Sleepr with two visionary Shipibo shamans - Maestro Eligio and Maestro: Amazon Jungle, Peru 2024
The Amazon Diaries: A Month With Plant Spirits
By Sleepr
In October 2024, Sleepr travelled to Iquitos, Peru to study under the guidance of Shipibo shamans. This immersive experience has resulted in a profound series of 12 works that explore the intersection of ancient wisdom and contemporary art. The series produced captures important details and artifacts from peak visionary states of ayahuasca, and the extraordinary diaries below capture a marathon experience of outer limits exploration of consciousness.
Wall art in Iquitos, Peru
Day 1: Iquitos, Peru
4 flights, 36 hours travelling. The city is brimming with energy. It feels like it has the pulse of the jungle infused into the streets. I'm definitely somewhere else. It feels different here - an umami you can't capture properly. Ayahuasca is on everyone's lips that I've spoken with. Jaguars and vines are scrawled on walls, in mechanics logos, and stamped on buses. Tomorrow I travel by boat three hours up the Amazon river. Many waves of anticipation, doubt, wonder, excitement so far. I wonder what will it be like when I’m there.
Lot's of time spent thinking on the plane. I’m on a mission, but is it really a mission or am is it just for myself? Am I only conquering myself again? What else could there be so far away, that isn’t here? All roads lead to Rome, and the inner space I navigate in suburbia is the same inner space as the jungle. Or is it? What would they know about the deepest recesses of my mind? All will be revealed soon. Where there is smoke there is fire, and Peru has choking black smoke rising from it. There's some special magic here.
When and why did I decide to go to Peru? I try to track back the sequence of events. I had a flash - a vision - so brief and yet so total of this entire thing. It was of course the next step - the only step - for me to do. Destiny. Being pulled in a direction ahead of time towards something specific. Courted by the whispers on a breeze. My sensitivity is high and getting higher the longer I am on dieta. It is a commitment so that I become more sensitive to detect the ethereal qualities of the other side. Is it just starvation and madness guised as meaning? Is there a difference?
The poison path is precarious. Multiple medical calls before arriving: do you have bi-polar, schizophrenia, multiple personality, manic depression, does your family have any history etc. The checks and balances of the danger zone. Perhaps you can be broken a first time, but not a second. To see visions, to hear voices is by definition madness - and yet this one heals. The West doesn’t quite understand it yet.
The further I travel, the more hidden tabs I close that were open in my mind. Wiped the phone clean of mailboxes, calendars, apps etc. The distance is important. It reflects the commitment to leave your old life - less cues to be who I was before, and instead be here now. I care so little about so many things in my former life, I wonder why I continue them.
So much of this process is about calibration - it’s taken me a long time to understand how much of an impediment I have been, to support the depth to which I could go in this space. There are no shortcuts. Everyone action I’ve done counts and can be seen in ceremony. It’s the blockchain of the spirit world: a transparent ledger of intention that is scanned and analyzed for errors. What did I miss this time, I wonder. What did I kid myself about? What blockages have I caught unknowingly and knowingly?
Tomorrow we go deeper.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 2: Amazon, Iquitos
First a bus for hours to the outer city, then a boat ride winding it’s way up the river. And now - finally - I am here. On sacred land where temples have been built to study and deliver the medicina. A carved out research center in the jungle of land dedicated to honoring the plant spirits.
The monkeys woop and announce our arrival, a million birds songs woven together, there is nowhere that life is not teeming. It is sweltering here, in the thick Amazonian jungle: there is no reprieve. Three shirts spent dripping in sweat. There are no walls here, just nets to every hut and maloca. Every sound is interconnected. There is jungle internet, jungle stairs. The eyes of the maestro looked black - black black - like they could see through this space and into the next.
As we entered, I watched 75 year old Maestra Cristina watch us like a hawk from a balcony up high. Indifferent to our personalities, she’s seen all this before. What did she see, I wondered. Tomorrow night we will be in her space, as she sings her icaros for us and heals us. They will cut the lights and we will be in pitch black except for the candle when ceremony starts. The artworks that adorn the walls all point to one thing: the visions. Everything revolves around honoring them. This is their culture, yet it’s not exclusive to heritage. Anyone can join or participate, because the culture revolves around a third party: the plant spirits.
Speaking with Cristina and her sons, all Shipibo Maestros, having earnt the title after all doing master plant dietas for years, I told them of my intentions here and the goals for the ceremony: to be a visionary plant artist, who can capture the essence of the spirit world. To heal others by helping map hyperspace.
I will take bufo too on Thursday: 5-meO-DMT. The toad medicina: a 30 minute life changing experience into a bright light. It feels too much, but I’m all in. Again. Why risk it all again and again? Because risk is relative to how far you’ve pushed it.
A thunderstorm begins to roll through as we rest, before tomorrow nights ceremony.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 3: Ceremony #1
Last night was the most insane thing I’ve ever experienced. Completely off the charts. Something I will cherish forever. To bear witness to five wise shaman in a maloca puffing away mapachos, sitting around in a circle full throated singing independently their own icaros for 7 hours. Like five braids of a rope, each separate yet binding together to connect and become stronger. They didn’t move, just took breaks, to allow the medicine to be taken. What happened when they sung their icaros? They called and charmed out of the woodwork literal entities and spirits.
These are pacts they made a long time ago, by becoming so sensitive to plants from being immersed in the jungle, that they have learnt how to communicate with things our Western senses have dulled to. People almost died throwing up, people completely lost their mind, tried to leave the ceremony, started speaking other languages, and 20 people violently throwing up - purging - their deepest knotted issues to heal themselves.
I was within 10 minutes in a completely three dimensional space sci-if like hospital with entities carting me away for survey and education. I was holding on for dear life. We started at 8:30 and I was able to slowly come down around 6am. Three cups tonight, so it was a long journey. I know my first artwork: it will be the five shaman in the maloca puffing away with rainbow serpents in the roof.
This morning multiple people left - this is not for them. The rest of the brave souls have just adjusted their capacity to experience an expanded life. I was petrified and yet I’ve recalibrated throughout the day and am better, stronger, sharper. I am writing copious notes, recording video. I could never have learnt this any other way. I’m onto something big - or perhaps just catching up to what the hell is happening in this space.
Godspeed brothers. Trust your sensitivity. Cultivate the relationship with the other side.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 4 Ceremony #2
A very difficult and complicated ceremony. A few individuals are becoming unruly and slipping away from reality - a harsh reminder of the ayahuasca tourist industry with indigenous medicine and Westerners looking for healing to their mental health problems without doing any ground work. Very concerned for a few individuals in the group- there is no care here like there would be in a hospital or a clinical trial in an unregulated industry in a place like Peru.
The jungle can be a very difficult place on it’s own, and messing with mind altering substances can easily spin you sideways. I am conscious of the limit of this and would pull the plug on this trip as soon as there are red flags on safety for others - nothing is worth participating in if it is harmful for anyone. This is unfortunately the complexity with psychedelics, and because we have not studied them enough we do not understand limitless mechanisms of their action.
As this experience for others went on it dispersed all supernatural activity. Suddenly most people sobered up, and were in a room with no umami spirit essence - the empty church again. All the facades and none of the spirit world. It’s fascinating how sensitive these spirits are and how mercurially they emerge and disappear. The icaros try to woo and call them in, but sometimes they won’t for some reason that’s very deep.
This all said, for me personally it was one of the most enlightening experiences I have ever had. I cannot describe how visionary the experience became - the shamans all in full unified voice singing new icaros that suddenly opened up an escalator for my soul to transcend into another world - a fully three dimensional stable space that was the most gentle and beautiful experience ever. I have no clue on earth how they learnt to do this. They had built stairwells, and rowboats to through song and vibration that carried my soul into the visionary world. What a magical moment that I will try to understand for an eternity. This will be my second artwork.
Tomorrow is a break day. Will rest, recoup and discuss my concerns for the safety of others with the facilitators. Be safe friends.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 5: Plant medicine trek
Trekked through the jungle today, with a couple of local guides pointing out a pharmacopia of plants and their medicinal use. Ayahuasca, chacruna, toè, jungle tobacco and many more. Found a family of sloth making their way up a tree as fast as an eth transfer.
Spoke with the shaman in a q&a for a few hours, and learnt a lot about the Shipibo approach and history. To be a shaman, one must diet with many many plants for long periods of time - about 7 years of constant 3 month, 6 month, 2 year isolated fasting in huts on one meal a day and consuming large amounts of a specific plant. This plant eventually begins to synergize with the human consciousness and the shaman is so sensitive that they can hear and interpret messages and communication from the plant spirit. This then becomes a song that they can sing which will call in that plant spirit to essentially heal on another plane.
Fascinating belief systems which have to kind of work in the jungle otherwise no one can be bothered pretending for ego. Yet the mechanisms of how all this stuff is going on is ultra complex. You hear them whistle at birds, and notice cues of weather changes. They’re detecting things at a different wavelength. They aren’t perfect by any means, but it’s technology we just basically reject outright even happens.
The network of information in the plants is incredible - it is not simple knowledge by any means, but instead feels like a vast wide encyclopaedia eons old. We believe in the west the extent of intelligence in a plant is its movement to the sun, which is about the least interesting thing a plant can do.
Of course, if it all sounds like a stretch of the imagination, come to the jungle and find out my friend - Iquitos is waiting.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 6: Sapo (5-MeO-DMT)
Braved the experience and smoked the venom of the Sonoran Toad, the Bufo Alvarius, which secretes “The God Molecule”.
Incredibly profound and moving experience. I was within seconds of inhaling the entire field of view turned into a chrysanthemum of geometric patterns, before vibrating so intensely my awareness point was able to break through a crack in the vibration and whoosh! Instantly teleported to a complete other dimension. These words sound cheap, and they will never do it justice, but it is pure magic that the soul can escape velocity and eject out of the body cleanly and safely into what is most likely the death state. Many experiences in the group of dying and working out of they were dead, while still remaining conscious. This is the sacred detail, in that you, the real you, beyond all your stories and beliefs, your name and your body, you the awareness point - which is the real you - continues on after this dimension.
Once you embody the understanding of this, you realize how deeply safe you always are. It will always be okay, because life is simply a passage and chapter in the fullness of experience. Survival is not life and death, just one place, one style we can inhabit.
Very thankful for the experience and the bravery to go over the edge. An incredibly important molecule that we will need to understand at some point if we are to decode consciousness.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 7: Ceremony #3
Good God, I’ve found what I’ve been looking, hunting and searching for for 20 years. I have never experienced such an intense night of supernatural forces.
Tonight I basically double dosed and was rocketed into an ayahuasca trip that lasted about 12 hours - from 9pm to 9am, was in the deepest possible meditation state I’ve ever reached, and understood hundreds of unique mechanisms of activity that I have rarely heard others describe or document. I believe I am onto something important - more important than the typical “life changing experience”, instead on understanding unique mechanisms of action and interaction between ayahuasca, DMT, icaros, consciousness, telepathy and contact. Tonight was the most important moment of my knowledge acquisition journey. I was burning absolute rocket fuel hot, completely hyper alert to the forest and the layers of extra sensory perception that my body is becoming extremely sensitive to. I could feel the surges of activity before the icaros would come on in full force, and would relax before they had begun to cool off. They are acting as antennae for the spirits, but you can sense them just as they do. The Shipibo shaman just verbalize the vibrational quality of the forces they sense. These create synergistic conditions which resonate inside of your being, just as a glass can break if you find its resonant harmonic. How all this stuff works and happens is mind boggling, but the forces you feel are like being in the Serengeti with wild animals. They are not tame by any means.
This fieldwork is allowing me access to such a rich complexity of experience that sinks deeper and deeper as time goes on. The artworks that the Shipibo make vibrate at a different frequency. I believe it is a very unique approach to art that will become very important as research continues in this field. The jungle, the specially brewed Ayahuasca, the plant baths, the tobacco ceremonies, the bufo, the icaros- everything is synergising now together.
I was unable to move or open my eyes 6-7 hours in, and they called a shaman over to sit directly with me and sing Ícaro after Ícaro over and over, blowing tobacco smoke over and over my portal points - the crown and hands. This would visually look like rich, coded tapestries that spiralled cone-like over me.
I’m convinced that there are actually ways to “disappear” from this dimension - or in other words, crawl into another. Like Escape From Alcatraz, I believe one can smuggle themselves out of this dimension. I have had many visions of this before, and a very important work I produced for the Secrets show - The Underworld - showed this “aftermath” scene of someone who had successfully done so, except set in ancient times.
I feel like I am hot on the heels of a major breakthrough to do with understanding ESP and cognition states in psychedelics. Where there is smoke there is fire. Feeling very bright, positive and sharp today.
Onwards brothers into the unknown.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 8: Ceremony #4
Tonight I took a much smaller dose, after the 12 hour trip last night. I was able to tune in deeply into the group space and connect without rising and rising in intensity. Light visuals, a subtle sense of presence - a much calmer experience.
It’s clear that we truly don’t understand many things about dosage and many conventional ideas don’t really stick. Having 20ml can send you very deep or 100ml can do barely anything, all from the same batch that was brewed with equal and consistent amount of beta-carbolines for MAOI inhibition and DMT.
It feels like it’s becoming clear there are other mechanisms that influence dosage other than biochemistry. It actually feels here in the jungle that they are calling a force to come in to activate the drug once it’s entered the body. This isn’t reproducible in a lab and really compromises Western studies at Universities or hospitals of ayahuasca.
Dr. Andrew Gallimore mentioned something interesting that I will need to relook up the context of - but he said something like the DMT experience comes on *through you* not from you, as though the experience is swelling up on another plane first.
To me it also feels like DMT is being activated at a greater intensity with the presence of the entities they call in, like iron flakes in a carton of cereal being pulled to the edge of the carton from a magnet. The magnet of course being the entities, and the icaros are calling them in, while the iron is the DMT. This then creates very “deep and meaningful” experiences and life changing experiences rather than just trippy visuals that feel synthetic, unimportant, boring, where you are still alone. I believe many people have only experience this side of the drug in their bedrooms or with friends. A mild otherworldly presence but not full on. This I believe is an important nuance that has probably been mentioned but perhaps not grasped or defined clearly. There are many more that I will keep private for now.
The shamans do this work 4 times a week all year. An incredible feat of mind and commitment. Many people have been healed this week. Many from the West who adopted a scientific dogma in their lives and rejected a belief in greater things. To all those who have been duped by the Western scientific framework or rationalism - be warned. You may have inadvertently cut yourself off from a rich and complex worldview, and trusted the wrong career minded, statistics-driven individuals to define the world you live in.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 9: Shipibo art market
Wonderful day discussing the art produced by the Shipibo, directly with the women and the shamans, who explained in intricate detail the symbolism and meaning behind the work they make.
The place was filled with hundreds of intricate, large scale tapestries, that the Shipibo are famous for making. They are a true cultural export of fine craftsmanship and artistic quality. They are famous throughout the world for these visionary artworks.
But it is not the quality of the needlework that is so interesting to me, it is not the poor perspective realism of the jaguar or the anaconda. It is instead their model for what these artworks are and of. They make stitch these serpinski-style fractal geometric lines, that are a literal translation of their icaros they sing. It is not that they represent the icaros - they are the icaros. The rings in the centre are the rings in ceremony, and each colour is a plant that they have done diets with and are an ally they call in.
These are complex maps of hyperspace, where they are constructing diagrams of the control centre (the maloca) and the mechanism of action (the icaros) that are the antennae channeling of the spirits. In this way, they are literally translating the channeled energy (which calls the spirits in) of song into imagery to be paused and hum for all time.
These artworks are “magic artworks” because the effect they have on others are both protection but also a calling card for the spirit world. I believe that this is fundamentally different than how we approach making art in the West, where we trying to recreate a “dead” snapshot of visionary experiences, rather than build little radio stations (in visual form) that follow the same mechanisms that work in ceremony to call the supernatural in.
I believe many artists in the West try to and do create humming, magic artworks that do much more than just put color to page, but they are just intuitively experimenting until they reach this sweet spot where something interesting is happening. I feel there are many gaps we have about how we approach art, mostly due to our fundamental limits of the framework we apply to reality. As they reality is much more wider and expanded, so too are their artworks capability.
When they wear ceremonial tunics and robes covered in their famous fractal-esque geometry line stitching, they are being bathed in those “songs”, which is really just a vibrational signal that the ones not from here, are here.
I aim to interview the shamans to capture these insights for the documentary for the I’m making while here. Absolutely wonderful experiences so far. Bought two large scale works that brought me to tears that I will hang proudly in my home to remind me of so many things I have learnt here about the world I live in.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 11: Ceremony #5
A long and complex ceremony that was focused this week on deep healing. The icaros in particular were focused on dislodging deep seated wounds and trauma. Felt like a lot of information lost on the big one on Thursday was regathered and consolidated. Lots of personal stuff came up and out which is really the end goal of most healing sessions.
This field work is taxing. Spirits are high but the heat, intensity and consistent space on being on the edges of reality truly makes this feel like a marathon. Am retreating to private spaces to write notes and consolidate my thoughts.
What is it that I’ve been so protective of keeping in the West? What is so worth it? Which is crazier, and which makes more sense: to live in the jungle connected to real spirits or live in the concrete jungle connected to the fiat spirit. Why do I live for the weekend and sign up to be the wage slave? What fundamentals are not up for debate?
Lots of questions, very few answers. Been chatting with the owner and managers of the retreat a lot, and the translators about difficulty translating Shipibo to Spanish to English on nuanced topics like where does the information reside that we see? Out there or in here.
I’m actually getting the sense that the Shamans are very well practiced but don’t have the depth of mechanical understanding to map all of this out. The systematic deconstruction and reconstruction methods of science in the West will triumph here.
To those reflecting on their own life path and finding meaning: keep going. This is the only important question for tomorrow. Once you stop on this line of questioning the limit to your path are set in stone.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 12: Ceremony #6
This was a wild ride. 3 hours in and no effects were felt. I was completely sober. 3 hours of icaros, listening to others react and sitting still in meditation position on an empty stomach waiting patiently for the “medicina” to kick in. Maybe not tonight, might as well kick back and relax and take a nap.
Just as I laid back, like it always does, it suddenly sprung out of nowhere and a three dimensional space opened up in my minds eye. It’s like closing your eyes, and your closed-eyes are now open seeing another world. I laid back on my mattress, lifted my shirt in the intense heat to get the cool midnight breeze over my skin. The visions started to weave fantastical things - but they were different this time.
I’ve experienced probably 400-500 high dose psychedelic visions over my time seeing all types of insane things. It’s always showed me new things, almost rarely the same thing twice - hence my obsession with cognitive qualities like novelty and imagination.
But tonight, as I laid down and just as I let my guard down when I thought it wasn’t working, the visions came on. I was getting dizzy and imbalanced, as though laying down as disrupted which way was vertical and horizontal. I started lifting off the ground, and floating horizontally through room after room after room. Brightly lit neon colors, snake filled rooms, hieroglyphics covering the walls, the icaros were moving my soul around (not my awareness point which was still laying down). What is hard to describe is how you can see with that “etheric body” while still half present in your physical body and awareness. I floated into rooms where spells were being cast on my body based on each icaro. This went on for a good 45-60 minutes before reducing down in visual intensity. Truly an experience that has completely changed my understanding of the visions.
I panicked slightly coming back, as my soul wouldn’t return to my body. It was floating in the room, as I had sat back up. I focused on my breathing, posture, icaros and intentions. It would take another hour or two to connect back together. Separating and reconnecting of this visionary process are both mechanisms to understand further.
Just truly can never underestimate the depth of experience one can have in a night. Exhausted today and am in a plunge pool recovering atm.
The hours of experience I’m gathering are what will fundamentally change me as an artist, and give me an edge in producing works of importance over the coming years and decades. It isn’t easy work, it also isn’t the final product - I typically only show the final great work rarely the lengths one goes to to understand a new language so you can try to create something interesting.
Many, many artworks can be made at the level one is at now. But to refuse to be content with that level, is what will give me an advantage over the long term. I am not interested in tech tools (glitch, generative, blockchain) to define the category and style of work I’m producing, I am instead much more interested in a way longer goal that seems impossible right now - real magic and how art can play a pivotal role in unlocking experiential doors for others. To strive for this and fail will give greater return on contribution that to choose a shorter more realistic goal and dominate it.
The fun and interest will just run out pretty quick on anything less than the big one - trust me. Any progress made on the big topic will dwarf any contributions in smaller ones. There is no comparison. Hence why I was cornered to shift my entire operation into this field. It’s coming one way or another - who will get there first.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 13: Ceremony #7
Uh oh.
Last night things did not go well. Not entirely sure what happened but this one got me.
Within 10 minutes was flooded with literally thousands of visions, hundreds and hundreds of people emerging and crawling in and out of the woodwork of bizarre DMT-esque meanderings. Peruvian faces, rural farmers, townsfolk, all with the same vibe of movement and sentiment that is a mix between old cartoons simply unwinding themselves and mission oriented messages they conceal. Meaningless and yet so richly deep and full of information that is so so difficult to unpick and understand.
The visions were unrelenting though: if I tried to close my eyes they would compound on themselves into more and more outlandish and uncontrollable things. If I kept them open I was dosed to the gills and would get cross eyed in the dark. The only reprieve a middle ground of half squinting to sit in both at once somehow.
Worse was yet to come, as I heated up to and incredible temperature trying to process so much ayahuasca. It had felt like I’d been bitten by a poisonous snake. The heat was unbearable and I called for help for someone to take me outside. I fanned myself endlessly for the next three hours trying to catch my temp. I went through six cold towels that they were continuously bringing me from the kitchen on special request. They normally don’t give these out easily in the jungle.
Passing in and out of consciousness, dark patch as I was feeling like it was game over folks. Felt my blood sugar spike and go super low so forced myself to bite into an apple just to give a semblance of normal processing in the brain. You quickly realize that yup, you’re in the jungle. Maybe a cold towel can be brought but you’re on your own to make it through. Deep roller coaster of emotions.
Theres something happening in how I’m processing DMT that’s different and unique to others - I believe it is an interesting biochemistry case, most likely to having an over-producing or over-active DMT production in my brain. It’s like the smallest amount is compounding and synergizing. It’s like every other ayahuasca ceremony comes on all backed up in the system.
Being on a strict diet and eating light multiple days in a row again just makes you so sensitive to the processing in your body. It’s not so much you haven’t eaten enough, it’s just you are really fine tuning your instrument to fully process these plants. You become the plants. The forest becomes you. The shamans become you. Consciousnesses interweave and lines blur. I could hear the leaves in the trees move with the wind, but it felt like they were an extension of my senses in my body.
The spread of sensory sensitivity extends well outside of the body into an aura or field that at times feels like a few feet, to at other times feels like it’s connected into other large networks like the jungle or people or cosmic. These may feel like far out concepts but this is the type of stuff you’re playing with. You become the medicine.
Coming out the other side I could not close my eyes until 7am. A brutal ten hour session with fierce peaks. Feeling rough today, but have a bright spirit and sober on Earth again. While very intense it feels like I had learnt an anti-venom by going through such an ordeal. You never initially wish to go through, but being forced to you learn a great deal about yourself, limits of consciousness, and the nature of hidden or locked off dimensions. Am very thankful to have had it. These are badges of honour to have survived and lived to tell the tale.
Have rested for most of today and will be going to ceremony #8 tonight on about a quarter of the dose as tonight just to stabilize the ship. Can feel the end of this marathon journey coming up quick ahead, and am deeply sad about its conclusion, yet excited to reach mainland.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 14: Ceremony #8
A much milder dose today and was cruising comfortably at 30,000ft. This is where ayahuasca feels really spot on and like light work: gentle visions, interconnected sentiment and peaceful feelings of being in the pocket with the jungle. Spent a lot of time thinking about the previous night and consolidating thoughts and interesting insights.
Wrangled together multiple visions that will form the basis of some artworks for the series. One magic moment happened in the pitch dark maloca when the shaman sparked up a mapache and the shadows cast from the single light source was just incredible and gave the impression one other ceremony participant was walk through a portal at the end of their mattress - maybe they really were.
The Amazon is a wonderful place and is about as free as you could feel. The lightning in the sky sparked all night last night during a torrential downpour. Woke up this morning to grab my deodorant to a tarantula the size of my hand crawling up the shelves my clothes hang. I enjoy walking bare feet across the wooden planks all day, and listening to the birds all day and night. I’m never “inside” or isolated from nature anymore which has recalibrated something deep. All food is grown on site, there is nothing in a packet or bought. Life is tough but simple here for the Peruvians. They fish, make crafts and play soccer. Not one child throws a tantrum or cries that I’ve seen- they all seem to be smiling all the time. A general neuroticness of adults in the West must ripple through and down to the children. Happiness for me would be to live in nature again. The stress of the city is crippling for one’s ability to find deep peace.
Spent today digging up some historical use of 5-MeO-DMT in the Amazon in the form of snuffs made from a variety of plants including the seeds from the Anadenanthera peregrina and curiously a few Acacia’s, which are my personal plant of choice in Australia including Acacia auriculiformis, Acacia victoriae. These snuffs were called Yopo, cohoba or virola and have an entheographic documented history dating back at least 600 years in the Amazon basin. The use of the Sonoran desert toad has been much more recent. This is important to extend the cultural history of use of this specific compound in addition to the Caapi and Chacruna in ayahuasca.
Curiously 5-MeO-DMT and a variety of other variations on DMT molecules have been found in many Acacias in Australia, and it’s well know that actually the better DMT is often a jungle mix that is “full spectrum” which includes these other variations instead of just a cleaner product of white crystals. This full spectrum jungle mix of maybe a deep red sap like colour or yellow or orange most likely includes many of those other molecules synergizing into the experience to include some partial 5-MeO-DMT lift off at the same time as the standard N, N-DMT visions.
The ayahuasca has been powerful but am finding that actually the underground Australian psychedelic scene is punching very far above its weight and have really comprehensively explored in a more detailed way a lot of nuanced around DMT use.
What I’ve noticed the Amazon does do better is create these wild synergistic effects with the icaros that seem to reverberate and heighten the extra sensory experience and focus much greater on efforts towards healing. The icaros are truly unique, and the dedication to the plant dietas to keep learning new methods directly from plant intelligences.
In Australia, there are no visionary medicine men working with Westerners and plant medicine. South American traditional jungle use is unique in this way and it has served them well, opening a door to tourism and cultural exportation that heightens and secures their future - albeit with some compromise of balancing the inflow of tourists and expectations vs. organic use.
Few days rest and then into the final stretch of the last four ceremonies.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 15: Rest
A new batch of tourists have come through the doors of the retreat. I’m one of the only to be here for so long, most stay 4-5 days. Some stay 10. Few stay a month. This amount of time is recommended for “deep work”, but with so many other factors at play in the jungle it is quite taxing. It is needed however, for me, to really attune into this special place with the most visionary plants in the world, with a culture that has been using them for the hundreds of years.
The only thing that matters in psychedelic research really is experience in the form of hours one has spent in hyperspace. No one can compete with the Shipibo of course, having taken ayahuasca multiple times a week for 60 years. However the time I’ve spent here has certainly developed a finessed understanding of the plants affects on vision, hallucinations and the spirit world.
Reflecting on how deep the places you can go: It’s incredible to think what the mind can be stretched to and return safely back to normal. Of course, this is not possible for some, where the rubber band gets stretched too far and it breaks. Very thankful for a number of reconciliation techniques I’ve learnt over the years during psychedelic sessions that help me navigate and unwind some very spicy, coiled knots. Allowing cans of worms to “resolve correctly” rather than stuffed down to be forgotten is something most people should be striving to do.
There’s also a lot of affordance and simplicity in the jungle. People stop caring about a whole bunch of useless stuff, mostly because it’s inefficient energy wise. There’s a disinterest in individual achievement - it feels like there is the tribe and survival. The rest isn’t that important. No one really cares about anything other than the moment you’re in and being a good person. Being light and funny is a value that is elevated much higher here than other skill sets.
I’ve had one major alert level breakthrough in understanding this very wide and complex field and about 10-12 minor breakthroughs that could all be research topics and papers. Have written many notes about them and will just keep chipping away while my time is spent here - more secrets to come.
There will be major work required on how to develop training guides for facilitation of psychedelics in the West - a very complex field with many many unknowns and poor practices already. How do you talk and interact with someone in that state or who is really losing the plot. Facilitators are basically just volunteers - they aren’t counsellors or therapists or psychologists they could could be anyone. Mind you, those fields too don’t have the correct understanding of how to react and support a psychedelic trip, as their frameworks have zero understanding of what is happening during a trip. They may have learnt the broad training - be respectful, list, patient, don’t overlay or project etc. but it’s more about their mettle as a person is put to the test during dark nights of the soul. How do you measure the love of a facilitator to support someone compassionately in their most vulnerable moment? Are friends better than facilitators? Much work to do *everywhere* in this field, and this field is going to 10x, 100x in the future as the West continues to lose the plot mentally without helpful medication and healing techniques.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 16: Forty hour brew
Helped to mallet down some vine today for the 40 hour aya brew that lasts them about a month and they store in bottles. They cook it in 4 black witches cauldrons - because you know it’s a magic potion. Ayahuasca is a thick syrup, almost the thickness of a thick shake. It’s a brutal taste: it has this earthy chalk-like residue that coats every part of your mouth. To even mention the word ayahuasca now makes me gag. Keeping it down is a bit of a battle.
We eat mostly fruit for breakfast at 8: mangos, mandarins, apples, some oats and eggs. Then we eat a light lunch at 12: rice, yuca, sautéed vegetables and then nothing else that day as we drink the ayahuasca at night. This ensures we have a clean stomach lining for it to be absorbed quicker and with less to purge if necessary.
Have lost weight and had more sun than I’ve had in years here in the jungle, by virtue of eating less in a day more often and the food being simple and healthy. Has done wonders for feeling bright and connected - not having sugar or fat cravings daily is a major positive.
Some of the tales that get around here are wild. One of owners here was telling me about Maestra Christina, who is 75 years old, who gets told messages from spirits all day about the guests here, and that these spirits walk around the centre but no one else can see them. She comes from a direct lineage of shamans - her grandfathers grandfathers grandfather were all shamans. She trained all of the shamans here. They were saying how there are stories of alchemical transmutation where the shaman will turn into an animal at different times, mainly at night, to go travel to other villages here in the Amazon. A tale I’ve often heard across cultures and is not unique to the jungle.
Very curious about these siddhi like magical abilities and their stories. From the West they seem like fun stories to amplify mystique, but after 8 ceremonies here I can tell you on thing - there is a whole layer of ESp and magical layer of stuff going on, that feels like it is completely outside of the known bounds of this reality. Hence those stories feel like there is a curious depth to them.
Tomorrow we have ceremony #9, which I am particularly looking forward to with a smaller group of us here about half the size as the first week. Let’s get it.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 17: Ceremony #9
Wonderful 6 hour experience tonight. A very typical ayahuasca journey that felt clean and bright, without the heaviness that’s come through a few times. This is where ayahuasca really shines, when everything works as expected. There is absolutely nothing I’d rather be doing that be in a pitch black maloca in the jungle watching visions for 5-6 hours. Gentle and smooth, got a bit intense for a while, but began peaking very traditionally after an hour last about 1-2 hours with much less intense and gentle visions for the remainder.
It’s a very open space to think in, since you can see what your mind’s eye can see, rather than fumbling around in your thoughts blind like normally. I do my deepest visionary work for my life path and complex issues in these states. This is where healing and premonitions come in.
I really believe the freshness of the brew helped with the clarity of visions - something to certainly investigate is the chemical compositions of brews that have been stored for weeks or months. They will often flash boil it to remove any fermentation but it feels like there is more going on when the assumption is that nothing is.
The visions were of incredible new artworks, laughing Peruvian children, the maloca, the jungle from a birds eye view, eyes in the room, hidden passage ways, a future son to come and so much more. I’ve never enjoyed watching TV, but I imagine the this is why people like watching TV - to see reels and reels of the imagination in action. Of course, TV is a consumptive behaviour watching someone else’s dreams, compared to cultivating your own.
It is undeniable to me that the smartest individual thinkers across all fields will eventually migrate to the topic of DMT. It is a bright light that will attract the greatest minds to attempt to unravel. All roads lead there, and many other fields will define their own as the pinnacle, but the talent pool working in them will be standard high achievers. The new Theoretical Division in Los Alamos will be focused on DMT. It is where breakthroughs in science and cognition will be made that blow past all known limits of physics. In the DMT research space, the equivalent of Einstein or Gödels will be made. This knowledge is inaccessible to AI as it is experiential and it will require the human consciousness to bend and warp into infinitesimally small and large complex forms and shapes to achieve so.
It’s interesting how few people want this type of lifestyle that includes consistent visionary states. For me, it feels like a latent and fundamental property of mind that is being actively ignored, yet it is honestly superpower-like abilities.
Multiple very strange and supernatural moments - one in particular when both shamans stopped signing almost simultaneously as they felt something come into the room at the same time lightning cracked and struck outside to light up the whole place as if being electrocuted. A real moment where everything happened.
I learnt something very deep about the process in which I make art, and the difference between how the Shipibo approach this same task do differently. The key is that they treat art as ethnographic diagrams - they document and explain many concepts about their worldview in a single work, that also function as healing tools as well. The West is hyper-obsessed with aesthetics - yet I think by compromising aesthetics and increasing diagrammatic aspects one is able to communicate long-form ideas and complex worldviews much easier. I will be taking this learning with me into this new series and as always approaching my art with the pure authenticity to capture something special.
Rest tomorrow and then onto ceremony #10. I can already sense the deep sadness I’ll feel to miss the natural wood structures, the bird songs, the rain, the studious focus on learning the supernatural. I have probably a 500+ book library and not a single fiction book, as I know the wildest stories of all deep in reality.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 18: Integration and reflection
Spent the day swimming in the Amazon river, going for medicine walks, reflecting, writing and reading.
The sheer amount of rich data experienced on this trip so far has been incomparable. Growth happens when you are stretched, and it is why I believe psychedelics play an important role in the advancement of cognition. I believe that those brave souls learning to navigate these realms and experiences - the good, the bad and the ugly- are paving the way for smoother experiences for many others in the future.
It’s been interesting watching the children play carefree and high spirited - always respectful, grins on their faces in whatever activity they do, and a freedom to explore and develop very naturally. There is a lot of risk that surrounds them everyday but they do just fine in navigating it. I feel the best growth always happens under duress and stress. Soft settings create soft people. Bumps and bruises are important to help the individual develop their abilities, navigation and self-regulation capacities. In the same way psychedelics occur to: adults tend to hyper focus on creating safe containers to live in and steer away from risk, but unfortunately I believe that this can stifle growth of potential.
In the same way that therapy is helpful to work through tough events in your life, psychedelics instead help force development whether you like it or not. This is a more brutal process, but afterwards, there is no better feeling than having learnt to fly your own fighter plane in treacherous conditions, and pushed your experience of your system in terms of understanding how it all works. Of course, one can just skip all this and feel healthy in mind, body and spirit - but there is a range of abilities and experiences inaccessible via other modalities. Breathwork or yoga won’t take you to the places of high dose ayahuasca. They are both great but each play a key role in extending the ability of mind.
What I have learnt on this trip so far is truly incomparable. It is the time and experience in being neckdeep in voodoo that brings so much new information forward. I’m uninterested in playing the game by any one else’s rules, as I am hot on the trail of breakthroughs in understanding a range of traditional fields through my own independent research.
The Sleepr brand is auspicious, extra-terrestrial and built different. It is a life long commitment to one goal in art, and I am convinced that my long-term goals of public collections and important collectors will continue to be achieved as the works will be seen as important and unique contributions.
The story of Sleepr really can’t be told over brunch - the complexity and richness takes days, weeks and months to wade through the detail. This is what a good story should have - many chapters and many interwoven breakthroughs and meanings.
2025 will see a lot of work done through the team in expanding contacts, opportunities and connections in the traditional art world with the works always store on the blockchain as this is clearly the future development of the art world.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 19: Ceremony #10
Sheesh, just when you think you’ve got the snake by the neck it pulls you into an all night long battle. Very intense ceremony. Still sizzling spice at 7am.
Within 10 minutes of the first cup I was pulled into three-dimensional visions very similar to The New God except it was orange, with fabric strips and trim of geometric patterns strewn over the organic, writhing, conscious mass before me. I’ve seen this many times on DMT - it is as though you’re looking at private view of a plant spirit whose form is so complex your brain just pauses and rests as it watches. There is a deep sense of calm when you are watching it too. It’s like looking out at the top of a mountain range - a deep sense of calm and peace at the undeniable sense of beauty you’re witnessing. A healing vision unlike anything ever told or described to us before.
Many visions came on quick for about 40 minutes and then just like it has a few times before, it seemed to flush all the DMT out and I became very sober very quickly. This lasted for about 2 hours as I sat there meditating and listening to the icaros quite carefree thinking my night was going to be short and sharp.
I was disrupted by the person next to me asking for help to a facilitator as it became too much for her, and light a match lit in a dark room I had the overwhelming sense that I too will need help and this experience wasn’t close to done. My entire field of view became like noise on a TV, a statically charged field except instead of pixel artefacts, or video grain noise, these were made of the same geometric spirals and knots and twists and turns that all DMT visions seem to have infused into its skin. It’s a type of conscious can of worms, writhing and crawling with aliveness, as though in a moment it would reveal that each pore is in fact an entirely inhabited world. This rush and inset snowed me out - I was completely blind and incapacitated to see or breathe or think.
I believe there is a gating mechanism to the processing of DMT that few have described that is producing these “waves”. It builds up the caught DMT without processing it, until eventually some amount tips it over into being released and processed by the brain.
I then spent the next 3 hours in ceremony just fighting for it, struggling to keep the crawling insanity from spiralling into a full blown meltdown. The intensity across the processing regions of the brain and how much new information you can sense and detect internally - like following with a flashlight the processing regions of a computer - from hard drive to RAM to operating system to screen for eg.
Many many realisations about cognition later and I was exhausted. The lead shaman was struck down again, and her two sons spent about 45 minutes signing passionately and vibrantly to help her, blowing endless mapachos. It is very interesting the attentiveness the shamans show for each other - they know it’s murky waters and best to take many, many precautions.
It became clear to me for the hundredth time that the biochemistry and effects of ayahuasca are not just limited to the molecules. There is an entire layer of interactions occurring with ayahuasca that are the plant spirits.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 20: Shipibo Maestro Interview
Had the great privilege to capture an exclusive interview with one of the lead shamans - Maestro Eligio - for the Sleepr documentary. We spoke for about 45 minutes solely on the nature, aesthetics and qualities of visions he sees. Asked many questions about the type of subject matter that most dominates his personal visions in ceremony. Anacondas, jaguars, eyes, temples were all common. I asked him specific questions about where are the visions coming from, does he see his Icaros he sings, do Peruvians see different things than Westerners and more.
Eligio was born deep in the Peruvian jungle in the native community of Vencedor, a 24 hour boat ride from Pucallpa. The son of Maestra Justina and Maestro Cesar he comes from a pure lineage of Meraya Healers and is one of the most promising talents in the Amazon. He started working with the plants at the young age of 14.
Eligios voice is incredible and often contorts and winds its way around and around, upside down and inside out throughout your mind, as though the plant spirits he’s channeling are literally clearing the pipage of your thoughts. It feels like a stiff bristle brush clearing away blockages that filter down the three energetic levels: from spirit to mind to body.
The icaros he sings work on a spiritual level, far outside of the sensitivity we can really understand or sense in the immediate sense, but you can feel something shifting. Just like when your stomach is being held tight in a knot due to stress and you suddenly relax and feel a great sense of ease mentally. In the same way you can massage the spirit body of a human and this re-alignment will filter down into the mental framework and then into the physical.
Curiously, many of the shamans are quite uninterested in the visions. I think it’s a Western thing where seeing is believing, and without the same cosmology of plant spirits that they live and breathe everyday, we need something to hang this new framework onto.
I personally love the visions as it is just one very clear aspect of psychedelics that is virtually impossible to deconstruct cleanly into just neurological causes. Take DMT 50 times and you might think you get how it’s being made in the brain. Take it 150 times and you realise you know absolutely nothing about anything, and all your frameworks need to be abandoned.
What an incredible journey so far, and the story to be told is going to be such a wonderful exposition on an artist making visionary art in the modern era, and the tension between indigenous and Western perspectives meeting at the junction of plant medicine.
The West just cannot beat the long length of time the Shipibo have spent learning the nuances of a certain plants characteristics (aka its spirit) in an intergenerational tradition with lessons passed on for centuries or with an individual who has been healing for over 25 years and probably 5000 ceremonies under your belt.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 21: Ceremony #11
Strong but excellent ceremony last night. Just about the perfect dose, with many visions, but still sweating bullets at its intensity.
One of the things I’m most sensitive about in my life - personally, at work, in relationships - is authenticity. I believe that due to the consistent use of psychedelics, I can feel and sense authenticity at a much higher level, to the point where it is basically my only measurement of engagement with someone.
Often times people try to be authentic to the best of their ability, but they have many blockages or personal issues, gripes, beliefs that limit their capacity to just be straight with you. I don’t care if you collect butterflies or run a nightclub - I only really care about the amount of authenticity I detect in you.
I say this as there were many moments of focused insight into the nature authenticity and how it is like the initial domino in a chain reaction of actions of anything that reaches me. That initial domino is the message that comes through the loudest, not the final or the sequence.
When someone plays a note of music on a piano, I can feel their authenticity. I can feel their fear, trepidation or doubt. The shamans are clean in their authenticity - they have nothing to hide and don’t over compensate their care. Getting your head straight - I mean truly and deeply straight - is the only important task to do before you begin anything. If you’ve got baggage to work through, anything you touch will be poisoned by the past. It sticks out like a neon sign, and will cause others to move away until you resolve your issues.
The Shipibo are regularly cleaning their spirit with multiple ceremonies per week. The same way we clean our teeth, or go to therapy, however few of us go to the spiritual gym to keep our spirits clean.
You can intuitively detect the source of where a vision is coming from. I know when a vision I see is mostly from my imagination, or my memory, or is just a neurological effect - and most importantly - a vision that I didn’t generate whatsoever, but one that is revealing from a different source.
These visions truly have an otherworldly quality about them. They feel and look like something you’ve never seen and they’re virtually impossible to understand as you look at them, because there is no category they fall in from previously know or seen objects. If there was, it feels like it would be coming from the imagination source.
One incredible moment I will try to capture as an artwork were these DMT sculptures in catacombs, crawling with their geometric patterns and about as baroque and complex a form as you could imagine - nestled into the dusty ground, as though it was under the pyramids.
I recently read about a microdelay in consciousness processing from your physical body to the conscious I registered as your awareness. I believe this is a crucial property in how you can have visions of your own thoughts in realtime. The way this so cleverly works is because of a small delay that enables a feedback loop to witness-process-feed-witness. Thus a perpetual motion feedback loop of conscious navigation of visionary states. Similar to how AI can take the last frame and feed it into the neural network etc. Spent a long time getting used to this sensibility and feeling it happen and witnessing it.
The visions came on really strong as per usual, but another curious effect occurred again, which had happened now on at least 4 ceremonies. There is a whirring tone that comes on very strong and quite audibly loud. So loud I thought it might be coming outside my head, but it is an internal subjective sound. It sounds exactly like a UFO in a sci-fi film, kind of ominous tones, slightly electronic, but a high vibrational buzzing.
I have heard about this tone for 20 years but never experienced it - well it’s certainly a thing. The tone changed and modulated multiple times as though it was feeding information into my head.
Lots to unpack from this one.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 22: Tobacco and plant baths
Ayahuasca without any shamanic systems in place can cause incredible visions and mystical experiences. However it is those cultural systems, such as the Shipibo, that give us working models and insights that are not only clamped out of Western models but would just be repeatably rejected at having any underlying mechanism more than ceremonial show.
A good example of this is the tobacco used heavily in ceremonies for all sorts of things. Shamans will go around the entire maloca and blow tobacco smoke through the outside windows into the space. They will blow tobacco smoke over the top of your head - the crown - and over your hands. They will puff mapachos (straight jungle tobacco) all ceremony. One would initially think it’s being used a bit of a pick me up, just like Westerners would to keep alert through the nicotine, but it certainly isn’t just that.
At one level it is something that is happening with the smoke interfacing with these chakra-like portals that open up which may be at key points in the body and interface with the spirit world. Almost like a camouflage or a perfume that envelopes the spirit body. If one is struggling the shamans will blow smoke over the crown repeatably.
But deeper, and harder for Westerners to understand, is that the tobacco plant has a spirit, and that it is “friends” with ayahuasca, and has good synergies with it at the plant spirit ecosystem level. They are calling in a friend to interact with the other main spirit plant - ayahuasca - so that the spirit of tobacco may support and help the individual. This is honestly completely mind blowing to me, and I’ve heard of all this stuff before, and perhaps generally heard their reasoning but it’s never really clicked because there was an initial hurdle to jump around the idea of plant spirits in general.
Another example of this is that I’ve been daily having plant baths, where specific plants have been chosen and blessed by shamans which are then infused into water. One then bathes in the plant-infused water before ceremony - without showering after - so that the plant-infused water remains present all over the body.
Again, it’s tempting to think of some skin related absorption of medicinal nutrients in the plants, or of a general placebo that puts you in a good spot to enjoy it, but to be quite frank, in the jungle there’s just little inspiration for showmanship and theatre without much effect.
The deeper reason again is that these plants are “friends” with the ayahuasca spirit, and by infusing yourself in them you are effectively becoming “friends of friends”. Each plant has its own incredible abilities, but in the context of ayahuasca they support the interaction with this main plant spirit.
Another practice by the Shipibo in this same vein is before drinking ayahuasca, the main and incredibly powerful Maestra Christina will half-whistle icaros into the drinking containers containing the deep earthy brew. Icaros must be whistled into the ayahuasca while it is brewing. This all appears very ceremonial to a Western mind, and appears like well-wishes for the journey ahead.
But again deeper down, there is an imprinting or memory that occurs in liquid and water which are based on intentions both privately and explicitly. These intentions are what is consumed - they are “attached” to the medicine the same way one applies spin to a bowling ball so that late down the lane it may kick in with a certain spin to change the trajectory of the roll.
Intentions are not part of medicine in the West - it’s a part of prayer and spirituality - which likely has more effect than many would believe or assume.
The levels one can reach taking ayahuasca are lifetimes ahead of standard cognitive development of the human brain, and one is thrust into a world of interactions so complex that all existing frameworks dissolve out. I keep a very open mind about indigenous practices as all I know is that I know so little.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 23: Ceremony #12
Wow. There’s honestly less and less words to say as I’ve gone on further down the rabbit hole.
An incredible turn of events that led to a really important personal moment for myself. I’ve stated to become very frightened of the visions - their intensity is just really hard to conquer, and when the spice begins to sizzle intensely, my entire field becomes dominated with the distinct pattern of DMT geometric patterns.
The intensity is so much that it looks like it is fierce knives or hair whipping out, almost like masks in the blackness of space. When this has happened recently a few times, I’ve shut down due to feeling terrified and looked away or breathe deeply and try to just “manage” the moment. But tonight something different happened.
Quick lesson: Maestro Eligio talked about an important vision he had privately with some facilitators after a ceremony. This knowledge is very sacred to learn from. He spoke about seeing like giant sharp knives spinning in front of him and he was strapped to a seat that was moving towards it.
He became very frightened, but eventually succumb and gave in to his fate. When he did the knives simply passed right through him with no effect, and on the other side, he spent 6 hours in some of the most mind bending visual state where the plants explained and talked him through hundreds of medicinal uses of plants in the jungle. It was a very deep download of real knowledge.
The same tale occurs when you hear how fortunate it is to have a vision of an anaconda eating you. Though you may be frightened - let it eat you completely so that it may reveal its secrets.
I remembered this story just as the hallucinations became really difficult. At this point I am so tired after this marathon excursion, and am now tired of being scared of the visions - so I just gave up, and said “well go on and obliterate me, I don’t care now” and faced the visually head on, and let them encompass my entire visual field for me to process and deal with it. At that moment I slipped through the wild visual field of Zulu style masks, and noise and turbulence and popped into quite literally another world.
What I saw honestly just blew my mind. It was a two level room with multiple small beings, moving about in quite a clinical and autonomous manner. They were very strange, simple shaped, and moved oddly. But the crispness and suddenness of clarity is what is so hard to reconcile. This is what McKenna coined as ‘true hallucinations’ where there is this qualitatively potent feeling that what you are seeing is present somewhere else other than this world.
I’ve heard about small, little people or elves in visions many times but never seen any. They were about 3-4ft, almost toy-like workers on another dimension, moving up and down multiple levels in an architectural space.
But one major breakthrough concept I am proposing - is that these fearful visions that many people see are most likely a defence mechanism from the plant spirits. In the same way tribes make masks to deter people from just the look, I believe the plant spirits are putting up soft-defensive walls that can be navigated through in order to protect more intimate secrets. Many people would miss out on that truly visionary stage, getting caught up in the blind fear.
Plants have many defence mechanisms in nature, and many use illusions to trick or fool, and so it feels like a natural behaviour progression to see this type of process happen in the visionary realm too. The longer one resists the concept of plant spirits, the longer the delay between getting to the heart of what is happening with psychedelics. The Shipibo are a living embodiment of this concept.
It’s always truly terrifying to engage with such a force, and this doesn’t go away. Ayahuasca is like learning how to ride a wild stallion. It will throw you off many times, but the attuning period eventually leads to significantly greater experiences than possible before.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 24: Rich in spirit
The Peruvians in the Amazon live in harsh conditions, mostly third world, and have little possessions other than things like shelter, hunting utensils and perhaps a soccer ball. Their houses are on stilts, and are made of bare broken wood. There is no carpet, windows or doors. There are few fans or lights. Everything that is bloat has been trimmed by the jungle; separating out survival from comfort. Yet they are so rich in spirit it’s difficult for us to understand where the source of nourishment is coming from.
The shamans talk about how their minimalist needs, namely: ayahuasca, a maloca to do their healing, food and a place to sleep. There is a nourishment that they have by being so interconnected into the land, that many in the West do not have. Instead we fill it with all kinds of things to counteract that lack feeling we walk around with. Like trying to eat more to quench a thirst, it just doesn’t quite get there in the end.
I’ve noticed their eyes light up when you talk about how nature is operating. When you talk about the different sounds of the monkeys, or why you hear hummingbird sounds on ayahuasca, or how to handle a tarantula - as one guide shows me as it crawls up his arm, over his neck and onto his face. They love learning the way that nature operates, and are encyclopaedic on so many things yet rarely advertise it. We all enjoy how things work, and of course they would focus primarily on the jungle, but it feels deeper. Learning to understand the mysterious force of nature is very nourishing, as it aligns the disconnected fundamental interconnectedness.
Many cultures display genuine happiness with very little, but there is truly something charming about how uninterested the Peruvians are in many of the things that see important for us. It reveals an alternative world view that abandons the cancerous qualities of middle-class working culture that feel about as absurd and useless as Kafka articulates: Paper pushing busywork, statistics driven pseudo-science, poisoned food, inauthentic smiles - not sure which culture is poorer to be honest when we are the ones who live in such pain. No wonder why we travel around the world to be healed and nourished by the juice of a vine in a hut in the middle of the Amazon.
The main reason why the anthropological qualities are important to ayahuasca use is because the framework in which you approach the animist components - I.e plant spirits - will greatly determine your interpretation of experience.
Westerners will reframe quite radical experiences back to fit within Western cognitive or therapeutic lenses, which I think is limiting their experience of interpreting deeper truths about this medicine.
I think there is a missing puzzle piece in ayahuasca tourism. Just as there is a lot of writing and support for preparing the food intake via a dieta of clean and healthy meals, I believe there should be a preparatory Shipibo animist foundation of knowledge that is learnt prior to ingesting. This then creates alternate interpretive pathways to what happens during the experience, so that patrons can be open to the possibility of more than they are typically familiar with. When they say “the plants told them” they didn’t mean a fun way of saying “they intuitively guessed”, “my gut told me so”, they really meant this third party source of information told them.
It is almost always the case that one needs to keep going back and back to so many of your a priori assumptions before you are able to leapfrog over those boundaries that emerge in the peak states.
Heading out of the Amazon in 2 days now and will be going back to Iquitos so will do a wrap up post soon. Been such a nice experience overall, very hard to put into words. Shed some tears today at being grateful for so many things in my life. I am just a sensitive guy who is trying to be brave and bold and inspire others to do the same.
Take care friends and keep smiling bright.
Iquitos, Peru
Day 25: The End
Very bittersweet to come to the end of this journey in the Amazon. Grateful to have spent time becoming friends with the Shipibo shaman, they are enormously generous in knowledge and spirit. They have dedicated their lives to the craft of navigating the spirit world to heal others. Despite the ayahuasca tourist trade being complicated culturally for both these indigenous healers and Western tourists, there are numerous benefits of this shared dialogue for both that are atypical in this precarious relationship.
This has been a critical development period too for me to undertake as an artist. Spending time in the visionary world is the type of foundational work that is really important, and becoming familiar with using your third eye more than your other two is the single fundamental skill of an artist - we just for some reason expect them to use their imagination blind.
For me, it's more important to spend time discovering what to make, rather than how to make something. The how is a much easier task, once you actually have discovered something important to capture. People learn how to sing because they want to be singers - but they rarely spend time on building a life of stories that are worth singing about. Your why as an artist is your everything.
My skillsets will continue to develop and mature over time. I'm by no means the greatest at illustration, 3D, texture, material, sculpting, pattern, lighting, geometry etc. But what I am continuing to refine over the years is a level of comfort in taking risks visually that are backed by a grounded thesis on taste in the visual arts and how it will develop in the future.
I am anticipating where the puck will go - in 2, 5, 10, 20 years time. Eventually at some point in the future, we will begin to seriously dedicate large-scale resources to sending psychonauts into the spirit world and other dimensions to document and map out hyperspace. The early and crude maps created by visionary artists now will form the basis of this work and will be historically seen as important.
In the same way there was an explosion of early explorers discovering far distant lands to form countries, there is a currently a goldrush to tagging the aesthetics and contents of the spirit world. These include a taxonomy of new artifacts like geometric forms, places, and entities. The first to bring back proof - that is timestamped clearly - will undoubtedly wield tremendous sway over the historical attribution to its discovery. This is the game I've been playing for a while.
My work has always tried to catch a strange quality in action - like a sports photograph can capture a moment in time. I think of myself a little like a national geographic explorer, rather than an illustrator or abstract artist. I think this is because despite the clear task of recreating things I've seen, there are deep fundamental problems with the representation of things losing a level of authenticity.
I believe that visionary artists are going to be one of the most important developments in art history - period. Their theoretical contribution to documenting the unseen spirit world will supersede in importance many new and existing visual art movements.
I've completely disregarded trying to appease the algorithm on Twitter. Keywords like psychedelics or ayahuasca tank discoverability, and long winding posts with little likes confirm to the algorithm that the account is not what mainstream consumption is looking for. I'm not trying to fit expectations, I'm trying to trust my gut and keep the blinkers on.
I really appreciate everyone who has commented, or sent well wishes - it's helped me enormously to keep going down the rabbit hole further when the fear sets in that I've gone too far. I've spent a month going slightly bonkers in the jungle, but my greatest fear of all is that fear itself will short my destiny. This cannot and will not happen, and I'd rather risk it all to conquer fear. Being in a room full of risk-takers feels supportive of the Sleepr mission. I like seeing people take risk and back themselves and want to see everyone who takes risks win.
Will spend another day here in the Amazon, then another in Iquitos, and then make the long haul back to Australia - but will snip the transmissions here. Godspeed my brothers and sisters. May we all make it to the other side.