Tuesday, October 28, 2008

We Walked Away, We can Always WALK Back

November's scheduled Fear-No-More World WALK has me travelling to Montreal, Canada, to spend the weekend "walking" with horses, with people interested in relating to horses from the point of view of horses rather than the traditional view-points of humans.


Horses, camels and other animals have walked alongside humans for millennia. In many cases they have been dragged, forced, beaten and whipped to walk with us. But all of our insensitivity was not necessary. They would have walked happily with us if we had approached them with love, respect and care. Even while enduring the hardships we have put them through they have, in general, always walked in the mode of Fear-No-More, surrendered to the moment, even though those moments were often very harsh. Yet as soon as we are willing they can and will guide us back to fearing-no-more, with grace, beauty and forgiveness. In a sense they have always been waiting for us to notice who they really are, how they are, and to do likewise...

The specific monthly Fear-No-More World WALKS we have been doing for almost a year now have served significantly in carrying forward some further degree of Adi Da's "Vision of Fear-No-More" into our respective lives. I know these walks have served me considerably. Getting out and leaving everything behind for a period and simply walking with happy, bodily, intent has been instructive for me in letting go of the subjectivity of who I think I am... restoring me each time to a clearer sense of being breathed, lived and released beyond my knowledge of anything at all....

The ongoing process of the WALKS has also raised awareness and support for Fear-No-More Zoo itself to new levels. There is still a lot more support needed but we are doing a little better, which is great. Please get involved in supporting this unique process between humans and non-humans, and invite your friends to check out "Fear-No-More" also.

I trust those of you who have been crazy enough to participate in these WALKS have also benefited in whatever ways are true of you.

I will continue living and combining my life with the Fear-No-More World WALKS -- ongoing. I will probably not be engaging the WALKS on the ritual monthly basis we've been following till now. For me, at least, change is necessary. Everything has it's moment and reasons. Everything shifts and changes. To keep things growing what becomes familiar has to be bounced and turned out so that what's next can come through and be embraced...

I will be doing these WALKS randomly from now on, any time I'm moved and often... and I will also be arranging for the undertaking of a longer annual WALK to commemorate, and further, the advancement of the "Vision of Fear-No-More". Details of the second annual WALK will be forthcoming, and I hope many of you will participate, wherever you reside.

Information on the origins of these WALKS can be found by perusing earlier posts in this blogsite.

Keep WALKING,
Stuart

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

All of Nature...

"All of Nature is Contemplating constantly... it's a culture of Contemplation, including the Earth itself. . . " -- Adi Da Samraj
Humans were once an integral part of ancient Earth's "culture of Contemplation" but now we stand apart in mind, philosophy, and personalized religion, full of projected meanings, increasingly separate from one another and every thing.

In this time we are experiencing a "fist" of unprecedented human fear gripping the world. There is so little Contemplation alive in human cultures anywhere today.

The non-human world is affected and confused by this. Where is the heart of humankind? Where has the human gone?

If this fist of fear and independence is not released it/we will choke and squeeze the life from everything we know.

May we all walk our lives, every step, feeling and releasing the fear, and supporting everyone to do this... again to Contemplate the Source of all Life, as was anciently done, free of man-made intermediaries, books or doctrines... but through breath, life and feeling heart.

This is the World WALK of Fearing-No-More; WALKING together, human, non-human, river, forest, desert, mountain... no difference, no separation... restoring Contemplation to every human heart regardless of race, culture, politics or religion.


(c) 2008 The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd, as trustee for The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam. All rights reserved. Perpetual copyright claimed.


Stuart

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Fear WALKS Away

These monthly WALKS are good, have gotten things going, but they're not themselves the "thing"... (next scheduled is this coming weekend - Sept 6 & 7)

Let's start WALKING all our lives, all our days, all of us, everywhere we go, whatever we do.

Because we don't WALK any more we are chronically afraid. If we remember the walkabout nomad deep in our hearts we can learn again how to release and breathe. If we let ourselves feel it, we will know how scared we really are. This fear makes us do weird things, crazy stuff. We get angry, become insensitive, out of balance, brutal toward ourselves, competitive with others, inwardly collapsed -- and destructive of this fragile world.

Our fear and anger make others feel afraid, too. And all this also makes the non-human world vulnerable, insecure and confused. The non-humans, watching from their perches at forest edge, get confused by the erratic activities of humans. Our dogs and cats are confused because they notice we don't know how to be.

One day of my life mysteriously brought me into Fear-No-More Zoo, a place requiring me to feel my fear, face it, love it. Almost everything in me always wants to run as far away as I can from the fear -- my death, and away from others. I used to run a lot. Now I'm called in every moment, by every thing, to "Fear-No-More". Sometimes it's almost too much.

At first I was like, "whaat?" All I really knew and trusted was my fear. Let go of that? Love instead? Take that wild, irrational, fear and embrace it and never run again? "Whaat??!"

Sometimes the fear pumps so hard every cell bursts and contracts, believing the terror. Only uncomfortable, sometimes painful, love keeps me here, loving life, truth, camel, pig, parrot, horse, you. It's not often perfect love but it keeps me here, breathing the fright, knowing it, letting it free.

These WALKS we've been doing... let's keep them going... and also do them every day... Fear-No-More World WALKS as a never-ending prayer for the advancement of a world free of the crunch of unnecessary human fear.

WALK to the fridge, the bathroom, across the aisle, down the street, over a mountain, to a friend, invoking the spiritually contemplative depth that becomes, and is, "Fearing-No-More", which is love-surrender through and beyond fear... to the deep stillness existing beyond name, religion, species and place...

WALK in your car, on your bike, your horse, in your canoe. WALK in your sleep, your repose, in your garden, while you're shopping, too.

In doing this we might, at last, find the world free of all that fear creates and destroys with every grimaced grunt. We don't have to suffer the fate of unenlightened men and women, burdened forever beneath the dripping mouth of imagined death's fear.

Adi Da Samraj: The human world is the fear world.
The non-human world is not
the fear world.


So Fear-No-More...
like the non-humans do !



Stuart


(c) 2008 The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd, . All rights reserved.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

And Then So Clear....

It's been about 8 months since the Fear-No-More Awareness Walks commenced.
People have been getting out and about around the world, participating in these low-key Walks on a regular monthly basis. I think on any monthly Walk we might have people walking in about 30 locations.

There is a part of me that could very easily just go walking and stay walking... walk all over the place, be a wanderer, a nomad... not so much for the sake of anything altruistic, any change, but just to walk; because it's so original and primal to wander without concern for property, without so many restrictions, boundaries and limits. This isn't going to happen though, except briefly here and there....

These days life is different than when men and women lived in tipis and yurts and followed the bison or the caribou. Imagine following the seasons throughout your entire life, being that interconnected, and interdependent, with the world. When mother weather shakes, rumbles and moves you get up and move with her... inseparable from her whims. Imagine your outlook on everything, how released and pliant you would need to be...

We are (most of us) now so far from that kind of life. Yet, deep within our cells, our intuitions, still beats the primitive impulse to wander, to walkabout, to be free.

These monthly Walks are a symbolic, motivating, gesture for our deeply buried impulses to be free; to walk free of the daily news, to walk free of the mind that locks us into what we look like, or seem to be, rather than who we are, which is Free -- and free of fear.

We are all walking somewhere so wherever we walk let it be toward a world, a life and an awareness that is free of unnecessary fear -- for everyone.

In honour of our nomadic forebears let's return, to everything we do, the essentials of those ancient walkabout cultures -- the wisdom, the tolerance, the understanding of cold rain and hot sun, sharing through famine and oasis, the patience, the smiles and softness through hard times, the yielding of every moment to Life itself.

And may our continuing monthly Fear-No-More World WALKS be a simple, ongoing, happy, reminder, and prayer, for all of us to release ourselves and one another beyond fear.... to the Tree.

Stuart

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Next WALK - August 2 & 3

The next scheduled Fear-No-More World WALK is this weekend (August 2 & 3).

Loving Fear

In my humble experience the chronic underlying fear of death dissolves whenever I love.

When I stop running from, and avoiding my fear, but instead turn to face, accept and allow it, increasingly allow it to be a part of my experience, the fear dissolves, losing its force.

From the time I began serving at Fear-No-More Zoo I have progressively, if not "suddenly", gone through a clarifying process with regard to fear. Today, fifteen years later, I find I am choosing simply to love my fear. In any moment where I let myself feel it, deeply feel it, to the degree I do I am engulfed by a life impulse within which fear is embraced and exceeded.

I don't love fear because I like it or in order to encourage it. I've come to love it because it is present and active in everything I do, in every moment, and it's not going away through any effort or struggle or search. Finally, my only real choice has become loving it. This is not romantic or infatuous love but an essential impulse that overwhelms me. In part, too, I love the fear simply because it is afraid, and pitiful, and needs love in order to be free. Loving the fear is equal to loving myself, loving the entire event of the life within which I somehow exist.

In daily meditation, the WALKS I've been doing, in my service to the animals and at other times, feeling notices fear, dissolves it, and opens to un-thought-of life and mystery.

Animals' constant bodily sense and awareness of being part of the food chain, that death is potential in any moment, swells their contemplative residence within the Mystery of Life, and the Divine, anchoring them in the disposition of "fearing-no-more". They don't philosophize that death might happen to them. They know it will. And when the time arrives they know how to yield and release themselves into the process of mortal death with a grace few humans are practiced enough to equal.

The tacit knowledge of inescapable death inspires animals into fully embracing their situation without argument or complaint and, through their natural meditative depth, feeling is released to move life into the place, and disposition, of "fearing-no-more".

Described by Adi Da Samraj as "Fearing-No-More", this disposition abides not in the absence of fear and threat, but through the fully feeling acceptance of fear and threat, perpetually releasing through love-surrender to life and mystery.

Fear-No-More World WALKS invoke our human embrace and acceptance of mortal fear, loving life beyond all apparent deaths past, present and still to come...

Stuart

Monday, July 7, 2008

A Few More Walks...

From Marcelene Alexander (Portland):
Dear Stuart, Suzanne Hryniw, Dennis Judd and myself put on our Fear-No-More World WALK body banners and did a Fear-No-More World WALK on Sunday at the Thomas McCall Waterfront Park in Portland. There were thousands of people there participating in a music festival over the entire Fourth weekend. One gentleman approached me and asked what it was about, saying he had had an idea a number of years ago to start a walk going half way around the world - but never followed through with it. I explained briefly and gave him a card with the web sites on it. This is our fourth month walking. The first walk we did at Reed College Canyon, the next walk was at Natural State Park right in Portland out on the Terwilliger Curves, the next walk was done by myself in Vancouver, BC and also in Portland where I walked about 27 blocks of my neighborhood, and then this walk at the McCall Park. So , humble as it is, we are walking for Fear-No-More World - hopefully we will get more organized and prepared as we go along.

From Margot S. Janeway (Lopez Island, Washington):
A couple of us on Lopez Island went on a four mile walk along a beach on the western side of the Island. For me it was a lovely walk of contemplation, and consideration of the state of the world and the great need of human beings to become aligned to a Divine process that we may live in harmony with all beings and the earth itself.

From Roslyn Esler (Queensland, Australia):
Hi Stuart, I am walking - and talking with dogs I meet along the way - walking with Monty.
I may not do it monthly - I try to do it daily or a few times a week and for only 30 minutes but it all helps.

From Loretta Sheehan (New Hampshire):
I walked a pine- needled path along a peaceful lake, then took a logging road into deep woods. More or less in that hour…. A dragonfly (the oldest living creature on the earth…they were here
300 million years ago!) landed on my hand and basked in the sun, fearlessly. A damselfly
and her mate let me watch as she laid eggs in a hole in a tree stump…my head was about 5 inches from them! I read that these beautiful insects are "very wary, have big eyes, and are hard to approach", but they, too, were fearless of me. In blessing mode, I saw a giant hornet, robins, chipmunks, butterflies, busy woodpeckers, ants, squirrels, Daddy-long-legs running into the woods, huge flock of starlings, and heard the exquisitely sweet call of the wood thrush. The parallel to your "dead, black cow" was an archery range I came across, where hunters were practicing with crossbows on targets and deer statues!! Ugh!! The pain & death intruded on my walk, too….and I was required to bless all hunters and hunted, praying that FearNoMore would soften the hunters' hearts, and change their desire to hunt for sport. Although mosquitoes tried to bite me all day, they were mostly brushed away, or repelled with spray…none were killed. The grand finale to the FNMZoo Walk, largely centered around small and tiny animals, came that night….as magical lightning bugs appeared in the darkened woods and bog… erratic living, moving lights…sending a message to hopeful mates….here I am! Then, one was on the outside of our blue tent in the dark, and could be seen from inside…..lighting up again and again!…a tiny hello in response to the Fear-No-More Blessing….no doubt.

Walk in Oxford with the "Chief"

Hi Stuart, We walked yesterday, about an hour and a half across Port Meadow in Oxford. Salina and I walked over the Meadow and back to Oxford along the river Thames. I've attached a few photo's! The weather looked very threatening and it got really dark at one point and rained but brightened up later. Saw lots of birds and cows. -- Dan George

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Why In Hell Do I Do This...? :)

Discovering that a walk on Snow Mountain involves 10 hours of driving, there and back, I opted out of that plan. Instead I hit the road to Middletown again.... about 15 miles. Malcolm accompanied me and Coal for a few miles until about 7am

I had a lot more resistance to doing this walk than any before today. But after about 90 minutes, down along the creek flats, I began breaking through the resistance as a new energy surfaced... I felt my resistance as the sense of chronic fear in my body, mind and life; fear of death. As I walked I was able to walk into that fear, and love it. Rather than resist it I found myself embracing it, loving it... not because I liked it and wanted to adore it, I simply had no choice but to accept it and release it... and as I walked I lived and consciously participated in each moment as a death, yet very alive. With each step the moment was shed, rather than held... each moment like water.

Later in the walk I encountered the carcass of a massive black cow. The stink was thick and came down all around me, soaking the whole area for 100 yards around. I stood in the stench, flies swarming under a baking sun, by the carcass. The body was beautiful in a way, in its rotting stillness, life rushing to devour it. Another lesson begging understanding.


Several hours into the walk I took a short break to sit and eat an orange. My friend, Coal, a big black lab gave me about three minutes before grinning, wriggling and jumping up and down like a Masai, eager to keep going. Later, with the sun high, and trees sparse, I had to slow my pace for the old boy as he padded out the last leg into town.

Why am I doing these walks each month? To be honest I have no idea. It feels necessary. The walking is about getting beyond any idea about it. The walks are an offering, a prayer and a breath for the flourishing of Adi Da's Fear-No-More Zoo, and for the advancement of His Vision of Fear-No-More out into the cells and patterns of every fear-living human on this planet, which is pretty much all of us. It's something I just feel compelled to do.

Whether others walk with me, here or in other places around the world, I'll walk anyway... every month now for the rest of my life.

Years ago Adi Da told me that whatever I ended up doing he wanted it to be done to last. So I intend that this Fear-No-More Zoo and Vision last beyond my lifetime, and that it go on and grow, deepening for generations to come... and I'll walk and do other things too, to effect whatever I can to ensure Fear-No-More exists and blossoms for a long time.

I think this is the best thing I can do with my life and time... and I hope each of you will join me, each in your own way.

Another idea I got from the news today.... floating across California in a lawn chair suspended from a cluster of helium-filled party balloons...! That could be fun! I could drag a banner saying, "Fear-No-More Monkeys! "... Friends already banned me from wing-suiting!

Stuart
FNM
Gift

Thursday, July 3, 2008

About 15 Years Ago

About 15 years ago Severn Suzuki, Canada, was 12.

At the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio she made a timeless speech to the gathered delegates and to the world...

"We are a group of 12 and 13 year olds trying to make a difference..."

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Walking July 5th Weekend

The next Fear-No-More World WALK weekend is July 5 & 6.

Where will you be walking for a world free of fear?

I'll be walking alone here this time, but I hope others will walk in other areas. I'm planning a 6 hour walk in the Snow Mountain Wilderness at the northern end of Lake County, a beautiful and remote area.

I humbly dedicate my walk up Snow Mountain to the mountain gorillas in the war-torn Virungas, to horses and humans who are treated as merchandise and discarded when no longer useful and to all the bugs and insects we think nothing of, but who are full of wonder, mystery and intelligence far exceeding our own.

Fear-No-More,
Stuart

Land Owners Lost

Owning land was a foreign concept to the Australian Aboriginals and many other native cultures around the world. Those people saw, and in some cases still see, themselves as caretakers of a land more primary than themselves. To them it was inconceivable for a human being to own land, or to own anything, really.

Practically and spiritually these more original, nomadic, cultures were far freer than we who became land-trapped through fear and separation.

With ownership came a more serious aggression, as well as deepening segregation, intolerance and an insensitivity to the cycles and equalities of life. Ownership became viewed not as an aberration anymore but a form of status, a sign of superiority over life.

This new culture of "owners" became destroyers, of which the world today bares ample witness.

In reality, land ownership, or ownership of anything, is a mirage within our minds. The economy of ownership is a false one, for nothing can ever be owned by a human, or by any other being, and especially not the earth. Today when one single, tiny, person can presume on his own to possess 30,000 square miles of land the fantasy, one could say, has become insane.

If we are really up to the responsibility of ownership we'd hold the land as a sacred privilege rather than our right. What makes us live the way we do?

The buying and selling of land is tantamount to the trade in human slaves. That this is hard for us to feel doesn't make it not so. Real estate agents have become the approved slave traders. The Earth is stolen, bought, sold and abused like chattel. The buyers, sellers and realtors are often treated like chattel as well.

We are fully a society of "owners", and "the owned", and this won't change in a hurry. But we can become owners who are sensitive and respectful to the land, as well as to one another.

The lands we live on are sacred. So the buying and selling of land should be a sacred process.

Hidden within the title, "Real Estate Agent", there is a reference to the higher purposes of this position within society.

We need our good real estate agents to begin serving the inherently "Real E(nlightened)state" in themselves, in the traded lands, and in the buyers and sellers they work with, and for.

We should expect these real estate agents to be priests and protectors of the lands they serve, the very lands who serve them. Regardless of differing religions, or ideologies, we should all be as priests and servants of the "real state", and of the earth who is our home and who gives us life. She knows how to bring us together as a culture and equalize our differences, if we allow her...


Stuart

Dreamtime Stones

During the 1940's at an Australian Aboriginal outback reservation arrived a small group of geologists. The geologists had spent several weeks further out in the arid desert collecting rock and mineral samples. Their expedition completed, they now spent several days cataloging their findings at the reservation. The collected rocks were laid out in rows according to type, size, and quality, and the scientists began identifying and classifying them.

After a time, a group of elderly Aboriginal men came over. Upon viewing the rocks they quickly became highly disturbed and animated, crying, and wailing. Their mournful displays drew the geologists' attention who enquired about the elders' distress. The unwitting intruders were astounded by what they heard.

The Aboriginal men recognized the stones and rocks before them as individuals they personally knew. They had names for some of them. They also accurately identified the precise locations from where individual rocks had been taken. Many of these rocks were associated with precious stories and tribal myths. These rocks were keepers and guardians of the balance of life in that region, and of the peoples' sacred culture.

Viewing the stolen rocks reconnected them to their ancient lands, re-awakening their concerns for the safety of those places and for the doubtful continuation of their spiritual culture. The sacred lands where these people had lived peacefully for millennia were no longer the same. First disturbed when these tribal caretakers were forcibly removed the land was now further thrown out of balance with the theft of the rocks. The elders were inconsolable for days. Their world was destroyed.

-- Stuart Camps



Adi Da Samraj: From the magical, shamanistic point of view everything is alive. The cosmos is a living process. From the magical point of view, so-called inanimate objects are also conceived as being alive and participating in a living, magical cosmos. And this is certainly true. The more psychically awake you become, the more you are aware of the psycho-physical nature of what you call the objective world. Once you see that the world is psycho-physical in nature, you begin to appreciate the living condition of everything that arises in the field of experience -- not living, perhaps, in the sense that a chair can get up and walk out of the room, but living in a magical sense. Your association with so-called inanimate objects can go through many changes. Association with an inanimate place, even just a room, can change. There are feelings associated with it, a sense of energies, emotions, moods, influences, all kinds of factors to which you become sensitive relative to so-called inanimate things, just as you can be sensitive relative to moving and living things. . .

(c) 2008 The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd, . All rights reserved.

The Grass as Person

Adi Da Samraj: How would you treat the grass as a person?... How do you think the trees feel about not being regarded as persons by all of you?... When I walk about outdoors I naturally acknowledge the trees and plants I encounter as persons...


(c) 2008 The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd, . All rights reserved. Perpetual copyright claimed.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

July 5 & 6 Walk

Next "official" Fear-No-More World WALK >> first weekend in July.
Here in Lake County we're still deciding on the walk location... either a coastal redwood & beach walk, or a rock-crunching, sweat-pumping hike around the trails on nearby Bogg's Mountain.
We hope every one of you will get up and get walking with us that weekend as a "walking prayer" for a world less afraid... us of one another and the non-humans of us !

I'll post a further reminder closer to the date.

Stuart

His Holiness the Karmapa

His Holiness the Seventeenth Karmapa (December 2007) : Throughout my life I have always felt that the outer natural elements and my own mind are close. I have a special connection with the four elements. I am not being superstitious and saying I can talk to the elements, but sometimes it feels that way.

Ever since the human race first appeared on this earth, we have used this earth heavily. It is said that ninety-nine percent of the resources and so on in this world come from the natural environment. We are using the earth until she is used up. The earth has given us immeasurable benefit, but what have we done for the earth in return? We always ask for something from the earth, but never give her anything back.

We never have loving or protective thoughts for the earth. Whenever trees or anything else emerge from the ground, we cut them down. If there is a bit of level earth, we fight over it. To this day we perpetuate a continuous cycle of war and conflict over it. In fact, we have not done much of anything for the earth.

Now the time has come when the earth is scowling at us; the time has come when the earth is giving up on us.The earth is about to treat us badly and give up on us. If she gives up on us, where can we live? There is talk of going to other planets that could support life, but only a few rich people could go. What would happen to all of us sentient beings who could not go?

What should we do now that the situation has become so critical? The sentient beings living on the earth and the elements of the natural world need to join their hands together-the earth must not give up on sentient beings, and sentient beings must not give up on the earth. Each needs to grasp the other's hand.

(thanks to K.M. for forwarding this excerpt)

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Crazy Vic, the Fearless

Madman, Crazy Vic, walks the world advancing the disposition of "Fearing-No-More". Crazy Vic is also a master of pichenotte, a tree-climber, wildgrass-eater, landscaper, long-time celibate, jokester, camel lover and random movie watcher... and he loves to walk. He also meditates a lot and helps those less well-off than he... including the rich and famous !

In a recent rare interview Crazy Vic mumbled, "It's a good idea, no matter what, to Fear-No-More... (chuckles)..."

Monday, June 2, 2008

Afraid?

"Letting Go Mountain"

Typically, people have a variety of ideas about what the Vision of Fear-No-More is about; like not feeling fear, avoiding fear, over-riding fear somehow, perhaps by challenging or confronting it.

But the "Fearing-No-More" process isn't about avoiding or escaping fear. It isn't about doing exaggerated things in order to challenge and overcome fear.

"Fearing-No-More", as described by Adi Da Samraj, involves a process of accepting and feeling your fear, embracing and allowing the fear, not being afraid of the fear, acknowledging the inevitability of our mortal situation -- that no matter what we do we are going to die -- and instead of struggling and seeking to prevail over what is simply inevitable surrender your entire being into life itself, trusting in the Source of Being, surrendering "without even the slightest hint of the (manmade) Divine", because eventually you have no choice anyway...

Enter through the gates of Fear-No-More Zoo, at the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary, and you will pass among the burial shrines of five animals; two dogs, a cat, a Bactrian camel and a llama.

The entrance to Fear-No-More Zoo imparts a profound message to those who visit there sensitively. Read a little more....
Stuart

Walking on Saturday, with Crazy Vic

Last weekend, with Stuart and Coal, we did a moderately steep walk up the slopes of Mt. Saint Helena (California), reaching the summit rocks in about 3 hours. (We had originally planned to walk to Middletown from Seigler Springs, but changed gears at the last minute.)

It was a beautiful sunny day, and other folks were out enjoying the hike. As we ascended, starting at about 6am, the fog banks below us were like expansive oceans of clouds, with hills and peaks poking through the billows in a surreal landscape.
I invoked the purposes and intentions of these Fear-No-More World WALKS throughout the hike.

I felt my heart open as I offered my prayers of blessing for all beings, again and again.

I prayed for my own sensitivity to non-humans to deepen. I prayed for my understanding of the inter-connectedness of all of life to grow. I prayed that my practice of ego-transcendence become stronger and stronger.

I prayed that all humans come to a deeper understanding of their relationship to all beings, particularly animals. I find it very sad that in this time and place, animals are often considered to be without consciousness, just 'instinctual' beings, and are regularly mistreated, maligned and slaughtered on such a massive scale.

I feel, as we all do, that it is time for a new respect and a deeper understanding to develop.

Stuart and I alternatively talked, joked, told leelas, and just walked in silence.

We hope more of you can join us in the future.

These walks are very healing for me and I'm sure you will enjoy them if you come along.

Victor

Friday, May 30, 2008

Uncontacted Tribes of Earth

John Nigro forwarded me the following article, which I wanted to post. While I was growing up in New Guinea every so often I remember hearing of another new tribe being "discovered". The people on who's land we lived had been "discovered" only 30 years before I was born there.

That human beings still exist free of the modern world's dilemmas, free of the intellectualism of the more disconnected cultures, and are a people still native to the earth and the forests, represents an vital link for the rest of humanity... a link to who we were, and who we still are.

Today, "after all of this", which cultures are the richer now? Much has been gained by man's so-called advance, but we need also to ask, "What was lost? Are we more or less human now?"

I hope the modern world now claims enough sensitivity, compassion and wisdom to protect these still original cultures from our barbarism, at least until we have righted our place upon the earth and can meet with them in wisdom, respect and reverence. In saying this I'm not idealising these un-contacted cultures. It's just that right now the rest of humanity has nothing good to bring them. Not medicine, not religion, not science, not technology, not coca cola... let's not ruin more tribal cultures, but instead preserve and protect them from our predation. If not ourselves, then let them, at least, live in relative peace.

-Stuart

One of Earth's last uncontacted tribes

DailyMail.co.uk
By Michael Hanlon, 30th May 2008

Skin painted bright red, heads partially shaved, arrows drawn back in the longbows and aimed square at the aircraft buzzing overhead. The gesture is unmistakable: Stay Away.

Behind the two men stands another figure, possibly a woman, her stance also seemingly defiant. Her skin painted dark, nearly black.

The apparent aggression shown by these people is quite understandable. For they are members of one of Earth's last uncontacted tribes, who live in the Envira region in the thick rainforest along the Brazilian-Peruvian frontier.

Thought never to have had any contact with the outside world, everything about these people is, and hopefully will remain, a mystery.

Painted: In a thick rainforest along the Brazilian-Peruvian border, these tribespeople are thought never to have had any contact with the outside world

Their extraordinary body paint, precisely what they eat (the anthropologists saw evidence of gardens from the air), how they construct their tent-like camp, their language, how their society operates - the life of these Amerindians remains a mystery.

'We did the overflight to show their houses, to show they are there, to show they exist,' said Brazilian uncontacted tribes expert José Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Junior. 'This is very important because there are some who doubt their existence.'

Meirelles, who despite once being shot in the shoulder by an arrow fired by another tribe campaigns to protect these peoples, believes this group's numbers are increasing, and pointed out how strong and healthy the people seemed.

But other uncontacted groups in the region, whose homes have been photographed from the air, are in severe danger from illegal logging in Peru and populations are being decimated.

Mystery: The tribespeople are likely to think the plane that took this photograph is a spirit or large bird


Logging is driving uncontacted tribes over the border and could lead to conflict with the estimated five hundred uncontacted Indians already living on the Brazilian side.

'What is happening in this region [of Peru] is a monumental crime against the natural world, the tribes, the fauna and is further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the 'civilised' ones, treat the world,' said Meirelles.

It is extraordinary to think that, in 2008, there remain about a hundred groups of people, scattered over the Earth, who know nothing of our world and we nothing of theirs, save a handful of brief encounters.

The uncontacted tribes, which are located in the jungles of South America, New Guinea and a remote and the beautiful and remote North Sentinel island in the Indian Ocean (the inhabitants of which have also responded to attempts at contact with extreme aggression) all have one thing in common - they want to be left alone.

And for good reason. The history of contact, between indigenous tribes and the outside world, has always been an unhappy one.

Human nature: One man points at the plane. Others ready their weapons

In our overcrowded world their very future hangs in the balance. Almost all of these tribes are threatened by powerful outsiders who want their land. These outsiders - loggers, miners, cattle ranchers - are often willing to kill the tribespeople to get what they want.

Even where there is no violence, the tribes can be wiped out by diseases like the common cold to which they have no resistance.

According to Miriam Ross of Survival International, which campaigns to protect the world's remaining indigenous peoples, 'These tribes represent the incredible diversity of humankind. Unless we want to condemn yet more of the earth's peoples to extinction, we must respect their choice. Any contact they have with outsiders must happen in their own time and on their own terms.'

As to who these people are, how they live their lives, what language they speak - we know nothing. 'Normally you can tell who tribes are by their language, how they wear their hair, how they adorn their bodies and so on, but in this case the photos don't allow us to get close enough to see,' says Ms Ross.

Hidden homes: The tribe's tent-shaped dwellings deep in the rainforest

When anthropologists first overflew the area, they saw women and children in the open and no one appeared to be painted. It was only when the plane returned a few hours later that they saw these individuals covered head-to-toe in red. 'Tribes in the Amazon paint themselves for all kinds of different reasons - one of which includes when they feel threatened or are aggressive,' Ms Ross says.

'And they are almost certain to feel threatened by or aggressive towards a plane, which was where the photos were taken from. They are almost certain not to understand what the plane is - perhaps a spirit or a large bird.

'The jungle is fundamental to their lives and survival. It's their home, their source of food, the source of their culture etc. Without it, they could not exist as a people.'

Contact is usually a disaster for these remote tribespeople, who live a life probably unchanged for more than 10,000 years. Even if the loggers do not shoot them (which they often do) or force them off their land, diseases against which these isolated humans have no resistance typically wipe out half an uncontacted tribe's numbers in a year or two.

Stay away: The anthropologists saw evidence of gardens, but exactly what they eat, how they build their huts and why they paint their bodies remains unknown

Ms Ross added: 'These pictures are further evidence that uncontacted tribes really do exist. The world needs to wake up to this, and ensure that their territory is protected in accordance with international law. Otherwise, they will soon be made extinct.'

For more information on Survival International

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

From Val Hensey, Bristol, UK

Dear Stuart,

I will be doing a walk around the area I live on Saturday morning, in spite of the rain!!

It is soft, gentle summer rain and fairly mild, and I always let my tears for our beautiful planet mingle with the tears from Heaven, it is so healing to my spirit...I think of others who are doing the same, and then I don't feel so lonely...

I walk out from my house right on to a beautiful area of "common" land, where there are Badgers, Deer, Hare, Foxes, insects of all kinds, and some very beautiful Sky Larks, and other rare birds, also there are some extremely rare orchids, and the most amazing part is that all this is within half a mile from Bristol International Airport...So, one thing does compensate for another, I find this as I go through Life.

much love, Val Hensey

Monday, May 26, 2008

FNM World WALK - June 2008

Dear Friends and "World Walkers",

Please join us this weekend, at your convenience, by embarking on an invocatary, contemplative, walk in your area... on your mountain, along your river, around your lake, or alongside your free-way... The location and duration is up to you.

Scan through older blog-posts to familiarize yourself with the purpose and intent of these walks.

The Lake County Fear-No-More World WALK will journey the 15 miles from the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary to Middletown, once again leaving at 5am, Saturday 31. Contact Stuart for more info.

Stuart
www.fearnomorezoo.org

Friday, May 23, 2008

No Fixed Address

Robyn Davidson is, perhaps, best known for her trek by camel across Australia's outback. Her books, "Tracks" and, "From Alice to Ocean: Alone Across the Outback" detail that journey.

The following is excerpted from another of her books, "No Fixed Address: Nomads and the Fate of the Planet".


TRANSCRIPT - Robyn Davidson:
For thirty years on and off, I have been visiting, reading about, living or travelling with traditional nomads all over the world.

Wherever I have looked, I've found that those ways of life are under enormous pressure and will, I believe, soon disappear. Given that we have been nomadic since our time as Homo sapiens sapiens began - about 200, 000 years ago - and given that we have planted crops and lived in settlements for only ten thousand of those years, that strikes me as an extraordinary fact.

During these last ten thousand years, we have made massive, unprecedented changes to the environment, creating problems for ourselves that we may not be able to solve.

We get out of cul-de-sacs by retracing our steps to find out where we went wrong. I would like to suggest that one wrong turning occurred when we gave up cultures of movement, for cultures of accumulation. I do not mean to say that we should, or could, return to traditional nomadic economies. I do mean to say that there are systems of knowledge, and grand poetical schemata derived form the mobile life, that it would be foolish to disregard or underrate. And mad to destroy.

The agricultural revolution transformed the earth and changed the fate of humanity. It produced an entirely new mode of subsistence, which remains the foundation of the global economy to this day. It gave us greater quantities of low quality food, and a rapidly increasing population dependant on that food. And there is no going back. Without human labour hacking at weeds, felling trees or redirecting water, domesticated grains would die out, and without that grain, so would we. Agriculture provided no exit other than famine.

By requiring humans to become sedentary, it changed the way we conceive of our place in nature, and it changed the way we distribute goods. Pre-agricultural peoples saw themselves as embedded in and working with nature, rather than struggling against it. Because they were mobile foragers, they didn't produce surplus, and they couldn't carry much weight.

In 10 000 BC all human beings were hunter-gatherers, by 1500 AD I per cent were hunter-gatherers. Less than .001 per cent of people are hunter-gatherers today.

Agriculture set us on a path to the urban then the industrial revolutions, and finally to the wild consumerism of late capitalism. Like previous chapters of the agricultural story, the present one is achieving material wealth, longer life, greater choice - all the benefits that people like me enjoy. But they are available to the few at the expense of the many. This is axiomatic. The pyramidical social structure, which formed around the storage of grain, with goods, power and resources concentrating towards the top, is as fundamental today as it was in those first cities of five thousand years ago.

Most importantly, the generation of our wealth requires an increasing pillage of the environment. Global warming should be terrifying enough to galvanise us into changing habits of consumption. It does not appear to be doing so. Four billion years of life on earth. Millions of those reigned over by the dinosaurs. Us lot a mere 200 00 year blip and according to Lord Rees, the UK Astronomer Royal, we are not looking good to get through the next century, let alone compete with the dinosaurs.

In every religion I can think of, there exists some variation on the theme of abandoning the settled life and walking one's way to Godliness. The Hindu Sadhu, leaving behind family and wealth to live as a beggar; the pilgrims of Compostela walking away their sins; the circumambulators of the Buddhist kora; the Hajj. What could this ritual journeying be but symbolic, idealized versions of the foraging life? By taking to the road we free ourselves of baggage, both physical and psychological. We walk back to our original condition, to our best selves.,

While there can be no literal return to previous modes of living, there might be ways into previous kinds of thinking. Pilgrimages, let's say, to newly imagined territories where, instead of dismissing the traditional as useless to modernity, we might integrate the best of each.

But if that is too much too expect, at least attention to nomadic world views might get us closer to finding whatever solutions to the disintegrations of modern life are actually available to us.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

"Friends Walking"

"Friends Walking"
A sculpture in bronze
Kenneth Armitage, 1952

NEXT WALK : May 31 - June 1

The next Fear-No-More World WALK is set for the weekend of May 31 & June 1.... please join us by going on a walk in your area.

On this fifth walk we honor all the people (human and non-human) around the world who have walked, run, swum, fasted, sat in trees, on rocks or in one way or another made a stand for betterment within themselves and in the world around them, regardless of the obstacles

-- people such as....

Peace Pilgrim, Peace Pilgrim Two, Julia Butterfly Hill, Mahatma Gandhi, Shivapuri Baba, Wangari Maathai, Martin Strel, Genshin Fujinami, Black Elk, Nugi Garimara, Roger Fouts, Digit, Skidboot, Mottaipaiyan, Ananda Mayi Ma, Apisai Bati, Kenny Ausubel, Jane Goodall, Brighty, Washoe, Chief Sequoyah, Chomolungma, all the great rivers, and countless others.....

These humans, animals, trees, mountains and rivers and countless others have, in one way or another, stood out for tolerance, peace, environmental protection and for sheer life! They and their efforts continue to be inspiring for their enduring effects.

Swami Vivekananda once told a gathering of people seated in front of him, "All of you here are not less, but greater than, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna and Mohammed because you are alive here right now, at this very moment!"

He was telling his audience that the achievements and inspirations of others, no matter how great, are efficacious only to the degree that others, we -- you and me -- take up their lead. He emboldened everyone he met to be as great, or greater, than the most impressive people in history in terms of action and life.

If we are merely inspired by the seven year running feats of Buddhist monks, the tree-sitting of environmental activists, or the great realizations of spiritual giants, we support and further very little of what their lives attempted to set in motion.

Martin Strel wrote: "there are millions of people throughout the world gazing out the same window. Occasionally a crazy thought comes into their head from somewhere so far away they can't even fathom its sources, but they quickly discard it and return to the surface to deal with the seemingly important aspects of everyday life that crowd their inbox. Years pass, their children have children, and every time they gaze out that window, those old dreams flood their minds again. Big dreams. Dreams they are afraid to try to reach but yet linger. They may think they’re too fat or too old or whatever their excuse. They all have an excuse that prevents them from reaching those dreams. If a fifty-two year old, slightly fat man can swim the Amazon, what can you do? Remember, those last two hours before sunset can often be the best swimming of the day".

The monthly Fear-No-More World WALKS are an opportunity for everyone to not just admire others for their heroic efforts, but to put our own energy forward also, bare our sweat a little, exercise our muscles for the simple sake of the life before us and around us -- inspired by all those others who have stepped out more dramatically then we to induce a positive life. If our lives come to match our potential these great friends of humanity may never need to extend themselves so again. As they have done for us, we also can relieve them by our greatness, how we live, what we understand and do.

Let's pick up their energy for life and carry it with us, take up their action and prayer and re-enliven it as our own... carry their intentions forward as they would have wanted us to... they are part of our human lineage and legacy as we are theirs.

WALK for a world free of unnecessary fear, perhaps even to free fear from its own desolate solitude of unhappy self...

Stuart

"NO" = "KNOW"

The root meaning of "No" is not punitive, suppressive, demeaning or controlling.

"No" is rooted to "Knowledge".... "to know".

Using the word, "no", with its most positive intent would not be to tell you, "No! don't do that!"

Instead "no" would be calling you to knowledge, "to know", to be aware and thereby do the right thing.

So "yes" and "no" are sisters communicating the same intent of agreement and knowledge.

"Yes" and "no" are not opposites but companions communicating approval and wisdom, a point of view free of doubt and fear.

Fear-No-More World WALKS are walks for "yes" = "no".

Resist telling someone "No, you cannot".

Never tell yourself, "No, I cannot".

When we tell someone, "no", let's do so to draw each other beyond limitation and suppression... into self-know-ledge, awareness and freedom, helping to undo the fear and doubt this present culture tends to prefer, that strange fear we've come to feel safe within...

Yes and No-ledge, in their fullness, are not different or opposites.

They are the same.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Walks in SFO Area - Tom Stiles

On Saturday May 3rd I walked for "Fear-No-More" in three parks in San Francisco. Primary among these was the Presidio, in the north-west corner of the city, along the shore on either side of the Golden Gate Bridge, out to the Pacific, and on up the hill half a mile all along.

The Presidio is home to many species of trees, including eucalyptus, and therefore also many birds and other wildlife.

I walked on part of the Bay Trail in the Presidio….. this is a trail that traces the shoreline of San Francisco and San Pablo Bays, over 500 miles when it’s done, and it’s over half completed now. It offers non-motorized access to some of the most scenic, and in some cases wildlife-protected shoreline on the Bay.

I walked in a dog-walk zone where human people exercised their relationships to canine people... observing how dogs bring people together.

May all people come together on the ground of a fearless world for non-humans and humans alike.

Tom

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Boston Walk post

The Boston walk happened on Sunday May 4 between 10:30am and 1:00pm….overcast and “moody”. I could feel a palpable union with all other walkers, and the INTENTION of the walk…very enjoyable…I did not see one single negative thing for the 2 ½ hours, even though I was right in a big city. Every unit that came to my attention felt blessed via my regard. I started in Winter Hill, Somerville, famous in the past as a home of gangsters. Blessed them. Passed a Revolutionary War gunpowder magazine stone structure…blessed all political revolutionaries. Then 3 dogs, a few birds, saved an earthworm stranded on a wet sidewalk.

Then was wandering down streets in a general direction, but didn’t exactly know where I was….stumbled on a beautiful bike-path/greenway that ran right thru Somerville/Cambridge for miles!! Greenery bowing in from above, happy walkers, babies and dogs. Overcast, gray, and timeless. Fed birds.

Then came a miracle of synchronicity! I came out of the greenway to a giant MURAL….huge! in vibrant colors! and there are: a green chameleon, a rabbit, 2 parrots with green, red and yellow feathers!! just like on the FNMZoo brochure I had just seen that morning. Also there were fish, pastures and sky, snakes. After my happy shock, I saw it was on the brick side wall of a petstore….wow. Once on the subway, I read of rescuing elephants in Sri Lanka, and what a great job the Buddhists there are doing moving them to sancturies… with tranquilizers and trucks! Finally got home…joyful.

Can’t wait til the next one………may all beings be blessed by these walkabouts…….

love, loretta

Sunday, May 4, 2008

One More Fear-No

This weekend Victor, Coal and I walked from the MOA Sanctuary to Middletown.

Starting at 5am we were done by 10am. A good walk. A good meditation. The canyon, creek, crags, old trees, dawn sickle moon, rising sun and blue sky were full and alive.