VEGETALISMO

We have seen this reference time and again in relation to various kinds of culture tourism, anthropological and ethnographic studies, addiction treatment and personal development. It’s origin is within South American indigenous culture; the term ‘Vegetalismo’ is a much more recent development, as you will see as you read on.

Jonathan Standing Bear

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

Vegetalismo is a shamanic practice found in the Amazonic provinces of Peru, which relies on the knowledge of the medicinal as well as spiritual properties of different types of indigenous plants. The word "vegetalismo" is actually a derived term, from the word vegetalista (plural, vegetalistas), referring to a witch doctor that is knowledgeable in this practice. A key belief in Vegetalismo is that some plants, known as doctores ("teachers"), may provide natural and spiritual knowledge if ingested in certain conditions. More specifically, vegetalistas produce a particular brew known as ayahuasca (using plants of the Banisteriopsis caapi and Psychotria viridis species, and possibly others) which is aimed at providing the knowledge needed to diagnose and cure a wide range of illnesses. These and other "teacher-plants" of Vegetalismo are actually known to have particular psychotropic or biodynamic properties.

THE ICAROS

Singing to the Plants: a Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon

http://www.singingtotheplants.com/

In the Upper Amazon, mestizos are the Spanish-speaking descendants of Hispanic colonizers and the indigenous peoples of the jungle. Some mestizos have migrated to Amazon towns and cities, such as Iquitos and Pucallpa; most remain in small villages, their houses perched on stilts on the shores of the rivers that are their primary means of travel. Here in the jungle, they have retained features of the Hispanic tradition, including a folk Catholicism and traditional Hispanic medicine. And they have incorporated much of the religious tradition of the Amazon, especially its healing, sorcery, shamanism, and the use of potent plant hallucinogens, including ayahuasca.

The result is a uniquely eclectic shamanist culture that continues not only to fascinate outsiders with its brilliant visionary art but also to attract thousands of seekers each year with the promise of visionary experiences of their own.

Singing to the Plants emphasizes both the uniqueness of this highly eclectic and absorptive shamanism — plant spirits dressed in surgical scrubs, extraterrestrial doctors speaking computer language — and its deep roots in shamanist beliefs and practices, both healing and sorcery, common to the Upper Amazon. The work seeks to understand this form of shamanism, its relationship to other shamanisms, and its survival in the new global economy, through anthropology, ethnobotany, cognitive psychology, legal history, and my own personal experiences studying wilderness survival and plant healing in the Amazon.

Steve Beyer, Author

Susana Bustos, (2006). The House that Sings: The Therapeutic Use of Icaros at Takiwasi. Shaman’s Drum, Number 73.

We take it for granted that music is one of the oldest mysteries explored by human beings. Did you know we’ve even found evidence our ancestor’s used instruments to explore the psycho-acoustics in the depths of their sacred painted caves? Journeying and music have long gone together, and our travels to the Amazon brought us in contact with that tradition as it still lives in the songs of the shamans, who use their icaros to guide their patients into realms of healing and self exploration. We would like to share this article with you on how one Westerner, a French doctor named Jacques Mabit who trained in curanderismo, uses songs to help heal addiction.

Susana Bustos

Susana Bustos (2008) Healing power of the Icaros - Phenomenological Study of Ayahuasca Experiences. PhD Thesis, Califorina Institute for Integral Studies.

http://www.4shared.com/document/Kzn_T

Mestizo Shamanism and Vegetalistas

http://www.ayahuasca.com/spirit/primordial-and-traditional-culture/mestizo-shamanism-and-vegetalistas/

Among mestizo populations of the provinces of Loreto and Ucayali in Peru, the shamans of plant knowledge and medicine, who communicate with Sacha Runa (elemental spirits of the plants), are known as vegetalistas. This term is used differentiate them from oracionistas, who employ only prayers for performing similar shamanic tasks, or from espiritistas, who work solely with spirits. The vegetalista regards plants as teachers, hosts to elemental spirits that can communicate with human beings.

Vegetalistas are more than just herbalists. Vegetalismo is a kind of plant shamanism deeply rooted in indigenous practices. Vegetalistas diet with different plants in turn, spending weeks in isolation in the jungle, eating only certain foods and consuming great quantities of the plant they are “dieting” (they phrase it as “I dieted this or that plant”) until the spirit of the particular plant enters them and teaches them about itself — a sort of Plant-spirit vision quest.

A vegetalista may specialize in other plants besides Ayahuasca; the dieta can be used for learning any Plant. Most vegetalistas tend to specialize in one or a few Plant Teachers in their practices. There are tabaqueros who specialize in Tobacco (Nicotiana rustica); toeros who specialize in the use of Brugmansia species (known in Peru as toe); camalongueros, who use the seeds of camalonga, a plant that grows in the Andes; catahueros who use the resin of Catahua (Hura crepitans); paleros who use the bark of various large trees; and perfumeros who use the scents of various fragrant plants, a kind of aromatherapy. (There are also tragaceros, who use strong alcoholic beverage distilled from sugar cane.)

Most vegetalistas use a number of different plants. But Ayahuasca is the primary plant of vegetalismo. Most vegetalistas use Ayahuasca in addition to their other specialties, or used it during their apprenticeship, because one of Ayahuasca’s roles is to make it possible to communicate with other plants and learn the language of the plant world in general. Without Ayahuasca, there would be no vegetalismo; in the rest of Spanish-speaking America, few mestizos, especially urban mestizos, have anything to do with backward Indian customs like communicating with plants, and nothing resembling vegetalismo is practiced in the mestizo populations outside the regions where Ayahuasca is used. But in the Ayahuasca-using region of Loreto, Peru, plant shamanism has not only survived, it has thrived.

THE DAWNING OF CLARITY: May, 2010

Spring this year was and is a rich time for of personal growth, renewal of balance and harmony, and increasing light. In January, I participated in two vegetalismo journeys. Being recognized in the ceremony as an as an ‘emerging’ elder, my intention was reconnecting with my cosmological lineages that fed material evolution and the development of consciousness.

In the weeks that followed this ceremony, I was reading Blackfoot Physics, Nature and the Human Soul, and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I soon became wracked with grief. Reading was difficult through the tears. I saw for the first time the taken-for-granted invisible chauvinism of my heritage: western egocentric, rational, analytical, fragmented and heartless way of coming-to-know. This seeing illuminated a deep split in my own being, a soul-level fragmentation, torn between two world views, seemingly diametric opposites, and they were at war within me. I had no context to depend on, no antidote to soften the pain.

The more I inquired into this conditioning, the greater was the personal despair; accountability dawned for pain and suffering both personal and global. The possibility of lineage healing, or right relationship, began to take shape. I became willing to bring awareness and attention to the various threads and streams of conditioning that were shaping this mind stream, noticing the release of conflict and belief that resulted. From all directions, linage healing possibilities began to show up: family, primary relationship, community, cultural heritage, and natural world. In conversation, friends would describe a similar movement in their own being. Everywhere everybody and everything was demonstrating the consequences of fragmentation, alienation, dispersion, and unbridled self-interest.

Two more ceremonies followed over the Easter weekend. On Easter Sunday, I sat with my younger brother, someone I have had an on-again, off-again relationship from the beginning. Even though he lives only two hours away, I had not spoken to him in 18 months, and very little more in the last 5 years.

The sessions seemed to be all about family, expressed in the intention circle and integration as well. Healing and forgiveness between family members, siblings, ancestors, and children was called for and received. These sessions were very difficult for me physically; I was overcome by enduring nausea which was not relieved by purging. Both nights, I finally purged during the integration period. On the last ceremony, the integration circle was just closing when I violently purged at last.

The curandero asks, “What was that?” I gasp out, “That is a knot of vile gall, dark, bitter, and acid that has been with me forever and ever – my entitlement to suffering, judgment and animosity.” “It’s truly gone,” he says, “and your release has liberated me and many in this room from a similar affliction.” And it is true.

As the season progresses, the world begins to show the signs of spring and the returning light. In May, two more ceremonies. The inner inquiry into lineage healing continues and relationships become increasingly intimate and rich. Working with my teachers is revealing an unforeseen capacity to transmit unconditioned awareness.

The first ceremony is pretty ragged; three curanderos this time, they are very tired and chaotic with each other and that yields a very impersonal atmosphere. We are in a large cold room and there are 20 of us. No intention circle is held and there is no integration, either. Dawn finally comes; I wake from a fitful sleep and one by one, we all scatter back out into the world. It is cold grey and windy.

The next night, Saturday, everything changes; a single curandero for this session. Now we are in the living room of a private home, only 12 of us, and the intention circle lasts for two hours. The sharing and intimacy is profound. My intention is to keep looking into this “linage healing,” asking for a vision of what is to be done to heal. I am hoping that “my” healing will spread outwards to the body, family, community and world. I want this healing for its self, most of all.

The medicine is strong; I am asking for a big dose. After 15 minutes, I am violently purging – unusual for me. Now an hour in, I am having some of the physical effects of the medicine: fractal patterns with eyes open, drifting internal visions, and I think to myself, this is going to be really good at last. And then the Mother, La Purga, asks, “Do you want visions or do you want clarity. You need only ask.” Holy shit!

There is no hesitation – I form the word silently: “Clarity.” I know that it doesn’t matter which I choose, but I must ask. A visual image comes with the question – an impersonal boon is offered with no preference as to the choice. A knowing arises that the choice is an offering of surrender, willingness, and love that would create one of a multitude of realities, all available to me. To create a particular reality, it is necessary that I ask, and all would be given. I am offered the sure granting of any wish I might form – it is already given in the asking. This wish-fulfilling gem is always available and creating our reality whether we are conscious of it or not.

As I ask for clarity, immediately the physical effects of the medicine drop away. I am sharply present and intently alert, and remain so for the entire night. No tiredness, sleepiness, or fatigue – completely present and in touch with every being, body and energy form in the room, with each aspect and particular of the collective energy field available to me. I’m seeing in the dark through clarity. I don’t sleep for two days, calm energy is flowing through the physical, emotional, and “spiritual” bodies, and there is no separation anywhere to be found, and there is no “after” with this.

Sunday evening and the sun has dropped behind Elephant Mountain and the sky is gradually becoming clear, changing from dusky blue to evening indigo. It’s been a day of shifting light, clouds, rain and sun, hail and snow showers over the valley heads. There is all around a deep feeling of peace and profound awareness in the house this evening – even the three cats are exuding an atmosphere of electric ease.

It’s been 24 hrs since we started the circle of intention together and nothing is as I had left it when I set out for Tracy and Ross’ house yesterday afternoon, yet nothing is different either. Awareness and clarity can do that. Something is just coming to the surface since the integration this morning. I now experience and recognize that this clarity is the ground for the healing I have been nurturing for the last 6 months. Healing in body, relationship, linage and world – all met by clarity. Even now, I have difficulty finding the depth of pain and suffering that was so predominate earlier in the year. I see that ordinary clarity is the “ultimate medicine” and the only possibility for right relationship with suffering, fragmentation and impermanence. So, my intention for the ceremony – to heal the splits and gaps in my being, linage, and world -- has been met beyond any expectation. All fragmentation is dissolved in clarity. I can choose clarity; I can ask for clarity, and in that instant, all is forgiven. Always. Clarity cannot deny itself. Is that not good news?

How did/does this happen? I don’t really know; many factors, auspicious events, histories, divine grace and the total evolution of the universe (known and unknown) all converged on the moment of choice to ask for clarity. In that room, the Mother facilitated a potent moment. The Mother’s life stream and mine, and all who were present, coming to focus on the moment of asking for clarity, and it is given, and it is received in the depths of my heart, and it is transmitted to all beings, given back a thousand times more. Clarity recognizes its self in everything, and I say, Chequiayo for this luminous impermanent existence.

EMBODYING NONDUAL PRACTICE

We have been given in this moment the opportunity to move our nondual ‘practice’ into greater and greater engagements with what is. This can come during times of emotional upheaval, sickness, injury, extraordinary physical exertion, as well as during ceremony with the plant medicines. True and potent shadow work is possible, if supported by intention and willingness, and the grace of the attendant Madres or Doctores of the ingested plants.

Imagine that facing your approaching death could be just such an opportunity. The time to develop capacity to abide in unconditioned awareness, the result of all traditional practices, is right now. Peruvian shamanism provides a remarkably effective catalyst for the dissolution of the conditioned, resistant psychic self. This is the results level, embodying what is, this limitless awareness, the ultimate medicine.

Shamanism can provide us with unparalleled access to the most resistant blocks and deepest shadows. As the ceremony opens, luminosity itself clears the way for the reclamation of disowned aspects of our selves. Integration has always been the solution to releasing the conflict within our conditioning that is driven by the tyranny of subterranean core belief structures. Embrace the prodigal son or daughter as they return to you across the sea of luminous awareness!

Nondual practice offers us a direct path, where we discover how to access our unconditioned being now -- in this moment. We give ourselves and each other permission to stay in the unknown, to learn to rest in the boundless space of awareness without putting labels on what we are experiencing. This is not a mindfulness practice, nor is it an attempt to reach some blissful state. This invitation is much more radical: to first expand and then dissolve the boundaries of our whole conditioned identity.

The foundation of the practice is learning how to rest in unconditional presence, to abide in a space where there is nowhere to go, nothing to know, and nobody to be. As we work with the practice and the practice works with us, can we allow ourselves to embrace presence in the space of not-knowing? Can we release the impulse to define or understand whatever arises, and just meet it directly, without the labels, without even needing to know what it is?

Core themes and inquiries for the nondual aspect of potential retreat arise from the foundational practice. These themes are completely transferable beyond the event and quite potent in grounding transformative results -- they become the on-going work as the experiences of the retreat fade into the past and dissolve.

The flow of creative energy springs anew as we release the habitual sense of who we are, what we believe, and how life is supposed to be. The nature of this energy calls us far beyond the safety and security so dear to our 'survival self.' This energy asks us to live creatively right now, to discover what it means to fully participate in life, to let go of the structures that keep us separate and solid.

Welcoming everything is the nature of presence or awareness welcomes everything, just as it is, and allows it to be, just as it is. As we work with this personally and with each other during the ceremonies and after, we can begin to embody this way of being, moment to moment.

We work here and now when accessing unconditioned presence in this moment. This key facet of being together calls us back to this moment. Thoughts of the future arise now, memories from the past arise now, and we can meet them and work with them now, nowhere else. This direct, immediate and profoundly alive.

By investigating thought and belief in the limitless space of unconditioned awareness, it becomes clear that no thought, no story is true. There are many different skilful and subtle ways of supporting an ongoing inquiry into the thoughts that create so much suffering. As the process works within, this opportunity is amplified and illuminated.

Being intimate with what is, to experience something honestly is to be one with it, to experience it fully. Direct, unmediated experiencing is always transformative, healing the pain of separation. In this intimacy we find ourselves undivided, not separate, not two, a radical kind of intimacy in our relationships with self and other.

Freefalling into the vast openness of presence, there is nowhere to land, no final destination, position, point of view, or conclusion to hold on to. The medicine is such a great teacher when it comes to this. In fact, we can discover that the so-called “medicine journey” actually has no beginning, middle nor end. Can we invite ourselves and each other into the wild, alive, and completely unstructured nature of this - not just for a few moments or hours, but because we recognize this to be the true nature of reality?

EMBRACING THE UNKNOWN

We are witnessing the disintegration of much in our world that had once seemed solid and secure. The ground beneath our feet is literally shaking, and everyone knows it. How are we to stand before the tsunami of the unknown?

Perhaps an option is the resolution of duality, dissolving the suffering of separation, opening to the healing space of unconditioned awareness. Condor or Eagle, the Jaguar and the Mountain Lion, heart with mind, neither action nor repose – these dichotomies are meeting each other, releasing undreamed of creative healing energy.

Working with Amazonian shamanic methods can be a tremendous opportunity to venture into a similar territory of the inner landscape—to open within to that which is profoundly unfamiliar, beyond the reach of anything that our conditioned mind could have possibly conceived.

The vision for a retreat arises of a desire to extend abiding in unconditioned awareness throughout the entire range of human experience. Nondual practitioners could be immensely benefited by an alliance with indigenous Peruvian shamanic practices offered in a ceremonially authentic setting, and well-supported by qualified resource people.

The vision makes an offer to current nondual practitioners for a mutual undertaking to widen the stream of each practitioner’s life and expand the possibility for unconditioned awareness. Since the capacity to abide in nondual awareness is radical, specific, and takes time to develop, there seems to be an essential prerequisite of engagement with nondual practice for any participant. The embodiment of results-based practice always and finally comes to rest in just this.

In many cases, the shamanic practices will support personal healing, clearing, emotional resolution, and shadow work. This is obviously good medicine for any practitioner, not just the so-called nondual. When we drink the medicine of non-separation, we discover what we really care about, what is truly calling us in our life, right now. No one else can tell us what this is. But we can come together and create a seamless field that supports this kind of investigation. As our constructed world crumbles, is it not time to fully embody a full-hearted and deeply creative response to life, just as it is?