| 06 April 2011
Becca Dakini is a cultural creative & artist actively participating within the Australian and international conscious arts community: as a writer, holistic therapist, counselor, dj, project manager, event coordinator, truthseeker, consciousness explorer and visionary. She recently returned from living and working with shamans in Peru. InJoy caught up with her to find out what gifts she has brought back from her time in the Amazon jungle.
While her hometown is Byron Bay, Australia she perceives herself as a global citizen of the currently emerging conscious & creative culture.
You’ve just returned from a year of living and working in the Amazon Rainforest in Peru?
Through a few strange yet uncanny twists of fate I was hired as a Retreat Coordinator for a shamanic retreat in the south of Peru in February 2010. I moved on from this initial retreat quite quickly due to the “shaman” being a “sham-man” and landed in Northern Peru where I was offered a new job at a centre that focused on working with female Shipibo shamans. I lived in the heart of the Amazon jungle, with seven Shipibo shamans. My role was to coordinate workshops & the retreat itself, directly supporting guests at the retreat through 12 day Ayahuasca intensives. I worked side-by-side in ceremonies with the shamans and supported hundreds of guests from all over the world through their healing process in the role of counselor and support person.
Overall, it was an amazing experience living and working with shamans as the Shipibo themselves are such a beautiful people. So humble, playful and authentic they are. Quite often I would refer to the Maestras and Maestros as “ancient children”. They display such wisdom yet such innocence in every moment. Laughter and joy was a common theme each day when living with them, as well as open affection and tribal living. I came to learn that they are like the “keepers of the vine” as their lineage has worked directly with Ayahuasca for thousands of years. The Shipibo people’s connection with the plant spirit realm is mystifying and powerful. Their healing abilities when working with the plants, not only Ayahuasca, are powerful and genuine. It is like these beautiful people themselves sprang from the roots of plants and trees. That is how at one they are with the plants and the wisdom they contain. It was an honor to work with such amazing beings, and to support them in sharing their healing abilities with people from all over the world.
What was most rewarding about your time working in these healing centres?
One of the most rewarding aspects of my experience was working with all of the people from all over the world who came to the jungle to move through their core issues, which is what Ayahuasca is prime “medicine” for. Ayahuasca goes deep and digs out childhood trauma and core wounding and brings it to the surface to be released or purged. It’s also a great tool for overcoming addictions and negative life patterns and behaviors.
Sometimes the process is very difficult for people and they really need a lot of support to understand what they are going through. I found that the deep work of the medicine, coupled with intensive counseling and support, produced rapid and amazing results. I saw lives transform, deep wounds heal, and people die and be reborn again. I feel very honored to have experienced what I have. Through supporting intensive self-development and healing in so many others, this work has been mirrored in myself. After all, I believe that we are all just mirror reflections of each other.
This really was some of the best work I have done in my life; being there as a rock for people in such a personalised and powerful way. Nothing is more rewarding to me than being of service to humanity’s healing & evolution, on an individual as well as global scale.
You are a holistic therapist and have been on the healing path for quite some time. What healing did you witness, and experience yourself, with Ayahuasca?
This plant medicine works on really deep core issues and is an amazing catalyst for change. “She” will show you what you need to see and it’s not pretty all the time – you need to be willing to face your demons as well as your angels. It will bring up what you need to look at and help you purge that which you no longer need within yourself. You don’t always get what you want, but you get what you need with Ayahuasca. This medicine is not for the faint of heart, it’s for the spiritual warriors that are willing to fling themselves into the Amazon jungle and drink a sticky brown disgusting-tasting plant concoction with shamans, and face the deepest darkest recesses of themselves.
I watched participants cut through so many layers and return to core wounding… and it seemed to always come back to issues with the mother and the father at the core of whatever was needing to be healed. I believe that everyone has these mother/father issues that need to be resolved to become an autonomous adult and functional human being. Our internal mainframe wiring of how we operate as beings is formed in our first few vulnerable years of life, and our parents affect our early development directly. These early archetypal imprints seem to quite often also imprint upon our relationships in later life, and any wounding that occurred as vulnerable children in the hands of our parents and carers seems to repeat in adult life with others that trigger similar stories and energy. Patterns form and begin repeating in our lives. Unless addressed and healed, or “rewiring” takes place, these old patterns, memes, scars and stories can sabotage our adult lives. They wreak havoc without us even realising we’re just playing the old story out repeatedly in a different way, until we get the lesson and shift the pattern. The art, I believe, is to see the pattern clearly and where it stems from, then start working on healing that core wound...t hen great transformation and personal shifts can take place. There are many excellent tools that can be used for such deep personal work such as breathwork, psychology, and shamanic journeying, as well as Ayahuasca.
It is often said that if children are not given a safe environment and support when things are difficult when they are small, they don’t know how to properly cope with trauma and difficulties later in life. This is a common thing for a lot of us these days because we have grown up with parents that were often too busy or in environments where emotions stayed buried and unaddressed.
To witness people from all corners of the globe going into their core stuff, owning it, purging it and transforming was an experience I will never forget. If you’ve read the Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby you’ll understand there’s an idea that aya works directly with our DNA...there seems to be a link between the “vine of the soul” and our DNA.
It seems that the more you work with plant medicines (in moderation, with balance and reverence) the deeper the journey is back to Source. Interesting that in this time of patriarchal society, people are still focusing upon that which is outside of the Earth as Source, when really the nurturer of us all is right below our feet. Our source of Life is that which for so long we have taken for granted and disrespected. The plants seem to be whispering to us invitingly to return to the wisdom and cycles of the Mother Earth, just as the indigenous people of this planet keep telling us also. It’s the same message – back to the Garden. This is why people sometimes call Ayahuasca ‘Madre’, because often the experience had with the medicine is akin to returning to the Mother in all her guises – the nurturing, disciplining conduit of both birth and death within the Self. Sometimes we need to let things die inside of us and in our lives to let new things be born.
What about people working with Ayahuasca in Australia, without traditional Shamans?
You do step into 4D when working with Ayahuasca, and become open to spirits and entities. Unless you yourself know how to navigate those realms and protect yourself you need an authentic shaman, as it is an incredibly vulnerable space to be in.
Ayahuasca is the vehicle and the Shaman is the driver… this is a quote from Jean Kounen’s documentary Other Worlds. I do believe this to be truth, from experience. Hence I do not personally feel drawn to working with the medicine anywhere but in the jungle of Central or South America with authentic shamans.
That said, I respect that some people here in Australia feel drawn to follow a more organic process of learning themselves how to work with this medicine, without traditional shamans. I just don’t feel drawn to it personally. I also intuitively feel to only work with plant teachers on their home soil, there seems to be so much more resonant potency in communing in this way.
Do you believe Ayahuasca is for everyone?
Drinking Ayahuasca is an ancient sacred purging and healing process that is a great tool for many people at this time, but not for everyone! Everyone is on their own individual journey and will find tools that work for them along the way.
I do believe that Ayahuasca is a great tool on the path but like with everything, if you get stuck on one thing you’ll get stagnant. There are many, many tools available on the path of self-development and it is important to keep going and keep progressing—that’s how we evolve.
There is nothing recreational about Ayahuasca, this is an ancient shamanic medicine. Traditionally the Shamans took the medicine and patients came to them for visions and transmissions and did not drink. It is interesting that most Peruvians don’t drink Ayahuasca, it is the Gringos (westerners) who mainly come to drink. I guess we’re the ones currently seeking reconnection to the Earth and the elementals again, as we go about living so far removed from nature in our concrete jungles.
What about the emergence of the “Ayahuasca industry” in Peru?
When the elements of money and greed come into the shamanic mix you can see some insidious energy being introduced, and from there an element of manipulation always follows. Unfortunately it is becoming an industry over there. You can’t really blame the shamans because in a third-world country where there is such poverty and struggle to survive. Westerners coming with so much money seeking healing seems like a solution to their problems. Sometimes some shamans get clever at manipulating “gringos” so they can make a lot of money. There are a lot of shamans that genuinely want to help people and heal, but there is also those in Central and South America who manipulate for greed, money and ego.
I would advise to be extremely careful and do your research on who you are going to work with, if you are considering going to Peru or beyond to drink Ayahuasca. Speak to those within your communities who have experience in such areas and go where you know it’s safe and authentic, and the focus is truly upon healing.
Money has become an issue for every shaman I met over there. That insidious corporate patriarchal energy currently gripping most of the planet has affected them too… but you know this is what we are all up against and we all have to work hard not to let it take over.
Personally I don’t believe Ayahuasca and money mix. I’m not sure what the solution is, but greed and healing don’t go hand in hand.
This time of rapid transformation on Planet Earth – what do you feel is most important to focus on?
I believe that this is a time of coming together as a species with a focus on Unity Consciousness, instead of the current systems of separation, hierarchy and inequality in society.
With everything that is currently going on, solar flares included, we are all being affected on many subtle levels in my opinion, and it is making me see more clearly how we are just one organism here on this Gaian entity called Earth. We are all interconnected but we are one being at the core, one cell, one entity. I view our planet as our source energy, Gaia. The more we turn back to Her, our Mother, the more easily I believe we can move forward into the new paradigm that is rapidly approaching. The more we listen to what the indigenous or Original peoples of this planet have been saying about honouring our Mother Earth, and act accordingly, the more peaceful and sustainable our future will be.
I believe it is important for us to look at our global community as a whole, and explore new ways of resource management so there is equality for all citizens of Earth on all levels of existence. I hold a vision for the planet moving away from giving away our power to the patriarchal corporations – to Daddy – and coming back to the Mother and into her nurturing folds. It feels to me that this is what the current evolutionary impulse is all about.
Becca Dakini © 2011
http://www.resonant-temple.com
