Love, Service, and Wisdom
One of my favorite things about my job at Hierophant Publishing is that when friends ask me what I do at work, I can say things like, “Well, this morning I had a Zoom meeting with a shaman in Peru…” Over the course of helping them develop their books, I interact one-on-one with healers, teachers, and wisdom keepers from around the world, whose unique stories and personalities stay with me long after the book is published.
A few months ago, I had the pleasure of chatting with Jorge Luis Delgado, an Inca chakaruna or “bridge person” who will be writing a book with Hierophant sometime next year. As a child growing up in Peru, Delgado carried tourists’ suitcases and guided them to their hotels in exchange for tips to help support his family. Eventually, he found his way to law school and trained to become an attorney before having a spiritual awakening that led him to study spiritual and cosmic laws instead. He decided to follow in his mother’s footsteps and become a teacher and healer.
Meeting with Delgado was a bit like having a Zoom call with the sun. His warmth and radiance filled up my screen and spilled out of my computer’s speakers. Like the sun, he seemed to possess boundless energy, and a boundless generosity to go with it. Sure enough, one of the first things Delgado said to me was, “We are all children of the sun”—a theme that would weave its way throughout our entire conversation.
A few minutes into our call, Delgado explained to me the three principles underlying Inca spirituality: munay, llankay, and yachay. The first of these principles, munay, roughly translates to “love.” In Delgado’s words, munay means an attitude of respect, acceptance, and reverence for everything in life. When your consciousness is saturated in the energy of munay, you exude warmth and affection for all beings and all situations, just as the sun shines on all beings regardless of whether they are “good” or “bad.” Our ability to feel this unconditional love for life grows as we nurture our inner sun.
The second principle, llankay, roughly translates to “service” or “work.” The Inca people took joy in their work of tending the earth so that it could remain fertile and beautiful. Far from tedious or soul-compromising labor conducted in exchange for money and status, this type of work is humble, life-affirming, and healthy for both planet and person. When your consciousness is saturated in the energy of llankay, you naturally come into the service of all beings.
The third principle, yachay, means “wisdom.” This refers to the wisdom that arises from cultivating your inner sun, and is characterized by clarity, intuition, and discernment. Long before human beings developed books and universities, we nevertheless recognized the qualities of thought that made a person wise. When your consciousness is saturated in the energy of yachay, you instinctively know the appropriate way to speak and act in any given situation.
As our call went on, I sensed that Delgado was a person who had cultivated munay, llankay, and yachay in his own life. Warm-hearted and exuberant, he seemed committed to sharing the very best of his culture with outsiders. Indeed, in addition to being a chakaruna, he is the owner of a tour company specializing in spiritual journeys. At the end of our call, he invited me to Peru as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “Come stay in Cusco and we’ll discuss the book some more! You can join any of my trips to sacred sites, and then you’ll understand.”
When the call was over, I walked into my garden and spread my arms out wide, just as Delgado had shown me. Tipping my face upwards, I greeted the sun, feeling its bright rays saturate my being with warmth and light. How had I forgotten that I, too, was a child of this endlessly giving celestial body?
In November 2025, Hierophant Publishing and Insight Events USA will be offering a special Journey with the Shamans to the Sacred Valley of Peru. Jorge Luis Delgado will be leading the trip, along with Warrior Goddess Training author HeatherAsh Amara and the Queros, or shamans, of the Sacred Valley. This trip will take participants on a deep dive into Inca culture and spirituality, helping you establish the qualities of munay, llankay, and yachay in your own life.
To some of you, November 2025 may feel like a long way off. Indeed, when I sat down to write this newsletter, I thought, I don’t even know what I’m doing tomorrow, let alone next November! Yet one thing I’ve learned about these power journeys is that they really begin the moment you make the inner commitment to go. Your journey with the shamans doesn’t start when you get on the plane, but when you open yourself to being transformed by ancient wisdom and awakening your inner sun.
If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a long time, you know that I’m a homebody who prefers puttering in my garden to exploring distant lands—at least, that’s the story I tell myself. The truth is, my early experiences with international travel left me feeling lost and hungry. I knew I was seeing beautiful things, but I didn’t understand what they meant, or how they could change me. As a teenager and twenty-something backpacking through Samoa, India, and Morocco, I felt like a seedpod blown by the wind, never engaging deeply with the people and places I encountered. In some cases, I lacked the language and know-how to make those connections, and in other cases I was simply too shy.
In India, I remember visiting temples and sacred sites and being impressed by them on an intellectual and aesthetic level, but being too overwhelmed by the practical details to let them into my heart. Was I supposed to take my shoes off? Stand on this side of the room or that side? Join the chanting or stay silent? All of these questions distracted me from the experience, and I played it safe by hiding behind my sketchpad or reading my guidebook, while worrying that I was missing out on the very things I had gone in search of.
Then one day, I met an Indian woman my age named Radhika, whom I’d stopped on the street in Calcutta to ask for directions. She befriended me—or took pity on me, depending on how you look at it—and for the rest of the day, she appointed herself as my guide. With Radhika by my side, the world opened up, and everything I’d been missing revealed itself in exuberant color. Not only did she explain things, but she created a space in which I could truly be present, instead of having all my mental energy go into decoding rules and protocols or navigating the language barrier. All these years later, I have more memories from my afternoon with Radhika than from the weeks and months of traveling that came before.
My experience in India taught me the importance of having a “bridge person” when visiting a foreign land. Whether it’s a kindly stranger or a professional guide like Delgado, traveling with a person “in the know” can help you shift out of your head and into your heart, receiving the deep gifts of travel instead of staying stuck on the surface world of logistics. On next November’s journey to Peru, Delgado’s deep connection to the Queros of the Sacred Valley will provide you with experiences that would be nearly impossible to come by on your own—at least, not without years of time in which to slowly learn the language and build those relationships.
In the Quechua language, the word chakaruna refers to a person who forms a bridge between the human world and the divine. Although this might sound like a rare and distinguished title, the truth is we all become chakarunas when we cultivate the virtues of love, service, and wisdom in our lives. Whenever we pay close attention or approach life with an attitude of reverence, we are making ourselves a bridge, and inviting heaven to join us here on earth.
Whether you journey to distant lands or remain safely between the beds of flowers and beans in your garden, you can choose to serve life in this way. Indeed, just as flowers and plants synthesize light from the sun, we synthesize the divine, bringing it into the earthly realm through our speech, actions, and the artwork we create. Just as our beautiful planet could not exist without the hard work of plants, it also requires our love and our wise perception to bring it into being; it requires the shining of our inner sun.
As we move into the last weeks of summer, may your inner sun shine brightly—and may you always find the guides you need to take you where you need to go, and help you see clearly once you’re there.
Sincerely,
Hilary T. Smith
Senior Editor, Hierophant Publishing