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Roaming the Mind

Roaming the Mind

Journeys to our origins

Tag: ayahuasca tourism

Posted on January 5, 2014January 5, 2014

The City for Machines, the Jungle for Healing

Back in 2004, when I was documenting the shamanistic practices of the Ashaninkan curandero Juan Flores for my book, The Jaguar that Roams the Mind, Flores had a saying that captured the nature of his healing work.

Returning from the riotous din of the nearby frontier town of Pucallpa, he would turn to us with a smile and say, “The city for machines. The jungle for healing.” At such moments, speaking of his beloved rainforest sanctuary of Mayantuyacu, Flores’ face would light up from within, and he was capable of shedding bitter tears at the cutting of precious old growth medicinal trees on lands bordering his center for traditional medicine.

At that time, it was clear where Flores’ allegiance lay: the old ways. The traditions of the Amazonian peoples who lived in intimacy and conscious symbiosis with the mysterious lifeways of the rainforest.

One night, early on in my bewildered stage of adaptation to Mayantuyacu, Flores approached me after a ceremony with the visionary plant medicine, ayahuasca. Sitting with me on the floor, he described how his grandfather had taught him to make fire with the natural products of the rainforest. In Flores’ words, I heard that corridor open, the one that can very rarely be found nowadays, that leads directly back to our ancestors – those who knew not merely the utility, but the magic, of fire.

It was a good moment.That was Mayantuyacu’s gift to the world: memory of the old ways, of the healing power and rapturous beauty of wild nature, just as it is. Mayantuyacu had the power to recall one to his or her aboriginal senses.

At that time, Mayantuyacu floated delicately upon a sea of foliage and jungle cries. The animals, snakes, and birds were populous. The insects voracious. With no electricity, Mayantuyacu gleamed with kerosene lamps and candles, suspended in a matrix of silence, so deep your bones relaxed in its embrace.

This was in keeping with another of Flores’ beliefs: the spirits don’t like noise, which is why they make their residence in the most tranquil, undisturbed places of the wild. If you want to get to know them, Flores said, you had to seek them out there. Which is why Flores built Mayantuyacu at a place of unique geological power and beauty: the geothermally heated river that flows beneath his center. The spirit boat, so well known in the Amazonian cosmology, filled with doctors and other supernatural beings, traveled up that river. It is also a traditional site for his people — there is record of “wild Indians” gathering at the locale in the 1800’s.

Mayantuyacu now presents something of a contrast to those early days. Seen from the ridge above, it no longer appears like an organic part of the landscape. At night, electrical light blazes in the main structures, and the sound of an electric generator reverberates in the night. Technology is making its creeping way into the settlement. We observed during our hike in that the shaman’s apprentice, Brunswick, is now addicted to fiddling with his cell phone. Ominously, a worker assured us, Mayantuyacu is “catching up with the times.”

Viewed in that light, Mayantuyacu is beginning to resemble just another frontier town, aggressively pursuing its growth at the cost of the surrounding landscape.

This is the perpetual question: will Mayantuyacu lose its original vision under pressure from the world outside? Will it become just another hub for the spiritual tourism market?

As the concrete continues to pour and the infrastructure develop to provide more comfort to visitors from afar, we watch carefully if the “mythic line,” that place of tending to the ancestors and traditional ways, has been frayed or broken. Put bluntly, is Flores still holding it together? Has the container of Mayantuyacu been broken?

Yet it’s all too easy to fall under the delusion of naive realism — that we must hew to some primitive standard in order to have a true culture of shamanism intact. As in so many places in the world, Flores is in a race of adaptation to mounting pressures from inside and outside.

Inwardly, traditional curanderos are not immune to the seduction of “progress,” and their families often ratchet up the pressure upon them to pay the bills, educate their children, and leave a concrete inheritance once they, and their traditional knowledge, pass away. Comfort and convenience creep into precedence over reverence for ancestral ways. Some curanderos entirely abandon the idea of transmitting their cultural heritage to their video game playing, TV watching, internet surfing children.

Outwardly, Mayantuyacu squats upon land controlled by a Houston-based oil company, which has thus far cast a tolerant, even mildly benevolent, eye upon Flores. Should some other corporate eye fall too hard upon the sentient river that flows through his lands, the sacred waters could be diverted, and the music of the spheres end in mere noise. Thus the scientists and film crews visiting Flores’ center, seeking to document and save it, all of whom require electricity to power their equipment. As well, as Flores’ reputation spreads, groups of physicians and medical students will come seeking education in indigenous ways — and they cannot be expected to adapt to raw jungle living in the brief time they will have to immerse themselves at Mayantuyacu. They will need more than a modicum of comfort.

Mayantuyacu, therefore, presents a fascinating challenge, perhaps an identical one faced by all beings who wish to live in communion with the original mind. Can we keep a balance between our necessity to adapt to the impersonal demands of the world economic system and vocations that require immersion in the embrace of sentient Nature, especially among traditional healers?

This strikes me as a battle now being fought on innumerable fronts, in innumerable ways, in every moment of our lives.

Posted on April 15, 2009February 13, 2013

Ayahuasca Pilgrimage?

PilgrimAs a writer on ayahuasca shamanism, and a leader of small groups down to the rainforest to encounter the practice of traditional medicine, I have watched the rising of the phenomena labeled “ayahuasca tourism” with apprehension.

The dark spectre of ayahuasca tourism is dealt with in only one chapter of my book, The Jaguar that Roams the Mind, and tangentially at that. I confess when I first began my pilgrimages to the Amazon, the concept of an ayahuasca tourist hadn’t even occurred to me, nor did I know the effect of this sham industry on indigenous culture. Continue reading “Ayahuasca Pilgrimage?”

About Robert and Susana and Our Books!

Roaming the Mind is the online home for the writing and work of Robert Tindall and Susana E. Bustos.

Sacred Soil: Biochar and the Regeneration of the Earth details the remarkable potential of terra preta, the recently rediscovered sacred soil of the pre-Columbian peoples of the Amazon rainforest, to help reverse the catastrophic damage that has been visited upon our Earth. The authors, Robert Tindall, Frederique Apffel-Marglin, and David Shearer, lay out a fascinating description of how utilizing the biochar embedded in this highly fertile, living soil offers a way to free ourselves from dependency on petrochemicals, restore the health of our soils, and remove carbon from our overheating atmosphere by fixing it back where it belongs--in the earth. The book also shows that the rediscovery of terra preta is an opportunity to move beyond the West's tradition of plunder and genocide of the native civilizations of the Americas by embracing the deeper mystery of indigenous methods of inquiry and to participate in an animate cosmos that gave rise to such a powerful technology as terra preta in the first place.

Please order your copy here.

The Shamanic Odyssey: Homer, Tolkien, and the Visionary Experience is an exploration of the indigenous roots of Western literature, of the native mind lying in plain sight not only in the ancient epics of Homer, but also in the fantasy works of J.R.R. Tolkien. As such, the Odyssey as well as The Lord of the Rings can be seen as awakening and healing songs to return our disconnected souls back into harmony with the living cosmos.

Please order your copy here.

The Jaguar that Roams the Mind is a journey into the vanishing world of Amazonian shamanism. Robert Tindall travels through the churches of ayahuasca, with the Kaxinawa Indians in Brazil; to a Peruvian center for the treatment of addiction, Takiwasi; and reveals his studies with an Ashaninca shaman in the rainforest jungle. Moving beyond the scientific approach of reducing medicinal plants to their chemical constituents, Tindall illustrates the shamans' intimate relationships with plant spirits. He explores the three pillars of Amazonian shamanism: purging (drawing disease out of the body), psychoactive plants (including the use of ayahuasca), and diet (communing with teacher plants).

Please order your copy here.

Psycho-Spiritual Integration and Holotropic Breathwork

Integration sessions are necessary for many people who have experiences in non-ordinary states of consciousness. The access to these experiences may be spontaneous or induced by practices such as plant medicine work, Holotropic Breathwork, meditation, or spirit quests, among others. They tend to impact the whole organism at the physical, emotional, mental, and existential levels, requiring a safe container to be processed and metabolized in daily life, particularly when people feel open, incomplete, or still dwelling in the state after the most intense experience is over.

The techniques used for integration vary depending upon the needs of the person, including sharing, framing of the experience, bodywork, the expressive arts, and dietary advice, among others.

A session lasts about one hour and a half. Phone consultations and skype sessions are available to people outside of Peru.

Holotropic Breathwork is a powerful method for healing and self-discovery that relies upon the inherent drive for wholeness within each individual. It was developed by Dr. Stanislav Grof, M.D., one of the founders of transpersonal psychology, and his wife Christina, based on insights drawn from modern consciousness research, transpersonal psychology, anthropology, Eastern spiritual practices and mystical traditions from around the world.

This method combines hyperventilation, evocative music, and focused energy release work to experientially access the deeper dynamics of the psyche that are ready to emerge for an individual, according to his or her particular circumstances. These dynamics may correspond to biographical, perinatal, or transpersonal realms of consciousness.

Holotropic Breathwork has proven to benefit people with a broad range of conditions, such as psychosomatic disorders, addiction, stress, anxiety, and depression. It is an excellent complement to psychotherapy and self-inquiry methods and practices.

For more information, please contact Susana at tutibu@gmail.com or call (510) 689 7597.

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