T2E6: The Masters of Yagé

We spent the night in the municipal seat of the town, because it had gotten very late and both my sister and I were finding ourselves very weakened physically. So Claudia, one of the taita’s helpers, kindly invited us to spend the night at her house.

On arriving there, I noticed that that was not the dwelling of a conventional family, but a place consecrated to healing with Yagé. There were mattresses and foam mats laid out in all the rooms of the house, and you could smell the incense of copal, the perfumes of the jungle, and even of the Yagé itself.

Falling asleep after such an impressive experience, and one so difficult to steer, proved impossible for me. In my mind there was a torrent of memories, emotions and questions that I could not manage to arrange. Besides that, almost all of Claudia’s other guests were talking animatedly, sharing their experiences, so I set out to spend the night doing the same. However, before going to find my group of yagé-takers, I took a little walk through the house.

In the living room, on a wooden console there was a photograph

in a frame that powerfully caught my attention: In it one could see a cheerful shaman of long, wavy hair, with both arms raised, holding a large maraca in one hand and a vine, probably of ayahuasca, in the other. He wore no shirt, but a few Amazonian necklaces, and what stood out most was his smile, something that did not seem to me common to the solemnity characteristic of the taitas.

I asked my friend Martín who the smiling shaman was, and he answered me that it was Omar Barreto, the owner of the house and elder of the Madre Tierra community, which was the original name that the group of yagé-takers and spiritual seekers who took remedy at the farm where I had been that day for the first time had. Omar was also the brother of Claudia, the kind helper of the taita Fernando, and to my surprise, Martín also told me that Omar had passed away a few months before.

I lamented the sad news that Martin had just told me, because without any apparent reason, it had occurred to me for a brief instant that perhaps Omar might be the person who would help me to resolve the quantity of questions I had after my experience with the Yagé. That photograph projected the image of a kind and wise man, who surely would have been a great teacher had I had the opportunity of getting to know him.

That day I did not yet know it, but Omar — despite no longer being among the living — would become later one of the most important teachers on my shamanic path. That night, however, there was a lot to talk about with my friends, and if possible, to try to rest in order to set out the next day on our journey back to the city.

My sister Julia, Zoraya, Martín and I returned to Bogotá, and unlike the road going out, I found myself much more circumspect and reflective. Fragments of visions, messages, thoughts and memories that had surfaced during the taking of Yagé were arriving at my mind in disarray. Everything I had lived still seemed incredible to me, especially the involuntary movements, the sensation of having spirits inside me fighting for control over me and struggling to remain in my interior, and the quantity of emotions and sensations that I had never felt.

But the most unsettling thing was that I felt totally different from the person I had been just a day before. I saw everything around me in a different way, I had an inexplicable sensation of mysticism and transcendence, as if from the taking of Yagé I had woken to a new reality. Everything looked the same, but felt very different.

The following days were a strange return to normalcy. I went back to my job at Telefónica and resumed my usual routine and relationships, but I knew that nothing would ever be the same again. My priorities now were other, and among them, first and foremost, was to understand everything I had lived in La Mesa, and to verify whether all of that had been real, or the product of my mind under the effects of ayahuasca.

The only person I knew who could clarify to me what I had seen and felt during my Yagé journey was Mara, so I visited her as soon as I was able to fit a space in her agenda. This time I went alone, and just like the first time, conversing with Mara was in itself a therapy that reaffirmed me in having found the path I was seeking, and that I would not rest until I had revealed all the mysteries I had intuited during my journey.

I told Mara that I had seen Omar’s photograph at Claudia’s house, and her face lit up with an expression of love and a touch of sadness. —“¡Ay, you got to know my Omitar!”, she told me with tenderness, and began to tell me about her beloved teacher.

Omar Barreto was born in Cachipay, Cundinamarca, in the mid-1960s. His mother had been a healer and midwife of the region, and used her knowledge to help her neighbors with ailments of the body and of the heart. From there, Omar and his sister Claudia had access to the knowledge of the sacred plants, and from a very early age both knew the power of the Yagé in their own lives.

Being barely a young man, Omar began to help his mother with the patients who sought spiritual help and healing. Knowing that that was his path, Omar studied natural medicine and acupuncture, trying to complement his knowledge with other wisdoms that would allow him to help as many people as possible. His natural charisma and leadership positioned him as the leader of his community and interlocutor with other knowers who were coming to his path.

He traveled to the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and with them he learned the mysteries of the poporo, the ceremonial and healing use of the coca leaf, and he became a knower of the oral tradition and the teachings of the Mamos, or guardian elders of the ancestral knowledge of the Arhuaco people. After a few years of traveling through this school, he understood that his formation had to continue in the other temple of the initiatic wisdom of Colombia: The Amazon jungle.

It was thus that the young Omar decided to settle for a time in the department of Putumayo. In the jungle, first as a helper and then as a disciple of a knowledgeable taita named Juvenal, he learned the secrets of the ritual preparation of the Ayahuasca, the care of the participants in the ceremonies, and many other secrets of magic and shamanism. Omar became a Taita then, and began his work as a healer and guide. It was then that he returned to La Mesa to apply all the baggage of knowledge that he brought from the Sierra and the Jungle, for the waking of humanity[1].

Mara also shared a bit of her personal history with me, about which I had a lot of curiosity. How was it that an actress who had known fame and money had come to work in order to help people in such a committed way.

Mara was born in El Líbano, a small town in the Colombian department of Tolima, also in the tumultuous 1960s. She came from a family of good social standing in her region, but she always knew that her destiny was in the performing arts, and that to achieve her objective, she had to move away from the social canons of the time and venture beyond the province.

Her father, who was an officer of the National Police, had become interested in the ancestral knowledge, and having been assigned to a command post in the territories of southern Colombia, had the opportunity to know the Yagé and to learn its secrets with the indigenous communities of the jungle. On more than one occasion, Mara accompanied her father on his forays into the jungle, and by his side she also knew the medicine of the Ayahuasca, being barely a child.

From her father, who unfortunately passed away from health complications during her adolescence, it is probable that Mara learned, in addition to the use of the Yagé, the discipline, punctuality and mysticism that good agents of the law practice, but also service for others. Still many years and transformative experiences would have to pass before Mara found her destiny in the service of humanity.

The first of those experiences happened shortly after she finished her secondary studies, when her family moved to the now tragically famous town of Armero, in the department of Tolima. While there, Mara felt that if she did not take her own path, she would not achieve her dream of becoming a theater actress. Unfortunately, this was an idea her parents did not approve of, since at the beginning of the 1980s, acting was still seen as an unworthy trade, more suitable for bohemians and epicures than for a lady of society.

Faced with family pressure, Mara agreed to start a career in Hotel Management and Tourism, which she thought that eventually could bring her closer to the world of the spotlights, while pleasing her parents and allowing her to provide for her own means of subsistence. She began her studies with the discipline that has always characterized her, and quickly became one of the most outstanding students of her class. This opened the door to an opportunity that very few reached in so little time: To do her business practicum at a well-known hotel on the paradisiacal island of San Andrés, in the Colombian Caribbean.

Without hesitating, Mara packed her suitcases and set out on the adventure in one of the most attractive tourist spots in the country. San Andrés was everything she could desire as a first starting point of a career that she knew would take her to the medium in which some of her youthful idols shone: the most admired actresses of the time, who were known to have started their career in the world of theater.

It was the year 1985, and Mara was following her life plan to the letter, distinguishing herself in her work, saving most of the money she earned, and making her first contacts within the world of the entertainment industry. Suddenly, on November 13 of that year, her life changed forever: that night, after 69 years of inactivity, the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, located about 50 km from Armero, entered into activity, launching tons of pyroclastic flow that melted in minutes the enormous glaciers of the summit of the volcano.

A mixture of bad luck, political corruption, and a lack of early warnings made it so that no one announced the approaching tragedy: lahars, or flows of lava and rubble, were descending the hillside at 60 kilometers per hour heading toward Armero, and were invading the courses of the six rivers that were born in the volcano. Many of the town's inhabitants were sleeping, others were gathering at the town's cafés and taverns, when a strong tremor shook the earth, and a few minutes later, the streets began to fill with the swollen water of the nearest rivers.

Some people managed to flee to the highest points of the area, but when it was thought that the worst had passed, the relentless lahars broke over the town, and within a few minutes it was completely buried beneath the heavy mixture of lava, mud, and ash.

More than 23,000 of Armero's 29,000 inhabitants were buried alive, without the slightest hope of a quick rescue, turning into a cemetery what had once been a thriving town of farmers and merchants. Miraculously, Mara's mother and younger brother were saved, who were not in the municipal seat. Unfortunately, Mara's two older sisters did not have the same luck, and passed away on that fateful night in November.

The news could not have been more devastating for the young Mara, who did not hesitate to call her island adventure off and return to Tolima to support her mother and her brother in recovering from such a tragedy.

Bad luck endowed Mara with a new quality that would be instrumental in her life: the courage and the resolve to overcome difficulties and to take charge of the situation when the others did not have the strength to do it. She became the head of her family, and as such, made the decision to move to the big city, to leave the tragedy behind, to start over, and to concentrate on fulfilling her great dream, and to be able in that way to provide for herself and for her own.

Mara arrived in Bogotá like so many young people fleeing the tragedy of Armero, but also from the lack of opportunities in the provinces of Colombia. She had to work in different trades that allowed her to sustain herself while she went forward with her theater studies, an art that she learned over four years at the academy of Rubén di Pietro.

Theater was everything Mara had dreamed of, and more. She had found a vehicle to express her torrent of histrionic talent, and had proven that being on the stage was the place where she felt free and empowered. However, after seven years of total devotion to the art, Mara had to recognize that theater would not give her the economic security she needed.

Abriendo las puertas del abismo — Opening the doors of the abyss

It was this last thing that impelled her, despite it never having been among her plans, to do an audition for a secondary role in a telenovela called Puerto Amor. Malcom Aponte, the director of the series, immediately recognized Mara's talent and gave her the role, which was initially going to last only three episodes, but which, due to Mara's outstanding interpretation, became a character of much greater importance in the plot.

Puerto Amor was precisely the telenovela in which I remembered having seen Mara when I was about 11 or 12 years old, and was torn between the fear of going to my school and the excitement of attending the infant mission on Sundays. Well, evidently I also used my free time to follow the fashionable telenovelas.

Her entry into television gave Mara the economic stability she was looking for, in addition to fame and an active social life. Being recognized in the streets, loved or hated for the characters she portrayed, became part of her life, but fame itself was of no concern to her. The money she earned not only allowed her to improve her standard of living and to help her family in El Líbano, but it also served her as a tool to start what would become one of her forms of helping the world: feeding and adopting street animals. A task that Mara has carried out with inexhaustible devotion ever since.

Colombia during the 1990s, just as I mentioned earlier, was the decade of the zenith of the money and violence of the drugs. The world of the entertainment industry in those years was a melting pot that, in addition to art and fame, comprised prominent egos, libertine sex, the consumption of alcohol and drugs, prostitution, and in some cases, black magic.

For a young, cheerful, beautiful, and open-minded person, an environment like that would necessarily become a difficult trial to overcome. In multiple conversations we have had, Mara acknowledges having allowed herself to try many of the perilous amusements that life offered her during those years. She knew many facets of the darkness that has ended the lives of so many talented artists, not only in Colombia, but in any country of the West.

The little animals, as Mara calls them affectionately, her mother, and her spirituality based on the yagé, prevented her from being lost in the bowels of that accursed monster that is the mixture of ego, power, money, and lack of restraint. There she watched several of her friends and professional idols fall ill, go mad, and die. With each role that Mara portrayed, she explored a new facet of the human mind, of relationships, and of the darkness.

Love came and went several times, since within Mara's universe, no matter how disposed she was to approach that darkness and to taste some of its honeys, there are things that are not negotiable. Mara let go of the chain that bound her to those who refused to open their eyes and to move away from the flames of perdition, or to those who wanted to possess her and to deny her the freedom to serve Nature, or the “Mother”, as Mara refers to her.

All of these approaches to the darkness, the non-attachment, and death, were preparing her, without her realizing it, for a more important mission that she had to fulfill. The taitas say that to become a shaman, one has to be able to look death in the eyes, to take it by the hand, and to travel at its side. They say that the woman of wisdom must know the hidden corners of the darkness, in order to be able to rescue from them so many lost souls who do not find their path.

They say that the tree can only grow tall and reach the sky, if its roots go deep and reach the very center of the Earth. Mara was close to her initiation, but there was still one more trial: the guardian of the threshold was waiting for her with his terrible sword: Approaching her 40th year, Mara received the bitter news that in her uterus there was a malignant tumor.

Of course there were tears and much pain, but no suffering. Mara knew that another battle was approaching, like the so many that she had had to fight during her life. She was going to fight the battle, but she did not intend to let them extract her womb and submit her to a tortuous chemotherapy, without first fighting on the terrain that she knew, and that she knew she would have to face one way or another.

Mara had been a direct witness to innumerable healings that appeared miraculous with the yagé, but her trusted “tomadero” (place of taking) was in Putumayo, and her acting obligations would not allow her to be away for the time that she knew her healing would require. It was thus that a close friend made known to her that there was a taita with a very good reputation who had recently arrived from the jungle, and was giving yagé at a farm in the municipality of La Mesa. His name: Omar Barreto.

Mara presented herself before Omar at his farm in La Mesa, and by just looking him in the eyes, she noticed in him the wisdom and mysticism of a true man of knowledge. A firm believer in the “diosidencias” (divine providences), Mara trusted that that man would show her the path that the Divine Mother had arranged for her healing.

Omar also recognized Mara, but not only as a woman of knowledge, but as much more: a very ancient warrior alongside whom he himself had fought for hundreds of years. He did not tell her that at that moment, but he knew that through her he would receive not only the medicine he was seeking, but also the preparation that he lacked to assume his place in the cosmos.

“Mara, you have to take a lot of yagé, because that is a lot of what has to be taken out”, he told her with the tone of affection and authority that characterized him, while Mara, on her knees and with her forehead on the floor, was asking forgiveness for her faults, for her pride, and her weakness.

Omar was not simply a yagé shaman: his formation in ancestrality, esotericism, the cabala, and other mysteries, had taught him the importance of forming a grey, a group for study, to work on the everyday life, the lessons and trials that the yagé gave in ceremony. Mara would be much more than a new disciple: Omar saw in her a priestess.

The friendship between Mara and Omar blossomed quickly: Mara admired Omar's kindness, knowledge, and love for service, and Omar admired the devotion, discipline, and mysticism that Mara demonstrated in each trial and each lesson that he gave her. There were many totumadas (takes) of yagé that Mara ingested, many moments of darkness that she had to go through, and many battles that she fought at the side of her new teacher.

After some time, in the middle of one of those agonizing yagé journeys, something unusual happened: In the midst of the darkness and the despair of a fight against her fiercest demons, everything was filled with light. The silence muted the sounds that came from around her, and Mara saw the presence of the Divine Mother herself. There, over her, in her radiant form of light and maternal warmth, she was the very archetype of all that is feminine, the spirit of Gaia, the mystery of the virgin, and she came close to her face and told her: "Today you have won your healing. There is no stain on your womb. But there are only two paths for you: service for humanity or the darkness that you already know".

Mara did not need to confirm what her heart had heard, but still, the doctors who followed her case ordered her to do the routine blood tests and X-rays to verify the progress of the cancer. What a surprise it was for the doctors — not for Mara — when the results of those tests showed a healthy body, with no trace of disease.

The tumor was no longer there, but in a way, neither was the woman who had carried it in her womb. For that woman, "Mara" was only a pseudonym, because she had been baptized with another name, which out of loyalty to her, I will not reveal in this writing. The healthy woman that the tests revealed was another one, perhaps an avatar of whom the Divine Mother had taken possession. A shaman who, from that day on, would dedicate her life to rescuing as many souls as possible from the claws of alcohol, drugs, lust, madness, and other demons that besiege our world.

The abused and abandoned animals would always continue to be a priority for Mara, and a source of strength and love in which Mara recharges herself after giving everything for the healing of those who have knocked on her door with their souls in pieces.

Mara and Omar walked together the following years, and she became part of his intimate circle. In that circle, they held special yagé ceremonies for masters, with only a handful of people. Omar guided his disciples in astral journeys that they made to temples of the white lodge throughout the world. They traveled to the beyond and returned, receiving messages for their group and for humanity.

These messages would be a fundamental part of Omar's service, who created a study group for beginners and those aspiring to the sacred knowledge. They met in a room in the west of Bogotá and spoke at length about the wisdom of the Being, the powers of the mind, the Infinite, the laws of the cosmos, the power of the balance, the work of the will, among other topics.

My friends Zoraya and Martín came to belong to this second circle, along with actresses and actors that Mara brought after they had awakened from the mortal dream through the power of yagé. Among the most assiduous members of Omar's study group was one of the leading actresses of the cast of the most famous telenovela in Colombia: Betty la Fea.

The relationship with Omar, having always been strictly one of teaching and friendship, came to surpass in love, intensity, depth, and mutual support any form of relationship that Mara had known. Omar was her master, friend, and battle companion. She rescued lost souls, mainly from the world of spectacle, though with increasing frequency also from outside, and Omar gave them medicine, companionship, and teaching.

Mara learned from her master that every time someone sought her to find spiritual help, it was a responsibility that the Cosmos gave her, and therefore she had to be with them, support them, care for them, and if necessary, cleanse them and contain them. Through the La Mesa farm passed actresses, actors, models, presenters, film directors, among others. I do not exaggerate if I say that almost all the characters of the Colombian showbiz world who speak publicly about spirituality and ancestral medicine were led to it by Mara.

Omar, in turn, continued to expand the messages he received from the Divine Mother through his talks and conferences. Eventually, thanks to his growing contacts in the showbiz world, he would come to have frequent appearances on the small screen, and even a permanent radio program on the Todelar station, through which he invited the awakening of consciousness and the healing of the soul through ayahuasca.

This was the laboring of Omar and Mara, in whose furrows the spiritual seeds of the masters who preceded them sprouted, and which bloomed in the lives of those of us who had the luck of finding the masters of yagé. One by one, those beings who in the past had been on the verge of ruining their lives with the temptations of the world, began to form beautiful families. Some ex-drug addicts, ex-prostitutes, and abusers became entrepreneurs, public servants, happy housewives. Then came the children, the children of yagé, the spiritual grandchildren of Mara and Omar, born of conscious and loving families.

Of course, not all battles are won, and so there were lost cases, painful relapses, and early farewells, as cannot be otherwise on the paths of mud and flowers of life. Some of those cases led Mara to ask herself whether it was worth continuing to fight for a humanity that seems to take one step forward and two steps back. Many of those who sat in that intimate circle, and even more of those who frequented the study group, left without a word, or with a languid farewell.

However, the farewell that sank deepest into Mara's heart was that of her friend and master. Omar died toward the end of 2008, a little less than a year before I came to know Mara. The unexpected and untimely departure of the Master, because of a strange brain tumor, left all his friends and disciples immersed in sadness and confusion. He himself had taken care to prepare them all for his absence, constantly repeating that he was not important, that he was a messenger. That each one had to find the power in the Infinite that resides within them, and that we have to act and move because death stalks us at all times.

If Omar were still on this plane when I came to know Mara, I would surely have become one of his disciples. My search, however, had begun there, at Omar's house, when I saw his photograph and felt that he could be the master I was looking for. I wanted to verify whether all that magic and mystery that I had lived was real or only a trick of my mind. What better sign, then, than to receive many of the answers I was looking for from the lips and the heart of someone who was no longer among the living.

Teachings from the beyond

I received from Mara's hands an iPod full of esoteric and shamanic music, but with an even more valuable treasure: Among the thousands of audio files, there were 13 MP3 files with the recording of complete conferences that Omar held with his study group. I lost count of the times that I repeated those audios in the following years, but each time I listened, I found one more answer, a key, a suggestion of where to continue.

Years later, in the fall of 2014, while I was in Chicago, USA, I received an email from a friend and helper of Omar Barreto. He introduced himself as the "right hand" of the master and told me that he had come upon Omar's conferences on a website that I had published years before. In addition, he told me the following:

"I was the first one who recorded (sic) Omar's talks, and it's not the only thing I have of his, he left me a great many books in pdf, with which he supported himself to acquire knowledge and guide his knowing, research, music, in short, he left me everything so that I could defend myself and thus help the people interested in the science of the spirit."

This message left me speechless, because I had just re-listened to Omar's conferences during that trip and I thought that I already knew almost by heart everything that he said in them, that maybe there was no longer a point in repeating them.

I exchanged a few emails with the mysterious figure, in which I told him of myself, and he shared with me some of the books he mentioned, and in addition he delivered to me 17 additional conferences to the ones I had in my possession. Thus, out of nowhere, Omar had sought me out again to deliver to me more valuable tools for my path.

I should say in retrospect that not everything I found in those books or audios I consider accurate or relevant to my life at this moment. But what I also have to recognize is that Omar's words satisfied my curiosity for the esoterism, the metaphysics, and the work with yagé. His humble counsels and the focus on discipline, the will, the character, patience, and other virtues are a fundamental part of my path, and today I honor his legacy with my life and my work.

Mara has also honored her word and the teachings of her master, dedicating her life to the salvation of all living beings, plants, animals, and humans, who come to her path looking for a bit of air to breathe, a point of support to get up, a reason to believe in life.

I have seen with my own eyes Mara clean up the vomit and feces of people who, because of the effects of yagé, cannot control their movements or their sphincters. She has opened her home to dozens of dogs and cats without a home, mistreated or abandoned, who look for a bit of respect and affection. I have seen her give money without expecting anything in return to help a friend in a moment of need.

I have also seen her cry, curse, and scold, but what makes me consider Mara my spiritual master and mother is that after 12 years of having the fortune to walk at her side, I have never seen in her an iota of incoherence. I have never seen her deny her help to someone who needs it, close the door to an animal without a home, deny her time to someone who has no money to retribute her work. If I have to define Mara in a single word, it would be COHERENCE (consistency).

This chapter is a homage to a life of sacrifices and hard work, of love and mystical giving for life. I write these lines to ensure that the legacy of Omar and Mara continues to bear fruit in many generations to come.

And may all beings be happy,

May all beings be joyful,

May all beings have love,

May all beings have peace,

May no one lack food, warmth, nor shelter.

[1] https://yagetigreom.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_453.html

5 years ago Sir Manuel, nice to meet you, I am Claudia, Omar's sister. I want to clarify that Omar's mother, who is also my mother, is alive and in very good health.

0 Reply Author: manuelr Reply to Anónimo 5 years ago Hello Claudia!

It gives me great joy to greet you, and even more to know that your dear mother is alive and in good health. Please excuse me with her for the misstep, which I will correct right away. Likewise, please send to your mother a sincere congratulation and thanks from the heart for bringing to this world such wonderful beings as you are. A hug!!!