Certainty in Uncertainty.

Unlike the rollercoaster rides of the previous ceremonies, during this ceremony a stillness came over my body and mind. It was very theraputic to listen to the sound of silence and to know that you can always retreat to the inside of yourself when it seems like the world around you is collapsing. Even when lightning would strike in the surrounding jungle it stirred nothing within me. I am now very intrested in beginning a daily mediation practice so that I can clear my mind and prepare for the days trials and celebrations. As I have noted before, after drinking the Ayahuasca a huge cosmic party was awaiting me upon my arrival. All sorts of flowers littered the ceiling, multi-colored fireworks shot off all around me, and spirits danced to the tune of Lucos Icaros. What the Ayahuasca showed me this time around was the reason for these large celebrations. The celbratory nature of my Ayahuasca ceremonies was due to the spirits being overjoyed that someone came to visit them. The truth of the matter is that they are very lonely at times because humanity has disconnected from nature and the spirit world, and rational thought seems to reject all things mystical without a thought of weather there might be some truth in what billions of people claim to be real. Instead of seeing things outside of myself on this Ayahuasca journey, I was shown the intricacies of my genetic structure. I saw the codons of my DNA more clearly than the most powerful microscope, ribosomes, mitochondria, and the nucleus of my hundred of trillions of cells as if I was back in highschool biology class. At the moment I could understand the purpose, inner workings, and language of what we call the human body. I desperately wanted to write it down, but it seemed that the ayahausca permanently paralyzed me to stop me from doing so and to let me know that this was sacred information that I could only glimpse, not keep. During the more contemplative stage of the ceremony I began pondering about how to live life, my emotions, and various other things. At this moment the Ayahuasca showed me an island in the middle of a vast ocean. As I aproached the island I began thinking that it was trying to tell me to live as if I lived on an island; only seek the necessities in life such as heat, shelter, water, and food. But the Ayahuasca interupted this thought and told me that I must be the island. The point in telling me to be the island was to hammer home the idea that there is certainty in uncertainty. An island is the greatest example of something that remains certain in an ocean of uncertainty. Certainty and uncertainty are two aspects of our nature. At one level, things have to be certain or order couldn´t exist. At another level, things have to be uncertain or there would be no newness to life. Evolution moves forward through surprising events. So the point I am trying to make is that uncerainty is nothing to fear, but is something to be looked forward to. Why fear it when it can do nothing to shake the foundation or "island" of your being? Later on in the night I again began thinking about how as this towering corporate culture threatens to suffocate us, Ayahuasca can provide for the West what Peyote did for the Indians; instant proof, beyond any doubt, of the existence of a nonmaterialist mystery worth exploring. Realizing that many people are unwilling to go to such lengths it came to me that proof of the mystical can be found in cutting edge science. With so much downtime in the jungle I have smothered myself with any literature that can help explain the unexplainable. One such book was on quantum theory. I already knew and understood Heisenbergs uncertainty principle (don´t ask me how) but after reading about "quantum jumps," quntum nonlocality" and other concepts I can not recal the names of, I saw that even to the raional skeptic, the proof is there. I wont bore you with the details of it all here, but if you can´t make it down to the jungle, do some reading.

Praying for you always,

- Paul

A master shaman walks into the room...

During this cerimony I had the privelage to witness what was possibly the greatest spectacle of my young life; two shamans running ceremony at the same time. About five minutes before ceremony was supposed to start Luco informed us that Alberto, quite possibly the most well known shaman in the world would be joining us for ceremony. To help you grasp how amazingly special this encounter was I will give you a little background on Alberto. Alberto is a fifty five year old master shaman who has been drinking Ayahuasca since he was eight years old (55-8=47 years of drinking Ayahuasca). Just thinking about the enormity of knowledge and wisdom Alberto has attained throughout his life and his passion for sharing it with us would have been a dream come true, but to add fuel to the fire Luco told us that Alberto was the shaman he trained under. This gave me a much deeper feeling of respect for Alberto because if he taught Luco, easily one of the top five shamans on earth, much of what he knows, then he truly is a special person. Once the ceremony started we were all catapulted into realms we had not yet expiernced up to this point. The effect of having two shamans singing their very different Icaros in perfect harmony with eachother was so astounding that it was almost to much to handle. As my visions started I found myself stairing at the intricate mandalas creating themselves before me that are often typical of Ayahuasca. As I was meditating on this mandala this white, round, supreme godhead being started floating down infront of the mandala. Right as I started to get a good look at "it" a huge hand came out of nowhere and lifted it what seemed to be like miles above me and out of site. All of a sudden I realized that the mandala I was looking at was just a little piece of the sheet around the waist of a giant protector. When my focus zoomed out I noticed not only one, but two of these giant spirit like protectors on either side of me barring my access to the godhead. Soon after this I began floating up to a transperent ceiling. When I reached the ceiling I poked it, causing it to pop and allow a large neon purple anaconda to fall through and swollow me hole. After swallowing me it traveled through a series of vortexes and tunnels that each spun at a different frequencies and cailbrated each of my chakras. Feeling like a finely tuned guitar, I opened my eyes to look around and found what looked to be a gorilla on the ceiling stairing down at me in wonder and curiosity. Laying there contemplating what had just happend, I experienced a shift of energy. It was as if a vail was lifted off me and transformed me into a new person. A new level of confidence, security, and love came over me. What is also important to point out was that these feelings did not come from somewhere else, they were always there. All I needed to do was shed the materialistic cultures idea that these are things that must be obtained externally.

Ceremony #10

It´s sounds funny to say that I now feel comfortable with the most powerful entheogen on earth, but it is the truth. I have learned, after much suffering, how to manage the medicine inside my body. Sensing that the group had a lot of enthusiasm towards this ceremony, Luco gave everyone of us a quartz crystal to hold onto the entire night. Having shed my skepticism regarding holistic medicine and its effectiveness soon after my first Ayahuasca ceremony, I embraced the crystal with the upmost confidence in its ability to further enhance my transformation... Even if the details of its power were beyond my current understanding. The fact that quartz has been used in shamanism throughout history and all around the world told me that this was not just some new age hocus pocus. As I held the crystal all night I could feel an incredible energy flowing through the crystal and into my hand. It was almost as if the crystal had a life of its own, and ater doing some research on the use of quartz in shamanism, I believe this was in fact the case. In his book, "The Cosmic Serpent," Jeremy Narby points out that amazonian shamans, in particular, consider that spirits can materialize and become visible in quartz crystals. If you think about this in terms of Western thought, it still makes perfectly logical sense. Quartz is a crystal which means that it is an excellent receptor of photons (light). So what if these spirits were just the biophotons emmited by every living cell in the world picked up, and amplified by a quartz crystal? That would mean that spirits are made of pure light as has always been claimed (and witnessed by me personally and detailed in earlier blog posts). Put that in your pipe and smoke it!!! Going back now from this seemingly unnecessary rant, allow me to explain my experience with the quartz crystal. The crystal would emmit this unmistakable flow of energy that travled up my arm, into my heart, and then finally to the rest of my body. I have probably used the word "unexplainable" a million times by now, but that is the only word in my vocabulary as of now that I can use in trying to explain the healing power of the crystal. I would call it a kind of "cosmic flush." Like a foreign chemical such as Drain-o enters a toilet and cleans out the pipes, so did this unknown spirit clean out and regenerate every nanometer of my physical and spiritual self. It is no wonder that during this ceremony I experienced the largest purge to date. I purged so much that it was hard to believe where it all came from. It just kept coming and coming with no end. I practically filled up my bucket. All I can say is that what I was purging was coming from some very very deep places. Places that have not seen or felt light for what felt like centuries. The time after my purge was also very special for me because I could literally feel energy shifts within the ceremony house. If the group was happy I could feel the heavyness lift from the room and vise versa. I continued to be this open up until about 6AM when I was walking down to the river for my daily ritual. It felt great to be outside in the morning and be so open because I was able to percieve the little things in reality that we have trained ourselves to not acknowledge or ignore. An example of this would be the insect orchestra that is playing its heart out all around us all the time. I heard mosquitos, crickets, flies, moths, butterflies, you name it... All producing their distinct sounds in perfect unison. I have never in my life experienced anything like it. It goes back to the fact that all of nature is constantly communicating and us humans have at some point in time decided to stop listening and telling ourselves that "nature is mute." Well here is a reality check, nature does speak. Just not in a language we can understand without the use of psychoactive plants. Think about it, why do plants waste so much time and energy producing psychoactive alkaloids? To this day scientists have not been able to explain an evolutionary reason for plants producing these alkaloids. It is easy to see the reason if we step back and look at the world with new eyes.

Ceremony # 9

Before I begin telling you about my ceremony I would like to discuss my recent posts. I know they may seem short or lacking in detail but I think it is just a result of the transformation taking place within me. Writing about my experience has become very trivial at times because as the barriers and crossed energies inside me start to break down, my experiences have evolved into a series of literally unexplainable events, emotions, and concepts that only I can conceptualize. I do not mean to say that only I can conceptualize them becaue I am somehow higher in thinking, but rather that they only apply to my own self and therefore could never be understood by anyone but me. Nonetheless I feel I can still go through many visions I have and some of the insights I arrive at that are more universal in nature.

Here we go.

In this ceremony I was definately cruising. After vommiting as if my mouth was the mouth of a waterfall I experienced what I believe to be my most beautiful vision. I was inside this blue cilinder with a beam of light/energy traveling up the middle of it, and brightly colored anacondas spiraling around the light beam in an upward direction. At the same time this cilinder was flying upwards at an incredible speed against a very impressive fireball that contained every shade of orange and red imaginable. So for a while I watched as the fire encompassed the cool blue cilinder and tried to find some sort of hidden meaning in what was occuring. As soon as this thought arose, the scenery changed. I opened my eyes and noticed a neon colored palm tree had sprouted and grown next to the matress where I was laying. As I examined a tree, a man like spirit with a tale walk over to the tree, climbed up to the top, and sat there for the rest of the night as my watchman. I have a strong inclination that this spirit was someone important from a past life, or possibly a diseased family member because unlike the other protectors I have met, the presence of this one gave me more joy and comfort than all the previous ones combined. I wanted to get into some of the decisions I have to make in the near future in terms of where I want to take my life so I layed there and asked the medicine what I should do. Should I go teach english in South Korea so I can save money to travel and further enhance my journey to self discovery? Should I stay in San Francisco? Move to New York? As I asked this third question, the medicine interupted me and told me that I belong where my family is and that location is secondary. It said that when you stick with your family that is when your life force is most powerful. I was happy to finally find out what I should do, but it was also very troubeling since my parents are moving to Europe in eight months to retire. Do I drop everything I have in California and go with them? This is a question I have to think very thoroughly about. Interestingly enough, when I told my mother about the revelation she told me that she and my father have already been discussing keeping the family together...Maybe my original move to Europe after college was the right choice after all. Anyways, enough of my personal decisions and on to the rest of the ceremony. The last significant part of the ceremony was when Luco came over and conducted a Ventiada on me. A Ventiada is basically a personal healing session between you and the shaman. He sings his icaros at you, opens up chakras, removes dark energies, and protects you by blowing smoke in specific places on your body. This ventiada was especially special to me because not only did he do a number on my head when he did some energy work on it and made it fly open (think of a pipe becoming unclogged). But after he was done he gave me a hug and told me how he loved me like family. After this I laid there in silence and complete bliss until the sun came up.

Ceremony #8

So after getting destroyed on my last ceremony I decided to take it easy since I was still recovering, so I drank substantially less Ayahuasca then I usually do. However, although the experience was shorter lived, it was by no means easier. For about three hours after the medicine took effect I had no control over my body whatsoever. I was twitching uncontrollably and shaking as if it was freezing outside. I put on sweatpants, a hoody, and covered myself with two blankets, but I still shivered in discomfort. I can proudly say though that the feeling of having all that cold energy leaving the body is beyond words. Every inch of my physical self feels lose and nimble! In addition, as usual I had some amazingly kalaidascopic visions of anacondas, lions, and very weird unclassifiable creatures that hovered around me all night as my protectors. Towards the end of my short Ayahuasca journey I finally heard a voice telling me that an important part of my destiny is awaiting me in India. I have always been drawn towards India (especially in the months leading up to my trip to Peru) and to be reassured by a divine voice that an important part of my life journey is to take place in India is simply enchanting.

Rainbows in Outer Space.

So the new group arrived on Sunday which was exciting because It's nice to meet other people who are on the same path as I am and it has a compounding effect on the healing taking place when you have people to share your experiences with after ceremony. Another inspiring aspect about this group is that we have people from all walks of life; Former Special Operations Officer for the Army, an employee for the private security company "Black Water," a computer programer, a wine salesman, and surprisingly, a guy who works for a hedge fund. The diversity in people seeking the medicine gives me great hope that Ayahuasca will go more mainstream and that a shift in the world consciousness is possible in the near future.

Now on to Ayahuasca ceremony #7:

To put it simply, I got absolutely rocked last night. Part of the reason for this was drinking about three times more Ayahuasca than everyone else. I didn't plan on drinking that much but the effects were not kicking in for a long time ( which I later realized was because food stuck in my stomach was slowing down the absorption) so I drank another half glass of Ayahuasca and sat back in my rocking chair. About fifteen minutes later the medicine took effect and it was comparable to being hit by a truck. I found myself in some extremely far out places. One place in particular was when I travelled deep into space to an area that was so dark, and mind-numbingly silent, that I really did not know what to do. I just sat there suspended somewhere in the cosmos completely helpless. Then all of a sudden a rainbows starting appearing everywhere around me which helped me recognize that light is indeed everywhere (because rainbows are just reflections of light). From this point to about three hours later I am sad to say I dont remember that much because I was just so out there that my mind couldnt focus on anything or grasp many of the symbols coming at me. Basically images were just shooting past me super fast, and with each image it had some weird calculation written out that I think was signifying its location in the universe. The calculation was not in any language we could understand. It was similar to Egyptian Hieroglyphs and the types of weird alien writing you would see in Transformers or The Fifth Element. When I came back down a little bit and woke up from a complete blackout I kept seeing rainbows! But this time they were covering the ground everywhere. Each stripe in the rainbow signified a different frequency energy emitting from the earth and into everything on the planet. Other than that, the medicine did some serious work on my intestines. It was very painful at times because my central nervous system was shooting off everywhere and it felt like someone was stepping on my bladder which is extremely uncomfortable. This went on till about 5AM. So all in all, this ceremony was not as profound as others I have had, but the medicine is always doing something in your body regardless. I am sure that tonight I will drink an amount that I can handle and therefore gain some insights into a question I have been meaning to ask the medicine; " Who am I?" Sorry for the hap hazard post :). I still haven't slept, and I still feel extremely vulnerable and tender so it is hard for me to put together a proper report.

Stay tuned!

My Sanango Diet.

As promised, it's time to tell you how my Sanango diet went. Every night at 3 AM I would be awoken from my slumber, and after Luco blessed it, given the Sanango brew to painfully gulp down. The taste is absolutely horrible, and much much worse than the taste of Ayahuasca. And if that was not bad enough, the Sanango root burns your throat worse than anything you imagine. After I drank the brew I was permitted to fall back asleep only to wake up an hour later and violently vomit into the bucket strategically placed next to my bed. In addition, it burned even worse coming back up then it did coming down. After vomiting, I would then usually proceed to sit on the toilet for a while and try to tame the frequent bouts of explosive diarrhoea (I am sorry if you are eating breakfast while reading this, but I am strictly trying to paint an accurate picture of what occured). By this point the Sanango has worked its way into my system and my muscles became heavily sedated, making it difficult to move around. I would spend the next few hours laying there and concentrating on how the Sanango was affecting my energy and central nervous system. My body would become extremely hot, and a pins and needles sensation would cover my entire body. Occasionally through out the day I would get these sharp jolts of energy that would shoot to one hand, or my leg would just start tweaking out. This sounds kind of scary, but I welcomed the Sanango and surrendered to it completely so that it could work its magic. After a week of minimal sleep, tons of purging, and total isolation, I was finished. Over the week something had definately shifted within me, a certainty about my place on this journey and in this universe came over me. Each day of the diet, that certainty seemed to deepen and mature. It was not something I could clearly define, but rather an internal experience that transcended reason, possesing impeccable clarity. With all the alone time I had during the diet, a lot of introspection and value judgements seemed inevitable. So for the rest of this post I would like to share with you some of the thoughts and realizations I arrived at during the week. It is amazing how fast and hard your mind comes at you when you stop distracting yourself with things like computers, ipods, and social interaction, and really listen to what it has to say. Well, going into the diet I was on cloud nine. I had six very profound Ayahuasca ceremonies under my belt, and I admittedly had fallen into the trap of believing that I could kick back because the universe will unfold as it should. This is true, and as I said in an earlier post, that when you stive for something with all of your heart, the universe, fate, whatever you want to call it, helps us onward. Beforehand I took this as our lives being left completely to divine intervention. However, this is not the case. Yes, the universe will help you onward, for example, by bringing someone into your life that can guide you, or that is relevant to your goal, but make no mistake about it, no one gets help in the general meaning of the word. As I lay there in my bed I realized this truth and it was inescapable. But I also realized that if everyone gave help, everyone would receive it too. This brings me back to a reoccuring theme in this blog; That life is not a race, its purpose isn't to try the impossible feet of putting yourself above another person (this is simply an illusion we create), but rather to live side by side and help each other along. Everyone one day will realize the same fate, death. And life and death will always complement one another for eternity. Imagine if we focused all that energy we put into ourselves into helping others, and the drastically different world this would be. Just take a step back and look at how ridiculously skewed our idea of life is today. We kill ourselves at our jobs trying to accumulate enough material wealth to build and decorate the posh prison cells we call homes, to insulate ourselves from the indifference of the world. Another tangent I would like to go off on now is one on happiness. It is so engrained within our culture that happiness is something we don't currently have, that is something that needs to be attained though various channels such as shopping, or finding love etc. Our own constitution even proclaims a right "to the pursuit of happiness." I would like to end all that nonsense right here and now. Happiness is within each and everyone of us right now and always will be. Do not look for peace and happiness outside yourself for you will not find it. It is up to us to let go of the fear in our lives that we so dearly cherish and accept the happiness into our lives. Fear is like a dark cloud that blocks the light. The cloud lifts, and the light that was ALWAYS there shines bright. Think back to the concept of death. No one knows when it will come for you, so be happy today.

"Things are never bad; it's the way you think about them."
- Epictetus