns of light were rising up from the peaks all around us, flashing on and off. I had never seen anything like that and have not since. It was as if a huge lightning storm was going on but there were no clouds. After a time the cold overcame me and I crawled back into my bag and fell deeply asleep to an epic dream.

Lena did so as well and had a very interesting experience that she describes as partly asleep and partly awake. A great rock being made its presence known to her and indicated that it was looking for hoocha. Now, hoocha is the name the Q’ero give to anything that is not resonant with one’s well-being. They don’t say it is negative, just that it is not in harmony. It is similar to the term used in the jungle, mal aire, roughly translated as “bad air” or “negative energy.” She watched this great rock being go from tent to tent opening its big jagged mouth and eating the hoocha, our disharmonious thoughts coming from it. In the morning she spoke to the Q’ero about what she had seen and they verified exactly what that being was and what it looked like. Interestingly, I awoke feeling that my mind was clear of all the junk that had been passing through it. I am glad something considered it a good meal.

After several days we arrived at the Q’ero festival site, located in a huge beautiful area where five valleys converged. We had dropped in altitude and the weather was clear and warm. We camped for two nights, and I welcomed the chance to rest. Here also we were invited to climb up to some Incan ruins high above our camp where we held another despacho ceremony and were invited to sing as part of it. Although I was terribly feverish at this point, I sang my heart out and cried at the beauty of the occasion. Later we were told that no outsiders had ever been invited to this particular place before, and we all felt awe for the good fortune that had come upon us. Among the many apus that surrounded us were the two that the Q’ero regard as balancing the whole world.

That night I succumbed to a severe fever and crashed in my tent, sweating furiously throughout the night. I no longer had fight in me, and strangely all my fears left me as I just lay sweating and gave up all resistance to being sick. I figured the mountains and the apus would have their way with me and there was no use fighting them off anymore. The next morning, although very weak, I felt amazingly better and remained so for the rest of the trip. I had passed another major initiation, a process of terrible self-confrontation.

Sometimes these adventures are not what they appear to be to others. They are not all fun and games — I never know what is going to arise. The good part is that the scenery is usually pretty good while I go through whatever comes to the surface to be processed. We experienced so many things with the Q’ero; I can recount only a few of them in this story. As you shall see, in retrospect the trip happened exactly the way it was supposed to.

After returning to Cusco, we prepared ourselves for the radical shift to the Amazon jungle, where we would meet with the Ravens, our two-year-program study group, for intense ceremonies with the Shipibos. We flew to Iquitos and welcomed the heat and humidity of the jungle after the icy cold of the Andes where we had to chip ice off our tents’ rainflies every morning. After a day in Iquitos visiting the markets, we loaded onto a river ferry for the six-hour trip to the jungle outpost along the Yarapa River. There, across from the indigenous village of Yarapa, we participated in an intense series of ceremonies overseen by Enrique and Herlinda, our Shipibo teachers and friends.

During the ferry ride we were treated to one of the most beautiful sunsets I can remember. The great cumulonimbus clouds forked out lightning all around as one by one they turned orange and then pink in the sunset. The blue sky turned indigo, and stars began to reveal themselves. I felt a great weight lift off my shoulders and an ineffable happiness surround and penetrate me. I could not remember being so happy in a long time and felt that I had truly come home, surrounded by people I love.

While the Andes are barren, rugged, and masculine, the jungle is succulent, damp, and intensely green, a lowland feminine polar opposite to the heights of the mountains. In the jungle we lay in hammocks throughout the heat of the day and sang out the nights in ceremony. I felt the power of the apus downloading into me during the ceremonies night after night. After a week we arose at 3 A.M. for a boat trip and bus ride back to Iquitos. Where we had started with sunset on the ferry going to Yarapa, we ended with sunrise on the Amazon, a time of great flying birds, cool breezes, and early morning mists.

We flew to another bustling mestizo jungle town, Pucallpa, where our group would divide. Some members of the group were returning to Lima for the flight home, and the rest would go on to San Francisco, the Shipibo village where we would continue to work with Enrique and Herlinda. There we would diet intensely with specific jungle teacher plants for another ten days. These plants would bestow upon us their knowledge and healing powers. Another group from the States would meet us there to diet as well.

San Francisco was very hot and without rain, so our dieting was rendered more severe: we could not drink water from early morning until close to four in the afternoon. Each morning we would trudge off in the nearby jungle to a beautiful maloka, a ceremonial temple with a high palm frond roof, to drink our various plant potions and spend the day in hammocks, processing the plants. Some in our group were just starting their diets with tobacco while others had completed tobacco on former trips and had moved on to reneqia, boasca, albahaca, camalonga, chiric sanango, cerromacho, and marosa. We took each plant for seven to eight days before moving on to the next. All of these plant drinks contain some tobacco, the foundation plant for all of them.

I was finishing up boasca and beginning camalonga, a camphor plant that tasted rather like mothballs but gave a powerful pattern of protection when working with serious diseases and dysfunctions in other people. While the plant is not at all hallucinatory, it produces a kind of deep reverie or state of meditation that lasts many hours. Some of that time can be spent meditating, reading, or listening to music on an iPod. Each day I read a little from the works of Patanjali, Gregg Braden’s Fractal Time, and Tom Kenyon and Judi Sion’s The Magdalen Manuscript about the balance of masculine and feminine.

On this day, as usual, I set up my mesa on the floor next to my hammock. It consists of a woven woolen cloth containing various healing stones I had received in Q’eros, accompanied by my pipe, Agua Florida, and feathers. The Q’ero paqos mostly use stones in their mesas because this is what is in their environment: a masculine set of tools. The Shipibos use plants because that is what they have in their environment, mostly feminine tools, although there are exceptions to both. I decided to marry the two, stones and plants, and use both during my dieting. I could lean out of my hammock and pick up various stones to contemplate during my day of dieting with a plant, an experiment that produced far-reaching outcomes and big downloads of information.

On the fifth day of the camalonga diet and my seventh overall day, I received a particularly big dose of the brew from Herlinda, who chuckled as she handed me the glass. She sang over me and blew an icaro into my tobacco and Agua Florida as she and the other shamans did every morning. Getting it down was rough, and I had to chase it with a drop of Agua Florida to avoid instantly purging it.

I did an hour of meditation while sitting and then, unable to sit up any longer, retired to my hammock as the heat soared and sweat poured from my body. To get the most mileage, I used some self-hypnosis to go deeper than ever. I received the message that I should pick up the connected crystals covered with calcite that I had purchased in Cusco and place them on my tan tien (navel). Instantly I was led to contemplate the imbalance of my masculine and feminine sides.

Now, it is worth noting that several days earlier in ceremony I had asked the shaman to work on balancing my right and left sides because I had been having problems with my left side: an earache on the left, a stuffed-up sinus on the left, an ache in my left shoulder, and so on. These were chronic conditions I'd had for years.

I received an internal message to count back lifetimes to find the one where these conditions started. I counted back and at twenty-seven I saw a miserable man who abused women out of fear of them and loathing for himself. This life was truly terrible and left my psyche with long-term scars and a decision that I simply could not forgive myself for what I had done. A pattern of lifetimes began where I could not get comfortable with the feminine, and the imbalance grew. Feeling such guilt and not forgiving myself created the dynamic that the feminine within me was slowly shriveling up and dying from neglect. I saw that the woman on the left side of my body was shrunken and abandoned, desperate for nourishment, love, and protection. The male side was equally wounded and could not make progress without his other side, which he was so afraid of. They lay in my body, side by side, wounded and unable to communicate, stuck in a stalemate. I was shown that the decision to heal this situation was mine alone. I could neglect it and it would continue, or I could set things right and hop on the road to healing. I could make no more progress on my spiritual path without moving on this.

I contemplated the desperate plight of each side and felt the deepest compassion and sorrow. No one was to blame; both sides were just stuck in time. Since the male needs to move first with action, I reached over with my right hand and gently held my left hand, a first step in reconciliation. At first the left hand was frozen, but little by little each side had many things to say to the other, and as they did so they forgave each other. Each side was desperate for the love of the other, and with time they moved toward each other with great desire and determination. This process took a number of hours and was deeply and powerfully moving.

After much work had been done, I was told to look at the two connected crystals I had been holding on my tan tien. One was longer and clearly the male; the other was shorter and clearly the female. The longer one looked as if it were protecting the shorter one. In actuality they were one. I was told it was no accident that I had bought this stone; this had been arranged by my essence far in advance. I was then shown the grand scale of events that culminated in this healing of my two sides. First came the trip to the Andes, Q’ero land of stones and the masculine. There, of course, I got sick because the masculine side of myself was sick from being isolated from the feminine. All my demons arose there because they needed purging. I repeated the pattern of feeling overshadowed by the power of the feminine, represented by Lena’s being so welcomed by the Q’ero and my feeling overlooked. This was the guy from twenty-seven lifetimes ago rising up with his pain.

The next step was to go to the jungle, the great dark feminine, where I felt overjoyed and where such intense work had to be done. The life-giving moisture and succulence of the feminine were like manna to my soul and my feminine side. I prompted my intellectual center with readings from The Magdalen Manuscript, which my old friend Pat had given me. Clearly, she was in on my healing conspiracy as well. Herlinda, a woman shaman, gave me the huge dose of camalonga to push through the big internal work I had to do that day. Under subconscious guidance, I picked up the “marriage crystal” and worked with it without knowing why. My inner guidance laughed at the grand scale of the plan that had been carried out under my nose without my catching on until the very end.

Spirit revealed to me in no uncertain terms that my personality is not in control of my life and is the last to know what is happening. Also, what I have learned to call reality is actually just a big passion play, an elaborate dreamscape where I can act out grand-scale dramas of getting lost and finding my way home again over what appears like many, many lifetimes but is actually just the blink of an eye. What other dreams are being played out even as I write this?

What dreams and dramas are being played out under your very nose that you have failed to notice because you are as caught up in the details of your life as I have been? Better start chuckling now.

POSTSCRIPT

Like the events in this story, the large-scale events of the planet — the imbalances of climate, economies, religious strife, political events, and so on — are just a big drama unraveling for the collective, to teach us in a way that we may learn in order to wake up. They are dreams orchestrated by parts of ourselves so much more powerful and wise than our surface personalities. All is well and all will be well because we are in very good hands. Our job is simply to see, listen, and respond willingly to what we are shown. There is only healing to do and absolutely nothing to fear.

As has happened so many times before, powerful lessons were unfolding within me, and my personality was the last to know. When I was feeling stuck I was actually involved in a bigger drama designed to reveal specific life lessons and solutions to the test I was passing through.

QUESTIONS

How are you being tested right now, or how have you been tested recently? Did you pass this initiation? Are you passing it now? Isn’t it time to handle it once and for all? What does handling it look like?

Your ego wants you to think that you have made no progress and never will. It wants you to identify with failure. You might want to take a good look at this. Is that acceptable to you? Always give yourself wiggle room to grow. How are you different? How have you changed? What is not the same anymore?