Ayahuasca Mind Part 7

Tranquil Revolutions

 

 

Time for Coca

 

The hastily spread dollop of jam slithers down my empty-tunnel throat as I jump into a motocar and yell  (with unintentional gusto) “downtown please!”
 

......
 

We stare at each other.
 

“Que?”  The driver asks.
 

..........
 

We stare at each other.
 

“…why... did I assume he knew english?” I ask myself dumbfounded, before brushing aside this flawed assumption and cobbling together a bit of spanish, “uhh…ir…al…plaza de armas…por favor”. Off we go snaking through the half-finished maze of Iquitos’ streets.
 

J. and M. sit calmly beneath the burgeoning sun. I walk up, we chat a bit, and then head on down to the surreal and every-busy Belen Market. Zigzaging around people, motorcycles, and overflowing displays of food, we arrive at stall number 23 and purchase ayahuasca vines and chacruna leaves.
 

I waddle down the slim aisle of an overcrowded bus and sit in the back, peering out the dusty window as we barrel down the highway. At marker 23 the bus comes to a slow halt, we pay the fare, and begin walking down a long dirt road that vanishes into the jungle. A deep blue interspersed with wisps of cotton-white paints itself across the dome sky as we travel toward a jungle house to grab some coca leaves and a machete. Throughout the day, I chew and make leaf-wads of this amazing energy-boosting, appetite-suppressing plant.

Making Ayahuasca

 

Making ayahuasca is easy to do, provided you have all the plants. But how did those early folks figure out the plant combinations? Trial and error seems way too tedious in a jungle of 80,000 species! 
 

First gather the basics --- ayahuasca vine, a hammer, a pot to cook in, and chacruna leaves. Although their isn’t one formula for making ayahuasca (this isn’t some type of Betty Crocker shit!), this is pretty standard, but you can also tweak it a bit by mixing in other species like chiricsanango or tobacco if you please.
 

Grab the vines and smash them open with a hammer (without smashing your grabbing hand) and place them inside a large pot. Add some chacruna leaves, bless it with mapacho smoke, and pour some water in. Seal it up by placing a few large leaves on top and fastening them in and then let it simmer over fire for a few hours.
 

The world with all its simultaneously happenings goes about its business of maintaining its continuous creations as we sit and wait, smoking mapacho’s and listening.
 

“Muy tranquilo” M. says intermittantly.
 

Our little patch of earth revolves away from the sun and dusk rises. Our magical-medicinal bitter-brew is nearly ready. The vine and leaves are thrown aside and the remaining liquid is sifted through an old shirt, a cleaning process that precedes one last refinement.
Bam! Pow! and other onomatopeitic (?) phrases abound (if only in my head) as 300ml of medicine is poured into an empty water bottle. Mapacho smoke blesssings and a bit of shaking put on the finishing touches. 

gather chacruna leaves

 

 

 

gather ayahuasca vines, a hammer, and a cooking pot

smash the vines

put vine in cooking pot

bless the vine with mapacho smoke

sprinkle some tobacco on top

add some more ayahuasca

pour water into the pot

seal off the top

discard ayahuasca after it has simmered

photograph discarded ayahuasca and put caption underneath

sift remaining ayahuasca through a cloth

take the remaining ayahuasca and refine it further

finished ayahuasca

bless the ayahuasca with mapacho smoke

 

 

 Ceremony: Tattered Nostalgia

 

The Sun exits stage west and hides its masculine solar-flesh to allow the moon to glow in its full feminine glory. Beneath the wooden roof of M.’s old jungle house, we set up for the ceremony by sitting close to each other and ritually blowing mapacho smoke.  The bottom of an empty water bottle becomes the ad-hoc sacramental cup. I carefully raise it to my lips, breath deeply, and gulp it down.
 

A half hour later and I’m still feeling little.
 

“Would you like to drink a second cup?”
 

That damn question! My brain screams “yes yes drink more” while my stomach, having to deal with the digestive repercussions, is much more wary. So I reside in limbo, vacillating between “it’s not worth it” to “you must drink”, as J. knits another aural tapestry. The icaro ends and the jungle continues with an encore.
 

“Hwoo” I exhale, “yeah, I’ll take another cup.”
 

Another full cup almost climbs down my throat, but I guess it was fearful of the digestive process so it opts to climb back out. An acidic citrus-flavored stream catapults itself from my open mouth. Although the actual experience of throwing up wasn’t pleasant, the after-effects were. My theatrical mind plays a show of nostalgia; old friends and family members appear on stage. The little man inside me begins judging and clothing these people in prejudicial costumes that are often many years worn out. The little man turns to look at himself and notices the same tattered clothes.
 

“Why do I do this? how often do I do this?” the little man wonders.
 

The little man sits with this thought for a while.
 

“There is no reason to be doing this” he concludes, and so one by one the constricting and tattered clothes peel away as the personalities behind are set free. That immensely powerful fourth chakra, the heart center, beats thunderously with a deep love that stays long after the mareado subsides. As the ceremony ends, I curl up close to the uneven floor’s edge and glimpse the vibrating night sky.

Leaving The Amazon

On one shoulder lies a deeply sad character and on the other dances a happy angel. I’ll miss that jet-black sky dotted with the invisible electrical wiring of pin-point stars as I balance on a string between two worlds.  I’m going to miss ayahuasca and all it entails –the insights and purging, the jungle nights and inspiring people– but it’s time to live what I’ve learned. So I head away from the chaos of Iquitos and into the chaos of the United States.

The Florida airport becomes a jarring experience for me—I can suddenly understand the language people speak, but the pompous way in which two men discuss their financial investments makes me wish I didn’t. Even though I’ve lived in this country my whole life, I feel like a foreigner. The people here seem plastic, molded from a rigid factory headed by inhumane bureaucrats who lost their sense of possibility long ago.
 

Life seems to be a series of phases that we grow through, in many ways reflecting the cycle of day and night. The shimmering rays of the midday sun don’t need, nor do they cling to, the early morning ascent. People, like the shimmering rays, die not only at the “end” of their lives, but through the whole progression of it; we have our early morning rise, the midday shine, and an evening descent. Forgetting this knowledge, people tend to carry around corpses simply because they don’t know what to do with them! Whether young or old, it’s sad to see people unable to embrace the phase they’re in, to see old women longing for an early morning rise. Unlike traditional societies, our society has no ritual that commemorates the death of one phase and the birth of another, perhaps by constructing a little ritual-death people can help to let go of the older phases and jump full force into the new.
 

Hypothetical ritual: gather some old journals and distill the essence of what you’ve written into a few paragraphs that you integrate into a caricature of your old-self, go to a secluded area and clear your mind (meditate, light some incense, or smoke a mapacho), dig a hole and place the objects in it—light the hole on fire! Stand up and (live) get on with your life. Salud!

Ayahuasca Mind Part 6

Patterns of Tension

 

 

Paper Napkin Gifts

 

Like the butterfly surfing on air inches above the boat, my hand glides freely atop the wave crests of the wide-bellied Amazon. The community at Mishana fades into the receeding jungle as we turn around the bend and spot Nina Rumi beckoning us with rustic charm. On a simple wooden bench we wait, reflecting on what happened over the last two weeks and pulling ourselves back into a world outside the paradaisical jungle retreat; a world where motocarro’s, not barefeet, provide the transporation.

To my left a bright white air-conditioned rectangle crawls up the straightline road and stops. Doors open and we walk on. With our bags at the front, we sprawl out on spacious seats and feel the bus shake like tension between two worlds as it wobbles down long pot-holed roads. Bievenidos a Iquitos. We’re back.

The no sugar/no salt/no hot spices/no caffeine diet hangs up and a tasty boulevard plate calls. It’s so loud that a band of three wandering kids hear. The caller, a steaming plate of white rice, is quickly wrapped up in a paper napkin by E.B. and given away.

Although not restricted to the two-thirds world solely, situations like this certainly happen more frequently here. The endless and tranquil jungle is no more, now the patterned cement of Iquitos stretches out for miles. Children sell ciggarettes and popcorn, old ex-pats drink, emaciated dogs scamper by, and hungry cats prowl. The last one, a striped tabby, steers by way of its nose toward my fish sandwich. She stares for a moment with wide siamese-eyes before crying out, in a high-pitched tone, “meow…meow…meow”

“Just look away, look away” I say to myself.

But it keeps on coming... “meow…meow…meow”

“Dammit…alright alright, calm down calm down”. 

I peel off small bits of fish and watch her fast, sharp teeth inhale. Iquitos’ jarring sounds -- the continuous honking horn and blarring radio --  are too much to deal with, so I retreat to a sleepy hotel. 

 

Dream Interlude

 

While in the arms of sleep adrift in a dream world, the decor of a hotel lobby fades in. A parade of vulturous vendors swarm in from all sides and repeat “Hi-yah my friend, I’ve got your stuff…yeah yeah, ayahuasca…good energy” while shoving their products in everyone’s face. With signature Hunter Thompsonesque style I shake my fist and yell “these sons of bitches!” before grabbing as many as I can and pushing them outside. Those around me want to hug and thank me, but I decline. I don’t want to be some type of hero, I just want the pesky vendors to leave!

The Day After and So On 

 

Outside the contours of that altered reality, I find myself in a “real” hotel lobby, about to head out for some food. Before my toes hit the pavement, my ears perk up and hear the carefully marketed phrase “hi-yah my friend, I got your stuff”. The strangeness of the wording always throws me off at first — “have I been robbed already?”
 

These savvy vendors have mastered the techniques outlined by the father of public relations, Edward Bernays, back in the 1920s. Namely, instill the idea that unmet emotional needs (typically unconscious aggressive and sexual energies) can be satiated by material objects. All worries can now disappear because this necklace is “yeah yeah, good energy.” Tempting, but…I decide to walk away.

Not to say I’m against acquiring material objects or anything, that would be hypocritical considering I’m inside an artisans market wearing a recently purchased vest and ogling the beaded-bracelets and ayahuasca vine necklaces. The interior is adorned with vibrant oil paintings and intricate woven clothes. Needless to say, I walk out with more than I came in with.
 

The rest of the day until evening is spent walking along damp roads, zig-zaging between the sights of the Belen Market, and saying goodbye to some amazing people. Around dusk I find myself at the Karma Cafe smoking mapacho’s, talking, and making plans with M., a Matses curandero, to do a nunu (tobacco-snuff) ceremony early the next morning. The night ends beneath the roof of a boulevard bar singing english karaoke tunes.
 

The sun ascends to its prominent central spot as our packed bus travels down a long stretch of black pavement and drops us off at kilometer 23. We continue our journey on foot down a long and glistening dirt road.
 

Some introductions seem appropriate: J. is a 29 year old American who has been down here nearly two years learning about the healing potentials of ayahuasca and M. is a 40 year old curandero from the Matses tribe, also known as the “Cat People” because of the whiskers they attach to their faces. M.’s very knowledgable about the local flora and fauna and has cured people of supposedly “fatal” cancers that university-trained doctors gave up on. He slices a machete into a large tree and a white-sappy liquid pours out. “This cures diarrhea” he says. Pulling apart the stem of a small green bush reveals iodine. “This is good for your chiggers” he says, and splotches it over those annoying little red dots that have colonized my leg. Eventually we come upon a small jungle hut tucked into the enveloping jungle and greet the 75 year old woman who lives there alone. I watch her mash yucca roots as M. starts preparing the ceremony… 

A Ceremony with Tobacco 

While the tobacco dries in the sun, M. prepares a blood-purifying mixture consisting of casllillo vine water, paujil huasca & misho chaqui (leaves from a prickly-spiny bush), betilla, cordonsillo, and itiningo blanco; he says I will “have no more sickness” after drinking this. He rolls over the tobacco with a glass bottle to soften it, then sifts it through a cheese-cloth into an ultra-fine powder. Down in the river I wash my body and  sit on a wooden plank. M. hands me the blood-purifying mixture and rhythmically shakes a leaf-rattle (renaquilla, katauwilla, cumala rojo, aire sacha, matelo sanango, and catagua) as I swallow it. He scoops up the tobacco with one end of a hollow tube and places the other end in my nostril, forcefully blowing it in.
 

My eyes begin to water. Sense perceptions become heightened to such a degree that I tune into the unique form of each unfolding ripple in the stream. Subtle shades of green jungle leaves gleam in the daylight sun and my body tingles all over. M. repeats the procedure three or four times, pouring water over my head and rattling in between. I spit up saliva and streamline this gooey green-brown gunk out my nose. I’ve never experienced tobacco in this way. Along with the ceremony comes dietary restrictions meant to keep my bodymind healthy: no red meat, beef, duck, or milk, basically eat a vegetarian diet with occasional fish and chicken. After the ceremony, I feel very calm, “muy tranquilo” as M. keeps saying. A salad of chonta (a sort of palm bark) and lemon is prepared before walking out of the jungle and into another humorously overcrowded bus to head back to the city. 

 

 

Ayahuasca Mind Part 5

Are The Dead Alive?

 

 

Ceremony: The Hook Inside My Inside Eye

 

Each ayahuasca brew, like the existentialists say of all people, is sui generis, an absolutely unique category unto itself. Its character is dependent upon the proportional harmony that arises from the quantity of leaves/plants used, the quality of leaves/plants (dependent upon local climate, time of day picked etc.), the thoroughness of the refinement process, and the intention of the maker --- an important and overlooked factor.
 
The day before, Don E.’s wife travels to the local market for some goods. While there she is mugged, beaten up and left with fewer possessions than she came with. A distraught Don E., concerned about his wife, finds it difficult to concentrate on the minutae of ayahuasca brewing and the medicine is noticeably weaker. Other than the fleeting visualization of a light-river flowing upstream through my nose, hooking itself into my third eye, and flowing downstream through my titled mouth, only contemplation and somatic sickness fill the ceremony.

 

Ceremony: The Centuries Old Unmet Composer

 

Gulp.
 

I tame the urge to vomit.
 

Don E. chimes in with susurrus sounds that call on the mareado to rise. It drifts in and out as he continues to play his song. This being the last ceremony, he gives each patient an “arkana”, a sort of protective song-ritual, to help keep in all we’ve learned over the course of these two weeks. Don E. sways back and forth in front of me, softly whistling the prelude to a powerful icaro that lasts more than five minutes. The mareado deepens…
 

“Holy shit!”
 

I get sucked into the geometric webs emanating from his multi-tonal & incomprehensible icaro as it cocoons my body in patterns of diaphonous architecture. His powerful masculine voice grows for an eternity before subsiding into a feminine tranquility that wraps the vocal shield up.
 

Pshooo…
 

He blows agua florida onto the crown of my head and pushes the arkana in by compressing the sides of my skull and chest.
 

Visions wax and wane throughout the whole ceremony according to the time-signature dictates of an unmet composer. During a more contemplative measure I began thinking about the sum total of dead people from all of history. Where are they? Did they all simply disintegrate into the environment? Are they floating around in some capacity, influencing the present situation in ways unknown to most? Why is the appeasement of ancestor spirits so vital to many cultures? 

As this vista of questioning unfolds, a new contemplative landscape opens. What will the blow-back of bad karma, the collective impressions of Evil, be? It’s known in physics that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, what will the “equal and opposite” reaction to centuries of murdering-raping-pillaging be? The instances of these actions have been expanding in the collective psyche for centuries and centuries, what will the force of the contraction spell out for humanity and Spaceship Earth? It ain’t goin’ to be pretty folks (to put it lightly).
 

Don E., like the steady drum beat backing a free jazz solo, provides the rhythmic ground of continuous song to orient the direction of my thinking.
 

And then silence...
 

“Would anyone like a second cup of ayahuasca?”

I contemplate this for a moment, but the moment ends soon when I come to notice  the watery-webs expanding in every direction from my spacious eyeballs. I’m underwater and cannot take such an innocent sounding question seriously, so I laugh. No one drinks a second cup tonite. The ceremony ends and we all huge Don E.

Off in my bed I lie perfectly content with my last night in paradise. 

Ayahuasca Mind Part 4

Grabbin Seeds

 

 

Ceremony Four: The Grunting Labyrinth 

 

A serpent coiled tightly around a golden egg writhes with anticipation inside the flesh walls of my stomach. Like the discomfort of a newborn squirming through the confined space of its mother’s labyrinthine tubes, the thing birthing inside me had to lead somewhere...I just wasn’t expecting it to grunt in a low rumbling tone the anti-climactic demand “go to the bathroom!” In the jungle darkness mareado and barefoot I stumble down the maze of interlocking walkways into a sparse bathroom where I come face to face with a toilet that has become personified. 

“Have you been waiting here for me? did you know I would come?” A rare type of puzzlement and surprise perks up, one that emerges when you find yourself having dialogue with inanimate objects. 

 

La Purga Interlude 

 

“Purging” is an integral part of ayahuasca ceremonies, serving to expell any accumulated toxins that can affect the proper functioning of our being. These toxins attract themselves to us through a variety of means and inhibit our ability to “be whole” (the meaning of “health”), therefore they need to be released through vomiting, diarrhea, crying, or farting. The openness with which these natural bodily functions were discussed and accepted as fundamental to healing, compared to the fearful and suppressive attitudes I was more accustomed to, helped to shift my viewpoint toward an appreciation of how powerful these technologies of release can be.
 

Ceremony Four Continued  

I take a seat and gaze at the spherical domains brought into being by the choregraphed dance of my flashlight.  A slender rainbow, alive and pulsating, streams a few inches above my skin and deconstructs the illusion of continuous movement. Instead of smooth transitions, it moves by way of still snapshots that resemble the process of creating stop motion animation. I watch and ponder, waiting to make sure all that needs to come out, comes out (if you know what I mean). A powerful tide of The Strange wraps itself into my perceiving mind, so I concentrate it on examining this body I’ve been for all these years.
Grabbing my knees to make it more real, I think “What is this for? Why do I have a body?”

Adherents to Darwinian evolution tend to view the body as simply a vehicle for survival,  a machine built for the gratification of selfish desires. If it’s simply to survive and nothing else, then why so complicated? Why thousands of miles of internal tubing? Why more synaptic possibilities than observable stars? Couldn’t we survive perfectly well with a less complex body?

An inquisitive iris lured by the universal fascination with getting closer, pulls itself right next to the extended bone of my knee cap...but it can only go so far. With telescope’s we can peer into the world of cells, those socially conscious communities that carry out most of the body’s work by running off the energy of the local electromagnetic environment. The dynamism of this environment can acquire its unique signature through the energetic input of thought.  Therefore thought can influence the quality and type of work expressed through the body.
 
Past the domain of cells lies an information dense core, the nucleus. Within its walls reside DNA, a crystalline substance able to receive and transmit signals from both the local and nonlocal universe. Throughout human history a variety of carefully-taught methods have been practiced by people who understand this (by whatever metaphors they use) and want to extend their conscious awareness of DNA’s recieving capacities to connect and learn from different vibrational frequencies. It seems the fundamental function of our bodies, built from the genetic blueprint of DNA, is to recieve and transmit energy signals from “the environment” (within the skin-encapsulated ego as well as billions of miles away). From this understanding arises the ethic of broadening these capacities.
 
All done! (“how cute”)
 
I configure my legs, or my legs configure themselves, out of that awkward sitting position and into that idiosyncratic human stance (the bipedal two leg gig) to head on back to the maloca. On tippie-toes with the delicacy of a geisha, I traverse the darkness as unobtrusively as possible to sit lotus position on a mat. After a soft congratulation for not stepping on any toes, my head languidly droops back at a forty-five degree angle with my mouth, resembling a pyramid capstone, opens wide to await the inflow of cosmic signals.
 
“Ahhh......”
 
Breath transfigures into a luminous web that draws itself into the architecture of the maloca roof, providing midwife support for the birth pangs of a sound rainbow and its child, a spiraling troupe of o-so-sinuous green vines. My head puslates to the rhythm of ethereal butterfly’s that soon take flight, piercing through the net with a fluttering grace unseen in this world.
 
The sounds born from people collecting their voices into a unified pool of vibration penetrates through my body and orchestrates a serpentine dance. Movement just happens, I don’t consciously direct it -- the only injection of conscious will is the thought “I don’t want this to stop.” Unfortunately it does stop, halted by the tune of a rumbling stomach --- you know the deal. I don’t know why -- too many mapacho’s? too much insensitivity throughout my life? --- but this meat machine isn’t working as I’d like it to. “What’s your deal?” I remember thinking, providing the opening question to a dialogic process bound to take long yet long overdue. How can “we” work together? The answers to these questions cannot be found in dead phrases written down and forgotten, for the only way I’ll know if an answer is “correct” is through lived experience.
 
With this the ceremony ends. I tiredly scamper off to my bed and gaze at the gossamer rainbow patterns gliding centimeters above my skin before surrendering to the tides of sleep.