The Cosmic Law of Ayni and Why it Matters

The German mystic Meister Eckhart said “If the only prayer you say in your entire life is ‘thank you,’ that will be enough.”

Rumi said “Wear gratitude like a cloak, and it will feed every corner of your life.” 

Gratitude. The importance of gratitude is talked about frequently in self-help kinds of articles.  

But, can you really wear gratitude like a cloak in your life and what does this even mean?

Most of us think about gratitude as an ACT like remembering to say thanks at a meal, for example. Acts of gratitude are powerful—and these quotes point to something more.

What is this mysterious power that gratitude has to change our lives and how do we access it?

Deepak Chopra says that “Gratitude opens the door to the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the universe. You open the door through gratitude.” 

Gratitude opens the door to the power and wisdom of the universe. Just let that land for a few seconds.

These quotes point to gratitude beyond an act, and hint that gratitude is more like a state of BEING.

What if gratitude is a state of BEING? What if gratitude is a frequency that we become?

What if embodying gratitude opens us to deeper connection with life itself?

The Cosmic Law of Ayni

I’ve begun studying shamanic healing practices of central Peru. In their language – Quechua --  one of the first words we have learned is “Ayni.”  In this tradition, Ayni is a Cosmic Law and means that "nothing ever goes one way." At it’s heart, Ayni is about reciprocity – the exchange of energy between things for mutual benefit.

Reciprocity implies interdependence.

Our breath is also an expression of Ayni.

From the moment we are born, our first beautiful breath announces our arrival into this world, and we breathe 6-8 times a minute for the rest of our lives. Every inhale, we fill our bodies with the ingredients for sustaining life. Every exhale, we return the ingredients for plants to create our next life-sustaining breath.

This reciprocal cycle ties our lives directly and inexorably to the Earth every single moment of our lives. What connection between life and the Earth could be more immediate or more visceral than our breath? If we cannot breathe, we die.  

Ayni is baked into us as humans. We can't escape it. It's in every breath, whether we know it or not.

When we go beyond the simple act of saying thanks and feel grateful for what we have received, we are IN AYNI. We are experiencing the free flow of love and appreciation for what is given to us, and the feeling of wanting to give back.

The moment we become the frequency of gratitude, we embody the Cosmic Law of reciprocity. The more that we embody gratitude and Ayni, the more we open ourselves to the gifts of the universe. More love flows through us. More abundance. More connection to all that is.

This reminds me of a song we used to sing at summer camp called "Magic Penny". LOL. The song said "love is something if you give it away, you end up having more. it's just like a magic penny, hold it tight and you won't have any. Lend it, spend it and you'll have so many, they'll roll all over the floor." The Magic Penny song is an expression of Ayni.

Why Ayni Matters Today

Although it goes by many names, Ayni is present as Cosmic Law within Indigenous cultures around the world. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote about her father’s offering of coffee to the land each morning when they woke up. How he stood and poured the coffee into the brown humus saying “Here’s to the Gods of Tahawus,” and the impression that his offering left on her.

“The words and the coffee called us to remember that the woods and lakes were a gift. Ceremonies large and small have the power to focus attention to a way of living awake in the world. The visible become invisible, merging with the soil. It may have been a secondhand ceremony, but even through my confusion I recognized that the earth drank it up as if it were a right. The land knows you, even when you are lost.”   

It's pretty obvious that most of the world is lost right now—around the world, people are experiencing unprecedented suffering from the pain of disconnection. For centuries we in the Western world have cut ourselves off from these types of earth-based indigenous practices, essentially doing everything we could to stamp out the people and traditions that harbored this wisdom. As a result, we are boats adrift in a stormy sea endlessly searching for the lighthouse to guide us home.

What I see now is that we are on a collective journey to rediscover ancient wisdom. We need it because we need to reconnect to the sacred within so we can finally stop the madness of the empty materialist worldview and come home to the loving, joyful beingness that is our birthright. We may feel lost, but the earth is not lost. As Wall Kimmerer says, “the land knows you, even when you are lost.”

Indigenous cultures teach the practice of making offerings because these practices return us the energy of reciprocity and into alignment with the Cosmic Law and frequency of Ayni.

I feel strongly that now it is essential for the Western world to take a closer look at indigenous wisdom and practices that reestablish our connection to the earth like making offerings.

Reciprocity begins as a way of being. It begins with feeling our connection to the earth and the flow of give and take in the universe, and finding more ways to offer something back in exchange.

I don’t have all the answers for what that looks like. But I do know that I’m going to offer a few drips of my morning coffee to the earth tomorrow and see what happens.

Would you like to join me?