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 Living with Heart: Lessons of a Yachag ShamanThe Spiritual Traveler
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The
following is a subjective account of my own experience at the Second
Apprenticeship Program Workshop conducted by Don Alberto
Tatzo. I don’t think it would be possible to give an
accurate, ‘objective’ account of the event. But I hope that
through my own account, those who experienced the workshop will see
something of their own experience in it, and those who did not attend
will get a glimpse into the possibilities offered by Don Alberto’s
apprenticeship program. I did no electronic recording during
the program. All conversations, dialogues, and utterances
recorded here are the result of hastily scribbled notes. Don
Alberto’s words were also conveyed first through a translator, so there
is no pretense of accuracy, only an attempt to convey a general spirit,
intention, or train of thought. Any corrections offered by
other participants of the workshop are heartily welcomed and
appreciated.
 I
drove down from Ann Arbor, Michigan, early on a Saturday morning on May
26th. It was about a three-hour drive to the second Elkhart
exit, and then a bewildering few extra miles down and past a maze of
country roads marked CR-4, CR-2, CR-3, CR-1, and
CR-5. “Roads in Michigan have names, not numbers,” I said to
a man waiting by the side of the road for people to arrive for his
garage sale. He took the criticism of his state
good-naturedly and pointed me in the right direction. Soon
afterwards, I arrived at Christine Kaminsky’s palatial home, the site
of the workshop. The weather was unseasonably cold and
wet. For some reason, I had not been able to sleep the night
before, so I was already tired when we assembled for our first meeting
in the basement of the house. There were about 25
participants in the workshop, sitting in a wide ring on the carpeted
floor, mostly in chairs, but with a few people lounging directly on the
floor itself. Don Alberto entered the room, dressed with
utter casualness in slacks, shirt, woolen cardigan-like jacket of
native origin, and bare feet.
“Every moment of our life can be a party, a fiesta, a celebration,” he
spoke. Every moment can be something to be
enjoyed. Our meals, our chores—everything can be a party, a
celebration. Even the difficulties can be part of the
celebration.”
What
impressed me immediately was the way in which the people present in the
circle listened to Don Alberto. There was a mood of
lightness and joy. There was no somberness, no seriousness,
and no mistrust. I didn’t feel anyone probing my
intentions. No one seemed to care why I had come to this
workshop. That I was present seemed to be enough to make me
automatically a part of the group.
 I
thought to myself that in any spiritual group, this was what I should
look for. If there were happiness, if there were laughter, I
would know that the group had a solid foundation. If not,
then I would know that there was a serious problem with the group.
“Our mind wants to take us out of the party, out of the celebration,”
Don Alberto was saying. “But we have now reached that point
in our spiritual path when we have the option of remaining in it at all
times. Whenever our problem is too big, we can ask for help
from the elements of nature—the earth, the air, the fire, or the
water—whichever appeals most to our natures.”
“I have problems dealing with people in the workplace,” one of the
participants said. “Sometimes there is anger
involved. I feel most drawn to the fire element, but is that
an appropriate element to connect with if there is anger in the
situation?”
I raised my hand. “
Fire can also be a calming element,” I offered.
Don Alberto agreed with this. “There is no ideal place for
you to be other than the place where you are right now. It’s
all here and now, not at a different time or a different
place. The elements of nature are not only outside, but also
within us.”
“What
about if you are in a state of deep shock?” another participant
inquired. “Can we expect this technique to work in such a
situation?”
When a
person is in shock,” Don Alberto replied, “rationally they’re not
recording anything, but subconsciously they’re recording
everything. Such a technique will not work every time or to
the same degree each time.
If a person has been living with a depressive thought pattern for a long time, it will be far more difficult to change.”
We were about fifteen minutes into the session, and this was just about
the time when all my accumulated worries and anxieties were due to
bubble up to the surface. I was thinking of my own thought
patterns, which certainly tended to be depressive at times, and
defending them to myself. I thought of a self-help book I
had been reading recently, and which had angered me with its relentless
attempt to sell other people on the writer’s own
experience. I thought to myself that I was tired of this
kind of relentless optimism, and that every once in a while a
depressive viewpoint is good for a person. It brings them
back to reality. I raised my hand and unloaded this on the
group, but Don Alberto wasn’t buying it. “That’s an example
of how you get away from the party,” was all that he said, and I smiled
ruefully at his reply.
Surprisingly, after the morning session, I received a number of
comments from people who said they had understood the intent of my
question and agreed with me. I got into an extended
conversation with a young man named Paul, and found there were many
topics on which we had similar attitudes. “I love to
travel,” he said, “and I have the urge to simplify my life as much as
possible. I'm not against marriage, per se, but you have to
be very sure of what you're doing, because you can sacrifice a great
deal of spontaneity in your life. It's hard enough to take
care of yourself and be open to new experiences. Then you
add the responsibility of sharing your life with another person, and
adjusting for their moods, their needs, and their desires.
 On
top of that, add the responsibility for a family, house, and
mortgage. And, of course, you have to hold down a job that
generates a steady income. With all those responsibilities,
how can you possibly have time to be really open to
life? You can get completely burdened down with
responsibilities until your life is not your own any more.”
“So in other words the fact that I don't have a family or even an
intimate relationship isn’t necessarily a bad thing?”
“Not at all.”
“It may even be a positive thing.”
“Sure.”
“I may even be lucky. I should thank my lucky stars and
count my blessings.”
“Exactly.”
“Yes, that’s the way I feel,” I replied. I feel that we’re
sold a bill of goods. We're told that these are the things
you need to have, that these are the desirable things in
life. Everyone should have a partner. Everyone
needs to have a sex life. Everyone needs to experience
intimacy. Everyone needs material
possessions. But that’s plainly not the
case. People are driven to look for these things out
loneliness or a need for security, and these are just types of fear.”
Paul agreed with me. “It's fear that often drives people to
look for money, wealth, job security, relationships, and even
intimacy. None of these things are bad in themselves, but if
you're not careful, you can live your whole life using these things as
a kind of protection or insulation.
 The
more secure we try to make ourselves with these things, the more
sedentary we become, the less active, the more self-satisfied, the less
curious about the world at large, the more we cut off our spiritual
growth.”
I got into
another conversation with a woman named Pam Maddox, who said something
very similar. “I made the mistake of asking for something,”
she said, “and I got it.”
“A relationship?” I asked.
“Yes, a relationship. Then later I found out that I got more
than I bargained for.”
“Well that’s all I was trying to say, earlier,” I
replied. “You have these people writing books about the joys
of intimacy, or how they made their first million, and implying that
there's something wrong with you if you don't have the same desires,
the same dreams, the same drive that they do. But the fact
is that wealth isn't for everybody, intimacy isn't for everybody, and
freedom isn't for everybody. We all have difference agendas
in this lifetime, and different things that we need to experience.”
I also had a brief conversation with Christine, the organizer of the
event. “I’m an initiate of Ramakrishna,” she told
me. “My teacher lives in India and is not very
accessible. I’m sort of cheating by hosting Don Alberto, but
I miss having close contact with some kind of teacher.”
I was very surprised and gratified to hear her say
this. “I’m in the same situation,” I replied. “I
belong to a spiritual group called Eckankar. We also have a
Master, teacher, or guide, but he serves a large body of initiates, and
is therefore physically very remote.
The
only way to be in direct contact with him is via the ‘dream state’, or
perhaps in one’s contemplation or via an occasional
letter. The close contact with a spiritual teacher is very
refreshing for me, as well. I was worried that in some way
Don Alberto’s teachings might conflict with those of my chosen
spiritual path, but I’m glad to see that there are other people here
who also follow another spiritual path, yet are able to integrate it
with Don Alberto’s apprenticeship program.”
“I view the apprenticeship program as simply an extension of my own
spiritual path,” Christine said.
“That’s exactly the way I feel,” I replied. “Don Alberto’s
teaching seem designed to get us in touch with the physical
world. We live in the physical world, after
all. We may belong to a religion that points us in the
direction of our highest spiritual aspirations. But we also
have to live on earth. We can’t live our lives at war with
the physical world and our physical bodies.”
I agree,” Christina said. “Don Alberto’s teachings are not
only a way of staying grounded, but also of integrating and putting
into action all the spiritual principles we have learned on our own
path, but have been unable to activate.”
“There’s a real problem,” I added, “in relying solely on a religion
that is ‘too spiritual’. It can leave its followers without
practical skills in life, without ways of getting along with one
another, without the ability to energize their own cause or their own
mission, and vulnerable, as well, to all kinds of negative influences.”
 Buoyed
by this conversation, I helped myself to some of the food that was
being prepared in the kitchen. Food was a big part of the
workshop. Participants had the option of paying for a full
meal plan, bringing their own food, or fasting. I had
decided to eat very sparingly, but we had a wonderful cook named Megan
Living Stone, who had a knack for preparing Ecuadorian-style
food. There were steaming pots of quinoa, fava beans, and
large white corn of a type normally unavailable in the United States,
but ubiquitous in Ecuador. Don Alberto stressed the
importance of eating with a reverential attitude, and many of the
participants could be found eating in silence and utter seriousness at
the marble dining room table, while others sat at a smaller table near
the kitchen entrance in more animated conversation.
At the beginning of the afternoon session, Don Alberto asked us to
describe our experiences during the meal. “How are we giving
back?” he asked. “What have we done or what are we doing to
repay Mother Nature for this meal?”
I pointed to one of the participants, Priscilla Dawes, who had done the
dishes afterwards. “That’s one way of giving back,” I
offered. Then I thought of my own approach to the meal, and
offered another suggestion. “I didn’t each much,” I said,
“and this could be considered an example of the Law of
Economy. Life itself doesn’t use anything in any greater
amount than is necessary, nor put forth any amount of effort more than
is needed. And if you have this principle in mind when it
comes to eating or consuming anything, then you are giving back to Life
the same state of consciousness with which the food is produced in the
first place.”
 Don
Alberto then had us do an exercise that we had learned at the first
apprenticeship program workshop. It involved standing up in
our bare feet and trying to ‘walk’ with our toes. That is,
by flexing our toes, we were supposed to pull ourselves by
infinitesimal degrees forward on the carpet. After we had
practiced this, Don Alberto asked us for our reactions. He
asked us again, “Via this exercise, how are we giving back?”
With his question as a hint, I connected the exercise to the previous
discussion about food. “Does the exercise have something to
do with digestion?” I asked.
“Exactly,” Don Alberto replied. “It is directly connected
with digestion.”
“In that case,” I remarked, “I can see how it might be giving
back. Digestion itself is the beginning of a process that
returns the food back to its original source.”
In the afternoon, Don Alberto gave us a ritual exercise called a sand
painting. It was actually on the first part of a ritual
process that would be concluded the next day. And it wasn’t
done with sand. We were to go into the woods and find a
place where we could mark off a circle in some way. Then we
were to do embellish the space within the circle in any way that we
wanted. We could draw in the earth with a stick, place
objects within the circle, or anything else that we wanted to
do. Then we were to find an object to place to the left of
the circle and an object to place on the right. The object
to the left was to represent something that we wanted to get rid of or
dispense with. And the object to the right was to represent
something that we wanted to get, or that we had and wanted to keep.
 I
went out and found a perfect spot in the woods. There was
small place where some earth had been dug up and was already heaped in
a kind of mound, which made it eminently suitable for marking
off. I drew a circle with a stick. Then,
unsatisfied with the bare look of the earth, I started taking leaves
from the surrounding foliage and covering the earth in the circle until
I had a perfectly round green shape in front of me. Then I
took little twigs and pushed them into the leaves like skewers to hold
them in place. I put a ring of pebbles around the perimeter
of the circle. Finally, I placed a large spray of white
flowers on the right and a smaller sprig of white flowers on the
right. I didn't think much about what I wanted the two
sprigs of flowers to represent, but I assumed that it would come to me
by the next day.
The lack of sleep the night before caught up to me by the late
afternoon, and I dozed off through most of the evening
session. Then, to top it off, I decided to drive back to Ann
Arbor for the night instead of looking for a motel. I got
back to Ann Arbor close to midnight and immediately went to bed, unsure
whether I would even make it back for the second day of the
workshop. But by mid-morning, I was back on the road, and
arrived back in Granger around noon, having missed the morning session,
but feeling more alert than I had the previous day.
When I arrived, I asked some people what Don Alberto had talked about
in the morning session. “Mainly he stressed the fact that he
was not a holy person, not a guru,” one of the participants told
me. “He can’t see into the future, and he can’t read
people's minds. He doesn’t really know what people
necessarily want from him, or want to say to them, unless they come out
and tell him.
 He’s
just a person walking on a path, and if people want to accompany him
for part of the journey, that is their choice. He’s come
here to talk to us, rather than teach us, because really he’s just on
the same path as we are.”
The weather was still bad, so in the early afternoon we met again in
the basement of Christine’s home. Don Alberto talked about
some of his experiences during his own apprenticeship
training. “Many times I made the mistake,” Don Alberto said,
of putting a person at a particular point on the path just because I
wanted to show the person what I had experienced. And very
often, it was not that person's time to experience that, and sometimes
the result was actually that they took a step backwards on the
path. One of the tasks I was given during my training was to
live with a dog for three months in a cornfield. At the end
of the three months, I let the dog go, and the dog was so glad to be
set free that he ran amok and made a mess of the
cornfield. This lesson was meant to show me that I had to be
careful about taking people where they didn’t necessarily belong.”
I reflected on this observation, and it seemed to me that it applied to
my own experiences, as well. I had spent a considerable
amount of time on my own spiritual path, and was finding it more and
more difficult to relate to people in my spiritual group, who were
mostly newer to the path than I was. I wanted company on the
path. I wanted the same sense of community that I had
experienced in previous years. But most of the people in the
group were not capable of appreciating my perspective, and I couldn’t
expect them to where I was, or where I had been.
 “Just
BE,” Don Alberto was saying to the group. “Be in the
moment. Be yourself.” Don Albert’s words touched
on another issue that was fresh in my mind. Back in Ann
Arbor the previous night, I had checked my e-mail to find a message
from someone I had interviewed recently. He was very
concerned that he had said some things to me in the course of the
interview that he felt he shouldn’t have said. He was
worried about the repercussions of his remarks, and had asked me to
make some edits, which I was perfectly willing to do. But
the situation brought out some negative feelings in me,
nevertheless. I felt defensive about the possibility that I
had not taken enough care with the interview, and annoyed at my
subject’s paranoia about the consequences of his words. So I
raised my hand again to ask another question.
“We have a principle in my religious tradition called the Law of
Silence,” I said. “It’s a difficult principle to define or
pin down, but we have a rule of thumb that we associate with
it. We say that if you are in doubt about the wisdom of
saying anything in particular, you should ask yourself three questions:
‘Is it true, is it necessary, and is it kind?’ But I wonder
if this principle can be taken to an extreme, if we can be so worried
about the consequences of our words that it can take us out of the
moment and close off important channels of
communication.”
If I was looking for Don Alberto to salve my conscience about my
distaste for the way some people practiced the Law of Silence, however,
I was disappointed, however. “This is a very good
principle,” he said. “I agree with it entirely.
 On
this path that we’re walking, little by little, we will be talking less
and less. I have practiced being in silence, and it’s a
wonderful thing. It’s wonderful not to talk, and wonderful
to fast from talking. In fact, to fast from talking is as
important a principle as to fast from eating.”
He then suggested an exercise. “Try, as an experiment, to
fast from talking. The experiment cannot be less than 24
hours. If you really have to communicate with someone, you
can do so by writing.”
“Isn’t it cheating to communicate by writing?” someone wanted to
know. “No,” Don Alberto replied. “Writing is
different from speech. If you write without speaking, you
will still be sticking to your fast.”
“Would it be cheating to do the fast on a day when your contact with
other people might be very limited?” I asked.
“No. There's nothing wrong with that,” Don Alberto
asserted. “In fact, some groups have places you can go
specifically for this kind of exercised, where you will not be
disturbed by other people. This is an excellent way to begin
if you're new to this type of exercise. Another thing you
can do is to carry around a notepad and jot down any word that you
utter by mistake. Then for every word you spoke during that
24-hour period, you have to do an additional day of silent
fasting! If there's something that's difficult for you to
do, then there's something going on in your life. Some
things are going to be difficult. We have to know what is
easy for us, and what is not so easy.”
 Don
Alberto’s words went immediately to the heart of my problem with the
Law of Silence. Clearly, it was something that was not easy
for me. So instead of trying to excuse myself, justify
myself, or cast doubt or suspicion on the whole principle and other
people’s attempts to live their lives according to it, it was better
simply to realize that this was something that was difficult for
me. It was therefore best to look at it as a challenge.
As an illustration of the greater simplicity of life in his home
environment, Don Alberto mentioned that he didn’t have any mirrors in
his house. “When I first traveled to North America,” he
said, “one of the first things I noticed was the abundance of mirrors
in every house.”
“I
went through a profound change in my life about ten years ago,” I
remarked. “Suddenly, I couldn’t look into a
mirror. It was only a minor inconvenience. I had
to learn how to shave blind in the shower. This lasted for
maybe five or six years. It might not seem outwardly to have
been very significant, but the reason for it was that I had come into a
state of consciousness that made the mere act of looking in a mirror
seem like an act of vanity. And that state of consciousness,
it itself, was very significant.”
Don Alberto now changed the subject, and talked about something he
called the sacred fire. One of the participants asked if
this was similar to the force referred to as the Kundalini, and when
this concept was explained to him, Don Alberto replied in the
affirmative. “You have to respect this force,” he
emphasized. “If you don’t, it can burn you.”
“What is the attitude toward sex in your culture?” one of the
participants asked.
“In Quichua,” Don Alberto replied, “there is no word for sex or sexual activity.”
“How, then, do people communicate with one another during sex?” the
questioner wanted to know.
Don Alberto smiled. “We don’t feel that the sexual act
requires an accompaniment of words,” he replied.
“You make sexual activity in your culture not only sound somber, but
also give the impression that it’s something people rarely engage in,”
another person commented.
“Sexual activity in the countryside tends to be less than in the city,”
Don Alberto replied. “In the city, people tend to lead a
sedentary life, and their sexual activity increases proportionally to
the lack of other forms of physical stimulation. In the
country, people work quite hard. They’re tired at the end of
the day, so there are fewer sexual urges.”
It struck me, as I was listening to Don Alberto, that one could not
really separate the sexual from the non-sexual. There was a
sexual aspect to every activity, to life itself. Simple
vitality, hard work, and vigorous activity were like sex, in a way,
because they brought one closely in touch with life
itself. It therefore made sense that there was no word in
the Quichua language that specifically referred to sex.
It also occurred to me that Don Alberto’s observations about sex
paralleled his view of the Law of Silence.
 Words
were a form of communication, just as sexual activity
was. One had to respect the power of words, just as one had
to respect the ‘sacred fire’. Otherwise, their power could
come back to haunt you.
After the session, I still felt I had an unresolved question about this
issue, so I went up to Don Alberto and spoke to him
directly. “I’m just beginning to train myself as a writer
and reporter,” I said. “Writers deal in
words. It’s their commodity, their product, and medium in
which they choose to work. A reporter talks to people and
encourages people to talk to him. In that capacity, I have
to stick my nose into other people’s business, so to
speak. How can I dedicate myself to this type of work, and
still work within the Law of Silence?”
Don Alberto's reply was simple: “Keep doing what you're doing, and if
you make an occasional mistake, learn from it.”
In the afternoon, we prepared for the fire ceremony, which was the
follow-up to the exercise the day before. We were first
asked to gather go back in the woods, find our sand painting, and
remove the object that we had placed on the left. Then we
were told to cover up the area that we had previously decorated and
return. Once inside, we assembled in the basement, and were
each given a large sheet of paper. Then we were given some
tobacco and told to make a circle with the tobacco on the sheet of
paper, starting clockwise from the bottom. Then we were to
divide the circle into four parts with two more lines of tobacco,
vertical and horizontal. This basic figure represented the
four directions, as well as the four elements. The South
represented earth, the West water, the North air, and the East
fire.
 At
this point, we were given some freshly picked herbs such as mugwort or
angelica, and shown how to make a sprig of one, three, or five leaves,
called a kintu. We stood up with the kintu in our hands, and
faced each one of the four directions in blessing, blowing on the kintu
with each salutation. Then we were told to place the kintu
in the middle of our tobacco symbol. After this, we were
given flower petals to place on the paper for decoration. A
number of other things could be added: animal fat, animal bones, herbal
essences, corn, brown sugar, and chocolate—all deemed pleasing
offerings. Finally, we placed the object that we had
retrieved from our sand painting, which represented something we wished
to be rid of, placed it on the paper, wrapped it up in a package,
secured it with string, and placed any additional adornments on it that
we wanted.
When
this was done, we began the fire ceremony. We stood in a
large circle around the fire, playing our drums or flutes, or whatever
instruments we had with us, as each person in turn came up to the fire,
with whatever gestures, words, or ritual observances they chose, and
placed their ceremonial package in the fire. I had decided
what I wanted to be rid of. It was a heavy, unwanted feeling
that I had been carrying around with me for a long time. I
approached the fire, chanting the word Mahanta, and then the names of
three ECK Masters—Rami Nuri, Lai Tsi, and Wah Z. I felt the
presence of the ECK, or Spirit, and I felt something lift from
me. I felt lighter than I had before. The anger,
disillusionment, and emotional weight had been replaced by something
else.
 I
remember thinking that it had to be replaced by something else, and
that was why it was important to have placed something on the right
side of the sand painting, as well as on the left. I had not
really focused on what I had wanted that side to represent, but I knew
that it was connected with Don Alberto.
I had no desire to drive back to Ann Arbor that evening. I
had brought a tent and a sleeping bag, found the KOA campground in
Granger easily, and managed to pitch the tent with only the aid of a
flashlight. Monday morning, Memorial Day, the weather had
lightened up, so we convened on the deck. Don Alberto was
speaking of the necessity of men developing their feminine qualities,
and women developing their masculine qualities. “The
feminine qualities in a man are softness and tenderness,” he said,
“while the masculine quality in a woman is decisiveness. The
femininity of the woman lies in the back of her calves, while the
masculinity of the man resides in his shoulders. Simply for
a man to contemplate the back of a woman's calves, or for the woman to
look at a man's shoulders will help cultivate these reciprocal
qualities in the individual.”
As usual, I was quick to raise my hand. “I find that I’ve
been trying to develop greater decisiveness,” I said. “So I
must be still be working on developing my masculine qualities.”
In response, Don Alberto stood up. “Let me give you an
exercise that will help you balance the masculine and feminine within
yourself,” he said. The yoga-like exercise involved doing a
handstand at a 45-degree angle, with the feet high above the head,
resting against a tree trunk or wall.
 Once
this position was achieved, I was supposed to move my head up and down,
continuing this until my shoulders could bear the weight no
longer. The exercise was specifically designed to build
strength in the shoulders, said by Don Alberto to be the seat of
masculinity.
Another exercise was meant for the same purpose, and according to Don
Alberto, equally useful for men and women. This involved
squatting on the tips of one’s toes, but with the feet turned outward,
so that the heels were touching. The arms were held straight
down, with the palms touching and the tips of the fingers pointing
directly down to the ground. One was supposed to breathe in
very deeply during this exercise, and tighten the gluteus muscles as
much as possible as one did so.
A third exercise involved touching one's feet, massaging the soles
quite vigorously with the nails in a stroking motion, first looking at
one's feet as one did so, and then closing the eyes while continuing
the exercise. Again, one was supposed to breathe deeply all
the while. A final exercise consisted simply of walking, but
with all the weight of the body mentally transferred to the
head. Don Alberto had the participants walking around the
grounds for over half an hour in this fashion, practicing on the deck,
the grass, the pavement, and the stones. “Try to do this
first with your eyes open, then judge the distance in front of you, and
try it with your eyes closed,” Don Alberto recommended. The
resulting spectacle was comically reminiscent of a Fellini film, with
people walking in very earnest fashion at all angles across the lawn
and driveway, passing one another wordlessly as they did so.
 When
we reassembled, Don Alberto reiterated his earlier recommendation of
first opening the eyes, judging the distance, and then walking with the
eyes closed. “The purpose of this is to begin to awaken ways
of seeing other than with simply the eyes,” he
explained. “Walking at night in the forest, a person can't
see anything with the eyes. But if this other type of vision
is awakened, it is possible to walk in a dark forest without bumping
into any trees.” He sent us out to the woods again, and this
time there were no specific instructions. We were just told
to experience whatever there was to experience.
When we reconvened again, Don Alberto was asked about the purpose of
the exercise that involved massaging the feet. “This,” he
said, “is a way of activating the mind without thinking. The
body is divided into three different pachas. The word pacha
can be translated as 'realm', but there is no exact
translation. In Quichua, there is no differentiation between
the words for space and time. There is only the word pacha,
which signifies a unified realm of time and space. These
pachas correspond to the three major areas of the body—the body from
the genital organs down represents the earth, the head represents the
sky, and the torso from the genitals to the neck represents the
physical world that we inhabit—at the meeting point of earth and
sky. By stimulating the feet, we stimulate the torso, and
ultimately the head. We begin to light part of the sacred
fire. You can feel this in your heart. And this,
in turn, will activate the brain. So this is a way to
stimulate the mind to think in a natural, rather than a mechanical
way. It is activating the brain through the
heart.
 All
these exercises I have shown you today are meant to balance the
physical, the emotional, and the mental processes in the
individual. Eating foods with a high phosphorus content can
also aid in stimulating the mental processes in a natural way.”
Don Alberto then asked us to do a variation of the massage exercise
that we had done with our feet, except with our
hands. Again, Don Alberto instructed us to first look at our
hands as we did this, and then to close our eyes while continuing the
exercise. He then asked people to relate some of the things
they had experienced that day.
“The most powerful experience for me,” I said, “came from the simplest
technique, which was the palm exercise that we just did. It
was the simplest exercise, but the most profound. The minute
I made the transition from looking at my hands to closing my eyes, I
felt the ECK, or Spirit, pouring into my heart. I was
surprised, because I am used to feeling the presence of the ECK when I
put my attention on the Inner Master. But I’m not used to
feeling it in response to something as simple as looking at my hands
and then closing my eyes. It’s really something that the
mind can’t comprehend. There’s no explaining why the simple
act of closing one's eyes while stroking one's hand should have this
effect, but it did. The only thing I can say about it is
that, for me, it had something to do with experiencing the shift of
attention from the outer to the inner world. With a single
closing of the eyelids, that shift was accomplished.”
“It’s true that you can have such a feeling in response to focusing on
something very specific,” Don Alberto replied. But when we
open ourselves to just feeling, then we can go even farther than when
we have a specific goal.”
 What
struck me about Don Alberto’s approach to spirituality, mirrored in his
reply, was its simplicity. The whole workshop was an
exercise in simplicity. You had the feeling that Don Alberto
was making up the program as he went along. Discussions,
topics, exercises, and even activities might be prompted by a mere
participant’s question. And yet it was amazing how much
experience this spontaneous approach was
generating. Outwardly, an observer might get the impression
that nothing much was happening. And yet here I was writing
down my experiences, and it was hard to keep up with the flood of ideas
and information that I wanted to convey.
Don Alberto then asked us what we had experienced during the walking
exercise. “Watching other people walk can help us with our
own walking,” he said. I remembered that I had noticed this
in regard to our host, Christina. She was a very tall,
statuesque young woman, and watching her walk was a
pleasure. “This exercise,” Don Alberto commented, has to do
with comparing ourselves to others. This can be a positive
exercise, but not if it is done in a way to place oneself higher or
lower than another, but merely to learn from the other
person. Criticism can be harmful to the person doing the
criticizing. It is best to observe others and be aware of
our own mistakes. When a person thinks that someone is
either behind them or in front of them, it is a way of being
judgmental. When we judge in this way, we will feel superior
to some and inferior to others. Neither of these will help
us on our path.”
 Don
Alberto also solicited reactions to our walk in the
woods. “I was feeling rebellious,” I said, “so instead of
going out to the woods, I went over to the swimming pool and communed
with the Polaris, the automatic pool cleaning machine. It’s
this amazing little devise that cruises randomly around the pool
trailing a little mesh basket in which it catches the smallest
particles of debris. I was thinking to myself that this
wasn’t really nature, until I noticed how much the Polaris acted like
an animal. In fact, I am convinced that it mimics the
actions of some creature in Nature, although I’m not sure what creature
it may be. I think there was a lesson in this
experience. It was showing me that everything in life, even
a machine, is part of Nature.”
When Don Alberto asked for any further questions, I spoke up
again. “Yesterday you were talking about the fire ceremony,
and you said afterwards that a ritual is just ritual. Of
course it’s just ritual. But it has the power to cause us to
change our attitudes, our intentions, our state of consciousness or
awareness, and to experience the ECK, or Spirit. So how can
it be just ritual?”
“Anything we do can be viewed as a ritual,” Don Alberto
replied. “Even just sitting together as we’re doing now is a
ritual? How does it influence us? It influences
us because it makes use of the elements of nature—the sounds, the
colors, the action of the fire, the
rocks—everything. Everything in nature is giving and
receiving. So for that simple reason, everything we do is
sacred and can have repercussions in our life. If we can
understand this, we can make everything we do a
ritual. Everything we do can be sacred. Our life
then will transform, and we will be in a permanent state of
ritual. In Quichua, the word 'ritual' also does not
exist. Instead, there is a word, raymi, which means fiesta,
or party. The researchers call it sacred ritual, but in
Quichua, it just means party, fiesta.
 “Everything
needs to be transformed into a permanent ritual. A ritual
basically has four parts: (1) We great that which we are encountering
(2) We express our feelings at that moment (3) We ask for whatever we
want or would like to occur (4) We say our words of
parting. This process can be done without another person
even noticing. For instance, a few moments ago, the cat was
standing in the doorway. I opened the door to go inside, and
the cat came out. Most people would not notice anything in
my behavior to indicate it, but as I passed the cat in the doorway, I
went through the entire ritual. It's difficult to put into
words, but it's actually a simple technique to master. We
simply have to make everything we do a part of this great ritual of
life.”
We then
stood up and did a manya or prayer. My prayer was: “Mahanta,
from this day forth I am transformed. My life will be a
permanent ritual, a permanent celebration, and a permanent sacred
event. Baraka Bashad. May the Blessings Be.”
When we sat down again, Don Alberto continued. “People will
come up to you and say ‘What happened to you? You look
different.’ Don't try to explain it with
words. Just smile. Show that you are part of a
great fiesta, a party, or a sacred event.”
He then began his closing remarks. “It's not in my hands to
take you deeper into this temple. I am only offering that we
walk together. My body belongs to Pachamama, to Mother
Earth, and it is only natural that it will return there. Let
us not be concerned about the ultimate fate of the body, but simply
celebrate our existence at this moment.”
 His
voice became more urgent, more eloquent. “I was recently
reading a book that I picked up here in the United
States. It was about the Chinese philosophy of the
Tao. The people in the Land of the Eagle (North America)
don’t have to know any more. They have more than enough
books. They have the knowledge. Now they simply
have to live what they know. You have all the
information. You know it all. You are very mature
people. You are ready to fly. The only problem is
that the knowledge is all in your minds. It has to be
transferred to your hearts.”
Tears now came to his eyes as he spoke. Out of respect, I
didn’t look at him as he delivered his words of parting. “It
brings great joy to my heart to be with you. Thousands have
given their lives, their reputations, and their fortunes in order that,
centuries after their deaths, we could come together for this very
meeting. Let us not forget to be grateful to those
beings. And the best way to show our gratitude is just to
live. When you wish, and when we can, we will walk together
again. And when we go to sleep, we can continue to meet and
to talk with one another in our dreams.” |
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Date Submitted:
1/2/04 |
Copyright Information:
Copyright © The Spiritual Traveler, 2001 |
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