Lineage and Syncretism
The medicine paths can be likened to different landscapes and territories. Some people, when visiting a new destination, experience it briefly and move on, whether they liked it or not. Others return, revisiting to remember, to give it another chance, or to deepen their discovery. Some might make it a regular pilgrimage, planning annual or biennial trips because the place moved them and created an inner movement.
Along these journeys, some make friends. Others are so moved by the territory that they seek to orient themselves there, to find belonging. They track the landscape, getting to know its back alleys, meeting the beings along the way. It's like going to a new country and falling in love with it. You start to immerse yourself, learning the language, local customs, music, arts, and history.
On the medicine path, deeper immersion leads to a greater appreciation of the places we've visited and the spaces that have impacted us. We learn the technology and language involved, come to respect its complex ecology and it becomes crucial to learn how to translate this knowledge. The new language we acquire differs from our own, gifting us perspective and teaching us to look differently. This different way of looking opens us to a different way of living, a deeper way of living.
Some people explore these territories under the roof of one house, one lineage, opening their eyes to a specific viewpoint. This perspective is very beautiful, it contains vistas of heritage, ancestral dreaming, and cosmology. The lineages working with entheogenic plant medicines, especially from South America, are incredibly beautiful and exquisite.
As with the topic of interspirituality and religion, one needn't constantly change paths. If you find a good spiritual director, guide, or healer who can help you, there's no need to look further. You've found your path.
For me, I appreciate all of the pathways that wind around the forest, and I've been exposed to many different leaders, great ayahuasqueros, curanderos, onanyas, kurakas, pajés, madrinhas, padrinhos, and I want to be something of a translator. Sometimes, my role is to be a bridge between this world and that world, this world and the other. To cross divides of meaning because too often we are quick to translate and impose our worldview, when in fact there is a distinction and a difference between our worlds. We are not always speaking the same mythical languages of the landscape. And in being a bridge, we can be like an open door. Being an open door allows others to find accessible meeting points along the way and allows people to appreciate those places and to discover those places, to broaden their eyes, to broaden their view.
If we focus on just one room, one corner in the house of the great medicine paths from around the world, we're seeing only a limited part. In reality, it's an immense house with many rooms, windows, and doors. There are countless ways to approach it, each unique to our particular view—who we are, where we come from, and our relationship to our ancestral dreamings and weavings. Each path reflects the way we have learned to see the world.
So, I say with ayahuasca, it is not black and white; it is simply complex, but we don't have to complicate matters. For example, there are a lot of contradictions and complications if we look from just one side. Because what somebody says on one side of the river, on the other side, they say the opposite. What one side says you should never do, the other side says they do that and there's no conflict. And so reconciling those opposing views is a path of stepping back. It's one of listening and slowing. It's one of appreciation and being open to many different perspectives and interpretations.
In that sense of appreciating the different lineages, again, we're stepping back to appreciate the tradition of medicine carriers, the tradition of wisdom carriers, the tradition of the ways of those who are called to be a bridge, to be a window, to be a doorway, to hold those things, to carry the songs, to carry the prayers. What does it mean to be someone who carries a prayer? What does it mean to be someone who carries wisdom, someone who carries songs, someone who carries messages, and someone who delivers those messages?
People should look to lineages and find good spiritual directors to align themselves, to have guidance, to be able to have something to fall back on, because a lot of it is uncharted territory, especially for the Western initiate. There's a lot of walking out in that unknown, out in those vacant spaces, out in those territories of wilderness, and finding our paths, within finding our place.
One of my teachers says, “Everyone finds their place.” Sometimes your place is in your own healing. Sometimes your work is unraveling your heart. Sometimes your work is in sitting and paying attention. Sometimes your work is in participating and uplifting the community in the ritual. Sometimes your work is in the music. Sometimes your work is just listening. If we're engaged in that listening, then we find our place in many places, in many spaces. But if you find your place and you become stable in it, then you can find that place in many circles and in many paths.
Our place with the Forest Path is its own tradition. It's our family lineage. It's our family offering that has come from a wide range of attributes and aspects. It doesn't land in any one of those places from where it is inspired, yet it contains traces of them, honours them, and pays respects to them. Still, it is a direct orientation in and of itself.
The Forest Path is not saying to do away with lineages. It's saying to appreciate the lineages. And there is a lineage here that has begun. And if you find yourself here, then maybe that's your place. But your place can always change. Your space can always change. And so the space is always open for people to continuously find their place and find their space. And any space of spirituality should always be open for those to come and go, to find their work and to grow. If they're not growing, if the work is not working, then there are other places and there are other spaces and that is fine too. We must ask ourselves continuously what is it I am actually looking for?