Post 74: Plant medicine & a transmuter
Years ago, I went to a peyote ceremony where we sat outside in the freezing rain all night long, sitting in chairs around a rock fire pit that wasn’t lit. Someone sang all night. A dog snored all night. We didn’t talk, and we didn’t sleep in our chairs.
A woman walked out onto an open grassy area and vomited, and cried loudly, clearly feeling like she was releasing something or moving through something.
I took more medicine than the others, and it was the worst thing I’ve ever tasted, with a texture that made me have difficulty drinking cacao or smoothies for a bit afterwards.
But I was lucid most of the time. Waiting. Cold. Listening.
Every so often, I went inside to the bathroom to vomit. I wondered if, despite my closed door, they could hear me like I’d heard the woman in the field.
One of the times I sat down on the bathroom floor, sweaty, wondering if I was done for now or if I’d be sick again, I thought, angrily, “is this the best thing I could be doing right now? Just vomiting all the time? I don’t feel a release, just vomiting. I didn’t cry like that woman. I’m not moved. I’m just ingesting and expelling poison. What is the point of this?”
I sat still for a moment, and I heard from the Deer, the venado, the spirit of the peyote. Like other plant medicines, it started with the same message for me:
“You don’t have to do this,” it said. “You won’t be harmed, you won’t be traumatized by plant medicine like some others are, but you don’t have to do this. You can get to these states on your own, without ingesting anything. Others are trying to shortcut to where you already are.”
I heard this from a woman who devoted her life to Bufo. She said “Bufo isn’t your medicine. You don’t need it. If others are here” (she gestured her hand at her waist level) “you and I are already here” (she gestured her hand at shoulder level). She shrugged. “So you don’t need it.”
I heard this from other medicines too. I was disappointed. I watched others say they transformed and I wanted a shortcut to bliss and enlightenment. But over and over, the message was, this isn’t taking you where you want to go.
The Deer spent some time with me. “You’re just like me,” it said. “I am?” I was confused. I didn’t think so. My mentor said I was a crocodile and a monkey and an obsidian knife, ancestral and bouncing from idea to idea and hitting others with hard truths that I channeled that others may or may not to hear. I wasn’t a Deer.
The Deer continued. “You watch, you observe, you’re sensitive, like me. It’s not a bad thing to not be a predator. The forest is still beautiful.”
The Deer told me that this would be my last ceremony, that I was complete, but that I could energetically connect whenever I wanted, because we had this quantum entanglement now, forever connected. I didn’t need to ingest to feel this connection.
I was angry that the sun was taking so long to rise. I had never been more furious with a sunrise. Come on, come on, I’d think. I’m cold, wet, uncomfortable, I haven’t slept, I want to go take a shower and spend the next 2 days in bed.
And then it was day.
We got up, smiled nervously, gratefully, and started digging into papayas, bananas, and other offerings we brought.
The woman who threw up said, “I was so angry the entire time. That dog snoring! I almost said something about it.”
“I saw the sun rise 3 times,” a man said. “I was so confused why it wasn’t day.”
A man I had been sitting across from, across the unlit pit, but hadn’t spoken to before, looked me in the eyes and put his hand on his chest and said with tears in his eyes: “thank you.”
I looked around to check if he was talking to me. “For what?” I said.
He took a steady breath. “You purged for ALL of us.”
I stared at him. I guess they did hear me from inside the bathroom.
“I couldn’t purge,” he said, “but every time you did, I felt the collective weight lighten, like we were all healing, profoundly. You did that. Thank you.”
I was stunned and also annoyed. I’ve been going to these ceremonies to purge for other people? What a rough deal! No wonder I hadn’t been feeling better or didn’t feel moved at all. I was just the transmuter for someone else’s pain.
I thought about what came to me in the shower. That the world is inside of me. That I read on the internet words like “spreading like a cancer” and “metastasizing” and “malignant.”
I think about the clean bioresonance scans, the benign mammograms, the energy workers and holistic chiropractors and psychics and medical mediums who said they couldn’t see any trace of cancer on me.
I’m not convinced this cancer is fully mine.
What a deal.
I've been thinking about this story nonstop since I read it. Thank you for sharing your thoughts River, and thank you for letting us into your world so we can support you. I hope this writing process is as cathatric and healing for you as it is impactful for the reader. :) Just a few days ago I texted my mom saying, "River hasn't been as active on Instagram, have you noticed that?" Ever since you put something out there a few weeks ago about having a really bad day, I've had a bit of a nudging that something wasn't right. In the past, you've helped me to "take up my space" in the world. I still catch myself wanting to hide behind some imaginary curtain at times, and I know that if I didn't feel that way, I likely would've reached out sooner to check in. This was a reality check for me, and I'm glad I am here now. Thank you for continuing to be a guiding light for so many. Your words matter and they change me for the better. I am sending all of my love to you.