Quantum Life Bodywork News

Help Free A Major Indigenous Leader Imprisoned in the U.S.

On Tuesday, October 19, 2010, indigenous Colombian healer Taita Juan Agreda Chindoy was detained in the Houston International Airport. He was formally arrested by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) for possession of his traditional medicine Ayahuasca. He is now being charged as a federal criminal and is facing up to 20 years in federal prison.

[From Free Taita Juan]

On a not so positive note, and speaking of Indigenous leaders and holders of Traditional knowledge, some sad news from the US recently is detailed at the website above. It is heartening to see the explosion of support for Taita Juan in the social media networks and, I am sure, in the material realm.

Whilst the expression of outrage is understandable, Taita Juan’s arrest serves as a reminder to all who actively participate in ceremonial relationship with the Sacred Medicines. In most countries in the world these plant sacraments, absurdly in my own opinion, remain prohibited by law with extreme penalties for their possession and ingestion. It behooves all who have an interest or relationship with these plants to acquaint themselves with the local and federal legislations which pertain to the plants usage in their country. Whilst it is true that the Teacher Plants can offer protection to individuals and groups, there are aways opposing forces and as Steve Beyer highlights in his excellent Singing to the Plants, the realm of Curanderismo [at least in the regions from which Taita Juan hails] deals explicitly with both the light and the dark. Protection in this context is hard won and requires vigilance.

A recent arrest of Santo Daime members in the UK, arrests in Chile and less recently in Australia amongst others show that, although some jurisdictions have a more mature perspective, the brutality of the state can still be swiftly and unfortunately brought to bear on those whose aims and actions may be of great integrity.

Whilst personal work with the Sacred Medicines is imperative and civil disobedience, as Martin Luther King, Gandhi and others have shown, is at times a necessity, the only way we can prevent this kind of travesty from occurring is to work towards the change of legislation that makes it possible in the first first place. Overt public civil disobedience has historically shown to have a high cost for the individuals involved, forcing as it does, the hand of the imperial power of the time. Let us work towards a world in which we who revere the possibilities for healing afforded by these Sacred Medicines can sit down openly and peacefully throughout the world to celebrate our chosen spiritual expression.

My voice joins others in the cry for a rapid, gentle resolution to this terrible situation for Taita Juan. My prayers are with him.

About six weeks ago, I was asked by Liz Thompson, the director of the Sharing Stories project, if it would be possible for me to visit a widely known and respected song man and Elder of the Waagilaak of Eastern Arnhem Land, Roy Ashley. The co-director of the project, Gavin, had recently driven Mr Ashley to a funeral as he holds an important ceremonial position in the singing of funeral songs, which is to say songs to guide spirits to their proper place after they pass away. In that journey Gavin had the chance to speak at length with Mr Ashley.

Mr Ashley’s physical health was in rapid decline, and this had been noted by both Gavin and Liz. Both were aware that something of the decline was unable to be addressed with Western medicine.

There was a recognition, in subsequent discussions between Gavin, Liz and myself, of a degree of urgency and so I decided to make the journey in the immediacy, despite being unfunded. Although I was aware there would be no finacial payment for my work, in the preparations for that journey I did make a call to a number of directions for financial support to cover the not insignificant costs of that journey.

There is certainly much more to say on this subject, but the immediate intent of this post is to offer thanks to all those who did generously offer that support. The desired outcome in the immediacy was achieved, with Mr Ashley’s condition significantly improved by the time of my departure. Whilst I was there, I asked him to say a few words to those who’s contributions went some way towards the recouping of my costs to get to he.

I’ll let him speak, then, for himself.

Roy Ashley – Legendary Waagilak songman offers thanks for assistance from Quantum Life Studios on Vimeo.

My own thanks go to Liz and Gavin for clearly seeing a need, and acting upon that, despite the lack of a cultural framework to guide the process they were suggesting, and not inconsiderable obstacles to it’s achievement. Thanks to they also for their material and emotional support in the process, and their personal commitment to relationship with Roy that informed that.

Thanks to Corrie for her most generous financial support that made the initial booking of flights an easier leap to make, as well as her ongoing energetic support throughout the process. Thanks to Homelands Community, particularly to Lucas and Maya who took my request for support to the community, and their financial and emotional support for the process. Thanks to Karen and the Canadian Jungian community, to Teresa and all the other supporters who live outside of this land, but recognise the importance of Mr Ashley and those like him who hold song and power therein contained, which is intricately and importantly concerned with the health of the Earth as a whole. Thanks to Eric, Carmer, Georgie and Heather and Barry who also contributed in financial support, and to Alison who also offered most generously financially and energetically in support of the endeavour. Thanks to Simon who made the process smoother in his support thereof on a number of levels . Thanks to Phil at Budget Darwin who enabled a reduced rate for our movement around this wide, brown land. Thanks to Tony and Lynda for their material support by way of nutritional medicines for Roy. A thousand thankyou’s also to Jo and Ruby, who’s commitment to support of me in right action, regardless of reward, allows me the possibility to fulfil my responsibilities for healing in the world.

Despite considerably generosity, some of the costs remain unmet and any further support which can be offered will be gratefully received. A donation button is available to the right side of the page here.

UPDATE: [please note that this link has been removed on account of Paypal's seizure of my all of my funds in my Paypal account months after receiving a few hundred dollars in donations in support of Roy's healing. The reason they purport to have done this is because of "Australian and Global" Counter Terrorism and Money Laundering legislation. I will be writing more of this issue, but will leave the reader to their own conclusions as to the real reasons behind this action]

Obviously the assistance of one man, regardless of how much information he holds, goes a very small way towards addressing the massive health issues facing indigenous Australia. What this small success, does highlight is that there are broad gaps between traditional medical sciences and those offered by the modern Western medical system in Australia, and that those gaps can in some way be bridged by the sharing of other traditional healing sciences. Not only that, it highlights the fact that an effective dialogue regarding these issues is possible between European and indigenous Australia.

I have some time been in dialogue with a French medical doctor who operates a clinic which bridges modern and traditional sciences effectively and specifically for the treatment of addictions in Peru. He has relationship with both the Plant Medicines of South America, and the Western Medical system. He has expressed interest in the possibility of a cultural exchange process between Curanderos in South America and Traditional Healers in Australia. As his system has proved successful for both Europeans and Indegenous people in the South American context, so to does it offer the possibility of a dynamic and ongoing relationship of curing and learning for Indigenous Australians. I have already been in dialogue with a young Indigenous leader and Maparntjarra, who has experienced profound healing on a personal and ancestral level with the aid of the Plant Medicines revered in South America and in a similar context to that to which I am referring.

There is some political sensitivity in an Australian of European descent endeavouring to facilitate processes related to indigenous healing and yet clearly I am in a unique position to assist in this manner as I am recognised as Curandero by colleagues in South America and as Marngitj and Maparntjarra by Elders in this land. Clearly there is much dialogue to be had with other Marngitj, Maparntjarra and Nankari of this land to determine interest in and perceived efficacy of such a program. I personally have been working towards this process from many years, establishing relationship, developing trust, demonstratig capacity and envisaging structure. Slowy what began as a germ of a seed, is taking root, gaining vigour and showing itself as a viable evolutionary proces. That process now needs the support of othes to help it grow.

Clearly the journey I have described above has been a rewarding one on many levels, and a fine indication of the efficacy of cultural exchange. I will be grateful for any offers of assistance received, in whatever form. Contributions received once costs for recent journey have been covered will be turned towards the nurturing of the ongoing process of the the realisation of gathering between traditional Indigenous Healers of Australia and South America with a view to facilitating cultural exchange in the realm of healing.

As these things go, moments after posting my reference to Terrence McKenna, i discovered in my in tray, a link to this article by David Suzuki. It interested me as it spoke to a lot of the subjects I have been endeavouring to address of late. David speaks of perceptual filters, references a story told by Wade Davis [who's inspiring TED talk I referenced here] of the cultural and geographical landscape I am currently inhabiting, and articulates an experience with loggers very similar to a historical one of my own.

If presented with the autopsied brains of a diverse array of people, no expert would be able to distinguish from the brains’ anatomy or neurocircuitry the gender, religion, or socio-economic class of the cadavers. Because we are members of one species, our brains, neurons, and sensory organs are similar in structure and chemistry. But if you were to ask both men and women about love and family, Israelis and Palestinians about Gaza, Catholics and Protestants in Belfast about British occupation, Republicans and Democrats about Karl Rove, and Shia, Sunni, and Kurds about U.S. troops, you’d think the respondents came from different planets.

What this demonstrates is that we learn to see the world through perceptual lenses formed by heredity, upbringing, personal experiences, religion, socio-economic differences, and so on. Even though we detect our surroundings in the same way through eyes, ears, nose, skin, and tongue, our brains actively filter that incoming information so that it “makes sense” according to our individual values and beliefs. This creates huge dissonance between fossil-fuel executives, environmentalists, and politicians when we discuss an issue like climate change.

[From Our perceptual filters shape the world! | Sustainable Development and Humanitarian Causes: The Alternative Channel Blog]

Suzuki goes on to describe an experience with Davis which caused him to think about the profound manner in which a cultural perspective determines a people’s relationship with their environment. He contrasts the vast difference between the attitudes to environment between a resident of a Peruvian mountain village, and a Canadian logger. In his account of a confrontation with one such logger, he says;

The confrontation made for good television, but I was frustrated at our inability to find common ground. Finally I told them, “I worked as a carpenter for eight years, and to this day, I love working with wood. No environmentalist I know is against logging. We just want to be sure that your children and grandchildren will be able to log forests as rich as the ones you’re working in now.” Immediately, one of the men replied that he’d never let his kids to go into logging. “There won’t be any trees left!” he said. And there it was. Those men knew that they were cutting the trees down in a way that ensured there would be no harvestable timber for future generations of loggers, but they saw the trees as the way to put food on the table day after day and make the house and car payments at the end of the month.

Some years ago whilst endeavouring to assist in the halting of an illegal logging operation in Central Victoria’s increasingly scant state forest, I was greeted by the sight of an aging but virile, chainsaw wielding logger sprinting towards me with anger and frustration writ clear in his eyes and on his weathered face.

“Come ‘ere ya f***ing hippy f***ing c***”, he screamed, spittle flying from his mouth. He brandished his chainsaw maniacally, “I’ll give ya a f***ing haircut”

I adopted my best Aussie drawl and met him calmly.

“Ah yeah, hippies mate, don’t get me started! Look mate, I got no problem with logging mate, logging’s an honourable trade. Me, I’m from three generations of rice farmers, mate, out Deniliquin way. That mob can’t make a living any more because of the salt problem caused by too much clearing and over irrigation…”

Within 10 minutes we were sitting on a log, sharing a cup of tea and some organic chocolate donated by the local businesses, eager to protect their environment and the tourist trade it afforded them. George looked over his shoulder to see if any of the other loggers were within earshot and said to me sotto voce

“Yair mate, ya don’t need to tell me we’re killin’ the forest, we know it. 50 year ago mate we used to look after this forest, I could fell two trees over the river and go down half a mile and drink a glass ‘a water outta that stream, clear as crystal it were. This industrial loggin’ mate, it’s bullshit, but what am I gonna do? I’m 67 years old mate, and I got family to support.”

There were tears in his eyes.

The operation was found illegal in the courts and the logging process halted, until such time as the corporations found a loophole or a less publicly obvious forest to exploit..

Suzuki concludes his article;

How can we resolve such differences in perspective? I don’t know, but I am sure that the challenge has to do with what’s locked inside our skulls. I have spent more than 40 years trying to use the electronic media to inform and educate, but I continue to be flabbergasted by the strength of those perceptual filters.

We have to find ways of overcoming those blocks so that we can begin to agree on some basic principles. We are not outside or on top of the web of living things; we are deeply embedded in and utterly dependent on it for our survival and well-being. Without that understanding, we will continue on our destructive rampage.

My experiences about the world, with people of all different ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic situation has lent me to believe that our differences are largely illusory. Most people want to live happily, without fear or struggle. They want their children to be happy, to eat and be educated well. On the whole they want to be kind to their fellow humans. I believe few want consciously to destroy their environment or those with whom they inhabit it. Those that do, I feel have simply forgotten, or been taught by state or religion to see with a perspective too narrow to allow for the effect of their actions upon the web of life and consciousness around them.

My experience in working with the Sacred Medicines has consistently shown me the incredible power of these Teacher Plants to show each and every one of us that “we are not outside or on top of the web of living things; we are deeply embedded in and utterly dependent on it for our survival and well-being”.

If, as Suzuki suggests, “without that understanding, we will continue on our destructive rampage”, why, when we have the possibility of learning from teachers who can offer us precisely that understanding, are these plants outlawed in most countries in the world?

What cultural mechanism, especially in light of substantial scientific evidence that regular Ayahuasca drinking in the context of the UDV church leads to healthier, happier, more culturally cohesive individuals, can justify the continued prohibition of such substantially profound possibilities?

I will leave you to your own conclusions, and with a quote from a National Geographic article I referenced some time ago;

The taking of ayahuasca has been associated with a long list of documented cures: the disappearance of everything from metastasized colorectal cancer to cocaine addiction, even after just a ceremony or two. It has been medically proven to be nonaddictive and safe to ingest. Yet Western scientists have all but ignored it for decades, reluctant to risk their careers by researching a substance containing the outlawed DMT. Only in the past decade, and then only by a handful of researchers, has ayahuasca begun to be studied. At the vanguard of this research is Charles Grob, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at UCLA’s School of Medicine.

In 1993 Dr. Grob directed the Hoasca Project, the first in-depth study of the physical and psychological effects of ayahuasca on humans. He and his team went to Brazil, where the plant mixture can be taken legally, to study members of a church, the União do Vegetal (UDV), who use ayahuasca as a sacrament, and compared them to a control group that had never ingested the substance. The studies found that all the ayahuasca-using UDV members had experienced remission without recurrence of their addictions, depression, or anxiety disorders. Unlike most common anti-depressants, which Grob says can create such high levels of serotonin that cells may actually compensate by losing many of their serotonin receptors, the Hoasca Project showed that ayahuasca strongly enhances the body’s ability to absorb the serotonin that’s naturally there [4]. ‘Ayahuasca is perhaps a far more sophisticated and effective way to treat depression than SSRIs [antidepressant drugs],’ Grob concludes, adding that the use of SSRIs is ‘a rather crude way’ of doing it. And ayahuasca, he insists, has great potential as a long-term solution in maintaining abstinence.

“When we want to understand something strange, something previously unknown, we have to begin with an entirely

different set of questions. What is it? How does it work? Are there recurrent regularities?” Margaret Mead

I wrote recently about the culturally sanctioned belief [and an incredibly resilient one at that] which flies in the face of ever mounting evidence to the contrary, that quantum effects occur at a quantum level and any observation of them in daily human life is evidence of “magical thinking”, superstition or lack of critical facility. Now whilst I agree with Israel Regardie in the matter of their being a great deal of “new age cosmic foo-foo” to sift through in current popular literature around the subject, I believe the matter requires our urgent collective attention, if we are to have any hope of some manner of directing our personal and collective destinies.

Obviously I work in a realm where non human consciousness are not only conceptually considered, but interacted with on a regular basis. These are not abstractions, but rather conscious, self organising and determining entities, with particular personalities who, in certain situations, will interact with the human realm and share their particular wisdoms. By the definitions of a Western reductionist cultural model such ideas are quirky and amusing idiosyncracies to be tolerated at best, or dangerous pathologies to be medicated out of existence at worst, and yet,

“As if it wasn’t bad enough for the military to muck about with mind control, they’re also bent on creating an online, self-teaching artificial intelligence.”

[From Military AI Could Rule the Internet | Wired Science from Wired.com]

Internet Map

So notions of plant sentience are off limits for cultural examinations, but multi million dollar budgets to build the same thing in the machine are up for serious discussions in the rarified halls of the power elite? If nothing else, as the Wired writer suggests;

“there is something vaguely creepy about the idea of greater-than-human artificial intelligence unleashed on the Internet by the military”

Why is it that working in collaboration and harmony with the ecological systems we inhabit is a “fringe” solution, and hurling huge sums of money at technological replications of preexistent structures in nature [which inevitably function with more grace and efficiency] is the dominant course of action to try to ameliorate the damage wrought by our current oil addicted economies?

Again, a regular occurrence in the work conducted here in South America in collaboration with the plants, telepathy when examined in modern intellectual psychological models is largely discounted, unable to be statistically held up as a possibility worthy of serious attention. Again, it’s examination by “fringe” scientists such as evolutionary biologist Rupert Sheldrake are often ridiculed by “serious” scientists and “skeptics”. And yet from here , here and here

“A team of UC Irvine scientists has been awarded a $4 million grant from the U.S. Army Research Office to study the neuroscientific and signal-processing foundations of synthetic telepathy”

Why are these subjects allowable in the cultural domain to be examined for the agenda of dominance and control, for the facilitating of killing people? The use of the such technologies for malefic intent in the Amazon is considered brujeria, or sorcery, yet another notion discounted by modern psychology and philosophy as primitive superstition. and not to be taken seriously. Why are we not spending millions of dollars examining usage [such that has occurred in the Amazon for millenia] in the realms of healing, caring for community and society, and finding visionary means of navigating our way through what is widely held to be a very critical juncture in the evolution of the human species?

A widely quoted aphorism is “the devil’s greatest achievement was to convince humans that he didn’t exist”. If we are to take responsibility for our own destinies [if indeed that is possible] then we must be aware of the possibilities and technologies of consciousness available to us, and be aware that to redress the significant imbalance in the current global mind, we must work actively with those technologies for the betterment of our individual ecosystems and the collective health of the incredible diversity of relations with whom we share this planet. We must have the courage to ask new questions, perhaps uncomfortable ones, if we are to break out of the stupor of our current spiral of self destruction and life denial, as it is clearly obvious that our habituated questionings are not providing us with the answers we need. I have no doubt that we are capable of such a leap of consciousness.

Aho Mitukuye Oyasin

In the course of my day many thoughts and ideas arise, most of which I would like to share and I mentally file these for later expression. As is evidenced by the paucity of posts by me in the last 12 months, this strategy has not been particularly effective. One result of the observation of this is the acknowledgement that I act most effectively in the moment, and that long term planning is definitively not my forte. To this end, I am experimenting with a strategy of posting as thoughts and ideas arise, or as near as possible as is practicable.

Bear with me in this.

So, today I am inspired by the magnitude of possibility. Yesteday I attended to some clients that a friend in the Sacred Valley asked me to see. The actuality of their situations may be told at a later date, but suffice to say that both had been pronounced incurable by the medical systems available here to them and, whilst for many Peruvians the quality of medical treatment available is poor, the same diagnosis would probably have been made in Australia.

One of these clients has been resigned to her fate for some 10 years, and yet in 2 short visits over the course of a couple of weeks those around her have witnessed more change than in the prior decade. I am not offering this for the purpose of self aggrandisement, as I firmly believe such healings are a matter of grace, a confluence of events and people, a matter of right place and time. Nonetheless I feel that there are mechanisms at play which, if explored from a variety of perspectives, would offer much to our develpment of a more sophisticated language with which to point towards healing.

In both of these instances it is obvious that a large part of the capacity to effect change came about by virtue of my capacity to communicate non verbally, as neither of these individuals had, at that time, the capacity to communicate verbally. Probably the most common explanation of this manner of communication would be to refer to words such as clairaudience or telepathy, which may or may not be the case, but I find the common language available in this instance limiting and divisive because both have a pejorative weighting and are not seen as particularly applicable to “real world” curing.

Now obviously the real world is a culturally bound perspective, but there is quite obviously a weight given to the cultural perspective that we in modern western “democracies” adhere to. That this is so was clearly evidenced to me yesterday as I arrived at the small Peruvian town in which my clients lived. Just past the adobe gate to the town was a monstrous billboard which announced, in English, “Cash Available, ATM next left”. Said ATM dispenses US dollars in a region where many live on two or three such dollars a day. US consumer culture is blatantly obvious here, and even by those who cannot afford to participate in it is considered some kind of natural progression. The cultural, economic and environmental cost of this is pronounced.

Here is Wade Davis‘ perspective on such matters.

I can say that the healing afforded these people was a result of grace, and the assistance and direction of the Apus and Pachamamas, the spirits of nature, and celestial sentient beings, which indeed it was, and those who were witness to the events would concur that the winds assisted and the material realm was demonstrably altered by the processes of consciousness enacted therin, but that will not afford me much credibility if I want the cooperation of a mental health research institute in Florida. Nor in fact should it, because I am not Q’ero, am not Chinchero. My genes come from different continents, and my cultural antecedents are worlds apart from those who have for centuries cultivated relationships with the spirits of the mountains and of the elements. I cannot don the intricate weavings of a Q’ero p’aqo, take an initiation and expect to have mystical powers conferred upon me, but I am not so chauvenistic in the house [as it were] of these spirits to suggest that they are a fiction and because I do not believe in them, that they do not exist.

What I am suggesting, however, is that the suffering of two people people was alleviated by seemingly inexplicable means, the whistling of haunting tunes, waving of feathers and blowing of tobacco. In my view this has to be a good thing, and we could afford to spend more time and effort examining how to do this on a much broader scale than I am able to as one individual. In fact, it may be as Davis suggests, that the thoughtful (as opposed to romantic or fanciful) examination of the wisdom of other cultures that, along with our own culture’s technological wizardry, offers us a way through the rather dire mess we as a species find ourselves in on a planetary scale.

My remuneration for my day’s work was a small bottle of water offered by a grateful father [and produced by Coca Cola] and, as I say, the resulting joy and inspiration that such results offered me. I came home and, in the course of subsequent communications stumbled upon this statistic.

I am not suggesting that indigenous cultures are perfect, far from it, nor am I denying my enjoyment of the health and material prosperity which my modern culture offers me, but I am suggesting, as the picture above shows in no uncertain terms, that something is completely and utterly out of whack! If this is representative of a Darwinian evolution of cultural process, if modern western culture is, as Fukuyama suggested some time back, the end of history, then I think perhaps it will be.

I have seen many people come to disappointing realisations about the motivations and idealogies of mestizo curanderos in the last months, and I myself am under no illusions about the nature in which much old knowledge is applied today in Peru. Nor am I under any illusions about my own frailties or limitations, but equally I am not limiting my capacities to conform to a particular cultural framework. Whilst it is so that the old people, the carriers of wisdom in indigenous cultures have much to offer we in the West, so too have we much to offer their cultures insofar as manners in which they can limit the destructive elements of this culture which now touches every inch of the planet, and at an ever increasing pace. Rather than suggest that we can do nothing about the inexorable onslaught of totalitarianism, social surveillance and control, war and ecological and cultural destruction, let us set about building new cultural identities, new languages that reflect our experiences of possibility, not of limitation.

I do not know what to do, other than that which I do, but I am interested in mature, collective discussion about what to do, and I hold great hope for the bringing to the fore the noblest aspects of the human spirit.

The healing vision of Quantum Life Bodyworks has always included more than solely the laying on of hands. It was with great pleasure that in November of 2007 I met with Rachael Kohn of Radio National to discuss something of my understanding of the nature of plant based shamanism in the South Americas, and the way in which my work was informed by these traditions.

I was grateful for Rachael’s openness in discussing seemingly arcane topics, and exponentially gratified by the reception of many throughout the world who called and emailed to thank me for the manner in which the interview shifted their perceptions, and helped them to understand things that they themselves had long sought to articulate.

That particular venture has paved the way for a collaboration with award winning documentary film-maker Liz Thompson to explore at length the curing traditions based around the usage of the Sacred Plant medicines Ayahuasca and Huachuma..stay tuned for more from SoulCure productions.

Until then the Radio National interview is available in mp3 format here.

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