They tried to bury us; they didn't know we were seeds. 

Derman arardım derdime, derdim bana derman imiş.

Glossary of Quechua and Andean Words:

Apu - The spirit of a mountain, a star, or other natural feature

Ayni - To walk in balance in all three worlds of Andean reality. Based on the idea of divine reciprocity. Similar to the Christian concept of existing in a state of grace.

Capacocha - The sacrificial rite held on the summer solstice. This rite was initiated by the ninth Inca, Pachacuti, and involved the sacrifice of a child from each lineage.

Capac Rayni - One of the major Incan festivals of the year. It was held on December 22, the summer solstice.

Collca - Granary; a name for the Pleiades star cluster

Coto - A handful of seeds; another name for the Pleiades 

Gawag - The third eye 

Goya - The female counterpart of the Incan ruler, or Sapa Inca

Hanaqpacha - The superior world. This is the third level of Andean reality and it is represented by the condor. It is the home of the higher energies and supernatural spirits.

Hauca - A holy or sacred place

Inca/Inka - The illuminated one(s). This term was generally reserved for royalty.

Intihuatana - A large stone used for calendric functions utilizing shadows cast by the sun

Kausay Pacha - The energy universe

Kuraq - A great visionary

Kaypacha - The second level of Andean reality symbolized by the puma. The ordinary world that we perceive with the five senses.

Ilankay - The power associated with the physical; the ability to manifest. The body-centered person.

Malku - A man who has reached the fifth level of consciousness

Mallqui - A tree; an ancestor

Mamacona - The legendary Virgins of the Sun, the select women who were specially trained in the ancient arts and who were dedicated to the service of the pachamama.

Mastay - A great gathering of people or reintegration

Mayu - The Milky Way, our galaxy. Also known as the sacred cosmic river.

Mesayog - One who works with supernatural spirits

Mosoq Karpay - A special ceremony in which, through an energetic transmission, the seed of transformation is given.

Munay - The power associated with the soul, love, and feeling. The heart-centered person.

Nusta - A woman who has reached the fifth level of consciousness

Pacha - The mother or the cosmos 

Pachacuti - A time of great physical or psychological transtormation. Also the name of the ninth Inca.

Pachamama - The Earth and all of physical creation. The feminine aspect of deity. The great Cosmic Mother, a living being that is the source of all life.

Pachamag - A name for the energy of the Cosmic Father

Pag'o - A shaman

Pampa Mesayog - An expert healer who works with the earth energies

Panya - By some accounts, the ordinary reality that is based on linear time and that we perceive with the physical senses. More accurately, the right side of the Andean mystical path associated with the masculine. The ordinary or left brain.

Paqarinas - Places of origin or emergence from other dimensions into this time/space, such as trees, caves, and springs.

Q'ero - According to Alberto Villodo, a long-haired one, a person of knowledge, one who has healing powers. A group of Indians believed to be the last direct descendants of the Inca.

Q'ollorit'i - The annual Festival of the Snow Star, sometimes called the Return of the Pleiades

Quipuscamayocs - The record keepers. Records were kept by the arrangement of knots tied on a cord. The record keepers had the task of remembering what each knot meant. Most of the quipus were destroyed at the time of the conquest.

Quipus - The knotted cords by which records were kept

Sapa - The Royal Inca ruler. The term sapa denotes an individual who has reached the sixth level of consciousness.

Tage - The third stage of relationship. The stage noted by communion, where the energy bodies interweave; also a joiner of energy fields.

Tage Onkay - The great interweaving; the great gathering of the tribes

Taripay Pacha - The golden age foretold in the prophecies

Tinkuy - The first stage of relationship, the encounter, where two energy bodies make contact

Tupay - The second stage of relationship. In this stage the energy bodies size each other up and feel out the potential of the encounter. The confrontation stage.

Ukhapacha - The first level of Andean reality symbolized by the serpent. Known as the underground, this world is the realm of invisible things and spirits.

Uru Pachacuti - The transformation of the world due to water. The Great Flood.

Waka - The holy statute that held the divine power of the lineage. Each tribe or lineage had their own waka. They believed that the waka connected them to the stars from where they originated.

Wiraccocha - The Creator

Yachay - The power of people who have knowledge and well-developed mental abilities. The mind-centered person.

Yanantin - Opposites such as male and female, light and dark, viewed together as complementary pairs

Yoge - By some accounts, the non-ordinary world that functions in sacred time or dreamtime. More accurately, the left side of the Andean mystical path associated with the feminine, the right brain, and intuition.

The gift of gratitude leads ultimately to the practice of ayni. We can walk in perfect ayni in all worlds as the ancient ones did. We can learn to perceive, think, act, and speak from a state of awareness of the sacred nature of all things. Then the world will mirror to us our sacredness.

Humility ultimately teaches us that all life is sacred - a gift of the divine union of form and the formless. The ancients of Wayu's time understood that everything on the planet is sacred, including every blade of grass, flower, clump of dirt, and brick. This is the critical message of the Andean masters, who perceive all objects as animate because they comprehend that everything has consciousness and acts as a receptacle of light.

The unifying force that pulses from the formless into form, the force that rides the waves of pure light, is the force of unconditional love. Unconditional love is the vibration that comes from the central sun, the Self. It is the superluminal force that awakens the light codes hidden in the human form, which engender the human seed, creating the capacity for divine radiance. Unconditional love is the intent that filters from the heart of the creator and lights the hearts of the masters. It is the unifying force eternally dedicated to our awakening that filters down to this planet of a little yellow sun spinning through space in the distant realms at the far edge of the Milky Way.

Because of our multiplicity, we can consciously move between different realms of existence. We are a particle of consciousness fixed in this space/time but also a unity of consciousness beyond time or space. The gift we receive from our multiple levels of perception is that as quantum beings we can finally understand that separation is an illusion. We can begin to perceive that we are part of an ever-expanding whole and that the entire universe may itself be an immeasurable hologram that some call God. The Incan and Mayan prophecies point to a collective awakening of humanity, to revolutionary breakthroughs, and to stepping outside of time as we know it. They hint at a golden age of enlightenment that may represent a true quantum leap - that is, a leap to quantum consciousness, to another way of being and perceiving.

We are now in the time of the great galactic synchronization that will result in the quickening and transformation of matter. The sixth level of consciousness will emerge when we return to the vibrational level that is still held at ancient ceremonial centers like the Temple of Wiraccocha. The new consciousness will emerge when we as a human community collectively align our vibration with the higher vibration that is awakening within the planetary light field. The doorways to divine consciousness, the ancient gateways, which are in actuality the next level of the implicate order, will open when "the light that comes from below is equal to the light that comes from above."

We know that the people of Mesoamerica and Peru built and used sacred sites primarily for ceremonial purposes. There is substantial evidence that they were built to awaken higher states of consciousness and to create opportunities for divine communication. After flourishing, the ceremonial areas of these regions were abandoned. Prior to abandoning these sites, it is likely that our predecessors deliberately sealed certain critical features of the sites energetically as a form of protection. Since they knew a time of darkness was coming, they may have realized that as the human god-seed descended further into the world of matter, it would lose the ability to function in the higher dimensions, and thus they locked the portals within these sacred libraries of divine consciousness. They probably knew that the power hidden within the sacred sites themselves would help to catalyze the future awakening.
There is a simple but ancient formula for accessing this hidden power, a key well known by the builders - the law of sacred correspondence, the principle of "as above, so below." Basically, the power of these sites can be accessed at any time when the light that shines from below is equal to the light that shines from above. In our space/time, this means that to access this power our own personal light must reflect the higher light, our frequency must resonate with a higher harmonic, thus assuring that access to such power is never given to those who are spiritually unprepared. The ancient concept of the macrocosm as microcosm also tells us that the greater divine life (light) is reflected in the human body.

When we express negative emotions such as fear, hate, and anger, we are involved with dense energies and lower frequency currents. By contrast, when we express more positive emotions like love and kindness, we are dealing with more refined energies and higher frequency currents. The lower the frequency, the less consciousness and light; the higher the frequency, the more consciousness and light. We are dynamic beings of light capable of regulating the energy that flows through our systems with our thoughts and intents. Quantum physics has shown that the nature of light as we perceive it depends solely on the intention of the perceiver, since whether light takes the form of a wave or a particle depends on the intent of the observer.

The Light that flows through your system is Universal energy. It is the Light of the Universe. You give that Light form. What you feel, what you think, how you behave, what you value and how you live your life reflect the way you are shaping the light that is flowing through you. They are thought forms, the feeling forms and the outer forms that you have given to Light. They reflect the configuration of your personality, your space-time being.

The Sun is the father and the Earth is the mother and their parents are one - Illa Tici Viracocha (Wiraccocha) - neither male nor female, energy in its purest form. This is the basis of all Andean shamanism. It is a principle of reciprocity. You make ayni to the Pachamama, the Mother Earth, and she is pleased and returns your gift with fertility and abundance. You make ayni to the Sun, and he returns your gift with warmth and light.
The Apus, the great mountain peaks, give you strength to endure your work; the heavens give you harmony. Make ayni to all people and they will honor you in return. It is a wonderful principle.
They say that the shaman lives in perfect ayni - the universe reciprocates his every action, mirrors his intent back to him, as he is a mirror to others. That is why the shaman lives in synchronicity with Nature. The shaman's world mirrors the shaman's will and intent and actions.
When we walk in perfect ayni, everything is sacred. We perceive, think, act, and speak from the heightened understanding of the sacred nature of all of existence. The world then mirrors back to us what we are - also sacred.

Those of us who have been indoctrinated by the Western system of thought must begin by reconnecting with the pachamama, the Cosmic Mother. Western thought is built on a very limited perceptual foundation that may have been revolutionary in the 1600s when René Descartes envisioned a mechanistic, predictable universe based on Cartesian coordinates. But we have outgrown this simplistic reasoning. We now understand, at least theoretically, that mind and matter are implicitly connected. But the damage caused by the mechanical model has been done. Our task now is to heal the wounds in our psyche caused by the Cartesian split, a split that literally tore us from the breast of the divine Cosmic Mother.

The Inca believed that the natural world had patterns that corresponded to those of a higher order of intelligence, and they built ceremonial centers to reflect such sacred correspondences. Beings seeds of the divine, they looked to the heavens for guidance and for indications of their intent of the creator.
There was a curious but undeniable correlation between astronomical events and the unfolding of Incan history. The transformations that occurred in the Incan world seemed to correlate with how the solstice suns entered and left the Milky Way. This synchronicity began in the year 200 B.C. when the solstice sun first entered the Milky Way. According to Incan myths, it was at this time that the bridge to the land of the gods opened, and Wiraccocha entered this world. Then, after civilization developed, Tiahuanaco arose and experienced a golden age, which ended in about A.D. 650 with the advent of warfare with the Wari people. In the sky at that time, the June solstice sun no longer entered the Milky Way; the gateway to the gods was closed. Finally in 1544, with the death of Huayna Capac Inca, and with the Milky Way no longer at all visible at the June solstice, time ended. The Spanish arrived and devastated the empire. With a mere 175 men, Francisco Pizarro devastated an empire of over 6 million people.
During the conquest, the Spanish, directed by the Catholic Church, systematically destroyed nearly all vestiges of Incan spiritual life: every lineage waka, every intihuatana stone, all the ceremonial sites, and the quipus. Moreover, the conquistadors invaded sanctuaries of the Virgins of the Sun, whom they raped. The agricultural terraces and irrigation systems were seized but were not maintained. As a result, the people were no longer connected to the stars from which they originated; the solstices and equinoxes so vital to the people's vision could no longer be accurately observed; the people's ties with history were severed; and there were no longer any surpluses of food or water but instead droughts and famines. The conquistadors, driven by overwhelming greed and a blind arrogance based on an indoctrinated sense of moral superiority, had but two interests: subjugation and gold.
The story in Mesoamerica is much the same as that in Peru, although in both regions, even long after their golden ages, the civilizations overrun by the Spanish were in many ways far more advanced and progressive than the cities of Spain at that time. Since the Vatican had decreed that the Indigenous people of the Americas were not human and thus had no souls, anything was tolerated in the blind pursuit of the one and only god - gold. From Cuzco alone, the Spanish took billions of dollars worth of gold, often in the form of extraordinary pieces of artwork melted into ingots. Much of the wealth that came from the conquests ended up in the coffers of the Catholic Church, which, in turn, continued to support the conquistadors.
Ultimately, the goal of the conquistadors was to break the spirit of the people. They were enslaved and brutalized, stripped of everything that had meaning, and their religious practices were outlawed. However, despite this violence, the seed did not die, but instead went underground, within the unconscious, where in the realm of our deepest yearnings it awaited the return of the light.

From the beginning of time (as measured by the coming of Wiraccocha) the Indigenous people of the Andean highlands had lived in a manner taught by their god, based on classless cooperation between many ethnic groups and the principle of reciprocity. Their creator god, Wiraccocha, was seen as an androgynous being, and thus men and women were treated with equal respect; neither was dominant, and both sexes were seen as natural complements.

There is a story associated with the majestic image of the condor (the divine messenger who embodies the sacred in the Incan worldview) flying toward the Milky Way. According to legend, whenever the seed of light falls into darkness, the great sun sends its messenger to the people in the form of a brilliant iridescent bird whose very presence brings a mysterious influence. Subsequently, violence, hatred, and anger are dissolved, and an atmosphere of love fills the air.

Since the creation of the world until this time there have passed four suns without counting the one which presently illuminates us. The first was lost by water, the second by the falling of the sky on the earth. The third sun they say failed by fire. The fourth by air. They take this fifth sun greatly into account and have it painted and symbolized in the temple Curicancha and placed in their quipus until the year 1554.

One night the Smokey Mirror had a dream, in a cave deep under the great Pyramid of the Sun at the sacred site we know as Teotihuacán. And in this dream the Smokey Mirror traveled far up and through the great pyramid and far out into the night sky into the world of the stars and shining, swirling galaxies. He looked up and around at the stars, and he saw that they were made of light. He looked up into the space between the stars, and he saw that it was made of light. Then he looked down at his hands and saw that they, too, were made of stars and that the stars were made of light. And he looked at the space between the stars that were his hands, and he saw that they were made of light. And in that moment the Smokey Mirror awakened forever from the dream of darkness, the dream of this planet. He saw that we are nothing but Light. He saw that everything is made of light and that the light from deep within the universe brings us knowledge of who we really are. The Smokey Mirror discovered that we all are the children of light.

According to Andean mythology, the creator god Wiraccocha had come in human form from the higher worlds. Although each regional tradition has its own version of the creation story, all are remarkably similar. It is said that long ago when the world was without light, Wiraccocha came to a place above the dark waters of Lake Titicaca. There, high in the Andes near the Peruvian-Bolivian border, this god-man called forth the sun, moon, and stars and placed them above Lake Titicaca. He then created the tribes of the Andes, each with its own place of emergence, language, and customs. Every tribe was given a holy statute that held divine power and could evoke the seed of the lineage that directly connected the divine and the human. In Quechua, the language spoken by the Inca and still in use in the high Andes, this statute was called a waka. Wiraccocha then spoke gently to his people, the seeds, telling them to do good, to be loving and charitable to all, and to bring no injury to another. He then taught them how to live harmoniously and to bring forth prosperity, showing them how to terrace, engineer systems of irrigation, and grow sacred crops.

All world mythologies mirror the divine. 

Our stories are the seeds we plant for the coming generations. Whether they are read in the mind or heard by the spirit when an Elder shares in a traditional way, orally, they become a part of the spirit of those who will house them until the next generation.

If you really sit with it, pray about it, mull it over, and then let it go, the teaching will come.

О̂hkomimâwak (grandmothers) are very generous people. They will feed you, clothe you, guide you, and love you unconditionally. They are generous with stories and teachings, and their ways of shaping youth through subtle, practical mentorship. They are also generous with their honesty - they will be honest so that the relationship can be true and connection strong, and so a person they are in relationship with has the opportunity to learn. Honesty and integrity requires a level of hardwork and bravery and О̂hkomimâwak are not afraid to love, to be humble, to see their people through struggles and hardship, and to stand up for what is right - to protect their children, grandchildren, and their culture and resources for future generations. They are brave to do a lot of healing in order to be able to be kind, humble, patient, generous, and honest. This is kisewatisiwin (kindness) in action.

Don't judge, just smudge.

 Culture cannot be bought or sold, or learned from Uncle Google.

Praying is a part of healing because it might be the first time any of us stop and say "I need healing," or "I need guidance," or help. And the reality is, no matter how much society wants to keep us all separate, independent, and responsible only for our own lives and livelihoods, we are vulnerable, interdependent beings. That does not make us weak. Interdependence makes us stronger if we are accountable and aware of our relationships. We need support and nurturing from others and the spirit world. Being resourceful, accountable, and responsible is a spiritual journey.

Don't harvest anything unless you first offer tobacco. Practise non-interference when someone is having a learning experience, don't take away the learning from them by telling them what to do and how. Know when to stand up for something, and when to let go and continue on peacefully. Be honourable to people, animals, and the earth regardless of what has been done to you. Take care of the water, because water is life.

At one time, the bush was the grocery store, the pharmacy, and the craft store. 

There is a continuum through the current and future generations, and past generations, and our body and blood remembers. Our DNA remembers up to six generations according to modern science. According to some Elders, it is seven generations. The name can serve as a reminder of our blood memory, and of this connection with our ancestors, that may come and gone before us.

Ceremonies can help heal disconnections. There are ways to make space for emotion that could turn into anger if not acknowledged and processed, and one of them is ceremony.

Kisewatisiwin - A personal commitment to humility, prayer, and loving kindness towards all things

Niwâhkômâkanak - My relations (we are all related in the Creator's eyes)

Kikawinaw Askiy - Mother Earth

Tipiskâwi-pîsim - Moon

Iskotew - Fire

Real learning happens only through relationship.

The tellers of stories are weavers, their designs are the threads of their personal sagas as well as the history of their whole people. Though the designs are always traditional, the hands that weave them are always new. Future generations are the new knots Creator ties onto the threads that weave together our families, communities, and Nations in the wider fabric of the cosmos.