When Alberto Villoldo brought the Munay-Ki rites, a system of energetic transmissions adapted from the Peruvian shamanic culture, to us Westerners, he found a receptive culture thirsting for soulful ritual. Even people who would ordinarily not buy into something so non-rational as the idea of awakening and weaving energy fields often found themselves emotionally moved and somehow altered by the Munay-Ki rituals.
On the one hand, just being in the peaceful and comforting act of ritual is a refreshing experience for those of us who spend most of our time running on the spinning wheel of progress and productivity. We've lost our connection to quiet, pause, reflection. Even our past-times either keep us on the go with sports or activities, or we collapse into a cushion and watch someone else do something via our electronic window.
So experiencing a ritual that keeps us actively engaged but in a process of reflection rather than projection is not only refreshing, but can reawaken us to aspects of our nature and inner dreams that we forgot or never discovered. The process involved in healing rituals takes us into a quieting, so that our bodies and mind can attune with the natural world. No matter what we may think or believe, when we feel ourselves harmonize with the living cosmos, there is no denying that there is, in fact, something very healing about being in ritual.
However, even beyond the feeling of connection and balance that healing rituals can create, the Munay-Ki Rites are energetic attunements that not only connect us to higher energies, but sow the seeds of those energies within our own subtle system. The first four rites of the Munay-Ki are what Villoldo calls technical rites, because they are about opening pathways and weaving connections that will help us access and use our subtle senses. The final five rites are versions of the rites used to initiate a paq'o (apprentice) through stages of the shamanic path. In these rites, the shaman calls in the energies to which each rite is targeted and the shaman calls in the spirits to help transmit seeds of those energies into the initiate's subtle field. The initiate then must walk a path that will grow those seeds, in order for them to shift our subtle architecture and awaken our intuitive abilities.
Each person's experience is different: some feel big changes right away, others feel little and notice a more general and subtle shift over time. I don't remember anyone, in my experience, though who received the rites and did not have a positive experience or feel a positive change in his or her body or life. Sometimes the change is that a pattern in your life has suddenly shifted. Sometimes you just feel different in your skin. Sometimes, though, if you're subtle senses are awake, you can feel the energy pouring into or through you.
After I received the Star Keeper's rites, I went into a bit of a funk the next day. All day I felt out of place in my own skin. Nothing felt quite right. I went through the whole day of workshops and things gradually intensified, so that by the time I arrived at that evenings ritual, to receive the Creator's rites, I was in pain. Not real physical pain, but a kind of indescribable discomfort. I felt as if every cell in my body was being reshaped -- pushed and stretched-- so that I could not get comfortable, but yet, it needed to happen. By the time I sat down to get my final mesa rites from Alberto, I sat before him in silence as tears slid down my face. As he blessed my mesa with rites, I began to feel calmer inside. I began to feel as if I was getting used to this new shape my insides were taking.
It took awhile for me to feel completely comfortable in my skin again, but I continued to meditate and do the work to nourish the seeds. One day, though, I remember there was a moment when I was opening sacred space, and I suddenly realized that I was "inside" that space. It was like before I had been outside, calling in spirit guides to weave a sacred time/place we could enter. But suddenly, it was like I was already walking in that place, and when I called in the energies, I was standing in the middle. My axis mundi had been opened for good, it seemed. I felt I had woven a full time connection. I was no longer trying to get into the sacred space, but was now umbilically connected to my inner self and the higher consciousness. I no longer had to "do" something to connect, I just had to "be" in this state of connectedness that was now woven inside me.
As I said, each person's experience is different, but my experience has shown me that even in this busy, reason and productivity driven world, we are capable of discovering our subtle nature and access our subtle senses. Click Here To learn more.
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