THE SACRED FOREST OF THE AMAZON WATERS

The "MISMI" is the sacred mountain that forms the sacred waters that at its last point of its journey meet the Amazon River. The mountain peak is at  5,597 m (18,363 ft) above the sea level. It is located in the Chila Mountain Range in the Andes of Peru. A glacial stream from the Mismi form the Lake Ticlla Cocha at the base of the mountain  and from there forms the Apurimac River making it the longest upstream extension of the Amazon River, the world's largest river -by volume- which its current length is 4000 miles (6,437 kms).
The Chila Mountain Range lies in the Arequipa Region in the Andes. The range is located in the provinces of Castilla and Caylloma. It traverses the province of Castilla from east to west.
In 1542, friar Gaspar de Carbajal recorded the way he and his shipmates reacted with fascination to the narratives that the People of the Amazon Forest spoke about powerful creatures, mythical snakes, ogres, defenders of the forest, beautiful female spirits, and handsome males, capable of transformation walked the path-ways and populated the river creating a sense of awe, and also fear.
More than 800 groups of people with different ethnicity and speaking different languages, such as the Arawak, Carib, and Tupian, once lived in this Forest.  It is an old green land that has been inhabited for between 40,000 and 60,000 years.
Research  done among the priests (shamans) of the Amazon Forest shows a particular way of doing the ritual of crossing-over towards the three realms known as "pachas." It is a ritual used to get advice over matters concerning the community to the presence of divine powers and spirits in charge in order to continue the balance needed for the harmonized peace between them and the universe. Non-visual senses increases their power and the is done in a form of a vision or hallucinations. It uses different vibrations that translate into each other. It is like moving into the interior of images, and the images move into you, like dreaming and reading at the same time.
Amazonian cultures are known for its complex philosophy. It shows the notion that the world is inhabited by different sort of entities, humans and non-humans which grasp reality from distinct points of view. The shamans experience moments when the boundary between this world and other realities cracks and they are able to see animals, birds, and trees, in their true human form. Power and fear is felt at the same time. Transformation and shape-shifting, rather than fixity, are the basic premises of this type of experience. What it conveys is the clear understanding of how the world came to be. Through a series of transformations from the non visual reality to the one in which the current boundaries became established is the ideology they applied in order to comprehend the language of the supernatural world.
In today's world, boundaries have become barriers and Nature merely an object to be exploited for economic gain rather than human progress, losing the connection that brings the understanding of the laws governing everything.
Shamanic experience is still alive in the Amazonas River. Even us which are not connected to the Natural world daily, we perceive the crossing of realities in a very different way. Redness in our faces, vomiting sensations, nervous breakdown, all of them are symptoms, but if we do not progress in the understanding of our inner perspective of the world in which we live in, then healing our sickness will result in a constant defeat to our own nature.
The laws of our natural world is unknown to us, but not to the ones who live in the Amazon Forest. The world of spirits, animals, souls, and humans will continue its way and only a few will understand the force that binds all together,
The Amazon region is the habitat of the greatest number of plant and animals in the world. It is a vast territory almost the size of the continental United States. Situated in the equatorial region of the planet, the Amazon River basin covers several countries. The territory is shared by Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador Colombia and Venezuela.

INCAN VIEW ABOUT ATTACHMENT and LOVE

All the people in the Andes had a clear view about ATTACHMENT and LOVE. The observed all the magnificence of nature and noticed that even the insects were in pursue of two important ingredients,  peace and joy.
In order to reach a level on enjoyment in their every day life, they understood the statutes and rules of Nature, and grasp the understanding of these laws to build a kind and compassionate heart towards all the entities around them. Nature was simple and clear to them, and at the same time the best teacher that they ever had.
They modeled their way of life in tune with these laws and the material things such as owning lands or possession of treasures for self purpose had an empty value in their minds. They believed in the afterlife and developed a deep understanding of the spirit dimension. The real treasure was to earn enough power  through their actions in order to achieve dominion over all the entities around them in a very harmonious way.
The people of the Andes avoided the consequences caused by desire and attachment. Everyone exercised Love and Compassion, but on some of them was great and in others it was small. They observed the flesh eating animals and saw that even them never would eat its own cub.
So, for them desire and hatred were two powerful entities. The bridge connecting them was ATTACHMENT. Without it no one would generate anger, so they believed that the roof of anger was desire. Anger and Attachment produced negative energies and were very easy to obtain. The power in them was to eliminate the Attachment over things that involved the desire of the flesh to gain control over suffering. Mental attitude played a very important role in the process of elimination, creating an emptiness from the things belonging to the flesh and interdependence in terms of one another in the spiritual terms. For them it was clear the understanding of how a thing exist and at the same time how it appears to exist in the physical world. You couldn't have one without the other.
Attachment to the the things of the flesh and Love were totally opposite. Attachment was selfish and love was unselfish. If the marriage of energies coming from the sacred places were in nature from attachment to them, then punishment were expected, and the source of power broken, because attachment was understood as a temporary boundary. But, if the marriage of energies were in nature from a sincere love to Nature and that pure power was the one able to move mountains of obstacles then the power would last as long as harmony was maintained.
Unfortunately, when the Spanish invasion occurred, the empire was divided between two forces, one controlled by Huascar and the other by Atahualpa. Assassination of Huascar came from the hand of his own brother, Atahualpa. The whole empire was in a great turmoil, and the power that they maintained once broke after the assassination of Atahualpa from the hands of the Spanish invaders.

ANCIENT PERUVIANS and the WORLD.

Few people in the world realize how much they owe to the ancient people of the Andes. They gave to the world the many varieties of potatoes and corn. Their knowledge of agriculture has never been surpassed. The fine textiles and the beautiful pottery equaled the best that Egypt could offer.
The Incas governed their millions of subjects with firmness and justice under a benevolent system that allowed no one to be hungry or cold.
They had no written language, not even hieroglyphics. What we know about them has had to depend on what they left, aided by the chronicles of the sixteenth century, most written looking upon through european eyes in terms of their history and politics.
This civilization found a perfect way of living in one of the most inaccessible parts of the Andes cordillera, the region lying between the Apu-rimac River and the Uru-bamba River. Two important affluents of the mighty Amazon River. Here they shared their habitat with mighty precipices, passes three miles high, granite canyons more than a mile in depth, glaciers and tropical jungles, as well as with very dangerous rapids.
In spite of these geographical challenges, they were able to build fortresses on top of very high mountains. The religious and military headquarters were placed there. The acclimatization of their bodies were obtained through a very powerful diet using their own agricultural resources.
The royal city of Vilcabamba is one of the great mysteries of the Inca's Empire. Hidden in the mountains is the last great city silently waiting to be found.
Shortly after the invasion of Cuzco, Peru, in 1533, Pizarro placed a young Inca nobleman, on the throne. In 1537, Manco Inca rebelled and fled into the myterious and remote regions of Vilcabamba.
Around 1553, Manco Inca installed his kingdom protected by the mountain of Vilcabamba.  After Manco Inca, Sayro Tupac Amaru, and Tupac Tito Cusi resisted the rebellion until 1572.
The Vilcabamba area, and the Spirit Pampa is believed to have been the long-sought "last refuge" of the noble Inca. The royal city was completely lost from the sight of the invaders. It was protected by the remnant of the Empire as a sacred shrine hidden on top of great precipices in a canyon where the secret of its existence was and still is safely buried under the shadow of Machu Picchu Sacred Mountain.
The marvel of this place holds a special beauty in the sublimity of its surroundings. There is nothing in the world that can compare to the character and the mystery of its beauty.

The "SPIRIT" of the "LAND" has a life of its own.

Legendary explorer Christopher Columbus believed that Nature had a power on its own. He wanted to know its secrets and that feeling was the strong force that moved him to spend his whole life sailing in pursuit to discover "a new land." He was a saintly mystic of deep piety with an enigmatic character.
He wrote: "I went to sail over the seas from the most tender age and have continued in a sea life to this day. Whoever gives himself up to this art wants to know the Secrets of Nature here below in this world. I have more than Forty Years that I have been thus engaged. Wherever anyone has sailed, there I have sailed... then ... I ought to be judge as a Captain sent from Spain to the Indies, ... a New World to be found ... a nation with numerous people, with customs and religion all together but very different to ours."
Without forgetting the economic and political motives resulting in the transoceanic expeditions of 15th century Spain, the quality of the encounter of both the Old and the New World was a disastrous event.
The settlers took their arrival in 1492 as TIME ZERO and superimposed their European economy on their own terms without suspecting that in the end this assault to the Laws of Nature, in the future, will result in a catastrophic ecological imbalance.
The Americas were already a land populated by people happily living in harmony with the Laws of Nature. For them to become wise required a personal transformation. The knower and the known became linked in an irreversible way and changed a fundamental way of process information. With this learning process it was possible to know the names, structures and chemical composition of all forms of life residing with them in the same landscape.
Europeans nobles who were the first to come to the New World to settle were educated with sedentary authoritarian social order with relatively autonomous individual man made laws.
Individual land ownership with fixed boundaries replaced flexible communal governance of shifting and seasonal patterns of land use. Exotic agricultural products replace local productivity. Fenced-in imported livestock replaced free-roaming animal life. Linear growth of production and exports replaced the sustainable seasonal round of resource use. Gross National Product replaced ecological sustainability. The Swiss Bank account replaced neighborly sharing, bartering and hospitality. Man made medicine replaced the power of natural healing medicine grown around the landscape in which the natural man set his habitat. Singing inside a shower with perfumed soap replaced praying sessions for hours in a sweat lodge with herbal cleansing made of sage and sweet grass. Global reality now seen in television replaced the natural touch experienced before with the interrelation between man and its landscape.
Knowledge now is seen as something that can be purchased and accumulated by almost anyone if they have the resources to acquire it. But this type of learning process lack its spiritual and emotional facts that are described as tacit, empathic or analog knowledge, and it can only be learnt through non- verbally direct experience using all of our senses: the whole of our being.
Our brains do not accumulate information in a digital form, but rather by growing new synapses. Since the wiring of the brain grows more dense and complex until we are quite old, the learning process is mainly by forming more associations, and co-processing more sensory inputs. Although language and mathematics are powerful tools for modeling the world around us, our ability to think consciously in words and symbols is only a small part of our processing capacity.
The fact that RELIGION was and it is still been in the service of life to the whole natural people of the Americas make them a better source of knowledge about everything. They still seek a better aligment to the cosmos so that the world might continue. In contrast to this reality is the fact that we live in an age and culture that does not grant equal weight to human responsibilities, neglecting our obligations to the Laws of Nature. Our religion separates us from the land, which enable us to pray for ourselves while at the same time we decline our responsibility for the care of the earth that actually feed us. Our potential threat is the assumption that the resources of Nature are endlessly and expansive.
Where do we go from here? Is the Spirit of Nature a commodity belonging to us or slave to us or it is an entity possessing its own life in which we are a very small part of its community?
More than five hundred years have passed since the first european settlers arrived to the Americas. The effect is being proved by the severity of the climatic chaos. The land of the Americas survived catastrophic events but the lives of its inhabitants was preserved for thousands and thousands of years because everyone found its place in the harmony demanded by the Laws of Nature. Still the remnant of these people maintain their ceremonies that symbolizes LIFE as a SPIRIT that makes its journey in which there is a mystery beyond every door. The outside world can see it but they remain blind but in time they may come to understand that the SPIRIT of the LAND has a LIFE of its own.

The sacredness of the URUBAMBA River.

The INCAS found a perfect way of living in one of the most inaccessible parts of the Andes, in Peru, the REGION lying BETWEEN the APURIMAC River and the URUBAMBA River.
The REGION was considered the heartland of the Inca Empire. It comprises the departments of Cuzco, Puno and Apurimac, bordered by the highlands and Amazon on the North and West; and by Bolivia and the Amazon on the South and East.
URUBAMBA rises in the Andes Mountains to the southeast of Cuzco. It originates in the Mountain Khunurana in the Puno Region, Melgar Province, near La Raya pass. The River's upstream change the name to its Aymara name VILCANOTA, which means "House of the Sun." It is called Vilcanota in the area where it comes above the ground (near Puno Region's border).
The section of the River that flows across the Sacred Valley of the Incas (exactly between PISAC and OLLANTAYTAMBO) is called WILLCAMAYU or HUILCAMAYO meaning "Sacred River."
Then it flows North- North-West for 724 kilometers when it is called URUBAMBA in Northern Peru, where it is partially navigable, before coalescing with the Tambo River to form the UCAYALI River.
The Sacred River then meets with the Apurimac and Ucayali Rivers, together with them it forms the mighty AMAZON River.
The REGION was considered the CENTER OF THE INCA UNIVERSE. Here they shared their habitat with mighty precipices, passes three miles high, granite canyons more than a mile in depth, glaciers and tropical jungles, as well as dangerous rapids.
The INCAS had excellent skills in building such stone structures all over the mighty Valley. Heavy granite stones were the primary materials. Extremely hard to cut, even with today's technology.
Why the Incas chose this complex way of building is not known. Certainly with today's eyes and minds  we can observe that the Inca buildings were done to defy time.

VILCABAMBA, one of the great mysteries of the INCAS.

The city of Vilcabamba, hidden in the mountains, is one of the great mysteries of the Inca's Empire. It is the last great city silently waiting to be found in the heart of Peru.
The city was a sacred shrine hidden on top of great precipices in a canyon where the secrecy of its existence was safely buried under the shadow of Machu Picchu mountain.
Shortly after the invasion of Cuzco, in 1533, Pizarro placed a young Inca nobleman, Manco, on the throne. In 1537 Manco rebelled against the Spanish and fled into the mysterious and remote regions of Vilcabamba.
Around 1553, Manco Inca installed a rebellious kingdom about 50 miles away from Cuzco in the Grand Canyon of the Urubamba River, protected by the mountains of Vilcabamba, while the Spaniards invaders had already taken almost the rest of the Empire.
From his hidden refuge Manco and his warriors, estimated to be from 50,000 to 80,000 strong and mountain trained men, launched successful attacks against the invaders' supply routes. Several counter-strikes launched by Pizarro failed to dislodge Manco.
Following Manco's death in 1545, the rebellion continued under Manco's sons : Sayri Tupac,Tito Cusi, and Tupac Amaru. They resisted until 1572, the latter finally being captured near the River Urubamba, taken to Cuzco and executed there.
The Vilcabamba area, and Espiritu Pampa is believed to have been the long-sought "last refuge" of the Sapa Inca, and was never found by the invaders.
Few people realize how much we owe to the ancient Peruvians. They gave to the world the countless varieties of potato, gigantic corns, quinoa, etc. Their knowledge of agriculture has never been surpassed. The fine textiles and the beautiful pottery surpassed the best that Egypt could offer.
The Incas governed their millions of subjects with firmness and justice under a benevolent system that allowed no one to be hungry or cold.
They had no written language, not even hieroglyphics. What we know about them has had to depend on what they left, aided by the oral lore that was pass on from generations to generations.
They found a perfect way of living in one of the most inaccessible parts of the Andes, the region lying between the APURIMAC river and the URUBAMBA river, two important affluents of the AMAZON river. Here they shared their habitat with mighty precipices, passes three miles high, granite canyons more than a mile in depth, glaciers and tropical jungles, as well as with dangerous rapids. In other words they had one of the most wonderful places in the world.

The mysterious PARACAS CULTURE. (from 800 BCE to 100BCE)

PARACAS culture was an andean society between 800 and 100 BCE, with an extensive knowledge of irrigation and water management and a very significant contribution in the textiles arts. The culture was among the earliest settled civilization of the Chincha Valley, one of the longest and most productive regions located on the Pacific Central Coast of Peru, two hundred kilometers South of Lima.
The ancient astronomical-aligned energy sites on Earth were not unfamiliar to the Paracas culture. They possessed a deep discernment and wisdom and sophisticated understanding. Newly discovered geoglyph lines and mounds dated back to 300 BC proves it. Some lines mark the spot where the Sun would have set during the June solstice together with two-U-shaped mounds and a larger platform aligned to it. Other lines appear to mark time or point out to sacred mountains or yet others point to sacred structures. The Paracas Candelabra is known as a reflection of the Southern Cross Constellation.
The fact that Giza is 72 degrees West of Angkor Wat ( location name made up from two sacred Egyptian words Ankh meaning 'to live," and Horus meaning 'far-above-one') and 108 degrees East of Paracas suggest that the ancient world had a very accurate language in measuring the globe. The common purpose was to harness the enormous power of the earth, aligned at the same time, with the power created by the motion of the other planets in our solar system as well as with the central power of the galaxy (Milky Way).
Paracas is also home to the mysterious elongated skulls that were not the result of the practice of head- binding, the process being known as cranial deformation. At least 300 skulls were found at the Colorado Mountain adjacent to the main graveyard (Wari Kayan).
The skulls had cranial volume larger, and in some cases 25 per cent larger than a conventional modern human skull. A theory from the locals says that the society that developed in the area had a very ancient origin. They were a very advanced civilization from old. Their food were basically from the soil. The fact that the food they ate did not consider animals was much better at extending their years on earth.
The excavations on the North side of the Peninsula, in the central area of the large semicircular Bay, the massive and elevated graveyard was found. Each tomb contained an entire family. Each one consisted of a many layers of intricate, ornate, and finely woven textiles in conical-wrapped bundle. The individual inside was in a seated position holding a cord and facing North across the Bay of Paracas. Next to the corpse, offerings such as ceramics, food stuffs, baskets and weapons were placed.
There is evidence that these tombs had a continual use over centuries and the heads of many of the deceased were taken out in order to make them be present to the religious ceremonies, a custom very important to the continuity of the peaceful life. The embroidered cloaks, which are among the finest examples of the art of textile making in the world, shows the high degree of advancement they had in the physical world. The covering garment was and still is the symbolism of the protection to the invisible journey of the soul. The ancestors which in their time of existence were also in pursuit to the highest degree of spiritual development are now seated in high places to let them help the world of the living in their function of maintain the peace and harmony of the forces of Nature.
PARACAS is hot and dry during the day, but cold at night (10*C or 50*F). It almost never rain, but in winter the Paracas' drizzles are common.
PARACAS is a marine reserve, the only one in Peru, and the reason is the quantity of seabirds that stop there in their migration from South to North, and the diversity of sea mammals and fish.
There are many spots in the reserve, and the most famous is the BALLESTAS ISLANDS. It is a group of small islands that shelter an enormous number of sea lions and seals.
The ICA region is famous for its drinks based on fermented grape, excellent wines and the famous PISCO. Pisco is a pure grape brandy used to prepare the national cocktail named "Pisco Sour." The best time to try those drinks is at the Vintage Festivity on March in ICA city.