K.J
01-03-2007, 12:55 PM
Forked from: My Santo Daime visit (http://www.breakingopenthehead.com/forum/showpost.php?postid=9009)
Recently, I visited centers of the Santo Daime with ten other Westerners from Europe and the United States, on a three week tour. Our first stop was Brasilia, the capital of Brazil – a modernist city built from scratch in the early 1960s. We stayed at a Santo Daime community on the outskirts of the city, and attended two ceremonies while we were there. Initially, I experienced a tremendous resistance to the Santo Daime work. In the shamanic ceremonies I had attended in the past, we took our medicine in the dark, and the focus was on experiencing individual visions. In the Santo Daime ceremonies, the lights were kept bright, and the energy was focused on creating a kind of group mind – later, Jose Murilo, one of our hosts, told me they called it "collective shamanism." It also took me a while to get used to the hymns, which seemed very foreign at first. I also felt a powerful negative reaction to the idea of an organized religion where people wore uniforms and sat in rows, and separated men and women.
I kept having to run out of the ceremony. I would go out to sit near the fire outside, to walk around and look at the stars. There were guardians assigned to keep watch over the ceremony – and these guardians kept coming over to try to get me to go back inside. For me, at that point, it seemed to be a violation of my personal freedom to be part of the ceremony. I only returned with the greatest reluctance. I felt anger at their attempts to restrict my independence.
From Brasilia, our group flew six hours to the Amazon jungle. We stayed at a Santo Daime community named ?????. They had a beautiful ceremonial center, covered in blue and white paper streamers. For our one night there, they organized a ceremony that involved dancing all night – the dance was a little two-step, everyone shuffling back and forth within a little three-foot space. I danced for a while, then my resistance rose up again. I ran out to sit by the fire, then went back to my hammock. In this community, nobody seemed to care whether or not I stayed in my place.
Alone in the room, I began to have the standard Terence McKennaish DMT trip. With my eyes closed, oddly ferocious elves began to multiply in hyperspace, showing me strange tesseracts and transforming objects. But I started to get bored of these pesky critters, who seemed like manifestations of my endlessly churning mind. The whole tripping thing seemed a bit adolescent. I realized that I did want to participate in the ceremony. "Fuck these stupid elves - I want to dance," I thought. My resistance suddenly disappeared. I went back and danced the rest of the night, and I began to understand why the Santo Daime ran the ceremonies in such a rigorous way.
As I allowed myself to stay in "the current," as they call it, I felt like the medicine was not only introducing me to a divine force or presence, but it was also flushing out my psyche. It was a bit like a Buddhist mindfulness meditation – thoughts would arise, then channel themselves out.
The next morning, I went back and sat for a while in the empty church – for the first time in my life, I felt that I understood the nature of devotion as a spiritual practice. It seemed as if devotion was a vibration or a kind of frequency that helped to hold together the structure of reality. I felt moved, and grateful that I was being introduced to this ceremonial practice.
We then took a boat three days down into the jungle, to Jurua. For some reason, I was sort of terrified of this trip before leaving New York, and I couldn’t even bring myself to look at a map to see our destination. All I knew was that we were going very far into the Amazon. We slept on hammocks on the boat – I slept on top, under the roof, and it was an incredible experience. At night I would wake up to find everything shrouded in fog – the trees just visible like wraiths on the banks. I felt like we were floating into the void, into the abyss – and it was utterly liberating.
Finally we reached our docking spot. Part of our initiation process was learning how to make the ayahuasca, to work with the two plants that are brewed together, the vine and the leaf. As soon as we landed, we were brought to a huge pile of the leaves – we were told we had to clean each leaf individually. Usually only women work on the leaves – but for some reason, they decided they wanted the men to try it also. At first, cleaning the leaves seemed an impossible and endless task. They gave us Daime to drunk, however, and after a while the entire task suddenly changed into something intensely pleasurable. I felt each leaf was presenting itself like a little female deity that demanded attention – it seemed that the medicine was teaching us how to take care of it. Immersed in the task, I lost all track of time.
We took a break for lunch and then marched four hours deeper into the jungle, to the town of Jurua. Jurua is considered one of the most important spiritual centers of the Santo Daime. By Western standards, Jurua is a very rudimentary place – no phone, no electricity, no running water. The houses are strung off long jungle paths like beads on a string. We were led to our one big room, where we put up our hammocks and mosquito nets. It took some effort to get used to the jungle heat and humidity – we learned to follow the example of the villagers, who were good at keeping still and conserving their energy during the hottest parts of the day. All of the villagers were very friendly to us, and seemed to support us for having made this long trip to visit them and participate in their rituals. Without judgment, we were welcomed into their community.
During the next days, I learned how to work on the vine – carving out the moldy and rotten parts, and then smashing it into filaments for cooking. We had two ceremonies, presided over by Mestre Alfredo, who is the leader of the church. I was very impressed with Alfredo. He had a very gentle manner, yet I had immediate trust in him, and in his mastery of the Daime. The ceremonies were extraordinarily beautiful and moving. I found that I really wanted to be connected to this tradition, which had preserved such a direct connection to the sacred. Two of my friends felt the same way. Before we left the jungle, we decided we would join the church. We told Luis Fernando of our decision.
The last ceremony we had there was a healing ritual. The energy became so huge, the visions so intense, I was worried that we would be unable to contain it, but Alfredo stayed firm at the rudder. At times I could see the "Mother of the Forest," like a vast astral being, twirling over our heads. I could feel what I can only describe inadequately as the Divine Presence, at the center of the room, above the altar, where the energy of the singers was focused. I could see astral beings who seemed to be coming up to me bearing flowers and fruit. For a long time I had this sense that there was a dark figure by my left side, and I was scared it was something threatening. Finally, in my visionary state, I looked and realized it was Alfredo himself, reaching out a hand to me. In my vision, I shook his hand. He gave me a wonderful smile, and vanished.
We left Jurua the next day. We took a canoe through smaller tributaries to reach our boat on the river. For something like half an hour, an eagle flew along with us, leaping from tree to tree as we proceeded. It seemed like a fortuitous sign.
This journey was the most beautiful experience of my life.
I went digging through the forum a bit to find any posts related to the Santo Daime and not much came up, except for this from Daniel. I've read it before (on the Santo Daime website) and of course some variation of it was included in 2012TROQ.
I have felt very drawn to the Santo Daime ever since first reading about the religion. 2012TROQ, and the account above from Daniel, certainly increased my feeling of wonder about the SD. My wife and I have talked about visiting them in Brazil sometime in 2007 (our alternate plan is to visit Peru and work with curandero's there).
This thread has been started in the hopes of opening up a dialogue about the Santo Daime, in particular the original church started by Padrinho Sebastião in Brazil. Are there any members of the Santo Daime here? Has anyone else visitied them in Brazil (or elsewhere)? If so, do you have information that would assist those of us who plan to visit in the near future? Does anyone else feel called to the Doctrine?
Discuss... :D
Recently, I visited centers of the Santo Daime with ten other Westerners from Europe and the United States, on a three week tour. Our first stop was Brasilia, the capital of Brazil – a modernist city built from scratch in the early 1960s. We stayed at a Santo Daime community on the outskirts of the city, and attended two ceremonies while we were there. Initially, I experienced a tremendous resistance to the Santo Daime work. In the shamanic ceremonies I had attended in the past, we took our medicine in the dark, and the focus was on experiencing individual visions. In the Santo Daime ceremonies, the lights were kept bright, and the energy was focused on creating a kind of group mind – later, Jose Murilo, one of our hosts, told me they called it "collective shamanism." It also took me a while to get used to the hymns, which seemed very foreign at first. I also felt a powerful negative reaction to the idea of an organized religion where people wore uniforms and sat in rows, and separated men and women.
I kept having to run out of the ceremony. I would go out to sit near the fire outside, to walk around and look at the stars. There were guardians assigned to keep watch over the ceremony – and these guardians kept coming over to try to get me to go back inside. For me, at that point, it seemed to be a violation of my personal freedom to be part of the ceremony. I only returned with the greatest reluctance. I felt anger at their attempts to restrict my independence.
From Brasilia, our group flew six hours to the Amazon jungle. We stayed at a Santo Daime community named ?????. They had a beautiful ceremonial center, covered in blue and white paper streamers. For our one night there, they organized a ceremony that involved dancing all night – the dance was a little two-step, everyone shuffling back and forth within a little three-foot space. I danced for a while, then my resistance rose up again. I ran out to sit by the fire, then went back to my hammock. In this community, nobody seemed to care whether or not I stayed in my place.
Alone in the room, I began to have the standard Terence McKennaish DMT trip. With my eyes closed, oddly ferocious elves began to multiply in hyperspace, showing me strange tesseracts and transforming objects. But I started to get bored of these pesky critters, who seemed like manifestations of my endlessly churning mind. The whole tripping thing seemed a bit adolescent. I realized that I did want to participate in the ceremony. "Fuck these stupid elves - I want to dance," I thought. My resistance suddenly disappeared. I went back and danced the rest of the night, and I began to understand why the Santo Daime ran the ceremonies in such a rigorous way.
As I allowed myself to stay in "the current," as they call it, I felt like the medicine was not only introducing me to a divine force or presence, but it was also flushing out my psyche. It was a bit like a Buddhist mindfulness meditation – thoughts would arise, then channel themselves out.
The next morning, I went back and sat for a while in the empty church – for the first time in my life, I felt that I understood the nature of devotion as a spiritual practice. It seemed as if devotion was a vibration or a kind of frequency that helped to hold together the structure of reality. I felt moved, and grateful that I was being introduced to this ceremonial practice.
We then took a boat three days down into the jungle, to Jurua. For some reason, I was sort of terrified of this trip before leaving New York, and I couldn’t even bring myself to look at a map to see our destination. All I knew was that we were going very far into the Amazon. We slept on hammocks on the boat – I slept on top, under the roof, and it was an incredible experience. At night I would wake up to find everything shrouded in fog – the trees just visible like wraiths on the banks. I felt like we were floating into the void, into the abyss – and it was utterly liberating.
Finally we reached our docking spot. Part of our initiation process was learning how to make the ayahuasca, to work with the two plants that are brewed together, the vine and the leaf. As soon as we landed, we were brought to a huge pile of the leaves – we were told we had to clean each leaf individually. Usually only women work on the leaves – but for some reason, they decided they wanted the men to try it also. At first, cleaning the leaves seemed an impossible and endless task. They gave us Daime to drunk, however, and after a while the entire task suddenly changed into something intensely pleasurable. I felt each leaf was presenting itself like a little female deity that demanded attention – it seemed that the medicine was teaching us how to take care of it. Immersed in the task, I lost all track of time.
We took a break for lunch and then marched four hours deeper into the jungle, to the town of Jurua. Jurua is considered one of the most important spiritual centers of the Santo Daime. By Western standards, Jurua is a very rudimentary place – no phone, no electricity, no running water. The houses are strung off long jungle paths like beads on a string. We were led to our one big room, where we put up our hammocks and mosquito nets. It took some effort to get used to the jungle heat and humidity – we learned to follow the example of the villagers, who were good at keeping still and conserving their energy during the hottest parts of the day. All of the villagers were very friendly to us, and seemed to support us for having made this long trip to visit them and participate in their rituals. Without judgment, we were welcomed into their community.
During the next days, I learned how to work on the vine – carving out the moldy and rotten parts, and then smashing it into filaments for cooking. We had two ceremonies, presided over by Mestre Alfredo, who is the leader of the church. I was very impressed with Alfredo. He had a very gentle manner, yet I had immediate trust in him, and in his mastery of the Daime. The ceremonies were extraordinarily beautiful and moving. I found that I really wanted to be connected to this tradition, which had preserved such a direct connection to the sacred. Two of my friends felt the same way. Before we left the jungle, we decided we would join the church. We told Luis Fernando of our decision.
The last ceremony we had there was a healing ritual. The energy became so huge, the visions so intense, I was worried that we would be unable to contain it, but Alfredo stayed firm at the rudder. At times I could see the "Mother of the Forest," like a vast astral being, twirling over our heads. I could feel what I can only describe inadequately as the Divine Presence, at the center of the room, above the altar, where the energy of the singers was focused. I could see astral beings who seemed to be coming up to me bearing flowers and fruit. For a long time I had this sense that there was a dark figure by my left side, and I was scared it was something threatening. Finally, in my visionary state, I looked and realized it was Alfredo himself, reaching out a hand to me. In my vision, I shook his hand. He gave me a wonderful smile, and vanished.
We left Jurua the next day. We took a canoe through smaller tributaries to reach our boat on the river. For something like half an hour, an eagle flew along with us, leaping from tree to tree as we proceeded. It seemed like a fortuitous sign.
This journey was the most beautiful experience of my life.
I went digging through the forum a bit to find any posts related to the Santo Daime and not much came up, except for this from Daniel. I've read it before (on the Santo Daime website) and of course some variation of it was included in 2012TROQ.
I have felt very drawn to the Santo Daime ever since first reading about the religion. 2012TROQ, and the account above from Daniel, certainly increased my feeling of wonder about the SD. My wife and I have talked about visiting them in Brazil sometime in 2007 (our alternate plan is to visit Peru and work with curandero's there).
This thread has been started in the hopes of opening up a dialogue about the Santo Daime, in particular the original church started by Padrinho Sebastião in Brazil. Are there any members of the Santo Daime here? Has anyone else visitied them in Brazil (or elsewhere)? If so, do you have information that would assist those of us who plan to visit in the near future? Does anyone else feel called to the Doctrine?
Discuss... :D