Some of my most profound Fishing for Soul experiences took place while I was on shamanic journeys in Peru. I was introduced to the ancient path of truth, knowledge, healing, and empowerment popularly known as shamanism in the summer of 1993, shortly after my ‘Cracking Open’ episode. The following is a true story that took place in November of 1996.

Purple in Peru

I was a semi-anonymous, naked, purple person for almost two weeks.

I was not sure how long I had been dozing. Without a watch, I couldn’t know the exact time, but the somewhat familiar and comforting sounds of the jungle suggested that it was close to dawn. The medicine was still having an effect. When would they come for me?

“Un dia mas,” Agustin, a shaman overseeing us said the previous afternoon as he examined me, blowing tobacco smoke from his beautifully carved pipe over my body, and pressing deeply into my darkened flesh. My skin retained the deep purple hue achieved by applying dye from the crushed seed of a fruit whose name I cannot recall. The intention was to help keep mosquitoes away and to break down any notion of race and gender.

For six days I sat in silence, left alone to face my thoughts and emotions under the safety of mosquito netting on a wooden platform in a three-sided thatched hut, the fourth side left completely open to the air, struggling with a fearful reality of snakes creeping in, and eating a special diet of white rice prepared by the women in the camp – white rice in a bowl of hot water, white rice on a plate with a side of some kind of warm, watery broth, and after one painful, tormented morning a surprise that made me weep tears of gratitude and humility – a lunch of white rice with bits of chicken and herbs. Would they feed us as usual on this morning?

This was the final morning of my silent retreat. I had traveled to the shaman Agustin Rivas’ camp in the Peruvian Amazon as part of my work with my mentor, Lorna Roberts. The night before I had, along with the other members of our small group, taken part in an ayahuasca ceremony, the third in just a few days. When combined with other plants, boiled down to a thick “tea,” prayed over and ingested, ayahuasca, known as the vine or rope of death, becomes a powerful hallucinogenic (medicine) whose ability to bring one closer to their true essence and the nature of the cosmos is legendary in the Amazon. It also has a purging effect: diarrhea and vomiting are common during the ceremony.

It wasn’t until many hours later that this magical, ruthless plant mixture stirred up memories from my childhood, causing a deep sorrow to bubble up to the surface. As the sun rose, my mind filled with visions of my youngest sister. I saw her sad, lonely, and scared as she struggled to take care of two young children. I had a vision of her behind bars, a prisoner in her own life. I remembered her at the age of 2, 6 and 8, left alone at the mercy of my mother’s unsettling and often volatile mood swings.

My body began to heave as the heaviness of those years unfolded and I relived each unforgotten moment. I felt so helpless and hopeless at that time in my life, unable to rescue my little sister from the pains inflicted by our mother, who was suffering in her depression. Years of anguish poured out of me in tears, sobs, moans and wails. More and more images flooded my mind as I vomited what I could no longer contain. I began to hear a familiar voice. “Let it go, let it go. You are not helpless anymore.” Giant arms seemed to cradle and rock me. I didn’t question it. I surrendered to it.

After a while, I sat up, the jungle heat pouring over me, calmly looking through the haze of the protective mosquito netting toward the temple area where I had met Mother Ayahuasca in ceremony the night before, listening once again to the silence between the sounds and to the deeper stirrings inside of me. “When you return to New York you will formalize your apprenticeship with Lorna.” I let that sink in, wondering what it really meant.

People began to move about the camp, some carrying a large pot to a growing fire. Soon, purple beings that I had barely seen for a week were led from their huts and directed to stand near the fire. Eagerly, somewhat shyly, and still reflecting deeply upon my recent emotional release, I quietly took my place in line. One by one, the women of the camp scrubbed our naked bodies.

I closed my eyes, filled with gratitude for the care I was being shown as a week’s worth of dirt, dye and odor sunk to the ground. With each stroke of the scrub brush I felt as if a part of my past were being washed away. # # #

Today I thank Lorna Roberts and her tender guidance, Agustin Rivas for sharing his gifts, the dense jungle that held me for two extraordinary weeks in 1996, my courage, my mother, my sister, my visions, my guiding spirits, Mother Ayahuasca who visits me to this day, all of Nature, the land and people of Peru.

Amen.

Thanks and peace!

Joe