Perhaps in a parallel universe there’s a version of me that’s a prolific writer who updates his blog at least every couple of days with good doses of wit and wisdom and has a huge audience hanging on to his every word. I’m kinda envious of that guy!

As it is, I’m sat here struggling, as usual, to make my brain connect with interesting words and sentences that people might enjoy reading, oh and when was the last time I updated this blog? October 2010! Jeeez, I’m living in the wrong parallel universe that’s for sure.

Well whatever, I am where I am, and that happens to still be Iquitos in the middle of the jungle, towards the end of 2011, somewhere in this apparent infinite universe! No doubt in another parallel universe there’s a version of me wishing he was having adventures in hot and interesting places. So I’m not complaining

So, it’s been over a year since I updated this blog! What’s happened since? Quite a lot actually. It’s been a crazy, fun and ultimately enjoyable year, but with several road blocks, challenges and serious frustrations thrown in for good measure. But that’s how you grow and learn right?

Anyway, here are a few highlights that stand out in my mind from 2011. I’ll start with the good stuff!

Starting an Ayahuasca Retreat Company

About a year ago I visited my good friend Alex at his lodge in Huaraz to further discuss our ideas and come up with a concrete plan for setting up an Ayahuasca retreat company. That quickly evolved into Ayahuasca Odyssey and we hosted our first retreat just 6 months later in June 2011. It was a pretty small affair, just 3 people attended which perhaps wasn’t bad considering we only launched the website about 2 months before that retreat which didn’t give us much time to promote it!

I remember being pretty nervous about that first retreat, mainly from having doubts as to whether I could be an effective facilitator or not. An Ayahuasca experience is undoubtedly one of the most powerful, life changing and paradigm shattering experiences that most people will ever have. Almost nothing else comes close and it can also bring up a whole lot of shit (such as deep fears, painful emotions and old wounds) that people then may need help to process and heal. I don’t have any formal training in counselling or psychotherapy and I think those kind of skills might turn out of essential in certain circumstances. However, I’m pleased to report that so far things have gone pretty well and I’ve received some very positive feedback on my facilitating skills, so that’s something I feel much more confident about now.

The following retreats were also pretty small affairs, and then in September Alex met an American guy called Zach who had also just started his own retreat company called La Familiar Medicina. Alex was incredibly impressed Zach and the main shaman he was working with, a relatively young guy (35 I think) called Gumercindo, and for the sake of brevity let’s just say that we’ve now joined forces with Zach and Gumercindo and now we’ve become Ayahuasca Satsangha. Our last retreat was fully booked and the next two retreats are fully booked with 12 people, so this can undoubtedly be labelled a success!

I’ll attempt to follow-up with more thoughts about my experiences with Ayahuasca Odyssey and Ayahuasca Satsangha in a future post, but for now this experience has definitely been the highlight of 2011 and has resulted in lots of conscious growth for me.

Encounters with Brujeria

Not everything related to Ayahuasca shamanism is infused with love and light. There’s a dark side too and sadly many shamans fall into its grip, after perhaps starting out with good intentions in some cases. Here in the Amazon the bad shamans are usually refered to as brujos (pronounced bru-ho’s) and what they engage in is referred to as brujeria which is what we would call black magic or witchcraft. And whether you believe in it or not, its effects are definitely very real.

Usually they do what they do for money. Someone might get really upset or pissed off with someone, and as a form of revenge they pay a brujo to cast a spell on the person they’re unhappy with. Some spells can cause misfortune, or accidents, while others can cause serious illness and even death. You certainly have to be very careful about who you piss off in the jungle, because the wrong person can do a lot more harm than simply shout at you or punch you in the face!

So what happened to me? Well, I’m still getting to the bottom of it all to tell you the truth. What I can say is that about a year ago (Nov 2010), after a ceremomy near Cusco, I stopped getting visions or useful insights from drinking Ayahuasca. I would usually get some kind of experience, but it was always a little weird and almost never interesting or useful. In the first half of 2011 I was regularly taking tourists out to Kapitari to one of my favourite shaman Don Lucho, and as a result I would always take part in the ceremonies, but I was never getting a good experience. Among the Ayahuasca community you regularly hear the mantra “Ayahuasca doesn’t give you what you want, but it always gives you what you need!” There’s certainly a lot of truth to that, but in my case something really weird was going on – month after month after month,  and I never felt for a moment I was getting anything I needed (or wanted) from the ceremonies.

I had 3 theories as to why I was having these problems and brujeria was one of them, but it wasn’t until early August that I got confirmation that brujeria was indeed the source of my troubles, and I’ve had several more confirmations since then. I don’t know how it works exactly, but somehow the brujeria has blocked me from connecting with the spirit of Ayahuasca. And as a sidenote, this to me is further proof that Ayahuasca is almost entirely a spiritual experience. If for some reason you can’t connect with the spirit of the plant, then almost nothing is going to happen, no matter how much you drink!

In future I will write a follow-up post with the full story – or at least when the story is finally over, because I’m still not out of the woods yet. Just last weekend I did a ceremony and drank 3 cups of super-strength ayahuasca and got almost nothing out of it.

I’m supposedly clear of the brujeria now. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been working with an amazing healer who’s staying in Iquitos for awhile. This guy uses a combination of intuition, prayer and experimental kinesiology to do what he does, and he’s been getting some remarkable results around here. All the tests say I’m now clean, but as the last weekend demonstrated, there’s still some work left to be done.

It’s been baffling as well as frustrating, but many lessons have been learned.

Dealing with more rejection (the cycle continues)

In the very early days of this blog, when I was living in Cusco, I wrote some extremely personal stuff about my lack of success in love and relationships – even though I only scratched the surface to be honest. Two and a half years later I can’t say things have got a whole lot better for me, although I’ve certainly gotten much better at dealing with it emotionally so I guess progress is always being made on many levels.

It seems that one of the recurring themes of my life so far has always been rejection (at least in terms of love and relationships). Now, I’m very aware that EVERYBODY has to deal with rejection at least sometimes in their life, it’s good, it’s normal and in some ways it’s very healthy because it’s the difficult and gutwrenching experiences that help us grow and become better and more conscious human beings. But sometimes I can’t help but want to scream at the universe “COME ON NOW, ARE YOU SERIOUS? GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK WILL YOU!?”.

It’s happened to me too many times to even remember and surely I’m now way beyond having my fair share of this type of experience. Well apparently not it seems, because they just keep on coming. Clearly I must be missing some important part of the lesson, which is odd because usually I’m a pretty fast learner!

I began 2011 being rejected by someone I really thought I connected well with, and now I’ve just ended the year being rejected by someone I know I have connected really well with over the last 12 months, so much so that many people actually thought she already was my girlfriend! But as usual I’ve gotten deeply stuck in the ‘friend zone’ and as I’ve come to realise it’s a very hard place to escape from!

Anyway, I don’t want to seem like I’m complaining about life, it is what it is, and thankfully I’m not someone who dwells on the negatives for very long. I may feel sad and perhaps even a little angry for a few days, maybe a week or so, after it happens, but if nothing else, I’ve learned to process my feelings pretty quickly and come out of the other side feeling as happy and optimistic about life as always. I seem to be incapable of feeling depression and any feelings of self-pity I may occasionally indulge in are quickly put aside. So at least I’ve got that ability to be thankful for. But I can easily understand how some people can become very bitter and angry as they get older, and if I didn’t have a strong connection with spirit sustaining me through difficult times, I think in a different parallel universe that could easily be me by now!

This seemingly continuous cycle does leave me feeling bewildered though. It surely has to end eventually (or does it?), but I’ve been saying that for over 10 years now. Finding a girlfriend has never been something I’ve obsessed over. I’ve always been happy and extremely comfortable on my own, and will continue to be, no doubt. But I do feel like I’m done with all the lessons of being single, and that I’m beginning to stagnate in this area of my life. I definitely don’t see having a relationship as being some kind of holy grail, and nor do I believe that a relationship will necessarily make me any happier, but what it undoubtedly will bring is new lessons, new experiences and hopefully a lot of conscious growth, and for those reasons more than anything, it’s something that I desire to happen in my life.

Financial Struggles

Love is not the only thing I’ve often struggled with over the course of my life, the other is money, and it seems that I’ve had more than my fair share of bad luck in this area of my life as well. But it has to be said that 2011 (or at least the first 8 months of 2011) saw me going through one of the roughest financial periods of my life. As you may know I make most of my living as a freelance web designer, and although I’ve never made a lot of money from it, I’ve almost always made enough to support myself and it seems that the universe has always sent me work when I’ve needed it. So I’ve gotten by ok, but can hardly say I’ve experienced much financial abundance.

My financial problems started about the same time as the brujeria did, and I suspect there may be a connection but it could of course just be a coincidence. I’ve always found that work has come to me when I need it, but that just didn’t happen during the first half of 2011. I’ve rarely done any self promotion and have generally relied on word of mouth or people finding me through serendipity. That failed me big time this year, and for the first time in my life I started doing  self promotion only to find that it didn’t bring me anything but more frustration (and very little money). There were a few times this year when I had to rely on my family and my business partner Alex to send me a bit of money just so that I could live and pay the rent and there’s almost nothing I hate more than having to ask for financial help from people. It makes me feel utterly powerless and useless and not in control of my life. But sometimes there are no other options, and thankfully I’m blessed with a few people who are willing (and able) to support me in tough times.

Anyway, since about August (about the same time I started working to cleanse myself of the brujeria – coincidence?), things started picking up again and I’ve finished the year doing ok for myself. And I’m also very optimistic about the year ahead (presuming major financial crashes don’t happen around the world just yet). I’m in the process of launching a new internet business venture with a couple of friends that I expect will be pretty successful next year, but more on that another time perhaps.

Let’s end this review on a slightly more positive note!

Giving up the Booze

This year I stopped drinking alcohol for almost 5 months. I realise to some, that may not seem like a great deal of time, but it’s undoubtedly the longest period of time I’ve gone without having a drink since before I started drinking when I was about 17 years old. It may even be the longest time since I was about 13 because even when I was about 14 or 15 I was allowed the occasional glass of wine or beer with my parents.

Now before I gave it up, I don’t think it would be true to say that I had a problem with drinking, but let’s just say I never needed much of an excuse to go out and drink a beer – much like most of the British population in fact! Drinking is such a huge part of our culture and for most people in Britain, the pub is like a second home. Drinking was certainly a huge part of my adult life for all the time I lived in the UK and although I’ve generally drunk a lot less while I’ve been living in Peru, it’s perhaps something I’ve still indulged in a little too often to be good for me.

I decided to stop drinking because I thought it might help with my problems I was having with Ayahuasca that I just wrote about. Initially I made a decision to quit for 3 months, but then I decided to keep on going, although I confess I did have my first beer again a couple of weeks ago (and yeah it tasted pretty good!).

The first couple of months without drinking were hard work, and I frequently found myself desiring a beer  (particularly if I was anywhere near a bar!), although I never did give in to temptation – I can be pretty strong willed when I really want to be. But then it started getting easier and easier, and after about 3 months I found, for probably the first time in my adult life, my desire to drink beer had almost vanished. Wow! What a change!!

For the first time in my adult life I now find it easy to say ‘no’ if someone suggests going out for a beer. That’s not to say I always will say no. I haven’t gone off the taste just yet, so it’s something I can, and probably will enjoy sometimes, but for the first time in my life I feel almost completely in control of it – and I’m very pleased about that.

Now I just have to remain in control. I don’t want to blow my trumpet too hard just yet because I know it probably wouldn’t take much to slip back into comfortable old habits – if I’m not careful – and these last couple of weeks have certainly been extremely testing for me. Rejection in the past has usually led me to drinking copious amount of booze for a week or two to help numb the pain, but so far I’ve avoided falling into that trap and I’m feeling pretty good about it. However, I do confess to still missing some of the all night benders I used to enjoy with some of my close friends in Iquitos. I realise they were not good for me, but boy were they sometimes crazy fun!

Looking ahead

So that was my year in a nutshell. It probably doesn’t sound like a great year overall when you consider the main ‘highlights’ were mostly pretty negative. But I’d be lying if I said I thought it was a bad year. Despite all the challenges and setbacks I enjoyed it immensely, and as they say, what doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger. I definitely feel stronger than ever and I’m really looking forward to 2012 and everything it will bring. I think I need to write a separate post about that so hopefully I can get back into the habit of blogging once again! There’s a definitely a lot of things I can write about.

So, here’s me toasting (with a glass of water) to 2012 being an awesome year! Given the current global economic/political climate, it’s likely to be a very challenging year to be sure, but I feel the conscious growth potential is going to be immense! Have a great one everybody.

Ok, so I’m starting to write this at almost 5am in the morning and I’m not feeling my usual self. I’m so upset, I’m so angry at myself and I can’t even begin to get to sleep, and I’m experiencing a rare moment of ‘what the fuck am I supposed to do right now!?’ There’s a background to all this which I should explain first.

I’ll start with my first San Pedro experience which took place about 3 weeks ago. San Pedro is a cactus that grows in Peru and it’s another plant teacher that people and shamans use for healing and spiritual growth. From what I understand, it’s very effective for healing, or bringing awareness to, emotional issues which are usually related to the heart. And it certainly did it’s job on me!!

Now I wanted to write about this experience several weeks ago, just after it happened, but I decided it was too personal and I just didn’t feel comfortable writing about it in a public blog. I still feel pretty much the same way, but after tonight, I just feel ‘fuck it’. Maybe getting some of my feelings out into the open will start a healing process that I really need to begin, otherwise I’m just going to keep repeating the same old patterns that are becoming increasingly more unbearable. We can’t have that can we?

To explain the problem I need to talk about my life a bit more….

It’s fair to say I’ve had a very comfortable and happy life. There’s very little I can complain about, I’ve never really wanted for much and most things have generally gone the way I’ve wanted them to. I think I have a life and a (predominantly) positive mindset that many people would envy. So, I’ve always been pretty happy with my life except for perhaps one thing – I’ve never found that special someone. I’m currently 33 years old and I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I’ve spent pretty much all my adult life being single. Although I have to add that’s been mostly my fault and mostly my choice. Things could easily have been very different.

If I have one main regret about my life it’s that when I was younger I always took the idea of relationships far too seriously. Ever since I was about 19 and I discovered spirituality (way younger than most people) I’ve been searching for my soulmate – whatever that actually means (I’ve decided I don’t know anymore). But whereas most young people don’t think about these kind of things too much and usually just date, go out, or have sex with whoever they please, I usually judged every girl I met as a potential ‘soulmate’ or not. And if I didn’t think she was then I usually wasn’t interested in anything other than friendship. As a result of that particular mindset I turned down the possibility of many relationships that might have been casual or otherwise.

Now, I have had a few short, casual relationships and a few one-night stands over the years, but they’ve been fairly few and far between and although I don’t regret any of them, I don’t feel particularly great about them either. I know a few of those could have turned into relationships had I wanted them to, but they just never seemed right at the time.

However, over the years, there have also been several girls that in some way or another have really captured my heart and this is where things have always gone wrong for me (or I’ve completely screwed things up) and I’ve usually ended up getting really hurt. On the few occasions I’ve let my feelings known to someone (and usually, for some reason, believed they felt the same way about me) I’ve always ended up being rejected. And each and every one of those times has really hurt like hell!! However, usually within a week or so I’d start to feel ok and start to believe I was completely over it and I’d just get on with life as I always do. I’ve never realised how deeply I was affected by those rejections until I did San Pedro a few weeks ago.

This plant teacher showed me that I was still carrying all these emotional wounds from all these years of rejections that I had never properly healed from. And it showed me that if I don’t heal these wounds then they’re going to keep causing big problems in my life and prevent me from getting what I want. Well tonight I experienced another example of how they are still capable of causing big problems in my life.

Some of my friends know that I have a friend from the UK visiting me right now. If you don’t know who she is then it’s not important. But she is someone I’ve known for about 7 years and I once believed she liked me, and just over 3 years ago I decided to ask her out but she turned me down. Now, of all the rejections I’ve experienced this probably affected me the least because I never actually believed she was my soul mate or anything like that. I just really liked her and for the first time I was just intrigued to see what would happen. Unfortunately I never got to find out.

We did stay good friends though, even though I rarely saw her, particularly after I left Leeds almost 3 years ago. About a month ago I invited her to visit me in Peru, and a few days later she (very unexpectedly) bought a ticket to visit me for about 4 weeks.

Anyway, she arrived here just over a week ago, and although we’ve been having a good time together, a lot of my feelings for her came back which has been a little problematic, especially tonight…

[stuff edited out]

To cut a long story short, I was kind of hoping we might have a bit of fun and romance for a few weeks. However it became pretty clear to me quite early on that that wasn’t going to happen. Fair enough I thought, I had no expectations, and I certainly wasn’t upset about that, and ultimately I was just very happy and grateful to have some good company for several weeks.

But tonight something happened that I wasn’t prepared for, and I repeated some old patterns and lost the plot a bit (alcohol played a major role as usual). It was clear my friend was getting rather too friendly with some other guy we’d met earlier in the evening, and I suddenly felt these huge and horrible waves of jealousy and feelings of abandonment. It was basically another form of rejection. I made quite a fool of myself, and I won’t go into the details about that, but I know I’ve gone and made things very awkward between us and I’m feeling so angry and upset at myself, and stupid and depressed – and I never get depressed.

My behaviour has shown me that there are some important lessons I haven’t learnt yet, but I now realise from taking San Pedro a few weeks ago, that I keep repeating this pattern because I’m still carrying these old wounds with me that I’ve never really healed and whenever I feel rejected it’s like someone rubbing salt on open wounds. I’m not sure what to do right now. I’m feeling like I may have ruined my friends holiday and so that’s making me feel worse. I don’t usually feel like I want to climb into a deep hole, but that’s how I feel right now. Hopefully things will be ok in a day or two.

I’m mostly just upset because I feel like I’ve let myself down again. This isn’t the first time I’ve behaved like this, and each time I’ve felt bad and convinced myself I’d learnt my lesson and would never behave like that again. Yet here I am once again, repeating the same old patterns and feeling totally upset and shitty about it (again). I guess the main (and very important) difference is that for the first time I feel like I know exactly why I’m repeating these patterns. I guess that’s the first real step to healing. You can’t solve a problem unless you know exactly what’s causing it.

Hopefully I’ll get back to my usual positive self a few days from now