T4E6 - Poliamor: El Camino del Filo de la Navaja

In the opening pages of my story I told how, during my childhood, I recognized the feeling of attraction toward women and found in that feeling an important source of satisfaction. Every time I arrived at a new place where there were girls, I invariably took notice of them, with the hope of finding one who, when our eyes met, would make me feel that tingling in my stomach, the emotion of harboring a new illusion, the perhaps of a moment of love.

In those days, “love” was for me the agitated palpitation of the heart when I felt the soft hand of a girl brush my arm with subtlety, or when, after trying to ignore me during our fleeting encounters, she would come close to my ear with her hands cupped around her mouth and whisper that she wanted to see me again.

Those moments left me in ecstasy for hours, and after living them I could summon the same sensation for months, simply by closing my eyes and recalling the words, the gestures and the sensations. It didn't matter that I would never see again the girl who had given me those moments of rapture; for me, the illusion that came with the possibility of the encounter being repeated was enough.

That is how I lived love during almost all of my adolescence as well. I gave my first kiss just before I turned fifteen, and I had my first girlfriend – who shortly after would become the mother of my first daughter – at seventeen. I went from platonic love and ephemeral yet pertinacious courtships to being practically married, right as I was reaching the age of majority.

I don't resent having had such a convoluted debut in the arenas of the heart, but I do attribute to it the naivety with which I conducted my first romantic relationships; believing that my vocation as an incompetent Don Juan had been left behind simply by deciding so. I adored women, but my eternal panic of rejection made taking the initiative nearly impossible for me; I preferred to content myself with the sweetness of flirting and the conviction that, since it is man who proposes and woman who disposes, not proposing would keep me far from falling into the temptation of infidelity.

But then I moved to Santa Marta and discovered that there, where women are self-assured and uninhibited, the only way to put an end to promiscuity is either to have eyes for no one but a single woman, or to have an enormous strength of will. I, not meeting either of those two requirements, graduated as unfaithful, and I discovered, perhaps a little late, that I was still the same boy in love who could be carried away with two or three girls at once.

This discovery, with us freshly married, did not sit well with my wife, who, as soon as she joined me in my discovery, decided to leave me with good reason. That event would become the origin of one of my periods of greatest suffering. So much pain and guilt did I feel that almost every aspect of my life entered crisis, and my mental health took its first blow.

Those who knew me as a serious, cheerful and above all faithful guy couldn't credit the accounts of my disordered behavior and prolonged despondency. Something strange must have been happening to me; someone must have been doing me harm. I myself, who prided myself on being essentially good, concluded that the only possible explanation for such a storm in my life was that I was under some kind of spell or curse.

The search for a cure for my ailment eventually led me to the path of shamanism and yagé, which would mark the next stage of my life. In that first ayahuasca ritual I was able to feel the demons of lust and promiscuity writhing in my chest. I fought with all my might to expel them and, amid gnashing teeth, copal smoke and the chants of the taita, I felt them leaving my body one by one and freeing me from their yoke.

Moments later, elevated in an indimensional Samadhi, I saw what my life would be like without the ballast of those beings from the underworld: prosperity, love and complete happiness. I had been born again, I saw the world in different colors and above all I felt different. Yagé had also delivered Paula to me, of whom I fell in love the moment I set my gaze upon her green eyes, so everything seemed set for the lovestruck boy of old to remain, this time for sure, only in memory.

The spell of yagé lasted only a few days. Apparently the demon of lust played dumb and found a way to remain inside me. Although I was completely in love with Paula, my lustful thoughts about other women returned to their traditional levels, and my dealings with some close women, while not quite crossing the line of friendship, were seasoned with coquettishness and perhaps too much familiarity.

Where I did allow myself a rather more licentious conduct was in my life in cyberspace, where I took advantage of the physical and impersonal distance to give free rein to my fantasies and my search for approval from the opposite sex.

Paula was not slow to discover – and to abhor – these two facets of my life: being overly familiar with some girlfriends and quite inappropriate with a couple of acquaintances on the Internet. By then I had already renegotiated with my conscience and considered that, as long as I didn't move from flirting and virtual dalliances into the realm of physical contact, I was not committing infidelity.

After I realized that if not even a “formatting” with ayahuasca had rid me of my excessive attraction toward women, then it had to be that the true value of the spiritual warrior consisted not in being free of temptation, but in being capable of facing it without falling to it. In any case, I had my old and reliable weapon of insecurity: even if I suspected that some lady reciprocated my interest, I wouldn't dare propose anything to her, and in Bogotá, where women had proven to be much less uninhibited than the ones I had known in Santa Marta, I would be safe.

In other words, I was going into battle with a target on my chest, with the peace of mind that no adversary would dare shoot me, out of sheer lack of initiative.

This tangled moral morass led me to suggest to Paula that we should bulletproof our relationship against infidelity. Not make it immune to it, but armor it so that when it came – and I knew it would come – it wouldn't sweep us away. I was not speaking only of my self-accepted tendency toward promiscuity but also referring to her. Paula had just turned twenty and, like me at her age, had not had many romantic relationships.

I had been unfaithful, but I had also been put on the other side of the table and I knew how much an infidelity wounded me. My proposal for Paula was that we both allow ourselves to be free, that we see each other as sexual beings who express their sexuality in many forms, not necessarily physical ones, with different people. This was an idea I had read in a book by Osho, the famous guru from India known for his radical stances on freedom and non-possessiveness, and according to some, also for rituals of sexual unrestraint in his commune in Oregon.

At first I thought that, given Paula's youth, I had the possibility of molding her to my comfort and planting in her ideas that favored my licentiousness, but with time I realized that her acquiescence did not come from candor but from boldness. True, Paula was a young woman raised with traditional values, but she knew male instincts well, starting with her father and later through her previous partners, so she found logic in my arguments.

What was most likely was that my playboy instinct would be the thorn in the shoe for which I wanted us to build a callus, but I made it known to Paula that I also believed it was possible that she at some point would have to live some experience with another man, and I didn't want something like that to destroy us.

In the years that followed, we prepared for the storm by speaking candidly about things that couples normally don't share: I told her when another woman attracted me, I let her see some of my spicy and insubstantial conversations over the internet, and she told me if she liked some singer or if some man on the street seemed attractive to her. The two were definitely not equivalent, because in twenty years Paula would not have managed to gather as much inappropriate material to tell me as I shared with her.

And yet, that trust became one of the most important parts of our relationship: besides being lovers, we were friends and accomplices. There was no topic we couldn't address. We allowed ourselves to go out with people whom we knew we had some physical attraction to, and even to have an erotic chat every so often. These and other things that have meant the end for many couples were, for us, “a Tuesday afternoon”.

This is not to say that there were no jealousies between us, but we spared ourselves a large part of the drama that weighs down other couples, and we managed to add to our relationship a spice that only some couples discover, and usually in an advanced stage of their relationship. The key for us was never to cross the line: everything was permitted to us except taking the relationship with a third person into the realm of intimacy. Not because it was something we wouldn't forgive ourselves, but because after liters of ayahuasca, dozens of tobacco sessions and hours of sleepless vigil with the grandfathers, we had come to the conclusion that extramarital sex was the only thing that could “break the moyo,” as the mamos of the Sierra Nevada say – that is, that the Great Spirit would punish it with all his fury.

Once more, I felt I had found balance in my life, and even better, by accepting a part of myself that I had previously rejected. My love for Paula grew every day, and feeling free beside her made me love her even more. I had close girlfriends of whom I was the confidant, with whom I would talk for hours and who usually found me attractive and perhaps felt attracted to me. I enjoyed those encounters a lot and they satisfied the appetite of the lovestruck boy I still carried inside. On the other hand, I had a couple of “friends” whom I only dealt with through the internet, with whom I let out my instinct of promiscuity without crossing the forbidden limit.

I had a couple of near opportunities to carry those fantasies into reality, but I declined them at the last moment – I don't think out of valor, but rather out of cowardice, because I truly believed that, if I took that step, I would fall into disgrace and lose everything I had achieved up to that point. I suppose that is what religions seek with their dogmas: to fill with fear what is lacking in us as character.

And so, for years I walked along the razor's edge, where some Gnostics believe one obtains the sacred fire with which sacred alchemy is practiced. The problem was that I was still wearing a target on my chest, and it was only a matter of time before someone put an arrow there.

That is not her real name, but out of respect for her privacy, I will call her Diana. She had recently become friends with Paula, and although they were not very close, they had started talking to each other more frequently. On one occasion, Diana told Paula she felt a “strange energy” in her house and did not feel at peace there. Paula and I had done the energetic cleansing of our apartment together, and we had helped a friend do the same in the commercial space she had just rented, but Paula did not remember well the list of things needed for such a cleansing, so without any reservation she gave her my phone number and told her to contact me, that I could give her the instructions much better.

A few days later, Diana contacted me, and I did as Paula had suggested. I explained to her the way I did the energetic cleansing of a house and gave her the list of implements she would need to do it. Later, Diana contacted me again with some additional questions, and we ended up chatting about the personal problems she was going through. One of those conversations took place while I was returning to Bogotá, after the ceremony at the Juan Curí waterfall with my friends Luis, Maiker, and Nelson. It was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that I ended up becoming the confidant of a friend of my wife's.

I had not yet seen her in person, but I liked her voice and she seemed like a very intelligent and cheerful girl to me. We talked a couple of times a week, and I tried to advise her as best I could. One January afternoon, Paula invited Diana over for coffee at our house, and of course I was eager to meet my new friend, for whom I already felt a special affection and an undeniable attraction.

When our eyes met for the first time, I was surprised that Paula had risked putting us in contact. She knew my tastes very well, and under normal circumstances she might have sensed that Diana could be the type of woman who attracted me. However, the two of us were very focused on our little Luciana, Diana was barely a couple of years older than my daughter Ana María, and the truth is Paula was already used to me feeling attraction toward my friends, so perhaps she did not give that possibility much significance.

I myself did not give the event much significance. Yes, Diana attracted me, but I had met her while holding my baby in my arms next to my beautiful wife. I was still sporting the target on my chest, but since I would never dare to hint at my interest in her, Diana would never put an arrow in my target... Or that was what I wanted to convince myself of, as if I had not already gone through exactly the same situation 15 years before...

The plan seemed to be going divinely. Diana and I talked almost daily, and although the chemistry and mutual interest were perceived in every sentence, every emoticon, and every goodbye, I kept dismissing the possibility that it would turn into something more than a platonic love. My mood, after having felt the threat of darkness in my mind since Luciana's placenta delivery, was better than ever. This was also reflected in my relationship with Paula, which had been affected by my emotional swings, and thanks to my new sentimental distraction, I looked more smiling and playful than in previous months.

Then the predictable happened: in a voice message, Diana confessed that she felt very attracted to me and that she simply wanted me to know. It took me a couple of minutes to react, but I must say that I did not hesitate for a moment: I would answer that I fully reciprocated her affections and that I was dying to have an affair with her.

I did not even doubt that she had that intention; otherwise, why would she have taken the trouble to reveal her feelings to me, knowing that in doing so she was betraying her friend? I did not feel guilty or confused either. So many years of spiritual path to supposedly be prepared and fight temptation when it presented itself, and there I was, eyes shining and an idiotic smile, getting ready to embark on one of the most difficult roads a man can take: that of deceiving his partner, living a double life, risking everything most valuable for an instant of excitement.

But the possibility of rejecting that opportunity did not cross my mind, not even for a moment. I told Diana that I adored her and that I would like for us to meet alone whenever she could. Barely a couple of weeks passed and that encounter happened, among the trees of a beautiful park in the city. We hugged, we kissed, and we held hands while we talked for a couple of hours, as if we were two old lovers reuniting after a long journey, telling each other the story of their lives during the absence.

I returned home with electricity running through my body, surely waves of serotonin and endorphins rewarding my limbic system for opening a new possibility of procreation, a new avenue through which the spirits of my ancestors engraved in my DNA were betting on being reborn in a new body. The ancestors want to come back to life; they do not care if they do it in a Christian home, in the womb of a prostitute, of a raped young woman, or as the fruit of a forbidden love. As Mara used to say: “Nature has no morals.”

For the following five months I lived a double life; on one hand, I was a happy family man and husband, present and affectionate, an efficient employee, and a shaman / spiritual guide respected and appreciated by many. In my other life, however, I lived a passionate romance with young Diana, to whom I devoted a few hours a day through instant messaging and frequent clandestine encounters arranged by well-orchestrated lies, thanks to which I was able to keep my affair secret during that time.

Many times I was tempted to reveal the truth to Paula, but not out of guilt, or to honor the commitment we had made to trust each other if we faced a test like this one. I wanted to tell her because I was dying to share with her the happiness I was feeling, tell her about the experiences I was living, and make her a participant in my adventure. In the end I did not do it, because my relationship with Diana had the aggravating factor of her friendship with Paula, and although I was sure our relationship would survive, her friendship would not.

I know that was a poor excuse for my cowardice, because I knew that, despite everything, Paula would understand me. Deep down, the real reason I did not want to reveal my secret was that I knew things would change once everything came to light, and I wanted to live my relationship with Diana with the greatest intensity and peace of mind. After all, at the time we were processing my work visa for the United States, where everything seemed to indicate that, after almost three years of failed attempts, we would finally manage to emigrate in September of that year. That trip would be the final point for my relationship with Diana, and at that moment I would tell Paula everything... Or so I believed.

Popular culture says that when someone is unfaithful it is because something is missing from the relationship, or because love has died. It is also believed that the person living a double life lives with constant stress and fear of being discovered. I did not fit any of those theories. I felt happy, excited, alive; I also did not change with Paula, or rather, I did change: I felt more in love, more physically attracted to her, and the more I remembered my romantic, attentive self with Diana, the more encouraged I felt to live it with Paula too.

At night, however, I sometimes felt afraid of myself: how could I be living a double life, deceiving Paula, and at the same time lie looking into her eyes without feeling an iota of remorse? I remembered that fifteen years before, when I was far from being a spiritual being and shaman, I felt exactly the same when I cheated on my first wife. Then, at times, memories came to me of the dark night of the soul I lived back then when Angélica left me. Was I heading toward the abyss again, or was there something different this time?

One of the most beautiful experiences I had in 2016, apart from my relationship with Diana, was a personal coaching workshop led by my friend Maiker Villa, with whom I had done the ceremony the year before at the Juan Curí waterfall. Maiker, in an act of generosity I will always be grateful for, gifted me the registration to his workshop, and in exchange I helped him build the website of his new venture.

The workshop included talks by a group of speakers, among whom was Maiker himself, but it also included other certified coaches specialized in personal finance, leadership, planning, and even inner child healing. Some of the talks were a retread of tropes I already knew in spirituality and esotericism, but others seemed novel to me and truly useful for life.

The end of the workshop, which spanned several Saturdays over about three months, was divided into two equally entertaining and enriching experiences: a temazcal, or traditional Mayan indigenous sweat lodge, in which I took the opportunity to ask the guardian spirits of the north of America to open the doors for us to live in that territory. The second, which was also the closing of the workshop, was an event very common in coaching circles, in which, after rituals of personal empowerment and neuro-linguistic battle cries, we would walk barefoot, happily, over red-hot embers.

I had already read that this performance, far from demonstrating the mind's capacity to master any sensation of pain — and even less to turn the delicate skin of the feet into a Maori warrior's callus — was possible thanks to the low thermal conductivity of the coal and the thin layer of ash that surrounds it.

The course attendees lined up single file, and one by one we crossed the three or four meters of burning embers to the rhythm of clapping and the chorus of “yes we can!” It is interesting that, in the eagerness to attribute to the mind properties it does not have, coaching loses the opportunity to teach, through the ember walk, the true way in which the mind accomplishes such a feat.

The instruction we had was: “you have to be sure that it is possible, visualize your goal and do not think about the danger, master your own fear.” The embers would represent that primal fear that stops us and prevents us from achieving our goals. I looked at the burning coals and could not help making the analogy with my dangerous relationship with Diana. I clenched my fists, frowned, and threw myself onto the embers with long strides, which were more like small leaps, with which I reached the other shore.

I raised my arms in a triumphant attitude and enthusiastically shouted “yes, we did it!”, while trying to hide the pain caused by the four or five blisters with which I had just baptized my bare feet. The secret to walking on fire without getting burned, I learned later, is to walk at the right pace: too slow, and the embers will have enough time to cause a burn; too fast, and the feet will sink too deep among the embers, penetrating the layer of ash that covers the coals. The problem is not walking on fire; the problem is not knowing how to do it correctly.

Besides the second-degree burns on my feet, I very much enjoyed the coaching workshop. Maiker and his group truly wanted to make a difference in the lives of their pupils. For me, who had already received in some form almost all of those teachings, from Mara, grandfather Luis, the Muisca, or so many other walkers of spirituality, it was nonetheless a gift for the soul. Only the last event of the workshop remained, which would be the delivery of diplomas and a farewell toast.

The graduates had the possibility of inviting our partners or parents, so Paula accompanied me to that closing event. After the delivery of the certificates, the dinner, and the obligatory photographs, students and guests headed to the terrace of the hotel where the event was held, to enjoy a farewell cocktail. While I was chatting with my classmates, Paula came over and asked to borrow my mobile phone, since hers had run out of battery.

When the activity ended, I noticed Paula was upset with me. I asked her what was wrong, and as always when I noticed her upset without an evident reason, I wondered if she had discovered something, but I dismissed it, because I was always very meticulous and deleted the text messages, photographs, or videos that chat and social media apps stored without warning the user.

But as we rode in the taxi back to our apartment, I knew something had slipped past me when Paula ordered me without delay:

I tried one last lie, telling her it was a friend about whom she already knew we had too much closeness, and that she had allowed it. A lie just for the sake of lying, because lying begins as a resource, becomes a habit, and in the end seems like an addiction.

In any case, Paula had formulated the question rhetorically, since with what I said in the video she found on my phone, she had enough information to connect some loose ends, and she only needed me to confirm Diana's name.

When I did, Paula's reaction was what one would expect, although, to be sure, it was neither as cold nor as impulsive as my reaction when I saw her conversations with that close friend because of whom we almost ended our relationship a little over two years earlier. My reaction, on the other hand, was much calmer than I myself had imagined when I weighed the possibility of Paula finding out before I told her the truth.

Having been so radically sincere with Paula from the beginning, regarding my weaknesses and fantasies, had two advantages that became evident at that moment: on one hand, I felt bad for not having had the courage to share with my wife-confidante what was happening and count on her, whatever the consequence of doing so, but I did not feel weak or miserable as happened when my first wife found out about my infidelity.

On the other hand, I knew our relationship was strong enough to face and overcome that incident, just as we had previously come out ahead of other similar conflicts; although my relationship with Diana was, without a doubt, something of greater gravity than anything either of us had had to overcome before.

After Paula's well-deserved reproaches and my poor attempts at mitigation, Paula asked me to tell her absolutely everything that had happened between Diana and me from the beginning. And so I did; I held nothing back, I did not try to downplay it or sweeten any bitter pill. But I did stay silent for a few seconds when she asked:

– “Are you in love with her?”

– “Do you want to stay with her?”

– “No. I love her, but not the same way I love you. I love the part of her that I know, and from the part of me that she awakened.”

I meant that while I was with Diana, I lived a life parallel to the family life I adored living with Paula. In that other life there was romance, mystery, adventure, fun, and lightness, but there was no future. My feelings for Diana were very strong; being by her side made me happy, we understood each other in every aspect we had shared, and I believed we influenced each other positively. But all of this was also true with Paula, in addition to the fact that there were 100 more things in my relationship with Paula that did not exist, and almost certainly could not exist, with Diana.

Then Paula, tears in her eyes, asked the question I feared most:

– “Are you going to distance yourself from her?”

We both needed time to think. I did not want to distance myself from Diana from one moment to the next, and Paula did not want to stay with me if that meant having to live in the constant uncertainty of whether my love for Diana was greater than the one I felt for her, or fearing that someday I would decide to end our relationship to go away with her.

I got on my bicycle to get some air and headed toward Mara's house. She was the person I trusted most, and I knew she would give me objective advice. I had to cut off my relationship with Diana, but how to do it without turning her into an ideal or an obsession that I might end up pursuing, the way we humans pursue everything that is forbidden.

Mara already knew what was happening. Not because she was a witch, but because in her more than fifty years of life she had come to know many men and women, from her own experience and that of her patients.

– “Manu: is that thing pure sex, or does that girl make you happy?”

– “Well then, it's your happiness; you have to live it as long as that is what your being asks of you. Paula is a warrior. Talk to her honestly, involve her in your decision. Don't leave her out.”

I could hardly believe my ears. I had heard Mara say several times that infidelity is the witchcraft of almost all men, that that is where almost all of us lose; and yet she was encouraging me to go ahead with Diana, despite the enormous affection I knew Mara felt for Paula and her feminine solidarity.

But I felt she was right. My relationship with Paula was something very different from any I had known before. The two of us had been through so many things, both on the physical and the spiritual plane, that it occurred to me there was a possibility.

When Paula's initial annoyance subsided, partly displaced by curiosity about what had happened behind her back for four months, she confessed to me that what surprised her most of all, apart from my unsettling ability to hide something so carefully and lie so easily, was the fact that during that time she had felt me present, loving, and close. She was terrified of the possibility that this was part of the deception; that, given my ease at lying, I had managed to feign so much love and joy at being by her side.

I immediately understood her concern and conceded she was right. I myself felt frightened by my ability to lie. I told her it was something I had thought about a lot and had reached a conclusion:

– “I realized that lying comes easily to me because the things I lied to you about seem trivial to me: telling you I was with a client when I was really with Diana, hiding my text messages, justifying with my work a few extra hours connected to the Internet from the study. In the important things, the fundamental ones, like my love, my attraction to you, my commitment, the will to leave for the United States, to have a family with you until the end, in those things I never lied to you or feigned anything that was not real.”

For many years I had discovered that it is possible for me to love more than one woman at the same time. To love them intensely, to admire them, to give them the best of myself. This, of course, is not a revolutionary discovery; it is likely that most human beings have this capacity, although our society represses it, to avoid the countless problems that polygamy causes. In spirituality circles, this practice was increasingly heard being called “polyamory.”

The truth was that having a new illusion in my heart had made me forget the anguish that the last yagé session during Luciana's placenta delivery had generated in me. Feeling desired by two attractive women boosted my self-esteem and filled me with energy. This was the state of mind with which I faced day to day life during the time I maintained my relationship with Diana, and as a result, my love and attraction for Paula had intensified.

There was also a pragmatic component in the process. Diana had awakened in me a romanticism that over time I had lost with Paula. Feeling it again made me strive to revive it in my relationship with my wife, and so I did, returning to the little attentions that had been lost, observing her and admiring her as when I first fell in love with her.

I talked with Paula about all these topics and let her know that I did not want to leave Diana yet; that I wanted to keep living my relationship with her until we left for the United States, and I proposed that, if she allowed me, I would keep her informed of everything that happened and would no longer hide anything from her. Her answer, after a few hours of thinking it over, took me by surprise:

– “Okay, you can continue your relationship with Diana, but I am not going to be an outside observer. I am going to be there with you.”

– “What? Are you saying the three of us have a relationship?”

– “Don't be silly! I am not going to have a threesome with you, but Diana was my friend. This was a very sad betrayal on the part of you two, but I came to feel affection for her, and I love you, so I am willing to try to restore my relationship with you and my friendship with her and, I don't know... maybe we make plans as three, try to get to know each other in a different way, so that each one knows their place in the life of the other and there are no more deceptions.”

Once again I felt overwhelmed by the maturity and the size of my Paula's heart. Just as when, only 20 years old, she became a mother to my daughter Ana María; like when she decided to throw herself fully into the Muisca community to accompany me in my spiritual search, even though she had neither the blood nor the traditions of that territory, or when she forced herself to become bilingual to be the best adventure companion on my trips. Once again she was willing to overcome her fears, step over her prejudices, and walk hand in hand with me into the unknown.

Diana was also a realistic, open-minded woman, so she agreed that Paula had the right to decide the course of events from then on. Besides, she also felt great affection for Paula and liked the idea of trying something different in love; perhaps opening the possibility that, after our departure, we could maintain some kind of bond.

We went ahead with the plan, and I can attest that we all did our best. Paula resumed her friendship with Diana, making plans together as before, talking about the new common topic and their previous ones. Diana, answering all of Paula's questions and trying to honor the trust she had placed in her. And I, playing dice with fate, juggling fire and trying not to burn myself in the process... Or, as Samael Aun Weor used to say, walking along the razor's edge.

Nevertheless, things did not take long to go downhill: Paula frequently had episodes of anguish with the reasonable feeling — sometimes accurate — that Diana or I were hiding something from her, and I, to tell the truth, no longer found so much excitement in my encounters with Diana; first, because they were no longer forbidden, and second, because I could not help feeling guilty imagining that Paula felt displaced or replaced.

But perhaps the most precise thrust in our improbable experiment was the bad news that my American work visa application had been rejected. There was no longer the possibility of an easy exit from my relationship with Diana. Only two alternatives remained: to cut off the relationship even without a trip in between, or to try to keep standing the sentimental house of cards we had built in the middle of an emotional gale.

However, not everything was negative, even for Paula, who achieved her goal of taking the reins of our relationship and, above all, of her situation. She had ceased to be a deceived wife to become a free woman who chose her man, accepting virtues and weaknesses with the same love. Diana lived, for the first time, an uplifting, uncomplicated, and respectful love, and I received the immense gift of being able to feel once more the magic of falling in love, the excitement of discovering myself in another being, and of expressing love in a new way.

Without the easy exit of my trip to the United States, our farewell did not come in September as I anticipated, but by then, the situation with Paula had become untenable. We had found in my relationship with Diana a source of excitement and curiosity to break the routine, but the novelty had dissipated, and we found ourselves facing the prospect of having to manage three relationships that, separately, flowed divinely, but simultaneously complicated each other. My mood had already descended again into one of constant worry and unease, and both Paula and Diana confronted their own fears and insecurities with increasing frequency, due to the instability of our relationships.

And so we decided — I no longer remember on whose initiative — that perhaps yagé could show us the best path forward for the good of everyone. We agreed to go to La Mesa, to take yagé with taita Fernando Lezama, taking advantage of the fact that, on that Saturday in October, Mara would also attend to accompany one of her patients.

I had invited Diana to take yagé on more than one occasion, and she was drawn to the idea, but due to personal difficulties, she had not been able to do it. However, taking ayahuasca near Paula and me, two people who at that moment meant a lot to her, was an opportunity she did not want to miss. What none of us knew was that that yagé session would mark the end of our polyamorous relationship and the beginning of a long ordeal that transformed the lives of all three of us.

The ceremony promised to be unforgettable. Not only would Mara attend, but grandfather Luis had also joined the plan. My eldest daughter's boyfriend and several friends would also attend. Of course, yagé is always unpredictable, and receiving it while being with Paula and Diana caused me a bit of anxiety. We had not found anyone who could stay with Luciana, so she also accompanied us that day, and Paula would take care of her. The children who attended the ceremonies were offered a teaspoon of yagé, an amount not enough to produce a psychedelic experience in them, but Fernando said that even so, yagé shows children fairies and the elemental spirits of the plants and of the Earth, so we let Luciana receive her little sip of the remedy.

The session went as usual, beginning with the ritualization that the taita practices and lining up in one row of men and another of women to receive the “cocado” of medicine. Then we scattered around the farm. Diana went to the lower part, right where I had been when I received yagé for the first time, and I went to the upper part, near the maloca. Paula stayed with Lucy and the other children who had attended that day, and from there she devoted herself to taking care of all of us.

I had already taken yagé a couple of times during my relationship with Diana, and yagé had not shown me anything negative about her or about the fact that I was failing that commitment that I once felt yagé had urged me to keep: not to have sexual relations with a woman other than my wife. In fact, in one of those ceremonies, which my mom also attended, I had seen that Diana and I would have a son together and that we would all live together, happy, with Paula and Luciana. So great was the bliss that in the middle of my trance I began reciting Diana's virtues to my mom.

But that October day in La Mesa with Paula and Diana, things took an unexpected turn; after an initial relaxing and colorful trip, I saw scenes of my relationship with Diana and felt that it was something dense, malign, as if the darkest part of both me and Diana had been attracted to each other to ruin our lives, leading them down a path of deception and lust. The worst part was that, according to my vision, I was dragging Paula and the rest of my family down with me.

While I was having these ominous visions, I was lying on the grass, face down and with my eyes closed. I got up with a start and said to myself in a low voice:

– “I have to end it with Diana!”

I got up and began to walk slowly, still drunk with ayahuasca, thinking about the next steps I had to take: when the ceremony ended, I would talk to Diana and tell her that, despite the love we felt, we should separate for our own good and that of our loved ones. I looked toward where Paula and Luciana were and saw my little girl cheerful, playing with a twig. Paula watched her too, with a smile, and the afternoon sun reflected off her light hair.

I felt guilty for the pain I had caused her and that I knew I kept inflicting on her, but above all, for putting my baby in danger because of my selfishness. I approached them, hugged them, kissed them, and promised them that everything would change for the better. Then I sat in a chair I found nearby and returned to my entheogenic introspection.

I stayed there, perhaps another hour, when suddenly I felt a voice near my ear:

– “I love you and I am not going to distance myself from you. We are going to be together forever.”

I opened my eyes and it was her; Diana hugged me and began kissing my cheek. I instinctively hugged her back and only murmured: “Oh, my Diana, this is very difficult.” Then she sat on my lap and kissed me. I reciprocated and stroked her hair, as if only the two of us existed in the universe. I still had not returned to reality, and the reality was that everyone at the ceremony was watching us. That included Paula, Mara, grandfather Luis, our friends, acquaintances, and the other attendees.

Then the taita approached us and, with an authoritative voice, addressed Diana:

– “Young lady, get up from there; you cannot approach anyone. Besides, you must show respect; this is a sacred ceremony.”

That scolding from Fernando brought me back from my trip in the blink of an eye, and at that instant I realized what had just happened. I looked around, and everyone was watching us, some with mockery, others with looks of disapproval, and still others with sadness. I looked for Paula, but I did not see her until I felt her voice behind me:

– “Get up from there and get yourself ready, we are leaving. This was the only humiliation you still owed me, but this is as far as we go. Stay with her.”

I could not believe what was happening. Diana, who until that moment had always seemed to me a sensible, honest, kind-hearted person, had taken the initiative to expose me in front of the people I love, and in a sacred environment for me. I had not had the fortitude to resist the embarrassing act and had played along without weighing the consequences. Now Paula, it seemed, had just ended our relationship, and I had no good argument to even try to dissuade her.

Grandfather Luis approached me and called me out, although most of our friends focused their displeasure on Diana, not only for being the stranger of the group but for being a woman. In matters of infidelity, men are often pardoned as innocent victims of feminine malice.

I was intoxicated, that is true, but I was not deprived of my capacities for reasoning and movement. It is well known that some people put their hands in the fire or throw themselves rolling down a slope during the yagé trance, but I had never before reached such an extreme of unconsciousness. I seemed to hear the voice of master Mauricio Vicencio:

– “A man of wisdom cannot be rolling on the floor like you are now.”

Several days passed before Paula agreed to listen to me again and accept my poor excuses. I did not want to present myself as a victim, but I knew that, had I been of sound mind, I would not have allowed myself such a shameful display of weakness. I did not regret feeling love for another woman, or trying to live that experience in some way, but rather failing in the use of my willpower, in the service of my judgment and my fundamental values.

Paula, who knew a more coherent definition of the word “love,” knew how to step over her annoyance once again and recognize in me a genuine intention to make the right decisions from then on. Deep down, she knew that I always sought to move away from situations of unnecessary conflict, and I had already confessed to her, within the framework of our friendship, that my relationship with Diana brought me fewer and fewer satisfactions in relation to the difficulties it represented, and that I preferred to keep a beautiful memory rather than let our polyamorous experiment turn into drama. But the drama had sat down on top of me without my realizing it.

My relationship with Diana came to an end that afternoon, and we never saw each other again, although over the years we remained in sporadic contact over the Internet. My relationship with Paula returned to near normalcy within a few days, thanks to the push given by the disappearance of a factor of instability and recurring conflict. I felt at peace returning to tranquility, but there was something that troubled me quite a bit: on the afternoon of the infamous yagé ceremony, after the show I starred in with Diana, I kept processing the events in the middle of my trance, and with the feeling of guilt mixed with the worry I felt, I entered a state of paranoia, which could also be called a “bad trip.”

During those moments, I felt that I had failed a simple test of spiritual strength and that the consequences would be devastating. Perhaps even my little Luciana would have to pay for her father's weakness. That thought filled me with dread, and I devoted myself to chasing Luciana all over the farm, because I was terrified by the idea that something bad could happen to her.

Well, that paranoia and that “bad trip” did not go away with the dissipation of the yagé effects, nor with the distance from Diana. Everything around me seemed to fit back into everyday life, but I could not manage to do the same: a sensation of emptiness, of insecurity, constantly stalked me. Something was not right inside me and threatened to destroy everything. I had decided to walk along the razor's edge, and now I felt torn by it, the same way I had burned my feet when I walked over the embers.

Grandfather Suaga-Gua had pronounced it well:

– “You can do whatever you want, but remember that you will always pay for your actions.”

4 years ago I haven't listened to this episode yet but it's good that you came back after two months. Blessings Manuel 🙂