Ayahuasca Mind Part 3

The Onomatopoeia of a Sappy-Chalky Esophagus

 

 

The Telephone Inside Me

The call comes early --- you know when. When your eyelids should be tightly furled up to provide a backdrop for the theater of dreams; when the night just begins to withdraw its sheet of black as a languid sun slowly ascends its invisible staircase. It's now, of all times, that the gastrointestinal caller decides to speak.

"GET THE FUCK OUTSIDE!" 

I hang up (... "how do you hang up a stomach?" ...) to run outside and purge...and purge...and purge. Each time a river of acidic fluids jumps through my mouth like water rushing through a small crack in a dam. 

"Time for breakfast" some joker yells in the distance.

Perhaps I should sketch out some background. The reason for all this is dragon's blood, sangre de drago, a sappy-chalky purgative distilled from a tree of the same name and served to me in a small unassuming glass. It sticks to the walls of my esophagus like bees drawn towards their death on hot wax paper, calling forth all that which needs to come out --- "you, yes you, come on" it motions. As the dragon's blood does its internal bidding, I gulp down a liter or more of lukewarm water before...

BLAHHHH!!!

Onomatopoeia doesn't really do justice to the strange humble of exaggerated howls, grunts, and stilted breaths that make up this experience, but it will have to do for now. 

Gunk and goo and gibberish too continues to stream out for a few minutes until that small voice that has been with me since the beginning grows to a yell.

"No more!" 

No more water, no more puking, no more chalky insides -- no more!

So I step aside and watch this ritual of synchronized puking and perk up at the interspersed tones of surreal laughter that bubble over every once in a while. Eventually everyone reaches their threshold (for now) as all that is inside becomes outside, soaking into the vibrancy of topsoil to convert that which is dead into the womb of new life. 

After a light meal (as you can imagine, our stomachs weren't too keen on letting in much more), Don E. prepares a special plant bath consisting of water, mucuru leaves, white onion, menthol, and nepthaline. This bath acts to reinforce and accentuate the intent behind imbibing the purgative, namely to drain our bodies of accumulated toxins so as to sensitize it to the spirit of ayahuasca. Don E. methodically pours a few cups of the cold strange brew onto my hair and as it descends my body, he blows mapacho smoke and concentrates the diffused energetic imprint radiating around my being by symbolically squeezing the four sides of my skull and chest. 

 

Ceremony Two: What Are They Floating?

 

The ayahuasquero Don E. prepares our medicine with the same prescriptive pours and mapacho blessings as before. For reasons unknown, the ayahuasca barely worked itself into me after an hour of anticipation. I gulp down another cup and wait. Twenty minutes later C., the retreat organizer, asks if I'm mareado (feeling the effects of ayahuasca).

As I'm rattling off my response --- "a few geometric patterns but not much more" --- the effects really begin to take hold. Don E., hearing my translated response, starts an icaro that he encourages everyone to mimic, thus increasing the likelihood of visions. This certainly helps because the mareacion comes fast, but it frightens me and I start to pull back, fighting off the urge to explore the fearful landscape. I'm walking down a long trail inundated with Christian symbols strewn like garrish billboards as death metal and other mall-goth cultural acoustics play satirically in the background. Eventually the road bifurcates and to my left emerges a tall black gate of cold and spiky metal forming the entrance to a cemetery of unknown residents with a powerful evil-satanic-scary feeling beaming forth. To my right stands an indistinct blurry gate with a this-is-good feeling. The left side pulls me towards exploration with a sort of teenage rebellious curiosity, but I was wary because I thought it meant dabbling with brujeria.  

 

Brujeria Interlude 

  

A common misconception of shamanic practices, heavily ingrained in New Age circles, is that Light Shamanism, or practices concerned with healing oneself, others, and learning, is all that exists. This misunderstanding leads people to be unaware of Dark Shamanism, or brujeria, which is intended to harm and even kill others; it’s heavily invested in gaining power for oneself by disempowering others. Don E. was hesitant to even utter the name “brujeria” because it’s such a feared practice in the Shipibo culture he grew up in. Brujeria might or might not have a long historical tradition, but it seems to have gained popularity in recent history as a form of political resistence against invading Westerner’s who were desecrating the land and culture of indigenous peoples.

Ceremony Two Continued

In hindsight it seems that the satircal and frightening landscape offering itself to me was more a reflection of some inner conflict that needed exploration rather than a shiesty tactic used to ensnare potential candidates for brujeria. My own fear dissolves the contours of this vision and I’m deposited back into the maloca to waft in-between worlds for a few moments. But it isn’t long before the synesthasia of the collective icaro singing weaves itself into the contours of a new and more beatific vision. Voice becomes used as an advanced technology by a group of mayan looking priests I call The Divine Sound Technicians. They sit meditatively and chant glossolalia, using the energy of Don E.’s incomprehensible tapestry of sound to suspend this enormous Mother Goddess entity in a spatio-temporal vacuum. I had the feeling that they had been doing this for an eternity and that I was incredibly fortunate to have caught a brief glimpse. The brief glimpse unveiled the surreal architecture of a vertical wall of breasts cacooned within a huge translucent and pulsating seed-womb. New life forms continually shoot out of the nipples and I, with wide-jaw amazement, repeat “this is what she does…she continually creates!” Inside this landscape of deep knowledge the notion of death seemed completely unreal because each old-decaying form was simply broken-down, remolded, and shot out newborn from the generative nipples of this eternal creature. The bliss at having witnessed such an event lingers on long after the vision fades and the entity returns to the imaginal realms. My limber body dances with joy unconstrained by conscious control, and peaks with downloads of energetic bliss as I recall that beautiful encounter.

Ceremony Three: An Eerie Polyphony

The mareacion slowly twists itself into being with the emergence of slithering light rivers that float like lost biblical figures and lillipads above an illusive boundary of skin. Locomoting and dancing, they cue me into the subtle and delicate rise of a diaphonous energy rooted deep in my lowest chakra.  This glistening ray bursts through the crown of my head on its upward journey and follows the dome roof toward the central apex where all things seem to lead. I watch in amazement until it becomes a bit more familiar and then look around to notice that everyone’s body is participating in the same process. The sum total is attracting itself into a photonic stream of energetic capital that shines like jungle chandelier at the center of the roof before it descends in coils down the helical wallpaper of this inverted cup.
 

As the ceremony progresses, sound takes center stage in this otherwordly concert hall.  Mimicking the aural designs brought on by a second cup of ayahuasca, K. bellows out an eerie polyphony of improvisational sounds, each unique and each strangely beautiful. Although devoid of a simply understood meaning they seem deeply meaningful nontheless, like hearing a euology in some unknown language. While evoking this gallery of sound, his body transforms into a plant pillar shaped like a Greek Ionic column that sprouts twisted liana’s rising in accordance with the findings of sacred geometry. As the song winds down and the entwined branches fade, Don E.’s wife V. begins her soft tune that hovers barely above a whisper. As an Shipibo artist and vegetalista, she excels at stitching together vivid and colorful designs to encode the fluttering dynamism of icaro woven geometries.  The visual animation drawing itself from the high-pitched tones of her voice is that of angelic cloudlike beings swirling off the top of her skull, dancing the rhythmic motif’s of impermanence and beauty.

 

 

 

Ayahuasca Mind Part 2

Silent Murmurs and Moth Tobacco

Learning to Follow

The image of a yogi living inside the deep flow of long breaths with the body posture of a sculpted lotus attracts me like a moth determined to reach the light. I follow the image down a winding wooden corridor and into the maloca, our ceremonial structure. The half dome ceiling spirals upward toward the central connective apex and directly below sits the ayahuasquero Don E. ritually preparing each cup of medicine by invoking the help of God and blessing it with mapacho smoke.

Mapacho Interlude

All the tobacco that sprouts up within the biosphere can be (for convienence) seperated into two latinized categories, nicotiana tabacum and nicotiana rustica. The former is stuffed into the over-priced tax-dense cigarettes most Americians (and others) smoke and die from --- along with a lovely barrage of over 500 toxins. Mapacho’s are made from the latter, a native species of the Amazonian region. The deadly additives lovingly approved by various government agencies are not to be found in these rolled up wonders--- YES AND ALSO: they’re about 20 times stronger, a hell of a lot cheaper (50 for $3), and haven’t been linked to the development of cancers.  Although it might sound strange to westerners who’ve been indoctrinated into the “tobacco-bad” mindset, healers in this region known as tabaquero’s exclusively use this sacred plant to work on their patients. In ayahuasca ceremonies, the curandero (healer) blows mapacho smoke over the medicine cup to charge it with her, or his, intention. Patients are also advised to consciously blow mapacho smoke inside their shirts, over their hands, and around their head to create a protective shield conducive to healing.

Ceremony One: The Undulating Mouthpiece

The glittering blue photons of a flashlight pierce the darkness and create a floating bridge connecting Don E.’s being to mine. I slowly rise and walk over to sit in front of him. With reverence I grasp the cup of medicine and silently repeat my intention and then, fearing an unpleasant taste, quickly gulp it down...

...“Not bad, kinda sweet” I silently murmur to myself (never again do I silently murmur this to myself).

The medicine is ritually gifted to everyone participating in the circle. A few moments of silence permeate the space as everyone generates a positive internal environment to launch from. Don E. begins a soft susurrus melody that quickly grows into a complex solo symphony. For thirty minutes these incomprehensible Shipibo icaros (healing songs) flow from his mouth, undulating from ripple-like feminine melodies to tsunami warrior masculine howls. He has become a mouthpiece for Spirit to sing through. Inside the web of a slow melody, Don E.’s being shifts into a dying walrus mimicking a blue’s singer expressing, well, the blues. As the icaros continue he morphs into a reclining old woman with long, swirling black hair before dissolving into the faint outline of a jaguar.

“Matt would you like to sing?”

Hmm…a moment of hesitation emerges as I contemplate being the first one to sing while deeply mareacion (“tripping balls”) in front of a bunch of people I barely know? The formations of an answer meticulously climb through dense saliva trenches and shout to my contemplative mind, “Fuck it, why not!” Although my body jitters like a nervous hummingbird withdrawing from coke, my rational mind continues to operate as if the whole world hadn’t shifted.

“Sure I’d like to sing”

So I sit back with closed eyes and tilt my head -- deep breath in, deep breath out. I’ve been around myself long enough to know the sound of my own voice, and this wasn’t it. It seems a transitory nightgig composed of several disembodied indigenous women squished together between my teeth (being disembodied, they don’t mind the tight space) help me sing with a rare vocal subtlety. As the act ends and my mouth closes, they head off...possibly to go help the others. We each take turns giving form to a unique vocal ecstasy and then, with applause, graciously fade back into the dark jungle night. Tears of joy flow down the contours of my grinning face.

The Whispy Maid

As the ceremony continues my river-fed eyes shrivel up to allow the dry bedrock of analysis to display its necessary form and I walk over this jumble of rocks and reflect. It seems that I (and many others) lock into ego-narrative’s that grow off a foundation of conclusions built during arrogant teenage years when “everything was known”. Oftentimes these little stories are deeply inadequate and need to go. So, with my heightened perception, I call out for these little stories to present themselves and when they do, I transfigure their form into wisps of smoke that rise like excess steam through the maloca roof.

“I don’t need you anymore” I keep repeating.

The maid inside me starts cleaning the dusty closets, throwing away aspects of my ego often left untouched, such as the intense yearning to prove myself to some “other”, whether it be parents, peers, or society.  Is there some final entity that will release me from this game once I prove myself to it?

A resounding “Yes!” The final entity is me.

The ancient Kemetians (or “Ancient Egyptians” if you prefer) understood this principle deeply. Their mapping of the after-death state included a “weighing of the soul” performed by the soul who lived that weight. It was you, the highest vision of you, that determined the quality of your life. Later Christian traditions bastardized this ethic and sold the idea that some outside agency, often personified as a Male Judge, measured the weight of your soul.  If the good-pious marks outweighed the bad-sinful marks then you go to heaven (replace “heaven” with “diploma-success” and you get public education), and if vice versa then you burn in hell for an eternity….. “but He loves you” cries George Carlin. The word “sin” itself derives from a Greek archery term meaning “to miss the mark”, it’s not some absolute Evil action, rather it’s a small mishap that requires you to re-draw your “bow”, aim again, and release. To wallow in pity and guilt not only increases the sum-total of self-violence wafting around but it hands over the act of “weighing your soul” to religious-political authorities who might not have your best interests at heart.

Can I get an amen.... and possibly some of that tithe money too!

Ayahuasca Mind Part 1

What the Little Plastic Mouse Brought

 An Umbilical Forage

The giddy tones (“ahhh-hehe”, “hehe-ahhh”, and “aheahe”) leap and frolic from the depths of my voice box to express solidarity with my wiggling toes --- “God-damn this was a smart decision!” The distinct moments of linear time stretch into a space of momentless beyond, experienced as a giddy, toe wiggling eternity.  True contentment.

My story, however, begins well within the constraints of linear time. It begins with the confrontation of a man and a mouse --- a dead and monotone little plastic creature connected by wireless umbilical to the cage of an equally dead and monotone laptop. Inanimate as it may be, this mouse pulses with a great tension, especially as I place it over the last necessary bit of source code and book a flight. 

CLICK

I could write a whole book probing, investigating, deconstructing, and reweaving anew the manifold urges that brought me to, and resulted from, that previous all-caps onomatopoeia ...but I’ll spare you the details. Through the electro-magic of the internet, invisible binary bits whiz through cyberspace at incomprehensible speeds to subtract digital code most call “money” from an online bank account and book a flight with the aptly named, cheap, and decent at best, Spirit Airlines. 

This was the first step in my thousand mile journey, the landscape opens and holy shit it’s vast. So like any good intelligence agent, I forage for information --- scanning my infant eyeballs over hundreds of pages pertaining to ayahuasca, shamanism, Spirits, and Amazonian culture (a few sources include: Graham Hancock’s Supernatural; Michael Taussig's Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man; and Michael Harner’s website). Like the branches of a wide burgeoning tree my interests extend outwards in all directions, but it’s only through tracing back that I can find the potent generative seed I’m looking for.

Muttering Mantra Method:

So…borrowing (alright stealing) a method used in numerous magickal practices, I write out my desire, erase the repeating letters, and construct a mantric sigil from what remains --- and what remains is an absurd juxtaposition of vowels, consonants, and pauses. Slowly and meditatively I repeat this intention-dense sound until a subconsious knowing pokes through my often-stubborn conscious awareness (for FREE!).

La Dieta:

Ayahuasca has often been described as “muy celosa”, very jealous; it demands sensitivity and concentration. One method for increasing these qualities is to diet, to refrain from sugar, salt, hot spices, caffeine, alcohol, and sex. These restrictions are often placed within a larger “dietary” environment that includes a period of jungle seclusion. Seeking to emulate this within an environment far away from the jungle, I decide to renounce television, music, and restrict myself to a diet of yucca, plaintains, and quinoa (at least for this paragraph).

The chance that this commercial airline would specifically cater to ayahuasca dieters by serving a unique plantain-yucca-quinoa dish for anything less than indentured servitude seems unlikely, so I tweak my dietary restrictions a bit and concoct an experimental trail mix of hempseed, walnuts, dried plantains, and cold quinoa. The joys of culinary ingenuity quickly fade when I realize...

..... “this shit is absolutely disgusting!”.....

Buddhism prescribes a disciplined method of meditation to quiet the mind, but I find that shock does it much faster. A space of no-thought emerges as I’m forced to confront my own stupidity.

.... “why didn’t I try it before?”...

I look at four sandwich bags full of the stuff... and then my hand. Four bags. My hand.

SLAP!

A little self-inflicated violence breaks up the last battalion of arrogant iota’s still clinging to a long-gone ideal of culinary pride. With their death comes the rise of a new realization: I’m not going to eat for a while.

Pass the water!

Closed on Sundays:

The amorphous morning dew floats above the jungle canopy with shapes that mock the rigidity of Euclid. A small airplane steers through and settles down on a parking lot for things that whirl in the sky. As the door opens, a blanket of humidity with drops of falling rain climb to the top steps of the airplane to greet me. I waltz through like a sponge, soaking in the rain and sights, until I’m escorted to a patiently waiting taxi with a DIY-improvised charm to navigate through the half-finished roads alongside two strangers with totally different backgrounds who chose to make this same journey. I’m at the hotel for a few moments, just enough time to throw my bags in the room and head out, searching for food to quell my nagging stomach.

Down on the boulevard lies Dawn on the Amazon, a restaurant with a special ayahuasca diet menu designed for the booming hordes of travelers, seekers, and tourists. On the corner stands a veteran salesman working the gringo market, “you want ayahuasca?”

Hmm…drink a sacred and powerful psychoactive meant for ceremonial contexts with the first stranger I meet in a foreign land?

Tempting. What could go wrong?

And so I’m tripping balls walking around this jungle outpost with a complete stranger -- just kidding. I “just say no” as ol’ Nancy used to advocate.

Moments later a raggedly dressed gringo strides up and stares into me with penetrating eyes. A story of mugging and poverty grows from his rapidly moving lips followed by a monetary plea...“if only I had a few soles everything would be perfect”. I contemplate this for a moment, but his decaying teeth and jittery presence lead me towards fibbing, “I’m sorry but I don’t have any money”. Later I find out that he has intentionally kept his fingers broken despite offers of medical treatment so that he could sell his tragic tale to sympathetic travelers.

The restaurant is closed on sundays, no ayahuasca menu. That empty bag beneath my belly-button doesn’t care for dieting now, it just wants to be full. I break off from vegetarianism and la dieta to inhale a plate of chicken and rice.

Ahhh...

Back at the hotel a broad illustration of the coming weeks is sketched out and then we part ways. An empty twin mattress beneath a revolving fan seems like paradise after a day of “rest” on airplane seats and hard plastic floors.  At seven in the morning we head out.

A rare “sticks-out-like-a-sore-thumb” air-conditioned bus lunges through the dense city streets and down a long meandering dirt road, bouncing on potholes and eeking across decaying bridges to end up riverside in the small village of Nina Rumi, the last settlement on the map.

Our modest boat sits alongside an enormous missionary vessel that casts doubt on our intentions as they continue with their own centuries old game of “spreading the gospel”. In our elongated cresent moon we head down the sinuous waters of the jungle cosmos, floating into the borders of a new world. These borders refer to the outposts of a new psyche about to unfold as well as the conspicuous absense of green we’re steering towards. Welcome to the Mishana Community!