When I first stepped onto this path, it was not from clarity — it was from heartbreak.
Something inside me had fractured. In that fracture, I turned toward Ayahuasca. I listened to stories of awakening, visions, rebirth. I entered ceremonies not as a seeker of truth, but as a wounded man searching for relief. And in the depths of those nights in Peru, something stirred within me.
At the time, I mistook that stirring for destiny.
After a few ceremonies, I felt chosen — as if the medicine had whispered a role into my ear. I began to imagine myself initiated, set apart, called. Looking back, I see how seductive that narrative can be. A foreigner drinks the medicine, feels intensity, feels revelation, and confuses experience with transformation. I was sincere in my longing — but sincerity alone does not equal readiness.
I searched for teachers. I looked for elders who might confirm what I hoped was true. No doors opened. No one affirmed the identity I was trying to step into.
Yet something had shifted. I could not return to my old life unchanged. The routine felt mechanical, hollow. I did not crave comfort anymore — I craved meaning.
So I created a profile on a volunteer website. Weeks later, a message arrived from California. A group was building a cob house — a structure made from earth, sand, clay, and straw. The symbolism felt obvious. If I could not yet build a new self, perhaps I could at least build something honest from the soil.
I told my friend Alex. He thought it was cool and decided to come along. Soon we were driving across America — stopping in Colorado and Las Vegas, spending more money on marijuana than gasoline. We were not monks or mystics. We were young men chasing intensity, confusing altered states with depth.
Eventually, we arrived in Ukiah, California.
The land was expansive and quiet — an orchard resting against the mountains, free-roaming horses moving calmly across the fields. But it was more than a building project. It was a small commune. The older generation had planted the orchard years before. Now a younger generation was trying to preserve it, building a cob house so the caretakers could live simply and sustainably, especially since much of the fruit was already going to waste.
Then someone mentioned that a shaman would be visiting.
My heart reacted before my mind could slow it down. Perhaps this was what I had been looking for.
The next day, I saw him walking along a narrow dirt path that led toward a view overlooking the mountain range. Valleys folded into distant peaks. The air felt still. I followed quietly.
He sat on a log and began singing icaros — medicine songs from the Amazon. The sound pulled me back to Peru. It carried something ancient, something that bypassed thought and moved directly into the body.
I approached him and, without meaning to, startled him while he was singing. I asked if I could sit beside him.
He said yes.
With his eyes closed, he began speaking about my life — about aspects of my personality and patterns I had never spoken aloud. He mentioned that I did not always want to be high, even though I had just smoked a joint before sitting down. He spoke about details that felt too specific to be coincidence.
I sat there suspended between awe and skepticism.
Was he psychic?
Was I transparent?
Or was I simply easier to read than I imagined?
Then he said, calmly:
“Go to Mexico. Find the Huichols.”
I remember thinking, Who are the Huichols? I had no context, no understanding of why he was sending me there. Just a direction.
Later, he told me I would encounter others like him along the path — and also people who would try to distract or discourage me. “Do not let them disturb you,” he said.
That week I met with him again. One evening, as he sang, a group of horses gathered quietly behind us. They stood still, listening and watching. It felt as though the moment had thickened — as if something invisible had been acknowledged.
Afterward, he looked at me and said:
“I have planted a seed in you. This is the beginning. Go.”
I later mentioned the encounter to one of the volunteers. By coincidence — or what felt like more than coincidence — she was from Mexico. I told her, “I don’t even know who the Huichols are.”
She responded casually, “My friend is Huichol. I could connect you.”
A chill moved down my spine.
What were the odds?
Was this synchronicity? Suggestion? The mind searching for patterns? Or was life responding to the intensity of my questioning?
For the first time, the question was no longer whether I was chosen.
The question was whether I was willing to follow through.
Because a seed, once planted, does not grow on belief alone.
It grows on action
