The Maha Integrative Technologies of Amazonian Plant Medicine and Orlando Chujandama

Near Mushuk Pakarina at Llucayanacu on the Rio Huallaga in the Peruvian Amazon (downriver from Chazuta, Peru) 

"Almost all of my epiphanies over the previous fifteen years had been this same one: I don't know. Over and over again in life, I keep coming to this same crossroads. I keep having to learn to let go of needing to be the one who knows. I keep having to let go of trying to master life through thinking about it - through perfecting my explanation of it." ~ Stephen Cope, "The Wisdom of Yoga: A Seeker's Guide to Extraordinary Living" 

I am a seeker. If I could choose one archetypal, mythical role with which to self-identify, it would be this. However, various teachers and therapists have identified in me aspects of the "Hero Archetype" and its unhealthy shadow side by way of the "caretaker" manifestation. Hmmmmmmmm. Tricky stuff...

According to Carl Jung, we all have a morning, afternoon, and evening of our lives but our modern, Western, commercial, consumerist culture only appreciates, sanctions, and celebrates the rituals and ceremonies applicable to our mornings (youth) - baptisms, confirmations, bat mitzvahs, bar mitzvahs, summer camp socials, proms, graduations, coming-out into society parties, year-long breaks from college backpacking through Europe, etc. After our "mornings," we are basically condemned to the rest of our lives as "productive members of society" - citizenry of a culture that has all but lost its reverence for life's passages, many of which take place on the other side of our thirties, far into the twilight, and up to the very end of our lives. Taking time-out to "find ourselves" or to "find meaning in our lives" has become cliché. And if you take time to find yourself in your thirties or beyond, you're viewed as a tragic cliché of largely irresponsible and foolishly epic proportions. That's certainly a tragedy, but much more so as an observation of the evolution of our society and a culture that no longer sees the inherent wisdom in the rights of passage of all members of a community - whether in their teens, twenties, thirties, or well beyond. Yes, academia can take a sabbatical - but most members of our society are expected to confine their personal quests or rites of passage to a two-week vacation once a year. And heaven forbid that you should openly discuss such things! And these journeys or quests in our mid-lives and beyond tend to be primarily spiritual in nature while the rituals and ceremonies of our youth tend to be more about the development of our roles in society - the building-up of our ego personalities.

The mid-life crisis is another label that has been given the veneer of the pathetic in our culture, but the genesis of this occurence, and its archtypal understanding by Jung and others points to a longing that is much deeper than a simple lust for the attributes (and follies) of youth. There is an often misunderstood longing, as Stephen Cope so accurately identified, 

"...a longing for being itself, a longing to live fully in the face of death. It seems to transmute an ordinary life of quiet desperation into a life of simple presence."

This unfathomable longing often compels us to face the totality and impermanence of our lives - the good and the bad - and to try to make sense of it all - particulary as one or more of the foundations of our lives inextricably crumbles. Trauma has always been the primary catalyst for profound personal change - and the journey that precipitates it.

My story is no different than many others, perhaps with the exception of the unique tools and practices I've been blessed to apply in response to my life's unfolding thus far. Of these tools and practices, the unique and powerful combination of the paths of Psychotherapy, Taoism, Yoga, Buddhism, and Shamanism have provided the support, clarity, and evolving framework necessary to help make sense of my life, my healing path, my purpose, and the worlds within as well as without. Not one particular path appears to offer the therapeutic vessel to appropriately contain and provide a level of serenity, compassion, and discernment in response to all the manic and toxic characteristics of a modern life (e.g. living and working in NYC in 2011!). Often one particular, exotic path or one particular, charismatic teacher at-first-glance appears to provide the perfect response to our seeking and our desperation. But with maturity and discernment, this can prove to be a foolish and sometimes dangerous approach. The late, great Alan Watts provides a warning to those of us that are susceptible to romanticizing the esoteric or exotic - expecting the ancient practices to provide all the answers for our current state of evolution: 

"If we look deeply into such ways of life as Buddhism and Taoism, Vedanta and Yoga, we do not find either philosophy or religion as these are understood in the West. We find something more nearly resembling psychotherapy. This may seem surprising, for we think of the latter as a form of science, somewhat practical and materialistic in attitude, and the former as extremely esoteric religions concerned with areas of the spirit almost entirely out of this world. This is because the combination of our unfamiliarity with Eastern cultures and their sophistication gives them an aura of mystery into which we project fantasies of our own making. Yet the basic aim of these ways of life is something of quite astonishing simplicity, beside which all the complications of reincarnation and psychic powers, of superhuman mahatmas, and of schools of occult technology, are a smoke screen in which the credulous inquirer can lose himself indefinitely."  ~ "Psychotherapy East and West"

My recent trip to Peru and participation in La Dieta under the care of curandero vegetalista Orlando Chujandama was but an extension or deepening of all my other
practices (and sadhana or spiritual practice). It surprised me - even though it shouldn't - that the lessons that were revealed and reinforced by Orlando, La Medicina (Chiric Sanango), La Selva (the jungle), and La Madre (Ayahuasca) were perfectly aligned with those of the great masters that I've read - as well as the magnificent healers and teachers with whom I practice and study on a day-to-day basis. My holistic, therapeutic approach to my healing path and the manner in which the subtle lessons approach me are strikingly aligned on very fundamental levels. Universal truths transcend the different teachings, different geographies, different cultures, and different times. And by way of Shamanic practices, I have experienced this first hand. The "technologies" and insights have revealed themselves as completely aligned at the level of empirical knowledge - deep in my core being. With La Medicina and under her influence, many synchronicities are clearly apparent; passages in a spiritual book being read are astonishingly illuminated, a comment by a therapist provides a crystaline opening, an adjustment by a Hatha Yoga teacher provides a more refined understanding, an insight by an intuitive reinforces a gut-feeling, a release during acupuncture or another treatment allows for a period of unity, a development at work allows for a more appropriate role, a development in an intimate relationship reveals difficult truths and insights, a shift in perceptions and habitual thinking allows for a more compassionate way of living - all these instances seem to reinforce that we are indeed 'doing the work' and that there are intrinsic benefits. And these truths also reinforce that there is even more work to do. We are not done by any means. And we are not special by any means. Our healing must continue and the hard work to dig deeper must never waiver - the requirement for hard work will never abate. It is the true purpose of our lives even though we are constantly distracted and force-fed a delusion that says otherwise.

La Medicina and La Madre are powerful catalysts for changes in perception, but this is not to be confused with the often exploited hallucinatory properties of certain sacred medicines. That's just a side-show and another distraction to get caught-up in. More appropriate is that La Madre wants to - on a very sublime and profound level - connect us to La Selva (the jungle) and the Earth. I think this is how La Madre has planned how to respond to her desecration and destruction all along - by having us experience the oneness with her and La Selva so that we can develop very deep compassion and better advocate for her and our beautiful, precious, and delicate planet. Call it the Archaic Revival à la Terence McKenna, but La Madre wants us to remember the Earth and revere her the way we revere ourselves and those dearest to us - by way of experience. And she is definitely calling us - calling all those that will listen. If I can put into words the great lessons of unity and reverence I experienced, it would be the feeling that I am part of La Selva and Mother Earth and that I must never, ever forget that I am already home - that I am inherently part of a perfect heaven that's more precious than any material possession I could ever acquire.

I must reinforce the importance of incorporating truly gifted and spiritually-based practitioners of psychotherapy into our healing paths. I am extremely lucky to have a therapist that has a long history of Shamanism, Core Energetics, Somatic Release, Jungian Psychology, early childhood development, etc. And it's this transpersonal, progressive psychological approach that has helped unify and illuminate so many shadow aspects of my unconscious. While we may attain states of extraordinary perception via the Yogic and Shamanic paths - we must never forget that we are human beings with the "divine challenge" of an ego personality and deep-rooted ideas of separateness and specialness. And when dealing with ego personality, the attainment of unity or universal consciousness can only provide a very brief experience of 'enlightenment' - and when this period is over (and it's always over too quickly) - we're right back in our heads with our plethora of neuroses and self-absorbed, narcissistic tendencies. And for this, we need to develop our abilities of compassionate understanding and discernment of ourselves - our ego personality - and how it relates to the "i am" and the "I am" and the rest of the world at large. And we need the appropriate guidance by individuals who've "been there, done that." So get ye to the psychotherapist my yogi friends and shamanic apprentices! If you think for a minute that you don't need this psychotherapeutic work because of "a pass" by way of spiritual work - you are yet another delusional casualty on the path. I should also mention that only the traditional, Freudian, psychoanalytic approach - by itself - doesn't seem to work very well either. In the absence of a holistic, spiritual, transpersonal framework, psychoanalysis often becomes a talk-therapy "viscious circle" whereby the patient attempts to match wits with the analyst and a manipulative power struggle ensues. The delusion continues. It's like trying to make the Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve-Steps work without the necessary surrender to spirit or a higher-power (Isvara Pranidhana).

The insights I experienced during la dieta while in Peru (and the following period of la dieta restrictions and "processing time") were echoed by the curandero vegetalista, Orlando Chujandama, and he echoed my wonderful and powerful therapist - and they both echoed exceptional intuitive healers I see - and they all echoed the sublime truths of the great masters of Yoga, Buddhism, and Taoism. Empirical knowlege is like this - the truths are validated across multiple systems, multiple paths. The opportunity we have as modern seekers on our unique healing paths is that we can follow several paths. As long as we are aware of the dangers of 'sampling' - the trap of avoidance by only scratching the surfaces of these important approaches (collecting) - we can combine sacremental modalities, technologies, and frameworks in a unique and powerful approach to the sacredness of our very own lives. We are that which we seek, and all the great paths overlap and converge in the great wisdom that can only be experienced.

...to be continued.

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If intrigued, go here to read "Out from Under the Divine Thumb of La Medicina: Part I"

Barry Fleming (aka: Dharmabuilt) is a seeker stumbling along the path as best he can. He writes as another means of self-healing and hopes that maybe a couple of his words hold a degree of truth for you - as you experience it - on your own unique healing path.