February / March 2005

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The Entrainment Of Intent
— Carla Woody

Just over a decade ago, I flew cross country and landed in a territory that was totally unknown to me— both literally and metaphorically. I was picked up at the airport with a few other people and driven deep into the Southern Utah desert. Along the way, I began to wonder what I’d gotten myself into, even though a part of me was certain about the choice.

When we finally rolled into the makeshift camp, I climbed out of the truck feeling a mixture of excitement and apprehension, the two being closely linked anyway. While in this state, I noticed a brown-skinned man making his way toward me. He had dark, wavy hair, a mustachioed, handsome face, and wore a woven poncho. His eyes sparkled. He smiled broadly and wrapped his arms around me in greeting. As he did so, any fear I felt dissipated immediately and was replaced by great warmth swelling from some place inside me, unlike any I’d ever felt. This was the man the sponsors had advertised as a shaman, the person who, in the years ahead, I would come to know not only as a mystic and teacher of the heart, but a cherished friend—Don Américo Yábar. My meeting him was to change the fabric of my entire life. [Excerpted from Standing Stark by Carla Woody, 2004, Kenosis Press.] the entrainment of intent — Carla Woody

The next day our group of about thirty was seated in a natural rock amphitheatre listening to Don Américo share teachings from his native Andes, through his translator. Suddenly, he looked directly at me and motioned for me to come to him. I came to stand about a foot in front of him. His eyes locked onto mine, not letting me go.

“The way to see is with the body’s eye,” he made a movement just outside the center of my chest, my heart center. And not the mind’s eye!” he proclaimed, making a swiping motion across my forehead.

I received then what I had unknowingly requested from a part of myself that I was little in touch with at the time. What I’m assured of now is that Don Américo saw, through my subtle energy field, that intellect ruled my life, creating flatness with little joy. I had a deep spiritual yearning that was unfulfilled.

There were bodily felt sensations that accompanied his work with me, the opening of my heart and loosening the hold of my mind, having the outward effect of softening my face and relaxing my body, which the others witnessed in astonishment. More important, the reverberations of that shift continue to impact my life, creating a richness I hadn’t known possible.

Over the years, I’ve maintained a commitment in experiential study of Andean mysticism, particularly through Don Américo. While there are a number of well-known teachers in Peru, there are some key differences in his approach, that of salk’a or undomesticated energy.

PURE INTENT In the Andes, there is a way of speaking about life—the right side and left side. The right side is anything cultural, hierarchical, or analytical. It’s any technique or ritual, any construct of the mind or ego. It’s referred to as domesticated energy and where most of us put our attention— ordinary reality and everyday living.

The left side is common to everyone, but most forget it’s there. In the Andes, they characterize it as salk’a. It’s what the Taoists identify as the original face and I call the Core Self. This vessel of undomesticated energy is like that of the puma or jaguar, which in the tradition of the Andes symbolizes the Kaypacha—the middle world where we all need to learn to walk well. Here in the realm of non-ordinary reality, with all its normal and paranormal manifestations, resides pure intent.

Intent isn’t a new concept to our Western ears. Some people call it “intention.” As I have wrestled to understand this notion that isn’t of the mind, but an action of the heart, I’ve come to know it through the lens of Andean mysticism where everything is energy, and I made a further discernment.

Intent is. Intention tries. Intent is a pure, light energy having a distilled, laser-like quality. Intention speaks to degrees of limitation and has heavy energy, or hucha, as the Quechua Indians would say. When one becomes attuned to subtle energy in this way, it’s merely an act of seeing or feeling to note where you are or someone else is, at any given point, in any environment. If there’s clearing to be done, then the refinement process can be undertaken through various healing modalities, until only intent exists. Intent is injected from the Core Self into the right side to lead a more authentic, fruitful life.

A Q’Ero Indian Despacho Ceremony for the Group. The Q’Ero Indians had a vision before the conquistadors invaded Cusco, And they moved upland where their descendants were found 400 Years later by a Peruvian anthropologist in the 1950S. They still rarely mix with outsiders.

Since I have been actively introducing the reality of intent and awareness of subtle energy levels to others, at the beginning I ask them to set their intent. Most are confused about exactly what this is personally. But a part of them does know, just as I did when I chose to engage with Don Américo for the very first time. People self-select for this endeavor.

Letting them know that I hold a strong intent for the work we are to do is also a key ingredient. An entrainment process begins. As they have the desire and I also hold the container of probability, something happens for them at an unconscious, even metaphysical level. The transformational process can be so subtle that it may seem magical, causing them to wonder how it happened.

When the collective desire of a number of people joins with the strong intent of a leader, it has significant implication. In the groups I sponsor to Peru to work with Don Américo and others, there is consistent evidence for the power of focusing on the left side to create healing. It includes the salk’a nature of the land, too. In little time, participants begin to experience release in various ways. Many break wide open. Some gain a deep peace and joy for the very first time in their lives. This happens when it seems to outward appearances as though we’re not doing much, maybe meditating, sitting against the earth, or taking part in a ritual. But everything is occurring—unseen to everyday eyes.

These are also the kinds of happenings that have become normal to me while in Peru and with other work. However, three separate events in June showed me the magnitude of what is possible by purifying energy levels and living through intent.

TALE ONE: NO PAIN We had traveled down the Alto Madre de Dios, a tributary of the Amazon. Our boat pushed up on the small sandy beach, the jungle rising sensuously all around us. We all clambered ashore. Our destination was a large stone outcropping near where we would perform a meditation to connect with the elementals.

I made my way toward the rocks as the others did. But I wasn’t paying attention. The place I chose to begin my ascent was slippery. One foot flew out from under me. I went down hard. Bam! I landed on the large stone—full force—on my front teeth, my legs below me in the water. Others rushed to help me. I remained seated at the bottom to do my meditation while the others resumed their climb a short distance away.

Logic said to me, “Better to rest here.” But strangely enough, while I was certainly a bit rattled from the fall, I had no pain. Again, my logical mind said, “You must be in shock.”

But pain never came in the ensuing hours or days. Even upon returning to our lodge and seeing the hairline crack and abrasions on my teeth, the cut on my shin and huge bruise ranging from ankle to knee, my body bespoke no stress, just the documentation of my lack of focus.

TALE TWO: NO ALLERGY We have wonderful meals prepared for us when we are at Salk’awasi, the House of Undomesticated Energy, Don Américo’s ancestral home in the Andes. Our Mollamarka Indian cook sprinkles love into the ingredients of the traditional dishes he makes over the fire of the adobe oven. One evening we had a tasty meal of boiled potatoes and eggs with ahi, a chili sauce that could have rivaled the creation of any famed chef of nouvelle cuisine, in my estimation. We were all commenting vigorously on the effect to our palates and added it to our list of recipes for soups, vegetable tortillas, grilled fish, yucca.

A few days later we hiked up the steep hill to Mollamarka, with children and other villagers as our escorts, to await the transportation that would take us elsewhere on our journey. As we waited, saying our last farewells, several of us gathered around our cook asking him about a recipe for the ahi that we all found so delicious. As he recounted the ingre-dients in Spanish, I saw one of the women of the group suddenly look incredulous and say something like, “That can’t be!” But sure enough, one of the ingredients was ground peanuts. During the beginning of our trip, I’d heard her carefully questioning ingredients of certain of the foods, which she then avoided because of her history of severe toxic reaction to peanuts. And yet this time, the response didn’t occur.

TALE THREE: FACING THIEVES I was sitting in an Internet café in Cusco (the oldest continuously inhabited city in the Western Hemisphere). It was the time of Inti Raymi, the festival of the sun, which transformed the usually placid former Incan Empire capital, with masses of revelers, huge numbers coming from other loca-tions. We had been repeatedly warned that many pickpockets came from Lima to take advantage of the crowds. Consequently, I was very much aware of this fact, and carefully sat on my coat with my passport and money in an inside zipped pocket while I focused on webmail, neglected for several days.

I had been at it for some time with people at computers on either side of me coming and going without any real attention on my part. But then I sensed something, noticing only the color green in my peripheral vision, and went back to my e-mails. Then again, slight movement out of the corner of my eye. I glanced down. The coat was hanging open, the inner pocket unzipped and my passport and money gone!

Without any conscious thought and literally seeing nothing to go after, I was out of my seat and onto the thronged sidewalk in a split second. Instead of raising a cry with no information to relay, something caused me to turn immediately into the small travel agency next to the Internet café. My hands had a life of their own and clamped onto the arms of two men standing just inside the agency, waiting in line. In an authoritative, loud voice I stated, “My money and my passport! My money and my passport!”

They faced me then with shocked looks, as I continued to make the same demand. Both struggled in my grasp, as the travel agents and other customers in the office began to get up from their seats. My hands had become pincers of steel, but the two men managed to turn me toward the entrance in their efforts to be free. One finally managed to duck out the door saying something to the other one who slipped out of his jacket, leaving it in my hand. Dropping it, I started to follow the pair, but heard a woman’s voice saying, “Are these yours?” She was holding my passport and money pouch. In her other hand was the green jacket. I thanked her, as well as others who had risen to aid me, and returned calmly to the café, resuming my correspondence. That night I had a dream. Someone gave me a puma (jaguar, mountain lion).

UNCONSCIOUS INTENT There were no traditional interventions to account for the lack of physical reactions in the first two stories above. In the third story, I was no longer in the group energy because our time was over. I had stayed over to do my own travels.

What explanation do I have for these unlikely occurrences? My logical mind and its constructs are certainly confused because it doesn’t own the truth here. The transmission came through the left side from the Core Self, which is salk’a, to manifest in the everyday life of the right side. It’s the undomesticated energy we all hold that’s ever ready to serve.

Because of these events, I have a new certainty regarding intent. If the body experiences injury, it is possible to forego feeling pain. Or through a pure energy state, we are able to unconsciously prevent a physical or emotional response. As we entrain with a higher vibrational frequency, light energy doesn’t allow us to doubt or contract in fear. It is strong and grounded. It has peripheral vision. Salk’a induces clarity without thought, compassionate detachment, and the warrior’s action. This is a state of being we can maintain.

CARLA WOODY, MA, CHT, author of Standing Stark: The Willingness to Engage and Calling Our Spirits Home: Gateways for Full Consciousness, is the founder of Kenosis LLC, based in Prescott, Arizona, whose mission is to support human potential and spiritual emergence through workshops, retreats, and spiritual travel. cwoody@kenosis.net. www.kenosis.net

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