Program Notes
Guest speakers: Meriana Dinkova & Shonagh Home
In today’s podcast we get to listen in on a conversation between Shonagh Home and Meriana Dinkova. Meriana received her initial training in psychology studies at Vienna University and at the Free University in Berlin. And in 2003 she completed her MA in Counseling Psychology at the California Association of Integral Studies in San Francisco. In 2010 Meriana started two different monthly Meetups, which have been successfully running since: “Get Out Of Your Own Way- Conquering Self Sabotage” and “Sex Magic”- . She has also been a featured speaker at the Visionary Voices Salon in SF where she talked about Sex Magic and different uses of sexual energy to enhance awareness.
Meriana has developed a unique system of psychological and neo-shamanistic inner-space navigation tools for navigating non-ordinary states of consciousness and the Ayahuasca experience. Those tools are designed to maximize the experience and provide the opportunity for learning and healing, while safely navigating the inner landscapes, and avoiding common pitfalls. Learning how to use your consciousness in those ways can enrich your psychonaut toolkit and empower your inner shaman.
Meriana also organizes retreats to Peru, in which she combines her work with experienced shamans.
“Confessions of an Ecstasy Advocate” with Lorenzo
Previous Episode
444 - The Longest 100 Seconds You Will Ever Know
Next Episode
446 - Closing In On Concrescence
Similar Episodes
- 543 - Working With Medicinal Plants - score: 0.82369
- 490 - Bridging Western Medicine and Shamanism - score: 0.81567
- 452 - Kambo, Sananga and Rapé - score: 0.80780
- 475 - The Path of a Medicine Woman - score: 0.80537
- 537 - Integrating A Medicine Experience - score: 0.79523
- 614 - Meditation and Psychedelics - score: 0.79378
- 477 - What is this medium called consciousness_ - score: 0.79361
- 046 - The Psychedologist - score: 0.78246
- 413 - Plant Medicines As Healing Agents - score: 0.78232
- 132 - McKenna_ Shamanism - score: 0.77853
Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:19 ►
This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.
00:00:24 ►
And today we’re going to hear a conversation between Shauna Holm and Mariana Dinkova.
00:00:30 ►
Now during their conversation, you’re going to learn a lot more about Mariana,
00:00:34 ►
but I would like to add that she received her initial training in psychology studies
00:00:39 ►
at Vienna University and at the Free University in Berlin.
00:00:42 ►
And in 2003, she completed her MA in Counseling
00:00:46 ►
Psychology at the California Association of Integral Studies in San Francisco. Now, in my
00:00:53 ►
opinion, one of the issues that could use more attention in the psychedelic community is, well,
00:00:58 ►
for lack of a better word, education. Education in how to handle ourselves before, during, and after a psychedelic experience.
00:01:07 ►
And I’m not talking about just more books or podcasts, but hands-on training about how to
00:01:12 ►
best use these powerful substances. And if you’ve been hanging around the salon here for a while,
00:01:17 ►
you already know how I had to more or less stumble and fall my way through a lot of
00:01:22 ►
experimentation that really could have been eliminated very easily if our community had a long-standing tradition of teaching one another
00:01:30 ►
how to best navigate psychedelic space. Well, over the past few decades, a lot of progress has been
00:01:36 ►
made in building such a tradition, and today we are very fortunate to have with us two women
00:01:41 ►
whose lives are now pretty much shaped by building some new traditions among the worldwide psychedelic community.
00:01:48 ►
You already know our frequent correspondent, Shana Holm, and with Shana today is Mariana
00:01:54 ►
Dinkova, who, as you’ll soon hear, is quite a remarkable person.
00:02:01 ►
Okay, so I am here once again, Shana Holm, and I am speaking with a really fascinating woman today,
00:02:09 ►
Mariana Dinkova, and I’m just going to read her bio and then we will launch into what I think is
00:02:15 ►
going to be a really fascinating conversation. So Mariana Dinkova is a Bay Area-based psychotherapist,
00:02:23 ►
speaker, and workshop leader teaching workshops in the U.S.
00:02:26 ►
and internationally. She’s developed a unique system of psychological and neo-shamanistic
00:02:32 ►
inner space navigation tools for navigating non-ordinary states of consciousness and the
00:02:38 ►
ayahuasca experience. These tools are designed to maximize the experience and provide the
00:02:44 ►
opportunity for learning and healing while safely navigating the inner landscapes and avoiding common pitfalls.
00:02:51 ►
Learning how to use our consciousness in these ways can enrich our psychonaut toolkit and empower our inner shaman.
00:02:58 ►
Mariana also organizes retreats to Peru in which she combines her work with the medicine work of experienced shamans.
00:03:04 ►
to Peru, in which she combines her work with the medicine work of experienced shamans.
00:03:09 ►
And for those out there who are interested in learning her system of navigation tools but can’t make her retreats, she is available via Skype.
00:03:13 ►
So you can contact Mariana via her website, which is marianadinkova.com, and that is spelled
00:03:19 ►
M-E-R-I-A-N-A-D-I-N-K-O-V-A dot com.
00:03:28 ►
And so, Mariana, welcome.
00:03:30 ►
Hello. It’s a pleasure to be here.
00:03:32 ►
Oh, yeah. This is so cool.
00:03:35 ►
Just to let everyone know, Bruce Dahmer put us together.
00:03:38 ►
He sent us both an email saying,
00:03:40 ►
I think you two need to have a conversation,
00:03:43 ►
and he thought Mariana would be a really great choice for conversations such as this.
00:03:51 ►
And so after she and I had a talk recently, and I have to say I quite agree.
00:03:56 ►
So, yeah, I want to get right to talking about your work with the ayahuasca, Mariana. And I’m always curious to know, first of all,
00:04:07 ►
what led you to that amazing plant teacher?
00:04:12 ►
That was a long time ago.
00:04:15 ►
And that was a while.
00:04:15 ►
I think I was around 21.
00:04:17 ►
I’m 40 right now.
00:04:18 ►
And I was in Ibiza.
00:04:21 ►
And I know that a lot of people’s reaction to hearing about ayahuasca is like wow
00:04:26 ►
she’s such a big force I want to wait until the right time for her to come into my life
00:04:32 ►
I know that for me I heard about her I heard that there are ceremonies and I was like I’m
00:04:36 ►
gonna track her down so it was very much as soon as I heard about her and the kind of experiences
00:04:42 ►
people were having I was very much like where can I find somebody who can introduce me to her?
00:04:47 ►
So it was an instant resonance.
00:04:50 ►
And then also in the very first ceremony I had with a Brazilian shaman, Yatra,
00:04:55 ►
who introduced me to the medicine at the time,
00:04:58 ►
it was one of the biggest, it’s still probably one of the biggest experiences of my life.
00:05:03 ►
Well, let’s hear about it.
00:05:06 ►
That was also the first ceremony.
00:05:08 ►
I mean, what Datra did is something that I had never heard any other shaman do,
00:05:13 ►
which is one of the reasons why I actually developed the system of working with ayahuasca,
00:05:18 ►
because I think it was extremely important to know, which is at the beginning of the journey.
00:05:22 ►
She said, by the way if you die
00:05:25 ►
that’s fine it’s a it’s just an experience i guarantee you’re gonna be back have the experience
00:05:31 ►
take notes you will be back but let yourself have the experience so i remember that this it is and
00:05:38 ►
that is something so important to know and that’s one of the things i teach people is since it’s one
00:05:43 ►
of the big things that can happen with ayahuasca there is a reason she’s’s one of the things that teach people is since it’s one of the big things that
00:05:45 ►
can happen with ayahuasca there is a reason she’s called divine of the death that she is also the
00:05:50 ►
teacher of the veil that we can go through the death veil and beyond and beyond and experience
00:05:55 ►
the other realms and come back and it’s safe and i know that so many people who don’t know that
00:06:00 ►
and who have not been told that’s not something scary to be afraid of,
00:06:07 ►
but almost equivalent to a cosmic jackpot.
00:06:11 ►
You get to check out the forbidden lands and come back, so to say.
00:06:13 ►
And I know so many of my friends, actually,
00:06:16 ►
who spent half of their journey fighting the death experience instead of being happy that they get a chance.
00:06:18 ►
But in that particular experience, I did go through the death veil.
00:06:23 ►
It was the experience of having, like, how natural it was
00:06:27 ►
and how my human self was such a small part of who I was.
00:06:34 ►
So after kind of closing down and shutting down all the human programs,
00:06:39 ►
I ended up in this humongous self, which was so multidimensional.
00:06:43 ►
It was, like, abiding in so many worlds so much of
00:06:46 ►
it was beyond space-time i wouldn’t say that was just universal consciousness it still had my own
00:06:52 ►
formula but it was kind of the experience like oh little mariana died it was like oh the pac-man
00:06:59 ►
programming my big computer just shut down all to bed it was kind of the experience of
00:07:06 ►
how little of me in this big self actually had death in the system it was almost it was obvious
00:07:13 ►
as if only a part of your left hand can die but the rest is immortal and beyond time space and
00:07:19 ►
always will be there and ayahuasca almost like gave me a humongous slideshow. I mean, it was almost made like a YouTube tutorial, I could say,
00:07:29 ►
with all the visuals and all the explanations and the audio explanations
00:07:32 ►
about the nature of the cycle, the nature of the universe,
00:07:35 ►
the nature of time and space, the nature of all the spiritual readings,
00:07:39 ►
teachings, the nature of all the channeled books I have ever read,
00:07:43 ►
including the parts I had never understood,
00:07:45 ►
because I was like, what do you mean your birth and your death
00:07:48 ►
is there at all times?
00:07:51 ►
And then Ayahuasca would come and tell me,
00:07:53 ►
oh, this concept is because time is simultaneous.
00:07:55 ►
This is how it works.
00:07:56 ►
It’s all one big thing, including all the probabilities.
00:07:59 ►
And it was amazing to you the way she broke down to me
00:08:02 ►
the nature of existence almost,
00:08:04 ►
in a way that it was way beyond anything I could have expected possible, including also the nature of meditation.
00:08:13 ►
She was going, I mean, coming almost like, and she had almost a sense of humor, but not as much as mushrooms.
00:08:18 ►
Like mushrooms are funny.
00:08:19 ►
She’s kind of more the grandma who comes and kind of lovingly gives you the teachings in a way.
00:08:25 ►
And I remember her even explaining me meditation with going like,
00:08:28 ►
so do you know what they meant with this thing with being present to the moment?
00:08:32 ►
This is what happens.
00:08:33 ►
You take the moment and you become really present to it.
00:08:37 ►
And she almost helped me how to almost stop it and hold it down and go in.
00:08:42 ►
And then the moment opened up is this intergalactic
00:08:46 ►
multidimensional entry station from where if you really get present to it you can go everywhere and
00:08:52 ►
all these atari yams were available from there i was like that’s what the yogis were trying to do
00:08:57 ►
now i get it yeah well this is really fascinating Mariana, because when I work with the mushroom medicine, the medicine calls me.
00:09:09 ►
And when I feel the call, I feel the medicine saying,
00:09:13 ►
it is time to die again.
00:09:16 ►
And so it’s just so interesting because I, too,
00:09:22 ►
have experienced a similar piece to this.
00:09:26 ►
And what comes to me is that every time I do the medicine,
00:09:30 ►
a part of me dies just from doing the medicine
00:09:34 ►
because you are so expanded
00:09:37 ►
and you are open to just incredible awareness.
00:09:43 ►
And then it’s like the part of you that existed prior to that goes away,
00:09:51 ►
dies away, has to, has to, so we can absorb more of this awareness.
00:09:57 ►
And then, of course, I have had an experience where I did go through
00:10:01 ►
like a full death or what felt right, like a death process,
00:10:05 ►
which I did not fight either. Because of course, the other side of that was absolutely extraordinary.
00:10:14 ►
But I just find this so interesting and how interesting that we are beginning with death here,
00:10:19 ►
the death process and ayahuasca. And as you say that uh that can be really highly challenging and traumatizing
00:10:28 ►
to people and and so you refer to yourself as the before and after woman when we were talking and so
00:10:35 ►
why don’t you explain that and that’ll tie us in here i have been a geek and I would call it a geek, actually, on collecting and making up and coming up with techniques of how to work with consciousness in altered states.
00:10:51 ►
I remember since I first was introduced to mushrooms when I was 18, and also to marijuana and hash and things like that.
00:11:00 ►
The way my brain worked was, and the way my body worked, was that I was getting humongous downloads about how to work with consciousness in those states.
00:11:09 ►
And I remember writing notes about it since I was a teenager.
00:11:13 ►
So I know that I have a very analytic mind that naturally breaks things down into units and into techniques.
00:11:20 ►
So when, and my body, I remember being in touch with my body and the experience there.
00:11:24 ►
So when I started working with different medicines.
00:11:27 ►
So I know that since then I would naturally be going into really deeply meditative states.
00:11:34 ►
I have been studying meditation since I was 17,
00:11:37 ►
and also reading different non-dualistic teachers since that time,
00:11:41 ►
and I started going to India since I was 19.
00:11:44 ►
So I had a lot of
00:11:45 ►
background from pretty early and those medicines were giving me experiences of what it means to
00:11:51 ►
be present of what it means to dive into different energetics of what it means to shift things
00:11:57 ►
energetically that then have healing aspects in the body from a very early age, as well as how to use the ability of my consciousness
00:12:06 ►
and my focus and my ability to visualize and my ability to move in order to shift information
00:12:13 ►
constructs, in order to elevate my consciousness, in order to center deeper, in order to be
00:12:19 ►
more present, and in order to break through to other realms.
00:12:22 ►
So that has been coming pretty naturally to me since a young age,
00:12:26 ►
but including the ability to break it down in steps.
00:12:29 ►
And there’s always been the desire to write it down
00:12:32 ►
and maybe one day bring it to the people
00:12:34 ►
and one day kind of work with it in a way that I can.
00:12:38 ►
It felt like I was being given certain tools
00:12:40 ►
and it would be extremely selfish for me to never,
00:12:43 ►
to just use them for my own self
00:12:45 ►
i know that having an experience years ago when after watching one particular movie i was so
00:12:52 ►
almost depressed about going well i have been writing these things forever and i am too chicken
00:12:57 ►
to do something with it and bring it out and almost feeling like um i mean as they say usually nature gives things to more
00:13:07 ►
than one person instead in case one of them doesn’t have the balls or doesn’t make the time
00:13:12 ►
to express them and i was like wow i’ve been given those things i’ve been given this nervous system
00:13:17 ►
i’ve been given this mind and if i am too small to do something with this somebody else will i mean
00:13:23 ►
it’s like the i know that also
00:13:25 ►
with the newton theory there was a few people who came up with it the same time newton was just the
00:13:30 ►
first and feeling like how i don’t want to play small around it that he felt like that was one
00:13:35 ►
of the unique things that were coming to me and it would be selfish to not be a channel to them
00:13:41 ►
so it was beautiful once after that i that, I met David J. Brown,
00:13:45 ►
who also before that was one of my favorite psychedelic teachers
00:13:48 ►
and somebody I was really looking up to.
00:13:51 ►
And we totally clicked and started co-facilitating workshops
00:13:55 ►
in which I was able to give those tools a voice, an expression, a format.
00:14:01 ►
And it was amazing to see how much people were getting out of it,
00:14:04 ►
especially around their last experiences.
00:14:06 ►
Okay, so could you go into some of those tools?
00:14:10 ►
I mean, so essentially, do you work with people directly before they do the medicine and then
00:14:18 ►
they come out of the medicine and then you work with them shortly thereafter?
00:14:22 ►
Yeah, I don’t work with people under an influence myself, but I have, usually in my retreats,
00:14:28 ►
in the first two days, I teach people the tools so they can have their own toolkit to
00:14:33 ►
navigate the experience, to know how to shift between different states, to know kind of
00:14:39 ►
their own makeup and how to make the most out of it, as well as how to interact with
00:14:44 ►
the space.
00:14:44 ►
Because a lot of
00:14:45 ►
us we are taught to surrender we are taught to take it in and let her do the work but it can be
00:14:51 ►
a relationship and that’s also something that very few people talk about is how to make it as an
00:14:56 ►
interaction it is we can ask ayahuasca for things we can request, we can work with her instead of just have her work on us. So I know
00:15:07 ►
that for a lot of places, it’s okay to be passive and receive and surrender. And there is also many
00:15:12 ►
more things one can do. And also between the ceremonies, I do different workshops, which help
00:15:18 ►
people get in touch with different parts of their life and how to put it in a way that they can work with ayahuasca with them i help them identify so to say emotional virus where the way i call it which is um a lot of us
00:15:33 ►
have programs of fear or programs of self-criticism programs of existential doubt programs that
00:15:40 ►
usually come from all kinds of backgrounds that served as one upon a time,
00:15:45 ►
but now they’re kind of more of emotional saboteurs.
00:15:48 ►
And when those programs kick in in psychedelic experiences,
00:15:52 ►
they can pretty much create a horror trip.
00:15:55 ►
So also how to know those programs in advance
00:15:57 ►
and know their essential qualities
00:15:59 ►
so we don’t get hijacked by a paranoid part of our personality
00:16:04 ►
or we don’t get hijacked by an inner critic who’s trying to beat us up
00:16:07 ►
while being in a deep psychedelic state.
00:16:10 ►
So I help people also get to know themselves
00:16:13 ►
and give them tools of how to work with those things in ceremony.
00:16:16 ►
And afterwards, I also have a system that is specifically for integration
00:16:20 ►
with tools that help people to take what they have learned during the ceremonies
00:16:25 ►
and have techniques to remind themselves of who they are
00:16:29 ►
and how they make choices and live life from then on.
00:16:32 ►
So it’s not just some experience they had somewhere in Peruvia one day.
00:16:36 ►
And for people who cannot come to my retreats, I work over Skype.
00:16:40 ►
So sometimes people call me to get the tools before they go do a ceremony with someone
00:16:46 ►
who can be in a different continent or a different country and then sometimes after that in order to
00:16:52 ►
make the most out of the integration process since there are amazing shamans out there and some of
00:16:57 ►
them really don’t speak English or don’t make a point to work with those experiences in depth or
00:17:04 ►
to prepare people.
00:17:06 ►
It’s kind of two different skill sets.
00:17:07 ►
What do you do in the space?
00:17:09 ►
And also, how do you prepare people and how do you help them integrate?
00:17:12 ►
So I’m the before and after girl, as I was telling you.
00:17:15 ►
Yeah, I love that.
00:17:17 ►
That’s great.
00:17:17 ►
So I would love it if you could speak more about our inner demons, if you will, and so these sort of
00:17:28 ►
psychological programs that undermine and trip people up and can cause a really rough experience.
00:17:34 ►
So how would you, just speaking to that aspect, how would you counsel people to kind of manage
00:17:41 ►
that for themselves before they go into something like this?
00:17:50 ►
For example, I have a lot of background in a lot of different kinds of psychotherapy.
00:17:57 ►
And some of my favorites have been Hakami, which is body and experience-oriented psychotherapy and voice dialogue, as well as a variety of different tools.
00:18:01 ►
So in some of the workshops, we identify what are the personal demons of someone.
00:18:05 ►
And I don’t want to call them demons
00:18:07 ►
because once you get to know them,
00:18:09 ►
they have such good intentions
00:18:10 ►
and such horrible strategies to go about those intentions.
00:18:14 ►
I think demons have a bad name, many of them.
00:18:16 ►
Some of them have earned it, but others, not so.
00:18:20 ►
That’s why, I mean, in some of the systems,
00:18:22 ►
like internal family system that I’ve studied,
00:18:24 ►
they’re called protectors.
00:18:26 ►
Because they mean well, they just do strategies to once upon a time help the survivor pretty questionable childhood and now later in life are really making it hard to thrive.
00:18:38 ►
So, for example, a lot of people, a lot of my clients also in my psychotherapy practice, so that applies work as well as just for life have a very strong inner critic and that’s the voice that starts
00:18:50 ►
focusing on what’s what’s missing what’s wrong and starts making you wrong and you can bring that
00:18:56 ►
one in ayahuasca you can go in there and start beating yourself up for you’re not sitting straight
00:19:01 ►
you did this experience or sometimes if she shows you experiences to look at,
00:19:05 ►
and she has a really gentle way of going,
00:19:08 ►
hey, this is what’s going on, but she’s not blaming.
00:19:11 ►
But the inner critic can take the information and make it into self-blame
00:19:14 ►
and make it into something to beat yourself up with.
00:19:18 ►
Or the inner paranoid, kind of the fear voice
00:19:21 ►
that is extremely creative about coming with worst-case scenarios
00:19:24 ►
and diving deep in there. A lot of people live voice that is extremely creative about coming with worst-case scenarios and diving deep
00:19:25 ►
in there. A lot of people live in that place. A lot of my normal psychotherapy clients come with
00:19:32 ►
very strong inner paranoids or anxious voices that are trained to look for the danger, look for the
00:19:38 ►
worst thing that can possibly happen. But in a journey space, that can create easily a horror
00:19:44 ►
trip or extremely scary experience
00:19:46 ►
not because of the experience but because of what that program does with it right so people who can
00:19:52 ►
easily go into oh my god i’m starting to go here what if i never come back and that can be the
00:19:58 ►
beginning of the next four hours horrible way to spend your alaska experience yeah so i also help
00:20:03 ►
people identify those things in themselves
00:20:05 ►
and know how what it feels like i mean in in the workshops we interview them it’s almost like
00:20:11 ►
taking that part putting it giving it in a different chair and going hi good to meet you
00:20:16 ►
so let me know about yourself how do you operate in that person what do you want for them um what
00:20:22 ►
triggers you like how do you see the person like what are
00:20:25 ►
you afraid is going to happen if you don’t do your job and um how old are you often then people
00:20:31 ►
often find out being guided by this five to eight o’clock uh five to eight year old scared parts
00:20:39 ►
who sound like with these big scary voices in their head, but they’re actually scared children.
00:20:46 ►
Different place where they can still do those good intentions they’re trying to do,
00:20:50 ►
but in a way that serves the person versus puts one down or scares us or devalues us.
00:20:55 ►
So that when people are in journey space and those programs kick in,
00:20:59 ►
they can straight away recognize them and give them tools how to switch.
00:21:04 ►
Because usually we do have also biologically when emotional malware,
00:21:10 ►
the way I call them, kicks in,
00:21:11 ►
it takes about 20-something seconds until our glands catch up.
00:21:17 ►
And then once the glands get activated and start pushing the fear or the anger
00:21:22 ►
or the depression hormones into our blood,
00:21:26 ►
then it’s a little harder to shift it.
00:21:27 ►
Then it takes at least 15 minutes or more unless you continue the story.
00:21:31 ►
So I help people recognize it and knowing how to shift it straight away.
00:21:35 ►
So it’s almost prevention versus cure.
00:21:38 ►
Yeah, excellent.
00:21:39 ►
So it gives them tools to know which voices to listen to,
00:21:42 ►
and if one of the other voices comes up to straight away
00:21:46 ►
what else to ask for or who else to turn to so that they don’t have to entertain energies that
00:21:52 ►
are not serving them and usually if it’s also similar with those voices as it is with some of
00:21:57 ►
those i know that on ayahuasca sometimes people that they can see demons let’s and they can look
00:22:03 ►
like the psychedelic demons.
00:22:09 ►
They can only have power if you give them enough of your attention to make them real.
00:22:16 ►
So there is, again, also with some of those inner visions that are kind of more dark or scary, potentially, if you don’t feed them very much at the beginning, they don’t have much power over you.
00:22:20 ►
If you give them a lot of attention, then they become more and more real and something to deal deal with so there is a lot of things we can do at the very beginning when a process starts
00:22:29 ►
and i’m not saying that people should always avoid hard experiences there is a lot of learning and a
00:22:36 ►
lot of growth that can happen in difficult spaces so it is also i give people tools how to switch
00:22:43 ►
the channel and go down the different roads,
00:22:45 ►
but also sometimes how to go down the more difficult place with enough protection,
00:22:51 ►
with enough resources, and also how to develop their own kind of inner protector troops
00:22:58 ►
and divine supervision, what I call it,
00:23:01 ►
so that when they go to those difficult spaces and difficult emotional experiences they don’t get re-traumatized they go they go in there with enough resources
00:23:10 ►
that can really have the healing and maybe cry and grieve over the things that they can find
00:23:16 ►
so it’s not always about choose the happy road and just get out of there it’s sometimes it is
00:23:21 ►
about go in there go in there with protection with resources
00:23:25 ►
with knowing how to craft your spells in a way that you can absorb and you can work with the
00:23:33 ►
information that comes up and work with the emotional experiences in a way that doesn’t
00:23:38 ►
completely overwhelm you and break you down but in a way that becomes bite-sized, in a way that you can really process and reintegrate.
00:23:48 ►
Right, right.
00:23:49 ►
And we all know medicine doesn’t always taste so good going down, right?
00:23:53 ►
So, yeah, sometimes that challenging experience absolutely serves
00:23:58 ►
because the medicine is trying to get something through to you.
00:24:03 ►
And for some people, you know, that’s the most efficacious way.
00:24:08 ►
Not for a lot of us, but for some people, surely.
00:24:11 ►
And for myself, it was at one point.
00:24:14 ►
And I did get the message.
00:24:15 ►
You know, this is interesting when you’re talking about these different voices within us
00:24:18 ►
because I worked with this beautiful teacher, Brew Joy, and he’s since passed.
00:24:24 ►
But he was like a master teacher.
00:24:26 ►
He taught for over 30 years.
00:24:28 ►
And he would tell us, there would be a large group of us in the room,
00:24:31 ►
and he’d say, there are many, many more of you here than you can see.
00:24:36 ►
In other words, all of us come in with our posse of inner voices.
00:24:43 ►
And I’m very familiar with the voice dialogue work,
00:24:46 ►
which is amazing, amazing work.
00:24:49 ►
And so, you know, he would speak to how, you know, as we grow,
00:24:55 ►
we really die many times in one lifetime, right?
00:25:00 ►
I mean, are you the same personality when you were three years old,
00:25:03 ►
when you were eight, 12, 17?
00:25:05 ►
No, you’re very vastly different.
00:25:08 ►
So where did those personalities go?
00:25:11 ►
And they had specific experiences, and they have integrated those experiences from that age.
00:25:19 ►
And so they’re all living inside of us and essentially kind of running us from the shadows or, or functioning in the shadow part of ourselves. And then you do something like ayahuasca and, uh, and yeah,
00:25:32 ►
those voices or those, uh, parts of ourselves can get activated. And so if you are, do not have that
00:25:38 ►
awareness, uh, you’re, you’re right. I mean, it just can be a wild and hairy ride. And, and so I just so fascinated and
00:25:47 ►
so thrilled that you, uh, are making this available to these people because I think it is essential,
00:25:54 ►
especially because ayahuasca is so popular now, right? There’s so many people traveling to do
00:26:00 ►
this. And, uh, and we really, really need, really need people like yourself who are
00:26:05 ►
functioning in this way
00:26:08 ►
to help people really thoroughly
00:26:09 ►
prepare and then
00:26:12 ►
to integrate
00:26:13 ►
afterwards
00:26:14 ►
it’s true I mean some of those parts
00:26:17 ►
come up to be healed in Ayahuasca
00:26:19 ►
they call for
00:26:21 ►
psychotherapy and steroids
00:26:23 ►
because she doesn’t have the ability to do amazing healing
00:26:27 ►
and really deep psychological work
00:26:29 ►
in the realms of the verbal and way of the pre-verbal
00:26:33 ►
and as you were saying that we do have different parts
00:26:36 ►
and some of the parts that you work are our Buddhas
00:26:39 ►
and our extremely high intelligent parts
00:26:43 ►
the parts of us that are so connected with cosmic consciousness,
00:26:47 ►
the really, I mean, also the higher self parts.
00:26:49 ►
I mean, I know a lot of people have a controversial feeling
00:26:53 ►
about the use of higher self,
00:26:55 ►
but the part of us that is extremely wise,
00:26:57 ►
that has the answers, that has the blueprint for our perfect health
00:27:01 ►
and our psychological well-being.
00:27:03 ►
So as much as I work with the parts that are not so developed
00:27:07 ►
and holding some trauma or holding some pain and some less adaptive strategies,
00:27:11 ►
I also help people get in touch with their wisdom parts,
00:27:15 ►
with the parts of them that are extremely strong, have the answers,
00:27:19 ►
and also how to call for those.
00:27:21 ►
I mean, some of the techniques I teach are how to interact with the space and with yourself.
00:27:27 ►
And sometimes just calling for the part of you that knows how to do something is even more powerful than asking Ayahuasca to help you to do that something.
00:27:36 ►
Yes, you know, Brew used to say, if you’re in trouble or there’s a challenge, he would say, channel the one who knows,
00:27:46 ►
channel the part of you who knows. And, and I have done that a few times. And it works
00:27:51 ►
amazingly. It’s like an instantly shifting states of consciousness and accessing another very highly
00:27:59 ►
capable part of our mindset or soul posse or however you want to think of it.
00:28:07 ►
And it absolutely works.
00:28:09 ►
I mean, I actually, you know, I had to do it once.
00:28:11 ►
Anyway, I had chickens and I had to cull a rooster because I couldn’t find home for
00:28:15 ►
him and he was attacking my children, basically.
00:28:18 ►
And so, you know, I had to do the dirty deed.
00:28:21 ►
It was awful.
00:28:21 ►
But what I did was I thought of what Bruce said, and I channeled the farmer.
00:28:27 ►
And it worked.
00:28:28 ►
It worked.
00:28:29 ►
And so, you know, Shauna could sort of leave the room
00:28:32 ►
and allow this much more capable and very wise part to come through
00:28:38 ►
and get that done, you know, effectively.
00:28:44 ►
Yes.
00:28:49 ►
Exactly. get that done you know effectively yeah exactly and i teach people a series of questions and how to interact with the space and that is because it is almost sometimes being deep in ayahuasca
00:28:55 ►
it can be like in a way like being in the matrix like the remember that part of the matrix where
00:29:01 ►
he has to drive a helicopter and he doesn’t know how to so he’s like i want to
00:29:06 ►
download the software for driving helicopter better zl13 whatever it was and then download
00:29:12 ►
complete and he comes in and drives it so there is also partially that if you call in for the
00:29:17 ►
part of you that knows how to do this and then the other hand it is sometimes like it cost me google
00:29:23 ►
so the way you put the may you make you spell spell, the way you make the request, the way you make the question can be very important.
00:29:32 ►
Like in one of the schools for psychotherapy that I studied, which was the recreation of the self, which also taught me that one technique to ask for the part of you that knows how to blah, blah, blah.
00:29:44 ►
which also taught me that one technique to ask for the part of you that knows how to blah, blah, blah.
00:29:49 ►
And the trainer, John Eisman, was using a very good analogy,
00:29:51 ►
which was that the unconscious is like a dog.
00:29:56 ►
If you tell it, if you’re going to give it a bone and throw it,
00:30:00 ►
and it’s going to go and start looking for and bring you the bone you asked him to bring you.
00:30:06 ►
So if you go in the space and go and start asking questions like why is it that I can never have what I want
00:30:08 ►
why is it that I’m so fucked up
00:30:10 ►
why is it that I always live
00:30:12 ►
in fear
00:30:13 ►
horrible bone to
00:30:16 ►
throw that dog
00:30:18 ►
because then the whole experience can go
00:30:20 ►
oh that’s what you want me to look for evidence for
00:30:22 ►
well let me look
00:30:23 ►
so I also like help people really recognize when they’re making dangerous spells because like when
00:30:31 ►
you make a question or a statement in there which has a limited view of yourself limited view of
00:30:38 ►
reality or sees you as broken sees reality as an unfriendly place that is doing bad things to you
00:30:44 ►
then that’s the paradigm you’re starting to call for.
00:30:47 ►
And yes, ayahuasca is extremely intelligent spirit,
00:30:51 ►
so very often she will correct you anyway,
00:30:54 ►
but also you’re going against the current.
00:30:57 ►
So also how to help people recognize this
00:31:00 ►
and make it into the spells they do want to have,
00:31:02 ►
which see themselves as whole,
00:31:05 ►
and they’re asking for the results they do want, not for why is it I can’t have what
00:31:09 ►
I want.
00:31:10 ►
Right.
00:31:10 ►
Because then they’re calling in for a completely different circuit and they’re getting a very
00:31:13 ►
different experience.
00:31:15 ►
Okay, Marianne.
00:31:15 ►
That’s what I’m saying.
00:31:17 ►
Yeah.
00:31:17 ►
You have used the word, so I love this, you’ve used the word spell four times now.
00:31:24 ►
And we’re going to talk, or you’re going to talk about this because the’ve used the word spell four times now. And we’re going to talk or you’re going to talk
00:31:26 ►
about this because the beings or the community, I call them beings, that I work with as a result of
00:31:33 ►
my work with mushroom medicine, they speak in terms of spells. And they say, it’s all spells.
00:31:41 ►
It’s all spells. And here you are are you’ve used that word four times talking about
00:31:46 ►
the spells that we can essentially
00:31:47 ►
cast and so
00:31:49 ►
I’d like you to
00:31:51 ►
just kind of riff on that
00:31:53 ►
for a bit here
00:31:55 ►
what are you talking about here?
00:31:58 ►
I guess this is
00:32:00 ►
like making information units
00:32:02 ►
in a way that they can
00:32:04 ►
call in the energies and the results that
00:32:06 ►
you want and for example before every ceremony help people come up with their intentions
00:32:12 ►
and often people word their intentions in a way because the intentions are also spells
00:32:18 ►
the intentions like when we say hey Alaska help me with this and this or I want this and this um the way we word
00:32:26 ►
them and how we craft them because if we do want to go for to Africa we can ask for I want to be
00:32:36 ►
in Africa this time or we can ask for an airplane if we ask for an airplane that doesn’t mean we’re
00:32:42 ►
going to get to Africa we might just get airplane, and whether it has gas, maybe it crashes halfway, maybe it goes somewhere else.
00:32:51 ►
I help people to see what do you really want and how to make the intention in a way that it’s crafted,
00:32:56 ►
in a way to get you the results that you want.
00:32:58 ►
Not just let you know the causes of why you don’t want, you can’t.
00:33:02 ►
Not just show you where you’ll be in your own way
00:33:05 ►
that all has benefits but actually to get you to africa and if you’re going to africa in order to
00:33:12 ►
get healing of the kidney then you can even skip skip africa then you’re asking for the healing of
00:33:17 ►
the kid right so it’s also to really help people what are you trying to ask for when you’re setting
00:33:22 ►
those intentions and you make the intentions in a way that it’s really calling from the cosmic google and from the healing powers of
00:33:29 ►
the intelligence of ayahuasca the results that you want and sometimes people going like i want
00:33:35 ►
to get rid of fear i’m like well the unconscious does not understand negatives it’s a little bit
00:33:40 ►
like if you say i don’t want to think about pink elephants, then conscious here is pink elephants, pink elephants.
00:33:47 ►
So instead of I want to get rid of fear, you ask for I want peacefulness and confidence.
00:33:53 ►
Or if people say, I want to know where this comes from, I’m like, and if you know where this comes from, what is the result going to be?
00:33:59 ►
Oh, then I’m going to be healthy and happy and blah, blah, blah.
00:34:02 ►
So I’m like, then you want to be healthy and happy.
00:34:04 ►
We can add on the reasons, but you don’t want to just ask for the reasons and the causes.
00:34:09 ►
Right.
00:34:09 ►
So it says much about the words which are spells in and of themselves.
00:34:14 ►
And so this is just so interesting.
00:34:16 ►
So you’re saying crafting, crafting your intention.
00:34:19 ►
I mean, it sounds like we’re talking about witchcraft in a way.
00:34:23 ►
And really, there’s a lot of similarities.
00:34:28 ►
There’s not a whole lot of differences
00:34:29 ►
between what we would sort of think of as a shaman or a medicine person
00:34:33 ►
and a witch.
00:34:36 ►
I mean, you are working with spells.
00:34:41 ►
There’s just sort of different descriptions.
00:34:43 ►
Anyway, I’m just finding this very fascinating, Mariana, and ultimately incredibly
00:34:48 ►
empowering because most people don’t even realize that
00:34:52 ►
they can do something like that. They have no clue
00:34:57 ►
that they can sort of harness all of that within
00:35:00 ►
themselves because they’re so accustomed to looking outside of themselves.
00:35:12 ►
You tell me what to do. you tell me how it works you know so yeah why it’s like i see that a lot of the way um westerners approach ayahuasca it’s a little bit like the way religion used to
00:35:18 ►
be when the shaman is becoming the priest when they’re being told that when in help ask the
00:35:23 ►
shaman when you need help ask the shaman they’re not being told any particular tools or they’re being told that when you need help ask the shaman
00:35:25 ►
they’re not being told any particular tools
00:35:27 ►
or they’re not being empowered for direct communication
00:35:30 ►
so there is almost like God might come to you from a higher place
00:35:35 ►
and might bless you
00:35:36 ►
but it’s not that you can start communing with it
00:35:39 ►
and that almost there is a lot of power given the shaman
00:35:42 ►
and the tradition of the shaman
00:35:43 ►
which is kind of the priest who is the middleman,
00:35:47 ►
or the tradition is this place that is holding the context
00:35:51 ►
but not empowering people to have their own direct line
00:35:54 ►
and also to use their own tradition.
00:35:58 ►
And some of the tools that I teach is also helping people get in touch
00:36:01 ►
with their own tradition, with their own archetypes, with their own symbols.
00:36:05 ►
Beauty are powerful for them
00:36:07 ►
that they have deep emotional
00:36:10 ►
connection with because very often
00:36:12 ►
we are from a different tradition than the shamans.
00:36:14 ►
So when the shamans are calling in
00:36:16 ►
and their protectors and their deities
00:36:18 ►
and their spirits that they
00:36:20 ►
have relationship with, they don’t mean
00:36:22 ►
anything to us.
00:36:23 ►
So how to empower the inner shaman who
00:36:26 ►
can have their own support teams so that when we’re deep in there that we can call on our own
00:36:31 ►
forces that we are in touch with which are often they can come from many different places than the
00:36:38 ►
tradition of the shaman and to help people identify those things so that they can come
00:36:42 ►
in prepared and well armed with support support troops, so to say.
00:36:46 ►
That’s beautiful.
00:36:47 ►
One of my shaman teachers in the Yucatan, Miguel Angel, he’s just lovely.
00:36:54 ►
And he said to me once, Shana, I give you these teachings not to give you my power, not to give you my ancestors, no, to open you to your own power.
00:37:05 ►
And I never forgot that. not to give you my ancestors, no, to open you to your own power.
00:37:07 ►
And I never forgot that.
00:37:11 ►
And then also, I’m big into bloodlines these days,
00:37:18 ►
and I know the blood coursing through my body is Celtic, and it’s North Germanic.
00:37:22 ►
It’s that old European bloodline.
00:37:27 ►
And when you trace back long before the Romans came and imposed their cult of Christianity and their laws and all this stuff on us, our or my people were deeply, deeply connected
00:37:35 ►
to nature, deeply connected to the trees and the sacred streams and the stones. And they were,
00:37:41 ►
many of them were working with uh plant medicines of course of
00:37:46 ►
course and so there were uh what you could think of as shamans in those cultures you betcha you
00:37:52 ►
know they just uh looked very different but that is in me that is in my dna and that’s been revealed
00:37:58 ►
to me on the mushroom and so yes when you’re speaking of this, I am going back to my ancestors way, way, way back.
00:38:07 ►
And I’ve called them to me.
00:38:09 ►
And then, as a result, synchronicities occur.
00:38:12 ►
I’m led to this, which leads me to this.
00:38:14 ►
And I find that book and this person.
00:38:16 ►
And it has opened up a whole new world.
00:38:19 ►
Absolutely amazing.
00:38:21 ►
So thank you for bringing that up.
00:38:23 ►
It’s just wonderful.
00:38:27 ►
I really like what you did said yes really valuable and that’s that’s one of the phrases i keep using is how to empower one’s own
00:38:33 ►
inner shaman because we all come from different lineages with different codes with different
00:38:39 ►
energies that we connect with with different ways that we, almost with different powers in
00:38:45 ►
some ways, because often psychedelics open us to abilities that we have that we often didn’t know
00:38:50 ►
about, and how to know how to listen for those things, and to look for those things, and to feel
00:38:56 ►
the power of those things, versus to look outside for that person who hopefully is amazing. I mean,
00:39:02 ►
I have huge respect for working with very powerful shamans,
00:39:06 ►
but also how to know to look within with the same honor
00:39:11 ►
and with the same reverence for the inner wisdom and the inner shaman.
00:39:17 ►
Right, right.
00:39:18 ►
In this culture, you know, we’re given mediators.
00:39:20 ►
You know, I mean, that’s how it’s been sort of with our conventional religions.
00:39:26 ►
And, and then even in, you know, in public school and whatnot, I mean, you’re just you’re just taught
00:39:30 ►
to look outside of yourself to this external authority and politically and whatnot. So yeah,
00:39:35 ►
this is a whole new deal. So okay, so with all of this in mind, then, all right, so someone has
00:39:43 ►
worked with you, and they’ve done the ayahuasca and then it’s the integration piece and also how then do
00:39:50 ►
they bring all of this into their day-to-day life because then they have
00:39:52 ►
to go back home and re-embrace their life of course in a different way so so
00:39:59 ►
how do they do that Mariana the way is say sometimes that integration starts with the experience so and
00:40:07 ►
that’s what I teach people who work with me is when they do have some deep experiences of inner
00:40:13 ►
joy of self-love of acceptance of seeing the big picture of forgiveness that that’s the moment to
00:40:20 ►
almost make the first spell I mean again I know you’re going to use the word spell but it’s almost like invocation which is from now on i want to live from that place i want that
00:40:29 ►
place to become a part of my core formula from where i live live from so that you almost have
00:40:35 ►
the experience and you draw it to your inner center to that place that where you come from
00:40:41 ►
to the core of your being so it’s not just an experience you had, but something that you became.
00:40:48 ►
And that is as powerful when it happens in the moment of having the experience.
00:40:52 ►
Because I know that a lot of people say integration is after.
00:40:56 ►
And for me, integration starts in the experience as long as you take the experience
00:41:01 ►
and you start going from now on.
00:41:03 ►
I wanted you to be a part of how i will
00:41:05 ►
leave my reality and also after the ceremonies i hear from people what kind of experience they’ve
00:41:12 ►
had and especially often since when i teach people the tools of how to ask and how to interact
00:41:19 ►
they do have some really deeply powerful experience of self-love of forgiveness
00:41:23 ►
since we also learn how to call in for some emotional qualities sometimes,
00:41:28 ►
that’s a part of the program.
00:41:30 ►
And then when they have had those experiences,
00:41:32 ►
to also anchor them in their body so that they almost start having a relationship
00:41:39 ►
with that part of them that was so deep in self-love
00:41:43 ►
and knew about the perfection of the self
00:41:46 ►
or about the lovability of the self
00:41:48 ►
or about the preciousness of life
00:41:49 ►
so that we can really anchor.
00:41:51 ►
And sometimes I use also NLP tools to anchor that experience
00:41:55 ►
because it is not something you read.
00:41:58 ►
It is not something you heard.
00:41:59 ►
It is not something that some guru told you.
00:42:02 ►
Your body was there.
00:42:03 ►
Your being was there.
00:42:04 ►
Every cell of your body got it at that moment.
00:42:07 ►
Right.
00:42:07 ►
It was direct.
00:42:10 ►
So also how to use that version of yourself, which at that point is a past self,
00:42:16 ►
is a guide, a teacher, a best friend,
00:42:20 ►
who you can develop and continue a very intense relationship with.
00:42:24 ►
So it’s not that one time in Peru where I felt self-love. who you can develop and continue a very intense relationship with.
00:42:28 ►
So it’s not that one time in Peru where I felt self-love.
00:42:34 ►
We make it so that you really deepen the experience with that version of yourself who is so deep in that experience.
00:42:36 ►
And you cuddle with them.
00:42:38 ►
You call them when you’re PMS.
00:42:40 ►
You call them when you’re angry.
00:42:42 ►
You kind of know how to call them in your body
00:42:44 ►
and how to work with the anchors of them.
00:42:47 ►
I know I have had myself extremely powerful experiences when being in really dark moods and going like, what am I doing?
00:42:55 ►
Like, I know I know better.
00:42:56 ►
And calling in on parts of me that have been ayahuasca ceremonies, knowing the big picture, basking in the perfection of it and and the
00:43:06 ►
lovelability of life and myself and going like okay i’m stuck here i’m in a victim movie can
00:43:12 ►
you like get me out and calling them in and putting them next to me and giving them a time
00:43:18 ►
frame to do the work and then being in deep bliss in five minutes so i know they can it can be very
00:43:23 ►
powerful if we remember to call them
00:43:25 ►
if we remember remember to evoke them if we remember to move in them to breathe in them
00:43:30 ►
and i mean one of the biggest tool like always is remembering to use your tools
00:43:36 ►
yep yep but yeah because it just it’s so knee-jerk to go into the reaction and so
00:43:43 ►
it’s like you have to break these old patterns you have to interrupt that knee-jerk to go into the reaction. And so it’s like you have to break these old patterns.
00:43:45 ►
You have to interrupt that knee-jerk.
00:43:49 ►
And, yeah, I think of this also as self-nurturing
00:43:53 ►
because that’s really what the mushrooms taught me how to do very highly effectively,
00:43:57 ►
just like what you were saying is to self-nurture.
00:44:01 ►
And that is going within to the resources that I have developed as a result of working with
00:44:09 ►
that medicine. And it has changed everything. And I’ve spoken with people who’ve experienced
00:44:15 ►
the same kind of thing. And truly, their life changes. And it sounds so hokey, like when you
00:44:24 ►
change, your whole life changes. But guess what?
00:44:26 ►
That’s because it’s true. It’s not some new age nonsense. I mean, it really, when you change on
00:44:31 ►
that deeper level, your whole approach to different areas of your life changes, right?
00:44:38 ►
And so when you change your approach, you start getting different results, whether this
00:44:44 ►
has to do with relationships, love relationships or friends or work or whatever it is.
00:44:51 ►
We get locked in mindsets. these extraordinary visionary substances will unlock that mindset and open to some really
00:45:09 ►
extraordinary possibilities. And I do see, I have noticed, a number of people I see in the
00:45:17 ►
ayahuasca community who seem to keep going back and back and back, over and over and over and over
00:45:23 ►
and over, you know know like I’ve talked
00:45:25 ►
to people and oh yeah I’ve done ayahuasca 120 times and I’m like why I mean what uh uh and and
00:45:34 ►
you want to know well and I just wonder you know like are you just seeking that peak experience
00:45:39 ►
like what have you learned uh so what are your thoughts on that and and because i would think you’ve
00:45:46 ►
encountered some of that as well in your travels for sure and just like i just i just had a quick
00:45:51 ►
thought when you were talking before it’s such a hologram that in the moment we change our
00:45:56 ►
vibration changes and what we attract changes it’s just hologram and it’s more just in mind
00:46:00 ►
patterns it’s actually a whole inner energetics because sometimes ayahuasca has
00:46:05 ►
worked in part of me there were more big personality parts or big energetic parts
00:46:10 ►
they were way verbal so it was way beyond mind when she was going you’re here but you should
00:46:15 ►
be here crack i’ll put you here almost like deep personality chiropractic
00:46:19 ►
and as you were saying for the people who do it again and again and again and again
00:46:25 ►
i have seen i remember after my very first journey when she did the big download about everything
00:46:31 ►
and me asking her at the end so do i have to do it again and she said no you don’t i mean you can
00:46:39 ►
but no you don’t have to anymore you got it yeah it’s yet a hand though then later in life when i had done it again
00:46:45 ►
getting so many benefits so i know that some people do it almost every few weeks to a month
00:46:51 ►
and i also have worked with clients who are extremely depressed suicidal where um then
00:46:59 ►
after getting off meds they had to go they started doing ceremonies and where it took them a while to actually overcome the depression to work with ayahuasca to a place where she finally showed
00:47:11 ►
them what the depression is and that it’s not them and finally led them to a place of self-love
00:47:16 ►
you know what i mean so if it’s a certain more serious condition it can take multiple ceremonies
00:47:21 ►
yes that makes sense about every once in a while then
00:47:26 ►
revisiting again because sometimes maybe in the middle you had a heartbreak or you had a place
00:47:32 ►
where somebody died and you’re you’re in it so there is a place for every once in a while
00:47:37 ►
revisiting and getting the cosmic reset and on the other hand, the other hand, yes, it’s called a spiritual mouthwash.
00:47:47 ►
Spiritual mouthwash?
00:47:50 ►
When you do it just regularly, you go,
00:47:52 ►
okay, I went to church, so I’m good.
00:47:55 ►
And on the other hand, it also depends how it’s being used,
00:47:59 ►
because I also know in Brazil, a lot of those works,
00:48:01 ►
they’re done for the planet.
00:48:03 ►
They’re not done for the individual anymore.
00:48:05 ►
So I know that if somebody goes into those ceremonies in order to do planetary good or in order to pray for the environment, go for it.
00:48:15 ►
Yeah, that’s beautiful.
00:48:16 ►
Yeah, that’s beautiful.
00:48:17 ►
Speak to that, Mariana.
00:48:18 ►
What do you know about that?
00:48:20 ►
I know that we all get called for different things.
00:48:23 ►
And I know that especially with ayahuasca
00:48:25 ►
you can have influence
00:48:27 ►
in things bigger than you
00:48:28 ►
and I know that I mean in Brazil
00:48:31 ►
I know that a lot of what they do the works
00:48:33 ►
is for the planet and is for the big picture
00:48:35 ►
I also know that
00:48:37 ►
we all have different
00:48:39 ►
callings about that
00:48:40 ►
and different formulas and yes we can
00:48:43 ►
ask for healing for other people
00:48:44 ►
I still remember
00:48:46 ►
one time in Goa in a ceremony way when when I realized there was a woman who was like screaming
00:48:52 ►
it up her head she was reliving something about incest and it’s hard to say she was disturbing
00:48:58 ►
because she was just loud and I remember being deep in a state and going like, okay, I want her to stop crying.
00:49:05 ►
And then she stopped crying.
00:49:07 ►
And I was like, yay, okay, that was good.
00:49:09 ►
And then this other kind of ayahuasca voice came and went like, do you want her to stop crying or do you want her to heal?
00:49:16 ►
I’m like, oh, shit, no, I actually want her to heal.
00:49:18 ►
And then she started crying again.
00:49:22 ►
So there is also the understanding that sometimes,
00:49:28 ►
and I know that people have gone through the big pain of white people, for example,
00:49:31 ►
reliving the pain of African-American slaves,
00:49:34 ►
I mean, African slaves being taken to America, or reliving the pain of whole ethnic groups,
00:49:37 ►
or going through the pain of their whole lineage,
00:49:40 ►
where it’s about ancestral unburdening,
00:49:44 ►
the pain of their mother and the grandmother and so on.
00:49:48 ►
So some of it is for our own lineage.
00:49:50 ►
Some of it can be for social groups.
00:49:52 ►
I remember one time when she showed me
00:49:54 ►
these extremely powerful tools for self-healing
00:49:57 ►
and for alignment of psychological and of life energies.
00:50:01 ►
And she had done such an amazing healing in me.
00:50:05 ►
And I was like, wow, I got the tools.
00:50:06 ►
I’m just going to make them, like, global scale.
00:50:09 ►
I’m just going to take those tools and imagine the earth and humanity,
00:50:12 ►
and I’m just going to do exactly what you just showed me,
00:50:14 ►
and I’m going to heal humanity.
00:50:16 ►
And I remember at that point, actually, these big four entities showing up
00:50:20 ►
and going, no, little girl, you’re not allowed.
00:50:25 ►
And they’re like, no, no, no, no, no.
00:50:26 ►
You’re here to cultivate a different frequency.
00:50:29 ►
And if you do that, you’re going to have to feel so much pain
00:50:32 ►
that it’s going to crush you and you’re not allowed.
00:50:34 ►
And I remember going like, but I can feel pain.
00:50:37 ►
I can be like, I can take one for the team.
00:50:39 ►
I’m a human.
00:50:40 ►
And then just noticing how much ego was behind those words.
00:50:44 ►
And I’m like, okay, I’ll listen. But I also know that there is a lot of, for people who are called, and sometimes
00:50:49 ►
it’s a calling, sometimes it’s something that just comes, and I know of people who had, they had,
00:50:54 ►
who have been able to hold such an amount of deep despair for humanity in order to come on the other
00:50:59 ►
side, deciding the deep list, and they knew they were going for the collective and I have had that one
00:51:05 ►
mushroom ceremonies where now I was going through a really deep painful experience that was for me
00:51:10 ►
and at least two other people who had had similar trauma they don’t the two were dissociated at that
00:51:16 ►
point but knowing and there was a very deep knowing wow I’m going for through that for them
00:51:22 ►
and I know that also in and I had the strength of
00:51:25 ►
psycho at that moment it was excruciating and that’s why I also learned some of my transpersonal
00:51:31 ►
tools and how to use them how to use the witness to be with extremely hard experience but it was
00:51:37 ►
very clear that I was doing healing for more than myself and exactly for who who the people were
00:51:42 ►
that I was taking that on for because I had the strength for the system to work through this.
00:51:47 ►
And if I could work through this, it would be also for them.
00:51:50 ►
So, I mean, there is from a smaller scale,
00:51:52 ►
you’re yourself and your ancestors,
00:51:54 ►
or you’re in a group of people,
00:51:56 ►
to a bigger scale where it’s about the planet,
00:51:59 ►
the environment, or whole ethnic groups.
00:52:01 ►
Okay, so question.
00:52:02 ►
So as this was for people who you knew, and you went through
00:52:07 ►
that experience for them, then did you discuss it with them later? Did they feel it on some level?
00:52:14 ►
I did not discuss it with them later, no. Okay, was there any, did you notice any kind of shift
00:52:20 ►
in them? Yes, to a degree. I mean, one of them was possessed by by an entity this point
00:52:26 ►
so it was also hard to yeah i i could have discussed it to him to a degree because i know
00:52:32 ►
that he was not there as his own self at this point but after my own experience that yes
00:52:38 ►
there was a shift it’s hard to tell it’s in of course um and also in the traditions in the more original traditions
00:52:46 ►
it was the shaman who was drinking the ayahuasca not the people he was working for so people would
00:52:51 ►
come to the shaman with the desire for healing or with the desire for whatever intentions they had
00:52:57 ►
and he wouldn’t give them ayahuasca he will be the one bringing so that he can go to the
00:53:01 ►
spiritual realms and do the healing or find information so also I know that in a lot of traditions
00:53:08 ►
Ayahuasca was only drunk by the
00:53:09 ►
shaman who would do the work for the whole tribe
00:53:11 ►
or the people who came to him
00:53:14 ►
interesting
00:53:15 ►
and it sounds like
00:53:18 ►
your first Ayahuasca shaman
00:53:19 ►
was a woman, is that correct?
00:53:21 ►
could you talk a little bit about her?
00:53:24 ►
yeah sure
00:53:24 ►
I mean she wouldn’t say much at the beginning was a woman is that correct yeah could you talk a little bit about her yeah sure i mean i uh she
00:53:28 ►
wouldn’t say much at the beginning apart from the if you die it’s okay and it was like i don’t know
00:53:33 ►
she was so amazing in holding the space she still works in brazil she has a center in alto paraiso
00:53:39 ►
and i’m actually thinking maybe one day to do a group with her or to bring a group to her.
00:53:47 ►
She does, I mean, from what I know right now, she works with an amazing band of musicians.
00:53:52 ►
I was impressed by the way she held space.
00:53:56 ►
And she was, I wouldn’t want to say hardcore, but she was not the lovey-dovey type.
00:54:02 ►
And she still had such an inner strength and such a solid container that i have a lot of respect for i know that there are different
00:54:09 ►
people and everybody has a different character some people are more the more the motherly type
00:54:13 ►
some people are more the the wise elder like i did one of my first retreats with adela who is now
00:54:20 ►
almost 80 years old who is current there she’s been working with Ayahuasca since she was 11,
00:54:25 ►
and she held a very different space.
00:54:28 ►
I’ve worked with some women, and I’ve been very impressed
00:54:30 ►
by a lot of also what they bring.
00:54:33 ►
So before we finish, I know you’re going to be doing a retreat with RAC Razam.
00:54:40 ►
Do you want to talk about that?
00:54:42 ►
In April, for my next retreat, I’m going to be joining
00:54:45 ►
Forces with RAC as a co-organizer
00:54:48 ►
and we’re going to be having a retreat.
00:54:50 ►
It’s a 10-day retreat with three different
00:54:52 ►
shamans. So we have
00:54:54 ►
developed a system in which
00:54:56 ►
first people can experience
00:54:58 ►
Percy Garcia, who’s
00:55:00 ►
one of those very deeply
00:55:02 ►
indigenous and traditional
00:55:04 ►
curanderos,
00:55:05 ►
who is Peruvian and works in a very indigenous way,
00:55:09 ►
and he will be the introduction.
00:55:11 ►
So we’re going to have two ceremonies with him and his center,
00:55:13 ►
then we’re going to go and have a ceremony with Ron Wheelock,
00:55:17 ►
who is the Gringo shaman who lives nearby Iquitos.
00:55:22 ►
When I first saw Ron,
00:55:25 ►
I thought, okay, that’s some redneck
00:55:26 ►
who got expat in Peru.
00:55:29 ►
I don’t know what he can do.
00:55:30 ►
And I saw him work, and I was so impressed.
00:55:34 ►
And I believe more in converting than non-believer.
00:55:38 ►
Very impressed by Ron and his group.
00:55:39 ►
And the third shaman is going to be a woman from Croatia
00:55:43 ►
who was trained to be a shaman in Peru
00:55:46 ►
and who has a center in Croatia, Borka Kapuk.
00:55:50 ►
And she also has some clairvoyant powers and healer powers.
00:55:54 ►
When I met her, she was able to diagnose.
00:55:58 ►
She has the ability to diagnose people and what they’re holding.
00:56:01 ►
And sometimes also we have almost entities that attach to us
00:56:05 ►
i know the one she worked with one of my she’s diagnosing a friend of mine and she was saying
00:56:10 ►
like you have you have a demon in your belly you have an entity in your belly that is holding you
00:56:14 ►
back and we need to take care of this and she gave her actually a free session um to get a
00:56:20 ►
and that was the closest i’ve seen to an exorcism and I know that that particular
00:56:25 ►
friend of mine had drunk at least 100 times so she was not a newbie but it was the only session
00:56:31 ►
where she almost checked out and there was a lot of screaming and it was very I was the only other
00:56:37 ►
person in the ceremony so it was very clear that I was they were battling that thing until it got
00:56:42 ►
out and there was a change in my
00:56:45 ►
friend I was very impressed also by Borka’s work although she’s not she’s also not traditional
00:56:51 ►
Peruvian but on the other hand she has been trained from traditional Peruvian and she has
00:56:56 ►
been working with ayahuasca for a long time and has a center near Iquitos so I have it’s it’s
00:57:01 ►
interesting I’m really excited to see how this one is going to go since we are opening
00:57:05 ►
it up with a very hard center
00:57:07 ►
gentle traditional
00:57:09 ►
shaman, then Ron who is very full
00:57:11 ►
spectrum, I see that he is
00:57:13 ►
comfortable working with the light and the dark
00:57:16 ►
he is kind of the no fucking
00:57:18 ►
around shaman
00:57:18 ►
and he has a very strong personality
00:57:21 ►
and then at the end is going to be
00:57:23 ►
Borka who is a very skilled healer and very skilled in realigning people,
00:57:29 ►
taking care of whatever rest of the healing needs to happen.
00:57:33 ►
And also when I was talking to Barka, she was saying that a lot of the work they do is almost repairing the work from other shamans.
00:57:41 ►
That if people have worked in the past with ayahuasca with shamans who were not of the highest integrity and if any of that is still in their system one of
00:57:49 ►
balka’s specialties is clearing those energies so i am excited to have her as the last person
00:57:54 ►
and also people are going to get the chance to experience to work with the frog medicine
00:57:59 ►
and kambo at the end that’s going to be optional they’re going to be jungle walks too and i’m going to be
00:58:05 ►
doing the workshops at the beginning before the ceremony between the ceremonies and at the end
00:58:10 ►
for the integration part and that’s going to be the april retreat and i will probably be doing a
00:58:15 ►
different retreat either in december or early next year so if people are interested um when they go
00:58:21 ►
to my website when they hover over events a little menu opens up
00:58:26 ►
and then they can click on retreats
00:58:28 ►
and see what’s coming up
00:58:30 ►
or if people want to be kept in the loop
00:58:32 ►
they can join my mailing list
00:58:33 ►
and then they’re going to get my mailings
00:58:35 ►
about different events and different retreats
00:58:37 ►
that I’m doing
00:58:38 ►
oh Mariana, okay that sounds
00:58:41 ►
absolutely amazing
00:58:43 ►
and I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to have this conversation.
00:58:48 ►
It has been really just so fascinating talking with you.
00:58:51 ►
Same here.
00:58:52 ►
It’s been really beautiful talking to you, too.
00:58:54 ►
And I actually am still looking forward to taking your brain in a different time in a personal environment.
00:58:59 ►
It sounds like you know a lot and you care a lot about it.
00:59:01 ►
Oh, yeah.
00:59:02 ►
It makes me curious to know you.
00:59:04 ►
Oh, yeah.
00:59:04 ►
I look forward to meeting you
00:59:06 ►
in person. Well, all right.
00:59:08 ►
We’ll stay in touch
00:59:10 ►
and talk soon.
00:59:13 ►
Have a beautiful day.
00:59:14 ►
Thank you, and thank you for the interview.
00:59:17 ►
You’re listening to the Psychedelic Salon,
00:59:20 ►
where people are changing their lives
00:59:22 ►
one thought at a time.
00:59:24 ►
I sure wish that there was someone like Mariana around when our group was first finding its way.
00:59:30 ►
And I’m not talking here about the ayahuasca group that I eventually found.
00:59:35 ►
I’m talking about the early days back in Dallas during the 80s.
00:59:38 ►
If you watched my interview about those days, the one that’s titled Confessions of an Ecstasy Advocate,
00:59:44 ►
then you’ve got some kind of an idea of what I’m talking about. Thank you. It’s a pseudo-translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. And believe me, it wasn’t very comforting.
01:00:08 ►
At least to me it wasn’t.
01:00:10 ►
And maybe I shouldn’t exclude my early ayahuasca years now that I think of it,
01:00:14 ►
because even though I’d read a lot about the experience before my first time,
01:00:18 ►
I was still very nervous about it.
01:00:21 ►
And then, a few minutes before I was about to begin that experience,
01:00:26 ►
a close friend of mine, who was very experienced with ayahuasca, I should add, came over to
01:00:32 ►
me and whispered in my ear, it’s a great night to die, don’t you think? And then he walked
01:00:38 ►
away and left me in the darkness to have my first ayahuasca experience. And did I mention
01:00:44 ►
the fact that that particular night
01:00:46 ►
was the one that the Catholics call Good Friday?
01:00:49 ►
Which always seemed a bit strange to me, calling it a good day,
01:00:53 ►
but let’s leave the theology to the priests for now and move on here.
01:00:58 ►
So, in my opinion, to have people like Mariana available
01:01:02 ►
to talk with before and after an intense psychedelic experience,
01:01:06 ►
well, in my opinion, it’s exactly the direction that we should be heading in.
01:01:11 ►
And by the way, I’ll put those links that Mariana mentioned, I’ll put them in today’s program notes,
01:01:16 ►
which you can get to via psychedelicsalon.us. I’m sorry that I didn’t get this out sooner,
01:01:22 ►
but if you are interested in Mariana’s workshop and individual training schedules, you’ll find it all on her website.
01:01:28 ►
And while I’ve not yet met Mariana in person, and while I do have a bit of experience with ayahuasca,
01:01:34 ►
I’m here to tell you that she surprised me with some new information and ways of looking at things that, well, I’ve been missing all these years.
01:01:42 ►
that, well, I’ve been missing all these years.
01:01:45 ►
Hopefully we’ll get to listen in on a conversation between these two medicine women one day
01:01:47 ►
when they discuss psilocybin, magic mushrooms.
01:01:51 ►
But for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from cyberdelic space.
01:01:56 ►
Be careful out there, my friends. Thank you.