Community and Connection

The group retreat began officially this morning, and we took a guided tour of Cusco. We began in the central square which was surrounded by Incan palaces 600 years ago before the Spanish came in and took over their culture. Indeed, for a long time the ancient Peruvian culture was pushed aside and those with Spanish blood were considered more worthy. Today, the opposite is true.

Our guide Juan Carlos proudly shared his native Incan culture, which today meant marvelling at the feats of Incan engineering. Communities built perfect walls over generations, without tools - only those made of stone (they had no iron and brass was too soft). Scholars have been stumped at how they accomplished it, but what they did have was community.

The people worked together, with music, corn beer, coco leaves (many properties of this to be shared another time but think hyper-focus), laughter and fun. In his words "they had focus, fun and a task they knew they would achieve together". Imagine these communities, eating, drinking, laughing and making music while they work on a shared purpose. How would it be if life was like that in workplaces now?

The shift from community to individualism has happened in Peru too.

The Incas talked of "ayni" which means "if I help you, you will help me. And if you don't; someone else will at some point." It's the spiritual law of reciprocity, or abundance as we often say in the West.

The shaman with Incan heritage still hold this approach as important today, and many of the stories I have already heard about these people have demonstrated it too.

It's interesting that 600 years ago, humans had no "tech" but they had each other and accomplished the impossible. Now we have "tech" but no team, and struggle to resolve many of our collective problems.

So it has been a gentle start (much needed as at least one of our number was hospitalised with altitude sickness and a few very sick in bed). Today though I felt I went beneath the bubbly tourist side of Cusco for the first time.

We are lucky to be accompanied by Adriel, our Andean priest on all our days. He is an experienced shaman of indeterminate age and having done coco leaf readings for even the president of Peru, he is highly respected. Chance has made it that I am the first person of our group to receive a reading from him, I am off to prepare for it now...

photo: 600 year old Incan wall - a modern engineering mystery / the sun temple (note the notches where the rocks were either carried or slotted together like Lego to withstand earthquakes