The Peru Trip - Day Three - Part I of III

November 5th Before Dawn

I awoke to the light of the moon. It filled our cabin with a light that seemed to blend with the sounds of the Amazon rainforest that surrounded us. It was a dimly lit scene in this theater of life. Even though I had only been conscious for a short time I could tell it was getting lighter. The birds and insects played the overture for the day to come. I thought about whether to fall back to sleep or get up. Both my roommates were still asleep. Occasionally the sounds of nature were interrupted with a discordant snore as I lay there in passive awareness. Although I felt sleepy I sensed a bell like clarity in the background of my thoughts. It was as if I had meditated for the few hours I had been asleep. Did this state come as easy as breathing the air? Perhaps the day to come would hold the answer.

As the day moved into morning twilight I decided to get up. As a compromise between getting up and sleeping some more I would go lay in one of the hammocks in the meeting hut as the sun rose. As I further awakened my body by getting out of bed I realized that the clarity that I felt in my mind was in the energy that moved through my body as well. Just laying in the hammock would be a celebration of this clarity. I put my clothes on and got ready to celebrate!

I laid in the hammock and just enjoyed my breathing and feeling alive. The birds song began to reach a crescendo as the dim morning light became beams of sunshine. I was drifting through layers of consciousness as I lay there between asleep and awake. The purity of the energy I was feeling allowed me to drift as easily as our boat had flowed down the Amazon the previous day. How far would I drift during the Ayahuasca ritual to come that evening? I heard someone walking up to the meeting hut. I was jerked back into a more mundane state of mind.

I saw Richard walking into the hut. He walked around the floor occasionally going over to one of the railings at the perimeter of the hut to look at different views of the grounds around the lodge. He didn't see me. I had sunken too far into the hammock to be distinguishable from the empty hammocks that hung in the hut. Richard was too intent in his perusal of the grounds to notice anyway. I wasn't sure about Richard's connection to the group. He was with our group but I had picked up from Jerry that he was merely traveling with our group. Something about a business venture that he was involved in with his traveling partner Julie.

"Hi!", I decided to end my invisibility. "Oh Hi!", he said surprised, "I didn't think anyone was awake". "I woke up early, couldn't fall back to sleep and decided to come out here", at least this was a simple explanation of what had led me to the hammock. Richard explained to me that he was usually up at such an early hour of the day. He was out on an early morning walk around the lodge. We talked a little more. I asked about his connection to the group. He went on to explain how he and his partner were looking into opening a bed and breakfast in Cuzco and maybe a jungle lodge nearby as well. His connection to the group was certainly on a more material level than the rest of us!

"I was going to walk down to the river do you want to come along?". "Sure", I was going with the flow. I would have to leave my hammock cocoon but I would make the sacrifice. We walked down the sloping path down to the river. The short walk ended with us standing on the dock. Our tied up boat bobbed up and down in the ripples of the river glistening in the morning sun. With our backs to the lodge we could have been anywhere on the river's path through the jungle. The jungle seemed ready to swallow the river up as it slowed going around the bend near the lodge. As if to ward off the jungle spirit that was all around us we began to talk of land prices, economic conditions in Peru, building costs, and types of lodging that would appeal to waiting tourists. The conversation seemed out of place in our setting. It seemed to fit with Richard's nature. He seemed to respond to the flow of spiritual energy with a counterbalancing flow of cynicism. We began to walk back toward the lodge. As we walked back into the meeting hut we found another early morning person there. It was Deborah. Her and Richard exchanged some words and laughed. Deborah laughed with the magical innocence of a young girl. At the same time she exuded the sensual mysticality of a jungle priestess. I was beginning to realize that this contrast was the essence of Deborah. This was why her age seemed to change from one glance to the next. Richard and her continued to laugh. It seems that they had encountered each other on one of the trails near their respective huts the night before. In the darkness Deborah had asked Richard(in Spanish) if he worked there. Richard not understanding Spanish said yes as a reflex. Deborah responded quite forcefully(in English) "No you don't!". Richard kept joking about how intimidating Deborah had been. She seemed to be amused about how angry she had sounded to Richard. The whole conversation seemed to loosen them both up. I think we would all loosen up a bit in the day to come.

Julie(Richard's partner) showed up at the meeting hut and informed us that breakfast had just begun to be served in the dining hut. The four of us were the first people to partake in the jungle breakfast. As I was going through the breakfast line I began to talk to Deborah about her six year usage of Ayahuasca. She explained how she had been using Ayahuasca for 6 years with no more than 2 months between uses. She had been using it since she was 18. Her ageless presence now had an age, 24 years. For most glances she didn't look that old.

As Deborah and I sat down next to each other at the long breakfast table our conversation continued. "So what have your (Ayahuasca)experiences been like?". "Well, each experience has been different". She expanded a bit, " the changes that Ayahuasca has brought into my life have usually been different than I expected". "There are unexpected lessons that Ayahuasca teaches", she said with a bit of melancholy in her voice. "So have you had any great revelations?", I was wondering if she had "seen God". "No, its not like I have seen God or anything like that". I was wondering if telepathy was one of the lessons that Ayahuasca had taught her! I talked to her a little about the balancing of the chincona and the Ayahuasca vine energies in the Ayahuasca mixture. She explained to me that it was not so much a balancing between male and female energies as I had thought. She talked about how there was a balancing of two different forms of a more female, earth energy in the mixture. She said that she knew how to make the mixture from watching different shaman so she was knowledgeable on its preparation. She spoke of the cleansing aspect of the Ayahuasca ritual. This aspect too, has surprised her sometimes. I asked her about throwing up as part of the cleansing. She said that sometimes she still did, and it varied from one time to the next. I got the feeling from her that the difference from one Ayahuasca experience to the next was as different as one person's experience from anothers. The reasons for this were both psychological and biochemical, it was up to the shaman to decide at each preparation how he would mix the ingredients.

Talking to Deborah had made my curiosity grow even greater about the ritual to come. Was the use of Ayahuasca the reason for her strange energy? Young yet old, grounded yet spiritual, she seemed as diverse as the many Ayahuasca experiences that she had alluded to. Since she was studying music and was from Brazil I asked about a favorite music of mine, Brazilian jazz. I had always felt that this music had a spiritual sensuality about it. Now that I thought about it, the energy was very similar to Deborah's energy! She knew of some of the musicians I mentioned, not surprisingly, and when I attempted to explain how the music was "more than music" she interrupted and said, "Yes, I know, it feels SO GOOD!". I could tell by the way she said this that she really did understand. Perhaps this feeling lay within the Ayahuasca experience as well.

By this time almost the whole group was sitting at the table eating breakfast. Jerry gave a brief itinerary of the day, again reminding us that we might want to eat a light lunch and a light dinner or no dinner to prepare for the Ayahuasca ritual that evening. But that was the evening, on the agenda for the morning and part of the afternoon was a guided jungle walk and a visit to the Hivaros Indian tribe. I was feeling a little tired but the jungle energy was invigorating. I went to get ready for our rainforest walk and our visit to the Hivaros.

Sandy Craig Shaw
sandy@bodhisattvasoftware.com

Go to The Peru Trip - Day Three - Part II.

Return to The Peru Journal Page.