September 11 — San Pedro and the Last Full Day at Blue Morpho
Friday was our San Pedro ceremony and our last full day at Blue Morpho. By this point I had done three ayahuasca ceremonies in four nights, barely slept the first couple of nights, sweated constantly, gotten covered in bug bites, had more cold showers than I could count, and had so much information and emotion moving through me that I was definitely beginning to feel the accumulation of the week.
The San Pedro ceremony started around 8:30 in the morning.
San Pedro
When it was my turn to drink, I asked for half a cup again. There was cacao available as a chaser, but I declined it and just slowly sipped the San Pedro the way I had been sipping the ayahuasca all week. Taking medicine slowly seems to work better for me. It gives me time to welcome it into my body instead of feeling like I have to get it down as quickly as possible.
I did get pretty nauseous for a while. At one point I was down on my hands and knees over my bucket, thinking I might finally throw up, but I never did. Apparently vomiting is just not the way my body likes to purge at this time. Instead I burped, had several bowel movements, and I sweated an unbelievable amount. The jungle was already hot enough that I was basically sweating all day every day, but this was another level. My body seemed committed to finding other ways to release things besides throwing up. I appreciate that so much. Thank you, body.
San Pedro is such a different experience for me from ayahuasca. There wasn’t the same feeling of being pulled so deeply into another visual dimension, and the day was much longer and more conversational. Maestro Hamilton talked with us throughout the day and shared teachings about time, intention, consciousness, AI, and all kinds of other things. Sometimes there was gentle drumming or whistling, and people moved in and out of the ceremonial space more freely. I had a sense that the vibrations of his words and sounds were falling differently on people at different levels. There was the information and then the vibration and I felt surrendered to all of it. I knew I was receiving an incredible amount that I wasn’t processing with my brain, but that my heart knew just how to receive—to soften, open, and allow—like George’s teaching.
I was in and out too. Sometimes I needed to go to the bathroom or just move around, and there were periods where I was listening closely and other periods where I was simply sitting there and letting everything wash through me.
After the intensity of Thursday night, it was nice in some ways to have a day that felt more spacious.
Watching My Mind Around Love
At one point during the day I noticed myself paying very close attention to a small affectionate interaction I observed, and of course I noticed every little detail. One of the things this retreat has made so incredibly obvious to me is how quickly my mind scans for information when I feel love or attraction toward someone. I notice the tone of a voice, a handshake, a comment, who someone looks at, little gestures and interactions, and then some part of me immediately starts trying to construct a story out of tiny pieces of information.
What was much more interesting than anything happening outside of me was watching what was happening inside me. Thursday night I had experienced this enormous love that felt connected to Maestro Hamilton’s presence, and I had begun to understand something completely new for me about how love does not have to become romance or intimacy or a question about being chosen. I could experience this extraordinary feeling of love and connection without needing to turn it into a story about what it meant or what should happen next.
Then Friday I could watch those old neural pathways come right back online and start looking for evidence anyway. Does this mean something? What does that mean? Is there something here that I should be paying attention to? It is amazing how well-worn those pathways are, and how quickly my mind can take a beautiful feeling and start trying to gather information that will tell me what kind of love it is and whether I am being chosen.
I think part of what I am learning is that noticing myself doing this doesn’t mean I have failed to understand what I experienced Thursday night. Maybe this is what learning it actually looks like. I get to notice the old pattern while it is happening instead of unconsciously disappearing into it, and then remember that I don’t actually need an answer to all of those questions. I can come back to what I know from my own experience: I felt an extraordinary amount of love, it was real for me, and I don’t have to turn it into anything else in order for it to matter.
My Body Again
I also had a pretty dramatic swing in how I was feeling about my body.
Thursday night, standing naked in the shower after ceremony, I had felt so deeply at home in myself. I was washing my hair and touching my skin and feeling how good it was simply to inhabit my body, without judging it or imagining how somebody else might see it.
Then Friday I looked at myself in the mirror and had almost the opposite reaction. I saw my body through that harsh external lens again and thought about my weight and how unattractive I felt, and how impossible it seemed that someone I found attractive could possibly find me attractive.
It was such a contrast.
The night before, my body had been miraculous because I was inside it. Then I looked at it from the outside and immediately started grading it again.
I had prayed about my body during the week too, and I do want to become healthier and stronger and probably lose weight, but I also kept thinking about something Maestro Hamilton has said repeatedly, which is that he looks at all of us and sees miracles. The fact that we are here, embodied at all, is miraculous.
I don’t think that means I can never want to change anything about my body. It means that maybe changing it does not have to begin with contempt for it.
I also checked in with myself because what I’ve learned over the years of sitting with San Pedro is that the medicine does not oppose or correct my negative thoughts. It shows me the differences in how thoughts feel in my body, but it doesn’t oppose me or argue with me. It kindly lets me discern for myself what to think. And I realize the power and agency that I have to make choices about my thoughts.
Julio, Apprenticeship and Wanting to Be Chosen
Maestro Hamilton also talked more about Julio, and there was something he shared that caught my attention because of everything I had experienced Thursday night around apprenticeship.
He talked about how Julio had known Maestro Hamilton was coming long before they actually met, and I remember him saying something about Julio having been checking on him since he was around thirteen years old, and then when they finally connected there was this sense of, “What took you so long?”
Of course my mind loved that story.
Some part of me immediately wanted to turn it into the fantasy that maybe Maestro Hamilton had somehow been waiting for me too, or that something about my being here had been known before I arrived.
I can see that part of myself very clearly. I want to be special. I want to be chosen. I want someone I admire to see something exceptional in me. Maybe we all feel that way because we are human? And maybe keeping in mind the vulnerability I have to these desires is very smart and sensible as I watch how things play out over time and align and realign myself with what is true.
And there is this funny contradiction because another part of me genuinely wants to approach this world with humility. I can feel how much I don’t know. In many ways I am a kindergartner in the medicine world, and there is so much for me to learn.
But then another part of me wants Maestro Hamilton to think I am advanced and impressive and unusually perceptive and to really like me.
Both of those parts exist.
I don’t think I need to shame myself for the second one. I just need to know that it is there so that I don’t accidentally turn every meaningful experience into evidence that I have been specially selected for something.
I thought about Georgia choosing me to help with Medicine Path ceremonies too. There are spiritual ways I could interpret that, and there are also very practical reasons she asked me. I am willing to show up. I have the time. I have experience. I take responsibility seriously. Those things are meaningful too.
Maybe being chosen doesn’t have to mean destiny in order for it to matter. And it doesn’t mean I am better or worse than anyone else. It just means that this is my path.
“Let’s Take a Photo”
There was also this very sweet little moment when Maestro Hamilton initiated taking a photo together.
He said something like, “Let’s take a photo.”
It seems like such a small thing, but I noticed how much it meant to me.
My interpretation was that maybe he can sense that I am shy sometimes and that I don’t always know how to approach him, and perhaps he was drawing me out a little because he is kind. I don’t know whether that was his reason, but that explanation makes more sense to me than turning every bit of warmth from him into evidence of some larger story.
One of the things I appreciate about him is how little ego I experience in the way he interacts with people. He can be incredibly powerful in ceremony and then also completely ordinary and playful and human.
I kept thinking about how rare that combination feels to me.
Respect, Noise and Letting People Be Who They Are
There were still people talking outside while Maestro Hamilton was teaching, smoking and getting louder, and I still noticed it.
It still bothered me. I don’t suddenly love loud talking because I had a revelation about acceptance.
But after everything I had worked through Tuesday and Wednesday, it wasn’t taking over my entire internal world in the same way. I could notice that I would prefer people to be quieter and more attentive without turning that preference into a whole case against them.
And once again, Maestro Hamilton did not appear outwardly disturbed by it. He kept teaching. He kept talking. He kept doing what he was there to do.
I am still learning from that.
Nathan Reaches His Limit
Nathan had been planning to stay for the dieta and the next week of retreat, but during Friday’s ceremony he decided he was done.
He spent less and less time in the San Pedro ceremony and eventually said that he had reached his limit and wanted to go home to his wife and kids.
I had a lot of internal reactions to that too.
There was part of me that wondered whether he was leaving right when something important was coming up for him, especially after how intense his ceremonies had been. There was another part of me that could easily construct all kinds of explanations involving addiction, ego, discomfort or resistance.
But those would be my explanations. What he actually said was that he had reached his limit and wanted to go home to his family. That is what I know.
After everything I had been thinking about all week, there was something almost perfect about having to confront that. Maestro Hamilton and Maestro Christian could offer him support. They could encourage him. They could show him what was available if he stayed.
But Nathan still got to decide.
Georgia always says, “You can show someone the door. You cannot make them walk through it.”
Maybe leaving was avoidance. Maybe leaving was exactly the self-responsible thing he needed to do. I don’t know.
It was his choice.
The End of a Very Full Week
Ironically, by the end of Friday I could feel how complete I was becoming with the experience. And just because it was coming to an end didn’t mean that I wasn’t still powerfully experiencing it and being impacted by all of it.
Three ayahuasca ceremonies and an all-day San Pedro ceremony in such a short period of time is a lot. Add in the heat, the humidity, the lack of sleep, the conversations, the teachings, the jungle hikes, the physical experiences, all of the things I had been thinking about with love and my body and responsibility and apprenticeship, and I felt incredibly full.
I did not feel like I needed another ceremony. I did not feel like I needed to push myself harder. I felt grateful.
At some point Maestro Hamilton said something to me like, “We’ll have to share some cacao.”
Of course I noticed that too. I had brought him the cacao from Lima because I knew how much he loved it, and hearing him say that made me happy. I also immediately wondered, When would we do that? How would that happen?
There goes my mind again, always wanting to turn a sweet moment into logistics and a future.
Maybe we will share cacao someday. Maybe we won’t. The sweet thing was that he said it.
Friday felt like completion, even though we weren’t technically leaving until Saturday. The ceremonial part of the retreat was over for me, and I could feel how much I had received without yet having any real idea how much of it I would carry home.
I knew enough to know that I was tired.
I knew enough to know that I was grateful.
And I knew enough to know that I was going to need a lot of time to understand what had just happened for me.
