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| Our group at Sacsayhuaman |
Follow the 12 day Peruvian journey with tour leader, Chris Sopa, as she blogs about her amazing experiences in Peru! Chris’s journey is a custom group tour organized by Sacred Earth Journeys.
We started our day out extremely early after only getting about 4 hours of sleep. Upon arriving at the Cusco airport, we were surprised and thrilled to be greeted by Jorge Luis himself! On the bus ride to our hotel, he already had the entire bus crying tears of joy listening to him discuss the powers of Peru, staying in the present moment and releasing our resistances to becoming our true essence. What is our true essence? Returning to a state of joy in our lives and living from love and not fear. I find this “ironic” because my book, which will be out this summer, is titled “Living the Fearless Life: The Choices of Sustainable Joy.” I guess I’m on to something… lol!
After settling into our rooms and having a nice lunch at the hotel (which is beautiful and owned by Jorge Luis!) we were greeted by our guide and shaman Edgar who will be with us through the Inca Trail. Edgar is an amazingly wise young man with the sweetest energy I have ever seen! We boarded our bus and headed to Sacsayhuaman (or as Donna heard it, “sexy woman,” which is almost exactly how it sounds in Quecha). During our time here, we learned about the amazing stone architecture of the Incas, took a slide down a “stone slide,” and spent some time meditating on our own as we walked with our Quintus to find a place to ask for our intentions to be manifested. A quintu consists of 3 coca leaves together (kind of forming a fan) that you blow your intentions and things you may want to release from your life into. You then find a “power place” to leave your quintu as a thank you and an offering to Mother Earth to manifest your intention.
We then took a powerful, short walk through a symbolic “birth canal” cave. This was a very small, tight spaced’ pitch black cave we had to walk through and make it to the other side. Very symbolic and VERY transformative for 3 people in our group. Donna and Carolyn who are afraid of closed spaces made it through like a champ (Carolyn had the help of a little one named Flora who guided her through the cave holding her hand – “and a child shall lead them”) and Carol who is terrified of the dark. They all stayed in the moment, challenged themselves and DID IT!!! Woo-hoo! Transformation on the first day!!!!
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| Donna exiting her transformative walk through the cave |
Lastly, before we left, we all took a solo ceremonial walk through a very sacred part of Sacsayhuaman that is meant to clear your heavy mental energies. As we were walking, letting our hearts lead the way, a rainbow appeared above us…a very good sign that we are on the right path! :)
We ended our amazing day eating dinner with Jorge Luis and listening to his wise spiritual knowledge and wisdom on SO many things.
Everything you do when you are in Peru is with intention. Everything you do, gratitude follows. And everything you experience is healing. The focus for so many things we are doing here is to expand love, service and wisdom in ourselves and in the world. These things cannot be realized until we love ourselves. In the Aymara tradition, it is believed that the past is in front of you because you can see it and the future is behind you because you cannot see it yet. Loving yourself means loving your past and finding harmony in your future and the relationship in your life…especially the one you have with yourself.
That is what this trip is all about for so many of us: Finding our way back to loving ourselves so we can be the light for so many whose lives we touch…just like the sun shining down on us from the sky. The sun, our cosmic teacher, who by her brilliant warmth and wisdom, shine upon us daily with the hopes that we someday learn to shine within ourselves….as she waits patiently for our return.
Hoping you are letting your own light shine with lots of munay (love),
Chris
