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 Journey
to Ecuador: Part 4Pichincha, Quilajalo
May 11-12, 2001
The Spiritual Traveler
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Even
compared to my climb up the crater at Pululahua, the bike ride down the
Avenue of the Waterfalls, or my perilous descent underneath the
waterfall at Manto de la Novia, the high point of my tourist experience
in Ecuador was undoubtedly the climb up Pichincha Friday
morning.
 I
had told Marco that I had to pick up the rental car for the trip to
Quilajalo at two o'clock sharp, so he came early, at 7:30 in the
morning. I had the idea that Pichincha was this little hill
of a mountain that I could see rising up behind the city from my hotel
window. But that turned out to be only a little knoll at the
foot of the volcano. The ride took almost two hours, and as
we got to the base of the true peak, the road narrowed into something
more suitable for a dirt bike than a four-wheeled
vehicle. Marco was driving his Jeep, equipped with
four-wheel drive, but as we rounded some of the hairpin curves, the
wheels started spitting out mud behind them like material in a food
fight, and I began to doubt that we would make it to the
top. Sure enough, we reached a point where the Jeep could go
no further. It must have rained the previous day, and the
wet soil of the road gave the Jeep no traction.
 "You
can hike the rest of the way," Marco told me. "It will take
you no more than two hours. If you are back by 11:30, we'll
still be able to return to Quito in plenty of time for you to pick up
your rental car."
Feeling some time pressure, I
started the ascent as briskly as I could. The distance to
the top was probably no more than four hundred meters, but this time
the altitude was much higher than at Pululahua. I started
out at about 4,200 meters, with the summit at least 4,600 meters in
height. The hike up the road, although not particularly
steep, was exhausting, and I had to pause along the way many
times. The wind was very strong and the air brisk, but
instead of putting on more layers of clothing, I was peeling them off
rapidly. The top of the volcano was covered in mist as I
climbed, but the higher I got, the more the clouds seemed to recede,
until the very rim of the crater was visible above me.
 The
final 200 meters of path was the most exhilarating. I had
passed the vegetation line, and ahead of me was only a thin sliver of
rock, ending in a spike that literally thrust into the blue
sky. The lip of the volcano bubbled over with mist as if it
were a cauldron, and when I got up to it and peered inside, the entire
crater was filled with clouds like a bowl full of steaming
milk. I clambered the last few feet up to a flagpole of a
summit and felt like a conqueror.
The entire hike took about an
hour and fifteen minutes to go up and about forty-five minutes to come
down, so I made it just about in the time that Marco had
predicted. We started back to Quito and got there with about
a half-hour to spare, just time enough for me to save the digital
images on my computer at the hotel and make it to the car rental
agency.
 My
only misgivings were that I would have no interpreter for my encounter
with Don Alberto, and that Germán and I would also have to find some
way to communicate during the trip. He knew no English and
my Spanish had not improved much during the course of my visit.
The drive turned out to be a pleasant one, however. I
enjoyed trying to communicate with Germán in my fragmentary
Spanish. It was more difficult than with my guides, Marco
and Miriam, with whom producing even the most babyish phrases gave me a
sense of triumph.
 With
Germán, I wanted to express more complex thoughts, and this was
frustrating. Just before Salcedo, I saw the arch with the
word RUMIPAMBA at the same time that Germán did, and we turned onto the
road that only a few days before I had walked in pilgrim-like fashion
towards Quilajalo. Florentina was there to greet us, but of
course there was no Don Alberto.
Germán and I sat down with Florentina and some children, and were given
the same type of food we had eaten in Otavalo-cheese sandwiches, honey,
that faintly sweet quinoa gruel that I didn't like, and weak herbal
tea.
 "Did you dream about this place?" Florentina asked me.
"Not that I recall," I replied. "But the first time I came
you, when I met you and Nadav on the road, it seemed very familiar."
Germán and Florentina entered into a long conversation, and I became
more dispirited as they talked, without my being able to participate in
the conversation. Florentina said that Don Alberto was due
at any minute, but I was quite convinced he wasn't going to show that
evening. The climb up Pichincha and the driving had taken
their toll on me, and all I wanted to do was crawl into some bed and be
left alone with my dreams.
I could tell that Germán and Florentina were saying something about me,
and about our trip to Otavalo, and then I thought I picked up on
something that they were saying. I turned a questioning
glance at Germán.
 "Florentina
says that the minute you left them at the bus terminal in Quito, Don
Alberto showed up," Germán confirmed what I thought I had heard.
This piece of news made me positively morose. I recalled the
dream in which Don Alberto told me he couldn't talk to me, and now
wondered why I hadn't listened to it, instead of coming down on this
wild goose chase. My mind filled up with questions and
doubts. What really was I doing here, chasing after this
shaman? What could I get from him that I couldn't get via
Eckankar? Was the discipline of having to look for the
Master within simply too difficult for me? Did I need some
kind of external validation from a teacher whom I could meet and talk
to face to face? If so, it wasn't working out, for not only
would I be unable to converse with Don Alberto without the aid of a
translator, but he was also so elusive that my prospects of meeting him
were not much better than that of seeing the ECK Masters in the flesh.
What bothered me, particularly, was the decision I had made on the bus
ride from Otavalo to Quito.
 The
whole time, I had been preoccupied with the choice of whether to leave
Florentina and Nadav in Quito or proceed with them back to
Quilajalo. Now it was plain that I had made the 'wrong'
choice. If I had stuck around, Don Alberto would have
appeared within minutes. I could have ridden down with him
all the way to Quilajalo, with Nadav along as a translator, and likely
ridden back to Quito with both of them the next
day. Everything that had occurred on my trip had seemingly
set up the situation in which I had to make that choice, and then I had
failed to make the 'right' one. It was a discouraging
thought. Perhaps it meant that there was something misplaced
about my interest in Don Alberto.
 Evenutally
Germán and Florentina noticed how tired I was. I was
directed to a room with a bed, and I passed out in it, glad to quit the
world for a while and leave my discouraging thoughts
behind. I woke up very early the next morning, and tiptoed
out of the room as soon as it was light. Then I took a long
walk to sort out my thoughts. It occurred to me, first of
all, that if Don Alberto had truly communicated with via the 'dream'
state, this outcome was just a substantiation of that, and I shouldn't
have expected anything else. Secondly, what did I really
have to ask Don Alberto? If I had ridden down with him from
Quito to Quilajalo and back, would I have just stuck a tape recorder in
the shaman's face and conducted an interview? It didn't seem
likely.
Finally, I realized that my choice to get off the bus at Quito could
not have been a mistake, because it had been MY choice.
 I
had been tired, there were things I needed to do in Quito, and those
things had been more important than hanging around with Don
Alberto. But more to the point, if I believed that every
action and event had a significance and a meaning, then I had to
believe that I had made my choice for a reason, and because it was my
choice, it could not be a wrong one. It didn't matter where
I might be, or with whom, or whether my plans worked out or did
not. I was always in the right place and the right
situation. At that moment I remembered that a dream I had
had several months before. In the dream I had gone through a
long process of chasing after Don Alberto and always missing
him. I had only just lived what the dream had
foretold. With this realization flooding my mind, I chanted
the word MAHANTA silently to myself, and felt a flood of love pour over
me.
 I
returned to find Germán, Florentina, and some children eating
breakfast. I joined them and had a little bread, cheese, and
tea. I was starting to think about getting back to
Quito. I mentioned to Germán that I really needed to get the
rental car back by 2:00, and that we therefore needed to leave within
the next hour or two. Just at that point, Don Alberto showed
up. It was really quite strange. As soon as I had
put out of my mind the possibility that our paths would cross, he
walked in. He was smiling, dressed in very ordinary clothes,
and had the same aura of warmth and friendliness that I had noted when
meeting him in Michigan. After a few brief greetings and
handshakes, he disappeared, and Germán and I were left to walk around
and wait until he happened to appear again.
 Germán
started showing me around the compound, which was reminiscent of that
of a hippie commune from the late '60s or early '70s. He was
telling me about the new book he was working on, called El Libro de la
Vida Humana, which was apparently concerned with the necessity for
living in harmony with nature, a theme that was obviously a
preoccupation of Don Alberto. It occurred to me that
achieving this kind of harmony might no be so much a matter of changing
one's environment as much as of changing one's
consciousness. One could live in an urban apartment and
still be in touch with the elements--the earth, water, fire and
air. All that was required was to pay attention to
them. The principle was the same as that which I had
expressed during the last discussion group at the Eckankar center--it
was all the same thing.
 Being
in touch with nature meant being in touch with life. And
this was the same as being in touch with the ECK, or
Spirit. And this was the same as to be in touch with the
Inner Master. And this was the same as being in touch with
God. To put one's attention on any of these things was to
give one a sense of reverence for life. And to have a
reverence for life not only put one in touch with nature, but it also
entailed respect for others and neutrality, as well as impersonal
love--everything that the Eckankar students had been discussing the
other day.
We came
to the ceremonial hall, which was circular in shape. It had
a doorway that faced the East, and was marked by a triangle to
represent the sun, Inti. The other directions were marked,
as well-the North, represented by the eagle, the South, represented by
the condor, and the West, represented by the moon, Quilla. A
plant was placed at each one of the four directions to represent
life.
 The
cone-shaped roof was made of reeds and had an opening at the top,
presumably to let in the light of the sun at noon. In the
center of the hall was a large ceremonial pit with the remnants of a
bonfire. A puma pelt was stretched out next to the blackened
logs and above the pit a bear pelt was laid out, with all sorts of
feathers, amulets, and other magic tokens placed on it. The
hall was clearly designed for ceremonial and ritual functions in every
respect.
"This is a
place of reunion," Germán said. "The fire is used to reunite
the people present at the ceremony. Through the fire, it is
possible to see in the past, in the future, and across great distances."
What Germán was saying reminded me of the idea I had in response to his
lecture, that we have all lost our personal history. The
idea of a reunion suggested that we have lived so many other lives that
it is more than likely we have all known each other before.
 Florentina's
question as to whether I had dreamed of this place, and my reply that
it seemed familiar, suggested that this very place was one that many of
us might have lived in before. But whether it was in this
very place, in the Andean region, or somewhere else, the main point was
the Don Alberto had established this place specifically as a place or
reunion.
To most people it might seem irrelevant to try to reunite with others
in this way. What's past is past, after all. Yet,
clearly, this is a stage in the process of spiritual
unfoldment. If spirituality is all about asking "Who are
we?" "Who and what were we before?" "Where are we going?"
"Who and what will we be in the future?" then this is something we all
have to experience at one point or another. I didn't know
whether it was really necessary for me to sit beside that fire, for I
had enough past life recall already to satisfy myself that I had lived
before.
 But
for many people, Don Alberto's ceremonial hall might serve an important
purpose, to help them reconstruct their sense of personal history, and
discover their destiny in this life.
There was little time left. I went back into the kitchen,
and bought some medicinal herbs from Florentina. She ran out
and came back with Don Alberto, who explained to me how to use
them. I looked deep into his eyes and felt that mutual
recognition of Soul to Soul that I was used to experiencing with
members of Eckankar, as well as with other people with whom I had
contact with during my travels in life.
"This person," Don Alberto said to Florentina,
"is on the path of the shamans."
There was something that I appreciated about him saying that to her.
"I dreamed that I will see you again in the United States," Florentina said to me, and I appreciated her saying that, as well.
In parting, I gave Don Alberto a copy of Paul Twitchell's The Tiger's
Fang, translated into Spanish under the title El Colmillo del
Tigre. "This is a book that has been of great value to me in
my life," I told him. "Perhaps if you have time to read it,
we can discuss it together some time."
Just then a strange group of men, a mixture of old and young, all
indiginas except for one Norteamericano, came by to pick up Don
Alberto. They left ahead of us in a camionetta, and we later
passed them on the road, bouncing along to some secret
destination-perhaps the source of some herbs, or a sacred site of some
sort. Germán and I had an uneventful ride back to
Quito. We stopped for a while at the entrance to Cotopaxi
National Park, but decided not to attempt the drive up in the rental
car.
 When
we arrived back in Quito, I could sense that Germán was tired, and
probably had not gotten much out of the trip. He had wanted
to have an extended conversation with Don Alberto, and that had not
occurred. For my own part, I consoled myself with the
thought that I had managed to give Don Alberto a copy of The Tiger's
Fang before we left. I didn't know if he would read it, or
even if he did, what I could expect him to say on the
subject. I wondered if there was any point in trying to
bring two spiritual paths in contact with one
another. Undoubtedly there was some sort of cosmic principal
responsible for establishing these different paths, which prohibited
them from intermingling.
 Nevertheless,
I felt that I had something to learn from Don Alberto, and that it was
the ECK, or Spirit, that was pushing me in this direction. I
realized that most members of my own spiritual community would probably
not feel that Don Alberto had much to offer them. So when I
got back home to Michigan, I called up my friend Chris Hogan, a high
initiate in Eckankar, and told her about my experience. "The
ECK is in everything," she replied in response to my
questions. "It's in Eckankar, and it's in all these other
spiritual and religious groups. It's all the
ECK. The ECK is in everything. The ECK is life
itself."
"If you
choose to explore this shaman's teachings," she added, "you just have
to remember where your foundation is. If you view your
experience as just an extension of your experience in Eckankar, and his
teachings as an extension of the Eckankar teachings, then that's what
it will be for you. Consider that the ECK Masters themselves
have sent you to Don Alberto, and then you will be able to transmute
whatever you learn from him to the highest spiritual
value. Remember, that the most important thing is to be
yourself, and unashamedly yourself. Follow your interest,
your passion, and look for the hidden guidance of the ECK, of Spirit,
in all the facets and events of your life." |
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Copyright © The Spiritual Traveler, 2001 |
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