Ayahuasca Visions (Third Ceremony)

The third ceremony was held outdoors under a full moon. Now that the tarp had been removed, everyone had an unobstructed view of the sky. The night could not have been more perfect. The same ritual pouring and drinking of the ayahuasca was followed. I had an extra measure of the brew poured for me. Once I had settled down in my spot and closed my eyes, the visions began. I could feel the effects five or ten minutes after drinking.I found myself on the cosmic subway again, but this time, when the doors slid open, I got off. The silver mirror was there, and I was able to pass through what appeared to be swinging doors into a space I call the Ayahuasca Cafe. There was a movie theatre with some presence lounging outside the door. The marquee outside read, "Who Really Killed JFK?" in small yellow lightbulbs. I thought, okay, this could be interesting. When I approached the theatre it became apparent that the film was not showing at this time, so I wandered around the building into an alley that led to a stairwell, trailing after a voice that said, "Come this way. Follow me. Wait here." The voice left me standing in the shadows of the stairwell. I considered climbing the steps to the second floor or taking an elevator if it appeared, but instead, I turned around and retraced my route.

I walked through a small gate into a bistro containing tables and chairs and found myself standing in the middle of a garden. Aphid like insects with round bodies and many tiny legs were crawling along the branches of the plants growing here. Little eyes attached to the tips of flexible stems peered at me. I definitely felt that I was in the plant world. I watched three white Stryrofoam balls wearing baseball caps go bouncing between the tables and out of sight. Above my head, there was netting strung across a ceiling that was open to the sky. There were shiny jewel-like objects strung from the netting like shells in some nautical design. I could see the silhouettes of pedestrians and vehicular traffic passing by on the street beyond a lattice screen that defined one boundary of the cafe.

I walked through into a gift shop area where there were jeweled bracelets arranged on a three-tiered serving platter. A voice told me that I could take whichever one I wanted. I actually reached out my hand, but couldn't physically touch what I was seeing. And then a type of metallic computer disk, like a small external hard drive appeared out of the darkness. A voice said that the program was mine. It seemed to click into some invisible socket I was unable to discern. I figured whatever info was being downloaded would become evident in the days to follow.

That's pretty much the entire vision. I got up at that point to visit the toilet. The diarrhea was much less intense on this occasion. The full moon did not have the halo effect it had during the first ceremony. The moon looked like it normally does, bright and full. Clouds seeped like watercolor paint across the moon's surface. Some participants reported seeing meteors streaking through the sky, but I didn't see comets. It was just a beautiful night sky and a peaceful jungle environment and a circle of united souls under the stars.

I watched Riccardo doing his thing. When he approached me, he took my hands, pressed my palms pressed together, and blew smoke over them. Then he held my head and blew smoke into my crown chakra. The expression on his face was intense, his eyes focused, his body squatting before me in the smoke under the moonlight. I lay back on my pad, closed my eyes, but didn't experience any strong visuals. I had tried looking at the clouds that moved across a grid superimposed on the sky, but it was hard to focus my eyes and the effort was making me a little dizzy. I turned on my stomach and stared at the wall of trees behind me and listened to the insects trilling, everything bathed in moonlight and faintly luminescent.

I was feeling quite good about my experience. I felt that I had many questions answered. I felt reassured about the path I was on and felt that I was moving in the right direction. The fact that so many of the people who were participating with me in this ceremony were open to collaboration exhilarated me. Here was both guidance and opportunity freely offered for me to make of it whatever I could. I am deeply grateful to have had such an enriching experience and thankful to those who made my initiation possible. The center of my forehead was sore to the touch after the last ceremony, which suggests to me that my pineal gland had been strongly stimulated.

Ayahuasca Visions (Second Ceremony)

The second ceremony was held inside the Maloca. Since space was tight, a small group was split off and relocated in a screened room that was being used to display artwork. Riccardo presided over this group. Don Guillermo, Sonya, and Maria, along with other apprentices, performed the ceremony with the larger group. Again, each member in the circle got up from his or her mat and knelt before Don Guillermo who poured the ayahuasca from his plastic bottle into the cup he raised in his hand for all to drink. We were given the option of asking for a larger or smaller portion of ayahuasca from the outset or we could come forward later for another cup during the ceremony.

The bodily sensations I experienced were not as strong as the first time, but I could feel my guts start to churn and I burped a few minutes after I drank my cup and returned to the mat beside Gabriel. We looked at one another, smiled, assumed meditative postures, and closed our eyes.

The ceremony was being held inside because of intermittent rain that had fallen during the day and that had nearly dissipated by the time the ceremony began. I could hear drops falling on the thatched roof. It was a cozy space. I sat with my back pressed against the curved wood wall of the maloca. Jeremy Narby and Dennis McKenna, two of the presenters I had traveled to Peru to hear speak, sat directly across from me. I felt at peace. Serene.

The visuals were very subtle: snake-like tendrils swaying down, like willowy branches stirred by a breeze. The icaros began weaving threads in the darkness. The man who had heaved his guts two nights earlier began his second all-night-long vomiting session. In fact, while I was sitting on the toilet later that evening, he burst in on me ready to hurl, but he backed out and rushed into the next stall and heaved. A close call.

The night was overcast and hazy from the rain that had all but disappeared by now. I stumbled in from the john through a different door to the maloca than the one I exited and was blindly searching for the spot I thought my mat should be when I was politely asked what I thought I was doing and then gently guided to my spot on the opposite side of the room. No nausa. No impulse to hurl. Just a slightly queasy feeling in my gut. The icaros in the maloca this night were much lighter, which I attributed to the fact that Riccardo was in a different building.

More voices were added to the singing as the apprentices harmonized together. We were treated to beautiful symphonic chanting throughout the night, the female voices sprialing upwards, floating, nearly resolving, but then rising again in a slight variation in an undulating rhythm that was extremely pleasant.

I felt as if I had been left standing in front of a row of shop windows in some indistinct mall of some sort. I didn't feel like wandering a mall. Visiting the shopping center is not something that excites me. I wanted the crystal palace, the space ship, the journey to distant planets, contact with alien races. But here I was, dropped off at the mall. The voice in my head asked me if I wanted to see what was in a display case. I realized that here was a simple metaphor that I could easily understand, as well as a method for sharing information, so I replied, "Sure, let me see."

There appeared a rectangular doorway or mirror framed in silver jewels that I approached hoping to see in it the reflection of my face or to pass through it to whatever lay beyond, but as I got nearer it disappeared, and I was peeking in the glass of the display case when a hand appeared holding a carved wooden box with what looked like fuzz-covered seed pods packed like bonbons in an ornate candy box. The case was slightly tilted for me to see and then the carved box and the hand holding it withdrew below my line of sight.

Threads of light continued to spiral down from above, angling toward me in a third-dimensional way, sort of like a glass snowglobe effect, but instead of snowflakes, ribbonous snakes, like crepe paper streamers, floated down on the vibrations of the icaros. I feel asleep listening to the family chanting sweet music, the chorus in full-throated harmony, the high mosquito whine of Maria's voice darting like a hummingbird around my head.

Ayahuasca Visions (First Ceremony)

The first ceremony was held outside under the stars. By 9:00 pm, all participants had assembled and taken their places on straw mats that were arranged under and around a large canvas tarp that provided shade during the day and protection for a bank of electronic equipment in case of rain. My shoulders and head extended beyond the edge of the tarp, so I had a clear view of the sky. The ayahuasqueros took up their positions in the open center of the rectangle formed by group. Don Guillermo and Riccardo sat with their backs to one another. They indicated with a nod of the head for each member of the group to approach and drink the ayahuasca they poured from a plastic bottle into a small cup. When it was my turn, I knelt in the white sand before Riccardo, took the cup he held out to me, and drank. The ayahuasca that had been boiling in a large black kettle all day did not taste as bad as some people reported. In fact, I found it went down smoothly. After swallowing my portion in one gulp, I returned to my mat and sat watching the others get up, drink their cup, and return to their spots. After everyone had drunk, I closed my eyes, cleared my mind of thought, and waited. I felt no anxiety. I was confident in Riccardo and Don Guillermo's ability to hold the space for such a large group.

I started to feel the effects approximately five to ten minutes later. My stomach began to rumble a little and I belched a few times. I sat with my eyes closed and felt the ayahuasca spreading through my system. By the time the ayahuasqueros began singing their icaros, the visions had begun. I could feel the snake energy coursing through my body as though I were traveling on a cosmic subway train through my intestinal tract. I felt as though I had entered a subterranean world of fibrous roots and rich loamy earth. The snakes felt thick and large as they squirmed through my bowels. Riccardo's icaros, sung in a much deeper register than Don Guillermo's, along with the body music my neighbors provided (burps, farts, and vomiting) proved the perfect accompaniment to the serpents' wriggling dance. It was snake music--gititupgititupgititupgititupgititup--and it seemed a strong invitation to puke your guts out, which is exactly what one poor guy did all night long. This is why ayahuasca is referred to as la purga--people were heaving into the plastic buckets we were all instructed to carry with us at all times. Welcome to the vomitorium. The thought made me smile.

There were fuzzy little micro-organisms scurrying down root filaments in my mind's eye. The subway train I was on would slow down when it approached a platform and I could see posters of mandalas hanging in a freize across the walls of the station. Glass sliding doors were stenciled Enter and Exit, but the train only slowed down and then picked up again. It didn't stop for me to disembark and explore the dimly lit spaces beyond the platform. I was growing impatient staring at the billboards and wanted to be shown something a bit more extraordinary--an alien saucer, a crystal palace, the galactic mother--something a little less pedestrian than advertisements, but I was stuck on the train, so I settled in for the ride.

I held healing intentions for the people I know whose bodies have been stricken with disease or whose minds have been afflicted by psychic trauma. I wanted these people healed, all people healed, my own body healed, the planet healed. And the plant obviously understood and shared my intentions. My cousin, the person who first excited my interest in psychedelics while I was just a kid in high school, told me he had been diagnosed with rectal cancer a week before I left for Peru. He had already started chemo and radiation treatments when I boarded the plane. The day I returned, he told me about a dream he had while I was in the jungle. It was more a vision than a dream, and it woke him up. His first thought was that it must be some type of telepathic message from me. I think he's right. He dreamt of a stallion and a mare copulating in a field filled with plants with spiky leaves, like cactus. The plants had eyes and mouths, and they were singing songs in a strange language. Unidentified onlookers were cheering in the scene, as the mare was mounted. Root chakra stuff. Perhaps that's the energy field through which I traveled while riding the underground subway. Anyway, I discovered during the conference that there are plants used to cure cancer, that can draw a tumor out of the body when applied as a poultice, and that the animal spirit associated with one of these plants (pinon blanco, I think) is the horse. An interesting connection.

My guts were really twisting at the peak of this experience. The explosive vomiting coming from all around was amplified. The icaros were weaving together in beautifully intricate, hypnotic, contrapuntal melodies. Don Guillermo's mother Maria added her icaros to the mix, her high pitched voice like the thin whine of a mosquito stitching the songs together. I didn't know how much longer I could last before soiling my pants, so I opened my eyes, grabbed my bucket, and headed down the moonlit path to the toilet. With eyes open, I was totally aware of my physical surroundings, aware of my identity, in control of my body. I felt no queasiness in my stomach, no urge to vomit. The discomfort I felt was centered in my intestinal tract. Since I've been taking medication to control Crohn's disease for more than twenty-five years, this type of discomfort came as no surprise to me. Ayahuasca is medicine. It went to work on what was ailing me, that's for certain. After a few gushes of diarrhea, I felt considerably better, even though my guts were still gurgling. A circle of bright light emanated from the moon in feathery shafts, forming a glowing halo. The moon, like an eye above cheeks of cloud, looked down at me as I looked up. I found my way back to the ceremonial space with no problem, without need of a flashlight. The white sand of the paths that led throughout the conference center was luminescent as though lit by a black light, recalling a few rock clubs I frequented back in the late 60's and early 70's. There were patterns in the trees that surrounded me. Some participants saw spirits in the trees, the shapes of animals. To me the trees seemed to be floating in separate planes, layered one in front of the other, like three nearly transparent sheets of paper: near, middle, and far--kind of like colorform stickers that children paste on a page to make a picture.

When I got back to my mat, the heavy internal body sensations I was experiencing made me woozy. I sat cross-legged for a while, watching Riccardo and Don Guillermo make their rounds, squatting in front of people, blowing mapacho smoke into their crown chakras, and chanting. I lay back on my mat, my head on a small pillow, and covered myself with the small blue airline blanket Delta had kindly supplied. You could tell when one of the curanderos was approaching your position. The song deepened and intensified, as did the energy in that space. I found out later, that curanderos can see the energy patterns of a person's body. They are similar to the patterns found in Shipibo weavings, which are visual representations of the icaros the shamans receive directly from the plant and sing throughout the ceremony. A skilled shaman can redraw those patterns, like an artist with a brush transforming some visual element in a painting, by employing shamanic techniques such as chanting, blowing into the opening of a plactic bottle, as well as laying on of hands. Some of the healing going on is evident in the visions people report. One participant had his body unseamed in a surgical procedure and sewn up again after some vile black substance was removed by spirit hands. So the healing that's going on is happening on various levels--the physical, the psychic, the emotional. How strange to be consciously aware of these states and to be able to navigate through them.

I was told that Don Guillermo had circled the entire group at least four times during the night, blowing smoke and chanting beside each participant in the ceremony. I could see that Riccardo was doing the same, working his side of the street, holding the space, his voice a register lower than Don Guillermo's rich tenor, his pulsing bass rhythms a counterpoint to Maria's delicate, finely-pitched tremulo. I listened to their musical performance until I fell asleep. I was told that I was snoring. I figure my snores were just another added voice in the chorus. At least I wasn't shouting for help, as some of the others had done throughout the night. There was an occasional verbal outbusrst, someone cursing out his mother, another exorcising his own tormenting demon with his cries. Not everyone had a smooth or pleasant ride. A few people chose not to participate in the third ceremony because their experience had been too intense both physically and psychologically for them to continue.

My mindset at the start of the ceremony was to approach it in a sacred manner. It had been my intention to bring a pure heart, an open mind, and no expectations to these ceremonies and to be receptive to whatever happened, no matter how bizarre. I felt no fear or anxiety at all. This posture seemed to serve me well. I felt welcomed into the weirdly beautiful realm of the plants, insects, and snakes.

Convergence 2008

The Vultures

I returned from Iquitos, Peru on Saturday after spending nine days at the Espiritu de Ananaconda, a small Shipibo village in the Amazon jungle, where I and approximately 70 other people took part in Convergence 2008. I had come to learn about Ayahuasca, a powerful plant teacher, and to experience for myself the plant's effects. I participated in three traditional Ayahuasca ceremonies during my stay. My introduction to Ayahuasca proved to be a remarkable experience that I will describe in subsequent posts as part of my integration process.

My trip, I came to discover, was being scripted by an unseen hand and powerful natural forces. I left Seaside Park, NJ on July 8th with my passport tucked in my pocket and visions of my three-week-old granddaughter flooding my mind's eye. Things got spooky when the flight from Lima to Iquitos was cancelled due to vultures circling in the sky above the dumps of the city, obstructing air traffic. Another more prosaic explanation for the aborted flight was that striking workers had strewn nails and glass on the runway in Iquitos. I would like to believe that the vultures temporarily blocked our path so that I could connect on a deep level with a few fellow travelers before the conference.

Soul Brothers

Once I had rechecked my luggage and rescheduled my flight for the next day, I hopped into a taxi with Gabriel and we headed off to a cliff top perch overlooking the Peruvian coastline. Gabriel and I spent the next nine hours downloading information to one another. I shared my poems with him and he shared his art with me. The strength, depth, and immediacy of our connection astonished us both. By the time we boarded the plane for Iquitos the following morning, Gabriel and I had become not only friends, but brothers.

When we arrived at Espirtu de Anaconda, we were fully primed for sacred ceremonial work. Gabriel set up his computer to play his collection of trance mixes in a tent that Don Guillermo dubbed the Ayahuasca Discotheque. It proved a nifty place to chill and to maintain our groove. After stowing my gear in a tambo situated in a secluded spot along a jungle trail, I spent the remainder of the day getting to know other members of the group that had assembled the previous day. I've got to give credit to the spirits orchestrating this journey for bringing together such a collection of incredibly talented and creative people. It was only natural that we formed a closely knit tribal community.

Entanglement

The forces of attraction waxed strong in the jungle. I became entwined in the fantastic tendrils of Robert Venosa and Martina Hoffman, two visionary artists who shared their wisdom and love with me. They, too, were stranded in Lima the previous day. Katiri Walker, a Native American actress and activist, is another person with whom I have become hopelessly entangled. We share a common vision and are traveling a similar path. She has promised to introduce me to her Hopi grandmother when I return to Arizona in the fall. I am at her service. Two other people I will look up when I get back to Phoenix are Sharon Stetter, a teacher of Integral Yoga and agent for Dennis Numkena, and Harry Farrar, a network engineer turned DJ. Conveniently enough, both Sharon and Harry live in close proximity to my home in South Mountain Village, which will make it easy for us to get together.

Easter Island

I've added many new friends to my address book since my return from the Amazon. I am excited and honored to be part of this network of creative, like-minded individuals. There is much work to be done in the years leading up to December 21, 2012. Gabriel and I are already making plans to meet on Easter Island to conduct a sacred ceremony during a full solar eclipse on July 11, 2010.