Entheogenic Soul Evolutions

Abstract-

2008-10-30T11:39:00.000-07:00

I originally began this blog to document my travels in Peru and experiences with the plant medicines. This was a wonderful opportunity to explore these traditions, my own consciousness, heal my physical body, and do field work for my Master's thesis. I received my degree in Sustainable Communities from Northern Arizona University in May of this year. I have taken the past five months to decompress from the incredible energetic and mental push of completing this project, and I am now ready to share. I hope that it is easily readable in the Blog format. I delineated each chapter through a separate entry. If I learned one thing in school it was to skim the intro and conclusion, and see if from here I wanted to read all the chapters. I encourage you to do the same if you so desire. I would love any feedback or thoughts you have. I have plans for future qualitative research into the entheogenic experience. The data I collected is a good jumping off point. But more on that later.... I hope you enjoy reading this! Many Blessings and Much Love- Robin

Abstract-

ENTHEOGENIC SOUL EVOLUTIONS:

AN EXPLORATION OF THE CEREMONIAL USAGE OF

AYAHUASCA AND HUACHUMA BY WESTERNERS

Robin C. Flynn

This thesis explores the intercultural phenomena of the ceremonial ingestion of two South American indigenous plant medicines, Ayahuasca and Huachuma (also known as San Pedro.) The core research questions have been: why are individuals from all over the world are choosing to seek out experiences with the indigenous knowledge systems associated with these plant medicines, and does this have implications to the creation of good and sustainable communities?

Each plant-spirit medicine is introduced through a chapter, which discusses the biochemical make-up of the plant, and how it interacts in the body, as well as its history, current use, and some of the controversy surrounding each medicine. This project is based on field research undertaken in Peru and the secondary literature available. This research project includes qualitative analysis based on data given in an online questionnaire by people who have participated in these healing ceremonies, participant-observations, and reflections on my own experiences with these healing traditions. I present and discuss the core and emergent themes of the collected data focusing on the qualitative impact participating in these ceremonies have had on the lives of the individuals. My analytical and personal conclusions are presented in the final chapter.

Acknowledgments-

On this radical journey of healing, growing, and learning I have been blessed with remarkable support. I wish to thank my mother, Lindy Flynn, for her endless and unconditional love and cheerleading. Without her encouragement on all levels I would not have been able to complete this piece. As well as my father, Martin Flynn, for instilling in me a love of paradoxical realities and guiding me towards the multi-disciplinary path of the Master of Arts in Sustainable Communities. I wish to thank Dr. Sandra Lubarsky for directing this process and helping me hone the strength of my analytical mind. I send my deepest gratitude to Dr. Bill Burke for being an amazing and challenging editor, as well as to each of the members of my thesis committee who took the time and energy to support this project. To my partner in adventure, exploration, and life, Darcy Kopas, it has been an awesome and beautiful journey so far- the best is yet to come! And to the Great Mystery whose unending beauty and grace weaves the tapestry of all life. How grateful I am to be here.

Chapter One: Introduction

2008-10-30T11:22:00.000-07:00

At this time on the planet millions of people from all walks of life are eagerly and earnestly seeking alternative approaches to the dominant materialist paradigm. They see that the path of the current American cultural trajectory (which is a guiding force in the world) is leading to planetary destruction and the possible extinction of life as we know it on the planet. Many are looking for solutions to our environmental issues, which continue to unfold in mind bending complexity, illuminating the underlying interconnectivity of all life. Many are heart-broken and disgusted by the current fear-driven paradigm that fuels and feeds war mongering corporate-states all around the world while needlessly killing millions, destroying beautiful eco-systems, and consuming an inordinate amount of un-renewable resources. The true colors of many politicians and corporations are being shown to be self-serving and with seeming disregard for the health, happiness, and peace of the planet and all her species. We, the people, have been have been commodified from citizens into consumers, and the consumer culture is leaving us feeling soulless. 700 people own more wealth than half the population of the planet.
Many in developing nations are sick and poor, and many in affluent nations are sick and poor. In the United States one in four people have some form of mental illness, and of the top ten prescription drugs nine are for anti-anxiety, anti-depression, or sleeplessness, with the tenth being viagra. Addiction is rampant; the signs of this are everywhere. The sacred plants of the Americas have been adulterated, genetically modified, raped of the active constituents from their natural form and turned into addictive killing machines. Corn, which has always been the food of the People, has been turned into high fructose corn syrup that leads directly to insulin resistance, diabetes, and obesity. Tobacco, which is sacred through out the Americas, whose smoke carried the prayers of the People to the Creator, is now covered with over 200 poisonous toxic chemicals and pushed as the same plant. Coca, which is a tonic and powerful medicine, whose nutrient dense leaves will sustain a person, save lives of those afflicted with altitude sickness, and are left as offerings to the Apus (mountain spirits), has been drenched in chemicals and beaten down until only a little white powder remains.
On top of all of this it has now been shown that the largest cause of death in the United States is actually the medical industry. The recent research undertaken by a group of five doctors evidenced in the article Death By Medicine reviewed all of the statistical data on the actual impact of the medical industry on people’s health and well being. The impact of this peer-reviewed paper profound:
"This fully referenced report shows the number of people having in-hospital, adverse reactions to prescribed drugs to be 2.2 million per year. The number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections is 20 million per year. The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million per year. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million per year. The most stunning statistic, however, is that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is an astounding 783,936 per year. It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US. (By contrast, the number of deaths attributable to heart disease in 2001 was 699,697, while the number of deaths attributable to cancer was 553,251.5) (http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2004/mar2004_awsi_death_01.htm)"

These issues are all deeply interconnected. The search for and application of sustainable approaches to living is being done globally in all fields and sectors of society. People are beginning to realize that inherent in environmental issues are social justice issues, and at the root of both of these often lay spiritual crises- guilt, fear, pain, disconnection, apathy, and despair. A global movement has been emerging in the past twenty years. This movement is the greatest the world has ever seen. It is non-hierarchical and is comprised of millions of groups and individuals dedicated to honoring all of life, the diversity and complexity of nature, and social justice (Hawken 2007: 14.) It is a movement without a name. This movement and new global wisdom is saturated in and informed by indigenous knowledge systems from around the world. These wisdom systems are not caught in the trance and anesthesia of the modern post-industrial dream. This thesis is an exploration of the indigenous wisdom systems associated with the ceremonial ingestion of two healing plants of South America.
I came to the exploration of the ceremonial use of Ayahuasca and Huachuma (commonly known as San Pedro I will refer to it by both names) through my own search for health and sustainable approaches to living. Ayahuasca is the term used for an entheogenic decoction made by South American shamans. Entheogen literally means, “That which gives rise to inner divinity” a term given to the application of natural or synthetic mind-altering substances for spiritual use (Huntbadiner/Grey 2002: 61.) This decoction is derived from the Ayahuasca vine and leaves from the Chacruna tree. Often other medicinal plants and tree barks will be added, although these two are the typical base brew. San Pedro is a cactus of the Trichocereus genus and its scientific name is Trichocereus pachanoi and Trichocereus peruvianus. It also is an entheogen whose alkaloids are usually extracted through a decoction process. Indigenous peoples of South America have used each of these substances for thousands of years. I have yet to find an exact date for Ayahuasca but the shamans themselves say that it has been used since time memorable. The use of San Pedro has been dated to 1500 BCE with the Chavin culture and is used by the Andean and coastal cultures of Peru to this day (http://www.globalheritagefund.org/where/chavin.html).
I began to hear and read about plant-spirit shamanism in the early 2000’s. Over time information began to surface about how people were having life altering experiences by working with shamans and the ceremonial use of certain plants. I heard reports of people recovering from life long battles with depression, addiction, childhood trauma, and even such disparate physical ailments as eczema, Parkinson’s disease and cancer. The stories that I heard were deeply compelling to me since I had been dealing with complex health issues for which the Western medical system had unsatisfactory solutions. I speak of this more in depth in a following chapter. For me, the study of sustainability became interwoven with my own pursuit of health. I saw that in order to live a sustainable life, I must learn how to have a healthy “sustainable” relationship to my body as well as to the planet. I found that many of the people reflecting on their entheogenic experiences were coming from a place of deep concern for the state of the world, and were pursuing these altered states of consciousness not from a place of self-indulgent yearning, but for the pursuit of information that could benefit the good of all.
I was deeply compelled by what I heard and I knew that in order for my curiosity to be satisfied I would have to go to Peru to experience this for myself. In the spring of 2007 I traveled to Peru to participate in Ayahuasca and San Pedro ceremonies. This thesis is an account of my own experiences working with these two plant medicines; an exploration in to the history, biochemical make-up, current use and legality of each; and a qualitative research project that I have performed through an online questionnaire in order to gain a greater understanding of who is seeking out these experiences and how these medicines are effecting their lives.
In writing this thesis I substantiate the ceremonial use of Ayahuasca and San Pedro as a burgeoning intercultural phenomenon that offers rich possibilities in the creation of good and sustainable communities- healing the collective through healing the individual. The data collected for this work shows that the indigenous healing systems of Ayahuasca and San Pedro have relevance beyond indigenous populations. Some healers from the Amazon jungle and Andes of Peru are willing to work with Westerns who sincerely seek to learn, who come to them in humility and respect. While there are concerns about, and conversations that must happen, in regards to the “cultural appropriation” of these traditional healing practices that is not the focus of this work (and I have not found any substantive data on the topic.)
It is my great privilege to have the honor to write about these powerful medicines and their healing role on the planet.

"The human brain shares an affinity with hallucinogens. Our neural chemistry contains some of the most powerful psychotropic compounds in the worlds, such as tryptamines and seratonin, which are identical to those found in many teacher plants. It is part of our design, our biological blueprint, to be able to move into expanded awareness or deep trance almost at will, and this may be no accident of evolution… For at least a million and a half years, we have been hard wired for the sacred, even though many of us are largely denied today. (Heaven/Charing 2006: 80-81)"

Chapter Two: An Introduction to Ayahuasca

2008-10-29T18:17:00.001-07:00

The plant-spirit medicine known as Ayahuasca is a decoction made from Banisteriopsis Caapi, commonly called the Ayahuasca vine, and the leaves of the Psychotria Viridis, a member of the coffee family, commonly known in the Amazon as the Chacruna tree. Chacruna is a Quechua (an indigenous Amazonian and Andean language of Incan origins) word meaning to “bring light to visions.” While the vine, in Quechua, is called mariri meaning strength. The two, when paired, work in tandem chemically manifesting hallucinogenic altered states of consciousness, vomiting, diarrhea, and other non-ordinary states of being. This brew has been used since antiquity and is renowned by peoples of the Amazon to be a powerful healer for virtually all ailments. In this chapter I will discuss the biochemical make-up of Ayahuasca and how it interacts in the body, as well as its history, current use, and some of the controversy surrounding plant-spirit medicines.

The Active Chemistry of Ayahuasca

"Understanding the pharmacological effects (of plant-spirit medicines) helps to illuminate their central role in many cultures as a source of religious and spiritual inspiration, shamanic ecstasy, and visionary experience. The effects of the pyschointergrators (entheogens) upon brain processes, perception, emotion, and cognition derive from their similarity to neurotransmitters, and from their ability to evoke experiences derived from the underlying neurophenomenological structures of the human brain/mind. The close physical similarity of psychointegrators to natural neurotransmitters enable them to have powerful effects upon the mental and psychological function and reveal the natural structures of the human mind as structured by the physiology of the brain."
(Winkleman 1996: 9)

The physical and psychological effects of the Ayahuasca brew are the result of the complex chemistries of the combined Ayahuasca vine and Chacruna leaves. Ayahuasca tea is a complex mixture of bio-chemicals that work together in the body to promote healing and produce visions. To understand how this complex binary drug delivery system works, we must understand how the individual bio-chemicals provided by the different plants work in the human body. Let me take each of these in order.
In the nineteenth century chemists were able to first isolate natural products from plants. Alkaloids are basic nitrogen containing organic compounds usually found in plants, although they can be found in animals and fungi as well. They are a large and diverse group of plant metabolites that are medically important (Hanson 2005:83). They are bitter in flavor and are present in many of the medicinal plants from throughout the world. Alkaloids are also larger than other bio-chemicals making them easier to identify and separate. The first alkaloid isolated was morphine from the Opium poppy. This discovery revolutionized Western medicine for its pain relieving quality, and ignited zeal among scientists to breakdown the chemical structure of plants in order to isolate individual constituents, which could then be synthesized. Alkaloids make up a large percentage of pharmaceutical medications, and plants from rainforests have higher percentages of alkaloids, which often help the plant be more resistant to insects (Shaman’s Apprentice DVD 2005.) This is why ethnobotnists and western drug makers search the rainforests for medicines, and with the help of native medicine people have found an abundance of life saving chemical compounds.
Boiling the pounded vines of the liana (large jungle vine) and leaves of the Chacruna tree in water makes the Ayahuasca brew. The vine contains the beta-carbolines harmine, harmaline, and tetrahydroharmine (THH) these are the harmala alkaloids that act as monoamino oxide inhibitors (MAOi) (Metzner 1999: 101.) MAO enzymes live in the stomach and liver and serve the very important function of deactivating the neurotransmitter seratonin. Seratonin deficiency has been linked to depression, anxiety, irritability, violence and insomnia (Metzner 1999: 28). Serotonin is created throughout the gastrointestinal system and brain. This is important to note because:
Serotonin's major function is basically one of inhibition within the complex neuro-chemical pathways of the central nervous system (CNS), as if to screen out spurious bits of data to allow one to better focus on the task at hand. Modifying the action of serotonergic functions within a living organism typically results in observable changes in behavior. Many psychotropic substances, whether purified synthetic powders or crude natural products, affect at least some aspect of serotonergic activity. (Callaway/Metzner 1999: 98.)

When Ayahuasca is ingested seratonin levels within the brain elevate, over stimulating the vagus nerve the result of which is often vomiting and diarrhea. It is important to note that “Both MAO inhibition and seratonin uptake inhibition work together through Ayahuasca to safely increase levels of seratonin by simultaneously inhibiting both its metabolism and neuronal reuptake, respectively.”(Callaway/Metzner: 102)
The MAO enzymes also deactivate N,N-Dimethltryptamine (DMT) when orally ingested. In the Ayahuasca brew the Chacruna leaves are a rich source of DMT. This is a naturally occurring chemical compound found in abundance throughout nature. Humans have DMT throughout their entire body, with the greatest concentration residing in the brain. It is hypothesized that the pineal gland produces DMT, along with Melatonin and beta-carbolines because it contains the largest concentration of the biochemical within the body. The pineal gland is a pinecone shaped organ that resides deep within the brain. DMT also closely resembles seratonin. It is an endogenous compound whose role in the body is still shrouded in mystery.
When DMT was first isolated and synthesized in 1931 its mind-altering effects were not recognized. R. Manske, a Canadian researcher, made this discovery, while chemically modifying tryptamine, and did not investigate DMT further. It was not until 1946 that DMT was isolated in the mind-altering snuffs of South America by O. Goncalves, and it was not until 1955 that the Hungarian chemist and psychologist Stephen Szara discovered that alone it is orally inactive (Strassman 2002: 44). Szara, experimenting on himself, was the first to take DMT through injection into the blood stream, and in doing so discovered the most potent hallucinogenic known to man. This is what shamans of South America have known for innumerable generations, and why the DMT rich Chacruna leaves are combined with the beta-carboline rich Ayahuasca or taken as a snuff which quickly passes through the blood-brain barrier effectively side stepping the digestive system altogether. DMT, along with LSD and other consciousness expanding substances was made a highly restricted schedule one substance by the United States Congress in 1970. The schedule one classification is for drugs that the government deems has a high potential for abuse, no known medicinal value, and a lack of safety for the use of it under medical supervision (www.erowid.com.) Since each of our bodies naturally make DMT our entire lives, as do many other plant and animal species, we are all continuously breaking this law.
In 1990, Dr. Rick Strassman, preformed an exhaustive study of the effects of intravenous DMT on consciousness, and reported his findings in the book DMT: The Spirit Molecule. He was able to undergo this study after a lengthy and complicated process of obtaining government approval and finding a source of synthetic pure human grade DMT. After doing hundreds of intravenous administrations of DMT to human volunteers he wrote:
"The most general hypothesis is that the pineal gland produces psychedelic amounts of DMT at extraordinary times in our lives. Pineal DMT production is the physical representation of non-material or energetic processes. It provides us with the vehicle to consciously experience the movement of life force in its most extreme manifestations. Specific examples for this phenomenon are the following: When our individual life force enters our fetal body, the movement in which we become truly human, it passes through the pineal and triggers the first primordial flood of DMT. Later, at birth, the pineal releases more DMT. In some of us, pineal DMT mediates the pivotal experiences of deep meditation, psychosis, and near-death experiences. As we die, the life-force leaves the body through the pineal gland, releasing another flood of this psychedelic spirit molecule (Strassman 68-69.)"

Western science still does not have a definitive conclusion for what role DMT plays within the body. Strassman’s hypothesis is intriguing and backed by his data; it also parallels the traditional belief that Ayahuasca opens one’s consciousness to metaphysical realities, and is why it is called both “the vine of spirits” and the “vine of death.” It is interesting to note that the pineal gland forms in the womb 49 days after conception- the day when the fetus’ sex becomes fixed. Forty-nine, is also the number of days it takes a soul to reincarnate after leaving the body according to the Tibetan Buddhist Book of the Dead (Strassman 2002: 81).
Synthetic DMT is an isolated chemical, which can be injected or smoked, the effects of which last only 5-20 minutes and is from subjective reports incredibly intense, with told journeys to other worlds, encounters with angles and aliens, and complete out of body experiences. The experiences are often so quick and powerful that they lack the “teachings” that occur with a longer duration experience that a marriage of beta-carbolines and DMT provide. This has still not prohibited people from having profound occurrences. I am not a proponent of synthetic drugs, mind altering or not, because when any bio-chemical of a plant is isolated and synthesized, the rich structure that it naturally occurs within is removed. This structure is built of other nutrients, some active and others inactive, which aid in the safe breakdown and assimilation of the medicine.
The paradigm of Western medicine is rooted in reductionism, which isolates individual nutrients and synthesizes these bio-chemicals that are then manufactured into drugs unto themselves. This process creates a standardized product, which can be reproduced in mass, in the form of pharmaceutical drugs. It is difficult for a scientist to research the effects of a chemical without doing this, because there can be variability within a natural substance. So in these cases, like the research Dr. Strassman performed, it is the ideal to have a standard pure substance. Our bodies however did not evolve to assimilate nutrients in an isolated form. This is why pharmaceutical drugs usually have a long list of serious counter-indications. Even synthetic vitamins have been shown to have long-term negative impacts on the body (food derived organic vitamins are an exception to this since they are essentially super-concentrated whole foods.) I have personally found the side effects of these drugs to often be harder to live with than the original ailment. There are many holistic alternative approaches to health practices that have been clinically proven to be effective without damaging the system in any way. A few of these are Chinese medicine, homeopathy, fasting, herbal medicines, detoxification, and a whole foods diet.
With this said the beta-carbolines of the Ayahuasca vine allow for DMT to be orally active until other metabolic processes of the body breakdown and remove the substance from the system, this usually takes 4-6 hours depending on the individual’s metabolism and if any additional plants are added to the brew which may contain mind altering effects. Tsononga, a South American tree bark, for example, prolongs the effects of the “medicine”. Some people have reported being in “the medicine” for 24 hours or longer. My longest experience lasted about 12 hours in an altered state of consciousness, with an additional 6 hours of euphoria and elation.
Ralph Metzner edited Sacred Vine of the Spirits: Ayahuasca, which is a compilation of writings on the history, phytochemistry, neuropharmacology, and personal accounts of use. One of the articles presented was written by J.C. Callaway Ph.D. who, after giving a detailed explanation of how the Amazonian brew works in the body, at least to the extent that is now known said, “ It is, without a doubt, one of the most sophisticated and complex drug delivery systems in existence.”(Callaway/Metzner: 100) and “If Ayahuasca is not the most complex binary drug delivery system in existence, what is? It certainly must be the oldest. Exactly how the technology was devised to locate and combine certain plants to enable the oral activity of DMT remains a mystery.” (Callaway/Metzner: 113)

Preparation for Ingesting Ayahuasca

The chemical structure of the Ayahuasca brew is exceptionally complex, and requires the initiate to follow a strict diet before and after ingestion to ensure safe consumption. In Shamanic traditions it is quite common for the initiate to go through a purification process prior to a ceremony. Each lineage of Ayahuasca shamanism has its own specific requirements for this process. The most common elements of this “dieta” as it is called are: abstinence from all sweet tasting things (no fruit, sugar, or artificial sweeteners) for three days before and three days after drinking; sexual abstinence for three days before and after drinking; no alcohol for three days before and seven days after; no pork for one week before and one month after drinking; and abstinence from prescription drugs, time varies depending on what type, anti-depressants should be ended two months prior, and others two weeks to a month after. The indigenous healers have behind them generations of trial and error, and are masters of medicinal botanical knowledge. Their knowledge is gained from personal experience testing the plants on themselves (Metzner 1999: 30.)

If the diet is broken the initiate will suffer the consequences. One man in the group that I drank with ate a piece of gum the day after the second ceremony. This gum was artificially sweetened. After a few moments he spat it out, realizing that he unwittingly broke the diet rules. After an hour or so he began to feel waves of nausea and stomach cramps. He spent the next 36 hours in horrible pain and when I next saw him and asked him how he was doing he said, with more humor than I could have mustered, “Lesson learned.” There were many other stories we heard of people breaking the diet in one way or another, and none of them we very pretty. Ayahuasca is a strict teacher.

History of Ayahuasca Usage

Entheogens containing DMT have been used in the snuff form for thousands of years. Archeological records date snuff pipes and trays to 3,000-4,000 b.c.e. There has yet to be found any objects of antiquity dating how long Ayahuasca been used, there are however an abundance of indigenous stories about its origin, and how humans discovered this unique plant combination. What is most perplexing to scientists is how out of an estimated 80,000-150,000 plants in the Amazon jungle, Ayahuasca and Chacruna came to be paired, especially since they are not found growing next to one another. It is a statistically improbable event.
There is much lore around Ayahuasca within cultures that have traditionally used it. According to the Igano Indians of Puerto Limon there are seven different kinds of Banisteriopsis caapi. Wade Davis in One River reported that they say in order to tell them apart one must: “Prepare the plant at the right time of the month. Then, once you come under its influence, you can distinguish the variety based on the tone of the songs that each one sings to you on the night of the full moon” (Davis 1996: 176.) While the Sinoa Indians reported eighteen varieties which they could distinguish at a distance within the jungle, and were differentiated on the trading history, authority and lineage of the shaman, and strength of the brew (Davis 1996: 218.) These examples communicate the mythical reverence given to this plant by the peoples who have used it for millennia.
All accounts I have read and heard given by Ayahuasqueros say that the plants themselves told the people how to use and combine them. In creation stories Ayahuasca is always a product of intervention from the spirit world, either given to the people by God or spirit helpers. It is “ perceived as a magic intoxicant, of divine origin, which facilitates release of the soul from its corporeal confinement, allowing it to wander free and return to the body at will, carrying with it information of vital import” (McKenna/Metzner 1999: 69.) The Shamans report that they do communicate to the spirits of these plants, and it is the spirits of these plants that they can call on for help in healing. This is important to note in looking at plant-spirit medicine- the rational mind cannot grasp the unseen realms that these people are referring to. The western rational-minded perspective led to the historical anthropological discrediting of the Shaman as mentally deranged or insane due to their often-unorthodox appearance and actions. This view began to change in the latter half of the twentieth century and the Shaman was seen in a new light as the bringer of order (Narby 1998: 15.)
"The academic analysis of shamanism will always be the rational study of the non-rational- in other words, a self-contradictory proposition or cul-de-sac. Perhaps the most revealing example in this respect is provided by Luis Eduardo Luna, the author of an excellent study of the shamanism of mestizo Ayahuasqueros in the Peruvian Amazon, who practice what they call vegetalismo, a form of popular medicine based on hallucinogenic plants, singing, and dieting. Luna focuses on the techniques of these Shamans and reports their opinions without interpreting them. He writes: “They say that Ayahuasca is a doctor. It possesses a strong spirit and it is considered an intelligent being with which it is possible to establish rapport, and from which it is possible to acquire knowledge and power if the diet and other prescriptions are followed.” However, Luna writes in a rational language for a rational public (“us”), and it is not rational to claim that certain plants are intelligent beings capable of communication. Luna, who explores the question of “plant-teachers” over several pages, ends up concluding: “Nothing can be said… until we have some kind of understanding as to what these people are really talking about, when they say that the plants themselves reveal their properties.” One cannot consider that what they say is real, because, in reality as “we” know it, plants do not communicate. There is the blind spot. (Narby 1998: 18)"

South America, being one of the many areas around the world captured by European explorers and colonists, the Amazon and her peoples, were the focus of centuries of exploitation, religious persecution, and disenfranchisement. The Spanish and Portuguese occupiers condemned the uses of indigenous entheogenic sacraments, as well as all forms of aboriginal religion.
Condemned by the Holy Inquisition in 1616, the ceremonial use of plant hallucinogens by aboriginal peoples of the New World survived only by going deeply underground, remaining hidden from the hostile and rapacious European-imposed dominant culture. (McKenna/Metzner 1999: 67)

Plant hallucinogens, as well as the healing herbs and healers of Europe, had already been condemned and eradicated by the church. This brutal system of culture destruction, based in religious domination, held all world views which differed from its own as evil, and was used to justify the many exploits of European colonial countries all around the world. The obliteration of indigenous knowledge systems was justified by the church’s view that these practices were diabolical and evil. It was convenient that these practices were also economically beneficial to the church and state.
The Ayahuasca traditions went underground when Europeans arrived in the Amazon and what remains must be only a fraction of the original customs. The mother of the “War on Drugs” was the Holy Inquisition, that same entity that burned millions of women and men in Europe for being witches and tortured countless souls throughout the world. The Inquisition knew that by violently condemning pagan practices that its agenda of religious homogeneity could proliferate. Mind-altering substances within the container of spiritual ceremonies ran counter to this dominator culture and still do. As Graham Hancock has said “If I am not sovereign over my own consciousness, I am sovereign over nothing”, this is as true today as it was in 1616.
Westerners outside of the church first began reporting encounters with Ayahuasca users in 1851. Richard Spruce, an English botanist, was the first Westerner to document the use of mind-altering snuffs known as yopo, vilca, epena, and jurema, as well as the Ayahuasca brew in South America. He documented use of Ayahuasca by the Tukano Indians of the Rio Uapes in Brazil. After collecting samples he named the unknown species Banisteria caapi after the Tukano word for the vine- caapi. This was later changed to Banisteriopsis caapi (Davis 1996: 392-393.) In the next decade Spruce came across its use throughout the Amazon and into the Andes of Peru. An Ecuadorian geographer Manuel Villavicencio published the first written account of ingestion in 1858, and although it was an exotic description there was very little academic interest in it until the 1950’s. Villavicencio’s experience:
"This beverage is narcotic, as one might suppose, and in a few moments it began to produce the most rare phenomena. Its action appears to excite the nervous system; all the senses liven up and all the faculties awaken; they feel vertigo and spinning in the head, then a sensation of being lifted into the air and beginning an aerial journey; the possessed beings in the first moments to see the most delicious apparitions, in conformity with his ideas and knowledge: the savages (apparently the Zaparo of eastern Ecuador) say that they see gorgeous lakes, forests covered with fruit, the prettiest birds who communicate to them the nicest and most favorable things they want to hear, and other beautiful things relating to their savage life. When this instant passes they begin to see terrible horrors out to devour them, their forest flight ceases and then descend to earth to combat the terrors that communicate to them all adversities and misfortunes awaiting them. As for myself I can say for a fact that when I’ve taken Ayahuasca I’ve experienced dizziness, then an aerial journey in which I recall perceiving the most gorgeous views, great cities, lofty towers, beautiful parks, and other extremely attractive objects; then I imagined myself to be alone in a forest and assaulted by a number of terrible beings from which I defended myself; thereafter I had the strong sensations of sleep….(as quoted by Harner 1973: 155-156.)"

It was the prolific work of professor Richard Evan Schultes that brought greater interest and understanding to the medicines and entheogens of central and South America. In the 1940’s-1950’s he spent twelve years traveling through the Amazon jungle collecting over 20,000 plant specimens and living with two-dozen Indian tribes. He became the worlds leading authority on jungle medicines and an icon of the psychedelic revolution of the 1960’s. Information on Ayahuasca came to be known by the counter-culture from the writings of academics such as Richard Evan Schultes and later Michael Harner. Anthropologist Michael Harner published his personal account of participating in an Ayahuasca ceremony, which directed him to undergo a personal path of Shamanism. Shamanism began to surface as a field of healing and spirituality in the 1970’s-1980 with many new age spiritual seekers turning to indigenous spirituality. Sometimes they were welcomed and sometimes not.
William Burroughs also wrote about Ayahuasca, when he traveled throughout South America in 1953 looking for a cure to his copious drug addictions. He wrote a letter to Alan Ginsberg in which he summarized his experiences and this aroused the interest of many a pyschonaut. "Yage (Ayahuasca) is space time travel, the blood and substance of many races.... A place where the unknown past and the emergent future meet in a vibrating soundless hum" (Lee 2001: online article.)

Current Status of Ayahuasca Study and Use

From the 1950’s-1980’s information about Ayahuasca slowly but steadily increased as accounts of ethnobotnists, anthropologists, and adventures reported their experiences with this enigmatic and mysterious substance. As more information surfaced, more Westerners sought out such experiences. With the advent of the World Wide Web information spread between people at an unprecedented rate, this was and is especially true for information on practices condemned by the dominant culture, such as personal experimentation with consciousness and alternative healing practices. Conversations began happening via the World Wide Web, which involved personal accounts, and testimonials of Ayahuasca use, brewing techniques, sources, analogues (alternative plant sources that provide the same chemical combination of MAOi’s and DMT), and legality. There are now thousands of sites with intelligent information that discuss the safe consumption of Ayahuasca, as well as, other mind-altering substances.
In addition to being used by peoples throughout the Amazon, Ayahuasca is the sacrament of three-syncretic religions- Sainto Daime, Uniao do Vegetal, and Barqini. All three of these religions have sprung up in the twentieth century from mestizo origins.
The two largest of these church movements - Santo Daime and Uniao de Vegetal - utilized yage in their religious services without interference by the Brazilian government until the mid 1980s, when U.S. officials pressured Brazil's Federal Council on Narcotics to put the Banisteriopsis caapi vine on a list of controlled substances. The Ayahuasca churches protested and a government committee was appointed to investigate the matter. After examining the churches' use of yage and testing it on themselves, the members of this committee recommended that the ban on Ayahuasca be lifted. The Brazilian government acted upon this recommendation and legalized the sacramental use of yage in 1987, much to the dismay of the U.S. embassy. The revival of Shamanic rituals found a fertile ground particularly in areas where wealthy plantation owners and multinational corporations displaced peasants from the land. For these poor and desperate people, Ayahuasca was a gift that helped them cope with the expansion of the market economy into the frontier. As their subsistence society unraveled, so, too, did their sense of sanity and well being. Consequently, a growing number of mentally ill individuals and uprooted wage-laborers sought out curanderos, who were forced into a new role. In addition to curing the sick and communicating with the spirit world, many witch doctors began using Ayahuasca to mediate class conflict. As one Putumayo medicine man told Taussig, "I have been teaching people revolution through my work with plants" (Lee 2001: article.)
Ayahuasca was the subject of U.S. governmental persecution when a small church community of Uniao does Vegetal in New Mexico was charged with possession of a class one restricted substance. Uniao do Vegetal is Portuguese for “union of the plants”, and fundamental to its teachings are that humans are a part of nature and nature is sacred. This case was eventually taken to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the Uniao do Vegetal stating that the government could not prove that Ayahuasca was in this case harmful. The court stated:
"Before this Court, the Government's central submission is that it has a compelling interest in the uniform application of the Controlled Substances Act, such that no exception to the ban on use of the hallucinogen can be made to accommodate the sect's sincere religious practice. We conclude that the Government has not carried the burden expressly placed on it by Congress in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and affirm the grant of the preliminary injunction. [Gonzales v. UDV, 2006]"

This was quite a victory for religious freedom all around the world since the United States leads the “fight” on the international war on drugs. This “war on drugs” has done little to end usage of hard narcotics like cocaine, heroine, and methamphetamines, while demonizing medicinal plants that have been used for thousands of years. The war on drugs is also the third leading cause of global deforestation according to the National Academy of Science. According to the United Nations every year seven million gallons of toxic chemicals are dumped onto land in just Columbia, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil alone (Stewart/Nadelmann/Harpignies 2007: 188). This not only kills the forests, but violently pollutes the water ways and leads to severe toxicity in of the local inhabitants “Millions and millions of acres of remote areas are being cleared of forests and ultimately made toxic so that people cannot grow crops that we, in our culture, primarily the United States, have declared illegal: marijuana, opium poppies, coca.” (Stewart/Nadelmann/Harpignies 2007: 190)
The United States also spends over 75 billion dollars a year on this “war on drugs.” Much of this money is spent on incarceration. In the U.S. there are 2.2 million people in jail, more than any other country in the world, and 500,000 of these are there on drug charges.
"One of the consequences of the privatization of prisons in the last two decades is that there is now a large and influential private business whose commodity is incarcerated human life. Like any other business, it wants to be a growth industry and, with violent crimes on the decline, non-violent, non-dangerous drug users are a key to the steady flow of bodies to incarcerate. So the pressure to keep locking up more and more people in the name of protecting our society from dangerous drugs is very high. And while there certainly are some substances that are dangerous, clearly the way to heal society from their use is not through the massive incarceration of non-violent users. For substances that are not dangerous at all, or, like the ones we use in our religious practice, that are actually of potential benefit to individual health and consciousness, it is particularly insane. (Brofman/Harpignies 2007: 177)"

This is a political and economic war that has caused far more harm than it has prevented. There are great discrepancies in our government’s view of dangerous substances. How is it that known carcinogens such as aspartame, formaldehyde, and pesticides (to name just a few out of thousands) are allowed in and on our food and body care products, when non-toxic plants like marijuana (which has been used for millennia as a medicine) are demonized.
"The outstanding characteristic of the plants and substances that are banned by the drug laws is their powerful effectiveness. They are some of the best medicines ever discovered by humans. They are not inert junk, like the medicines that are shoved over the counter by humans. They are potent, in other words they are effective. Opium is the best pain medication in the world. Hemp is probably the best anti-depressive, coca the only true tonic. But who makes money off healthy people- off the underlings who heal themselves with plants from their backyard or balcony gardens, the people who don’t want to sacrifice their hard-earned money to doctors or pharmacists? Ineffective medicine is a more certain source of income, as is medicine such as Valium or Rohypnol, all of which pass the test of culturally acceptable addictions. Those who look into the question of whom the drug laws benefit will not believe their eyes, for it is the same people who want to withhold the enjoyment of sacred plants. (Muller-Ebeling/Ratsch/Storl 1998: 207-208)"

In 1996 the International Plant Medicine Corporation tried to patent Ayahuasca. This was the first time Ayahuasca was brought to court in the United States. This case debated the practices of large pharmaceutical companies’ actions in the rainforest and world wide in regard to genetic property rights. Many companies employ tactics of using the indigenous wisdom of aboriginal people to locate medicinal plants, and then patent it, and synthesize the plants’ active constituents with out compensating the people for their knowledge or engaging in a dialogue about the ethics of such a practice. Although this has been done throughout the history of the world by colonizers and corporations, governments of the new world such as Brazil and Ecuador, ethnobotnists and concerned citizens, and the indigenous people themselves our fighting this. This process of profiteering is also known as bio-piracy.
"Loren Miller of the International Plant Medicine Corporation tried to obtain a patent for Banisteriopsis caapi, which would have given her exclusive rights to create and sell new varieties for profit. Miller had pulled out a yage’ plant from the garden of an Ecuadorian family without asking permission, hurried back to the United States with the vine, and then applied to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Upon learning what had transpired, the Ecuador-based Coordinating Committee of Native Organizations of the Amazon Basin denounced Miller and her company as "enemies of the native peoples" and proclaimed they were unwelcome in indigenous territories. Because of this scandal, the Ecuadorian government refused to sign a bilateral agreement on intellectual property rights with the United States in 1996, which would have made U.S. patent law applicable in Ecuador. Washington countered by threatening Ecuador with economic sanctions.(Lee 2001: article)"
If patent 5751, which was rejected in 1999, went through it would have made it illegal for the tribes of the Amazon who have been using Ayahuasca for the whole of their cultural memory to continue this practice. They would have had to purchase a license for a fee from this greedy, rapacious, and unethical company. In a letter to President Clinton, chiefs representing their four hundred Amazonian tribes, railed at this. Their speaker Valerio Grefa said “To patent our medicine which we have inherited over many generations is an attack on the culture of our people and the entire humanity.”(Mueller-Ebeling/Ratsch/Storl 1998: 207)
In the past thirty years people from all around the world, in order to gain a greater understanding of how and why it has and is viewed by its users as a “cure-all” medicine, have studied Ayahuasca. One of the most intriguing researchers is Jacques Mabit, a French medical doctor, who discovered while working in Peru that many of the indigenous herbs used by local healers were highly effective. Due to shortages of western medical resources Mabit began to investigate the ways certain plant and plant combinations were used to treat common illnesses as well as addiction. This led him to explore not just the effects of the plants for healing but the practices and rituals of local curanderos (healers). Mabit found many of their techniques to be very effective in treating a wide range of ailments from the physical to the psychological to the spiritual. The curanderos applied use of altered states of consciousness (with and without the use of plant-spirit medicines), and had a much higher rate of efficacy in treating addiction than any of their Western doctor counterparts. Mabit noted especially the use of a process oriented group therapy approach married with the ceremonial use of Ayahuasca was effective in treating PCB addiction (coca paste- a bi-product of the production of cocaine). And he found the use of the San Pedro cactus effective in treating alcohol addiction.
"My research has led me to conclude that humans have an instinctive psychological need to seek altered states of consciousness because those states naturally can engender a renewed sense of meaning, thereby providing therapeutic healing and integration. I have come to see drug use often as an attempt- albeit clumsy and sometimes dangerous- to break through and transcend the limitations of an uninspired and devitalized lifestyle. Unfortunately, because the use of psychotropic drugs has been criminalized in Western cultures, they are often used outside of controlled settings, under chaotic conditions that tend to produce confused, counterproductive experiences. (Mabit 2006: article)"

Over a decade of research led to the creation of the Takawasi retreat center where Mabit and a highly trained staff of Shamans, western psychologists and staff use a three step approach to healing addiction, which could be used as a model for other such retreat centers around the world. Takawasi integrates plant medicines, psychotherapy, and community life, a holistic approach to ending addiction and creating healthy patterns of community interaction. "By encouraging the patient to return to a true path of initiation and to explore alternative states of consciousness with respect, we believe that it is possible to rekindle his awareness of and relationship with the Mystery of Life” (Mabit Article: 31.)
Entheogenic substances, such as Ayahuasca and Huachuma, have also been referred to as “pyschointergrators” by Michael Winkelman. He is a modern-day researcher who is at the forefront of the convergence of academic research and the indigenous knowledge systems associate with plant-spirit medicines. His research shows that plant-spirit medicines, also known as sacred plants, have played a vital role in many cultures through out time and continue to do so. He has documented their importance through ethnographic research on cross-cultural patterns of use; clinical observations of their therapeutic effects and properties; neurophysiological laboratory studies on their roles as neurotransmitters; and consciousness studies and theory (Winkelman 1996: 9.) From his exhaustive research he believes that these plant-spirit medicines can play a vital role in the health of the individual and community. He believes that through cultivating a greater understanding of the pharmacological effects of these plants we can have a more profound appreciation for their true emotional, spiritual, and physiological benefits- individually and collectively.
"Pyschointergrators and other altered states of consciousness induction procedures have systemic effects upon the autonomic nervous system, limbic system discharge patterns inducing interhemispheric synchronization and coherence and limbic-cortex integration. This integrates brain functioning from neurophysiological to cognitive levels in ways which permit the manifestation of specific human potentials. These potentials of concurrence are reflected in the transpersonal psychologies and contemplative traditions of thought and practice (e.g. Buddhism.) Cross-cultural use of psychointegrator plants also stimulate these potentials and served as one of the original sources of altered-states of consciousness based healing and religions on humans (Winkelman 1996: 9.)"

The Hoasca Project was a collaborative and multi-disciplinary study undertaken by the Uniao Do Vegetal church of Brazil and researchers Charles Grob, Dennis McKenna and J.C. Callaway in the early 1990’s. The main intention of this study was to substantiate the use of Ayahuasca as a beneficial sacrament, as well as to generate scientific data on how the brew affects the human physiology.
The preliminary results suggest that the apparent impact of Ayahuasca on the subjects in the study appears to be positive and therapeutic, in both self-reported and objective testing. The psychiatric diagnostic assessments of the Ayahuasca-using subjects showed that a large proportion had alcohol, depressive or anxiety disorders prior to their initiation into the UDV but "all disorders had remitted without recurrence after entry into the UDV" (4). Eleven of the subjects had either heavy or moderate patterns of alcohol consumption before joining the UDV but achieved complete abstinence shortly after affiliating. The members were also "quite emphatic that they had undergone radical transformations of their behavior, attitudes toward others and outlook on life. They are convinced that they had been able to eliminate their chronic anger, resentment, aggression and alienation, as well as acquire greater self-control, responsibility to family and community and personal fulfillment through their participation in the hoasca (Ayahuasca) ceremonies of the UDV (www.csp.org.)

The work done by the Hoasca Project and Mabit, as well, as many other doctors, psychologists, and healers have opened the door for informed treatments using plant-spirit medicines for conditions plaguing the Western world. This work is extremely important at a time when over 50% of Americans take some form of prescription medication, and 28 million Americans are on some form of anti-depressant (http://www.healthtransformations.net/depression.htm.) This situation is proving even direr with the recent findings of the counter-indications of these drugs. According to warnings by the FDA the following anti-depressants actually can lead to greater depression and higher rates of suicide especially in children and teenagers: Prozac (fluoxetine); Zoloft (sertraline); Paxil (paroxetine); Luvox (fluvoxamine); Celexa (citalopram); Lexapro (escitalopram); Wellbutrin (bupropion); Effexor (venlafaxine); Serzone (nefazodone); and Remeron (mirtazapine). (http://www.antidepressantsfacts.com/2004-03-22-FDA-SSRI-warning.htm.) The pharmaceutical drugs that the medical industry is prescribing often lead to death. In fact 106,000 people die per year from wrongly prescribed medications, and 2.2 million-hospital patients experience adverse drug reactions (this does not take into account anyone experiencing adverse drug reactions outside of hospitals) (Null/Dean/Feldman 2007: article.)
Taking this into consideration one sees that alternative and integrative approaches are needed and necessary in dealing with modern epidemics. There are many who have tried and given up on allopathic medicine. For those who are interested in alternatives to the Western health paradigm the ceremonial use of Ayahuasca and the San Pedro cactus offer two such approaches.

Chapter Three: A Sojourn to Rebirth-

2008-10-29T18:15:00.002-07:00

I sat under the conical roof of the ceremonial jungle hut. My pad was comfortable and I was supplied with a blanket, pillow, and a blue plastic puke bowl. I along with twenty-three other guests faced the shamans and apprentices, who all sat in chairs. One of the challenges of an Ayahuasca apprentice is to remain upright the entire ceremony, which is a remarkable challenge indeed. Like the slow incline to the apex of a roller coaster I felt the moment of truth edging nearer. As everyone settled, and quieted the Shamans and apprentices cleansed, purified, and spiritually protected them selves by blowing mapacho (jungle tobacco) smoke on their legs, torsos, and arms, as well as using perfume, and tinctured extracts of various indigenous plants, garlic, and onion. As they did this they told jokes in Spanish, getting ready, until the moment Hamilton and Don Alberto (the two Maestro Shamans) began to sing icaros into the bottles of Ayahuasca. Icaro in Quechua means “to blow smoke” these are invocations they said were taught to them by the plant spirits themselves. The icaros are prayers for healing and protection of the ceremonial space, they sound like songs but are; from what the Shaman’s say vibrational keys that unlock the power of spiritual realms. Before each ceremony began, Hamilton would welcome the group, and remind us to focus on positive thoughts - much stronger than negative ones, and to remember to ask for help if we needed it.
Earlier in the day there was an hour long de-briefing given by the apprentices. This was a run down of some of the more common experiences and how to bring ourselves back if we got caught up in darkness or heaviness. Much of it was simple and yet, in the midst of a crazy ceremony it is the simple techniques that help the most. Focus on breath, call in light, and ask for help from spirit, the shamans, your highest self, and whatever else you can think of. One of my favorite lines, given to us from Hamilton, was "a Shaman is only as strong as the help they can ask for."
My intention with Ayahuasca was to heal. I was ready to get to the root of my physical ailments, which I saw residing in my womb area and endocrine system. I was ready to be healthy, and on a deep intuitive level felt that I could not move into the next phase of my development without this healing. After nine and a half years of digging deep into my psyche, doing intensive personal growth work, searching for the source of my ailments on a thought based level, I felt at a stalemate. Everything in me told me that it would take Ayahuasca to shed light into areas that my ordinary awareness was not yet able to reach. I was ready to do the work, what ever that meant, and move forward.
What creature bleeds for eight years and does not die? How strong and mysterious is this flame of life within. At the age of fourteen my body began acting strange. Barely accustomed to the rapid changes of adolescence that left my sense of reality and self- reeling, I was absolutely unprepared for it to be doing things out of the ordinary. I started to get really long menstruations from a week to a month, with a short amount of time in-between, bleeding again. At first I did not pay it much attention, having only begun menstruating two years prior, the entire process, was still as new and alien as having breasts and surfing the waves of pubescent drama. After a year the bleeding became not only increasingly irregular, but heavy as well. I would feel a thick flow draining my womb, and although I felt ashamed for somehow having this strange affliction rising in my sexual center, I talked with my mom, and we went to see the family doctor.
In the next 9 years I would go to over 15 doctors, gynecologists, naturopaths, and nurses, searching for respite from the blood leeching from my body. The bleeding would ebb at times and for a week or two, my body would regenerate itself, and I would hope dearly that it would even out, that my cycles would truly become cycles, and yet each time the bleeding would return. I could find no other cases like mine. I did not get a diagnosis for what was causing this until I was 22. For eight years I lived with an un-diagnosed chronic condition.
When I was finally diagnosed, with polycystic ovarian syndrome it was because I had large polyps growing in my uterus. The polyps were a result of the copious thickening and shedding of my uterine lining over the years. Polycystic ovarian syndrome is an ailment that is rapidly affecting a large amount of the young women of developed nations. It is a direct result of environmental toxins that mimic estrogen, this then throws off the hormonal system, and makes it so that eggs released by the ovaries are not caught by the fallopian tubes and brought to the uterus as nature intended, but instead get stuck on the outside of the ovaries and turn into cysts which grow and rupture causing intense pain. I found it an irony that I was continually overlooked as having one of the most common causes of infertility, cramping, and irregular periods because I did not fit the outward appearance usually attributed to this- obesity, facial hair growth, and depression. I could have potentially been relieved of the constant bleeding years earlier if only I had not looked fit, beardless, and relatively happy. And yet the polyps were a blessing in disguise.
Having the surgery and going on bio-identical hormone therapy relieved me finally of the constant bleeding and I began for the first time in my life to have regular cycles. Once diagnosed, I could apply all my self-directed learning of herbs, nutrition, and detoxification to help my body remove the pollutants. It was a deeply heartening experience to feel my body move into a state of health that I had often feared would never come. While the bleeding regulated the cysts kept forming on my ovaries, this led to pain ranging from a weak ache to disabling cramps lasting anywhere from a few moments to weeks, which I decided to live with instead of going back on conventional hormones which are toxic. The near constant pain was preferable to the havoc wreaking that birth control pills and other like substances had caused me in the past.
For the next year and a half I felt that I was at a cross roads, physically and spiritually. One path was accepting the Western allopathic medicine health paradigm, which would involve being on some type of prescription hormone medication indefinitely; taking other pharmaceutical drugs (all of which have a long list of counter-indications and toxic side effects) to become fertile if I ever did want to become pregnant; and constantly being monitored for the development of cancerous growths. This path could keep me healthy enough, with a reasonable quality of life, but with no assurance of ever being drug free. I understood that virtually all of the pharmaceutical drugs being offered to me by allopathic physicians as the only option they knew of had side-effects that could range from depression, candida (which many doctors still to this day won't acknowledge exists), cancer, obesity, and well the list goes on. It was an endless path of doctors, examinations, and medications, with an attack-based paradigm to deal with the "dis-ease" in my body. All of the visits and medications would be paid out of pocket, if I ever did find medical insurance, because it would be a preexisting medical condition.
After dealing with a multitude of doctors, specialists, even naturopaths, I felt like this approach was equal to accepting death. More intrinsically- accepting it meant that I am just a finite being fulfilling an entropy-ridden destiny who there for must rely on "experts" to make this small life bearable. This, more than any other aspect, made the typical Western approach unacceptable to me. In the marrow of my bones I knew that I could not accept this perspective on existence. I feel that I am an infinite being, in an infinite universe, and this more than any other factor pushed me towards the other fork in the road.
This path was one that was shrouded in darkness, but gave me hope. It was a non-linear approach to owning the full responsibility of my state of being-my health and happiness, my eternal beingness. This path required constant vigilance, self-education, and courage. It required honoring my intuition and intelligence over that of medical experts. It required asking over and over what chemicals comprised medications and researching what these chemicals did in the body, while advocating for myself. It was the path of self-love, and although it offered no clear assurance that I would survive or be rid of the constant pain in my body, it did stoke the fires of will within me. It was not a path that I could walk alone, and with the support of my parents, friends, authors, the internet, and spirit, I had thus far become healthier and healthier. I knew that with the radical self-assurance that I had been cultivating I could advocate for myself within the “expert”-egotism of the medical industry, and yet I saw no solutions with in it for this small fierce body that lived through eight years of a wound that would not heal. So I chose to go to Peru to take Ayahuasca and see if she could heal me.

After all present including the Shamans drank, Hamilton called in the beings of the four directions with a resounding blow of a conch shell, and gave additional thanks and recognition to the recently deceased Maestro shaman, Don Julio who had taught him and Don Alberto. The oil lamps were then turned off, and the ceremony began. I drank and I focused my intention into the old teacup that held the brown luminescent liquid, and asked for healing. I asked to be shown what I had not been able to see before. I asked for growth, empowerment, strength, and courage. Ayahuasca is called both the “vine of spirits” and the “vine of death”, for undergoing this radical of a change in perception blossoms one’s consciousness into metaphysical realities that require the initiate to reorient their conception of self. Taking this action was metaphorically laying myself on the altar of Truth. As I prepared myself to drink I felt willing in the moment to die to the past, die to sickness, die to all that felt unworthy within, to die for the love of truth. To purge from me all that was heavy, dark, and sick.
Little did I know what I was asking for.

This night was total darkness. No moon to paint the world silver. The indescribable taste of Ayahuasca lingered. My mouth salivated profusely, and I could feel thick alkaloidal tendrils wrapping through my intestines. The room was vibrating and reverberating, building a coagulated intensity with the unified voice of the Shamans and apprentices. The shaking of their leaf rattles fanned the air, which blew across my face, while the sweet voiced icaros filled the air until the round ceremonial hut was the only place in the universe to be. I was waiting, breathing, repeating my mantra - this was medicine and I would heal. Meditating on the sound of the icaros and mentally noting all of the sensations and subtle changes in my consciousness. My stomach began to feel sharp stabs of pain coupled with intense waves of nausea. After a half an hour I could not sit up, so I lay on my back, knees up, and stomach swollen. Physically it was the most pain I could remember. I felt as though a hard ball of steel was in my womb, and it was too big to push out or puke out. All I could do was breathe. I felt like I was giving birth, but nothing was moving. At one point I asked for help from Mimi, one of the apprentices, and she told me that sometimes it just takes a while, to focus on breathing, and ask spirit for help. So, I tried, and was suddenly lost in total confusion. I was without a body, without an identity, in a soup of limitless struggle. This incoherent void wanted to consume all of me. All I could do to fight it was repeat over and over "No, no, no, no...." and "Robin, Robin, Robin." I was struggling not to drown in this eternal confusion and suffering, and I could only peek my head up long enough to remember where I was, who I was, and that I was healing, and that this darkness would leave, that I would make it leave or die trying, because once you drink you are committed. I had no option at this time but to do the work, to release any and all negativity over and over. This was my re-birth. There was no retreat.
I lay on my back and side for hours panting, while energetically re-living all the levels of the evolution of consciousness, and how this being I self identify with as "me" is an energetic pulse that has constantly pushed forward, that has fought to be conscious for all of eternity. That has sought greater and greater coherence. This struggle took the embodied form, from amoeba to human, always striving towards the light, towards awakened oneness. And here I was at the final point, where if I did not persist and persevere I would once again be lost in the sea of endless confusion. If this sounds dramatic, it was! All of my life had been in preparation for this opportunity. This was the time when I had to choose the true light or the true dark. I had to prove over and over to spirit and myself that I wanted enlightenment, I wanted healing, and I was willing to work for awakened oneness, for without health all else is naught. This panting fight lasted until the oil lamps were re-lit (a sign that the ceremony is formally over, even though many of the participants will be in the medicine much longer.) At this point, I was still deep in birthing canal, and had yet to purge, which was all I desired to do. I wanted this hard, gross, ball of negativity out, but it took everything I had to not lose my mind. In the light I could see that my abdomen was distended. My skin stretched taut over what was a silver grey ball of energy that was so heavy I was pinned to the ground and too large to vomit or shit out. I needed to purge and I needed help to do so, this was larger than I knew what to do with.
At one point, when I felt lucid enough to communicate with Mimi I asked if I could drink some water to help me purge. She checked in with Hamilton who said I could, although this is an unusual thing to do. I felt like I was burning up from the inside. I gulped a full glass and asked for more. After two and half full glasses of water I curled up in a fetal position around the distended bowl of my belly. I was six hours into the journey, with no end in sight.
So I lay and breathed through it. My breathing reminded me of that of women giving birth; short breaths followed by one longer one. I was a wreck, completely and utterly disheveled, crying from frustration and pain, sweating, shaking, and surviving. Each second was a wide desert plain of interminable effort, and yet this effort, this work was an opportunity, the richest of gifts. At one point I heard Daniel (one of the apprentices) and Hamilton talking about me. I could hear that they were watching my process, and helping as much as they could. I wanted to reassure them that I was OK, and that I felt confident that I could persist. So, without consciously realizing that I did so, I sat up out of my body and walked over to where they were. At this point they stopped talking. My spirit form told them that I was OK, and that I was very grateful for all their help. I started sending waves of gratitude towards them, and they then said, "She's almost there," and left the conversation. Before returning to my body, I saw it lying on the blue mat and felt in love. Love for its strength and persistence, it steadfastness and kindness. Always doing the best it could with what it was given. Breathe out darkness, breathe in light, breathe out darkness, breath in light.
And then I started dry heaving, over and over, with wrenching spasms. I felt that the force with which my body was trying to rid itself would loosen all my organs and empty me of everything, but the wracking hurls just kept coming. My bones felt bruised, ribs aching as if they were grinding together. Each effort left me light headed, black pinpoints flicking through my vision, along with rainbow spectrum of swirling energy filaments that danced in the air. Only a handful of us remained in the ceremonial house, but I could feel the support and camaraderie of each of the other participants. I heaved and heaved, until I felt my energetic body contract, tight around me so I could barely breathe, and then suddenly lift. This happened over and over for close to an hour. At one point Mimi came and lay on the pad next to me, and in doing so somehow helped me get out the very last of it (for that session at least.)
All of a sudden I could see how my fighting and resisting were no longer necessary, and Mimi was helping me out of a slimy shell of energy goo. I peeled off dark green ooze that had held me before like a thick cocoon. This was happening in another dimension. In a white field of totality she was double checking me to see if any of the last shreds of goo remained, and guided me to my feet. I heard a voice saying "Congratulations you made it." In this field of whiteness, other Mimis and Daniels were also assisting some of the other participants.
One of the things that are learned in apprenticeship is the ability to bi-locate and eventually to be in many places at once. Mimi said that often guests tell her of the help she gave them. And although she was sending energy and psychically checking up on them, people perceive this in their own way. It is as though our consciousness feels the energy of others, and this filters through, especially on Ayahuasca or in altered states of consciousness, in a symbolic image based form. So, she was helping my process by sending the energy of love, strength, peace, release and my consciousness felt this and responded by creating a relationship that I perceived as her helping me to my feet and removing the last of the gooey shell of confusion. I felt free, and was. In this beautiful crystalline reality of awakened mind, others and I practiced exercises of mindfulness. I felt radiantly full of joy and love. I was creating orbs of light and color through my intention to do so. I was teleporting my self from one side of the room to the other, while my body lay resting from its ordeal. When I would get distracted or have a thought that was not in the light (i.e. fearful or egoic) the scene I was working on would flutter and disappear, but when I consciously released the thought and the energy connected to it, the scene would reappear and I could continue building my strength through honing the ability of my psychic skills.
After quite a while working in this zone, by myself and with the spirit of others in the group, I sat up and joined a small group smoking mapachos. I was not able to speak due to the high level of information coming in. So I communicated energetically sending thoughts, images and emotions to the others. This was quite effective. One interesting note is that I did not throw-up which is a common experience, but in the bottom of the puke bowl that I had dry heaved into, was black phlegm, gobs of nasty goo. Pretty sick looking, and when I asked Daniel what this stuff was he said "Black goo. We don't know exactly what it is, but it is the stuff we carry inside us that we come here to get out."
The night was long and beautiful, and the soft shades of morning came while I lay in bed meeting the spirit world. I saw spirits but not just through my eyes (it was as though the images materialized both inside my head and in the room). Later as the ceremonies progressed, my third eye opened more and the spirit world looked almost as concrete as this 3-dimensional one. As I lay in my bed, gently and slowly massaging my lower abdomen, images of what I was releasing flowed through my consciousness. Much of these were demonic, yet wearing my face. I released each of these as they came, sending them to the light, to source, where they could be cleansed and have other opportunities to grow and evolve. In the top left hand corner of my vision was a portal that opened to source energy. I realized in this process that many things I had in the past identified as being a part of me, weren't: low-self esteem, self-hate, rejection of my body, thoughts that said over and over "you are not good enough to be loved, you are not good enough to be well," weird sexual energy of a sexually unhealthy culture. What dawned on me through this process of release is that the sources of all negative thoughts (especially self-deprecating ones) are not me. They are energies and consciousnesses that feed off of us. My essence, at its core, is love and light. The best way to describe what I consistently purged is dark grossness. Purging is a physical process as well as an energetic one. The psychological effects of throwing up and defecating are very effective. We all accumulate trauma, pain, and heaviness. Ayahuasca helps us to rid our selves of this- some of the ways she does this is vomiting, defecating, shaking, crying, screaming, laughing, and singing. This is no easy concept for the Western mind to wrap around, nor to translate from personal experience.
Taking Ayahausca was in every respect being birthed into a new way of being, seeing, and doing. As I type this a year later the pain I went to heal is completely gone, my body is as healthy, strong, and nourished. It took the first five Ayahuasca ceremonies to break-up the frozen dark energy in my womb and the next five to begin cleaning out my endocrine system and energetic field. This first session lasted close to twelve hours, and I have never been the same since. It was quite an introduction.

Chapter Four- An Introduction to “The Cactus of the Four Winds”

2008-10-29T18:15:00.001-07:00

San Pedro is the Christianized name given to the psychoactive cacti within the Trichocereus genus. This family of columnar cacti is native to the dry eastern mountains of the Andes. Of this genus Trichocereus pachanoi or Trichocereus peruvianus are used as plant-spirit medicines. These are known by the indigenous names Huachuma (Andean), Achuma (Bolivia), Aguacolla and Giganton (Ecuador). There is a wealth of lore around this ancient and magical plant. It is said to be the “Cactus of the Four Winds,” the cactus of vision that opens the gateway to heaven. This night blooming cactus is the most ancient and revered of plant teachers in Northern Peru and is referred to by Andean people of today as the “maestro of maestros” which “enables the shaman to open a portal between the invisible and visible worlds for his or her people… Its Quechua name is punku, which means “doorway” (Heaven/Charing 2006: 92.) In this chapter I will discuss the known bio-chemical structure of Huachuma, its history, current use, and some of the lore and controversy surrounding the plant.

The Active Chemistry of Huachuma

Huachuma is usually prepared for ingestion through a decoction process. The photosyntheic outer layer of the cactus contains most of the active bio-chemical constituents. Once the spikes are removed the cactus is sliced down each of the ribs (ranging from 4-9). The white pulpy interior is discarded, used in topical politices or made into soap, and the inch thick green skin is cubed and boiled for 3-12 hours. This thick, dark green viscous tea is then drunk at the beginning of a ceremony. The effects of the Huachuma tea can last anywhere from 10-15 hours. The nausea and purging associated with Peyote (another entheogenic cactus) is mild or non-existent. Purging is rare but does happen. The flavor of the brew, like that of Ayahuasca, is tolerable the first few sessions and then becomes more and more disagreeable. Although I have read some reports from individuals online who have eaten the cactus raw, this seems most unpleasant and sure to produce nausea. A plant preparation called contrachisa is made from the outer skin and used to induce purging by some maestros in order to clean out spiritual toxins and “make room for San Pedro so the visions will come” before the tea is given (Heaven/Charing 2005: 94.)
San Pedro contains a number of alkaloids, including mescaline (0.21 - 1.8%), anhalonidine, anhalinine, hordenine, tyramine, 3-methoxytyramine, and a number of phenethylamines (3,4-dimethoxyphenethylamine, 4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenethylamine, 3-hydroxy-4,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine, 4-hydroxy-3,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine.) Although it is not known what the precise role of every one of these is within the consciousness altering effects and medicinely beneficial qualities of the cacti, the effect of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For San Pedro is a true medicine that gains its power from a rich diversification within its bio-chemical structure.
As mentioned, one of the synergistic alkaloids found in the Huachuma cactus is mescaline. In 1897 mescaline was first isolated and identified by Arthur Heftner, and synthesized by Ernest Spath in 1919 (www.erowid.org.) This is the main alkaloid responsible for the visual and consciousness expanding effects of San Pedro. Mescaline is identified with increasing acuteness of the senses. Colors become brighter and more vivid; textures sing out in newfound gradation. There is a visual alteration that comes in the form of patterned imagery. I have seen honeycomb grids, much like the actual structure of the molecule, sweep through my vision, living things seeming to emit bio-photonic light in undulating waves. All things breathe. Communication occurs across time and space. A sense of complete oneness with creation and others in the ceremony is married with a deep sense of empathy for inanimate and living things.
Found in San Pedro, phenethylamines are both a naturally occurring compound found in both the animal and plant kingdoms, are produced in the deep tissues of the human brain, and can be sythsized. Phenethylamines are quite a famous family of chemicals in the counter-culture of our times. Alexander Shulgin, a chemist and pharmacist, developed hundreds of combinations of synthetic phenethylamines. Among the most famous of these is MDMA (N-Methyl-3,4-methylenedioxy-A) also known as “Ecstasy.” Less well known combinations one hears rattled off by “experienced travelers” include MDA and 2C-B. In the book PIHKAL- A Chemical Love Story, co-authored by Alexander and Ann Shulgin, there is an extensive listing of all the phenethylamines explored by Shuglin. Only one of San Pedro’s constituents is mentioned in this book, 3,4-dimethoxyphenethylamine, and it was found to have an insignificant effect on consciousness. Perhaps this was due to 3,4-dimethoxyphenethylamine being studied in isolation rather than in combination with other alkaloids found in San Pedro.
Another one of these alkaloids in San Pedro is anhalonidine, which produces low levels of sedation and sleepiness without sleep (Shulgin 1972: lecture.) Another, hordenine suppresses the appetite through stimulating a release of norepinephrine. This is an excitatory hormone that stimulates the nervous system, and helps the body burn fat (Schweitzer/Wright 1938: article.) This could be the element responsible for the usual lack of hunger for the first 6-8 hrs after drinking Huachuma. Hordenine has also been shown to inhibit the growth of several strains of staphylococcus bacteria that are resistant to penicillin. This bacterium causes an infection commonly known as Staph, which is a serious, potentially fatal condition that preys on individuals with weak immune systems. It is most often contracted in hospitals after surgery. More research needs to be done on the application of San Pedro in helping the body fight of this malicious infection.
This is the information found by western science through the process of studying the isolated constituents of the cacti. The shamans of South America have used it for centuries to help diagnose and treat illness, heal a myriad of health issues: alcoholism, mental disorders, fungal infections, fevers, regulating blood pressure, urinary track infections, as well as removing witchcraft. Poultices of the stem are used externally to treat skin infections of all types and dandruff because it is anti-microbial. It also helps to reduce scarring.
My own observations have shown Huachuma to be a diuretic, cleansing the blood by a rapid detoxification of the kidneys through the urine, as well as soothing and balancing the nervous system. Therefore it is important while under the effects of the plant; to maintain a good balance of electrolytes, blood salts like magnesium, potassium and calcium. When participants do not adequately hydrate themselves while on Huachuma, they can experience the effects of dehydration at the end of a ceremony, this can include headaches and muscle cramps. The shaman that I worked with in Peru made a point to always have us drink lots of limeade and water throughout the day, as well as eat chocolate, nature’s most abundant source of magnesium. Fresh limejuice enhances water, giving it vitality through living enzymes, vitamin C, and trace mineral nutrients which aide in detoxification.
I noticed that taking San Pedro while staying hydrated and eating proper nutrients helped balance unfriendly yeast bacteria in my system. Candida had been an issue for me since taking pharmaceutical antibiotics and birth control in my teens. I also lost the desire to drink alcohol after my first five sessions.

Preparation for Ingesting Huachuma

In contrast to Ayahuasca, Huachuma has relatively few preparatory restrictions prior to ingestion. Pork is to be avoided at least a week prior to ingestion and as long after as possible (as with Ayahuasca.) This meat, according to a maestro I worked with in Peru, is spiritually dirty and the plant-spirits dislike it. It contains heavy, toxic energy that makes the medicine less effective. Pigs eat just about everything, including their feces and the dead remains of there own kind. Pork, as all meat, transports parasites and the environmental toxins that the animals were raised in directly into the body, as well as all of the stress hormones the animal produced during slaughtering. In Shamanism there is no differentiation between the physical toxicity of a substance and its spiritual toxicity.
The day of the ceremony one should eat a light breakfast, if anything at all. The timing of ingestion is dependent on the lineage of the shaman. Within the lineage of the shaman I worked with the ceremony is started mid-day, so that one experiences the balance of light and dark, and the transition between the two at sunset. The work of Douglas Sharon and Wade Davis indicates that the shamans of the sacred lagoons at Huancabamba hold exclusively night ceremonies (Davis 1998: 8.)
The ceremony is opened and closed at the curing altar or “Mesa.” The Mesa consists of a cloth placed on the ground upon which the shaman places objects of power and significance. The composition of each mesa is as individual as the shaman, and the arrangement of these items differs from ceremony to ceremony (Trout 2005: 114.) The totem items placed on the cloth guide and aide the shaman in healing and are called artes. Carved staffs, crystals, and rocks from specific Apus (mountain spirits) or holy sites, feathers, bones, carved figurines, and any other object of great personal or symbolic power can be an artes. Maestro shaman Juan Narvarro said:
"The artes bring magical qualities to the ceremony where, under the visionary influence of San Pedro, their invisible powers may be seen and experienced. The maestro’s mesa, on which these artes sit, is a representation of the forces of nature and the cosmos. Through the mesa the shaman is able to work with and influence these forces to diagnose and heal disease. (Heaven/Charing 2005: 93)"

History of Huachuma Usage

This is a plant-spirit medicine that has been in unbroken use in Peru since at least 1400 b.c.e. (some say the site is as old as 3500 b.c.e.) when it was used as the main sacrament at the Andean site of Chavin. This peaceful, artisan culture produced masterpieces of carved art portraying anthropomorphic beings, especially animal-human hybrids, holding Huachuma. Its depiction is found in cultural iconography spanning thousands of years and miles.
"Shrouded in mystery, the cult of Chavin arose from an oracular shrine, a temple of stone which cradled and then brought forth a new belief, a spiritual conviction of unknown character but of such immense authority and power that within a century its worship had spread north and south, encompassing all the central Andes and reaching west as far as the sea. (Davis 1998: 5)"

The Nazca culture (300 b.c.e. - 800 b.c.e.) and Paracas culture (750 b.c.e.- 100 b.c.e.) both highly developed coastal cultures, decorated their ceremonial and burial ceramic vessels with its spined image. The famous Nazca mummies were buried with Huachuma coming out of their shoulders; “symbols that the deceased would be born again out of darkness, just as the cactus blossom emerges in the early hours before dawn” (Davis 1998: 7.) Huachuma was used by the Lambayeque culture (800 b.c.e. - 1200 b.c.e.) in lunar rites and still to this day is harvested in some parts of Peru by women during the full moon (Trout 2005: 106 & 110.) The Moche culture also referred to as the Mochica, of Northern Peru, used Huachuma in elaborate ceremonies involving hundreds to thousands of people. From the profusion of its depiction we can assume that it was exceptionally culturally significant to virtually all-coastal cultures of northwestern South America. I refer to my experiences at some of these sites and go into greater depth on their history in the following chapter, which documents my own experiences with the plant-spirit medicine.
The Catholic conquistadors and their priests condemned Huachuma, like Ayahuasca and virtually all-indigenous entheogens, as a product of the devil. Its perceived diabolical nature once again justified the “god-given” right of the oppressors to force Christianity on the natives, steal their land, and persecute any individual or group that did not conform. It is interesting though that the few written accounts by Europeans of the use of Huachuma by Indians briefly note its medicinal qualities while calling it a product of evil. The 1653 account of Father Benrabe Cobe shows the bias against the cactus:

"This is the plant with which the devil deceived the Indians of Peru in their paganism, using it for their lies and superstitions. Having drunk the juice of it, those who drink lose consciousness and remain as if dead; and it has been seen that some have died because of great frigidity to the brain. Transported by this drink, the Indians dreamed a thousand absurdities and believed them as if they were true…. One can use its juice against fevers…(Trout 2005: 108)"

An ecclesiastical report from Spanish arrivals in Peru said:

"That the shamans “drink a beverage they call Achuma which is a water they make from the sap of some thick and smooth cacti…as it is very strong after they drink it they remain deprived of their senses, and they see visions that the devil represents to them. (Shultes/Hoffman/Ratsch 1992: 166)"

Another Christian missionary had this to say about the brew:

"It is a plant with whose aid the devil is able to strengthen the Indians in their idolatry; those who drink its juice lose their senses and are as if dead; they are almost carried away by the drink and dream a thousand unusual things and believe that they are true. The juice is good against burning of the kidneys and, in small amounts, is also good against high fever, hepatitis, and burning in the bladder.
(Attributed to Christian Ratsch by www.mescaline.com)"

I imagine that there had to be a few inquisitive and adventurous Old World individuals who participated in these indigenous ceremonies and had positive experiences. These accounts were obviously not recorded for they would be proof of idolatry and thus justification for torture and possibly death under the inquisitional Catholic overlords.
The research I have undertaken so far suggests that as an entheogen Huachuma is unique in the way that the indigenous people of Peru have merged its spiritual qualities with those of the catholic figure St. Peter or San Pedro who holds the keys to heaven. This is no doubt a response by the indigenous people to the violent suppression by the Church of anyone even suspected of not completely embracing its doctrine. I found this creative response by the people to be indicative of the deep importance this plant-teacher played in the lives of Andean people.
Even in the present Christianized mythology of this area, there is a legend told that God hid the keys to Heaven in a secret place and that San Pedro (St. Peter) used the magical powers of a cactus to find this place so the people of the world could share in paradise. The cactus was named after him out of respect from his Promethean intervention on the behalf of men. (Heaven/Charing 2006: 92)

The modern use of San Pedro (as well as Ayahuasca by mestizos) among South Americans is an amalgamation of pagan and Christian elements. A wide pantheon of deities is often invoked within ceremonies. I observed this as a motto of “the more help the better.”
Huachuma is called the “Cactus of the Four Winds”. The number four is very sacred to the indigenous cosmology of the Andes, as well as to many people and cultures all around the world. It is associated with the four directions, the winds or spirits that each direction houses, and that are always called upon during ceremony. The Incan empire was also divided into four regions of earth. From Cusco, a sacred city and the heart of the empire, a road departed in each direction (http://www.ayahuasca-shamanism.co.uk/Huachuma-SanPedro.htm). The four-ribbed Huachuma is seen as the most sacred and magical of the cacti. These are very rare, and finding one is an auspicious act.
The San Pedro shaman Juan Navarro said in an interview with Heaven and Charing in Plant-Spirit Shamanism:

"San Pedro helps the maestro see what the problem is with his patient before any of the healing begins. The cactus is a powerful teacher plant. It has a certain mystery to it and the healer must also be compatible with it. It won’t work for everybody, but the maestro has a special relationship with its spirit. When it is taken by a patient it circulates in his body and where is finds abnormality it enables the shaman to detect it. It lets him know the pain the patient feels and wherein his body it is. So it is the link between the patient and the maestro. It also purifies the blood of the person who drinks it and balances the nervous system so people lose their fears and are charged with positive energy. (Heaven/Charing 2006: 94)"

Current Status of Huachuma Study and Use
Due to its beautiful white night blooming flowers, whimsical green columns, and ability to grown in colder climates, San Pedro, is often grown as an ornamental cactus. One can find various members of the Trichocereus genus at home and garden stores all across the United States, Canada, and Europe. Mescaline, like DMT, is illegal and classified as a schedule one substance under the Federal Controlled Substances Act. It is not, however, illegal to grow or sell mescaline-containing cacti. If the plant is in a dried or powdered form it could potentially be illegal if police could prove that the intent of the owner is to ingest it. This is a gray area of the law. So far there have been no cases brought to court against Huachuma use.
I find it important to note at this time that San Pedro, as well as Ayahuasca and Peyote, have never been linked to a verifiable death. Even the use of synthetic mescaline in large doses, up to 8 grams, has shown no harm to normal people. "Mescaline containing cacti poses NO risk (other than legal), either in terms of health or psychiatric well being to any normal, or even half way sane, individual who uses them knowingly and voluntarily. (Original Italics)(Trout 2005: 26)" Mind-altering substances such as mescaline and LSD were used in experiments by psychiatrists and the US government on institutionalized mentally ill people, as well as by Nazi doctors in German concentration camps (www.erowid.org.) This unethical use of mind-altering substances often produced great fear and anxiety in the test subjects. I have met people who were unwittingly “dosed” at parties with LSD or marijuana and all remarked on the extreme sense of vulnerability, fear, and dislocation that came with the experience. This is where set and setting become of great importance to the overall experience of anyone entering any altered state. If one does not take into account factors such as mental state and environment (people, place, and weather) there is a higher likelihood of having an unproductive experience.
The ceremonial use of Huachuma as a plant-spirit medicine offers great potential to people who are seeking help with a variety of emotional and physical ailments. The most important of these in my mind is addiction recovery. Huachuma has been used in Peru to overcome alcoholism and drug addiction (Mabit 2006: article). A close friend of mine reported that after two ceremonies she no longer desired cocaine, a substance that she had been addicted to for 3 years and the use of which was severely harming her relationships. She has been cocaine free for over six months at this point.
In a culture where addiction is rampant (to alcohol, food, food additives, cigarettes, TV, shopping, pharmaceuticals and illegal drugs) we in the west are sorely in need of solutions. These solutions do not just have an effect on individual lives by improving health and relationships, but on the planet, for they are connected to our consumption patterns, stagnant lifestyles, and disabling apathy that are enabling governments and big business to rape the earth and rob the inheritance of future generations. The potential of engaging this plant in a ceremonial context to help heal the Western mind is huge.
I will end this chapter with a short anecdote. While in Peru I met a woman from South Africa who owned a guesthouse and restaurant in Cusco. We became acquainted while I stayed at her hostel. She was an abundant source of information about local shamans and had been training with a Huachuma shaman in the area for over a decade. She had a wealth of knowledge about how to brew, grow, and travel with the cactus. An experience she shared about Huachuma opened my heart and eyes to the wild possibilities that this plant-spirit medicine holds. I will paraphrase her story. One of her twin sons had been diagnosed with a severe form of cancer. He was not open or interested in non-traditional approaches. After a couple rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, the cancer still thrived. This was a process that happened over a couple years and by the time she insisted that he come to Peru and see what the shamans could do, he was willing to try anything. After just one Huachuma ceremony he began feeling better and when he to the doctor a month later there was no sign of the cancer- none! In telling this she was very sincere and believes that it was the spirit of this cactus that saved her son’s life.

Chapter Five- Huachuma Adventures

2008-10-29T18:14:00.001-07:00

Darcy, my Canadian traveling companion and love interest, arrived in Lima six hours after me. We had two days to hang out and acclimate to Peruvian culture and each other’s presence before we met up with the group whom we would be traveling with. Howard, the leader of the journey, is a tall and handsome man of indiscriminate age, with witchy blue eyes, short white hair and mustache. Born in the rural south and educated as a naturalist he began working with plant-spirit medicine in the 1970’s. Although Anglo he had been living in Peru long enough to deeply identify with the culture- truly a man with a foot in both worlds. He had a quiet reserved power of someone you wouldn’t ever want to cross, with a smile simultaneously sincere and challenging.
We caught an early flight from Lima to Chiclayo, which is on the northern coast of Peru. At the Lima airport we met Howard and the other group members- Erika, Neil, Scott, Bill, Dan, Jack, and Nikolina. The flight was short, and we were greeted at the Airport by our van and drivers- Jose and Hernando. The first stop was a typical developing country market where one can purchase everything that is needed to keep life going: fresh fruits, vegetables, clothing, car batteries, you name it its there, and unlike big-box stores you are actually buying from real people, in stall after stall. What made this a truly unique place was that while supplying the before mentioned items, it also housed a full Shamans market. There was everything from fresh herbs (chamomile, eucalyptus, rosemary, horsetail and coca leaves plus dozens I could not identify), nutritional supplements (fresh and dried Maca and Noni, bee pollen, raw honey, balms off all sorts my favorite containing snake poison for arthritis), to hundreds of items used in ceremonies and magic (Paulo Santo, voodoo dolls, crystals, Moche flutes, antiquities, bones and skulls of everything from dog to anaconda to human.) While wandering its narrow allies I felt an odd satisfaction knowing that I was in a completely singular environment, a place original and one of a kind. Chiclayo looked like many towns we would be going to: people doing what it takes to feed their families, sever poverty next to buildings where construction never ends- roofs of re-bar reaching ever higher-a crude symbolism of our free-market times, and young mothers holding their infant to suckle in one arm and a beggars cup in the other.
Tucume- The Mesa of Death
This was my first Plant-spirit medicine ceremony and experience of Shamanism while traveling Peru. It would be the first of twenty ceremonies I participated in while traveling. This is a recount of my first five San Pedro ceremonies.

The group sat in a semi-circle, women on the left wing, men on the right facing the Tucume ruins. Tucume was a Moche temple known as a huaca. The Moche civilizations lived along the coast of Peru from 100b.c.e-800 a.c.e, and are known for their incredible cultural relics, which span from huacas and pyramids to elaborate burial sites comparable only to King Tut's tomb. There is a better understanding of what these people’s lives looked like than even those of the Inca because of the wealth of art they left behind. The most notable in my mind being the pottery which portrays all aspects of the life process from a mother giving birth with babe emerging from womb, to all imaginable acts of sexual congress, to death and the worlds of spirit. The Tucume ruins surround a rocky peak 250-300 meters high, which feels mountainous on the long flat land that bridges the ocean and the Andean foothills. This liminal zone is an eternal threshold; its timeless solitary rocks a doorway between the mountains of the east and the ocean of the west.
Around 1pm we congregated. To open the Mesa, as it is called, Howard had laid an altar on the ground. Upon brightly colored hand woven tapestries lay objects of power and metaphor. A jaguar’s skull lay at the head of this arrangement, from which condor feathers winged each side. Necklaces of anaconda bones, wood staffs carved with power images, quartz crystals, figures of the feminine and masculine intertwined, spondylus shells, and plant stems from the Amazon were also present. Howard, adorned with beaded headband and hand woven poncho, lit a Mapacho (a black jungle tobacco that is held sacred in these practices and used for cleansing and purification, which along with coca leaves and limonada are essential to the use of Huachuma) and began. After a period of offering smoke to the 7 directions-south, east, north, west, earth, sky, and within. Each person was called to kneel before the Mesa, offer their intentions and prayers, and be purified with Mapacho smoke and the harmonic vibrations emanating from the his rattle. As each knelt they lifted a small and simple ceramic hand-made cup, whose handle resembled the cactus itself, and drank the Huachuma decoction.
I had felt since arriving at the Tucume hotel mentally fuzzy and awkward. I felt out-of-sorts and overwhelmed by thoughts of the United States political and economic deterioration, my own financial situation, and insecurities about opening my heart to another person. These stress filled thoughts chased each other in circular repetitions. As I knelt in front of the Mesa, my intention was for freedom. I asked for freedom through clarity and understanding, and with this I promised to trust the process, and to offer all I gained to the highest and best good of all. While I set my intention; Howard stood behind blowing powerful exhales of smoke on and over my body, I would learn later to help open my chakras, to receive what the medicine had to offer. I picked up the cup, breathing long and deep to steady myself, and with as big of gulps as I could manage emptied the cup. It was dark green, with a slightly bitter and astringent taste not completely unpleasant. As each of us stood and reassumed our seat Jose handed us a glass of fresh limonada (limeade good for cleansing the palate and supplying electrolytes through out the day.)
Once I resumed my seat, I felt immediate elation and a release of tension. After the drinking we all gathered our days bags, and Neil (a beautiful Australian man who is well on his path to becoming a healer) gave me a quick coca leaf lesson. Coca leaves are chewed or drank in a tea form to help with stamina. The leaves have to be catalyzed by a soda bicarbonate base, commonly derived from a tar ash. You wrap a leaf around some ash, then re-wrap the bundle until it is a satisfactory size, and stick it in you mouth. This is an amazing medicine, and has been a central nutrient source in the lives of many South Americans through out history. Then daypacks in hand we walked the 1000 or so meters to the entrance to the ruins.
At the base of the ruins we walked through a greeters station, small museum, and picnic area. We hung out in the shade here for a short time, some playing on an old rusty swing set, some sitting and breathing, preparing for the journey. By this time reality felt subtly altered. Huachuma is a long slow journey lasting up to 12-14 hours. There are what Howard calls seven acts, seven phases of the experience, that as one progresses in the practice can easily distinguish.
The Tucume runes were once tall, majestic buildings made out of adobe bricks. The bricks were used as a form of tax in the time of the Moche Empire. Each family had their own symbol scratched on the surface so that their yearly quota could be distinguished from others. Due to the heavy storms of El Nino much of the exterior walls have been eroded to the extent that the original structure’s shape is almost unrecognizable. The day was spent circling the edge of the Rocky point and climbing it. The ascent was quite a precarious indeed. Both Darcy and I agreed that if we were climbing this on our own, in our current state, we would question our choice of spots, but with the aide of a master Shaman, it seemed like a reasonable thing to do. The path to the peak was along a razors edge of rocks, each side dropping sharply hundreds of feet below.
During this time my mind flowed in a continuous dialogue. I was not quite sure what to expect, and what I was experiencing was in no way similar to my solo explorations in altered states of consciousness. I kept thinking that I wasn't getting it, that I was not opening to the Medicine. This feeling of frustration with myself mounted as the day began making its way to night. At the top of the peak Darcy and I listened to meditation music on his MP3 player and double headphone jacks. This is a wild time to be alive- bridging ancient wisdom systems with modern technology.
As I listened, and breathed, I took in the beauty of the flat green fields below dotted with small fires of burning trash, the mountains in the distance slowly being veiled in fat promising clouds. I felt for the first time in weeks present and still. This sense grew and expanded encompassing many levels of my being, flowing out in all directions in undulating waves energy. This ultra-present state was clearer in many ways than any state I could ever remember experiencing, oscillated only when worries about politics, money, intimacy, or health surfaced in my thoughts. I felt an intense contrast between the super expanded state of clarity and oneness that was opening to me, and frustration with the negative chatter in my mind. All the parts of my life that were out of resonance with this feeling sense of peace became alarmingly blatant and uncomfortable.
Bill, one of the other group members, came to tell us that everyone was making their way down while there was still light. As we stood up, a magenta sunset peaked its way between parting clouds. Above the peak and soaring up all sides, vultures dived and circled in the rush of wind sweeping up the rocky apex. It was beyond gorgeous accentuating the eternal nature of the land. And yet with this beauty I felt sadness and heartbreak flow through me. An anger and sorrow for myself, my shortcomings, for the ways I haven't lived my life as fully as I could. For all the ways I could love better, be kinder, be a better daughter, be a better friend.
After the sun had set we very carefully made our way down. The sadness in me grew with each step of our descent. Once we traversed the most dangerous area, I stepped off the path to let Bill and Darcy go on. I moved quickly to a spot that was hidden in shadow, and with a despondency I had not felt for years, began to cry. It was a heavy weight expanding inside my chest, seeping through my ribs, and the only way to dislodge it was to let it out. I couldn't stay where I was because of the quickly faltering light, but I didn't want to be around anyone I sucked up my tears and dried my eyes to meet up with the rest. I tried to go on, but after a few moments of walking, I quietly I removed myself from the group again. I crouched low on a lookout spot, and began to weep. I felt done, totally done with myself. I was there for a number of minutes weeping in that way you can only do alone, loud racking sobs, that feel like they come from another creature. I cannot remember ever having these sudden and real feelings of despair and disgust with my self.
As my feet rested on the ground, arms wrapped around knees, forehead cradled in both, I saw movement not far from me. I flashed my headlamp toward the movement, and fifteen feet away from me was a young fox. I turned off my light and in the deep dusk we looked at each other. At first I wanted it to leave so I could continue crying, and this realization alone made me feel ridiculous. For two full minutes we watched each other, and then it began to go down the path, pausing to look back at me every few steps. I dried my eyes and stood. As I stood it went down farther, and as I finally began my descent, it veered off the path to the left into darkness. I took the steps slowly, and when I met the group at the bottom I was greeted with hugs. I began to feel lighter.
We came back to the hotel, cleaned up quickly and met back at the Mesa. Here Howard began to "work" the mesa again. My brain felt overloaded with the sound of the small hand rattles, and involuntarily my eyes crunched shut and my body locked up. When the music ended so did the sensation. Weird, I thought. I then I began to look around the group and feel doubt rise within me. I saw the lot of us sitting full of self-importance, cultural appropriators, just some more sad westerners building themselves up as spiritually important while actually we were just spending copious amounts of money to take drugs. After a few moments Howard played two Moche ceramic whistles, bringing Neil and Dan to stand in front of the Mesa, and blow them simultaneously. My eyes did the crunch thing again, and my body wouldn't move. I mentally was still aware of what was happening, but I had no control over my body. I was perplexed by this wondering what the hell this was, but felt calm, even if uncomfortable. After what felt like a very long time they stopped, and as the sound ended, I felt my consciousness expand rapidly out of my body and snap back like a huge rubber band.
I opened my eyes, feeling completely present, clear and sober, but totally confused about what happened. For the next half an hour I was happily dumbstruck, and all the self-loathing and insecurity that filled me earlier was totally gone. In its place was clean presence. I still do not know what happened, but this was the first lesson showing me the power of the Mesa, and revealing a new world of energy.
We ended the night with a fire, to which we gave offerings of Copal resin and Paulo Santo, and a simple dinner of soup and bread. We sat talking and laughing, a true comrade comfort surrounding the group. We made it through unscathed and each more whole than when the day began.

Batan Grande- the Mesa of Pachamama

There are Carob trees in Peru that live for over a 1000 years. The gnarled branches of their ancient body reaching low on the ground, encompassing more horizontal space than vertical. Life and death flow effortlessly along the silvered brown bark. Her age emphasized, not her individuality as I would have thought, but the interconnecting processes that allow all life forms to exist. She was a tribute to the eternal feedback loops of living systems.
As our van pulled up to the tree, the overwhelming sensations of nausea that filled my gut subsided next to her greatness. The drive to Batan Grande from the hotel had felt incredibly long. On Huachuma the senses are super acute. The smell of the exhaust, the hard rhythm of the wheels, and the rushing scenery almost brought me to vomiting. But at the sight of the Carob tree, all thoughts of my physical discomfort subsided. I placed my bag, and sandals on the ground, and climbed on her. I felt, in my heightened state, the flow of creation running calmly through strong limbs, welcoming all equally. As I walked and climbed her branches, breathing in her scent, I stepped over trails of ants and had wasps crawl over me. The total oneness I felt, the harmony of death feeding life and life flowing into death brought me to a state of presence that was so complete that I lost all sense of myself as an individuated being. In this oneness, I was welcome. My energy flowed with it.
There were two people in our group who were highly agitated by the wasps. Those who were agitated and reacting from a place of fear drew more of the wasps to them. Erika, a true beauty, with rich chocolate warmth, a sincerity and openhearted presence that I immediately resonated with, approached me after I had jumped down from one of the branches. She said she needed help because she was falling into panic. Knowing without thought what she needed, I placed my hands on her upper chest, and looking into her eyes, breathed into her cool blue oneness. Calm clarity flowed through me. I was able to hold my presence, and send her the vibrational sense feeling that was the opposite of the fear and overwhelm that the wasps had inspired. After a few moments of eye contact, breathing together, and touch, Erika grounded enough for me to step away.
In the exchange I had picked up a small amount of agitation that read not on a mental level, but as flickers of stress up my arms. This was a powerful lesson on how like attracts like. Those who were agitated and/or frightened were drawing more wasps to them, which became agitated enough to sting. Those who were focusing their attention on the splendor, power, and greatness of the life processes of the tree, had wasps come and go with no stings. At one point I had over a dozen wasps crawling on me (probably enjoying the salty sweetness of my skin, a novel array of smells that they were interested in exploring) and I felt love and appreciation for them. One of the group members, Bill, was highly agitated from the beginning of our time at the tree, and after a few moments, the wasps began to swarm around him, and the van (chock full of tastes the insects wanted to check out), which he was near. When we eventually loaded back into the van, to leave the buggy scene, we had some new passengers with us.
Bill kept swatting the wasps, trying to get them out of the vehicle, which made the wasps fly manically around the cab. I found myself astonished and angry with this man. He could not see how he was creating the situation, and he couldn't even though he was asked repeatedly to stop swatting them. Anger, in my altered state felt like a warm flash rising from my abdomen, that I breathed out in strong sharp exhales, so I could control my instinct to swat the swatter. I felt a fierce need to protect these creatures that I had communed with. It was the same protective instinct that I feel when any loved one is being antagonized. We drove through a tropical dry forest, one of the largest on the planet, and arrived at the base of another rocky formation, round at the base with steep loose rock sides.
As I exited the van I moved quickly away from the agitation, and lit a Mapacho. I inhaled, holding the rich, slightly burnt tasting smoke in my mouth, and exhaled with the intention to return to calm connectedness. As I did so my perspective of my fearful group member rotated from other to mirror. In that mirror I saw the thousands of times I have taken an aspect of reality, and made it into a problem (something a friend, family member, or partner was doing or not-doing; the money in my bank account; my body being sick and the physical pain that came with it; etc) and focused on these things, sometimes searching for a way to fix them and feel better, but often just following the emotions which led to feeling worse and worse. I saw how I had continually made situations more acute by my reaction to them. In focusing my attention on the problem, the problem grew. The saying "Like attracts like" was something I grew up with, but through Huachuma was able to experience this principal on an energetic level.
After the exchange with Erica I had one wasp sting me in the soft flesh between my underarm and back on my right side. The sting radiated from that spot through out my whole body. The sting itself was uncomfortable but the effect it had on my consciousness was amazing. I knew that it was a gift of medicine. I felt that the sting sear through my whole system, clearing out all my energetic meridians, each and every nerve ending, and my body felt brand new- totally cleansed. I have always been allergic to bee and wasp stings, not to the point of needing to carry epinephrine around, but the area around the sting would swell up 3-4x the normal size. This didn't happen and by sunset there was barely a red spot left, but the mental and physical clarity it gave me persisted.
As the others began walking up the Huaca, Erica and I searched out a good tree to relieve our selves behind, and process the exchange that we had experienced. She said that she felt like I had rescued her from falling over the edge of mounting fear into full-fledged panic. As a child, bees had been her friends; she loved playing with, until one day a few of them attacked her. Since then they had become her primal fear, and their presence brought about a sheer fight or flight reaction. In the past people had tried to verbally calm her or lead her away from the scene, but by me stopping, looking into her eyes, breathing with her, and intentionally sending the vibration of oneness to her, she was able to bring her self back to her own center. It was as though my intention and energetic presence created a bubble around her, where she could slowly walk the path back to her center. (Just a side note here about altered states of consciousness and peeing. The importance of a beautiful spot in nature, out of view from others, at which to relive oneself should never be underestimated! Where an idyllic spot has the potential to bring an almost transcendent experience of release, a smelly, dirty, feces crusted environment has the opposite effect, and if one is not adequately prepared, can really bring you down. No place is this more true than third world bathrooms, or Burning Man porta-potties.)
As we walked up to the base of the hill, a vulture soared above us, showing off a large and powerful wingspan, and healthy black feathers. Nature is the biggest braggart of all. I think that humans are here just so she has an audience. There’s too much resplendent grandeur on this small plant to go un-witnessed. The rest of the group had found places for themselves along the rocky steep sides. None had reached the top because of the steep gravel slopes. I wanted to make it to the top. Erika came with me halfway, to a perch where Darcy sat meditating. He opened his eyes, smiling, and invited us to join him. Heartbeat more pronounced from the hike up, breath tasting sweeter with exertion, I looked around at the sight below and knew that this scene was timeless.
Flowing out from the base of Batan Grande a dark green landscape known as the Forest of the Moon ran east to the foothills of the Andes. From where Darcy sat I saw an animal trail running side ways along the hill, which by this point was too steep to climb straight up. I felt too full of energy to sit still, and followed its path over and up the hillside. I scampered up and over the hill with the childlike joy that always accompanies exploring new places. I felt pulled upward, and as I reached a saddle between one low peak and the ridge leading to the highest point, my eyes registered the adobe walls of a huaca leading upward. These were totally out of view from below. I felt like a special chosen child finding them. I was flooded with emotions of joy, welcome, and a sensation of coming home. The sun was close to setting, and I didn't have much time to explore and not enough to reach the peak. I climbed fast up the old ruins. As I paused to catch my breath, I sensed a large ball of energy shoot up and out of the red and white rocks. I had never experienced anything like this and was totally captivated. The energy ball six feet in diameter flew out hundreds of meters in the air with huge intensity and almost instantly boomeranged back. The force of it hitting my chest almost made me loose my footing.
I instantly felt like I was back. I don’t know how else to describe it, but that some part of me, that I didn't know was missing, came home. I felt absolutely solid. I also felt a connection and love for the land that went beyond anything I had ever experienced before. The sun was beginning to set, and the already treacherous climb would be completely unmanageable in 20 minutes. Saturated in this new sense of self, I made my way back to where Erica and Darcy were perched.
As the sunset, Erica and I sat arms wrapped around one another, watching three-dozen or so Vultures dance in the sky. The beauty was beyond anything Maxfield Parish ever painted, and the two of us agreed that we were in an everlasting place, where life would continue in its abundant parade long after we are gone. As the last of the pink light faded we made our way down the hill. We wandered as a group on the road, through the Forest of the Moon. Darcy and I walked hand in hand in the thickening darkness. The ride back to the Hotel was peaceful, each contemplating the day while milk chocolate coated our throats, and limonada replenished our electrolytes. In Shamanism different spirits like different things, some like perfume, others flowers, Huachuma likes chocolate. This of course made all of us very happy. I had brought down a pound of raw cacao nib trail mix, which was a blessing at the end of a day of fasting. Chocolate in its un-processed form contains the highest amount of nutrients and alkaloids of any food source on the planet. Howard said that chocolate was very important to the healing process of Huachuma. Later in my research I would find that this has some bio-chemical base.
The phenylethylamine in cacao, perhaps in conjunction with unknown neurotransmitter modulating agents, seems to also help boost the effects of psychoactive New World cacti (San Pedro, Peyote) and other phenylethylamine/mescaline-based plants and substances. Due to their natural synergy and presence in geographically nearby regions it is likely that cacao has been traditionally used with psychoactive cacti, although documentation of this is not established. (Wolfe/Shazzie 2005: 76)

We closed the day at the Mesa, and I was stunned by the great open landscape this work had laid before me. Never had I been more aware of my own ignorance. There are worlds upon worlds that simultaneously exist in the here and now, and my first two Huachuma navigations had contained more reality than all the months I had spent in meditation in the hills of Nepal and ashrams of India. I was dumbfounded by the power, and awestruck by the Divine intelligence that had guided me in every moment to this place of oneness.

El Brujo- The Mesa of Sorcery
We left the Tucume hotel and headed south for our next Mesa. An hour and half out side of Huanchaco (a cool little beach town full of Peruvian and foreign surfers, Cebiche, and the hot equatorial sun.) Here there is a huaca named El Brujo, the Witch. This is a large site spanning at least a dozen acres. We started the day by setting up the Mesa along the beach, from which all but one of the pyramids there were out of site. After a ceremonial drinking of two cups of the Huachuma and instructions from Howard to keep our energy flowing each of us spent an hour meditating on the beach. The waves crashed hard here and the force of the ocean was all encompassing. I walked in the water, allowing the waves to just reach me, and spent this time sinking into the strange Huachuma induced clarity that I had begun to feel more comfortable with. At a certain point I felt an internal call to return to the mesa.
At El Brujo there are two huacas one symbolizing the feminine and the other the masculine, one the light and the other dark, one healing and the other life taking. I had been told that this was a Moche site where ritual human sacrifice was performed. It was done here because the full brute force of El Nino hits this area of the coast. El Nino is a weather pattern that still exists; I have known it in my life as the bringer of much needed moisture to the dry highlands of northern Arizona. The effect here is much different, storms lash the coast flooding cities, wiping out crops, and killing many. But some how amidst this threat, that often occurs every decade, people have successfully inhabited this area for over 3,000 years.
The question of how leads one into a world of ritualized magic where the relics of an ancient culture show belief in the ability to harness and channel the power of the human life force. The human sacrifices were chosen through ritualized combat using blunt objects and hand to hand fighting. Those felled were brought to the Cao Viejo Pyramid where, in ceremonies involving hundreds of priests and lay people, the sacrament of Huachuma was ingested, and then the sacrifices made. There is extensive evidence, through its depiction in recovered artifacts from these cultures, that Huachuma was used throughout Peru for the past 3,000-4,000 years. The very best of the young warriors would participate in this ritual combat; the defeated were bound, and from a small incision on the neck and drained of their blood. This blood was collected into communion bowls, from which all present drank, while focusing this energy to protect the culture from the forces of El Niño. Skepticism aside, the Moche civilization thrived in this area for over 800 years, there are no adequate scientific explanations for how they succeeded in doing so in the face of overwhelming natural forces. As we walked up to the site to stand in the huaca's interior, I was bowled over by nausea. All of the others but my group member Scott were able to walkup and into the hollow, three walled center, but it took me a few moments of breathing before I was confident that I could handle the sensations running through my body. I felt electric, whips of energy were flashing up my body. From the moment we got there I didn’t like the place. This was the feminine huaca, the huaca of healing, but even knowing that it did not calm my instinct to flee. We walked up the steep path to the top of the adobe structure. It was about 20 meters high, and from the top I could see across the beach to the endless ocean, and across acres of pitted land to the larger huaca. Each pit I knew to be a grave, long ago dug. The energy that was causing me waves of nausea so intense that I doubled over, was from what Howard said, the life energy captured by the thousands sacrificed here. He was very clear that their souls were not trapped here, but the life force of their body, this place was vibrating with the energy of a thousand silent gongs, but was not haunted. The pyramids acted as batteries for this energy.
I had to focus all my concentration on breath. I wanted to leave. My ovaries had begun to ache as soon as I stepped on to the structure. And I felt like it wanted too much. I couldn't relax, and was boggled by how calm everyone else was acting. This place was pure energy, but I didn’t want any of it. It was the energy of slaughtered people. This was the place where one could charge up on life force, but all I could think was what does it want for that energy exchange, and so I let it flow through me, but never tried to capture any of it for myself.
As we were standing on the eroded top of the huaca I felt the latent life force in my ovaries and womb, begin awakening. I was frightened that my moon had begun, and although I couldn't feel blood, I couldn't imagine my ovaries vibrating so with out my womb shedding. I could not wrap my mind around what I was experiencing, and yet I was not ready or willing to surrender to the experience. I felt fear of my body and the sickness I had lived with for so long. Up until this moment, I knew I wanted healing, but I didn’t know it would require so much. And while part of me shook with fear and disgust, I let the wild flame of energy roar through my center, and held ground. Facing the gray sea, wind rushing up, wet with salty humidity, I felt overwhelmed by the sheer infinity of reality that embraced this small body.
The group made its way down to the Mesa; it was still an hour or so before sunset. I felt wreaked. My womb was cramping in sharp violence, a pain I knew well from chronic illness. I spent the latter half of our time on the first Huaca dancing the energy through, but I felt physically pummeled, and by the time I sat down to face the alter, felt like I had hit some sort of breaking point with my physical discomfort. I wasn’t sure what exactly I was experiencing, but the intense pain in my body made me want to run away, even though I knew that it was part of the larger process of healing.
Howard grabbed one of the wooden staffs that had been stabbed into the sand at the head of the mesa. On the top of it were the carved figures of a man and a woman embracing, and in-between their heads was a small hole, I had previously thought was used to hold a candle. Howard called Neil to him, and poured some dark green liquid in to the whole. Neil plugged one nostril and deeply inhaled, and then proceeded with the other side. "Howard," I asked, "What is it?" Not quite ready to snort a weird dark liquid into my head without any consultation. "Pure Magic." He said with an otherworldly gleam in his eye. There we were at one of the largest human sacrifice sites on the planet, my womb was contracting and with out a bathroom I was sure I was bleeding through my clothing, and I felt a level of ignorance so all encompassing that I was fighting back tears of frustration by digging my nails into my palms.
After Neil, Dan, and Jack nasally ingested the liquid, I said to myself “Fuck it!” Stood up facing the indifferent dark water, brought the staff to first my right and then left nostril, handed it back to Howard, walked to the left 10 paces and crumbled to the ground. Knees splayed out, hands grasping sand, mucus freely flowing down my face, I gave it all up. Graceless and covered in snot, in that moment I stopped resisting and walked into my own pain and fear, so fed up that I did not care if I ever got up again. I placed my head on the ground, and watched as the grains of sand, and pebbles before me turned into mountain ranges, and where the slightest movement of my body took profound effort. A disassociated and distant voice asked God to tell my parents I loved them, because I was sure that I had come to this place to die. The internal drama was great. It was a relief actually; all I had to do was wait. In this space-time experience, maybe a few moments passed of normal time, but what Huachuma has shown me is how very little we understand about the true nature of time, for I was their an eternity, happily flickering in and out of non-existence.
What brought me back? No great moment of profound insight but the figure of Darcy walking past me, kneeling on the white sand, dry heaving trying to throw-up. This made me wonder if I needed to purge as well. With just the thought I started dry heaving. At this point Jack and Erica came to help me. Jack said to try to get it out, it was exactly the same for him the first time he tried Singara (which I was later to find out is a liquid tobacco snuff that often contains herbs and San Pedro.) I couldn’t throw-up, I felt as grossly inebriated I had ever been, so frustrated with myself for my resistance, the lurking shadows of fear, and that I needed help. I couldn’t vomit, so I started to sob. I was covered in sand, snot, tears, and spittle. Never had I been such a mess. Erica rubbed my back and whispered to me that this was the release I needed, that I was healing, and with each tender word and touch I was able to, in tears, let go of the pain that beat the inside of my pelvis and the fear that accompanied it. While I was in this world of my own gracelessly releasing, the rest of the group wrapped up the mesa, and I was helped to the van.
We drove to the base of the next Huaca. It was over 1,000 meters away and on every side of the road were the sunken pit graves of thousands warriors who had given their lives freely or not for the good of all. As we approached the archeological site, we saw a cluster of rundown buildings, and a handful of men dressed in military gear. With full paramilitary guys walking around the perimeter, dressed in black with guns. At this point I seriously wondered at the sanity of our Shaman. This was a place few people, local or western had seen. I van stopped and I exited only to be greeted by a couple strange four legged creatures that were the most pitiful and ugly sight I have ever encountered. The odd grossness of these creatures was unnerving. These hairless dogs with pronounced under bites, I was to learn, have been prized companions in Peru since antiquity; their remains uncovered at almost every archeological excavation. Their famed to be loyal, smart, and cleaner than hair coated dogs, all that aside, my encounter with them reinforced my deep affection of cats.
The group was milling around avoiding eye contact with the camouflaged garbed men, waiting for instructions from Howard, when I saw that Nikolina was curled in on the seat, crying. The energy of this place was incredibly challenging for many of us. I curled her in my arms as she cried. Holding and comforting her, brought me back- the moments that she was in my arms called me to the present. Slowly I felt whole again, and in this wholeness defiant. Defiant of my own fear, which had long been hiding behind insecurities, doubts, and overwhelm. I told it very clearly, that it no longer had a place to live within me, and it was time to go. In my further medicine work I have learned that fear is a multi-leveled experience, and healing is slowly, persistently unearthing love under the fear and pain. This is not possible without a radical commitment to self-love and a great deal of asking for help- from the physical and non-physical realities.
Howard led us up the pyramid of Cao Viejo. This is where the sacrifices were performed, and eventually where the love of power corrupted the priesthood. Like all hierarchies it reached a point where corruption and egotism by the elite brought down the entire culture, an area that for centuries housed rich cultures, became to unstable from storms, and civilization crumbled, only the adaptable survived. The walls that have been excavated here have pictorial representations in relief of what occurred here. According to anthropologist Regulo Franco Jordan after the ceremonial battle:
The conquered ones were led nude with a rope at the neck toward the temple... The sacrifice practices that appear in the iconography of the Mochicha are presented in different ways: beheading, extraction of the heart and strong blows to the head... These ritual battles were developed during the dry season, possibly from the beginning of the summer solstice. (Jordan 1992: 8)
Looking into the power that is possible through intense, focused, ritual brought me to the raw sobriety that the darkest forces that have ever been on the planet are the ones birthed by men. I looked into the blinking eyes of a millennia old relief, its spirit promised me power and strength that no one could vanquish, I saw it wanting to flow into me- fill my ego-self with power. Sick with the place and the cruelty possible by my own kind, I walked away. To move through the energetic intensity I felt I focused on my breath, while generating feelings of love and kindness within me. I saw the life taker and life giver within me. At El Brujo I saw the brutality of humanity, and the divine love of humanity. I saw my weakness and my strength, and although the power of this place felt a hundred thousand times stronger than me, it could not seduce me. I chose love and life.
We watched the sunset from the top of this Huaca. The test of El Brujo showed me that energy is not good or bad, it just is. Energy is indifferent to morality, and on the Shamanic path one must constantly temper and purify them self so as not to get drunk on their own capacity for power. Each left that day seeing how every moment is a choice, not between good and evil, but between service and selfishness.

Chavin- Mesa of Transformation

The dry coastal landscape fell behind us as we made our way to the next Mesa site in the small Andean town of Chavin. An overnight bus brought us from sea level to 13,000 feet in less than 24 hours. Being raised at 7,000 ft. I have always felt quite immune to the effects of altitude sickness, but this sudden change challenged even the hardiest of us. Nature’s best antidote for the effects of altitude sickness is Coca leaves. As Jewelweed is to Poison Ivy and Nettles, Coca is to extreme altitude. Coca leaves made the journey possible. They are an incredible healing herb, and by far the best aide in lessening the effects of altitude sickness. Between stuffing them in my cheek and drinking tea steeped from their leaves I was able to fend off exhaustion, dizziness, and an intense searing headache. I find this simple phenomenon of Nature to be an astounding affirmation of the innate intelligence of the natural world. One almost always finds the antidote living near the poison. This is one more simple, yet powerful concept, to ponder, and one that undermines many of our cultural institutions. There are places in this world, that once seen, alter one’s perception permanently- places of such exquisite and clean beauty that the soul awakens in longing to merge with the whole, to expand beyond fragile flesh and skin, encompassing space that previously lay in the dormant recesses of a forgotten self. This simple mountain village was such a place. The town was quite and small, and although a few tourist buses floated through each day, it was surprisingly devoid of the gilded surface of tourism. The village was the huaca’s s namesake. The Chavin site is comprised of an old temple (dated around 900 b.c.e.) and a new temple (dated around 500-200 b.c.e.). It is situated in between the Andean mountain ranges of the Cordillera Negra and the Cordillera Blanca, and is at the headwaters of the Marañon River. It was a site rich in trade, and the artwork of the Chavin is found among many of the archeological sites of the coastal cultures.
The Chavin complex was in active use for over 800 years. Although rich culture from the recovered artifacts, there is no trace of military or outward war defenses. The temple was decorated with hundreds of carvings depicting anthropomorphic deity figures. Central to all of the artwork at Chavin is the San Pedro cactus. It is the central theme of the complex. The Chavin culture was one of peaceful priest-artisans who used Huachuma as a sacrament, men and women equal in their sacred roles. In researching this site I found a history channel show dedicated to the mysteries of the Chavin. It being a product of mainstream, indoctrinated media portrayed it to be the site of a cult who used this mind-altering substance as a form of collective mind control- hence the lack of military. It is hard for some to imagine that a dominance paradigm is not an absolute cross-cultural phenomenon, and that there have been cultures that created harmonious ways of self-organizing independent of a hierarchical structure. For anyone who has partaken in entheogens understands that they aid in the liberation of consciousness from cultural institutions of control.
Howard set the Mesa up in the hostel room where we grounded and prepared for the day. This was the Mesa of the Jaguar, the Mesa of complete transformation. It was here that we would encounter a civilization centered on enlightenment consciousness, the unification of duality. It was up to each of us what this transformation would look like. The previous three ceremonies had left me paradoxically feeling confused and centered. I knew that in this world of Shamanism I was incredibly young and ignorant, and yet, through surviving and embracing the intensity of the previous ceremonies, I was ready to embrace as much as I could possibly take in. I was ready to throw myself into the fire, and see what remained at the end of the day. Howard made it very clear that this was the place to let all that didn't serve us go, and let transformation begin, and that each of us was here by invitation of the Chavin consciousness. As I drank I had no idea what he meant, and yet, as the day unfolded I realized that he spoke absolute truth.
As we walked to the site, I felt all of the locals’ eyes on us. This was not a town where gringos went unnoticed, especially when led by a 6ft 2-inch man in a neon colored embroidered hat and matching poncho. It was a strange feeling indeed to walk in such a parade. After entering the gates the beauty of the environment married with the catalyzed Huachuma alkaloids began to take hold, and each of us quieted. I had spent the morning drawing and meditating in our small hostel room. Using art as a form of mindfulness, drawing not with focus or direction, but letting shape and color manifest. One of my intentions for the trip was to get reintegrate art into my life. To feel inspired to create, which I had not for years. I felt as though all my creative energy had been channeled into surviving my dis-ease and healing my body. Upon entering the site we first visited the small museum that housed excavated Chavin artwork. Outside of this was a small courtyard that housed one Longzon obelisk that is carved with designs of jaguars, Caymans, jungle flora, and anthropomorphic creatures. In this same courtyard were two ancient blooming Huachuma plants. As I went to investigate the blooming flowers I was stunned speechless by what I saw. On one of the cacti, a flower bud, jutted out unopened. This bud was what I had drawn in my journal with out ever seeing it that morning. Some how I had tapped into something greater than myself and from that place retrieved this image. And so the magic of this day began. Chavin is beyond description, its exquisiteness was poorly captured in all of our photos, but I feel confident to now say I have been to Heaven. Nothing in my previous world travels, throughout five of earth’s seven continents compared. It was another realm. Green hills of radiant with light, turquoise sky held by strong mountains, river running surely with calm power. As a group we walked down to sit by the river’s edge. I was fully in the medicine by now and sat to meditate. As my body began to resonate with the sound of the rushing water and thick energy of this place, waves of pleasure began to sweep up my spine. They rushed from the ground all the way through me. It was like a continuous and calm orgasm that never became too much. While in this state, I pushed through the veil of self, and saw clearly my personal journey through time. Huachuma guided me back through all the lives I have ever lived, which were expressed not in visual memories as a linear story line, but in emotions, feelings, and physical sensations.
I saw how the being that I self identify with, is a energetic charge that has, and is traveling in time, birthing time, and co-participating in a much larger evolutionary process. Culture defines the experience of time through habitual routines that are so ingrained that the natures of the habits are taken for granted. The medicine allows one to step outside of culture and examine the consensual assumptions of reality. Time is not a separate entity from consciousness, but an aspect of consciousness. I saw how every life event had brought me to this moment of clarity, this moment of awakening. It was here in this time-space moment that I met the Chavin consciousness. Meeting a consciousness is not like meeting a person, it is vibration and feeling and it permeates the whole of one’s being. The closest metaphor I can think of is being submerged in warm rich water after a long cold day, as you sink deeper into the luminescent liquid instead of holding your breath, you take deep inhales and feel the warmth fill your entire body.
The Chavin showed me how at every step along my path I had been guided, how every time I had asked for help, I had received it. How the whole of my life (the entire journey of this consciousness through time) had been in preparation for this moment. I was then down loaded with information regarding everything from the nature of time, the changing world and the Mayan prophecies surrounding 2012, the path of healing, and the awakening of enlightenment consciousness across the world.
This lasted for a couple of hours. Sitting half lotus next the river I found unification, I experienced a state of being that has changed everything for me. It was kind, relentlessly beautiful, and the hallmark of this wild occasion, it was real. This was the clearest I had ever felt, the truest reality that I had ever experienced, and it was what I could clearly see is the underlining reality of life. I knew absolutely in these moments (and this clarity has not waned since) that my role here is to birth this consciousness onto the planet again. To dedicate my time-energy-consciousness to co-creating more spaces on the planet that house this vibration of awakened mind. This afternoon, in which time danced, bending and folding in on its self, revealing its mutable nature, I shed a skin that I was previously ignorant that I wore, I shed my resentment to God for the pain, confusion, and fear that accompanies being born.
The site closed at dusk, and as a group we walked back to the Hostel, congregating in Howard’s room around the Mesa. As we sat there, Howard proposed something to us. "Are you willing to die for the truth?" "Are you willing to voluntarily experience death to know what lies on the other side? We have the opportunity to do so tonight, if it calls to you, go to your rooms, lie in darkness on your bed, and I will come and administer the Vilica." This is a DMT based snuff that has been used for thousands of years. In the artistic carvings on the Chavin site one finds representations of the Huachuma cactus and of anthropomorphic deities whose nostrils are running in thick plugs of mucus. Vilica is the Quechua word for sacred.
I don’t know how many of the group went to their rooms. I, still fully in the medicine, left second. Darcy and I cleaned the bed off and made a clear path to the bathroom. Before we turned of the light we paused looking at each other, both knowing that this is the realest thing two people can do together, we kissed, two people embracing life to it fullest. I can’t imagine anything more powerful to share. As we lay in the darkness, I felt a strange elation; I was ready to surrender it all, consciously, with complete awareness to know what lay beyond the veil of death. My body began to tremble before Howard's outline appeared in the doorway. We sat up. I went first. The device had two plugs that I pushed tight against my nostrils, and then quickly and deeply I inhaled. I coughed and then sniffed again until I sneezed. After a moment I stumbled to the bathroom where I dry hurled and then I went and lay down on my stomach arms tight under me, and began to violently shake. The spasms went from head to toe, and trying to control it did not pass through my mind. For the love of truth I allowed myself to fully believe I was dying. "For the love of truth" my mantra, my driving force. Face buried in the pillow, I began a journey.
As my body shook with convulsions my mind blossomed and from the center of my forehead a portal opened before me. The complete darkness of the infinite time-space continuum unfolded and enveloped me. I felt no fear, only complete totality and calm oneness. I was held in a space of no time, understanding that life, the whole of it, this experience of humanness never ends, the energy just keeps revolving in eternal constancy. I floated here, aware of my body in spasms on a bed both very far away and very near. I asked "Why?" what is the purpose of this, of life and death and endless change. And with that question I felt laughter flow through the vast plane of my mind, the endless vista of consciousness, no longer bound to being Robin, the amusement oddly surprised me. "Ah," it said in its wordless way "The un-answerable question." And with that the wide plain of my mental landscape swirled into a series of events, through which I rode propelled by the intensity of my desire to know.
I was shown the birth of four worlds, each birthed from the previous and while traits remained constant, the worlds were radically different. Each world was an evolution of the previous; each species carried traits of its old skin, but was radically different. I saw how these worlds emerged out of each and every point in the multi-verse- each moment a welling up and spreading out of time-space-consciousness. The emerging of a new world was the Creatrix evolving. It was the whole changing, metamorphosing. Change the ever-constant truth.
I was brought to the present and into the near future where another age is to be birthed. What that will look like I was not privy to, but I saw great change on a physical scale. The planet rapidly reorganizing itself, with humans not being the center of this change, integral because we are consciousness, but not central. I was shown a community where people came from around the world to learn to align themselves to change, to learn to "sing the world into being." Darcy and I stood at the base of a huge Huachuma in full bloom welcoming family, friends, and strangers. This I was informed was both metaphorical and literal. I was told that I am supposed to work with him to create a community dedicated to this. That this is just one of the many things we will do together as life partners. I found out later that he was informed of exactly the same thing. We had at this point only been traveling together for two 2 weeks- with no conversation ever being had about love or commitment. And yet neither of us doubted it for a moment or has since.
I saw that there will be many such centers, and that in this world evolution there will be many types of experiences all OK and integral to the larger process. Some will find it hard to adapt to a rapidly changing environment or chose not to adapt. While others will ride the wave change, embracing the endless possibilities presented. It was made very clear to me that each has the right to choose, and each of us does choose each moment by where we focus our attention and intention. To ride the wave, I must focus on the razor edge of duality, choosing my experience in this endless dark and endless light, holding each, while consciously watching the now flow through me. My body began to calm, and I came back to the small hostel room, the flat bed, and my breath. Nothing, absolutely nothing after this day would be the same. I had been given the gift and responsibility of vision.
The time I spent at Chavin has altered my perception of reality, and how I perceive my role as a co-participator in this consensual world reality. I have learned that when one willingly embraces the fires of transformation, the fear of death, and relinquishes all hope of external salvation for the love of truth, the universe responds in kind with gifts of understanding and a path of purpose. After this point I realized that the time for growth is now, and began to dedicate each day to learning and sharing as much as possible about healing consciousness.

Heaven’s Gate- Where the Curtain Dropped

Heaven’s Gate, our last mesa, was the jaw-dropping finale to this righteous adventure in consciousness. Outside of Huaraz, in the Andes, the most beautiful spot on the planet has been created through the intense forces of nature. I loved Darcy’s description and so I quote him:
We traveled up into the mountains of the Cordillera Blanca of the Andes, the highest tropical mountains in the world. Our destination was a beautiful area called Laguna Chinalcocha. The forces of nature created this lake in 1970 after one of the worst earthquakes in Peruvian history. The 7.9 intensity quake causing a large portion of two mountains to split, sending rock, water, ice hundreds of miles per hour down the valley and burying the local town of Yungay - killing 30,000 people within a few seconds. A devastating catastrophe for the people of the area, and yet an amazing phenomenon happened. Where the mountains split, an incredible environment was created. The two mountains that parted - one on the Cordillera Blanco, and the other on the Cordillera Negro - created a balance of male and female energies, in a perfectly harmonious convergence. Mother nature had brought on natural creative forces in this spot in the Andes. A fantastic natural mesa. The trees of the area, which typically take 100 years to mature - are mature after only 37 years since the quake. An extraordinary example of how everything in the universe can have accelerated transformation - even on a geological scale. Realizing dynamic union of the spirits of nature and cosmos within and all around us. (www.sacredplants.blogspot.com)

On the ride from Huaraz to Heaven’s Gate I focused on breathing and bringing my energy up from the soles of my feet and base of my spine out through the crown of my head. Many of us in the group noticed that Huachuma liked it when we focused our attention on this process, what I call consciously "flowing". I also noticed that this plant-spirit teacher love music, and with Howard's encouragement we all dived into the texture of sound, and the effect of sound frequency on consciousness.
On this drive I was wrapped tight in the thick melodies of Hank Williams, and in this embrace I saw how my life patterns were going to change in order to truly incorporate the information that I had received. I saw how the life I had been living needed to be restructured in order to align with the power of my vision. I saw that to do this I need clarity, and that in order to maintain clarity, I need a body free of toxins. This path is about embracing the potentiality of being human, and in order to do this all areas of my life must be focused on cultivating a soil of self in which this blossoming can occur unhampered. Everything from nutrition, to what information I am taking in, to the quality of my relationships, to where I focus my attention. This is a path of unification and healing. Huachuma made it clear what activities I had been participating in that were no longer appropriate. It is the time to be clear and centered; it is the time to embrace more of the potentiality that this life offers. What always surprises me is that when it is truly time to let a thing go, when an activity or relationship has run it's course, releasing it is effortless and a joy. Nothing forced, all things serve us, until they don’t, and then new things do. Wonderfully and idiotically simple, but so true. Something’s must die for others to be born.
As the bus arrived each of us was deep in the medicine and our own thoughts. As we rolled by vast cliffs on either side I knew that this place was the future, a slice of what’s to come. An electric sea green lake flowed from the peak’s snow capped top. This was shored by wild gnarly trees, cacti, and flowers three times their normal size. This place is 12 years older than me, and has a complex ecosystem close to rivaling the jungle. It is an anomaly, a place that shouldn't exist but does. It is punctuated equilibrium incarnate. Where I saw and experienced Heaven (or the closest thing I can imagine to it) at Chavin, here I experienced a new world- the world I was shown coming in my vilca vision- incarnate. It was extreme, pure nature, evolution at a wild accelerated pace. Nothing I could have imagined until my feet tread upon her soil.
"So," I said to Huachuma "Its a lot bigger than us. God’s evolving." The thick silence swept across me. " What do you do in the face of something so tremendous?" And the answer I received flooded me with joy and love and peace, the foundational trinity of true freedom. "Heal yourself and empower others to do the same.”

Chapter Six: Questionnaire Responses and Analysis

2008-10-29T18:12:00.000-07:00

In the previous chapters I introduced Ayahuasca and Huachuma through their bio-chemical make-up, history, current use, and legality, as well as sharing some of my own experiences with them while traveling in Peru. In writing this thesis I realized that the only way for me to gain a fuller understanding of the larger implications of westerners seeking out ceremonial experiences with Ayahuasca and Huachuma was to conduct research of my own. I undertook this study to gain greater understanding of who is seeking ceremonial experiences with these plants and the knowledge systems associated with them. I am not interested in information that comes from a non-ceremonial context.
In this chapter I will discuss the information given by participants through an online questionnaire that I administered. Each of the individuals answered a list of questions designed to examine their intentions for participating in these ceremonies, and what their experiences were with the medicines and Shamans; to disclose any integration or lack thereof of their ceremonial experience; and to encourage any general reflections on their experiences. To conserve space within the body of this work the compiled surveys are located on a data disc in the back sleeve of this thesis.
Representatives from varied countries, walks of life, and motives for seeking out the ceremonial experience participated in this survey. I chose to make contacts while traveling and document my experiences and observations. After acquiring permission through the Northern Arizona University internal review board and an informed consent form to collect interviews. I created an online questionnaire of open-ended questions. Twenty-three individuals participated in this survey with the following questions:

• What is your background?
• What brought you to San Pedro and/or Ayahuasca?
• What were your intentions in participating in these ceremonies?
• How many ceremonies have you participated in?
• Where and in what context did you participate in the ceremonial use of these substances?
• How did you relate with the Shaman? Did a relationship form, and if so what did this look like?
• How do you understand what the Shaman's intention was?
• What were your experiences while in the "medicine"? What understandings, visions, and experiences did you have? Did they build upon each other? If so how?
• Describe the emotional content and intensity of the experience?
• Has your life changed since this experience? If so what have these changes looked like?
• Has it changed your understanding of the world, if so how?
• Has your ceremonial experience impacted your health (physical, psychological, spiritual)? If so how?
• What is your definition of health?
• Any extra thoughts, reflections, or commentary?
• Do you plan on participating again?

The Participants and Their Experience

I will now introduce each of the participants, weaving their stories together into a cohesive data set taking a qualitative look at how and in what ways participation is affecting individual’s lives. I will highlight what brought them to seek out ceremonial Ayahuasca and Huachuma usage and my impressions of and reflections on their experiences. Following this I will discuss the emergent themes that I found in analyzing and deconstructing the given reflections. If the reader desires further investigation of the surveys they are located on a disc in a sleeve in the back of this thesis.

Jaymie is 27 and from Michigan. She is a traveler, working seasonally to support her thirst for adventure. She first found out about Ayahuasca from a friend she was traveling with, and they organized their South American trip around drinking the brew. She has since participated in 16 Ayahuasca and 1 Huachuma ceremonies. She explained first this linear version of what brought her to Ayahuasca and then added “But the reality is that the universe brought me to Ayahuasca, because it was the reflection of God that I needed to experience at the time. The “teachings” that my life was supposed to receive as Jaymie Noble.”
Finding a sense of purpose, destiny and synchronicity in being drawn to these experiences is an emergent theme among the participants. Most said they were drawn to these experiences by spiritual curiosity. Some such as Neil, Bud, Eric, and Keenan reported that it was prior experiences with psychedelics that first sparked their interest in plant-spirit shamanism. It was these self-directed explorations in recreational settings and solo journeys that acted as a gateway to pursuing traditional ceremonial ingestion of plant-spirit medicines. I believe that individual experimentation in alter states of consciousness is what brings many to begin researching authentic plant-spirit shamanism. Bud, 34 year-old Green Builder, said:
I became interested in these medicines after a being introduced to the sacred mushrooms during University. The mushrooms had an uncanny ability to produce a dimension of reality that was novel up to that point in my life. Producing a perspective to my life that helped guide me in my maturing manhood. It took a decade before I fully understood that these were plant-spirit medicines and they were used in the rich Shamanic traditions. As I delved deeper into this knowledge I inevitably stumbled across the usage of San Pedro and Ayahuasca in different areas of the world and became compelled to participate in true Shamanic ceremonies with these medicines.

It was “a terrible curiosity of the powerful states of consciousness that these plants were promising to offer” that first brought Bud to Peru. This evolved, once he had experienced Ayahuasca, into an expanded understanding that the plants have “profound power to heal our bodies, minds, and souls on deeper levels than I thought possible.” Bud has since committed himself to path of learning the “medicine.” He has thus far participated in 19 Ayahuasca ceremonies and 40+ Huachuma ceremonies.
Neil, 26 year-old Australian, said that his primary intentions were “To gain insight into life, why we are here, who we are?” and this has shifted to “Now, the emphasis is more strongly on how best to be of service.” He was initially brought to San Pedro and Ayahuasca by an “insatiable hunger for the hallucinatory experience.” Neil has chosen to pursue a learning path with the medicines of apprenticeship. He is one of the nine people interviewed who have sought out both medicines. After experiencing 90+ ceremonies his commentary veered more to explaining his general experiences than powerful individual ceremonies (as those who had just participated in 2-10 tended to do.)
Overall there is a cumulative effect from participating in guided and effective Ayahuasca and Huachuma ceremonies, which is manifested in a gradual rising of the personal baseline of consciousness. The state of mind of the ceremony begins to flow into daily life as the teachings reveal an ever-present spiritual continuum that exists at all times in all places, within and without, particularly in the pristine wilderness or in some natural setting. The medicinal plant experience is, again, quite variable and subjective but the overall trend seems to be a removal of limitations on awareness and a move toward a more heart-centered life.

Kelly, a wildlife ecology PhD student, has been on the formal path of apprenticeship with an Amazonian Ayahuascero and reports drinking 100-120 times all in a ceremonial healing context. She first found out and became interested in Ayahuasca by a friend who worked for a group focused in researching alternative treatments for heroin addiction. She say’s that she went with very little preconceptions about what Ayahuasca was or that it would become such a huge part of her path.
Though I had been to a pre-ceremony information session beforehand, I think I was quite amazingly naïve – I had done no research, I had asked very few questions. I did three ceremonies in Canada, and then traveled to Peru for a vacation with my then-partner. We spent a week at Espirito de Anaconda, and then a week after that journeying in the jungle on the Amazon. The shaman traveled with us on that trip, and it was then that I went to him and said that I wanted to learn more. At that time I didn’t even really know what I meant by that. But he told me to come back, and so two months later I returned to Peru. On my first night in ceremony, he initiated me as an apprentice, which I realized after the ceremony. So, without discussion, without thought, I woke up, apprenticed on this path. Reflecting back, I think if it had been any other way, if I’d come to this path with more rational thought, I probably wouldn’t have ‘decided’ to apprentice, and maybe I wouldn’t even have drunk Ayahuasca that first time.
Before embarking on the healing path Kelly focused on self-healing in the ceremonies. As she stepped on to the path of becoming an Ayahuascero her intentions broadened to include being “simply present” moving from less rational place of being open to the “teachings as they are gifted to me, and sometimes I am shown ways to move forward in my own personal process.” Kelly’s perspective is interesting as a westerner who has taken a formal apprenticeship with a South American shaman, and is beginning to do healings. Her insight goes beyond what most of the participants have relayed for it is synthesizing the indigenous wisdom system of the plants with a western academic perspective. What she shares opens the doors of how this medicine and the process of altering ones consciousness and purging are guided by the shaman.
Knowing a little more about shamanism within the Ayahuasca context, I know that the shamans’ intention is to call in the plant teachers, the animal spirits, it is the plant and animal spirits which create the protection around the participants, and which guide the shaman in diagnosing and curing illness. When I work with people (which I am only beginning to so I don’t have much experience) I sort of get out of the way so that Madre Ayahuasca can use my eyes to see into a person’s being, to see where there are knots in the energetic fabric. And then by chanting and using tobacco and other plant spirits (I’ve used lavender), my intention is to re-weave the energy so there are no more knots, or dark places where there should be light. It’s only happened a few times, but I’ve had flashes of insight, totally non-rational, about what might be the person’s ‘problem’ (even though there really are no problems). It’ll take me a while I think to learn how to work with those, and be confident enough to speak them.
In this study I did not interview any master shamans for the breadth of how these healers work is another field of inquiry, which has been explored by other authors and yet still warrants future exploration. One of the questions I asked was "How do you understand what the shaman’s intention was?" I asked this question to see what role people saw the shaman having in the ceremonial context of their experience. When one opens their consciousness to the influence of Ayahuasca or Huachuma they are incredibly open to suggestion, to the energy of other people, and to their intentions. While every one who participated in this survey relayed a positive experience of the shaman’s intention, this has not been the case with everyone I have talked to. Kelly speaks about the ways in which a shaman can abuse the power of this situation and how this affects all members of the community, and her own path to finding integrity while learning the medicines.
Unbeknownst to me at the time of my initiation, the shaman had had several sexual relationships with women for whom he was either their healer or teacher. Sometimes the sex happened in the maloca during ceremony. There have been no reports of forced sex, but the question of true consent under those conditions is certainly an interesting one. Myself I don’t believe that most women can give true empowered consent in that kind of situation. So, it’s really been a struggle for me. Part of my time out right now is assessing whether I can continue to work with someone with this kind of history with power abuse. Apparently, he no longer has relationships of this nature with women, but I still struggle with it. I also struggle with the larger issue of patriarchy in Amazonian shamanism. This shaman is certainly not the only shaman to have had sex with women in his care; it’s quite common. And I have heard reports of rape under these situations. I could write a lot on this topic, and actually, I think it’s something that could really use some serious inquiry, and intelligent non-blaming discourse.
Two-thirds of the participants for this survey did their Ayahuasca medicine work at a Peruvian retreat center outside of Iquitos, Peru. This is also where I drank Ayahuasca and how I met many of these people. Of the participants who worked with this center, which is headed by a western master shaman Hamilton Souther and a Peruvian master shaman Don Alberto Torres Davila, with both Peruvian and Western apprentices, everyone relayed feelings of deep trust and respect for the shamans. The level of personal intimacy, however, differed with each individual.
Gene, a college professor of music and long-time Buddhist who was brought to Ayahuasca by a suggestion from a “maverick American Buddhist teacher” felt that the shaman’s intention was to “let the medicine find and heal what needed healing.” Carmen, a clinical sexologist, sees the shaman as holder of the space “He or she is the riverbed for the process to flow in.” Carmen has worked with shamans in the United States as well as Peru and has participated in 12 ceremonies. “I related to the shaman as I did to any teachers in my life, with a lot of respect and attention. The relationships that have been formed are more on a spiritual level, from one Human in Training to another.” She was brought to Ayahuasca by a search for truth, to connect with “the spirits” and live in peace and harmony. She say’s that her life has completely changed since first drinking by imbuing her with compassion, empathy, and trust in the Divine. She has eliminated sugar from her diet, and feels like she is more in touch with the needs of her body. On a mental and emotional level she relays feelings of unconditional love and relating to people in her life in an expanded way: “ I can see them as being a part of me and me of them.” Ayahuasca also relieved her fear of death: “I don’t see death as something to fear but as something to embrace without concerns of what is and what will be.” This is a good example of why Ayahuasca is called the “vine of death” although this term is also used for the access it gives one to the spirit realms.
Often individuals in altered and expanded states of consciousness will experience deep and latent fears surfacing. Dying and death seem to be an inherent aspect the ayahuasca journey. Death is an underlying fear of almost everyone and can be looked at and processed while in ceremony. Gene also relayed facing a latent fear of death surfacing. I see this as an aspect of the archetypal “hero’s journey.” This is embraced through consciously altering ones consciousness. Inherent in the journey is a passage to the underworld. This is a passage to and through the negative patterns in one’s own consciousness. I believe this to be why even the most challenging of ceremonies offers therapeutic benefit. It allows the individual to embrace the death/rebirth cycle of personal initiation. This in my mind facilitates the permanent increase in quality of life. Through challenge we grow and learn. When stepping to the cup one must be willing to accept whatever teachings the medicines offer (which can often be brutal.) It is in a sense a proclamation that no matter how this night goes I will chose to view it as a lesson, a teaching, a productive use of my time. This is in itself a very courageous act.
After his experiences in Peru, Gene was not sure if he’d want to drink Ayahuasca again, because the experiences he had under the medicine were amongst the most “awful of my life.” But after six months of reflection he said “I really feel Ayahuasca revealed something important to me by giving me a physical experience of my confusion and of my clinging. Because they were such physical experiences they are unforgettable, so I have greater understanding of each of the tendencies.” This is a prime example of a therapeutically beneficial experience.
Katy, 25 year-old, with a background in contemplative psychology and health and healing, relayed another example of how the darkest and most challenging visions gave her some of the greatest insight. She has participated in 5 Ayahuasca ceremonies and over 20 Huachuma ceremonies. This is what she described as her fifth Ayahuasca ceremony.
I was faced with major purging, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. I felt myself being pulled down into a vortex of darkness, fear, pain, self-loathing, but every time I would get sucked in I would repeat to myself, “I choose life” over and over until I believed it, and though I might have still been vomiting or on the toilet, I would feel my heart, and feel love expanding throughout my being. When I finished purging, I lay back on my mat, feeling spent and yet so blissful, so happy that I had made a choice to be alive, to be me. I had another complete out-of-body experience, similar to my second ceremony, but much deeper and with a feeling of having earned it, having faced my demons in order to enter into the expanse of bliss that is love and gratitude. As I reentered my body, I felt more whole and integrated than I had ever felt before.
Neil describes his general process of “learning” through his plant-spirit medicine experiences, which I feel gives a wonderful framework for the internal process that makes these experiences so powerful and the benefits lasting.

The emotional content ranges from the very personal to the extremely impersonal with a general movement between both poles. Intensity also fluctuates between the calm and peaceful to the mind-bending and terrifying. Ayahuasca and Huachuma often work on different parts of the energetic system so in truth this is a complicated question to answer. Ceremonies have usually, in my experience, involved some sort of crisis point or confrontation with something in need of work (the dark side?)... Followed by a 'letting go' or cathartic episode and a blossoming or flowering of well-being, peace and love. While the content is usually person-specific the plant teachers often guide one towards a greater appreciation of the earth, natural beauty and importance of caring for organic life/ecosystems as well as one's friends and family.

This “crisis” point that Neil describes appears to be a universal aspect of Ayahuasca and Huachuma ceremonies. It is where the work of the medicines comes in. Purging in Ayahuasca is an intense physical process of vomiting, defecating, shaking, crying, and a whole range of emotional releases. This is a concept that is quite foreign to the traditional rational western world. Instead of approaching life trauma, painful thought constructs, additions, and negative emotions by trying to mentally sort it out though a tradition counseling session, one brings their whole self, baggage and all, to the ceremony. The medicines help bring those things that are painful to the surface, and then clear these through the psychosomatic process of physical and mental purging. Bud relayed the power of this:
In almost every ceremony I was nauseous and experienced purging. Purging became an important aspect of the ceremonies. The medicine surfaced into the consciousness layers of a lifetime built up of emotional garbage and negative programming that had a negative influence on my life. The medicine made me see the garbage for what it is and then gave me the opportunity to purge it. Vomiting was my way of purging, but shaking, shivering, sweating, crying, and defecating were also performed. The purging became easier as more ceremonies were experienced - even to the point where I looked forward to the purging experience because of its cathartic qualities. The visions were stronger some ceremonies than others. Not necessarily dose dependent. The visions showed geometric patterns, animal spirits, snakes, jungle, color, and wormholes, people. Other participants from the group would sometimes be in my visions. The visions showed me worlds that were as real as this reality, and spirits that worked outside of the 3 dimensions. I found much of the lessons came through the medicine in inner understanding. Combining the inner teachings, visions, and information surfacing by the purging, the whole ceremonial experience is rich with powerful personal teachings of who we are as spiritual beings in human incarnate bodies. The lessons seem to build on each other in successive ceremonies. Needing to learn one lesson before ready for another.

I have also noticed a trend within the data and in conversations with others that participating in multiple ceremonies in a close proximity to one another allows for the experiences to piggy-back and build on one another. This suggests to me that engaging this systemic use can access deeper levels of work.
Dusty, a 26 year-old graduate student first heard about the Ayahuasca and Huachuma through friends. He felt called to by an intuitional pull to participate in ceremonies with both of these plant-spirit medicine teachers with the intention to have genuine and unique spiritual experience, that was not given to him through any institutions, but that emerged inherently from his own relationship to the Divine and the medicine. He had this to say about the impact to his health that participating in five ayahuasca ceremonies in nine days:
It has boosted my physical and psychological health immensely. On one level, this has occurred as an effect of the purging—that is by eliminating many ways in which I used to sabotage my own health in these areas. Moreover, the experiences have completely overhauled my paradigm of the way(s) in which the world works. In terms of specifics, one little tip of a shaving on the iceberg would be to say that I have a great deal of direct knowledge (given through nothing less than direct experience) of so many things, which I only ever previously has supposed could or might be true/possible. Now that I have had these experiences, and have realized the ways in which I am supported in this massive endeavor (“life,” “existence,” or whatever else you choose to call this grand thing), I am not only more empowered, appreciative, and attentive, but my life has been growing consistently richer, more meaningful and clearer in many respects.

Nikolina, originally from Bulgaria has been residing in the USA since 2001, she was also first told about the medicines by friends, and was already planning to travel in South America. She was starting a new chapter of her life after a recent divorce. She felt that she was very much guided to the medicines through “intuition and a synchronistic set of events.” She has participated in 14 Huachuma ceremonies and 8 Ayahuasca ceremonies all in a ceremonial context, as well as participating in other Shamanic dieting while in the jungle. Her intention was also to deepen her connection to “Source”.
The medicine brought for me state of profound admiration of nature; peace; revealed my emotional pain and helped me for reconciliation of my recent divorce; more love for my parents and acceptance of their shortcomings in the past; knowing of the Sacredness of Life; nonverbal transmitting of wisdom about life as it is…NOW; realization that the collective effort to express gratitude could bring energetic balance to the turbulence we've created on a global scale; taste of ancient human approaches to nature's elements and ability for humans to live in benevolence; the complete dependence of human to life taking and life giving forces; less arrogance and increased humbleness; desire to consider Mother Earth in all my doings; realization that we all are potentially healers and highly evolved beings; the reminder of death as another impermanent cosmic experience; empathy and compassion on any scale; vision to bring cultures in their ritualistic dance and ethnic music into artistic expression dedicated to Spirit and celebrating the precious Life we live now. This vision did build upon work with different plants.

Sandy, 74 year old woman from California, has traveled by herself to the Peruvian Jungle three times to work with Ayahuasca. She first heard about the plant-spirit medicine from a radio interview with author Graham Hancock who said “If you never do another thing for your spiritual life, try Ayahuasca.” She has devoted 40 years of her life to cultivating her spiritual self primarily through meditation. Her physical health was however, the motivating factor in traveling to Peru. Severe fatigue, chronic coldness in her limbs, and a need to always be busy were her main complaints. After 13 ceremonies with two separate sets of shamans she reports:
I got very high each time and experienced lots of love and bonding with those around me…my body flopped on the floor like a fish out of water (authors note- this type of shaking is a form of purging that many people have reported.) The energies were really ripping through me. During my second visit to Peru, the movements became so pronounced during a ceremony that the tambo we were in was shaking on its foundation. The shaman came over and put his hands on my head and did healing work on me. The movements stopped, they have never returned. I had this problem for thirteen years. He also gave me a special treatment because my body is always very cold. My body is now warm all of the time. The “cold” problem had plagued me since I was a teenager. Another great benefit of ayahuasca is it improves digestion.

In her time since returning to Peru she reports that she is in a very good place on all levels. She had no bad trips, but the ceremonies did not build upon one another as with other participants. Sandy is a wonderful example of how Ayahuasca is a healing medicine available to almost everyone (the only counter-indications for physical ailments I have read or heard about is for heart problems and high blood pressure) and that regardless of age purification and new insight are always possible. She ended her questionnaire with the comment “I found the whole Ayahuasca experience to be life-enriching and beneficial to my spiritual life. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in adventuring into inner space.”
Diane sought out Ayahuasca and San Pedro after hearing reports from family and friends “about the expansion and ecstasy” they had experienced as a result of the ceremonies. She had felt reluctant to seek these experiences out in fear of being an “ugly American in another culture’s ceremonies” and was happy to be working in an environment with western and Peruvian shamans. She is the only participant who mentioned initial fears of cultural appropriation. This was a fear of mine as well. The topic has not been discussed in any depth in the literature I have reviewed so far in regards to Ayahuasca and Huachuma, but I am sure that this could be a rich area for future investigation. Diane said that her life has positively changed from realizations gained through Ayahuasca ceremonies:
Just knowing that heaven on earth is right here is amazing. I experienced it, and deep connections within my family, and with the other participants. I find myself to be less and less able to live a life that isn’t congruent with these states…. I am happier now than I have ever been. For me however – I know that if I ever had a serious psychological or physical dis-ease – plant-spirit medicine is there for me.

Within her reflections surfaced the themes of a purifying catharsis, biophilia, teachings through visions and expanded states of consciousness, great respect for the medicines, and desire to learn from future ceremonies.
Josh is a 30-year-old native New Yorker who wanted to go beyond his limitations. After 10 Ayahuasca ceremonies he feels deep within a personal process of examining how he has lead his life and what he should do in the future. The ceremonies brought him to meditate more and watch when his ego takes over. He did not relay any specific experiences while “in the medicine” but remarked on the positive impact the ceremonies have had in waking him up to greater possibilities within himself.
Amy, a 25-year-old Navajo woman was introduced to Huachuma through a good friend. “I was seeking spiritual guidance through communion with a timeless, wise, and sacred entity to help with post traumatic stress disorder, depression, food addictions, and physiological toxicity. “ Through the 7 ceremonies that she has participated in she has seen a radical improvement to her health and psychological well-being. The ceremonies did build upon one another through a shedding of layers of toxic energy, which helped her to “feel my body and take my space more and more each time.” Amy processed deep levels of personal and familial trauma that had not been accessible in a healthy and productive way before partaking in plant-spirit medicine. Her reflections on the impact of the ceremonies show that her life improved on many levels. This is reflective of the interconnectivity within each person of the emotional, physical, and spiritual bodies. In Shamanic worldview no issue is just physical or just mental all are integrated aspects of the whole.
There have been considerable changes in my physical health. I no longer have the same back pain I had previously. I have much less joint pain with more flexibility and my body just feels lighter overall. I also gained a lot of psychological insight into the root of my personal fears and limitations. The experience deepened over time- days, weeks, even months following each ceremony as I reflected upon each experience and began to notice permanent changes in my attitude and daily habits. The ceremonies impacted my spiritual health by allowing me to feel and see the rich complexity of the natural world, the elements and the presence of spirit guides.

Hank was drawn to Ayahuasca by the book DMT: The Spirit Molecule (I discusses this body of work in the chapter on Ayahuasca.) He then booked a trip to the Amazon to participate in 5 ceremonies. He is one of the only people I have talked to who reports only positive experiences while drinking. “I had great visions. Everything was totally positive from the beginning of the very first experience to the end of the last ceremony. I never had a bad or sad or negative thought at any time during any of the ceremonies.” This shows that while a purifying catharsis, crisis point, and “journey to the under-world” are recurrent themes in most people’s reflections, they too are not universal.
After 5 ceremonies, Stephano, reports a complete hiatus from the use of alcohol, drugs, and overeating, while feeling more confident and clear in his path. As a result of ingesting Ayahuasca he has been able to psychologically overcome fear and spiritually feel more in tune. He did not give more specific reflections so I do not know what the severity of his pre-ceremony fear or disconnection was. Stephano’s comments relayed a general and enthusiastic improvement in quality of life.
Sophia was curious about Ayahuasca after reading about it and her intention in participation was to overcome personal problems and figure out “what the future had in store.” She felt safe with the shamans she worked. I found her description of the emotional intensity that can surface in ceremonies to be poignant:
I could feel every emotion pushing through me up to my head and out of my hair. At times it was very intense to the point where I felt like I was losing control but other times I was able to let the emotions leave me faster and the experience would be much calmer. This is when I would learn the most.

This comment is indicative of the multiple levels of “teachings” that occur within the Ayahuasca experience. While Sophia did not have strong visions, she had strong emotions to work with. She reports that her life is much changed since the five ceremonies she participated in.
I feel happier and at peace with life and the world in general, I understand that everything is only an experience and it's only as good or as bad as my reactions to it… Physically I feel healthier, I lost a few pounds and I am not overeating anymore. Psychologically I don't feel plagued or bogged down by negativity and confusion. And spiritually I feel more open to new ways of thinking and living; I feel the urge to become more enlightened.
Ann is the only participant who is not considering more ceremonies. Her reflections relay a very powerful experience in rich detail. She was brought to Ayahuasca and the Amazon by a “sense of disconnection from my true nature and essential self.” She felt that Ayahuasca would help her with this “inner turmoil.” She has also participated in one Huachuma ceremony but did not speak of this in detail. Ann’s reflections touch on the emergent themes of a purifying catharsis, “teachings” given and learned while altered, and a deep respect for the medicines. She drank twice while in the Amazon and says that she is relieved of her previous phobic tendencies, is socially much more confident, and is physically more flexible and strong. I found her descriptions of her second and last ceremony to be enlightening and original:
I spent about 30 minutes trying to remember and understand "why I would do this to myself" - it felt like 50 people had dog piled upon me and I had the hardest time breathing. And at the same time my body was moving around without my permission...I honestly felt possessed. But gradually I found a comfort spot, and the healing began to get deeper and build. I began to find beauty and the light within me found source. I connected to a deep, profound courage. And then I tried to think of everything I fear, and release the fear. I became light spirited again. Thought of past loves and relationships, which had troubled me - was able to feel total love and release. Sent off healing energy from soul to soul...healing energy of a very potent nature. And I continued to feel deep pleasure and relaxation. Everything slowed down to a realistic pace and I asked the Ayahuasca permission to stop drinking so long as I took the lessons it had taught with me. It said sure, you've always had free will, but continued to make the experience more lovely always asking, are you sure you don't want to drink any more? And in my state of perfection and balance, I said no. I had received what I came for.

Natalka, 31 year old, participated in 2 ceremonies offered through a mediation center in her hometown. Her intention was “I wanted to know how I could serve the greater good.” She is the only participant who reported feeling depressed afterwards. The integration of expanded states of consciousness does often take an oscillating path of progression and can be quite challenging in and of its self. All the ways ones life is not in coherence become blaringly obvious. Natalka described her experience:

The ceremony threw me into a depression. I saw even more how beautiful this world is, but then I felt this deep sense of unworthiness to be in it. I felt the pain of the world more and I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to put myself into a hospital for my mental health but instead went into a meditation retreat for a month (dathun). The dathun helped me to heal, and see how I was just as worthy as everyone else; it helped me to truly love.
I have wondered if Natalka had the opportunity to participate in more than 2 ceremonies if this experience would have shifted. She did say that if her “heart and mind” were in tune that she would participate in future ceremonies. I see this as evidence that the plant-medicines are not appropriate for everyone and at every stage of their life. Partaking in the ceremonial ingestion of any entheogen should only be done with great intention and within a supportive community and clear set and setting.
Tom and Jiri gave short and concise answers to the questionnaire. While reporting a respect and rewarding experiences from drinking Ayahuasca and a desire to drink again. I found very little qualitative data pieces from their reflections. Both relayed improvement in quality of life, teachings while “in the medicine”, purifying catharsis, and feelings of interconnectedness.
Keenan, 23-year-old man, intentions were to confront and overcome anxiety and self-depreciation. His feedback from the questionnaire relayed details from each of his ceremonies, but also expressed a lack of enthusiasm for the challenges of reintegrating the experiences upon return to the States. While he does report in the questionnaire feeling more on his spiritual path there is an inherent sense of struggle in returning to his normal life. What I find interesting to note here is that after participating in this study he reports realizing the profundity of his experiences while in the Amazon, and has begun writing in earnest to better understand and relay the power his ceremonial experiences. While I found little of his reflections to relay any qualitative changes to his life, I am excited that answering the questionnaire spurned deeper inquiry within him.
Mike is an acupuncturist and Chinese herbalist and it was his desire to better understand “energy/spirit based medical practices for personal and professional” illumination. He desired to become more energetically balanced and a conduit for the healing energy of the medicine in his own healing practice. The shaman’s guided his experience through the singing of their icaros. The Ayahuasca ceremonies he participated in were some of the most “intense and gratifying” of his life.
While in ceremony there are many different physical sensations that come and go. Senses of touch, smell and sound were particularly enhanced in my experience. The mind is unfiltered and thoughts flow very quickly. It is a very dream-like state in that not all thoughts are connected in a linear pattern but still combine to create similar patterns from ceremony to ceremony. Lasting visions of my experience were ones that seemed to portray potential scenarios in my near future that related to jobs and personal relationships. At various times throughout the different ceremonies I would see friends and loved ones going about their daily lives. I often saw people that have since passed away. Also, throughout the ceremonies different animals would appear present and
interacting with me. One night I was observed as being engulfed in a white and green light and sitting in the lotus position hovering above my physical body looking very 'Buddha-like'.
Jill came to the medicines through an interest in shamanism. She felt that the “medicine work was what I needed to do next in order to make the next big jump for my spiritual awakening and personal development.” She traveled to Peru with a small spiritual tour group. Her reflections are deep and detailed. She has experienced purifying catharsis, increased feelings of biophilia, a death like experience, many teachings in the blissful and hellish realms, a huge increase in the overall health with an oscillating path of personal progression, and she is on the path to learning the medicines through purchasing land in the Amazon on which to build a spiritual retreat center. While she relays in detail many of her challenging moments in her Ayahuasca ceremonies her description of “bliss” encompasses what many have relayed about their own experiences of the “highs” that happen within plant-spirit medicine work.
I then started to feel something I had never felt before on the Ayahuasca. A cosmically orgasmic feeling began filling every cell of my being. Visions of beautiful light filled my minds eye. Words cannot describe this experience I was so fortunate to have. I felt it immediately to be a kundalini awakening. The orgasmic energy was radiating at such intensity it was almost too overwhelming. I was oooh-ing and awe-ing quite a bit, I had no control to do anything but that. It was like an Herbal Essence commercial out in the jungle...luckily it was just Deana and I out there. This experience is one I could never forget. It was so beautiful and pure...uniting with the Divine. It was not sexual but nonetheless completely orgasmic in every cell of my being. I could only wish everyone on this planet could have a similar experience.

Eric’s reflections were similar to Jill’s. He wrote in a lyrical and heart felt way of his experiences while drinking Ayahuasca and the pitfalls and joys of integrating these experiences. After 10 years of psychotherapy trying to heal childhood trauma inflicted on him by a schizophrenic mother Ayahuasca facilitated this happening. One of the great potentials of working with these medicines is healing relationships with loved ones who have passed away. Many people find a level of resolution with people that could not be attained in actual life. Eric voiced why this is so beautifully:

In some ways this experience (with my Mother) illustrated the intangible, yet psychologically vital aspect of entheogens. You see, your body does not know what is real and what is fantasy. Take the mundane example of a sexual fantasy… As you imagine an erotic encounter, your body becomes aroused – even though nothing “real” is going on! It cannot distinguish between the imagined and the real. So, maybe I did not visit with my dead Mother, and receive a blessing and healing from her… but it doesn’t matter, because my body thinks I did… And that’s good enough for me. In a deep and fundamental way, with the aid of the medicine, I was able to heal around my Mother.

Summarizing Remarks

The central theme, or core category, of the data collected from the survey contributors in this project is: an improved quality of life arising out of the experiences gained through the ceremonial ingestion of the plant-spirit medicines Ayahuasca and San Pedro. This is the central storyline of the data. Within the reflections were several emergent categories each of which strengthened the core-unifying theme, which I will now summarize. (Please look to the Appendix to read quotes from the surveys that I found to be especially poignant and illuminating in regards to each of the emergent themes.)
Among the participants was a relayed belief in a synchronistic set of events that guided the individuals to participate in the ceremonies, as well as a heightened sense of meaningful coincidence in their life experiences that followed. Most participants found out about plant-spirit medicine through friends, family, or authors and were drawn to their use by curiosity and desire for spiritual growth and/or physical healing. In many of the conversations I have had with others who have sought out these experiences there is always a thread of meaningful coincidence that brought the individuals to the audacious task of finding and drinking these plant-spirit medicines. This is an implicit aspect of communication around these substances. This leads me to conclude that many of the survey participants see their lives governed by unseen, beneficent forces. This in itself is not a new concept, but can prove quite powerful when one has been struggling to find healing from physical or psychological impediments and are then given a powerful and authentic experience, which leads to relieving these issues. I have seen this develop into a deep trust for the spiritual unseen realms of ones life.
Many participants had a purifying catharsis followed by a “flowering of well-being, peace, and love” (as described by participant Neil.) This usually involved mental and physical purging through vomiting, defecating, shaking, crying, laughing, and energetic release. These catharses often lead to a crisis point where a therapeutic break-through was achieved. It is important to note here that within the altered-state participant’s experienced extreme highs and lows (effortless states of ecstasy and bliss contrasting hellish demon-filled realms) with both being therapeutically beneficial and part of the individual process in retrospect. This is indicative to me of an initiatory rite of passage, which challenges the initiate through a meaning-filled and symbolic ordeal, from which they are re-birthed into a new state of being.
This process is an inherent aspect of most indigenous cultures that have long-standing coming of age ceremonies. This allows the initiate to reorient themselves to a new role within the community that is appropriate to their developmental phase. This process helps to keep communities strong. If you look to western culture that has no death/rebirth coming of age ritual you can see that on one level of consciousness this culture is still stuck in pubescence and obsessed adolescent themes such as sex, violence, materialism, instant gratification, and lack of foresight (this is of course not true for all individuals or institutions but is especially prominent in popular culture.) It is understandable on a survival basis why a tightly knit group of people deeply connected and dependent on the land would have self-regulating systems in the form of customs. These protocols allow the individual to transcend adolescent aspects of consciousness- for if too many were stuck in this level of development the whole culture could become threatened. I believe that westerners who seek out ceremonial experiences with these plant-spirit medicines are also seeking out such an initiatory passage, which can occur at any powerful juncture in life. This is why another emergent theme within the data was facing the fear of death and/or coming to peace with death while in the altered state (which I spoke about more in depth in the previous pages.)
All survey participants experienced “teachings” through visions, emotions, and/or purging. Two-thirds of the participants viewed this as a progressive process. I did not focus in this study on the content of visions specifically but the impact such experiences had on the individual’s life. In Antipodes of the Mind author Benny Shannon covers this topic in great depth. These teachings covered a wide landscape of information geared to the individual and their life experiences, and yet within this was the very prominent theme of increased feelings of biophilia and interconnectivity to of all life. Many of the participants within my survey and within the secondary data relay incredible love and appreciation for nature and all of living things arising from their ceremonial experiences, as well as a newfound dedication to living in harmony with the earth and her eco-systems. The importance of such feelings cannot be understated in regards to the global environmental issues of today.
Most of the participants expressed an interest in learning more from future ceremonies, with a number of the participants considering or already engaged in apprenticeship. Only one individual expressed no intention to participate in future ceremonies. Many reported that they encountered an oscillating path of personal progression in regards to integrating ceremonial experiences (a two-steps forward one step back type thing.) The “teachings” often relayed very specific information in regards to health, relationships, and other factors in personal life situations. The bar set in the ceremonies was often hard to maintain absolutely when the individuals returned to their home. Participants also felt that a Sangha (a Buddhist term for a spiritual community of practitioners) to be important for support while in the altered state of consciousness, and for processing and integrating the ceremonial experiences. Paramount in this support is working with a Shaman that feels trustworthy and experienced.

Sacred hallucinogens are the means of breaking through this trance of the social dream into the expansive, freeing, information-rich universe full of infinite possibilities of other realities and futures. These plants do not lead us away (original italics) from ourselves, into an unbalanced frame of mind, as our doctors and politicians warn, but deeper into ourselves and our potential; to a place where we can find greater balance through genuine self-awareness. (Heaven and Charing: 2006: 79-80)

Chapter Seven- Conclusions

2008-10-29T18:08:00.000-07:00

Analytical Conclusions:

The data given by participants in this study, as well as my own explorations, lead me to conclude that the authentic spiritual experience offered by the ceremonial ingestion of the plant-spirit medicines Ayahuasca and Huachuma can dramatically and enduringly increase quality of life. These increases of quality of life, while being radically individualistic (in that each person has unique experiences, visions, and relayed teachings from perceived non-human spiritual teachers, which are tailored to and within their own consciousness), have important universal themes especially in regard to the creation of healthy and sustainable communities. I see that these medicines are vehicles to re-enchantment within the micro and macrocosmic levels of ones own being.
Partaking in the ceremonial ingestion of any entheogen should only be done with great intention and within a supportive community. I want to stress that I do not think that these medicines are appropriate for everyone or at every time in ones life, and in less than ideal circumstances have the potential to be quite traumatizing. The experiences while in an altered state of consciousness can be incredibly challenging physically and mentally. I feel that to quote Neil, one of the participants at this time, is most appropriate:
Work with the sacred plant medicines is a serious and profound endeavor and anyone thinking of commencing with the work should evaluate their intentions closely. Overall the work has had an extremely beneficial effect on my life but has presented many challenges and difficulties that were initially unforeseeable. The rapid change in ontological and social context may mean the original point of departure is lost, and a new and challenging path is embarked upon that will have incredible implications for one's personal life. However, the profound appreciation and closeness to nature is its own reward, and this is a growing field with the potential to revolutionize communities and individuals and help bring a tumultuous world back into balance and harmony.

The Hoasca Project (that I previously mentioned in the Ayahuasca chapter) showed definitively what South American people have known for millennia that Ayahuasca is a powerful healer of the body, mind, and spirit. Although no formal study of this caliber has been performed on Huachuma over three thousand of years of unbroken use speaks for its own healing power. The qualitative survey data that I collected and analyzed for this project concurs with this, and participants through their own words have illuminated their post-ceremony increase in quality of life. In addition to the substantial positive life shifts reported by individuals in this study, the experiences of many of the western participants coincide with the traditional claims that these plants are medicines that heal.
The survey data I analyzed was also rich with individual reflections communicating authentic wisdom gained through the psychosomatic and spiritual process of participating in these plant-spirit medicine ceremonies. This is personal work that has the potential to help individuals heal negative life patterns while relaying an over-arching theme of interconnectedness and biophilia. I see this as very relevant in the creation of healthy and sustainable communities, in so far as it brings one to the feeling-sense of our true interconnectedness. While many may intellectually understand that all of the life-systems of the planet are interrelated and reliant upon one another, until it is felt in an all-encompassing way, it will not be the soil from which individual action is rooted.
Ideas and logic are important, but first we have to feel our dilemma. If we could genuinely feel our dilemma and make other people feel our dilemma, we would move rapidly toward real solutions. But we are anesthetized. We are a world dying under anesthesia for lack of authentic experience, authentic connection with the living world out of which we came. We have to reach across barriers of culture and time and space to the essential humanness that unites all of us. And if we do this, by whatever techniques are available, if we can create a sense of community, globally, then attending that sense of community will be a sense of caring and responsibility. (McKenna/Harpingnies 2007: 61)

The emergent content of the data I have analyzed parallels the available literature on plant-spirit medicines and the reports given by outside users. This is especially true in regards the plant-spirit medicines ending patterns of addiction and creating healthy life affirming habits, which people all around the world could benefit from. Imagine a community without addiction where individuals found life affirming avenues to express the desire for the numinous that enhanced relationships and familial ties. I believe after my first hand experiences with these medicines that this possible and probable as more and more people humbly learn from indigenous knowledge systems and apply this learning to their own life situation. By synthesizing worldviews, technologies, and spiritual techniques we can meet the challenges unique to our times.
The body of secondary literature available on Ayahuasca and Huachuma, as well as the research that I have done, does not validate the government’s stance on these substances or the mind-altering alkaloids they contain (i.e. both DMT and mescaline are listed as schedule one substances- the most harmful and with no known medicinal benefits.) In fact the recent article Death By Medicine written by western doctors about the medical industry dramatically highlights this huge discrepancy. As I mentioned in the introduction to this thesis, this article now conclusively shows that the largest cause of death in the United States is actually the medical institution. One of the participants, Diane, voiced this well:
I really believe that we live in a crazy culture because our country gives tax breaks and subsidies to drug companies who synthesize individual components of plants that were once healing. These companies make huge profits on people who get sick from the drugs. And this same country makes it illegal to take plant-spirit medicines that do much good and no harm. Could it be because the expanded worldview; the expanded consciousness; the stronger connection to our own inner core and inner knowing, that also comes from some of these plants, makes people less malleable to governmental control?
Many others have shared this sentiment. I foresee in the coming years as more and more people wake-up to the shortcomings of the medical institution and industry, integrative and holistic approaches to health will be globally embraced. When the drugs and techniques that the medical industry pushes kill, and medicines that heal are criminalized, the only course of action is serious inquiry into the current polices surrounding laws that enable such discrepancies. Our health and the health of future generations are dependent on this.
The current legality within the United States and other developed nations of these medicines is something that each person interested must come to terms with. I only advocate for the ceremonial ingestion of these medicines within a supportive structure that includes: a qualified guide or Shaman, safe set and setting, and with a deep reverence for the indigenous knowledge systems associated with these plants. It is my sincere hope that in the near future the criminalization of these mighty healing plants will end, and the shadow of fear that has been looming over entheogens since the inquisition will lift.
The accounts of both Ayahuasceros and San Pedro shamans and their descriptions of working with the plant doctors and allies that are their spiritual and healing partners reveal a very gentle, lyrical, and ensouled approach to the world. A very different picture begins to emerge from these accounts than the images we get from newspaper reports and television documentaries, which lead us to believe that hallucinogens of any description are bad and need to be banned…. Argue or reason as we might, we in the West face a situation of increasing repression of our freedom to experience the sacred, as plants like Ayahuasca and San Pedro help us to do. We are loosing our connection to the spirit of the world because of the power of government to control our access to it. This repression is not for our safety- to stop us from “getting high” and jumping off buildings- but to keep us locked in a materialistic mindset. Any transformational experience that shows us the interconnectedness of all things, and our part in the planetary consciousness runs contrary to this objective. But it is obvious how self-defeating this objective ultimately is when we look around at where such materialism has got us. (Heaven and Charing 2006: 96-97)

Personal Conclusions-

True healing is a pilgrimage within- a journey of integrating and reclaiming all the parts of ones own self and in the process striving to learn and explore the infinite mysteries of the Cosmos. For worlds of beauty, a course of meaningful action in an insane world, and gifts of samadhi deeply affect the soul. The gifts of the plant-spirit medicine work I did in Peru continue to unfold. To say that I truly understand how or why the medicines work would be a lie. What I do know is that the emergent core theme within the data I analyzed, an increased quality of life, feels like an understatement for the incredible transformations that have blossomed in my life. The chronic pain I went to heal in my womb is completely gone. I have taken myself off of all prescription hormones and medications and my endocrine system is functioning in a balanced and healthy way. After drinking Ayahuasca and Huachuma in Peru all patterns of addiction in my life have ended- I say all of this because I like so many others had been searching for health, peace, enlightenment, self-love, and feeling deeply connected to nature. Through the medicine work and the diligent integrations of its teachings I have found all of these and much more. This path of health and self-realization is infinite, and no matter how far I come I am very grateful each day to wake-up at the beginning.
This work has also absolutely been the most challenging and hardest thing I have ever done. Drinking Ayahuasca and Huachuma was in many ways more difficult than the years I spent being sick, solely because I had no choice but to deal with the deepest levels and darkest corners of myself. I had to face the places I was afraid to go. I had to shine the light on and lance the boil of ego over and over. It did take everything I had to get through some ceremonies, and yet this is when I have felt that I learned the most. With great challenges come great rewards. Just two years ago I would not have thought it possible to be this comfortable in my body and this free of fear surrounding my health. I suppose only someone who has lived with a chronic health condition can truly know the incredible joy and gratitude that occurs when your finally come out the other side and retrospectively reflect on the years of challenge.
Much of the learning I have received from these plant-spirit medicines came through the integration and application of the insights gained in ceremony. In looking back I find it hard to comprehend how vastly the quality of my moment-to-moment reality has improved. I have learned that true healing occurs on every level of life. In relationships, family, connection to nature, choice of lifestyle- compartmentalization is just not an option. This is why I see the potential within these ceremonies for Westerns to be so great and dearly needed.
In having any conversation about sustainability, I believe that we must go to a deeper level than has been social acceptable especially in most academic situations. We must recognize that we are spiritual beings, that there are many layers to our consciousnesses and have this be foundational in our interactions. It is time to acknowledge that when our actions directly or indirectly harm another life or degrade the planet we feel this in our subtle sensing systems. Disturbances like these lead to imbalance, which leads to dis-ease. We must also recognize that the technology to live as a global sustainable planet is here. Our consciousness is what is lagging. To do this we must examine our own lives and look deeply for where we are avoiding responsibility, where we are abdicating our power to an outside source and through this recognition we can begin reclaiming our responsibility, our power. Each day it becomes more blatant and apparent that the cultural reservoirs that have been feeding our power and thus our responsibility to– government, corporations, and hierarchical institutions- are incapable of meeting the challenges of our time in peaceful ways that support life.
I see this time on the planet with its great crisis’ to be a phenomenal opportunity to get real with ourselves, and stop pretending that we came here to do anything but love and steward. To do this we need help, we need to learn from other wisdom systems how to heal, not just the physical body, but the emotional, psychic, spiritual and etheric levels as well. For this is where our culture is sick. It is on these levels that the trauma of abuse, incest, fear, shame, and guilt lie and lead to addictions and further perpetration of violence.
It has taken our past trajectory to reach this moment of informed opportunity- the only way to individually or collectively heal is to chose to. This is an opening for personal and collective rebirth into healthy meaning-filled lives of deep responsibility. Choosing to take responsibility for our thoughts, emotions, and actions is a radical act of love. Now is the time to mend what needs mending, to metaphorically and literally pick-up other people’s trash wherever we find it, and ask those near and dear to keep us honest.
I am not saying nor do I think plant-spirit medicine is for every one. It is just one such course of action out of a multitude. Huachuma and Ayahuasca do however help facilitate within a ceremonial context reconnection to our spiritual and energetic self, and this I do feel, is the antidote to our cultural malaise.

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2008-10-29T18:06:00.000-07:00

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Websites
www.pachamama.org- this is a global organization, who was started at the behest of Ecuadorian shamans who saw that with out working with dedicated people from the modern world neither would survive.
www.erowid.org- an online reference to all mind altering substances
www.bluemorphotours.com
www.globalheritagefund.org/where/chavin.html
www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/11856.php
www.csp.org
www.mescaline.com
http://www.ayahuasca-shamanism.co.uk/Huachuma-SanPedro.htm

DVD

• Healing the Luminous Body: The Way of the Shaman
• The Illuminated Chakras: A Visionary Voyage Into Your Inner World
• Ayahuasca and Mystical Secrets of the Amazon
• The Shaman’s Apprentice

Appendix: Emergent Themes and The Participants Own Words

2008-10-29T18:01:00.000-07:00

Appendix:

Emergent Themes and The Participants Own Words

1) A purifying catharsis followed by “flowering of well-being, peace, and love” as described by participant Neil- Usually involving mental and physical purging through vomiting, defecating, shaking, crying, laughing, and energetic release.

Neil- “Ceremonies have usually, in my experience, involved some sort of crisis point or confrontation with something in need of work (the dark side?)... Followed by a 'letting go' or cathartic episode and a blossoming or flowering of well-being, peace and love.”(Ayahuasca and Huachuma.)

Bud- “ In almost every ceremony I was nauseous and experienced purging. Purging became an important aspect of the ceremonies. The medicine surfaced into the consciousness layers of a lifetime built up of emotional garbage and negative programming that had a negative influence on my life. The medicine made me see the garbage for what it is and then gave me the opportunity to purge it. Vomiting was my way of purging, but shaking, shivering, sweating, crying, and defecating were also performed. The purging became easier as more ceremonies were experienced - even to the point where I looked forward to the purging experience because of its cathartic qualities.”(Ayahuasca)

Gene- “In the interview with the shamans before the first ceremony I said I wanted to work with my confusion and doubt (not knowing what to do, who I am; what path to follow). The shaman grinned and said, "you're in the right place." So I asked, "Well, how am I going to work with doubt and confusion?" To which he replied, "You're going to puke it all out." Well, that pretty much describes my experience – it was one of purging and purging and purging. But I felt terrific for a long time after returning.”(Ayahuasca)

Diane- “Then I shook and shook and was really cold, curled up in fetal position. Couldn’t even speak loud enough for an extra blanket. Luckily Neil next to me asked for me – my hero. My body just vibrated like crazy for 2-½ hrs. Prior to the ceremonies my shaman had talked a lot about continually focusing on my third eye and heart and breathe. And saying Yes to whatever is happening. I made it through 1^st ceremony slowly, onion peels, shaking, cold, releasing energy, lots in belly.”(Ayahuasca)

Amy- “The first experience was rather intense and painful for me physically and emotionally. It felt as though my spine and hip joints were being pushed back into straighter alignment. Throughout the experience I could see what appeared to be a black substance just beneath my skin that was pulsating out with the thick consistency of tar or molasses. I also spoke a lot about the trauma, stress, pain and strife that I have experienced in the past and present and I let out a lot of emotion. The days following the experience I was very sore and extremely tired. But within a week I felt like a new person, lighter with more vitality. The chronic low back pain which I had carried for more than two years had greatly subsided and I was very amazed by how powerful the plant medicine is.” (Huachuma)

Eric- “Near the middle of the ceremony, I saw a colorful “snake” approach me. It actually looked like an iridescent, ridged vacuum cleaner hose! It “asked” me for permission to enter my guts, “saying” it wanted to clean out my throat, guts and intestines. I granted permission, and then opened my mouth wide to accept its passage. I felt it enter my throat to nestle gently in my guts, and then I promptly forgot all about it… Until about 20 minutes later, when a rising tide of nausea reminded me of the logical conclusion of a gut-cleaning… a purge! That’s when I ejected a demon-ghost that had infested me many years earlier – an old Hispanic man who had apparently died in the very bed in which I had once spent a sleep-tossed, unpleasant night.”(Ayahuasca)

Ann- “The next night I drank a spirit dose, but was very reluctant to relax into the medicine - fearing the intensity of the night before - although I also knew it wouldn't be so brain scrambling. But resistance and fear are amazing things with Ayahuasca. I felt extreme discomfort, and a profound loss of the sense of my heart. I wanted to vomit, but after puking up the actual Ayahuasca nothing else was allowed to release. The Ayahuasca clearly wanted me to process my discomfort and fear energetically”

Katy- “On my third ceremony I had a very varied range of experiences. I felt a lot of physical pain, especially in my uterus/ovaries. It felt like there were metal tentacles grasping that area of my body, and I was employing breathing exercises to try to release them. At one point I was sinking into a pit of terror and pain, from which I couldn’t see out. One of the shamans and one apprentice came over to me and performed a venteada, or healing song, over me. At that point I started to feel an easing of the sensations, I was able to focus on healing, on love and on gratitude, and I was able to remember that this pain I was feeling was just these things leaving me. I continued to purge, to feel pain, but I was able to work with it in a way that it wasn’t all encompassing. At one point I asked to meet Jesus Christ, and he came to me. I asked if he could help me with my pain and he said, sure, that’s what I do. I felt a cool sensation and all my pain was gone.” (Ayahuasca)

2) Increased feelings of biophilia and interconnectivity of all life.

Neil- “While the content is usually person-specific the plant teachers often guide one towards a greater appreciation of the earth, natural beauty and importance of caring for organic life/ecosystems as well as one's friends and family.”(Ayahuasca and Huachuma)

Jaymie- “Less depression, less physical pain, more spiritual connection to the oneness of all that is...”(Ayahuasca)

Bud- “My life has been totally transformed by these experiences. I now see how connected we all are to mother earth and to all life on earth, and how consciousness is manifesting the world. I now have the desire to connect deeper and more fully with the earth and the energies of the universe. As my connections deepen I am more able to gather the strength to work in these insane times with more compassion and understanding. The strength to be an agent of love and beneficial change instead of being controlled by fear and destructive emotions.”(Ayahuasca and Huachuma)

Kelly- “I relate to the world with a more open heart. So I carry a lot less anger, and perceive the world with a lot less of a sense of a ‘right way’ or a ‘wrong way’. I see the Oneness more clearly, how we are all so very connected, how this world is living and breathing as we are. I think before I just understood the world as only form, as matter. Now, when I eat bread, I feel the sun on the soil in which the wheat grew, I see the people whose hands prepared all the ingredients, and I sense their joy and suffering, and I know how we are all One. And because of this, I feel how important it is to offer thanks, and to really be present and grateful when I eat my morning toast.”(Ayahuasca)

Natalka- “The world looked even more beautiful to me after the ceremony. I also saw how we are all connected. I felt as though the energy of the world – specifically the pain, is all of ours. I felt like the girl who was wailing at the other end of the room, was crying my tears for me. I saw how we all shared the same pain.”(Ayahuasca)

Diane- “EVERYTHING IS MADE OF LOVE, the structure may be made of fear, but the building blocks are made of love. Grace and gratitude. Acceptance is movement. Ask Spirit to Help, look for synchronicities. There is no choice, love is the only choice.”(Ayahuasca and Huachuma)

Amy- “It changed my understanding of the world by giving me a sense of hope and urgency in healing my self and others in the process. It expanded my notion of the capacity for healing with plant spirit medicine on a global communal scale.”(Huachuma)

Eric- “I am far more sensitive to the inherent connectedness of all beings at every level.”(Ayahuasca)

Carmen- “My life has completely changed. I am NOT worried about time anymore. I know now that. There IS enough time and There IS enough love. I know that we are all connected, I can see myself in the eye of a stranger, and I can feel the wind, even when it is not blowing. I am the elements.”(Ayahuasca)

3) Facing fear of death and/or coming to peace with death.

Gene- “In the last ceremony, I had an experience of intense fear because my heart rate went way up, to the point I thought I was going to have a heart attack. One of the apprentices (who were both excellent) helped me reconnect with my breathing (I couldn't focus enough to do it myself) and that brought it back closer to normal. But I had never realized until that ceremony how afraid I am of dying. This was real existential terror; the terror of annihilation. As a Buddhist I tell myself that dying is just a transition, like taking off one set of clothing. But Ayahuasca showed me how deeply I am still clinging to my body and mind. This was a surprising realization.”(Ayahuasca)

Jill- “The DMT visions were overpowering...I again had to just ride them out for a while. I eventually was able to get up and walk a little ways when suddenly I felt like I was dying. This feeling of death coming upon my being was very frightening but I knew deep down on a subconscious level that I wouldn't really physically die. But my brain thought I was which made it scary. I called out to Deana that I thought I was dying, and a few seconds later I had fallen to the ground. Later that evening she said she saw many white lights flying around my head when I was going through the death experience. I had completely surrendered to this death I was experiencing and at the same time had no choice but to do so. The next thing I was aware of is that I was laying in a fetal position on the ground but at the same time I was back in the womb. I honestly have never felt so secure and comfortable in my life. I was in the womb of the Mother Earth, in the womb of the jungle. I felt so intensely loved and safe.”(Ayahuasca)

Carmen- “I don't see death as something to fear but as something to embrace without concerns of what is and what will be.”(Ayahuasca)

4) The individual experiencing “teachings” through visions, emotions, purging. With two thirds of the participants viewing this as a progressive process.

Neil- “Yes, overall there is a cumulative effect from participating in guided and effective Ayahuasca and Huachuma ceremonies, which is manifested in a gradual raising of the personal baseline of consciousness. The state of mind of the ceremony begins to flow into daily life as the teachings reveal an ever-present spiritual continuum that exists at all times in all places, within and without, particularly in the pristine wilderness or in some natural setting.”

Josh- “My experiences were varied - from total joy and happiness to a chaotic confusion which attacked me both mentally and physically. My understanding was that life can be both simple and complex at the same time, and that nothing bad ever can happen to you - just that your reaction to those things can be bad. The visions and ceremonies certainly built upon each other, it's just impossible to explain how. It was like building a house, having to start with the bottom and working all the way to the top.”(Ayahuasca)

Bud- “I found much of the lessons came through the medicine in inner understanding. Combining the inner teachings, visions, and information surfacing by the purging, the whole ceremonial experience is rich with powerful personal teachings of who we are as spiritual beings in human incarnate bodies. The lessons seem to build on each other in successive ceremonies. Needing to learn one lesson before being ready for another.”(Ayahuasca and Huachuma)

Kelly- “My visions haven’t really been related to one another per se, but they’re almost always about healing, myself and others, and about being taught. So there are common threads there, recurring themes. I’ve been gifted with many insights into the nature of the cosmos.”(Ayahuasca)

Amy- “The following fifth experience was very intense and I seemed to enter into a very deep part of myself. I could hear/feel spiritual helpers and see portals to other realms. This experience helped me understand the source of much of my childhood trauma and persistent phobias. I was able to understand how to let go of many things and move on with my life and be strong for my loved ones…. Each ceremonial experience prepared me for the one to follow it by allowing me to shed off layers of ‘heaviness’ or stagnant toxic energy which helped me to feel my body and to take my space more and more each time.”(Huachuma)

Eric- “Wow, where do I even start?!?! As they say, the medium is the message, and that was true of this also – the entire experience did keep building and building upon itself – as if to say that the deeper you go, the more there is to find.”(Ayahuasca)

Hank- “I didn't have any contact with any of the conscious beings in the spirit world that everyone was talking about. But then I don't believe that there are conscious beings in the spirit world. However, if I use Hamilton's definition of a spirit as "any energetic pattern", then of course I believe in energetic patterns. Under this definition, everything in the universe is a spirit, and I do believe the universe exists as energetic patterns. I think that Ayahuasca will show you what you believe in. If you believe in spirits as beings, you'll see them. If not, you probably won't. If you don't believe in demons, they all go away. Ayahuasca will also open a door into your consciousness that will allow you to access thoughts that you might never access otherwise”.

Stephano- “Each experience was different, there were visuals and transformations. The experience is very personal and specific to the user and his life. In my experience each ceremony did build upon the one before…. I realize that everything works in cycles of positive and negative, but not in the sense of good and evil only as opposing forces.”(Ayahuasca)

Katy- “ I do feel that my experiences with San Pedro have built upon each other. As I gain more experience with being “in the medicine” I am more able to navigate in that state of consciousness, therefore allowing for greater insights and also greater healing. For me, the experience of “being in the medicine” is one of a heightening of senses, a lengthening of time, and a state of openness to new experiences.”(Ayahuasca and Huachuma)

5) Within the altered state an experience of extreme highs and lows (effortless states of ecstasy and bliss contrasting hellish demon-filled realms) with both being therapeutically beneficial in retrospect.

Jaymie- “Every ceremony was intense, ranging from fear, to pure bliss, everything in between, often in one moment. The San Pedro experience that I had, gave me a huge feeling of depression, and oppression, but that could have been from set and setting, but really it was just the aspect of myself that I needed to see in that moment, and it happened in the context of a San Pedro ceremony.”(Ayahuasca and Huachuma)

Natalka- “It was physically and emotionally the most painful experience I ever had. The pain was in my stomach. It built up and lasted for at least 2 hours until I finally gave up and said, “fuck this shit” in my head and heart, and then I let go. Everything went white – like an old TV screen in reverse (all the blackness narrowed to a pinpoint and disappeared). I don’t know if I went anywhere. I remember the feeling of busyness – lots of people – like some Indian circus or marketplace. I don’t remember any vision though. When I came back to the room I was very, very grateful for my life. Everything was beautiful. I felt very connected to everyone in the room.”(Ayahuasca)

Jill- “It was excruciating on all levels.... I couldn't imagine anything worse for myself. It felt like what it would be like when a person dies that chose not to lead any sort of spiritual life... they pass over into a hellish like existence not having been able to hold on to any part of their luminosity or conscious awareness. When I came out of it later that evening it was quite a relief. I felt like I was coming off a hundred hits of acid...not pleasant... but nonetheless a very powerful learning experience.”(Ayahuasca)

Carmen- “The experiences have offered both ends of the spectrum. Total Bliss and understanding of the light and love that we all are. EVERY ONE of us, to the total nightmare of a maze of fears and disturbances that our own mind creates. With every journey that I was able to take, more of the light and less of the darkness appeared. I believe that the experiences were able to build on the truth of our existence and provide me visions and colors of the beauty of the love that we are.”(Ayahuasca)

Ann- “ My whole being was covered in a sense of love and beauty, and an intensity of sensuality that made my human form feel blissful. And then I was pulled into vivid imagery which came at me with such rapid intensity I'm not sure I could really describe it, but to say it was figurative, vivid and never ending. I felt as though I was being pulled by the light in my heart through all that I was destined to see and experience…”(Ayahuasca)

Katy- “I have had a wide range of emotions and intensity of my experiences during San Pedro ceremonies. I have felt quite often a sense of ease and rightness in myself that is much greater than any ease I may normally experience. I have also felt a great inadequacy, or uncertainty during ceremonies, however in every case when I have felt this, the feeling has passed before the ceremony is over and I have come to a place of greater confidence because of it.”

6) Belief in a synchronistic set of events, which guided the individuals to participate in the ceremonies, as well as a heightened sense of meaningful coincidence in life following the ceremonies.

Jaymie- “That is the linear version, but the reality is that the universe brought me to ayahuasca, because it was the reflection of God that I needed to experience at the time- the teachings that my life was supposed to receive as Jaymie.”(Ayahuasca)

Eric- “I am much more aware of and sensitive to the power and possibilities of “coincidences” (synchronicities.)”(Ayahuasca)

Diane- “I really felt led to go to Peru, and once I made the decision to go everything seemed to fall into place: perfect places to stay, the right person at the right time, how to get around Lima, friends to spend time with after the retreat. That sense of synchronicity stayed with me for weeks after I returned to the states. (Ayahuasca)

7) An oscillating path of personal progression in regards to integrating ceremonial experiences (a two-steps forward one step back type thing.)

Neil- “Ceremonial work has generally had an improvement in physical and psychological health, but the high standard set by the medicines can be hard to maintain. Overall the effect is positive but has presented various challenges and difficulties. I have found it to be a “two-steps forward one step back” type of process.”(Ayahuasca and Huachuma)

Kelly- “As I continue down this path, my relationship to the master plants is growing deeper. I have been humbled many many times. And so I experience my ‘self’ as student, working toward being a vessel clean enough and strong enough to do their work.”(Ayahuasca)

Diane- “You live your medicine path, make a decision, go into a place of action, start picking a path that is Light, a Path of Heart, release all ideas of how, never ever quit, think positive, stuff comes up, never allow yourself to be dominated by those forces, when you act in ways counter to the decision straighten your energy, make changes. There is an abundance of love and energy in me manifested before I was born. SAY YES TO WHATEVER HAPPENS, give compassion to your anger as to a child. Purify don’t judge yourself.”(Ayahuasca and Huachuma)

Jill- “When I initially get back from doing ceremony I feel spiritually rejuvenated, my will renewed, motivated to change more so to make my life more harmonious on all levels. Then 2-3 weeks later I'm back in a pit of depression, wanting to drink alcohol- back and forth, back and forth. Yet there is always an underlying strength within my spirit that always seems to resurface, pulling me out of the illusion of this world.”(Ayahuasca)

8) Great respect and reverence for the power of the medicines and the Shamans.

Neil- “Work with the sacred plant medicines is a serious and profound endeavor and anyone thinking of commencing with the work should evaluate their intentions closely.”(Ayahuasca and Huachuma)

Jaymie- “.... Ayahuasca to me is truly a gift from the Divine, it is being given to humanity right now, to a variety of nationalities (which only exists in the mind), to so many people in so many different forms, because that is what we need right now.”

Bud- “After a little experience with the medicines I began to understand the profound power for these experiences to heal our bodies, minds, and souls on deeper levels than I thought possible.”(Ayahuasca and Huachuma)

Diane- “The potentialities of multiple layers of consciousness, the realities of different countries and worldviews, the opportunities of plant spirit medicine healings for body, mind, spirit and relationships have expanded my world into multi-dimensions. I’m excited!”(Ayahuasca and Huachuma)

Eric- “I was often afraid of the Ayahuasca – it’s hard to describe just how weird it is/was, even for an experienced psychedelic journeyer. This medicine is minded, a “vegetable intelligence.” In some ways, it deeply represents or embodies the true spirit of our entire planet – an implacable, indomitable, and yes, often-brutal spirit of transcendence and sheer survival. It was disturbing to feel that I was “taken over” by an alien entity that was going to have its way with me.”(Ayahuasca)

Sophia- “I would recommend this experience to any and every one. Especially for those of us stuck in the western mindset, this is very therapeutic and mind opening. It could truly change the world and the way we interact with each other.”(Ayahuasca)

Dusty- “…In other words, no matter what you are accustomed to thinking about your limits, Ayahuasca works within them—even if this means pushing the limits of your mind further than these constructs think is possible. In short, Ayahuasca works within your whole self (it is not merely “in your mind” with you, but in all those parts you’re not aware of as well), and on behalf of this whole self. It is through the process and evolution of serving this “highest self” Ayahuasca purges all that does not serve your highest interests. Ayahuasca can use any aspect of your consciousness as teaching material, and the range of its methodology is potentially limitless.”

Amy- “Yes. I think that it is a very important sacrament that is here to help humanity at such a crucial time for human existence on this planet. I think there are many people who can benefit from the use of San Pedro when and always prepared for and partaken of respectfully.”

9) Health, as viewed by the participants, is a dynamic state of being incorporating much more than the traditional Western allopathic view of “a lack of symptoms.”

Neil- “The proper functioning of an organism. Energy levels that are adequate to carry out necessary or desired tasks, produce something of value for the world, and maintain a positive state of mind. A state of physical and mental alertness able to handle daily tasks with care and attention and overcome obstacles. Being able to appreciate the beauty of nature and engage with people with sincerity. An energetic state able to have and integrate new experiences.”

Jaymie- “Having open lines of communication with all aspects of the universe, perfect health to me, is the oneness, the complete reunification with Divine, without my belief systems, without the borders that my mind has formed to try and keep me in this plane.”

Kelly- “Wisdom and compassion. Wisdom is needed for clear seeing, for awareness, the sword of intuition and intellect cutting through the bullshit – prajnaparamita. Compassion so that what is seen can be held with love, rather than denial, rejection, which only creates more pain. Health is true happiness and true happiness is loving oneself and loving others.”

Diane- “Health is being energetic, strong, balanced, fluid, enthusiastic, positive, able to relax and renew, mentally and physically.”

Amy- “I view health as a reciprocal relationship with the land - water, earth, fire, air and light that we are made of. I think that this is done through prayer, meditation, exercise/movement, healthy organic eating habits, use of plant medicines, and positive affirmation. The love, peace and respect generated for family, friends and communal relations is also a very important application of health.”

Carmen- “A balanced and harmonized state of a conscious body, mind and soul.”

Ann- “Health is the balance of breath and the light of God energy flowing through you.”

Katy- “For me health is not a static thing. It is dynamic, ever-evolving, exciting! Health is a motion towards integration and freedom… To be truly healthy, I feel it is necessary to feel comfortable in realms of spirit as well. This means the ability to navigate on a spiritual, or energetic, realm, to feel comfortable there and to feel spiritually able to do anything you desire. Health is also the desire and ability to make choices. Though many of us take it for granted that we always make our own choices, upon closer examination we might find that we aren’t the ones in control of what we do. Societal pressures and unconscious messages as well as spirits whom cohabitate within us often play a role in making decisions for us. When I am truly free to choose my actions from my highest self, then I am on the path towards health.”

Dusty- “ I would define health, most generally, as a wholeness of liveliness, or that which is life affirming. Another way to say this might be: being balanced and experiencing well-being and/or growth on many levels. At the very least, these levels include: the physical, mental-emotional, psychological, spiritual, and familial, as well as that of a community… I also feel like any definition of health must necessarily be non-exclusive. For example, I cannot imagine the “health” of an individual, for example, being completely shut-off from the health of their family, community, or the rest of their society. The “health” of the society, community, or family is most definitely interpenetrated by the health of the individual(s) who make it up, and vice-versa.”

Hank- “The ability to wake up every day and pass every day with no pain or physical or mental problems.”

Mike- “Optimal function and well-being spiritually, physically, and emotionally. Many western models consider health the absence of signs and symptoms, a theory I find inadequate. By the time signs and symptoms appear you have been sick for a long time.

1) An interest in learning more from future ceremonies, with a number of the participants considering or already engaged in apprenticeship. Only one participant expressed no intention to participate in future ceremonies.

Out of the twenty-two people who participated in this study all but one had some interest in participating in future ceremonies. Ann said that she felt she had gained what she needed to from Ayahuasca and did not plan on more ceremonies. Natalka and Keenan said that they were open to future ceremonies if it was the right time and they were in the right state of mind. The majority of the people (19) were absolute in their desire to engage these plant-spirit medicines in the future. I find this to be indicative of the beneficial impact these ceremonial experiences have.

12) A reported change in physical well-being and/or an increase in healthy day-to-day habits.

Josh-“ Changes have been; examining my eating habits, what brings me true joy, instances where my ego tries to take over, needing to meditate more in order to seek answers to the questions I have. Also, a greater desire for nature, as opposed to city life.” (Ayahuasca)

Bud- “Yes, I now see how important all aspects of my total being are for complete health. How I treat my body and what I put in it directly affects my physical, mental and emotional health. Also, the types of thoughts of my mind can be nourishing to my body and also destructive depending on the content. I understand that many health problems can be activated by energetic precursor patterns that take hold on our energetic bodies causing later physical or psychological manifestations - caused by blocked energy flow, negative and destructive emotions, or even witchcraft.”(Ayahuasca and Huachuma)

Diane- “I am happier now than I have ever been. Many different activities including meditation, plant spirit medicine, diet etc. contribute. For me however – I know that if I ever had a serious psychological or physical dis-ease – plant spirit medicine is there for me.”(Ayahuasca and Huachuma)

Amy- “The experiences helped me to make major dietary changes and even inspired me to quit a job I had been stuck in for awhile. The ceremonies helped me gain the focus and desire to pursue my truer passion and goals in life.”(Huachuma)

Jill- “I feel I know what my true purpose is in this life now. Leading the blind to the light, helping with the awakening of this planet, awakening and healing myself!!!!” (Ayahuasca)

Tom- “Most definitely. I'm much happier overall. My life feels much more blessed. I get very uncomfortable when distant from my spirituality -- now that I've seen it, I have to have it.” (Ayahuasca)

Carmen- “Physically, I have eliminated sugar out of my diet, and I am more aware to what my body needs, wants and desires. Psychologically, I am able to step out of the judgment mode, and see everyone as an equal and love him or her unconditionally. I can see them as being part of me and me of them.” (Ayahuasca)

Hank- “I believe I'm more at peace with myself and am more interested having good interpersonal relationships with others. I'm more tolerant of others and of difficulties that might come across my way.” (Ayahuasca)

Stephano- “Yes, my life has changed. I stopped drinking, doing drugs, stopped over-indulging with food and fear and doubt have left me as well. I am much more confident in myself and I can clearly see a path.” (Ayahuasca)

Sophia- “Yes my life has changed. I no longer fret over my past or worry about some unreachable future. I feel happier and at peace with life and the world in general, I understand that everything is only an experience and it's only as good or as bad as my reactions to it.” (Ayahuasca)

Jaymie- “Every moment of life is a walk in a sacred ceremony, my culture did not teach me that, is not teaching anyone that, so the medicine ceremonies that I have participated in, have only helped me unlearn what my culture has forgotten.” (Ayahuasca)

13) Importance of Sangha (a Buddhist term for a spiritual community of practitioners) for support while in the altered state of consciousness and for processing and integrating the ceremonial experiences. Paramount in this is working with a Shaman that feels trustworthy and experienced.

Eric- “I’d always considered psychedelic work to be an essentially internal affair, and had only occasionally done them with others. The group environment stirred powerful energies for me: I felt that WE were a cosmic node, a center for nearly electrical brain activity and intentionality in our visionary state. Reality was ‘molten’ and the combined force of all those opened consciousnesses seemed to send shock waves outward into the fabric of reality, and, simultaneously, to secretly collect the vital life force of spirit energy to our gathering.” (Ayahuasca)

Jill- “I really love having the "sangha" in my life. Friends on the Ayahuasca path, all of us understanding each other on a level that no one else can. Ayahuasca takes you in so deep, it is so profound, and no one can grasp that until they experience it themselves. So having this community of supportive and understanding relationships has helped all of us tremendously. When you meet someone else that has participated in the medicine works it's like you immediately have an innate and beautiful understanding between you. Ayahuasca lets you pierce the veils of illusion, and this understanding between people is very profound.”

Natalka- “I would advise not to do the ceremony without some kind of support afterward – be it a counselor, a sangha, or a friend who has done it and knows the power in it to transform.” (Ayahuasca)

Mike- “This experience was one of the most intense and gratifying experiences of my life thus far. Through the medicine I was able to venture deep within myself realizing both the positive and negatives that were affecting me daily. Having this experience along with 25 other people was also very comforting, enlightening, and humbling.” (Ayahuasca)

The First Ceremony

2007-04-23T15:17:00.000-07:00

The night was total darkness. No moon to paint the world silver. I had just drank my first serving of Ayahuasca. My mouth salivated profusely, and I could feel it's thick alkaloidal tendrils wrapping through my intestines. The room was vibrating and reverberating, building coagulated intensity with the unified voice of the Shamans, apprentices, and their leaf rattles. I was waiting, breathing, repeating my mantra, that this was medicine and I would heal. Meditating on the sound of the Icaros and mentally noting all of the sensations and subtle changes in my consciousness. My stomach began to feel sharp stabs of pain coupled with intense waves of nausea. I could not after a half an hour sit up and so I lay on my back, knees up, and stomach swollen. It was physically the most pain I could remember. I felt as though a hard ball of steel was in my womb, and it was too big to push out or puke out. All I could do was breathe. I felt like I was giving birth, but nothing was moving. At one point I asked for help from Mimi one of the apprentices, and she told me that sometimes it just takes a while, to focus on breathing, and ask spirit for help. So, I tried, and was suddenly lost in total confusion. I was without a body, without an identity, in a soup of total confusion, that wanted to suck me back and all I could do to fight it was repeat over and over "No, no, no,no...." and "Robin, Robin, Robin." I was struggling not to drown in this eternal confusion and suffering, and I could only peak my head up long enough to remember where I was, who I was, and that I was healing, and that this darkness would leave, that I would make it leave or die trying, because once you drink you are committed. I had no option at this time but to do the work, to release any and all negativity over and over. I lay on my back and side for hours panting, while energetically re-living all the levels of the evolution of consciousness, and how this being I self identify with as "me" is an energetic pulse that has constantly pushed forward, that has fought to be conscious for all of eternity. This struggle that took the embodied form from amoeba to human always striving towards the light, towards awakened oneness. And here I was at the final point, where if I did not persist and persevere I would once again be lost in the sea of endless confusion. If this sounds dramatic, it was! This was the time when I had to chose the true light or the true dark, I had to prove over and over to myself and spirit that I wanted enlightenment, that I wanted and was willing to work for awakened oneness. This panting fight lasted until the oil lamps were re-lit. (This is the sign that the ceremony is formally over, even though many of the participants will be in the medicine much longer. ) At this point, I was still deep in the fight, and had yet to purge, which was all I desired to do. I wanted this hard, gross, ball of negativity out, but it took everything I had to not lose my mind. At one point, when I felt lucid enough to communicate with Mimi I asked if I could drink some water to help me purge. She checked in with Hamilton who said I could, although this is an unusual thing to do. I felt like I was burning up from the inside. I gulped a full glass, and asked for more. After two and half full glasses of water I curled up in a fetal position around the distended bowl of my belly. I was six hours into the journey, with no sign of an end, and so I lay and breathed through it. My breathing reminded me of that of pregnant women; short breaths followed by one longer one. I felt like a wreak, and I was a wreak. At one point I heard Daniel (one of the apprentices) and Hamilton talking about me. I could hear that they were watching my process, and helping as much as they could. I wanted to reassure them that I was OK, and that I felt confident that I could persist. So, without consciously realizing that I did so, I sat up out of my body and walked over to where they were. At this point they stopped talking. I told them that I was OK, and that I was very grateful for all their help. I started sending waves of gratitude towards them, and they then said "She's almost there," and left the conversation. Breath out darkness breath in light, breath out darkness breath in light. And then I started dry heaving. Over and over, wrenching spasms. I felt that the force with which my body was trying to rid itself would loosen all my organs and empty me of everything, but they just kept coming. Only a handful of us remained in the ceremonial house, but I could feel the support and camaraderie of each of the other participants. I heaved and heaved, until I felt my energetic body contract, tight around me so I could barely breath, and then suddenly lift. This happened over and over for close to an hour. At one point Mimi came and lay on the pad next to me, and in doing so somehow helped me get out the very last of it (for that session at least.)
All of a sudden I could see how my fighting and resisting were no longer necessary, and I was being helped by Mimi out of a slimy shell of energy goo. This was happening in another dimension. A white field of totality, she was double checking me to see if any of the last shreds of goo remained, and guided me to my feet. I heard a voice saying "Congratulations you made it." In this field of whiteness, some of the other participants were also being assisted by other Mimis and Daniels (one of the things that is learned in the process of becoming a shaman is being able to bi-locate and eventually to be in many places at once). Mimi said that often guests tell her of the help she gave them, and although she was sending energy and psychically checking up on them, each person perceives this in their own way. It is as though each of our consciousness' feel the energy of others, and this filters through the consciousness, especially on Ayahuasca, in a symbolic image based form. So, she was helping my process by sending the energy of love, strength, peace, release and my consciousness felt this and responded by creating a relationship that I perceived as her helping me to my feet and removing the last of the gooey shell of confusion. I felt free, and was. Others and I practiced exercises of mindfulness. I was creating orbs of light and color through my intention to do so. When I would get distracted or have a thought that was not in the light (i.e. fearful or egoic) the scene I was working on would flutter and disappear, but when I consciously released the thought and energy connected to it, the scene would reappear and I could continue building my psychic skills.
After quite a while working in this zone, by myself and with the spirit of others in the group, I sat up and joined a small group smoking mapachos. I was not able to speak, due to the high level of information coming in. So, I communicated energetically. Sending thoughts, images, and emotions to the others. This was quite effective. One interesting note is that I did not throw-up which is a common experience, but in the bottom of the puke bowl that I had dry heaved into was phlegm like gobs of black goo. Pretty sick looking, and when I asked Daniel what this stuff was he said "Black goo. We don't know exactly what it is, but it is the stuff we carry inside us that we come here to get out."
The night was long and beautiful, and the soft shades of morning came while I lay in bed meeting the spirit world. Spirits which I saw not completely through my eyes (it was as though the image materialized both inside my head and in the room). Later as the ceremonies progressed, my third eye opened more and the spirit world looked almost as concrete as this 3-dimensional one. As I lay in my bed, gently and slowly massaging my lower abdomen, images of what I was releasing flowed through my consciousness. Much of these were demonic, yet wearing my face. I released each of these as they came, sending them to the light, to source, where they could be cleansed and have other opportunities to grow and evolve. So in the top left hand corner of my vision was a portal that opened to source energy. I realized in this process that many things I had in the past identified as being a part of me weren't: low-self esteem, self-hate, rejection of my body, thoughts that said over and over "your not good enough to be loved, your not good enough to be well", weird sexual energy of a sexually unhealthy culture, etc. What dawned on me through this process of release is that the source of all negative thoughts (especially self-deprecating ones) are not me. They are energies and consciousnesses that feed off of us. The best way to describe what I consistently purged is dark grossness. Purging is a physical process as well as an energetic one. The pyschosomatic effects of throwing up and defecating are very effective. When one willingly ingests a substance that has such a wide range of possibilities into the body, surrendering to the process is inherent, although often much of the resistance in me was due to the physical discomfort I was feeling (which always greatly diminished after purging.) This first night lasted close to twelve hours. Quite an introduction.

Blue Morpho's website so you can put faces to the names I write about, if you so desire-

http://www.bluemorphotours.com/about_us.asp

Ayahuasca- The Vine of Death

2007-04-03T13:17:00.000-07:00

After our time ended with Howard and the Journey through time, Darcy and I had two weeks to chill out, and process the incredible amount of experience and information that we found ourselves immersed in. We spent half of this time in the little beach town of Paracas and the other half in the very metropolitan area of Lima called Miraflores. We then flew to Iquitos, the town in the heart of the Amazon. Inaccessible by road, one can either take a five day boat trip up river or fly. One point of interest of Iquitos is the poor city planning which placed the local dump next to the airport, a favorite hangout for over 400 local vultures. Since this addition to Iquitos all flights in and out have to be planned around their activities (all flights in and out have to be made early in the morning anywhere from 2am-7am or in the late afternoon, it seems this particular flock are not early risers.) Many a traveler's plans go awry around the whims of these birds, and at one point there was fear from locals that the town could be cut-off from the rest of the country. The ridiculousness of modern life, and yet....

We entangled our fates with these wily birds of carrion yearning in order to heed the call of that enigmatic Madame, Mother Ayahuasca. This call first came to me three years early while rolling through the Nevada Desert in a shiny green 1976 hearse (the same vehicle that has been rumored to have carried Elvis's body to it's final resting place- no kidding.) At the helm my friend Kate, a soul who inspires me no end, and the woman who could be in many ways the catalyst of this whole enterprise. It was she who took me to my first Burning Man festival, and on the way told me stories of her life, her years as a professional gambler in Las Vegas; traveling in India as a young woman by herself (as I too did) , and after many other rich and wonderful anecdote's of a life well lived, told me about the three weeks she had spent earlier that year in the Amazon doing the most intense psychological and healing work of her life through the ingestion of a substance called Ayahuasca. (Did I mention that she is a licensed Therapist, Co-founded a Charter School with her husband which marries indigenous and western teaching for K-8th graders, and is incredibly radiant and embodied.)
As we rolled down the dry two lane highway, the hearses big back end heavy with costumes, I set my intention that someday, sooner than later, I would take this wild adventure on. This was now on my Cosmic List of Things To Do. (One more point of interest is the creation of a C.L.O.T.T.D. I believe this to be an essential aspect to living an adventure filled life. Mine does not exist in a written form, but has been the instigating force in many of my wild and crazy enterprises. I usually hear of something that sounds like a lot of fun, make a mental and verbal note that it is added to the list, and then once I have done the thing, check it off. Many are on- going things to do, like annually visit special places to me, paint my body with mud whenever I have the opportunity, make love in nature, and so on.)

Ayahuasca is a viscous substance whose spirit is the subject of much attention as of late in circles of psychonaughts, psychologists, healers, and seekers. A liquid of such extraordinary potency that no one description could ever suffice. And I am loathe to try, as it is not something to be quantified by taste, texture, color, but meets each person in its own saporious way.

I sat under the conical roof of the ceremonial jungle hut. My pad was comfortable and I was supplied with a blanket, pillow, and a plastic puke bowl. I was facing the shamans and apprentices who all sat in chairs (one of the challenges of an Ayahuasca apprentice is to remain upright the entire ceremony which is a remarkable challenge indeed.) Like the slow incline to the apex of a roller coaster I felt the moment of truth edging nearer. As everyone settled, and quieted the Shamans and apprentices cleansed and purified themselves by blowing Mapacho smoke on their legs, torsos, and arms, as well as perfume, and tinctured extracts of various indigenous plants, garlic, and onion. As they did this they told jokes in Spanish, settling in, until the moment Hamilton and Don Alberto (the two Maestro Shamans) began to sing Icaros into the bottle of Ayahuasca. Before each ceremony began, Hamilton would welcome the group, and remind us to focus on positive thoughts (which are energetically much stronger than negative energy) and to remember to ask for help if we needed it. Earlier in the day there was a hour long de-briefing given by the apprentices, a run down of sorts of some of the more common experiences and how to bring ourselves back if we got caught up in darkness or heaviness. Much of it was simple and yet, in the midst of a crazy ceremony it is the simple techniques that help the most. Focus on breath, call in light, ask for help from spirit, the shamans, your highest self, and whatever else you can think of. One of my favorite line's given to us was from Hamilton "A Shaman is only as strong as the help he can ask for."
My intention with Ayahuasca was to heal. I was ready to get to the root source of my physical ailments, most all of which resided in my womb area and endocrine system. I was ready to be healthy, and on a deep intuitive level felt that I could not move into the next phase of my development without this healing. After eight years of digging deep into my psyche, doing intensive personal growth work, searching for the source on a thought based level of my ailments, I felt at a stalemate. Everything in me told me that it would take Ayahuasca to shed light into these areas that my ordinary awareness was not yet able to reach. I was ready to do the work, what ever that meant, and move forward. I felt that I was at a cross roads. One path was accepting the Western allopathic medicine path, which would involve being on some type of prescription hormone medication indefinitely, taking other prescription drugs (all of which have a long list of counter-indications and toxic side effects) to become fertile, and constantly being monitored for the development of cancerous growths. This path could keep me healthy enough with a reasonable quality of life, but with no assurance of ever being drug free, and with the understanding that virtually all of the prescribed medications would have side-effects which I would have to deal with and which could range from depression, candida (which many doctors still to this day won't acknowledge as existing), cancer, obesity, and well the list goes on. It was an endless path of doctors, examinations, medications, with an attack based paradigm to deal with the "dis-ease" in my body, which eventually would lead to death. After dealing with a multitude of doctors, specialists, even naturopaths, I felt like this approach was equal to accepting death. Accepting more intrinsically that I am just a finite being fulfilling an entropy ridden destiny who must rely on "experts" to make this small life bearable. This more than any other aspect made the typical western approach unacceptable to me. In the marrow of my bones I knew that I could not accept this perspective on existence. I felt that I was an infinite being, in an infinite universe, and this more than any other factor pushed me towards the other fork in the road.

This path was one that was shrouded in darkness, but gave me hope. It was a non-linear approach to owning the full responsibility of my state of being- my health and happiness, my eternal beingness. This path required constant vigilance, self-education, and courage. It required honoring my intuition and intelligence over that of medical experts. It required asking over and over what chemicals comprised medications and researching what these chemicals did in the body, while advocating for myself. It was the path of self-love, and although it offered no clear assurance that I would survive or be rid of the constant pain in my body, it did stoke the fires of will within me. It was not a path that I could walk alone, and with the support of my parents, friends, authors, and spirit, I got healthier and healthier.

There is much written and spoken about on the taste of Ayahuasca, but the overarching theme of this dialogue is its foulness. Truly it's bad, and it becomes worse tasting the more you drink. So that first night, I drank a third of a cup (that's the starting dose for everyone, you can always ask for more, and the following nights you can choose your dose or leave it up to spirit, but I found that this was consistently the perfect dose for me. Some people need more and others less, it does not seem to depend on body size or experience. Darcy consistently needs a full cup which blows my mind as well as that of the Shamans. Hamilton said that he has never drank a full cup without, at some point in the evening, screaming his head off, where Darcy just sits in his chair and digs it.) After all present including the Shamans drank, Hamilton called in the beings of the four directions with a conch shell, also at this time giving a additional thanks and recognition to the recently deceased Maestro shaman who taught him and Don Alberto, Don Julio. And then the oil lamps are turned off, and the ceremony begins.

So, as I drank I focused my intention and asked for healing. I asked to be shown what I had not been able to see before. I asked for growth, empowerment, strength, and courage. I prepared myself to once again die for the love of truth. Die to whatever was no longer serving me. To purge from me all heavy, dark, sickness.... Little did I know what I was asking for.

Heaven´s Gate- Where the Curtain Dropped

2007-03-12T14:51:00.000-07:00

The time I spent at Chavin has altered my entire perception of reality, and how I perceive my role as a co-participator in this consensual world reality. I have learned that when one willingly embraces the fires of transformation, the fear of death, and relinquishes all hope for the love of truth, the universe responds in kind with gifts of understanding and a path of purpose. I know I´ll be processing this experience for a long long time, integrating insights as they come, but for now I have made some life decisions. The time for growth is now, and I am dedicating myself to learning and sharing as much information about these changing world times as possible.
Heaven´s Gate our last mesa, was the jaw dropping finale to this righteous adventure in consciousness. Outside of Huaraz, in the Andes, the most beautiful spot on the planet has been created through the intense forces of nature. I loved Darcy´s description and so I quote him: "We travelled up into the mountains of the Cordillera Blanca of the Andes, the highest tropical mountains in the world. Our destination was a beautiful area called Laguna Chinalcocha. This lake was created by the forces of nature in 1970 after one of the worst earthquakes in Peruvian history. The 7.9 intensity quake causing a large portion of two mountains to split, sending rock, water, ice hundreds of miles per hour down the valley and burying the local town of Yungay - killing 30,000 people within a few seconds. A devastating catastrophe for the people of the area. Yet, an amazing phenomenon happened. Where the mountains split, an incredible area was created. The two mountains that parted - one on the Cordillera Blanco, and the other on the Cordillera Negro - created a balance of male and female energies, in a perfectly harmonious convergence. Mother nature had brought on natural creative forces in this spot in the Andes. A fantastic natural mesa. The trees of the area, which typically take 100 years to mature - are mature after only 37 years since the quake. An extraordinary example of how everything in the universe can have accelerated transformation - even on a geological scale. Realizing dynamic union of the spirits of nature and cosmos within and all around us." On the ride from Huaraz to Heaven´s Gate I focused on breathing and bringing my energy up from the soles of my feet and base of my spine out through the crown of my head. Many of us in the group noticed that Huachuma liked it when we focused our attention on this process, what I call consciously "flowing". I also noticed that this plant-spirit teacher love music, and with Howard's encouragement we all dived into the texture of sound, and the effect of sound frequency on consciousness. On this drive I was wrapped tight in the thick melodies of Hank Williams, and in this embrace I saw how my life patterns were going to change in order to truly incorporate the information that I had received. I saw how the life I had been living needed to be restructured in order to align with the power of my vision. I saw that to do this I need clarity, and that in order to maintain clarity, I need a body free of toxins. This path is about embracing the potentiality of being human, and in order to do this all areas of my life must be focused on cultivating a soil of self in which this blossoming can occur unhampered. Everything from nutrition, to what information I am taking in, to the quality of my relationships, to where I focus my attention. This is a path of unification and healing. Huachuma made it clear what activities I had been participating in that were no longer an option. It´s time to be clear and centered, it´s time to embrace more of the potentiality that this life offers. What always surprises me is that when it´s time to let a thing go, when an activity or relationship has run it's course, releasing it is effortless and a joy. Nothing forced, all things serve us, until they don´t, and then new things do. Wonderfully, idiotically simple, but so true. Somethings must die for others to be born.
As the bus arrived each of us was deep in the medicine and our own thoughts. As we rolled by vast cliffs on either side I knew that this place was the future, a slice of whats to come. An electric sea green lake flowed from the peaks snow capped top. This was shored by wild gnarly trees, cacti, and flowers three times their normal size. This place is 12 years older than me, and has a complex ecosystem close to rivaling the jungle. It is an anomaly, a place that shouldn't exist but does. It is punctuated equilibrium incarnate. (Punctuated equilibrium is one of the tenets of the New Science model. Here´s a good website for more information: http://www.iscid.org/encyclopedia/Punctuated_Equilibrium)
"So," I said to Huachuma "It´s a lot bigger than us. God´s evolving." The thick silence swept across me. " What do you do in the face of something so tremendous?"
And the answer I received flooded me with joy and love and peace, the foundational trinity of true freedom. "Heal yourself and empower others to do the same."

Chavin- Mesa of Transformation

2007-03-12T06:25:00.000-07:00

The dry coastal landscape fell behind us as we made our way to the next Mesa site in the small Andean town of Chavin. An overnight bus brought us from sea level to 13,000 feet in less than 24 hours. Being raised at 7,000 ft. I have always felt quite immune to the effects of altitude sickness, but this sudden change challenged even the hardiest of us. Nature´s best antidote for the effects of altitude sickness is Coca leaves. As Jewelweed is to Poison Ivy and Nettles, Coca is to extreme altitude. Coca leaves made the journey possible. They are an incredible healing herb, and by far the best aide in lessening the effects of altitude sickness. Between stuffing them in my cheek and drinking tea steeped from their leaves I was able to fend off exhaustion, dizziness, and an intense searing headache. (I find this simple phenomenon of Nature to be an astounding affirmation of the innate intelligence of the natural world. One almost always finds the antidote to a malaise living near it´s source. This is one more simple yet powerful concept to ponder, and one that undermines many of our cultural institutions.)
There are places in this world, that once seen, alter one´s perception permanently. Places of such exquisite and clean beauty that the soul awakens in longing to merge with the whole, to expand beyond fragile flesh and skin, encompassing space that previously lay in the dormant recesses of a forgotten self. This simple mountain village was such a place. The town was quite and small, and although a few tourist buses floated through each day, it was surprisingly devoid of the guilded surface of tourism. The village was the Mesa site´s namesake. The Chavin site is comprised of an old temple (dated around 900 b.c.e.) and a new temple (dated around 500-200 b.c.e.). It is situated in between the Andean mountain ranges of the Cordillera Negra and the Cordillera Blanca, and is at the head waters of the Marañon River. It was a site rich in trade, and the artwork of the Chavin is found among many of the coastal cultures. The Chavin complex was in active use for over 800 years. There is no trace of military or outward war defenses. The temple was decorated with hundreds of carvings depicting anthropomorphic deity figures. Central to all of the artwork at Chavin is the San Pedro cactus. It is the over-arching theme of the complex. The Chavin culture was one of peaceful priest-artisans who used Huachuma as a sacrament. Although if you try and research the site many believe it to be a cult who used this mid altering substance as a form of collective mind control. It´s just too hard for some to imagine that a dominance paradigm is not an absolute cross cultural phenomenon, and that there have been culture´s who created harmonious ways of self-organising independent of a power over structure.
Howard set the Mesa up in the hostel room where we grounded and prepared for the day. This was the Mesa of the Jaguar, the Mesa of complete transformation. It was here that we would encounter a civilization centered around enlightenment consciousness, the unification of duality. It was up to each of what this transformation would look like. The previous three ceremonies had left me paradoxically feeling confused and centered. I knew that in this world of Shamanism I was incredibly ignorant, and yet, through surviving and embracing the intensity of the previous ceremonies, I was ready to embrace as much as I could possibly take in. I was ready to throw myself into the fire, and see what remained at the end of the day. (This type of extreme internal process suits my personality quite well.) Howard made it very clear that this was the place to let all that didn't serve us go, and let transformation begin, and that each of us was here by invitation of the Chavin consciousness. Little did I know as I drank the dark green Huachuma that he spoke absolute truth.

As we walked to the site, I felt all of the locals eye´s on us. This was not a town where gringos went unnoticed, especially when led by a 6ft 2 inch man in a neon colored embroidered hat and matching poncho. A strange feeling indeed to walk in such a parade.
After entering the gates the beauty of the environment married with the catalysed Huachuma alkaloids began to take hold, and each of us quieted. I had spent the morning drawing and meditating in our small hostel room. Using art as a form of mindfulness, drawing not with focus or direction, but letting shape and color manifest. One of my intentions for the trip was to get reintegrate art into my life. To feel inspired to create, which I had not for years. I felt as though all my creative energy had been channeled into surviving my dis-ease and healing my body. Upon entering the site we first visited the small museum that housed excavated Chavin art work. Outside of this was a small courtyard that housed one Longzon obelisk (check out photo below) which is carved with designs of jaguars, caymans, jungle flora, and anthropomorphic creatures. In this same courtyard were two ancient blooming Huachuma plants. As I went to investigate the blooming flowers I was stunned speechless by what I saw. On one of the cacti, a flower bud, jutted out unopened. This bud was what I had drew in my journal with out ever seeing it that morning. Some how I had tapped into something greater than myself and from that place retrieved this image. And so the magic of this day began.
Chavin is beyond description, it´s exquisiteness was poorly captured in all of our photos, but I feel confident to now say I have been to Heaven. It was another realm. Green hills of radiant light, sky held by strong mountains, river running surely with calm power. As a group we walked down to sit by the rivers edge. I was fully in the medicine by now, and sat to meditate. As my body began to resonate with the sound of the rushing water and thick energy of this place, waves of pleasure began to sweep up my spine. They rushed from the ground all the way through me. It was like a continuous and calm orgasm that never became too much. While in this state, I pushed through the veil of self, and saw clearly my personal journey through time. Huachuma guided me back through all the lives I have ever lived, which were expressed not in visual memories as a linear story line, but in emotions, feelings, and physical sensations. I saw how the being that I self identify with, is a energetic charge that has, and is traveling in time, birthing time, and co-participating in a much larger evolutionary process. Culture defines the experience of time through habitual routines that are so ingrained that the nature of the habits are taken for granted. The medicine allows one to step outside of culture and examine the consensual assumptions of reality. Time is not a separate entity from consciousness, but an aspect of consciousness. I saw how every life event had brought me to this moment of clarity, this moment of awakening. It was here in this time-space moment that I met the Chavin consciousness. Meeting a consciousness is not like meeting a person, it is vibration and feeling and it permeates the whole of one´s being. The closest metaphor I can think of is being submerged in warm rich water after a long cold day, as you sink deeper into the luminescent liquid instead of holding your breath, you take deep inhales and feel the warmth fill your entire body. The Chavin showed me how at every step along my path I had been guided, how every time I had asked for help, I had received it. How the whole of my life (the entire journey of this consciousness through time) had been in preparation for this moment. I was then down loaded with information regarding everything from the nature of time, the changing world and 2012, the path of healing, and the awakening of enlightenment consciousness across the world. This lasted for a couple of hours. Sitting half lotus next the river I found unification, I experienced a state of being that has changed everything for me. It was kind, relentlessly beautiful, and the hallmark of this wild occasion, it was real. This was the clearest I had ever felt, the truest reality that I had ever experienced, and it was what I could clearly see is the underlining reality of life. I knew absolutely in these moments (and this clarity has not waned since) that my role here is to birth this consciousness onto the planet again. To dedicate my time-energy-consciousness to co-creating more spaces on the planet that house this vibration of awakened mind.
This afternoon, in which time danced, bending and folding in on it´s self, revealing it´s mutable nature, I shed a skin that I was previously ignorant that I wore, I shed my resentment to God for the pain, confusion, and fear that accompanies being born.
The site closed at dusk, and as a group we walked back to the Hostel, congregating in Howard´s room around the Mesa. As we sat there, Howard proposed something to us. "Are you willing to die for the truth?" "Are you willing to voluntarily experience death to know what lies on the other side? We have the opportunity to do so tonight, if it calls to you, go to your rooms, lie in darkness on your bed, and I will come and administer the Vilica." I don´t know how many of the group went to their rooms. I, still fully in the medicine, left second. Darcy and I cleaned the bed off and made a clear path to the bathroom. Before we turned of the light I looked at Darcy and knew this was the realest thing I had ever done with another person. It was two people embracing life to it fullest. I can´t imagine anything more powerful to share. As we lay in the darkness, I felt a strange elation, I was ready to surrender it all, consciously, with complete awareness to know what lay beyond the veil of death. My body began to tremble before Howard's outline appeared in the doorway. We sat up, I went first. The device had two plugs that I pushed tight against my nostrils, and then quickly and deeply I inhaled. I coughed and then sniffed again until I sneezed. After a moment I stumbled to the bathroom where I dry hurled over and over. After a moment I went and laid down on my stomach arms tight under me, and began to violently shake. The spasms went from head to toe, and trying to control it did not pass through my mind. For the love of truth I allowed myself to fully believe I was dying. "For the love of truth" my mantra, my driving force. Face buried in the pillow, I began a journey. As my body shook with convulsions my mind blossomed and from the center of my forehead a portal opened before me. The complete darkness of the infinite time-space continuum unfolded and enveloped me. I felt no fear, only complete totality and calm oneness. I was held in a space of no-time, understanding that life, the whole of it, this experience of humanness never ends, the energy just keeps revolving in eternal constancy. I floated here, aware of my body spasming on a bed both very far away and very near. I asked "Why?" what is the purpose of this, of life and death and endless change. And with that question I felt laughter flow through the vast plane of my mind, the endless vista of consciousness, no longer bound to being Robin, the amusement oddly surprised me. "Ah," it said in it´s wordless way "The un-answerable question." And with that the wide plain of my mental landscape swirled into a series of events, through which I rode propelled by the intensity of my desire to know. I was shown the birth of four worlds, each birthed from the previous and while traits remained constant, the worlds were radically different. Each world was an evolution of the previous, each species carried traits of it´s old skin, but was radically different. I saw how these worlds emerged out of each and every point in the multi-verse. Each moment a welling up and spreading out of time-space-consciousness. The emerging of a new world was the Goddess evolving. It was the whole changing, metamorphosing. Change the ever constant truth. And I was brought to the present and into the near future where another age is to be birthed. What that will look like I was not privy to, but I saw great change on a physical scale. The planet rapidly reorganizing itself, with humans not being the center of this change, integral because we are consciousness, but not central. I was shown a community where people came from around the world to learn to align themselves to change, to learn to "sing the world into being." Darcy and I stood at the base of a huge Huachuma in full bloom welcoming family, friends, and strangers. This I was informed was both metaphorical and literal. I am supposed to work with him to create a community dedicated to this. I saw that there will be many such centers, and that in this world evolution there will be many types of experiences all OK and integral to the larger process. Some will find it hard to adapt to a rapidly changing environment or chose not to adapt. While others ride the wave change, embracing the endless possibilities presented. It was made very clear to me that each has the right to choose, and each of us does choose each moment by where we focus our attention and intention. To ride the wave, I must focus on the razor edge of duality, choosing my experience in this endless dark and endless light, holding each, while consciously watching the now flow through me.
My body began to calm, and I came back to the small hostel room, the flat bed, and my breath. Nothing, absolutely nothing after this day would be the same. I had been given the gift and responsibility of vision.

El Brujo- The Mesa of Sorcery

2007-02-22T15:54:00.000-08:00

Dear readers, this is when the story of my ethnogenic adventures in Peru becomes stranger. There is much that I am going to attempting to describe in this blog, as honestly and lucidly as possible, and much of this stretches the typical westerner perspective. So, please know that none of what I say is fabricated or exaggerated. We live in an infinitely magical world, the door to which opens, when we learn ask it. Strangeness abounds and I am finding that once embraced can be a source of much solace in a world that is abundant in dualism. There is an infinity of nows all interwoven in this magnificent tapestry of life, all paradoxically true. (To the right Howard, our fearless Huachuma leader, a beautiful soul!)

We left the Tucume hotel and headed south for our next Mesa. An hour and half out side of Huanchaco (a cool little beach town full of Peruvian and foreign surfers, Cebiche, and the hot equatorial sun.) Here there is a huaca called El Brujo, the Witch. This is a large site spanning at least a dozen acres. We started the day by setting up the Mesa along the beach, from which all but one of the pyramids there were out of site. After a ceremonial drinking of two cups of the Huachuma and instructions from Howard to keep our energy flowing each of us spent an hour meditating on the beach. The waves crashed hard here and the force of the ocean was sensorially all encompassing. I walked in the water, allowing the waves to just reach me, and spent this time sinking into the strange Huachuma induced clarity that I had begun to feel more comfortable with. At a certain point I felt an internal call to return to the mesa. As a group we walked up from the beach to reach the Huaca.
At El Brujo there are two huacas one symbolizing the feminine and the other the masculine, one the light and the other dark, one healing and the other life taking. I had been told that this was a Moche site where ritual human sacrifice was performed. It was done here because the full brute force of El Nino hits this area of the Coast. El Nino is a weather pattern that still exists, I´have known it in my life as the bringer of much needed moisture to the dry highlands of northern Arizona. The effect here is much different, storms lash the coast flooding cities, wiping out crops, and killing many. But some how amidst this threat, that often occurs every decade, people have successfully inhabited this area for over 3,000 years.
The question of how leads one into a world of ritualized magic, harnessing and channeling the power of human life force to protect the coastal area. The human sacrifices were chosen through a ritualized combat using blunt objects and hand to hand frightening. Those felled were brought to the Cao Viejo Pyramid where, in ceremonies involving hundreds of priests and lay people, the sacrament of Huachuma was ingested, and then the sacrifices made. There is extensive evidence, through it´s depiction in recovered artifacts from these cultures, that Huachuma was used throughout Peru for the past 3,000-4,000 years . The very best of the young warriors would participate in this battle, the defeated were bound, and from a small incision on the neck, drained of their blood. This blood was collected into communion bowls, from which all present drank, while focusing this energy to protect the culture from the forces of El Niño. Skepticism aside, the Moche live and thrived in this area for over 800 years, there are no adequate scientific explanations for how they succeeded in doing so in the face of overwhelming natural forces.
As we walked up to the site to stand in the huacas interior, I was bowled over by nausea. All of the others but my group member Scott were able to walkup and into the hollow, three walled center, but it took me a few moments of breathing before I was confident that I could handle the sensations running through my body. I felt electric, whips of energy were flashing up my body. From the moment we got there I did´t like the place. This was the feminine huaca, the huaca of healing, but even knowing that it did not calm my instinct to flee. We walked up the steep path to the top of the adobe structure. It was about 20 meters high, and from the top I could see across the beach to the endless ocean, and across acres of pitted land to the larger huaca. Each pit I knew to be a grave, long ago dug. The energy that was causing me waves of nausea so intense that I doubled over, was from what Howard said, the life energy captured by the thousands sacrificed here. (He was very clear that their souls were not trapped here, but the life force of their body, this place was vibrating with the energy of a thousand silent gongs, but was not haunted.) I had to focus all my concentration on breath. I wanted to leave. My ovaries had begun to ache as soon as i stepped on to the structure. And I felt like it wanted too much. I couldn't relax, and was boggled by how calm everyone else was acting. This place was pure energy, but i didn´t want any of it. This was the place where one could charge up on life force, but all I could think was what does it want for that energy exchange, and so I let it flow through me, but never tried to capture any of it for myself. It was here that I felt the latent life force in my ovaries and womb, begin awakening. I was freaked out sure, that my moon had begun, and although I couldn't feel blood, I couldn't imagine them vibrating so with out my womb shedding. One of my main reasons for coming to Peru to research Shamanic healing and Plant-spirit medicine was because my body was quite ill for quite a while. From the age of 14-22 I menstruated more often than not. For months at a time my womb would gush blood, leaving me so depleted that getting off of the couch was at times more than I could bear. I went to see over a 20 western doctors, naturopaths, and healers. No one could give me any lasting help. The western hormone medication made me sicker than I imagined possible, and one naturopath I worked with for a few years said that I was the most difficult case she had ever had. The levels of self-deprecation, fear, and anger that accompanied this process pushed me to my breaking point time after time. I not only physically hurt, but felt like I was some how spiritually flawed because I couldn't be helped. Doctors got fed up working with me because they couldn't help. I got frustrated to the point of finally giving up on the idea that anyone else was ever going to help me heal. I know this seems extreme and it was. I had given my body over time and again to the "experts" who while often helping me understand how the body works, nutrition, and how to take care of myself, could not do more. It took me finally taking the situation completely into my own hands, researching extensively everything I could around health and healing, and gently implementing changes to my whole life style. From the day I took complete responsibility for my own health, I have continued to get healthier and healthier. I now use western medicine for it´s tools of diagnosis. To see how the herbs, diet, exercise, meditation, and prayers are progressing in creating a state of perfect health. I have certainly pissed off my fare share of western doctors. I will go further into my insights on the medical industry when I begin discussing my experiences with Ayahuasca. All I will say for now is it´s a disgusting consciousness that gains it´s life on death. It´s an abomination, one that each of us will sooner or later face. (One of the things I am dedicating my life to is helping people learn about the alternatives that do not fit into the western medicine paradigm. If you know someone who is severely ill whether it be cancer, HIV, or any of the other big bad guys, there are many ways to bring the body back into a state of complete health. I have information to share about the paths to freedom in health.)
Back to the Pyramid. I stood looking out over the gray sea, wind rushing up, wet with salty humidity, I felt overwhelmed by the sheer infinity of reality that embraced this small body. Each in the group had their own experience here. Darcy and Erica were sitting in the Huaca´s depressed center with looks of ecstasy on their faces, which I learned later was from having Kundalini awakenings. Orgasms for five hours straight. Darcy describes this well in his blog. Check out it out: www.sacredplants.blogspot.com

(This is the Huaca. Innocent looking, the quite strength of Peruvian magic lies in it´s vapid exterior.)

The group made it´s way down to the Mesa, it was still an hour or so before sunset. I felt wreaked my womb cramping in sharp violence. I spent the latter half of our time on the first Huaca dancing the energy through, but I felt physically pumled, and by the time I sat down to face the alter, felt like I had hit some sort fo breaking point with my physical discomrt. Howardx gr4abbed one of the wooden staffs that had been stabbed into the sand at the head of the mesa. On the top of it were the carved figures of a man and women embracing, and inbetween their heads was a small hole, I had previously thought was used to hold a candel. Howard called Neil to him, and poured some dark green liduid in to the whole. Neil plugged one nostral and deeply inhaled, and then precided with the other side. "Howard," I asked, "What is it?" Not quite ready to snort a weird dark liquid into my head without any consultaion. "Pure Magic." He said with a manical gleam in his eye. (I know to some the description of a manical gleam might bring to comic book conintations, but you must remember that we were hanging out at one of the largest human sacrifice sites on the planet, my womb was contracting and with out a bathroom I was sure I was bleeding through my clothing, and I felt a level of ignorance so all incompassing that I was fightening back tears offrustration by digging my nails into my palms.) After Neil, Dan, and Jack nasaly ingested the liquid, I said fuck it! Stood up facing the indiffernt dark water, brought the staff to first my right and then left nostral, handed it back to Howard, walked to the left 10 paces and crumbled to the ground. Knees splayed out, hands grasping sand, mucus freely flowing down my face, I gave it all up. In that moment I stopped resisting and walked into my own pain and fear, so fed up that I did not care if I ever got up again. I placed my head on the ground, and watched as the grains of sand, and pebbles before me turned into mountian ranges, and where the slightest movment of my body took profound effort. A disassoiated and distant voice asked God to tell my parents I loved them, because I was sure that I had come to this place to die. It was a relief actually, all I had to do was wait. In this space-time expericne, maybe a few moments passed of normal time, but what Huachuma has shown me is how very little we understand about the trrue natuer of time, for I was their an eternity, happily flickering in and out of non-existance.
What brought me back? No great moment of proufound insight but the figure of Darcy walking past me, kneeling and dry hurling. This made me wonder if I needed to purdge as well. With just the thought I started dry hurling. At this point Jack and Erica came to help me. Jack said to try to get it out, it was exactly the same for him the first time he tried Singara (that would be the phenotic spelling.) I couldnt throw-up, I felt grossly inbreiated I had ever been, so frustrated with myself for my resistance,the lurking shadows of fear, that I needed help. And because I couldent vomit, I started to sob. I was covered in sand, snot, tears, and spittle. Never had I been such a mess. Erica rubbed my back and whispered to me that this was the release I needed, that I was healing, and with each tender word and touch I was able to, in tears, let go. While I was in this world of my own, the rest of the group wrapped up the mesa, and with help walking we were directed to the van. We drove to the base of the next Huaca. It was over 1,000 meteres away and on every side of the road were the graves of countless warriors who had given their lives freely or not for hte good of all. As we approached the archeological site, we saw a cluster of rundown buildings, and a handful of super freaky looking dudes. At this point I wondered at the saintiy of our Shaman and knew that I was in a place few people, local or western had seen. I exited the van only to be greeted by a strange four legged created that was the most pity inspiring and scary site I have ever encountered. It was the Peruvian hairless dog. The photo posted here is indicitive of the odd grossness of these creatures, who I have been prized compainons here since antiquity, their remains uncovered at almost every achreological excavtion in Peru. Their famed to be loyal, smart, and cleaner than hair coated dogs, all that aside, my encounter with them reinforced my deep love of cats. (The photo posted here is an expectionally ugly demonic looking one.)
The group was milling around, waiting for instructions from Howard, when I saw that Nika was curled in on the seat, crying. The energy of this place was incredibly challenging for many of us. I curled her in my arms, and she cryed and cryed. Holding and comforting her, brought me back. The moments that she was in my arms called me the present. Slowly I felt whole again, and in this wholeness defiant. Defiant of my own fear, which had long been hiding behind insecurities, doubts, and overwhelm. I told it very clearly, that it no longer had a place to live within me, and it was time to go. It would take a few more weeks of traveling and the sharp scaple of Ayahuasca truly uproot it, but this path is one where disciplne and vigilance are required.
Howard led us up the pyrimid of Cao Viejo. This is where the sacrfices were performed, and eventually where the love of power corrupted the priesthood. Like all heirarchies it reached a point where corrpution and the love of power by the elite brought down the entire culture, and the area that for centuries housed rich cultures, became to unstable from storms, and civilaization crumbled and only the adabtable survived. The walls that have been excavated here have pictorial represntations in relief of what occured here. After the ceremonial battle " The conquered ones were led nude with a rope at the neck toward the temple... The sacrifice practices that appear in the iconograpghy of the Mochicha are presented in differnt ways: beheading, extraction of the heart and strong blows to the head... These ritual battles were developed durning the dry season, possibly from the begining of the summer solstice. " from El Brujo: Tradition and Religious Power by Regulo Franco Jordan
Looking into the power that is possible through intense, focused, ritual brought me to the raw sobriety that the darkest forces that have ever been on the planet are the ones birthed by men. I looked into the blinking eyes of a millenua old relief, it´s spirit promised me power and strength that no one could vanquish, I saw it wanting to flow into me, and sick with the place andthe cruliety possible by my own kind, walked away. To move through the intensity I focused on my breath, while generating feelings of love and kindness within me. I saw the life taker and life giver within me. At El Brujo I saw the cruelity of humanity, and the divine love of humanity. And I saw my weakness and my strength, and although the power of this place felt a hundred thousand times stronger than me, It could not seduce me. I chose Life.
We watched the sunset from the top of this Huaca. The test of El Brujo showed me that energy is not good or bad, it just is. Energy is indiffernt to morality, and on the Shamanic path one must constantly temper and purify themselves so as not to get drunk on the ir own capacity for power. Each left that day seeing how every moment is a choice, not between good and evil, but between service and selfishness.

Batan Grande- the Mesa of Pachumama

2007-02-09T18:03:00.000-08:00

There are Carob trees in Peru that live for over a 1000 years. Their gnarled branches reaching low on the ground, encompassing more horizontal space than vertical. Life and death flow effortlessly along the silvered brown bark. Her age emphasied, not her individuality as I would have thought, but the interconnecting processes that allow all lifeforms to exist. She was a tribute to the eternal feedback loops of living systems.
As our van pulled up to the tree, the overwhelming sensations of nausea I had been breathing through subsided next to her greatness. The drive to Batan Grande from the hotel had felt incredibly long. On Huachuma the senses are super acute. The smell of the exhaust, the hard rhythm of the wheels, and the rushing scenery almost brought me to vomiting. But at the sight of this great wonder, all thoughts of my physical discomfort subsided. I placed my bag, and sandals on the ground, and climbed on her. I felt, in my heightened state, the flow of creation running calmly through strong limbs, welcoming all equally. As I walked and climbed her branches, breathing in her scent, I stepped over trails of ants and had wasps crawl over me. The total oneness I felt, the harmony of death feeding life and life flowing into death brought me to a state of presence that was so complete that I lost all sense of myself as an individuated being. In this oneness, I was welcome. My energy flowed with it. There were two people in our group who were highly agitated by the wasps. Those who were agitated and reacting from a place of fear, drew more of the wasps. Erika, a true beauty, with rich chocolate warmth, a sincerity and open-hearted presence that I immediately resonated with, approached me after I had jumped down from one of the branches. She said she needed help because she was falling into panic. Knowing with out thought what she needed, I placed my hands on her chest, and looking into her eyes, breathed into her cool blue oneness. Calm clarity flowed through me. I was able to hold my presence, and send her the vibrational sense-feeling that was the opposite of the fear and overwhelm that the wasps had inspired. After a few moments of eye contact, breathing together, and touch, Erika grounded enough for me to step away. In the exchange I had picked up a small amount of agitation, that read not on a mental level, but as flickers of stress up my arms. This was a powerful lesson on how like attracts like. Those who were agitated and/or frightened were drawing more wasps to them, that became agitated enough to sting. Those who were focusing their attention on the beauty, power, and greatness of the life processes of the tree, had wasps come and go with no stings. At one point I had over a dozen wasps crawling on me (probably enjoying the salty sweetness of my skin, a novel array of smells that they were interested in exploring) and I felt love and appreciation for them. One of the group members was highly agitated from the beginning of our time at the tree, and after a few moments, the wasps began to swarm around him, and the van ( chock full of tastes the insects wanted to check out) which he was near. When we eventually loaded back into the van, to leave the buggy scene, we had some new passengers with us. The agitated group member kept swatting the wasps, trying to get them out of the vehicle, which made the wasps fly manically around the cab. I found myself astonished and angry at this man. He could not see how he was creating the situation, and couldn't even though he was asked repeatedly, stop swatting them. Anger, in my altered state felt like a warm flash rising from my abdomen, that I breathed out in strong sharp exhales, so I could control my instinct to swat the swatter. I felt a fierce need to protect these creatures who I had communed with. It was the same protective instinct that I feel when any loved one is being antagonized. We drove through a tropical dry forest, one of the largest on the planet, and arrived at the base of another rocky formation, round at the base with steep loose rock sides. As I exited the van I moved quickly away from the agitation, and lit a Mupacho. I inhaled, holding the rich, slightly burnt tasting smoke in my mouth, and exhaled with the intention to return to calm connectedness. As I did so my perspective of my fearful group member rotated from other to mirror. In that mirror I saw the thousands of times I have taken an aspect of reality, and made it into a problem (something a friend, family member, or partner was doing or not-doing; the money in my bank account; my body being sick and the physical pain that came with it; etc) and focused on these things, sometimes searching for a way to fix them and feel better, but often just following the emotions which lead to feeling worse and worse. I saw how I had continually made situations more acute by my reaction to them. By where I chose, even if unconsciously, to focus my attention. The old adage "Like attracts like." was something I grew up with, but through Huachuma was able to experience on an energetic level how this manifested. After the exchange with Erica I had one wasp sting me in the soft flesh between my underarm and back on my right side. The sting radiated from that spot through out my whole body. The sting it´self was uncomfortable but the effect it had on my consciousness was amazing. I knew that it was a gift of medicine. I felt that the sting sear through my whole system, clearing out all my energetic meridians, each and every nerve ending, and my body felt brand new- totally cleansed. I have always been a allergic to bee and wasp stings, not to the point of needing to carry epinephrine around, but the area around the sting would swell up 3-4x the normal size. This didn't happen and by sunset there was barely a red spot left, but the mental and physical clarity it gave me persisted. Wasp medicine to purify my system.
As the others began walking up the Huaca, Erica and I searched out a good tee to relieve our selves behind, and process the exchange that we had experienced. She said that she felt like I had rescued her from falling over the edge of mounting fear into full fledged panic. As a child bee´s had been her friends, and she loved playing with with, until one day a few of them attacked her. Since then they had become her primal fear, and the presence of them brought about a sheer fight or flight reaction. In the past people had tried to verbally calm her or lead her away from the scene, but by me stopping, looking into her eyes, breathing with her, and intentionally sending the vibration of oneness to her, she was able to bring her self back to her own center. It was as though my intention and energetic presence created a bubble around her, where she could slowly walk the path back to her center.
(Just a side note here about altered states of consciousness and peeing. The importance of a beautiful spot in nature, out of view from others, at which to relive oneself should never be underestimated! Where a idyllic spot has the potential to bring an almost transcendent experience of release, an smelly, dirty, feces crusted environment has the opposite effect, and if one does not adequately prepared, can really bring you down. No place is this more true than third world bathrooms, or Burning Man porta-potties.)
As we walked up to the base of the hill, a vulture soared above us , showing off a large and powerful wingspan, and healthy black feathers. Nature is the biggest braggart of all. I think that humans are here just so she has an audience. There´s too much resplendent grandeur on this small plant to go unwitnessed. The rest of the group had found places for themselves along the rocky steep sides. None had reached the top because of the slippery gravel slopes. I wanted to make it to the top. Erika came with me half-way, to a perch that Darcy sat at meditating. He opened his eyes, smiling, and invited us to join him. Heartbeat more pronounced, breath sweeter with exertion, I looked around at the sight below and knew that this scene was timeless. Flowing out from the base of Batan Grande a dark green landscape known as the Forest of the Moon ran east to the foothills of the Andes. From where he sat I saw a animal trail running side ways along the hill, which by this point was too steep to climb straight up. I felt too full of energy to sit still, and followed it´s path over and up the hill side. I also took great satisfaction that I was beating all the men to the top. I like to be queen of the hill. I scampered up and over the hill with the mindless joy that always accompanies exploring new places. I felt pulled upward, and as I reached a saddle between one low peak and the ridge leading to the highest point, my eyes registered the adobe walls of a huaca leading upward. These were totally out of view from below. I felt like a special chosen child finding them. i was flooded with emotions of joy, welcome, and a sensation of coming home. The sun was close to setting, and I didn't have much time to explore and not enough to reach the peak. As I breathlessly reached as far a I felt I could go, soaking it in, and as I was in the process of catching my breath I sensed a large ball of energy shoot up and out of the red and white rocks. The energy flew out hundreds of meters in the air with huge intensity and almost instantly boomeranged back. The force of it hitting my chest almost made me loose my footing. I instantly felt like I was back. I don´t know how else to describe it, but that some part of me, that I did´t know was missing, came home. I felt absolutely solid. I also felt a connection and love for the land that went beyond anything I had ever experienced before. The sun was beginning to set, and the already treacherous climb would be completely unmanageable in 20 mins. Saturated in this new sense of self, I made my way back to where Erica and Darcy were perched. (Interesting site with archaeological information on history of site: http://agutie.homestead.com/files/incas/inca_sican_treasure_1.html)
As the sunset, Erica and I sat arms wrapped around one another, watching three dozen or so Vultures dance in the sky. The beauty was beyond anything Maxfield Parish ever painted, and the two of us agreed that we were in a everlasting place, where life would continue in it´s abundant parade long after we are gone. As the last of the pink light faded we made our way down the hill. We wandered as a group on the road, through the Forest of the Moon. Darcy and I walked hand in hand in the thickening darkness. The ride back to the Hotel was peaceful, each contemplating the day while milk chocolate coated our throats, and limonada replenished our electrolytes. (Huachuma likes chocolate. This of course made all of us very happy. If any are interested in the profound healing abilities of Cacao check out David Wolf´s book Naked Chocolate. I brought down a pound of raw cacao nib trail mix, which was a blessing at the end of a day of fasting. Chocolate in it´s un-processed form contains an incredible amount of nutrients, spiritually soothing alkaloids, and a plant-spirit of great benevolence. Here´s a site where you can read a bit more about it and order all your yummy raw super foods. Later I will go into the insights that Huachuma and Ayahuasca have given me surrounding health, healing, and nutrition.)

http://www.rawfood.com/cacao.html

We closed the day at the Mesa, and I was stunned by the great open landscape this work had laid before me. Never had I been more aware of my own ignorance. There are worlds upon worlds that simultaneously exist in the here and now, and my first two Huachuma navigations had contained more reality than months I had spent in sitting meditation. I was dumbfounded by the power, and awestruck by the Divine intelligence that had guided me in every moment to this place of oneness.
(Kirilian Photo of Cacao Nib... Wow that´s a pretty cool electromagnetic field!)

Tucume- The Mesa of Death

2007-02-09T17:36:00.000-08:00

Tao Te Ching- 41
"When a superior man hears of the Tao,
he immediately begins to embody it.
When an average man hears of the Tao,
he half believes it, half doubts it.
When a foolish man hears of the Tao,
he laughs out loud.
If he didn´t laugh it wouldn't be the Tao.

Thus it is said:
the path into light seems dark,
the path forward seems to go back,
the direct path seems long,
true power seems weak,
true purity seems tarnished,
true steadfastness seems changeable,
true clarity seems obscure,
the greatest art seems unsophisticated,
the greatest love seems indifferent,
the greatest wisdom seems childish.

The Tao is nowhere to be found.
Yet it nourishes and completes all things."

To describe my first encounter with Huachuma is a challenge. Putting a linear story line to an internally emergent experience stretches new found neural pathways.

The group sat in a semi-circle, women on the left wing, men on the right facing the Tucume ruins. Tucume was a Moche temple known as a huaca. (The Moche civilization lived along the coast of Peru from 100b.c.e-800 a.c.e, and are known for their incredible cultural relics which span from huacas and pyramids to elaborate burial sites comparable only to King Tut´s tomb. We actually have a better picture of what these people´s lives looked like than even those of the Inca because of the wealth of art they left behind. The most notable in my mind being the pottery which portrays all aspects of the life process from a mother giving birth with babe emerging from womb, to sexual congress (not as imaginative as the Karma Sutra but they sure look like their having fun), to death and the worlds of spirit. I found this link to be basic, but a good overview: http://archaeology.about.com/od/mocheculture/g/moche.htm.) The Tucume ruins surround a rocky peak 250-300 meters high, which feels mountainous on the long flat land that bridges the ocean and the Andean foothills. This liminal zone is an eternal threshold, it´s timeless solitary rocks a doorway between the mountains of the east and the ocean of the west. Archaeologists are still not sure what this huaca´s significance was to the Moche. I believe they have yet to ask Huachuma.

Around 1pm we congregated. To open the Mesa, as it is called, Howard had laid an alter of sorts on the ground. Upon brightly colored hand woven tapestries lay objects of power and metaphor. A jaguar´s skull lay at the head of this arrangement, from which condor feathers winged each side. Necklaces of anaconda bones,wood staffs carved with power images, quartz crystals, figures of the feminine and masculine intertwined, spondylitis shells, and plant stems from the amazon were also present. Howard, adorned with beaded headband and hand woven poncho, lit a Mupacho (a black jungle tobacco that is held sacred in these practices and used for cleansing and purification, which along with coca leaves and limonada are essential to the use of Huachuma) and began. After a period of offering smoke to the 7 directions he called each person up to kneel, offer their intentions to the Mesa, be purified with Mupacho smoke and the harmonic vibrations emanating from the his rattle. As each knelt they lifted a small and simple ceramic hand-made cup, whose handle resembled the cactus itself, and drank the distilled Huachuma.
I had felt since arriving at the Tucume hotel mentally fuzzy and awkward. I felt out-of-sorts and overwhelmed by thoughts of the United States political and economic deterorization, my own financial situation, insecurities about opening my heart to another person- these stress filled thoughts chased eachother, making me nauseous in their circular repetitions. So, as I knelt in front of the Mesa, my intention was for freedom. Not a particularly deep or rich intention, but with all the force I had I asked for freedom through understanding, and with this I promised to trust the process, and to offer all I gained to the highest and best good of all. While I set my intention; Howard stood behind blowing powerful exhales of smoke on and over my body, I learned later to help open my chakras, to receive what the medicine had to offer. I picked up the cup, breathing long deep breaths to steady myself, and with as big of gulps as I could manage emptied the cup. It was dark green, with a slightly bitter and astringent taste not completely unpleasant. As each of us stood and reassumed our seat Jose handed us a glass of fresh limonada (lime-ade good for cleansing the palate and supplying electrolytes through out the day.) Once I resumed my seat, I felt immediate elation and a release of tension. After the drinking we all gathered our days bags, and Neil ( a beautiful Australian man who is well on his path to becoming a healer) gave me a quick coca leaf lesson. Coca leaves are chewed or drank in a tea form to help with stamina, and are a literal life saver with altitude adjustment. The leaves have to be catalyzed by a soda bicarbonate base, commonly derived from a tar ash. You wrap a leaf around some ash, then re-wrap the bundle until it´s to a satisfactory size, and stick it in you mouth. An amazing Medicen, and central to the lives of many Peruvians. Then day packs on we walked the 1000 or so meters to the entrance to the ruins. At the base of the ruins we walked through a greeters station, small museum, and picnic area. We hung in the shade here for a small while, some playing on a swing set, some sitting and breathing, preparing for the journey. By this time reality felt subtley altered. Huachuma is a long slow journey lasting up to 12-14 hours. There are what Howard calls seven acts, seven phases of the experience, that as one progresses in the practice can easily distiguish.
The Tucume runes were once tall, majestic buildings made out of adobe bricks. The bricks were used as a kind of tax in the time of the Moche empire. Each family had their own symbol scratched on the surface. Due to the heavy storms of El Nino much of the exterior walls have been eroded to the extent that the original structure´s shape is almost unrecognizable. The day was spent circling the edge of the Rocky point. The ascent was quite a precarious climb indeed. Both Darcy and I agreed that if we were climbing this on our own, in our current state, we would question our intelligence, but with the aide of a master Shaman, why the heck not. The path to the peak was along a razors edge of rocks, each side dropping sharply.
My mind flowed in a continuous dialogue. I was not quite sure what to expect, and what I was experienceing was in no way similar to my solo explorations in altered states of consciousness. I kept thinking that I wasn't getting it, that I was not opening to the Medicine. This feeling of frustration with myself mounted as the day began making it´s way to night. At the top of the peak Darcy and I listened to music designed to help one flow into the meditative state. Who would have thought I´d find a guy who likes to sit at the top of a vulturous peak, high on a mescaline based clarogen, meditating on the nature of self and reality. Pretty cool. As I listened, and breathed, I took in the beauty of the flat green fields dotted with small fires of burning trash, the mountains in the distance slowly being veiled in fat promising clouds. I felt for the first time in weeks present and still. This sense grew and expanded in compassing all levels of being, flowinging out in all directions in undulating waves energy. This ultra-present state, that was clearer in many ways than any state I could remember experiencing oscillated with worries about politics, money, intimacy, health. I was feeling this intense contrast between a perspective of clarity and oneness, and frustration with myself. All the parts of my life that were out of resonance with this feeling-sense of peace became alarmingly uncomfortable.
Bill, one of the other group members, came to tell us that everyone was making their way down while there was still light. As we stood up, a magenta sunset peaked it´s way between parting clouds. Above the peak and soaring up all sides, vultures dived and circled in the rush of wind sweeping up the rocky apex. It was beyond gorgeous accentuating the eternal nature of the land. And yet with this beauty I felt heartbreak begin flow through me. A anger and sorrow for myself, my short-comings, for the ways I haven't lived my life as fully as I could. For all the ways I could love better, be kinder, be a better daughter, be a better friend.
After the sun had set we very carefully made our way down. The sadness in me grew with each step of our descent. Once we traversed the most dangerous area, I stepped off the path to let Bill and Darcy go on. I moved quickly to a spot that was hidden in shadow, and with a self-loathing and a despair I had not felt for years, began to cry. It was there, expanding inside my chest, seeping through my ribs, and the only way to dislodge it was to let it out. I couldn't stay where I was because of the quickly faltering light, but I didn't want to be around anyone, but like so often in the past instead of touch in on the sorrow, I sucked up my tears and dried my eyes to meet up with the rest. I tried to go on, but after a few moments of walking, I quietly I removed myself from the group. I crouched low on a look-out spot, and began to weep. I was felt done, totally done with myself. i was there for a number of minutes weeping in that way you can only do alone, loud racking sobs, that feel like they come from another creature. I can not remember ever having this sudden and real feelings of despair. As my feet rested on the ground, arms wrapped around knees, forehead cradled in both, I saw movement not far from me. I flashed my head lamp toward the movement, and fifteen feet away from me was a young fox. I turned off my light and in the deep dusk we looked at each other. At first I wanted it to leave so I could continue crying, and this realization alone made me feel ridiculous. For two full minutes we watched each other, and then it began to go down the path, pausing to look back at me every few steps. I dried my eyes and stood. As I stood it went down farther, and as I finally began my descent, it veered off the path to the left into darkness. I took the steps slowly, and when I met the group at the bottom I was greeted with hugs. I began to feel lighter, but not completely out my heavy funk.
We came back to the hotel, cleaned up quickly and met back at the Mesa. Here Howard began to "work" the mesa again. My brain felt overloaded with the sound of the small hand rattles, and involuntarily my eyes crunched shut and my body locked up. When the music ended so did the sensation. Weird, I thought. I then I began to look around the group and feel doubt rise within me. I saw the lot of us sitting full of self-importance, cultural appropriators, just some more sad rich westerners building themselves up as spiritually important while actually we were just spending copious amounts of money to take drugs.
After a few moments Howard played two Moche ceramic whistles, bringing Neil and Dan to stand in front of the Mesa, and blow them simultaneously. My eyes did the crunch thing again, and my body wouldn't move. I mentally was still aware of what was happening, but I had no control over my body. I was perplexed by this wondering what the hell this was, but felt calm, even if uncomfortable. After what felt like a very long time they stopped, and as the sound ended, I felt my consciousness expand rapidly out of my body and snap back like a huge rubber band. I opened my eyes, feeling completely present, clear and sober, but totally confused about what happened. For the next half an hour I was happily dumb-struck, and all the self-loathing and insecurity that filled me earlier was totally gone. In it´s place was clean presence. I still do not know what happened, but this was the first lesson showing me the power of the Mesa, and revealing a new world of energy.
We ended the night with a fire, to which we gave offerings of Copal resin and Paulo Santo, and a simple dinner of soup and bread. We sat talking and laughing, a true comrade comfort surrounding the group. We made it through unscathed and each more whole than when the day began.

(The top photo is the final ascent of the rock peak. The middle is of Bill and I taking in the sunset. The bottom is of Darcy and I looking out from Tucume.)

The Birth of a Begining

2007-02-03T08:50:00.000-08:00

Darcy arrived in Lima six hours after me. We had two days to hang out and acclimate to Peruvian culture and each others presence before we met up with Howard Lawler to experience the Huachuma Journey Through Time in Chiclayo. It was easy as pie to be hanging with Darcy again. Upon embarkation from the States I was pretty sure he wasn't a drug crazed psycho leading me down to the Amazon with his manly wiles only to trap me in the jungle as his sexual love slave. And, while this prospect was not entirely unappetising, I was delighted find myself with a man whose depth of knowledge and richness of interests are wonderfully balanced by a kind playful personality.
We caught a early flight to Chiclayo which is on the northern coast of Peru. At the Lima airport we met Howard and the other group members- Erika, Neil, Scott, Bill, Dan, Jack, and Nikolina. The flight was short, and we were greeted at the Airport by our van and drivers- Jose and Hernando. The first stop was a typical developing country market where one can purchase everything that is needed to keep life going: fresh fruits, vegetables, clothing, car batteries, you name it it´s there, and unlike big-box stores you are actually buying from real people, in stall after stall. What made this a truly unique place was that while supplying the afore mentioned items, it also housed a full Shaman´s market. There was everything from fresh herbs (chamomile, eucalyptus, rosemary, horsetail and coca leaves plus dozens I could not identify), nutritional supplements (fresh and dried Maca and Noni, bee pollen, raw honey, balms off all sorts my favorite containing snake poison for arthritis), to hundreds of items used in ceremonies and magic (Paulo Santo, voodoo dolls, crystals, Moche flutes, antiquities, bones and skulls of everything from dog to anaconda to human.) While wandering it´s narrow allies I felt that odd satisfaction that comes when you know that you are in a completely singular environment, a place original and induplicatable. Chiclayo looked like many towns we would be going to: people doing what it takes to feed their families, sever poverty next to buildings where construction never ends- roofs of re-bar reaching ever higher-a crude symbolism of our free-market times, and young mothers holding their infant to suckle in one arm and a beggars cup in the other.

The night brought us Tucume and our idyllic adobe hotel. The following day we had our first Huchuma Mesa ceremony.

(The top photo is of a herb stand at the Chiclayo Market, note the Huachuma Cactus at bottom right-hand side. The bottom photo was taken at the same market and is the cactus for sale.)

Always have to begin somewhere...

2007-02-01T12:12:00.000-08:00

To begin something new, the first step is always taken with a big inhale and holding of breath. I sit now enjoying the sensation of excitement that accompanies this opportunity to share. I am in a little Peruvian town called Paracas, where the air is heavy with summers glaring warmth, the pheromones of nature in heat (dogs chasing tail, flowers blooming without shame, humans intertwined in their ways on the playa, in the water, walking down narrow alleys), and the ever present honking of bicycle horns alerting all, over and over, to the presence of bread and ice cream for sale. Every where you go the horns are honking and the dogs are humping. I have been here with my traveling companion, Darcy, for the past few days, allowing the events of the previous weeks to slowly marinate into a cognitive understanding that I can relay. In telling this story and the emerging stories to come, I ask for understanding that this path I have chosen is non-linear and in many ways non-rational, so too may be my telling of it.
I left Phoenix at 9:16 pm on January 7, 2007 headed to Lima, Peru with stop-overs in L.A. and San Salvador. The momentum building for this trip was the biggest of any of my adventures to date. At every turn the trickster waited, waking me up to parts of my life that I had been neglecting. With each challenge, each seeming crisis was a huge gift, a strange dance of events that unfolded to an eerie perfection, seeming pitfalls were blessings in disguise. Something was rattling my cage telling me to wake-up if I wanted to start doing the real and dirty work. With the abrupt wake-up calls, one after another serious obstacles were avoided. The trickster is my friend, even as she proverbially poops on my path. By the time I hit the airport I was more ready then ever to get out of the country, to start this next phase. I had felt that a passage of my life was ending, and that the slow months and the multitudinous details of making this trip a reality, were the necessary labor to birthing a new phase. Great rewards often come with great challenge.
So, how did I end up coming to Peru to travel with a man I had met four months earlier and only spent five days with to undergo shamanic training with mind-altering plant substances so to better understand this rapidly changing world? Well, I´m glad you asked. It happened on a Tuesday (the day I have found to be the sleeping giant of the week) at the largest party on the Planet- Burning Man. If you have not heard me or some other burner rambling non-stop about the beauty, truth, and freedom of Burning Man check it out for yourself at http://www.burningman.com/. It is my favorite place on the planet, a celebration of life, a place that I allow myself to shed the skin of western culture and be fully me. This was my third year, and I had hitched a ride up with a caravan of friends from Tucson. A wild crew of big eyed pyschonauts lead by one of my soul brothers whom we call Life. A tall beautiful man who is one more spiritual warrior traversing the astral plane in search of understanding, and on the journey embracing all the delights these physical bodies have to offer. As it had the previous two years, a ticket and a way found me at the last minute, and much to my awe and delight, I rolled through the greeters gates with welcoming hugs from a family of dusty strangers leading us all in and yelling "Welcome Home." On this particular Tuesday, I was lounging in the shade structure of my new camp, which I felt greatly blessed to be a partof, The Temple of Virtual Wisdom, drinking white tea and discussing the nature of spiritual art, the benefits of faux-fur over animal fur, and the heighten syncronisities that occur when a community is intentionally created, especially on the scale of the 35,000 like Burning Man. Mrs. God, Pleather, and I had an ambling conversation while adorning hats with sequins, painting tribal designs on the smooth planes of cheek bone and forehead, and offering the passerby refreshments. I had been playing for the past couple of years with consciously intending my reality in multiple ways- setting my intentions each day when I gave my gratitude to the Universe for this life, playful exercises with my mind, and learning to listen more to my intuition and less to fearful mind chatter. Burning Man is my favorite place to play with this because it is an alternate reality, where everyone has set aside their mainstream jobs, duties, and obligations to co-create a playground of endless possibilities. While consciously tapping into my inner guidance system I felt directed to go to center camp, a huge shade structure that is a place to get a cup of coffee, listen to music, poetry, talks on super-string theory, get tarot readings, or just hang out watch the beautiful, dusted people walk by. (There are dust storms at Burning Man that cover everything in a fine layer of ivory colored dust, the remains of countless sea creatures eons ago, that covers the skin, making young and old alike look timeless.) I took a lazy ride through the burgeoning streets of the festival on my rattly garage sale one speed that I love more than any other possession, and parked it amongst the hundreds there. Heading under the shade structure, I narrowly avoided an on-coming dust storm. I walked slowly, circumabulating the circular center, feeling that there was a certain spot I needed to sit. I looked out over the open spots, there were couchs facing the main stage where a man sat, playing long whinny notes in no particular order on a cello while reciting poetry in a language that greatly resembled klingon or a similar dialect, and elected to walk along. After a number of minutes, I saw to my left an open corner facing out, a perfect place to sit and write. It was no coincidence that on both sides of me were bare chested men. The postcard began "Dear Mom and Dad, Burning Man is the best camp ever..." After a while conversation began between me and the people surrounding me, when I elicited help in forming just the right haiku to send to my parents, and the person to the right of me was (a mental drum roll is in order... thank you) Darcy. The truly juicy details of the courting will have to wait till a later time, but there is a ritual dance of sorts to any good Burning Man hook up. Faux-fur plumage accented my day-gear which consisted of raised knee high boots, booty shorts, and a earth-babe bikini top adorned with crystals, rocks, and other witchy goods; a group bike ride through a white out sand storm; refreshments at my camp; a psychedelic date made for two darkness´ from that light. He replied in a cultural appropriate fashion with offers of accompaniment to lectures; gifts of mind altering medicines; and the final move of a "walk" from dance party to tent. After spending most of the week together having as always the best time ever, we said our good-byes, thinking that perhaps we might see each other again the following year, since he builds rammed earth houses in Canada, and I was about to accept a job working in the Caribbean. Or we discussed meeting up in Peru where he would spending the spring doing a second trip of Shamanic training with Ayahuasca, which was something that I had been planning on researching for my graduate work before getting employment in the Caribbean. Well, upon my return home to Flagstaff, the dream job ended up being just that, and he emailed me "Well, since your dream job fell through, how´s a South American Shamanic adventure with me sound?" Just right I thought.