Ayahuasca retreat September 1-10, 2024
Pisatahua Retreat Center — Riberalta, Bolivia
The Amazon contains the heartbeat of this planet.
We must sustain her as she has sustained Life
Hello there!
The purpose of this text is twofold:
On the one hand, you’ll get a bird’s eye outline of the healing experience I had over the course of one particular ayahuasca/plant medicine retreat, in the Bolivian Amazon, in 2024.
The great majority of details are excluded. This is because many healing experiences don’t translate to text particularly well, and mainly I’m offering the outline of the retreat as a way of contextualizing the poems that came through during the retreat. Poetry is medicine itself, and I sincerely wish for these poems to reach you as ‘capsules’ that offer the most potent, most powerfully loving and healing energy of the retreat. The poems all came forth during the retreat — sometimes during ceremony itself — helping to verbalize and continue the deep processes that were happening.
So, the second purpose of the text is just that: to present and offer these poems, from my heart to yours — as healing medicine, or however they happen to resonate with you.
A brief yet vital note about judgment:
Judgment is one of the mind’s primary means of defending its preconceptions, and also, its sufferings. Judgment is how we say “No” to change and healing before even allowing them to enter our systems.
On the other hand, discernment is a very positive quality: ‘Is this good for me? Is this healthy? Is this person giving me something out of love, out of pure generosity, without conditions attached?’ Discernment is like the awakened cousin of judgment.
So, as much as you can, I recommend releasing, bracketing, or at the very least, being aware of your judgments — as you read this text, and in all arenas of life. I’m speaking from experience when I say, if you’re inviting positive, healing change into your life, judgment can have you spinning your wheels and going almost nowhere, even for years on end.
A bit more relevant context:
This was my third plant medicine retreat at Pisatahua, and the first two had been deeply positive, loving, healing experiences.
Speaking of healing, have you heard the story about the dog who was sitting on a nail for so many years, refusing to move, or to remove the nail? That’s how we often are with our own inner wounds — we identify with them, become attached to them, or become so used to them that we can’t even see we’re there. Or, we fear the one-time pain of removing the nail more than the continual, daily pain of living with it.
Some people identify with this sentiment: “There is nothing to heal. We are all already perfectly whole.” To that I say, yes, absolutely! And also, the work of healing is never over (as far as I’ve seen). Struggle and pain are inseparable parts of this existence, and we all carry very subtle kinds of sufferings, old knotted energies, or simply ways of being that are outdated and don’t serve us anymore.
This retreat was a continuation of my own healing journey. Petitions are a central part of these retreats: what we’re asking the plant medicine (e.g., the spirit of Mother Ayahuasca) to help us with. The meaning of petition is very close to intention — only, petition is more of a request. Rather than saying, “I intend to heal/address _____,” a petition is more like, “Please help me to heal/address _____.” In this text, I share my overall petitions, and petitions for each ceremony, to give you an idea of the shape of the retreat.
When all was said and done, Mother Ayahuasca (and the other plant medicines, and everyone involved with the healing process) absolutely delivered on every petition I put forth — and offered much, much more.
The process was not easy, but it was beautiful — and it was punctuated by so many joyous, high-flying experiences of such deep love. The thing is, if we want life to flow through us, we’ve got to be willing to feel all of how we feel. Every emotion has beauty; every emotion has a purpose; every emotion is worth feeling.
Enjoy!
El Valle de las Animas, La Paz, before the retreat
overall petitions (intentions) of the retreat
l Self-realization, most of all — “Please show me who I truly am, in the depths of my being.”
l Help me to open and to see the most loving, truth-aligned, healing life paths for myself.
l Please help me to heal my relationships with my parents, especially my mother, and to feel and shower them with such pure, healing love
l Please help me to cleanse and heal my sexual energy and male energy, and how I relate to them.
l Please help me to open my heart to receive and to feel more love — finding and feeling the tender places in the heart, the knots that have old emotions that I can feel and release.
opening incantation
Mother Ayahuasca,
I give myself completely to you…
Lovingly, I’m Yours.
You know what I want
even before I know it,
You know my heart
better than I…
No way around what’s to come.
My head in the tiger’s mouth…
When will she bite
a very special mapaho tree. photo by Jean Jamais (@jeanjamais)
Ceremony 1 — September 3, 2024
petitions of ceremony 1
l Please show me the truth of who I really am at the depth of my being.
l Please open and show me how to walk the most loving, truth-aligned life paths that are available to me.
Brief summary of experience:
The way Wara (the truly wonderful shaman who led this retreat) works with Mother Ayahuasca, the first ceremonies are often more subtle, kind of like “laying the groundwork” for many participants. That’s basically how I felt about this one. I considered asking for more medicine, but in the past I’ve been ‘greedy’ about asking for more, not always with the most pure motives (e.g. simply wanting a ‘big’ experience for its own sake).
So rather than asking for more medicine, it felt good to allow the experience to be more subtle, to stay in my heart space and be with whatever I was feeling. Leading up to the retreat I had been reading Chogyam Trugpa’s classic Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, and I really appreciated how that helped me to see the slightly aggressive edge of the spiritual ego (and the ego in general) when it’s craving a certain kind of experience.
Overall this ceremony was about learning a deepening kind of surrender, observing the ego’s little dance of the craving, and also simply being in the heart space and sometimes feeling a whole lot of love. I really loved singing a couple of the songs (the group sang Hey Wichitayo together, and I sang Maria from West Side Story), and sharing of myself with the group.
the lovely folks from the first retreat of this trip (August 2024)
Ceremony 2 — September 5, 2024
petitions of ceremony 2
l Please show me the truth of who I really am at the depth of my being.
l Please open and show me how to walk the most loving, truth-aligned life paths that are available to me.
l Please help me to heal my relationships with my parents, especially my mother, and to feel for and send to my parents such beautiful, pure, healing love
l Please help me to understand my relationship to video games over the years, why I have spent so much time with them, and the healthiest, most life-giving way to relate to them going forward.
Brief summary of experience:
This ceremony was a pivotal point of the whole retreat for me. I felt the medicine very, very strongly. At the end of the ceremony, my impression was that I had felt a deeper kind of surrender than practically ever before in life, and that I had purged aspects of ego, as well as some energies related to lust and toxic sexuality. I also felt like I had given myself to my own heart, and let myself share from my heart more freely and deeply than ever before.
However, the truly pivotal aspect of this ceremony surfaced the following day, when, after I shared my experience in the share circle, Wara (the lead shaman) spoke some very sharp (very compassionate) words to me. She said Mother Ayahuasca had decided to let me exercise my free will for this ceremony, and that most of what I had experienced was my own free will, rather than working hand-in-hand with Mother Ayahuasca.
Wara spoke of a ‘false light’ that presents itself often in ceremony (and in many kinds of spiritualities), which appears to be aligned with truth and love, but which is actually not — it’s rather a self-serving illusion, which our egos can easily become caught up with, if we’re not careful of it. Wara also spoke of, and warned about, healers who misuse their sexual energy, and cause so much harm by doing so.
Everything Wara spoke of had indeed surfaced during my ceremony. Hearing her was a huge reality check. Reflecting on Wara’s words, I became very confused, asking questions like, How could I be so sure I was in my own heart, trusting it and feeling such love — and be so misguided at the same time? and also, Going forward, how can I be sure I’m really working as Mother Ayahuasca wants me to work? I wondered how I could have had so many experiences with ayahuasca already (more than 20), and yet have such a misguided ceremony.
Yet, there was at least a handful of beautiful experiences in ceremony that I believe were in alignment with how the medicine wanted to work with me. I did feel some healing, loving energy for my parents, and received a piece of ‘homework’ that led to the poem for my mother that I would share later, in the fourth ceremony. I also revisited the ‘homework’ and understandings Mother Ayahuasca had given me about video games back in March during my first plant medicine retreat, which gave clarity about how best to relate to gaming in day-to-day life. Lastly I connected with the magnificent mapaho tree that is considered to be a guardian of the land, and I felt such a powerful energetic blessing from that tree — such love, such gratitude.
Overall I was kind of ‘all over the place’ during this ceremony. My body felt pretty awful for the next couple of days, and I cried quite a bit, for various reasons. The most fruitful result was ‘coming back to square one’ in terms of coming into new relationship, good relationship with Mother Ayahuasca, with the other plant medicines, with the Earth, with myself. As the saying goes, ‘If you’re confused, you’re learning.’
Context of the poem:
This was the first time I allowed myself to spontaneously speak a poem to a group of people. I didn’t plan to speak a poem; it simply flowed through — rough edges and all.
Wara usually has retreat participants working with one plant medicine continuously in addition to the ayahuasca, and I was working with bobinsana, which helps with freeing the heart — feeling and expressing what’s in the heart, with openness and flexibility. After this ceremony, Wara switched me to work only with tobacco, a plant medicine with energy nearly opposite from bobinsana — tobacco is grounding, centering, helping us to stay in our bodies. I believe she switched me from bobinsana because this ceremony was so high-flying and ‘all over the place’ for me — the bobinsana had loosened what it was meant to; now I needed to stay grounded, to work with the Earth.
(Note: the way of working with tobacco in this context is utterly different from the way tobacco is consumed and abused in most societies around the world.)
Though I’ve edited the poem somewhat, perhaps you can still sense some of the scatteredness and egoic ‘joy-riding’ (co-opting) of my ceremony in the poem. For example, why connect with the jaguar across the lake during ceremony? Mother Ayahuasca might direct us to work with such powerfully healing beings — the only reasons I connected with that jaguar was because (1) I really connect with the jaguar energy (medicine) in general, and (2) I felt like doing so, in a ‘monkey mind’ kind of way. Our minds can be so unruly and wild — that’s why it’s so important to stay connected with our guides and with the medicines themselves throughout ceremony.
The spiritual ego loves to take ownership of the love and insights that are coming through.
Anyway, I find beauty in the poem, even in its rough edges, and I hope you do too.
First, Let’s Surrender (1)
First, let’s surrender—
everything—
like waterfalls.
Like sitting in a waterfall.
…
Let’s surrender to silence
before we speak.
Let’s speak cloaked words
before we know them.
Let’s let ones greater than us
speak simple words
through our hearts
and throats.
First let’s surrender
our entire heart.
Let’s surrender, even,
all the hidden chambers of our hearts—
the dusty dark rooms we
chained shut and triple-padlocked,
pretending like nobody knows
what’s inside.
Let’s surrender to the majentas and fuschias
that streak through the darkness like fireflies.
Let’s surrender to every magnificent
sunrise and sunset we’ve ever seen,
and to those special nights
when we stayed up all night
and got to see the sunrise
before we went to bed.
Let’s surrender to that special
mermaid in a red dress,
who seduced us all
into swimming in the lake.
There’s a leopard who lives across
the lake, and he’s here tonight.
He has his own stories to tell.
He’s fought many battles
to the death—
it’s always to the death—
it’s always to the death.
(Except when he’s play-fighting
with brothers and sisters.)
So far, he’s won every battle—
(that’s what he’ll tell you, anyway)
—but he knows we all lose in the end.
So first, let’s surrender—
everything—
like waterfalls.
Like sitting in a waterfall.
Like being a waterfall.
Sara painted this sign that gave us all a whopping dose of forgiveness
Ceremony 3 — September 7, 2024
petitions of ceremony 3
l Please show me how to listen well to your guidance, and how to work as you would like me to work, in a grounded, practical way, rooted in the Earth.
l Please continue the process of healing my relationships with my parents, especially my mother, and to feel for and send to my parents such beautiful, pure, healing love
l Please help me to send healing energy, love and support to my sister and her partner, to help them through their current difficulties
l Please help me to see and to heal any way I’ve been less than a perfect partner, sending her such healing pure loving energy
l Please help me to understand and to heal the root of addiction as it has been present in my life — healing how I have related to video games, marijuana, alcohol, and sex
Brief summary of experience:
This ceremony was an interesting experience. The core of it felt like it started a very deep process of healing and purging certain old emotions around the heart space (sadness, anger, loneliness etc.), mostly related to the petition I made about healing the root of addiction. Some images and feelings from certain childhood memories arose, but I found it puzzling that I couldn’t quite connect to the emotions in a way of truly feeling them, as emotions (e.g. crying them out). Instead, there was a feeling of ‘energetic heart surgery’ going on throughout the ceremony and continuing into the following days — feeling tightness, or little painful knots — feeling like the wounds of my heart were being gradually loosened and healed. This way of being healed feels like it’s in alignment with how tobacco works — in a grounded, embodied way.
Mentally, I was sort of halfway between fully attending to the process in the heart, and bouncing around to different topics — most of them relating to my somewhat ‘overloaded’ list of petitions. I felt like I was re-learning how to work truly hand-in-hand with Mother Ayahuasca, but still my ‘monkey mind’ was fighting for control in some moments.
Considering how many different items were on the list of petitions, I was very thankful that somehow the ceremony addressed each of them in a helpful, practical way — while initiating a deep heart-healing process that continued into the following days.
Context of the poem:
As often happens to me (and many people, because the jaguar is a very important kind of energy in these cultures/ceremonies), again I felt very connected to the ‘jaguar medicine’ during this ceremony. Yet, because I didn’t want the ceremony to go in a similar direction as the previous one, I petitioned to connect with a certain kind of ancestral jaguar spirit that Wara had mentioned after the second ceremony. This jaguar spirit felt wiser, and also very connected to woundedness — the woundedness the Amazon is currently experiencing as it burns, the woundedness of the ancestors, and for me, the wounds in my very own heart, which were being felt, and healed.
The poem reflects well the scatteredness of my mind during the ceremony, but also the greater sincerity and intention of staying in my own heart and tending to my own process. There are a thousand and one ways we have learned to distract ourselves from simply feeling and being with, lovingly, whatever we’re feeling in our own hearts.
First, Let’s Surrender (2)
First, let’s surrender
everything
like a wise, old, wounded jaguar
surrenders to the business
of the day.
First let’s surrender all of ourselves
to Life, as if our lives
depended on it.
Let’s surrender to our passion.
Let’s learn from our passion,
without losing ourselves
to its creeping shadow.
Let’s learn from our passion
like the wise old wounded jaguar,
who sex is also wounded,
and healing, and full of heart,
and gentle, and wild,
and whole.
The elders
taught him tantra.
Tantra is the softest caress,
the stroke of a finger down your spine,
a silent blown kiss,
the gentlest breeze you
could feel on your cheek.
Tantra is love long, long, long
before touch. Tantra is the hidden
truth of all energy, of all emotions—
how to feel them, to let them be,
exactly as they are—
how to create beauty
with the precious energy
they’ve gifted you.
Tantra is building a temple
of the purest love
in yourself, first
and foremost.
Let’s surrender to the wounds
of our hearts. Let’s surrender to
the lonely times. Let’s surrender
to the time you ran away from home
and pretended you’d never return.
Do you remember, as a baby,
how loved you were? Or,
are you the one
who must love that baby?
Do you remember the lonely times
when you cried for help, and
Mom and Dad weren’t home?
Can you surrender to that feeling, too—
with love?
(Let’s bless all the babies in the world,
with pure love,
letting them know
how loved they are
and always will be.)
Do you remember, as a child, how you
dreamed big dreams? Big,
beautiful dreams of the life you
would live someday, or the life
you did live, in your fairytale heart?
Don’t follow your dreams—
follow their roots.
Follow them all the way,
as deep as they go.
What is your deepest longing?
What is your heart’s greatest desire?
What would you die for?
Life?
(Can you find the courage
to say yes to life,
yes to death,
yes to God,
yes to yourself?)
What would it mean
to nourish your deepest longing?
To care for it, to spend time with it?
Can you surrender your deepest longing, too?
Or rather, can you surrender to it—
can you let yourself be taken all the way?
Letting yourself be taken all the way
means giving up all hope
of ever managing to surrender.
Letting yourself be carried
means giving up on going
anywhere at all. It means
turning around
to face your shadow
and going there—
feeling it all
—even the worst of it—
in time,
with love,
gentle love,
great love.
Can you learn to hold all of yourself
with an infinite smile?
A smile with all of your cheeks,
a smile that shines your heart’s infinite love?
Because that’s all there is—
pure love…
and the shadow.
In this delicate dance,
step forward, step back—
Just when you think you’ve dodged
your shadow, there it is,
like a knife in your heart.
Your shadow is a blessing.
Your wounds are blessings.
When you pull out the knife,
light shines through.
Your shadow
shimmers.
Your wounds are shimmering shadows.
So feel them. Cry, sob, shake,
do a sad dance, scream, shout,
sit in silent sentimental surrender…
Or stretch out the nooks and crannies
of your heart
like a jaguar stretches
his front legs.
Stretch your shoulders, bless them—
bless every part of your body
down to its very roots—
every cell, every speck…
Spend time blessing
every part of your body.
I love you, body!
I love to dance with you,
I love how you look,
I love you exactly as you are.
I love you even when you feel sick, or yucky—
it’s okay, I’ll play with your hair, I’ll listen
to you… whatever you need, I’m just here for you.
Who knows? One minute I’m playing
with your hair, and the next…
who knows?
Many loves are like doors cracked open.
Some loves are too sacred to name.
Better to remain silent.
So first, let’s surrender—
everything—
like a wise old wounded jaguar
licks the wounds
of his own wounded heart.
Tobacco ceremony — September 8, 2024
Brief summary of experience:
Tobacco ceremonies are often the most physically trying and uncomfortable ceremony of the whole retreat. This is because this particular kind of tobacco ceremony involves drinking a vile-tasting tobacco tea, giving it some time to enter your system, and then allowing the cleansing property of the plant to help you to physically (emotionally, spiritually, energetically) purge whatever kinds of old energies, patterns, or emotions you’re now ready to release. The stuff that doesn’t serve you anymore.
For me, this was the third time I had done a tobacco ceremony, and it was the most challenging I’ve experienced. It showed me lots of old painful memories and emotions, mostly relating to the roots of addiction and depression from my childhood years up to young adulthood. The purging took a couple of hours in total, and yes, it was very uncomfortable and at times quite painful. But, the result was (always is) so beautiful — I felt cleared out, emptied of some amount of inner baggage… I felt like I had more space inside to receive love. The next day I felt fairly physically drained, but really grateful to feel a process of receiving warm, protective, caring love, and letting my own love suffuse my whole being, once again.
photo by Jean Jamais (@jeanjamais)
Ceremony 4 — September 9, 2024
petitions of ceremony 4
l Please send me a loving ancestral guide to help show me how to be a man, how to walk my life path as a man, and how to awaken to the suffering and injustice of the world and to feel it, as a man
l Please help me to understand and to heal and purge energies of possessiveness and codependency, especially around my sacral and root chakras
l Please help me to bring completion to the ongoing process of healing my relationships with my parents, feeling and sending pure healing love to them.
l Please help me to understand about why my parents’ house construction plans have been stalled for so long, and the best way for them to proceed.
Brief summary of experience:
I felt the medicine strongly in this ceremony, and I was fairly confused for a good portion of it — it was hard to track exactly where my body was, and the process felt so deep and multifaceted that I found myself continually asking what I was supposed to be doing. In retrospect, this was a really beautiful, ‘breakthrough’ kind of ceremony: in the midst of my confusion, I was finally discovering the deeper kind of surrender of working hand-on-hand with Mother Ayahuasca — as she wanted me to work, rather than as my own mind/ego wanted to work.
In addition to each of the petitions being addressed in beautiful ways, amidst the confusion I found myself receiving many different kinds of energetic infusions — energies of cosmic love, of ‘God consciousness’ (aether), of the Earth, of the heart… part of my confusion was simply trying to keep up with all the energies that were coming through. It seemed that each blessing needed to be received in a certain body posture, so I was alternating between different postures and mudras (hand positions) quite frequently, which also trying not to physically purge more often than the medicine actually wanted me to. Instead, I was able to gift many energies (energies that were not mine to contain) to the Earth — entering her cocoon, rooting deep down into her soil.
I did finally feel a beautiful confidence in my life, and in myself as a man. The medicine gave me a vision of myself in 10 years — fit, humble, strong, loving, with the wisdom of so many animals and plants in the body — but not holding my power in an egoic way. I saw that the body could contain weakness also, and all kinds of emotions, including the ‘negative’ ones.
The final very powerful part of the ceremony, for me, was how sharing the below poem brought a kind of beautiful completion to the deep process I had been in, of healing my relationship with my mother, and of amplifying the love I felt for her.
Context of the poem:
‘Ho’Opononopono’ is a Hawaiian mantra that means “Thank you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, I love you.” It is so powerful for healing and repairing any and all kinds of relationships — with people in your life, with the Earth, with yourself… I had been connecting deeply with the mantra through the course of the retreat.
Wara had asked everyone to prepare their own original song or poem to share in the final ceremony. To work with Ho’Opononopono with my mother felt very fitting and vital. I wrote the poem over the course of the last few days of the retreat, and it felt like ‘good medicine’ through and through: the writing process was giving healing to my own heart, and then to share the poem felt like breathing life into it and letting it soar — to the spirit of my own mother, to the hearts of the lovely people in ceremony, and into the heart of the cosmos itself, to be received by all mothers everywhere. I’m so grateful that this poem came through. For me personally, it is a life-changing poem.
Ho’Oponopono, Mom
a poem for my mother Sally,
and for all mothers
Ho’Oponopono:
“Thank you,
I’m sorry,
Please forgive me,
I love you.”
Thank you, Mom.
I’m sorry, Mom.
Please forgive me, Mom.
I love you, Mom.
(1)
Thank you, Mom.
Thank you, Mom!
Thank you, thank you, thank you
so much.
Thank you for giving me life.
Thank you for loving me.
Thank you for feeding me.
Thank you for for teaching me.
Thank you for the gentle lessons,
thank you even for the pain.
Thank you for my beating heart
that lets me feel it all.
Thank you for your care, your devotion.
Thank you for singing to me,
reading so many beautiful books to me,
filling our home with toys, art supplies, games…
Thank you for taking me to church.
Thank you for teaching Sunday school.
Thank you for cooking sloppy joes,
lasagna, mexican casserole,
mac n’ cheese with peas,
and so many other delicious meals.
Thank you for family dinners.
Thank you for being there waiting
with open arms when I yelled ‘Mom!’
and came running.
Thank you for making me feel safe
and letting me snuggle
between you and Dad
after I had a nightmare.
Thank you for your smile, your laugh.
Thank you for the peace in your heart.
I pray you know your peace
more and more
every day.
(Our peace is one,
our peace is one.
This Earth is one—
our pain, our love are one.
We are this Earth—
this soil, these roots.
We give, we receive.
We are stable.
We can hold it all.
We don’t turn away
from anyone.
We are one,
in the Heart.)
Thank you for your warmth.
Thank you for your spirit.
Thank you for teaching me to hold myself
in the light of my own heart.
Thank you for protecting me.
Thank you for teaching me to protect myself.
Thank you for nourishing me.
Thank you for teaching me to nourish myself.
Thank you for teaching me boundaries.
Thank you for teaching me to become a man.
(2)
I’m sorry, Mom.
I’m sorry, Mom — I’m so sorry.
I’m sorry, Mom!
Mom,
I’m so sorry.
I’m sorry for hating you.
I’m sorry for resenting you.
I’m sorry for withholding my love from you.
I’m sorry for turning away, for shutting down,
for making myself empty.
I’m sorry for blaming you.
I’m sorry for treating you like a servant,
like a doormat.
I’m sorry for violating your heart,
your energy.
I’m sorry for spilling orange soda
inside your purse.
I’m sorry for my absent heart.
I’m sorry for trying to change you.
I’m sorry for wishing you’d be different
in any way from how you are.
I’m sorry for rejecting you.
I’m sorry for my tantrums.
I’m sorry for making you feel awful
when Pokemon came out for Gameboy
and you bought me Donkey Kong
because Target was sold out of Pokemon.
You really did your best, Mom,
(and truthfully, so did I)
and I’m sorry for not seeing that.
(3)
Please forgive me, Mom.
Please forgive me.
Mom, please forgive me.
Please forgive me, Mom.
I know you already have,
but still, I must ask again,
with my whole,
remorseful, loving heart—
Please forgive me, Mom.
(4)
I love you, Mom!
I love you.
I really love you, Mom.
I love you so much.
I love you, Mom.
I love your smile,
I love your laugh,
I love all
of who you are.
I love how you brighten strangers’ days.
I love how you glue our family together.
I love how much you love and care for us.
I love how you love this planet.
I love how you love gardening, birds, trees, plants…
I love how you teach yourself about the Earth
and how to care for it.
I love you with all my heart.
I love you now and forever.
I love how you made sure everyone got a lot
of Christmas presents that they wanted.
I love how you were always Santa Clause.
I love your enthusiastic help for Halloween,
and I love how you took us to the pumpkin patches
with the hay bale mazes.
I love how you helped with school projects —
the human body, gingerbread houses, diaramas, ecosystems.
Finally I allow myself to feel the Pure
Love I’ve always felt for you,
from the very center of my heart.
I love how you care for your friends.
I love how you stay in touch
with Aunt Carolyn and Ruth.
I love how you manifested
the family reunion.
I love how much you want
the best for your children.
I love your openheartedness.
I love you in your struggles,
your closedheartedness,
your shortcomings.
I love your brightest and most
true love for Dad.
I love how you’re finding
your way.
I love how you ask if I want anything
before you go to the grocery store.
I love how sometimes I say No and
you still bring me cookies.
I love when you don’t bring me
cookies,
too.
I love how you and Dad took us to
visit Grandpa and Grandma Pfeifer
and Grandpa and Grandma Carpenter
every year
for so long.
I love how you cared for your parents
in their final years.
I love the beautiful legacy of your parents,
and I love living in the home your father built.
I love everything you’ve learned and passed on
from your parents—
the good, the bad, and the ugly—
especially the great wealth
of the good.
I love how you and Dad took us to Macinaw Island,
Sleeping Bear Dunes,
the Mystery Spot,
the Upper Peninsula,
Starved Rock, Santa Fe,
Scotsdale, Sedona,
the Grand Canyon—
fear and all—
and so many other amazing,
magical places
on this Earth.
And, I love how we stopped
at McDonald’s on the way
and played the Monopoly game
and spotted liscense plates
from so many different states.
(5)
I love you Mom—
I love you!
I just love you.
I love you with the warmth and color
of every sunrise and every sunset.
I love you like fields of lilacs, lavender, roses, daisies—
I love you all the pinks, reds, fuschias, majentas, soft blues…
I love you like your favorite bouquet of flowers
in the middle of your heart.
I love you, Mom!
I love you with the radiance of every star,
I love you with the purity of Mother Mary,
with the humility of Jesus washing your feet,
with the honor of a nameless devotee.
I love you with Krishna’s bliss
and play and joy,
I love you with Shiva’s
presence in All.
I love you, Mom.
I love you like the loving gaze
of Ramana Maharshi!
That’s just the beginning
of how much I love you.
I love you with the compassion
of every bodhisattva, and with
the generosity of every buddha
who gave, and gave, and gave.
I love you, Mom.
I love you with the simplicity of
a raindrop. I love you how God
loves a speck of dust, and how
a speck of dust loves God.
I love you with an ant’s
sense of duty. I love you
with the fierceness of a
mother bear defending
her cubs, as you have
defended me.
I love you, Mom.
I love you like shooting stars
at the drive-in movie theater.
I love you like the dance of the
Northern and Southern lights.
I love you with all my heart, Mom,
I love you everything,
I love you the Cosmos Itself.
I love all that you are—
your light, your shadow,
everything.
I love you, Mom.
As long as this human heart beats
it will be full of warm, radiant love
for you — every day, every moment
for the rest of my life.
And even after this heart stops
beating, still,
I will love you, Mom.
I love you a million, a bajillion,
I love you infinity,
I love you forever, Mom.
And through loving you, Mom,
I love everything,
Because you mean the world to me.
photo by Jean Jamais (@jeanjamais)
Overall lessons and reflections of the retreat
Though the experience of the retreat itself was full of ups and downs and deep processes that I trusted even as I felt lost within them, at its conclusion, the clouds really parted to reveal such beautiful clarity in relation to my practical, day-to-day life, and how I was ready to live my life upon going back home. We could say that the biggest practical shifts were: (1) reconnecting with writing as a healing practice and a central part of who I am, (2) feeling that studying and learning naturopathy could be part of a truly fulfilling career path, and (3) gaining clarity about what I’m looking for in romantic partnership, and how to make the space for that in my life.
Besides that, I’m always feeling like every retreat offers a deepening, lasting cultivation of pure love in my heart. Every plant medicine retreat (for me, at least) has been very heart-centered — clearing and healing old hidden wounds, emotions and stories in the heart, and making space for feeling and embodying a greater, more radiant love, for all loved ones, all beings, and for Mother Earth herself.
Lastly, one of the greatest teachings of this retreat was learning a bit more about how to truly listen — to the plant medicines, to Spirit, to my own intuition — in a deeper, more open way. This lesson continues to deepen, and to impact my life in very deep ways.
Coming out of the retreat, I felt perfectly ready and excited to return home and begin the ‘real work’ of integrating and applying all the insights and new energies to daily life. Yet, because I had arranged to stay at Pisatahua for an extended time, I still had two more retreats remaining before going home. Good thing there’s no end to the healing work we can do (i.e., learning to be more clear, more loving, fuller embodiments of ourselves).
the group of retreaters. I love them
Coca leaf reading — September 11, 2024
Typically, Wara conducts a coca leaf reading with each retreat participant at some time over the course of the retreat. Wara knows the ‘language’ of the coca leaves very well, and coca is another of the master plant teachers — so this is a chance to ask about and look into every area of your life, and your process of healing and growth in each part of life.
As it happened, my coca reading took place the day after the retreat ended, and the timing was perfect. This reading served a few purposes: (1) it tied up some loose ends regarding the processes of the retreat, (2) it grounded all of the work of the retreat into a vision of how I wanted to live my life (career, relationships, health, etc.) practically upon returning home, (3) it provided some questions/inquiries for me to further explore my vision of my own life, and to envision the practical details of how I could be a presence of love and truth unto myself and others, and (4) it also pointed to helpful petitions/intentions for the next retreat (because I still would remain at Pisatahua for about one more month before returning home).
During and after the coca leaf reading, I felt so full of gratitude — gratitude for such clarity, gratitude for feeling confidence in myself as a man and confidence in the vision of my life, gratitude for feeling that my heart was full of love — love coming from within — sustainable, unconditional love.
I also felt grateful to finally relate to Wara as a true friend. I believe that was facilitated by the deep healing process with my mother — because, it seems most of us project our mother issues especially onto female teachers/healers in our lives (and equally, we project our father issues onto male teachers, healers, other authority figures, or male partners).
I felt ready to return home, but also ready to continue into the next retreat, working on some similar threads and some different ones, seeing which layers of myself would rise to be witnessed, transformed, played with. I felt clear — while knowing there was so much more work to do.
photo by Jean Jamais (@jeanjamais)
closing incantation
It was all ‘essential’…
even though there are more and less direct paths.
She was always teaching me—
even by giving me the freedom to go my own way.
It was ‘uneven,’ unbalanced…
but it all balanced out in the end.
There is endless work, endless healing to be done…
but I am Complete, perfectly Whole just as I am.
The shadow is great, the suffering is immense…
but All is LOVE—
held in Love, felt in Love, transformed in Love
Every blessing is blown into the Heart of the Cosmos Itself…
Hallalla*
*(‘So Be It,’ ‘It is happening’)
a boat ride on the final day of retreat
Context of the (below) poem:
This poem came from a dream I received on the final night of the retreat. As a spiritual seeker, I had been ‘trying’ so hard to wake up, and I found the dream to be such a beautiful reorientation to rather wake in.
Wake In
‘Awakening is realizing there’s no way out.
Magic is realizing there’s a way in.’
—Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Wake up!
Wake up, wake in, look around.
Your life is not a movie—
No — this is it. This is the real thing,
the dream you decided to dream,
or sleptwalked in to.
Notice how your eyes follow the bend
and flow of light and color…
See everything,
but follow the light.
If you were worried of being seduced
into a never-ending nightmare—
don’t seduce yourself, dreamer.
Be here.
If you’d like to wake up,
you’re better off
waking in.
Wake in to your senses,
wake in to your emotions,
wake in to your heart.
Wake in to your beauty, your love—
spill them from your heart like fingerpaints.
Dream a wild, joyful, courageous dream—
or whatever
you like.
All dreams are created equal
but only some dreams birth equality.
All dreams are born free
but only some die free.
All dreams are true
but only some know truth.
All dreams contain beauty
but only some realize beauty.
All dreams can become loving dreams
but some dreams you’re better off waking up out of.
All dreams are made of love
but only some dreams are made of Pure Love,
refined Love — supple, sturdy, true —
the kind of Love that can build a dream
so deep, so wide, so full of heart
that you’d see it were your very own life
if you weren’t already sleeping.
Wake in, wake in.
photo by Jean Jamais (@jeanjamais)
OM GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA
OM GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA
OM GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA
‘Gone, gone, gone beyond, completely exposed, awake, sobeit!’
—The Heart Sutra (trans. Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism)
END of retreat notes/summer/reflections — ayahuasca retreat September 1, 2024 — September 10, 2024
If you enjoyed and feel inspired, please be especially kind to someone today.
Also please hold the Amazon in your heart, remember that we need to care for it (for example don’t eat red meat unless you know where it’s coming from).
All my love,
Will
Feel free to reach out—
instagram @cosmic.will
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