Return to the Jungle

I don’t really know where to begin.

I’m back in the jungle, finally, after nearly two very long, very aimless years in the States. My time there was not spent wisely. I worked a tedious, retail job for some time until I was fired. I drank progressively more and more, and I used various drugs. In the end, I had purposefully cultivated a mindset of general indifference. Feeling indifferent is easier than feeling hopeless.

I became scattered, abandoned things I had once felt passionately about. The days were monotonous, and I pursued nothing of value. I couldn’t focus, I watched too much television. I lost my enthusiasm and generally fell into a depressive state that, I know, has not yet fully dissipated.

Without getting into the details, circumstances seemed to conspire to force me back here. And that statement carries little positive connotation. I had nowhere else to go.

Of course, I’d wanted to come back ever since I left. But whereas upon my arrival in the US my goal felt clear and firm and unshakable, by the time I was in a position to purchase a return ticket, everything had gotten a bit hazy. And that’s the word that best describes what life had become for me: hazy. No clear destination, no clear path. A lot of stumbling.

So I boarded the plane, I flew to Florida. I boarded the second plane and flew to Lima. I spent the night in the airport and in the morning boarded the final flight to the jungle. All the while feeling as though I was in some sort of dream-state. Like I was watching myself going through the motions. But I didn’t experience the excitement like I always had before. I felt numb, disconnected, not present.

I should mention that throughout my sojourn in the States, I don’t think I ever succeeded in completely silencing that small voice within me that knew where I needed to be. But I sufficiently dampened the sound, and I was able to ignore it.

Alright, you get the picture. Things felt dark.

So I arrived in Pucallpa and was shown to my room, similar to the one I stayed in last time. Orange walls instead of hospital green, but more or less identical. I reached out to Papa Miky immediately, and he invited me to come visit with him at his house, very near the small hotel where he used to live. It was good to see him, and we spoke for a while about what had changed during my absence and what my plans were. Robert and Jurrien, two friends from past diets, stopped by and we all sat around chatting on the back porch for some time.

Miky informed me that I could open my diet on the 30th of May. Robert had been in diet since April, and Jurrien, as he told me later, felt like he’d been in diet since birth.

So, for simplicity’s sake, let’s jump to the 30th.

We met outside the Hotel Gavilanes, as always. During my time away, Miky had a maloka built on a friend’s property about 30 km outside of the city. We were driven there in a proper truck (luxury!) by another friend of Miky’s who, I think, is somehow associated with the hotel.

It’s a beautiful piece of property that Miky built on. The maloka itself is surrounded by a man-made lake that the owner stocked with 70,000 fish. At night the sky is often cloudless and clear and the Milky Way pours, glowing, from one end of the horizon to the other.

I approached the first ceremony with…well, “trepidation” is a good word. Fear, uncertainty, anxiety, and resignation are others. The only thing I felt fairly sure of was that Ayahuasca would not be gentle with me.

Noyarao Dieta – First Ceremony

There were four of us that first night. The maloka can hold 20, so we all had plenty of space. Miky set up his mat in the middle of the room, as usual. After we got situated, one of the dieteros extinguished the lanterns that ringed the hut, until all the light that was left emanated from a single candle in front of Miky.

Papa began by purifying the space with mapacho (rustic, jungle tobacco) smoke, and then he whistled an icaro to the medicine in the bottle. After that, he called each of us up to drink. I was last. He gave me a knowing look and a little laugh, and asked how much I wanted. I took a full cup.

I’ll say again, for the record: the taste of Ayahuasca is so utterly repulsive that when you drink it, even once, you tend to have a nauseatingly visceral reaction to the very thought of the medicine for some time afterwards. There were several times in California that I had to suppress a gag reflex while reading descriptions of various ceremonies. Getting it down, as I’ve said before, is an act of pure will. I always exhale, and throw the medicine back in one gulp. Doing otherwise would be impossible for me.

I walked back to my mat and I sat in the darkness waiting for the effects to set in. It took quite a long while. As I sat there in silence, I took note of how discombobulated my thoughts were, how chaotic and disordered. I tried to focus, but I couldn’t. I’d really done myself in. I took comfort in knowing, despite feeling unprepared for what was about to happen, that Aya would do what was necessary. There was a an implicit threat in that word “necessary,” of course, but for some reason it shored me up.

I don’t remember how it started. It crept up on me. There were some patterns behind the eyes, I think. But the real visions slipped in subtly, and all of the sudden I was lost.

The medicine was incredibly strong. Prior to this experience, I had never been absolutely certain that I was dealing with external entities and not aspects of my own subconscious. But the realm I was carried into that first night left me with no doubt about the reality of the spiritual world in which I was immersed. And it was not a pleasant reality.

What I remember most vividly was the spider. It was there, hanging around the periphery, large and black and fat. I didn’t pay much attention, but it slowly asserted itself more and more forcefully, and suddenly I very clearly recognized its presence, and that it was a negative entity, a bad spirit.

Now, there’s some confusion here for me. I was aware of Ayahuasca, and I was aware of another spirit that was very clearly angry, taunting, antagonistic, evil. Two voices, and two separate personas. But there were certain points at which the voices and the personas overlapped, and it was difficult for me to discern between the two.

I felt as though I stood in a kind of spiritual courtroom, condemned. I was reprimanded again and again for not taking the path seriously. For allowing the drugs in, the alcohol, the various and detrimental energetic influences. This, I think, was Ayahuasca. She was very upset with me. The voice was screaming. She seemed hurt, offended. Pissed off and frighteningly so. I had made a commitment, a promise, and I had not kept it. A terrifying and humbling experience, to be sure, but one that I felt was just and deserved.

But there was something else, as well. Something that went further than merely chastising me for my foolish choices, something that wanted to hurt me, to make me feel pain, to bring me low and beat me down. Crippling thoughts:

This is not your path.

Even the medicine can’t help you.

You don’t belong here.

You don’t belong anywhere.

You’re not up to this.

Don’t kid yourself.

You can’t make up the time you lost.

It was the absence of love. Something like love withheld. Hatred, yes. But more like a disparaging tolerance, like ridicule, like mockery. It felt torturous, and I felt incapable of getting past it.

Meanwhile, my body was being racked by occasional spasms and uncontrollable shaking. I was coughing and hacking things up into my bucket. And there was no catharsis. I couldn’t even convince myself that any good was being done. I was overwhelmed with a feeling of hopelessness and inferiority.

Miky sat in front of me for a long time, singing and cleaning me up. He began to call out the bad spirit, and eventually sucked it out of me through the top of my head. I remember feeling grateful that he was there and working, but embarrassed, too. This was work he had to do because I’d acted irresponsibly.

Once he’d dealt with the spirit and cleaned me up a bit, he opened my diet. I was more or less incapacitated, and completely unaware of what he was doing. Suddenly he stopped singing and told me that my diet was officially open. I remember barely managing a half-hearted thumbs-up and muttering something like “great.” Somewhere along the line I had vomited, and I remember dry-heaving for quite a while.

The shaking and the spasms continued, and I more or less lay quaking on the mat for the duration. I was profusely apologizing to Ayahuasca throughout the latter half of the ceremony, mentally begging her to make it stop. Finally, of course, the effects of the medicine subsided and the last of the shakes petered out.

When I had enough energy, I stood up with a cigarette in hand and walked outside to be alone. I needed air. I needed silence. I breathed in deeply, and looked out over the jungle that surrounded us. The early morning fog was resting along the tops of the trees. It was a beautiful sight, and part of me knew that, but I wasn’t in any kind of mood to appreciate it.

I remember standing there smoking, kicking myself, reeling from the night, confused and generally wondering what the fuck I was doing.

The next morning, Miky asked me if I’d had a rough ceremony.

I still felt exhausted. “Yeah,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “it gets worse.”

I’ll leave it there for now.

Travelin’ Solo – 7.11.13

So it’s been a while since my last entry. But last night was pretty intense, and deeply interesting to me on a personal level, so I thought I’d share. This may be longer than usual.

Yesterday evening marked the second time I’ve drunk Ayahuasca alone. The first occasion was about a week and a half ago. That experience wasn’t particularly eventful, and left me kind of cold, so I was hesitant to do it again. Both times I played a recording of a dieta ceremony in Paoyan. It’s a strange experience, sitting in a room, listening to the icaros pumping out of my computer speakers, and being completely alone. I didn’t much care for it. There are no blessings, as there are no maestros present. And as I’m not in this to simply trip, I wasn’t sure whether or not it was worthwhile to give it another go. As it turns out, I’m glad I did.

I took the Ayahuasca bottle out of the fridge around 8pm, and drank an hour later. During my first solo experience, I drank a relatively small dose, as I was unsure of where it would all lead. But, perhaps because I was overly cautious with the medicine, I didn’t purge. No vomiting, no shitting, nothing. It’s a difficult thing to describe to those who haven’t experienced it, but purging is easily my favorite part of the Ayahuasca ordeal. There’s something profoundly satisfying, refreshing, cleansing about emptying your stomach into a bucket. It’s not like throwing up when you’re sick. There are some similarities, obviously, but you’re expelling more than food and bile. It’s profoundly healing, physically, emotionally and spiritually. I’m not sure that there are words to communicate this effectively.

So, in an effort to guarantee a purge, I went in the opposite direction and took a very large dose last night. It may have been the largest dose I’ve taken so far. About half of a mug. I barely got it down, and had to fight the gag reflex for a few minutes after my last gulp.

I killed the lights, lit a mapacho and said a quiet prayer for guidance, clarity and safety. It’s become part of my ritual. I sat there for what felt like quite a while, listening to dogs barking outside and the occasional revving of a motorcycle engine. Neighbors came and went, and I waited. I started to get impatient, but I stopped myself. As the time passed, I watched the end of my mapacho, burning in the darkness. I always know when the medicine is starting to take hold, because the glowing tip of whatever I happen to be smoking begins to leave trails of light behind it as I turn my head from side to side.

When this commenced and a dizziness set in, I took it as a sign to play the recording. I began rocking back and forth to the sound of the icaros. I often feel, in ceremony,  like some kind of snake being charmed by the songs, moving involuntarily to the sound of the music. This went on for a while, and vague images began to take shape. Scenes of houses in the country, a nuclear explosion that ripped apart a small town, some natural imagery. Then it started up in earnest. I’ll try to describe all of this as I saw it, but chronology is a tricky thing when it comes to Ayahuasca.

I was reprimanded, to begin with. For the last few ceremonies, I’ve been incessantly asking Ayahuasca about herself. Questions like:

“What are you?”

“Why are you helping us?”

“What are you getting out of this?”

Miky refers to the medicine as a grace. I’m still suspicious. I feel like there must be a trade-off for the knowledge we receive during our sojourn in the spirit world. And I’m fine with some kind of metaphysical quid pro quo, but I want to know the price she’s asking before I pay it.

Most times I’ve received (at best) vague responses, or simply silence. This time, however, she had an answer. Of sorts. She told me it was arrogant, wrongheaded and stupid of me to think that I could wrap my head around what she is, and what she’s been for uncounted millenia. She showed me how small, and relatively inconsequential I am as a human being compared to the myriad forms of existence out there. She put me in my place. I felt dwarfed. It seemed like I was standing in the shadow of some enormous, cosmic entity.

So I decided it was best this time around to just shut up and listen to what she had to say.

• Fabric of the Universe: The first thing I experienced was, as in ceremonies past, a vision of the traditional Shipibo textile design being overlayed on everything around me. My eyes were open, and as I looked about the room, I realized that the walls, the chair, the dresser, the ceiling, all were made up of the strange, geometrical patterns so often found embroidered on clothes and tapestries sold in this area of Peru. The designs got smaller, shrank down to the point that they were barely visible. It was then that I realized (or was told – I can’t remember) that somehow this pattern constitutes the underlying fabric of the material universe as we know it.  Many myths speak of a web of matter that’s spun together by some deity or another, which binds everything, and out of which the physical world was created. The Alchemists might call this the Prima Materia. Plato speaks of geometrical archetypes (the Platonic solids) that constitute the root of everything we witness on a day-to-day basis. And philosophers throughout the ages have all maintained that number, shape and symmetry are the only things that truly matter, and that they function as a kind of divine language, speaking to us of the things of God. Sacred geometry. All these thoughts flew through my mind as I watched the shimmering, Shipibo design slowly fade out of view.

• DNA: Suddenly I found myself standing next to some kind of large transparent tube, through which a variety of long, green serpents were rapidly moving. The tube emptied out into what felt like outer space. I vaguely remember seeing clusters of galaxies, spiraling out and glowing with incredible intensity, yellow and white. As I watched, the serpents combined, and gradually merged with one another into the classic double helix form. And suddenly they were no longer snakes, but vast amounts of coiled strands of DNA. I was told to keep watching, and suddenly the DNA blossomed, expanded into a shape that I can’t even describe, but which was vastly more complex than our own genetic material. I felt as though the double helix was multiplied by 6 or 7, and the individual coils were beautifully connected, and radiated outward, mimicking the galactic spirals in the distance. It was as though I was being shown the biological makeup of a being incredibly more advanced than myself. I thought of Francis Crick, the discoverer of the double helix form of DNA, and his theory of directed panspermia, which postulates that at some time in the distant past an unknown culture sent out pieces of its genetic material across the universe, in an attempt to guarantee the survival of their species. Crick, incidentally, first saw the double helix while under the influence of LSD. I was in complete awe. And then it was gone.

• The Garden of Eden: Still surrounded by the breathtaking expanses of the universe, some gigantic hand pulled a canopy over me and created a brand new environment. It was entirely crystalline, and composed of enormous trees that towered above my head, with some kind of unidentifiable fruit hanging down, just out of reach. The whole scene glittered like a diamond. The trees, in ordered rows, felt like they were constructed out of enormous, precious stones that refracted the light from an unseen source. Throughout most creation myths worldwide, you’ll find an island, the place where everything initially came into being. The Japanese refer to the jewel trees of paradise, and it’s found in the epic of Gilgamesh (described as the garden of the sun), the Bible, Indian religious epics, and on, and on… In the past, on numerous occasions, I’ve referred to Ayahuasca as “tangible mythology.” Experiences like this one are why.

• The Bridge: Here’s where I lose the chronology. At some point, I was laying on my back, staring up at the ceiling and listening to the icaros. I think I’ve mentioned before that my hands occasionally seem to take on a life of their own during the ceremony.  They started moving, dancing almost, looking serpentine, and kind of slithering this way and that. I stared at my right hand (painfully aware that I was the embodiment of the stereotypical “tripper” at this point), and it started to disintegrate. I saw pieces of it just kind of fly away. It reminded me of how fleeting the physical truly is, and how foolish and short-sighted I can be when I’m caught up in it. Anyway, as my hand continued to dance there in front of me, it began to beckon to a corner of the ceiling. My eyes were open throughout all of this. Suddenly, from that corner, a hole seemed to open up, and light came through and connected with my head. Following the light, a golden-yellow bridge (that’s inexact, but it’s the best way I can describe it) extended out and appeared to connect with the area immediately above my eyes. It felt like the light was carrying information of some kind, and that it was inserted directly into my brain, or my consciousness…something. There were vague shadows of figures at the far end of the bridge, that I could only barely make out. They seemed to be motioning to me. I was reminded of the Bifrost rainbow bridge from Norse mythology, connecting the world of the gods to the world of men. When whatever was happening was accomplished, the bridge retracted and the light receded and the portal closed. I don’t know what information was deposited in my head, but I was left with a strong suspicion that an enormous serpent had given birth to the world. Interestingly, Miky informed me this morning that according to Shipibo cosmology, a giant Anaconda is responsible for dreaming the world into existence. Still not sure what to do with that, exactly.

• Light: At one point, I was laying on my side, and was bothered by the little green light flickering on my computer. I tried to cover it up, and then I thought I’d ask Ayahuasca a question. I’d been thinking about the electromagnetic spectrum a bit, sound and light waves, so I asked her to tell me something about the nature of light. To show me how it works. She’s been fairly generous in answering my questions of late (those not pertaining to her), and last night was no exception. Soon after I’d asked the question, she showed me light, radiating out from a central source in an arc. It was made clear to me that all light is part of a circle, or a circuit, a closed loop. We see an infinitesimally small portion of it, and assume it to be linear. But (so says Ayahuasca) it’s not. I don’t know what that means exactly. I need to think about it. Toward the end of the ceremony, threads of light from outside of the room made their way through my curtains. I reached out and plucked them like guitar strings. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around that.

• The Circle and Duality: Following the lesson on light, I was placed in the center of a giant circle, which itself was situated in some kind of nebulous, red-tinted version of outer space. I focused on the point of the circle directly ahead of me, and suddenly, my eyes divided, each moving around the side of my head in opposite directions, tracing the limits of the circle surrounding me. This was an odd physical sensation. As my eyes met in the back of my head, they joined together and came up and over, following the medial longitudinal fissure of the brain that divides it into two hemispheres. They followed that path until coming to rest just between my eyebrows, where I felt a very interesting, activating sensation. I know any mention of a “third eye” sounds all too New Agey, but this is an honest record of what I experienced last night, and it has to be included. The lesson here was that in some sense, the observer creates duality. Without our perception, it wouldn’t exist. And yet that begs the question: why are we made to perceive in a dualistic fashion? It might be a chicken and egg situation. What I feel comfortable saying is that there is a relationship between the circle (which is always the symbol used in myth and philosophy to describe the undivided whole that preceded manifested existence) and duality. It’s a general statement, I know. I have yet to figure this particular vision out completely. It may just be something felt, something that’s beyond communication. I thought of the Ouroboros serpent, devouring its own tail.

There were a few other things, as well, but they don’t really need to be discussed. I had to wipe a lot of fuzziness off of myself during the ceremony. I would look at my hands and arms, and they appeared distorted, like I was viewing them through cataracts. When I wiped my hand along the parts of myself that were blurred, the gunk that was responsible for the distortion was removed, and I could see my limbs clearly again. It’s happened before, and it’s very strange.

At some point in the middle of the visions I recorded above, I vomited. Hard. The bucket got its fill.

That’s it for today.

10 Days in Paoyan – Part Nine, General Observations

I’ve been home for about 10 days now. It’s given me some time to digest the experience that I’ve reported over the last eight posts, and to let the knowledge that was imparted to me during the dieta settle a bit. I’ll keep this brief.

As I typed up the journal entries that I wrote over the course of the 10 days spent in Paoyan, I realized that some of them don’t exactly reflect my current outlook. Part three, for instance, was a gushing, emotional and personal recognition of a universal love that I’d chosen to ignore up until that point. And as I transcribed part eight last night, I was reminded of the intense flood of happiness and joy that washed over me following the close of the final ceremony.

As much as I value those revelatory experiences, I have been shown many times since returning that it’s necessary to temper my words somewhat, and to tailor my actions to my audience, to a certain extent. This is not to say that I believe we should smother the kindness or love or gratitude that we feel toward other people, or that we should don whichever mask is most appropriate depending upon our present company. But in thinking on the reactions of others, and how our words can have such a profound effect, I do believe that to function in this world we have a responsibility to channel that ever-present, universal love into the most constructive methods of building relationships that we possibly can. Different tools for different jobs. If we become so swept away by cosmic truths that we alienate others, what good are we?

Miky likes to talk about Ayahuasca as a medicine that can put us in right relationship with every living thing on the planet. He said the other night that it’s a good idea not to become “too spiritual” and also to avoid sliding away in the opposite direction. Walk the middle path. I tend to agree with that. Part of what appeals to me about Ayahuasca is that it starts from the gutter, and works up. There’s no pretense, no show, no smiley glad hands (to borrow a phrase). In fact, it’s mainly burping, coughing, farting, vomiting and shitting, with occasional bouts of feverish shaking thrown in for good measure. And yet, juxtaposed with all of that are sublime, spiritual revelations and personal insights that far outstrip the results of any conventional, therapeutic method or organized religious system that I’m aware of. Blissful heights and the bowels of hell. And that’s life. And any valid spiritual path, in my opinion, should recognize those two extremes, and embrace them both as necessary components of the human experience.

There’s a great Tom Waits song that begins “I like my town / With a little drop of poison”. And that’s probably my approach to spirituality these days, too. Without the poison, you’re ignoring a huge part of day-to-day existence.

I guess what this boils down to is honesty. I think we have to take frank and unflinching stock of the ugliness within ourselves, some of which we’ve sought out and some of which has been forced upon us, before we can hope to rid ourselves of it. And even when the healing process is nearing something like completion, the knowledge that our own past afflictions afforded us should never be discarded, or held at arm’s length, but utilized to provide help to others that want it. The world’s got no need for more breathlessly indignant prophets screeching about repentance. I think what we need now are real doctors, real saints, working quietly.

If that’s a bit muddled, it’s because I’m still processing. It’s a blog.

I also want to comment that the men and women who participated in this dieta couldn’t have been better. It’s rare, I think, to find even one person in the course of your life who really wants to cut the shit and get down to brass tacks. To skip the chit chat and focus on what’s important. And here were ten, gathered together in a little hut in the middle of the jungle, freely sharing experiences and observations. Really incredible.

The lessons that I learned during this first dieta in Paoyan will stay with me. I still feel that wellspring of love deep within me, and that’s still new, and somewhat difficult to properly direct at times. But it feels more useful now, less sloppy and wide-eyed. And that’s good.

I don’t want to over analyze this, so I’ll stop here. But before I do, one last thing: experiential knowledge is fantastically more rewarding than anything I’ve ever read in a book. I’d recommend it. It’s a trip.

10 Days in Paoyan – Part Eight

April 26th

Two things happened last night, at the final ceremony of the dieta, the Arcana ceremony. First, as you’d expect from the name, we received our Arcana, and closed our diets. Second, as perhaps I should’ve expected from the Nourayou dieta, I vomited, wretched, shook and heaved harder than I can remember in my life.

As the time to drink approached, my throat began to swell up again, and I asked Miky about it. He seemed to think that it was brought on by overexertion in the jungle during the hike the day before. Gilberto seemed unconcerned, and so we got ready to drink.

The dose was less this time, a little more than half of that of the previous two nights. Miky said this was because Arcana ceremonies are about, well, the Arcana, whereas the previous ceremonies were focused on healing. Not that healing doesn’t take place in the Arcana, it’s just not the central point. So I was expecting a less intense, less trying experience than those of the preceding nights. How foolish.

Just before the Arcana was to be administered by Gilberto, I started to wretch. I took my bucket with me as we gathered around the Maestro, and he began to sing to us. As he sang, my stomach turned, and I adjusted my position a little so that if and when I threw up, it wouldn’t be too close to the others. Gilberto blessed us, making the rounds from dietero to dietero, slowly. Luckily, he’d started with the person immediately to my left, otherwise I don’t think I would’ve been able to make it.

Following the blessing, I feebly scooted back to my mat (mercifully close by), and upon reaching it, in a near prone position, puked my guts out. But this was only the beginning. Some of the vomit made it past my inflamed throat, but some did not. And the solid material that my body so desperately wanted to expel didn’t even have a chance. Once the heaving abated for a moment, I collapsed onto my mat, shivering from the cold, shaking from the purge, and unable to move.

The physical exertion of vomiting, I find, can bring about intense visual phenomena. As I lay there, my eyes moving about the room, patterns started to appear and to overlay physical reality. Then the heaving started again. I forced myself up with one arm, and kind of propped my head directly over my bucket, waiting for the release. My stomach rejected the sickness inside of it, and I felt the surge of thick liquid as it traveled up my esophagus and made it’s way toward my mouth. But as it worked its way higher and higher up my throat, the passageway constricted, and the best I could do was spit out little droplets of the putrid sludge. The rest was forced back down, into my stomach, which in turn caused further heaving. This back and forth continued for some time. I don’t know how long, exactly, but it was a good while, maybe four hours or so.

It resulted in a good deal of pain, both in my stomach, which wanted to rid itself of the refuse, and in my throat, which simply wouldn’t let it happen. Due, I think, to the physical intensity of the experience, the patterns that I mentioned earlier became incredibly vibrant and intense. The only way I can think to communicate what I was seeing is to say that it was as if radiant, neon threads of orange, green, red had actually been sewn into the fabric of reality itself. And they had been arranged in designs that I was familiar with from the various Shipibo textiles I’d seen. I wrote previously that in one of the ceremonies of this dieta, I saw orange, glowing beads draped around Papa Miky. During this experience, as I looked around at everyone present, both the dieteros and the maestros were covered, practically wrapped, in the same beaded, orange necklaces.

Visions of spirals, concentric circles radiating outwards like ripples in a pond, shimmering eyes, and other images danced around me as I lay on my mat, completely fatigued and mentally begging for it all to stop. I’d never reached that point before. That was new. I’d never actually wanted it to stop. But there I was, thinking “Christ, how long can this last?”

Finally, toward the end of the ceremony, I started to become a bit concerned. Most people, including Miky, had stretched out on their mats to fall asleep for the last few hours of the early morning, and I was still wretching. So I tapped Miky on the leg, and he crawled over. I remember squeaking out something like “This stuff can’t get past my throat.”

He told me to drink some water, which I did, slowly. I don’t remember exactly what he did after that. He may have awakened Gilberto, or someone, because suddenly the icaros started up again. I know he sang, I remember that. And as he did, the contractions in my stomach increased, and in turn my will to force that shit out of me intensified, and I decided to put my remaining energy into bringing it up.

It didn’t work. I seized and gagged and dry heaved and coughed, but finally after many attempts, I had to collapse back onto my mat. I was spent, and just praying for everything to end, praying for a chance to sleep. I remember Miky crawled over, and I started to sit up, but he told me to just stay on the mat. He pulled out a bottle of Agua Florida and began to whistle an icaro into it. I was motionless, trying not to disturb my stomach, which had gone quiet for the time being. When Miky finished, he gave me the bottle, and told me to drink just a little bit of the perfumed liquid inside. I remember him telling me that it was strong, and to only have a small amount. I put it to my lips and tilted my head back. Boy, he wasn’t lying. It burnt a bit going down, but it felt pleasant to taste something other than dried saliva, regurgitated Ayahuasca, and the smallest bits of whatever we’d had for lunch.

I put my head back on the rolled up shirt I was using for a pillow, and waited. As time passed, maybe an hour or so, the need to vomit decreased, and I began to gag less frequently. Finally, thankfully, it stopped. And I sat up.

If anyone tells you that Ayahuasca is just a recreational drug, and simply another form of escapism, feel free to give them my contact information.

Here now, in my opinion, is the weirdest part of this whole experience. Despite the fact that last night was probably the most trying ceremony I’ve ever been through, and despite the fact that it felt relentlessly, physically racking, I awakened this morning with the lightest and most pervasive joy I’ve felt in a very long time. It’s that love I’ve been writing about. It started this morning, and has continued up until now. I feel like I have a limitless reserve of patience, compassion, understanding, happiness, and again…love. I’m actually forcing myself to keep a lid on it, but I can’t quite seem to wipe this stupid grin off my face. I’m not used to this.

Additionally, when I woke up this morning my throat was completely clear, with absolutely no signs or symptoms of what I experienced last night.

As I write this, we’re crammed inside the cargo hold of an old, rusted ship on our way back to Yarina. We’ll be traveling like this for about 15 hours. And yet, I’m intensely happy. And more than that, I feel overwhelmed by gratitude toward everyone that I experienced this with, toward Ayahuasca herself, and toward God. I’m sure this will fade, slowly, but these kinds of moments are incredibly rare. For now I’m just enjoying the ride.

Alright, that’s all for today.

10 Days in Paoyan – Part Seven

April 25th

We took a jungle hike yesterday, to see the various trees and plants we’ve all been dieting, or that we might in the future. When we returned, I started to experience severe pain in my throat, and it began to swell up and was sore to the touch. I don’t know why exactly. But as I knew that Miky was going to give most of us a full cup that evening (“the warrior’s dose”) I became a bit concerned about physically getting the medicine down (to say nothing of its return journey).

When he came around, I took it in two swallows again, and on the second I had to really work to suppress my gag reflex. Several people began to vomit before the icaros began, but it didn’t kick in for me until about an hour into the ceremony.

I was lying on my mat, in my usual fetal position, and I realized fairly quickly that I needed to vomit, and that it was coming. I sat up. By this time I’d begun to talk with Ayahuasca, and she encouraged me to purge, to make the effort to get it out. I agreed (like I had a choice), but I asked her to take out whatever was causing the swelling at the same time. She said she would, so I sat up and eventually it came flooding out of my mouth. It hurt my throat, but not as much as I’d expected. After shaking a bit, I collapsed back onto my mat. It was freezing, and my teeth chattered as I worked to stretch my little poncho over my body in an effort to warm up.

I asked Ayahuasca if she’d gotten the sickness along with everything else in my stomach. It’s a very strange experience, talking to a plant in your body. She said that some of it had come out, but that I’ll deal with it in ceremony again tomorrow night. After that I should be fine. She said I could purge further if I wanted to remove it completely, but I couldn’t move, and that was okay.

Of course, I took this all with a grain of salt, and decided on a “wait and see” approach. If some of whatever was causing the swelling had actually been expelled, I could expect fewer symptoms and less pain come morning. If it was all just my imagination, then my throat would likely be the same, or worse, by sunrise.

I awakened this morning and the symptoms had decreased. As the day has progressed, they’ve decreased further. Draw your own conclusions.

I want to quickly jot this down, as it’s on my mind. In our lives, as we chase after the love and favor of another person, we’ve (I’ve) got to remember that at the end there is just one love, one beauty, that’s reflected in all of us, more or less strongly. We’re like men dying of thirst surrounded all the time by oceans of the purest water. I’ve been blind to this, in some sense willfully, for a long while.

To continue with the ceremony: there was a point when my mind wandered, and I felt delirious, and I decided to try to call out to spirits, to see if they’d come, to see if they’d interact with me in a more tangible sense than I’d hitherto experienced. There are numerous kinds of spirit interactions in the world of Ayahuasca. Some I’ve read about, some I’ve heard about from others. In some cases, ayahuasqueros and long-time drinkers will even intermingle, marry and start a family with these beings. When I called to them, I immediately saw a figure, very far off and looking native, standing on at the water’s edge of a large river with his hand raised. But the person was obscured by an enormous cloud of insects, swarming between him and myself. Insects, as I’ve written previously, have so far symbolized the sickness inside of me, and have indicated my need to purge. The message was immediately clear: this kind of interaction will come, but in a long time, after more ceremonies and more cleaning than I cared to contemplate at that moment.

I thought about the Ayahuasca in my vomit bucket. I stared down into it and saw what looked like a hundred eyes looking up at me. It looked as though things were swimming around inside of it, as well. I wondered how it worked; how did this plant take from us all of the negativity, the accumulated shit of a lifetime? And a thought came, that was half mine, and half Ayahuasca’s, if that makes sense. This medicine absorbs the sickness in the same way that the Agua Florida absorbs the icaros. It takes it into itself, and is imprinted by all of our afflictions, and then forces us to reject it, carrying all of our sadness and turmoil and struggle outside of our bodies. The phrase “takes upon himself the sins of the world” came to mind. Afterwards, I asked Papa Miky about it, as I felt that it may have constituted more imagination than insight. He agreed and confirmed the validity of the thought, however.

Other things transpired during the ceremony, but there’s only one more realization that I’d like to mention. At one point, it felt like Ayahuasca was being quite playful with me, and it brought me a good deal of joy. Suddenly she said, “Let’s write a story together!” I laughed out loud and said no – I wanted to continue working. A little while later, she brought it up again. I remember that I smiled, and agreed. She asked me what we should write, and I drew a complete blank. I told her that I had no idea what to write, or even how to write in that state. I could barely formulate coherent sentences. All of the sudden we were at a large blackboard, and her hand guided mine, and I seemed to be tracing out cursive letters like I used to in elementary school. I didn’t know what to make of all of this, and I found it generally amusing, until all at once the intention was made clear. Ayahuasca was connecting me to my writing, reminding me of how much I enjoy it, why I started to begin with, the reasons that I should continue.

As these thoughts and memories came flooding back, I was overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude toward Ayahuasca and God, and I saw clearly (in series of flashing scenes) that throughout my life, God has, either himself (I use the words “God” and “himself” for simplicity’s sake, but think of the concept however you please) or via others, always been willing to raise me up from the very bottom, as a child, and to teach me all that I require, starting from nothing. It struck me. Infinite patience, infinite love, always present.

10 Days in Paoyan – Part Six

April 23rd

The ceremony last night kicked my ass.

When Miky came around, he gave me quite a large dose of the medicine, a full cup. I can usually get it all back in one quick shot. But this was too much, so I drank half, and then drained the rest. I didn’t dare think about it, as I knew that if I were to really consider the taste, the texture, the smell, I wouldn’t be able to keep it down. I’ve found that the thought of drinking is actually much worse than the experience itself. Usually.

I entered this ceremony in a very positive state of mind. I was open to whatever I was about to experience, and I think this facilitated Ayahuasca’s work. I was intent on only one thing, really, and that was to concentrate and watch, as Miky often encourages us to do. The visions came and went, and I let them, and didn’t attempt to analyze. I remember a few things.

There was a scene of a kind of corridor, suspended in the midst of a nebulous, red and purple space. The colors remind me, upon reflection, of the pictures I’ve seen from the Hubble. But the corridor was made up of men and women, human bodies, suspended, and their limbs were hanging down. One of the men fell out of his position, and he collided with the legs of the others as he kind of floated down and away, like he was in some sort of zero gravity environment.

That passed, and I continued to experience other visions and began to converse with Ayahuasca. Suddenly, it seemed like the Q&A portion of the ceremony, and for some reason, I asked “What does Ayahuasca know?” Immediately I felt the inadequacy and futility of my query. And there was laughter, and she said “What a Western question.” And then I saw her, for the first time. She was a beautiful woman, dark, with thick bands of color across her face, and she had this knowing smile. Her face came out of the darkness, and I saw it for just a moment, and then it was obscured by the shadows again. She looked amused, and understanding, and gently admonishing. Amazing.

There was another instance (I have absolutely no idea of the chronology of these visions, by the way, as time is impossible to reckon during the ceremony) when a black serpent appeared, looking menacing. I reminded myself of Miky’s statement. Concentrate and watch. And I wasn’t frightened, and I opened myself to whatever it was. And it looked at me for a moment, and then it lunged, and I saw its mouth open and its fangs extend, and I was bitten, but felt no pain. It seemed to smile as it slunk back into the darkness, and it was replaced by a kind of white smoke that took the shape of a human skull. It was clearly death. And at that point, I became afraid. And my thoughts started to run away and I began contemplating what this all meant. Was it a warning? A threat? A spiritual attack? Did it poison me somehow? But the words that I’d made my mantra for the ceremony came back: “concentrate and watch.” So I let my fear and questions go, and just tried to watch. And the visions progressed.

There were two, maybe three times as well that I recognized the presence of Chiricsanango. I didn’t see the spirit, but it was associated with a physical symptom that I’ve never experienced in ceremony and that felt somehow foreign to Ayahuasca. This was an intense rush of blood to the head and incredible dizziness, the same that I’d felt after drinking the plant both times. I was surprised, and hesitated to trust my identification of this presence with Chiric, as I thought it would take longer to experience. But by the third time it happened, I was convinced and no longer doubted.

At some point during all of this I started vomiting. I vomited hard. I could feel the remnants of the fish and rice we had for lunch swim back up my throat and kind of explode into the bowl in front of me. My belly emptied – I remember knowing when it was completely drained. But I wasn’t done. I heaved and strained, finding little bits of Ayahuasca hidden away in the deep recesses of me. I vomited from my toenails. I pushed the bucket away, now at least half full, and stretched out on my mat. I began to think, for some reason, about vomiting particular experiences. I knew I wasn’t finished purging. I thought about my ex, my family, myself, nothing resonated. Then the depressive thoughts began to return, but I caught myself before I really started to entertain them.

And then it hit me: there is a part of myself that is in love with my sadness, my sickness, and that part is what’s preventing me from letting go of all the negative shit inside. That’s what I wanted to vomit. And the moment I realized this, a little creature appeared in front of me, looking like a cross between a gopher and a rat. I knew immediately that it was that part of me personified. There were others, too, as the night progressed, that I identified with jealousy, vanity, etc… but they weren’t the problem. It all came down to that little fucker who wouldn’t let anything go, that loved and protected the rest of my sins.

So I started chasing him throughout my body. I wanted to catch him, and I wanted to throw him up, to expel him from me completely. He mocked me, and taunted me as I did my best to lay hold of him. I attempted to vomit, with limited success, throughout the rest of the ceremony. I wretched until I was bringing up bile, and it burnt my throat and mouth. But I couldn’t catch him. He’d told me I wouldn’t. (But I fucking will.)

Later in the ceremony I realized that this thing I’d been chasing was just a manifestation that Ayahuasca had utilized in order to make it easier for me to remove that aspect of myself. It wasn’t a separate entity, it was just another part of me. The vision was necessary, however, and it helped me to identify what I need to rid myself of.

One more thing I’ll record: I’ve said before that I’ve been shown in numerous ways that I need love. More accurately, I need to learn to accept the love that’s always present. And there was a point in ceremony when I thought on this, and expected to feel that dearth of affection that I’ve experienced up until this point. But I couldn’t find that emptiness, that lack. I searched myself, but it wasn’t there. I was very surprised. Even now, as I write this, though I know I’m still searching for it, it’s not so palpable a want as it was before. This is just one example of many that I could recount of Ayahuasca’s healing ability which I’ve experienced in my short time spent drinking.

Tomorrow’s ceremony will be powerful. It is the 4th and last before the Arcana ceremony, and I expect that the healing will be deep and intense.

10 Days in Paoyan – Part One

This post and those following are reproduced directly from the personal journal that I kept for the duration of the 10 day dieta in Paoyan. It’s largely unedited, and some of it is descriptive, some of it pure flow of consciousness. I dieted a plant called Chiricsanango, which works on your central nervous system, focuses you, causes you to dream, and strengthens your physical and spiritual body. The schedule was as follows:

4.18

Drink Ayahuasca, open dieta

4.19

Drink first dose of Chiricsanango

4.20

Drink Ayahuasca

4.21

Drink second and final dose of Chiricsanango

4.22

Drink Ayahuasca

4.23

Free evening

4.24

Drink Ayahuasca

4.25

Drink Ayahuasca, receive Arcana, close dieta

4.26

Depart from Paoyan, reach Yarina around midnight on the 27th

Most of the journal entries record the previous day’s events. Many of the entries are somewhat disconnected, as I simply wrote down whatever came to me, without much concern for the quality of the narrative. A further note: it’s 6 AM. I’ve slept for about 8 hours in the last 72, so expect typos. Why not sleep, you say? I…I don’t…know. Enjoy.

April 18th

We arrived early this morning, around 4:00AM. As we drifted along the river in the rusted, metal boat, swaying gently in our hammocks, my thoughts were divided. There was a part of me intent on the work I was coming to do, and there was a part lost in thoughts of friends, family and things spread across two continents.

This morning, however, I awakened with renewed focus. I’m dealing with a touch of physical sickness, as well, and I’ve found that I’m most receptive to spiritual realities when my body is impaired somehow. As I’ve experienced over the last few months, it’s only when material stability is removed that we are forced to remember what’s important in this life. I can only speak for myself here, but I find that when things are going well, I become blind to the spirit and develop an increased dependence upon the false sense of security that things like relationships, friends, jobs, and various other manifestations of worldly success bring.

I know that tonight the Ayahuasca will begin to address my physical problems, so I’m not too worried about it. And as of now, I’m simply relying on the knowledge that I’m not this physical body. As I wrote of my experience during a ceremony at Tierra Vida, I was made to experience my limbs as strangers to me, foreign, like I was wearing a “skin suit.” That’s stuck with me.

Today, I’ve found myself dwelling on a quote by Vivekananda that’s applicable, I think, no matter what your spiritual background. It goes like this: “Hear day and night that you are the soul. Repeat it to yourself day and night, until it enters your very veins, till it tingles in every drop of blood, till it is in your flesh and bone. Let the whole body be full of that one ideal, ‘I am the birthless, the deathless, the blissful, the omniscient, the omnipotent, ever-glorious Soul.’ Think on it day and night; think on it till it becomes part and parcel of your life. Meditate upon it, and out of that will come work.”

Alright, to it:

We got to the boat at about 4pm. There was a scheduled departure time of 4:30, and this particular boat was supposed to be fairly powerful (comparatively), so we were all looking forward to an early arrival and a decent night’s sleep. This being Peru, it didn’t work out exactly as expected. After loading up our bags and supplies, we were informed that the captain was missing. Additionally, we were told that we were waiting on another truck full of cargo to arrive. So we killed time, smoking cigarettes and mapachos, eating sweetened crackers sold by the swarming vendors, and sharing our various experiences with Ayahuasca and assorted hallucinogens.

We also used the time to string our hammocks side by side down the length of the boat. There were 12 of us traveling together, all told, and with the rest of the passengers bound for Paoyan, it made for a bit of a tight fit. But it was fine, and around 7:30 or so, the boat’s motor started up, and it slowly began to reverse into the lake that connected to the Ucayali River, which would take us to the little Shipibo village about 12-15 hours north of Pucallpa.

My intention, as I said, was firmly directed toward the work I was about to embark upon. I wasn’t excited, I wasn’t nervous, I felt determined. But my conscious thoughts were with the people back home in the States. As an undercurrent to all of this, I was surrounded by a tremendous sense of peace that came from knowing that this was exactly where I was supposed to be, that I was doing (for probably the first time in years) exactly what I was supposed to be doing. Many thoughts, that I won’t get into here, came and went, and something in me rested content above them all.

When we arrived, we disembarked and followed Papa Miky through yards of deep, black mud toward our sleeping quarters and what would serve as our ceremonial space. During the rainy season, much of Poayan is completely inundated and inaccessible. Even now, the waters have yet to completely recede, and our hut is currently surrounded by about 3-4 feet of water. Thankfully, the Shipibo villagers had built us a makeshift bridge the day before our arrival, and we cautiously crossed it and climbed the few stairs to our rooms. The mats we’d be sleeping on were still piled in the rafters of the large hut, and a few of the Shipibo women climbed up to retrieve them for us. Suddenly, there was a clamoring and the women retreated back to the floor, looking frightened and saying something about “juergon.” I knew this word. It signified a kind of poisonous viper. Papa Miky came over and peered into the rafters for himself. There was definitely a big damn snake up there, in amongst the mats.

Antonio, Gilberto’s son, climbed up to investigate. After an anxious moment of everyone gathering around, staring up in silence and awaiting the verdict, he announced that it was only a Boa. He grabbed the snake by the head, and it constricted around his arm. He came down and presented his catch to a room full of wide-eyed gringos. Lots of pictures, as you can imagine. We all got as close as we dared, and snapped photo after photo, until he released the snake in the middle of the floor, and it slithered toward the edge of the hut and moved toward the water. It was interpreted as a good omen.

After that bit of excitement, we hung our mosquito nets around our mats (no covering on the windows, and no doors). Antonio helped those of us who needed it, and we made our way to our rooms where we all collapsed and slept for a while until breakfast. When we awoke, we were served a delicious soup made from majas, which is basically a kind of enormous jungle rodent. This was followed by a lunch of piranha. Snakes, giant rats and carnivorous fish. Quite the introduction.

We’re all looking forward to getting this work underway. I still don’t know exactly what to expect. I’m anxiously awaiting the ceremony tonight. It’s beautiful here.

Tierra Vida Ceremony 1 – 4.9.13

So, I’m gonna post this here today, despite the fact that I haven’t finished the account of the dieta. The following ceremony was just held last night, and I want to get it down while it’s still fresh. Excuse any typos, I’m tired.

Let’s just jump right in. Papa Miky contacted me and invited me to a ceremony at a retreat called Tierra Vida, located on an island in the middle of a small lake about 5 minutes or so from my apartment. Over the previous week, following the completion of the dieta, I’d been dying to continue the work, and so I again jumped at the opportunity.

I met Miky and Paul, an Englishman who lives in Pucallpa, at the hotel, and we hired a mototaxi that drove us to the lake. The rest of the group was already there waiting for us, and after a few minutes spent chatting we all hopped into a little wooden boat and shoved off for Tierra Vida.

It was about a 15-20 minute boat ride to the retreat, which (as I’d been told previously) was quite a bit nicer than the setting of the dieta. The maloka was surrounded by a grassy field and enclosed by high vegetation, which lent it a more sanctified appearance. The bathrooms were indoors and connected to the maloka, which is one hell of a luxury, and there was a water dispenser beyond the bathrooms at the end of the hall. What I wouldn’t have given for that during the first ceremony of the dieta.

The shaman who conducted the ceremony is named Gilberto, and he’s the same man with whom Papa Miky was working in Pisac, when I drank my first cup of Ayahuasca. He’s also Benji’s brother, and I’d heard nothing but good things from those who’d spent time working with him previously. I was looking forward to this ceremony, as I had high hopes that the medicine would be strong. It didn’t disappoint.

As the rest of the group got set up in the maloka, I went outside to read a bit in the last light of the day. I’d brought Graham Hancock’s Supernatural with me. That book’s gotten a lot of use. I’ve read it three times, I think, but it contains such a wealth of information that I find myself constantly referring back to it. I opened the book just as Papa Miky and his student, Jan, emerged from the maloka. They were discussing a book by Kim MacQuarrie called The Last Days of the Incas. Papa Miky suggested I might enjoy it, and we got to talking about the history of the Incas and their relationship to the Shipibo. Eventually, the conversation turned to the antiquity of Ayahuasca and I asked if there were any specific legends regarding its origin. Apparently the legends state that Ayahuasca is 10,000 years old, if not older, and Jan mentioned that he’d been reading about a sealed clay vessel containing Ayayhuasca that was recently discovered in Ecuador and dated to roughly 8,000 years ago (6000 BC). Papa Miky then related to me the Shipibo legend of the beginnings of Ayahuasca. It goes like this:

There once was a mapacho healer, who was growing old and was soon to die. He told his people, however, that he would not leave them entirely alone, but would give them something that they could use to access the spirit world and heal themselves. So, when the time came, he went and stood against an old tree, arms outstretched, and died standing upright. Out of his body grew the Ayahuasca vines, and they coiled around him. Then his wife sat down in front of him, inside a traditional Shipibo pot, and she died as well. From her body came forth the chacruna leaves (containing the concentrated DMT) which are boiled with the Ayahuasca vines to make the hallucinogenic brew we were all about to drink.

I find these kinds of stories fascinating. I had a few questions, but I thought I’d save them for another time. The bugs were starting to come out, and Miky and Jan took a walk, presumably to speak with the dieteros (individuals  undertaking a dieta) who were staying on the island and would be joining us for the ceremony.

I went back inside, as the almost certainly carcinogenic deet I’d lathered myself in seemed to have absolutely no effect on the insects’ ravenous appetites. After some time spent in quiet thought, the dieteros trickled in, eventually followed by Jan, Miky, and lastly, Gilberto. I had noticed during the interval that my thoughts were more chaotic, less organized, less focused than they were during the dieta ceremonies that I’d undertaken previously. This chaos was to prove the main opposition to real work for the first hour or so of the ceremony.

When it was time to drink, Papa Miky went from person to person, sizing each of us up and doling out a dose of the putrid medicine accordingly. It was thin, much like the first dieta, but it packed a punch. I spit for a few minutes, and washed my mouth out with a swig of water as Miky finished his rounds and took his place on the mat in the center of the room next to Gilberto.

I want to mention something here.  As I stated in my previous post, the Ayahuasca is kept inside large 1-3 liter soda bottles and poured out into a small, glass cup for the participants. The shamans on the other hand (in this case Miky and Gilberto) always drink directly from the bottle, tilting their heads back and drinking what can only honestly be described as a heroic dose of the brew, sucking down the foul tasting liquid like men dying of thirst. It’s quite a sight to see, and a bit nauseating to contemplate.

Again, the candles were blown out and we sat there in darkness for a while, waiting on the medicine. Immediately after drinking, I started to experience a pain, a burning in my stomach. I didn’t think it would be very long until I vomited. One or two of the dieteros on the other side of the room began vomiting before the icaros even started up, and they seemed to continue vomiting for a good long time, throughout the ceremony.

The icaros are what did it for me. I was starting to feel dizzy, the pain in my stomach was growing, but I wasn’t drunk. When Miky started singing, the song pulled me down deep, fast. I had to lie down. Suddenly that directionless chaos inside my head started playing games. Thoughts, both negative and positive, started assailing me. I tried helplessly to make sense of it all, to sort the bad from the good, to identify the sources of influence, but I couldn’t. So I laid there, starting to writhe and twitch (as I’m wont to do for some reason, but I’ll get into that another time), and desperately trying to differentiate between my ego, Ayahuasca, and/or negative forces that I didn’t want to experience. I felt too physically weak to sit up for a while. This is what I saw, and what I thought (in no particular order) during that time:

1. One of the first things I remember is coming into contact with my arms as I burrowed my head into my poncho. Suddenly, I realized that the arms weren’t mine. They somehow didn’t belong to me. It was like rubbing up against someone else. The same went for the legs. I very quickly felt a foreigner in my own body, which I’ve never experienced like that before. I thought at the time it was as though I was wearing a “skin suit.”

2. With my eyes closed, I recognized a new depth to the visions. Up until this point, I’d been shown scenes for the most part, as though they were projected onto a giant screen inside my head. This was different. When I closed my eyes, there was volume, depth, dimension. This is normal for people who have some experience with Ayahuasca, but for me, it was a new phenomenon. As I stared into the darkness, which felt like it had some vague geometric form to it, suddenly right in front of my face a pair of eyes opened. It was as though I’d been looking at a pair of shut eyelids the entire time, and they simply decided to open up. It was startling. I opened my eyes for a moment, and when I closed them again, whatever I’d seen was gone.

3. As I tried to sort out the competing “voices” in my head, and identify exactly where they were coming from, I felt myself getting concerned that I was losing my grip on reality. So I tried to think of certainties, things beyond question, to calm down. My thoughts went to God. Somewhere in the back of my head I remembered a story that Strassman told in his DMT: The Spirit Molecule about a man who, after taking a large dose of DMT intravenously, was set upon by evil little creatures who were tearing him apart. The one thought that he could successfully cling to was “God is love.” I gave it a shot, but immediately the thought was shot down from a thousand angles and sources that I wasn’t able to identify. I couldn’t justify it. So I cut out the “love” and stuck with “God is.” That seemed to work.

4. Again, I was shown extremely vivid images of decay, this time concentrated on the human body. I saw the limbs and appendages of numerous people in front of me, all beautiful, and then they aged and rotted and fell apart. I refer you to my previous post.

5. As I hugged the ground, trying to hold on to any one thought, feeling, emotion for more than a couple of seconds, trying to find some order, my attention went again to my ex-girlfriend (I mentioned this in my last post). But, immediately upon thinking of her, I was shown some kind of black, seeping liquid, and told in no uncertain terms that the memories I had were poison. I needed to discard them. So I did.

6. I was aware that I needed to vomit, but I didn’t want to do it right away. Not only that, I really wasn’t sure if I could lift myself off of the ground. I felt incredibly weak, physically. Whenever I resisted the idea of throwing up, however, disgusting images of insects in the corners of dirty rooms, and crawling out of sinks and stained toilets, flooded into my mind. This has happened before, though I haven’t posted about it yet.

As I shook pathetically in a fetal position on the floor, feeling at the mercy of my own thoughts, feeling unable to regain control of the situation, suddenly a very clear voice said: “Are you going to get up and do some work or are you just going to lie on the floor and play games with yourself all night?” At that, immediately a sharp and dramatic distinction was made between the nonsense flying around my skull and real work. So I tried to get up, because I knew the first step was vomiting. I felt too weak and fell back on the floor. I was disappointed in myself. Then the voice came back: “You’re a fighter.” I took some pride in that, as I’ve always fought and struggled against, well, everything. But my fighting, lacking direction, boils down to self-destructive anger. I knew that before the ceremony, and I know it now. And then the voice said: “Fight the right things.” It was a simple and obvious truth, and one I needed to hear. So I pushed myself up. I grabbed my vomit bucket, and held that in front of me. I was angry now. Maybe at myself, maybe at whatever was in my stomach, maybe even at the voice. Probably all three. So I white-knuckled the bowl, feeling like I might tear it apart. Unlike the last time I vomited, however, it didn’t just come. In the final ceremony of the dieta, I simply sat up and it pretty much streamed out of my mouth. There wasn’t any stopping it. This time was different.

I held that position for a little while, rocking back and forth to the icaros, with my muscles tense and my eyes wide, gripping the rim of the bowl in front of me. Miky came around to everyone and gave a blessing, though truth be told, I don’t remember that very well. The singing started again, went on for a while, and then stopped. Gilberto began to work with the dieteros. I was shaking, still gripping the bowl and doing what I could to “fight the right things.” Then I noticed that Papa Miky had sat down in front of me. This was a relief, because I knew that I could get this thing (I had started to feel as though it was some living piece of negative energy) out of me if he sang. He began to sing. I don’t know for how long, but I know that all of my energy was concentrated on forcing whatever was inside, outside. I kept trying to heave, to dredge my stomach for this vile little creature living within me. I remember swearing a few times, muttering something like “C’mon fucker.” It took a while. As Miky sang, my senses were more and more captivated. At one point I thought to myself: “This must be what it feels like to be under a spell.” I saw phosphorescent lines, triangles with eyes in them, glowing in the darkness. My vision was taken over by the icaro. I continued to heave, to force the thing up. Finally, it started. I vomited once or twice, getting some on my pants (it was dark and hard to see the bowl). But I wasn’t done. After a few more moments, I really threw up, and I felt as though the body of whatever little evil was inside of me came up my throat and out my mouth.

At that moment, I started laughing. I suppose because of struggling to drag that darkness out of me, The Old Man and the Sea came to mind, and I found it incredibly funny to think of Hemingway in a situation like that. I was done. Miky blessed me with a mapacho and told me to smoke some of it. I could barely grip the thing and when I tried to put it to my mouth I missed my lips completely and it landed somewhere around my nose. I found that confusing. But I started to feel good. There I was, covered in snot, tears and vomit and attempting (unsuccessfully) to smoke a cigarette, but damn I felt good. I got a few good drags of the mapacho smoke into my lungs, choking on each one, before I put it out in my bowl.

It’s a strange thing to say, I know, but I really like vomiting.

For most of the rest of the ceremony, I was happy. I mean, not sloppy happy, just perfectly contented. I was where I was supposed to be, and that’s all that counted. I had done what I was supposed to do, and that in and of itself felt amazing. For about seven months prior, I had felt completely at a loss, and unable to make anything happen. I barely wrote, I almost never read, I’d lost the drive. But somehow this fighting “the right thing” made me realize that I could do it again. Profoundly healing.

Interestingly, for the second time in the ceremony, God entered my thoughts. I have a checkered history with Christianity, and I rarely go to the Bible for answers or comfort these days, preferring instead eastern schools of thought. But all at once, after the vomiting, an Old Testament story sprang up out of the darkness. It was appropriate, it was reassuring, and it felt like balm on a wound. Here it is:

And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.”  Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

Obviously the verse above describes something much more dramatic than what I experienced, but at the time it felt as though I had come through an ordeal. Like I had been wrestling with myself, trying to expel old sicknesses that had lived inside of me for many years. So I took comfort in the words.

There are a few more things I should include before I wrap this up:

• After vomiting, my vision and conception of reality were both greatly affected. The room occasionally took on the appearance of a fun-house mirror. At one point Gilberto left the maloka, and went outside. I didn’t know why, but I figured he knew what he was doing. When he came back in, it looked to me as though his stomach was pulsating. The best way I can describe it is that it looked as if there were 15 babies inside of him kicking away.
• When I went to stretch out on the mat after Papa Miky had finished singing, there was something like a loud cracking behind me. I don’t know if I imagined that or if it was real and served as a catalyst for the hallucination. I turned to look at the front door, and it almost appeared as though an animal was trying to get into the maloka. I turned away, and then turned back, and it was gone. But the door was broken. It looked like shards of wood and blowing mosquito netting. I could even feel the wind, and I thought the insects were starting to rush in. I decided that I should check it out and do what I could to close it, but once I sat up I realized that the door was completely intact and fully shut. These two examples really constitute the first times that I’ve seen things convincingly altered in the “real world” with my eyes open.
• The last thing I want to mention is that I started to think about why Ayahuasca ceremonies are always conducted in the dark. The way it makes sense to me is by thinking of any kind natural gestation and growth. It’s all accomplished in the dark. The embryo is sheltered from direct light in the womb, the seed is buried deep in the earth. I realized, as I sat there, that this must be why ancient cultures tend to associate the moonlight with growth and transformation. Then it struck me that perhaps the reflected light of the sun as seen in the moon is comparable to the light that reaches the human embryo, filtered through the womb of the mother. Maybe it’s horseshit. Maybe not.

That’s it for last night.

nourayou dieta – first ceremony – 3.19.13

So we left from the hotel at around 6:00 in the evening. In Pucallpa, the majority of the vehicles on the road are open air mototaxis, and can’t accommodate more than three people at a time. Even three can be a little tight. There were 11 of us, I believe, and we ended up taking 4 taxis to the little Shipibo village about 45 minutes into the jungle, where the ceremony was to be held. We bumped and hurtled down dirt roads, past a little docking station for river boats, moving further and further away from any visible semblance of civilization. As the path ahead of us twisted along, occasionally we’d see a small hut with a thatched roof, or a few people walking along the side of the road. Mainly, though, it was just us, the plants and the bugs.

When we arrived at the village it was nearly 7:00, and the sun had almost completely set. It was still sweltering, of course, and the mosquitoes descended upon me almost immediately. I’d heard stories about how bad the insects could be in the jungle, and I’d come to Pucallpa prepared, but in the city there’s really no problem until after dark. Unaware of how remote the location of the ceremony was, I hadn’t used any bug spray before leaving, nor had I brought a bottle with me. So for that first night, the bugs feasted. But we all gotta eat.

The maloka

We walked into the maloka (the name given to the large, round huts in which the ceremonies are generally conducted), and inside there was a giant tent, made of mosquito netting, set up on the floor. Thank god. We all scurried in there, and the girls immediately started killing everything that moved. Apparently the setting of their previous dieta was nicer. The big, fat ants that crawled around on the floor really seemed to bother them, and there was quite a bit of slapping and cursing for the first ten minutes.

On the ride over, I’d sat in the mototaxi with Papa Miky and a man named Ivan. Ivan lives in Capetown, but he’s originally from New Jersey. He also spent about 20 years in India, living in the same ashram as Papa Miky, and they had studied aspects of Hinduism together. Papa Miky had told me a little bit about that chapter of his life over our initial breakfast meeting. Apparently Miky had studied Vedanta in India for quite some time, and even taught classes on the subject, until he realized that he wanted to do more and eventually ended up in Peru. He trained with the Shipibo for about 12 years before becoming a maestro himself 2 years ago.

We were all provided with well worn mats to sit on, but most of us declined, preferring the floor and a blanket to whatever was almost certainly living inside those sad, oblong pieces of flattened foam. Everyone seemed to be pretty practiced by this point, and they all spent some time arranging the various items they’d brought with them for the ceremony. See, there are some essentials that you absolutely need to have a pleasant ceremony:

• Toilet paper – Oh yeah. A couple rolls. Chances are, you’re gonna vomit. But you might just shit instead. And you really don’t want to be without papel higiénico when you do.
• Flashlight – When you feel the need to run to the bathroom, it’s nice to know where you’re going. No streetlights in the jungle.
• Water – Unless you’ve embarked on a dieta that prohibits it, it’s good to know that you’ve got a liter of water with you to wash the taste of the brew out of your mouth. It can be pretty rancid.
• A blanket – Ayahuasca can be physically exhausting, and it’s helpful to have a blanket to cover up with or use as a pillow when you inevitably pass out toward the end of the ceremony.
• Cigarettes – A lot of people buy mapachos, which are basically extremely heavy, potent, unfiltered cigarettes full of rustic tobacco. I have yet to develop a taste for them, so I usually just buy a pack of whatever’s handy. Either way, for some reason, the tobacco seems to compliment the experience quite well. Jeremy Narby reports that according to the Ashaninka people who live in and around the Ucayali region, tobacco is the child of Mother Ayahuasca.

Then there are the various sundries that people choose to take with them into ceremony. These include bug spray, little Shipibo textiles that they’ve purchased previously, bottles of agua florida (I’ll get to that later), or assorted nick nacks that bring them some comfort.

So what did I bring? Well, I was an idiot. I forgot my toilet paper, I didn’t (and still don’t) own a flashlight, left my water on my bed at home, and was down to my last three cigarettes. I did have a poncho that I’d purchased in Pisac about 6 months prior, so I used that as my blanket. I knew my bag felt a little light. Ivan, who was sitting next to me, was kind enough to ration a bit of water for me, which was very nice. At this point, upon realizing everything that I hadn’t brought with me, I was just praying that I didn’t shit myself.

The shaman who conducted the ceremony is named Benjamin. He’s widely known and highly respected throughout Peru for his spiritual abilities. I have been told by numerous people now that he represents the best that Pucallpa has to offer. He was the one who taught Miky for over a decade before eventually making him a shaman in his own right. Papa Miky told me that the spiritual traditions of the Shipibo are usually passed from father to son, in an unbroken line of succession. In this case, however, Benji’s sons had no interest in shamanism. So, Benjamin, recognizing in Miky both desire and ability, chose to teach him instead.

So we all sat there in the maloka, kind of getting into our own space, for some time. Benji, Miky and some of Benji’s family were in the front of the room, talking and laughing. The rest of us were arranged in a horseshoe pattern facing them, illuminated by the light of three small candles placed around the maloka. It got quiet after a while, and I think each of us took the time to reflect on what we were about to do, and our reasons for being there. Then it was time to drink.

Benji took out a large, plastic Coca-Cola bottle filled with a viscous, black and brown liquid that he and Miky slowly poured into a little glass cup, calling each one of us up to drink separately. When it was my turn, I walked up, took the glass and downed it as quickly as I could. I wasn’t trying to put on a brave face, it’s just that if I had spent too much time thinking about the contents of the cup, I may not have been able to get it down. So far, I’ve found that the taste of Ayahuasca can best be described as some mixture of citrus, chocolate and raw sewage. It’s actually not so bad, though. I personally think San Pedro cactus is much worse. The most stomach churning part of Ayahuasca, in my opinion, is not the taste but the texture. Lucky for me, this particular batch was relatively thin and easy to swallow, so I drank it with no problems and returned to my blanket.

The aftertaste is generally unpleasant, as it tends to linger, and it usually results in a spate of spitting and coughing from everyone around the room. So after everyone had finished gagging and hocking up the remnants of the brew into the vomit bowls which had been distributed earlier, the candles on the floor were extinguished and we all sat in silence as we let the medicine take hold.

It seemed slower in coming than the first time I drank in Pisac, and it was a good long while before Benji began to softly sing the icaros, the shamanic songs of Ayahuasca that really become the focal point of every ceremony. Icaros can be passed from person to person, or they can be given to the shaman directly by Ayahuasca herself. Regardless, for me and many others I’ve spoken to, they seem to act as your anchor to this world, and they call you back from that other plane of existence when it’s necessary.

When they started, I immediately recognized them as being the same icaros that had been sung the first time I drank in Pisac, and I suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of comfort, of happiness, of being at home. I lay on my back for a while and stared up, smiling into the darkness. It took some time for me to begin feeling the effects of the brew, and this batch of Ayahuasca felt much gentler than what I’d drunk previously. After a bit, it came on, and the visions started, very slowly. They weren’t intense, and they were somewhat muddled, but I’ll give you as much of a description as I can without embellishing (this is pretty much straight from my journal):

1. Still laying on my back, I was intensely dizzy. Various images appeared and disappeared, some of them probably generated by me, and some by Ayahuasca. Then, suddenly, when I kept my eyes shut, I was laying on a table. I was in some kind of, well, ship. There was a large window in front of me, and outside of it there were planets. My hands were grey, and my fingers were spindly and elongated. I was still myself, but I was in a stereotypically alien body. My hands, both in the vision and in “real life,” were moving and dancing around to the rhythm of the icaro being sung, seemingly of their own accord. This is a common occurrence for me. My hands seem to know what’s necessary, and they kind of bounce around and get my attention when it’s required. Anyway, within the vision, my hands suddenly started moving in a line along my solar plexus. As they did, they cut open my chest, through my bone, as though they were lasers. I pulled apart my flesh, exposing the inside of my chest. At that point, what seemed like two people (also alien in appearance) were standing over me, and one of them poured a red liquid from a silver vessel that reminded me of a gravy boat into my chest cavity. Then my fingers closed me back up, and that was the end of that.

2. Before I tell you this next part, a little background: During my very first ceremony in Pisac, I really didn’t want to shit myself, and I also wanted to avoid vomiting, if at all possible. The medicine was strong in Pisac, and throughout the night, I was having very literal conversations with the plant inside of me. Several of these conversations consisted of me asking Ayahuasca to allow me to get by without purging. The answer was very clear: “Okay. But you’re going to miss out on a lot of physical benefit.” I was fine with that at the time, and I didn’t purge.  This time, before the ceremony, I resolved that I would be open to anything that came, including the most unpleasant physical aspects of the Ayahuasca experience. However, despite feeling more open to it at the beginning, I started asking for a pass yet again. When I did, I was shown a series of meandering visions that are impossible to describe, but that ended up at what looked like a giant, white crack in a black universe. It was made clear to me at that point that my momentary cowardice was just another in a long line of broken promises, and that finally, I myself am, in fact, just a broken promise. It was humbling, and ugly. And again, I didn’t purge.

3. There was a point where I was shown numerous visions of decaying objects. I remember a large, metal padlock, with a key stuck in the top of it. It was there, in front of my face, brand new. And then it began to decay. It was covered in rust, cracked and falling apart, and coiled around by ivy, like I was watching a time lapse video. At the time, I wondered if this was a warning about death, but after some reflection, I realized that what I was being shown is just the transitory nature of physical things, the temporal body.

4. At one point, I asked about reconciliation with my ex-girlfriend, with whom I’d been in a relationship for 7 years, and who I’d been having an unbelievably difficult time getting over. The answer was a firm “no.” I didn’t like that. And at that point, I didn’t want to believe that the answer had come from Ayahuasca. Maybe it had been my imagination, etc… But I was just rationalizing. The answer was clear.

5. I was also shown numerous scenes having to do with space, planets, etc… which seemed strangely similar to Michael Harner’s vision, described in The Way of the Shaman. It’s certainly possible that reading his book influenced my thoughts and conjured up those scenes in front of me, but after experiencing several ceremonies now, I’m not as skeptical as I once was. There were points of light that were falling out of the darkness of space toward earth. I seemed to travel with them for a moment. I’ll leave this one to your interpretation.

That was it for the memorable visions this time around.

During each ceremony, there’s a point where Miky comes around to all of us, and performs a blessing. I’ll describe that briefly. He sits in front of you, and takes a little bit of what’s called agua florida in his mouth. Agua florida is basically a natural perfume (non-toxic) that’s used in Ayahuasca blessings and purifications along with the mapacho cigarettes. So he takes a bit of this in his mouth, and you bow your head, and he blows the agua florida on the crown of your skull. There’s a really particular noise associated with the exhalation that’s surprisingly pleasant. Then he asks for your hands, and you hold them out in front of you, palms together. He takes another small swig of agua florida and blows this onto your hands and arms, as well. During the ceremony in Pisac, my two friends and I agreed that he looked like some kind of giant bird as he moved around the room, blessing people, landing and taking off. This time, probably because of how low the roof of the tent was, he looked like a jungle cat, stalking from person to person. Very interesting.

Alright, so some general observations:

• As in Pisac, when the medicine took hold, I started to hear what I could’ve sworn were English words mixed into the icaros. I couldn’t tell what was being said, but it was there. It was like hearing a conversation through a thick door.
• My ego is so big, and so sensitive, that I was convinced that whoever happened to be talking in the room was talking about me. This feeling has improved greatly, but it was something I was meant to notice at the time.
• Despite the intensity of the medicine, the “me” of “me” was left largely intact. When it was time for those dieting to come and sit together and be blessed by Benji, I felt an incredible surge of impatience. All I wanted to do was return to my corner and be left alone. I couldn’t wait for the damn thing to be over. But the feelings of impatience weren’t really coming from the immediate situation. This is how I live life, and I was meant to notice this, too.
• Again, some background: there’s a French physicist named Beneviste who discovered that every molecule has its own frequency, and this frequency can be isolated and reproduced electronically. When the electronic frequency is directed at a given internal organ, the organ responds as though the original molecular body had been injected into the bloodstream. Okay. So, for some reason it occurred to me that perhaps this is related to the icaros of Ayahuasca. Could the icaros in some way be connected to the frequency of Ayahuasca (or DMT), explaining why the songs and the plant seem to work in unison so well? Maybe there’s something there. Or maybe it’s too materialistic. Either way, interesting.

DMT molecule

So, here’s the lesson (for lack of a better word) I took from the first ceremony (directly from my journal):

• As I think about it, the lesson of the session would have to be patience. There were many times during the ceremony when I wanted to know what time it was, to see how much longer it would last. Or at the beginning, when I was becoming restless and wondering how long it would take to set it. Or during the dieta blessing, when I was terribly impatient with Benji for singing too long and just wanted to return to my blanket. Each time I would have these thoughts, a realization would follow quickly on their heels: “What are you doing? Be here.” Each selfish, impatient thought did not simply come and go, serving no purpose. They were used to focus my attention on that aspect of myself that is incredibly juvenile and petulant. This is something I’ve always known about my life and my behavior, but I’ve never devoted much attention to it. So, if I had to nail it down, patience is the lesson of this particular ceremony.

So that’s it for the first ceremony. I’ll post a bit more tomorrow.

first dieta – intro and background

Me looking morose and/or sleepy. But probably morose.

Most people reading this blog already know me, and know why I returned to Peru in 2013, after a brief sojourn in California with the family. Prior to that I had lived in the south of Peru, in Cusco (the ancient Inca capital) and Arequipa (the second largest city in the country) for about a year and a half. For those who don’t know me, my reason for returning boils down to this: I need to get well. There’s nothing physically wrong with me (I assume), but like most people I know,  I have chronic, recurring, emotional and spiritual afflictions that I have so far been unable to successfully address. Ayahuasca, the sacred hallucinogenic brew that’s been in continual use for an indeterminately long period of time, may represent the very real possibility of finally putting my own issues to rest and, simply, becoming a better person.

I flew down to Pucallpa, Peru in late February of 2013. I had drunk Ayahuasca once before, with a Canadian-born shaman who had trained for many years with the Shipibo natives of the Ucayali region. His name was Papa Miky, and I and the two friends who attended the ceremony with me were quite impressed by both the quality of his medicine and his natural abilities in the ceremony. In January of ’13, about a month before I was scheduled to fly to Peru, I found out that Papa Miky lived full time in Pucallpa, so it seemed logical to contact him once I got there, since I’d had such a positive experience with him in the past.

We met briefly for breakfast, and we talked a little about my reasons for returning, what Ayahuasca can offer, and Papa Miky’s personal history. I won’t get into too much of that for now, but I do want to repeat what I felt was one of the most significant comments Miky made during our initial meeting. We were discussing the promise of Ayahuasca, and it’s potential for good, and he said that Ayahuasca shows you the problem, but it won’t do the work for you. The work is still our responsibility, but Ayahuasca can take us to the root of a lifelong disorder, so that we can begin to treat the cause of the disease, and not just suppress the symptoms. It’s an important point, I think.

So we left it at that, nothing formalized, just a pleasant introductory conversation. It was a few weeks later that he got in contact with me via email, informing me that a ceremony would be held on Tuesday, March 19th. I jumped at it, and I was told that I should meet Miky (along with about 10 other people who would be participating in the ceremony) at a nearby hotel, and we’d depart from there.

On the 19th, I got to the hotel a bit early and had a chance to meet the rest of the participants. Most of them had just finished a dieta with Papa Miky about a week or so before. A dieta (Spanish for “diet”) is a series of ceremonies, usually held every other day, that may last anywhere from 10 days to 6 months or more. Dietas also include dietary proscriptions, which vary depending on the kind of dieta you’re undertaking. Sometimes salt, sugar, fruit, etc… are entirely forbidden for the duration of the dieta. Much to my surprise, Papa Miky informed me that most of the other participants would be opening a new dieta that night, and he invited me to join them, if I felt so inclined. I had heard that dietas could be deeply challenging, both physically and spiritually, and I wasn’t entirely sure that I was ready. But, as he explained the specifics of it, it began to appeal to me. I also realized that were I to squander this opportunity, I might not get another for several weeks, or maybe a month.  I was eager to start the work I’d come to do, so I decided to go for it.

The dieta we were opening that night is called nourayou (pronounced new-ra-yow), and is sometimes referred to as “The Tree of Life” dieta. This dieta is unique, as it comes with no dietary restrictions (save the universal prohibition on sex, drugs and alchohol), but requires a 24-hour fast from the participant, every other day. I’ll give you the rundown: On the day of drinking, at 1:00pm, we were required to stop eating. It’s always a good idea to eat as little as possible on drinking days anyway, as there’s that much less to vomit up later. Between 1:00 and 8:00pm, we could still drink water. But when we drank Ayahuasca at 8:00, water was strictly prohibited from that point forward, until the end of the fast at 1:00pm the following day. This may not sound like much, but when you experience how racking and physically exhausting the process of drinking Ayahuasca really is, well…it starts to drain you.

So why is the dieta called “The Tree of Life”? Well, as Papa Miky explained it, the seed of the “tree of life” is implanted in the body of the participant by the officiating shaman (we’ll get to that), and it is watered by the fasting, the sacrifice that you make to the process. The tree then grows, and as it does, you are opened to a world in which there exist very well-defined, free-standing spiritual entities that communicate with you telepathically, giving you vast amounts of revelatory information that you can choose to act on, or not. This particular dieta is quite ancient, and there exist very few mentions of it online. The reason? It began to die out long ago, and the particular family of Shipibo with whom Papa Miky works are among the only natives still committed to keeping the tradition alive. I’m not going to discuss it much further, as Miky and the Shipibo have expressed concern that if the details of the cosmology behind the dieta were more widely known, they’d be exploited for material gain just as other aspects of Ayahuasca have been and continue to be. The specifics seem to be closely guarded secrets, and Miky told a few of us that only about 50 westerners have undergone this particular type of dieta. He was quick to follow that up, however, by stating that it doesn’t matter what anyone has experienced if they can’t put it to good use in their lives.

Having done my homework for several years before actually drinking the brew, I had (and continue to have) some personal reservations about the the world to which Ayahuasca opens us. I have no trouble believing that Ayahuasca lifts the veil on a free-standing reality that co-exists with our own – call it the spirit world, or another dimension, what have you. But my concern is that this alternate plane of existence may not be entirely beneficial to the human race. There seem to be indications, lurking around the fringes of the literature, that there can be a surprisingly dark side to the whole experience. I won’t get into it now, because there will be time enough for that later, but for those interested, I’d suggest reading the last chapter of Peter Gorman’s Ayahuasca in My Blood, Michael Harner’s experience in The Way of the Shaman, and Graham Hancock’s account of his recent Ayahuasca experiences in Brazil. Additionally, some of the encounters reported in Rick Strassman’s DMT: The Spirit Molecule are less than comforting. That said, however, I want to be clear that all of my experiences so far (limited though they may be) have been incredibly positive and profoundly helpful on a personal level. For me, this is something that I have to explore thoroughly. Experience, as one expat I met down here recently said, is the only kind of knowledge that’s really worth a damn.

Alright, enough for now.