San Pedro Cactus: cosmic ambassador of Earth
San Pedro cactus — is a fast-growing columnar cactus native to the Andes Mountains. Uses for it includes traditional medicine.
It has been used for healing and religious divination in the Andes Mountains region for over 3,000 years.[4] It contains Mescaline (3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine) — a psychedelic drug and entheogen.
It’s been a little bit more than three years since my return from Peru. So many things became uncommonly new to me starting from then and it still feels like new revelations continue to slowly unfold and manifest themselves in greater detail creating new connections within my reality thus expanding the whole experience of being.
My purpose in traveling to Peru was going to the jungle for Ayahuasca. San Pedro was not as much a purpose but rather a “why not to try” kind of thing. The internet is not that loaded with articles about San Pedro as it is with Ayahuasca.
And although I have read nearly everything I could read on both plants before my going to Peru, I am confident that very few words match my experience for both entheogens. This is especially true for San Pedro, whose power, in my view, is largely toned down by being described as “mild” medicine and thus perceived almost as a “chill- out” substance by many.
I spent quite some time contemplating how I would put into words my San Pedro trip. What is written below is an attempt to give yet another perspective on this entheogen and align me once again with the compelling teaching this plant has offered.
I have had only 1 San Pedro ceremony, which proved to be so extraordinarily strong and essentially idiosyncratic that even today, I am still digesting what I was given.
My San Pedro day started on April 16, 2016, in a magnificent place in the Andes hosted by a wonderful family, Bernard and Lisa, whose warmth and elegance provided the most gracious and vibrant atmosphere during my short stay.
And my special thanks go to their absolutely majestic cat named Tika with her unbelievable eyes that were staring at me like two planets. The house was surrounded by stunning views of sunlit mountains with lavish clouds laying gently on colorful peaks.
Having come here right after spending some time in the jungle with all my senses sharpened and heightened to the full I found the place irresistibly luscious at all levels.
I arrived late and didn’t sleep well the night before. The work with Ayahuasca had taught me to be as mentally clear as possible in order to connect to the plant.
But I was a bit apprehensive and my true intentions for the ceremony eluded me as its purpose was obscured by my nerves.
In the end, I just set the intention of comprehending whatever was important for me in the first place at that time.
Our morning started with some yoga exercises and tea. Soon after yoga, we gathered in the beautiful small maloka surrounded by Andes Mountains as Bernard made preparations and served the plant. My cup of San Pedro seemed to be a bowl of soup.
Having finished it I went out of the maloka to sit on the grass. I was sitting looking around at the extravagance of the landscape when I think not more than 15 minutes passed and all of a sudden Ayahuasca started taking on very quickly. Definitely, it was Ayahuasca, not San Pedro.
Knowing that San Pedro should not be visual, there I was gazing at the shapes of mountains with amusement and tiny disturbance as they appeared to run down into 3d ayahuascish swirling patterns, propelling into me with the increasing power and nonpareil polysemy.
Ayahuasca spirit started seeping through, playing with her dazzling and powerfully feminine smile which always came with that unique and complex semantics that made me want to stabilize myself in its intangible structure and to remain centered. It is as if She was saying, “Pay attention. See? You didn’t know it was Me who brought you here. Because you still have work to do.”
I stretched down on the grass, closed my eyes and followed the crystal white geometrical patterns rotating slowly inside of my eyes. At the same time, I was intensely drifting farther and farther from Earth. The picturesque landscape around me felt like another planet among the new dimensions of the vibrant energy of the Oneness.
Bernard approached me and looked attentively, “This happens sometimes. It’s because the two plants are very powerful and you now have lots of Ayahuasca in your body. She is inviting you, please try not to resist and let me know if you need any help.”
Having a verbal connection with a shaman is very important. My jungle experience was almost silent as I spoke very basic Spanish and was unable to articulate the unique flavor of my visions to the shaman. Nor was I able to ask the shaman for clarifications of my visions and physical condition.
It was not until I arrived at Bernard’s place that I realized how significant it is to have a shaman with whom to speak. I would even suggest that for San Pedro ceremonies this is especially true because the entire journey is so much about feelings rather than visions.
Although we didn’t talk much due to the way my process was unfolding, the few times when Bern did speak, were enormously helpful and also assisted me with the integration months later.
Time started becoming vertical instead of linear as I was taking different body positions with my eyes half closed and watching beautiful spherical images under the eyelids. Ayahuasca was very gentle now as if wiping out any shadows of my fear, rearranging the parts of my jungle experience.
On my “inner screen” I had the visions of the processes taking place in my subliminal layers. As if someone’s tender hands were taming an archetype animal inside of me, softening the sharp angles, interweaving the deeper parts of my soul with the newly rearranged pieces of my psyche.
I began feeling weightless and light with a big internal sunny smile in my chest, in fact, I was dissolving and becoming this radiating smile myself. I felt loved and embraced completely from the inside by an irresistibly glimmering and heavenly light.
This moment was the happiest of that day and probably one of the most profound times in my life.
I felt what it was like to die to my former human structure with its false beliefs and negative self-concepts. This “old self” seemed to be fully consumed by love, I would even call it “loving” as it was so intense, all-inclusive and continuous in every second. Words can only convey a tiny part of it.
Half an hour later I was sitting on the bench noticing that my radiant smile was gradually fading away.
All of a sudden something shifted and everything I saw became unnaturally vivid in colors as if in high-quality definition. My visual perception was sharply enhanced.
The edges of all objects and figures were so richly refined now that their visual appearance seemed to have doubled. And yet it was not an altered reality. It was the very same outward reality I lived in with the Andes, the grass, the sunlit shapes of shadows and the objects around me.
Bernard came up to me, bent forward and looked at me attentively. His face in front of me became a prominent 3D object and all the rest behind his head seemed to blur in comparison with this sharpness.
“This is San Pedro” — he said and stepped back with a smile. “Are you ok?” I nodded.
Now the unearthly sensation of all that surrounded tripled and the extraterrestrial presence although not visible became immensely visceral.
On a visionary level, nothing unusual was interfering with the reality that I knew. Except for the vividness and brightness of all forms and colors, the reality was “the same”.
… However, something had changed completely...
Now, I couldn’t be sure whether the reality that I was looking at was outside or inside of my head.
Moreover, there was no way to define it, no way to exit it and no hint whether this was going to end. I was now trying to locate myself in time and space. Looking for something to fixate me back I thought, “What time is it?” And it seemed absurdly inadequate and meaningless.
That’s how I realized I couldn’t feel the time anymore. I thought of “15 minutes”. It was a soundless, empty notion to which I could find no explanation. I stared at the grass guessing that probably the grass was 15 minutes, but that fell apart very quickly leaving me in a state close to a hidden panic.
I began searching for any hint of an altered state of my consciousness, any blurring object, unusual image or unknown creature, spirit or elf trying to get in contact with me.
Nothing.
Nothing was giving me a sign of the altered reality.
Everything was asking me a question — is it in your head? Or is it real? What is real? Where is your reality?
In my Ayahuasca ceremonies, I had very intense open- eye visions. I found the most relief in returning back to my visual perceptions, being able to see the world I lived in.
Now I felt the total collapse of all notions I have had about what was “real”. As if my natural eye vision became inverse and gave me a hint that there is no difference between “open-eye visions” that we may experience in the “altered states” and the “natural” state of looking with your eyes.
Increasingly struggling to locate my familiar self somewhere I recalled that I was in Peru and my flight back was in several days. That again made completely no sense.
Why would I take an airplane to get somewhere in my head? Why do we fly these things to cross the volumes of space if every single point is attainable easily without it?
I started feeling a gigantic burden somewhere in my body and I thought I was about to burst into tears. But it didn’t happen.
Now I was striving to find some emotional point for relief, pain inside of me, some personal story that needs to be repaired, something that hurts and can break me down so that I could feel human.
But there was nothing.
I became an intense timeless emptiness gazing at the virtual reality in front of me or “in my head”. And it seemed as if “by coincidence” it proved to be 100 % identical to the outward reality I lived in.
Bern came up to me again. “Is something bothering you”, he said. “You look like you are in frustration.”
I was staring at Bernard and realized we were inside of some quantum field– and I was not sure why he was speaking to me this language (English) — any verbal language at all. Why would we use some symbolic system to convey thoughts to each other? Who chose those “system preferences” for us so that we communicated verbally in the first place?
I said, “I don’t know. I think I am tired”. And I watched myself picking up those symbols and putting them in one line to let him know how I felt although it seemed irrelevant since I knew that he did know.
“It’s only one day”, he replied.
But I was not sure how long one day was. My only concern now was to find a personal pain inside of me so I could feel my former self. I was very far above any personal emotion, observing my reality as a simulation, perfect and elaborate programming with graphics.
It was also observed from a different place where time, locations, language, and physical appearance were just “advanced settings” and avatars for interaction. None of it was working and made sense out of context, none of it had meaning by itself.
Everything was slotted into the numerous fixing grids to maintain itself.
And I was not in there, but in a different field where those grids broke apart completely and looked just an abstraction.
It started becoming almost unbearable: I was not sure how to quit and step back into the time machine. As if I was wearing the state-of-the-art VR (virtual reality) system through which the “reality fixed on the grids” could be watched.
At that moment I only wished I could understand how to start feeling something except for the infinity and irrelevance of all objects. I had no idea how to get into a “perception layer” where I would actually feel the feelings. That layer had dissolved completely.
I was sitting on a bench without moving, drifting away and getting intensely tired … when suddenly I noticed a warm sensation on my left ankle. I looked down and saw Tika (the cat) purring, rubbing against my leg and gazing right into me with her beautiful amazingly turquoise, trans-saturnian eyes.
I leaned forward to look back at her, calling her by her name and finding numerous words to thank her. Inch by inch, I was feeling more and more grounded as if descending to my human being from that vertically defined, exquisitely fine space.
Gradually and not very steadily, it felt as if my heart was expanding and I was returning back — slowly, in phases, still unsure I could return back completely. I ate some soup and came back to the sunlit lane.
Bern called everybody to maloka to close the ceremony. I was still floating between dimensions but finally got back in touch with sensing the time. This was the first thing to notice — relief that time came back into being. Beautifully it was doing some diagonal movement inside of my head slowly returning back to horizontal.
Along with these indescribable rhythmic microfluctuations of time return came an overflowing tenderness — the feeling of being on Earth.
Letting go is easy while clinging takes so much effort. The mind plays tricks, making us believe that we have to struggle to let go.
Without these clinging mind tricks, everything is very transitory.
Everything just comes and goes in waves. First, there is a wave, then ripples, then it’s flat and then there is a wave again.
My San Pedro ceremony lasted 15 hours (with almost 12 hours of no experience of time). Unlike Ayahuasca it wore off very slowly and took some time before my former perception of reality was graciously given back. And my earthly — self fully reinstated.
What I found very challenging about San Pedro is that it gives one a choice. Unlike Ayahuasca which just punches in the face and there you are — San Pedro does give room for resistance.
This is most likely why it is viewed as a mild plant (when served in smaller portions, obviously). But if you have a generous cup, this room for resistance becomes something else.
You can struggle if you choose. That’s your choice and the plant is only amplifying it. San Pedro is very much about understanding your free will. It shows you which choices you are inclined to make and whether you are really free to make them.
It took me a while to put into words what makes this marvelous plant so special and intense when served properly. And now my answer will be that — by taking you very far it wants you to become grounded. That is what builds the real connection to the sphere of feelings, the domain where we are really human. It’s not only about “being present” or “being out of your head”.
It teaches you to be earthly, to be human in the most profound meaning of the word…
That is to feel like a human, to behave like a human and to understand what it is to be a human. It’s very easy yet it’s so hard. So often we don’t let ourselves be seen in our human nature, be refreshed and out of context, free of creating ourselves in our own minds, let our natural energies flow and get in touch with the time and space juncture at its full potential, be seen — true and uncomplicated.
… For the whole history of humanity, we are searching how to believe in God, instead of feeling that God believes in us.
Cosmic experiences have become such a trend recently. Astrologically this trend can be traced back to the beginning of the Aquarian Age, including Uranus (revolutionary insights) having entered Aries 9 years ago. In this position, it had extreme power and electric push for innovations and consciousness shift.
It was conjunct my Sun in 2011 when I accidentally discovered the potency of psychedelics for personal and spiritual growth. We can observe an increased interest in exploring our Galaxy while digging into our cosmic roots, to find that our reality is a hologram. We have even started looking for a different planet to relocate in the foreseeable future. Very advanced!
The re-born recognition of entheogens is also a gift from this generous with consciousness quantum leaps Uranus. And the harmony of the universal rhythms is second to none.
This looks like a perfect preparation for yet another cycle where now, when we have enjoyed discovering our soul bonds with other planets, it’s time to take a fresher look at Earth (Uranus moved into Taurus in April 2019, the most earthly sign of all).
Seeing from a distance usually gives us the most impressive and complete view. Perhaps it gives us an opportunity to look at Earth from a cosmic perspective, to fully comprehend what defines Earth as a planet, to realize its magnetic beauty and why we have chosen to inhabit it.
Revolutionary change in our attitude to handling Earth’s resources would be one of the best and most timely things that could happen to mankind now.
And being in your heart is a very earthly experience, such a precious one. But it has become almost fashionable to elaborate on “cosmic love”. Yet, no one can know what that is without partaking of the full spectrum of human loving feelings.
I am sure that all entheogens on Earth such as San Pedro have come here as a higher intelligence and with a purpose to serve this planet. Time has passed and I am still integrating its teaching.
On many levels, my understanding of “living life” has changed completely since I have experienced dropping out of the space and time paradigm. Only hypothetically we know that “time” is an illusion since being “inserted” into the linear TIME is a part of our human contract. And the meaning of it may be one of the deepest secrets we are to discover once we are done with the “school” on this planet.
San Pedro made me rethink the Earth completely.
If you are interested in exploring this plant or your own experience with this magnificent entheogen was “chilling” more then anything else, and you have no idea what I am talking about here, but you are still on a path of truth and self- discovery, then I recommend that you find a good shaman and have a fair cup of this magical plant intelligence…
It’s only one day…
