The Shaman and Ayahuasca

by Don Jose Campos

Two decades ago, the Amazonian plant medicine ayahuasca was largely unknown in the Western world. Few people outside of a circle of fringe scientists and daredevil psychonauts were privy to the obscure psychedelic brew, and fewer still had experienced its powerful effects firsthand. Yet over the past several years an explosion of interest in ayahuasca and its ceremonial use has rippled out across the globe, drawing the sacred vine out of the jungle and into the popular consciousness.

Alongside this rising movement, a vibrant new literary genre has come into being. Myriad aya-inspired books ranging from anthropological treatises to mind-bending initiation memoirs now fill the shelves. Among them, a recently published title from Divine Arts, The Shaman and Ayahuasca, stands out as singularly unique. Compiled from interviews with Peruvian curandero Don Jose Campos, the book is the first of its kind—an exploration of Amazonian shamanism told through the words of the indigenous shaman himself.

The book is the print companion to an eponymous documentary which follows filmmaker Michael Weise and his wife Geraldine Overton to Peru to visit Don Jose, a renowned healer. Whereas the film serves as a valuable introduction to the world of ayahuasca, the book unpacks the shamanic phenomenon in full depth and detail. Here, the 25-year veteran shaman offers up his version of “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Ayahuasca, But Were Afraid to Ask.” In short, conversational chapters edited by Overton, Campos demystifies the recondite rituals and philosophies that make up a traditional ayahuasca ceremony, from the practical function of icaros (medicine songs) to the reasons behind keeping a strict diet. For both uninitiated readers and seasoned shamanic journeyers, the lucid and thorough exposition from a bona fide maestro will be refreshingly illuminating.

The Shaman and Ayahuasca also serves as Don Jose’s memoir, relating numerous anecdotes along his path to becoming a vegetalista—one who heals with plants. With disarming humor and candor, Campos recounts the revelations and challenges—physical, spiritual, and intellectual—he has faced throughout his own shamanic journey. Especially interesting are his discussions on the benefits and drawbacks of Western medicine versus traditional healing practices. As the son of a conventional doctor, Campos is uniquely poised to comment on the interplay between these two modalities, and his observations are enlightening.

Ayahuasca shamanism is a spiritual healing technology far removed from the materialist dimensions of Western thought. As more and more people around the world engage with this ancient practice, the need for a contextual bridge between these disparate perspectives has become apparent. It is fitting that it is Campos who has stepped up to play this role, as he helped to facilitate early ayahuasca research with international scientists in Peru and was one of the first shamans to travel into the United States offering ceremonies.

Yet despite acting as emissary between humans and sacred plant consciousness, Don Jose comes off as endearingly unassuming. Such humility is fundamental in communing with and being healed by the plants, he insists: “It’s a privilege [to drink ayahuasca] because it gives you the key to open up. My friends, there is so much value in gratitude.”

This, perhaps, is Campos's most potent lesson, and one much needed in our hyper-egoic, blindly destructive culture. We would all do well to give thanks—for wise teachers like Don Jose, and for the beneficent, ever-mysterious universe that sustains us.

Reviewed by st-frequency

Reposted HERE

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

(Vintage; Reprint edition, June 1, 2010, $15.95, 320pps)

Usha Narayane is a testament to the transformative power of education. She is also one of the heroic women that New York Times’ journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wu Dunn profile in their book Half the Sky.

Narayane grew up in the slums of India. Her poor, but forward thinking parents sacrificed and saved in order to afford her a college education. Primed for a competitive job in the hotel industry, Narayane took a trip back to the village where she grew up. It was a trip that changed the trajectory of her life and forever altered the lives of her neighbors.

Narayane’s hometown had been seized by a ruthless gang leader, Akku Yadav, and his following. The group ruled the town with an iron fist, robbing the villagers and silencing dissenters with threats of rape and murder. He often carried out his threats in a grotesque and public manner, strengthening the citizens’ resolve to stay quiet for their own protection and for the safety of their families.

Education had empowered Narayane, who could not passively watch one man terrorize everyone that she loved. Amidst threats of death, rape, and acid burns, Narayane held her ground and stood up against victimization. Her act inspired the rest of the community to band together and confront their villain. By drawing attention to the plight of women in the lower caste, Narayane and her friends were able to outsmart a corrupt legal system and bring justice to the slums. Moreover, she chose to stay in her village and use her education to teach her neighbors about business, entrepreneurial skills, self-empowerment and gender equality.

Through stories like Narayane’s, Kristof and Wu Dunn call attention to the importance of feminism and the need for vast social changes. They write with a mix of concrete facts and compelling narratives, giving each cause a face as well as quantitative support. The book covers the issues of gender equality, cultural norms, sexual violence, stigmatization, education and empowerment. As a reader, I was left with a compelling desire to join the fight for social justice. Clever journalists that they are, Kristof and Wu Dunn provided me with the tools to contribute to change in the last chapter and the appendix.

Half the Sky is a must read book. Kristof and Wu Dunn have accomplished the improbably and turned a book about policy and complex, wide ranging issues into a page turner. I read the book cover to cover in four days, stopping regretfully for food and sleep breaks. Never before has a book impacted me so much.

Kristof and Wu Dunn are exceptional story tellers who practice what they write in their day to day lives. They are not humanitarian aid zealots who jump on any bandwagon that promises to end with world peace. They are intelligent, critical people who believe that one person can change the world if he or she has the drive and the knowhow. The international community could use more people like them. This book and consequent “how to” guide serves as a great start.

- Haley Petersen

Whether unending growth is a fundamental good or the root of all evil, the simple fact is that it's the basic characteristic of modern-day "developed" economies–as well as an impossibility. Industrial economies must continually grow, yet they can't grow forever because that's impossible in a finite world. An expanding economy requires ever-increasing quantities of natural resources, and unfortunately many of these resources are in decline or face imminent decline. For example, conventional oil production peaked in 2005 and total liquid fuels production, which includes unconventional sources like ethanol and tar sands, may now also be in terminal decline. These facts are common knowledge among those who follow the issues, but are hard to find on the radar screen of the general public.

What has many believing that the U.S. economy in particular is in recovery is the steady rise in GDP since the third quarter of 2009. But Heinberg dismisses this growth as almost entirely due to government stimulus spending; and anyway, he argues, GDP is a poor measure of economic health, revealing nothing about income distribution, non-monetary transactions or people's overall well-being. For example, if you eat at home instead of at restaurants and grow your own food rather than buying it, you're hurting GDP even as you practice thrift and self-reliance. And even granting that the economy really has resumed growth, it's done so against what Heinberg calls an unhealthy backdrop of dramatically higher unemployment and severely reduced tax revenues compared to pre-recession levels.

The End of Growth provides a brief but sweeping account of economic history, which Heinberg says can be condensed into one sentence: "As societies have grown more complex, larger, more far-flung, and diverse, the tribe-based gift economy has shrunk in importance, while the trade economy has grown to dominate most aspects of people's lives, and has expanded in scope to encompass the entire planet." In ancient gift economies, community members shared with one another and trade occurred only among strangers, since trade within a community would have been taken as an affront. Then along came money, fractional reserve banking, interest and other innovations that steadily propelled humankind from the gift economy to today's trade economies marked by fierce competition.

Heinberg sees the dogfighting between Keynesian New Deal economics and the "trickle-down" Reaganomics of 50 years later as effectively over, with both sides having fallen flat on their faces. The fantastic sums that governments spent trying to restart growth during the recent recession brought no lasting growth at all. And the lavish corporate bonuses given at a time when people at large had scarcely had it so badly showed how wrong the trickle-down ideal had been. Both Keynesism and Reaganism were doomed because both believed in perpetual growth. And their mutual demise leaves us with "a crisis not just of the economy, but also of economic theory and philosophy," writes Heinberg.

Technology boosters like pointing to the incredible breakthroughs in computer technology in recent times as proof that human innovation can solve all our problems. They invoke something called Moore's law, the observation that every two years sees a doubling in how many transistors can fit onto a microchip. But as Heinberg and others have noted, computers are able to advance so quickly because they're small and have rapid inventory turnovers. Our monetary and energy systems, in contrast, are anything but small and require great foresight and planning. Thus, in Heinberg's view, "[w]e're counting on Moore's law while setting the stage for Murphy's."

In his discussion of the limits to innovation, Heinberg brings up a little-known book titled The Limits of Business Development and Economic Growth. Its author, Swedish business consultant Mats Larsson, suggests that human beings have a finite ability to invent truly new activities. Most recent inventions, he argues, have been just slight improvements in the speed of rudimentary things that we've long been doing anyway, such as travel, transport, communication and trade. Larsson sees the big international corporations becoming ever more evenly matched due to the general slowdown in innovation. And at the time of the book's writing in 2004 he predicted that we'd begin seeing hard limits to business development around 2005 to 2015. For obvious reasons, his book received no mainstream attention.

Like most sensible observers of our predicament, Heinberg sees little chance that industrial societies will voluntarily adopt the self-restraint needed to avert disaster. He believes that necessity will be the driver of change, and that governments and other large-scale institutions will be of limited usefulness. Thus, his recommendations focus on what individuals, families and communities can do to better weather the transition. The common thread throughout these suggestions is the need to revive community cohesiveness and long-abandoned systems of local organization.

The unprecedented mobility that people enjoyed during the abundant-oil era led to a society in which close neighbors have become complete strangers. Heinberg calls this a "bizarre situation" that will prove dangerous as people once again have to rely on one another for help. But he sees promise in a number of current relocalization efforts, including Rob Hopkins' Transition Town movement and the Common Security Clubs (the latter seeking to provide personal and economic security to jobless among the community). Heinberg also has some interesting thoughts on how to put these and other initiatives on the map, such as relocating existing community organizations to prominent storefronts.

Some other recommendations include the outlawing of usury, a "haircut" approach to debt jubilee and a system of debt-free money issued by governments or central banks. Heinberg sees particular promise in the haircut idea, which would work by lopping down all debts, investments and savings alike by a certain percentage, while leaving assets worth less than, say, $25,000 untouched. This would obviously be unpopular among the well-off, but would be a huge relief to those on fixed incomes.

In the several years or so since peak oil began generating significant literature and debate, it has attracted a diverse array of thinkers. To name a few, there are insiders like Colin Campbell and Ken Deffeyes who sounded the first warnings; a clinical psychologist in the field of "peak oil blues," Kathy McMahon; an archdruid practiced in nature's less readily perceptible energies, John Michael Greer; and a couple of highly engaging social critics, Jim Kunstler and Dmitry Orlov. Richard Heinberg's distinction is that he's hands-down the most prolific peak oil author, now having written half a dozen books on the subject and a few others touching on it tangentially. He's hardly done, and I think I speak for most when I say that it'll be exciting to see what he comes up with next.

Reposted from : http://mudcitypress.com/endofgrowth.html

Walk Out Walk On explores the power of individuals who choose to take a community driven approach to tackling "unsolvable" problems. Wheatley and Frieze take the reader on a "learning journey" throughout some of the world's most progressive communities who dare to buck social norms and change their futures.

Honor Thy Daughter, a True Story of Psychedelic Healing

by Marilyn Howell, Ed.D.

Can psychedelic therapy help ease the suffering of those struggling with terminal illness? As psychedelic therapy reenters the mainstream vocabulary, some people are speaking out about the urgent need for more research into its risks and benefits.

In Honor Thy Daughter, the latest book from the MAPS Press, Harvard-educated teacher Marilyn Howell, Ed.D., tells the story of her family's search for physical, emotional, and spiritual healing as her daughter struggles with terminal cancer. Their journey ultimately takes them into the hands of an anonymous therapist who offers the family hope and healing through psychedelic psychotherapy.


As Howell writes, when it comes to reminding people of the importance of psychedelic research, "stories of patients who have been helped by psychedelic therapy may be the most powerful tool we have." Honor Thy Daughter is one of those stories.

Tune in tomorrow, Tuesday, May 16 at 8:00 a.m. PST to Boston-area radio show "1550 Today" to hear Marilyn Howell discuss her decision to seek out psychedelic therapy for her daughter (1550 WNTN Boston, or listen live online).

Howell's story has already changed how the world thinks of psychedelic therapy. It first appeared in a 2006 Boston Globe article in which her identity was concealed. She remained anonymous in her first-hand account in the Spring 2006 edition of the MAPS Bulletin, but came out of the closet when Playboy interviewed her for their 2010 feature article on "The Psychedelic Renaissance." Last February, psychedelic therapy hit the cover of O: The Oprah Magazine after the magazine's senior editor learned about Howell's story and decided to try it herself.

Transpersonal psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, M.D., calls Honor Thy Daughter a "medical odyssey." Spiritual teacher Ram Dass writes, "One of the most important fruits of the 21st century will be the acceptance of the therapeutic use of psychedelics…to ease physical and existential pain and to provide a deeper understanding and acceptance of death. Honor Thy Daughter provides a glimpse of this use." Media scholar and author Jean Kilbourne calls it "a brave and beautiful book."

Honor Thy Daughter is the first book in a growing genre of true-to-life medical dramas that take an honest look at the risks and benefits of psychedelic therapy. In his upcoming book Noe, psychiatrist Phil Wolfson, M.D., shares his experience with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for his son who struggled with leukemia. Wolfson will be discussing his own book tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. PST on Dr. Richard Miller's "Mind Body Health & Politics" radio show (KZYX Northern California, or live online).

Visit the Honor Thy Daughter website for excerpts, reviews, background, and educational resources. Also check out the Spring 2011 special edition of the MAPS Bulletin on "Psychedelics and the Mind/Body Connection" for a special sneak preview.

The stunning cover art was generously donated by internationally acclaimed visionary artist A. Andrew Gonzalez.

Honor Thy Daughter is available exclusively from MAPS (and electronically on the Amazon Kindle). 100% of the profits from the sale of this book will be used to fund psychedelic and medical marijuana research and education.

Everyday Enlightenment: Seven stories of awakening
by Sally Bongers
with a foreword by Jeff Foster
(Non-Duality Press, 2008, UK) $13 with Free Shipping at http://hopedance.org/purchase

The author of this short book, Sally Bongers, is a film director of Hollywood films (Resistance, Sweetie,  Snakes and Ladders, Rapunzel in Suburbia). She decided to work on a film, called the Enlightenment Project, about people who have experienced this rather elusive consciousness altercation typically called enlightenment. In her process it seems, she decided to put some of the audio interviews into a book form, and called it Everyday Enlightenment.

The theme of this altercated consciousness is a dropping away of the self, the “me,” the one who identifies with decisions, careers, our body, our ideas, our thinking process, and especially our viewpoints. Another feature that seems to be characteristic of this major perceptual adjustment of consciousness is that you, me and the world are already perfect the way they are. The notion of an acceptance of what IS is dominant in the literature. A subset of that acceptance is that to seek to try to change or transform or become somebody misses the point exactly; in fact the more we seek the more we move away from it. And the self inquiry process helps us at least learn about the conceptual pointers as we can deconstruct what is really going on.

I was certainly thrilled to discover this book of seven stories by ordinary people who have experienced and are now grounded in what is often called a “seeing,” an awakening, liberation or I'm sure there are are other names for this—but it is certainly not a temporary state or a brief experience or from the imagination or an intellectual understanding. What's interesting is that there are some commonalities and differences among the seven people. Some people still feel their individual selves but their self/ego nature is basically in the background. One person said that during an emotional crisis, his “self” became foreground for a short period of time but then subsided into the background, after an ease of the emotional chatter and a remembrance returned. The authors of the seven stories speak about how this new “seeing” is not that big of a deal, it's often spoken about as a shift in perspective even though it cannot be manipulated or controlled or intellectually understood. I found myself wondering if this was in fact the real deal or if they did have something genuine and rather than “keep going” as in going deeper, it's as if they decided to hang out there. Like as the Sufis say, “building real estate on sand castles.” It's just a question. I don't know the answer.

None of them had anything tantamount to an explosive or mind shattering experience. All the stories seemed to come gradually, few glimpses here and there and then it happened, unexpectedly – the shift came to the foreground, to play a dominant role in one's life.

Most had been on a path, whether it was with Bhagwan Rajneesh (Osho) or Da Free John or Ramesh Balsekar or Tony Parsons or some of the lesser-known teachers of awakening. Most did not like Bush. One is an IRS agent. Another is an environmentalist. I was drawn to the latter because he was an activist before his awakening and continues to be one. He explains his new seeing as not being attached to the activist outcomes and he doesn't get so irritated at the devastation he sees environmentally; and, he said, that he may feel even more passionate about the environment since his new intimacy includes the knowledge that we humans come from nature and we need nature to survive. He says that in his workshops he asks his audience that if they don't understand our intricate and delicate need for the planet he asks them to simply count to 30 while holding their breath. “Works all the time,” he says.

He went on to describe the fun he and his social change agents would have at the serious agenda making meetings. There is an obvious lightness that he brings to the table. I appreciate his story very much because after reading Adyashanti's The End of Your World, I became of the opinion that I needed to leave that activist world altogether since how could one want to “change the world” while simultaneously seeing the world as being already complete and perfect and flourishing and simply being itself. Fascinating; perhaps I could also include activists in that similar flow, a nondualistic participation in the perfection of it all.

And Sally, if you add the stories in the book to make it to the film's editing room please include other teachers who are not of the Tony Parsons “camp.” The film will need a variety of “teachers” who are present at the moment when we, like these seven people, have a shift that might just alter us everyday people forever.

Bob Banner is publisher of www.hopedance.org

Fuck It: the ultimate spiritual way by John C. Parkin
(Hay House, 200 pages, $14. 95)

I loved reading the summary of this book from the publisher's e-mail. I requested a review copy right away… from Hay House of all publishers! Hay House was your typical spiritual New Age publisher but lately they've been expanding the realm of the New Age. I congratulate you Hay House! I love seeing niches expand and become bridges, bridge makers, stretching into new territories. We certainly need to bridge various niches so we can see the oneness within all of our diversity so we can collaborate more and see and feel the commonalities!

Of course the book cover doesn't really spell the name out but has asterisks in the title (F**k It) and even on their website. But inside the book "Fuck It" is certainly spelled out. The main gist of the book is to let go, its as if the western world needs its own version of the eastern concept and practice of letting go. And this is not only western, but it's fun as well as sacrilegious. Necessarily so. And to say fuck it includes an edge to it as well as a letting go but I think we need that edge since the control and the calculated life and this strictness of what one ought to be doing needs an edge to halt it, to jolt it out of its slumbers. And because the controlling structured life is not making us happy, it certainly begs for a new genuine fun as well as countering the seriousness of seriousness. Seriousness and complaining and whining and more and more restrictions and less sleep and more work are making people miserable. Time to do something different, even if it goes to that outer edge of saying fuck it. The balance will work itself out.

What's interesting while I was reading the book is that since I am a laughter yoga teacher (whose role it is to use laughter for no reason and as an exercise to halt/heal the incredibly moroseness and unhealthiness of this new epidemic called seriousness), I found myself substituting the word "laugh" every time Parkin wrote the expression “fuck it.” And it worked quite well. Whatever works, I say. When reading the book try it and see for yourself.

For me it was quite smooth sailing with lots of laughter and praising the author for his insights and his sense of humor. I have said “fuck it” to many of the social more's rigid “shoulds" so I was right there with him. But when it came to my specific serious “shoulds” like “saving the world” and the numerous causes I enlisted myself and have attempted to convert others, I was curious. In pages 113 to 117 in a subchapter called “Say Fuck It to wanting the world to be a better place” I found myself cringing. And page 115 Parkin writes: “So here's the thing: let's recognize that good will never win out over bad, or vice versa. Let's accept things as they are… just exactly as they are right now. Let's say fuck it to the battle. It really doesn't matter. The news is the same every day. Just with different names. It's boring.” And then he goes on to say: “Like everything else that you do, once you start saying fuck it, the effect is peculiar. Once you give up wanting the world to be a better place, you may well start actually doing something that has an apparent effect in the world.”

On page 116 and 117 he reiterates: “Say fuck it to climate change. And in this context fuck it means relaxing. After all, it's the panicky fear that switches us to 'flight' mode. So relax. Breathe deeply (even if the air around you is polluted). Relax and then decide to have the courage to face this one. Face it every day. Think deeply about what's going on and what your place can be in dealing with climate change."

"As you face the problem, don't feel obligated to do anything at all. That feeling of obligation is like leaving the window open and letting that pesky tension get back in. Don't let me tell you what to do. Don't let anyone pressure you into doing something. Don't feel guilty about what you've done or haven't done… or what we as humankind have done or haven't done.”

I cant tell you how important this book has been for me... as well as many others at a time of simply saying no, no more, to stop my own insanity, to stop my MO.. and by stopping, something else could breathe in me, to open me up.

An interesting notion about oneness and separation which was the theme of Adyashanti's new book called Falling into Grace (see review at http://hopedance.org/media-reviews/books/1905), Parkin includes it as well: “At a time in the history of humanity when we have the technology to blow each other to smithereens (and take the rest of the world with us), this could be the one thing that binds us all together.”

“At the moment just before we all go down, we'll probably realize that we're all one, that all is one—just like all the gurus and teachers have all been going on about for so long. Ironic, really, as it's the perception of separation (from each other and from nature) that has got us here in the first place.”

So if you're interested in expanding your particular viewpoint whether it is as a social change agent, activist, spiritual person, or whatever... take a fun walk down this route of the western version of letting go. But then again we'll only truly let go when sometimes out of sheer exhaustion, or illness or when our MO is no longer working and we can actually see and taste the insanity of our MO... then and only then will we be open to say Fuck It!

And if you don't like this review, just say fuck it and do something different. And if you don't like saying the words, fuck it, how about substituting words like “relax,” “let go,” laugh, stop, do something else and see where it takes you.

I sold all the copies I had online and am sure you can get one from Amazon for $10.17. Check it out. And although Parkin lives in Italy, he runs a retreat center where for a period of time you can engage in the fuck it philosophy and, as he writes, where they have "plenty of hammocks!" Buy the book and find out where! And check out the fuck it video: http://hopedance.org/community-media/videos/655

- Bob Banner publishes www.hopdance.org online and is a laughter yoga teacher. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .