Integration from my latest plant medicine journey in Peru this past January had been a bit of a non-starter for a few months. The reason is the experience has continued into my life back home and a few months later I was still on the journey. I’ve probably stated after past experiences that the journey I just returned from was the best ever. Not every time, as I know some trips were more impactful than others. I mean the first time I went in 2013 was dreadful but it opened the doors to a ten-year odyssey. This last trip was a showstopper through the northern coast of Peru and then on up into the Andes mountains. The plant medicine of record was Huachuma, the cactus heart opener.
When you drink two full cups of strong Huachuma every other day for two weeks straight things start to come a little unglued. The maestro don MartÃn serves an energetic cocktail which upon continual use took me beyond expectations and knowledge of what Huachuma can facilitate. Usually by now, I will have written a detailed account of my journey from the notes I took during the experience. I don’t feel a calling to do that this time around, however I’m sure I will write about pockets of the sublime adventure in due time.
My understanding of Huachuma consisted of at its best an unparalleled heart opener. If you turn off the mind and sink into bliss, your heart will become on the verge of exploding with love. I knew if I couldn’t bypass the machinations of the mind, Huachuma would dutifully take you to hell. I played this out many times intra-ceremony, and ping-ponged between heaven and hell. On my last trip, just prior to the pandemic I started to uncover another layer of this medicine. I titled my blog post, “Fairy Tales and Magic” based on events and the intuition that was unfolding before me. I realized I had this energy coursing through me that was subconsciously at work, making my desires come to fruition. I peeled away the veil that separates who I think I am from the sum total of my being.
In the intervening three years between trips to Peru due to the global pandemic, this force within me would manifest what I wanted. Uncomfortable situations were brought to the fore and if I made the correct choice, all would work out. It involved what felt like tests which were presented to me so I could figure out if I did have principles and whether I would capitulate when the going got tough. I saw the easy way out and I closed that door. I took the path based on my principles and what I knew was the correct decision. I trusted my intuition and the knowledge that everything would work out if I didn’t waver.
The sum of my life has been a battle between being a good boy and a bad boy. Being a good boy is alluring because it grants you the approval of others and in turn the game of life becomes a breeze. In addition, I learned how to balance out my good and bad. My ego persona comes from the good and I please others with my talent and charm in order to skate through life. I didn’t realize what I have been doing all my life until recently as sometimes it takes a while for the realizations to come. This took a lifetime, but I see it so clearly now, and I laugh. It’s an exquisite game I have crafted. If I don’t disappoint others, my life becomes a breeze. I develop trust and then can fuck off and do what I want. This sums up my work life and to an extent my personal life. The driving force behind my game is to achieve a precarious balance. I can earn capital which allows me to give it to the subconscious force within me, so he won’t totally fuck up my game. Balance is achieved and the hurricane blows on through. I clean up the damage, become a good boy again, and continue with the charade. I've always sided with being a good boy. Even now when I try to discard that shell, the good boy voice is so strong it takes over. My good boy self is judgmental and steers me back to complacency and routine. I now need to put a knife in him if I genuinely want to live. I realize this incarnation was not meant to fall into routine and wind up unfulfilled upon death.
So, what is Huachuma?
I have drunk the decoction called Huachuma a couple dozen times. I have had some light trips, some relentless energetic days that went on for 15 hours, and I have had introspective days with Grandfather. I had learned that Huachuma will take you to heaven if you disengage the mind. Huachuma means no head and it is the clue you need where you go into the heart space and experience bliss. Alternatively, if you engage the mind, it may take you into a hell of your own making. It mimics your everyday life with the difference Huachuma potentiates everything so that it is all in your face. I thought I knew what Huachuma was. I get mental clarity on my life path; I physically experience a clarity of what just is. I get a good case of the "feels." I see the grandeur and beauty of all that is around me.
This time the lessons picked up on an experience from 2017. Back then I was in the Andes mountains of Ecuador and a day I spent with Grandfather just after my 50th birthday involved a grand teaching concerning the vibratory nature of existence. As a novice explorer of consciousness in 2013, the Great Goddess came to me at the conclusion of my first ever plant medicine experience and told me, “All is vibration.” I didn’t know what she meant, wrote a poem about it, and then unpacked it over the following years. I got the next phase of the lessons in 2017. I was instructed about the dominant frequency of power which rules the world. We get up in the morning and exchange our talent so we can drink from the trough of this power and carve out our piece of the pie. The spirit of Huachuma laughingly called this, “Sucking Satan’s cock,” and though crude, it fit the teaching. I was also taught about harmony and resonance. The undertones of the knowledge was that through gathering like-minded souls into a group you create harmony and a pocket of heaven in this hell world. Establishing resonance with one another allows two to move in a synchronistic pattern with the other. This is not limited to other human beings but to anything imbued with the life force, which is the power which sustains all living things. Fantastic feats of accomplishment can be achieved with this magic, basically explaining the achievements of past civilizations we have wondered about. How did they build the pyramids?
The day was an introductory course into the inner workings of the universe and I was assigned homework in regard to understanding what this all meant. The lessons were preparing me for my continued use of Huachuma. It would be another two and a half years before I drank Huachuma again in 2020 and though it was a while I had known I was not finished with his teachings. When I resumed drinking, the experience had changed, and I was starting to be witness to the different mind states I would be pulled into and how to raise my vibration to get out of hell when I fell in that hole. I then started to experience the magic available with Huachuma when I went up into the mountains for a week. I was connecting with others in a sub-level way, and I took notice. The feeling of connection was intoxicating and allowed one to communicate beyond verbal cues. It was a novel experience and one to investigate, however the pandemic put a halt to further investigation.
The pinnacle of my spiritual path is the heart. I walked the path of the heart to the end. I learned the lesson of loving all and not focusing on just one love. Ram Dass taught me that everyone is your crush and I understood. Assigning love to just one at a time and getting attached is not the route to my beatitude. Love all. That's the way into the chamber of the heart.
I took these lessons to Peru with me in January of 2023, intent on opening my heart up wide and keeping it open throughout the journey and then when I got back home. Huachuma showed me the example of the garden and how we plant our own gardens which contribute to the total of who we are. Of course, not all are invited into the garden, and like weeds they grow and become part of our garden. We can cultivate the weed and incorporate it into the fabric of our existence, or we can pull and discard them. We create our own unique garden. The beauty of our creation invites the birds in to sing their love songs as the echoes of their warbling ring throughout the forest of our lives. I was shown the love of the family unit and how essentially humankind is one big Garden of Eden spread out among this earth. I saw how the Great Mother's heart aches at the animosity between her children and she longs to bring us all back together to the dinner table for a nourishing family meal.
As with all lessons of the plants, they showed me everything. I was shown the garden analogy first and this fit in nicely with my teachings of loving all and making everyone the object of my affection. Don't have preferences. Once I start assigning hierarchy to love, the construct falls apart. My conception of love isn't sustainable when I delineate. Love to me is an undefinable bucket. I kept going further into what love is and what it is I'm searching for.
Just the one lesson of familial love wasn't in the cards. You see, we come to earth because we are desire. We wouldn't have been incarnated on earth without the pull of desire. First, I was shown familial love. And then I was shown the catalyst which is the ignitor of that love. I was given a dose in no uncertain terms of the gas that is poured upon the attraction that brings together the two. The root of what we all cherish is a ridiculously strong attraction which compels us to act. It is so potent we sometimes call it lust and once it catches you in its current, there really is no escape. The Huachuma we were drinking was so successively strong that the potion became divinatory. I saw what was to take place because of these teachings I had asked for. I had a choice, but really, I didn't. The coming hurricane engulfed me, and I welcomed it knowing all along where it was leading me.
I thought I knew Huachuma. It gave me clarity and a dose of the feels. Huachuma gave me life lessons of love and family. It always heightened energy to the point where I could see it. I didn't know it could reveal to myself and others the parts of us we keep hidden. Huachuma was continually magical. And I didn't know it could tell you the future and then have it play out before your eyes. I did nothing to stop it. I guess I could have, but I just went with it. What Huachuma showed me, all came true.
So, here I am in the aftermath of the hurricane and knowing I was the abetter of the hurricane. It's the fruit I wanted, desired, and I got to taste it. I learned when I project into the future or defer to culture and conformity, the fruit spoils. If I live in the now, the ripe fruit was available and I tasted the deliciousness.
I was taught a difficult lesson involving the path of the heart. I was selfish and treated others as incidental players in my game. It became about me and I let down others who had every right to question who I had become. I'm so sorry for the pain I have caused those I love.
In my hands, I hold the ability to make earth heaven or to make it hell. It is daunting for sure, though at the core it's quite simple. Your choice.
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