The Inward Path

Only halfway into our week-long ayahuasca retreat, and we had already experienced so much. The internal connection had been made, and we had begun the inner journey — yet the second half of the week transcended the first, and there were many revelations still to come. First, however, came the midweek break. After the intensity of several long days, two back-to-back ceremonies, and eight hours sleep spread between them, we were all relieved to have a day of rest and recovery. We welcomed our day off with a yoga session, which I suspect none of us felt like going to, but which we all benefited from. Re-energised, we moved to breakfast and then to the main maloca for groupshare. Lunch came far too quickly after that, but we managed an hour of rest before the bell summoned us to the front of the centre once more. The excursion for the afternoon was exploratory: we piled into the boat and were taken deep into the jungle. It was a sloth-sighting expedition, but we saw myriad animals along the way: huge blue macaws; hawks; a host of small monkeys. We chugged down the narrow estuaries, passing lily pads an arm-span wide and lotus flowers the size of a fist, dancing with white and yellow butterflies. The sun hurt with the ferocity of its heat, and we were all relieved when cloud cover rushed in to chill the air. We only saw a sloth on the return journey, hanging high in the treetops and moving with the deliberate slowness of its kind.

There was a half hour to spare before dinner, and I spent my time with Chandler — the facilitator who had been playing a handpan during ceremony the night before. He pulled out his instrument for Keith and I to experiment with, showing us how to navigate its unique structure. The handpan is beautiful — a UFO-shaped drum of beaten metal, with depressions along its top to slap and produce hollow, reverberant notes; a raised top to achieve a percussive bass. Playing it, I was struck by how it was a marriage of my taste for melody and percussion, and I made a mental note to follow up on ordering one for myself upon returning to Perth.

Our play time was cut short by an early dinner, immediately followed by another excursion out on the river after sunset. We slathered ourselves in mosquito repellant and donned long-sleeved clothing in anticipation, heading out into the dark. The billowing clouds of mosquitoes were thick and insistent, whining in flurries around our heads and piercing the flimsy fabrics that clung to our bodies in the soupy heat of the night. When we made it out to a dense patch of reeds, one of our two guides hauled a smaller canoe from the main boat onto the water and left us, paddling out into the blackness. He was gone for some time, and we shifted and scratched and slapped at ourselves, breathing with closed mouths and fantasising about mass mosquito death. The guide returned from his first foray empty-handed, but on the second attempt, he was successful. He stepped back onto the boat with a foot-long baby caiman alligator — caught with his bare hands — which he passed around for us to hold and examine before releasing it back into the reeds. As we made our way back to Arkana, our guide also managed to catch a green iguana that had been clinging to the reeds, and little bright yellow frogs jumped into the boat and climbed up our arms.

*I still have no idea how our guide found him*

Having touched down on dry land once more, we scrambled up the bank and made our way poolside, where a bonfire had been erected and was crackling cheerfully to greet us. This seemed as good a mosquito repellent as any, and our group crowded about the flames, spending the remainder of the evening playing a raucous game of charades until the pull to our beds forced an end to the night.

…

We awoke at 7:00am the next day, well-rested despite the heavy rain and claps of thunder that threatened just beyond the treeline by our bedroom in the night. Well, I was well-rested — Alessandra had been sweating and feverish, and was in the throes of some kind of sickness. We padded over to breakfast, then settled onto our mats in the main maloca for a twenty-minute meditation, preparing our minds for the upcoming sapo ceremony.

Sapo is, I was surprised to learn, a new practice. It is a secretion produced by the glands of the Sonoran Desert toad, which lives much of the year underground, emerging during the rainy season to reproduce. The secretion is dried, powdered, and smoked; and the 5MeO-DMT that it contains produces a unique experience: a true dissolution of ego and loss of the sense of a central self.

Despite the almost universal subjective experience of infinite love, joy and wonder, the sapo user has no control over their physical response after using the medicine, and this response can be intense, ranging from apparent elation to abject terror. Having now experienced sapo twice myself, I have my own thoughts on the matter: the medicine simulates death, and the dissolution of personal experience truly is profound and beautiful; however, every emotion can surface at the deathbed, and the path to death can be one of ultimate terror as well as ultimate peace. Fear of letting go; of loss of control; of death itself — these primal reactions are disinhibited, and rise reflexively in response to the experience.

For our own group, responses to the medicine were varied. There was moaning and sighing, laughing and crying. One of our group went wild eyed, leaping up from the mat and screaming with a raw intensity as though he had seen the mother of demons herself (I should note that he later reported his experience as being one of beauty and infinite love). Another leapt up and yelled at the group with aggressive enthusiasm, proclaiming self-forgiveness; gratitude; and love for the group, himself and the world.

When it was my turn, I moved to the three mats at the center of the maloca and began to slow and deepen my breathing. I was nervous, for the smoke is harsh and difficult to take in, and the experience is wholly out of personal control. I had just been taught a lesson in surrender, however, and so set my intention to give myself over entirely to the experience.

I inhaled the smoke slowly and, as instructed, held my breath for as long as possible when it was finished. I sat there with closed eyes, feeling the smoke swirl and flow inside of me, surrendering the drive to breathe out until it would not be denied. Then I breathed out, slowly, and was lain down on the mat by the facilitators. As I was lowered, my consciousness, as I know it, was already expanding and soaking into the broader reality. I let go of everything — my physical body, my memories, my very self. The others later informed me that I lay down quietly and peacefully, and did not move a muscle for the entire experience. I became void — the very space within which everything was happening. I was the music; was the sound of the group around me. I was wrapped around it all, and it was all happening within me. My body was not my own, and so it was easy to divest myself of. I felt every sinew and muscle relax. I emptied my lungs and accepted their desire for air without acting upon it, breathing with a deliberate, slow intensity, holding both on empty and on full for minutes at a time. I was in complete nirvana; a serene, peaceful joy had settled over my being, and tears streamed endlessly down the sides of my face at the beauty of the perfect moment I had been given. As I began to surface once more, I was struck deeply by the knowledge that it would all be okay — in the ultimate sense. If death was anything like the surrendering of self and unification with the fabric of Being that I had just experienced, then there was nothing whatsoever to fear from its tender embrace.

In the quiet moments that followed, I made my way to the outside mats, and Alessandra was soon called up. I was uncertain how she would go, as I knew she was particularly sensitive to the harshness of smoke, and was liable to cough before she could inhale enough of the substance to be taken by the medicine. She did indeed cough after no more than a few small sips of the smoke, and remained seated with her head in her hands, seeming upset as she refused to take any more when offered. That’s torn it, I thought — she had found it too difficult, and was unhappy that she could not manage it. This turned out to be wrong, however. She sat on her mat for some time, remaining seated with her head in her hands, which shook with intensity. Before long, I was called over to be by her side; a soothing presence as she returned to herself. Though she may not have gone as far into the medicine as I did, it turned out that she did in fact have enough to fall inward, describing a chaotic and jumbled experience that left her grateful to be alive.

The lunch that followed the sapo was to be eaten in silence, to appreciate the subtle pleasures of eating without distraction. We enjoyed chicken and salad, rice and quinoa, all heaped in bowls, with tureens of hummus and cashew sauce, and meditated on our gratitude as we ate.

*Our communal blackboard: gratitude and love*

It was some time between lunch and the plant bath at 5:00pm, and I used the lull to read and relax, drinking in the view of the river from the upstairs hammocks. When the bell called us to our plant bath, we doused ourselves by the riverfront once more; then met in the sapo maloca for a session of sound healing, where we were treated to a whirlwind soundscape of different instruments as we lay in meditation on the mats. While I had to resist the pull to fall asleep, Alessandra, in her sickness, was overpowered by it, and had to be roused at the end.

After an hour’s introspection, it was time to make our way to the main maloca for the third ayahuasca ceremony. I feel I should preface my report of this session with a brief note: there are certain experiences that cannot be described using mundane language, because they do not fit into the sphere of mastered, comprehended reality this language can break down and relay to others. These types of experiences transcend what we can understand and conceptualise, and so require transcendent language if we are to try to capture them at all. That’s the tricky part, for the broader a word is — the more conceptual terrain it encapsulates — the more diffuse and, ironically, unhelpful it is. A word like ‘God,’ for example, could be considered to capture the broadest possible territory, including conceptual, physical, emotional and spiritual domains…yet the word is so loose and open in its meaning that what I mean by ‘God’ and what you mean by ‘God’ are likely two completely different things. Because the word being used has such divergent meanings from person to person, it’s inevitable that what I’m trying to communicate — what I mean — and what is understood by the reader will be, at best, only vaguely related. Still, I will not be turned from the attempt simply because it is difficult. The compromise is to make a request: as you read, try to let go of your preconceptions and judgements, and sink into the world I am describing. Think of it as symbolic — even as fiction and fantasy — if that helps. If you are atheist, the proud, egoistic part of you may be tempted to discard my words in disgust — and if that is the case, try to see this urge for what it is: a defensive response, designed to protect the mind from a threatening idea. In the spirit of openness, here is my third inward journey.

I began the ceremony with an 80mL dose — two huge gulps of the thick, bitter concoction — and returned to sit on my mat with perfect posture, focusing on my breath in an attempt to let the nausea pass through me. It came in waves, but I persevered, and it eventually subsided, allowing me to lay down in the throes of the medicine without having purged. I began to feel washes and flickers of an emotion that I have never experienced before, outside of the 2019 retreat. It was a type of transcendent, jubilant, ecstatic joy, of a kind that set the mind shivering with anticipatory awe. I had to keep returning to the breath to stop myself from trying to force of fabricate experiences.

*A painting of Maestra Justina, head of the family of shamans, which watches over our experiences in the maloca*

As with sapo, I had realised that the key was in the surrender. I repeated this intention over and over: “I surrender completely and utterly. Please help me to heal.” I soon noticed that whenever I repeated this intention, the unique rush of emotion filled my mind once more, saturating it with wonder. I pondered the cause of this, and a thought emerged: “He prizes surrender above all.”

He? I picked up on the phrasing of the thought, and wondered about it. Was the thought referring to God? The emotion rushing and pulsing in me certainly felt like Him, as I had experienced Him throughout my last retreat. I was a proud atheist back then, but ayahuasca had connected me to something far beyond my narrow understanding, changing me in some deep way. I recalled the spiritual connection to the divine that had been forged during that first visit to the jungle, and realised that I had not felt it in years. How could I reconnect with it directly?

The response came immediately, clear as glass: maybe all I have to do is call.

I called to God, then, opening an internal door and calling with my heart, rather than my mind; and the moment I called, an all-encompassing, indescribably beautiful presence slammed into my consciousness like a wall of light, flooding it with a perfection and drawing out a whole-body gasp that rippled out from the centre of my chest. It was a shocking experience, so profound and complete as to leave me shaking with awe. He came, I knew, because I called with my heart; a genuine call, rather than a mere mouthing of the words.

I worked on opening up the heart-space further as I watched the shaman weave their icaros across the ceiling and around the maloca, like the branches of a tree or the threads of a web. I could see them in my mind’s eye, and they were ancient, monkey-like creatures with long, spindly limbs; and as they sang, my body began to flow and roll to the rhythms like a serpent. I observed its movements with surprise, for I’d never moved like that in my life, and was not making it happen then. The shamans’ songs filled the space, transforming it with an open, joyous energy that cleansed and soothed the mind.

The deep experience of the medicine began to fall away not long after, and I let myself drift along on the currents of music for the remaining hours. Just before the ceremony’s end, we were all handed maracas, and used them in accompaniment with the shamans’ guitars and voices to bring the night to a glorious and wholesome finish. When it was all over, I moved once more to Alessandra’s mat. This time, she said, she had managed to purge early, and had even succeeded in opening one of the closed doors inside herself — though she had seen a silhouette in the frame, and was pulled back and away before she could go further.

…

Activities were kept to a minimum the following day — which was a blessing, as we were all tired. A late breakfast allowed us to sleep in a little, regaining some of our lost energy, and we went from breakfast to the main maloca for our regular post-ceremony groupshare. We entered the space to see the entire floor covered with a variety of arts and crafts, made by the shamans and mothers of the Shipibo tribe. There were tapestries and paintings of sacred animals and of shamans communing with the medicine. There were bracelets and necklaces of ayahuasca. Most impressive were the clothes, all woven through with brightly-coloured thread depicting the various sacred jungle plants, with intricate icaros that fill the borders they create. It was a captivating display, and it was remarkable to see the threaded patterns of the icaros — many of which we had directly perceived in the throes of the medicine itself.

When groupshare was finished, we all ventured from our mats, taking our time to examine every piece on display. Alessandra and I picked out several items of clothing, a bracelet set with ayahuasca in its center, a small tapestry, and a carved maraca. We were told that we could bring our purchases into the final ceremony, where they would be blessed by the shamans.

The late morning and early afternoon was largely unstructured, and I spent much of it either reading or playing the handpan with Keith and Chandler. At 5:30pm, we returned to the main maloca for an integration circle. Candles were lit, and we were each given two pieces of paper. We separated into small groups, and each took time to write about our self-limiting beliefs; and the tools and knowledge gleaned from our ayahuasca experiences that may serve to work on them. Next, we wrote about our ideal lives — what we would be like, what we would be doing, and so on — followed by a set of three realistic goals that would bring us closer to the life we wanted. Finally, on the second sheet, we wrote down all that we want for our lives, as well as each point’s opposite. This latter half we burned; a ritual release of all those things we do not want in our lives.

One of the integration activities was particularly beautiful. Within our small groups, we took turns staring into one another’s eyes for one full minute and telling them all that we saw — good and bad. As we rotated through, we each received the gift of another person’s honest perception of us. I found it humbling to discover what my group members saw in me, and was surprised by several of their comments. I cannot imagine a space outside of the retreat where this kind of vulnerable, mutual sharing could occur, and the world is poorer for its absence.

It was time, at last, for the final ayahuasca ceremony of the retreat. I had been planning to have another 80mL dose, but at the last minute decided for 60mL instead, with the intention of having another 20mL when the second dose was offered. I thought I’d need it.

I didn’t need it.

As usual, I sat with the medicine as long as I could, attempting to ride the wave of nausea that accompanied the early stages, but after thirty minutes, I could not stop the purge. It was almost immediately following this that the medicine hit me. It began with a deep buzz. I could hear and feel the hum of the jungle itself, droning in the center of my mind and all around me. It was a vibration that shook my teeth, thrumming and insistent, wrapping me in a cocoon of thick webbing. In the pitch darkness, the three shaman appeared to me as spiders, encasing me in the threads of their icaros, protecting me and preparing me for transformation.

I gave myself over to the process, committing once more to total surrender, no matter what. Trapped in my cocoon, I saw three ancient figures, stick-thin, wearing feathered shamanic headdresses and staring out at me blankly. Their eyes were white holes, and they gnashed their teeth at me in a terrifying and disturbing display. I allowed my revulsion and fear to wash over me and welcomed them from a place of serenity, inviting them to do whatever was necessary with me. I felt them take my cocooned form and lower it into a bath of acid. Amidst the ever-present thrum, I felt my flesh dissolve, and then my bones. The hum grew in intensity, becoming almost urgent, consuming my mind. In this way, my self — as I knew it — melted away. Then the shamans began to sing together.

I felt their songs tug at me, causing my body to writhe and turn of its own accord. At one point, my whole torso was slowly lifted off the ground, as though a hook was attached to the centre of my chest, pulling me upward, and I felt shreds of dark energy being tugged out and cast away. I sipped at the icaros, tasting the light, feeling their texture on my teeth; their weave in my mind.

The God-presence rushed through me once again soon after. I could feel flickers of it — attunements to old-world magic that lit up chained nebulas in my mind like nodes on a circuit board. I narrowed my vision with my arms by my head, and in this way saw a golden temple ahead of me. Moving closer, I reached an altar, and at the altar, the face of God was revealed to me. It was a breathtaking, shining thing, and I was enraptured.

The old magic was in me now — the vibration of the jungle, humming a bass note underpinning and anchoring all the energies that swirled and flowed above it. I left the swirling vortex of the maloca to use the restroom, and there experimented with tapping into this force. I clasped my hands together and opened, holding a star-studded void within my cupped palms, noticing the shift of frequency of the jungle’s thrum. It was as though I was slowly twisting a motorcycle accelerator, pulling the magic to me in preparation for its use. I could feel it in my head; a deep, resonant drink of a sweet, dark magic that set my mind reeling with pleasure. But I also knew that I was not safe, there outside of the protective weave of icaros, and so padded back through the darkness to find my mat once more. Wide eyed in the pitch black, I stared out to where the shamans sang, clasping my hands and wondering if they knew of the magic I had just dipped into.

Many scenes were presented to me that night — and many of these I have since forgotten, for there were simply too many to hold. Some, however, have remained. I recall many scenes of the spiritual jungle, and the plants and animals that occupy it. I spontaneously found myself move into three yoga poses, and noticed my back and neck stretching, opening up a channel for latent energy to run through my body. I experimented with my breath, experiencing the peace of surrendering to the sensations of holding on empty. I felt the tender space my tumour occupies, and willed healing energy to it, flooding it with light.

As the night drew to a close, we were called up for our personal arkanas — special icaros of personal protection, meant to seal and protect the work we had done over our time in the jungle. I brought my earlier purchases to ceremony, and had them blessed as the shaman sang to me. I returned to my mat, aware of the deep respect and reverence I felt for these men and the wonderful mystery that such people present, holding the line between reality and something more. I contemplated this as I lay back, sinking into the last of the music. Then, without warning, the ceremony was over. When I checked in with Alessandra, she was exhausted, but content. She had managed to walk through a door at last, she told me — a door guarded by a blue-skinned woman who posed as Death itself — and had faced the inner demon that lurked behind it with boldness and courage, watching it shrink away to nothing before her power. It seemed, in the end, that we had both gotten precisely what we needed.

…

It was the morning of our final day in the jungle, and there was little more to be done. We took our last breakfast together, then mustered in the main maloca for groupshare and a gifting ceremony. The gifting ceremony involved each person placing a wrapped gift in the center of the room. Someone would be called up, select a package intuitively, and intuit who that gift should go to. When the gift was revealed, the giver would speak up, explaining its significance. Then the receiver would then go up and begin the process again, until all gifts had been handed out. I received a bag of wood chips, whose fragrant smoke was used to cleanse and protect the maloca on ceremony nights. Keith had carved ‘love,’ onto each piece, and ensured there was enough for me to give a piece to everyone. Alessandra received a very special gift from Chandler: a piece of the ayahuasca vine that was used in the batch we drank at ceremony. This gift, in particular, has been a touchstone for our experience; a piece of our time in the jungle that we can use to reconnect when we feel distant.

When the gifting was done, the shamans struck up a last song with their guitars, and we all danced and shook maracas, losing ourselves in the joy and playfulness of the moment, and in the newfound connection we all shared.

Yet all things must come to an end, and so, packed and ready, we climbed into the boat and pushed off from the riverbank, saying a silent goodbye to the retreat that had served us so well. The boat returned us to the fishing village, where we took a bus the rest of the way to Iquitos. We broke off into ones and twos when we arrived at La Casona, but arranged to meet up later that evening for a celebratory dinner at a restaurant overlooking the great river. We laughed and reflected together for a long while and, when we could not put it off any longer, said our final goodbyes. Alessandra and I joined a handful of the others in browsing some local shops after dinner, but then even they left. When we walked back to our hotel, only Keith remained. As we said goodnight and returned to our rooms, Alessandra was overcome with sadness at being out of the perfect bubble we had spent our last week within. For myself, I was filled with a simple gratitude; for life, for the experience of the retreat, and for the group of people that I had the privilege and honour to share it with.

…

There is so much we can take from our time at Arkana — both from the time spent in ceremony, and the broader experience of the retreat as a whole. Though it is impossible to set it all down, I will try to distill some of the core lessons I have taken from my personal journey here:

It is amazing just how connected to our own world we can feel when we disconnect from the world at large.
A series on people:
1. Deep connection with others occurs as a consequence of sharing words of truth from a place of mutual openness and vulnerability, whilst engaged in shared activities aimed at personal growth. The more deeply we can tell others our story — all our hopes, dreams and fears — and listen to theirs in turn, the more we can heal ourselves and those around us.
2. People are always more interesting than we give them credit for. The more you dig, the more you find.
3. We are deeply interconnected — with our family, friends, neighbours and partners. We leave parts of ourselves in others, and they carry us with them. In this way, the ending of our physical life is not the end of what is truly ‘us.’ We are the forest, not just the tree.
4. Surrender. Let go of the need to control all aspects of life. Subordinate yourself to something beyond you alone — however you choose to define it — and attune to it through the heart, not the mind.
It is helpful to write and reflect about what you want and what you experience. It crystallises the flowing, changeable abstraction of thought into a fixed form. This, we can work with.
We need not worry about what others think of us — often, they see the spirit within that we ourselves cannot perceive.
There is an inextricable link between mind, body and spirit, despite our attempts to compartmentalise and consider them as separate entities. The complex, networked relationship of the three must be considered as a whole, for a change in one will affect the others equally.
The shamanic practices contain both truth and wisdom, though of a kind different to the truths of science.
Love — and forgiveness — are the answer.
Enjoy your breath!

Exertion, Expansion, Exasperation

Welcome to the Jungle