Friday, August 7, 2009

The Shaman

The picture below, which I randomly found on the internet, approximates my main hallucination while under the influence of ayahuasca and the guidance of the jungle shaman:

This, after imbibing a medicine-y brew of green icky stuff and listening to the chanting and spanish-language catholic-influenced prayers of the shaman for a couple of hours, was perhaps one of the most coherent of my many visions.

It all started on a dark and blustery evening in the Amazon, when the shaman came and told us what to expect. "Bring a blanket," he said. "Bring water. Bring a pillow." Check and check. "When the medicine takes effect, you can expect that maybe the jungle will be talking to you. Or it could be in the form of a small virgin. Whatever it is, don't be scared. I am in control, nothing bad will happen." Okey dokey, shaman. My mind is in your hands.

My two partners in mindbending and I meandered back behind the lodge, into the jungle, over a bridge and up a path of stones lit by torch to an octagonal, screened ceremonial hut, where we took our places on some cushions and settled in for.... well, something.

It started like this: picture several lava lamps and a trippy "seeing eye" poster melting together and spinning rapidly around the room. Then imagine some 60s hippie kids in an electric kool-aid acid test van dumping brightly-colored crazy paint all over the freeway. Then imagine that a swamp/jungle starts growing in the midst of all this. There's some swampy water, and some frogs and toads croaking in the background, and a bunch of vines growing all over everything. It's all happening at very high speed. The whole time, you're looking for your spirit guide so you can ask him/her/it some questions, like how you can be healthy, do better at work, finish your projects, learn arabic more effectively and achieve lasting happiness. But your spirit guide isn't showing up. HELLO! You yell through the crazy paint. ARE YOU MY SPIRIT GUIDE? No answer. You begin to grow increasingly frustrated. You are no longer amused by the colorful geometric patterns whizzing by your head. You keep forgetting you have a body, and when you remember, it annoys you. You are about to ask for your money back due to your spirit guide not showing up, when suddenly it dawns on you: You Are The Spirit Guide. Suddenly you view the earth from space, and it is bursting with light. I Am The Universe. I Am the Light. All Matter and Energy is Together and It Is all God and I Have All the Answers, I Must Simply Think Them. Shortly thereafter, you fall into utter, complete bliss, peace, and happiness, lay down in a field of daisies, and decide that nothing matters except your love for humanity, which nothing can ever destroy or eliminate. You are at complete peace with all things and all people. You are care free. You are a beautiful and unique snowflake. Everything is extraordinarily beautiful and peaceful.

This, in a nutshell, was basically my experience on ayahuasca.

The entire next day, Iwandered around, starstruck at the beauty of the world, the love I felt for my fellow man, and the total weightlessness of having no worries at all.

36 hours later, in the airport, behind some horrid rude woman and her obese, miscreant children, I thought to myself: humanity is a disgusting pile of rotten waste and I hate all of you.

Then I concentrated on my memory of peace, and came to some internal compromise, leading me to conclude that this experience was definitely worth something.

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