WONDER AND WARNINGS
"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."
— OSCAR WILDE
A FTER SOME immeasurable epoch on the deck, we sauntered down to the kitchen, having fully regained our balance. The ladies of the kitchen staff had begun to know our preferences. “Buenos dias, Dominga!” I said.
“Buenos dias, Elisa! ¿Quiere papaya?” asked Dominga with grandmotherly sweetness.
“Sí!”
“Chor, ¿quiere piña y sandia?”
“Yes! Hola, Dominga! Grrracias! Grrracias!”
Chor decided to go by a Spanish variation of his birth name, which he had always preferred. “Joaquin! Call me Jwakeeen! Jwakeeen!”
All the ladies repeated in chorus, laughing, “Ok, Juakeeeeeen!” He set free that jovial laugh again, the laugh that lit up my sky as much as this Panaman sun.
We brought our bowls of fruit back up to the deck and settled onto the sofa. The fruit tasted all the sweeter because of our sensitized taste buds and empty bellies and adoring strokes. The other iboga apprentice, Ann-Marie, joined us. “How are you two doing?” she smiled and asked with her gentle Norwegian accent.
“Good!” we both chimed in. “My journey was so intense!” I confessed. “I feel fantastic, but, wow, it was wild. I am curious: Is every journey really different? Or all they all similar for you?”
“Every journey has been really different, yes. It depends on what I’m going through. The medicine always gives you exactly what you need.” She smiled.
I nodded, contemplating. What did this medicine have in store for me for the next ceremony? I wondered. I was resolved to receive.
We ate our fruit in peace and watched the cattle as they scattered across the land. We melted into more melting—on the sofa, the hammock, the bed. Talking or snuggling or just being. Luxurious.
“Oh, love,” Chor smiled. “You care about everything so much. You care about everything 200%. Not just 100%, but 200%.” It’s true. I was a zealot and a preacher, and I loved my righteous anger too much sometimes.
“Yeah,” I heartily agreed, laughing at myself. “It’s true. I get neurotic sometimes. I just wanna take such good care of everyone. It all comes from love, though.”
“I know, I know,” he chuckled.
Michael bounced out to the deck to check on us. “How’s it going?” He smiled knowingly.
Chor took some time with the men folk over at the guesthouse. I indulged in some time to myself on the deck with my journal. Writing had always helped me to fully digest my experiences. I emptied the night’s rich contents onto the pages.
When Chor returned, he briefly peeked at me as I scribbled away in my journal, and then retreated to the deck on the other side of the house. After a while, I walked over to where he was. “Watcha doin’?” I asked, as he sat on another sofa.
“I am...looking at this tree here.” Amazing. Chor would have never just looked at a tree for so long. I loved watching my lover bloom. I sat next to him.
“This looks like a tree from Africa,” he said. Indeed it did. It was an enormous, proud, symmetrical tree. Its branches looked like veins.
“What was your mystery question?” he asked.
“I wanted to get iboga’s take on something. I asked, ‘What is the nature of the Sacred Prostitute?’” I relayed my whole vision for him.
“Hmm,” he said. And we sat in a deep silence for a long time. “Why do you keep that part of your life such a secret?” he asked. “Are you ashamed of it?”
“No! Not at all,” I replied, a bit frustrated, as he’d asked this in the past and I’d answered him. It seemed so hard for him to understand. “It’s just very delicate information. I just wasn’t ready to explain this part of my life to Mopunga or Michael just yet. I like to get to know people more before I share all that, you know.”
“Hmm,” he said thoughtfully, and went back to looking at the tree.
The afternoon rolled around, and Chor and I took a short stroll along the jungle road of the property. The birds sang to us. Chor looked at every bug and rock and flower and butterfly, fascinated like a five-year-old. We searched for the legendary iguanas that supposedly inhabited the tunnel under the long driveway, and sure enough, they scurried around for us upon our approach.
Chor and I had a leisurely dinner with Michael. I had no appetite, and I was enjoying feeling light, but I made the effort to consume a small meal since Mopunga had stressed the importance of eating the day after a ceremony. Chor wolfed down his chicken; I couldn’t imagine how he could eat like that just now.
“Tell me about that 5-gram-a-day guy,” Chor inquired with Michael. He was curious about the man in one of the video testimonials.
“Oh yeah, that’s Jeff,” said Michael.
“Seriously, 5 grams a day? That’s crazy.” Chor was in disbelief that such a person could be salvageable at all. “At my worst, I was maybe at 1 or 2 grams a day, but that was always as much as I could get my hands on.”
“Yeah, he was pretty bad. That was the most intense detox I’ve ever seen. He flew in, and we started feeding him the medicine right after he got off the plane. He couldn’t do anything. He just crashed on that couch in the hallway upstairs. For five days, we kept feeding him medicine, and he didn’t move. Finally, on the fifth day, he was ready to come out of it.
“His dad was here with him and did the medicine, too, but just for a psycho-spiritual program, not for drug detox. Gary, a great guy. They both went on to do the iboga provider training, and Gary eventually started up another iboga healing retreat here in Panama.”
“Whoah,” said Chor.
“Yeah, Jeff was a tough case,” Michael continued. “He stayed clean for about eight months. He was one of the few who relapsed.”
“Wow. So I guess it’s not a magic bullet,” Chor reflected.
“No, it’s not. The medicine requires participation. The medicine cleanses and teaches. From there, a person has to make their own choices. It’s all about choices. That is how we grow.” We reflected and drank in the truth with a deep breath.
“Mopunga had foreseen Jeff’s crossroads,” said Michael ominously. “Mopunga told him simply, ‘Sell your motorcycle.’ Mopunga knew that his motorcycle was some kind of gateway to his old life, old crew, old patterns. But he didn’t listen,” Michael chuckled, seeing the humor even in the tragedy.
Michael elaborated. Jeff had returned home to the States for a visit and went out for a night on the town with his motorcycle buddies. It started off with just one beer, his first intoxicant in eight months.
Jeff and his friends ended up getting totally wasted. He skidded out on his motorcycle and was chased by police through three towns. He eventually collided with a moving vehicle and wound up in the hospital with terrible injuries, loaded up on heavy painkillers. Jeff wanted to go right back to Panama to continue his training, but he had charges and court dates and potential jail time to deal with. One thing led to another. Those painkillers plus depression and the wrong company triggered a relapse.
We listened to the warning tale with rapt attention. “Well Jeff came back to Mopunga with his tail between his legs. Jeff knew how Mopunga felt about relapses. Mopunga does not like it when people waste the medicine,” Michael shook his head sorrowfully.
Mopunga treated Jeff, Michael explained, but only because he was Gary’s son. Gary had become family by then. And Jeff was so ashamed. Mopunga took pity.
It took another five whole days, but Jeff couldn’t walk through the door that time—the door to the spirit world. The medicine cleaned up his body but blocked him out of the spirit world. He had no visions, no gifts. Worst of all, he went through all of the withdrawal symptoms that the medicine is generally known to alleviate.
Iboga gave Jeff a very clear message: Iboga is not there to help him every time he got in trouble. It is a living spirit and a teacher to be honored.
“Jeff stayed on the path and proved himself after that,” Michael concluded. “He even went back home to rescue a few friends who were still using. He stayed with them while they tapered down their usage to 1 gram a day, for an easier detox. He watched them shoot up and everything, but he didn’t touch it. He was by then completely through with the poison.” Michael smiled proudly.
“Wow,” said Chor, amazed at Jeff’s discipline.
Michael continued, “Jeff brought back those friends to be healed, and he carried on with the work. He’s a great iboga provider now.” Chor digested the story along with our dinner. Iboga was clearly not a cure-all. It was a force to be reckoned with. We would have to step up and honor its gifts.
Michael lightened up the heavy conversation. “You know,” he said with a smirk as he leaned over, “you can actually travel into other people’s bodies with this medicine!” He waited a moment for the ensuing wows, and then continued. “Yeah, you can actually enter someone’s body and heal different ailments they have going on. It’s a real inside job, ” he winked. “I tried that once, but I got myself into a bit of trouble. I learned: You gotta ask first!”
Michael shared the story: One day, while in vision with the medicine, Michael decided to fly over to visit his Zen teacher. She was meditating at her altar. He zipped inside her body and started doing healing work on her. But she knew he was there! She was a bit angry and tersely asked Michael what he was doing there.
Michael, surprised that he’d been discovered, explained to her that he was just giving her some healing work.
She advised him to at least get permission first. That made sense to Michael, to have good esoteric manners. So he asked for her permission and she gave it. Michael returned to his healing work inside her, and then he glimpsed a vortex beyond her altar. He started to peek over her shoulder as she meditated.
Suddenly she jumped up like a warrior, grabbed a staff, and faced Michael. “You can’t go in there!” she said.
So Michael asked, “Why not? What’s in there? What is that?” Michael reenacted his part in the scene, bouncing around as he peeked, curious and rambunctious like a big kid.
“Mopunga then jumped into my vision all of a sudden, in his full ceremonial regalia, and said ‘Come on. You don’t need to go there. Let’s go. Come with me.’ I guess was getting distracted!” Michael laughed with wide toothy grin.
I’d always had a sunset fantasy. Doesn’t everyone? It’s the quintessential lover’s date, and I’d never actually had one. Chor was always busy. So busy. Sitting still didn’t interest him, unless it was for a movie. But here, the sunset was the inescapable main attraction and Chor had been seasoned to slow down.
Chor and I made our way to the deck and curled up together. We sat in sweet silence, breathing as one, and watched God paint a one-of-a-kind masterpiece in the sky. After the sun went down, our nighttime entertainment commenced: flickering fireflies, abundant stars, and stealth bats. We bantered about the bountiful beauty.
In all of our six-plus years together, I couldn’t remember a single full day without the modern matrix of electronic existence. Amazing! Even though it was just because of their house policy, it was still a revelatory experience. I looked over at Chor’s peaceful face. I could almost see his brain taking a deep breath. “Isn’t this lovely, babe? To be ‘unplugged’ just for a little while?”
“Yeah! It is, actually.”
“Your body and mind can be refreshed from little breaks. Retreats, in balance with action, can help you to create truly visionary work,” I lectured, sweetly. I prayed that he’d have more electronic continence after this. I was delighted to witness his new ability to appreciate the simple beauty of nature, silence, and awareness.
We retired to our bedroom love nest. We undressed. In the soft light, we anointed each other with the purest frankincense. We wove our bodies together in artful carnal worship. He penetrated me and paused for a moment, trembling with bliss. He was a lightning rod of vital energy. He was sensitized, more present than ever before. His whole body was reading me, even as he was enjoying me.
He picked me up in his sturdy arms and held me as I encircled his waist with my legs. I surrendered to his power and rode his magnificence. We softly howled, hummed, purred. All the dust I’d gathered was shaken away. I was Venus, on honeymoon: pollinated, sated, loved, alive, cherished with wide-open eyes. I’d been waiting years for this paradisiacal day, eternally intuiting its existence. It had been so worth waiting for, and I yet I knew: I’d never live without this again.