Blog

  “Taussig wrote that the perception of the shaman as the creator of order from chaos mirrors the romantic notions of the Western imagination rather than the reality of shamanism. The anthropologist pointed out that the very talk about the shamans’ mystical trips to the heavenly spheres and their organic unity with their tribes is […]

It is perhaps one of many paradoxes of psychedelic use, that what conservative majority within our societies considers as drug escapism into hedonism, and away from duties and commitments of the world, can often lead – and it has led in my experience, to quite conservative view of life and values. It is not angry […]

When you ask Shipibo maestros for guidance, inevitably, no matter the specifics of the issue, the answer will be simple and come down to CONCENTRATION. It is not about more concepts, therapeutic modalities, supplements, techniques, philosophies, tools, programs, it is about less, about attention, where it goes, where we stop it from going. That is […]

  Why, they ask, you keep drinking ayahuasca, if you fail at living by the lessons shown? And why do you keep practicing yoga if eventually your body weakens and stiffens despite all effort? What if the drink of the vine of death is really a taste of impermanence, direct, intense experience of it, when […]

  If not just our ayahuasca philosophy, but in general whole approach to spiritual work were to be simplifed, compacted into a neat phrase, a trademark to sell online courses by ( if we were less grounded and less lazy to actually do online courses ) it would be this : COCO™ May these be […]

  “Discipline is about giving up the search for entertainment.” These words from Chögyam Trungpa are really what way of the dieta is about, but apply equally to correct attitude in life and in the process of focused work with the plants. It is not about rejection of the richness of the world as it […]

  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 […]

  Out of the common plants used in master plant dietas of Western Amazon perhaps one of most controversial and sometimes underestimated in its trickster power is chiric sanango. Of course it can deliver beautiful lessons. If you are ready to take them and not create resistance, because you will suffer. You may become destabilized, […]

  “By oneself is evil done; by oneself is one defiled. By oneself is evil left undone; by oneself is one made pure. Purity and impurity depend on oneself; no one can purify another.” — Buddha Shakyamuni About external Lucifers and saviours : keep in mind, we are here to be of service, ayahuasca is […]

  If you are asking how to understand or interpret your visions… … don´t Just as it is weird to try to understand your orgasm or, despite what they force you in high school, translate poetry into rational. Live them, feel them, be in awe, and then let go. The famed integration is not necessarily […]

  What makes MDMA bad and Prozac okay? A well-known 1996 article in the Economist put the question as such: “Every week, according to the most conservative estimates, half a million Britons take a pill to make them happy. This pill was originally developed as an appetite suppressor. Now it is an adjunct to partying. […]

There is a certain tension, or misunderstanding between modern world and figure of a shaman, and while modern consumer tries to adapt, mould the shaman to his needs and expectations, just like he does with the whole world perceived as goods at his disposal, resources, services and performers to be chosen according to liking, that […]

Was just asked an interesting question from a potential patient : “Do you know how to connect with the light in the universe?” It is interesting because I have been a photographer for many years, and as such know the importance of light but also the shadow. I have always followed the beautiful light, more […]

  There were times when I was frustrated by not knowing so many things, not being so many things, not being some body. Finally I understood, I will not be less frustrated when I achieve any of those, or turn into anybody. I will be so I when I choose to stop being frustrated. Best […]

“I laugh when I think how I once sought paradise as a realm outside of the world of birth and death. It is right in the world of birth and death that the miraculous truth is revealed. -But this is not the laughter of someone who suddenly acquires a great fortune; neither is it the […]

  If you ever think that there is a bad trip, this is the only thing that sets you towards bad trip. Of the countless sounds and grimaces, moans and laughters, faces of pain and smiling faces we have seen in our temples over the years, I can only say this, they are signs of […]

  There is no after ceremony, there is only ceremony “People often say, “Meditation is all very well, but what does it have to do with my life?” What it has to do with your life is that, perhaps through this simple practice of paying attention— giving loving-kindness to your speech, your actions, and the […]

There is no doubt, after many years of this work, that return to the fundament – the foundation, is the return to kindergarten, both in sense of working on things – especially emotions – neglected since then in the struggle of growing, becoming serious and mature, also “fixing” consequences of abuse and neglect from childhood, […]

Sometimes, in the contemporary psychedelic discourse, when all the mystical, wondrous, bizarre, ecstatic, hidden, poetic, earthy, bacchanalian, unspoken and unpredictable has been drowned out by therapy speak, safety, concepts, models, integration coaches, performance, stats, manuals, procession of endless conferences full of boring graphs and charts, it feels like the energy vampires from What We Do […]

Relevant to cognitive science, and especially psychedelic researchers researching the psychedelics from the outside, debating whether own experience is not “too subjective” : “In 1609, Galileo created a telescope with the power to magnify images twenty times, and with this new instrument he discovered four moons of Jupiter (which revolved around Jupiter, not the Earth), […]

A dieta process as it is happening here is a journey between extremes, intensity, magnitude and awe of the ceremony and emptiness, silence, stillness of the days in between. An exercise in different forms of concentration, sometimes in “too much” and sometimes in “too little”. Doing so, one has a chance to notice how craving […]

Allan Wallace writes : Many mental health care professionals today concur with Freud’s assessment of the human condition, arguing that mental disease can be traced primarily to brain chemistry, genes, and the physical and social environment. There is also widespread belief in the scientific objectivity of our drugs, diagnostic categories, and theories of the mind, […]

Are you afraid of your visions? Are you afraid of your mind? The good and the bad news,. and it is entirely up to you to decide which is it, are that ceremony is nothing but an intensified, amplified, spectacular and colourful training ground for realizing the fundamental truth you will inevitably face later in […]

  Neuroimaging studies, new hype in psychedelic realm and associated research serve more to give credibility to otherwise “savage and crude”, subjective ancient practices of explorations of consciousness in the eyes of materialistic science and regulatory establishment, than to approximate anything about the nature of consciousness or practical ways of altering it towards desired direction […]

Aim for the truth, not for wellbeing. These words below apply equally to the medicine ceremony, because it is, or should be, a meditation. The fact that you ingested plants should change nothing about your attitude – as you sit down after taking your cup, you should expect nothing and do nothing but witness, whether […]

As I struggled again in a sweaty session after a very long break from yoga, among many thoughts obviously distracting me from my handicap, this one came : I would not dare to hide behind some diagnosis – I am not suffering from some mysterious illness called treatment resistant rigidness neither I am disyogic. I […]

Perhaps the single most important thing I try to teach to guests beginning the dieta, or even before a single ceremony, is about unconditional relationship with the plant that should be different from a business transaction. Of course we offer here certain service, a transaction, but that is more about providing food, accommodation, all the […]

Another piece of Buddhist wisdom that word for word applies to proper practice with ayahuasca. When you are able to detach from your preference, and stay observer of your mind, not only you train yourself for less turbulent ceremony but also for less turbulent life. And the second part is about how obsession about reaching […]

We often hear Western mind pondering : how to reconcile shamanic and scientific seeing of the world? How can we verify if visions are objective – in other words “real” if we can not even verify where or what consciousness is – we can observe its correlates, but not the actual content of the experience. […]

At the bottom of this post you can find a list of some of the possible effects that may emerge at later stage of dedicated and advanced meditation practice quoted from “The Vajra Essence” by Düdjom Lingpa which may be of great interest in, how it is called today, integration of ayahuasca ceremonies, as they […]

One important way meditation is a perfect preparation for medicine work is that with that regular practice we can habituate ourself to proper – meaning calm – reaction to failure. In an honest, thorough look inside we notice thousands of times as our attention drifts away from chosen sign – be it breath we were […]

Can ayahuasca visions reveal our past lifes, I am being asked. Can it tell truth about future? I could not care less. If Bible advice about fortune telling calls it a sin, I only understand sin as practical mistake, that has its consequence not as accumulating future punishment from jealous dad in the sky, but […]

Nature loves courage, Terence used to say. There is a remedy for modern malady of anxiety, which is rooted in obsession of knowing. Having conqured more and more of unknown, we are, in accordance with nature of greed, never satisfied, on the contrary, increasingly anxious to have more under control – to be certain. That […]

In all those discussions about dangers of plant medicine, what seems to be avoided is honest recognition, that it is not only much safer way of learning to deal with extreme fear, without actual risk to physical existence, as in case of extreme sports for example, which no one proposes to ban, but also a […]

“Humble within wrong is good spirit, that is good spirit”, repeats many times Midnite in their reggae chant “Kingdom Trees”. We sometimes play it in the ceremony, not just because it speaks about trees. It is often difficult for us to remain humble and admit when we are ourselves in the wrong and are being […]

Buddhist teachers speak of cultivation of wisdom and compassion. It is not a coindicidence this is a language of the garden. The serpent can whisper its wisdom and it is a useful reminder, motivation, it can continue to provide clarity and guidance, but without dilligent work, weeds come back, growth of what we intented is […]

Psychonautics (from the Ancient Greek ψυχή psychē ‘soul, spirit, mind’ and ναύτης naútēs ‘sailor, navigator’) refers both to a methodology for describing and explaining the subjective effects of altered states of consciousness, including those induced by meditation or mind-altering substances, and to a research group in which the researcher voluntarily immerses themself in an altered […]

Horned one that guards our entrance is the devil only when you suppressed all the wild, rejected all that you persecuted and exiled to dark corners, that you took homeland – the wilderness – from and covered it with rational concrete jungle of straight angles and straight rules out chosen Book ( be it Bible, […]

„The war on germs is therefore another aspect of our culture’s self-other confusion, the confusion over who we are. It is not surprising that the great epidemics of our time are the automimmune diseases. At its most basic, the immune system distinguishes between self and the other. Our collective confusion over who we are manifests […]

Our forest neighbours, the termites, for years have been great teachers of patience, impermanence and futility of our actions. For first years, I did the same chore of stopping and fighting them but with anger and frustration, as they assaulted our meagre possesions, our fragile forest fort, literally eating away the humble investment. Then slowly […]

There is a simple and foolproof mathematical formula for happiness. Nice clickbait, eh? Maybe we get a few likes, but need to be careful about that expectation. Why? Explained below. Are you tired with constant onslaught of the options for bettering your mood, supplements, courses, trauma removal, exercise, this and that modality, often seemingly contradicting […]

Persisting in annoying emptiness and inaction, that can be found in dieta process, properly done in isolation and passivity, can not just point to one’s craving of action, but as consequence, could also lead to liberating realization : In our goal oriented habitual mindset we want dishes washed and all job done. And yet when […]

  “However beneficial a practice appears to be, however politically correct or exciting, if it does not contradict your habit of grasping at permanence, or looks harmless but insidiously encourages you to forget the truth of impermanence and the illusory nature of phenomena, it will inevitably take you in the opposite direction to dharma.” ~ […]

  Giuseppe Caruso in “Onaya Shipibo-Conibo El sistema médico tradicional y los desafíos de la modernidad.” explores interesting possibility about the polarity of still existing Onaya, a term for traditional healer in Shipibo culture, a middle level practictioner of plant based medicine, and Meraya, who is always, in current narrative presented as long extint superior […]

  The problem with modern, or as some call it, Western morality is that it is usually externalized. Even if for most of us the bearded distant God in the sky is dead, we still act as children of the father, as subjects of the overlord who issued some arbitrary rules we should obey in […]

  “The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are our biological kin, […]

  Previous post about maestro Francisco not shying from generous doses of ayahuasca triggered some people to make contrary claims, that a real master does not need much, or in ideal situation, does not need medicine at all to “be connected”. While the post was intended to be rather a light anecdote, it can be […]

When some of the western therapists and mental health specialists, not so long ago completely ignorant of potential of psychedelics, or worse, openly opposed to them, now try not only jump on the bandwagon but take steering wheel, they tend either to ignore indigenous paradigms and approaches to working with psychoactive plants, or at best, […]

What is depression then, if not disease, some unexplained malfunction of the organism ( brain ) that we can shoot at with series of changing chemical weapons in hope that it will alleviate, or solve the issue being confused with its symptoms? And to make it clear, I include in the above arsenal molecules such […]

  “Renounce knowledge and your problems will end” ( Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching ) No matter how blasphemous it may seem to some, the best theoretical system to prepare, work with and integrate ayahuasca, both from perspective of participant and the guide, is no system. It is being present with the dance, and as […]