Encounters with Power: Adventures and Misadventures on the Shamanic Path of Healing - José Luis Stevens 2017

A Second Pilgrimage to Regalia: Encounters with the Dark Shaman
Action—Chief-Warrior

In mid-April of the year following my first trip to diet with ayahuasca, I returned to Regalia on the banks of the Rio Respata, Pierre’s special diet outpost in the deep jungle of the upper Amazon in Peru, bringing a group of nine people. After I had returned to the States and shared my experiences with students and friends, to my surprise many wanted to go too. So here we were, back and ready for adventure. Our purpose was again to do a special diet under the guidance of two shamans, Pierre and his assistant, the elderly Don Niko. As before, the diet was to cleanse the body and then develop the foundation to work with various plant allies for healing and support. It was for older souls who had already done sufficient shamanic work such that they could endure the rigors of a diet in a harsh jungle environment, remote from any medical facility or communication network. The group consisted of two server types, three creative artisans, two strong kings, two entertaining sages, and one scholar — a highly exalted group, with more than the usual number of servers to nurture and support. It turned out to be a magical combination.

For each traveler, the journey began the moment they agreed to go to Peru. Many fears and obstacles including illness had to be overcome. I myself was so sick with the flu the day before we left that I thought I couldn’t go.

From Lima we flew across the Andes to acclimate for a couple of days at Pierre’s beautiful botanical gardens in the jungle town of Pucallpa. There we were treated to wonderful, healthy, home-cooked pre-diet meals of fresh fish, grains, soups, and tropical fruits. In town we shopped for hammocks, tobacco, and other things we would need for the deep jungle experience.

The astrology for the trip indicated there would be many obstacles of a physical nature, mainly caused by earth and water, but the group experience would be supportive, especially if perseverance and discipline were applied. We discussed this as a group in order to be prepared for the challenges to come.

That night a rare cold front blew in from the Andes, and for a day we had heavy, cold rain and strong winds. The humidity of the Amazon made it feel much colder, and we bundled up in jackets and blankets. Early the next day we piled into two four-wheel-drive trucks and headed northwest to our destination: the most idyllic jungle camp any of us had ever seen. Much building and clearing had been done since I had been here the year before. Set by a beautiful waterfall and pond, the camp consisted of small two-person shelters covered by palm fronds surrounding a tiny central plaza. There was an open-sided conical ceremonial hut, a shelter for dining, and a small cookhouse. A remote outhouse completed the camp.

There we spent the next seven days slowing down, lounging in hammocks, taking plant baths, and dieting on river fish, plantains, rice, oatmeal, and beans. We could hike through the jungle on machete-cut trails or float up the stream in a small dugout to watch salad plate—sized butterflies float about. On alternate nights we stayed up for several hours participating in intense ceremonies with plant medicines from the jungle. The seventy-four-year-old Don Niko, accompanied by Pierre, sang icaros, blew tobacco on us, and cleaned up our energy throughout the dark night. They were both able to “see” challenges and themes in our lives that they would explain to us the next day if we asked.

Because everyone in the group was interested in the Michael Teachings, also known as the Personessence System (see my website, thepowerpath.com, for more resources), around mealtimes we would discuss a great many personal experiences and learn more about the Michael Teachings through questions and answers. These informative discussions helped the group members understand one another better and thus facilitated our getting along under intense circumstances. The system had been tested by the rigors of the jungle and proved immeasurably useful yet again.

All in all, our group coped exceedingly well and we forged a strong bond. The challenges came in the form of internal emotional struggles, physical discomfort, insects, heat, and encounters with a dark shaman among us.

On the first evening upon our arrival, after we had settled in, the sun was setting and we hurriedly prepared for our ceremony, to be held on the ground underneath a palm frond roof held up with poles. Suddenly out of the jungle a giant bird-eating black tarantula the size of a dinner plate arrived and began to flit around camp at great speed, exploring and most likely looking for a ready meal. People were screaming and running helter-skelter trying to get away. The spider, obviously scared, held up its forelegs wherever it ran, making it look more menacing than ever. Eventually we lost it in the darkness.

Then it was time to sit on the ground and begin the ceremony. Since the ceremony was conducted in complete darkness and there was no moon, we could see nothing. I couldn’t quite get the spider out of my mind, and I know others were quite preoccupied with it as well. Every time I reached for my handkerchief to wipe the sweat off my face and clean up my running nose, I was terrified I would put my hand on a furry back, and of course the fantasy was that the spider would climb up my arm and perhaps jump on my face and bite me something fierce, a fate that never actually happened.

When things like this occur at the beginning of or during a ceremony, it is never an accident. The spider helped us all by bringing up some of our instinctive fears, which the medicine would deal with. In the morning all of us agreed, some rather grimly, that the spider had been a major player in the ceremony. It had done its job well.

One day, after we had participated in several ceremonies, Pierre announced that we were going to hike through the jungle to check out some alternative places where we could hold that evening’s ceremony. We spent the better part of the afternoon tramping through spectacular scented jungle, wading through warm streams, and slipping and sliding on slick muddy animal trails. I felt somewhat nervous wading through the streams because Pierre had told us that caiman (alligator-like reptiles) lived in these waters, as well as poisonous snakes and dreaded piranha. He told us not to worry about the piranha because it was the wrong time of year for them to attack and they were more scattered. He said it was only during August, the mating season, that they were inclined to unprovoked attacks in aggressive schools. This made me feel only slightly safer.

I remembered seeing a documentary about caiman on the Discovery Channel a few months before and had been surprised to learn how ferocious they were; a little caiman only two feet long could bite your hand off. The fact that, with a headlamp, I had seen the glowing emerald green eyes of a caiman in the water the night before didn’t ease my absolutely focused attention on every bubble and ripple. Nevertheless, the enchantment of colorful parrots flying overhead, the magnificently tall hardwood trees, butterflies the size of robins, the powerful lines of leafcutter ants, and the musky scent of the humid jungle made the risk worth taking.

We visited several beautiful secluded sites and eventually settled on a picturesque sandbank along a riffle on a side stream. Looking around and seeing the jungle looming along both banks, I anticipated the night’s ayahuasca ceremony with relish. Here we would be that much more intimate with the jungle and its mostly hidden wildlife. As the afternoon was getting on, we headed back to the compound to collect our pads and the few things we needed for the ceremony. Although we were not far from the compound, the route was not easy to traverse, and to get there we had to go up and down some steep ravines with water flowing through them. The slippery, muddy sides required us to manhandle ourselves up with vines and abrasive branches. In one particularly steep ravine, we had to cross by balancing along the slippery wet trunk of a fallen tree, high above the murky bottom. By the time we returned to the selected spot, it was getting dark, and we worked fast to inflate our sleeping mats and spread our bedrolls in the few flat spots we could find among the reeds, rocks, and puddles.

Lightning flickered all around with its accompanying smell of ozone, and the approaching thunder indicated a storm was brewing rapidly. Pierre looked up at the sky thoughtfully and then stated quietly that to remain would be hazardous because the water in the small stream would rise, engulfing us all. We quickly packed up and headed back in the darkening gloom with headlamps attached to our foreheads, the beams splaying this way and that as we slipped and struggled along the now obscure trail. Clutching my bedroll, I negotiated a log crossing the ravine as the rain splashed on the topmost branches of the forest canopy. I have no idea how I made it across, but somehow we all managed without falling off. In one of the other narrow ravines, I was not so lucky. I slipped as I was climbing down and grabbed for a branch that held, but in the process seriously wrenched my back while knocking all the wind out of myself. At the time I remember thinking I was in deep trouble but felt relieved when after a moment I could breathe normally again and my back calmed down to a dull ache.

Back at the compound, we gathered in the hut, dried off, and set up for the ayahuasca ceremony while the skies opened up to a glory of lightning and thunder.

I have never seen a deluge so heavy. Never have I heard rain so loud, nor experienced the waves of moisture crashing through the jungle like they did that night. The monsoon drove down in sheets for hours upon hours, roaring in a rising and falling cadence with the winds that drove it, flying, thundering, shredding the jungle.

The palm frond roof of the hut had been made so expertly, it leaked not even a little, yet it allowed some welcome cooling moisture to come in from the open sides. We partook of the sweet-bitter ayahuasca and settled down to ponder. Listening to the percussion of the drops on the huge leaves of the jungle plants all around, smelling the damp humus of the soaked jungle floor, hypnotically I went deep within. Before long visions came, bringing with them their own tumult, and my awareness of the storm receded into the background, a dramatic symphony playing in concert to an inner landscape. Hours later as the strength of the visions lessened, I became aware of a new sound, an ominous roar coming from below that appeared to be getting nearer and nearer. The small river fifty yards below was no longer small or far away. It had swelled with the rain to a raging torrent, and the banks were now close to the hut.

After we closed the ceremony, some of us stumbled and splashed down to the river, ponchos glistening and spattering in the misty wagging beams of our headlamps, to see what we could. The beautiful stream of clear azure water had transformed into a boiling, mud-brown flood racing at high speed and topping its banks, sending up a fragrance of damp plant matter. A short walk around the corner revealed that the placid pool where we had waded and swum earlier that day no longer existed. The beautiful waterfall cascading into the pond had grown to twenty times its size, the roar of the plunging cataract a truly awesome spectacle to behold. I spent much of what remained of the night mesmerized by nature’s dramatic gift.

The next morning as I again sat gazing at the unrelenting flood, I reflected on what might have happened had we remained in the alternative ceremonial spot we had abandoned at the last minute. Surely we would have been swept away to our deaths, on ayahuasca no less. I wondered how many times this had happened to other hapless travelers who, lost in the visions of plant medicines, had been accosted and drowned by a flood.

After the storm, the brown runoff raged for a couple of days until the stream receded back to its pre-storm level. Gone was the lashed wooden raft we had used to float in the pond below the waterfall. The sandbanks and holes were rearranged, as were the damp heaps of logs and debris that choked the stream at intervals. The water had now returned to its exquisite turquoise color, and a warm steam arose from the rock ledges below the falls. On these ledges there arrived a collection of the most beautiful and colorful butterflies I have ever seen. They ranged in size from tiny to so big that their wings were the size of slices of bread. Together they twirled and floated like whirlwinds around little puddles of water. I watched them for hours.

There was a young Peruvian mestizo who with Pierre’s permission had joined our group on this diet. Rodrigo Maestas (not his real name) was extraordinarily handsome and expressive, with the kind of charm one would expect in a politician. When he threw his head back and laughed, he revealed a full set of even white teeth set against his dark skin and jet-black hair. As Rodrigo talked, his face lit up with animation and his eyes danced, Spanish flowing fluently from his lips. Clearly he was a gifted storyteller and a comedian of sorts. He was a flashy dresser, and on his wrist I was surprised to see a Rolex watch. I wondered how a Peruvian man of his age could come upon such fancy items. Usually young Peruvian men were poor or had modest incomes.

I learned that Rodrigo had been working as an ayahuasquero in northeastern Peru for a number of years, one of the top men at a clinic where ayahuasca was given to alcoholics and cocaine addicts to help them combat their addictions. The clinic was experimental and had been given approval from the government because it was so successful in producing results. Rodrigo had been asked to leave under a dark cloud of conflict. Later I learned that he had walked off with fifty thousand dollars of the center’s money — no wonder he could afford a Rolex. Pierre told me that Rodrigo had come to do some healing work on himself during the diet. He also let me know that Rodrigo was interested in coming to work with him.

For some reason I had a sinking feeling when he told me this. I couldn’t imagine Pierre working closely with Rodrigo. This feeling of unease persisted and grew stronger as the days went by. I noticed that Rodrigo loved to be the center of attention and that he would take any opportunity to grab the conversation and focus it on himself. When the topic veered away from him, he would appear to sulk and then leave.

In the group setting around meals, Rodrigo appeared friendly and amiable, but outside when I passed him he took on a different demeanor entirely. He always averted his eyes and never said hello or smiled. I wondered why he did not seem to like me or if I had inadvertently done something to offend him. I tried to smile and say hello in Spanish but he would not respond to me. I began to avoid passing him, and when I saw him coming I would change my direction and take a different route. I found myself feeling resentful that he was on this trip and that I had to deal with him when there was so much internal processing I needed and wanted to do.

At first I chalked up my feelings of being ill at ease to a simple personality conflict. I tend toward introversion, and Rodrigo was clearly an extrovert. I told myself that maybe I was being too judgmental or critical, and I didn’t mention my feelings to anyone else because I was somewhat ashamed of my own reaction. Yet little comments others made gave me a sense that they were having difficulty with him as well. Finally, being circumspect and trying to be as neutral as possible, I asked several of the group members if they had any reaction to Rodrigo. They confirmed my suspicions, and Jim, an older man, revealed some information that I did not know. He told me that he had met Rodrigo on one prior occasion in the United States and did not have a favorable impression of him. Rodrigo had come to the United States several years earlier to conduct ceremonies as an ayahuasquero. Reports had it that Rodrigo had been drunk during the ceremonies and ended up hustling all the women. Unfortunately this was not an unusual event among Peruvian ayahuasqeros.

Jim went on to inform me that he had spoken with Pierre at length about Rodrigo and had learned a great deal more. Apparently, Rodrigo had run crosswise with his superior at the clinic where he worked. Although no one knew the details yet, Rodrigo had been asked to leave, partly because he wanted to do things his own way and was no longer following instructions. He had come to Pierre ostensibly to do a diet and get back on track, but his real agenda was clear. He wanted to work with Pierre to replace the job he had just lost. Pierre had allowed him to come for a couple of reasons. First, Pierre was good-hearted and did not want to refuse to help a man who said he wanted to work on himself. The second reason, however, was more sinister. If he refused, Rodrigo would most likely turn against him and become a problem for him.

Pierre had spoken to us about the intense conflicts, jealousies, and rivalries that are constant in the Amazon area. Shamans were always dueling and sending curses to try to unseat each other. In a way this had value, he said, because it forced you to become strong and learn adequate protection. If you were easily defeated, perhaps you were not strong enough to be a good shaman and healer. Although Pierre never practiced witchcraft himself, he was well aware when it was practiced against him. He said he was constantly dealing with it in one way or another.

Two months earlier he had been riding his motorcycle down the potholed highway running between Iquitos and an outlying town when a giant wasp flew into his mouth and stung him on the inside of his cheek. It practically caused him to crash the bike. Fortunately he retained control of the bike — he could have been killed if he hadn’t — but the sting was severe and his mouth and throat swelled up badly. Although he had been treating it, the sting still caused his whole jaw a lot of pain. Pierre was clear the event was a product of sorcery against him. I asked him if it could simply have been an accident, and he told me that in another region of the world it might be, but in the Amazon one had to look at accidents much more carefully.

So Pierre had allowed Rodrigo to come on this trip to keep an eye on him; sometimes it is better to be up close and familiar with a potential enemy than for them to be obscure. Upon reflecting on this, I realized how much strategy and political maneuvering played out in shamans’ dealings with one another. Warfare was a reality among them, and only the smartest and savviest could survive. I also realized that Rodrigo’s presence posed a potential threat to me as well as my companions. I now knew that I would not have my fantasy of a nice safe trip to the jungle to work with ayahuasca. I would have to deal with not only a difficult person but someone who practiced the negative ways of power and clearly did not like me. The feeling was mutual.

Later I realized he felt competitive with me because I was the designated trip leader for our group, and any competition for attention annoyed him.

I tried to steer clear of him as much as possible but in such a small group this was impossible, especially around mealtimes. I spent some time preoccupied and worried about this state of affairs.

On the second day, we participated in our second ayahuasca ceremony. I deliberately chose a spot in the small ceremonial hut that was at the opposite end from where Rodrigo would be. I could not imagine being on ayahuasca and sitting next to someone I did not like, much less trust. During the ceremony that ensued, Pierre and Don Niko did the lion’s share of singing and healing, but on several occasions Rodrigo sang icaros too. His voice was beautiful and full as his songs carried out over the night jungle and the whoosh of the stream below. He seemed to have had some training as a singer. While his songs were pleasant and I could not deny that his voice was wonderful, I felt something important was missing. When Pierre and Don Niko sang, although their voices were not quite as good as Rodrigo’s, their songs were powerful and effective. I could feel the effects in my body and in the quality of the visions. When Rodrigo sang, I felt nothing. Perhaps it was my resistance to him, but I came to the conclusion that when he sang, he wanted to entertain rather than heal. I almost felt like he expected us to applaud after each song. He certainly wanted our approval.

After the first several hours when the intensity of the ayahuasca had worn off, we gathered around to share our experiences. When it was my turn, I shared that I had been contemplating why I had become so sick with vomiting and diarrhea before first arriving. I felt I had picked up a lot of static from my many therapy clients and had needed to get rid of that before embarking on the weeklong diet. To my shock and surprise, Rodrigo retorted loudly that it was all in my head and that if I didn’t want to get sick I did not have to. He implied that I was weak and misled. Still on the effects of the ayahuasca, I felt stung and attacked. Pierre responded at that point, saying that my assessment of the situation was accurate and that I needed to learn more about how to protect myself when doing my work. I felt comforted and helped by what he said. Yet I also realized that all the things I had been feeling about Rodrigo were real and that he could be truly vicious.

The next day I spent time lazing in a brightly colored hammock stretched between two enormous trees. I draped some mosquito netting over myself and drifted in and out of light dreaming, accompanied by the rush of the river down below. I began to go over the events of the night before, and I had a number of realizations. I knew it was no accident that Rodrigo was here on this diet and I had to deal with him in the most intense of experiences. “Why?” I asked the spirit of ayahuasca, and the response came from the voice of the plant spirit deep within:

Because you desired to evolve and grow and bid for a higher level of personal power in your life. Did you really think that growth would come without a price? When you want to grow at an accelerated pace, you bring up challenges to face, deal with, overcome, and test yourself against. This is no different from desiring to be a better skier. You give yourself ever more challenging hills to come down so your skills will grow. If you always stay on the bunny hill you won’t evolve as a skier. If you handle the challenges well, the process can be more enjoyable as well as empowering. The key is not to resist. Know that Rodrigo can’t harm you if you don’t believe he can. All he can do is bruise your ego if you let him. He is here to deal with his own demons and to give you and others a challenge. Don’t resist and he will sink or swim on his own merits.

Upon hearing this I breathed a huge sigh of relief, and tears came to my eyes. Now I had the proper tools to deal with Rodrigo and my disappointment that he was ruining my experience. He could not and would not ruin it if I approached this whole matter from a different point of view. No longer was I a victim of circumstances. Now the question became, “How do I overcome my fear of and resistance to him?” The answer was immediate. “Observe yourself with a sense of humor. If you are too serious, you will fail. If you don’t take this seriously enough, you are also finished. The key is to keep your eyes open. Be conscious. Be aware. Be amused. Be free.” Although I did not understand all the ramifications of this reply, I got the basic idea. Silently I thanked the ayahuasca spirit for the sage advice. I already felt much more empowered and less obsessed by how to deal with Rodrigo.

From this moment on, I truly was no longer afraid of Rodrigo, nor did I feel his intrusiveness very much. I did observe him and my own reactions to him. I began to see him as a lost and sad little boy who had gotten hold of some toys that he was not old enough for and should not have. Sooner or later he would burn himself, and in fact it appeared that he already had.

Over the next several days I noticed that Pierre took the time to talk with him at great length. I did not know what they were saying but later I found out that Pierre was trying to get him to be honest and set him on a better course — as it turned out, to no avail. Later I took a walk in the forest outside of camp and saw Rodrigo talking with Don Niko. Don Niko came to Pierre afterward with the news that Rodrigo was putting Pierre down and trying to get Don Niko to go over to his side and start a botanical garden and diet outpost to compete with Pierre’s. Apparently, Rodrigo was scathing in his judgment that Pierre was working with gringos and making money off them, and he was trying to use this as the reason for Don Niko to abandon Pierre. Don Niko, being faithful to Pierre, would have none of it.

Although Pierre told me nothing about all of this, I shared with him that I distrusted Rodrigo. I’m sure he did not need to hear it, but I wanted Pierre to have independent observations about the kind of person Rodrigo was: a treacherous, sneaky, and undermining person who could cause no end of difficulty if allowed to.

Through this experience, I was once again reminded that to be an ayahuasquero or curandero is no simple matter. You have to be a good psychologist and highly attentive at all times to handle difficult personalities who might not have your best interests in mind. I admired Pierre’s fortitude because not only was he responsible for the well-being of all of us throughout the diet, but he had to contend with additional burdens as well. He exhibited a great deal of patience and I never saw him angry. He seemed always to keep the welfare of the others foremost in his mind, including that of someone who was attempting to undermine him.

One day I decided to take a walk in the jungle and followed a trail that Pierre had indicated would take me to a pool a couple of miles distant. I needed a little alone time and some exercise to stretch my legs and enjoy the jungle. Quickly I left the encampment behind and followed a fairly well cut out trail through pristine virgin jungle with ayahuasca vines bigger than whole tree trunks climbing high into the canopy to hang from massive trees.

After about half an hour of walking, I had the strange feeling that I was not alone. I heard snuffling sounds on both sides of the trail. I stopped and cocked my head to listen but there was no more noise, so I cautiously forged ahead, coming to a muddy place dug up by hooved feet. I noticed big patches of a white mineral substance on the ground. Then the snuffling came back — on all sides of me, now much louder and more active. In the underbrush I spotted a huge peccary (a piglike mammal), then another, and still another. As I looked around, I saw many peccaries surrounding me, all watching me with their squinty eyes.

In that moment I remembered a story Pierre had told me. Several of his friends were hiking through the jungle accompanied by their large dog. They came upon a big herd of peccaries and, realizing the danger, climbed trees to get out of range of the creatures’ jaws. Only the large dog, who could not climb, was left. By the time the peccaries got through with the dog, there was not a hair left of him. When the peccaries left, the men climbed down and made their escape.

Running would be catastrophic and there were no trees I could climb easily, so I very slowly reached into my pocket and pulled out my pouch of tobacco and my wooden jungle pipe with the carved monkey face that Pierre had given me as a ceremonial tool. I filled the pipe and began to smoke it, giving an offering of tobacco to the peccaries. I also said some very earnest prayers to Spirit to get me out of there safely. Slooooowwwly I went back the way I had come, blowing out clouds of tobacco smoke. The peccaries watched me intently but made no move toward me. When I got out of their range, I walked swiftly back to camp, realizing that I had walked into a salt lick where they had all been gathering. Perhaps they were more interested in the salt than me, or perhaps the tobacco offering worked better than I imagined. Whatever the case, I lived to tell the tale to my group. Pierre noted it was an encounter with power that I navigated well. I did discover that I had accumulated some power by facing off the peccaries. Did the peccaries have anything to do with Rodrigo? Was this salt lick with accompanying dangerous peccaries symbolic of dealing with Rodrigo? Perhaps! If so, I was learning to handle it with a better outcome.

On the third night of ceremony, we gathered in the evening to partake of the ayahuasca tea and repeat our prayers for visions and healing. After a couple of hours the visions were coming strong and the jungle remained black as pitch, creating a perfect backdrop for the brilliant landscapes welling up from within. Then, without warning, there was a sudden earsplitting explosion, like the sound of a shotgun, from ten feet away. In the middle of ayahuasca visions, I was unprepared for such a loud noise and not exactly in a rational state of mind to respond adequately. I had the thought that our hunter’s gun had accidently gone off, and I wondered if anyone had been hit. I could not quite fathom anyone attacking us in so remote a place. I heard people getting up and moving around. I heard the garbled voice of Pierre talking in hushed tones to Don Niko. Feeling that I had to know what happened, I crawled over to Pierre and asked him what the noise was. He told me that one of the glass bottles of ayahuasca had exploded and shattered due to fermentation but that luckily it was inside his colorful cotton bag, so the glass was contained. I went back to my spot clearer about what had happened but uneasy about its meaning. Was the spirit of ayahuasca trying to tell us something? Were we doing something wrong? Was Rodrigo’s energy responsible for this near disaster? My visions were interrupted, and for the rest of the evening I could never quite get back to where I had been. I could not feel the strength of the medicine and felt some disappointment.

The next day we discussed the exploding bottle incident. Pierre seemed to feel that it was a good sign suggesting that the medicine was very strong and potent. Although I trusted him and valued his opinion, I had a hard time agreeing with his evaluation. I had a sense of foreboding and felt ill at ease. The situation with Rodrigo was becoming explosive.

That evening we gathered in the hut for another round of ayahuasca tea and took up our stations around the central altar where Pierre and Don Niko presided. I decided to shift my position from the other nights because I wanted a new perspective. I chose to rest my back against a support pole and use my stuffed lightweight sleeping bag as a cushion for my back.

The ceremony went well. Afterward, in the wee hours of the morning as I groped for my toothbrush, a large brown jungle spider as big around as the palm of my hand emerged from my toiletries bag and scrambled through the floorboards of the hut, freaking me out rather badly. Of all the creatures on earth, spiders have always been the ones that I can be phobic about.

I soon realized that the spider had quickly crawled away without harming me. Then in the light of my headlamp I saw several flying insects clinging to the inside of my mosquito net. Their shadows from the beam of my light were eerily huge on the top of the hut. I counted three of them and saw that they were wasps. Suddenly there were four, then five, then eight, then fifteen. The air in the mosquito net was rapidly filling with angry buzzing wasps. Still under the influence of ayahuasca, I had to ask myself if they were real or some nightmare from my subconscious.

As I started to get into my sleeping bag, I felt a needle-sharp pain in my hand and realized that the wasps were quite real and deadly. The pain shot up my arm as I was stung again and then again. I pulled back the bag and there inside was a whole nest of swarming, buzzing wasps.

Trying to move as gingerly as possible, I crawled out from under the mosquito net while some of the wasps escaped from it too and buzzed around my head. I realized that I needed help, and at the same time I heard someone mumble in a drowsy voice, “What’s going on?” I cried desperately, “I need some help! A swarm of wasps is attacking me!” In that moment I was sure the group would think I had lost it and succumbed to some psychotic delusion under the influence of ayahuasca. Jim hesitated only a moment and then crawled out to help me. Together we carried the mosquito net and the bag out to the jungle on sticks. But I needed the net to protect me from mosquitos, so we had to clean it out. Swatting and waving our arms while trying to hold the sticks, for over an hour we struggled with the dilemma of the wasps. I flung the sleeping bag out into the jungle darkness, and we concentrated on clearing out the net. We managed to clear away the wasps but Jim was stung a couple of times. Exhausted, I profusely thanked him, and once again set up the net to try to sleep out the rest of the night. It was now about four thirty in the morning and the light of dawn would be arriving soon. As I lay back down on my pad feeling the ache from the wasp stings, my mind wandered to fearful thoughts about the consequences of being stung while on ayahuasca: the venom mixed with ayahuasca might poison me. It could stop my heart at any minute, or it could cause me to be unable to breathe.

I remembered a story Pierre had told me about a particularly dangerous wasp whose sting was devastating to humans and other animals. As it stung, it would lay some eggs under the skin. Before long the skin would swell and fester, a red ring would grow around the sting, and the flesh would putrefy. Eventually this process would spread to all parts of the body and become fatal. There was no simple cure. Unfortunate people so afflicted would be shot full of some highly toxic metallic substance that, it was hoped, would retard the destructive spread of the wasp sting and the buried eggs.

I realized I must put aside these thoughts as best I could, knowing that the situation was insoluble at the moment and only time would tell the outcome. Sleep abandoned me and I contemplated what the attack meant: the appearance of the spider, the nest of wasps in my sleeping bag, and the stinging. Was the jungle trying to chase me out? Was it another sign that I was not ready for this experience? Had I offended the spirit of ayahuasca in some way? Was I being cursed by Rodrigo, the dark shaman? Finding no clear answers, I listened to the sounds of the jungle as dawn slowly broke over the Amazon.

After breakfast and tending to the wasp stings, I decided I had better deal with the wasps in my sleeping bag. I carefully retrieved the bag where it lay, draped over a bush. As I came closer I noticed a mass of movement in and around the bag. Millions of small ants were snaking up the trunk of the bush and into the bag. As I pulled back the folds of the green sleeping bag, my eyes beheld an amazing sight. The ants were attacking the wasps, biting them into parts and carrying them away piece by piece. I watched fascinated that such small creatures could overcome insects that had given me, so much larger, such a problem. The wasps could not use their stingers on the small ants, and for some reason the wasps did not fly off but resigned themselves to the fate of being dismantled and carried off.

After watching for a time, I realized that it was best to let the ants do their work; I would come back later to deal with the ant problem. When I returned many hours later, I found the bag impeccably clean and empty — there was no sign of ants, wasps, or any of the drama I had witnessed. I marveled at what an efficient ecosystem existed in this forested part of the world.

Later I contemplated these events from the hammock, my daily napping spot overlooking the river and the falls. I understood that the spider and the wasps represented my fears made manifest. I saw that in such intense circumstances, feelings could actually precipitate events in the world to mirror the interior landscape. The spider startled me but did not harm me. The wasps stung me, but I was not injured in the long run. The ants cleaned up the mess, and this mirrored my internal world. I mused about the small size of the industrious ants and how thoroughly they had done their job. If the wasps represented my fears, the ants must represent the resources I owned for handling my fears. In the end there was no sign of spider, ants, or wasps. There was also no sign of my fear other than a reminder in the form of some red spots on my skin.

Upon reflection I realized that when I had draped the sleeping bag over a roof support earlier and left it to dry, a hive of wasps had found it attractive as a house. When I stuffed the bag, they were all inside and I did not see them, and when I attempted to get into the bag, they all flew out, angry at having been confined so tightly for so long. Perhaps there was a part of me that had been confined too long that sought expression. When it finally came out, it raised a little fury and then was no longer viable. Something very small handled it completely.

In the final ceremony I had a very bad feeling about Pierre. Under the influence of ayahuasca, I saw that someone or a group of individuals was going to try to kill him. Rodrigo? I suspected him. I couldn’t shake the dark feeling no matter what I tried to do — there is nothing quite so dark as an ayahuasca ceremony that goes negative. In the morning as the sun rose and lit up the jungle, it still looked unnervingly dark to me. I felt some kind of evil everywhere around me, although I knew it wasn’t mine and had nothing to do with me. I confided all this to Pierre and told him I was very concerned for him. I had no evidence, only what the ayahuasca had shown me. He listened intently and, uncharacteristically, said he saw it too.

When Pierre and our group returned to his compound in Iquitos after the diet, I lingered for a couple of days to recover and rest. We were sitting around the dining table at his botanical gardens after a particularly enjoyable meal. As usual I was pressing Pierre for more stories about his life in the Amazon before founding his gardens; being in a loquacious mood, he was glad to oblige. Pierre told a tale about his experiences working as a curandero visiting remote villages where there were no doctors or medical facilities. A number of years back he was in a distant village that was also being visited by two of the ever-intrusive fundamentalist Christian missionaries who frequented the backwaters of the Amazon. Pierre explained that there was no love lost between missionaries and a traditional curandero. In fact, missionaries sought to get rid of them in every way possible. So there was an uneasy tension in the village between them. Pierre went on to recount what happened.

A father went fishing with his six-year-old son on a sandy beach of the nearby river. The father decided to try another spot a little further down the beach where the fishing might be better. He instructed his son to remain where he was and to continue playing in the sand. While the father fished, a deadly poisonous snake slithered onto the beach and struck the boy. When the fisherman returned, he found the boy unconscious on the beach, overcome by the snakebite but still breathing shallowly. He put the boy in the dugout and paddled as fast as he could back to the village, where he ran carrying the boy and shouting for help.

Pierre, hearing the cries, rushed out and helped carry the boy inside a hut and laid him out on a mat. Pierre immediately applied emergency treatment to the boy’s wound and took measures to bring the fever under control. He then instructed the father and the other villagers to stand guard and watch the boy for the next couple of days. He said the boy had a good chance of recovery but that they should under no circumstances give him any water. In a snakebite situation you must deprive the person of water for some hours immediately after the bite or they will die. If they drink, the fluid will hydrate the flesh and help carry the poison to all parts of the body. Depriving the person of fluids keeps the poison localized where it can do less damage.

Pierre told the villagers that the boy would wake up with a terrible thirst but that they would have to withstand his cries until the danger had passed. Pierre’s services were needed elsewhere and he could not stay with the boy, though he said he would come back soon to check on him. Sure enough, after Pierre left, the boy awoke with a terrific thirst.

The missionaries staying at the village could not wait for Pierre to leave. Not wanting to be upstaged by this non-Christian curandero, they said that his instruction to deprive the boy of water was superstitious claptrap designed to keep a hold on the villagers. Secretly, of course, they believed that Pierre’s presence was making their missionary work harder.

When the boy began to cry for water, one of the missionaries brought a Coke to give him. But the villagers protested, and there was a standoff. The missionaries then said they would watch the boy for a while and sure enough, when no one else was there to stop them, they gave the boy the cola. He died within the hour.

When the boy’s father and the villagers discovered he was dead, there was a great commotion. The missionaries, fearing for their lives, blamed the death on Pierre, saying he had worked some evil magic that killed the boy. They managed to convince some villagers of this and created enough doubt among them that they were off the hook. When Pierre returned the next morning, a villager who was loyal to him met him at the edge of the village. He explained what had happened and told Pierre that he must leave at once because some of the villagers were planning to kill him. Pierre had no choice but to flee for his life.

We were mesmerized by his storytelling in the flickering candlelight. We were silent and horrified when he finished. From this tragic tale I realized that there is a harsh and brutal side to life in the Amazon that cannot be understood from the perspective of a simple tourist. I also began to understand that nasty politics play a role even in the most remote locales. Pierre went on to tell us that this was by no means an isolated incident. Many healers and curanderos have been run off and even killed by the machinations of the missionaries over the years.

The night was still young so we asked Pierre if he could tell us another story about life in the jungle. He thought a moment and then chuckled heartily. “This night seems to be about snakes,” he said. “I’ll tell you another one about a snakebite but this one is very different in nature.” Pierre explained that a number of years ago he was visiting villages in an area he did not know well. He had to be very careful in some areas because if you don’t know the local customs you can get yourself in big trouble in a hurry; under those circumstances he usually observed for a while before offering to help. One day a man was bitten by a poisonous snake, and a friend came to the edge of the village to ask for help. The village elders met and refused to allow the man into the village because if he died there, they might be plagued by his ghost. After some wrangling, it was decided that the man would be brought to a hut just outside the village where he could be treated.

Pierre noted that they gave instructions not to give the man any water or fluids. The man, feeling a fiery thirst, cried out for water and they refused him. After about twenty-four hours the man continued to plead for fluids but the elders of the village ordered that none be given him. Pierre began to feel concern because by now the snakebite victim was beyond the danger point and could be given fluids.

Time passed and the elders continued their order to refuse the man any food or water. The man was now beginning to show signs of dehydration, and his cries were weaker. Pierre did not know what to do. He felt the man needed water but did not know the local customs of the village and did not understand why the elders were refusing the man water. Three days came and went and still water was refused the man. Pierre did not want to cross the elders because this could prove fatal to himself, and he thought that maybe they had knowledge that he did not have in this situation.

After four days without water, the man expired. Nobody grieved. Pierre was horrified. Then the elders explained to him why they had taken this action. The man who had been bitten by the snake was a village troublemaker. He drank too much, stole things from the other villagers, and had a history of violent behavior toward others, including his wife and children. In the past he had killed other members of the village in drunken fights. No one liked him. The elders decided that the snakebite was a kind of punishment for his misdeeds. He was refused water as a way of executing him. What Pierre had witnessed was an example of jungle justice.

Weeks later, after I had returned to Santa Fe, I heard that Pierre had abandoned the beautiful outpost at Regalia after receiving anonymous death threats. A short time later he left Peru altogether under threats to his life. That is how it came to pass that I had to stop working with Pierre and began searching for other teachers.

Rodrigo surfaced in the United States again. He became a well-known and popular ayahuasqero, making his way into conferences, conventions, and the media. He gained many followers and wrote a book about himself. I tried to warn a person I respected who was sponsoring him, but he did not want to hear me. Rodrigo was very charming, but he became careless, drew too much attention to himself, and suffered serious consequences for it. That is all I will say about the matter. He apparently has more lessons to learn.

POSTSCRIPT

Sometimes an encounter with power comes in the form of a serious challenge, a confrontation with the dark side, a threat to safety and comfort. You do not become more powerful by remaining in your comfort zone: the price of power is your own comfort. Blaming, resisting, judging, whining, and feeling like a victim are not the ways of power, but the ways to lose the opportunity to become more powerful. To become more powerful you must be vulnerable — but not stupid. Neutrality is a strong stance, the best stance, because it allows you to observe without resistance. Self-observation is a royal road to more power, for through observing comes much critical information that can lead to wisdom. Another staple of power is forgiveness, the ability to see with compassion and insight. Although Rodrigo was acting without integrity, even dangerously, he was coming from a place of insecurity, a deeply fearful child pursuing glitter on the outside but on the run on the inside.

Safety is to be found within. Someone can attack you verbally but you can choose whether to be hurt. People exploring the darkness of fear can hurt you only if you agree to be hurt.

Explosive events often coincide with explosive emotions in explosive situations. Nothing is isolated from everything else. Everything is interwoven and explored by essence. In this sense there are no accidents.

QUESTIONS

At times we can be living in a dangerous world. Can you forgive someone who is currently attacking you, emotionally or otherwise, who may in fact be dangerous to you? What are your options? Where are your boundaries and how can you set them?