September 12 — Leaving the Jungle and Landing Back in the World
Leaving Blue Morpho
It was really strange waking up knowing that we were leaving Blue Morpho. Somehow, in the space of five days, the retreat had become my whole reality. There was the maloca, the jungle, the lake, the paths between everything, the sounds at night, the meals, the ceremonies, the same group of people moving around together every day, and this completely different relationship to time where there really wasn’t anywhere else I needed to be. I had arrived on Monday feeling unsure about the accommodations and not totally knowing what I had gotten myself into, and by Saturday morning I was genuinely sad to leave.
Before breakfast, Maestro Hamilton talked for a while about visions and what to do with the things that come through in ceremony, which felt incredibly relevant to me after everything I had been thinking about apprenticeship. The way I understood what he was saying was basically: don’t immediately decide that a vision means something is true or that you now need to reorganize your whole life around it. Sit with it. See what happens. See whether it continues to resonate once you are back in ordinary reality, and if it keeps showing up and continues to feel true over time, then maybe you follow it.
He talked about ways that he has tested things he has seen or been shown in visions against ordinary life, which I really appreciated because I think one of the things I have been trying to understand this week is how to honor the medicine without handing over my discernment to it. There have been experiences during this retreat that have felt incredibly meaningful to me, including this possibility of apprenticeship, but I also don’t want to turn an experience I had in ceremony into a story that is more definite than what actually happened.
I do not believe Maestro Hamilton formally made me his apprentice this week. That isn’t what happened. What feels more grounded is that some kind of path of learning feels available to me, and maybe my job is simply to keep showing up, keep learning, keep practicing, possibly come back and do dieta, and see what unfolds. I don’t need to decide today what it means.
That feels like a pretty big change for me, because I can see how quickly part of me wants to know: What is this? Am I special? Was I chosen? Is this a thing? Where is this going? I have done that around relationships, around spiritual experiences, around people I admire, probably around a million things in my life. Maybe apprenticeship begins less with somebody giving me a title and more with me approaching my life as an apprentice.
Saying Goodbye
At some point while everyone was saying goodbye, Maestro Hamilton came up to me and said, “You’re staying, right?”
I said, no, I had to go.
Apparently he had thought I was staying for dieta or for the next retreat, and I found that really sweet. Of course my mind noticed it and wondered about it, because that is what my mind does, but I genuinely don’t know what he meant beyond the literal question. Maybe he simply thought I was staying. I am trying to get better at allowing something to feel warm or meaningful without immediately needing to build a structure around it.
As we were walking out, Maestro Hamilton walked with me for a little while and I asked him about building the ceremonial lodge and some of what had gone into creating the space. I had this feeling that maybe he wanted to talk to me, but again, that is only my impression. I don’t actually know. One of the biggest lessons of this entire week has been learning to separate what I observe from the interpretation my mind immediately wants to put on top of it, and apparently I am going to have approximately twelve billion opportunities to practice that.
I took a selfie with Mirjana and Ashoka, and I hugged Annie and Maestro Christian goodbye. There was that slightly awkward end-of-retreat feeling where suddenly everyone is gathering their things and taking pictures and figuring out rides and saying goodbye to people you have been having these incredibly intense experiences alongside, and then everybody just disperses back into their normal lives.
Mostly I was just sad that it was over.
I felt incredibly full. I was grateful. I also felt complete with the ceremonial part of the retreat in a way that I don’t remember necessarily feeling last year. I had had three ayahuasca ceremonies, a full day with San Pedro, long conversations, hikes through the jungle in the day and at night, the lake, the stars, the birds in the ceiba tree, so many ícaros, so much laughter and discomfort and confusion and love, and about nine million thoughts about my life.
I didn’t feel like I needed another ceremony.
I needed to begin living with what had happened.
Lunch Over the Amazon
David and I went to lunch at Las Terrazas, which Jorge had recommended, and it had this gorgeous view out over the Amazon. It felt kind of surreal to suddenly be sitting at a restaurant again after being at the retreat all week, looking out at this enormous river and eating sushi.
The sushi itself was unusual. I don’t even know exactly how to describe it. At some point sauce apparently dripped all the way down the front of my shirt, and I somehow did not notice it until later, which was mildly mortifying. I had been sitting there talking to David with food all down my shirt and had absolutely no idea.
I also found out that David is only 27, which really surprised me. I had not realized he was that young.
We talked about the retreat and about his experience in ceremony, and he shared something that I had absolutely no idea had been happening for him. He believed that Maestro Hamilton had taken something from his heart that he associated with his ability to sell the AI product he had recently begun working with. He was angry about it, although he seemed fairly composed while he was talking to me.
I obviously cannot know what happened inside David’s experience or what it meant. What struck me was that I had been in the same ceremony space with him and had had absolutely no idea any of that was going on.
It made me think again about how little we know about what is happening inside another person. I can be ten feet away from somebody having an experience that is enormous to them and know nothing about it. Meanwhile I am inside my own experience, noticing where someone is sitting or what somebody said or whether they looked in my direction and constructing an entire story from the tiny amount of information available to me.
It was a very tangible reminder that everybody in that ceremony room had been living inside a completely different ceremony.
Back to the Airport
Segundo picked us up and took us to the airport. He seemed quieter to me than he had earlier in the week, or maybe less talkative, but I don’t know why. Again: observation, interpretation. I apparently came home from Blue Morpho with homework.
At the airport I ran into Dan and Heather and some of the other people from the retreat, and then we flew from Iquitos back to Lima.
The man sitting next to me on the plane shook or stimmed almost continuously for most of the flight, and it was really irritating me. I kept noticing the movement out of the corner of my eye and feeling increasingly agitated by it, and then at some point I realized that I was stimming too.
Which was kind of hilarious.
Not necessarily hilarious in the moment, because I was exhausted and overstimulated and itchy and ready to be somewhere private, but still. There I was getting irritated by somebody else doing something with his body while my own nervous system was doing its own version of exactly the same thing.
I had spent several days in the jungle surrounded by birds and insects and frogs and wind and people singing, and now suddenly I was on an airplane with fluorescent lights and announcements and luggage and people shaking their legs and all the machinery of ordinary life coming back online around me.
It was a huge transition.
Eighteen Floors Above Lima
After we landed, David and Heather went to dinner during their layover, but I got my bag and took a taxi to my apartment in Barranco. I was staying on the 18th floor, which sounded like it should be incredibly quiet, except apparently eighteen floors is not enough to escape Lima traffic because I could still hear the freeway and city noise pouring in.
The difference from the jungle was almost comical.
For days I had been lying in bed listening to insects and birds and whatever mysterious creature was making whatever mysterious sound outside my room, and now I was listening to cars, honking, and sirens.
The apartment had these big balcony doors that opened completely, with no screens, and I remember thinking, do bugs come up this high? I genuinely had no idea.
I was so happy to have access to a washing machine.
There are luxuries that I think you can only fully appreciate after spending several days in jungle humidity, and truly clean, completely dry clothes are one of mine. Nothing ever really felt dry at the retreat. Towels, bathing suits, shirts—everything just stayed a little damp forever. Being able to throw my dirty clothes into a washing machine, take a shower, and eventually put on something that smelled clean and was actually dry felt luxurious.
The apartment had a lot of mirrors, unfortunately, and that part was harder.
I had been having this really beautiful experience during the retreat of feeling at home in my body in a way I have struggled to feel for a long time, and then suddenly I was standing naked in a brightly lit apartment with mirrors everywhere and seeing my body from every possible angle. The harshness came rushing back in surprisingly quickly.
It was a reminder that whatever healing I experienced during the week did not mean that all of my old conditioning had vanished.
I could feel deeply connected to my body in ceremony and still walk into an apartment in Lima and think horrible things about how I looked.
Both could apparently be true.
Pizza, Yogurt and Clean Clothes
By that point I absolutely could not deal with figuring out dinner.
I had spent the entire week having meals appear at specific times, and now suddenly I was back in a city where I had to make decisions again. Where should I eat? Is it safe to walk there? How far is it? Do I need cash? Can I order something? How do I pay? Am I even hungry enough to deal with this?
No. Pizza. I ordered pizza through Rappi and ate four slices, which honestly felt exactly right. It was not ceremonial. It was not particularly Peruvian. It did not contain a life lesson. It was pizza.
There was also a Tambo convenience store basically next door to the building, which might have been one of the greatest discoveries of the entire evening because I desperately needed water and I bought yogurt, which for some reason had become one of the only foods that sounded consistently appealing to me.
I showered. I did laundry. I ate pizza. I drank water. I ate yogurt.
This was integration.
I was also covered in bug bites and incredibly itchy, my voice was scratchy, and I was exhausted. I could feel the world I had temporarily stepped out of starting to come back toward me too—email, work, clients, family, all of the responsibilities and decisions and things waiting for me at home.
Maestro Hamilton had talked about this before we left, about taking it easy when we went back into our lives and remembering that the medicine and the integration continue. He had encouraged us not to immediately make enormous decisions unless we actually needed to.
That felt wise.
There were several things I was thinking about very seriously by this point—apprenticeship, dieta, my relationship to love, what I wanted my life to feel like, how I wanted to work, how I wanted to inhabit my body—but I did not need to turn any of those things into a decision tonight.
I could wash my clothes. I could eat pizza. I could sleep.
Somewhere Between the Jungle and Home
I was really grateful that I had given myself these couple of days in Lima instead of trying to travel all the way home directly from the retreat.
At first, when I planned the trip, those extra days had just seemed practical. By Saturday night they felt necessary.
I wasn’t at Blue Morpho anymore, but I also wasn’t home. I was somewhere in between.
I had left this little temporary universe in the jungle where, for five days, almost everything in my life had narrowed down to the next meal, the next ceremony, the next conversation, the next walk to the lake, the next thing arising inside me. Now I was eighteen floors above Barranco listening to traffic, surrounded by clean laundry and mirrors and pizza boxes, with mosquito bites all over my body and my cats thousands of miles away.
I was sad the retreat was over. I was tired. I was itchy. I was incredibly grateful. I had no idea what some of what happened this week would ultimately mean.
Maybe I don’t need to know yet.
