The Amazon Heals My Open Wound

Part 4 – Read Part 3 here

There were no washing facilities at the village.  To get clean we all swam and bathed in the Amazon, which flowed just 100m from the Temple.  Initially when I read about the retreat I was hesitant, but now after the first ceremony’s marathon purge I couldn’t wait to cleanse all the memories away.

After spending the hours between 3am and 7am, shaking, alone in my bed with my past thundering around my head.  I was now like a happy little child again, splashing and jumping and diving.  There was something rejuvenating and uplifting about the Amazon river that morning.  As the sun beat down on our faces and the water cleansed us, I shared a deep connection with the river.  She knew.  She felt our pain.  She was there to help.

The bell rang for 9am and a morning of sharing and integration in the temple.  I rushed to throw some clothes on and take my place in the circle.  The most important part of working with sacred plant medicine is the integration that you do afterwards.  The reflection and personal exploration of what was presented to you by spirit.  Spiritual guidance is deep and meaningful.  And so the 3 hours of sharing after each ceremony was a time to hold space for one another and to bear witness to each others truth in a loving and accepting way.  As you give this precious gift to others, so do you give it to yourself.

In our group of 23 I was the last to speak.  Spirit it seemed had arranged this.  Before then I just didn’t have the ability to form coherent sentances.  In the midst of the ceremony the night before, I had been guided to ask for more medicine at “last calling”.  I hadn’t wanted to but I knew in my heart it was important as spirit kept telling me to.  This is what had kept me awake and why I was left to speak last.

Having listened to the other 22 people’s accounts of light filled journies of peace, calm and beautiful insights, I retold my night of darkness.  I was bitter but I did what I did best.  I put on a brave face and made a joke out of it.  Perhaps this was my protection mechanism at work that had kept me safe for 40 years.  Laughing behind a wall of lies.

I did not speak of the abuse.  I needed to process it first, to make sense of it some more.  If that was possible.  It had not settled enough within me.  I cried in front of the group, I was weak, exhausted and vulnerable.  The group and my new friends held the space for me.  The tears flowed.

“Lunch was like the first meal I had tasted on earth”

I had never been so pleased to have someone serve me a meal.  All I had eaten in the last 24 hours were a few pieces of fruit.  That is intentional when working with plant medicine, it is how you get the best results and work with the medicine and not against it.  It is also intentional that you go on a strict diet for two weeks before.  To ensure you arrive at the retreat with a body, mind and spirit that is already cleansed as much as possible.  I had done the diet for six weeks, in a hope to prepare even deeper.

Quinoa, rice, beetroot, beans, boiled eggs, carrots, soup and freshly caught fish from the Amazon.  It was so nice I could have cried.  We ate all meals as a group.  There was a deep bonding that happened during this time, as we took turns to serve each other and offer a blessing to the food.  We ate as one family, having shared a sacred and spiritual ceremony that had started to call us home.

“I felt vulnerable”

I ate.  I enjoyed the food, the company and I started to see that others were feeling the same.  It had been an intense night.  For the rest of the day we spent time alone.  I laid in a hammock and reflected.  I laid in the Temple and reflected.  I journalled, I swam, I chatted.  Pandora’s box was still open.  I had started to look inside.

The day after each ceremony was a gentle affair, where we let the hard-won insights and knowledge seep and settle within us.  We were encouraged to remain in silence as much as possible, to allow the inner work that needed to happen.  Talking and chatting were a distraction from the work that would ultimately set us free from our past and some times we practiced silence for a day.  It was at these times that I realised the importance of being in such a beautiful, natural and calm setting.  The gentleness and serenity of the trees, the river and her people were a blessing that I so graciously received.  They were healing the wounds that had been thrust open the night before.

It was during this integration day that I started to resign myself to what had been my forgotten and denied past.  It was into the afternoon that the effects of the medicine resided fully.  With a good meal inside me, the sharing complete and a good portion of laughing and joking out of the way.  The real soul work began.

“I was abused”.  My voice echoed inside of me.  I always thought that abused children were those from a poor family, a broken family or from a disadvantaged background.  I never saw myself or my family as any of those things.  I considered myself priviledged, lucky, provided for and cared for.  And now to have to face all of these assumptions about my life and invalidate them was tough.  I had to ask questions about people within my family and their friends.  The people spirit had shown me the night before.

“I already knew some ‘things’ about my past and about certain people in it.”

My parents had split when I was seven and my life had been divided between seeing them both.  With one side of the family I had an open, loving and caring relationship where I felt nurtured.  With the other, it was rocky, where I felt insignificant and frustrated.  But I accepted this as normal.  Many of my friends had split families and some had absent parents.  I was lucky.  Or perhaps this is what I was told and accepted as truth.

When I was 19, I was told the reasons my parents split-up 12 years before.  They were big reasons and heart-breaking to hear.  This prompted a hard time in my life, I took the truth badly.  It was as though someone took a knife and cut my life in two.  It was Christmas 1996 and I was at University at the time and away from my family.  As a way of handling these new revelations and coping, I did what most youngsters do when they go to Uni.  I got drunk.  A lot.  It seemed to help, at least temporarily.  But I was volatile.  Inside was a young man not coping.  Inside was a young man screaming for help.

University is a great place to hide alcoholism.  Thousands of youngsters away from home for the first time, no parental rules, a wad of cash, 12 hour working week and £1 a pint on tap from 11am.  Recipe for disaster, even without severe emotional problems.

I was never diagnosed with having an alcohol problem, perhaps it would have helped.  But alcohol was my coping mechanism for a number of years and eventually it lead me to professional counselling, hypnosis and NLP which did help.  But even with trained professionals, the core truth it seemed was still shy and illusive inside of me.

So on integration day, lost in the jungle, alone with an undeniable truth, these are the things I remembered back to.  I journalled about the family taboos that we had, all the things that no-one talked about, all the weird behaviour and how it was explained away, normalised and laughed off.  My body started to feel exhausted.  I napped, I listened to music.  Tunes that started to become my anthems for feeling pain and becoming free.

We had a plant medicine ceremony every three days for two weeks.  Afterwards, a morning of sharing and an afternoon of integration.  The next day group work, movement, creative time and more sharings.  It was tough, relentless inner work.  The intermittent fasting before the ceremony, the purging, the sleep deprivation, the searing heat and humidity of the jungle, the mosquitos, the exhaustion of the spiritual work that was happening and the absence of home comforts, familiar faces and distractions.  It was an intense hot-bed of raw emotions with no where to run.  All of us at some point broke down and cried.

But this is the point of a spiritual retreat.  With each tear shed another inner barrier comes tumbling down.  With each hug the group companionship grew stronger, flourished some more and carried us one step closer to our individual truth.  Freedom and liberation were designed as the natural outcome of this retreat, the facilitators knew this, the shamen knew this, the villagers knew this.  But for us, it didn’t always appear this way.  I wasn’t looking forward to the next ceremony…

To be continued…