A perfectly formed patch of sand
holds poetically inclined diatero
in the comforting cosy embrace of the Universe
Shining stars
Vapours rising in the gentle breeze
Dark silhouettes of trees gracefully swaying in the trance of Existence
Dissolving fear of the Unknown
A welcoming feast is awaiting the Pilgrim
Returned to Paradise Lost
The Way is arduous but I hope you can smell the aroma
Of sweet spices and herbs
Heavenly wine is pure nectar
Don’t forget to shed a few drops for the poets down below
Hard at work singing praise to the glory of our Lord
and true sustenance that feeds our soul
Lost to the past, one with the Flow
Eternally replenishing its vigour
Through unrestricted movement
Trees dancing in the gentle breeze
Dark silhouettes gracefully swaying in the trance of Existence
I was lying down on a patch of sand washed up on the side of Cachiyacu hot pools by the recent rain that cleared old leaves and debris and composing, or rather receiving, the above lines, while trying to remain as still as possible in the presence of spiders taking turns in climbing my prostrated flesh and feeling somewhat like a Gulliver on a Lilliputian shore having woken up after his infamous shipwreck endeavour to a bunch of tiny people claiming his bulk. First I tried brushing them off, which disturbed my comfortable trance, then ignore their ticklish little feet wandering up and down my legs, and finally pleaded the spiders to leave me in peace, addressing them in most fraternal fashion. Being naked and completely exposed to the jungle environment in the middle of the night, one is acutely aware of one's vulnerability, even more so when adhering to the dieta which is devised to render diatero receptive to the healing action of the roots and resins ingested. One is essentially calling the spirits in. In the absence of means to move about, spirits of plants come in the form of animals and insects, 'hitching a ride', so to speak.
While being invaded by the night visitors, I recalled a chapter from Martin Prechel's book I've been reading, in which he recounts his ordeal in the jungle when he has become a walking feast for insects and critters, being severely debilitated after getting thoroughly lost for over a week without food, fire and water until finally waking up in dismally broken state, summoned back to life by a song of the lizard. Becoming one with nature is a trying affair at the best of times, especially when your flesh and blood are on the menu, and my meditation was over the instant one of the spiders bit me viciously on the leg, infusing enough high voltage to raise the dead, let alone peacefully resting and fully conscious fellow enjoying tranquillity of the moment to his heart's content.
Brushing off the culprit, I suddenly became aware of being invaded by several other spiders running hectically all over the place, obviously result of commotion that followed my retaliation. As I started swiping my feet clean, more spiders came running out of the darkness, climbing all over me, until I jumped, frantically shaking off what felt like an army of spiders storming my flesh only to realise I was battling a dangling root split into several thin strands at the end reaching down to tepid vapours below, which I have previously seen in the daylight harmlessly hanging from the canopy above.
Rachel, disturbed by the noise of my sudden scrambling skirmish with the Army of Darkness from her blissful wake, anxiously inquired what happened. "Nothing," I laughed out loud. "Battling phantoms, like that proverbial snake of a rope that wasn't there to begin with." The reference came from a story of a man who got mortally scared of what he thought was a deadly snake on his path, a story used in a spiritual discourse to illustrate a matter of enlightening a disciple who is wandering in the dark of ignorance to the existential truth made consciously aware by his master who has seen 'the snake' in the light od day to be but a length of twisted rope - an allegory of misidentifying with one's ego. Likewise, my 'spider attack' was a case of mistaken identity.
Every time we bathe in the hot pool, we hear guttural sound coming from inside a cave tunnel on the other side. Voluptuous bulging and sloshing conjured up an image of a crocodile lying in the mud among old leaves and sticks waiting for his opportunity to take a bite of tender human flesh as a welcome snack in between laying its eggs in moist darkness. This is not idle imagination at work; we have gone to the trouble of making an enclosure of rocks on our end to prevent ourselves being munched on by a crock, should one happen to be around, having swam up from the river. Which happened before, since we found its hatched baby crocodiles that boiled by accident in a mineral hotspot. The guttural sounds, however, are nothing but sulphuric burps and belches exiting mud, and our conjured-up reptilian beast is a gaseous phantom, flatulence of the earth erupting in irregular fashion. It’s the most probable guess, anyway.
Talking about farts, mind is a guesswork, a puzzle solver with ample room for correction, adjustment and scraping of ideas and concepts. It never knows for sure when it comes to beliefs, weather predictions, Upanishads and quantum physics. Regarding the latter, discipline of quantum physics carries weight of scrupulous academic studies which eventually run into paradoxes owing to increasingly precise selection of measuring tools and state-of-the-art scientific equipment available as of late.
For instance, a presence of the observer in the atomic particle accelerator experiments affects the state of the atom being tested, which oscillates between being either a wave or a particle, depending on where or on what attention of the observer is focused. In other words, consciousness cannot be left out of the equation. The otherwise inanimate subject of study responds to being watched: a paradox. There is no explanation, not even a wild guess. Consciousness has no way of being measured, sliced open, dried and pinned to the display board of collected samples, similar to intuition which *knows* without any guesswork, doubts, or hesitations. It's a question of tuning in, as always.
Overjoyed at not having been eaten by crocks and feeling much rejuvenated, we expressed our warmest gratitude to the hot springs and took our leave up a steep path back to our house, Rachel leading the way for once, instead of me stomping ahead as usual. I caught myself thinking she ain’t moving fast enough, which implied hidden discontent and condemnation. Thus the energy I was sending to Rachel was negative. Once I clicked onto it and reversed polarity of my output, encouraging her progress every step of the way (speaking of steps, they’ve been carved into sandstone and clay slope, steep as they get, which quickly erodes due to rain running down in torrents of brown mud during heavy downpours. Having given a thought to improving them more than once, I resolved not to do it for the fact that easy access encourages repeated visitors and we happen to highly esteem tranquillity). Puffing happily uphill after my sweetheart in the wake of my simple yet profound insight, I realised importance of compassion and positive thinking in daily life, from moment to moment, as we encourage or hinder tender growth of our love affair unconsciously, unaware of mechanisms implanted in our psyche from the early age when we were barely able to walk, let alone speak the language which we now swim in like fish in water, spurting and spouting words regardless whether or not anyone is around to listen. Our internal narrator spinning away same old recordings over and over again, for he’s very existence depends on going around in circles; novelty of experience precedes linguistic understanding since only the experienced can be described and referenced. And referenced in very limited capacity at that. The dialect of the heart, pure vibrations, have no such limitations. It is versed in virtue of innocence and compassion. Tuning in to the heart is the key prerequisite when it comes to following the path of impeccability by aspired curandero, or any man that wishes for harmony in his life above all of other things. Relating to other human beings, therefore, is greatly influenced and much improved by high vibrations of energy projected. Being aware of one’s thoughts calibrates frequencies broadcast towards others and is indispensable as far as spiritual growth and integration of exalted energy states is concerned, infusing mundane situations with undeniable magic as orchestrated and performed by the wizard apprentice holding the magic wand of awareness.
Back at the house I barely had a chance to put on some clothes when Rachel announced she was going to pass out, going down on her knees to hug the floor of the veranda like a suddenly deflated doll. Pressed for time to fetch a mapacho, I placed both hands on her back, tuning in to her internal state, and guided my sweetheart through the panicky ordeal to relax deep enough and re-acquire her breath. We tend to enter into fight-or-flight shallow breathing mode in the event of an emergency, which speeds up the heartbeat and exhausts the system eventually to the point when a reboot is needed to turn the brain off and we therefore pass out. It only took a few minutes before Rachel thanked me for the magic touch. Strong medicine. “Once you’ve been through it a couple of times,” I replied finally, “you know the steps.” Breathe into the tummy, relax all tensions in the body and feel the heart rate slowing down and stabilizing, minute palpitations of blood echoing through veins and arteries in the far extremities. Body is a network, a vibrational field that holds one in a cradling embrace. All is well. The night is magic and full of gifts and revelations!
We’ve been drinking milky-white resin of sapote renako every morning for eight days by a spoonful, collected fresh from a tree giant with a massive root system spreading in ridges from its impressive trunk, famous for mending broken bones and damaged ligaments; bobinsana bark rasped and soaked overnight for opening the heart and clearing the mind; renakilla roots also used for bone and cartilage-related issues.
A snake entered the house few days back while we were chilling out inside, reading, and made enough noise knocking over jars and bottles on the table next to the door while trying to make its way up the wall, a kind of noise I couldn’t possibly ignore. It was large and black with yellow patterns running alongside its body - a very powerful presence that rendered us both wide-awake with apprehension. I got hold of a foot-long stick left from debarking bobinsana, no other suitable implements of war in sight, and urged Rachel standing next to me aghast to sneak past the doorway calmly as possible and followed suit. Upon considering the situation in the kitchen at the back of the house, I realised none of us would feel safe sleeping in our beds with a chance prospect of being visited in the middle of the night by a large and possibly quite deadly snake. I had to deal to it, there and then.
Returning back into the room wearing gumboots and with machete in hand, I couldn’t see it at first. It wasn’t curled up in the hammock, nor was it under a spare mattress. Having thus cleared one corner of the house, I turned to face the rest. Given away by its noise once again, I saw it lurking underneath the table. Disturbed, it started moving along the perimeter of the room, trying to scale up bare walls until it got to the shelving and reached the ceiling rafter. Too high; I didn’t want to annoy and further agitate the snake before striking, waiting for a sure opportunity to take its head off clean, but there was always something in the way of me swinging the machete.
When I did strike, I missed, and it redoubled its efforts to evade me, climbing walls and falling to the floor, launching itself in unpredictable directions while I sliced away at where it has been just a moment ago until eventually pinning it in the corner and calling out for Rachel to bring me another machete to finish the job. The scales of its body armour were too tough to be cut across, to my great surprise, and I had to apply leverage to go through them, leaving the snake’s head dangling of a strand of skin as it writhed in its death throes, splattering blood on mosquitero, bed sheets and the floor all around. A bloody spectacle, not for faint-hearted.
I took the dying snake outside and dumped it on the front lawn, where it remained coiling and slithering around itself for a good half-hour before giving up its ghost. We pulled its skin off, admiring beautiful craftsmanship of armoury that would make whistle with envy the best of medieval blacksmiths, and dried its head by the cooking fire. When I recounted the incident to Enrique afterwards, his laconic commentary was “you killed your own soul.” It added up: both I and Rachel were spent and highly irritable since brutally disposing of the snake. We were downright disheartened, as a matter of fact, attributing our state to being debilitated towards the end of dieta without visitations or even signs from the world of spirits. Moreover, a small bucket of bad news was freshly dumped on our heads, foremost of which was Enrique’s request passed on to us by Miguel, new manager-in-charge in Santuario, with apologetic commentary about maestro’s reluctance in spelling it out, which required us to cash out fifty dollars per person per ceremony each time we rocked up to drink with him. We previously considered Enrique to be our maestro simply by proxy of our asking to fill the vacant niche of a teacher wishing to pass his art and knowledge along to fervent disciples busting to learn the ropes. This fifty bucks request plainly stated this was not the case as we simply could not afford forking out hundred dollars a night between two of us.
Relationship between maestro and a disciple cannot be negotiated in monetary terms, being in its purest form a love affair in the realm of spirit; maestro’s transmission is precious beyond disciple’s capacity of paying back, as there’s no way to recompense the gift of spirit. Disciple is in the position merely to receive the gift, making oneself available to the transmission being poured into his empty vessel, utterly feminine in this capacity.
This is why I cannot ask of Enrique to be mine and Rachel’s spiritual guide and benefactor in the realm of curanderismo. To a certain extent he is, though. For one thing, he gladly shares his expert advice concerning protocols of dietas and instructs us of specific uses of plants and barks, their preparation and correct dozing. This is extremely important; you don’t wanna be roaming the jungle semi-nakedly like a wanton tarzan, scaring campesinos with your primal screams running for their lives, or die from overclocking your heart through combining powerful plant preparations that should be spaced out and drunk in correct dosages without being mixed with other incompatible medicines like Brazilian snuff or kambo that has an entire protocol of its own, being essentially a potentially lethal frog poison. A few months back a diatero died in Manantuyaco healing centre run by Juan Flores just upriver from Santuario, for this very reason – his heart stopped. Cardiac failure. Therefore we listen to Enrique with both ears open, soaking up essential information and wisdom. Santuario is always pressed for money, but we are welcome to the kitchen anytime, both the food being served and take-away items as we start running short of plantains and veges comes the end of dieta. And the fact that we got and incredible place to dwell in by the mystical hot springs no one ever visits, free of rent and in good faith, says it all loud and clear: we are welcome & wanted. To diet the plants, to learn from mistakes and absorb subtle frequencies that spirits use to communicate their mysteries in the state of trance or deep sleep. One has to address the spirit owners of the plants and summon their healing power sincerely in order to benefit from the dieta.
Earlier in the night when the warm flush of the medicine effect came over me, I had asked ayahuaska to revel herself. I waited but no vision came, just the warm oven cranking away in my belly, which was all. Next thing, Rachel expels air with a great deal of excitement and announces she just remembered her dream from the previous night in which she was conversing with an old wise woman who invited her to have dinner in some sort of a restaurant. It transpired she was no other old lady but the spirit of ayahuaska herself! Naturally Rachel asked how our dieta was going in the absence of visiting plant spirits of sapote renako and bobinsana we’d been drinking, as well as our alignment on the medicine path we’ve been walking and periodically stumbling, learning from mistakes one inevitably makes, not being cushioned and guarded at all times by a babysitter bringing your plate of rice and chapo three times a day, checking your vital signs and blowing tobacco smoke onto your crown to cleanse your energy field. “Relax” said the old woman, “you are being surrounded by spirits at all times, regardless if you see them or not. Relax, absorb the vibrations permeating nature, you are nature and the constant field of eternal resonance moves as part of you”.
Rachel then followed the old woman outside and as they started walking down the road the woman halted and looked directly at Rachel. “Oh, you have to go back and pay now”.
She wandered back in, thinking it to be an odd thing, “really?! I was invited and now have to pay?”, but cashed out nonetheless at the counter. Turning back, she beheld an androgynous beauty, both man and a woman, dressed in slick black pants and black tank top, short black hair and bright orange lips (!) lavishly reclining in a leather seat, basking in the vitality of her vibrant energy which attracted a great many people to her side. Enrique elucidated later on that the spirit of Bobinsana thus bestowed itself, much loved and celebrated by those who have partaken of its healing essence.
These were not all the revelations on the night of the ceremony I’ve been describing, however. After guiding Rachel through the steps of her ordeal on the veranda of our house, we lit a candle to smoke one of those pure tobacco stick I’d been lugging over every mountain pass we crossed in Cusco in hope to light one at an opportune moment of celebration but opted out each time on the account of its strength. A distant disco across the river was thumping away with a groovy bass line; twenty years ago I’d be dancing my head off, now all too content listening to serenading critters and birdcall symphony of the night. The sounds of the jungle mixed and mingled with faint techno beat in rather harmonious fashion and leaving plenty of room to enjoy effects of the medicine circling through the veins, gentle yet strong.
Pulling out a feathered santo palo stick from my infamous beautifully handcrafted tobacco pouch to a sudden merry accompaniment of Rachel bursting into laughter, I beheld a carved smiling face as prompted by her request to “turn it over!” and Rachel proceeded to narrate a story of her initiation by a Peruvian curandero living on the coast of Mancura where she arrived on a random recommendation of two French guys she happened to meet on her pilgrimage. By the time she made it to the small town where mountains meet the sea, she has completely forgot the directions. Her Spanish being poor at the time, her inquiry concerning the local medicine man was not well understood and a runner was sent to fetch an interpreter who just happened to live close by on the beachfront. It didn’t take long. An interpreter turned out to be a fairly energetic fellow exuding vitality and busting with eagerness to make introductions. His genuine display of warmth and affection came with a rather odd explanation, for he had spent most of his day carving a face on a palo santo stick decorated with plumage attached to the top of the ‘head’ with a band of red thread in a typical red-Indian fashion. The stick figure had Rachel’s initials carved at the bottom: R.W. The man had no idea that the recipient of the talisman would be coming the very same day, hence his excitement. In the meantime, likewise knowing nothing of this pre-destiny business, Rachel was trying to convey to her new-found interpreter her interest in finding a medicine man who worked with a magic brew called ayahuaska she had heard so much about, at which point the man announced he had everything she needed and she didn’t have to look further.
Voila! Just like that, Rachel was given a room in the large house and made comfortable and welcome in every way possible, receiving above mentioned palo santo talisman on the first day of her arrival. Her benefactor’s real name was Geraldo, albeit he introduced himself as Jerry on the account of some twenty odd years he spent driving cabs in New York. Upon receiving word of his father’s death, Jerry came back to Peru, having inherited his father’s house. Not entirely empty-handed, Jerry returned with a cocaine addiction and sought help of a healer in Pucallpa, but the real healing happened when he was drinking medicine sent to his place in Mancura by himself. Reason being, the old house was in need of urgent repairs and he couldn’t be in two places at the same time. Apart from healing, he started to receive transmissions from the plant spirits that came during ceremonies, initiating Jerry into curanderismo. The spirits advised of Rachel’s coming, albeit Jerry had no idea of what she looked like (having seen photographs of Rachel from the same year, I can tell you she looked stunning, quite literally and jaw-droppingly, fully in her power).
First time Rachel drunk ayahuaska had no effect whatsoever, due to her being new to the medicine that often needs time to accumulate in the body, or perhaps because of other people being present, which alters the energy of the space. Few days flew by while Rachael tweaked her fingers and swayed in the hammock, enjoying hospitality of her generous host and beach vibe. A week or so later, other customers out of the way, medicine came on strong. Wishing for intimate setting, Jerry had set the room up for Rachel to be in her space and promised to leave her alone, only returning to check up on her if need be. The effects were ‘staggeringly cosmic’.
Rachel experienced ayahuaska trance for the first time in her life, playing with positing her body in different ways between laying down, sitting up and standing to gauge the shift of energies and changing states of consciousness as she absorbed, balanced and calibrated the pranic flow. Jerry returned after a while, standing still mesmerised by the sight of a yogi, to communicate to Rachel her shamanic name that had been transmitted to him while meditating in the adjacent room, and was gone again. The name previously belonged to a known Mayan princess.
Allowing herself to be absorbed and dissolved into the fabric of the universe woven from strands of pure ether, she found herself floating outside of her body surrounded by sounds on all sides, which she started to channel speaking in tongues of unknown language. Hearing her pronouncements, Jerry retuned again and pronounced that the words she spoke belonged to ancient Mayan. She had never heard the lingo before but understood the meaning, swimming freely in the stream of pure consciousness connecting different worlds and timelines into a luminescent matrix, each nexus pulsating with the light and perfectly aware of other nodes responding with sympathetic resonance. The story of the Mayan princess thus been revealed: she had fallen in love with a warrior and being of royal blood was ostracized by her ruling family and the rest of hierarchy who deemed such union as unworthy. Preferring exile instead, she left the palace and rejected her high status to pursue her love affair. “Did they live happily ever after?” I questioned. “Not exactly. The warrior died defending his princess who keeps coming back into the world looking for him.”
A day after the this ceremony, Rachel woke up in her hammock to the sight of a beautiful golden-beige mare with a black mane and intelligent eyes standing nearby and quite obviously waiting for introduction. Jerry silently led Rachel to the back of the horse and she stared, once again, at her initials branded on the hide. A powerful feeling flushed over her rendering her speechless for a long moment. She came around the front, closed her eyes and pressed against the animal’s forehead that spoke volumes bridging the gap of linguistic exchange in an instant recognition that they were meant for each other. She was called to ride the mare there and then, without a saddle or a bridle, feeling no fear for her safety whatsoever. Jerry helped her up, as the horse was really tall. Grabbing hold of its dark mane, she turned the horse around to face the ocean waves and took off at full gallop, proceeding to spend the major part of the morning racing back and forth the beach Avatar style, being completely at one with the horse, a symbiotic relationship formed through instant connection. Jerry, once again, had acquired the mare from his neighbour having received a vision telling him to get it.
Arithmetic of love affairs adds up pretty quickly, romantic affection being a plain see-through business, and it was obvious by that point that Jerry was in love with his guest slash prophesised Mayan princess in the flesh. After his confession Rachel didn’t stick around long, pocketing her feathered santo palo talisman and stashing a small bottle of ayahuaska into her backpack to return to Aotearoa with.
I’ve heard bits and pieces of this story before, but never the whole thing as told by candle light relaxing on a particularly magic night in our private paradise in the jungle. My legs were cramping up after sitting cross-legged for a while and I requested a massage, as per usual at the end of a ceremony. It’s a special treat, to tell the truth, since Rachel has been privileged to be trained in chiropractic’s, Tai massage and yoga by a Qi-Gong master in Japan versed in all of these disciplines. I end up squirming and groaning under her hands every time, much surprised at the amount of tension released in my body. Tension and pain manifest in the areas where energy flow is blocked. Moreover, certain parts of the body are connected to internal organs and brain, such as the case with hands, feet and ears. My calf muscles were full of knots, flushes of pain making it nearly impossible to relax and breathe through it to release accumulated tensions completely. Muscles and tendons aside, when you’d think the worst is over and nothing is left but feet and toes, I almost screamed when Rachel got hold of my big toe on the right foot, it was that painful. As she went over it up and down with her knuckles, I felt a release of pressure in the top of my head and a flood of warmth spreading all around, leaving my whole body vibrating as I floated in weightlessness.
The energy flowed freely, washing away thoughts that hold one tethered to lower states of vibration. I felt liberated and much at peace, immensely grateful in recognition of being where I was, of the incredible opportunity to learn, to heal and dive deep into the mystery of Nature… a taste of homecoming feast for the Pilgrim to keep him smiling through thick and thin, pulling thorns out the palms of his hands and scratching at ant bites, meditating cross-legged on the rock at four o’clock in the morning and wiping sweat off my brow working the chakra to cultivate those plantains highly valued on the diatero’s menu.
The effort is very much worth the gifts and the insights. Human body is truly a temple of worship, for every cell, every atom vibrates with the light contained therein. When tension is released and blockages removed, energy flows uninhibited and consciousness is thus liberated by proxy, taking quantum jump onto a higher vibrational plane where one finds oneself surrounded by golden glow of peace, tranquillity and unabated joy. In essence, we are the energy. Vibrating, resonating, tuning in and humming away.
Our art, creativity and song is the overflowing of the vital energy when one’s vessel is too full to contain it and sharing becomes most natural as is the case of a flower spreading its fragrance. It simply cannot help blossoming away with its tender petals wide open to the elements, embracing sunshine and rain that makes it glisten with heavenly moisture ever so preciously alive.
The opening of a thousand petal lotus is a metaphor used by Buddha to reference the state of illumination, which is a primary function of kundalini energy activated by pranic breathing, as opposed to just being a Vedic myth cultivated by sadhus and yogis throughout the ages to perplex the man and justify chilling out under Bodhi trees all day long with no apparent purpose, growing long beards and laughing quietly, a contented smile lingering in the corners of their mouths at all times. For deep within each human being are encoded star maps waiting for courageous and diligent explorer of inner landscapes to mount their serpent power spaceship and blast through the spinal column into the pineal gland and beyond, into the Light ad infinitum.
There’s a science to it. Every ancient culture had one, except for ours. Egyptians knew, so did Hindus and Mayans, all making use of light-sensitive substance now known as melanin which is present throughout human body with heavy concentration in the spinal column and brain that facilitates the process of quite literal en-lightenment, activated through correct alignment of postures and abdominal breathing technique that was universally used by the ancients to enter the mystery of existence, to know thyself and the universe, creating architectural wonders and artefacts of Great Pyramids and Hindu temples referencing sacred geometry of space, precise mathematic ratios and mapping distant star systems without the aid of Hubble space telescope floating in the orbit around the Earth.
I laugh at Elon Musk expounding on challenges of rocket propulsion, cost-per-ton ratios that run into trillions of dollars and nonsensical terraforming plans for martial soil generously lubricated by his unchecked ambition to solve the technical problems of launching a handful of human beings in a flaming rocket torch choker-blocked with sensitive electronics and wiring, all busting and shaking itself apart at twelve-g acceleration through upper layers of stratosphere, melting its heat shield, to get to get to utterly inhospitable , oxygen-less environment of a foreign planet with a prospect of mining rock to get a drop of water. All on the pretext of being worried that in five million years’ time our sun will swell up and swallow the Earth, one and only, therefore we must act quickly while we have the chance to colonize the last frontier and conquer space, a chance available for the very first and possibly last time in human history, given our fondness for nuclear weapons of mass destruction that can wipe out our entire civilization and every last human being seven hundred times over should a power-hungry politician decide to throw a tantrum. Being a convinced atheist, Musk actually prayed at the launch of his multi-million dollar investment into rocketry, having no assurance in the successful take-off since there’s no telling what can go wrong in the circuitry powered by exploding hydrogen in previously untested high-compression rocket engine (God and Universe, in this trial-and-error high-tech scenario, come last, addressed just in case there is such a thing as divine presence and higher consciousness).
All of the above rhetoric is delivered by Elon Musk with intermittent stuttering, swallowing of words and regular interjections of Bevis and Butthead chuckles, inanely dry, making me scratch the back of my head at the thought of this highly influential tech-savvy entrepreneur with emotional development of an eight-year-old placed in charge of massive human and economic resources driving ambitious exploration of outer space on the borderline of delirium while turning blind eye to the inner realms infinitely rich by divine design providing best of all spacecraft readily available at our disposal by birthright, our very own human body. Finely honed and attuned, this very vessel is the ultimate tool for journeying to the furthest constellations and yet we invest out precious lifetimes in pursuit of vanity, externalizing Paradise Lost and meeting our End empty-handed at the expense of God-given potential. I find it utterly ironic, to say the least.
Other exploits of our effable friend Elon include robotics and artificial intelligence, spoils of which development are reaped and harvested by government thugs for the military applications that pay handsomely their contractors. I am not going to go into this topic for the sheer madness is writ in large capital letters all over it. Einstein was infinitely more astute and intelligent compared to Elon Musk and everyone knows what his infamous E=mc² did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki: school kids incinerated to radioactive ashes on the doorsteps of their houses with packed lunches in their daypacks, eyes wide open.
I can picture Elon Musk presiding over a raging apocalypses party in tailored black suit and polished crocodile skin shoes with snake-eye vertical slits of neon lime, smiling widely next to his best pal Bill Gates, may he suffer his own medicine, a helpful manager of Armageddon. I’m sure as hell won’t be there ‘cause I am not going to participate in such madness!
Don’t get me wrong, brain is a marvellous instrument capable of dissecting and working out highly complex problems, producing state-of-the-art special effects that leave movie-going crowds gaping in awe at the latest blockbuster premieres and excelling at supplying ongoing narration to every activity and every aspect of your life on a moment-to-moment basis as you come awake and put your shoes on, sip a cup of tea and read these very lines while running them through a gauntlet of scrutiny of its filtering algorithm checking the relevance of these revelations to the already existing information database stored as electrical impulses in the oscillating field of neurological connections responsible for forming memories. It’s a machine.
As I was pouring a jug of aromatic preparation of soaked overnight leaves and flowers from several plants indicated by Enrique for bathing oneself first thing in the morning after the ceremony, it occurred to me that language, at best, is very limiting and subject to being misinterpreted. In particular, the word ‘mind’. The vast majority of people identify themselves with their mind, myself having previously fallen into the same trap. ‘I think therefore I exist’ kind of thing. It is very unconscious tendency, erroneous in every respect. Mind exists on the periphery of our Being. It is utterly incapable of claiming our essence, what Gurdjieff called the ‘essential man’, for the simple fact that mind is a temporal phenomenon.
It is very clever, fairly complex and astutely cunning, yet at best it serves as a stepping stone in the ascent of the seeker after Truth and transcendence, its mental resistance creating necessary pressure for the explosion of awareness into the Light and reuniting one with the Source. Ego, unless fully developed and crystalized, cannot be dropped and one remains in the mind, a simulacrum matrix as opposed to the reality of living energies, mystery and magic. Dieting plants and spiritual practices afford the glimpses of the existential truth lying beyond linguistic limitations of words, language falls flat and utterly useless in front of what is meant by the notions of God, Truth, Spirit and the rest of esoteric pronouncements of them Taoists, Tantrics, Buddhists, Sufis, Bawls and a multitude of mystics and poets universally finger-pointing the Moon. To the spiritually blind, all of it is incomprehensive gibberish at best of times. Unless you make an effort of finding energetic centre of your being or have a near-death experience to give you a wee peak beyond the intellectual mind, none of the above mentioned will have much meaning and significance. It will go over the top like so many ripples on the surface of the pond caused by the gust of wind, without touching the depth of your being and invoking response of your heart and spirit within.
A really good friend of mine comes to mind in this regard. A certified genius and published author, driven by ambition to achieve immortality through the body of his literary works and a firm advocate of the planetary extelligence field that contains and evolves through individual contributions of ideas and knowledge to the larger collective pool (which is somewhat similar to a belief in a soul as maintained after a man’s death by his being remembered by the living, as celebrated in Mexican Day of the Dead). Ironically, I am powerless to save my friend a death-bed realization that his entire life’s work is undermined by the fear of life shared by most of people brought up in Western culture, utterly disconnected from nature, with rare exception when your mum and dad took a pilgrimage to acquire themselves an orange robe and kiss the feet of a guru or join an indigenous tribe in the deep jungle where jaguars roam and trees sway in the monkey wind. In my friend’s case, he was given away by his mother shortly after birth, talking about connectedness and being welcomed into the world. Once the umbilical cord connecting one with nature is severed, one takes refuge in the mind, and it doesn’t take a great degree of intelligence to see through feeble and asinine morality of religious indoctrination that comes hand in hand with being adopted into a catholic family - much more so when you happen to possess incredibly accurate memory and sharp as razor intellect capable of slicing though inconsistencies, bad logic and lies like a knife through butter. Add healthy dose of fast-food fizzy-drink lolly-pop flavour to your English white-flour eggs-and-ham xmas cake roast turkey diet, free access to a gaming console with regularly updated be-as-violent-as-you-can first-person shooters laser-gunning alien monsters back to hell, generously sprinkle this with post-annihilation era Japanese manga filled with cyborg disembodiment, equally violent screaming agony of death-metal gigs and a stunted serpent drive coiled in shame around your base chakra, you end up with no one else but Doctor Apocalypse and Captain Armageddon on your hands. Highly versed in being ironic about anything and everything in life that would quickly deteriorate into sarcasm and apathy, was it not for the man being highly intelligent and sensitive.
Intelligence and sensitivity are complementary to each other, for one must possess high capacity to absorb to be truly intelligent as opposed to being a smart-arse. It is up to an individual, however, to choose what to absorb. In the case of our good Doctor, his mighty intelligence is channelled into ultra-violent cyberpunk nanotech space-age sagas filled with splattered gore and gruesome death visions oft-depicted by his light hand in most hilarious manner imaginable and by now I’ve lost count of the number of novels he published but if I had to count them on my fingers I’d soon be running out. Same apocalypse and armageddon make their way into my friend’s one-strike three-D drawings of mechanical beasts and see-through cyborgs, cogs and wheels, spikes and bleeding daggers, all brightly coloured-in with neon-glowing giddiness, synthetic lime and flaming red dominating Doctor’s palette. His drawing style is brisk, precise and merciless as one would expect, reflecting a great deal of dementedness and humour originating from his personality. Last but not least, he pours himself into brutal verbal onslaught contests of rap battles, diligently impressing to memory stinging obscenities produced in voluminous verses by his vocabulary-rich mastermind to address and crush his foul-mouthed opponents, most of which are fully capable of packing a punch or whacking you with a beer bottle on the back of your head to prove a point or vent their frustrations was it not for prior agreed upon rules of verbal engagement. The energy of these gatherings is fairly ruthless, albeit never escalating into brawls due to the saving grace of laughter and Doctor’s berth capacity to accommodate ample resonance when it comes to uncontrollable shaking of the abdomen. He can’t help but instigate eruptions of laughter on a regular basis throughout his day, having instinctively adopted its therapeutic benefits of relieving tensions and dealing with the world. There’s a major difference, however, between ‘dealing’ and ‘enjoying’. ‘Thriving’ is yet a step above these two.
Doctor Apocalypse thrives in his mind while his physical vehicle deteriorates for the gross lack of maintenance as he runs himself into premature aging and a looming collapse of vital organs due to clogged-up filtering of liver and kidneys which are unable to cope with greasy fuel-intake of fried bacon and dubious sausages, his digestive tract and waste-disposal system failing to process nutrition as effectively as before, perpetual skin eczema testifying to the same problem of contamination by toxins – a lot of which come from poisons Doc voluntary self-administers in the form of pharmaceuticals allegedly to help him stabilise his arrhythmic heart engine overclocked by mounting bodyweight accrued around his torso. Every time I see him, I am dwarfed by his continuously growing bulk. The only relief from being uncomfortable in his own body Doctor encounters in flotation sessions at the volcanic lake half-hour drive from his house, which has become his favourite summertime destination for this very reason. He can be in the water literally for hours, floating belly-up to his heart’s content and, no doubt, concurrently plotting away sinister devices for his upcoming volumes, the unsung extelligence-of-species Hero right there. I’d like to save my good old friend (in fact, one of the best friends I ever had, come to think of it) who’s always ready to receive me out of the blue, no preliminary phone calls required, crashing down on his couch, make-yourself-a-cup-of-tea-if-you-like and let’s-talk-our-heads-off, what-news-and-tidings-you-brought-from-your-adventurous-scatterings kinda hospitality I have become accustomed to on the account of Doctor’s naïve immaturity when it comes down to boring stuff like doing chores around the house to keep it clean or serving a plate to his guest that drove hundred odd clicks to embrace him.
Numerous times in the past visiting Doc’s fire-engine red house transplanted straight from hell with webs of pentagrams, death metal band members face-painted as corpses, lethally legit samurai swords adorning the walls and a goat skull nailed to the front door to ward off them wandering Christians, I had felt despair, for entering the premises involved doing dishes for the entire household prior to being able to boil a jug for the above mentioned cuppa. I did it every time because I love the guy, his open-hearted presence, his kindness and warmth, his sparkling eyes emitting brilliant light refracted in flaring-up of spirit from within, for truly he is a reincarnated Bodhisattva that has forgotten his way back home, a benevolent amnesiac spirit that dwells behind the façade of the bizarre, awaiting invocation. In the meantime, I’d like to save my friend a deathbed realization. But if I say that mind and body are interdependent, interwoven and fused with each other beyond separation and that star maps wait encoded within a breath of fire to animate the dormant serpent, he won’t understand a thing. He’ll understand the words, but not their meaning. And it’s not a question of being willing; nor of curiosity or faith. One must get hold of tools that offer possibility of healing and reuniting body, mind and the soul into a living torch of embodied awareness. Ultimately, it’s a question of knowing thyself. And nothing further can be communicated at the existential threshold, but at least I tried my best to guide him to this point through unrequited letters I am compelled to write, whether they are answered or not.
On the subject of correspondence, I finally had a chance to tap into a treasure chest of podcast interviews by Lex Friedman with some amazing people, incredibly erudite and intimately familiar with their chosen fields of research and expertise. Speaking of brain tanks and sharp as razor intellects, look no further. In order to get the best out of scientists, filmmakers, writers, thinkers and shrewd businessmen launching rockets to colonise red planets in the nick of time before we nuke the old Earth thus re-enacting sci-fi saga of infamous Martian Chronicles classic (I think I’m addicted to hammering Elon Musk every chance I get), a journalist must be versed in every subject to ask insightful questions and this alone deserves loud applause. I see his predicament, though, trying to dissect and fathom the unfathomable oft encountered walking hand-in-hand with profound insights and revelations awaiting to ambush the seeker of truth. Mind is indeed a great servant and a terrible master. Have you heard this expression, Les? Out of appreciation for you erudite prowess of inquiry, my dear journalist, and with plenty of admiration and warmth, I’d like to address you in a public fashion for there are others who may perchance benefit from what I am about to say.
I have to choose my words very carefully with you being a major of intellectual inquiry. You wield some really sharp swords that nonetheless will irrevocably shatter and melt when met by a Jedi’s light sabre. In melting they merge with the Light Eternal. Yoda’s temple is a sanctuary for a good reason; mind cannot breach it and neither can its tools of dissection. Every child is born with no mind. To enter the Light of Truth one must lose it again since the mind is contrived and developed and as such cannot penetrate beyond its limitations. You are at a point to understand it. Literal meaning of understanding is to ‘stand under’ in reverence of majestic Creation, the sheer immensity of it. Very few people get it in their lifetime. Where do you think your music comes from? Music is the language of the universe. Quick rapids, voluptuous curves and silent pools of tranquil presence, gentle trickles and cascading falls erupting in orchestral crescendo of mighty foam and spray in roaring testimony of the mighty Universe and the infinite powers at its disposal to create worlds, stars and poets to sing praise to the above. Your piano mistakes come in from momentary lapses to be at one with the flow. You are the witness, pure awareness being in tune with existence.
Listening to your conversations, it is clear you’re going around in circles. There’s no real excitement, no awe of wander in your voice. Journalist trade is very sterile business of assuming safe distance from the subject of journalistic inquiry, a Plexiglas glove-box kind of deal, not permitting any real intimacy, just a superficial enclosure of unaffected reason. Remaining thus isolated, there is no danger catching a flu virus, but also no privilege and no luck catching a higher vibrational frequency. Watch out, it is easy to miss this lifetime opportunity and have a late-minute realisation that you are not your mind, after all, when the curtains are about to be dropped.
May the Light be with you, journey well into infinite realms of inner dimensions, may you be awed by the magic and miracles contained therein. Alchemical gold is the inner transformation so highly praised since the dawn of intelligence and spirit in human being, medicine for thy soul!
Often my hand hovers over ‘send’ button indecisively as I am wondering whether or not my outpouring accounts filled with deviations and editorial letters to random journalists exposing half-baked wisdom from trancing out in the jungle hot pools with veins pumping medicine have much, if any, relevance to intended recipients, all of them happen to be dear friends and family. And it is exactly because of this, because you happen to be one of those hearts I aim my affection at, do I count on your forgiveness for spamming your messenger box with a link to this blog. Above all, I count on good Doctor’s forgiveness for high-jacking his story of a brilliant mind and a beautiful heart to illustrate my case in point concerning nature of Being.
These are but some insightful thoughts from a ceremony held between Rachel and me on a beautiful night at our private paradise lost & found in Cachiyacu hot springs while dieting plants to restore our precious bodies and enter the mystery of curanderismo. We are more present in ourselves and lives of our dear friends and loved ones through interconnected matrix of luminous light, physical distance neither being a hindrance nor a factor to the motion of love and affection we breathe and expel in wide cosmic yawns afforded in between daily struggles with the unconscious.
In conclusion, coming back to diateros and swaying trees, we paid another visit to Santuario to resupply our green plantain and ask Enrique’s interpretation of Rachel’s dream and got surprised by a sudden strong wind soon as we walked back across Pachitea river over wooden planks serving as a makeshift bridge, heading to the chakra. The wind didn’t subside as we went; on the contrary, it kept gaining force until trees started swaying violently all over the place. Apprehensively, I slowed down to tune into the descending darkness of the brewing storm. “We are going to get wet by the looks of things,” I told Rachel, while looking for a fallen plantain I marked the previous week. As I stood watching a tree right in front of us wave its branches haplessly while Rachel was busy digging up pinion colorado seedling to take for transplanting, the trunk gave in to the wind and went crashing down right on top of where we stood. “Look out! Behind you!” I screamed, jumping aside. Rachel turned around just in time to escape being flattened by the tree that slammed between us, scattering broken branches. Rachel stood shaking and I gave her a hug of reassurance, saying it’s time to get out.
We made our way following the ridge line, wind blowing with full gale force over open pasture on the left, sending rain flying parallel to the ground. We watched trees bend hideously, their crowns caught in the wild dance, Rachel tottering ahead hugging herself from cold and dripping wet, with me some distance behind weighted down by my backpack and feeling rather exalted to witness such a power play of nature. It makes one dwindle in size and pay attention, infusing spirit with freshness and alerting senses. All tiredness gone, a heart pulse of adventure acquired. “When we get back home, if it’s still standing, we should offer a prayer and take a soak in the hot spring,” I hollered against the wind. “If the springs are not overrun by a torrent of muddy water, that is!”
Our home was safe and we did offer a prayer submerged up to our necks in the welcoming warmth of the mineral waters, watching raindrops bounce back from the surface in mesmerizingly slow motion. Incredibly, every day is adventure; we are having times of our lives and sending much love your way, wherever you are, amigo. Have a jolly good day and god bless, for this is the happy ending as far as this post is concerned in the otherwise never-ending story. Last but not least, please do reach out, we are here to make friends & flying our rainbow flag at high mast. Gracias family!
EPILOGUE
We arrive to Pucallpa to find our room has been flooded, mattresses wet and growing mouldy. Luckily, there’s a space in the guest house and we take up lodging there without asking until I can repair the roof. As always, neighbours are pumping disco and no sleep is possible. We lie in bed holding our breath, for the reeking stench of the open sewer is intolerable after pristine jungle. Welcome home, kids, your stinking sweet Shipibo home. Rubbish strewn from arsehole to breakfast, rotten veges and banana peels erupting and venturing out of the waste bin hand in hand with condensed milk cans, beer bottles and plastic bags. Old toilet careening sideways, ants nesting in their star-wars windowless bunkers on every wall, spider webs and strewn toilet paper underfoot, bring your own toilet paper while you are at it. There’s a tiled shower block with porcelain bowls, of course, but I refuse to make use of it because all the faeces are flushed straight into the swamp and drift right in with rising water after a wee rain.
Anyway. Next morning we go to see Dina and find her listlessly prostrated in bed. She’s barely able to talk. I ask Gerardo what’s going on and he explains that she’s fallen down, again, climbing a tree to cut ayahuaska vine down. He didn’t want to tell the story over the phone. She has put her back out, internal damage, can’t move. “How long she’s been like this?” “Five days.” It ain’t a flu. “Dina doesn’t go down from no flu,” confirms Gerardo. “She’s a tough one.” We all know that; she looks half-way gone to the other side and I feel utterly helpless. “Dina, what I do for you?” “Get me ten leaves of katawa, some paiko, juntain and suelda con suelda, she says. “Also ten leaves of pinion, three leaves of toe and a couple of eggs,” she adds. “Make me a compress. I want you to harvest these on empty stomach and pray when you do.” “Tomorrow morning, then.” “Yes”. “What is katawa?” “It’s a tree with spikes. Plenty of it grows in Restinga.” “Anything else?” I ask. “Yes, give me a cleansing with a branch of pinion and a sopla.”
Next day, arriving with everything on the list, I am relieved to see Dina’s eyes are animated and she’s much more present. Very weak, yet no longer gone as before. I unpack a wee fan and plug it in. The airflow is minimal yet affords a pleasant draft in otherwise stifling heat. Dina is super grateful. We wash her with ajosacha and pinion preparation I soaked overnight and tentatively probe her lower back. She’s been in much pain, getting some antibiotics and pain relief pills from a doc. She never ever does that, save for emergencies just to get her through the worst of it. Admitting to myself I am out of my depths, I ask Rachel to take over the back and move down to the legs. Lying down almost a week without movement is no joke. Dina groans and almost screams, guiding Rachel to push hard in certain places to set the bones back into place. I crush the leaves on a cutting board in the shape of a pig, the one and only, using a fist-size stone picked up from a gutter. Taking rest after suffering the worst of the chiropractic session, Dina instructs me how to whip up egg’s whites and mix these in to complete the compress that will bandaged on for the night.
Smoking mapacho after finishing the job, she tells us about her dream the night before she fell. “A headless man came after me, grabbed at my back and started hauling me. He was all cut up like a fish ready for frying. Then I was attacked by a hergon (a deadly snake) and I fought back until it was chased away by a dog.” “Dog is Dina’s protector spirit,” commented Gerardo. “And when I went climbing next day and fell, I woke up on the ground to tremendous pain in exactly same place the headless man was grabbing me.” So it was daño, a curse. “There are people who envy me for doing good things,” finished Dina. “Part of it was my fault. I got annoyed at my daughter-in-law who collected all my mapacho offerings to ayahuaska I’ve been leaving behind as gifts to the spirits. One should never be annoyed when harvesting the vine. One must be meditating and centred.”
Taking a break, I go out back of Dina’s shack (it could hardly be called a house) where Gerardo is cooking medicine stoking up the fire with foam fillings from an old couch he’s dismantling for this very purpose. “What can I do? The wood is wet,” he replies to my dumfounded question about the couch murder. “I don’t need much to finish cooking now.” There’s a pile of wood on a side, freshly cut. Looks like it will take at least three months of drying before it will burn. “Gerardo,” I offer, “there’s mountains of dry stuff in Irapai. We got sawmill next-door cranking every day from dawn till dusk. Remember?” “Can you take their firewood?” “Sure I can! They don’t know how to get rid of it.” We satisfy Gerardo's request for posing around the cooking fire with Kerry's didge and get asked to bless Zelmira's kid becoming little Ada's godparents. Why not? They must like us for some reason...
After shuttling back and forth between Irapai and Neuva Era to treat Dina with herbs and juices I woke up on a rainy morning with headache, fever and aching bones.
It’s ironic, really, to have flu in the forty-degree heat, but that’s what happens when you live in an open sewer and can’t get any rest neither during the day,
it’s too hot, nor during the night, ‘cause the disco is on. Your immune system goes down like a limp windsock in the absence of fresh breeze. My response to sickness was three points of kambo, the strong stuff from Iquitos. I couldn’t even sit up after vomiting to receive a sopla from Rachel. But I was back on my feet the very next day, not a trace of headache. Just a bit weak.
Dina got better and better. Rachel feels some of her ribs are cracked but she could breath. Every time we arrived there was a commotion in her place, family visiting their matriarchal figure that managed and negotiated affairs prostrated on planks of bare rough-sawn wood, taking phone calls and inquiring about demands for fresh vine from a range of customers running overseas exports, trying to make ends meet. She needed a radiography scan but it took a back seat same as paying for a qualified bone corrector. And why pay for one when there was Rachel, more than willing? Rachel sweated it out, sometimes working for hour and a half straight while I cooked medicine donated by Gerardo on Dina’s pre-empting. We harvested chakruna from Kerry’s place who finally gifted his land, two small but well-built house, his motorbike and everything else to his caretaker Bola. Freysi, youngest Dina’s daughter, made it from Lima with three small children and a new-born baby to look after her mom after I donated three hundred soles for the tickets. Daily, an older daughter, was also on the scene washing up and cooking plantains and prehistoric-looking karachama got for two soles for kilo from the market – practically free. Complete, utter chaos, in other words.
Somehow I managed typing in the Cachiyacu blog update in between all of this and ordered ten copies of new-year calendar with Photoshop highlights of mine and Rachel’s epic travels of the last year from Vista print to be sent to New Zealand that a chosen few will get to enjoy. That in itself is a feat, considering how fickle internet connection is, which makes uploading images to a printing site a royal pain in the arse. I managed the above while getting over diarrhoea rampant around town: no visit to Pucallpa lets you off without getting sick. Coincidentally (on not) I had it the day after talking to my mom. Her latest news was that Serafim, the younger of my boys in her care who is now twelve, was caught vaping in the school bus. Having reprimanded him once before for exact same crime, mum belted him. It came on top of the credit card scam Serafim ran less than a month ago to buy games for his cell phone on account of an old lovely lady, a family friend, who visited mums’ house one pleasant afternoon suspecting no sinister plot. A disaster, in other words. Smoking marijuana, or whatever it was that Serafim was inhaling riding that school bus, did not deserve the beating in my eyes and that much I communicated to my mother. Firstly, it is his own body and not yours; his choice of what he puts into it. Like eating. Secondly, punishment never works. You feed the wrong wolf by administering the punishment, giving energy to what does not serve, instead of encouraging goodness. There are alternatives. In one African tribe, the whole village gathers around the person who has done wrong and everyone takes turn in remembering some worthy trait of character or a descent deed on behalf of that person, thus healing the unlucky member of the tribe from selfish impulse that caused the consternation and discord. On the subject of getting hit, there is, of course, the infamous Zen stick. Getting whacked by Zen master is a privilege whence disciples come to monastic discipline on their own accord and therefore quite willing to receive the blessed blow. Furthermore, Zen master strikes in full awareness with great accuracy which is matched by his deep love and compassion. If your love is a bargain of conditions, a marketplace deal that is nullified the moment one misbehaves or cheats or steals, then it’s not worth a broken cent. It doesn’t come from the heart that accepts and surrenders to the whole as it is. My mother’s excuse for being unable to cope with Serafim’s case is a dying dog that finally developed cancer after being a couch attachment for major part of her dog life. You literally had to pull her off the couch and drag her out the door by force to go for a walk, since the only person the dog was glad to see was, you guessed it - my mother. Unless my mother was around, the dog would sulk and rather die than display a morsel of happiness or joy. So I said, it’s your fault entirely because dogs take on the traits of their owners. You conditioned it in such a way as to be miserable.
For better or worse, humans have more resistance and intelligence to being conditioned and controlled. If you ain’t gonna accept a boy’s honest truth, he will lie to you. He’s got no choice. I had a half brother once, he was about nine years of age when mum took off to India to kiss the feet of a guru and left us with grandma. We changed schools, for some time all was well, till my brother bought his friends with silver spoons from my grandma’s cabinet where she kept precious things. Grandma got infuriated and passed on my brother to his dad, crippled below the waste, always dragging his feet behind him, who was a literati intellectual surviving on a diet of coffee and cigarettes and staying up till 4 a.m. in the morning discussing literature and politics with soviet era renegades and mutineers against the party regime. My stepdad found himself incapable of coping with his teenage son and my brother ended up in a boarding school for difficult kids where he got beaten up regularly and after couple of months has presented a most pitiful sight. He died at the age of seventeen in a car accident taking a ride to a party in a passenger seat when the truck skidded from the opposite lane and smashed into the car my brother was in. My mum was flattened by grief and it took her a full year just to gather herself into a semblance of functionality. Ironically, she’s is unable to draw parallel between what is happening to Serafim now and what happened to my brother before. To complete the picture, my mother has not been welcomed warmly into the world by her own parents and she has no trust in Life, no confidence in Existence. And without trust, there’s nothing. Nearing her seventies, my grandma started paying quiet visits to church and no doubt putting a candle on for the blessing of her soul, just in case there’s god, after all. Doesn’t cost much to buy a few candles and stumble through a prayer repeated after a bearded priest parading solemnly around the hall in a long gown, swinging frankincense burner. Who knows, it just might save you being stuck in fiery hell for eternity to come. So buy them damn candles! And go back home to the favourite couch and to the idiot box to get your television fix and drift off with clear conscience of having thus tried the 'spiritual' route.
But guess what? Unconsciously, patterns are repeated and we become exactly what we loathed. If you keep resenting your old folks into your old ripe age, you turn into them. You find yourself glued to the same couch, watching same rubbish, being brainwashed by soulless asinine consumerism in place of soviet propaganda of the previous era but just as rotten and even more degrading. You chose comfortable and safe semblance of life, saying I deserved it. You don’t meditate because you never had a taste of meditative state. If you did, you’d continue until your very presence was saturated with joyous bliss of knowing thyself. You prefer sitting safe behind a wall of non-approachability because when it boils down to opening your doors, your home is your castle. Firmly cemented walls of judgement, high spikes of deadly morality with desiccated heads of unfortunate opposition from the past, iron-plated gates to bash into and a moat filled with tar that comes aflame just at the right moment to throw them daredevils in who manage somehow to assail the turrets. It’s all medieval warfare, going round and round like black plague, passed on with every slap around the ears, every rejection, every stabbing remark. Who are you to administer punishment, really? You don’t know who you are. Just replicating genetic code, duplicating hardware and installing same failing programs that will backfire in due time. Needlessly to say, my mother told me to get lost and be damned after listening to the above message. Don’t ever call me or write to me. Sod off!
And so it goes. Nobody wants to look inside, let alone be shown the mess and the ugliness reigning in the absence of love. Especially when your guru gives you devotional name implying just that: Divine Love. Get lost, why don’t I? I don’t know… let me think… ‘cause I love you? ‘Cause I care about you? ‘Cause I fancy coming home one of these days to the land I worked, trees I planted, coming home to harmony and peace and joy of meeting my family? It’s all too obvious, amigo, if you are in my shoes standing where I am standing, sweating it out in Pucallpa with industrial view of rubbish-strewn swamp, inhaling raw sewage, hear them stereos pumping upbeat techno. Get lost! It was nice to know there was a place I could run to. Now even that illusion is gone. Smoke 'em if you got 'em!
I’m gonna throw Layer’s wife’s brand-new roofing iron from Dina’s house tomorrow, all fourteen sheets of it in a tight silver bundle. No planning. Just moving stagnant energy, liberating the flow. Powered by pure indignation, I will heave it onto my back and drag it over out the door and dump it down the road. Dina’s getting soaking wet in her bed each time it rains in her rickety shack, unable to move, while her son’s wife is storing her new roofing iron inside Dina’s house. My mind fails to comprehend arithmetic there: all Dina does is heal and serve everyone, selflessly. When she needs help, nobody is there. Just like Mother Earth. Exactly like Earth.
I leave you with this, ladies and gentlemen, to precipitate and ponder. I’m not going to apologize for the lengthy chapter, either. Tatanka is right – time is speeding up. Eat your cake, don’t keep it! See you fulfilled and smiling when I’m looking at you and let’s celebrate this very moment of the promised encounter and embodied enlightenment for what it’s worth, for there is no other moment so splendid, so odd and so beautiful… ‘cause we are alive!
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