BRUJERÍA ◊ THE AYAHUASCA MEDICINE TEACHINGS OF HARMFUL PERCEPTIONS

Published on June 7, 2026 at 12:15 AM

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Introduction

◊🔑🧬 What if psychological distress is not always understood correctly when viewed exclusively through an internal lens? The Shipibo-Conibo medicine traditions of Peru offer a relational model of psychological distress that can provide valuable insight into intrusive thoughts, harmful influences, and personal healing, while remaining distinct from the assumption that all suffering originates either entirely inside or entirely outside ourselves.

◊🧬🌈🖤 n this archive, I explore these teachings through a combination of traditional medicine perspectives, personal experiences, cultural examples, and reflections from my own training as an Ayahuasqera healer. Along the way, I examine the traditional concept of brujería (black magic or sorcery), stories from the Amazon, the role of awareness and meditation — and how these teachings gradually transformed my understanding of intrusive thoughts and mental health.

◊🐉🧠🧘🏽 Although many of the ideas discussed here may initially seem unusual from a Western perspective, my goal here is to explore how two very different psychological frameworks can illuminate one another, and how the dialogue between them may open new possibilities for healing, self-understanding, and a new evolution of popular mental health culture.

A Western / Peruvian Hybrid Psyche

◊🇨🇦🇵🇪 As a Canadian-born and university-educated woman of European descent in my early 40s, who began the immersive path of traditional training in the Peruvian Shipibo-Conibo medicine practices of Ayahuasca during my formative years, I've emerged as a fascinating hybrid. Although I remain deeply embedded within Western modern culture, my psyche has been profoundly influenced not only by the psychedelic healing plant medicines of South America, but also by the cultural perspectives and traditions that surround them. These traditions have formed symbiotically with the medicine — Ayahuasca — through thousands of years of plant-human relationship, cultivating not only a way of seeing through the medicine, but also a way of living in response to the unique healing states of consciousness it can inspire.

◊🇵🇪 Despite being Western, I often feel, at my core, Peruvian — or more specifically, Shipibo-Conibo — when it comes to psychology. By this, I mean the deepest layers of my psyche. At the same time, I am intensely familiar with Western ideology, and I have found that my life path is often centred on introducing these healing perspectives into Western cultural discourse where I feel they are most needed. Because I practice primarily within this healing tradition, my focus has always been on the potential for Western models to integrate greater tolerance and respect for the psychological insights offered by the medicine, within their proper context. Mental health has long been one of my primary interests in this field, and it is that topic which I am here to discuss today.

The Key Argument ◊ The Source of Negative Mental Phenomenon

◊🫥🌎The key difference between these two models may be summed up by the question that is asked when someone is experiencing psychological distress. The Western inquiry is often, "What mental processes are generating this experience from within the person?" while the medicine asks, "What relationships are affecting reality — as a continuum between the inner and outer worlds of the person?" In fact, the word "condition" is perfect here because it carries two meanings: external conditions affecting someone's life, and medical conditions such as diagnoses. Traditional psychedelic plant medicine involves a healing relationship between humans and plants, where people learn to understand and respect an ecological framework — the perspective of a plant's life — as a way of supporting adjustment and integration to life's challenges. In ecology, things do not exist inside isolated bubbles contained within individuals; they exist within an interconnected web of relationships.

◊🧘🏽🧠 So when someone experiences intrusive thoughts, those thoughts may not feel authentic to them, yet doctors are often working to understand how they might still arise from within the person's own mind. Medicine people, by contrast, may consider that the source could originate from outside the individual. This method of analysis extends beyond mental or emotional phenomenon alone. In the Amazon, many forms of difficulty — such as persistent misfortune, misunderstandings between friends, unusual dreams, physical illness, emotional disturbance, loss of vitality, or a general sense of heaviness — may all be considered part of the same picture. Symptoms that are often grouped together into diagnostic categories in Western medicine are instead viewed as interconnected with broader patterns in a person's life. In this framework, a mental struggle is often understood as one expression of a larger imbalance rather than the root cause of unrelated difficulties such as job loss or social conflict.

◊😶‍🌫️ The source of such imbalance may be understood as another person, a spirit, a harmful intention, an energetic intrusion, or a disturbed relationship within the wider spiritual ecology. The analysis is not limited to trauma, cognitive bias, unconscious conflict, or stress physiology — although there is often nuance and room to consider these factors as well. Certain Western religious, spiritual, and multicultural traditions have likewise held space for similar perspectives. What I have appreciated most about the medicine, however, is its sophisticated emphasis on healing and adaptive forms of resolution. For example, I appreciate cultural depictions of demonic entities, black magic, witchcraft, or conspiracy theories as creative and thought-provoking ways of exploring these ideas. Yet I have found that the Shipibo-Conibo traditions do more than simply identify a possible source of imbalance — they maintain an optimistic and practical focus on how that imbalance may be effectively resolved.

The Ayahuasca Teachings of Brujería

◊🌿 How Traditional Plant Medicine Teaches About Harmful Influences and Malpractice


In Ayahuasca medicine ceremonies, there are very special teachings about this issue. The plant teachers provide a traditional healing container through which the information is studied. Generally, these teachings tend to arrive formally during later and more advanced periods of traditional training. That said, beginners who read this archive may later recognize that their own visions contained these perspectives on a subtler level as well.

In these more advanced experiences, examples are often provided of outside influences producing harmful effects, modeled specifically along the lines of how Ayahuasca ceremonies, plant preparations, and other traditional practices are conducted. The process and method of these teachings are designed to impress upon the student the importance of avoiding malpractice.

This method of studying the phenomenon tends to produce good healers because it serves as an excellent framework for exploring a wider issue that affects everyone, even outside of psychedelic experiences, while maintaining psychological stability through a system associated with safety, healing, and emotional progress. As a result, South American culture is rich with perspectives and superstitions that have been profoundly influenced by generations of master healers, creating a unique form of common sense infused with empathy and emotional intelligence.

◊🖤 Dark Sorcery, Healing Ethics, and the Origins of Misfortune in Amazonian Thought


Alongside the healing experiences of the medicine, and within this contained traditional format, abundant teachings are offered about how malpractice in plant preparation, cultivation, ceremony preparation, or leadership can produce effects comparable to black magic or harmful spell-casting. Throughout the Amazon, countless stories are shared about practitioners who fell into temptation through harmful intentions and began deliberately attacking others through forms of witchcraft or demonic influence known as brujería.

These stories are rich and fascinating, perhaps serving a role similar to fairy tales in the West, much as Disney princesses provide a common archetypal language through which larger lessons are communicated.

There are different views on what these teachings ultimately represent, but they generally fall into a few broad interpretations. Some believe that harmful intentions brought into medicine work naturally lead toward these attack-oriented expressions through misuse of the medicine itself. Others, myself included, believe that even with good intentions, failing to work with the correct plants, preparing them improperly, or neglecting the behavioural guidelines surrounding the work can create similar vulnerabilities, both offensively and defensively.

To me, this resembles a "chicken or egg" question. There appear to be many different forms of vulnerability, including harmful influences in both the human and plant worlds, as well as factors that remain difficult to explain. What seems most important, however, is that the greatest harm occurs when one consciously identifies with the choice to act destructively rather than toward healing.

◊🐉 Symbolic Diagnosis and the Art of Prognosis ◊ Demons or Spirits As Become Practical Tools for Healing


Bodies of relevant information are often stored within symbolic containers, and the emphasis on these symbols being literal helps keep the information organized and memorable. For example, accepting that an active human perpetrator may temporarily be viewed as "a demon" can be a crucial step toward directing attention to practical solutions instead of becoming consumed by assigning blame. Sometimes harm reduction, stabilization, and access to better resources are more beneficial than immediately pursuing a root cause.

Generally, the visions do not only teach that human practitioners are performing witchcraft. They may also teach that demonic spirits are responsible. The stories can be astonishing. For example, a healer might diagnose a mental health struggle by determining that a woman is literally pregnant with a demonic being, perhaps even a dragon.

To me, these highly creative and symbolic portrayals often function as tools for investigating situations where the responsible party cannot, or should not, be identified directly. Sometimes brujería is considered best left partially concealed, as excessive focus on exposing a perpetrator may intensify conflict rather than resolve it. In such situations, imagining the source symbolically as a spirit can become surprisingly practical and psychologically healthy.

As you can imagine, this is a highly sophisticated art form. The guidance of Ayahuasca can be extremely valuable in selecting the metaphors most likely to lead toward constructive outcomes. It becomes an advanced skill to provide a colorful prognosis through imagery such as a demonic pregnancy, even if such language may seem entirely foreign from a Western perspective. Rather than merely identifying a source of harm, the symbolic framework helps organize information in a way that supports healing, adaptation, and resolution.

An Introduction to My Story Examples of Brujería

My own stories of this nature do not quite compare to the wildly fascinating accounts found in traditional lore. While studying Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman by Pablo Amaringo and Luis Eduardo Luna, I found the stories there to be much richer as anthropological storyboards, offering a glimpse into older Peruvian beliefs and ways of understanding the world. Perhaps that is simply because my own experiences were not distant stories but deeply personal processes that I lived through while receiving support from the plant teachers to understand what was happening. These experiences tend to carry a private and often painful tone. In my experience, Ayahuasqero healers who share their own examples often do so with a certain gravity still visible in their expression. Brujería is frequently understood as something that can take years to resolve through many ceremonies and considerable personal effort, yet the breakthroughs can be profoundly rewarding. For that reason, I would like to offer an example both from the experiences of others as well as my own.

The Story of The Amazonian Walking Tree

◊🌿 Preparation to Understand the Story ◊ Vegetalismo, Master Plants, and Why Some Practitioners Go Astray

 

The core traditional Ayahuasca practice undertaken as part of training to become a master healer (a curandera) is known as Vegetalismo. There are different forms of vegetalismo, but what they generally share is a strict period of fasting on a special diet, sexual abstinence, and the ingestion of certain important "master plants." These master plants are not psychedelic medicines themselves, but are understood to work spiritually in unison with Ayahuasca as part of a larger healing family. When properly prepared and taken at the appropriate time, and when combined with Ayahuasca ceremonies in a traditional sequence, a person develops a lifelong relationship with that master plant. From that point forward, they gain a special intimacy with that teacher, which supports their healing journey in collaboration with Ayahuasca and tobacco medicine.

Exactly which plants belong to the core family of traditional master plants is sometimes the subject of debate. Certainly, many are widely recognized as part of the traditional teachings of Ayahuasca. Occasionally, however, people become confused by their visions or take matters into their own hands, imagining that other plants outside this traditional group should also be incorporated into vegetalismo. Fascinated by the extraordinary diversity of the Amazon, some begin experimenting with plants that were never intended for this purpose. In the traditional understanding, this can lead toward forms of witchcraft when Ayahuasca ceremonies are then used in search of ways to work with these plants as medicines, often motivated by desires for power or harmful influence. In such situations, visions that are easy to misinterpret may arise, appearing to encourage acts of black magic when they don't. Through wishful thinking, some come to believe that certain visions are instructing them to cause harm when they are not in essence doing that at all.

◊🌳 The Amazonian Story of the Walking Tree ◊ A Traditional Example of Misguided Plant Work


One fascinating example is the walking tree. The Amazon jungle is a strange place, filled with astonishing diversity and surprising forms of life. The walking tree is actually fairly common. It is a tree that appears to walk, using its roots like legs to slowly reposition itself through the forest. By lifting roots from one location and establishing them in another, it gradually migrates over time in search of better conditions. The movement is incredibly slow — perhaps comparable to a sloth — unfolding over days, weeks, and even longer periods. Yet despite the biological explanations for this behaviour, people often become captivated by the sight of these trees and develop larger stories about what guides them and grants them the power to move. Some wonder whether the same force that allows a tree to become almost human-like in its movement might also lend human beings powers that seem almost god-like.

◊🪞 The Healer Who Worked With the Walking Tree ◊ A Personal Example of Long-Term Psychological Consequences


Personally, I met someone who had undertaken this practice, and it was deeply disturbing to witness. He was a beautiful curandero who owned a gorgeous healing centre in Iquitos. He was well loved and respected by all, but after working with the walking tree he became profoundly unsettled. A part of him seemed increasingly dissociative and easily triggered, and he often fell into strange, overly simplistic explanations for reality that felt disconnected from the grounded wisdom he had once carried. He remained a well-intentioned person, but he frequently lost his centre and struggled to hold himself together.

It took many years of proper vegetalismo with the traditional master plants before he began recognizing the mistake he had made. It was probably fifteen years later before his spirit seemed to start reclaiming itself and the lights gradually appeared to come back on in his eyes. I often wonder how much regret he may have felt in later years for any misguided paths his visions had led him down. I feel deeply for the poor man.

The truth is that he was never quite the same afterward, and his life was permanently marked by the experience. And this is only the walking tree. There are far more severe examples involving dangerous poisons, exploitation, and serious violations. I share this gentler story because it illustrates how even seemingly simple mistakes can have profound consequences. The misunderstandings created through powerful visions, combined with a flawed approach to the practice itself, appeared to leave a lasting imprint on his psyche.

He did not suffer a concussion, brain injury, or poisoning, yet the effects often seemed comparable in their impact. To me, this is one example of how purely Western methods of analyzing what was wrong with the poor man can sometimes feel incomplete.

My Own Medicine Teachings & Experiences of Brujería

◊🌿 Two Ways the Medicine Teaches Brujería ◊ Learning Through Medicine Teachings and Healing of Direct Experience


My understanding of brujería developed through two very different forms of learning. On the one hand, the medicine provided direct teachings about the subject in an orderly and educational fashion, allowing me to become familiar with the traditional understanding of how brujería works. On the other hand, I also came to understand it through lived experience, gradually unraveling a complex situation in which it had been practiced against me over a long period of time. This second form of learning required years of introspection, growth, and increasing awareness while journeying with the plant teachers.

These two ways of learning through Ayahuasca are fascinating to compare. Sometimes the medicine provides teachings that feel almost like educational workshops, where a subject is presented directly and systematically. Other times, awareness develops much more gradually around an unseen problem, with seemingly unrelated healing experiences slowly providing the context needed to understand what has been happening. In my own life, both forms of learning played an important role in understanding brujería and its effects.

◊⚠️ The Visiting Circle ◊ Poisoning, Manipulation, and Immediate Recognition


One of the brujos I encountered was not particularly close to me, but rather, someone introduced from outside my immediate circle. As a result, it didn't take long to understand what had happened. However, even though the situation was addressed immediately, it was still only in later years that I came to appreciate its fuller significance.

During three Ayahuasca ceremonies as a visitor to this circle, I was given the poison of concentrated Brugmansia flower mixed into the medicine in a dosage that was very psychologically altering but thankfully not permanently damaging. In my understanding, this was done to influence my judgment and increase my vulnerability to eventual sexual abuse. There was much more to the story than that, however, and it remains a long and fascinating subject in its own right.

I was physically molested during one of the ceremonies, but thankfully the situation went no further. My background in vegetalismo had cultivated a degree of psychological resilience that helped me resist what I experienced as an invitation toward misconduct.

What shocked me most was how respected this individual was within a large community. Over time, I came to explain this as part of his sorcery which led to ceremony visions of elaborate promotional impressions of him — almost like surreal and emotionally charged commercials portraying him as extraordinary.

I discuss this experience also in another UNITY LIFE Archive: BLANKET BC SOCIETY ◊ GIVING BLANKETS TO THE POOR ◊ AND THE FIRST PEOPLES BLANKET CEREMONIES & HISTORY.

◊🕸️ The Brujo Within My Support Network ◊ Sorcery Hidden Within Trusted Relationships


The second brujo was much more difficult to understand because he was deeply connected to my support network and had a far greater influence on my life over time. Unlike the previous example, this was not someone introduced briefly from the outside. He occupied a position much closer to my path and development within the medicine traditions.

This man raped me when I first met him — a serious warning sign, to say the least. His sexual abuse extended beyond that as well. Yet as a very young woman, still relatively new to Ayahuasca, I naively continued pursuing a month-long training retreat mainly led by him in Bolivia. Looking back, I understand this period through the lens of his brujería and the influence it had over my judgment at the time.

Because he was so closely connected to my support structures, it took many years to fully unravel what had been happening. Although I witnessed troubling behaviours and inconsistencies early on, I did not yet have the perspective needed to understand the larger pattern. Only much later, after I was no longer dependent upon people within his network, did the medicine begin providing the broader, bird's-eye-view lessons that helped me understand what I had actually been experiencing.

◊🏨 The Training in Bolivia ◊ Seeing the Contradiction Between Tradition and Misconduct


Thankfully, I attended only a single month-long training with him in Bolivia. Even so, the experience left a lasting impression. When I arrived, he persuaded me to stay with him at what I later understood to be a prostitution hotel. At the time, I failed to grasp the significance of this. Only years later did I realize that he appeared to view me through a lens that was profoundly degrading and completely at odds with how I saw myself.

As strange as the situation was, the hotel itself remains almost comical in my memory. Cars would arrive and park beside private rooms, hidden beneath large tarps extending from the roof to conceal the identities of visitors. Inside, the décor was highly eccentric, with the colourful and idiosyncratic style so often found throughout Peru and Bolivia. It was like a bizarre, strangely colorful porno movie. Looking back, I still find it difficult to understand why I agreed to be there.

Another surprise awaited me when I arrived at the training itself. For the first time, I discovered that he was married. His wife, who was widely regarded as a brujera, was present throughout the retreat. Her hostility toward me was immediate and intense. She subjected me to repeated mistreatment, including leaving me for extended periods in the sweltering heat without adequate support, while also directing frequent insults, confrontations, and public humiliations toward me in front of the group.

Despite these difficulties, I also received valuable, proper traditional teachings during that month. At the same time, however, I began noticing contradictions between what was being formally taught and certain behaviours taking place around the edges of the training and surrounding ceremonies. It gradually became apparent that an underbelly of counter-traditional practices was operating alongside the legitimate teachings. Misconduct itself seemed to be treated as a secret, structured practice, existing in parallel to the traditions that were openly presented.

I could sense that something was wrong, but I lacked the perspective to fully understand it yet. Looking back, I am grateful that over a decade later, once I was no longer dependent upon people within that network, the medicine provided broader lessons and perspectives that helped me make sense of many things I had only partially understood at the time.

◊🪞 What the Medicine Later Revealed ◊ Altered Perspectives of Brujería and the Long Unraveling of Understanding


More than a decade later, once I was no longer dependent upon people within that network, the medicine began providing broader lessons and perspectives that helped me make sense of many things I had only partially understood at the time. Looking back, it seemed that the brujería this man practiced fostered a tendency toward misconduct surrounding the medicine itself. Thankfully, I emerged from that period without participating in such behaviours, though by no means without being harmed by these experiences.

One example involved periods that were meant to be sexually abstinent as tradition dictates. At unexpected times, powerful urges would arise that felt profoundly out of character for me, accompanied by a confusing and unsettling atmosphere. The sensations did not seem to fit my normal emotional or physical patterns. Some visions likewise appeared to invite interpretations oriented toward misconduct, while the plant teachers consistently seemed to offer more beautiful and constructive pathways through those same experiences.

In retrospect, I came to view these moments as temptations designed to encourage questions about whether Ayahuasca could be practiced outside of traditional ethical boundaries. This would explain why the man occasionally hinted that he followed such paths in secret. The implication always seemed to be that another route was available if one wished to pursue it.

This was only one example among many. Over the years, there were numerous experiences that I later came to understand differently. One ceremony in particular stands out in my memory. The entire night felt violently disrupted by what the medicine taught me was his aggressive brujería. The atmosphere was in direct conflict with years of teachings I had received from the plant teachers regarding how my ceremonies were meant to function and develop. Thankfully, this disturbance was limited to a single night.

Looking back, I also often felt psychically overshadowed by his rigid and militant approach to the medicine — a worldview centred on shame, failure, punishment, and doom. It seemed as though a series of expectations had been constructed that would ultimately define me as a failure in my path, despite the fact that the medicine itself repeatedly pointed in another direction.

◊🕊️ Healing, Freedom, and Graduation ◊ Discovering That Failure Had Been Success


Only once I was freed from my remaining supportive connections around him did the plant teachers begin educating me on how untrue and fallacy-based many of these harmful ideas which rooted from his sorcery had been. They provided clear understandings of how many of my supposed failures had actually been successes.

After I was finally in safety, the medicine supported me in healing from the painful experience of having misunderstood myself throughout many stages of my training. Discovering that I had succeeded to a far greater degree than I had previously realized was an immense relief.

Not long afterward, I graduated to become a full-fledged Ayahuasca master healer within my traditional ceremonies, much sooner than I had ever imagined possible. This came after roughly fifteen years of steady progress — a substantial but fairly typical length of training. Yet for much of that journey, I had assumed it might take another twenty-five years before I reached that point.

◊⚫ The Cost of Misconduct in Medicine Communities ◊ Protecting Healing Through Accountability


And that's how difficult this experience was for me without ever personally dabbling in black magic myself. Thankfully, I gained access fairly quickly to proper traditional support outside of this man's influence, including guidance from someone present during the training who was actively working to reduce the harm he was causing. I continued my studies largely beyond his sphere of influence and received the support I needed to avoid these kinds of temptations toward misconduct.

Even so, I witnessed troubling things happen to many of the people around him. There were countless stories, and it was painful to watch good people struggle under the influence of someone who presented himself as a healer while operating in ways that fundamentally contradicted the traditions he claimed to represent. In my view, he was never a true Ayahuasca healer. Over the years, many people — myself included — have publicly warned others about him. Yet the reality is that individuals like this sometimes continue causing harm for long periods of time despite those warnings.

For me, experiences such as these ultimately reinforced the importance of proper training, ethical conduct, and strong support networks within medicine communities. They also deepened my appreciation for the traditional teachings, which consistently pointed toward healing, accountability, and the preservation of human dignity.

Advisory : The "brujo within my support network" discussed in the story above is Miguel Kavlin (from Bolivia) of sacharuna.com
As well, the brujo described in "The Visiting Circle" is Guillermo Arévalo of TAMS (The Traaditional Amazonian Medicines Society). He is the person who played the Ayahuasqero Curandero in the movie Renegade

Recognizing the Safety Risks ◊ Finding a Safe Starting Point

These difficult stories should not be taken as a reflection of traditional Ayahuasca practice as a whole. Rather, they help explain why so many warnings exist for beginners, as the available resources can be a mixed bag and vary enormously in quality, ethics, and most importantly, integrity to formal Ayahuasca tradition. For those who are already firmly committed to exploring Ayahuasca, I have viewed The Temple of the Way of Light in Iquitos, Peru as an excellent starting point for visitors seeking a safe and reputable introduction to the medicine traditions. That said, the decision to participate in Ayahuasca ceremonies is deeply personal and influenced by many individual factors. For that reason, I cannot broadly recommend Ayahuasca itself through a public article such as this. Traditional Ayahuasca medicine has been the right thing for me — but any powerful field of human activity requires wisdom, discernment, and a commitment to ethical practice in order to be properly navigated.Ultimately, my intention is not to promote Ayahuasca, but to encourage informed decision-making while opening minds to another way of viewing these types of mental phenomenon. 

How This Insight Has Adjusted My Views On Intrusive Thoughts

◊🧠 Intrusive Thoughts and the Practice of Awareness ◊ When Thoughts Seem From Outside


I like to focus on intrusive thoughts, even though, as mentioned earlier, larger issues such as misfortune and physical illness may also be part of this picture. For me, the most fascinating and complex aspect has been learning to map and understand my own intrusive thoughts while observing similar patterns in others. Around 2018 or 2019, not long after graduating as a full-fledged Ayahuasqera master healer in 2017, I experienced a distinct shift in how I understood these kinds of mental phenomena through meditation.

Thoughts such as, "There's something wrong with me — I'm just not good enough. I feel the need to apologize for myself..." ceased to feel like expressions of my own insecurity or self-doubt. Instead, they began to appear as an outside influence. Through meditation as a practice of expanding awareness, I learned to observe these thoughts closely enough to notice that they stood out like a sore thumb against my natural patterns of thinking and belief. As the saying goes, sitting back in awareness and allowing thoughts to pass by "like clouds in the sky," whether stormy or pleasant, allows a person to step back and see them more clearly for what they are.

◊🔍 Pattern Recognition and the Direction of Thought ◊ The Hidden Agendas Within Our Minds


The Western obsession with the subconscious as a hidden chamber from which these experiences supposedly originate no longer made sense to me. Through meditation, I gained both a deeper understanding of myself and new insights into where these thoughts appeared to come from. Through careful observation and pattern recognition, I began detecting what seemed like a quiet agenda within certain intrusive thoughts — a consistent direction shaping the understandings, emotions, and actions that might emerge from them. Studying these patterns allowed me to analyze the apparent directive at work within the phenomenon, which often left tell-tale signs about who might benefit from these views arising within me as if they were my own insecurities or complexes.

This provided abstract, and occasionally more specific, clues about the source of these experiences. Sometimes the source seemed vague, such as someone who might directly benefit from my loss of confidence, influence, or status. Other times, it appeared more specific because I knew the individuals involved and could clearly see that their interests aligned with the internal experiences I was having. The latter was rare. More often, the source appeared abstract rather than personal. The medicine taught me that these influences frequently arise through larger groups or networks rather than a single individual acting alone. It may appear that one person is responsible, while in reality the influence is sustained through a broader web of interconnected activity. With this perspective in mind, I began studying institutions of power in a new way, expanding upon my earlier university education in sociology.

◊🏛️ Institutions, Power, and Harmful Influence ◊ Sociology and the Expansion of the Inquiry


I gradually realized that major institutions can often provide a framework through which individuals may elevate harmful intentions. Using both intuition and creative inquiry, I began exploring concept models for how something similar to brujería might operate outside of medicine contexts, including within underground systems of crime that align themselves with institutional structures and goals.

Over the years, the medicine had taught me a great deal about forms of abuse used within these hidden networks as methods of influence and control. When I later encountered various conspiracy theories, I found that although I did not believe the theories themselves, there was often a grain of truth within them that echoed certain lessons I had learned through the medicine. This led me into deeper studies on the nature of reality through meditation, searching for the underlying mechanisms through which brujería appears to function and whether similar processes might occur in other contexts.

As a result, I eventually came to feel that something comparable does seem to occur in the wider world beyond medicine traditions alone. While the forms may differ, the broader patterns of influence appeared familiar to me, and seemed relevant to understanding certain intrusive thoughts and psychological pressures experienced by ordinary people.

◊🌿 Why the Ayahuasca Container Works ◊ Healing Through Guided Inquiry


As a result of this breakthrough, I came to appreciate on a much larger scale just how powerful the Ayahuasca container can be as a gentle path for learning about this kind of phenomenon, which all of us encounter in one form or another. It seems to me that one of the deepest struggles people face with intrusive thoughts is the fear that they represent some hidden flaw within themselves, and therefore should be allowed to define their identity.

For this reason, the suggestion that some experiences may not originate entirely from within ourselves can initially feel unsettling. There can be a strong emotional reaction to questioning assumptions that have become deeply embedded in how we understand ourselves and our struggles.

Within the framework of the medicine teachings, I came to see this reaction as particularly fascinating. The phenomenon itself often seemed to encourage identification with the experience, as though it were invested in being understood as a personal flaw rather than something worthy of investigation. In that sense, the impulse to internalize and self-blame sometimes appeared to be part of the pattern being studied.

This is one reason I believe the Ayahuasca container can be such a valuable place to begin this inquiry. By limiting the initial study to situations involving medicine malpractice, and by exploring them within a supportive healing framework, people can begin the same process that I did — gradually and calmly recognizing that at least some experiences need not be understood solely as reflections of who we are.

◊⚖️ Balancing Inner and Outer Causes ◊ Why Not Every Negative Experience Comes From Outside Ourselves


Even within the Shipibo-Conibo traditions of Peru, there is no suggestion that every negative experience is caused by an outside influence. Of course, many difficulties are best understood through more immediate and practical explanations such as stress, exhaustion, grief, illness, or other ordinary challenges of life. The value, in my experience, lies not in rigidly choosing one explanation over another, but in remaining open to the possibility that either may sometimes be relevant.

This subtle shift encourages a deeper practice of awareness and self-inquiry. Rather than automatically assuming that every difficult experience reveals some flaw within ourselves, we can learn to observe more carefully before reaching conclusions. From the perspective of the medicine teachings, I have often found it striking that the immediate impulse is so frequently toward self-blame. In some cases, that tendency itself appears suspicious, seeming almost perfectly designed to keep attention focused inward and away from the possibility that other influences or relationships may also deserve examination.

Through meditation, I have come to appreciate a perspective similar to that found within many Buddhist teachings : that beneath the constant activity of the mind there exists a deeper stillness, awareness, or conscious presence. The self, at its deepest level, is not necessarily the turmoil passing through it. This understanding can help create space between awareness and experience, making it easier to recognize when a limiting story, false conclusion, or fabricated identity has begun to interfere with clear perception and wise action.

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