How Consciousness is Structured and the Purpose of Shamanic Process
In Part 1 of this article discussed the concepts of reality, the mind field, and how triggering sets one toward operating from an alternate reality state.
Now, how do we fix this? Nicholas Breeze Wood (shamanic practitioner, writer, and editor of Sacred Hoop) made a post on Facebook recently stating:
"Shamanism and sacred living is not about blissing out on nature, romping with your power animals and hugging trees - it's about empowering yourself and opening your eyes to the world and the illusions the consumer society has spun you. It's about de-culturing yourself - shamans and medicine people are not social animals. For by de-culturing yourself you get to know what is truly real in life; the Buddha didn't become the Buddha by deeply believing he really had to have a nice holiday or a new car."
The shamanic process provides techniques to assist us with managing these triggered states so that we may better operate via alternating current in a participatory relationship with actuality. The Quechua peoples of the Andes provide an excellent template to work from.
According to the Quechua, the type of energy we experience when the energy body (or poq'po) is infiltrated is called hucha. Hucha is heavy, dense, disorderly energy that disrupts the harmony and natural flow of the mind-field's processes.
Author Joan Parisi Wilcox has worked extensively with the Quechua and states in her book Masters of the Living Energy that: "If we do not cleanse the heavy energy from the surface of our poq'po, then hucha can accumulate, building up and seeping in more and more deeply. As this incompatible energy penetrates our energy field, it affects our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual states."
So, going back to triggering states, each time one gets triggered (and the energy body is punctured) a blotch of hucha (heavy energy) is left in its wake. Almost like a bruise or cut after being hit. If one does nothing about it, these bruises of hucha can certainly accumulate.
As this hucha accumulates it becomes more difficult to be able to see the true form of the individual in the image provided above. This is indicative with the way a person interacts with the world around them. As hucha accumulates, so it becomes more difficult for them to see the world in front of them, like too many fly splotches on a windshield.
Thus, instead of being able to participate with the world in a healthy way, a person is stuck in an alternate reality, only seeing past hurts reinforced by accumulated trauma. This is the plight of the individual unaware of their misguided behavior, what we in the shamanic culture refer to as shadow. When one is living in shadow, they are normally filled with so much hucha it is difficult for them to maneuver their own emotional state. According to J.E. Williams in The Andean Codex: "Hucha darkens mood, decreases resistance to disease, and causes sluggishness and poor health."
One of the primary goals of shamanic healing is to ensure that one does not live from a shadow-state. A process to help facilitate this is to cleanse one's energy, extracting the dense energy associated with trauma. As hucha leaves, the mind-field becomes clear and the individual is able to see and interact with actuality much more clearly.
See how clear the energy body looks now? However, extracting hucha can be a tricky process and every shamanic culture around the world has their differing ways on how to approach this. The primary lineage that I work in uses a mesa as a tool for this process. The mesa is a shamanic altar used for healing and connection with the natural world. Matthew Magee, mesa carrier and author of Peruvian Shamanism, describes the mesa as "a living control panel, co-created by Spirit and the curandero [shaman], to become a vehicle for experiencing the ineffable." When extracting hucha, in order to ensure the hucha does not infect themselves or wander off to infect others, the shaman can use the mesa as a medium to channel the hucha from the individual.
"Shamanism and sacred living is not about blissing out on nature, romping with your power animals and hugging trees - it's about empowering yourself and opening your eyes to the world and the illusions the consumer society has spun you. It's about de-culturing yourself - shamans and medicine people are not social animals. For by de-culturing yourself you get to know what is truly real in life; the Buddha didn't become the Buddha by deeply believing he really had to have a nice holiday or a new car."
The shamanic process provides techniques to assist us with managing these triggered states so that we may better operate via alternating current in a participatory relationship with actuality. The Quechua peoples of the Andes provide an excellent template to work from.
According to the Quechua, the type of energy we experience when the energy body (or poq'po) is infiltrated is called hucha. Hucha is heavy, dense, disorderly energy that disrupts the harmony and natural flow of the mind-field's processes.
Author Joan Parisi Wilcox has worked extensively with the Quechua and states in her book Masters of the Living Energy that: "If we do not cleanse the heavy energy from the surface of our poq'po, then hucha can accumulate, building up and seeping in more and more deeply. As this incompatible energy penetrates our energy field, it affects our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual states."
So, going back to triggering states, each time one gets triggered (and the energy body is punctured) a blotch of hucha (heavy energy) is left in its wake. Almost like a bruise or cut after being hit. If one does nothing about it, these bruises of hucha can certainly accumulate.
Further, the Quechua describe hucha as "heavy" energy for a reason. The greater an object's mass, the greater its gravitational pull. As a person accumulates hucha, their energy body becomes almost like a magnet for heavy energies, pulling to them surrounding energies that are unhealthy for the system.
Thus, instead of being able to participate with the world in a healthy way, a person is stuck in an alternate reality, only seeing past hurts reinforced by accumulated trauma. This is the plight of the individual unaware of their misguided behavior, what we in the shamanic culture refer to as shadow. When one is living in shadow, they are normally filled with so much hucha it is difficult for them to maneuver their own emotional state. According to J.E. Williams in The Andean Codex: "Hucha darkens mood, decreases resistance to disease, and causes sluggishness and poor health."
One of the primary goals of shamanic healing is to ensure that one does not live from a shadow-state. A process to help facilitate this is to cleanse one's energy, extracting the dense energy associated with trauma. As hucha leaves, the mind-field becomes clear and the individual is able to see and interact with actuality much more clearly.
Normally used as a cloth laid on the ground with ritual objects on top, the mesa can act as its own sort of magnetic attractor. It can funnel the hucha straight into the Earth, where it can no longer do any harm to the individual or others.
Why the Earth?
Hucha should always be given to the Earth Mother, Pachamama. As Joan Parisi Wilcox has learned from the Quechua priests: "Hucha empowers Pachamama; to her it is food, not waste." The Earth eats hucha, composts it, so later that energy can be turned into nutrients and then returned in life-giving ways back to us. It is a sacred reciprocal exchange, called ayni, which is the fundamental basis for maintaining balance in the universe. Some shamans say it is because we do not honor this sacred reciprocity of regularly giving our hucha to the Earth that has caused the collective malaise infecting our modern society.
We are out of balance, living in shadow, weighed down by hucha, because we do not recognize the sacred agreement of living in participation with the world around us. This is the purpose of the shamanic process: to remind us how to live harmoniously with the world. Ensuring we are cleansing ourselves regularly ensures we are seeing clearly. It is better to look through a clear window than a dirty one.
