With my new friend, Martin, I left from Lima by plane for a one-hour trip to Pucallpa, a river port city of some 200,000 people. There we met our teacher, a traditional Shaman, Teo, and his wife, Marina. Along with Eli, a South African globe-trotter seeking a new homeland, we headed up the Ucayali river for a four-hour trip in a 25-foot, $400 wooden boat powered by a 40 horse Sazuki outboard. The sounds, sights and smells of civilization faded quickly as we moved into the jungle of the backwaters of the Amazon.
Here’s a video of some of the photos I took around the town and on the river.
We arrived at a small muddy clearing on the riverbank that passes for a loading dock, scrambled up the muddy bank and walked a half-mile along a mud road to the little village of Nuevo Salon. Here the Shapibo people, who still speak their own language among themselves and Spanish only with outsiders, continue to carve out a basic living just as they have for hundreds of years. They grow a loving interconnected community supported by the fruits of the jungle and the gifts of the river. They are a people described by Martin as “very lightly incarnated,” barely distinguishable from their surrounding habitat. They are not far removed from the nature that surrounds them, feeds and clothes them and, in ceremony, guides and heals them. Their separate egos overshadowed by devotion to those in the community, they live in harmony with the natural world and communicate with it both in their prayers and through listening to the “voices of the medicine.”
We three have come for a two-week cleansing of body, mind and soul. I don’t know it yet but I am about to work with a true healer. Teo, who holds a university degree in education, is skilled in the traditional arts of plant medicine and how they are best combined to address an individual’s issues. He has the gift of seeing into the energy systems of those he treats and discovering where the blockages are and how they might best be cleansed and removed. In addition to plant medicine, he brings healing through song and prayer, which flow through him during healing ceremonies, that can last a few hours or through the night. His songs and prayers along with his taking negative energies from those he treats into his own body and then passing them through, continue interrupted only by brief rests every few hours. Teo’s energy was amazing to witness and even more amazing to experience directly. I was privileged to experience six of these ceremonies with Teo and two others prior to my going to the jungle. Each was a flooding of loving energy coming my way from gifted selfless healers, the unfolding process facilitated by the natural wisdom of sacred healing plants.
Over the coming weeks, I will be treated with a host of medicinal plants – breathing in their vapors, absorbing their energy through gentle baths, standing in their smoke and drinking their juice and derived potions. I will meet sides of myself that I had forgotten, both the dark and the light through the spiritual portals of the shaman’s world and through some profoundly deep physical purifications of the body. It just doesn’t get any better than this!
My first two experiences, or ceremonies as they are referred to in this tradition, occurred literally in my backyard, one in the home of my host, a well-respected Shaman in his own right and the second in his ceremonial temple. Both of these ceremonies were conducted by a Shaman brought in from the Iquitos region of the jungles of Peru. He was engaged by my host to help resolve some of my host’s personal issues. The recommendation could not have been better. I was about to be given the opportunity to work with a true shaman’s shaman.
My first encounter with ayahuasca, the most potent of the shaman’s medicines, was an easy one with lots of beautiful lights, patterns and visual stimulation, amusing body distortions, a few basic insights into the nature of life and how I fit into it all, brief visits into the pain of my personal past, some light grief. During the closing, I clearly experienced the shaman’s breath into the top of my head extend down into my heart center. A deep blessing and opening. I left the four-hour ceremony on a high with lots of energy and strong feelings of connection with all things and appreciation for the many gifts of my life. I needed little sleep that night, and the next day I felt great, calm, peaceful and receptive. I came to learn as I met other travelers on this ancient path, that such a peaceful, easy journey is not unusual for a first-timer.
My second ceremony came two days later and offered quite a different experience from the first. I was and still am convinced that I met and tasted death. At one point about 30 minutes after drinking the medicine, I was laying flat on my back watching my body grow cold, unable to even lift my head or to speak. I had the clear realization, or to use the language of this tradition, the medicine told me that this is how it is to die. It was also clearer to me than ever before that I am not my body. Reassuring insights followed quickly by the understanding that now was not my time to cross over and without help I may well do just that. I asked for help from the spirits of my ancestors, those of the plants I had ingested, the surrounding mountains and from the healing spirits I work with from Brazil. A dozen or so spirits appeared around me as glowing ghostly figures. I felt their support as I grew stronger and within a few minutes, was able to make it to my knees and then gradually to my feet and with great effort, place one foot in front of the other in order to leave the temple. I spent the next 90 minutes in the bathroom clearing from both ends what I would come to recognize as stored emotional pain that was trapped in my body. It took the rest of the night and most of the next day to return to a quasi-normal level of functioning.
A week later I left for the jungle and a two-week emersion into the world of ayahuasca and plant medicine shamanism. The first two ceremonies, while emitting unconditional love the likes of which I have never experienced, were basically cleansing ones for me, releasing the pain I had stored away from 20 years of sitting in others’ suffering as well as pain I had not opened up to from my own past. So, there was lots of time spent in the primitive outhouse, or purging into the bushes and most of the time, sweating profusely. I had the loving support of Teo and the rest of the community, especially the women, who would take turns helping me with steam baths for my legs and preparing plant medicine of many varieties for various purposes.
The third ceremony was a welcomed turning point. After a little purging, I began to embody an energy that I had not experienced moving through me since my teens. At one point, Teo worked on my back and shoulders and I was breathing so deeply and powerfully that it felt as if I were literally drawing the breath through the feet and toes and out the top of my head, an image I have worked with for years in yoga and meditation but had never actually experienced before this night. I felt completely connected with All of existence and open to the love and light that forms the foundation of reality. A deeper and more profound connection with the non-dual space than I had ever tasted before. I needed no sleep that night and only a little the next day.
The ceremony the next night carried me deeper into the blockages of my past and especially the pain my ignorance had brought upon others. There was a lot of grief and emotional release. I felt drained and slept and rested for the next two days. The remaining three ceremonies were a mixture of purging of my past pain and delight in the open connection with the Now and all the Loving energy that is available in it.
During these two weeks, I was overwhelmed by the loving presence and selfless support of Teo and his community. Their songs and prayers offered up close and personal in ceremony were the most powerful I have ever experienced, beyond my ability to describe in words. The ceremonies carried me to another world, one where I was not separate. The love I experienced did not have a human source nor was it limited or distorted by ego. As the breath of prayer and song touched my body I felt connected with a love beyond the mind, beyond the body. I recognized in those moments that this love was within me and that clearly, I was this love.
We will have to wait to see what the long-term fruits of these experiences will be. For now, I feel a greater sensitivity to both the pain and the wonder of the world I inhabit, a sweeter closeness to those who share my bus rides, a heartfelt connection with those trapped in fear and pain, a more profound appreciation for the wife that shares my life, a gentle wonder at the simple gifts of existence. I pray that these seeds will flourish and be shared with others whom I meet along the way. Si Dios quiere (if God desires).
Here’s a short video made from some of the photos I took related to the ceremonies.
Here’s an audio recording that I made during one of the ceremonies.
Here is a link to Wade Davis’s site. He’s a Harvard Anthropologist who spent much of his time working with Shaman. In his two TED videos (see lnks on his page), he speaks to the importance of protecting the remaining cultural diversity. I think you will enjoy them.
You can learn more about Teo and his work at this website
Que te via bien! Juan Estaban