I recently attended the Zoom meeting hosted by the Pachamama Alliance, Insights for Earth Activists, with Arkan Lushwala. That video recording can be found below.
Arkan Lushwala is a Peruvian ceremonial leader and author who focuses on teaching others practices that can restore balance to the planet. He was adopted by a Lakota elder named Basil Brave Heart and carries spiritual traditions from the Andes and the Amazon. He has written three books: The Time of the Black Jaguar, Deer and Thunder, and The Spirit of the Glacier Speaks. You can read the Epilogue of The Spirit of the Glacier Speaks here.
I value what Arkan says because of the way he expresses his spirituality. I find it similar to how I try to express my own.
He speaks of ancestral wisdom having more to offer than technology, that technology cannot illuminate nor improve what lives inside people. I am blessed to have wisdom from my Quaker ancestors.
Introduction
While singing to the spirits of the mountains and preparing sacred offerings to feed our Mother Earth, I am seeing the paths that the Universe has opened for us lately—paths of spiritual and human development that we are going to need to walk in order to continue living. In the midst of so many disasters affecting humanity, I have seen something beautiful that I can no longer hide. Even more, I feel a longing to give birth to something new. And as mothers know well, this can only be done with full conviction, like a whale that crosses an ocean. Among my convictions, one comes from my relationship with the ancestral world I grew up surrounded by, having been born in the Andes. I am convinced that anything new, to have real power, needs an ancestral root.
When seeking new and better solutions for the great social problems and natural catastrophes of the present moment, I believe that ancestral wisdom has more to offer than technological advances. Because technology does not have the ability to illuminate nor improve what lives inside people—the true source of the problems that are harming the world. Social injustice, the destruction of nature, excessive wealth, and extreme poverty come as a result of excessive human ambition. Such greed will not disappear with new technologies. We need greed to stop being fashionable, to cease being the marker of human progress. Only with wisdom will it be possible to resolve the problems of our time, with sensible cultural proposals that can help us aspire to reach happiness in another way. Therefore, I have no doubt that the ancestral wisdom of our Andean-Amazonian communities has much to contribute to the development of a new world culture.
Lushwala, Arkan. The Spirit of the Glacier Speaks: Ancestral Teachings of the Andean World for the Time of Natural Disorder (pp. 7-8). Disruption Books. Kindle Edition.
Arkan writes about the early European settlers being only interested in gold and being afraid of the Indigenous sacred world.
Just as they (Europeans) lost interest in being healed by our food, they could no longer see our hearts. Their eyes sought only gold, and they could not see us. They saw our sacred world from afar and, afraid of it, did not come closer. Their lack of experience in the art of entering into good relationships did not allow them to love us. Their only experience was with fighting, and they waged a terrible war in order to legalize the theft of our lands through their triumph. And despite the fact that they made our lands their own, they were never able to know their true treasures. Given that those who cannot be satisfied also don’t know how to stop, they didn’t consider taking the time to get to know the deepest secrets and the real treasures of the place they had come to. They continued on their way, looking for something new to appropriate. If they had simply let themselves sit down for a moment amid the pastures of these lands, they might have felt something in their hearts, and they might have become enamored of the beautiful people here who were one with the land. But they were too busy and could not take notice of what lay right in front of them. And so they lost the chance of encountering our mother, the mother we all have in common, the one they had forgotten—our Mother Earth.
Lushwala, Arkan. The Spirit of the Glacier Speaks: Ancestral Teachings of the Andean World for the Time of Natural Disorder (pp. 8-9). Disruption Books. Kindle Edition.
The most spiritual thing now is action.
Arkan Lushwala
This action needs to be born from a place in ourselves.
One day a brother from another country who was becoming a good friend came to see me. He was very affected by these same questions, tired of feeling himself separated from the beauty of the world. He had a great spiritual hunger and was searching for something different. I remember him asking me, “What can we do to change, those of us who have lost the memory of the original design for good living?” And aware that I didn’t have an answer for such a big question, I managed to not go to my head and look for one. I just responded spontaneously, “My brother, stop dedicating yourselves with so much enthusiasm to digging the holes you are going to fall into. Stop for a moment, brother, stop so much doing. Look, brother, let’s share some food, and let’s taste the earth.” I passed him some Kuka leaves and said to him: “Hallpaykusunchis wayq’echay” (Let us be the land—with tender affection—for our benefit, my little brother). And after a long silence, I smiled and said to him, “Saksachikuy wawq’ey,” which means “Make yourself satiated with tender affection for your benefit, my brother.
Arkan Lushwala, The Spirit of the Glacier Speaks
aware that I didn’t have an answer for such a big question, I managed to not go to my head and look for one
Arkan Lushwala
What can I do?
Speaking about what is happening on Earth right now,
many of the conditions of life that we used to take for granted,
now are really out of balance.
Hopefully we still have time to get back into balance
so life may continue.
I travel around the world and meet people and talk to people
from all different cultures.
And everywhere people ask, “what can we do?”
The question, what can we do, is the second question.
The first question is “what can we be?”
Because what you can do is a consequence of who you are.
Once you know what you can be, you know what you can do,
and we cannot afford wasting time;
we have little time.
We need to be precise now.
When someone sincerely asks, “what can I do?”
my humble answer,
the only answer that I find in my heart to be sincere is,
“First find out what you can be.”
Action is extremely necessary at this time.
This is not a time just to talk about it.
The most spiritual thing now is action.
To do something about what’s happening.
To go help where help is needed.
To stand up when we need to stand up,
and protect what is being damaged.
And still, this action needs to be born
from a place in ourselves that has real talent,
real intelligence, real power,
real connection to the heart of the Earth,
to universal wisdom,
so our actions are not a waste of time.
So our actions are precise,
our actions are in harmony with the movement,
the sacred movement,
of that force that wants to renew life here on Earth
and make it better for the following generations
The most spiritual thing now is action.
This action needs to be born from a place in ourselves.
Arkan Lushwala
Arkan talks about caring for our “sacred pot,” which made me want to visualize what that might look like. I’ve been learning to use a graphics tool, Microsoft Designer, to share about spirituality since words are usually inadequate.
Quakers and Mutual Aid 