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Location: Amazon Jungle, Peru, South America
I travelled deep into the Amazon jungle looking for an ancient
medicine they've been using there for thousands of years.
It has many different names but in the place my travels took
me to it was known as ayahuasca. It is a medicine which
functions on three levels: it it used to cure physical illnesses
(amongst them cancer), mental illness, and for spiritual healing.
Not much is known about it in Western society, except that
one of the ingredients is the strongest hallucinogenic known
to man and that it occurs twice naturally in everybody when
your born and just before you die. To the people of the jungle,
it is known as the most powerful of all the plant teachers;
it is the entrance to the spirit world.
After spending a week on a boat, which was supposed to hold
about 50 people but there were about 150 other people on it,
travelling up the mighty Amazon River into Peru, this
was followed by another day in a little wood before travelling
by canoe up one of the many rivers that run off the Amazon.
Finally I arrived at a little community of about 40 people
called Esperanza. As I walked up through the little
community, with kids looking at me like I was an alien, most
of them never seeing a white man before, I knew I was not
going to leave here the same person as when I arrived.
I spent most of the day walking through the jungle, amazed
at its sheer size and beauty, wondering what it was the great
ayahuasca spirit would have for me to see. That evening the
shaman arrived and after speaking with him for a while we
got ready to start the ceremony. I watched as he poured the
brew into a cup and then began to sing and whistle to it,
smoking some strange cigarette and blowing the smoke over
it. He gave me a couple more words of advice, which I hardly
understood as my Spanish is so bad, and handed me the cup.
I looked into it wandering where and why and how. Then drank
it as I was told.
Uuuuuuuugggggggghhhhhhhhhh! Just thinking about that dirty
dirty taste sends a shiver through my body. i handed him back
the cup and sat down, desperately trying to hold it in, and
watched as he poured himself a cup. I could feel the spirit
inside me working her magic and waited for take off. He started
whistling softly and after about 30 minutes everything started
to bend a little. I knew that this was it.
What exactly happened from then on is a little confusing and
impossible to explain with words, other than to say I saw
the most amazing images I have ever seen, far too beautiful
and complex for my mind to be able to conceive them. I listened
as the shaman sang these magical songs in an ancient language
and guided me through my journey, amazed and bewildered, but
having the most incredible time of my life.
After what seemed like a couple of hours, I could feel that
awful feeling you get, deep down in your stomach, that something
in there wants to come out. I tried to ignore it but it wanted
out and after not letting it out my mouth it went looking
for another exit. Finally I came stumbling out of the hut
and popped spilling the toxic shit everywhere! What an awesome
feeling! Spewing has never felt so cleansing. I don't know
how it kept coming or even what it was that was coming out
but it just didn't stop. I finally regained myself and crawled
back to where I could hear the magical sounds and sat in amazement,
tripping for another couple of hours, before the shaman told
me he needed to rest and left me to reflect on what had just
happened. |
Travel Writers: Making Love with the Universe by
Sue Palombi
