Standing Stark: The Willingness to Engage
Chapter Four
Intentful Existence
My friend and I had been wandering through Korikancha, particularly lingering within what little was left of the Incan temple that had first resided there. After the conquistadors came to Peru, the sacred site was claimed by its conquerors, most of its initial structure demolished and a large Catholic church and monastery put in its place. Likely for political reasons, the Church chose to retain just a few small rooms from the original Incan Sun Temple. These rooms, dedicated to Illapa, the Storm God and hurler of lightning, were allowed to stand, now contained in the courtyard of the church complex. I had made my way completely around the courtyard when something across the way caught my eye.
The bulletin board on the wall just outside the tiny shop front had some very detailed information posted about preventing high-altitude sickness. Alongside was an article on Coca-Cola. I thought it mighty strange that a display partnered the story of the evolution of a commercial product with data on medical advice. Then I realized that the common denominator was the use of the coca leaf.
The sign over the door said K’uychiwasi Qosqo, Rainbow House of Cusco. Curious, I glanced inside the small space and was invited in by the brightly colored wares. Waving to my friend to let her know where I was going, I ventured inside.
A diminutive woman wearing clothing that seemed to swamp her small frame and a large-brimmed black hat covered with folk art pins busied herself with something behind the counter. As I walked in, she glanced up, immediately broke into a big smile, her eyes crinkling up behind wire-rimmed glasses, greeting me. I took a leisurely turn through the shop looking at cookies, candies, teas and artwork. By then, my friend had caught up with me and came in to investigate as well.
Seeing our apparent interest, Emma Cucchi Luini introduced herself and began to tell us of K’uychiwasi Qosqo’s mission. The central purpose of this nonprofit organization was to educate about the uses of the coca leaf and its connection to the Andean culture. Actually, rather than connection, Emma emphasized that the coca leaf was the backbone of this ancient tradition, its practices and health of the native people.
Beleaguered with the discovery of a chemical extraction known as cocaine, the sacred coca leaf is now being threatened with extinction. Through tighter and tighter governmental controls and concurrent illicit operations, the simple coca farmer has been squeezed. Trying to scratch out a meager existence raising the same crops their ancestors have raised for centuries, these people are being directly affected by an encroaching Western culture in which a number of people substitute nose candy and greed for real experience.
In the last couple of decades, the national governments of Peru and Bolivia, pushed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, have targeted the coca leaf as the enemy, totally disregarding its cultural and quite innocent, but important, use by the indigenous peoples. The chewing of coca leaves is standard practice among the natives in the Andes, not to give them a high, but to increase their stamina for living and working in an environment that is often very difficult. Instead of inducing any undue alteration in their normal consciousness, which the coca leaf cannot relay at all in its natural form, its nutritional makeup provides them with energy and a plethora of nutrients not as available elsewhere in their sparse diet. Also ignored is its elevated status in the spiritual traditions and rituals of the Andean Indians. Mama Coca is the plant spirit invoked and Her leaves used in divinations, blessings and ceremonies. An analogy would be the chalice of wine symbolizing the blood of Christ in the communion ritual of many Christian religions.
As Emma so aptly put it, “There are many, many alcoholics in the world. Do they destroy the grape?”
That question certainly does make one think, particularly relative to what other motivations, political or otherwise, could possibly exist for the shortsighted methods used for eradicating cocaine trafficking through a focus on coca crops.
Could it be the genocide of indigenous peoples? That speculation may seem farfetched. However, look what the intentional slaughter of the buffalo did to the Plains Indians. Andean Indians little enjoy a similar status in their own countries as American Indians historically have in the United States.
Could it by any chance have to do with oil-rich lands underlying the fields where coca is grown? Knowing what other convoluted methods of seizure and control have been used in the past, that may well explain some of the U.S. Government’s extreme interest in the coca farmer.
The growers are caught in a web where, in order to feed their families, the choices currently available to them all seem so sticky that they cannot free themselves. The government will buy their crops for a pittance while the cocaine traffickers offer them six times that amount. The DEA will pay them to destroy their crops and say they will help the farmers to convert to another type of cultivation. However, the help promised never comes.
Enter Emma. With the in-country support of two Dominican friars, this Italian woman founded K’uychiwasi Qosqo in 1999. Christo Deneumostier Grill, a young Peruvian man, has since joined her in her efforts. In addition to educating about the traditional and medicinal uses, they research new ways to use the coca leaf. In their quarters they help women, girls and young men in need by training them to produce cookies, candy and folk art using the coca leaf as an ingredient. They look forward to eventually creating additional goods such as soaps.
In 2002, the organization even won the Slow Food Award for the Defense of Biodiversity, sponsored by the Slow Food Association originating in Italy. Emma and Christo are currently making small but painstaking steps within the bureaucracy of the Peruvian government toward wider distribution of their coca wares, the regulation of coca being tremendously tight. The only export of the leaf currently allowed is to the Coca-Cola Corporation in the United States. Ultimately, the success of Emma and Christo will benefit the Andean culture and help to maintain the growing of the coca leaf by offering products to be used by mainstream society.
As she finished her monologue, Emma shrugged and opened her hands in a characteristically Italian way and said, “I’m Italian. This cause doesn’t even belong to me.”
Reviewing our encounter in my mind later, I thought to myself, “This is a cause that belongs to the world. It belongs to us all. Emma chose to take it up.”
To me, it doesn’t matter where in the world the threads of ancient wisdom are being destroyed through thoughtless or misguided means. It’s the concern of all individuals who understand the dangers of eradicating such traditions and the detrimental effect on the world’s future, as we continue to lose sacred knowledge because of technological or political reasons, or just plain greediness.
Emma and I began to develop a friendship through sporadic e-mails after I returned to my home. When I traveled again to Peru several months later, I visited her once more. This time I asked, “What is your story? How did you get here? How did you get involved in this work?”
My questions uncovered a fascinating tale and the meat of Emma’s character emerged. I believe we can all learn a lot from this woman and others like her who hold unstinting intent and yet, humility.
She started the narrative at the beginning of her life by saying she was born near the Italian/Swiss border. Then she elaborated on her mother and father. She was very clear about giving credit to her parents for both their early and continued guidance and support.
“From my mother, I learned about culture and solidarity. Someone would knock on the door and my mother would say, ‘What do you need?’ And then she would give it to them, if she could. So, from her, I learned to be available to people.
“My father was a climber and he would take me with him. He would say, ‘If you want to go with me, you walk. You are not here to be carried.’ From him, I learned about nature and also discipline. He taught me that if there is a goal you have, you fix your sight on that goal and do what you need to do to move toward it. All these things, combined with my own energy and curiosity about the world, have served me well.”
As a child, Emma was a focused student and seemed to know from an early time what she was about. She was eight years old when she began to say that she wanted to go where her hands were needed in the world. By the time she was fifteen years old, she had already discovered her lifelong hero and barometer to her own mission — Albert Schweitzer.
“He said that theoretical concepts are nothing unless you put them into action. Schweitzer opened his hospital in Africa under great difficulties. Even when his wife had to return to Switzerland for her health, he stayed on and continued his work. From him, I learned to put my ideals and mission before my personal needs and even my family.
“I knew that I always must move my mind and meet new challenges. I asked myself, ‘Where is my root?’ And I decided to enter medicine. But I would use medicine as an instrument, not as a goal.”
In that conclusion, the spark of her dream toward being a humanitarian doctor caught fire.
As I listened to Emma, it seemed to me that the decision to use medicine as a tool rather than the end, along with her openness to continue to learn, was a decision paramount to her ability to move easily in the landscapes she traversed. She went on to medical school, and while she originally sought to be a surgeon, she finally decided to follow a specialty in anesthesiology because she could begin her practice much sooner. She wasn’t viewed by fellow doctors and professors as one jockeying for position. Indeed, they knew that she would be gone as soon as possible in order to follow her work. Expressly because she was not considered a “threat,” during her internship she was taken under the wing of various physicians and granted sundry opportunities to learn.
Her first break came in 1977 when she joined a climbing expedition to the mountain called Pucaranra in the Ancash region of Peru, as the team’s doctor. Shortly after her return from this adventure she thought to move to Kenya to follow in the footsteps of her hero, Dr. Schweitzer. However, by that time, he had passed on. Due to his demise, the hospital he founded was in duress. His disciples were in a state of loss and confusion. The hospital was in chaos.
Not surprising, I thought to myself. What true teachings, or organizations, within the spiritual realm have been able to maintain the levels previously attained after their originators have transitioned? Mostly they become watered down and restrictive, the central wisdom forgotten or taken out of context. Why should a hospital formed by such a man not undergo similar disorientation?
Needing the structure no longer available at Dr. Schweitzer’s hospital that she felt she required to learn tropical medicine, she opted for another location. She went to a hospital in northern Kenya, on the border of Ethiopia, where the people were enduring famine. There, after getting her feet wet, she began to work alongside and learn from the bocor, or tribal witch doctors. Emma respected the fact that many of their methods had healed people for centuries. Because the people saw that she respected their ways, she was also able to provide, in partnership with the witch doctors, those means from occidental medicine that filled a gap for such health threats as tetanus and meningitis.
After she had been there for a few years, she felt the need to move on in order to learn and contribute elsewhere. Emma saw an ad that had been placed in a professional journal by William and Gwen Mellon. These two extremely wealthy people had tired of the tidy life they were living in Arizona and wanted to give back what they could. In the midst of the dangerous upheaval of the presidency of Jean-Claude Duvalier, they sought to build a hospital in Haiti. In their ad, they were seeking volunteer doctors. Emma applied.
Standing in the airport, her family seeing her off to this unknown and rather risky venue after a visit home to Italy, her mother said to her, “Let me cry. You are going away now. You no longer belong to us. You belong to mankind.”
Emma arrived in Haiti in 1981 at the age of 31 and stayed there for five years. In those perilous times and surrounded by the prevalent tribal religion Voodoo, she practiced the anesthesiology needed for surgeries. Not trusting the local electrical services to be stable, she chose to mix the old methods of her trade with the new.
“I would do the best I could according to what I was taught in school, but only within the means of the place. I would have the life of my patient by my hands. I didn’t use the machines. The pulse is here,” putting her fingers to her carotid artery. “I wanted to make sure they’re alive. If the electricity went out, it would be disastrous.”
She mentioned using a hand pump, sometimes for seven or eight hours, to continue ventilating during operations. In those years, she handled some 10,000 patients or more, only losing nine.
“I would hear the people buzzing out in the village when I walked by. Finally, I realized that they consider me a bocor! A witch doctor! From their eyes, in that room, we managed life! I put people to sleep and brought them out. The surgeon opens the body, takes the organs out, puts them back in and changes the life of the people.”
Admittedly, working in the tribal culture where Voodoo, a powerful religion little understood by outsiders, was prevalent had its astounding and even, scary moments.
“One time we were invited to some celebrations. I was sitting on the outside of the circle when the people got up to dance. Someone invited me to join in. They use drums that create like a trance. The rhythm of the drums was getting louder and louder, and I was dancing. Then, I saw that all the women had moved away and it was only the men. They were dancing in a circle around me, getting closer and closer. For them, I was a different energy. And it was under the full moon, which was another symbol. I began to be afraid. There was no way out. I didn’t know what to do. Suddenly, my colleague broke through the circle and snatched me out! I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t done that.”
She talked about how the culture of Voodoo sometimes interfered with her work as an anesthesiologist.
“There was a young man who came to the clinic to have a cyst on his back removed. It only needed a local anesthetic, but the surgeon asked me if I would use a general on him because he was so scared of the surgery. So, I agreed.
She went on, “I administered the anesthetic and the surgeon asked me, ‘Is he ready?’ And I said, ‘Yes. He is ready.’ Just when she was ready to cut him with the knife, he broke all his restraints and sat straight up!
“We couldn’t believe it! I gave him general anesthesia. It is not possible for any human to have the reflexes of the neck after administration of these drugs!”
The surgeon told everyone to stand back. “These are some energies stronger than us. Nobody move!” All watched, paralyzed, as the young man lurched to his feet and went home.
A few days later, the surgeon knocked on Emma’s office door and indicated the same man had returned and wanted to talk to them. He said he knew that he had given them quite a shock. But, his loá, or spirit guide, didn’t like the surgery. They were in conflict about it. He said he had now negotiated with his guide and wanted to go ahead with the surgery. He asked if they would still be willing to do it, which they were.
Emma smiled, “I made sure to use the same drug to show that my anesthesiology does work!”
From Haiti, Emma was invited to help open housing and a clinic for orphaned children in southern Sudan. The sponsors wanted a doctor who had wartime experience. With her tenure during the bloody downfall of the dictatorship of Duvalier, she fit the bill.
One of the boys there had an infection in his leg that had turned gangrenous. Given the limited capabilities of the clinic, the doctors didn’t hold out much hope for him. Knowing that there were means to save him in Italy, Emma raised the money through different organizations and made arrangements to send the boy to her homeland for the needed treatment. She accompanied him. There, the doctors were able to save not only his life but almost his entire foot. He ended up losing only a couple of toes. He stayed in Italy to recuperate, was eventually adopted and has now applied for medical school and intends to return to his original home to help his people.
On her way back to Sudan, Emma laid over in Khartoum. She was told that the only air transportation going to her village, a military plane, had been shot down. For three days she awaited conveyance. On the evening of the third day she was having dinner with other foreign travelers in a hotel restaurant when terrorists bombed this establishment frequented by Westerners. Twenty-nine people lost their lives. Emma was the only survivor. She was also the only doctor available because entry to the area was barred after the attack. That same night the U.S. Embassy and a U.S. club in Khartoum were also bombed.
With one eardrum blown and her other ear injured, she had otherwise miraculously escaped serious physical injury. Without any real equipment, she did the best she could for people. And what she finally could do was only to help the injured die.
Airlifted out, she flew home to Italy to heal. But it was more than her physical body that needed healing. Her spirit was devastated. Emma had lost the meaning of the path to which she had given her life. How could she continue when culture and religion separate people in such horrible ways?
After eight months in Italy her parents said to her, “This is your house, but you know you cannot stay here.”
When an Italian association contacted her about an assignment in Bolivia, she half-heartedly accepted. But she stayed to herself and didn’t connect with the people.
“These Quechua people were so quiet, so shy. I was used to Africa with the dancing, the celebration! I didn’t like it there. Coca? What’s coca? I didn’t get involved.”
After two years the International Red Cross tendered her an offer at their hospital in war-torn Somalia. She snapped it up. There she remained for another two years. Then, she was asked to return to Bolivia by the Italian association that had previously sponsored her.
However, by that time, Emma had made the decision that she no longer wanted to work with associations. Her intent was to found her own humanitarian organization, to include a clinic and other needed services.
“I will find my own place like Dr. Schweitzer and stop,” she decided.
She was referring to the fact that Schweitzer founded his hospital in Gabon and remained there, dedicated to his work, until his death another 53 years later. But at the time, she hadn’t yet found her place.
The Italian association begged her, saying they needed just six more months from her in Bolivia. She protested. They enticed her. It would be just like what Schweitzer had done. This time, instead of the highlands, they said, it will be the jungle where you will work on a project to see about medical needs.
The enticement worked. Emma departed for Bolivia. There the association gave her a Toyota Land Cruiser and told her that if, in her duties, she was near the Catholic mission, she was welcome to sleep there. Otherwise, she would have to sleep in the car.
Emma didn’t know it at the time, but realized later, “They threw me alone into the middle of the narcotic trafficking area! The missionaries were leaving! They said, ‘It’s too dangerous for us. But you’re young. You have much enthusiasm!’”
Coming from her own sense of utter dedication no matter what, she was thrown into religious conflict. She saw the Church putting a priority of the missionaries’ safety over the needs of the people they were to serve. Making a clear distinction between religion and spirituality, Emma found that the actions of the Church didn’t deter her spirituality or her mission to help others.
In the midst of the active presences of narcotic traffickers, the Bolivian army and police and the U.S. DEA, she began to explore the villages on the borders of the jungle to see where she could assist them. There she met the coca growers.
They said, “You must visit us where we live.”
Emma came back with, “This is the end of the world! Beyond there is just jungle!”
They assured her, “Farther than the monkeys and the snakes, we live. And here we have our crops of coca.”
Venturing into those thick, humid places was, for Emma, like Dr. Schweitzer arriving in Africa in 1913. They moved through the density via canoes and cut swathes in the compact vegetation with machetes. There was no running water or electricity in the villages, but plenty of jaguars surrounding them. The farmers told her they needed her help.
Emma decided she had found her place.
She had been writing a book, Walk in the Sun. She told them, “If I can get my book published and get some money from that, I will come back and help you.”
With the help of family and friends she was able to get her book published in Italy. Miraculously, it seemed, within three months’ time she had collected $30,000 through book sales by promoting it in groups and colleges. She let potential readers know that she was raising funds to build a small medical clinic in the jungles of Bolivia for people in much need of aid.
Emma returned to the jungle and began to build her clinic. She continued going from village to village supporting the women and attending the people’s medical needs.
She noticed that when she would visit them in their homes or where they gathered, they would often have a pile of coca leaves in a conspicuous place. The Indians continually kept a little wad in their cheeks, their saliva drawing out the juice, which they then swallowed. Emma noticed that they would perform a ritual before inserting the leaves. The chewing of coca leaves seemed to be a communal practice.
Emma was curious, but held back. “That would be like me going into someone’s house and helping myself to a cup of coffee. So, I waited.”
One day her waiting was over. As she was sitting with the villagers one day, one of them said, “You want chajchado?” He gestured toward the pile of coca leaves on the table, inviting her to partake of the ritual practice.
From that point, Emma knew she was accepted into the community. She started chewing coca like a native, and began to notice its effects on her ability to sustain energy for long durations. Using her scientific background, she conducted simple experiments on herself relative to its nutritional benefits. She found that when she didn’t practice chajchado she would tire more easily and require food more frequently. Indeed, some years later through clinical research undertaken by a Peruvian scientist, she was able to validate the enormous amount of nutrients in that simple plant.
But even back then, she began to have a firm conviction related to the paramount importance of the coca leaf to the Indians’ health as well as spiritual tradition. Referring to the factions surrounding them, she told the growers, “If they destroy coca, they will destroy you because of the petrol underground. You will become militarized!”
With this statement, Emma made the unwitting foray into the political aspects of this natural substance. When the Bolivian police and U.S. DEA agents came through the growers’ villages, they would demand, “Who is this woman? She is a gringa?”
The villagers would tell them, “No, she is not a gringa. She is our campaniera, our friend.” The Indians protected her, but some of them were bribed.
Emma felt the undercurrents that told her something was wrong. It became a common occurrence that when she would pass through the checkpoint, returning from the jungle, sometimes very late at night, the police would harass her. They would try to provoke a conflict with her. Sometimes they succeeded.
In early August 1994, she returned to a village where she sometimes stayed briefly to obtain supplies before returning to the jungle. She was awakened early in the morning by a sharp knock on the door of her hut. Emma opened the door to an army of twenty policemen and agents!
“Are you Emma Cucchi?”
“Yes.”
“You are accused of terrorism. Come with us.”
Shocked, Emma complied and was taken to a compound where her jailers kept her overnight. There she endured an all-night beating with sticks. She was thrown repeatedly on the floor. The following day she was taken to the political police in La Paz where she was kept for three days. There she was accused of all manner of terrorist acts. She was told she supplied $50,000 worth of arms to the coca growers in order for them to rise up against the Bolivian government. She was charged with being part of a terrorist group.
Ultimately, she was found to be interfering with Bolivia’s political issues and deported to Italy where her passport was revoked. She was entered into immigration databases as a persona non grata and is still barred to this day from entering Bolivia and the United States.
There was no proof of any of the accusations, but her enemies had done a good job of perpetuating the falsehoods. Reporters grabbed hold of the news and the story of the “Italian terrorist doctor” and Emma’s face was widely splashed and trashed across journalistic media.
When she spoke of the effects, she did so with great sadness and hurt, “It caused such problems for my family, even now after all these years. People turn away on the street.”
Perhaps even most appalling and disheartening is the fact that the associations, for whom Emma had selflessly worked so diligently, disappeared. These were people who certainly should have known better given her long record of dedication. But they wanted nothing to do with her or the publicity.
There was only one public figure who sustained her — the Archbishop of Milan. He commiserated with her and encouraged her. He claimed, in essence, that she must return to the fire. If she were no longer able to go to Bolivia, then she would gain ground somewhere else.
The Archbishop knew of a couple of Spanish Dominican friars who were working with coca growers in Peru. After allowing Emma some time to get over her shell shock, he communicated with the friars and said, “Take her.” The friars, in turn, contacted Emma and worked the bureaucratic system to obtain the permits needed for her to join them and continue her work in some way. She arrived in Peru in October 1995. By January 1999, she had found solid footing and, with the support of the friars, created the foundation now called K’uychiwasi Qosqo.
Emma smiled, “This is the only place I haven’t chosen myself.”
She paused seeming to reflect for a moment and continued, “And this is the place I am doing more. Sometimes you get your life together, not where you want to, but where you must go. The energy of life goes toward the place it must go.”
She took a deep breath and exhaled, “Sometimes you resist. Sometimes I want to be in Bolivia, not in Peru. But I have to ask why I wasn’t killed there.”
There’s an obvious answer — pure intent and the Divinity that protects those who hold it. Emma’s fuller work is now just evolving.
The Relentless Path
In the typical sense, Emma’s path is not for everyone. But in another sense, perhaps it is. She followed her pure intent of service to others. In doing so, she had experiences that were extraordinary in their joy and their pain. She also had the more usual and mundane times we all pass in living from one day to the next. All of these occurrences took her on a venture inward to discover her Core Self. That is one way for intent to manifest its wider nature.
Another way is to start with the cleaning of the self. By focusing on cleansing away any caking or spattering of mud that may seek to obliterate that Core Self, the intent of an authentic life can also be manifested. Just so, it can take us from a focus toward Core Self that then can emanate real consciousness to others.
We were making our way slowly along the narrow shelf that passed for a trail on the mountainside where the Pisaq ruins were located. It was the group’s fourth day in Peru. I was near the front, following closely behind Don Américo.
Before he even turned around to see with his normal vision, he called out a warning in Spanish to his son Gáyle, who was bringing up the rear, “The white one has an attraction for the abyss!”
At that point, I swiveled around. My eyes swept the staggered line of individuals I had brought down to Peru to experience Andean mysticism, the land and Her people. My gaze stopped in amazement on Audrey, identified in Don Américo’s call to Gáyle by her completely white hair. Here was a woman with whom I had engaged on a continual basis in the last year. She was one who, through unrelenting commitment, had undergone incredible shifts of consciousness in a very short time. Based upon the overwhelming courage she exhibited of facing whatever emerged in our work together, the woman I now saw was unknown to me.
Even from my viewpoint, I could discern her quaking fear. She was the last in line, except for Gáyle who seemed to be guarding her. Almost hugging the mountainside, she crab-walked, inches at a time, her body rigid, her face agitated.
As it turned out, Audrey had a phobia of heights. Had she mentioned this fact to me over the past year, we could have released it easily. But, she later told me, she thought the issue irrelevant. I know the effect that phobias can have since I had one of heights earlier in my own life. I recalled the paralyzing state of affairs I used to endure on the rare occasion I was in a high place free of solid walls. Remembering the way my knees used to turn watery while waves of anxiety rushed through me, my heart went out to her.
If a fear of this nature were going to emerge in anyone, Pisaq would be a place for it to do so. The trail started out much wider and it’s easy enough to be distracted from its narrowing by the fascinating beauty of this sacred place, or the sweet little native girls posing for photos with their lambs. Suddenly rounding a bend, for a long stretch the path ranged solely about two to three feet wide, and the altitude and great drop were apparent. I know it had my attention. On the other hand, the children, who were well used to the conditions, played and ran along like young mountain goats in their flimsy sandals or bare feet.
Knowing that she was in Gáyle’s excellent hands and also seeing the person in front of her stopping to hold out a hand for Audrey to grasp for security, I turned around and continued to follow Don Américo’s lead. Periodically we stopped and waited until all caught up.
Once Don Américo directed us to climb up a large rock outcropping on the outer side of the trail. Being first up, I looked at him in askance. There seemed to be no apparent footing to follow or easy way to hoist myself up. I couldn’t see any real reason at the time to take this little detour either. He merely continued to urge me on with his gesture. So I complied, finally finding my way up a ledge and around to the top. The others followed, Audrey included, albeit slowly and taking hands proffered in help. When everyone was settled, we did a short meditation. In that time, a group of tourists passed on the trail below us. Presently, Don Américo indicated that we should return to the trail.
The trip off the outcropping was perhaps even more interesting than the climb up. As sometimes happens, the descent looked much steeper than the ascent to get there. After I was on even ground myself, I watched for Audrey. She came into my view after rounding a large rock, talking to herself the whole way.
“Let’s see. This foot goes here. And now this foot goes there. There we go! OK. Put that hand there. Now what? Yes. Let me sit down and I can slide from here. No, it’s OK. I can do this.”
And she plopped down to stand with those of us waiting, receiving cheers of encouragement and pats on the back. Whether Don Américo really had us take that side trip to avoid tourists or to push us all some more, I don’t know. He is often prone to the latter. I do know that I now saw quite an adjustment in Audrey’s demeanor. Her countenance had a sense of fearlessness to it, her stature straighter and taller.
As we all congratulated her, she said, “What else was I going to do? I certainly wasn’t going to turn around. All I could do was go forward! And everyone was so supportive.”
Don Américo proclaimed her a warrior of the spirit and we continued on our walking journey around Pisaq. By the time we had returned to where we left our driver, and during the rest of our time in Peru together, Audrey accepted helping hands periodically just as the others sometimes did. But mostly she traversed wide and narrow paths on her own, even finding the ability to look out over the valleys of high places.
Much later as I was considering stories to include in this particular chapter, I asked her permission to write of her radical revolution from panic to tranquility. Outside the therapeutic environment, it’s a rare occurrence for me to witness someone undergo such a transformation in a matter of a couple of hours. To me, the basis came from strong intent, actually not unlike what she had exhibited during our previous work together.
“Did it really seem that profound?” she asked me.
After I assured her that it did, she elaborated, “It certainly did on the inside. And it’s still with me. As I’m going out in the world, they expect certain things of me.” Audrey had recently taken a job after being retired for some time. “I just say to myself, put one foot in front of the other. That’s what I can do.”
One of the great validations she brought up repeatedly when talking about her experience was the real understanding about being in the present moment, and how fear was mostly an anticipation of something that hadn’t and likely wouldn’t happen.
“I said to myself, ‘I’m here right now. Putting this foot here. Now, what is it everyone is looking at? Oh! The beauty of the valley is incredible!’ Worrying about falling, I had missed a lot of that.”
That’s exactly right. Worry paralyzes the body and the mind, taking us out of the real experience to be had. If we succumb to worry, we project a future that doesn’t even exist. These were real words of wisdom from a woman who assuredly realized the power that intent has to move us beyond obstacles into living an unencumbered life.
Things happened perfectly. If Audrey and I had collaborated in my office to release her phobia, not only would we all have lost the opportunity to witness such a spectacular example of self-healing, but Audrey herself would have been deprived of the dramatic confirmation of her own abilities. Equally important to her was the group support.
“I know I’m not alone,” she said some time later as she reflected back on our collective time. “We all had things to deal with, but we gave loving support to each other.”
We aren’t alone. Intent is there. If we carry that, natural Divine forces will provide to us what upholds it.
Audrey added one last thought, “I was continually buying all these self-help books. I guess I was looking for the magic sentence that was going to do it all for me rather than doing my own work. What I realize is that is the author’s experience, but not mine. I’m going to take all those self-help books down to the used bookstore!”
The Ambient Effect
We are born with intent. We all have our own relationships and discoveries related to it based on what we are to learn. One way is not better than another way. The activation of intent in our lives is perfect for our own deeper purposes of awakening.
Some people, like Emma, know from early on what fuels their inner soul and move with undeniable faith toward what will fulfill it. Others of us have sporadic glimpses, but may be focused on too small a vessel, already overfilled, to recognize the signals. This would be analogous to the Zen master pouring tea for his disciple. The master pours and pours until tea is running over the brim of the cup and onto the floor. When the disciple protests, the master says, “I cannot tell you anything. Your cup is already too full.” So it is for many of us and we bloom later, when we have finally heard the master called Intent and empty our cups.
Living through intent doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a smooth road. Part of intent is moving through any intention that exists. Mostly it’s about adhering to a process that teaches us to walk upright. First, we’re lying on our backs waving our feet in the air. Then, something calls us to turn over and scoot or crawl. We eventually put our hands on a support and pull ourselves up. Finally, we make those faltering and then smoother steps on our own. Ultimately, we find we can climb mountains.
It doesn’t mean we don’t have doubts or fears. Emma and Audrey are the people they are expressly because they’ve engaged the inner courage and love to meet and move through any disillusionment, doubt or regret. People who are clear at a certain level — even if what is swirling around them is unclear, unseen or illusional — have the ability to see through the mist to the point where the direction becomes apparent.
During a later leg of the same Peru journey with Audrey, I was walking once again immediately behind Don Américo on a high trail. Dusk was quickly fading and night was near. We had been meditating further up the mountain and were now headed back to our quarters. We were strung for some distance along the uneven, rocky path, little groupings or an individual here and there. I was watching the ground in front of me so as not to slip and fall. I glanced up and saw the back of Don Américo a few feet in front of me as he continued his lead.
Suddenly, I had the most bizarre, unnerving experience. I saw his eyes gazing at me through the back of his head! Thinking I was crazy, I quickly looked down at the ground again and then stole another look. His gaze was still there! I willed my eyes to remain in that position. I had some sense of an image of his full face emerging as well, as his attention moved beyond me and swept the rest of the group. When I told him of my observation later, he just giggled and elaborated no further.
When intent is resolute, it engenders a certain kind of awareness beyond the five senses. It directs a consciousness that allows all-pervading vision, touch without presence, smell of the beyond and sound of creation. Thus, undeniable guidance is always given.
The Tasking
Set your intent and let it go. Your intent is your beginning. Worrying about the details detracts from the intent. In your strong intent, the attraction will take care of the details.
The first aspect of beginning is assessing yourself and taking responsibility for your own course, where it has taken you and where you are now. That responsibility will determine your future — the one that exists through the vibration you now exude.
This is the Separation and then the Search. It isn’t really a search as much as it is a surrendering to intent. The giving over is to intent. Then intent takes the lead and brings you what will take you further. It will take you further to recognize your Core Self, the Self that had been hidden from you previously, but the one that had been there all along.
Sometimes the realization comes through sitting still — through patience and listening. It’s not listening to what has been habit, but listening to the quieter place and the guidance there.
Sometimes the realization comes through an action, but only an action made from clarity, from impeccability. Otherwise, it’s an action taken from habit. Then the action will merely tell you something about your habit.
An action arising from the deeper place will have a solid knowing and urging about it. It’s a bodily felt energy that envelops you in knowing. It’s not a feeling of desperation accompanied by inappropriate or castigating internal voices. That’s the dialogue through which the actions of habit are fulfilled.
Actions of impeccability move you along the warrior’s path of utter surrender to the destiny of knowing and not knowing. It is the knowing of the Core Self in all aspects, in all human tendencies, in all that is resident of Source. It is the not knowing of the profound comfort of the Infinite.
It is the mind overtaken by Spirit.
It is the mind having willingly succumbed to the wider wisdom dwelling within and without.
And you have to leave the place of previous comfort and familiarity in order to uncover it.
All events described in this book are true. Some of the names have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.
I will publish chapters every few days until complete. Find links in the Table of Contents below.
Table of Contents
Chapter Three: The Inner Point
Chapter Four: Intentful Existence
Chapter Five: Connecting With the Cosmos
Chapter Seven: The Space of No Need
Chapter Eight: Conflicts on the Path
Chapter Nine: The Edge of Limitation
Chapter Ten: Asking the Answer
Chapter Eleven: Living With Contrast
Chapter Thirteen: Unconditional Being
Standing Stark: The Willingness to Engage
Copyright 2004 by Carla Woody. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be directed to: Kenosis Press, P.O. Box 10441, Prescott, AZ 86304, info@kenosis.net.
