Teatime: Evolving the Vision

I just got back from Peru, where I gave a talk at the 6th Annual Amazonian Shamanism conference. The theme was "Grace and Madness", and my presentation went a little something like what follows. Imagine that I'm reading this to you in a lush tropical paradise. You can hear the cicadas chirping in a weird sort of rhythm as a squirrel monkey skitters past your feet. And in the background, fireflies...

When I was invited to speak here in the Amazon, I kind of freaked out. I looked up the other presenters--all these legendary leaders in the field who've dedicated their lives to ayahuasca, shamanism, brain science, enthnobotany, chemistry, or art--and I thought, what can I bring to this? I'm just the Teafaerie. I write a sassy Internet column for a psychedelic information site frequented by do-it-yourself experimentalists.

Ayahuasca is a sacred mystery, and I am deeply ignorant about it. I've taken it less than a dozen times. I've read a few books, a bunch of articles, and a lot of trip reports. I've poked around on the forums. But I still have way more questions about ayahuasca than answers. I know that it's changed my life, maybe saved my life; it's healed me, it's helped me unknot some sick behavior patterns; it's opened up my body and my mind, my heart and my soul. I know that it's the real thing. It's a living magic medicine.

And my people are very sick, you know? The whole planet is very sick. So I thought: here's a chance for someone from my unique demographic to talk to some of the shamans of the Amazon and the Movers and the Shakers, to the people who work with this stuff, and to try to figure out how we can best relate to this mystery and to one another.