Teach me
Teach me to see
To see beyond
To see the man within the man
To see the sun inside and outside of man
Teach me to see, Mother
– Mother Ayahuasca (Icaro by Rosa Giove, Peru 1952-2022) –
In the West we have related the word yoga with a series of stretches and postures on a mat, but it is much more than that.
Yoga comes from the Sanskrit root yug which means to unite, to unite with God. To live the direct experience with divinity, to become one with divinity and to live in a state of service, devotion, love, real action and awareness. Yoga is to remember the essence of humanity and its real state of connection with itself and therefore the universe. We can live in that state or seek it through the practice of Karma yoga (service), Bhakti yoga (devotion), Raja Yoga (state of conscious mind).
Sinchi Runa in Quechua means Conscious Warrior. Sinchi is Warrior, defender endowed with strength and wisdom; Runa is Humanity, people, community, man, civilization. So we are calling to remember an inner warrior, a defender of human consciousness, a defender of the real concept of civilization, of truth.
We seek that the use of plants be an act of searching for consciousness, for knowledge; the beginning of that being opening of the heart, leaving the cultural paradigms of the mind. Abandoning the idea that logical thinking is the only manager of cognitive exercise, to find the understanding that lets us live and experience from the “heart”. That which goes beyond reason and is an act of consciousness, of being here and now.
Letting go of thought, the search for silence and self-observation, is the fundamental tool of healing, because it allows us to listen to our heart. The voice of the master plants needs our silence and for us to join the heart in order to guide us. The work with plants is a letting go, of learning the becoming, the timelessness, and of renunciation. Vomiting, which is fundamental in the sessions and purges, is not only at the level of the body, but of the mind, of the whole being. We need a conscious effort, and with that to come out of magical ideas, and to understand that the work with plants does not differ in any way from any orientalist spiritual exercise. To understand that healing comes through understanding.
The state of Ayahuasca can also be reached by a sadhu or a deep meditator. Imagine joining the knowledge of plants to the discipline of spiritual exercise and reaching that state with preparation, respect, the light of true knowledge, less fear and with, for example, the Vedic truth. Then let us see the opportunity to raise our frequency through yoga, to listen and hear ourselves, to be healed and to receive the divinity embodied in the plant.
We seek to fully immerse ourselves in the real opportunity of Ayahuasca for humanity, to remember or recover the Brahmanic essence of what today we call shamanism. Finding in the memory of these technologies of consciousness, in the work with entheogens such as Ayahuasca, safeguarded by primordial cultures in the Andes or the jungles of Peru, the truth of knowledge kept for humanity through time and lost civilizations.
We have understood through the master plants and the work with Vedic tools that there is a need for silence, meditation and yogic practices in our processes and retreats – to turn each process into a Sadhana, a spiritual exercise. That is what it means to take yoga away from just the mat, making the exercise of taking plants an act of total awareness, enlightened by the discipline of a daily practice of a spiritual exercise. A spiritual exercise that is aimed at the advancing on the sādhaka – the spiritual path – towards the ultimate expression of our life in this reality.
We live an immense opportunity in a time of dizzying change. Never in human history that we can remember, has there been so much opportunity in terms of knowledge and openness to one’s own understanding. Various tools such as the Internet spread the news and the opportunity to live a kind of global mind that doubles its knowledge in an accelerated way.
At the same time these tools also spread confusion, fear, manipulation and ignorance. Man has stopped creating its history around the natural elements and their phenology, to instead become the creator and destroyer of the earth: What scientists call the anthropocene, in which humanity is directly influencing the climate and the organism of the earth, with the catastrophic results we already know of seeing the limit of human life on the planet, in addition to the misuse of atomic knowledge and others. Bringing us closer to involution or total destruction.
Then it would be worth asking ourselves if knowledge is equal to wisdom and intelligence, if humanity is really reaching a development that leads to freedom, truth and its realization through the accumulation of facts and data.
“Knowledge is not the excellence of intelligence; intelligence can and does use knowledge, thus transforming man and society. Intelligence is not the mere cultivation of the intellect and its integrity. Intelligence arises from the understanding of the whole consciousness of man, of oneself and not of a separate segment of oneself.”
Diary II, Krishnamurti
So we really need to use knowledge starting from the basis of consciousness, because it is the ignorance of the self, of the search for truth, that transforms knowledge into limitations. Likewise the opportunity of the plants or spiritual experiences is destroyed through our own ignorance, if we do not take the light of consciousness, through the search for self-knowledge, to become a yogi who can be attentive not to transform knowledge into ignorance… or desecrate the divine opportunity of taking entheogens such as ayahuasca in only egoic experiences of psychedelic explosions or knowledge of “reality” absent of truth.
Rather we must frame this opportunity and understanding in humility, silence and the search for truth through a clear intention to heal the ego and its delusions and limitations.
With these words we want to share what we are understanding, and perhaps create a log of our evolution through so many retreats and processes in which you accompany us. Thank you all from the heart – you who accompany us, give us confidence, love and hope. To remember our searches with you for love, compassion and silence and to vow for a year of greater awareness and real freedom. On behalf of Sinchi Runa we send you a greeting at the end of this year 2022 where our heart received so much pain, sickness, chaos, sacrifice, hope, love and search for freedom that we are amazed at the human opportunity. Words are not enough to convey the gratitude and love for each heart that gave us their experience and wisdom during our retreats.
Happy solstice and a new hope for 2023.
Blessings,
Sanango
