That teaching that comes from the plants, the most efficient and lasting one, is, in my opinion, not given in rational language of the logos, but rather transmitted like nutrients in milk flowing from earthly mother. It flows in vines and veins, it fills every little cell until, just like in the hippie song, every little cell is happy. Of course, jealous mind immediately tries to grasp the experience and translate it into its theories, just like I am doing now, next day after ayahuasca ceremony, inspired by this image. But my body knows and my life gives testimony to the fact that the best I have taken from this well was not words, but joy, tears, laughter and feeling, touch of my daughter’s skin on my cheek.
I am convinced that learning from the plants happens by osmosis, by being with them, letting them penetrate us and effectively, partially turn us into them. That is how I see the meaning of word “medicine man”. It is not just person who uses medicine, it is someone who becomes the medicine.
What is then the basic truth carried from plant kingdom into the body and soul of anxious monkey? And what is the main question, contributing to his anxiety? Meaning of life, obviously. What the fuck am I doing here, what is the purpose and why bother. Those questions have been asked thousands times and again by puzzled minds, and thousand more answers have been deliberately constructed and dismantled, in a weird, psychedelic chain of rumination spanning generations. Meanwhile, nature is. Just like the mother is, just like the vine reaching for heights and the light is. It grows, multiplies, dies, decays and is reborn. That is it, that is all. That is why I think the best answers that came out of our jungle camp with guests leaving their retreats were not in form of revolutionary thoughts and concepts, bold decisions and enlightenments, but in form of new babies, either conceived right in the jungle or soon after. And I do not mean just conscious decision to do it, but rather somehow magical, physical process of opening in the bodies, for the seed to sprout, literally. This is the wisdom carried not just by wise shamans of the Amazon, but by any Jose and Angela of nearby village, who follow the instinct, just like all nature they have not yet removed themselves as far from as those who come here seeking from far away lands.
I am grateful for being given opportunity to be a tropical psychedelic redneck in one of last of world’s wildernesses, because it offers rare perspective. I see the world at the buffet of infinite relationship or gender identities as lost and unsatisfied as a decadent connoisseur unable to repeat simple pleasure of cheap wine, cheese and bread of teenage days and I ask, how can one be content with the whole world, much less love all of it, if one can not be content with the basics? So before you talk about liberation and salvation, show you can love one woman, one man, give life, right here and now, not after you are done with saving the world. Perhaps this is the return of archaic feminine wisdom, because this is what Mother is while Knight is busy doing, since beginning of time.