Synchronicity Aligning

The heat was cleansing. The taste of vapor was in the air. 100% humidity. The Amazon. I was there, in the thickness of joy. Of healing. The cleansing. The purging. The surge of this energy was felt when landing in Iquitos and continues to this moment. I am back home now sitting in the Pacific Northwest of the United States three days after a seven-day retreat with Tito and our entourage of ancestors and new friends. I began my journey to Peru adhering to respectful deference to our ancestors: little food, no sex, no drugs–including caffeine, and prayer throughout the days leading up to departure.  

We are all indigenous to this planet. Gratitude abounds for the indigenous wisdom passed down through the millennia and descending into the vessel of Tito and the elders, Don Jorge and Hernan–our ceremonial guides through the forest of the Machin Puro plant diet and ceremony. Arriving at the base of the Machin Puro tree to collect the bark and boil into tea, a Mantona Boa-constrictor greeted us with an auspicious hiss and curl. Smoke from mapacho swirling as we passed by in wonder and blessing on that first day of the retreat.

We dieted the Machin Puro tree, drinking the tea of the bark in the morning and evening ceremonially throughout the weeklong retreat. Each morning and evening I prayed to the cardinal directions with gratitude, breathing love into a world in pain. I came alone. There were two other groups of two and four. A total of seven ceremony guests to a 5-acre piece of land built by divine design to align to the rightful position of the ancestor’s vision for Tito. I opted for seven days of isolation with the exception of ceremony: bathing in the Machin Puro essence, and three evenings of ayahuasca medicine.

The heavens opened the first evening of ceremony with laughter of thunder and spark of electricity. The cleansing rain came, showering the evening with the tree teaching me the purity of pure compersion–happiness for other’s happiness, joy for their joy, entirely void of jealousy and envy. To love unconditionally without reservation or protection of self was the mind of the divine melding with mine throughout the night storm. With gratitude I slept blissfully kissing clouds of restoration and love.

Two days later our guides facilitated our second evening ceremony–known to me as the evening of the serpent–the night when the Mantona entered within me. A shedding. All the pain and suffering, without fear. I held it all, the beauty and terror of it all, and smiled. My father and grandfather stood by me, reassuring me as I passed out into the darkness and arose only to collapse again. My knees, my hands on the earth holding me. The Host held me to her tightly preventing me from flying beyond gravity into eternity, for now. I held the suffering of my loved ones, of all those on the frontlines of war, hungry children, the abused and oppressed, and I persevered and reemerged with a profound feeling of empathy and love.

The final evening of ceremony, clarity descended on me: a vision to continue giving and sharing the resources I have to live with, without fear or withholding. A reassurance from the Kind Spirit, the cosmic sea of consciousness, to continue and deepen the groove of my current trajectory. I felt love and the reassuring embrace of our Earthly Mother and Universal Father… Everything will be alright. Everything is alright when we embrace love, peace, and generosity. It is curious that in a world full of itself and suffering, deep in the Amazon jungle, in languages foreign to me, such purity and clarity would make complete sense to me. Or perhaps it is obvious that right there, in the jungle, is where I needed to be in order for it all to make sense to me.

On the final day, we broke our fast under an auspicious New Moon. We began the diet with a serpent signaling transformation, and on the wings of serendipity we ended under the loving, transformative power of a New Moon. How could I not be forever altered?

Many thanks and blessings to Tito and the family.

Synchronicity Aligning

At the base

of the Machin Puro tree,

a mantona snake, Eye see.

It calls to me,

to shed my skin,

and transform within.

A spiritual invitation

to feel thru the dark,

to become a part, and

consume the bark.

And then Eye envision,

a cosmic–infusion,

my heart and mind–transition,

my rightful–position.    

Holding the tree-rings,

the Milky Way spins,

in the palm of my hands.

By divine design,

Eye access

all that is mine, to

share with others,

those healing powers.

My clean hands,

that hold the tea,

Eye drink each morning,

and each evening, until

the New Moon–rising,

synchronicity–aligning,

new skin–shining,

at the base

of the Machin Puro tree,

Eye now can see,

what’s swirling in Me.