I remember that many years ago, when we were not operating continuosly as now but had more breaks between retreats, a local guide, unannounced, brought a couple of tourists who were on their honeymoon and insisted that they had to participate in a “spiritual experience” that they heard ayahuasca is.
Before we were able to attend and even talk to them, they run away in such a fear that the guide later had to come back and pick up their luggage they left behind. Why? Because in the old maloca we had they saw some animal bones and feathers and they “were expecting a spiritual place”.
So you understand, if there were some supermarket bought garden Buddha figures and we were wearing white robes, message would have been different, even if it is among superficiality of white turbans, elevated words, and all kinds of religious adornment that the worst abuse has always been happening. Spiritual predator almost never tells you in words and images : I am going to manipulate, dominate, violate, deceive you.
Attachment to appearances, to own pre-conceptions. Similar story with a Colombian traditional Catholic bred Taita who visited Poland for retreat to be held in Bon buddhist retreat space and he demanded to move ceremonies outdoor, as the ceremonial hall there was adorned with Tibetan tangkas showing all kinds of “demons”. Well, no wonder, in dualistic religions and by consequence in heavily influenced by them branches of Amazonian shamanism demons are suppressed, fought, expelled, never understood.
Even among supposedly open ayahuasca community our very name, Psychonauta, has been criticized as “disrespectful”. Towards what, the dogma of temples of light, that we offend by following the serpent, who in his path goes left and right, light and dark, exploring binaries, polar opposites, in other words, what is, or reality?
If you expel the trickster from shamanism and keep him at bay, he will always grow bigger horns in your perception, eventually, inevitably, turning into the devil priests fear, always external, always to be fought, no matter what folly you fall into, always his fault. Instead, we made him our logo, crossed legged seeker, more sadhu than bramin, the old horned lord of the animals, lord of the forest where light always comes more appreciated than in scorched deserts, it comes in between the branches, dancing, flickering, not taken for granted.
“Dharma is not serious and its not holy, that’s why we can have some jokes and funny examples. If you make it too serious, too high and too special again you make a cut, again you make a dualistic formation. Dharma and adharma, not dharma. Everything is dharma. Everything is within the dharmadatu.”
~ James Low