Why on earth would I go to Peru three times when I could go to China, Bhutan, India, Greece, New Zealand or other exotic places? Simply, because I fell in love with the land and the people. Seeing Peru’s Sacred Valley surrounded by majestic peaks made me cry. Carol Cumes, innkeeper of Willka T’ika (Sacred Flower) Garden Guest House in the Sacred Valley near Urubamba, explains it this way: “Consciously aware of it or not, people come to Peru to reconnect with Pachamama (Mother Earth) and their love for Her.” I do have a deep love for the Earth. My given name, “Terranda,” which was also my mother’s name, means “She walks the Earth,” or “Earthwalker.” The root word terra, means Earth, and “anda” is a form of the Spanish verb andar, “to walk.”
Walking the Earth while traveling in Peru, I learned about the Quechua (indigenous people of the Andes) and their practice of ayni. What is ayni? Ayni is the exchange of living energy, reciprocity, giving and receiving. Ayni is in everything everywhere. Ultimately, ayni is love. For millennia, the Quechua people have practiced ayni with Mother Earth and with each other. Their survival depended on it. To honor Mother Earth, the Quechua give prayers, offerings, celebrations, music, dance and ceremonies to Pachamama. In return, they receive Her acknowledgement of their love and appreciation as bountiful crops.
In their daily lives, the Quechua practice ayni by helping each other. “Today for you, tomorrow for me.” We will plant your fields today, tomorrow, we will plant mine. We will harvest your crop today, tomorrow we will harvest mine. Today, we will build you a house. Tomorrow we will build one for me. Their word for the marriage relationship is sirwanakuy (to serve one another). Giving and receiving love equally in balance – isn’t that a great basis for relationship? It serves both people. Like the figure-eight symbol of the universe, of infinity, of the divine, ayni is giving and receiving in a balanced way. It is true partnership.
Listening between the lines, you can detect the values inherent in ayni. Trust: We build your house today. I trust once you have yours, you will help me build mine. Integrity: We can each be counted on to keep our agreement. Mutual benefit through cooperation, respect, shared power, true partnership. Survival in harsh conditions, in isolated mountain communities at altitudes over 9,000’, depended on it. People could not make it on their own. They had to cooperate as a community to survive.
Today everyone’s survival depends on practicing ayni. In terms of global warming, whether we live in cosmopolitan, affluent San Francisco, Paris or Calcutta, we live in one world. Polluted air in Bejing is breathed by people in Santa Barbara. When we are out of balance, and ayni is absent, we get in trouble.
Think of our consumer society, corporations, Wall Street. Think of Enron. Think of mortgage companies…the sub-prime mess. Today for me…today for me…today for me, me, me, me, me. You’re losing your house because your interest rate went up and you can’t make your payment? Oh well, today is for me. My fourth-quarter profits are up. I’m going to exercise my stock options before people find out those loans will default and the stock price goes down. Today is for me.
Any place there is rainforest destruction, disease, war, poverty, giving and receiving are out of balance. Ayni is absent. “Where’s the love?” becomes more than merely a catch phrase. There is no love there. By working in partnership, we can rebalance the Earth and ourselves. Survival of life on Earth depends on it. There is one energy field – everything is connected – what we do to others and the Earth, we do to ourselves. The Quechua have held the consciousness of loving cooperation for thousands of years. It is time for us to join them.
What can one person do? What could Gandhi do? In his book, Assault on Reason, Al Gore tells about a woman who asked Gandhi if he would speak with her son and ask him to give up eating sugar. She was worried about his health. She knew her son respected Gandhi and thought he would listen to him. Gandhi told her to come back in two weeks, and he would tell her son not to eat sugar. She brought her son back. After Gandhi told her son not to eat sugar, she asked him, “Why did you wait two weeks to talk to my son?” “Well,” Gandhi replied, “first, I had to stop eating sugar myself.”
Like Gandhi, if we want the planet to be more balanced, we have to practice balance ourselves. Are your work and play balanced? How about your checkbook? Mine, at the moment, is not. If we want war to end and peace to prevail, we need to be calm and content in our individual lives with our families, coworkers and within ourselves. Are you fighting your weight? Do you struggle with getting to sleep? Is it any wonder these things are in the world when they are within us? As within so without. When we do the necessary work on ourselves, we are doing it for the entire planet. That helps. It’s nice to know that as we work on ourselves it is making a bigger difference – not only in our own lives, but also in the world. It’s time to take responsibility for shifting our individual consciousness so the collective consciousness can shift. We can remind ourselves as we practice, “I know who I am makes a difference in the world.”
