Latest / Plant More Worry Less: The Huachuma Foundation Podcast / The Wonderful Web of Huachuma: Marrying the Medicine, Chavín's Dark Chambers, and the Portal of the Present Moment

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The Wonderful Web of Huachuma: Marrying the Medicine, Chavín's Dark Chambers, and the Portal of the Present Moment · Plant More Worry Less: The Huachuma Foundation Podcast

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[music]
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SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Plant More Worry Less, a podcast by the Huachuma Foundation.
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SPEAKER_02: We are grateful for the supporters who make this show possible.
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SPEAKER_02: To learn more about our work or support our mission, please visit huachumafoundation.org.
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SPEAKER_02: Also note, in this podcast, we discuss sacred plant medicines for educational purposes only.
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SPEAKER_02: Nothing herein should be considered medical or legal advice.
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SPEAKER_02: And we do not encourage using any substances in places where they are illegal.
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SPEAKER_02: We hope you enjoy this very special episode.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: Hello, everybody.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining us.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: Today, it is just Hamid and I,
1:00
SPEAKER_00: and we're going to talk about one of my,
1:02
SPEAKER_00: maybe our favorite topics, which is going to Peru every year.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: And so today we have so much to catch you up on.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: We had two amazing groups in Peru this year, the Heart Path and the Fire Path.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: We also went to Chavin,
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SPEAKER_00: which we might even have a follow-up episode on,
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SPEAKER_00: more of a roundtable discussion with who joined us.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: And also I did a little bit of personal work with Miguel and the medicine this year.
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SPEAKER_00: So we have a lot of exciting things to talk about and talk through,
1:30
SPEAKER_00: and we're just so grateful that you decided to join us today.
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SPEAKER_02: Yes, definitely one of my favorite topics.
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SPEAKER_02: And there's a lot.
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SPEAKER_02: I also feel like we haven't had a show in a while, so we're getting hard.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: We're doing a lot of throat clearing to remember how to do this.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but I think it would be interesting if you shared because you went to Peru.
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SPEAKER_02: We're recording this in the middle of August,
1:58
SPEAKER_02: but you went to Peru in April and had a whole lot of adventures there.
2:05
SPEAKER_02: Obviously, this is about Huachuma, you know, our organization, so probably want to focus there.
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SPEAKER_02: But I'm curious, yeah, tell us about your trip.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, this trip was...
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SPEAKER_00: The way I can summarize it is that it was one of the most radical acts of self-love
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SPEAKER_00: that I have ever given myself.
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SPEAKER_00: And it's been so interesting to watch how that's transpired in my life coming home.
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SPEAKER_00: But I left in about mid-April, had a retreat, like sort of more of a yoga-y retreat.
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SPEAKER_00: And then in between that one and what we do and going to Shavin in mid-June
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SPEAKER_00: or beginning of June,
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SPEAKER_00: I I was working with Miguel and staying in Tarai,
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SPEAKER_00: and I ended up doing my very first diet with the medicine.
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SPEAKER_00: And it was, yeah, pretty life-changing.
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SPEAKER_00: And it's still like very much rippling out into my life and probably will be for a long time.
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SPEAKER_00: So I'm kind of just landing and waiting to see how all of that takes effect.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: But when I was there, it was really just...
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SPEAKER_00: So amazing to be connecting with the medicine myself and to be building
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SPEAKER_00: a relationship with Miguel and the Huachuma Garden that we have.
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SPEAKER_00: And for me, it was just the best case scenario ever.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
3:24
SPEAKER_02: You mentioned a diet.
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SPEAKER_02: What's a diet for people that don't know?
3:32
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
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SPEAKER_00: Well, this is a new, a little bit of a new concept with me working with plants in this way.
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SPEAKER_00: So feel free to like piggyback and correct me or, you know, also add on to this.
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SPEAKER_00: But the way I related to this was I'm coming in and I am committing myself and sort
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SPEAKER_00: of marrying the medicine.
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SPEAKER_00: And I always had this feeling that I was going to die at a plant, but I didn't know which one.
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SPEAKER_00: And then the idea for Huachuma came in and it came in after a couple of years
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SPEAKER_00: of working in Pretty intensely with the medicine with you and Miguel and what we do
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SPEAKER_00: in Peru.
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SPEAKER_00: And then I just kind of kept getting the calling to go deeper with it.
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SPEAKER_00: And for me,
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SPEAKER_00: that's what a diet felt like and still feels like is deepening the connection,
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SPEAKER_00: merging with the cactus consciousness and committing myself to it in a specific way
4:20
SPEAKER_00: beyond just being a participant in a ceremony.
4:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: Well, I've heard you say that before,
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SPEAKER_02: that it's like marrying the plant, which is an interesting way to describe it.
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SPEAKER_02: I think other people would use the same types of things.
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SPEAKER_02: They say like entering a deeper relationship with the plant or,
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SPEAKER_02: yeah, I mean, I don't want to take away from what you said.
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SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, you can continue.
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SPEAKER_02: I mean, I have my own understanding of diets based on what I've done.
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SPEAKER_02: But I'm curious as to yours.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, that's I guess that's mine.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: And I think before you maybe mentioned it was like a contract or something that you enter into.
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SPEAKER_00: And you were saying that like marriage is sort of a contract in a way.
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SPEAKER_00: So that's just another way of looking at it.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so I think that's that it even helps me understand what I did even more.
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SPEAKER_00: So I like came with my full heart and went all in and then hearing other people talk
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SPEAKER_00: about diets.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, that's exactly the feeling that I was having during the time there.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so the term diet is the English term.
5:30
SPEAKER_02: I guess I'll just give a little background on why I said that in the past.
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SPEAKER_02: I think it actually gets confused now.
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SPEAKER_02: A lot of people talk about the ayahuasca diet,
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SPEAKER_02: or some people will ask, just coming to a ceremony, what's the diet?
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SPEAKER_02: But the history of this is a little bit more nuanced because...
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SPEAKER_02: The term diet is obviously coming from the Spanish term dieta.
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SPEAKER_02: And dieta in certain traditions means something very specific.
6:03
SPEAKER_02: And I can't speak for all of the traditions.
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SPEAKER_02: I spent a lot of time in a Shipibo tradition, Shipibo people of the jungle.
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SPEAKER_02: They have a very established dieta tradition.
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SPEAKER_02: And in the Shipibo dietas,
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SPEAKER_02: what you do is you decide,
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SPEAKER_02: usually in consultation with your maestro,
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SPEAKER_02: like the curandero that you're working with, what plant is most helpful to you.
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SPEAKER_02: And then you would do a dieta with that plant where you would,
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SPEAKER_02: under the guidance of that The curandero usually agree to do a lot of things.
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SPEAKER_02: They call it a diet or a dieta because you're actually giving up food in a way,
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SPEAKER_02: like you're eating very simply.
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SPEAKER_02: Like in the Shipibo dietas, often it's like no salt.
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SPEAKER_02: No fats, like very limited fats, like no spicy foods.
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SPEAKER_02: So you're eating kind of like plainly.
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SPEAKER_02: And the reason for that is that you don't want to have foods with a strong vibration
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SPEAKER_02: or signature that are going to interfere with you connecting with the vibration of
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SPEAKER_02: the plant you're dieting.
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SPEAKER_02: And so there's like the physical diet.
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SPEAKER_02: Then there's also the things that you give up, right?
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SPEAKER_02: Like the curandero might say,
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SPEAKER_02: well, like for this plant, you need to give up thinking about certain things.
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SPEAKER_02: You give up sexual activity.
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SPEAKER_02: You give up, you know, like speaking.
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SPEAKER_02: Some of them are like silent, you know?
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SPEAKER_02: So like what you're giving up is what you're contracting with the plant for.
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SPEAKER_02: So you tell the plant basically like, hey, I'm going to agree to give up all these things.
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SPEAKER_02: And then the plant,
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SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_02: is agreeing that if you do that for a certain period of time that you commit to,
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SPEAKER_02: that the plant is going to teach you, right?
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SPEAKER_02: So that's the contract that you make with the plant.
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SPEAKER_02: It's like, I'll do this.
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SPEAKER_02: And then the plant's like, yep, if you do that, I will do this, right?
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SPEAKER_02: And so that's sort of like where I came to that contractual language.
8:15
SPEAKER_02: Of course, I used to be an attorney, so...
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SPEAKER_02: I speak of it like that because I'm like, oh yeah, it's like a contract.
8:22
SPEAKER_02: I know about contracts.
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SPEAKER_02: This is a contract.
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SPEAKER_02: And there are consequences just like in a contract.
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SPEAKER_02: Let's say you break your diet in the Shipibo tradition.
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SPEAKER_02: Then what's the consequence?
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SPEAKER_02: Well, there's penalties that come and you might have to repair it.
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SPEAKER_02: So it is like a court of law, but it's like a court of law in the jungle.
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SPEAKER_02: And it's dealing with other things other than, you know, like what we deal with in a court.
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SPEAKER_02: So there's that aspect.
8:53
SPEAKER_02: Then the reason I say it gets confused because people will say, what's the ayahuasca doctrine?
8:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
9:15
SPEAKER_02: That's completely different than a dieta.
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SPEAKER_02: That's just food that they say isn't going to be contraindicated for working
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SPEAKER_02: with ayahuasca, for instance.
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SPEAKER_02: Like it's not going to be fermented.
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SPEAKER_02: So that's like a totally different conversation.
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SPEAKER_02: So like when I hear the term diet,
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SPEAKER_02: sometimes it's like people using it that way, like the people of the jungle.
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SPEAKER_02: And then it gets even more complicated because the people of the jungle aren't
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SPEAKER_02: the only people that have worked with plants.
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SPEAKER_02: So many cultures,
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SPEAKER_02: including Western cultures,
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SPEAKER_02: European cultures,
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SPEAKER_02: have all had ways of working with plants to develop relationships with them.
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SPEAKER_02: But I think now the trendy term is diet.
9:59
SPEAKER_02: And I don't really attach so much to that because to me,
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SPEAKER_02: the way that
10:04
SPEAKER_01: You connect with the plant.
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SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be like the Shipibo way or this way or that way.
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SPEAKER_02: That we all can connect with plants in powerful ways.
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SPEAKER_02: And there's many things we can learn from how these people do it,
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SPEAKER_02: but that isn't the only way to do it.
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SPEAKER_02: So I just, you know, that's my framework.
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SPEAKER_02: So I'm not disagreeing at all.
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SPEAKER_02: Actually, I think like marrying the plant is a good way to describe it.
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SPEAKER_02: So did you, did you get married to Huachuma?
10:37
SPEAKER_00: I did.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
10:39
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
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SPEAKER_00: We had our honeymoon in Shavin.
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SPEAKER_00: So it was nice.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
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SPEAKER_00: That works well for me because, you know, I name everything and sort of personify everything.
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SPEAKER_00: So that was a good way for me to relate to it.
10:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
10:58
SPEAKER_02: Tell us about the marriage then.
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SPEAKER_02: How did that go?
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SPEAKER_02: What did it entail?
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well,
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SPEAKER_00: I'm happy that you brought up the Shipibo way of doing things because that's really
11:11
SPEAKER_00: the only way that I've ever heard of doing a diet was like sort of in the jungle,
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SPEAKER_00: not a lot of food, not a lot of just like very kind of strict rules.
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SPEAKER_00: And Miguel doesn't really work that way.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: And he said the cactus is a bit more lenient and doesn't really work
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SPEAKER_00: that way either, which,
11:27
SPEAKER_00: you know,
11:27
SPEAKER_00: I was curious about,
11:29
SPEAKER_00: but I had my own sort of expectations and judgments and wonderings about that.
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SPEAKER_00: And yeah.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: So with that,
11:37
SPEAKER_00: the food was really like just eat well,
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SPEAKER_00: just eat clean and not a lot of like heavy fats or things that are hard to digest.
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SPEAKER_00: He said no bread,
11:47
SPEAKER_00: but he was really like just eat well because Huachuma,
11:50
SPEAKER_00: you know, you're with the medicine all day and it depletes certain things.
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SPEAKER_00: So his rules were like eat clean and eat well.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: And so I was cooking my own food,
11:57
SPEAKER_00: which I think was like part of the whole magic of it was it was all my vibration
12:02
SPEAKER_00: and my energy that I was putting into my body.
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SPEAKER_00: So as far as food goes, it's a bit more lenient than being in the jungle with ayahuasca stuff.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know,
12:10
SPEAKER_00: like speaking about the difference between the cactus and the different traditions
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SPEAKER_00: from the jungle, I was kind of waiting for the intensity of that to come.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: I was sort of judging the experience a little bit at the beginning,
12:22
SPEAKER_00: and I was waiting for the sledgehammer to come down and me to be sort
12:25
SPEAKER_00: of like really strict and going into that.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: And it didn't And now I as I was going through it, I was like, oh, this is so perfect.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: Just just the way that this goes,
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SPEAKER_00: because Miguel really left me sort of to my own devices to connect with the plant.
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SPEAKER_00: It wasn't about him, which is really cool.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: He sort of held the space and stepped out of the way and let me do my thing.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: And so, like,
12:50
SPEAKER_00: I guess to just give you like a timeline of how it went,
12:53
SPEAKER_00: we did two ceremonies at first just with like random groups who were coming.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: And that was really helpful for me to do sort of those two warm-up ceremonies
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SPEAKER_00: because I had just gone through.
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SPEAKER_00: I got and done with a very busy,
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SPEAKER_00: intense yoga retreat and we were moving and doing so many different things.
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SPEAKER_00: So the fact that I got those two ceremonies to start with was really helpful because
13:13
SPEAKER_00: then I was like in the cactus vibration and the vibration of the land and
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SPEAKER_00: the prayers and starting to really tap into my own prayers with that.
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SPEAKER_00: But I wasn't really sure if the diet had started yet.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: Like Miguel seems to be, you know, a little bit just going with the flow.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: And that's, I think, a lot of how people are in Peru.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: But I was like, okay, did it start yet?
13:33
SPEAKER_00: I know we started ceremony yet, but like, is this the opening of the container?
13:37
SPEAKER_00: And so I found myself getting a little bit frustrated because I like to know like
13:41
SPEAKER_00: when it's game time and when it's not,
13:42
SPEAKER_00: like when do I really need to show up and when not?
13:45
SPEAKER_00: So I was feeling like, okay, I'd like a little bit more instruction.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: But then I guess the third technically ceremony that we had,
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SPEAKER_00: he brought out his chanupa and the tobacco and then it was very clear that this was
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SPEAKER_00: the opening of Of our like serious diet container.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: So I was really grateful for that.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: And with Miguel,
14:05
SPEAKER_00: I think because he follows the Red Road traditions,
14:07
SPEAKER_00: there was smoking of the pipe involved to open and close each day,
14:11
SPEAKER_00: which like was really one of my favorite,
14:14
SPEAKER_00: favorite parts of this whole process with him was the tobaccos and sort of sharing
14:19
SPEAKER_00: that with him.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: And that first day we, uh,
14:27
SPEAKER_00: I drank the medicine on the land.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: But before this, I actually got to make the medicine with him.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: It was just him and I.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: And then he would leave me for a couple hours.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: And I was just there in his kitchen making the medicine and talking and singing to
14:37
SPEAKER_00: the cactus and just kind of in my own world with it and praying to it.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: And then the first day I got to drink it on the land.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: We smoked the tobaccos.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: He served me the medicine.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: And then he just left till like 5 p.m.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: And I was just there,
14:52
SPEAKER_00: you know,
14:52
SPEAKER_00: at the cactus garden,
14:53
SPEAKER_00: which was so amazing because this was the garden that we had been raising money for
14:58
SPEAKER_00: for the last, I don't know.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: We planted some of the first cactus there and we're raising money
15:06
SPEAKER_00: to actually get this thing terraced and built.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: And then I just have this like so much love in my heart for this little garden.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: And so to be able to be there all day with the cactus and with
15:17
SPEAKER_00: the medicine was really such a treat for me.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: There's probably nowhere else I would have rather have been.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: And at first I was like, oh,
15:23
SPEAKER_00: but maybe I want to be up in my little casita because my little house is so cute
15:26
SPEAKER_00: and nice and I have everything I need there.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: But And like,
15:30
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
15:30
SPEAKER_00: an hour into that first day,
15:31
SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh no, this is the way, this is the perfect way for me.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: And he said the medicine told him.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: He had a ceremony.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: He said, okay, so how's this going to go with Dani?
15:41
SPEAKER_00: What does she need?
15:42
SPEAKER_00: What do I need?
15:43
SPEAKER_00: And this was his first time ever holding a diet container.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: So he So I'm really glad that the medicine told him that.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: And I had three days there like that.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: So not necessarily in a row,
16:17
SPEAKER_00: like two days in a row, then a day off or two days off and then another day there.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: And during my day on the land,
16:24
SPEAKER_00: I would start off after he would leave singing and just kind of waiting for
16:29
SPEAKER_00: the medicine to come on.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: For anybody who's worked with Huachuma, you know it's not instant.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: It kind of takes an hour and a half, maybe two hours for it to be kind of like fully there.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: So I would start off with singing with my rattle.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: I brought my altar.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: We had a tent set up, so I had all my things and my instruments close by.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: And then I would start working on the land.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: So in my time there,
16:51
SPEAKER_00: I was raking and weeding and cleaning up all the little cactus yards and
16:57
SPEAKER_00: And I'm building paths like I was just moving dirt around basically for a while
17:02
SPEAKER_00: and creating little paths to go to the upper levels.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: And Miguel came back one day and he was like, God, you really changed the face of this.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: And so I would kind of work on the land until the medicine kicked in
17:13
SPEAKER_00: and I was getting a little like heavy in my body and kind
17:16
SPEAKER_00: of forgetting what I was actually like doing.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: But then once that happened, I would go lay down in the tent and meditate.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: And part of The reason why I wanted to be with the medicine in this way,
17:29
SPEAKER_00: because I didn't want any distractions.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: I didn't want distractions at the altars or needing to pray or needing to sing
17:35
SPEAKER_00: or people around or anywhere to walk.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to just sit there and go inside and be with the medicine in a very intense way.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: I kind of wanted to really push the edges of what I know Huachuma to be so that
17:48
SPEAKER_00: when I'm working with this,
17:49
SPEAKER_00: maybe even with others, that I kind of know where they are.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: And so I...
17:55
SPEAKER_00: I can come back even when I'm not at the intensity of that medicine,
17:59
SPEAKER_00: that edge, I can come back to the fullness of it.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: And I know what's possible because those pathways have sort of been formed in that way.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: So that was like part of my intention.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: And then I would climb up on the land.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: It's like on this mountainside.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: And I would climb up and like be on top of the rocks and looking at Apu Linli and Apu.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: Sending out prayers for people with my chimes that you gave me.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: And I was calling it Sonic Cedar.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: So I'd go up there and just think about people that I love.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: And I would hit the chimes and just, you know, send it.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: And then I would come back down.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: And one of my favorite times was when I was playing all my instruments for the cactus.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: So I was walking around with my big, cool double flute that I got.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: And playing my harmonica for them and my chacapa and all my chimes,
18:44
SPEAKER_00: those little chimes you got me.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: I like went around to all the cactus and I played for them
18:48
SPEAKER_00: and was just giving them all kinds of sound.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: And yeah,
18:53
SPEAKER_00: and then Miguel would show up and I would be like laying on the ground amongst
18:56
SPEAKER_00: the cactus or kind of walking around or doing something.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: And then we would smoke the tobaccos and sort of close the prayer for the day.
19:07
SPEAKER_02: That's a lot.
19:11
SPEAKER_02: It's interesting because what came up for me at the beginning was just remembering
19:16
SPEAKER_02: that huachuma is a master plant.
19:22
SPEAKER_02: Not unlike ayahuasca, really considered to be a master teacher.
19:30
SPEAKER_02: And so it's interesting if you compare the diet practices of Like the jungle,
19:37
SPEAKER_02: they don't diet ayahuasca.
19:42
SPEAKER_02: They diet other plants and they use ayahuasca as the master plant to connect
19:48
SPEAKER_02: with those other plants.
19:50
SPEAKER_02: So it's interesting also to just do a dieta with the master plant itself,
19:56
SPEAKER_02: with ayahuasca or with huachuma.
20:00
SPEAKER_02: I think that's less common than...
20:04
SPEAKER_02: Working with more subtle plants.
20:07
SPEAKER_02: So it's interesting.
20:08
SPEAKER_02: I actually don't know very many people who have dieted huachuma in like a specific way.
20:17
SPEAKER_02: So, you know,
20:19
SPEAKER_02: the fact that it's sort of being intuited on the fly,
20:23
SPEAKER_02: I think is part of the way it has to be because I don't think there's
20:27
SPEAKER_02: a long tradition of doing that that way.
20:30
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
20:30
SPEAKER_02: Did Miguel talk about that?
20:33
SPEAKER_00: Um, no, not so much.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: He just, last year when I asked him, we were walking at Apuchecticaca.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you remember that last little walk that us three took.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: I said, Miguel, do you ever do diets with Huachuma?
20:46
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, yeah, I recommend it.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, okay.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: He's like, for you?
20:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I recommend it.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: And then, yeah,
20:53
SPEAKER_00: he just said it was his first time holding the diet container
20:56
SPEAKER_00: and He didn't really talk about anybody else doing it.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: And when looking online, too,
21:01
SPEAKER_00: to try to just get a little bit of research done before I went,
21:07
SPEAKER_00: there wasn't really anything at all out there.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: But I kind of liked that because then it was like left to my own.
21:17
SPEAKER_00: There was no like conditioning or narratives or anything I read or anything
21:21
SPEAKER_00: that was planted in my own mind.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: It was sort of just, it was all about the connection and yeah.
21:31
SPEAKER_02: What do you feel is the teaching?
21:34
SPEAKER_02: Usually after a diet,
21:39
SPEAKER_02: let's say a plant,
21:40
SPEAKER_02: there's something that comes through that the plant has delivered on its promise
21:46
SPEAKER_02: to teach you.
21:50
SPEAKER_02: But maybe it's hard to put into words,
21:53
SPEAKER_02: but also there's things that come through, so I'm just curious what you got.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Okay, the nugget.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: So the nugget that I come home with, what the diet has given me, yeah.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's like many little stories that I could tell about the nuggets
22:10
SPEAKER_00: that I come home with that was really, really beautiful and beneficial.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: And I guess I'll just start with one of my favorites,
22:17
SPEAKER_00: which was, you know, my intention was to merge with the consciousness of the cactus.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: And so one day on the land, I was like sitting up there at what I called Eagle Rock, right?
22:28
SPEAKER_00: Looking out at Abu Lindley and I was just like,
22:30
SPEAKER_00: thank you so much,
22:31
SPEAKER_00: Huachuma,
22:32
SPEAKER_00: for everything you've given me,
22:34
SPEAKER_00: for this moment, for this diet, for whatever, this moment, everything.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: And then what I heard was, no, thank you.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, thank me.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: And I felt like it was the medicine sort of talking to me and thanking me.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: And I said, for what?
22:48
SPEAKER_00: I drank you.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: I kind of felt bad about it in a way.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: And it was like, no, it's good for us to feel what it feels like to be a human.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: Like we don't get to laugh and cry and walk and hike and pray and do all these things.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: We're just sort of in this state of Yeah.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: Then I was just sitting there and there was this merging happening
23:22
SPEAKER_00: where I was experiencing life as the cactus and the cactus was experiencing life
23:27
SPEAKER_00: as me.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: And I was just watching Apu Linli and there was all kinds of sounds and visuals
23:31
SPEAKER_00: and it was all just sort of happening.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: And there wasn't any thought.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: There wasn't any anything.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: It was just the experiencing.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: And for me, that was like, oh, that's the merging.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: So that was one that I come home with.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: And I share that because there's a lot of people out there
23:47
SPEAKER_00: who are probably getting interested in Huachuma.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: And maybe it'll be helpful to know that it actually wants to work with us.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: And then I had this thought when I got home.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, maybe it's like AI.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's learning us so that whenever we all continue to work with it,
24:01
SPEAKER_00: it has like more information so that it can serve us even better.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: So the more that we drink it and work with it, it like...
24:10
SPEAKER_00: Learns the human condition and can help us heal.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: So that's one of the nuggets.
24:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's interesting because it's so hard to talk about consciousness, I guess.
24:29
SPEAKER_02: And consciousness,
24:31
SPEAKER_02: the way we think about it being such a part of our human experience,
24:37
SPEAKER_02: we forget that everything is really conscious in a way.
24:43
SPEAKER_02: You know, every cell in our body is doing things, right?
24:47
SPEAKER_02: Is constantly alive and doing complex processes that we have no mental...
24:56
SPEAKER_02: So obviously there's consciousness there.
25:01
SPEAKER_02: It's just beyond our conscious awareness, right?
25:07
SPEAKER_02: So to hear you speak about the cactus consciousness,
25:11
SPEAKER_02: I think a lot of people sort of dismiss this because they're like,
25:16
SPEAKER_02: well, cactus doesn't have a brain, and a brain is what makes us conscious.
25:21
SPEAKER_02: And it's like, that isn't actually...
25:25
SPEAKER_02: That's something that I identify with.
25:27
SPEAKER_02: All life,
25:29
SPEAKER_02: all plants even have consciousness and in some way,
25:33
SPEAKER_02: maybe even more intelligent than ours because we're very focused on survival.
25:40
SPEAKER_02: That's the way our senses are tuned.
25:43
SPEAKER_02: Plants, they have consciousness.
25:46
SPEAKER_02: Possibly even more senses.
25:48
SPEAKER_02: I was talking to one of our friends about this.
25:51
SPEAKER_02: There's a whole field studying plants.
25:56
SPEAKER_02: Humans have what we have, eyesight, we can hear, most of us.
26:02
SPEAKER_02: We can touch, we can smell, we can taste.
26:07
SPEAKER_02: Was like very limited senses, like five, right?
26:11
SPEAKER_02: And maybe there's like intuition.
26:13
SPEAKER_02: There's like this telepathic sixth senses.
26:18
SPEAKER_02: But plants can, you know, do things that we can't do.
26:22
SPEAKER_02: You know,
26:22
SPEAKER_02: they can sense radio waves,
26:26
SPEAKER_02: electromagnetic frequencies that we don't have the ability to sense.
26:30
SPEAKER_02: They seem to be able to communicate in ways that That defy our understanding
26:36
SPEAKER_02: of communication, like over long distances.
26:41
SPEAKER_02: They seem to be able to feel,
26:43
SPEAKER_02: of course, touch,
26:46
SPEAKER_02: but also probably hear and smell in ways that we can't,
26:51
SPEAKER_02: in much more complicated ways.
26:53
SPEAKER_02: There's an experiment that the roots of a tree will look for water,
26:59
SPEAKER_02: and a lot of people thought, well, how is it finding the water?
27:02
SPEAKER_02: Is it just...
27:04
SPEAKER_02: What sense is it using?
27:05
SPEAKER_02: Of course,
27:05
SPEAKER_02: like we project our own human experience onto the plant
27:09
SPEAKER_02: and assume it must be something that we're familiar with.
27:12
SPEAKER_02: Like it must be seeing, smelling, because that's all we know.
27:16
SPEAKER_02: But it's probably sensing in a way that we don't even know
27:19
SPEAKER_02: because some experiments displayed like the sound of water
27:24
SPEAKER_02: where there's no water underground and the roots went towards that sound.
27:29
SPEAKER_02: Well, there's no ear on the roots, so how does it do that?
27:32
SPEAKER_02: And is it hearing or is it sensing vibration?
27:36
SPEAKER_02: Like we don't even know.
27:38
SPEAKER_02: So a lot of,
27:39
SPEAKER_02: I think what the diet for me is,
27:42
SPEAKER_02: like when I work with the plant,
27:44
SPEAKER_02: it's not just like connecting with like the molecules,
27:50
SPEAKER_02: you know,
27:51
SPEAKER_02: the plant brew,
27:52
SPEAKER_02: but actually, yeah,
27:54
SPEAKER_02: the consciousness of that plant is And the consciousness of huachuma as
27:59
SPEAKER_02: a whole is really fascinating to me because I do feel as
28:03
SPEAKER_02: though there is this larger consciousness of huachuma,
28:10
SPEAKER_02: the cactus in general.
28:11
SPEAKER_02: So it might not just be the one plant there, but all of the plants.
28:15
SPEAKER_02: And if there is some kind of shared consciousness going on there,
28:20
SPEAKER_02: then our relationship with it and our working with it is really Fascinating
28:25
SPEAKER_02: because you said, you know, maybe it's trying to learn who we are.
28:30
SPEAKER_02: And I do sense that, that that's true for me.
28:35
SPEAKER_02: You know,
28:35
SPEAKER_02: like the cactus here in the States that are being grown here,
28:40
SPEAKER_02: even it could be the same species as being grown in Peru,
28:44
SPEAKER_02: but it's growing around different people.
28:49
SPEAKER_02: It seems to be different in various ways and maybe adapting to us or the environment
28:56
SPEAKER_02: in ways that we really don't understand.
29:00
SPEAKER_02: So I find that that part is the most fascinating for me is the cactus consciousness.
29:09
SPEAKER_02: People that haven't worked with Huachuma that hear this,
29:14
SPEAKER_02: they're like, what the heck are these people talking about?
29:16
SPEAKER_02: But actually...
29:18
SPEAKER_02: I do feel like when you work with Huachuma,
29:21
SPEAKER_02: you start to get a sense of what it's like to be a cactus.
29:25
SPEAKER_02: Like actually what is their experience, right?
29:31
SPEAKER_02: And what it feels like.
29:33
SPEAKER_02: And it feels great.
29:35
SPEAKER_02: Honestly,
29:35
SPEAKER_02: it probably is just they're in a state of consciousness all the time that we kind
29:42
SPEAKER_02: of glimpse when we work with their medicine.
29:45
SPEAKER_02: Does that resonate for you?
29:48
SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: Definitely resonates.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
29:52
SPEAKER_00: a couple of podcast episodes ago,
29:54
SPEAKER_00: I think we were talking maybe to Ross,
29:57
SPEAKER_00: and I feel like you threw me a trick question.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: You were like, what is Huachuma to you?
30:00
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, well, he's like grandfather and all these things.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: And I think that was like one level of understanding that I had.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: But now I really don't I really feel it as a spirit and as a consciousness fully.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that it's like masculine or I'm sure it has masculine attributes to it.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: But, you know,
30:17
SPEAKER_00: I definitely feel it as more of a consciousness and even like everything we do with
30:21
SPEAKER_00: the Huachuma Foundation and the garden.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: It's like we're not just being of service to Miguel or the land.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: We're being in service to this larger cactus consciousness that we get to work with in ceremony.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: So it feels like we're giving back to that whole thing instead of just
30:38
SPEAKER_00: a specific part in Peru or just a specific person.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: It actually feels way bigger than that.
30:46
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
30:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like the global consciousness of huachuma that's there.
30:52
SPEAKER_02: And I think that that also is part of the teaching that comes through for me
30:58
SPEAKER_02: when working with huachuma is also to remind us that there's a global consciousness
31:04
SPEAKER_02: of humanity too.
31:06
SPEAKER_02: And that there's this idea that our consciousness is separate.
31:11
SPEAKER_02: And I think this comes from our schooling and Western science and the way they want
31:17
SPEAKER_02: to look at someone's brain under an MRI, like what's going on in their brain.
31:22
SPEAKER_02: But it kind of isolates our experience to our body like it's our own experience.
31:28
SPEAKER_02: Whereas There's a collective consciousness.
31:32
SPEAKER_02: And I think there's more and more awareness of this in the mainstream.
31:37
SPEAKER_02: Podcasts like the Telepathy Tapes, for instance, really trying to highlight this.
31:46
SPEAKER_02: There's ways that go beyond us individually.
31:50
SPEAKER_02: We can have shared thoughts with people.
31:53
SPEAKER_02: That's common.
31:55
SPEAKER_02: You can have a shared experience with even your dog.
31:59
SPEAKER_02: Me and my dog, I always joke, I'm like, we have a Bluetooth connection.
32:03
SPEAKER_02: I just know in the middle of the night if he gets up, I already am up.
32:07
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't make any noise, but he just...
32:11
SPEAKER_02: We're just connected like that.
32:13
SPEAKER_02: And so sometimes I actually don't know if it's me or him.
32:18
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, wait, did I wake up and then you woke up or did you wake up and then I wake up?
32:23
SPEAKER_02: Because it's just a shared thing.
32:26
SPEAKER_02: And I know that mothers experience that with their babies, like a lot of mothers.
32:32
SPEAKER_02: The baby doesn't need to ask.
32:34
SPEAKER_02: They know there's this communication happening.
32:37
SPEAKER_02: So I think...
32:38
SPEAKER_02: Part of it is unique to working with plants in this way,
32:43
SPEAKER_02: but I guess what I'm getting at is that I think that the plants are just trying
32:48
SPEAKER_02: to show us that that's the way we are anyway and that we've forgotten.
32:56
SPEAKER_02: And so it's really putting us back into our humanity and that is part of our humanity, right?
33:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: And thank you for like pulling the cactus consciousness around to
33:08
SPEAKER_00: the larger consciousness and like what's available to us.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: And that's like,
33:12
SPEAKER_00: if it's okay,
33:13
SPEAKER_00: that's another thing I kind of want to share about what I come home
33:16
SPEAKER_00: with is like how real everything really felt to me as far as the prayers,
33:22
SPEAKER_00: like Having some stuff on my vision board and watching that come to fruition and
33:27
SPEAKER_00: then in real time working with the medicine and then all of a sudden I'm praying to
33:31
SPEAKER_00: the waters and it starts sprinkling or the eagles fly over or praying to the wind
33:35
SPEAKER_00: and now my window is banging because the wind just picked up out of nowhere.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: And it's stuff that sounds,
33:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:44
SPEAKER_00: maybe kind of crazy as I'm saying it,
33:46
SPEAKER_00: but to be in the moment and living it, it's like, oh my goodness, this is all...
33:50
SPEAKER_00: So real or like Miguel and I leaving the land for the first time after the first,
33:55
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:55
SPEAKER_00: diet ceremony thing and there's eagles above and the sun is setting
33:59
SPEAKER_00: and it's like great spirit is in the clouds and you can see it
34:02
SPEAKER_00: and you can feel it all around.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: And so I remember thinking like, wow, this is really real.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: Not just Huachuma is real,
34:11
SPEAKER_00: but it was like the practice of praying to the elements and the directions and
34:15
SPEAKER_00: the altars.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: Like this is not just something that you and Miguel regarded.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: And like we've talked about this before, but they just potentiate each other.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's helpful for me as I'm continuing along this path
34:51
SPEAKER_00: to not just feel like this is just something I'm hearing you guys say
34:55
SPEAKER_00: and copying it,
34:55
SPEAKER_00: but it's coming from a place deep inside me of my own prayers,
34:59
SPEAKER_00: but also the belief that the prayers are real and they're working and great spirit,
35:04
SPEAKER_00: great mystery is listening and the consciousness around us is responding.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: So I think it's an important step for me as I come forward into like working with
35:15
SPEAKER_00: the medicine in a deeper way and serving it that like it's important that I feel
35:20
SPEAKER_00: that this is real.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: So that was that was a really big moment
35:27
SPEAKER_00: and it's still happening like it's still I'm home now and have been still tapping
35:32
SPEAKER_00: into that.
35:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:37
SPEAKER_02: Well, you're married now to the cactus, right?
35:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:42
SPEAKER_02: So hopefully the teachings continue.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: I think they will.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: I really do.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: And I guess just to like...
35:54
SPEAKER_00: I love so much all the things outside of me.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: And I did my final, what I call my final exam.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: So Miguel left early to go to Chavin where we were going to meet him in Lima and
36:32
SPEAKER_00: then do the bus and go there, which I'm sure we'll get into that story next.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: But he left me there for a couple of days by myself.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: So I thought, OK, well, I have a couple of days.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't really want to like go into town and keep eating anymore.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: I don't really want to go meet up with friends.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: I still felt very raw and very in this container.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: So I decided to have my own ceremony.
36:51
SPEAKER_00: So I went to town,
36:53
SPEAKER_00: bought myself a cactus,
36:54
SPEAKER_00: cooked it in the way that he taught me, and then had myself a day.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: And that was a beautiful day.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: That was the one where the eagles came and the second altar and the air came and
37:07
SPEAKER_00: the third altar and the sun was coming up and it was all misty and smoky for
37:11
SPEAKER_00: the first altar.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: It was like the most magical day ever.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: But then in the fourth altar,
37:17
SPEAKER_00: before I started praying, I decided this altar was going to be dedicated to me.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: There's nobody else around.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: Nobody else I want to send it to.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: It just felt like a way for me to close this container and sort of make it about me.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: So I thought, okay, I'm going to leave this cedar prayer.
37:35
SPEAKER_00: And I start talking to myself as if I'm like my higher self,
37:39
SPEAKER_00: talking to this personality of Danny.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: And I was just honestly sobbing, telling myself, I'm so proud of you.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: And I know you mess it up,
37:49
SPEAKER_00: but probably more often than you don't,
37:51
SPEAKER_00: but you keep going and you have so many beautiful people around you.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: And I was just really loving myself.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: And I went on and on, you know, with the cedar for me, which was really...
38:06
SPEAKER_00: Probably something I'll never forget.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: Felt like a milestone for me.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: And I felt like, wow,
38:10
SPEAKER_00: I've been working with these altars for about five years now,
38:13
SPEAKER_00: four years pretty intensely,
38:15
SPEAKER_00: and thinking it was all about the altars,
38:17
SPEAKER_00: sending the prayers and sending it and praying to them,
38:21
SPEAKER_00: praying to all of these things outside of me,
38:23
SPEAKER_00: but also knowing I have all the altars within me.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: And just to think where all this devotion and dedication is,
38:30
SPEAKER_00: And by the way,
38:31
SPEAKER_00: it was like every day,
38:32
SPEAKER_00: like creating sound ceremonies about the water or about clarity or yoga classes all
38:36
SPEAKER_00: about the fire and like really not taking a day off from this,
38:42
SPEAKER_00: even just if it's like a small intention.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: And where it led me was on my knees in front of my altar praying to myself.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: It was like such a moment,
38:50
SPEAKER_00: like, oh, my God, I thought I was praying to all of these things outside of me.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: And It just led me back to me.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: And what a beautiful thing because I didn't even know where any of this was going
39:03
SPEAKER_00: to lead me,
39:04
SPEAKER_00: like studying the water,
39:06
SPEAKER_00: studying this prayer to clarity or whatever altar it was in.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: I had no expectations.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: It was purely about the practice.
39:13
SPEAKER_00: I didn't,
39:13
SPEAKER_00: you know,
39:14
SPEAKER_00: ever think I would be dieting the medicine or know that that was going to come up
39:18
SPEAKER_00: or anything.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: And it just really taught me that,
39:21
SPEAKER_00: like, It's not even about where you think things are going to lead you.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: It's about the practice and being in the moment with the prayers.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: And that is the destination.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: Like that is where we're trying to get.
39:32
SPEAKER_00: And if I had any assumptions or expectations about where all of this was going
39:36
SPEAKER_00: to lead me, then it probably would have stifled that moment that I had.
39:39
SPEAKER_00: And it probably wouldn't have been as sweet and as impactful as it was.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah,
39:45
SPEAKER_00: it was just a lesson in like stay in the moment,
39:48
SPEAKER_00: stay in the practice and just let it take you.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, where it's going to take you.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: And that's actually a lesson from the Bhagavad Gita that I remember really that struck me.
39:59
SPEAKER_00: And it was about doing the work in the moment without worrying about the outcome.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: And if you're present, that's like you're in the God frequency.
40:05
SPEAKER_00: If you're present with it and you're in that creative mode and process
40:09
SPEAKER_00: without worrying about it,
40:11
SPEAKER_00: then the end result is going to be that God frequency and that presence.
40:15
SPEAKER_00: But if you... Yeah, anyway, I don't know.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of hard to put into words, but it was a very big...
40:22
SPEAKER_00: A moment and lesson for me, for me, to me.
40:26
SPEAKER_00: And it's great.
40:28
SPEAKER_00: And now I come home and I'm seeing all the ways that I don't love myself.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: So this is like how the ceremony for me happens is like I come back home
40:36
SPEAKER_00: and I'm seeing all the ways that I'm not in alignment with my heart and all
40:40
SPEAKER_00: the things that I don't, that I do to treat myself not so nicely.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: And so it's been a big month of awareness for me and like, oh,
40:46
SPEAKER_00: I actually,
40:47
SPEAKER_00: when I'm here,
40:48
SPEAKER_00: I have to really work on rewiring all of these things that I do
40:51
SPEAKER_00: and all these patterns that I'm in that aren't so self-lovey.
40:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, wow.
41:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I agree on the self-love part and feel like this is the...
41:06
SPEAKER_02: If you want to just cut to the chase on what it's all about,
41:12
SPEAKER_02: what our journey here on Earth,
41:14
SPEAKER_02: a lot of it is about is to come to love ourselves, really.
41:21
SPEAKER_02: Because that's hard.
41:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's hard.
41:27
SPEAKER_02: I just want to say on one of the things you mentioned,
41:29
SPEAKER_02: which is the path, you know, like there's this, I think it's kind of Yeah.
41:50
SPEAKER_02: Where it's very goal-oriented.
41:53
SPEAKER_02: Where it's very much like, okay, what's my intention?
41:58
SPEAKER_02: What am I gonna get out of this?
42:00
SPEAKER_02: Like, what is this doing for me?
42:03
SPEAKER_02: And if it's not doing something for me, then actually I'm not allowed to do this.
42:08
SPEAKER_02: There's this self-shaming, so I think subconsciously there's this need to justify.
42:16
SPEAKER_02: Working with plant medicine,
42:17
SPEAKER_02: and this is a big conversation,
42:19
SPEAKER_02: but I think it does come from lack of self-love,
42:22
SPEAKER_02: which comes from cultural shaming around certain things
42:27
SPEAKER_02: and maybe just religious stuff too that's embedded within our society.
42:33
SPEAKER_02: But then people wanting something out of the experience that they can quantify,
42:40
SPEAKER_02: label, bottle, and say, this is what I got out of it.
42:45
SPEAKER_02: And also,
42:47
SPEAKER_02: if they keep going back into plant medicine spaces to know that they're on the path
42:52
SPEAKER_02: to somewhere, that there is a destination, right?
42:56
SPEAKER_02: It's like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
43:00
SPEAKER_02: If you continue to work with Huachuma,
43:03
SPEAKER_02: ayahuasca,
43:03
SPEAKER_02: then you keep going,
43:05
SPEAKER_02: then you do all these dietas, then you're getting closer to something, right?
43:10
SPEAKER_02: Do you sense that that is there in the consciousness?
43:13
SPEAKER_02: That that is there.
43:14
SPEAKER_02: It's like embedded.
43:16
SPEAKER_02: It's almost like not even acknowledged, but it's the way it is.
43:20
SPEAKER_02: It's like the paradigm.
43:22
SPEAKER_02: And for me, I'm trying to dissolve paradigms.
43:25
SPEAKER_02: So I'm a little bit like, well, why is that framework even there in our consciousness?
43:32
SPEAKER_02: That we think like coming to pray with Huachuma,
43:36
SPEAKER_02: going to a ceremony and you're going to keep going and we're going
43:39
SPEAKER_02: to keep getting closer to some pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
43:44
SPEAKER_02: And if we don't get there,
43:46
SPEAKER_02: we're going to shame ourselves that it's not working and our prayers aren't working.
43:51
SPEAKER_02: I see this over and over again.
43:53
SPEAKER_02: And it's not our fault.
43:56
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think we enter these relationships already with that framework there.
44:03
SPEAKER_02: And then it's not dissolved by a lot of the spaces that we enter.
44:10
SPEAKER_02: So I had to kind of dissolve this for myself at some point.
44:16
SPEAKER_02: And it really was that recognition like what you just described,
44:20
SPEAKER_02: which is that this This is the pot of gold.
44:26
SPEAKER_02: We already have it.
44:28
SPEAKER_02: All of the prayers that we've made have been answered.
44:32
SPEAKER_02: We are living the answer to our prayers now.
44:34
SPEAKER_02: If this teaches us anything,
44:36
SPEAKER_02: it's that if we want to change something,
44:38
SPEAKER_02: we need to change how we're calling things into our lives.
44:45
SPEAKER_02: Ultimately,
44:46
SPEAKER_02: the things that we want to change usually center on Us not allowing ourselves
44:52
SPEAKER_02: to have what we want.
44:54
SPEAKER_02: That we are the ones standing in the way, right?
44:56
SPEAKER_02: And that's the biggest obstacle is to figure out like, why are we doing that?
45:00
SPEAKER_02: Why are we blocking ourselves?
45:03
SPEAKER_02: And Huachuma is like a very clear teacher,
45:06
SPEAKER_02: like in that respect,
45:08
SPEAKER_02: which is,
45:09
SPEAKER_02: it just kind of shows you right away,
45:10
SPEAKER_02: like very clearly, like, okay, here, this is you.
45:17
SPEAKER_02: This is, you love yourself and feel it.
45:20
SPEAKER_02: And then, yeah,
45:21
SPEAKER_02: it's easy to come out of that space and you get all the protector parts coming back
45:25
SPEAKER_02: and you get all the programming coming back.
45:28
SPEAKER_02: But at least you've touched it.
45:30
SPEAKER_02: You know it's there.
45:31
SPEAKER_02: And you can move forward with that.
45:34
SPEAKER_02: But I guess what I'm getting at is...
45:37
SPEAKER_02: Even the way that we framed this discussion,
45:39
SPEAKER_02: and I kind of set it up that way,
45:41
SPEAKER_02: but it was sort of intentional,
45:42
SPEAKER_02: which is like, well, what do you get out of this diet?
45:46
SPEAKER_02: Even that framework I set up that way,
45:50
SPEAKER_02: I think that that framework too is just not something I attach to.
45:57
SPEAKER_02: There's value in just connecting with the plants.
46:00
SPEAKER_02: There's value in just going to a ceremony.
46:04
SPEAKER_02: I think that also there's value in creating a practice around something.
46:09
SPEAKER_02: And these practices, for me, they really are a way of life.
46:14
SPEAKER_02: Like the example,
46:15
SPEAKER_02: I gave it in a call recently,
46:17
SPEAKER_02: but maybe like another example that would be easier is like,
46:21
SPEAKER_02: let's say like you decide,
46:22
SPEAKER_02: somebody decides,
46:24
SPEAKER_02: they've never tried yoga,
46:26
SPEAKER_02: so they're going to go to a yoga retreat,
46:28
SPEAKER_02: you know, and then they go on a yoga retreat and it's the first time, so...
46:33
SPEAKER_02: Everything's new.
46:34
SPEAKER_02: They're trying all the poses.
46:36
SPEAKER_02: They obviously can't do it, but they get something out of it, right?
46:40
SPEAKER_02: And then they go back home and they're like,
46:43
SPEAKER_02: you know,
46:43
SPEAKER_02: their life feels a little bit different,
46:46
SPEAKER_02: but they don't continue to practice and they don't ever practice,
46:49
SPEAKER_02: you know, yoga except on retreats once a year.
46:53
SPEAKER_02: Is that really going to
46:55
SPEAKER_01: Do a lot?
46:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's almost ridiculous to think that way.
47:00
SPEAKER_01: You know, you can see it
47:01
SPEAKER_02: with yoga very easily.
47:03
SPEAKER_02: Like, that would be ridiculous,
47:04
SPEAKER_02: you know, to think that going once a year and practicing yoga is the way to do it.
47:11
SPEAKER_02: No, I mean,
47:12
SPEAKER_02: anyone that practices yoga,
47:13
SPEAKER_02: and I taught yoga and practiced for years, tells you it's a practice.
47:16
SPEAKER_02: You better commit to it, and you better...
47:20
SPEAKER_02: Incorporate it, and it
47:22
SPEAKER_01: is the path, right?
47:23
SPEAKER_01: It is the thing.
47:24
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing beyond there.
47:26
SPEAKER_01: You don't get a prize at the end that says, you made it.
47:31
SPEAKER_01: You're already reaping the rewards by doing the practice.
47:34
SPEAKER_02: That's what it is.
47:36
SPEAKER_02: And Pattabhi Joyce used to say,
47:40
SPEAKER_02: for whatever it's worth,
47:42
SPEAKER_02: and I acknowledge that he's human and there's a lot of things about him
47:46
SPEAKER_02: that maybe are true, but one thing he used to say was,
47:51
SPEAKER_02: Do your practice and all is coming.
47:53
SPEAKER_02: Just show up and do your practice.
47:55
SPEAKER_02: That's it.
47:56
SPEAKER_02: Quit looking so far for everything.
48:00
SPEAKER_02: It's right there.
48:01
SPEAKER_02: That's it.
48:03
SPEAKER_02: And so there,
48:04
SPEAKER_02: like you describe,
48:05
SPEAKER_02: it's such a big realization that I think people don't really have it all the time.
48:12
SPEAKER_02: It's just like you're there.
48:14
SPEAKER_02: That's it.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: That's what it is.
48:19
SPEAKER_01: The pot of gold is that.
48:23
SPEAKER_02: You're not going to get to some point where you levitate off this planet.
48:26
SPEAKER_02: If we're lucky,
48:28
SPEAKER_02: we may continue to plant our prayers in ways that are more intentional and live
48:33
SPEAKER_02: the lives that we are happier with.
48:35
SPEAKER_02: But we always have to keep returning to our practice too.
48:40
SPEAKER_02: And whatever that practice is, we have to...
48:45
SPEAKER_02: Cultivate it if we want to see any kinds of fruit from it.
48:53
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, I just spoke a lot, but I just wanted to reflect back the self-love piece, which
49:01
SPEAKER_02: I mean, if that's even a part of what somebody gets out of a diet,
49:09
SPEAKER_02: that's worth every second, you know, every hardship that went into it.
49:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks for that reflection.
49:20
SPEAKER_00: The practice is so good and then I come home and I'm still working in the practice
49:24
SPEAKER_00: in my own way and like,
49:25
SPEAKER_00: my God, this is grounding me so much into what I know and feel to be true.
49:30
SPEAKER_00: When I came back home and life was like pretty intense for me,
49:33
SPEAKER_00: but then I came to my altar and was there doing my prayers and I'm like, okay,
49:37
SPEAKER_00: this feels like truth for me and that feels like where I need
49:40
SPEAKER_00: to get right now is just right there on my knees in front of my altar.
49:45
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to say something that you spoke about.
49:48
SPEAKER_00: I think it's maybe our culture,
49:50
SPEAKER_00: how it's not so much about the practice,
49:52
SPEAKER_00: but it's like what the practice is going to get us
49:54
SPEAKER_00: or having this thing like we're going to get something out of it.
49:57
SPEAKER_00: I have to be honest,
49:59
SPEAKER_00: I came into this diet thinking that a little bit,
50:01
SPEAKER_00: at least for a couple of days,
50:03
SPEAKER_00: like the first two warm up ceremonies and then the first day.
50:07
SPEAKER_00: I was waiting for this profound moment to happen,
50:11
SPEAKER_00: like that I was going to get struck by lightning or an eagle would walk up
50:14
SPEAKER_00: and hand me a feather.
50:15
SPEAKER_00: And I was kind of waiting for this big, huge, what people talk about with diets and things.
50:21
SPEAKER_00: And I was like really stifling my experience and judging my experience.
50:25
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't coming from a way like I want to tell a good story.
50:27
SPEAKER_00: It was like I want to do a good job for my teachers and for the medicine and for my prayers.
50:33
SPEAKER_00: Like I want to just really show up and go all in.
50:35
SPEAKER_00: And I had this feeling like if I'm not getting hit by lightning, then I'm not doing it right.
50:39
SPEAKER_00: And so that was I was really judging it.
50:42
SPEAKER_00: And then one day on the land,
50:44
SPEAKER_00: I just was,
50:44
SPEAKER_00: I think,
50:45
SPEAKER_00: working and shoveling and doing whatever I was doing,
50:47
SPEAKER_00: forgetting about what I was thinking about.
50:50
SPEAKER_00: And I stopped for a moment and was just like very present.
50:54
SPEAKER_00: And it was almost I don't know if I saw it or thought it or how it actually came
50:58
SPEAKER_00: into my mind's eye,
50:59
SPEAKER_00: but it was like this portal opened almost as if you were burning a hole
51:03
SPEAKER_00: through paper.
51:04
SPEAKER_00: And it was like this portal opened.
51:07
SPEAKER_00: And in there was the whole universe.
51:09
SPEAKER_00: I kind of looked in and it was this whole universe.
51:12
SPEAKER_00: And the portal was the present moment.
51:15
SPEAKER_00: And that whole thought process after that was like,
51:18
SPEAKER_00: oh, everything, the whole universe, everything we could ever want and ever connect.
51:23
SPEAKER_00: And
51:26
SPEAKER_00: that was like the most profound teaching.
51:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's the moment.
51:32
SPEAKER_00: It's all we have.
51:34
SPEAKER_00: And then it happened.
51:35
SPEAKER_00: I finally let go of thinking that it needed to be this whole big thing.
51:40
SPEAKER_00: And the moment is so subtle.
51:42
SPEAKER_00: It's like so subtle that if we're not really in tune with it,
51:45
SPEAKER_00: then we could miss it, could miss all that we have.
51:49
SPEAKER_00: So I just wanted to speak to that because I totally started off
51:53
SPEAKER_00: and I've had other ceremonies too where I'm judging my experience and wanting it
51:56
SPEAKER_00: to be whatever.
51:58
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's because of how we're conditioned here,
52:01
SPEAKER_00: you know, in America to get something and to show something for ourselves.
52:06
SPEAKER_00: And if we're putting our time and money in there,
52:08
SPEAKER_00: Like, we can't just come back and go, I felt really connected.
52:11
SPEAKER_00: And that's, for some reason, doesn't hit as hard here as it maybe it does in Peru.
52:16
SPEAKER_00: It makes a lot more sense there.
52:18
SPEAKER_00: So I came in with that and left totally, like, got my ass kicked a little bit by that.
52:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
52:29
SPEAKER_02: After the ecstasy, the laundry, you know.
52:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
52:34
SPEAKER_02: Coming back to Earth after...
52:36
SPEAKER_02: These peak experiences.
52:40
SPEAKER_02: But I think that's part of it too, right?
52:42
SPEAKER_02: That's where we see with clarity the pieces of our life that no longer feel aligned
52:50
SPEAKER_02: or maybe they feel dissonant and we've lost connection with them.
52:55
SPEAKER_02: So that's also valuable, the hard landings.
53:05
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
53:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's kind of that.
53:09
SPEAKER_00: Is there anything else you want to ask me about the diet before we go into Chavine things?
53:14
SPEAKER_02: No, let's talk about Chavine.
53:18
SPEAKER_02: So you wrapped up your diet,
53:20
SPEAKER_02: you had two days,
53:21
SPEAKER_02: you did your own ceremony, and then that was all April until June, basically.
53:31
SPEAKER_02: Essentially, because I came June 3rd to Lima.
53:35
SPEAKER_02: So this is where we end up connecting in Lima is like on June 4th.
53:40
SPEAKER_02: And we're all going to Chivin.
53:43
SPEAKER_02: So that's where the story picks up.
53:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
53:50
SPEAKER_00: And thank you for letting me say my piece about the diet.
53:53
SPEAKER_00: It's part of it I wanted to get off of my heart.
53:56
SPEAKER_00: But then when you guys arrived,
53:57
SPEAKER_00: when we were with you and our other friend and finally met up with Miguel,
54:00
SPEAKER_00: it was kind of like, okay, the next phase, the next chapter of this is here.
54:04
SPEAKER_00: And yeah,
54:07
SPEAKER_00: we met in Lima and then headed off to Juarez on maybe your favorite bus ride
54:13
SPEAKER_00: of your whole life.
54:16
SPEAKER_02: A second favorite was on the way back, maybe.
54:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, just to bring everybody up to speed.
54:24
SPEAKER_02: So Chavin,
54:25
SPEAKER_02: for those who haven't been immersed in Huachuma for very long,
54:29
SPEAKER_02: is where the ancient temple is,
54:32
SPEAKER_02: where there's evidence of Huachuma being used thousands of years ago.
54:37
SPEAKER_02: And so it is sort of a pilgrimage for people that are deep in the Huachuma space
54:42
SPEAKER_02: to go to Chavin and And just be with that.
54:47
SPEAKER_02: And so we had asked Miguel to go and he was all game for it.
54:55
SPEAKER_02: And then a bunch of people decided to come.
54:57
SPEAKER_02: So we had a group of like 10 people, I think, in the end.
55:01
SPEAKER_02: And yeah,
55:02
SPEAKER_02: I'll spare everybody the complaints,
55:04
SPEAKER_02: but I'll just put out like one big complaint,
55:08
SPEAKER_02: I guess,
55:09
SPEAKER_02: is that I'm very tall and big and Peru is not made for people my size and anybody
55:15
SPEAKER_02: that is above 60.
55:16
SPEAKER_02: I'm six foot four, 250 pounds.
55:20
SPEAKER_02: And if you are at all my size, you are not going to be comfortable in Peru.
55:26
SPEAKER_02: So just know that.
55:27
SPEAKER_02: And the buses, no matter what they say, they are not made for people that size.
55:33
SPEAKER_02: So yes, it was not comfortable, the travel.
55:37
SPEAKER_02: And that's all I'll say about that.
55:39
SPEAKER_02: It will probably be comfortable for smaller people.
55:42
SPEAKER_02: And I just...
55:44
SPEAKER_02: I'm just an outlier in that country.
55:49
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, we went overnight.
55:50
SPEAKER_02: We went overnight to Juarez, which is in the north.
55:54
SPEAKER_02: And then a three-hour taxi to Chavin, which is up in the mountains.
56:00
SPEAKER_02: Chavin is a lot bigger than I thought.
56:04
SPEAKER_02: I thought there's going to be some tiny town.
56:06
SPEAKER_02: Actually, it's a fairly decent-sized town.
56:10
SPEAKER_02: There's the archaeological site and there's all this stuff.
56:13
SPEAKER_02: And I think the important parts of the trip to highlight for me are that we did have
56:22
SPEAKER_02: the opportunity to do a ceremony inside the temple.
56:29
SPEAKER_02: And I think that would be helpful to talk about with people, don't you?
56:33
SPEAKER_02: Just to explain because I went in with a lot of questions in my mind,
56:39
SPEAKER_02: like, how is this going to work?
56:41
SPEAKER_02: Like, is there a way that you do this?
56:43
SPEAKER_02: So you buy a ticket and you just tell the ticket office,
56:46
SPEAKER_02: like, yeah, we're doing ceremony or is it like a special ceremony ticket?
56:51
SPEAKER_02: And so all those questions were answered once we got there.
56:57
SPEAKER_02: So I guess I'll just go into it then if you want
57:00
SPEAKER_01: me to.
57:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
57:01
SPEAKER_01: So to shortcut it, no, there's no ceremony ticket.
57:07
SPEAKER_02: If you do ceremony inside the temple grounds,
57:10
SPEAKER_02: you are going to be buying a ticket just like the general public.
57:16
SPEAKER_02: We did get to the ticket office early before the temple grounds had opened.
57:21
SPEAKER_02: I think the thinking Miguel had was that maybe since the guards are there,
57:25
SPEAKER_02: we can just pay them off and get in early.
57:29
SPEAKER_02: And there were guards there behind the gate.
57:32
SPEAKER_02: They didn't seem keen on doing that.
57:36
SPEAKER_02: So we paid and then we went in.
57:38
SPEAKER_02: And you probably,
57:42
SPEAKER_02: people listening have heard us talk about the structure of the ceremonies,
57:46
SPEAKER_02: but Miguel practices with the four doorways, the four altars.
57:51
SPEAKER_02: So throughout the day, there'll be four altars opened.
57:56
SPEAKER_02: Altar is a complicated word.
57:58
SPEAKER_02: It's not like a church altar like that.
58:01
SPEAKER_02: It's more like a door.
58:03
SPEAKER_02: And you think of it like the directions.
58:05
SPEAKER_02: So anyway,
58:06
SPEAKER_02: the way that we did it was that we opened the altars outside,
58:10
SPEAKER_02: just finding places to do it.
58:14
SPEAKER_02: And then between each of the four altars,
58:16
SPEAKER_02: Miguel said, after we open each altar, we're going to go into the temple.
58:20
SPEAKER_02: So we went into the temple four times.
58:23
SPEAKER_02: Essentially, so like in and out and then went to a different part.
58:28
SPEAKER_02: And so that was kind of the structure,
58:30
SPEAKER_02: which was kind of cool because I was sort of wondering like,
58:33
SPEAKER_02: how are we going to do this?
58:34
SPEAKER_02: Like, where are we going to do the altars?
58:37
SPEAKER_02: And yeah,
58:39
SPEAKER_02: and there's like a whole aspect to it too that makes it very distracting,
58:45
SPEAKER_02: I think, for me.
58:47
SPEAKER_02: Which is that there was fireworks happening every 20 minutes, like really loud, right overhead.
58:54
SPEAKER_02: There was drumming from some kind of festival.
58:57
SPEAKER_02: There are tourists who are also there, just visiting the site, and they are not taking Huachuma.
59:05
SPEAKER_02: Then you've got all the guards...
59:08
SPEAKER_02: Who are whistling with whistles to call people out.
59:12
SPEAKER_02: It almost feels like a soccer match where it's like,
59:14
SPEAKER_02: oh no, you stepped where you shouldn't step, then you get a whistle.
59:19
SPEAKER_02: And so you're kind of navigating a lot of things.
59:24
SPEAKER_02: As far as spaces go to do a ceremony, this is a very challenging space, I would say.
59:31
SPEAKER_02: So I wouldn't recommend it for people who are new to Huachuma.
59:35
SPEAKER_02: This should not be your first Huachuma ceremony.
59:39
SPEAKER_02: But for us,
59:40
SPEAKER_02: being experienced,
59:41
SPEAKER_02: I think we were able to deal with all of those distractions and try to connect with
59:48
SPEAKER_02: the temple.
59:51
SPEAKER_02: Anything to add there, Danny?
59:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, I guess just like an overview of how I walked into it was,
1:00:01
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:00:02
SPEAKER_00: Chavin has been on my vision board for the last maybe three years since I heard
1:00:06
SPEAKER_00: about this place.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_00: And so going there and seeing the temple and the ruins for the first time
1:00:11
SPEAKER_00: for me was like,
1:00:12
SPEAKER_00: I was a little bit starstruck and kind of just so excited and ready to be there.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_00: And it sort of felt in a way that the medicine wanted me to go.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_00: Commit in a deeper way before I could actually go there.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_00: And I could see how when we first got there,
1:00:27
SPEAKER_00: it was almost like, OK, now you're ready to come here and experience this.
1:00:31
SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad that the medicine or the chavin made me wait because it was definitely worth it.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, I guess I didn't have as many questions as you.
1:00:40
SPEAKER_00: I was just like, I want to go and I just trust however it's going to go is going to go.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_00: Because now that you're saying all that,
1:00:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Yeah,
1:00:45
SPEAKER_00: it would have been really weird for us to be like in the temple singing and rattling
1:00:50
SPEAKER_00: and there's other tourists trying to also see the temple,
1:00:52
SPEAKER_00: but we're in there doing our thing.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah,
1:00:56
SPEAKER_00: like now looking back,
1:00:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, I could see why you had so many questions about this.
1:01:01
SPEAKER_00: But I think it went really beautifully and we had a wonderful group just to start,
1:01:06
SPEAKER_00: just to say, you know, just to start the energy.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_00: It's really incredible to just be there.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_02: What is your takeaway from the ceremonies in Chavin?
1:01:21
SPEAKER_02: You go in with this starstruck, wow, but what's your impression?
1:01:27
SPEAKER_02: What do you feel about that place?
1:01:33
SPEAKER_00: It's funny.
1:01:33
SPEAKER_00: It's like another what-did-I-get-out-of-it question.
1:01:36
SPEAKER_02: You don't have to, yeah.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to frame it that way, but I'm just like, what's your impression of Chavin?
1:01:41
SPEAKER_02: What is your...
1:01:44
SPEAKER_02: What do you think about it now?
1:01:46
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm sure it's different and changing,
1:01:49
SPEAKER_02: evolving, but, you know, you had the before and then what's the reality?
1:01:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think because I was so starstruck, it was actually almost hard for me to...
1:02:04
SPEAKER_00: Go into a deep emotional process about it.
1:02:06
SPEAKER_00: I was just there and like feeling the temple and feeling like I,
1:02:11
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:02:11
SPEAKER_00: I felt different frequencies and sounds and wind and like I definitely felt things.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_00: But I like I want to go back again because now that I kind of have that first like,
1:02:21
SPEAKER_00: oh, my God, I'm at Chavin feeling gone, then I can go in and go a bit deeper.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_00: But.
1:02:26
SPEAKER_00: I feel like I've had ceremonies where I go through a bigger process in a way.
1:02:31
SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's because there were like tourists around and other things,
1:02:34
SPEAKER_00: or maybe because I was like very starstruck being there.
1:02:37
SPEAKER_00: But I could feel myself, yeah, just sort of looking at everything.
1:02:44
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it made me just question like, what did they do in here?
1:02:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:02:50
SPEAKER_00: I feel like you could feel the prayers like when we walked up to the falcon doorway
1:02:53
SPEAKER_00: or something,
1:02:54
SPEAKER_00: a falcon flew overhead,
1:02:55
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:02:56
SPEAKER_00: and for me, that's like part of that wonderful web of Huachuma doing its thing.
1:03:00
SPEAKER_00: But I feel like you could feel the devotion of some kind,
1:03:05
SPEAKER_00: whatever they were devoting themselves to other than the Lanzone.
1:03:09
SPEAKER_00: But even huachuma and the medicines that they worked with and darkness
1:03:13
SPEAKER_00: and depriving your senses and doing all the different things that they did.
1:03:17
SPEAKER_00: I think it just kind of left me with more questions.
1:03:20
SPEAKER_00: And I remember looking at the cabezus clavus,
1:03:23
SPEAKER_00: I think they call them the heads and the transformation that the head goes through.
1:03:27
SPEAKER_00: I thought that was really interesting because then it's like,
1:03:30
SPEAKER_00: oh, well, is this an energetic transformation or a real transformation?
1:03:33
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah,
1:03:34
SPEAKER_00: it kind of just left me with more questions and made me want to go deeper into
1:03:39
SPEAKER_00: And maybe even more isolated,
1:03:41
SPEAKER_00: like maybe no altars,
1:03:42
SPEAKER_00: just sit there with the medicine and the temple and be like really undisturbed.
1:03:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:03:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:03:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think it's complicated.
1:03:53
SPEAKER_02: The place itself is really fascinating.
1:03:56
SPEAKER_02: And I think I would want to go back and not take Huachuma,
1:04:01
SPEAKER_02: honestly,
1:04:03
SPEAKER_02: and just spend more time being with the temple and I think
1:04:07
SPEAKER_02: the ceremony aspect made it much more complicated,
1:04:11
SPEAKER_02: in my personal opinion, to connect.
1:04:15
SPEAKER_02: Because there's so much stimulation.
1:04:20
SPEAKER_02: And with Huachuma, at least for me, I become very sensitive.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_02: And I don't need the Huachuma to become sensitive.
1:04:29
SPEAKER_02: I'm already hypersensitive.
1:04:32
SPEAKER_02: So the things that really were powerful for me,
1:04:36
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:04:37
SPEAKER_02: when we,
1:04:38
SPEAKER_02: after the first altar,
1:04:39
SPEAKER_02: we did go in and we had opportunities,
1:04:41
SPEAKER_02: each of us, to go crawl as close as we could to the Lanson.
1:04:46
SPEAKER_02: The Lanson is this giant granite,
1:04:49
SPEAKER_02: I think it's granite,
1:04:50
SPEAKER_02: monolith carving of what they say is the deity that there should be in culture.
1:05:00
SPEAKER_02: So you get to sit there and look at it and it feels very alien to me.
1:05:06
SPEAKER_02: And even the shapes and the way
1:05:08
SPEAKER_02: that it's constructed does not really look like things that I've seen before.
1:05:18
SPEAKER_02: It looks very foreign.
1:05:20
SPEAKER_02: I think that the carvings in Chavine in general do look like Picasso.
1:05:25
SPEAKER_02: Somebody pointed that out to us.
1:05:28
SPEAKER_02: The cubist style that Picasso was influenced by, I can see that for sure.
1:05:36
SPEAKER_02: But the Lanson is asymmetrical and it's this odd shape.
1:05:41
SPEAKER_02: And I wonder about it.
1:05:44
SPEAKER_02: When you're with Huachuma Medicine and you're sitting there and you see this thing,
1:05:49
SPEAKER_02: so much of it doesn't make sense.
1:05:52
SPEAKER_02: There's just a lot of like, what?
1:05:55
SPEAKER_02: Like, what is this?
1:05:56
SPEAKER_02: Like, why?
1:05:57
SPEAKER_02: Whoa.
1:05:59
SPEAKER_02: And maybe that's part of it.
1:06:02
SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's the teaching, which is, whoa.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_02: Like...
1:06:07
SPEAKER_02: They really went out of their way.
1:06:09
SPEAKER_02: This would not have been easy for them to create this back then.
1:06:15
SPEAKER_02: And so it must have had a lot of meaning for them.
1:06:19
SPEAKER_02: And then at the same time,
1:06:20
SPEAKER_02: when we're looking at the land zone,
1:06:22
SPEAKER_02: there's a guard who's making sure you don't take photos, right?
1:06:27
SPEAKER_02: So you've got this kind of Okay, I'm deep in the medicine, connecting.
1:06:33
SPEAKER_02: Okay, yes, I won't take photos.
1:06:35
SPEAKER_02: Then there's other tourists coming.
1:06:40
SPEAKER_02: The thing about it was just so hard, that part where it's like I can't settle into any place.
1:06:50
SPEAKER_02: And so anyway,
1:06:52
SPEAKER_02: I guess I'll bring that up because that actually was the biggest teaching
1:06:56
SPEAKER_02: for me overall was...
1:07:00
SPEAKER_02: That I live in a state of fear really around authority.
1:07:06
SPEAKER_02: And this is way beyond the scope of this discussion.
1:07:11
SPEAKER_02: But being a person, I was born in Texas, but with the Middle Eastern sounding name.
1:07:19
SPEAKER_02: And then living in a country that went through 9-11 and a lot
1:07:24
SPEAKER_02: of feelings around Middle Eastern cultures here.
1:07:28
SPEAKER_02: I've experienced a lot of what I would consider discrimination and prejudice
1:07:34
SPEAKER_02: and started early, name-calling and things like that.
1:07:37
SPEAKER_02: And also then having the experience of being...
1:07:46
SPEAKER_02: Unable to fly after 9-11,
1:07:48
SPEAKER_02: for instance,
1:07:49
SPEAKER_02: because my name like matched something or like I got on some list and there's
1:07:53
SPEAKER_02: a whole story to that.
1:07:55
SPEAKER_02: And then like even going to Peru,
1:07:58
SPEAKER_02: like the last two years,
1:07:59
SPEAKER_02: every time I go to Peru now,
1:08:01
SPEAKER_02: I have to go see Interpol,
1:08:03
SPEAKER_02: the police station, because my name flags as like a warrant out for my arrest.
1:08:09
SPEAKER_02: And I've contacted Interpol, you know, all this stuff.
1:08:16
SPEAKER_02: They let me in.
1:08:18
SPEAKER_02: But there's also this fear.
1:08:19
SPEAKER_02: It's like, why do I have to go to the police station, right?
1:08:22
SPEAKER_02: Like, why do I have to go through that?
1:08:24
SPEAKER_02: Nobody else has to go through this.
1:08:25
SPEAKER_02: So I have this like underlying fear all the time.
1:08:28
SPEAKER_02: And of course, I became an attorney and I dealt with law enforcement and that.
1:08:35
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, just to wrap this in,
1:08:37
SPEAKER_02: my personal lived experience is one where I would not defy authority very easily
1:08:43
SPEAKER_02: because I'm scared.
1:08:45
SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't go into a temple and try to do a ceremony that's not allowed just
1:08:53
SPEAKER_02: because my nervous system is set to be like, don't do that.
1:08:57
SPEAKER_02: That's just too painful.
1:09:00
SPEAKER_01: Here we are doing that.
1:09:03
SPEAKER_01: And the guards and,
1:09:05
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:09:05
SPEAKER_01: like other people didn't have my
1:09:07
SPEAKER_02: life experience,
1:09:08
SPEAKER_02: so maybe they don't experience that.
1:09:10
SPEAKER_02: But that was like coming up a lot for me,
1:09:13
SPEAKER_02: which is like, whoa,
1:09:15
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:09:15
SPEAKER_02: getting whistled at or like there was other times like we were at an altar where
1:09:23
SPEAKER_02: the guards were like,
1:09:25
SPEAKER_01: Really trying to get us to stop the singing, you know, and like leave, right?
1:09:29
SPEAKER_01: They were upset.
1:09:32
SPEAKER_01: Whistling, but then we wouldn't listen.
1:09:34
SPEAKER_01: And then so he came and was like trying to talk to people in our group, get there.
1:09:40
SPEAKER_01: Get them to make eye contact.
1:09:41
SPEAKER_01: I was like avoiding eye contact because I'm like,
1:09:45
SPEAKER_01: I am not going to look at the guard because I do not want to have this interaction.
1:09:50
SPEAKER_01: So I just looked straight ahead and acted like he wasn't standing there.
1:09:54
SPEAKER_01: And our friend, poor guy made eye contact.
1:09:57
SPEAKER_01: Then he got sucked into it.
1:09:59
SPEAKER_01: Then Miguel got sucked into it.
1:10:01
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, then it's like, you know, the guard saying, you know, you need to leave.
1:10:05
SPEAKER_01: And Miguel's like, oh, just five more minutes, you know.
1:10:08
SPEAKER_01: And the guard leaves us.
1:10:11
SPEAKER_02: But then the feeling was still there.
1:10:13
SPEAKER_02: Like, oh my God, we're breaking the rules.
1:10:16
SPEAKER_02: We're breaking the rules.
1:10:17
SPEAKER_02: But the biggest breakthrough for me was at that altar where that guard did that.
1:10:21
SPEAKER_02: Because right as the guard was trying to tell us to stop, our friend had the rattle.
1:10:28
SPEAKER_02: And the stick.
1:10:29
SPEAKER_02: And I looked at him and he was like, what do I do?
1:10:33
SPEAKER_02: He didn't know what to do.
1:10:34
SPEAKER_01: So he just started rattling, playing and singing as loud as he could.
1:10:41
SPEAKER_02: And it was so powerful.
1:10:44
SPEAKER_02: And the songs that he was singing,
1:10:46
SPEAKER_02: he sang this one song which got really a lot of movement during the...
1:10:54
SPEAKER_02: What is it called?
1:10:54
SPEAKER_02: The Standing Rock protests in the United States where they were going to build
1:10:58
SPEAKER_02: that Keystone Pipeline and the tribes were protesting.
1:11:02
SPEAKER_02: And I think this song became like the anthem.
1:11:07
SPEAKER_02: It's a water is life song.
1:11:09
SPEAKER_02: And so he's like singing about this, which is a protest song.
1:11:14
SPEAKER_02: Of course,
1:11:14
SPEAKER_02: it's a protest about like power,
1:11:16
SPEAKER_02: like coming in and trying to destroy nature and But we were also in this position
1:11:24
SPEAKER_02: where this person of authority was trying to get us to stop our prayer.
1:11:29
SPEAKER_02: And he just sang louder.
1:11:31
SPEAKER_02: And it was just so powerful to me because I realized a lot of
1:11:36
SPEAKER_02: the fear I have is totally unwarranted because when he started singing louder,
1:11:39
SPEAKER_02: the guard just went away.
1:11:40
SPEAKER_01: He just
1:11:42
SPEAKER_02: left us.
1:11:44
SPEAKER_01: Well, I guess that's that.
1:11:46
SPEAKER_01: It was sort of like...
1:11:50
SPEAKER_01: Wow, we can fight authority and we can fight without fighting.
1:11:54
SPEAKER_01: We just have to sing and pray loudly in their face and it makes them uncomfortable.
1:11:59
SPEAKER_01: And they just go away.
1:12:02
SPEAKER_02: So that was a big lesson for me and I still carry that.
1:12:08
SPEAKER_02: That was part of it.
1:12:09
SPEAKER_02: I got so much out of the fact that
1:12:12
SPEAKER_01: we were violating the rules.
1:12:15
SPEAKER_01: Because I think I just needed to violate some rules and see that it's okay.
1:12:22
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
1:12:23
SPEAKER_00: I remember that moment.
1:12:24
SPEAKER_00: And I just,
1:12:27
SPEAKER_00: I get goosebumps every time you tell that story,
1:12:29
SPEAKER_00: because what a profound sort of turnaround for you and perspective for you to take
1:12:33
SPEAKER_00: as he was singing that song from the top of his lungs.
1:12:37
SPEAKER_00: And like, what a cool thing to think.
1:12:38
SPEAKER_00: It's like loving your way through,
1:12:41
SPEAKER_00: like protesting with like love and sort of loudness, but not fighting with...
1:12:48
SPEAKER_00: I guess words, but like singing your prayers as loud as you can.
1:12:52
SPEAKER_00: And the darkness kind of retreats in a way.
1:12:56
SPEAKER_00: That's such a good one, Hamid.
1:12:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:13:00
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
1:13:00
SPEAKER_02: it's huge for me because I was an attorney and I think I became an attorney largely
1:13:05
SPEAKER_02: because of this feeling of injustice that's carried me from when I was younger.
1:13:10
SPEAKER_02: And not knowing how to deal with that feeling of injustice,
1:13:14
SPEAKER_02: you feel like I need to be able to remedy things, right?
1:13:18
SPEAKER_02: So like being an attorney gives you some power to do things, but it never actually felt good.
1:13:25
SPEAKER_02: Honestly,
1:13:26
SPEAKER_02: it felt like I was like in the wrong environment doing the,
1:13:30
SPEAKER_02: you know, like I still want to remedy things.
1:13:33
SPEAKER_02: I just don't want to do it in court.
1:13:35
SPEAKER_02: You know, guy in a robe and all this, it just felt off.
1:13:39
SPEAKER_02: But that moment was like, well, that's the way I want to do it.
1:13:42
SPEAKER_02: I just want to sing to these people.
1:13:48
SPEAKER_02: So that was really powerful.
1:13:51
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's so many things about the ceremony that were super powerful.
1:13:55
SPEAKER_02: I think that the other thing that really stands out for me was,
1:14:00
SPEAKER_02: it was after that altar, And we had gone into one of the chambers.
1:14:06
SPEAKER_02: And then we came out,
1:14:07
SPEAKER_02: and that same guard,
1:14:08
SPEAKER_02: I think,
1:14:08
SPEAKER_02: that had been trying to tell us to not do things was just sitting there
1:14:13
SPEAKER_02: on his phone, scrolling on his phone.
1:14:18
SPEAKER_02: And Miguel went up to him and was asking him whether we could do the next altar
1:14:23
SPEAKER_02: on this grassy area.
1:14:24
SPEAKER_02: Because I think we already made him mad, right?
1:14:27
SPEAKER_02: So let's just make sure he knows that we respect him.
1:14:33
SPEAKER_02: And he looked at where Miguel was pointing, he's like, no, you cannot go there.
1:14:37
SPEAKER_02: That's definitely not allowed.
1:14:40
SPEAKER_02: And then Miguel's like, okay.
1:14:42
SPEAKER_02: So then Miguel's like, well, are there any dark chambers we can go in?
1:14:48
SPEAKER_02: Because all the chambers are lit with LED lights for the tourists, so you don't run into stuff.
1:14:54
SPEAKER_02: And part of the magic of the temple,
1:14:57
SPEAKER_02: Chavin, was that it's like a sensory deprivation spot, right?
1:15:02
SPEAKER_01: So the guard looks up from his phone,
1:15:05
SPEAKER_01: now he's paying attention, and is like, oh yeah, there are many dark chambers.
1:15:10
SPEAKER_01: And so then Miguel starts giving him puppy dog eyes.
1:15:16
SPEAKER_01: He's like, yeah, we'd like to see them.
1:15:21
SPEAKER_01: And the guard's like, yeah, you would.
1:15:26
SPEAKER_01: Monetary terms, I think, were mentioned just briefly.
1:15:31
SPEAKER_01: And then swift as can be, he escorts us into a place where we had already been.
1:15:37
SPEAKER_02: And then there's a barricade that says, like, do not go in here.
1:15:42
SPEAKER_02: And it's just like this tiny little doorway, like you'd never think to go in there anyway.
1:15:48
SPEAKER_02: And the guard is like using his flashlight, like telling us go in there.
1:15:52
SPEAKER_02: Right.
1:15:53
SPEAKER_02: And it's completely dark.
1:15:54
SPEAKER_02: And so you,
1:15:56
SPEAKER_02: I don't know,
1:15:56
SPEAKER_02: we go in and it's like a stairway that's going down, like really steep.
1:16:01
SPEAKER_02: You got to watch your head.
1:16:03
SPEAKER_02: It's not built for people my size, of course.
1:16:06
SPEAKER_02: And we crawl like one layer below where we were.
1:16:10
SPEAKER_02: So now My God,
1:16:12
SPEAKER_02: like these chambers,
1:16:14
SPEAKER_02: these temples really have undiscovered chambers that probably go a lot deeper than
1:16:18
SPEAKER_02: that too.
1:16:19
SPEAKER_02: But now we're like a whole floor underneath where we were.
1:16:24
SPEAKER_02: And you can see up where we came in, there's like a little bit of light.
1:16:28
SPEAKER_02: It's not much because that chamber was only lit by like small LED lights.
1:16:32
SPEAKER_02: It's not very bright.
1:16:34
SPEAKER_02: And now we're in like complete darkness.
1:16:35
SPEAKER_02: And then there's all these other passageways.
1:16:39
SPEAKER_02: And it's totally dangerous because you can't see anything.
1:16:43
SPEAKER_02: So some of our group,
1:16:44
SPEAKER_02: there's 10 of us,
1:16:46
SPEAKER_02: goes like one way into this chamber and just sits in there and sits down.
1:16:52
SPEAKER_02: And then we,
1:16:53
SPEAKER_02: you and I and a couple other people,
1:16:55
SPEAKER_02: we're kind of like sitting like at the entrance,
1:16:58
SPEAKER_02: at the bottom of the staircase, right, where we went in.
1:17:02
SPEAKER_02: And that was the moment where we had that opportunity to experience...
1:17:07
SPEAKER_02: Chavin without the lighting and it's quiet and it was so quiet.
1:17:13
SPEAKER_02: Like when we all sat,
1:17:14
SPEAKER_02: 10 of us,
1:17:15
SPEAKER_02: like you could kind of hear your own breathing,
1:17:17
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:17:17
SPEAKER_02: probably feel your own heartbeat and every sound was so loud
1:17:23
SPEAKER_02: because there was no background sound.
1:17:26
SPEAKER_02: It was really powerful.
1:17:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I felt that too.
1:17:32
SPEAKER_00: Earlier I talked about hearing sounds and they had these little black windows
1:17:37
SPEAKER_00: that you could look into.
1:17:38
SPEAKER_00: And at some of them I could hear this frequency almost as
1:17:41
SPEAKER_00: if you could hear like something plugged into the wall charging.
1:17:44
SPEAKER_00: I was like tuning into some sort of sound or frequency.
1:17:47
SPEAKER_00: But then when we were down there in the dark chamber, there really wasn't even that going on.
1:17:52
SPEAKER_00: It was almost just like this breathing or this like deep pulsing and sort of like that.
1:17:58
SPEAKER_00: But it was...
1:17:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was really dark and I couldn't wait to get down there.
1:18:02
SPEAKER_00: And I actually want to spend more time there.
1:18:04
SPEAKER_00: But, you know,
1:18:05
SPEAKER_00: what happened down in that chamber was probably one of the best moments
1:18:09
SPEAKER_00: of maybe our whole trip in Peru because it was so funny.
1:18:13
SPEAKER_00: And just every time I think about it,
1:18:14
SPEAKER_00: it makes me giggle because it was like one of those moments
1:18:18
SPEAKER_00: where we were probably not supposed to be laughing,
1:18:23
SPEAKER_00: but that ended up laughing and it kind of just like made it funnier.
1:18:26
SPEAKER_00: But I'll let you tell the story.
1:18:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so we're sitting under there and, you know, obviously Miguel has paid the guard.
1:18:36
SPEAKER_02: Like this is like a big privilege.
1:18:39
SPEAKER_02: We've been granted entry to like the place.
1:18:42
SPEAKER_02: So Miguel and a bunch of people are sitting in the dark.
1:18:46
SPEAKER_02: I have no idea what they're doing because it's completely pitch black.
1:18:50
SPEAKER_02: Like you cannot see them.
1:18:52
SPEAKER_02: But I assume that they're sitting in there connecting with the place, right?
1:18:56
SPEAKER_02: And that's what we're doing.
1:18:57
SPEAKER_02: We're sitting in there connecting.
1:18:59
SPEAKER_02: So we're doing that as well.
1:19:01
SPEAKER_02: And just kind of sitting.
1:19:03
SPEAKER_02: And I can hear the breath.
1:19:07
SPEAKER_02: I remember I had to cough a little bit.
1:19:09
SPEAKER_02: It was so like, oh my God, I'm disturbing the peace.
1:19:13
SPEAKER_02: But then...
1:19:15
SPEAKER_02: We're sitting in that silence and yeah,
1:19:16
SPEAKER_02: there's this feeling that came to me which was like, whoa,
1:19:21
SPEAKER_02: this is why they built the place because there's no place outside of there
1:19:28
SPEAKER_02: that you could experience no sound.
1:19:31
SPEAKER_02: Like what you have when you're outside the temple is the river,
1:19:35
SPEAKER_02: the birds, the wind, all of this.
1:19:39
SPEAKER_02: So like even just the isolation of this little space would have created a place
1:19:46
SPEAKER_02: where they could feel and experience things in a way that,
1:19:51
SPEAKER_02: you know, that's a technology.
1:19:53
SPEAKER_02: Like sensory deprivation is a technology.
1:19:57
SPEAKER_02: So it's dark and quiet and all of that.
1:20:00
SPEAKER_02: And so we're there with that experience and then above us where we came
1:20:06
SPEAKER_02: in is just this faint light from the hallway in this upper chamber.
1:20:11
SPEAKER_02: And as we're sitting there,
1:20:14
SPEAKER_02: Some young teenage girls walk to that doorway where now there's a sign
1:20:20
SPEAKER_02: that says you can't pass.
1:20:21
SPEAKER_02: So they say like, oh, look, you can't
1:20:23
SPEAKER_01: pass in there.
1:20:25
SPEAKER_01: That's dangerous.
1:20:26
SPEAKER_01: So I'm like,
1:20:27
SPEAKER_01: we're like looking and we can see them,
1:20:29
SPEAKER_01: but they can't see us because we're in the complete black.
1:20:33
SPEAKER_01: And one of them takes her phone with the flashlight on it and starts shining it down
1:20:41
SPEAKER_01: at us, right?
1:20:42
SPEAKER_01: And that's the first time I could see you because now there's a light on you
1:20:47
SPEAKER_01: and you're just like crouched like this, like looking up at them.
1:20:54
SPEAKER_01: I lost it because there's no way that those girls were not scarred by what they saw,
1:21:02
SPEAKER_01: which was some kind of creature.
1:21:03
SPEAKER_01: So I just lost it.
1:21:09
SPEAKER_01: I started laughing so hard, but then I tried to hold it back, right?
1:21:13
SPEAKER_01: Because I didn't want them up there to hear it, and I didn't want to disturb everybody.
1:21:19
SPEAKER_01: So at first, it was just this laugh that was muffled.
1:21:25
SPEAKER_01: And the girls heard it, and they're like, oh, there's something there, right?
1:21:29
SPEAKER_01: They freaked out.
1:21:33
SPEAKER_01: And then other people started making sounds and then they quickly stopped
1:21:38
SPEAKER_01: because we didn't want to make noise.
1:21:41
SPEAKER_01: And then there was just so much energy.
1:21:43
SPEAKER_01: I was just like, oh my God, there's so much energy that has to come out.
1:21:50
SPEAKER_01: And the girls were still up there going like, oh, there's something in there.
1:21:54
SPEAKER_01: And so all that could come out of me was meow.
1:22:01
SPEAKER_01: And I meowed like a cat.
1:22:04
SPEAKER_01: And then the whole group of 10 people that were all meditating peacefully just lost it.
1:22:14
SPEAKER_01: And everybody started cracking up.
1:22:17
SPEAKER_01: I don't think actually people realized what was happening.
1:22:21
SPEAKER_01: They didn't know that some girl had spotted us or anything.
1:22:26
SPEAKER_01: But they just heard the meow.
1:22:31
SPEAKER_01: And then it was like uncontrollable, right?
1:22:35
SPEAKER_01: Like uncontrollable laughter, which sometimes happen.
1:22:41
SPEAKER_01: And I felt bad because I'm like, my God,
1:22:43
SPEAKER_01: Miguel paid all this money for us to be down here meditating and connecting
1:22:49
SPEAKER_01: in silence and I ruined it with laughter.
1:22:53
SPEAKER_01: But it was awesome.
1:22:55
SPEAKER_01: I thought it was funny.
1:22:57
SPEAKER_02: I thought it was one of the funniest things.
1:22:58
SPEAKER_02: Just like to see the girl's face and like
1:23:01
SPEAKER_01: how shocked she was that there was something in there.
1:23:06
SPEAKER_01: That's priceless.
1:23:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:23:09
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that will forever be funny.
1:23:12
SPEAKER_00: And I remember like as soon as we would stop laughing and kind of get it together
1:23:15
SPEAKER_00: and get it out, it'd be like three seconds.
1:23:17
SPEAKER_00: And then one of us would just like burst out
1:23:20
SPEAKER_00: and it was just like kept getting funnier and funnier.
1:23:22
SPEAKER_00: And because we were kind of like in trouble a little bit, it was like that was even funny too.
1:23:27
SPEAKER_00: And because we weren't supposed to be disturbed.
1:23:29
SPEAKER_00: So the whole thing was amazing.
1:23:34
SPEAKER_01: One of my goals in life is to get Miguel to laugh in a ceremony because he's so serious.
1:23:41
SPEAKER_01: Just like sometime he's going to lose it.
1:23:45
SPEAKER_01: That didn't happen that time.
1:23:49
SPEAKER_00: It would have been a good time because we couldn't see him anyway.
1:23:55
SPEAKER_01: I feel he was.
1:23:56
SPEAKER_01: Even though I couldn't see him, I think he was laughing on the inside.
1:23:59
SPEAKER_00: I think it was so funny.
1:24:02
SPEAKER_00: How could he not?
1:24:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:24:05
SPEAKER_01: So that was a highlight.
1:24:07
SPEAKER_02: Definitely unexpected.
1:24:13
SPEAKER_02: The day closed.
1:24:15
SPEAKER_02: I think that part too also stands out to me.
1:24:17
SPEAKER_02: Like we closed in the same place where we opened the first altar and the last altar,
1:24:22
SPEAKER_02: which is by the river in this little enclosure.
1:24:26
SPEAKER_02: And I think that we started the fourth altar around four o'clock tomorrow.
1:24:31
SPEAKER_01: 3.30, 4.00.
1:24:31
SPEAKER_01: And I think that the temple closes at 4.00.
1:24:35
SPEAKER_01: Like the archaeological site, actually.
1:24:37
SPEAKER_01: It's like you got to be out by 4.00 kind of thing.
1:24:41
SPEAKER_02: But before we get there, there was a point where everybody was really in the medicine.
1:24:47
SPEAKER_02: And I would say that one of the things that was unique about that is that
1:24:53
SPEAKER_02: the medicine was so strong.
1:24:56
SPEAKER_02: Very strong for me.
1:24:58
SPEAKER_02: And there were other people that were clearly on Huachuma.
1:25:04
SPEAKER_01: Kind of laying around or just something.
1:25:09
SPEAKER_01: By the end of the day, it was kind of like a free-for-all.
1:25:12
SPEAKER_01: It looked like, oh, well, there's some cactus people over there.
1:25:16
SPEAKER_01: There's some over there.
1:25:18
SPEAKER_01: Like people wearing like Burning Man style outfits, like sunglasses.
1:25:23
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, oh wow, we don't have the cool glasses.
1:25:26
SPEAKER_01: Like we're not really fit to be here.
1:25:30
SPEAKER_01: But there was some funny things
1:25:32
SPEAKER_02: like that.
1:25:32
SPEAKER_02: Just kind of seeing the other people was funny and interesting, I would say.
1:25:41
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, we did close.
1:25:42
SPEAKER_01: And that whole thing with authority kept going on.
1:25:45
SPEAKER_02: Like, okay, we're breaking the rules because the temple's obviously closing.
1:25:52
SPEAKER_02: And if anybody ever goes to a ceremony with Miguel, they start to realize he's very patient.
1:25:59
SPEAKER_02: And even if the final altar is gonna leave us without
1:26:04
SPEAKER_01: a ride home because
1:26:05
SPEAKER_01: the van's leaving or the temple is closing, he will not end early.
1:26:12
SPEAKER_01: Actually, it's more just the opportunity to slow down and really be with that.
1:26:20
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know,
1:26:22
SPEAKER_01: it starts to
1:26:22
SPEAKER_02: slowly get dark, dark, dark, dark,
1:26:25
SPEAKER_02: to the point where by the time we finished the final altar, it was pitch black.
1:26:34
SPEAKER_02: Excuse me, like you couldn't see anything.
1:26:37
SPEAKER_01: And I think it was like 7 p.m. by then.
1:26:42
SPEAKER_01: And so like even there was somebody in our group
1:26:45
SPEAKER_02: who was way more concerned.
1:26:47
SPEAKER_02: I wasn't that concerned because I'm like, well, We're a big group.
1:26:53
SPEAKER_02: And I knew that I had watched at the beginning of the day that the gate at
1:26:57
SPEAKER_02: the front opens from the inside.
1:26:59
SPEAKER_02: So it's like one of those exit type doors where you could always get out.
1:27:03
SPEAKER_02: So I was like, even if they left, we can still get out.
1:27:06
SPEAKER_02: We're not locked in.
1:27:08
SPEAKER_02: And somebody had expressed concern to me like, oh my God, are we locked in like all night?
1:27:14
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, no, the gate opens from the inside.
1:27:18
SPEAKER_02: But there was that.
1:27:19
SPEAKER_02: And then leaving and the stars, it was so dark
1:27:23
SPEAKER_01: that night.
1:27:23
SPEAKER_02: You see the stars as we're walking through the archaeological park, you know, after it's closed.
1:27:29
SPEAKER_02: I think it was funny to see the guards.
1:27:33
SPEAKER_02: They're like watching the World Cup or soccer.
1:27:36
SPEAKER_02: The World Cup was like happening at some point while we were there.
1:27:41
SPEAKER_01: And they're just watching the game and then here come 10 people just,
1:27:46
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:27:46
SPEAKER_01: like three hours after the parks close and we just leave and they open the door
1:27:50
SPEAKER_01: for us.
1:27:51
SPEAKER_01: It's like, go.
1:27:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was powerful.
1:27:57
SPEAKER_02: I think the one thing that I also...
1:28:01
SPEAKER_02: This is a proposal, not that I have any control over it.
1:28:04
SPEAKER_02: They really do need to have a day or a ticket that is specially for people
1:28:09
SPEAKER_02: who are doing ceremony.
1:28:11
SPEAKER_02: Like they could have a day that's like, well, Mondays is just ceremony people day.
1:28:17
SPEAKER_02: And during that day,
1:28:19
SPEAKER_02: we're not going to let people from the public and we're going to dim the lights
1:28:24
SPEAKER_02: or something like that.
1:28:25
SPEAKER_02: And they just make it a little bit more because everybody's doing it anyway.
1:28:32
SPEAKER_02: So I think that they could just do that and that would make it a little bit better
1:28:37
SPEAKER_02: of a place to do ceremony.
1:28:39
SPEAKER_02: Because it does have that feel like we're doing ceremony in a museum.
1:28:44
SPEAKER_02: And we just like dropped in and we're not really supposed to be doing it, but we're doing it.
1:28:52
SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
1:28:54
SPEAKER_00: I do know what you
1:29:21
SPEAKER_00: There's just birds around you and that kind of lends itself where you can like go
1:29:24
SPEAKER_00: in really deep.
1:29:25
SPEAKER_00: But I think, yeah,
1:29:26
SPEAKER_00: it is a bit stimulating to be in a museum slash historical site,
1:29:32
SPEAKER_00: tourist kind of thing where people are buying tickets to get in.
1:29:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I definitely think that we did the best that we could with what we had.
1:29:42
SPEAKER_00: And I would definitely go back.
1:29:45
SPEAKER_00: And you mentioned the stars.
1:29:47
SPEAKER_00: That was one of the best night skies I have ever seen.
1:29:50
SPEAKER_00: It was so dark.
1:29:51
SPEAKER_00: But then as soon as we,
1:29:52
SPEAKER_00: maybe because of light pollution,
1:29:53
SPEAKER_00: but as soon as we left the gate, the stars weren't as dark.
1:29:58
SPEAKER_00: Bright in the sky, but maybe because the streetlights or something, probably.
1:30:01
SPEAKER_00: But when we were in Chavine leaving,
1:30:03
SPEAKER_00: it was, and I'm such a star person, so I really am always looking up at the sky.
1:30:07
SPEAKER_00: And that was a pretty beautiful blessing that I feel like the sky was giving us for
1:30:12
SPEAKER_00: the prayers that we sent that day.
1:30:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:30:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Chavine is a beautiful place.
1:30:20
SPEAKER_02: The nature, the river, everything about it is really beautiful.
1:30:32
SPEAKER_02: Next to the temple, there's a sanctuary that we did visit.
1:30:35
SPEAKER_02: We visited the museum,
1:30:36
SPEAKER_02: I think the next day,
1:30:38
SPEAKER_02: and also this sanctuary with this woman who I just want to give a huge shout out to
1:30:46
SPEAKER_02: because she owns a restaurant in town and she's been planting huachuma there,
1:30:51
SPEAKER_02: she said, since...
1:30:53
SPEAKER_02: 2006, I want to say, or 2008, I don't remember, but it was like 18 to 20 years.
1:30:59
SPEAKER_02: And we have photos, excuse me, we have photos somewhere.
1:31:03
SPEAKER_02: And
1:31:08
SPEAKER_02: it's just, it's like very inspiring to see what that consistent planting has done.
1:31:16
SPEAKER_02: And she's got thousands of huge, beautiful huachuma now.
1:31:22
SPEAKER_02: And it's probably one of the,
1:31:24
SPEAKER_02: I don't know,
1:31:24
SPEAKER_02: it's the most beautiful garden I've ever been in probably just for everything,
1:31:30
SPEAKER_02: just the way that she's done it.
1:31:32
SPEAKER_02: And her name is Ingrid.
1:31:34
SPEAKER_02: She's just amazing that she gave us a tour and opportunity to see the land.
1:31:42
SPEAKER_02: And that I think was,
1:31:46
SPEAKER_02: I don't know, I'd rather just go hang out there than go to a museum like any day.
1:31:52
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's a good idea to go back and do ceremony there amongst all those big, huge cactus.
1:32:00
SPEAKER_00: And so like that, would you say there was like thousands or hundreds?
1:32:04
SPEAKER_00: Thousands.
1:32:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:32:05
SPEAKER_02: She's easily thousands.
1:32:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:32:07
SPEAKER_02: Thousands.
1:32:08
SPEAKER_00: And they're all massive, like way over our heads and just so big and so healthy and so happy.
1:32:14
SPEAKER_00: You can just tell that they're loved.
1:32:16
SPEAKER_00: And I think Maybe in a conversation you said you can tell that
1:32:19
SPEAKER_00: the prayer is very strong with this woman because of how well the cactus are growing
1:32:24
SPEAKER_00: and just how beautiful the land is.
1:32:28
SPEAKER_00: And that was really like maybe one of my favorite parts of going to Chavin was going there.
1:32:34
SPEAKER_00: And it was kind of cool for us to see the place that inspired Miguel
1:32:38
SPEAKER_00: to build his garden in the Sacred Valley.
1:32:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:32:40
SPEAKER_00: He said that last time he was there,
1:32:42
SPEAKER_00: he like looked across and you can see it actually when you're in Shabina in
1:32:45
SPEAKER_00: the temple.
1:32:45
SPEAKER_00: You can see it through the trees and there's all these like cactus heads sticking out.
1:32:49
SPEAKER_00: And he was like, wait, is that a, are those cactus over there?
1:32:53
SPEAKER_00: And then he went and saw it and he said he had never seen it done like that before.
1:32:57
SPEAKER_00: And it just sort of gave him permission in a way to see that, well, somebody's doing it.
1:33:01
SPEAKER_00: Like, why can't I do it?
1:33:03
SPEAKER_00: And so I don't know,
1:33:04
SPEAKER_00: it was kind of a moment for him to take us there and see the inception point
1:33:09
SPEAKER_00: of what we've been working towards with the garden.
1:33:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've never seen them planted in that way.
1:33:17
SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting, that's a whole other discussion.
1:33:19
SPEAKER_02: But she has them planted in very precise rows and organized in this way that you would think...
1:33:30
SPEAKER_02: Like when you see huachuma in the wild,
1:33:32
SPEAKER_02: I know this maybe didn't cross your mind, but it crossed my mind.
1:33:34
SPEAKER_02: When you see huachuma in the wild, it tends to grow arms from the base.
1:33:38
SPEAKER_02: So it branches from the base and that creates these big wide stands
1:33:45
SPEAKER_02: where there's like all these arms going up,
1:33:48
SPEAKER_02: but they're coming from more of a contained point on the bottom.
1:33:52
SPEAKER_02: But the actual plant gets very big, like very wide and wide.
1:33:58
SPEAKER_02: So like if you plant right next to each other all of these what she's done,
1:34:04
SPEAKER_02: you would think that that would create this situation where they're all crowded.
1:34:08
SPEAKER_02: But actually it looks to me like they figured out and they know where they stand
1:34:13
SPEAKER_02: and they just started to grow in these perfect columns like all next to each other.
1:34:20
SPEAKER_02: And it's really spectacular.
1:34:22
SPEAKER_02: I've never seen Huachuma planted in that way.
1:34:25
SPEAKER_02: And it's so precise, like every row and everything.
1:34:30
SPEAKER_02: And they're all just incredibly healthy.
1:34:35
SPEAKER_02: I was looking, I was like, there's no unhealthy plant here.
1:34:38
SPEAKER_02: They're all pristine.
1:34:40
SPEAKER_02: Like usually you see Huachuma has like bugs eating it and think,
1:34:44
SPEAKER_02: you know, no, like all of hers are just like picture perfect.
1:34:49
SPEAKER_02: And the grounds and everything.
1:34:51
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, you can tell that those cactus love being there.
1:34:58
SPEAKER_02: And she also loves them.
1:35:00
SPEAKER_02: I mean, obviously that is like a labor of love.
1:35:03
SPEAKER_02: Like nobody's coming and giving you a certificate to do that.
1:35:07
SPEAKER_02: She's been doing it.
1:35:09
SPEAKER_02: And I guess her and her husband do ceremonies there, right?
1:35:14
SPEAKER_02: In that space.
1:35:14
SPEAKER_02: And we got to see their space, which is...
1:35:18
SPEAKER_02: Actually,
1:35:18
SPEAKER_02: part of the temple grounds,
1:35:20
SPEAKER_02: which I think that's the most interesting part,
1:35:22
SPEAKER_02: is that at one point it was all connected.
1:35:25
SPEAKER_02: You can see there's remnants of temple on her land, these big granite pieces.
1:35:32
SPEAKER_02: So in some way, that is the temple.
1:35:34
SPEAKER_02: It's just the garden area, in a way.
1:35:39
SPEAKER_02: And it's almost more peaceful because there's not the tourist aspect to it.
1:35:44
SPEAKER_02: So maybe one day,
1:35:45
SPEAKER_02: I know that she facilitates with her husband,
1:35:47
SPEAKER_02: we'd have to go to their ceremony there,
1:35:49
SPEAKER_02: which I'd probably be open to if we were ever invited.
1:35:57
SPEAKER_02: But that was another highlight.
1:36:01
SPEAKER_02: You know,
1:36:02
SPEAKER_02: not to go on and on,
1:36:03
SPEAKER_02: because I think we should probably wrap this call up soon,
1:36:05
SPEAKER_02: but we went from Chavin to Huaraz,
1:36:08
SPEAKER_02: back to Huaraz,
1:36:09
SPEAKER_02: did a hike there, a ceremony, which was still the hardest ceremony I have ever done.
1:36:18
SPEAKER_02: And I don't know if we need to get into all of it,
1:36:21
SPEAKER_02: but I'm still burying the battle wounds from that.
1:36:24
SPEAKER_02: Which was, you know, a broken toenail and smashed my foot.
1:36:29
SPEAKER_02: And just the fact that I made it, I was happy.
1:36:32
SPEAKER_02: But that one,
1:36:34
SPEAKER_02: without being acclimated,
1:36:35
SPEAKER_02: I think at that point I still had been in Peru less than a week.
1:36:40
SPEAKER_02: We were up way above 10,000 feet.
1:36:43
SPEAKER_02: I just remember not being able to breathe.
1:36:46
SPEAKER_02: It's a place called Cherup.
1:36:48
SPEAKER_02: Which we have photos and we'll probably end up sharing those too,
1:36:51
SPEAKER_02: I assume on our Instagram or some other place so people can check them out.
1:36:56
SPEAKER_02: Incredibly beautiful place to do ceremony if you're acclimated.
1:37:03
SPEAKER_02: And you were already acclimated, so you had a little bit of a better time than I did.
1:37:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
1:37:10
SPEAKER_00: but you made it.
1:37:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's a funny thing about that one,
1:37:14
SPEAKER_02: which is like when the van dropped us at the bottom and it says Chorup Lagoon,
1:37:20
SPEAKER_02: right?
1:37:20
SPEAKER_02: There's like a little trail and it starts leading up
1:37:23
SPEAKER_02: and it's just this like nice paved trail, but it's uphill.
1:37:26
SPEAKER_02: But going uphill on that trail is really hard when you're not acclimated
1:37:30
SPEAKER_02: because you're like at 10,000 feet.
1:37:33
SPEAKER_02: And so we're just going up this trail, you know, like climbing, climbing for maybe an hour.
1:37:39
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I had to sit down.
1:37:40
SPEAKER_02: We sat down, me and my friend who was also not acclimated, take a break.
1:37:47
SPEAKER_02: And we're going and we keep going, we keep going.
1:37:50
SPEAKER_02: At some point,
1:37:50
SPEAKER_02: this guy like hikes really fast past us and he looked like he was wearing some kind
1:37:57
SPEAKER_02: of uniform or something.
1:37:59
SPEAKER_02: Well, anyway,
1:38:00
SPEAKER_02: come to find out,
1:38:01
SPEAKER_02: he was the guy that worked at the ticket office because we had to hike for an hour
1:38:05
SPEAKER_02: and a half just to get to the place where you buy the ticket to go into
1:38:10
SPEAKER_02: the actual
1:38:11
SPEAKER_01: hike, which blew my mind.
1:38:15
SPEAKER_01: I kept thinking like, okay,
1:38:17
SPEAKER_02: we're going to get to the top.
1:38:18
SPEAKER_02: We're going to get to the top.
1:38:19
SPEAKER_02: After an hour and a half of going up and huffing and puffing and not being able
1:38:22
SPEAKER_02: to breathe, we get to buy a ticket.
1:38:26
SPEAKER_02: To enter the trail that actually starts going.
1:38:30
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, that's not real.
1:38:33
SPEAKER_01: How can this be?
1:38:35
SPEAKER_01: This can't be the way they do it.
1:38:38
SPEAKER_01: Why won't they put the ticket office at the bottom?
1:38:40
SPEAKER_01: I guess it makes more sense because if you can't even make it there, You are in trouble.
1:38:46
SPEAKER_01: Because that was nothing compared to what came after.
1:38:51
SPEAKER_01: Which you could see this glacier way up there, like miles away, like high in the sky.
1:38:57
SPEAKER_01: Nobody in their right mind would think that this trail is going there.
1:39:04
SPEAKER_01: But it does.
1:39:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:39:08
SPEAKER_01: You know,
1:39:09
SPEAKER_01: it's like,
1:39:09
SPEAKER_01: I remember this being like,
1:39:10
SPEAKER_01: you know, sometimes you see like Asungate from the sacred valley.
1:39:13
SPEAKER_01: It's like way over there.
1:39:14
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like that.
1:39:15
SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh wait, there's this big mountain over there.
1:39:17
SPEAKER_01: And then like, that's where we're going.
1:39:20
SPEAKER_01: We're walking and we had to climb a waterfall.
1:39:24
SPEAKER_02: There's points in this hike where It's so steep that you have to use ropes,
1:39:31
SPEAKER_02: but they're like chain ropes that are built into the side of the mountain.
1:39:35
SPEAKER_02: There's no way that this hike would be allowed in the
1:39:37
SPEAKER_01: United States,
1:39:39
SPEAKER_01: I don't think, without signing many waivers because it's just way too dangerous.
1:39:46
SPEAKER_01: And then here we are doing this on medicine,
1:39:50
SPEAKER_02: by the way, that we forgot to mention.
1:39:52
SPEAKER_02: This medicine that we took when we went there was medicine that's made
1:39:55
SPEAKER_02: from cactus we got in Chavin.
1:39:58
SPEAKER_02: There was wild cactus,
1:40:00
SPEAKER_02: and Miguel went and found arms that had fallen to the ground,
1:40:03
SPEAKER_02: and then we turned that into medicine.
1:40:04
SPEAKER_02: So this is the strongest medicine in the world, too.
1:40:08
SPEAKER_02: And going up, we made it.
1:40:12
SPEAKER_02: We definitely made it.
1:40:16
SPEAKER_02: I guess to put it in perspective,
1:40:18
SPEAKER_02: I've hiked the Grand Canyon several times,
1:40:20
SPEAKER_02: but you have to go down in one day and then maybe like camp,
1:40:26
SPEAKER_02: couple days recover and then come back out.
1:40:29
SPEAKER_02: This would be like hiking the Grand Canyon all the way down and then coming back out
1:40:37
SPEAKER_02: in one day and also drinking a lot of huachuma.
1:40:42
SPEAKER_02: This is not a performance enhancing medicine by any means.
1:40:47
SPEAKER_02: So that's like the scale of how difficult it was.
1:40:50
SPEAKER_02: It was really an interesting experience.
1:40:53
SPEAKER_02: And I'm grateful I did it.
1:40:56
SPEAKER_02: I don't know that I would ever do that one again unless I was really acclimated,
1:41:01
SPEAKER_02: like three weeks plus in high elevation.
1:41:08
SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
1:41:09
SPEAKER_00: I loved Troop.
1:41:10
SPEAKER_00: That was like maybe one of the most beautiful days, beautiful ceremonies I've had.
1:41:15
SPEAKER_00: Everywhere you looked, it was like snow-capped mountains off in the distance and waterfalls.
1:41:21
SPEAKER_00: And it was really just such a beautiful place.
1:41:24
SPEAKER_00: But again,
1:41:25
SPEAKER_00: it was almost like I was a little bit overstimulated,
1:41:28
SPEAKER_00: like with the beauty and the hardness of the hike,
1:41:31
SPEAKER_00: that it made it a little harder to drop in deep, deep, deep,
1:41:36
SPEAKER_00: because I was worried about So that's another place that I do want to go back
1:41:39
SPEAKER_00: to one day so I can go a little bit deeper into the prayer now
1:41:41
SPEAKER_00: that I've been there once and I know what to expect.
1:41:43
SPEAKER_00: And there was these like sweet, sweet little dogs that came with us.
1:41:59
SPEAKER_00: And that was probably the most I cried for that whole ceremony.
1:42:03
SPEAKER_00: It broke me open even when we were in the van afterwards.
1:42:06
SPEAKER_00: I was just thinking about these little stray mountain dogs that are so skinny
1:42:11
SPEAKER_00: and one had like an infected eye and they were so sweet and followed us all day,
1:42:15
SPEAKER_00: which I love when dogs and animals come with us on our hikes
1:42:19
SPEAKER_00: because I just love animals.
1:42:21
SPEAKER_00: But they were kind of with us all day and looking for food from different hikers,
1:42:25
SPEAKER_00: which it broke my heart.
1:42:26
SPEAKER_00: They were just like shooing them away and We fed them with what we had.
1:42:31
SPEAKER_00: I think like some dried up lentil snacks and you and I gave them dried mangoes.
1:42:37
SPEAKER_00: But then I just kept thinking about those two little pups out there on the mountain
1:42:41
SPEAKER_00: and how loved our dogs are.
1:42:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my heart just really breaks open for animals.
1:42:48
SPEAKER_00: And then I was thinking, I want to come rescue them.
1:42:51
SPEAKER_00: But then I was like, but they live there.
1:42:53
SPEAKER_00: That was one of the most impactful things of that trip
1:42:55
SPEAKER_00: that really broke my heart open was those pups.
1:43:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:43:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's sad to see them because they've been conditioned that that's their way
1:43:19
SPEAKER_02: of getting food is to beg from hikers.
1:43:24
SPEAKER_02: But they're obviously not getting enough food, you know.
1:43:28
SPEAKER_01: So that's really sad to watch.
1:43:31
SPEAKER_02: But yeah,
1:43:31
SPEAKER_02: the place was very overstimulating,
1:43:33
SPEAKER_02: not just with the nature, but there's thousands of hikers.
1:43:37
SPEAKER_02: I would say thousands, hundreds, I don't know.
1:43:44
SPEAKER_02: It turns out that that's like one of the number three hikes in the entire world.
1:43:48
SPEAKER_02: So it's like on people's bucket list that are world hikers,
1:43:52
SPEAKER_02: you know, they go around and they try to do that hike.
1:43:55
SPEAKER_02: So we were, I think we were drastically unprepared for what we were getting ourselves into.
1:44:02
SPEAKER_02: Like we had never been there and I don't think Miguel had ever been there either.
1:44:07
SPEAKER_02: And so...
1:44:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's definitely one of those hikes where,
1:44:11
SPEAKER_02: you know, everybody had sticks, like poles, hiking poles.
1:44:15
SPEAKER_02: They were, you know, packed very light.
1:44:17
SPEAKER_02: We were like packed very heavy, no poles, you know.
1:44:22
SPEAKER_02: We were not in good shape.
1:44:24
SPEAKER_02: I mean, at the time,
1:44:25
SPEAKER_02: we got to the top, which was absolutely amazing that we actually made it there.
1:44:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:44:31
SPEAKER_02: And there were tons of people up there.
1:44:33
SPEAKER_02: And at some point, I looked up because I was just resting, laying down.
1:44:38
SPEAKER_02: And there's a group of elderly people,
1:44:42
SPEAKER_01: old and wearing shorts.
1:44:45
SPEAKER_01: And they just came out of nowhere.
1:44:47
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, these people made it.
1:44:51
SPEAKER_01: I could barely make it.
1:44:53
SPEAKER_01: It was really humbling to see them.
1:44:56
SPEAKER_02: And I was fairly convinced that there was another way up because there were people
1:45:02
SPEAKER_02: at the top that did not come the way we came.
1:45:06
SPEAKER_02: Like you kept seeing people come over this ridge over on the right side.
1:45:11
SPEAKER_02: I was like, there's people coming from over there.
1:45:14
SPEAKER_02: And then when we were at the top and Miguel was like, let's go back.
1:45:17
SPEAKER_02: I was like, are we not going to go back the easy way?
1:45:20
SPEAKER_02: He goes, I think it's just one way.
1:45:22
SPEAKER_02: I was like, well, there's another way.
1:45:24
SPEAKER_02: There's people coming over there.
1:45:27
SPEAKER_02: And he's like, really?
1:45:30
SPEAKER_02: But I had no way to confirm it.
1:45:32
SPEAKER_01: So I still think that there's a road that goes up that way.
1:45:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:45:38
SPEAKER_01: I think what it was is like the road that we stopped at,
1:45:42
SPEAKER_01: where we got out,
1:45:42
SPEAKER_01: if you would have kept driving on that road, you end up at the top.
1:45:47
SPEAKER_01: And probably these people were dropped at the top by their tour bus
1:45:51
SPEAKER_01: and they walked down and they got picked up at the bottom by the same bus.
1:45:55
SPEAKER_01: That's what I'm thinking happened because I don't know.
1:45:59
SPEAKER_01: I can't believe that everybody did that hike, especially the older people, but
1:46:05
SPEAKER_02: it's possible.
1:46:06
SPEAKER_02: It's possible they did.
1:46:08
SPEAKER_02: Who knows?
1:46:08
SPEAKER_02: I guess we'll find out one day.
1:46:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's like classic Miguel.
1:46:12
SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, there's a plane, but we're going to take the overnight bus.
1:46:15
SPEAKER_00: Or like when we go to Chicon, it's like through the brush, we're like bushwhacking.
1:46:18
SPEAKER_00: It's like you're always like, never mind that road right there.
1:46:22
SPEAKER_01: Never mind the clear path to walk on.
1:46:24
SPEAKER_01: We will always take the harder path.
1:46:27
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:46:28
SPEAKER_00: So this was no different.
1:46:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:46:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's one of the things.
1:46:35
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I've learned, you know, on these ceremonies that there is a point to it too.
1:46:40
SPEAKER_02: It's not just to torture people,
1:46:44
SPEAKER_02: but actually,
1:46:46
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:46:46
SPEAKER_02: to push up against our limiting beliefs is really powerful and important to do.
1:46:52
SPEAKER_02: Because I think most people would look at that hike and if they knew,
1:46:55
SPEAKER_02: like if I knew what it was going to be,
1:46:57
SPEAKER_02: I probably would have talked myself out of it.
1:47:00
SPEAKER_02: So it's actually better that I didn't know how hard it was going to be.
1:47:05
SPEAKER_02: And we just did it.
1:47:06
SPEAKER_02: And there's benefit in that because you see that you're actually capable,
1:47:11
SPEAKER_02: even though I'm still dealing with the broken toenail and things.
1:47:16
SPEAKER_02: Overall, fairly unscathed.
1:47:20
SPEAKER_02: So that was really great.
1:47:21
SPEAKER_02: And then, yeah, I just, I don't think we're going to get into it too much.
1:47:27
SPEAKER_02: It's kind of the end,
1:47:28
SPEAKER_02: but we went from there back to Sacred Valley,
1:47:31
SPEAKER_02: and then we had two retreats this year.
1:47:35
SPEAKER_02: There was a Heart Path retreat,
1:47:36
SPEAKER_02: which was all people who were coming for the first time,
1:47:41
SPEAKER_02: not necessarily first time with Huachuma,
1:47:44
SPEAKER_02: but first time with With us on the retreat.
1:47:47
SPEAKER_02: And then we had a group of returning people that we did a more advanced retreat with.
1:47:53
SPEAKER_02: We called the Fire Path because it had a fire ceremony appended to the already two ceremonies.
1:48:00
SPEAKER_02: And I really thought they were beautiful, the retreats.
1:48:04
SPEAKER_02: And we're still doing integration calls and we have our containers still going for those.
1:48:11
SPEAKER_02: So we're still in touch with people.
1:48:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, just letting the medicine still work a couple months later.
1:48:20
SPEAKER_00: I just have to say,
1:48:23
SPEAKER_00: I've gotten the opportunity to be with you every single year that you've gone
1:48:27
SPEAKER_00: to Peru and taken people to And it really like I can feel the the bigness of
1:48:33
SPEAKER_00: the prayers.
1:48:34
SPEAKER_00: You know,
1:48:35
SPEAKER_00: they get bigger and better each year,
1:48:36
SPEAKER_00: just even outside of the retreat with the Huachuma Foundation and the podcast
1:48:40
SPEAKER_00: and all of the different things that you're doing now to like continue this movement
1:48:43
SPEAKER_00: and mission.
1:48:45
SPEAKER_00: And it's just really it's been so beautiful to see the evolution of it and even like
1:48:49
SPEAKER_00: the people who are coming and the two retreats.
1:48:52
SPEAKER_00: And I just have to say I loved the structure of it this year and having the people
1:48:56
SPEAKER_00: who hadn't been there before.
1:48:59
SPEAKER_00: And then we really got to show them that.
1:49:01
SPEAKER_00: And then just afterwards,
1:49:02
SPEAKER_00: the contrast of people who have been to Peru before and worked with Miguel.
1:49:05
SPEAKER_00: And we got to go a little deeper and be sort of in the ceremonial container for
1:49:09
SPEAKER_00: a good like five or six days, whatever it was.
1:49:12
SPEAKER_00: And we didn't really come out of it until the very end.
1:49:16
SPEAKER_00: And I just appreciated that because there's something in me that loves the newbies.
1:49:21
SPEAKER_00: Like I love them seeing things for the first time and having all the questions.
1:49:25
SPEAKER_00: And I know you're like the advanced practitioners.
1:49:29
SPEAKER_00: There's something about the newbies that I love.
1:49:31
SPEAKER_00: And so they just hold such a special part in my heart.
1:49:34
SPEAKER_00: And then getting to do the fire path with like some
1:49:36
SPEAKER_00: of our best friends also had its own kind of magic to it.
1:49:41
SPEAKER_00: So I just look at this time in Peru as,
1:49:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:49:45
SPEAKER_00: one of the most beautiful summers that I've spent there for so many reasons
1:49:49
SPEAKER_00: and like really intense with the lessons and all the things that came through.
1:49:54
SPEAKER_00: And some of our other podcast episodes,
1:49:56
SPEAKER_00: actually,
1:49:56
SPEAKER_00: before we got into this Plant More Worry Less podcast,
1:50:00
SPEAKER_00: we talked a little bit about like how you met Ross and Ross introduced you to Miguel
1:50:05
SPEAKER_00: and sort of the story of you meeting Miguel in Peru.
1:50:08
SPEAKER_00: And actually so cool.
1:50:10
SPEAKER_00: Ross got to come with us this year on the fire path,
1:50:12
SPEAKER_00: which was such a big prayer of mine to meet him in person.
1:50:15
SPEAKER_00: And we have the same birthday.
1:50:16
SPEAKER_00: I think he's super amazing.
1:50:19
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just so glad I got to meet him.
1:50:21
SPEAKER_00: But I'm kind of curious,
1:50:22
SPEAKER_00: like if it's okay to ask you a question about this is like,
1:50:25
SPEAKER_00: how did you know that you wanted to take people to do this?
1:50:29
SPEAKER_00: I know that like you would go for your own personal work,
1:50:32
SPEAKER_00: but like where,
1:50:34
SPEAKER_00: what was the moment when you were like,
1:50:35
SPEAKER_00: yeah, I want to bring people to experience this?
1:50:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:50:41
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if I've shared this before.
1:50:42
SPEAKER_02: I think I have shared it sometime, maybe not on this podcast, but
1:50:48
SPEAKER_02: It was 2018 where I met Ross,
1:50:51
SPEAKER_02: and I had been working with Huachuma before that,
1:50:54
SPEAKER_02: so it wasn't my first time working with Huachuma.
1:50:57
SPEAKER_02: In fact,
1:50:59
SPEAKER_02: I was working pretty heavily with Huachuma when I met Ross in the jungle,
1:51:04
SPEAKER_02: and we were doing dieta, you know, and studying the Shipibo way.
1:51:09
SPEAKER_02: He turned me on to this idea of the hike, the Or what Miguel would call like a walk.
1:51:20
SPEAKER_02: And Ross was like, well, you work with Huachuma, have you ever done it as a walk?
1:51:25
SPEAKER_02: Like in the mountains?
1:51:26
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, no, never done it that way.
1:51:28
SPEAKER_02: Usually we take the medicine and we're kind of,
1:51:32
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:51:32
SPEAKER_02: more internal, you know, maybe go outside or, you know, that kind of thing.
1:51:38
SPEAKER_02: But we weren't like Structured hike.
1:51:40
SPEAKER_02: He's like, you should try a walk with this guy, Miguel.
1:51:43
SPEAKER_02: I just think you're going to like it.
1:51:44
SPEAKER_02: And I'm pretty sure on the podcast, Ross talks about this.
1:51:47
SPEAKER_02: But anyway, to cut the long story short, that's how I met Miguel.
1:51:55
SPEAKER_02: And the first ceremony I had with Miguel was at a place called Quincecoche.
1:52:01
SPEAKER_02: And you've been there now.
1:52:04
SPEAKER_02: It was one of the hardest days of my life, probably, as far as just like, What the heck?
1:52:10
SPEAKER_02: Like it made, it made ayahuasca and I had been in the jungle with ayahuasca and many ayahuascas.
1:52:17
SPEAKER_02: It made ayahuasca seem like kids playing in a sandbox.
1:52:20
SPEAKER_02: I was like, there was actual threat of death.
1:52:26
SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, the thing that happens with Um, yeah.
1:52:46
SPEAKER_02: And this was nothing like that.
1:52:47
SPEAKER_02: It was exactly the opposite.
1:52:49
SPEAKER_02: And coming from the jungle where we had just spent a month with ayahuasca,
1:52:52
SPEAKER_02: it was such a stark contrast where it's like we're walking.
1:52:56
SPEAKER_02: I would have said that this hike is like level five anyway.
1:53:01
SPEAKER_02: If you're on a scale of one to five, like how hard is it?
1:53:05
SPEAKER_02: Even without medicine, it's level five.
1:53:07
SPEAKER_02: Like it's advanced.
1:53:09
SPEAKER_02: And then you add Miguel, you know, giving you the strongest Huachuma I had ever had in my life.
1:53:15
SPEAKER_02: And then it started sleeting, like frozen ice on us during the final altar.
1:53:23
SPEAKER_02: And thinking you're going to die of hypothermia, you know, high elevation.
1:53:28
SPEAKER_02: I'm not putting this out there as like any kind of like good thing.
1:53:33
SPEAKER_02: But in the end,
1:53:35
SPEAKER_02: what I realized is like, Whoa,
1:53:38
SPEAKER_02: you know, and the ayahuasca experience in the jungle, everything was hypothetical.
1:53:43
SPEAKER_02: Every fear was all just happening in my mind.
1:53:47
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't real in that sense.
1:53:50
SPEAKER_02: But every fear that I confronted on that mountain,
1:53:53
SPEAKER_02: every thought I had about am I going to survive, that was real.
1:53:57
SPEAKER_02: I was actually confronting real fear in a way that was practical and And easy to see
1:54:06
SPEAKER_02: because Huachuma doesn't take you into dissociative state.
1:54:08
SPEAKER_02: It's sort of like what I was explaining in Chavin.
1:54:11
SPEAKER_02: When I confronted that fear of authority with the medicine in real time, that is different.
1:54:19
SPEAKER_02: That is manifestly different than having a vision in an ayahuasca ceremony
1:54:24
SPEAKER_02: of some authority figure and then coming to some realization.
1:54:27
SPEAKER_02: It This is very hard for me to convince the ayahuasca people of,
1:54:32
SPEAKER_02: and I don't need to convince them,
1:54:33
SPEAKER_02: I'm not trying to,
1:54:35
SPEAKER_02: but what you accomplish if you're looking to conquer fear,
1:54:40
SPEAKER_02: which I think fear is the biggest impediment to our happiness, honestly, is fear.
1:54:49
SPEAKER_02: If you go on one day on the mountain with Miguel and you come out alive,
1:54:54
SPEAKER_02: which you will,
1:54:56
SPEAKER_02: nobody dies,
1:54:57
SPEAKER_02: You will have conquered a lot of fears, you know, and not just with Miguel.
1:55:03
SPEAKER_02: I mean, these ceremonies,
1:55:04
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:55:04
SPEAKER_02: we can do them in other places and there's ways to confront the fear safely
1:55:09
SPEAKER_02: where you're not actually in danger.
1:55:13
SPEAKER_02: So the first ceremony I had with Miguel was Quincecocha
1:55:15
SPEAKER_02: and I actually thought I was going to die.
1:55:17
SPEAKER_02: There was a point in the final altar,
1:55:20
SPEAKER_02: and I remember this vividly,
1:55:22
SPEAKER_02: where I was very convinced that I'm dying of hypothermia.
1:55:29
SPEAKER_02: I wasn't prepared.
1:55:30
SPEAKER_02: It just came from the jungle.
1:55:30
SPEAKER_02: I didn't have warm clothes.
1:55:33
SPEAKER_02: It was sleeting ice.
1:55:35
SPEAKER_02: I was shaking so violently that I just couldn't even.
1:55:39
SPEAKER_02: And then I had this moment where I said to myself as Miguel was praying, I guess that's it.
1:55:48
SPEAKER_02: So I surrender.
1:55:49
SPEAKER_02: If this is it, then this is it.
1:55:51
SPEAKER_02: And I surrendered into it and all of the pain went away.
1:55:56
SPEAKER_02: And then I was just with him in his prayer.
1:55:59
SPEAKER_02: And it was just me and the prayer and all of this happening.
1:56:02
SPEAKER_02: And it was one of the most beautiful experiences.
1:56:05
SPEAKER_02: And that was when I first really connected with the idea of a prayer.
1:56:09
SPEAKER_02: I'm very anti-religion,
1:56:11
SPEAKER_02: generally speaking,
1:56:12
SPEAKER_02: because I just had bad experiences and I've seen a lot of the harms
1:56:18
SPEAKER_02: that organized religion have done, but that was very powerful.
1:56:23
SPEAKER_02: And so this other ceremony we did on that trip was to a place called Pacha Tucson,
1:56:31
SPEAKER_02: which you've been to now too.
1:56:33
SPEAKER_02: And when we got to the top of Pacha Tucson,
1:56:35
SPEAKER_02: which is a very hard hike to get up to the top,
1:56:39
SPEAKER_02: it opens into one of the most beautiful places you've ever been.
1:56:45
SPEAKER_02: It goes beyond any words that I could have.
1:56:48
SPEAKER_02: And I just...
1:56:50
SPEAKER_02: I just started crying.
1:56:52
SPEAKER_02: I couldn't hold back the tears because what I was feeling was the sense that
1:56:58
SPEAKER_02: if anybody in my life,
1:57:00
SPEAKER_02: and the person that came to mind most was my dad,
1:57:02
SPEAKER_02: I was like,
1:57:03
SPEAKER_02: I just wish my dad could see this place or experience what I'm experiencing now.
1:57:09
SPEAKER_02: If all the people I love could experience this place,
1:57:14
SPEAKER_02: They would have a totally different outlook on life.
1:57:17
SPEAKER_02: It would relieve so much suffering, basically.
1:57:20
SPEAKER_02: Because a lot of our suffering is not knowing who we are, where we are.
1:57:27
SPEAKER_02: And that puts it all in perspective in a way that is very hard to describe.
1:57:32
SPEAKER_02: So even when I'm trying to describe it now, it feels very inadequate.
1:57:37
SPEAKER_02: So the feeling I had was, I have to bring those people here.
1:57:41
SPEAKER_02: And at first it was just like that feeling like I got to bring my dad,
1:57:44
SPEAKER_02: I got to bring my sister, I got to bring like these people that are close to me.
1:57:50
SPEAKER_02: But as time went on, I realized, so that was 2018, I realized like, no, my dad is not coming.
1:57:57
SPEAKER_02: You know, he has difficulty walking.
1:57:59
SPEAKER_02: This isn't a thing.
1:58:01
SPEAKER_02: And I started to go through this like letting go process, like you're not bringing those people.
1:58:07
SPEAKER_02: But doesn't mean you can't bring other people.
1:58:11
SPEAKER_02: And so it took me a long time to really come to it.
1:58:15
SPEAKER_02: And then, yeah, in 2023 is when, so five years after that is when I took the first group.
1:58:25
SPEAKER_02: But it had been, that prayer had been there and manifesting and just working its way.
1:58:33
SPEAKER_02: And that's when I decided,
1:58:37
SPEAKER_02: because I just realized,
1:58:38
SPEAKER_02: like, I'm okay with words, I can write, I can speak, but there are no words.
1:58:44
SPEAKER_02: You cannot communicate what people experience there.
1:58:50
SPEAKER_02: It is so beyond anything.
1:58:52
SPEAKER_02: And I know it sounds like, whoa, you know, these people are real high.
1:58:56
SPEAKER_02: It's like, you just got to go.
1:59:00
SPEAKER_02: There's no way else to experience it.
1:59:04
SPEAKER_02: You have to do it.
1:59:05
SPEAKER_02: And so that's why we take people so that they can come to Their own experience of that.
1:59:12
SPEAKER_02: And maybe they'll put words to it.
1:59:14
SPEAKER_02: Or we've had people who are artists who will create music or poetry or things
1:59:20
SPEAKER_02: to better describe it.
1:59:22
SPEAKER_02: But it's something that is really life changing.
1:59:28
SPEAKER_02: And I now say the word life changing as a disclaimer.
1:59:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:59:35
SPEAKER_02: Not as a sales pitch.
1:59:36
SPEAKER_02: Like disclaimer.
1:59:38
SPEAKER_02: It's like once you see heaven, you can't unsee it.
1:59:42
SPEAKER_02: This will change your life.
1:59:45
SPEAKER_02: And whether you are ready for that, it's up to you.
1:59:53
SPEAKER_00: Bam.
1:59:55
SPEAKER_00: Do you feel like your reasons have changed now that you've done it
1:59:58
SPEAKER_00: for four years going into the fifth one?
2:00:01
SPEAKER_00: Do you feel like it's still really like that's the essence of it?
2:00:05
SPEAKER_02: Well, I feel like at the time that this was all starting to manifest,
2:00:10
SPEAKER_02: the prayer, I was still really kind of like wrapping up the second altar of my life.
2:00:16
SPEAKER_02: I took a lot longer maybe than some people, but I was around 37, 38 years old.
2:00:22
SPEAKER_02: So I was starting to step,
2:00:25
SPEAKER_02: I was already in service,
2:00:26
SPEAKER_02: you know,
2:00:27
SPEAKER_02: like that was kind of my But I still was seeking for myself a lot,
2:00:33
SPEAKER_02: and that's why I was there.
2:00:34
SPEAKER_02: I was still seeking for myself.
2:00:38
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I'm 46 now, and I'm well-grounded into this third altar of service.
2:00:45
SPEAKER_02: So I think now, to me, it's less about me.
2:00:50
SPEAKER_02: Even that part of wanting to share with people was still about me in some way.
2:00:56
SPEAKER_02: And now it's really about other people.
2:00:59
SPEAKER_02: I just want to be in service to that.
2:01:02
SPEAKER_02: I
2:01:07
SPEAKER_02: like to go, but I don't think I would go for myself.
2:01:12
SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't go for myself anymore.
2:01:14
SPEAKER_02: I go because of the people going and seeing them go through it.
2:01:22
SPEAKER_02: I do have a special place in my heart for the first timers.
2:01:27
SPEAKER_02: And there's something magical about seeing their faces after that first ceremony,
2:01:35
SPEAKER_02: or even at the fourth altar, to just see them.
2:01:38
SPEAKER_02: Because it's so life-changing for a lot of them just to have that experience.
2:01:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:01:49
SPEAKER_02: And even the first-timers that come, they're not inexperienced.
2:01:52
SPEAKER_02: Most of them have like a lot of experience with plant medicines,
2:01:56
SPEAKER_02: other plant medicines, some with huachuma.
2:01:59
SPEAKER_02: But, you know,
2:02:00
SPEAKER_02: the combination of everything,
2:02:02
SPEAKER_02: you know, on these retreats really makes it a different type of thing.
2:02:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:02:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's something that happens between the prayers, the medicine, and then the container.
2:02:16
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like a co-creation at some point.
2:02:18
SPEAKER_00: Like you set out the prayer, like, okay, this is when we're going.
2:02:21
SPEAKER_00: And then whoever shows up,
2:02:22
SPEAKER_00: I call it,
2:02:22
SPEAKER_00: I love this term,
2:02:23
SPEAKER_00: the wonderful web of Huachuma,
2:02:25
SPEAKER_00: because it feels like there's another consciousness that's directing the people
2:02:28
SPEAKER_00: into experiences with us.
2:02:29
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's like the perfect dream team group.
2:02:33
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's like a little bit, you know, people are Yeah.
2:02:58
SPEAKER_00: So sometimes I even think about the place where you are,
2:03:01
SPEAKER_00: where we are,
2:03:01
SPEAKER_00: and then the people that get called in is like exactly what's sort of needed.
2:03:09
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to comment on what a great example you've been for me about being in
2:03:13
SPEAKER_00: the unity altar of your life and going from clarity into unity.
2:03:18
SPEAKER_00: And like you're reminding me that it's like about the others now.
2:03:21
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sort of in that.
2:03:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm still...
2:03:24
SPEAKER_00: I feel very much I'm still in the clarity altar of my life,
2:03:26
SPEAKER_00: but like moving step by step into the unity altar.
2:03:29
SPEAKER_00: And I feel that happening.
2:03:30
SPEAKER_00: So I just,
2:03:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
2:03:31
SPEAKER_00: you've been such a great reflection and reminder and example for me about how
2:03:36
SPEAKER_00: to really make it about the others.
2:03:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, about me.
2:04:01
SPEAKER_00: And I guess just like one more question about the retreats.
2:04:04
SPEAKER_00: Do you ever think about like what you hope people leave with or what you hope that they come?
2:04:10
SPEAKER_00: Is there any like prayer that you hold in your heart for the ones that are coming?
2:04:14
SPEAKER_00: Or are you just sort of in full trust and surrender to the mountains and to
2:04:18
SPEAKER_00: the medicine and that people are going to get what they need?
2:04:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I tried to,
2:04:24
SPEAKER_02: you know,
2:04:24
SPEAKER_02: when I think about a container,
2:04:25
SPEAKER_02: I think about Javier a lot,
2:04:28
SPEAKER_02: Javier Riguero,
2:04:29
SPEAKER_02: because he really has a powerful teaching on this,
2:04:33
SPEAKER_02: but he talked about how a container should be like the cup that you serve
2:04:39
SPEAKER_02: the medicine with,
2:04:40
SPEAKER_02: which is clean,
2:04:42
SPEAKER_02: hopefully,
2:04:45
SPEAKER_02: and empty,
2:04:47
SPEAKER_02: and empty,
2:04:47
SPEAKER_02: because it should just provide the The containment for what happens and
2:04:54
SPEAKER_02: the medicine itself is going to be the individual experiences of people.
2:05:01
SPEAKER_02: So from my perspective,
2:05:03
SPEAKER_02: holding the container,
2:05:04
SPEAKER_02: I don't have an intention other than to hold the container for them
2:05:09
SPEAKER_02: to have whatever experience is theirs.
2:05:13
SPEAKER_02: And it's why I try not to push too hard on, like, imposing my viewpoints.
2:05:20
SPEAKER_02: If people ask me, I'll certainly share.
2:05:24
SPEAKER_02: But I do want people to develop their own, you know...
2:05:30
SPEAKER_02: Everything.
2:05:31
SPEAKER_02: And the other thing to keep in mind,
2:05:33
SPEAKER_02: it's good to just keep in mind anyway,
2:05:35
SPEAKER_02: is when you're working with people who are working with Huachuma or any medicine
2:05:42
SPEAKER_02: that expands consciousness, so psychedelics,
2:05:48
SPEAKER_02: people become very impressionable.
2:05:52
SPEAKER_02: And everything that you say as a facilitator,
2:05:56
SPEAKER_02: even if you're just holding the container, Is gonna land in a deeper way.
2:06:01
SPEAKER_02: So I'm also sort of aware of that always and trying not to contaminate the medicine.
2:06:13
SPEAKER_02: Not put myself between them and the medicine.
2:06:17
SPEAKER_02: And so that they can experience it.
2:06:20
SPEAKER_02: And it's not about like what I think.
2:06:23
SPEAKER_02: It's really about what they come to.
2:06:26
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it's hard.
2:06:28
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it depends on the group.
2:06:29
SPEAKER_02: We have so many groups and different dynamics,
2:06:32
SPEAKER_02: and it's not me sometimes doing the The contamination, right?
2:06:37
SPEAKER_02: Like other people in the group imposing their views.
2:06:41
SPEAKER_02: And so like a lot of what we do preparation-wise is to talk about that.
2:06:47
SPEAKER_02: And I know like I belabor the points,
2:06:50
SPEAKER_02: but like we have slide presentations and calls where I talk about how we're going
2:06:54
SPEAKER_02: to hold space for each other.
2:06:56
SPEAKER_02: We're not going to impose our views in that way.
2:06:59
SPEAKER_02: I don't I don't speak of it in the same way.
2:07:04
SPEAKER_02: Each time it's a little bit different.
2:07:06
SPEAKER_02: But really to allow people to have their experience is part of how we hold space for them.
2:07:13
SPEAKER_02: So that's how I hold space for people too.
2:07:17
SPEAKER_02: It's not about hoping they get something.
2:07:21
SPEAKER_02: I do know that they will get something.
2:07:23
SPEAKER_02: I just don't know what that is.
2:07:25
SPEAKER_02: And...
2:07:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think that works for me.
2:07:33
SPEAKER_02: I think sometimes,
2:07:35
SPEAKER_02: this is just my observation,
2:07:38
SPEAKER_02: is that some traditions, they push too hard into people's experiences.
2:07:44
SPEAKER_02: Like one tradition that I had a really deep dive in was the Shipibo tradition,
2:07:51
SPEAKER_02: and I think they push too hard.
2:07:53
SPEAKER_02: They push their views way too hard into people.
2:07:57
SPEAKER_02: And you cannot really just casually engage with the Shipibo tradition because even
2:08:03
SPEAKER_02: if you shut off and you say, okay,
2:08:06
SPEAKER_02: I'm not going to believe all of the things,
2:08:08
SPEAKER_02: they're still going to put their beliefs on you.
2:08:11
SPEAKER_02: And your psyche is so open with the medicine that you're going to internalize some of it.
2:08:16
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, that is like me having it done to me.
2:08:20
SPEAKER_02: I was like, I don't really want to do that to anybody else.
2:08:24
SPEAKER_02: Because I know that after my experience in the jungle, it took me years to undo.
2:08:29
SPEAKER_02: And I didn't believe it, you know, a lot of the things they were saying.
2:08:32
SPEAKER_02: But my psyche had already been exposed in such an open way to a lot of their things.
2:08:37
SPEAKER_02: It took me a long time to get past some of their things.
2:08:41
SPEAKER_02: And I think that that is dangerous, honestly.
2:08:45
SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
2:08:46
SPEAKER_02: like a lot of the things that I would say are harmful in the plant medicine space is
2:08:51
SPEAKER_02: that.
2:08:52
SPEAKER_02: It's like people like me who are young and eager to learn and we just dive into
2:08:58
SPEAKER_02: a month with the Shipiba without knowing that we're actually walking into
2:09:03
SPEAKER_02: a complex belief system that we might have a difficult time untangling later.
2:09:11
SPEAKER_02: So I see that happening,
2:09:13
SPEAKER_02: you know, with the spread of certain traditions and, you know, no judgment.
2:09:18
SPEAKER_02: Everybody gets drawn to their own tradition.
2:09:23
SPEAKER_02: But I really do think that The traditions that resonate most for me are the ones
2:09:28
SPEAKER_02: that keep it open.
2:09:30
SPEAKER_02: Even though we have the altars,
2:09:33
SPEAKER_02: the altars aren't telling people what their experience needs to be.
2:09:36
SPEAKER_02: They're just opening a doorway into what that experience could be for them.
2:09:43
SPEAKER_02: It's not the place of the facilitator to tell the person what it means.
2:09:49
SPEAKER_02: Everybody figures it out for themselves.
2:09:52
SPEAKER_02: So that's kind of how I hold the containers, too, in that way.
2:09:57
SPEAKER_02: And trust,
2:09:58
SPEAKER_02: actually,
2:09:59
SPEAKER_02: that people will get what they need as long as I'm holding the container in
2:10:03
SPEAKER_02: a good way.
2:10:04
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
2:10:07
SPEAKER_00: Love that.
2:10:08
SPEAKER_00: I chuckled a little bit when you said clean cup because I thought of Miguel's cup.
2:10:13
SPEAKER_00: We always like,
2:10:14
SPEAKER_00: it's like,
2:10:15
SPEAKER_00: well, now he's got a new cup, but I just had a little chuckle over a clean cup.
2:10:19
SPEAKER_02: I just remember Javier in one of his books or one of his podcasts or one
2:10:23
SPEAKER_02: of his talks, he says, a cup should be clean.
2:10:29
SPEAKER_01: Just like the container should be clean, you know, so it's interesting.
2:10:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and Miguel's cup is...
2:10:38
SPEAKER_01: It's clean in its own way.
2:10:44
SPEAKER_00: Last question I have for you is, is there a favorite part of these retreats?
2:10:50
SPEAKER_00: Something that you look forward to every year and something that you take home
2:10:54
SPEAKER_00: with you and just kind of like, yeah, a favorite part?
2:10:59
SPEAKER_02: My favorite part is probably...
2:11:01
SPEAKER_02: Just being taken care of,
2:11:04
SPEAKER_02: honestly, by Jesusa, the lady that cooks for us, is one of my favorite parts.
2:11:11
SPEAKER_02: Just really feeling like we're taken care of.
2:11:16
SPEAKER_02: That feeling of not having to take care of myself.
2:11:20
SPEAKER_02: Because I'm, you know...
2:11:22
SPEAKER_02: I'm an adult and I do all the adult things and always having to take care of myself
2:11:27
SPEAKER_02: and take care of others.
2:11:29
SPEAKER_02: I really feel like that is one of my favorite things.
2:11:32
SPEAKER_02: Now, the things that we do, I love the sound that we do.
2:11:36
SPEAKER_02: We go to Si Consalo, the Maha Templo.
2:11:40
SPEAKER_02: It's always one of my favorite things.
2:11:43
SPEAKER_02: And of course, the ceremonies themselves are, yeah, I love them.
2:11:53
SPEAKER_00: And I know you love the community too, like that whole aspect of it.
2:11:57
SPEAKER_00: You always mention that.
2:11:59
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
2:11:59
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's really the medicine for me is the people.
2:12:05
SPEAKER_02: And we create this whole family.
2:12:09
SPEAKER_02: I mean, whether we want to or not, create it.
2:12:13
SPEAKER_02: And that's really what I like.
2:12:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:12:21
SPEAKER_00: Well, is there anything else that you want to say or ask
2:12:26
SPEAKER_00: or do you think we've reached completion?
2:12:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're done.
2:12:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's good.
2:12:33
SPEAKER_01: I think we'll leave it there.
2:12:37
SPEAKER_00: Okay, great.
2:12:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad.
2:12:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad we did this.
2:12:40
SPEAKER_00: It's always so nice to reminisce.
2:12:41
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, last night we were talking in a call and like, was that a dream?
2:12:44
SPEAKER_00: Did that really happen?
2:12:46
SPEAKER_00: And so it's nice to kind of recap and look at pictures sometimes and be like,
2:12:50
SPEAKER_00: no, no, we did live that.
2:12:51
SPEAKER_00: That was, that was real.
2:12:54
SPEAKER_00: Great.
2:12:54
SPEAKER_00: So, well, thank you so much, Hamid.
2:12:56
SPEAKER_00: And thanks for giving me the space to talk about my experience too.
2:12:59
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I can't wait for next year.
2:13:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to it already.
2:13:05
SPEAKER_02: Yep, me too.
2:13:06
SPEAKER_02: Stay tuned.
2:13:08
SPEAKER_00: Stay tuned.
2:13:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay, everybody, thank you so much for listening.
2:13:11
SPEAKER_00: If you made it this far, we'll see you on the next one.
2:13:14
SPEAKER_02: Bye-bye.
2:13:14
SPEAKER_02: Bye.
2:13:22
SPEAKER_02: This podcast episode was a production of the Huachuma Foundation.
2:13:27
SPEAKER_02: If you would like to be a guest on our show, email us at huachumafoundation at gmail.com.
2:13:34
SPEAKER_02: If you would like to learn more about us or support our mission,
2:13:38
SPEAKER_02: please visit huachumafoundation.org.
2:13:42
SPEAKER_02: And most of all, remember to plant more, worry less.