We need a map. An ancient map. One that can guide us into the visible and invisible realms. Our lost world needs a map...
For over 15 years, I have been studying with elders and holders of this ancient Andean Cosmology tradition.
Whenever I got lost, confused, experienced anger or separation, and felt a void inside me, I always returned to the Andean altar, the Chakana.
There has not been one instance in my life when a troubling question was not answered by this map. This key.
It holds ancient stories, calendars, keys to secret doors, and mystical powers.
This journey of healing my body's pain was no different. I started in the lower part of it. In the Ukupacha. The unseen world. The old traumas. The Earth and snake wisdom. Diving deep into what I could not see yet. Ukupacha brought me to my inner child, to stories I had forgotten, to the shadows of the shadows. I spent over a year there.
Then, when the time was right, I stepped into the middle of the key. Kaipacha. The here and now, this world walked by the Puma, into the fire. Taking action and coming to Peru on a hint from Spirit that I could move this body. Carried out from the plane, hardly able to walk. I found my joy in the arms of my family here. Who held me, helped me, and guided me.
And then I stepped into the sky, the Hanan Pacha, the majestic condor medicine, the top of the Apus, starting to see life from another perspective. So I could finally see and complete this prayer, this vision, this Rite of passage.
Many rituals, ceremonies, and ancient wisdom ask us to not only be authentic and committed, true discipline but also to embody the teachings. In our lives. In our words. In our actions.
As I complete this cycle, I start again. Born again with a new vision of myself and my life.
Everything is shifting. Everything feels like being seen through the eyes of a newborn baby.
I am a beginner again. An eternal student of those ways. Amazed, humbled, walking with ease again.
I pray for all my relations to remember their prayers, to find those maps, keys, teachers, and elders who can lead us to liberation and a life of beauty.
I pray to keep walking in a good way, those worlds of true magic.
If you ever find yourself lost, I pray you find the map, the key, that will work for you. And may this world we live in, deeply angry, confused, and separated, remember that there are other ways, other paths, that can save us from ourselves.
Angell
