so, back to that friday afternoon...
i made my way up the steep muddy barelythere trail up the hill to the caves, where i just sat for a bit, on a wooden stump. i could tell by some remaining remnants of a fire that this was a place used for some kind of ceremony at one time or another. the spray from the fall made a shimmering silky screen from which behind i looked out onto the valley. my mind raced with ideas and pictures of what i´d imagined i´d be experiencing that night. i´ll be in a cave? i saw faces and skin made red and orange with fire, a man with a tribal necklace, banging on a huge skin drum, chanting. what will i be given to drink? will i hallucinate? or will i feel a familiar calm connectedness, grounded? i imagined, as it is difficult for me not to, that this would be an event that would give me answers, make me aware of something i´d missed...i walked over to the small wooden bridge beside the waterfall, and stood at the edge, my face inches away from the rocks. i looked at the little world before me, inspecting each growth, formation, leaf, and drop of dew. an insect crawled up a dark vine. nature is absolute perfection, i thought. and i remained standing there, leaning in as though if i could just get my face that little bit closer, i would be extended an invitation to enter within the rock, within the moss. why do i feel seperate? i wondered. i sat down on the bridge and watched the spiders dancing up and down their webs like kung fu tight rope walkers, the butterfly exercising it´s wings as it perches on a rock, then flutters away. the long trees swaying on the hillside. i am different. but why? why don´t i feel a part of this world before me...i closed my eyes and felt my body. surely my body must not feel much different to me than that of a tree does to it? there is this perfect harmonious system here, and i feel like all i can do is stand back and watch, appreciate it.
after about an hour of sitting and observing, i walked back down to town.

around 7, i took a taxi up the hill. i was greeted at the house by a young man who i assumed was the son, who then handed me over to the wife. she was kind, but i sensed some apprehension in her manner. why do i feel like no one what´s me doing this, i thought.
ï would like to participate in the ceremony tonight,¨i said
she asked me how i had heard about this. i told her about the woman in town. ahh, she smiled and understood. she told me that the ceremony wouldn´t be starting until around 830. i could wait there, or come back, so i told her i would go for a walk and then return. the sky was almost completely dark as i slowly walked farther up the hill. it´s a full moon...it shone. and a thick fog was moving over the valley, creeping into town.

i was back at 830. there were several others now, waiting in the room the woman had showed me earlier. we waited for almost another hour, i think, before paulivio entered the room. i observed the shelf to my right stocked with bottles of varying sizes and shapes, filled with varying questionable looking liquids. there was a sort of fire pit in the centre of the room, and before it, the wife had layed out numerous different objects on a woven blanket, including a cactus head, a human skull, a cross, a crystal, various rocks, a shell, a large feather, a small circuler drum, and a rattle on a long stick. the small wooden benches hugging 3 of the walls had completely filled up with people. and still several more were seated on the floor, which was natural of earth, not constructed. i looked around at everyone. mostly they were older people, and indigenous, based on the way they were traditionally dressed. there were a few couples with small children, who were put to sleep wrapped in a woolen poncho on the ground, at their parents feet.
i feel like i cannot, in detail, describe the entire ceremony from beginning to end, and i feel that my voice lacks a certain tenderness and sensitivity to write fully of the beauty i experienced that night, or perhaps it is not my voice that lacks, but words themselves, the way their sharp lines cut up this blank page.
but i´ll give it my best.
besides paulivio, who i suppose is considered ´the´shaman of the village, were his wife and several others who assisted with the healing during the ceremony. i felt drawn to the other main healer instantly. he had kind sparkling eyes, a long black ponytail, and a large handsome nose. he wore a rainbow colored woven band around his head, with a type of star centered on his forehead. he tended the fire for the duration of the ceremony, arranging the fallen embers into an eventual symbol within the fire circle, and throwing sage and another herb, that i could not recognize, (but noticed a reaction of my own spirit to it) onto the fire. he also prepared the servings and handed out the medicine. paulivio smoked tobacco as the ceremony commenced. tobacco is considered sacred in this practice. first we were given the san pedro mixture. 3 gulps of a thick, green, vile tasting mixture. the cactus is ingested to invoke a spiritual healing state, and has been used in traditional andean medicine for over a thousand years. several people vomited, there was a good supply of plastic bags handy for this purpose. next, and twice more throughout the night, we were given a different mixture, one that had an alcoholic content. paulivio spoke quite a bit. i could not understand very much, but his speech was repeatedly spattered with words i did recognize, esperitu (spirit) tierra(earth) madre tierra (mother earth) padre (father) espacio(space)vida(life)mysterio(mystery) i believe much of his speech was prayer, in a sense. blessing. as the couple from chile seated next to the shaman murmered ´aho,´in agreement of his words, the image of my grandmother, in a red turtleneck and gold chain with a cross, murmering, mmhmm, at my grandfather´s side as he prays, came to my mind. while i compared the two images in my mind i also thought of the way i always felt during christmas season at the thiessens, during the evening of the bible reading and the prayer, waiting to open presents. aunts and uncles, little squirming cousins, and my own family all seated in a jagged circle in the dim basement room. i don´t think i understood what i was hearing then, being spoken in english, any better than what i´m understanding now, i thought.
i closed my eyes and tried to sense the medicine in my body, to sense the energy around me.
but i found myself continually diving into my imagination, my story, me me me...i thought all i could sense was a little bit of a dizzyness in my head. i was not experiencing what i had anticipated.

then the drumming and singing started, and that released something in me. sparkly fire tender picked up the drum and knelt next to the fire. he held his hand over the smoke and then rubbed the skin of the drum, slowly, with carefull attention. he did this several times, on each side of the drum. he then moved over to paulivio, still kneeling, head bent over the drum. he hit it with the drumstick bambambambambam like that, no rythym as you hear a drum being beaten by hands, and paulivio shook the rattle in the same manner, and sang. and a joy rushed to my cheeks. heeyyaahhhoyyahowwaahheeyyahh. i closed my eyes and felt the drum beat in my body, the vibrations of his voice, my spirit rising. several women joined in, ahh soo beautiful...i have been yearning for this song my whole life, i felt. this is what i´ve always wanted to hear.
the singing and drumming continued for about an hour i think. the rattle was passed to several different people, and several different voices were heard. sparkly fire tender moved to 4 different points around the fire with the drum.

paulivio spoke more. with his eyes closed, he stretched his arms out, as though to embrace and bless all in the room. and then the individual healing started.
first, after cleansing a large dark stone, he hands it to you and you rub it all over your body as if it were soap. and everyone is required to take their shirts off, or more clothing if desired, which is left up to the individual.
this is important because the shaman spits the liquid all over you. not ´spit´the way you´d huck a gob of saliva on the sidewalk, there´s certainly some kind of technique to it, and it comes out of his mouth in a spray. i wish i had been able to ask questions, because i´m not entirely sure of this, but i assume this is what cleanses the spirit. for those with joint or muscle problems (i believe) he dips his finger in the liquid, brushes it over a flame of a candle, and(because of the alcoholic content) blows the fire from his finger over the body of the person being healed. so that for a moment, a wave of fire runs across the back, or the arms, or the legs. and then depending on what the illness is, he acts as so many things to eradicate pain. chiropractor. reiki master. massage therapist. whatever is needed. afterwards, for each person, he fans the feather in the smoke and fire and then over the body, and finishes by pressing the feather in the centre of the forehead.
he moved his chair beside the fire, only a foot from me, and called on the lady who had travelled from cuenca to be healed, who walked over painfully with stiff legs.
this is when it all stopped. my innerworld vanished, and there was no secret place to retreat to any longer. i was simply there, with everyone. i didn´t even realize the tears streaming down my cheeks as paulivio worked her joints. he kneeded her arm and tugged on her fingers. i read the pain in her face as though it were my own. i could feel it, and then i understood why i was there, and what i was seeing, and what it meant to me. all of these people, old, sick and poor, with pain in their bodies, who probably could not afford visits to a doctor or hospital, have come to this man to be healed, who does so with compassion, with every ounce of strength in his own being. this is community.
this is what it means to be human , i thought. we have the ability to heal one another. this is how i am different from the butterfly and the moss and the spider. we have the gift of awareness. by using this and the energy of nature, we are able to reharmonize ourselves, we are able to heal. there was nothing more beautiful or profound to me in that moment. and that in itself was enough for me. i don´t even care if he does anything on me, i thought, i don´t need it now.
i felt ashamed for the way i had been relating the experience to myself earlier, ashamed at my thoughts, of my anticipation of the ´hallucinogenic plant´, (which, yes, although technically it is, the dosage is not great, and the purpose certainly is not to provide a high)
it felt like everyone in the room was united then.

and soon the room was light, it was morning. and perhaps it was the birthing dawn that lightened up everyone´s spirits as well. the room laughed together, smiled together. by the time he got to me, i did not experience anything particularly powerful. i believe that because i had already experienced the healing taking place in each person preceding me, that his hands felt no different on my own body. he drew out the tension in my forehead, the tightness in my chest. and he did something to my back, i´m not sure how, but when i left the place, i felt it was much more upright than i am used to.
to close the ceremony we were all given water to drink out of a large pink shell. it was around 9 30. i felt wobbly on my feet. i went to the bathroom. as soon as i had myself locked behind the door tears poured from my eyes the way the wind might release the moisture that has collected on a wide flat leaf during a rainstorm.
i lingered around for a while. i didn´t feel like leaving.
the woman from chile, with an appearance similar to my own, said ¨you speak a little spanish? you understood a little?¨
words were hard to form. slowly i managed to say¨i am able to feel.¨
¨it´s all one language¨she said ¨it doesn´t matter where you´re from, or what language you speak, the language is the same¨
when i left there were still a few people in the room, speaking with paulivio. fire still smoking. i felt...healed.
not in the way i had imagined. no, things never are.
but it was the most beautiful thing. i have ever seen.
it connected everything.
this is the path i´m on...i thought. this is what i want to explore.
i thought of the way i had felt when paul told me that i would be healer. it touched me deeply, my heart quivered. and i truly felt whole. is it true? i wondered, me? a healer? i know there is fire in my palms. that i am like smoke, with no definite shape. i can be clear and warm, and my heart is big.
but i think of the way i burst with force and then retreat sullenly, with my head down, to judge my expression, to judge my words. the way i protect myself with the idea of separateness that is so easy for me to believe in. am i self indulgent? i can ignore so easily the feelings and thoughts of others, wishing not to have to look outside of myself for anything.
i know i am loved and yet i feel loveless.
please universe, send me someone to open up my world. someone i can trust. send me a relationship that heals fear.
at times if i concentrate i can feel what it would be like. a connection that gently takes a hold of my heart. i relax, i don´t retreat, and i can travel deep in the universe, open.