Another Encounter with Diego in Miami

I’d like to share with you some things from my latest ceremony with Diego, this past Saturday night in Miami. I have to say that a few months ago, I could not have imagined writing some of the things I am about to share. Before the ceremony, Diego warned us that the word “profound” would take on a new meaning for us. That was no exaggeration.

My message to you is that I believe we are now on the cusp of a very deep and profound awakening and healing. As a young James T. Kirk might have put it, “Buckle up.”

First, I have to say what an incredible experience it was, flying into Miami, with such a completely different vibe than DC, and be welcomed by such loving, open people. There are quiet giants there, serving a cause they know is vital for a world that needs healing. Much more needs to be said about their loving dedication to the medicine and selfless service. But that is for another entry.

With a friend of mine from the DC area, I flew into Miami Friday afternoon and checked into a hotel my friend Maile had arranged. (Maile, thank you so much, and sorry you couldn’t make the trip.) We took a dip in the pool before we were picked up at the hotel and taken to the home of Juana, who organized most everything, and who was a true force of nature. We did a sweatlodge that night, which is one of her specialties. The next day we headed to where we would be doing ceremony with don Diego, somewhat of a high rise condominium on Key Biscayne, overlooking the ocean. Our host of the condo, a wonderfully light hearted artist from Peru, had his enchanting abstract paintings on the wall. We took a short swim in the ocean and I got a little burned, then prepared for ceremony called Depspacho with James. This was a very elaborate ceremony for cleansing us and creating our intentions for ceremony with Diego. (Again, I am leaving out quite a bit.)

The ceremony with Diego began much like the first one. His instructions were simply to explore everything through the breath, and that the breath is our primary connection with spirit. The medicine tasted foul, of course, and created a tensing and slight nausea in my stomach. (I had gone on a pretty strict diet for a week, so I was hoping to avoid “purging.”) My mind grew alert for what I might see, and sometimes there would be a little hint of this image, or that, but nothing that I could be really sure wasn’t just my imagination. I went for over an hour and not much seemed to happen. I drank a second cup when the opportunity came, and I sat down thinking maybe I just wouldn’t experience the same kind of profound experience that I had before.

About this time, I began to feel a tingling in my arms and a sense of being in “lift off” phase. There was a sense of the medicine making its presence known, and saying “Hi.”

Soon afterward there were abstract patterns and intricate, colorful grids unfolding before me. I would try to remember to breathe. Diego would be chanting, playing with bells, or other instruments. Each time he played it would seem to bring me back to a new place.

All in all, I would describe that there was a sense of “tunneling” to the other side, where I felt immersed in a dark river of Being, a vast source of geometries, patterns, and possibilities. Much of the time there were only hints or shadows of shapes and symbols, all connected together, yet also flowing together with a sense of structure yet also flow. Of course, not with the clarity of an Alex Gray painting, but hints and flashes nonetheless. And as I felt my connection with all of this, I was filled with a sense of love and ecstasy with this ground source I sensed was the foundation of pure creativity and freedom.

But there was also an elusive quality to everything, never really hitting me with the full light show. There remained a kind of obscure, mysterious quality as if eluding my ability to fully conceptualize and get a handle on what this truly was.

I also became aware that as I was seeing and feeling these not quite substantial patterns and flows, I was also constructing in my own mind (even now) stories about it, inventing a role for myself (as your story teller) that was simultaneously removing me from this field of essence. That was perhaps the true struggle, staying present with the reality that was unfolding as thoughts of roles, identities, and stories constantly tried to pull me away. You’ve heard the expression of a deeper reality that is beyond the ability of language to convey. Well that’s what I experienced. I felt my very attempts to, say, put characterizations on the nature of the medicine or what I was experiencing, actually distorted the experience. Like the medicine was always eluding my attempts to define it or explain it. Ultimately, you could say that I eventually caved to the deductions of the ego, though I really felt I had more than just a glimpse of the other side.

This was the core experience for me through the night, as Diego played (amid other sounds of retching) and as time seemed to both stretch and shrink. And I had the sense that the group radiated together in ecstacy, not unlike a collection of tuning forks vibrating at a common pitch.

Like the last session I had with Diego, I thought of various people I knew, appreciating their special beauty. Recognizing the special beauty and purpose that they have (that I and often they forget). There were people who I had blamed for this or that, a view in my exalted state made no sense. Everyone I knew had amazing qualities and beauty, and it seemed strange that I just didn’t realize the obvious all the time.

For example, I usually thought of my supervisor at work as a frumpy, nagging, narrow minded woman. But when I beheld what she had to deal with, including a husband with all sorts of emotional and physical problems, and the impossible politics of where I worked, I realized that in many ways, this small, unassuming woman was nothing less than a giant.

Somehow, though I’m not sure how my thoughts took this direction, I had the sense that I had more or less broken my father’s heart in ways that I had not seen before. He had dedicated his life to our family, sacrificed much on our behalf. Yet, I turned my heart away at an early age, mainly because I had a highly sensitive and independent nature, while he was very rigid and expected me to follow the Southern Baptist way, that I felt didn’t exactly work for me. I pulled away, and in some ways we never fully reconciled, perhaps because we lived in worlds apart. But he was an amazing man who gave me so much. And for some reason, at this point, I saw what looked like a vast colorful fractal pattern of Escher-like geometries.

Another insight was that I saw that I was perhaps or probably not meant to have the “soul mate” or deep and profound love connection with one person that I had hoped for much of my life. It was sort of like I saw that my soul had made some kind of agreement not to focus on a link with an individual, with the vast reality before us. An important phrase kind of echoed in my mind at some point, “all my relations.” It was of course, what we used to enter the sweat lodge on Friday night. Somehow now, though, it took on a different kind of meaning. It was no longer a nice, altruistic phrase, it was a foundational core reality. ALL MY RELATIONS. I saw that while I had been searching for that special someone, I had forgotten that we are all connected as one family with the plants, animals, rocks, and bugs. I saw that ALL MY RELATIONS is the core truth that binds us together more profoundly than we have imagined. And it is about exploring these interconnections through play and love and tears. Creating a special relationship with someone can bring joy, especially while bringing children into the world. It can help us learn devotion and empathy for another. But the dark side is that we can get locked into a relationship pattern that might take us away (or blind to the needs of) others who are, in reality, no less connected with us. It seemed to me that (perhaps) in this time of need and vast interconnections, my soul had chosen not to link to tightly to anyone one person, so that I could be of greater service to the many and to link with others for teaching and sharing. For those of you who are single and wondering about that, I invite you to consider this possible vision of vast playful, loving interconnection.

I continued to feel this ALL MY RELATIONS as I listened to Diego’s playing, hearing the voices all around me, sensing that they were also opening to this reality in their own way.

At some point near the end (weren’t you just waiting for this?) I felt something in my stomach and perhaps a little nudge from my spirit that said, yes, George, there is something you need to let go of. I responded with “No, I don’t think so.” But then there was this, “Dude, it’s your turn.” I resisted. Maybe we’ll wait awhile, I thought. But the feeling was persistent. So I slowly looked around for the plastic purge bucket, got on all fours. My core muscles worked hard and I let it rip, and it’s wasn’t pretty. Here I was, one minute feeling like a master creator. The next moment I was on all fours, puking into a plastic bowl on the floor. So revolting. So gut wrenching real. And yet also glorious. I got that I was releasing crap that just did not jive with the higher frequencies.

At some point, Diego did close the ceremony and people slowly began to re-orient with their surroundings. And eventually, I began speaking to my neighbors. I began having a conversation with Kuki, a woman who had sat beside me during ceremony. She was radiant and had an amazing caring, playful energy. She had met Mother Theresa at a young age, and had been taught a meditation technique directly by Osho. She shared a great deal of her wisdom about things that I had recently been trying to learn more about, like principles of manifestation and tapping (EFT). She also convinced me I had to go to India, and I made an attempt to share some things with her. Somehow, my conversation with her and what she shared with me seemed as important as anything else in the ceremony.

One thing I believe I understood about Diego is that he is more transpersonal in his work. Although he has been trained by a shaman from Peru (and he has his ceremonial lodge there) unlike other curanderos, he has worked with teachers in India. Some of his icaros (chants and songs) come from a Vedic tradition. So his work embraces not just the traditions of the jungle. I think the experiences that people have reflect this.

Based on what I felt and experienced, I’d like to leave you with a final inquiry. Suppose what we have always dreamed of experiencing could be attained with a few ceremonies like this (or with other tools such as meditation retreats)? Suppose tools were now available to help us awaken into a deeper, more profound reality? And let’s suppose that we lived on a world where the dysfunctional nature of “normal” consciousness was leading our planet toward peril for the first time in it’s history. What if that was the reality that was unfolding before us now?

My answer to that inquiry is that we start to wake up now. With friends. We share tools. We share experiences. We open our hearts. And (maybe) we puke our guts out.

We do what we can to help other awake, and we ask others to help us. If enough of us heed this call, we create a critical mass that turns to the challenge that our world faces at this time.

Yes, I know, it sounds idealistic. And as I write these words, the experience is now a memory. I see people (at the airport when I first began writing this, later in my office) the way I normally did. As I write these words on Monday, my body is tired, I am falling back into my habits and I too am sitting here questioning my own words. And I realize (more than I did last time) that perhaps the greatest challenge is integrating what I’ve experienced into my more habitual life.

I cannot, however, forget what I experienced, seeming to breaking through to this source of beauty, a vision of a magical playground that is our essence, the source of freedom and creativity that we share. And yet, there is also another truth. The people who brought me this medicine, Diego and his helpers, as well as Juana the organizer and her helpers, were simple, gentle souls. Diego’s energy and power seemed directed purely in the spirit of service. His helpers reached out to me in the darkness as I stumbled, gave me water…they were devoted to what was needed. Instead of sitting searching for visions, they moved quietly and cleaned the bowls that had been used for purges. They poured a little water on my head, checked into where I was, and asked me to breathe through it. Then they would move onto others who needed help. I imagine today they are in their gardens, working with the soil and the worms, tending their flowers. Gentle hearts who feel and nourish their connections with all things.

So that’s my sharing. The bottom line is that after experiencing this, I must bear witness. During the last stages of the ceremony, I felt again what I felt during my first time with Diego: we’ve waited lifetimes for this moment, to hear the call and awaken for one another, with one another, and truly shift the game.

Yes, the moment has arrived.

ADDENDUM: Just a few additional thoughts, as the medicine recedes a little in my body and I return to this dimension. Last night, as I was tired, I felt I had left the esctacy behind, and I wondered what from this experience could I truly carry back and integrate into my life? Many of the stories and worries that habitually played through my mind returned, and I began to question all I had written above. Was it all just a wild experience, and perhaps nothing more than more stories and constructions so my ego could play them back for you?

But then I remembered something that I had forgot to mention above (actually there are probably many things I have left out). And that is that this place of power can be accessed in one's life, but that it's characteristic is inherently playful. So when the habitual stories and the shoulds and worries crowd my mind, there is less room for that sense of play, that innocent awareness of a child. So I tried slowing down my thoughts, letting more spaces come between the thoughts a little, and asking myself: "How can I make this experience more playful?" I felt more in my body, and I think I felt a little a little more of the trace of the medicine as I did that.

And the world is beautiful. It can be more playful, more gentle. And from here, the source of power flows.

Anyway, that's my two cents at the moment. :)