Ayahuasca

I craved for my third visit to the Amazon region of Peru to be intimate and authentic. During my previous stays I had had a few negative experiences which I did not wish to repeat. 

For one, I took issue with overcrowding; most ceremonies resemble third world sweatshops in their money hungry tactics of assembly line “healings”. More specifically, retreats I previously attended had approximately twenty participants. During one ceremony aya gave me a tour of their nightmares, one by one by one. Talk about vicarious trauma.

Yet, twenty is a relatively small number, as the once niech “healing” modality transforms into an industry.

For example, an acquaintance went to Mexico to retreat with “famous” Doctor Gabor Mate, and shared the good doctor packs them in like sardines. In fact, they indicated it was physically impossible to stretch out without bumping into another person. 

I’ve met others who attended ceremonies numbering in the 100s. Talk about chaos!

Aside from overcrowding, I had concern with shamans being drunk on alcohol while conducting ceremony. Would an alcoholic be permitted to run a recovery centre? Not likely. However, they do conduct ayahuasca ceremonies.

So, with these reservations in mind, gained through visits to one of the largest and most “western” retreat centers on the river Amazon in Iquitos, I decided to forgoe corporate middle men mentality and traveled to Pucallpa, a city closest to the small village of San Francisco, where most “healers” from the Shipibo tribe are from.  I booked a month’s stay at a property close to both city and village, ran by a rough round the edges woman who wore her soul on her sleeve. I wanted authentic and she sure as heck did not hold back; she also routinely fell asleep during ceremony and snored like a locomotive! Essentially, looking back, I traded in one circus show for another…

Surprisingly, in stark contrast with the slums of Pucallpa and surrounding area, the village of “Saint Franny”, with its new motocars and freshly painted huts, seemed eerily manicured. Influx of cash from westerners seeking communion with nature is the official explanation for its gleaming appearance. Though, my host suggested it had something to do with proximity to countries like Brazil and the booming underground economy of “exports” or straight up guns and cocaine trafficking via Amazon river. Each time I went to this village, mostly to purchase souvenirs for loved ones, I noticed vultures showing off their wingspan while circling overhead.

My host arranged for me to study with a shaman who traveled to the house via water taxi. For nearly half my stay, I was alone and at its peak, joined by four other participants.

Part of the reason I felt called to work with the medicine was my mother’s cancer.  Stories of healing and change gave hope where “conventional medicine” lacked cure.

My initial ceremony at this tiny center, situated on stilts on a river inhabited by blind dolphins, was no walk in the park. I examined death from many different angles with visions of life force leaving physicality like a balloon drained of helium. I also saw images of skulls dangling from tree branches like Christmas ornaments while wobbling my way to the toilet to purge. 

The ceremony which followed did not ease up in intensity. As I made the usual trip back to my cot from a visit to the can, struggling to keep upright due to brew induced nausea, I visually located my puke bucket and chartered a course to reach it but instead tripped and fell to the floor. Even though I managed to grab the pail, vomit came out with such force it bounced off the bucket and hit me straight in the face. 

During the next ceremony, I was able to call upon my mother’s energy until her essence seemed present. Yet to my surprise, spirit quickly took her soul and locked it away behind what seemed like a wall or cave of glowing crystals. 

Subsequent ceremonies continued to center on transformation from physical to non-local and back again. I felt uneasy and discouraged from carrying such a “heavy load” as I descended deeper and deeper into an existential abyss. At one point I saw myself as the centre of the universe; simultaneously all and not. 

On a night off from ceremony, alone at the dining room table, doing my best to use the time for integration, I questioned my decision to willingly put myself through such intense experiences for the duration of an entire month. Then, as if on autopilot guided by an invisible hand, I got up, walked over to a heaping bookshelf, and, without hesitation, pulled out “Bringers of the Dawn” by channel psychic medium B. Marciniak. The hair at the back of my neck stood on end as the composition of a thousand pages come to life. Starseed. Past life. Current experience. It was a good read to be sure.

As my stay neared completion, my host invited a local artist and son of a famous shaman, who was also a tobacco reader, to visit the house and entertain her guests. He arrived drunk on alcohol and in high spirit. He proceeded to “read” smoke from lighting several cigarettes at a time. I was skeptical of his showmanship; however, quickly warmed up to his banter of conjured up fluff. Naturally, a lighthearted message was what I expected when it finally came my turn to have my fortune read. Instead, the psychic’s face grew solemn as he informed me of my mother’s impending death shortly following my return to “civilization”. My host attempted to discredit his prediction by saying the “psychic” was drunk and talking nonsense. Deep down; however, his message struck a chord for it mirrored the theme of death and transformation being communicated by ayahuasca.

I felt powerless and grief stricken in ceremony which followed. In the privacy of my own experience I wished for my host (whose nick name was “mamma” and who very much had a “mother hen” type of personality) to hold me. Her partner was also in ceremony and to my astonishment heard my thoughts. I listened in disbelief as he came out of his own journey, got her attention and told her what I needed. In response, she called me over and proceeded to spoon and sooth me as I cried for my mother. 

The Shipibo shaman with whom I studied was an interesting creature. Small in stature, quiet during the day, he bellowed nausea inducing”icaros”, as if through a megaphone, once the sun went down. He taught me some of these songs and invited me to take turns singing at each gathering.

I was in Peru over Easter and we happened to have a ceremony scheduled over Sunday. As the shaman went through the ritual of opening ceremony space, he found he could not sing or go through his typical routine. Respite from his incessant noise making was delightful; we got to experience aya with only the sound of jungle chatter as our companion. I felt good and decided to play; energetically visiting my fellow retreaters. One participant’s enegetic wall felt up so I moved on to another, a man seated across from me, I watched being breastfed by his mother. In the morning, he validated what I saw as he described his experience. He then demonstrativly went into town to call his mother in Australia, a woman with whom he had a strained relationship, and expressed appreciation for his birth. He returned gleaming with satisfaction and with a toilet seat… Peruvians like to climb on top of the toilet and shit squatting like that thus no need for seats… apparently the conversation went so well he got inspired to shit in style…🤷‍♀️

The shaman’s energy intensified in the “clingy” department as time went on. For example, during a ceremony where his grandfather and teacher made a guest appearance, the creepy litte dude demended to hold hands and refused to allow his Elder to sing to me. Years later, this shaman’s bitter rival, a “gringo” who within the “conscious” aka “woke” aka “influencer” community boasts the title “papa”and benefits financially and in notoriety from hosting ceremony with the “tree of light” at locations such as his private villa in Peru, told me he personally knew him to be a “dark wizard”, or one who engages in “brujaria”. In hindsight, both clowns were out-to-lunch.

As my last ceremony commenced, I felt spirit dance and play. I wanted silence but the shaman kept singing what felt like anthems of war. At one point I told the spirit of ayahuasca if the pushback I was feeling was a manifestation of ego resistance, I was prepared to purge and rid myself of whatever was hindering me from progress.  To this, I heard a message say to listen to the song of my own essence and centre. As I did, I sensed a jaguar, with glowing green eyes, the same one who visited with the others during my initiation with the brew, come into ceremony space and sit next to me. I felt its heart join mine as it slowly entered and integrated into my energy body; my spirit animal and I were one. Or, as the first nations describe it, I “recieved” my spirit animal. I then began to hiss and growl at the shaman as I heard him address the jaguar in song. He was ordering it to stand down, to be tame and to tame me! I called over to my host and told her what was happening, and, just as the “gringo” years later mentioned is a monologue gossip session, she, too, gave validation the Shipibo was struggling with personal deamons.

I went outside to get away from what felt like an energetic battle of will. Once more, I needed to ensure my ego was not playing tricks on me. I knelt by the river and told my highest self I was willing to release anything which was holding me back. Again, I felt drawn to centre. There was nothing to fight within my core. I proceeded to sit there, alone, for what felt like eternity.

Departing Peru seemed uneventful… but it never is, not with all ten of humanity’s micromanaging digits up my twat…

On a stopover at LAX, an airport security guard was quite abrasive when I flagged her down and demanded she fetch my luggage which, despite having a huge and distinctly bright ribbon attached to it, was being dragged off behind a glass wall I, the insignificant, did not have access… it’s shocking the degree of liberties human trash has taken while repeating the “stupid alien is stupid so she won’t notice” mantra!!! Or was this the “Eve is right” and “Evil Alien is WRONG” and must be “taught a lesson” skit? Both, I reckon! (Speaking of airheads, over the years human trash have “encouraged” me to be a flight attendant, never ever a pilot! Degrading and taunting at every opportunity… doth protest too much gaslighters!)… after arguing (they always do) she got the bag and insisted she go thought its entire contents, item by item, before “graciously” releasing it to me. In response, the jaguar in me growled underbreath. On the flight back to my meaningless, micromanaged, bullshit lie of a life in hellhole Canada, I indulged in a little wine and cheese — the jaguar in me purred.

A few days after my return, I rushed my fake mother to the hospital for the last time. Within a month she was gone. She died hooked up to machines. My spirit animal held space for me, as I held space for my fake mother, as she took her last breath.

Post Scriptum:

During my time with ayahuasca I also connected with liquid quartz inside of me and saw the size of the overwhelmingly large piece of technology, capable of flight backward, unlike primitive human made tin cans also known as “air-planes”, hovering silently overhead as the clock, at past midnight, tick tocked to signal time of “entertaining” human gaslighting was over. Humans who participate in ayahuasca ceremonies often say ayahuasca is not “pro-human”; given humanity refuses to hear the cries of earth, and spreads like cancer while killing it in the most cruel of ways, this is absolutely the case, ayahuasca is not, in any way, shape, or, form, “pro-human”. Be not a cancer on the earth humans, leave room for “nature”, also known as other species whose home, human zombies, you vacantly and ruthlessly turned into a living nightmare.

Fiat Lux,

Lucifer-Kali-Durga-Isis or God the Mother to you, scumbags!🖕🖕🖕

How about calling a spade, a spade… Poland calls “it’s” territory “fatherland” and actually teaches in religious studies that animals do not have a soul (salcesonik, baleronik, szyneczka, flaczki… pyszne “miesko” nie na duszy w krainie popierdolonych Polakow!) and fish in particular do not feel pain… perhaps Creepy Granny is simply feeling extremely confident about her degradation of my being because her allegiance, like any self-respecting Pole, is clearly to Jesus aka Satan! Hence, the ease with which she diddles little kids.