In search of the authentic self: using plants of wisdom as healers.

"Without knowledge of the self, nobody arrives at the rebirth ... That is why we have to remember who we were."

Padrinho Sebastiao 1

"In search of the authentic self": these are pretty words, words we can use to impress our friends. However, when these words come to represent a quest, a mission to know who we are, or part of our longing for the truth, they carry a totally different energy. Even when it means suffering and showing one's weaknesses, we come to the realization that there is no way to know the authentic self without giving up our pretensions, our ego desires. I am reminded of the words of Jesus Christ when he said, "You have to deny yourself." In the search for authentic self, we let all of these things go, and consequently the demons that feed from these ego desires also disappear.

In my own quest for authenticity, one important step in the process was the realization that I was not living authentically. I had to admit that my life was not working. Everything I had ever read from the writings of learned and respected teachers described the authentic self as happy, joyous, free, powerful, and spontaneous--even beyond description. This did not match my life at that time. So my prayer was, "Creator, please help me to release what no longer serves You--what no longer serves the good of all. Please, God, teach me how to love."

If we are really searching for the truth, questions such as, "Why do I have anxiety? Why are my relationships rocky? Why do I have addictions? Why am I on medication? Why do I have so much fear and doubt?" cannot be ignored. Admitting that we are in a situation that is not working for us breaks the first link in the chain that keeps us in bondage, keeps us from remembering who we are.

The quest for authenticity is not easy. To really break through can involve an intense battle and a lot of sacrifice and suffering. It is my experience that the use of plants of wisdom is a most illuminating way to heal and incorporate all those parts of our selves that resist authenticity. As healers, plants of wisdom offer direct access to the Divine, and it is through connecting with the "I Am" that we begin to remember who we are.

In this article I will explore the Santo Daime tradition, which uses plants of wisdom as teachers and healers, and examine more closely the healing process that leads to remembering the authentic self.

The Santo Daime Tradition

The Santo Daime is a religion whose origins are in the Amazon rain forest of Brazil. It comes from the Ayahuasca tradition whose historical roots date back at least to the Inca Indians, who used a sacredly prepared tea, ayahuasca to aid them in their spiritual life. Many Indian tribes use this drink, known by different names, all over the Amazon Basin and throughout South America. In the late 1920's a young Brazilian man of African descent named Raimundo Irineu Serra was invited to participate in the ceremonies of a local tribe. During one ritual, this humble, seven-foot tall rubber tapper received a vision instructing him to form a religion. Thus the Santo Daime was born. The Santo Daime is primarily a Christian religion, though it encompasses all Divine Beings. A blend of South American shamanism, African shamanism, Christianity and other traditions, it is sometimes referred to as the religion of the sun, the moon and the stars.

Over the years, people came to the Daime from many backgrounds. One person who came in the 1960's was a mediumistic healer named Sebastiao Mota de Melo. Suffering from a liver ailment, he came to Mestre (Master) Irineu for healing and became a close follower of the Santo Daime religion. Mestre Irineu passed the teachings on to Padrinho (Godfather) Sebastiao and when Mestre Irineu died in 1971, Padrinho Sebastiao formed a branch of the Santo Daime whose focus became building community. He founded an ecologically harmonious, spiritually based, sustainable community in the center of the Amazon, called Mapia. Today, under the leadership of Padrinho Sebastiao's heirs and followers, Santo Daime communities continue to be built on these same principles. The most remarkable fruits of these communities are the members themselves - fully alive, free human beings aspiring to live a spiritually focused life in harmony with God, with each other and with nature, outside of the world of anxiety, illness and war.

Since the time of Padrinho Sebastiao, the Santo Daime religion has spread to many other locations in Brazil as well as countries in Europe and North America. There are even churches in Japan. In 1980, after a lengthy government investigation, the Santo Daime gained legal recognition as an official religion of Brazil. Subsequent battles in Holland and Spain have resulted in the legalization of the Santo Daime religion in those countries as well.

The name Santo Daime refers both to the religion founded by Raimundo Irineu Serra and the tea (ayahuasca) that is ingested during ceremonies. The tea is made by combining the vine of the jagube plant (Banisteriopsis caapi) with the leaves of the chacruna plant (Psychotria viridis) in a sacred ceremony involving an alchemical process that results in the incarnation or embodying of a Divine Being into the liquid. In the Santo Daime tradition, ingestion of the tea takes place in the context of ritual. Elaborate ceremonies, where participants wearing uniforms and standing in proscribed positions pray, sing and dance in harmony, create and hold a space for direct contact with the Divine.

The Santo Daime is in the entheogen family. An entheogen is a substance that takes one closer to God and other Divine Beings--that opens up divine recognition. There are other such substances: peyote, San Pedro, some of the mushrooms that are used as plants of wisdom and some African plants. All are power plants known by shamans and spiritual leaders to hold vital, healthy information and to open the doorway to the spiritual world and other dimensions. These plants have been revealing themselves for thousands of years. This knowledge, however, is not well known due to its sometimes-brutal suppression. There is a common erroneous belief that use of entheogens can be addictive. There is absolutely no evidence to support this. Entheogens, traditionally used as spiritual food, in the context of ritual, serve to create a shift in consciousness that opens up access to the Divine.

Another important property of the Daime is its power as a healer. For many, the initial motivation for drinking the tea is the desire for healing from serious illness. Through the Santo Daime and the mediums that know how to work with its energy, people have been healed from drug addiction, cancer, emotional trauma and other ailments too numerous to mention. There is another kind of healing that happens with the Daime--a purifying or cleansing - of old thoughts and behavior patterns that are not for our highest good and do not serve us anymore. Sometimes, this cleansing is accompanied by a physical purging where the individual actually vomits or "throws out."

The Daime also works to heal disincarnate spirits that are in the ether. There are often many disincarnate spirits attached to a person who is ill. The Daime heals those spirits as well. Mediums, who know how to work with the spirits to help heal them, drink the Daime and let the spirits come in and have the Daime so they can be healed.

I have personally witnessed the Santo Daime used in healing ceremonies with cancer, where the energies of cancer actually left a person's body. The young woman involved was in a very weakened condition from stomach cancer, an uncommon ailment for people of the forest. She had had surgery and chemotherapy, but was still unable to keep food or liquids down. A friend had taken her to healers and nutritionists, yet she continued to lose weight--to literally waste away. During two healing ceremonies, under the guidance of the Daime and through the focus of the ritual, skilled mediums worked with the healing energies and spirits and the woman was cured. There were twenty or twenty-five other people present as well, all channeling energies of light and healing, all instruments in the process. By the end of the second ceremony, the woman, who had previously been unable to sit up, was sitting upright on the end of her bed and singing the Daime hymns in a strong, clear voice. Within hours of the ceremony, she began to take in small amounts of food and subsequently began to gain weight and strength.

Following is the written testimony of a man whose fifteen-year cocaine addiction was healed through the Daime.

      The miracle started approximately 10 days before Dec. 4, 1999.
   I hadn't seen my friend Debra C. for over a year and a half. But
   one day on a lunch hour in Salt Lake City, I ended up in the Golden
   Braid Bookstore quite by chance and there she was, standing there
   all-aglow by herself looking for a book called The Forest of
   Visions. I said to her, "I see that you are doing something very
   right in your life; what is it?" She proceeded to tell me about
   a vision she had involving a loved one of ours named Michael who
   had passed on March 8, 1998, who came to her during a Santo Daime
   ceremony in Rio during the St. Michael's Work in June of 1999.
   Michael said to Deb in this dream, "Tell John about the Santo
   Daime." So ten days before Dec. 4, 1999, my friend Patrick gave me
   a pass to fly to New York. I didn't have the $200 for the ceremony,
   which my boss at work kindly loaned to me. I forgot a minor
   detail here. Before going into this ceremony, I had a 15-year
   addiction to cocaine.

      I had tried ayahuasca with a Peruvian shaman 3 times in
   ceremony, had been in therapy, gone to Cocaine Anonymous, had
   acupuncture, etc. and never was able to kick the habit, so to speak.
   I went into the Dec. 4, 1999 ceremony with my intentions and
   of course, those deeper intentions surfaced that I needed to deal
   with. It was a very powerful, life changing experience for me
   that day. I was healed from my cocaine addiction with the Santo
   Daime. I thank God for releasing me from the torture of 15 years
   that I chose to endure, experience and learn from. I do not judge
   it; the time frame doesn't matter. What matters is that the Santo
   Daime broke the cycle and started the healing process in my brain.
   Now I really have a life again, one which feels fulfilling, one in
   which I can give back in service and not have to worry
   about that monster cocaine. I thank Jesus Christ and His Holy
   Sacrament, which gave me the freedom to fly again and have a life
   again. I just want to serve Jesus and carry His light all the
   days of my life. Oh, by the way, after returning home from New
   York after that White Ceremony, I was looking for something in my
   glove box in my car and in a blank white envelope were 2 single
   $100 bills stuck between the pages of the car manual. Yes, I
   am a miracle. Yes, I believe in miracles. Thank you Santo Daime for
   that 1st miracle Dec. 4, 1999. I'll never forget it. Now, to the
   next level and the next miracle.

There are many wonderful healing stories like these, and from my personal experiences with the Daime, I know they are true. But the Daime as healer cannot be separated from the Daime as teacher, and it is only in being able to follow the teachings that healing can happen.

The Healing Process

Healing is to bring harmony where there is disease, to bring peace where there is violence, to bring calmness where there is anxiety. Healing needs to take place at all levels: the physical, the emotional, the mental and the spiritual. The Santo Daime reaches all these levels. One of the ways I see that it inspires healing is that it gives hope. If I am ill and I have a hope or a concept or even a vision that I can somehow lead a better life, then I can aspire to that.

The Santo Daime is a great teacher--a healing teacher. By the ingestion, the taking in of this healer, doors of perception are opened that may have been closed before. The Daime clears darkness or cloudiness from the doors of perception. One of the big blocks to healing is confusion brought about by the inability to overcome fear and doubt. We have so much input, so much confusion, fear and doubt that we can't get past that into the realm of where the healing happens. With the Santo Daime, in almost all cases where there is persistence, there are options or avenues that open up to take us past this confusion. In this heightened or altered state of awareness (trance) we can begin to visualize and experience healing, begin to visualize and experience a more holistic way of living.

When we want to be clear about something - a problem in mathematics or physics, or something as simple as how colors go together in decorating our house - we seek out a teacher who can clarify things for us. That's how the Daime works, as a great, great teacher. The Daime as teacher does not require a middleman. It opens up the doors of perception to where we can commune with the Divine, with the Great Teacher, with the Voice that resonates inside of ourselves. This is not to suggest that an experienced, seasoned facilitator is not of the utmost importance to hold the space while one does the inner exploration.

There is a hymn in the Santo Daime tradition that contains the line "The caboclos [native spirits of the forest] bring good medicines to heal the Christians." The Santo Daime is a medicine of very high vibration. Through this high vibratory rate, this "wisdom" that it carries, we can begin to see illusion. Why are we so unwilling to see? Why do we choose to be closed to so much light, so much information? I believe it comes from our judgments, our programming and training; it comes from fear. It is in that fear to see that healing is blocked. True healing on a mental and spiritual level cannot happen unless we begin to recognize what does not serve us. There is a level of ego (little self) that we get involved in where we lose sight of our spiritual side.

It is this inability to see/feel our soul that causes so much illness in the world. Even though many people claim to be religious, claiming is not illumination. What illuminates is the high vibration of being in an altered state of awareness. This starts to spill over into one's life as perceptual changes - changes in what one believes to be honest, true, good. I know that I have spent much of my own life in pursuit of material and ego wealth: wanting to be special, wanting to have more, wanting to be right, wanting to compensate for not feeling good enough. These beliefs are illusions. It is an illusion that I am not good enough, that I will somehow make myself good enough if I acquire enough wealth, power or prestige in the material world. The Daime helps to open up the doors of perception in the healing process so that we can begin to discern clearly the illusions of the ego, patterns of addictive behavior, and what does not serve our highest good.

For me the Daime (plants of wisdom, teaching plants, entheogens) is spiritual food, becoming evident when consumed. The high vibrational light carried by the tea illuminates addictions and destructive behavior and gives one the choice to overcome or not. For those who choose to overcome, I find Heart Centered therapies very beneficial in releasing old traumas and disease that stand in the way of integrating the spiritual encounter that the plant teacher brings.

I first met the Santo Daime on my birthday in November of 1996. A friend of mine called and told me that a South American shaman was going to be in Sedona, Arizona, and I was living in Phoenix at the time. I knew as soon as she said those words that I was supposed to be there. So I went to Sedona for that ceremony and met the shaman from South America--a leader (Padrinho) in the Daime tradition--and I had my first encounter with the Daime. I had explored alternative paths for many years and for ten years prior to that had been particularly interested in indigenous spirituality. I had gone through a divorce in 1995 and was still suffering the pain of a "broken heart." Through that pain came an openness to receive something new, to let go of what I already knew and step into the spirit world in a way that I had never done before. I was vulnerable enough at that time to finally admit that I didn't know much, if anything and that everything I had came from the Source. So I was able to open to the wisdom of plants to teach me and guide me. I discovered that they possess the keys to unlock the doors to levels of consciousness and states of being that I had never experienced before.

One of the great gifts that the Daime has given to me is a much deeper connection with the natural way, especially with the elements of nature-the earth, wind, fire and water. As long as I can remember I have been connected to nature. Some of my earliest memories are of my love for being outdoors: being out in the woods, crawling around on the ground, being by streams, being outside under the sky. Now, through the Daime, that connection is stronger, deeper than ever. I believe that this is due in part to the fact that the Daime itself is from nature. It is made from two plants that combine in a synergistic way known to shamans for thousands of years. Drinking this medicine from the earth and knowing that I am being taught by the wisdom of these plants brings an awareness of how much I am dependent on Mother Nature. With a sense of deep knowing, I feel a part of the Life Force like everything else. Mother Nature is my mother and everything that lives is my relative - as close to me as my own heartbeat. At the subconscious level, I believe the Daime helped heal me of my denial of the Mother, of the one who gives me life.

This has broader implications if we look at humanity as a whole and the way we live on the earth. As a species we deny our dependence on the Mother and choose not to see ourselves as one with all of life. If we are willing to open our eyes and look, the impact of this denial on our planet is shocking. Our planet is in peril. Humanity is in peril of self destruction.

This same attitude of separateness keeps us from accepting any approach to life that doesn't fit the dominant culture. For this reason, the future of plants of wisdom/entheogens as healers is also in peril. This gift that the shaman people, the caboclos offer all peoples as a way to heal our minds is threatened by brutality and ignorance. Those of us who know about this precious gift are stepping forward and demanding inclusion. Full inclusion involves not only legalization, but also more importantly, cultural legitimization.

The Santo Daime brings new hope to my life, a freedom I have never known before, the freedom to accept life--and death--on its own terms. All healing comes from the release of fear. The spiritual being incarnated in the Daime guides and assists me in releasing my fears and doubts. It has not been an easy path for me. In order to release many of my fears, I have had to re-experience them and view them from a different perspective, one of heightened awareness.

Plants of wisdom unlocked the door to a reality that was hidden from me by my own blocks, by my own "dirty windows"--the traumas that I have experienced in my life. So in releasing or being able to go through these fears and doubts, I have been able to travel deep with the Santo Daime and for that I am most grateful.

The Santo Daime is a path celebrating life and all that is good, holding the light and giving it freely. Giving itself as spiritual food, this great plant teacher illuminates one's place in the sacred web of life. Knowing that plants of wisdom have always been here to help us on the journey of self-discovery and healing offers a bridge to remembering the authentic self.

Acknowledgements

1. First of all I would like to thank Maria Calabrese for her invaluable help in transcribing and editing this article.

2. I wish to acknowledge and thank The Wellness Institute for the good work that they do, and for the positive impact my association with them has had on my life. Through the use of Heart-Centered therapies presented by The Wellness Institute, I have experienced my own psychological cleansing and witnessed the cleansing of others. The Wellness programs have been of great help in my personal search for authentic self.

3. I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my teachers in the Daime and to the Madrinhas and Padrinhos who carry on this tradition.

The author is a Fardado (official member of the Santo Daime church) and graduate of The Wellness Institute programs. He is a healing arts practitioner and he and his partner Maria lead tours to Brazil and Mapia. He can be reached at his e-mail address: [e-mail]. Recommended Reading

1. For a detailed description of the Santo Daime religion as told through the author's encounters with one of its founders, Padrinho Sebastiao Mota de Mela, see Alex Polari de Alverga, (1999). Forest of Visions. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press.

2. For a fascinating investigation into the correspondence between the use of ayahuasca by Amazonian shamans and modern molecular biology, see Jeremy Narby, The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. (1999). New York: Tarcher/Putnam.

3. For personal accounts of the experiential dimensions of Ayahuasca, see Ralph Metzner, Ayahuasca: Human Consciousness and the Spirits of Nature. (1999). New York: Thunder's Mouth Press.

References

Alex Polari de Alverga (1999). Forest of Visions. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 164-165.

* Edwin can be reached by email at [e-mail]