4th shamanic conference and Amazon wrap up

By Dean Jefferys

Flying back from the Amazon across the deep blue pacific ocean for the 6th time I'm wondering if the rising fuel prices and the difficulty to justify this carbon footprint, means this may be my last trip to visit the shamans of the Amazon.

I've just spent an amazing 6 weeks in Chile and Peru. First I travelled to the International Whaling Commission, I.W.C. in Santiago, Chile, with 6 other people from the Byron region. The aim was to try to stop the whaling nations from the insane activity of killing whales. We definitely rocked their boat, but that's another story. What I want to talk about here is the crazy shamanic adventure that followed in Peru.

To cover my costs to attend the IWC I organized a shamanic tour with 8 people from around the world to visit sacred sites around the Machu Picchu region and into the Amazon jungle and experience some power plants. The power plants of Peru, the San Pedro cactus and the Ayahuasca vine have been used along the Andes Mountains and in the jungle by shamans and people in ceremony for thousands of years. Ayahuasca is not only legal in Peru it was just declared part of Peru's cultural heritage therefore keeping it out of the cluches of the UN and Americas war on drugs.

Climbing to the top of Machu Picchu mountain to avoid the crowds I knew the transmission from condor rock and the mountain with San Pedro would be worth the steep 2 hour climb. The shaman I was walking with suggested we chanted as we climbed and every 30 steps we prostrate to show our respects and develop a relationship with Apu (mountain) Machu Picchu. I don't know if it was the ozzy rebellious nature but us 3 ozzys didn't want to leave when they where rounding everyone up at closing time so we hid, then spent the night exploring these ancient ruins under the full moon. I felt shamans throughout the ages have use these power plants here in ceremonies, connecting them with the forces of nature and the spirit world.

This shamanic tour ended the day before the start of 4th shamanic conference in Iquitos, situated deep in the Amazon jungle in Peru. Around 200 people from countries around the world attended the gathering with an aim to acquire a deeper understanding of this ancient shamanic healing art and the Ayahuasca experience itself. It was an excellent opportunity for people to drink Ayahuasca with a trusted and experienced shaman. I liked shaman Percy Garcias energy and decided to drinks with him. 48 km from Iquitos and a half hour walk and we were at his Ayahuasca centre in the jungle.

We started the ceremony off with a flower bath and tobacco smudge to help cleanse the body and spirit. The Ayahuasca was prepared with 7 other plants the names of which remained a shamanic secret. Videoing at night with infra-red help me capture some of the magic without interrupting the energy, yet at some point in the ceremony the camera became an inoperable object. Purging the contents of your body is part of the cleansing process that I think most participated. The next day, two people reported seeing the same small forest beings and delighted each other with sharing the same descriptions of the beings. Another was show by the plants aspects of herself that she wasn't even aware of. For me, drinking Ayahuasca was like visiting and old friend. She reminds me of a world that exists parallel to our own that we forget, or just don't realise is there. She also can show when we have stepped of the path of being the best person we can be and through visions and insights guides us back on our path. Many westerners are now using Ayahuasca as a tool for their own personal development yet paranoid unfounded laws try to prevent people using these power plant. As Terence Mc Kenna once said "We are told to live between a narrow canyon of conciousness walled in between awake and asleep." Countries like lemmings signed up to the UN convention on Narcotics that put these power plants in the Schedule One category along with heroin and cocaine. So paranoid were the powers that be that these plants may challenge the status quo, that even research into these plants and their possible clinical applications were banned. Now many Doctors, Philosophers, rights campaigners, Ethnobotinists and more are lobbying to remove these plants from a scheduled list and allow their use in respectful ceremonies.

Another well respected local Ayahuascaro healer told me how he works with spirits of dead doctors from around the world to help heal people. These spirits also protect him from bad spirits that sometimes try to psychically attack him. Around 60 local Peruvian people come to his house every Friday night to be healed by him. He doesn't charge any money. After an Ayahuasca session with him, Celo from Mullumbimby now living in the Amazon said see could see as clear as day, all the spirits in the room that he was working with.

I was kept busy filming editing and uploading short video clips and interview of the conference to mywww.planetearthinternettv.com. I also made a one hour documentary of the conference which is available from my other website www.shamansoftheamazon.com

I managed a chat with an English guy who, after a series of ayahuasca visions was inspired to build a 7 story floating pyramid on the Amazon river. Now almost half built. See www.pyramidperu.com/ for more info.

I lost 10 kilos on this 6 weeks trip and I figured I should be able to interest some of Jenny Craig's clients to come to the Amazon on a shamanic weight loss program.

Talks and interviews were intermingled with direct shamanic experiences in this 8 day conference that I'm sure has transformed many lives. Yet I'm also sure some may have been disappointed that they didn't get the visuals or visions that where depicted so well in the Ayahuasca western called Renegade, or my film "Shamans of the Amazon" or that the little machine elves that Terrence Mc Kenna explained so eloquently didn't dance for them. Yet next year many of the same faces will appear in the large Amazon jungle town of Iquitos at the 5th Shamanic conference, again looking to deepen their understanding of shamanism and the Ayahuasca experience. Maybe Ill get one more year in.

Footnote: Many clips of the Shamanic conference are currently available to play on demand atwww.planetearthinternettv.com. Dean is heading to Tonga this week, filming, communicating and swimming with the humpback whales. He will be uploading underwater footage of the whales to his website. Japan still plans to kill 50 humpback whales and 900 Minke whales this summer in the Antarctic unless they can be convinced otherwise.

For the whales
Dean Jefferys

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