Beyond The Shaman (Part 2): A Deconstruction

Just living in the thick lowland jungle is an experience in itself, because you can really feel the forest of our planet and Mother Earth. Just to live in the jungle and be surrounded by so much life and so much vibration, so much biodiversity when it comes to plant life and insects and reptiles, it was just mind-blowing. I had never been in an environment like this before, and I don't think there's another environment on the planet that is so thick and dense with life.

And just solely to be out of all my previous contexts. There was no civilization chatter, so to say: no phone ringing, no internet, no distractions, just me in that nature. To have the time to observe that nature was a teaching in itself, because finally I understood what photosynthesis meant. I never understood it in school. In biology I was like: what is she talking about, my teacher, you know? But later on, in the jungle, through what I experienced, now I understand it, of course. And understanding what life and death mean: observing that one thing is the other thing, and that it's about survival. It's about pure survival.

To live in the jungle while a thunderstorm is happening, and the trees around your hut are falling to the ground and might even hit your hut, that gives you another perspective on the human being in its context on this planet. Because we as a species are quite new to the jungle. Maybe 20,000, 25,000 or 30,000 years ago, the human species was introduced to the jungle environment. But the jungle as it is has existed for millions and millions of years. So I was connecting to that forest of everything.

And on the other hand, I started to drink sacred ancient medicines for the first time. And that was absolutely changing everything too. The healing I received, the understanding, being able to face specific things: that whole realm in itself was a very new thing. And then, of course, when I went back to Berlin after this, it was impossible to continue life as I had it before. After you have an experience like this.

I was fully immersing myself in the jungle, and it was everything. I was scared. I had fear, I was happy. I was enchanted. I felt liberated. All kinds of emotions. Because for me, the reason for this journey, the first journey, was to heal my illness, in order to live long and happy, right? It was a question of life and death, why I did that. So I was fully going into it, and it was ripping me apart and putting me together in a new way. And then, of course, everything was new, and everything changed.

Well, you can try. How did it start? I had dreams about this healer, as I said. I was still in Berlin. I was doing some internet research, and I found a name on a forum where people who had been there before were discussing visiting healers in the Amazon rainforest. I resonated with one name. I didn't have any idea about all of this. I didn't even speak Spanish at that time, so zero language skills.

This healer has a website. He has a small place in the jungle, a healing center, as he calls it, where he welcomes people who want to work with him. Originally he's from deeper inside the jungle, but he lives with his family in the city of Iquitos, which is a jungle city in Peru. So I used a translation tool to contact him by email. I think at the time he had someone helping him with this digital stuff, because in the jungle there is no internet. So they sent me an answer, and he just said: you are welcome.

He told me that I needed to give him my flight details, and that on the day I arrived at the airport, there would be a driver picking me up. I booked my flight, I gave him my details, I arrived at Iquitos airport, and then a driver, who's a friend of mine now, picked me up and dropped me at a random spot on the road, kilometer 48 outside of Iquitos, next to a small village.

And there was this indigenous boy sitting there, waiting for me, whom I couldn't speak to because I didn't know the language. He took my stuff, he helped me carry my things, and he walked into the jungle from there. And that was it. I had to follow him.

The night before, it had been raining a lot. I was not prepared for these jungle hikes. I arrived with white sneakers after a 40-hour plane trip from Europe. And we had to wade through the water because the bridge was flooded, and on my left there were rotten pineapples in the water. I saw one snake. I was totally overwhelmed. The hike took about one and a half hours, because it was difficult to walk there because of the rain. I couldn't even follow him as fast as he was walking. I had to carry my stuff over my head, and I nearly slipped walking through the water. The water was up to here.

But there was an old woman coming my way from the other side, carrying rice on her head, and she had a stick. She gave me the wooden stick, and I could easily walk to the other side. And then I turned around, and she was gone already. And I never understood: was she real? A helping spirit?

So I arrived at that little clearing in the jungle with some huts. There's a temple, there are some huts for people to live in, there is a kitchen and there's access to the river. The boy dropped my things at one hut, and I think later that day or the next day, the healer arrived. I still couldn't speak the language, but somehow we communicated. And that was my house, that was my home for that while. And I started learning the language at the time, of course, because there was no other choice, and we started working together.

In general, when I do these trips, one thing leads to another. Now it's a bit more complex, what I'm doing with visiting the tribes in Brazil. But I do it mostly alone, all of these journeys.

The first time that I went to Brazil, some years ago, to visit the tribes, my intention was that I wanted to work with the tribes and go deeper into the tribal tradition with the medicines. And how I ended up where I ended up in the first place was again quite an interesting, meant-to-be situation, like the one I described with the healer I was dreaming about eight months before I even arrived. Everything was falling into place.

So I put out the intention that I wanted to visit the tribes in Brazil. Then again, one thing led to the other. I'm going to spare you this story, because it's quite a long one again, but one thing happened, and then the other thing happened, things you would never expect.

For Brazil, it's important to contact FUNAI, which is a government organization that takes care of the indigenous peoples' rights and land rights. If you want to visit a tribe, it's good to meet them first, so they know you're in the area and they can assist you on your journey. So I did this. I contacted FUNAI, and they helped me out a lot. They connected me to one tribe that I then got to know very deeply, and they arranged the communication for me. But I had to get there myself. And at that time, when I went to Brazil, I didn't speak one word of Portuguese. So I was starting from scratch again.

Staying with that first tribe, the Puyanawa people, who are very dear to me, I met people from other tribes there, and they invited me to their villages. So one thing led to the other, and then I arranged my travels alone, with, you know, boats, buying gasoline and then going there. So this is usually how I do it.

I mean, you don't do this stuff if you don't want to. You've got to be committed to doing it. And of course my story is a bit different, because I do it alone all the time. So maybe I'm supposed to do that, and this is my calling. But I never had problems, ever, in all these years. Not one problem. I was never robbed. I was never raped.

The thing with the lowland jungle itself is that it's dangerous. There are spiders that are dangerous, there are snakes, there are jaguars, there are all kinds of things going on in the jungle. You've got to be aware when you are in the lowland jungle. You've got to be careful. I was sick with some jungle diseases throughout the years that are no fun, that can kill you, like malaria or the chikungunya virus. That brought me to the edge as well. The jungle is a living entity, it's about life and death, and you are in it. So there is definitely a risk, traveling to the lowland jungle, of getting sick with something, or getting bitten or stung or whatever. You need to be careful, as much as you can. This is one thing.

The other thing, when it comes to the context: because I'm alone, I'm kind of positioning myself in a specific energy, right? I'm often observing, and I respect the rules of the village that I'm in. I'm more in the background, at least when I'm arriving for the first time and meeting all the people, right? It's important that I'm not showing off with a big fat camera and technology or equipment, because it's altering them. You've just got to be careful. I'm also not leaving my credit card lying around somewhere, of course not. There's some common sense when you travel to these places: you take care of yourself and stay safe.

What I'm always trying to do is understand the language, learn the language and speak the language. The language is an important bridge that overcomes xenophobia. Because I'm still white. And the current situation as it is here in South America, with indigenous people in Brazil already sick with the coronavirus, and the old indigenous trauma getting activated, of the white people bringing the diseases, like it was with measles and smallpox: it's very current. It's there, it's real.

A lot of indigenous people have put themselves in self-quarantine right now. They locked down their villages. No visitors are allowed. So I don't know how the future around that will develop. We'll see. I have heard of a lot of aggression towards white people in some jungle cities in Peru. So I don't know how my future of traveling to the jungle and to the indigenous people will change because of this current situation, or when it will come back to normality.

Well, I was always careful, and I never felt threatened. The only thing that happens is maybe that an indigenous person is interested in you as a love partner, or wants to marry you. This is what I've experienced, which can happen, right? That's normal. This is the only thing I've ever experienced, but other than that, I never had problems.

For some very modern tribes, it's actually not that big a deal if people come to visit them, if you have someone who's arranging a trip like this to get there. For the westernized tribes, who are used to working with white people, it's not a big deal. If it's more of a remote thing, and you want to do it on your own, like I usually do, you've got to have a specific mindset for that.

But there are a lot of shamanic healing centers all over the Amazon that arrange your whole trip, from airport to hotel to jungle and back. So people who book healing retreats in the Amazon rainforest usually never have a problem getting there and getting back, because they're taken care of.

This is a very current and interesting topic. There is a lot of what is called medicine tourism going on now: people coming down to South America to work with the sacred medicines because they want to heal something. And to accommodate the Western mind and approach, you can't just say: yes, just come to my place. You've got to meet them in the Western ways.

So it's a lot about money. When it comes to medicine work, there's a lot of money there that the local people will never see. And it's also a lot about creating comfort for the Western visitors. In the jungle you can have a fully equipped toilet and shower, as you know it from back home. No difference. So there's a lot happening to create a safe, comforting space for the visitors.

And usually the people who own these places are not even indigenous people. They're people from the Western world who buy a lot of land in the jungle and have the investment to build a healing center. Then they employ managers who speak different languages, and a lot of local people working for them. But the question is: do the local people really get the money that they deserve for their work? Usually not. And do the local healers who get hired by those healing centers really get paid the way they should? Usually it's not like that. It's not uncommon now to pay 3,000 US dollars for 10 days of ayahuasca work in the jungle.

And that's a problem because, for example, here in Peru over the last years, a lot of ayahuasca vine got harvested, chacruna got harvested, to make the medicines. And you need quite a lot of the plants to make the medicine that you can drink. But who's replanting, who's regrowing? How sustainable is all this? Is this really sustainable?

Because a lot of people want to heal themselves. They hear of ayahuasca, they book a retreat online, and then they travel to Iquitos. They get picked up, have an intense 10 days in the jungle, and go back home. But they don't know what happens behind the scenes in the meantime. Is that really sustainable for the whole process of healing for themselves? If the indigenous and local people get exploited here, and if no one is regrowing ayahuasca, is your healing really more important? But usually people don't even think about it, and they don't know, because it doesn't appear to them.

And when it comes to the money: the money is definitely changing the indigenous cosmology and worldview, and even their connection to tradition. It's not easy for me to accept that. I have been observing it more and more, and it's making me question my relationships and my collaborations with the tribes for the future, because I don't want to be part of it.

Because money makes life easier for them. Back in the days when the first white people visited indigenous uncontacted tribes, they left behind gifts, like a machete, or something like this, things they never had. There are some anthropological reports that you can read about this. The uncontacted tribes found those gifts and started using these new tools, and they left behind the old ways they were doing things. So this is how progress comes into a civilization, of course, and this is nothing you can change and nothing you will stop.

But there are tribes in Brazil that are popular for medicine tourism. People from those tribes are also traveling worldwide to share ceremonies. It's a very common thing nowadays. They have very high prices for visitors. You can easily pay 1,000 US dollars a week with one of the tribes. And it's important to see: what do they do with the money? Do they invest it in the village? Do they improve the conditions of the village, or invest it in a project? Or do they just buy a new phone in town, or buy fast food in the city and come back to the village and start eating fast food and stop hunting? Or they buy a flat-screen TV in the city, they need a generator for it, then they have electricity in the village, and then they lose the old ways. Are they really connected to the sacred medicine path, or are they now just interested in the money?

So there are a lot of layers to this whole question that you just opened, right? And we have a responsibility here to observe that and evaluate it properly. But there is a big shift happening.

It depends on which village or tribe you look at, or which specific example. But something is shifting towards losing something. And maybe you can even say losing authenticity. Maybe it's just one person in the village, but everything affects everything. It's a whole environment of living together, so everything will affect everybody.

First of all, it is a commitment. It means commitment, commitment to the way. And the way that I observe and study is the indigenous way. Not all of the indigenous ways that are still active are good examples, from my perspective. Because there's also some lack of alignment in indigenous traditions happening right now: the shifts in culture and the coming of money are changing so much that the true nature of their tradition is maybe lost. So maybe they are not a good example for me anymore. But there are good examples out there.

Personally, I believe it means you need to be aligned with the teachings of that medicine. And you also compromise on some things in your life, and you pay a price. This is how I perceive it personally. In order to share Kambo, I would like to live its teachings. Because if I share this medicine, what I'm doing is just creating the space, and the medicine is doing its work. But I still have to be in full alignment to be able to do that. Otherwise, I'm not sharing the truth from the heart. Otherwise, I'm creating a space that is not clean and clear and doesn't show full respect to the medicine. So we have to be really aware that this is a big responsibility, and we always have to check in to be aligned.

For me personally, it has been a lonely path. Maybe because it's a bit the story of my life, to walk my path alone, or a challenge in my life. But it has been aligning and flowing like this; things have been going their way for me. I was always doing it alone, committing to working with the medicine or sharing the medicine. I'm not living in an indigenous community in the jungle. I'm a solo person on my path. I'm not living somewhere in a tribe with 500 people from my genetic family. That is maybe more the story of my family, but not my own personal story in this lifetime.

So I am quite a lot with myself, in a kind of dieta or diet, especially this last year outside of the jungle. I have been on the diet with myself a lot, and it means that I have to take care of my own energy and of what I put into my system. If I tell someone about dieta and diets with Kambo, I have to live it too. And at the same time enjoy life as it comes and find a balance. It's about a sustainable balance here.

It's important that if you say something, if you share a thought, an idea, with someone, you walk the talk. Of course we are not perfect. I'm also just a human being. But what I'm doing in that moment, I can try to do impeccably. And not just with heart and love, but with awareness.

And of course it's a path and it's a process. The way I'm working now, sharing information about Kambo, sharing Kambo, is different from three years ago. It's different from two years ago, for example. It has shifted. We have to be aware that we can always learn more. There's always so much more to learn. That's why it's important for me to continue traveling to the tribes and connect with more insights and myths and stories and cosmology and views and perceptions and approaches, because it's never-ending. It's a vast ocean of knowledge out there.

At the same time, it's important to stay humble, very, very humble, because things can quickly go to your head, if there's gratitude from a person who sees you as the one who brought them the healing, which I don't think you did, you know? It's always important to stay humble and detached as well.

But it is a commitment. And personally, for my own life, that means I say yes to a commitment because I want to, and there are things that I'm missing and lacking. There are parts of my life that I'm just not living like other people would live them. But they have other lives too. What I'm doing is maybe quite specific. It's not the same energy as living in the city and doing specific things in the city. It's not that anymore. I'm living a totally different life.

It depends on which tradition of indigenous healing we are looking at. But a very common way for the healers of the villages to learn their ways is mostly in isolation and seclusion, for a long time, maybe for 10, 20, 30 years, until they receive the permission to start working with people.

There is a tribe in Colombia, the Kogi. They have people in their tribe who are talking to Mother Earth, and they are the transmitters of the message of Mother Earth. For them to be able to receive the messages from Mother Earth and give them to their people, they have to be receptive to them, and they learn to be receptive after they are born. I don't know exactly when, but they live in darkness for a specific number of years, so their senses get sharpened and they get attuned to speaking with the spirits. So that is a commitment, right? From the Western perspective, imagine you have to live in darkness for nine or 10 years before you can serve your community.

Other healers that I know have been receiving their teachings and living in isolation for 20 years, just in the jungle with the plants, doing that work. One healer that I know has to ask the plants for permission before he has sex with his wife. Another healer I know has a kind of codex: whenever he meets the people he works with, he never gives them a hug. He always keeps a two-meter distance from people. I asked him one time why, and he said it's for reasons of energy: "Don't take it personally. It's just that I need to be in my own energy, and I'm not allowed to come closer to you."

Whereas on the opposite side, you have people who call themselves "I'm the healer" and are going to rape women during an ayahuasca ceremony. These stories happen. You can find the information online about these things. People abuse their position.

But to be able to maintain the work that you share, you have to maintain a specific way of living. So the price that you pay can be many things, in general, also for the indigenous people. But you don't see it as something you lose, but as something you gain: a specific attitude and behavior, and keeping the rules and the framework, so you can serve the people with what you have learned. So it's a process of commitment.

So basically, for the indigenous people who are sharing the work, who are the bridge keepers between the worlds, it means a lot of isolation time, a lot of fasting, a lot of time with the elements in the jungle, the plants, the animals. A lot of time alone. So it means specific things for your experience of life and the world, but it's focused on your teaching, on your receiving of those teachings.

The only thing I would add is: when you say that you decide on it, it's often that it gets decided for you, or it just happens. It's not a conscious decision. For some people it's: you're going to be the next one, because your grandfather has been the healer of the tribe. Or something happens in your life, and you stumble onto that path through something that happened in your life, and you're on that path and in the flow, and it was never planned. So there are different levels to that. But once you are there, you commit to it. Yes.

Exactly, yes.

Yes, definitely. What I observe, and what you also mentioned, is the popularity around those sacred medicines. So first of all: what are sacred medicines? Throughout the history of humanity, human beings in different traditions and cultures have used what Mother Earth gives them to connect with the spirits or other dimensions. It might be magic mushrooms or peyote in Mexico, ayahuasca in South America, so many other possibilities all over the world.

Sacred medicine was always used in the context of indigenous tradition: for healing, for a rite of passage like an initiation, for consulting the spirits about something that is happening in the village, to find a solution, to connect with the ancestors. So the context of sacred medicines is old and ancient, and we have to see it in its context as well.

Nowadays, indigenous people drink ayahuasca regularly. Some tribes do it once a week, every Saturday, for example, as I have experienced. They drink it once a week all their lives, let's say ayahuasca. So it's implemented in their everyday life and culture, because they may discuss something that is important for their village, or this is the way they reenact a ritual and maintain their connection. And it's important, to stay strong as a community, to do this practice together. They still chant the old healing songs, they perform the old dances, and they have a strong choreography and structure around this. And they share prayers, words of gratitude. So when we talk about sacred medicine, there's this background to it.

And now there's a new thing going on: it's become the popular thing that people are into. What I sometimes feel is that people perceive those sacred medicines like going into a supermarket in the Western world, in the city, for example. I'm going into the supermarket, and I can get everything at any time of the year, and all I have to do is take it, put it into my basket and pay for it, and then I have it. There is a mentality about healing and approaching sacred medicines that is similar: I'm going to the supermarket and I can get whatever I need at any time, as long as I pay for it. But that is far away from what I have just described, the indigenous way, the context of using sacred medicines there.

I understand everybody who wants to consult sacred medicines to tap into intuition, to heal, to learn more about themselves, to heal something specific. We have this option nowadays. And to build the bridge between the indigenous, hopefully still sustainable, context, and there are surely uncontacted tribes we don't know about that still do it like this, and where we are at right now, we need to share information and education to make that happen. Because otherwise we approach it in the way of the supermarket: I want a quick fix, and as long as I make the payment, 3,000 dollars, after 10 days I'm going to be enlightened.

Because the approach is often the approach of consuming: I consume something, so I will feel better. I'm going to drink ayahuasca, it's going to heal me, and I'm going to feel better. But this is not the truth. I would not say that when you drink ayahuasca, and you drink it a lot, for many years, you are healed. I think that's not true.

What ayahuasca, or any other sacred medicine, is doing, and what the person in between is doing, the healer who is creating the space for you to experience it: they are tools and they are helpers. They support you to enter into something where you can perceive and learn something about yourself, where you have a possibility to enter the realm of understanding.

Because what happens when you work with sacred medicine? Something opens up, something gets moved. You see something. But you usually see it from the perspective of where you are right now, in your perception, in your mind. And still, when the ceremony's over, the hardest part starts, because you have to go back home and implement and integrate what you have learned in that ceremony, or what you have seen there. That's the hardest part. You have to change, and you have to commit to changing your life in the three-dimensional [world].

It's easy to drink ayahuasca, to sit in a sacred space of ceremony that is being held, and to experience it. It's a challenge, but it's easier than implementing the teachings in your everyday life. And often what happens is that it's hard to work with these medicines. It's not always a clear message that you receive from ayahuasca or something like this. What do you do with what you experience?

Because often, in the old, old way, if you wanted healing for yourself, you would never even drink the medicine. The traditional way was that you consulted the healer of your village with the intention to heal, and he would hold a ceremony for you, but he would drink the medicine. Only he, or she, would drink, and you would sit in that circle, and that person would consult the medicine and work on you. You would just be sitting there, or maybe you wouldn't even be sitting there. Maybe you would just be in your hut, in your bed, because you wouldn't be able to walk or something. The traditional way is actually that. But nowadays everybody comes running to drink those medicines.

But why? What is the context behind it? Because it's challenging to take it in, and it's a quick shift that happens in your whole system. How do you really digest all of that information? Working with the sacred medicines shouldn't be taken lightly, especially because they are sacred.

I know that it's our nature to be curious. We want to try things out, right? And that's okay. But as I see it, if you have a specific intention to work with a specific medicine, or even more than one medicine, stay with that intention and remind yourself: healing takes a long time. It's not going to be done in one day or in one year. The more medicine I drink, the more I understand that the healing happens in different ways, and not just when I'm drinking medicine. So you have to be aware of that.

Of course it's beautiful to dwell in those realms of non-dualistic bliss, peace and love, and we all want to be there all the time. That's also our nature. It can become addictive to always be in those enchanted spaces. And we know that a lot of psychoactive molecules, alkaloids, help us fight depression. They make us more alive, more happy or more enchanted. And of course we want more of that. That's also natural and normal.

But we have to really check in on the purpose: why am I joining that ceremony? Why do I want to do that medicine work? Because usually people start with a very specific thing in their life, and then what I observe is that you can really get lost and keep drinking the medicines, and maybe you don't even know anymore why you are in that flow of the medicine community, the medicine world. You're always in that energy. You're vibrating high, you like the social aspect of it, and it's all fine. But is that the true reason why we should work with those medicines? Because again, there is no endless supply. Someone has to regrow that ayahuasca vine. Someone has to take care of the chacruna, of all the Kambo frogs. Is it really necessary to smoke the Bufo alvarius medicine 15 to 30 times in a row? Is that necessary? Aren't we exploiting the medicines by not knowing why we are working with them anymore?

You can drink ayahuasca for years, but you are still the same person with the same problems. Why is that? Because you have not done your work in this world here, in 3D. That is the challenge, and that is the painful thing. And this is a tendency that I see. We have to be very aware and careful around this. And I'm not talking theory. I'm sharing something I have been going through myself. That's why I can share it.

Maybe we can even say a therapeutic approach versus a recreational approach. A general thing that I believe makes the difference here is taking breaks: taking breaks from working with sacred medicines, and using those breaks, when you are not always going into the DMT worlds, to stay in 3D and tap into what you have experienced from this perspective and from this dimension.

Because traditionally, if we study a little bit about ancient civilizations, the aim would not be that we keep drinking ayahuasca until the end of our life, or that we constantly need to consult the medicines. That shouldn't be the aim. It shouldn't be that you're going to drink ayahuasca for the next 20, 30, 40 years, unless you're living in an indigenous context, in a village where this is the tradition, and this is how you maintain your connection to the spirit. Well, that is another story. I'm talking about someone coming from the Western world and looking for healing.

I don't believe that these medicines are out there, and that Pachamama, Mother Earth, is giving us these possibilities, so that we are always going to drink them and use them. I don't think so. I believe you have to check in with yourself about why you are doing what you're doing. As I already mentioned: what do I want to work on? What do I want to heal? But take breaks from these medicines.

Because I also had a time in my life when I was so much in that flow that I was using specific medicines super frequently. On the other hand, if you share the medicines, maybe that's another story, if you work with them a lot yourself. But I personally believe it's good to take a break, like a year, two, three years, and really try to implement those teachings, no matter how hard it seems, and how much easier it would seem now to drink a cup of ayahuasca in a ceremony and loosen up and relax again about something that we couldn't solve. But healing takes time.

In my ceremonies, in all these seven years now, I was working a lot on my relationship with my parents, for example: seeing a lot of visions, having a lot of energy moving around that, purging a lot of those old energies that have not been serving me. But the true practice comes when I meet my parents in real life and spend time with them. This is where I can put it into practice, and this is where the real test happens. And I appreciate the possibility that we can do it in the three-dimensional [world].

But if it's just about getting high and always being in that space, and not being able to take a break, being afraid of taking a break from those medicines... You're not just drinking ayahuasca, you are much more than that. You should still see it in its sacredness, but as a helping tool, with a limited supply on the planet. And we also have to feel into the idea of sharing.

There is a very sad story going on around the Bufo alvarius toad in the Mexican desert. This species will go extinct. The medicine is very popular. People use it, people overuse it. Is it really necessary for one person to smoke it 40 times? Why don't you just use it a couple of times and think: okay, now more people can use the medicine to tap into what I have tapped into? This is something that is lacking entirely, an understanding that not many people have.

That's why I gave the example of consuming: we go into the supermarket, it's always there, and we buy it. This kind of approach, this kind of attitude, is not the attitude of someone who has always lived in the jungle and is self-sustained by the jungle or in his or her village. It comes from a Western matrix, so to say. And we have to be really careful and always check in with ourselves.

In my answer, I would like to focus on the holistic approach, on what I would wish for the world, or what I believe is important. Maybe I can share it like this, if it's okay for you.

I believe that first of all, it's about understanding the connection to myself: who am I, and what am I? Because it's important to put that focus on ourselves first, to be able to understand the rest. We are highly complex and sensitive beings, and we carry a lot of memories, emotions, behavioral patterns and traumatic experiences, all of us, in our lives. And we are all going through the same experiences in life. We have to understand that we are all the same in what we go through. If you're heartbroken and I'm heartbroken, we're going through the same suffering. So it's a shared experience, actually. If I have cancer and you have chronic headaches, there's no better or worse in what we are going through. It's exactly what we experience and what we wish to be liberated from, right?

Body, mind and heart: we are layers of so many things. We are such sensitive beings. Our bodies, our minds and our hearts are going to show us the way, so we've got to tune in and observe the signs, because we are all energy and vibration. And to be able to heal, first of all we have to understand that I have to respect and love myself. There's no other way around it.

We have the power. Everybody has the power to connect with themselves and to start this healing process. We have to connect with the idea of self-empowerment. And again, it's important that we understand and tap into this power: yes, I can create my own reality, and we can take action to create our own reality at every moment in time, right now, right now. You can create your own reality.

And it's important to be grateful for the life that we have, and for all the teachings that are coming, because it's all part of that universal flow, everything that is happening, even in the current situation. It's just a matter of perspective: where do we put ourselves, what do we do with the challenges in life? And to be able to reconnect with ourselves, not just with the practice of self-respect and self-love and the awareness around this, but with the awareness that we are all in this together. That's important.

And that we reconnect to our home. My home is not this house. It's my temporary housing. My home is the planet. It's Mother Earth. It's Pachamama. And if we want to connect to our essence, we've got to live in companionship with nature, and in companionship with the elements. We have the chance to tap into an old knowledge of health and healing and living together by consulting the indigenous wisdom and the indigenous ways.

Just to name the topics that I'm referring to: for example farming, hunting, our relationship to food, our relationship to fasting, our relationship to prayer and chanting and dancing, the traditions, the rituals, the rites. What's the source of our being? What's the sacredness of being? That's very important: that we reconnect to those understandings. Because usually the Western way of life is a globalized way of life, and we are so uprooted. But the indigenous way happens in a tribal way, in a community way.

And we can understand and learn that it's important to respect yourself, each other and your surrounding environment, as much as having compassion and supporting each other, also by sharing. We can tap into using sacred natural medicines, and we can learn more about the spirit in everything by understanding that everything belongs together. But often in Western life, we are lacking many of those things. Also a connection to food. A healthy and aware connection to the land that you're living on: what importance does the land you're living on have, what you're surrounded by? What kind of community are you living in?

So by connecting to the indigenous way of living, because there's a lot of wisdom in it. It's not about perfection, but there's the wisdom that has been repeated over thousands and thousands of years in different indigenous contexts. We can connect to an understanding of what our true nature is and what the important values of living are.

It's not just about: I want to heal, so I will drink ayahuasca, and I have my shaman, and they're going to heal me. I think that's wrong. We should not abuse the sacred medicines, and we should not give our power away: "They're going to heal me. The doctor and the hospital are going to help me. The shaman is going to heal me." You're the only one who is going to heal yourself, and no one else. You can use amazing tools and teachings and understanding to put it into practice, but it's still going to be you who's doing the work. No one will do it for you.

It would be great to inspire just one person to a more loving connection with themselves. And to save some jungle.

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much, hermano.

Thank you so much. Haux haux.