Letting go of Fear

As I prepare for this trip, I continue to realize that one of the intentions of this trip is to let go of the fear in our lives and replace it with love.  There are so many times when fear runs our lives - the fear of getting hurt, fear of losing a job, fear of not living up to our potential.  Even as children, we develop behaviors based on a fear rather than simply overcoming that fear and moving on with our lives.  Since signing up for this trip, I've been dealing with the fear of the unknown.  I had no idea what to expect going deep into the Amazon Rainforest or interacting with the Achuar, especially since we will be participating in traditional ceremonies.  It feels like walking into a nearby Pueblo and asking to live with a family and participate in a closed ceremony.  I began preparing the only way I knew how - reading books about the Shuar / Achuar written by Americans who had traveled to the Amazon and lived among these people.  With every page, my fear has dissolved and I finally feel I know enough about their customs to be respectful.   

 

The topic of fear also continues to come up in the spiritual beliefs of these people, the purpose of being a man or a woman, and the healing that we need as a society.  In reading about why the Shuar conduct warfare and how men become warriors, John Perkins says: "So you see why we fight. As I told you, to dominate our fears."  It is through the initiation of young men becoming warriors and killing their enemies that they faced their fear of death and could live the rest of lives without being afraid of dying.  The Shuar  methodology about a great warrior who killed an enormous anaconda and became the fiercest warrior who faced his fear of death is mirrored by our legend of Beowulf.  In fact, many of the Shuar legends about facing fear rather than being controlled by it can be found in legends told to children in the United States.  One of the largest differences is the Shuar actually provide their people with traditions that help them live up to their potential - men becoming warriors, women becoming good gardeners and mothers, and each gender has opportunities and understands the ways to access the ancient power within them.  

 

I'm continually struck by one major difference.  The Shuar have many legends that tell them how humans are no different than the plants and animals - that we are all connected.  Legends remind them of how they must keep their populations in check or the plants and animals and therefore, themselves, will suffer.  They learn how consumption leads to suffering by all.  They have tales that remind them to only kill the animals they need to eat and to ensure a plant is planted for each plant taken from the earth.  These legends have taught the Shuar to build their homes not to be permanent, but to last only a while.  They then leave their clearing and home and move to another location and let the earth re-take their previous clearing and their homes goes back to dirt.  Imagine how different the United States would look if our childhood stories embodied these values!  Rather, our dream in the U.S. is actually to consume as much as possible and build and own things that are permanent.  Our values include controlling nature - through construction, agriculture, manufacturing of goods - because we are separate from the natural world.  Our dreams include consuming more and owning more things that we can keep forever and pass down to our children.  We give little thought to how the ideal of owning more things impacts the natural world or the destruction involved in so many people owning so many things.  At the root of our value system is that we are above and separate from the natural world and have a right to control it - plants and animals have less rights than humans and we are somehow unaffected from their destruction.  What we are beginning to wake up to is the reality that if we continue living with this value system - we will not have a planet to pass down to our children.  Our dreams must change and our values must shift if we are to continue living on this Earth.  We have so much to learn from indigenous cultures on this note.  We also have much to share, but when it comes to our relationship with nature and the planet, we must begin to listen rather than talk.