by Ross Heaven
After the first hour the shaman began his work. Each person, again one by one, was called to the mesa, the Altar Mayor, to receive the shaman’s diagnosis and be given the opportunity to release whatever it was they needed to release.
Once the shaman makes his diagnosis, guided by his mesa and San Pedro, he begins his treatment. The treatment can take a variety of forms depending on what ails the individual: rattling, soul retrieval, singing, whistling, feather fanning, staffs, sucking, blowing, spitting. Whatever was happening each of us had to sit through each person’s healing process, all of this in pure darkness. If an individual was moaning in pain we felt that pain too. If the shaman shook his rattle it reverberated throughout our entire bodies as if it was inside of us. What was so interesting about this process—and, at first, difficult to manage while doing our own inner work with San Pedro—was how communal it was. The message I received from this was: there is no way out, we are all in this together!
My panic at times was daunting. My heart, I felt, was going to give out. But the logistics of the ceremony inspired me. I looked over at the black shape of my wife and could tell somehow that she was dealing with some hard pain. I had such love for her and all I wanted to do, without any sort of return, was comfort her. I stroked her back calmly and I watched the shadowy forms of the shaman and his auxillios in the center of the chamber work on his patients. All of this began to inspire me. As terrified as I was to have my name called, this inspiration guided me to a place of sudden surrender to San Pedro.
Then, the shaman called for me: “Daniel.”
That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined.8
I stood. I don’t know how but I did. Without falling, without a breakdown of panic. In absolute darkness I walked up to the northern side of the mesa, on top of a pallet of deerskin. My shaman sat on the south end watching me, prepping his diagnosis. Surprisingly, despite my fear, courage overwhelmed me. It was my moment to state my intention: “I am Daniel Erin Moler. I call myself to myself. San Pedro help me thus.”
My shaman verbally acknowledged my intention. Then one of the auxillios brought me a singado (an infusion made from tobacco leaf macerated in alcohol, taken in a shell). I was instructed to inhale/ingest the singado into my left nostril, to release whatever it was I was intending to release. (I was incredibly nervous for this moment; I’ve never so much as done a neti pot!)
He began to rattle. I ingested the liquid into my nostril, imagining my fear rushing away . . . coughing, choking, spraying bits of the juice onto my face. The rattling stopped and I confirmed the action with a whisking blow from the shell into the mesa. Then the next singado came; I was to inhale this down my right nostril to intention what I want to bring in to my life.
The rattling started again. When I inhaled this time, imagining courage and love, it went down easier. A mighty rush overflowed me as I blew into the mesa. I felt power, such mighty and magnificent power. Not a dominating kind of power . . . the real kind, the medicine kind. A gentle power, what my wife would call “wick.”
Next, the shaman approached me. He picked out a staff that resonated with my frequency and began his work. Using the staff, he called on great powers and spirits to assist, to remove any obstacles in my way to achieving my purpose. He used the staff to push out the hucha (heavy or dense energy from stress-related attachments) within my body. I noticed he specifically had to push harder around my heart area. After that he placed his mouth on my chest many times and tried to suck out the hucha, coughing from its toxicity and spitting it back into the mesa. This is part of the act of ayni, the sacred reciprocity of energetic interchange with the universe.
Then I was showered with agua de florida as he spit/sprayed it on the back of my neck, my face, and the rest of my body. Walking back to the mesa the shaman selected one of his artes (medicine tools kept on the mesa used to cleanse the energy field of a patient) and returned to place it in my hand. It was a marble heart.
“Take this heart,” he said. “Go back to your seat. Draw the energy from it for the rest of the evening. You did good brother.” And he embraced me.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth9
I really felt like his brother at that moment.
I have never been close to my own family. I grew up in a very unhealthy dynamic that made it difficult for me to assimilate relationships, to love people and know how to love in return. Even my friendships have been tainted with this same venom. Now more than ever I need to know how to love . . . for my wife, for my children . . . for everyone in my life. When my shaman embraced me and I held that marble heart in my hand I felt so connected. I felt truly loved, truly grateful to the universe—for the first time ever—for life!
What was truly revealing was the image of the heart. My wife had found a heart-shaped rock on the beach almost a year ago and gave it to me as a gift. It has always been at my bedside, a favorite medicine piece. The first time I visited my shaman the arte he gave me was a small heart-shaped rock made out of the same substance as the one my wife gave me, as he found it on a beach in Hawaii. This one I got to keep assisting me in controling my fear and anger in tumultuous situations. Then about a week ago my wife found a heart-shaped piece carved out of wood, which has become an integral part of my mesa and (unbeknownst of the shaman) I brought it to the ceremony to assist in my healing. The fact the message was so clear, that I received another heart, chimed in my spirit with a clear and strident sanction.
Now . . . I could spend hours talking about the visions given to me by San Pedro that came after the healing work: the puma face cringing at me, the insectoid patchwork covering my vision, the San Pedro cacti in the windows dancing back and forth, the vibratory resonance of the universe literally (physically) shaking my body, the insight to our sacred ancestry, our connection to the Star People, my being selected by one of these Star People to guide and teach me for the years to come in my shamanic apprenticeship, or watching the “violet psychofluid” seep out of everyone’s pores. This is all fine and magical but the point of the entire evening may be missed.
When the healing work was complete we waited until dawn. As the sun slowly eked over the horizon a creeping incandescence emanating brighter and brighter within the chamber, the shaman and his auxillios spent that time in the center of the mesa creating a refresco, a citrusy alchemical concoction made to rejuvenate the body after a full night’s work with San Pedro. It is loaded with sugar, fruit bits, flower petals, and the playful joy the shaman and his auxillios generate while preparing it. When it was ready the auxillios brought each patient a cup with a kiss to seal the sweetness. It is a drink to be savored as it connected us back to the Earth from our experience.
Finally came the flowering. We each received a white rose and were told to put them by our bedsides at night, to eat one of the petals before sleeping so that San Pedro can continue its work in us.
The shaman put on an almost goofy headband with puffy balls trailing the back in a sprightly array. We all stood while he playfully danced from person to person spraying aromatic waters on the women’s breasts, on the men’s tummies, pouring flowery essences down our shirts and spraying us with powder. We all laughed and giggled like children, soaked to the brim in oils and smelling like a pungent, exotic garden. Our connection to each other was unbound and intertwined . . . a great serpent eating its own tail, the infinite ouroboros, T’eqsimuyu Amaru. We will always have this experience together. San Pedro will always be in our system, fused into our DNA. It will always be our Great Teacher, our “Masterful Lover.”
So, what did I learn? Because it’s all about learning, isn’t it?
Say not “I have found the truth,” but rather “I have
found a truth”
Say not “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather “I have met the soul walking upon my path”
For the soul walks upon all paths
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed
The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals10
It surprised me to realize how unengaged I was with the visionary appeal of the experience. Given my interest in psychedelic phenomena and art I thought the visionary aspects of San Pedro would be the primary catalyst of my journey. How wrong I was! I was 100 percent focused and engaged on the ceremony of the night not San Pedro’s visionary affects.
What San Pedro taught me was how to love.
The shaman is the pure embodiment of Love. Whatever we had to go through that night the shaman went through as well. He drank from the same cup as we. Where we had time to be with our inner work while on San Pedro the shaman spent every waking moment giving of himself. If it was bad enough that we had to inhale singado down our nostrils, the shaman did it twice over. While we were sitting on the floor he was always up and working . . . every minute containing space, every minute extracting hucha, every minute healing our spirits. Tirelessly he gave himself throughout the entire evening: the true embodiment of the llama, of self-sacrifice.
The shaman has become my shaman. The embodiment of Christ Consciousness. I understand now why the Peruvian shamans had no issue with adopting the Christ story into the Pachakúti Mesa tradition. The crucifix generally lies in K’uychi, the heart of the mesa, the Universal Heart. Jesus Christ has the same message, lived the same life.
The shamans continue that story with the work they do; giving their lives over selflessly to the healing experience, they embody the Universal Consciousness of self-sacrifice. This is how to love: without fear, without anticipating return. Giving oneself to another endlessly and selflessly is the only true way to heal, to evolve.
San Pedro taught me that no good will come from festering on the hurt and pain. That will only breed more hurt and pain. To give of yourself to others, unbound, without fear, without limitation is how one heals one’s heart. How one grows into the man or woman one wants to be. Thus, like the shaman prescribing for each patient to their own individual needs, so must I love the people in my life each to their own individuals needs . . . not—as it once was—to my own.
Am I enlightened? No. Has my life suddenly changed for the better? No. All of that work has to be on my own.
What I did walk away with from San Pedro’s teachings was a firm gratitude and confidence for what I must do and how I must do it . . . a deep energetic self-assurance I never could have received from a book or a class or any other external source. San Pedro infused itself within me and I have no doubt it will continue to teach me in mystifying ways for many years to come. As well, it cemented a human and cosmic connection with my shaman, my curandero, as teacher, guide, and brother.
“Shamanic mastery is attained not in radical insight of universal truth and order, rather it is discovered over and over again through joyful surrender to the process of accretive growth.”11
Happy anniversary, my wife, my Love. My commitment to growth remains forever strong.
We are the seeds of the tenacious plant and it is in
our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are
given to the wind and are scattered.12
13
Deciding to Live Not Die
Sonna-Ra
This morning I woke up to the gentle pattering of rain against my bedroom window. There was a sense of peace in my heart at the memories of my journey with San Pedro in Cusco. I couldn’t wait to get out of bed to write this down. Words kept flowing effortlessly, like Mozart’s symphonies, waiting to be written.
During spring equinox in 2009 a group of my friends gathered at a retreat somewhere north of Wellington, New Zealand. I was invited to be the weekend’s cook in exchange for the cost of the retreat. Finances had been tight since I decided to return to university that year.
One night Judith-Anne related to me her experience at our mutual friend’s recent death. She had died of a brain tumor just thirteen weeks after diagnosis. Judith-Anne said that when our friend stopped breathing, every family member in the room broke out in a haka (a traditional Maori chant or challenge) to celebrate her departure from this world. The noise and energy in the room was explosive and Judith-Anne felt the presence of God. After hearing that I was moved to tears and we both had a good cry in each other’s arms.
Following that episode I couldn’t stop thinking about my own mortality. I decided to live a bit more daringly and do some things that I had been too chicken to do. One evening shortly after the retreat, I was having a meeting with some friends and mentioned that I would like to go to Peru to attend Ross Heaven’s workshops, but I couldn’t afford it unless I checked out the money I had been saving for my funeral.
Gwyneth looked at me and said that when I passed on my friends would throw a big healing fair to raise money for my burial, as long as I don’t mind what I got. Sandra chirped in that she thought the kohas (monetary gifts) from the fair would be more than enough to hold a big party and a decent burial, plus a coffin for all my friends to express their creative art on. It was such a hilarious image that we were laughing till our sides hurt. I was so touched by such sincere generosity from my friends that I confidently went and booked my flights and workshops the next day before my mental Scrooge returned.
For someone like me who had never taken recreational drugs nor smoked a joint in my life (being a natural health therapist) many of my close friends thought it was quite an unbelievable thing to go all the way to Peru for ayahuasca and San Pedro ceremonies. But there I was, getting off the plane at Cusco after twelve days in the Amazon jungle getting to know ayahausca.
Outside the airport I was immediately immersed in the high vibration of the place. I saw gold light around people and all over myself. The next day I had a mild headache, which was intensified by drinking coca tea. Everyone recommended this tea for altitude sickness but the more I drank the worse I felt. After breakfast I had a huge headache and when I moved I felt nauseous. I could only walk five steps and my heart was pounding and I was short of breath. I finally got up the steps to the casa where Ross’s group was meeting and met up with Ross’s assistant, Donna. Donna told me that San Pedro would fix my altitude sickness; it did for Ross! I couldn’t wait to try it. At that point, out of desperation I was willing to drink snake venom just to feel better.
We went to the Temple of the Moon for our first ceremony. The wind was cold and I had a thick blanket with me. Our shaman, La Gringa, gave us a talk about San Pedro. She said that we were drinking Light and that San Pedro would open a doorway to experiencing oneness with nature. Then we received our glass full of this interesting-looking liquid, which was thick and tasted a bit bitter. We had to hold the medicine down for forty minutes for it to take effect. Ten minutes after drinking it, however, I was puking in the flowerbeds and started to feel heavy. I grabbed a branch of a plant beside me just for a solid connection to the world in case I lost my mind somewhere, I thought.
From then on my whole body relaxed and I could feel San Pedro’s energy moving through me. I started to cry from some sad feeling of abandonment and aloneness. Then I felt my son holding me and giving me so much love that it moved my soul. Without words I knew that we both had a strong bond and our love will always be there. San Pedro brought it to my conscious mind to know it like an etching on a wall, so solid that I will always remember. Then I experienced love from my close friends from New Zealand.
The journey continued with San Pedro circulating in my body, and I felt my temperature fluctuate and pain surface at different places. La Gringa’s three dogs were present in the garden where we drank, and all were great healers. One of them kept turning up whenever I was in pain. He would park his body along my back and within a few minutes the pain would diminish and he would trot off to minister to
another person.
Later, I lay on the mattress with a thick blanket over me, staring at the sky and feeling the wind on my face. The San Pedro songs playing in the garden were like nothing I had ever heard in my life. My whole body received the lyrics and the sounds with joy. I felt I was in oneness with the songwriter’s creation and surfed in a frequency of ecstasy. Man, this body is so cool. San Pedro removed my miserable thoughts and tuned me into ecstasy!
My next San Pedro ceremony was amazing in itself. On this occasion we had two Peruvian musician-healers with us. I held down the drink quite well this time and trusted its power more. The music and chanting took me through ancient landscapes on the wings of a condor. The voices from the healers were sweetly haunting and soulful. I could feel my heart spinning in my chest and a voice in my head said, “You are the essence of love and everyone mirrors back to you.” It was so deeply profound and I realized that all that is in my world is a reflection of me. I am the one who gives meaning and purpose to my existence. I am the one responsible for my thoughts and feelings. There was a sense of gratitude inside me for this connection with Pachamama.
At the end of the day the sky opened up and poured with rain. We huddled beneath the canopy of the veranda with a cup of hot tea. It was the happiest day of my life. If there is an opportunity in the future I would love to share a San Pedro experience with my son who is eighteen.
At the end of the workshop five of us traveled to Machu Picchu. It was another amazing adventure, as if Pachamama continued to present us with her generous gifts of love.
When I was on the plane leaving Cusco I looked out the window and saw another plane with Machu Picchu painted on its tail. Tears rolled down my face. I cried not from sadness at leaving this place but from gratitude. I had thought that this place was a hellhole when I arrived and had experienced such altitude sickness but now I felt utter gratitude for all it had given me: a precious deep sense of love for myself and my world. I also felt that my journey to Peru and with San Pedro wasn’t just for me. I had drunk it for those at home too who couldn’t come personally. To my surprise many of my loved ones felt a strong heart connection to me during my absence, they told me later.