Program Notes
Guest speakers: Borka Cafuk & Shonagh Home
Today’s program features a conversation between Shonagh Home and Borka Cafuk, who is a remarkable medicine woman. Not only does Borka provide interesting details about plant medicines such as ayahuasca, sapo, and nu-nu, she also tells the fascinating story of her transition from working as an environmental journalist from Europe into a South American medicine woman. And she minces no words in talking about the difficulties that she has encountered being accepted by the indigenous people, and in particular the male ayahuasceros, where she now lives. Much plant knowledge is being lost as traditional healers are being subsumed into the Western culture that is now seeping into the Amazon basin, and so it has fallen to people like Borka to help the local medicine men and women hold together the threads of this important work.
Yana Puma Healing Center
Yana Puma (Black Jaguar) is a plant medicine healing and educational center located on river Momon in Loreto, Peru. The center offers traditional healing treatments using a variety of Amazonian plants, ayahuasca, sapo, nu-nu and tobacco ceremonies, as well as plant diets.
Our primary objectives are to preserve the jungle and its biodiversity, and to preserve the incredible knowledge and culture of the indigenous people.
The mission of Yana Puma Healing and Educational Center is to help people on the path towards spiritual, physical and mental healing and growth, to ultimately reach their true purpose in life. This is done through unparalleled support on all levels, healing and education while simultaneously preserving and spreading the knowledge, culture and traditions of the indigenous people, who are in danger of being lost forever.
Shonagh Home is a teacher, shamanic practitioner, and the author of
‘Ix Chel Wisdom: 7 Teachings from the Mayan Sacred Feminine,’
and the upcoming, ‘Honeybee Wisdom: A Modern Melissae Speaks.’
Website: www.shonaghhome.com
Contact: shonagh.home (at) comcast (dot) net
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474 - Important Podcast – This Affects YOU!
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476 - Origins of the Choice-Maker
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:21 ►
This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.
00:00:24 ►
From cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:32 ►
Have you ever wondered how a person who feels the calling becomes a medicine man or a medicine woman?
00:00:36 ►
Well, from what I’ve seen, there are two ways to do it.
00:00:43 ►
The primary way is to be born into a culture that honors medicine work and become an apprentice to the tribe’s shaman. And then there’s the other way, which, near as I can tell, includes an almost infinite
00:00:49 ►
variety of paths.
00:00:51 ►
And today we’re going to hear the story of one woman who is, well, she’s from Croatia,
00:00:56 ►
and she has followed many different paths until one led her to a jungle in Peru.
00:01:02 ►
Now, following the trajectory of her life until about 11 years ago,
00:01:07 ►
one would never have suspected that today she is a resident healer at a center in Peru,
00:01:12 ►
and she performs ayahuasca, sepo, and nunu ceremonies, as well as supervising various
00:01:18 ►
plant diets. It’s a fascinating story that most often is a man’s story, which makes Borka Kafuk even more amazing.
00:01:27 ►
So let’s begin with Shona Holm introducing her guest today.
00:01:31 ►
Welcome everybody. I am here today with a very fascinating woman, Borka Kafuk.
00:01:38 ►
And she runs the Yanapuma Healing Center.
00:01:47 ►
the Yanapuma Healing Center. And so I will just read to you the description of this incredible place and do her bio, and then we will have a conversation. Yanapuma, which means black jaguar,
00:01:55 ►
is a plant medicine healing and education center located on River Momin in Lurito, Peru.
00:02:01 ►
The center offers traditional healing treatments using a variety of Amazonian
00:02:05 ►
plants, ayahuasca, sapo, nunu, and tobacco ceremonies, as well as plant diets. Our primary
00:02:12 ►
objectives are to preserve the jungle and its biodiversity, and to preserve the incredible
00:02:17 ►
knowledge and culture of the indigenous people. The mission of Yanapuma Healing and Education
00:02:23 ►
Center is to help people on the path towards spiritual, physical, and mental healing and growth to ultimately reach their true purpose in life.
00:02:32 ►
This is done through unparalleled support on every level, healing and education, while simultaneously preserving and spreading the knowledge, culture, and traditions of the indigenous people who are in danger of being lost forever. And so, Borca Kafuk is the founder and director of Yanapuma and is the
00:02:51 ►
resident healer of the center. She performs ayahuasca, sapo, and nunu ceremonies and
00:02:57 ►
supervises plant diets. Borca has studied European plant medicine for 11 years and is a certified
00:03:03 ►
producer and refiner of aromatic plants. She has studied Amazonian plant medicine for 11 years and is a certified producer and refiner of aromatic
00:03:05 ►
plants. She has studied Amazonian plant medicine for the past seven years with several traditional
00:03:10 ►
healers. She is certified as a licensed shiatsu practitioner, trained martial artist in Shotokan,
00:03:17 ►
and has studied Lohan Qigong and is a transcendental meditation practitioner for more
00:03:22 ►
than 20 years. Also, Borka is the founder of
00:03:25 ►
Durga’s Sanctuary, a plant medicine healing center located in Croatia, which has been operating for
00:03:32 ►
five years. Borka specializes in treating energetic disorders, removing intrusive energies and
00:03:39 ►
entities, and treating all forms of negative spiritual practices, such as brujeria, black magic, and voodoo.
00:03:47 ►
Apart from that, she also treats trauma, depression, and other psychological problems,
00:03:52 ►
as well as physical problems and illnesses.
00:03:55 ►
Her philosophy can be summed up in these words,
00:03:58 ►
quote, everyone deserves a chance to be happy, healthy, and free.
00:04:03 ►
And so, welcome, Borka. Hi, Sona. free. And so welcome, Burka.
00:04:06 ►
Hi, Shona.
00:04:07 ►
Thank you for having me in this interview.
00:04:09 ►
Oh, I’m so excited about this.
00:04:12 ►
All right.
00:04:12 ►
Well, I’m going to begin with this question I’m curious about, and that is, what inspired
00:04:19 ►
you to choose the path of a healer?
00:04:23 ►
Oh, that’s a tough question I really never never had any intention
00:04:29 ►
to walk on this path I will say in my previous life well life before what I’m doing now I have
00:04:37 ►
been a journalist environmental journalist for many years but there was something, always something missing in my life.
00:04:45 ►
I felt like that’s not exactly what I need to do.
00:04:49 ►
And I was always trying to find myself through all these different things,
00:04:53 ►
doing Shotokan, Lohan Chi Kung, through the meditation, through Shiatsu,
00:04:58 ►
and I always thought, oh, maybe that’s it, but it never was.
00:05:03 ►
Then I saw a painting of a very famous current era
00:05:07 ►
from Peru Pablo Marengo one of his paintings and he was saying this is the
00:05:12 ►
painting of my ayahuasca vision and I had didn’t have any clue what I was
00:05:18 ►
called at that point and I was looking at the painting and I said well I don’t
00:05:23 ►
know what ayahuasca is but I’m certain I’ve seen this before.
00:05:28 ►
I know this space. I know what’s happening on this painting.
00:05:33 ►
And that put me on the path to investigate ayahuasca.
00:05:37 ►
So my first ayahuasca ceremony was actually in Spain and I went because of myself and my let’s say so egoistic thing I wanted to find out what is
00:05:48 ►
missing in my life what is that that open hole in me what is always saying that’s not it that’s not
00:05:54 ►
it there is something else that you need to do that you need to be and basically after that
00:06:01 ►
I was told I went through a couple of difficult ceremonies in which I was told
00:06:07 ►
by the medicine that I need to go to the jungle.
00:06:09 ►
I never wanted to go to the jungle.
00:06:12 ►
I was like, what?
00:06:13 ►
Jungle?
00:06:13 ►
Snakes?
00:06:14 ►
Mosquitoes?
00:06:14 ►
No way, I’m not going there.
00:06:17 ►
So I did my best to prevent myself to go to the jungle, but in the end, I ended up in
00:06:23 ►
the jungle, and that’s where my story begins. Okay, so you ended up in the jungle, but in the end, I ended up in the jungle, and that’s where my story
00:06:25 ►
begins.
00:06:27 ►
Okay, so you ended up in the jungle.
00:06:29 ►
Well, let’s continue.
00:06:30 ►
So what happened when you went?
00:06:31 ►
What were the circumstances?
00:06:34 ►
The moment I entered the jungle, and I remember it was really dark in the evening, so everything
00:06:41 ►
was dark.
00:06:41 ►
I felt like, wow, this feels like home.
00:06:41 ►
so everything was dark I felt like wow this feels like home
00:06:44 ►
but what actually
00:06:46 ►
happened during
00:06:48 ►
the ceremonies and my one month
00:06:50 ►
being in the jungle wasn’t so
00:06:52 ►
I wouldn’t say it was a blissful
00:06:56 ►
experience because I was immediately
00:06:57 ►
put through the
00:06:59 ►
let’s call it initiation process
00:07:01 ►
with the things that I’m doing today
00:07:03 ►
you have just read
00:07:04 ►
in what do I specialize let’s call it initiation process, with the things that I’m doing today, you have just read them,
00:07:05 ►
in what do I specialize.
00:07:10 ►
So, and basically forced by the medicine
00:07:14 ►
to look at my life
00:07:16 ►
and all the people who have been summoned in my life
00:07:20 ►
and all the things that have been happening in my life,
00:07:23 ►
which led me to the path
00:07:25 ►
of what i am doing now so basically the initiation was done because there was another person
00:07:31 ►
which with whom my soul had an agreement to come to that ceremonies which had an entity inside of
00:07:39 ►
himself which jumped in me and basically throw my soul out of my body and that was a really tough night
00:07:48 ►
because it took a time for me to come back to my body to experience the entity inside of me
00:07:53 ►
for a current arrow at that point to extract that thing out of me
00:07:57 ►
and it took me another two months coming back from the jungle to really
00:08:08 ►
coming back from the jungle to really uh understand what happened why did it happen because the thing what medicine said to me this is your path you need to do this you need to help
00:08:13 ►
people with these conditions and i was like no way never again i’m going to drink ayahuasca
00:08:19 ►
not to mention that i’m not going to have anything with plans because in my head at that moment was just fear.
00:08:27 ►
For two months I was living in fear.
00:08:30 ►
I couldn’t sleep at night without the light on.
00:08:33 ►
I would enter the, for example, the public into the tram or into the bus.
00:08:41 ►
And I could feel and see people carrying these things with them.
00:08:45 ►
And that would make me even more fearful and then I was forced to look back at my life starting from my family
00:08:52 ►
from my own father who was carrying these things from the other people who entered my life and had
00:08:59 ►
had impact on me and I was like yes these things have come into my life
00:09:05 ►
to try to remove me from the path because these beings knew what i was meant to do in this life
00:09:14 ►
so it took me a really long time to accept that to stop being fearful and to learn how to deal
00:09:20 ►
with that and and i know today people when when you say to them, and these other beings, bad spirits,
00:09:26 ►
they say, no, that doesn’t exist.
00:09:30 ►
But this world is more than we see.
00:09:33 ►
Yes, that is so true.
00:09:35 ►
Well, the Western world really is very superficial
00:09:40 ►
and dismisses all of this. And yet, it is understood in every ancient esoteric path,
00:09:50 ►
there is the sacred too. So we have the world of the seen, which we all operate in, and then we
00:09:57 ►
have the world of the unseen, of course. That’s the rule of the coin. as long as we have a coin there are always two sides
00:10:05 ►
and unfortunately the western mindset
00:10:09 ►
has just dismissed that altogether
00:10:11 ►
which is part of the problem
00:10:13 ►
the reason why I think we’re in the mess we’re in
00:10:16 ►
but in any case
00:10:17 ►
so first of all I have a question
00:10:20 ►
so when you were in with that experience in the jungle
00:10:23 ►
where that entity came into you were you with a large group of people or was it just you and a few people with a shaman?
00:10:30 ►
I just want a little bit more detail on that.
00:10:32 ►
It was an interesting thing because when that entity started to express himself in that other person, the shaman actually left the ceremony.
00:10:49 ►
uh the the shaman actually left the ceremony and my my instant feeling was like oh this is not going to this is not leading to anything good you don’t leave the ceremony when there is someone
00:10:54 ►
shouting and going through because this was a small really tiny person and he changed his voice
00:11:02 ►
he started to act very violently he had more force than like three people put together.
00:11:08 ►
So basically in the end there was only three or two other people which stayed in Malacca with me.
00:11:16 ►
And that person who was going through his experience. And it was really scary.
00:11:23 ►
Okay, and you said the shaman
00:11:25 ►
left the ceremony? He left, yes.
00:11:28 ►
While this person
00:11:29 ►
was ranting? Yes.
00:11:32 ►
What do you think the shaman was
00:11:34 ►
doing? Well,
00:11:36 ►
more
00:11:37 ►
years needed to pass for me
00:11:39 ►
to actually understand what happened.
00:11:41 ►
And again,
00:11:43 ►
the answer was given to me by the medicine
00:11:46 ►
at the point when the spirit of the Mother Ayahuasca
00:11:49 ►
decided that I’m ready to hear that.
00:11:54 ►
Deshaman became my teacher, my first teacher in the jungle.
00:11:58 ►
So he knew where I was coming from and what is going to happen.
00:12:03 ►
He actually knew that.
00:12:04 ►
And he had agreement with these entities to leave the space.
00:12:07 ►
Why?
00:12:08 ►
There is another explanation for that.
00:12:12 ►
Many shamans, or let’s call them curanderos in the jungle, especially in Peru, they practice both.
00:12:18 ►
They practice, let’s call it black magic and white magic.
00:12:22 ►
And they don’t see anything bad in that.
00:12:25 ►
But you know, as more you practice black magic,
00:12:29 ►
or brujeria, how we call it,
00:12:31 ►
then you more walk on the path of the darkness
00:12:34 ►
than on the path of the light.
00:12:36 ►
So at that point, my teacher was on the crossroads.
00:12:40 ►
Will he take the path of light or the path of darkness?
00:12:45 ►
Unfortunately, in the end, he decided to walk the other path.
00:12:50 ►
Interesting.
00:12:52 ►
I’m just curious more of this.
00:12:54 ►
This is fascinating to me.
00:12:56 ►
Did he leave also to sort of initiate you into that experience?
00:13:02 ►
I mean, that’s my sense, ultimately.
00:13:06 ►
I don’t know.. I don’t know.
00:13:07 ►
I really don’t know.
00:13:08 ►
But the answer of the medicine was he left because he was asked from the dark spirits
00:13:15 ►
to leave because they had their agenda with me to remove me from the path because they
00:13:21 ►
knew what will happen if I continue to walk the path.
00:13:24 ►
On the other hand, he really did me a favor.
00:13:27 ►
With all the bad things he did, he did me a favor,
00:13:30 ►
although he didn’t want to do it, because he taught me a lot.
00:13:33 ►
So I am grateful to him for everything he has done.
00:13:38 ►
Yeah, I would agree because I do see these entities,
00:13:43 ►
I mean, they stir up a tremendous amount of trouble, and they can do incredible damage. And at the same time, I tend to see that whole piece as like threshold guardians.
00:14:06 ►
knew what was ultimately your path, and they were going to do everything in their power,
00:14:13 ►
it appears, to frighten you, to discourage you away from that.
00:14:20 ►
And I had a teacher, Brew Joy, who would speak of this, saying that these are, well, you will see these in temples.
00:14:21 ►
You’ll see these statues or faces of gargoyles and dragons and demonic-looking beings,
00:14:29 ►
and they’re like standing sentry at the threshold of the temple.
00:14:33 ►
And their entire function is essentially to say,
00:14:36 ►
oh, you think you’re ready to cross this threshold?
00:14:42 ►
Let’s see what you’ve got. And then they throw you, of course, all of this
00:14:47 ►
adversity and fear and great stress and self-doubt. I mean, right? I mean, everything,
00:14:58 ►
essentially, they provide for you the hero’s journey. Now, it can get far worse than that, of course,
00:15:07 ►
but this is my take and has been my own experience
00:15:11 ►
with this kind of thing, which I find very interesting.
00:15:15 ►
All right, so that puts you on the path,
00:15:17 ►
and it took, what did you say, like a couple of months
00:15:20 ►
where you were sensing those entities on other people around you,
00:15:24 ►
including your father?
00:15:27 ►
At that point,
00:15:28 ►
my father was already dead.
00:15:30 ►
There was understanding
00:15:32 ►
and I could understand
00:15:33 ►
why he was like he was,
00:15:36 ►
why he was trying to
00:15:37 ►
destroy
00:15:41 ►
my
00:15:42 ►
internal power
00:15:45 ►
and I was able to forgive him
00:15:50 ►
because he was driven by
00:15:52 ►
this other force
00:15:53 ►
that he could not control.
00:15:56 ►
I could, yes, on the other people
00:15:57 ►
I could sense them, I could feel them,
00:15:59 ►
I could see in their eyes
00:16:01 ►
for the next couple of months.
00:16:05 ►
And I was on medicine just put, she said, you need to decide.
00:16:09 ►
In the end, it’s your decision.
00:16:12 ►
But if you don’t take the path that you decided before coming here
00:16:16 ►
that you will walk on, you will never fulfill your mission.
00:16:20 ►
You will never be happy.
00:16:21 ►
You will never find what you are looking for.
00:16:24 ►
Because in the beginning, it was your decision, my decision.
00:16:28 ►
Right. Okay. So did you essentially kind of come to a place of peace around that and then you continued your training?
00:16:37 ►
Yes. It took some time and it took a lot of courage to go over the fear. Because, you know, when you are ready for tests, you will be tested.
00:16:49 ►
Yeah, yeah, I’m quite familiar with that, I have to say.
00:16:52 ►
And I am familiar with this line of work that you do,
00:16:55 ►
because I myself have done some depossession work, and it’s very real.
00:17:01 ►
And the eyes of the person change, and eyes being the windows to the soul, you know,
00:17:08 ►
that’s always haunted me, especially in a couple of instances where I felt like I was, you know,
00:17:14 ►
looking into the eyes of a demon, if you will. And so, in other words, this work is not for
00:17:20 ►
everyone, is it? No, no, definitely not.
00:17:28 ►
All right, and so what was the continuation of your training, Borka, particularly with this aspect, which again
00:17:32 ►
is not an aspect that most people choose to explore, who are
00:17:36 ►
drawn to the shamanic, the path of the healer?
00:17:41 ►
So basically I kept going back to the jungle, to
00:17:44 ►
my first teacher teacher I had another
00:17:46 ►
two three teachers after him and it was always the same thing doing the diets being exposed
00:17:54 ►
on the ceremonies to these things and then in the end being exposed to actual attacks of my teacher
00:18:00 ►
he was at some point he was very happy with
00:18:06 ►
how am I progressing
00:18:07 ►
and he was always saying to other people
00:18:10 ►
ah that’s my best student
00:18:11 ►
you need to be more like her
00:18:13 ►
and then at one point
00:18:15 ►
something happened
00:18:17 ►
and he
00:18:19 ►
well we see that a lot in Peru
00:18:22 ►
they start, they become jealous
00:18:24 ►
and so at that
00:18:26 ►
point he was trying he was trying to get rid of me he was trying to mess up with
00:18:30 ►
me manipulate me still my vision still my power still my ability to work with
00:18:38 ►
the medicine and also mess up my friends, even my family members.
00:18:46 ►
When he couldn’t attack me, he started attacking my partner, my mother, even my pets.
00:18:52 ►
So what did those attacks look like?
00:18:55 ►
Well, I can talk about one, what happened to me.
00:19:01 ►
I just, when we broke up, i broke up my uh commitment to my teacher
00:19:07 ►
um i had a dream before my business travel i had a dream that there is my mother and me driving in
00:19:15 ►
the car and in the backseat my teacher is sitting there and he’s pretending he’s not looking at us
00:19:20 ►
he’s not seeing us he’s ignoring us but the moment i would turn to see to face front i would
00:19:26 ►
feel him poking me with this huge stick which had a it looked like a spear right on my back where my
00:19:33 ►
heart is so i woke up next morning and i was like yeah that’s a strange dream uh but at that point
00:19:40 ►
i still didn’t you know pay too much attention to it So I went to wherever I was going to do my job.
00:19:47 ►
And I went to one store.
00:19:49 ►
And in the store, while looking for something, I felt like a hand going in my body beneath my ribcage, grabbing my heart and squeezing it.
00:20:00 ►
And I fell.
00:20:02 ►
I was trying to hold on the shelves and all these things started
00:20:06 ►
falling down and I felt like that’s it I’m going to get heart attack so that’s
00:20:11 ►
how a typical brujeria attack looks like okay and then how do you counter that
00:20:20 ►
well at that point I didn’t have a lot of tools to deal with that
00:20:27 ►
except the spirits of the plants
00:20:28 ►
that I dieted with
00:20:29 ►
some spirits of the light that work with me
00:20:32 ►
and some spirits that come in animal form
00:20:35 ►
so I started calling them
00:20:36 ►
summoning them, come come help me
00:20:38 ►
do this, do that, do anything
00:20:40 ►
so that helped
00:20:42 ►
that terminated that attack because it was really close. I was
00:20:48 ►
really close to losing my consciousness and I felt like my heart is going to burst.
00:20:53 ►
Okay, so this is very interesting because on the shamanic path, or the path of, I mean,
00:20:58 ►
shamanic being one term, right? This is an ancient path, medicine man, medicine woman.
00:21:07 ►
term, right? This is an ancient path, medicine man, medicine woman. All of these folks cultivate relationship with allies in the form of plants or animals, usually winged ones, etc. And so this
00:21:20 ►
sounds like, you know, you are cultivating that relationship ultimately through the diet, through the plants.
00:21:25 ►
And then lo and behold, when you are in a time of need, then those spirits essentially show up to the rescue, would you say, and assist you as they are meant to do, designed to do, yes?
00:21:42 ►
Yes, yes, exactly.
00:21:45 ►
Go on.
00:21:46 ►
Later on, I’ve learned from the medicine and plants and other spirits,
00:21:51 ►
other tools, how to use them to know in advance when something will happen,
00:21:57 ►
to protect the space, to protect the people who are in my space.
00:22:01 ►
So it’s different now.
00:22:01 ►
who are in my space.
00:22:02 ►
So it’s different now.
00:22:05 ►
All right.
00:22:10 ►
And so I’m just very fascinated by every step of your journey, Borca.
00:22:12 ►
So, all right, so then what did you do?
00:22:19 ►
Well, I never planned to go back to the jungle, to live in the jungle, but the medicine was always telling me, you need to go there,
00:22:22 ►
you need to live there, you need to work there, you need to work there, because,
00:22:26 ►
and there was, she used this line, she said,
00:22:30 ►
you need to go there to sort out my sons.
00:22:34 ►
Ah, very good.
00:22:37 ►
It took me a while to figure that out, my sons,
00:22:41 ►
because usually, what we have now, have many many male curanderos or
00:22:48 ►
shamans a very few female and she the medicine was basically not happy with what is happening
00:22:56 ►
with them of course you have curanderos which are which are very very ethical and very good
00:23:02 ►
and on the other hand you have more and more of them
00:23:05 ►
who are either pretending to be curanderos, and they are not,
00:23:09 ►
or who want to achieve, you know, these lower things
00:23:14 ►
for being a curandero, to attract women or to get more money
00:23:17 ►
or whatever they want.
00:23:20 ►
And they are ready to do and step basically over dead bodies in that process.
00:23:27 ►
So this is actually quite an act of courage on your part to go there then
00:23:32 ►
and become essentially a curandera of the ayahuasca
00:23:37 ►
and thus part of the competition.
00:23:41 ►
And for some of these guys who look on it as a big business as as it is
00:23:47 ►
right i mean the uh ayahuasca tourism is just exploded and so here you come uh with also some
00:23:56 ►
quite a bit of experience already how very interesting all these initiations in what it’s like to be on the receiving end of black magic, if you will.
00:24:08 ►
And also showing up now, I would think, realizing, huh, I do have some very effective
00:24:15 ►
plant allies who are my protectors. And so it seems to me like you’re being prepared all along
00:24:21 ►
to then, yeah, come to the jungle and set up your position and create the
00:24:26 ►
kind of energetic that you are creating so did the center then form shortly thereafter or how did
00:24:35 ►
that all come together well it took a while um it took a while it took many years before the center now it’s let’s see we started in 2013
00:24:47 ►
so it will be two years and a couple of months now oh gosh okay it’s not that old center
00:24:54 ►
um and we went through hell and back of course because first the problem is to build something
00:25:03 ►
like that and we are very far, far from the town.
00:25:07 ►
You need to establish connections with the people who live there.
00:25:10 ►
And of course, because there is a sort of racial issue,
00:25:17 ►
which means that mestizo people,
00:25:20 ►
they call themselves rebelenos,
00:25:24 ►
the people of the river the river
00:25:25 ►
on the river they look at you as a white person and the idea of the white person is a oh every
00:25:32 ►
white person has a tree which grows money so they look you they look at you as a bank and they will
00:25:40 ►
try to do of course everything to get the money from you. So first, that was a problem, to establish some sort of good connection with these people,
00:25:49 ►
to see us as people, not as banks.
00:25:55 ►
Then, at that point, we were attacked, me and my partner,
00:26:00 ►
because my partner was also the student of my first teacher.
00:26:05 ►
We were still attacked by my teacher
00:26:07 ►
who was still
00:26:08 ►
at that point he was still
00:26:13 ►
strong. These days he is
00:26:15 ►
just an alcoholic.
00:26:19 ►
And then
00:26:20 ►
to set your energy in the jungle
00:26:23 ►
in which all these different spirits are and all these different energies.
00:26:27 ►
Of course, jungle needs to accept you.
00:26:30 ►
The jungle is like, who are you and what do you want?
00:26:33 ►
So that took some time.
00:26:35 ►
And then to get people that you really want to work with.
00:26:40 ►
Right.
00:26:40 ►
And I say, I always say, I would rather work with free people
00:26:44 ►
who really, really want to do their work, their process, and really want to change themselves and help themselves than to work with 30 people or 40 people who just come to see, to have, I don’t know, ayahuasca, they call it ayahuasca trip or visuals or whatever.
00:27:04 ►
They call it ayahuasca trip or visuals or whatever.
00:27:07 ►
Right, right.
00:27:08 ►
That’s very interesting.
00:27:13 ►
I had a conversation with another medicine woman, friend of mine,
00:27:14 ►
and she’s an oracle.
00:27:18 ►
And she was saying, Shana, I have read for thousands of people,
00:27:29 ►
and this is a very, very wise, wise woman. And she said, really, very, very few people actually are willing to do the work, because there is this idea in their minds that, oh, yeah, you just, you know, receive
00:27:36 ►
whatever a blessing or the, you know, medicine person waves some plants over you or you take a plant and then you’re healed and that’s not how
00:27:46 ►
it happens it’s a process so yeah i really hear what you’re saying there exactly exactly because
00:27:54 ►
yes a medicine person has that magical wand yes but we don’t tend to use it why because if a
00:28:03 ►
person for example let’s say it’s a person with a cancer and it comes to you. Yes, you can wave your magical wand, but then what? The source cancer may be removed, but it will come back because the source of the cancer hasn’t been resolved.
00:28:34 ►
So the person needs to do a process, needs to go to that painful spot of not forgiving other people, feeling like a victim, hating God and life for what happened to them.
00:28:40 ►
He needs to go to that spot, resolve that, and then it can truly be healed.
00:28:47 ►
So that’s a process. Yeah, this makes me think of the analogy of we have Louis Pasteur,
00:28:54 ►
who came up with these vaccines, and I’m actually not in agreement with a lot of what he had to say.
00:29:00 ►
At the same time that Pasteur was around, we had a scientist named Antoine Béchamp.
00:29:06 ►
And he had a very, and apparently Pasteur actually stole a lot of Bechamp’s research,
00:29:14 ►
but Bechamp was of a different mindset, and he said, it’s not the disease, it is the terrain.
00:29:21 ►
It’s about the terrain, so that if you have created in you the terrain that would support the disease, whatever it is, mental, physical, spiritual, then of course
00:29:26 ►
it can proliferate. And so, yeah, it’s like, oh yeah, we can just cure you, quote unquote,
00:29:33 ►
take that disease away. But if the thinking remains or the way you treat your body doesn’t
00:29:40 ►
change, yeah, it’s going to come back or it’ll come back in some other form. So yeah,
00:29:46 ►
very, very interesting. And so when you work at the center now, so you oversee the diet for these
00:29:55 ►
people, and then you have certain medicines that you work with for people. and it sounds like also you do uh quite a lot of uh spiritual
00:30:07 ►
mental healing so so how does that work like if someone were to
00:30:12 ►
approach you to come to your center what’s your approach back
00:30:17 ►
it depends what that person says if the person says, I just want to experience ayahuasca,
00:30:25 ►
of course, yes, you can do that.
00:30:28 ►
But if the person says, I have this and that problem
00:30:31 ►
and I want to work on that, we will talk about the problem.
00:30:35 ►
We will see how much can I…
00:30:36 ►
It’s excellent if I can diagnose the person if it’s living next to me.
00:30:42 ►
But even if the person is living in another in another country
00:30:46 ►
we can talk over skype try to diagnose and then i will say okay um from what i have learned about
00:30:55 ►
you and about your diagnosis i believe that you need for example a month and we can sort out that in a month, of course, if you participate
00:31:06 ►
100% in the process.
00:31:08 ►
Right, right, essential, essential.
00:31:11 ►
And so how do you work with such a person, for instance, then when they show up for a
00:31:17 ►
month?
00:31:20 ►
Usually we will first do initial ayahuasca ceremony and see what will happen on that ceremony.
00:31:26 ►
Do more diagnosing because when a person drinks ayahuasca, nothing can stay hidden.
00:31:32 ►
Things from in the body, in the energy field, in their mind, they come to surface.
00:31:37 ►
And it’s so much easier to see, ah, look, there is this thing and this thing and this thing.
00:31:43 ►
look, there is this thing and this thing and this thing.
00:31:50 ►
And then I will always consult with the spirit of the medicine.
00:31:52 ►
What does she suggest?
00:31:59 ►
What, for example, plans or how many ceremonies or what do we need to do?
00:32:04 ►
And then we have our little program, let’s call it that way.
00:32:08 ►
And I suggest to the person, okay, this is what medicine said, this is what I think, you, for example, need to take this plant for three days,
00:32:14 ►
you need to do the diet with this, or so many ceremonies,
00:32:17 ►
and if the person says, okay, I agree with that, then we will work on it.
00:32:21 ►
And of course, as the time goes and as the process,
00:32:26 ►
things change in the process,
00:32:28 ►
we might change the plans or shorten the process.
00:32:37 ►
And it depends individually on the person.
00:32:40 ►
How much effort is that person putting in the process?
00:32:44 ►
And of course, each one of us has its own time.
00:32:50 ►
Right.
00:32:50 ►
And then what about also when I always start my sessions
00:32:55 ►
with what the Mexican curanderas refer to as a platica, a heart-to-heart.
00:33:01 ►
And so I would imagine you have a lot of heart-to-heart talks
00:33:04 ►
with these
00:33:05 ►
people as well and how does that look well essentially and that is good
00:33:11 ►
because people tend to be very open and tell me things that they usually wouldn’t
00:33:16 ►
know they wouldn’t tell them to their best friends because they feel they can
00:33:21 ►
because they feel they can.
00:33:27 ►
And I’ve heard so many different things.
00:33:32 ►
Sometimes it is hard, but I’m there to hear them.
00:33:35 ►
And I’m always…
00:33:41 ►
I’m not going to conceal things from them.
00:33:43 ►
I’m going to tell them the truth.
00:33:50 ►
Usually people tend to react very good to that.
00:33:53 ►
Yeah, well, I would think so,
00:33:55 ►
because they’re there to do the real work.
00:33:56 ►
Yeah.
00:34:00 ►
Of course, with people who come just for fun or for, as they call it, cheap,
00:34:01 ►
you can talk for hours and nothing will happen right
00:34:05 ►
right now don’t you have a partner there also then who works with you yes john john okay
00:34:14 ►
tell us about him he’s helping a lot on the ceremonies he’s also singing in girls he helps
00:34:21 ►
me when i call him in for the healing.
00:34:29 ►
He’ll do all the, you know, technical stuff.
00:34:31 ►
He always says, I’m just a bucket cleaner.
00:34:35 ►
He’s not just a bucket cleaner.
00:34:41 ►
He really looks after my back, and he does a lot of this other work that I really can’t.
00:34:43 ►
I don’t have enough time for that.
00:34:45 ►
So he’s a really important part.
00:34:49 ►
Well, I love that it’s you and a man. So it’s this lovely balance, it seems, between the feminine and the masculine,
00:34:56 ►
which is just really important.
00:34:59 ►
You also do sapo ceremonies.
00:35:02 ►
Could you speak a bit to your training there and how that works?
00:35:08 ►
Well, sapo is actually the frog venom
00:35:11 ►
that some of the tribes of the Amazon use. And there is a
00:35:15 ►
story from Brazil that how in the history
00:35:19 ►
how did they even figure out how to use sapo? And the story says, well, the whole
00:35:24 ►
tribe was sick.
00:35:31 ►
And then the spirit of the frog showed itself to the curandero of the tribe and said,
00:35:34 ►
if you want your tribe to survive, you need to use my venom.
00:35:40 ►
So basically today, sapo is used usually before hunting. The hunters will use sapo.
00:35:43 ►
They will purge before, when they use the sapoapo they will purge before when they use the
00:35:45 ►
supper they will purge and what happens after supper you get this all this
00:35:50 ►
energy you feel like oh you can run for hours of course if you are physically
00:35:55 ►
good if you are sick you won’t feel like that also you see better the colors are
00:36:01 ►
more vivid you hear better like oh who is breathing in the grass
00:36:07 ►
oh it’s an ant okay i’m exaggerating a little bit but these senses our senses are more enhanced
00:36:15 ►
we tend to do sapo ceremonies also before ayahuasca ceremony because then if there is
00:36:23 ►
something to clean you will clean it on sapo
00:36:25 ►
you will purge on sapo all these hard energies or toxins and then it will be much easier for you on
00:36:32 ►
ayahuasca ceremony sapo is also good in diagnosing people because the the venom should work from your
00:36:40 ►
head to your toes you you know, balanced.
00:36:46 ►
You should feel it everywhere in your body.
00:36:51 ►
But then if the venom goes to the certain point of your body,
00:36:55 ►
then it’s saying that basically there is a problem,
00:37:01 ►
better energetical problem or a blockage or some physical problem.
00:37:07 ►
Also, it is very good for cleaning all the pathogens that we have in our body and even heavy metals.
00:37:10 ►
So we do get a lot of people who get what we call sapophase.
00:37:15 ►
Their face and even their hands and feet, they swell
00:37:19 ►
because there are so many things in our body that shouldn’t be there
00:37:23 ►
and they cannot get out.
00:37:26 ►
So people swell because all these pathogens go into the blood.
00:37:32 ►
Also, of course, there is another group of people
00:37:37 ►
which have infectious diseases like HIV,
00:37:43 ►
which if you want to
00:37:45 ►
do sap on them
00:37:48 ►
you can’t just do it once
00:37:49 ►
or twice because you know what will happen
00:37:52 ►
the virus will say oh
00:37:54 ►
something is attacking me
00:37:55 ►
and it will multiply
00:37:57 ►
the actual level of the virus
00:38:00 ►
will rise
00:38:00 ►
so if a person with HIV
00:38:03 ►
comes and says I want a a sample, I will say,
00:38:06 ►
okay, but we need to do it for a longer period of time
00:38:09 ►
to actually kill the virus.
00:38:14 ►
So how long does that usually take?
00:38:16 ►
It probably varies individual to individual.
00:38:19 ►
It really depends.
00:38:21 ►
Right, right.
00:38:23 ►
It’s hard to say how long.
00:38:27 ►
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No no this is very very interesting i actually have a dear friend who uh contracted lyme in june of this past summer and was diagnosed
00:38:34 ►
because she was hospitalized she was very sick and when she returned from new jersey i saw her
00:38:40 ►
and she was a shadow of herself and i said to her because this is a shamanic woman, I said, this is your initiation, dear,
00:38:47 ►
and you’re going to cure this.
00:38:49 ►
And she’d been talking about ayahuasca,
00:38:51 ►
and she actually flew out to Ecuador.
00:38:54 ►
She found on her own, thank goodness,
00:38:56 ►
a good ayahuasquero who worked one-on-one with her.
00:39:01 ►
She was there for 17 days.
00:39:02 ►
She did 11 ayahuasca ceremonies,
00:39:04 ►
and it was in the
00:39:05 ►
first ceremony that she said she felt the shaman, the ayahuasca was working on the Lyme, and he
00:39:10 ►
pulled it out of her, and she returned, and she is healthy as a horse. She’s back to work. It was
00:39:18 ►
astonishing to see the before and after. So I know the power of these medicines is extraordinary,
00:39:27 ►
and you have to be very present, 100% present to the process.
00:39:32 ►
There’s no question.
00:39:34 ►
What’s NuNu?
00:39:37 ►
NuNu is actually a snuff.
00:39:40 ►
You can make just a snuff out of mapacho, which is tobacco,
00:39:44 ►
Amazonian tobacco, tobacco nicotine rustica
00:39:46 ►
okay it’s powder tobacco um and then you can add all these different plants to it like
00:39:53 ►
explain everything um it is also one of the reasons you will use it is, let’s say on a physical level, is to clean your sinuses.
00:40:06 ►
Okay.
00:40:07 ►
But on an energy level, it removes all these energies that tend to be in our head, which
00:40:14 ►
are not ours.
00:40:15 ►
It balances how your brain works.
00:40:18 ►
And also it gives you energy.
00:40:30 ►
energy so if you would have a person who has for example problems with sinuses you would add with a tree to your with a tree bark to your nono because it works it kills all these bacteria and
00:40:37 ►
viruses and stuff that tends to be in the sinuses and provoke infections you can also use querarina
00:40:43 ►
that’s another very powerful plant
00:40:45 ►
that you can use with infectious diseases,
00:40:48 ►
snake bites,
00:40:50 ►
and many other plants.
00:40:51 ►
Also, you can make nunu a visionary.
00:40:55 ►
And traditionally,
00:40:57 ►
it was used before going to the hunt.
00:40:59 ►
Again, they would put visionary plants in it,
00:41:02 ►
like rayapanga,
00:41:03 ►
for people to see, for hunters to see where animals are hiding.
00:41:10 ►
So you would take nunu, look after animals, you would see the vision, okay, there are some animals crossing the river,
00:41:18 ►
and then the hunters would take sapo and go hunt the animals where you have seen them.
00:41:24 ►
take sapo and go hunt animals where you have seen them.
00:41:33 ►
That’s really, it’s just so interesting that these visionary plants not only will heal you on very profound levels, but they have very practical applications, don’t they, in
00:41:37 ►
terms of assisting you to hunt and get food for the tribe?
00:41:42 ►
Yes, yes.
00:41:44 ►
Brilliant, brilliant.
00:41:45 ►
Huh.
00:41:47 ►
Now, would you say,
00:41:50 ►
do you feel like you are part of a community
00:41:53 ►
of healer, curandero, curandera healers in the jungle?
00:41:59 ►
Ooh, tough question again.
00:42:01 ►
Okay.
00:42:03 ►
Because I have two little problems.
00:42:06 ►
First, I’m white.
00:42:07 ►
Second, I’m woman.
00:42:10 ►
They tend not to like that.
00:42:12 ►
So every time we go there, we collect more, let’s call them curanderos.
00:42:21 ►
They are brujos, actually, who don’t like them and who attack us.
00:42:21 ►
them curanderos, they are brujos actually who don’t like them and who attack
00:42:23 ►
us. But of course
00:42:26 ►
people who come to you, even the
00:42:27 ►
people, I have people from our
00:42:30 ►
village who are coming to me, so Peruvians,
00:42:32 ►
they have recognized
00:42:33 ►
okay, this person is actual
00:42:36 ►
curandera, she can help us.
00:42:37 ►
So more and more of them is coming to me.
00:42:42 ►
With
00:42:42 ►
this kind of people and of course
00:42:44 ►
the other guests
00:42:45 ►
which come from the other countries
00:42:47 ►
yes, the connection
00:42:49 ►
this relationship is
00:42:51 ►
ok, but then
00:42:53 ►
with brujos, no
00:42:54 ►
so, alright, so
00:42:57 ►
can you go into
00:42:59 ►
more detail in terms of this issue
00:43:01 ►
is it the brujo
00:43:03 ►
you pronounce that?
00:43:07 ►
brujos, alright, I mean do they make themselves known to you or is this done sort of on the etheric well most of
00:43:13 ►
them because of course they they will not face you face to face they will attack you during the
00:43:21 ►
ceremony or when you are not paying attention because basically they are Indian cowards.
00:43:29 ►
And I have yet to see a Brujo who will actually present himself in front of me and attack me.
00:43:37 ►
They always try to hide and to, you know, do it from your back,
00:43:42 ►
especially during the ceremony.
00:43:44 ►
So we have to be very vigilant to protect
00:43:47 ►
our space why they do it there is a couple of things why will they do it first someone paid
00:43:54 ►
them and it’s a not a long time ago you could find it in a local newspapers that they are saying oh
00:44:00 ►
if you have problems with your neighbors then contact contact me. I will do everything for such and such amount of money.
00:44:07 ►
So first, it’s their job to do this thing.
00:44:12 ►
Second, they might do it because of jealousy.
00:44:14 ►
Because, oh, my God, a person who was coming to me thinking that I’m his teacher is now coming to you.
00:44:23 ►
And I’m jealous.
00:44:24 ►
I don’t like that because that person was
00:44:26 ►
my person give give give me back my gringo and the last reason why would they attack you is when a
00:44:36 ►
person who was actually attacked by a brujo came to you to get healed know. If you heal that person, they know.
00:44:48 ►
They know at that moment who did it.
00:44:49 ►
Sure.
00:44:51 ►
That’s so interesting.
00:44:53 ►
Very, very interesting.
00:44:54 ►
When I was
00:44:55 ►
taught by a shaman on
00:44:58 ►
how to essentially unravel
00:45:00 ►
curses, and I remember her saying
00:45:02 ►
when you do this,
00:45:04 ►
you have to go incognito. You have
00:45:07 ►
to go disguised because the person on the other side of the curse who cast the curse, otherwise,
00:45:14 ►
we’ll see you. We’ll see what you are doing. And so you’re just confirming that. That’s really
00:45:20 ►
interesting, Vorka. Yeah. And also, this makes me think
00:45:26 ►
I sat in ceremony.
00:45:27 ►
It wasn’t a visionary medicine ceremony,
00:45:29 ►
but it was a ceremony
00:45:31 ►
where I sat with a fourth-generation
00:45:34 ►
Navajo medicine woman.
00:45:37 ►
And she was teaching us that night.
00:45:39 ►
But the fire that she had set
00:45:41 ►
in this huge teepee we were in
00:45:42 ►
was doing all sorts of crazy things.
00:45:45 ►
And she said at one point,
00:45:47 ►
this is those folks who they have been after me for however long
00:45:53 ►
and they are trying to undermine my work.
00:45:57 ►
In other words, what you speak of is very common
00:46:00 ►
throughout, I think, a lot of indigenous cultures
00:46:04 ►
where this kind of work is done.
00:46:07 ►
Yes, yes.
00:46:09 ►
Not so long time ago, I am from Croatia,
00:46:11 ►
so it was also a common thing here,
00:46:15 ►
but not in the last, let’s say, maybe 20, 40 years.
00:46:19 ►
These people hide, but they still mess up with other people.
00:46:23 ►
So, yes, it’s very common everywhere.
00:46:26 ►
In some countries, that practice has been forgotten or has gone underground. In some
00:46:35 ►
other countries like, you know, Peru or even Mongolia, these practices are known to every
00:46:42 ►
people, to all the people.
00:46:44 ►
Okay. They’re still alive. These practices are known to every people, to all the people.
00:46:46 ►
Okay, still alive.
00:46:51 ►
So could you talk about the kind of protection that you use when you are doing this work,
00:46:53 ►
which I’m sure you’ve gotten quite good at?
00:46:56 ►
Well, of course I use all the relationships I have with my spirit allies.
00:47:03 ►
There are certain things that you can make in the jungle
00:47:07 ►
some of them and they are well
00:47:09 ►
known so I can speak about them
00:47:11 ►
you can use kramalonga, that’s a thing that you
00:47:13 ►
made out of plants and after the
00:47:15 ►
certain seeds
00:47:17 ►
and camphor and liquor
00:47:19 ►
then you can use different perfumes
00:47:22 ►
from different plants
00:47:23 ►
so these are the things that are known.
00:47:25 ►
I will use them, and I will use some other things, which I’m not so keen to say out publicly.
00:47:32 ►
Of course, of course.
00:47:33 ►
Of course, because then when your enemy finds out, oh, he will try and look for the thing to counterfeit.
00:47:42 ►
Right, right, right, right.
00:47:44 ►
Of course, I understand.
00:47:46 ►
Yeah, and you know, this is a subject that I know a number of people are very uncomfortable with.
00:47:52 ►
And yet, it is part of the territory when one is doing this kind of work.
00:48:00 ►
Wouldn’t you agree?
00:48:01 ►
I mean, this stuff is ancient.
00:48:03 ►
And just because modern folks either dismiss it,
00:48:06 ►
or would rather be in a kind of a state of preference, you know, I hear people often saying,
00:48:11 ►
oh, I’m of the light. And I say, well, that’s all very well and good. But we can’t be without the
00:48:18 ►
dark either. And we need to know how to navigate that. It is essential. And then you, you know, set up a kind of relationship and
00:48:28 ►
it’s all about boundaries as well. And I also hear these people waxing poetic about oneness and
00:48:35 ►
we’re all one and we’re all connected. And I just, I look at everything as metaphor and I look at the
00:48:42 ►
human body and I think, well, okay, the human body is one organism composed of cells, but what does every cell have around it? A cell wall. And certain
00:48:52 ►
things can permeate that cellular wall and others cannot. So there is that sort of wisdom and intelligence that, yes, we are existing as part of a whole. And there’s all
00:49:08 ►
manner from every end of the spectrum, right, of intelligences. And some are benevolent and
00:49:17 ►
just some aren’t. That’s the wisdom of the coin, the two sides of the coin.
00:49:23 ►
All right. Well, okay. You know, know i want to ask you you also have a
00:49:27 ►
center i think that you have opened in croatia and we were talking about this earlier and it is the
00:49:33 ►
area of war torn war torn croatia could you speak to that yes yes so um when i was looking for my place, let’s call it that way, my special place, I went all over Croatia and I was really attracted to this place, which is in the south part of Croatia, which was exposed to all the wars throughout history so it’s a very disbalanced place
00:50:06 ►
on one side and the odd on the other side it is a split place like it has a
00:50:12 ►
rupture in the dimensional space it is not so physical so all these other
00:50:18 ►
things are coming in because all the spirits are attracted when there is a
00:50:22 ►
whole lot of things happening somewhere chaotic good or bad the spirits are attracted when there is a whole lot of things happening somewhere chaotic good or bad the spirits are attracted to this space so that’s the same how i was attracted to
00:50:30 ►
that space when i arrived there it felt so dead all the nature spirits were like slumbering and
00:50:37 ►
the feeling and this this voice in my head was telling me we don’t want you here go away leave us alone but i didn’t really want
00:50:46 ►
to go away so i bought that uh that place i made my house there and i said i’m staying whether you
00:50:54 ►
like it or not and it took me a couple of years um to get to terms with the spirits there of course
00:51:02 ►
with the nature spirits and all all these spirits which have been hanging there from all these previous wars and all these energies.
00:51:13 ►
It took two or three years, a lot of ceremonies, a lot of things have been done.
00:51:34 ►
And also to awaken the spirits that live there, because we tend, especially in the Western world, we tend to perceive everything around us as things, which we can use or not.
00:51:36 ►
Even the plants or animals.
00:51:43 ►
If you perceive a plant as a thing, then it will really become a thing.
00:51:45 ►
It will lose its spirit. It will lose its awareness thing it will lose its spirit it will lose its awareness
00:51:46 ►
it will lose its power
00:51:47 ►
so yes again in the West
00:51:50 ►
here in Europe we can still use plants
00:51:52 ►
in the healing
00:51:53 ►
but because of our perception
00:51:56 ►
this is a thing
00:51:57 ►
it will not work the same way
00:52:00 ►
like in the case
00:52:04 ►
when you really and actually respect the spirit and that that higher
00:52:07 ►
thing which is in the plant the plant is just the form uh so it took some time for plants there to
00:52:14 ►
get their spirits back to to awaken the spirits back and now it feels more more like in the jungle
00:52:20 ►
because when you go in the jungle you feel like oh everything is listening to you
00:52:25 ►
everything is watching you every leaf every plant every animal because uh these didn’t thank god we
00:52:34 ►
still didn’t influence the jungle in the way we influenced the western part of the world um
00:52:42 ►
so it took me a couple of years and now it’s the things are completely different even the
00:52:47 ►
plants are appearing which are not supposed to be in that area of Croatia they appear
00:52:52 ►
in the spring and I’m like wow what are you doing here
00:52:57 ►
hmm and so do you conduct uh the kind of healing rituals in that area as well?
00:53:06 ►
Yes.
00:53:07 ►
Right, you do.
00:53:08 ►
Okay.
00:53:08 ►
All right.
00:53:09 ►
This is interesting.
00:53:11 ►
I’m just catching the comment.
00:53:13 ►
You said that the plant is simply the form, and it makes me think of form and substance.
00:53:19 ►
And so form is essentially the shadow cast by the substance.
00:53:24 ►
And you can think of the substance as whatever, call it God, creator, source, whatever, right?
00:53:29 ►
Or the intelligence behind it.
00:53:32 ►
And so I think also it’s just like anyone, if you treat people a certain way, and if
00:53:37 ►
you treat them like they’re kind of whatever, nothing, that’s what you’re going to get in
00:53:44 ►
return.
00:53:45 ►
And so whereas if you treat someone like, you know, they’re very special
00:53:49 ►
and they have, you know, much to offer, then you’re going to receive more from them.
00:53:53 ►
And I see plants as no different.
00:53:56 ►
I have a question for you.
00:53:57 ►
Do you work with a plant called datura ever?
00:54:00 ►
Are you familiar with that?
00:54:01 ►
Yes, yes.
00:54:04 ►
We have one type of the Torah here.
00:54:09 ►
And you really, really need to be cautious.
00:54:13 ►
The best thing is to grow it from the seed so you get to know each other.
00:54:20 ►
It’s like I remember when I planted one in my yard
00:54:23 ►
and someone from the village came to Durga Sanctuary,
00:54:27 ►
and I didn’t allow him to come in my yard.
00:54:30 ►
He just came in.
00:54:31 ►
And he was looking at me like, oh, I feel something.
00:54:36 ►
Do you have a dog here, a very vicious dog?
00:54:38 ►
And I was like, no.
00:54:40 ►
He actually felt my datura.
00:54:42 ►
She didn’t like him coming in without getting permission.
00:54:48 ►
Yeah, yeah, very interesting.
00:54:49 ►
I just thought, you know, with all your experience with these sort of darker entities,
00:54:54 ►
often a medicine person of your ilk who works with that will have datura as their ally,
00:55:01 ►
and not necessarily that you are taking it, but that it is growing in a garden.
00:55:05 ►
I met another woman, a black woman who is a witch. She is amazing. And she is working with
00:55:13 ►
a detour. And also it is like an ally and a guardian for her. And yeah, and that is not
00:55:20 ►
something you, I mean, that’s something you want to be very careful with because,
00:55:23 ►
Yeah, and that is not something you, I mean, that’s something you want to be very careful with. Because, correct me if I’m wrong, do the Amazonian shamans work with datura at all, some of them?
00:55:31 ►
They use something which is called toye.
00:55:35 ►
Right.
00:55:36 ►
But it’s not, I think it’s not from the same family.
00:55:39 ►
It’s very similar, the flowers.
00:55:40 ►
The leaves are different, and there different different types of toy the white one
00:55:45 ►
red one black one and of course in the in the amazon the white one is that you will use it for
00:55:52 ►
let’s say good stuff the red one for brujeria but also just like here you will plant your toy
00:55:59 ►
plants to protect you you will plant other trees which brujos use to protect you from brujeria. You will plant other trees which brujos use to protect
00:56:06 ►
you from brujeria. Or you will
00:56:08 ►
do your diets with these things
00:56:09 ►
to know what they are capable of
00:56:11 ►
doing so you can
00:56:13 ►
handle it.
00:56:15 ►
I wanted to say one more thing
00:56:17 ►
about plants and this
00:56:19 ►
essence we were talking about.
00:56:24 ►
We use icarus in healing. Some people call it sacred songs these are not
00:56:29 ►
songs these are actually frequencies you receive them as a song whether from the medicine or from
00:56:39 ►
the plant you are dieting in but this is that is actually an essence and then you sing that ikaro to a person
00:56:47 ►
only and if only that ikaro is not helping the person to heal then you will use the plant that
00:56:54 ►
gave you the ikaro ah fascinating yeah so even if you don’t have a plant
00:57:05 ►
here in Croatia
00:57:06 ►
for example like Toe
00:57:08 ►
or Lupuna Blanca
00:57:10 ►
I can sing its Icaro to the person
00:57:12 ►
and
00:57:13 ►
get the same result
00:57:16 ►
like I
00:57:18 ►
yeah
00:57:19 ►
wow well there’s
00:57:22 ►
the power of sound the power of sound, the power of intention, and the power of relationship with the plant world as if it is in and of itself
00:57:47 ►
a tribe of different intelligences, right?
00:57:53 ►
That, you know, we have to cultivate relationship with.
00:57:58 ►
And just like any other person or group of people,
00:58:02 ►
then, you know, based on those relationships.
00:58:06 ►
A trust is formed and then work can be done.
00:58:12 ►
Things can be accomplished.
00:58:14 ►
I mean, you’re really illustrating this beautifully.
00:58:18 ►
And then we get magic.
00:58:22 ►
Yeah.
00:58:23 ►
Yes, yes.
00:58:25 ►
Well, let’s talk about magic.
00:58:27 ►
How would you define magic?
00:58:30 ►
Oh, magic is whatever we don’t believe in now.
00:58:34 ►
Uh-huh.
00:58:35 ►
I remember my mother telling me when I was a child,
00:58:39 ►
and I was saying, what is this world all about?
00:58:42 ►
I don’t like this.
00:58:43 ►
Look at these people doing that.
00:58:45 ►
People only running after this.
00:58:47 ►
And she said to me,
00:58:48 ►
oh, you better get used to it
00:58:50 ►
because this is the real world.
00:58:52 ►
And I’m like,
00:58:52 ►
if this is the real world,
00:58:55 ►
I don’t want to live in it.
00:58:57 ►
We forgot what the real world is.
00:59:01 ►
I’m going to be so bold to say
00:59:03 ►
that we
00:59:05 ►
very very long time ago
00:59:07 ►
didn’t need ayahuasca
00:59:09 ►
or other different
00:59:11 ►
visionary plants to see
00:59:13 ►
other dimensions and to talk
00:59:15 ►
to the spirits and communicate
00:59:17 ►
with all these other dimensions
00:59:19 ►
and entities because we could see
00:59:21 ►
today we walk this earth
00:59:23 ►
completely ungrounded
00:59:25 ►
and our
00:59:26 ►
this thing
00:59:29 ►
which is supposed to be in our head
00:59:31 ►
like our antenna is cut off
00:59:33 ►
we are not
00:59:36 ►
not only that we are cut off
00:59:37 ►
and we are split
00:59:38 ►
we split ourselves from the nature
00:59:41 ►
and what the world really is
00:59:43 ►
we are cut off all these spiritual things and all
00:59:46 ►
these other dimensions which people will say now ah that’s just a fairy tale we knew more we saw
00:59:53 ►
more before and uh it was different before well we will i was gonna say we become hyper-rational. Yes.
01:00:08 ►
And just so caught up in the rational.
01:00:10 ►
Now, of course, you know,
01:00:13 ►
it is essential to be able to think critically.
01:00:16 ►
And I think of the teachings of the ancients where they had the trivium,
01:00:18 ►
which was, you know,
01:00:19 ►
based on knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.
01:00:23 ►
It is, what is it?
01:00:24 ►
It’s grammar, wisdom, and understanding. It is, what is it? It’s grammar, logic, and reason, grammar, logic, and understanding, in any case.
01:00:31 ►
And then you had the quadrivium, which was number-based,
01:00:35 ►
and so that was arithmetic and geometry and astronomy and music.
01:00:39 ►
And so you had all of that, and that was your foundation. And then, of course, there was this rich, rich engagement with mythology
01:00:50 ►
and with the world of the unseen.
01:00:54 ►
And I see this just beautiful harmonic there,
01:00:58 ►
and we have lost that entirely, right?
01:01:02 ►
I mean, it’s just become so hyper-rational.
01:01:04 ►
Exactly what you were saying
01:01:05 ►
earlier about we look at plants as things, we look at animals as things. And we don’t,
01:01:13 ►
we, this culture stays very much on the surface. And anyone who does this work understands that
01:01:20 ►
just as we were talking about form and substance, yes, you have the form, but you must always go beneath that.
01:01:26 ►
And then even the story,
01:01:28 ►
there’s always the surface story.
01:01:30 ►
There’s the surface story of our lives.
01:01:33 ►
There’s the surface story of sort of what we’re given
01:01:35 ►
by this nonsensical media machine.
01:01:40 ►
And then there are the deeper, deeper layers at work.
01:01:43 ►
But most people don’t even delve into those deeper layers.
01:01:47 ►
They just take the surface story for what it is,
01:01:49 ►
or they take the image of the form just for what it is,
01:01:54 ►
and they don’t go any deeper.
01:01:56 ►
And yet the ancients went far deeper.
01:02:00 ►
They could see that very, very clearly.
01:02:03 ►
I think also our minds are shut down from a very young age.
01:02:07 ►
Public school does a really good job of that.
01:02:09 ►
I was speaking with a woman who homeschools her children.
01:02:12 ►
This was a couple years ago.
01:02:13 ►
She was telling me about something she had read that said by the time the child is eight,
01:02:19 ►
a public school kid, their imagination has been shut down by about 70%.
01:02:24 ►
So it shuts down the imagination
01:02:28 ►
and the imagination is the wand.
01:02:31 ►
And the mind is the wand.
01:02:34 ►
Each one of us is born as a prince or princess.
01:02:38 ►
But we turn into frogs.
01:02:45 ►
So yes, today, the lifestyle we are living,
01:02:49 ►
the things that we are told the life is,
01:02:52 ►
is very superficial,
01:02:53 ►
and it leads a whole lot of people to feeling
01:02:56 ►
unfulfilled, unhappy,
01:02:59 ►
going into these different behaviors.
01:03:03 ►
Some of them are not that good,
01:03:05 ►
addictional behaviors or even aggressive behaviors.
01:03:10 ►
And everything comes from this split,
01:03:14 ►
this rapture made between the human being and the world.
01:03:21 ►
Right.
01:03:22 ►
Right.
01:03:20 ►
the world.
01:03:22 ►
Right.
01:03:23 ►
Nature.
01:03:25 ►
Right.
01:03:30 ►
And, you know, in your metaphor of the frog,
01:03:31 ►
that we’ve been turned into a frog,
01:03:34 ►
and I just think of the traditional fairy tales where the frog is transformed into a prince.
01:03:38 ►
How?
01:03:39 ►
Through a kiss.
01:03:41 ►
And really what the kiss is,
01:03:44 ►
is the kiss is the transmission and so
01:03:48 ►
something is passed
01:03:51 ►
through the kiss and so I
01:03:56 ►
see that transmission or that kiss occurring through
01:03:59 ►
nature is doing that through her plants and her fungi
01:04:03 ►
for those of us who are, you know, drawn to both the visionary plants and fungi,
01:04:09 ►
and also for those out there who are inspired to just get back to the land,
01:04:14 ►
you know, they want to grow their own food.
01:04:16 ►
They want to, you know, really call that back.
01:04:21 ►
And so there is a transmission that occurs,
01:04:24 ►
and it comes from that engagement with nature
01:04:27 ►
because yeah the separation it’s like essentially it’s taken it’s almost akin to like i mean we were
01:04:35 ►
wild once and we’ve been essentially domesticated and in that domestication we’ve lost touch with
01:04:41 ►
our instincts and we’ve lost uh we are continuing to lose touch with our own senses
01:04:46 ►
right, with all this technology
01:04:48 ►
we’re losing even more
01:04:50 ►
of those natural senses
01:04:51 ►
which is our connection
01:04:54 ►
to nature
01:04:54 ►
yes, my question was always
01:04:58 ►
if something happened
01:04:59 ►
tomorrow
01:05:01 ►
and everything was lost
01:05:03 ►
like, you know, electricity water supply food supply
01:05:07 ►
who would be able to survive
01:05:10 ►
when you think about it you don’t know how to track the water down you don’t know how to find
01:05:17 ►
your food you don’t know oh wow i’m now in nature i’m scared of nature What can I eat in this nature? What is toxic?
01:05:25 ►
What is not?
01:05:26 ►
How can I wash myself?
01:05:27 ►
Which plants are good to make soap out of them?
01:05:31 ►
As a civilization, I wouldn’t call us a civilization.
01:05:35 ►
We would be lost that day.
01:05:37 ►
Yeah.
01:05:38 ►
Yeah.
01:05:39 ►
No question.
01:05:39 ►
No question.
01:05:40 ►
I know our ancestors, our recent ancestors, have really been seduced, particularly in the last over the course of the 20th century, really seduced into giving up their autonomy and letting go of cultural traditions that kept them very close to the to nature, very close to the land.
01:06:09 ►
And I see women who are doing what you’re doing and men who are doing what you’re doing
01:06:10 ►
as really calling people back to nature,
01:06:16 ►
both the nature that we are in and our own human nature.
01:06:21 ►
Yes.
01:06:22 ►
Yeah, well, that is very profound work you are doing,
01:06:28 ►
Burka. Could you
01:06:29 ►
give the website for the
01:06:31 ►
Yana Puma Healing Center
01:06:33 ►
for the listeners?
01:06:35 ►
So, the website is
01:06:37 ►
yanapuma,
01:06:39 ►
yanavidwai, yanapumaperu.vix.com
01:06:44 ►
Okay. I will make sure that that is
01:06:47 ►
on the psychedelic salon
01:06:50 ►
so that people can find you
01:06:52 ►
and obviously they can contact you
01:06:53 ►
through the website.
01:06:56 ►
Is there anything else, Borca,
01:06:58 ►
any more wisdom you would like to convey
01:07:01 ►
before we finish up here?
01:07:04 ►
Oh yes, one more thing please yeah
01:07:07 ►
i’m always telling on every every sharing after every ceremony i’m saying please please
01:07:14 ►
you are keeping your teeth clean you are keeping your bodies clean your hair you’re washing your
01:07:20 ►
hair your clothes needs to be nice and tight please pay attention to your thoughts
01:07:25 ►
please pay attention to your energy we tend to live in our heads we uh forget about about our
01:07:34 ►
energies and bodies our first layer of protection is our energy field we need to be aware of it. We need to keep it clean. And I would say that
01:07:46 ►
in terms
01:07:48 ►
of the energy field,
01:07:50 ►
that
01:07:51 ►
the way we are thinking
01:07:53 ►
affects our field.
01:07:56 ►
Yes. Because
01:07:57 ►
you can walk into a
01:08:00 ►
room, a crowded
01:08:01 ►
room, and there would be a person
01:08:04 ►
there who is very toxic. And you’ve never met
01:08:08 ►
them before. And they haven’t even opened their mouth and you feel like energetically repelled
01:08:14 ►
by that person. And then there will be someone else in that room who just has this incredible
01:08:19 ►
energy and you’re just drawn to them naturally. And that is a direct result of how they are mentally,
01:08:28 ►
emotionally, spiritually,
01:08:29 ►
and it affects the field around them.
01:08:32 ►
Yes, and it affects our whole life
01:08:34 ►
because with what we think,
01:08:37 ►
which becomes our energy,
01:08:39 ►
we attract things in our life.
01:08:42 ►
So we need to be vigilant.
01:08:46 ►
We need to pay attention.
01:08:48 ►
What do we think? Why do we think that?
01:08:50 ►
Why do we feel like we feel?
01:08:52 ►
Is this something ours that we need to work on it?
01:08:53 ►
Or did we pick up something from
01:08:56 ►
somebody that we need to work on it?
01:08:59 ►
Right.
01:08:59 ►
Right. And the plants
01:09:01 ►
can certainly assist us
01:09:03 ►
to figure all of that out
01:09:06 ►
and make us very aware of our toxic thinking.
01:09:11 ►
Yes.
01:09:12 ►
So basically the recipe is be now in this moment
01:09:16 ►
because other moments don’t exist.
01:09:19 ►
Be now and be aware what is happening with you
01:09:24 ►
and what is happening with everything
01:09:26 ►
which is around you
01:09:28 ►
well on that note
01:09:30 ►
Burka thank you
01:09:32 ►
so much for sharing your
01:09:34 ►
incredible wisdom
01:09:35 ►
I really really
01:09:38 ►
enjoyed talking with you
01:09:40 ►
and I look forward to meeting
01:09:42 ►
you at some point I’ll have to get myself out
01:09:44 ►
to your center at some point. I’ll have to get myself out to your center at some point.
01:09:46 ►
That’s definitely going to be in my future.
01:09:49 ►
So, all right.
01:09:50 ►
So your website again is yanapumaperu.wix.com.
01:09:55 ►
I encourage everyone to take a look at that website
01:09:58 ►
and to connect with you
01:10:00 ►
for those who are thinking very seriously
01:10:02 ►
of going to Peru for very real healing, working
01:10:06 ►
with these medicines. And you present us an opportunity to work with a woman, a woman,
01:10:13 ►
ayahuasquera. And, you know, I want to say, sweetie, that four years ago when I was called
01:10:21 ►
to work with ayahuasca, I was hearing these stories of these ayahuasqueros
01:10:25 ►
who were helping themselves to women sexually on the medicine.
01:10:29 ►
There were all these stories.
01:10:31 ►
And I remember saying, where are the women ayahuasqueros?
01:10:35 ►
Where are the women?
01:10:36 ►
And I did find within a month, this is how my life works,
01:10:40 ►
two beautiful women ayahuasqueros,
01:10:42 ►
and I was able to actually sit in an all-women ceremony,
01:10:45 ►
which was beautiful with these two ladies.
01:10:48 ►
But you’re the first woman I have had the pleasure of speaking with who practices this in Peru.
01:11:00 ►
So I’m just so thrilled. And so I’ll just want to spell the website again, Y-A-N-A-P-U-M-A
01:11:09 ►
Peru.wix.com. And Borca, just thank you so very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
01:11:19 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
01:11:31 ►
So if you find yourself out at the end of the line, thousands of miles away from the Amazon jungle, don’t give up hope. As we’ve just heard, once the vine reaches out to you, it’s almost
01:11:37 ►
impossible to resist. You know, back in the 1990s when I first began using ayahuasca myself,
01:11:44 ►
You know, back in the 1990s, when I first began using ayahuasca myself,
01:11:48 ►
the ayahuasquero who I was working with told me that,
01:11:53 ►
well, he said Lady Ayahuasca was moving out of the jungle and into cities all over the world.
01:11:57 ►
At the time, I didn’t pay much attention to what he was saying.
01:12:01 ►
After all, it took me over a decade of searching just to find him.
01:12:05 ►
But now, after listening to Borka’s story,
01:12:07 ►
I see exactly what he meant.
01:12:09 ►
So, if you’re like I was back then and seriously searching for a way
01:12:11 ►
to participate in an ayahuasca experience,
01:12:14 ►
don’t panic and don’t force the issue.
01:12:18 ►
She’ll find you when she thinks that you’re ready.
01:12:20 ►
I’m really sure of that.
01:12:22 ►
And speaking of finding you
01:12:24 ►
and of finding a few of the others,
01:12:26 ►
I want to announce that our month of free lifetime charter membership in our forums has come to a
01:12:32 ►
close. But never fear, should you want to give them a try without paying our nominal $12 a year
01:12:39 ►
membership fee, just sign up as a student member, which is free for the first year. After that, you can decide if it’s worth a dollar a month to participate.
01:12:48 ►
And even if you’re just a lurker, you should know that all of the membership fees go directly to supporting these podcasts.
01:12:55 ►
And hopefully we’ll get enough people using the forums that I won’t have to do another annual fun drive.
01:13:01 ►
And we all know how all of us dislike hearing its pledge drive time again.
01:13:07 ►
Now for our fellow salonners who apparently haven’t heard me talking about us being dropped
01:13:12 ►
from iTunes and they keep sending me email telling me that suddenly they can no longer
01:13:17 ►
find us in iTunes, I can at least tell you why I think our feed was dropped. It simply got too big.
01:13:22 ►
I can at least tell you why I think our feed was dropped.
01:13:24 ►
It simply got too big.
01:13:29 ►
I didn’t know this until I was submitting our new RSS feed to Google Music,
01:13:32 ►
which soon will begin handling podcasts,
01:13:36 ►
and that’s where I learned that there’s a limit to the file size of an RSS feed that iTunes and some of the other aggregators will accept.
01:13:40 ►
Until last week, our feed listed all 474 podcasts from this salon, and as such, I guess it
01:13:48 ►
must have maxed out the size limitation. So I’ve cut both the old feed and the new feed to the 50
01:13:54 ►
most recent podcasts in the hopes that eventually iTunes will pick us up once again. However, if
01:14:01 ►
you’ve been using the feed to go back to some of our earlier programs, well, that isn’t going to work for you that way anymore.
01:14:08 ►
So what I’ve done to help a bit, though, is that if you go to our main site, which is psychedelicsalon.com, and click on the podcast link, you’ll be taken to a single page that lists all of the salon’s podcasts on it.
01:14:21 ►
And clicking on any of those links takes you to the program notes page
01:14:25 ►
for that program and at the top of every one of those pages you’ll find a play button that allows
01:14:31 ►
you to stream these podcasts without first downloading them so if you’re accessing the
01:14:36 ►
salon through your phone while it isn’t quite as easy as using the long rss feed as in the past
01:14:42 ►
you can still stream all of these programs quite easily
01:14:45 ►
because at the bottom of each program notes page,
01:14:49 ►
there’s a button that’ll take you to the podcasts
01:14:51 ►
that come before or after the one you just listened to.
01:14:54 ►
And I guess maybe that’s really too much detail here
01:14:57 ►
because I’m sure you’re going to figure it out.
01:15:00 ►
So I hope that you keep listening to our older programs
01:15:03 ►
because there’s some really good information there
01:15:06 ►
as you’ll see if you click the category drop down on the podcast page
01:15:11 ►
you’ll find that there are over 200 Terrence McKenna talks
01:15:14 ►
over 50 Timothy Leary talks
01:15:17 ►
and over 60 talks each featuring ayahuasca, DMT and psilocybin
01:15:21 ►
and over 70 talks that concern psychedelic research.
01:15:26 ►
In all, you have hundreds of hours of psychedelic-related programs to keep you busy until next week
01:15:32 ►
when I return with either a Plinke Norte lecture or yet another Terrence McKenna talk.
01:15:39 ►
Until then, I’ll be connecting with you on our forums where there are several personalities
01:15:44 ►
that are already beginning to come to the forefront.
01:15:47 ►
And I see that quite a few new friendships are also taking place.
01:15:51 ►
Also, the first group that was started by one of our members
01:15:54 ►
has now grown to a size where they’re talking about getting together in person.
01:15:59 ►
You see, the main point of these forums is to provide a place for you to find the others.
01:16:04 ►
And that seems
01:16:05 ►
to already be working quite well. So for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
01:16:13 ►
Be careful out there, my friends.