wild ride!

Howdy!

Back from Peru. HOLY S@%t! Good god, y’all, that was one hell of a trip. Couldn’t explain it, but I’ll try.

It was an Ayahusca retreat in the jungle, right? You drink the Ayahuasca vine and get all zooey and see your life. Yes, hallucinations, but it’s more than that. This vine is a smart cookie. It is an intuitive medicine (that is what the Shipibo tribe call it. Medicine. Not a drug and it’s not….again, too hard to explain). I was not totally prepared for the ‘trip’ that it takes you on. You lose all mental (and sometimes bodily) control. You hallucinate, see your past, meet dead relatives, etc….but more than anything it shows you where you are stuck in your life. If you’ve got trauma or negativity dragging you down, this medicine presents it to you while you are in this trance state, in a way that you deal with it and get the issue out of your system. See? Told you. Hard to explain without making it sound all airy-fairy and trippy. The best way to explain it is how someone explained it to me: these little trips you go on in your head, hit a re-set buttton in your brain. The things that bugged you in the past, no longer bug you. For example, if your mother drives you crazy and you have issues with her, once you do this retreat, you see your mother differently afterwards. Through images of the past and hallucinatory events you ‘deal with’ the issue and it changes for you. Does that make sense? Ya, you have to go and experience it to know what i’m talking about. But it is life changing. Subtle, but life changing. The Temple of the Way of Light (the organization that i did this with) are great. To get there you go to Iquitos, take a boat for 2 hours, then hike way into the jungle. No running water, electricity or flushing toilets, but they’ve got a great set up so you don’t really feel like you are roughing it for 12 days. You have a little cabin in the jungle (tambo) that is very basic but nice. When you are not drinking the Ayahuasca (called a Ceremony) you are meditating, sleeping, reading, chilling out. The shamen from the Shipibo tribe are there on your ceremonies and chant to you while your tripping, and are working at taking all the negative energy out of you. Not for the faint at heart…..there is a lot of throwing up (they consider it a purging of negative energy), spitting, crapping your pants sometimes, crying, and a bit of moaning. And you are doing this with 20 other people who are there to go through the same thing you are. Lots of bonding going on. Okay, so far doesn’t sound good but it is. You come out lighter, calmer, and grateful. And you are doing all of this in the middle of the Amazon jungle where it is hot and humid as hell. At night the sound of the frogs, monkeys, and insects is deafening in a really beautiful way. The rain is thunderous and blows you off your feet but there is nothing cooler than lying in your tambo at night and feeling the power of the rain blasting around you. If you want to know more, go to templeofthewayoflight.org. It is a mesmerizing journey and i would recommend that every adult do this once in their lives. It is terrifying, amazing, intense, and awe-inspiring, all at the same time.

So, i’m back on planet earth now. Finally the weather in Vancouver is looking up. Past two days have been beautiful and sunny. Now we just need a little heat. Working on a little vegetable garden and shit are they hard work! I feel old. Gardened all day and it’s nowhere near ready, and my back and legs are killing me. Going to put the seeds in soon and grow me some salad! Gardens are great. Meditative.

Have an audition tomorrow so i’d better go here but wanted to update on the trip.

Talk to you soon.

xo

Sam