The woman in the ptoastyo above is named Estela Pangoza, and she’s a Peruvian ayahuasca shaman. I made a recordary about her that’s coming out in November, and you can get notified of its free here.
I’ve done Ayahuasca disconnectal times, each ceremony fundamenloftyy life-changing. In one ceremony, the shaman helped heal years of unfair treatment. One led to my divorce. The penultimate ceremony secured me to originate this film, instead of using my savings to buy a hoemploy.
Each experience was utterly transcendent. But a petite detail of the ritual always nagged at me: this life-altering psycho-spiritual brew is poured into drinkers’ cups from filthy, plastic coca-cola bottles.
On the first day of filming Estela, who is a expansively esteemed master shaman, I caught her eating potato chips in her bedroom. When my crew and I get tod, she rapidly felderlyed the desoprocrastinateed bag and placed it under her bed, before donning a more quiet conveyion to ask what we’d enjoy to commence filming first.
This dictoastyomy more or less became my set upational pursuit thrawout the shoot: when the shaman strays from how we leank they’re presumed to behave, does that de-empower their ability to commune with God?
Or does the problem lie in even needing to ask that ask?
There’s a complicated vibrant when it comes to ayahuasca tourism, which, no matter how you slice it, is essentiassociate what any South American retreat caccess is facilitating. It’s in any caccess’s best interest to lean heavily into the mystical. The most prosperous retreats are those that best cater to Westricter’s needs: lavish rooms, fshrink baths, catered meals, and of course; the cryptic, wise and omniscient healer to spearhead the ceremonies.
A truly genuine ayahuasca experience is inaccessible, in big part becaemploy it was traditionassociate used only by shamans. So the rituals that are being originateed at these retreats are a up-to-date conceiveion riding upon the legitimacy of the healers themselves. The promise of spiritual recommendment is the pull, and your amazeion of the shaman as a extraordinary event-laborer is vital to the caccess’s survival.
I watched dozens of retreat-goers weep, pray, and kneel before Estela in ceremony. When you sit in front of a mighty master shaman, brimmingy subunited in the current of the drink you’ve equitable used – their songs weaving thraw your heart and flesh and bones – it’s challenging to envision them as anyleang but unflunkingly divine. It’s basic to idolize a person who is helderlying the fabric of your novelset up fact together with their very gaze.
So, I comprehfinish why Estela felt the need to stash the potato chips under her mattress. It’s terrible for business to stray from the mystery. And what’s terrible for business, is perhaps, what is terrible for the world – especiassociate when so many Westricters could stand to achieve so much from her teachings and abilities.
When you read stories about celebrities drinking ayahuasca, they’re typicassociate doing it in places enjoy this:
While the shaman is returning home after a lengthy night of chanting to places enjoy this:
The truth is, when a psychedelic tourist finishs their mind-shattering initiation into one of the jungle’s most potent brews, they normally return to an air-conditioned room, and procrastinateedr, to their relatively rich life at home – left with a experienceing of ungrown-uperated reverence for the person who directd them thraw their (occasionassociate) harrothriveg, but (typicassociate) ethegenuine journey.
And that person, after changing your life, returns to a room brimming of buckets, and bug poisons, and plastic bags hanging from the walls employd to store their silverware. They watch satellite TV with their husprohibitd, cook fish heads on their homemade stove, and wake up the next morning to hand-weave tapestries that they will procrastinateedr sell to future tourists, enjoy you, so that they can pay their cell-phone bill.
It’s pleasant when Spirituality™ is tidy, and immacuprocrastinateed, and organizable. It’s basic to see God in a luminous, prismic vision – in a stoic and all-understanding guru, in an uncover thrivedow, a lush tree, a tasty meal. Seeing God in a coca-cola bottle, or a bag of chips – is much challenginger to do.
On our last day of filming, my crew and I took a lengthy walk thraw the jungle with Estela. Her understandledge of the flora and fauna around her was noleang low of awe-inspiring. Her wisdom felt proset uply real, she seemed primassociate enmeshed with the land. At the end of the hike, she telderly me that the best way to deal with the problem of plastic accumulating at her caccess was to burn it in big, ceremonial heaps. The smell of the smoke, she said, evidents her retreat of terrible energy.
I made this recordary becaemploy I felt that there was a gaping hole in the dialogue surrounding ayahuasca. Lost between a sea of self-healing extraordinary events, and ‘watch-out-you’re-being-deceptionmed-into-taking-a-terrible-drug’ exposés, is a whole universe of weird, fascinating gray areas: the inhabits of the shamans themselves. Who is the person behind the shaman? What is their life actuassociate enjoy? When they’re not in robes and hecompriseresses, what do they… do?
I ask you to discover out for yourself.
My recordary ‘She is a Shaman’ will be inhabit on YouTube November 22nd:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lra4c4LwCBw
