As a teenager, I took Ayahuasca with a Shaman from the Amazon jungle in Peru, which was not something I would have imagined myself doing. At the time, I had not heard anything about Ayahuasca, or Peyote, nor did I have any interest in learning about those things. Unlike the other people on the journey, which was with the Four Winds foundation, I had not yet read the books by Carlos Casteneda, and was a puritan through and through.
Raised as a Catholic, I swerved neatly into Tibetan Buddhism by the age of nineteen. It fit with my belief that the purest path was the express to enlightenment. I've been a vegetarian all of my adult life, do not drink nor smoke nor do drugs of any kind, and without making it a conscious decision, had adopted vows of chastity and poverty.
In short, I was not a normal teenager. I had a very strong conviction that spiritual awareness was everything, and anything which tied a person to the physical plane was nothing more that a distraction which could block one's progress.
When I stumbled onto the path of Shamanism, it seemed primal and messy, a far cry from the upper astral music and the peaceful communion with nature that I loved. It took years to let go of some of my deeply held beliefs about purity. I am still a vegetarian, and still do not take drugs, but have come to view other things in a very different light. In many ways, I feel I have lived my life out of order. I've done extraordinary things while remarkably young, and yet have skipped important steps along the way. So now I find myself remarkably old to be exploring those steps.
When I learned we would be taking Peyote with a Shaman from the Andes, followed later by Ayahuasca with another Shaman from the jungle, I was not happy about either. I had determined there was no way I would participate. I did not like the Shaman from the Andes, and was astonished at my own behavior when I leaned my head back and took the San Pedro stew. The resulting experience was violently unpleasant, and it was unsettling to know that the Shaman had a hand in making me do something against my will.
I would have preferred to be part of the ceremony, without taking the drug. It was my feeling that a person can achieve a transcendental state on their own, through meditation or ritual, and that higher levels of consciousness should only be accessed when the person is ready. Messing around with mind altering substances seemed a very dangerous thing.
Without going into all the details, I will say that for a day and a half afterwards, I could not focus my vision, which scared me. Six weeks later, I had a flashback and found myself at the supermarket where I was a cashier, unable to see the price tags on the groceries I was ringing up.
There was one incident during the ceremony which was incredibly prophetic. We were at the Nazca plains in the middle of the night, and were doing a ritual on one of the figures, called the eye of the needle. We had prepared a stick with carvings or ribbons or whatever. It was to represent personal history, and we were to walk along the spiral to the center and then stab the stick into the ground with a great shout. The point was to release history. Although I have no recollection of what I did, I was told about it the next day. Apparently, I refused to stab my stick into the earth, instead choosing to plant it gently. When I emerged from the spiral, I was carrying an imaginary baby.
Well, when I returned home after the journey, there was a birth announcement from a close friend, who had a son while I was in Peru. When I went to visit nine weeks later, her old apartment in the brownstone next door was vacant, and she needed someone to babysit her newborn son. I moved into what would be my home for over a decade and, for the next year and a half, helped raise my nephew. I put him to sleep at night, taught him to hold a spoon, and helped him take his first steps.
None of this would be clear to me while I was still in Peru, of course. After the difficult experience in the Andes, I was absolutely not going to take the Ayahuasca when we reached the jungle.
We stayed in straw huts on the banks of the river, in a place called Yarina Cocha. It was a magical place. Oppressive heat, thick cool mud, enormous insects, and the most beautiful absence of time. The jungle Shaman was named Agostine Rivas, and I liked him instantly. A gentle spirit. Diminutive in stature, with kind eyes, a soft voice, and the aged hands of a sculptor.
Although he said I could not participate in the ceremony without taking the Ayahuasca, I knew it would be dark, and I could easily avoid my turn. I stayed alert and fully conscious for the entire ritual, which lasted all night. We were on a wooden platform which extended out over the water. Agostine did not let anyone lie down, he insisted we stay seated upright to let the medicine work properly. He kept a tight but easy control over the tone of the group, pulling from a wide assortment of musical instruments and Shaman's tools. I remember especially an eerie sounding instrument which looked like an archer's bow. He blew into one end, while gently plucking the string. The music it produced made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It was otherworldly.
There was a funny moment when he went around the circle giving beaded necklaces to the female participants, but was one short when he reached the last person. He had mistakenly given one to me. As a teenager, I was often mistaken for a girl. I was slender, had long curly hair, and was arguably pretty. Even so, it was too dark for him to notice any of that. He was looking at our auras!
The ceremony was enough for me, I was glad not to have taken the potion, after the rough experience I had already had with Peyote. When we got back to NY, I joined a group led by the woman who guided us through Peru. Her name was Lorna, and she would become an instrumental figure in my spiritual journey. She led a fire ceremony on the full moon, a medicine circle on the new moon, and conducted seminars and retreats where we participated in sweat lodges and other rituals from the native american traditions, including Ayahuasca. Agostine came to NYC with a diluted version of the jungle vine. This time, I decided to participate.
Lorna had a beautiful town house on a private street in Greenwich Village, called Patchin Place. Agostine explained that the energy of a big city could intensify the experience. If we did not want to get sick and go through the physical purging, we should stay attentive and focus on our breathing. The Ayahuasca would work more subtly, but we should be prepared for chaos erupting in our lives over the next few days.
Unrealistically, I thought I would be able to go to work that morning. In an office. Seriously. I walked up to the glass doors and understood pretty quickly that there was no way I would be able to go through them and function all day as if I belonged there. My whole spirit was in another place, still processing the effects of the potent tea.
There was a rather dramatic episode with a roommate which followed. Too long a story to add here, but it did not end well. I evicted the guy and wound up defending myself successfully in small claims court. It was an awful ordeal, and I was grateful to be rid of him. There were issues involved which I can see now were even larger than I understood then.
The period of my life when I was studying Shamanism, and traveling to distant places, is one that I miss very much. It feels like such a long time ago. Lorna has moved on to the next world, and I to Los Angeles.
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