– “Manu has a big heart, but he still has a long way to go to finish healing that chain he has been carrying since he rebelled,” said one of the women's voices. Another added: “Now he can finally meet his spiritual companion. Wait until you see the one we have in store for him” – “A little blonde, like the ones he likes?” – “Yes, but this one is a real fighter; she was waiting for him, but the way he was, she wasn't going to come near him.”
As was to be expected, the words above — which I remembered from my liberation with yagé — were part of the prophetic messages I received that Saturday in October 2009 that stirred me the most. The tangles of the heart had, after all, been an important motivation behind my decision to seek healing through yagé.
In the years before, since my arrival from Santa Marta, I had been searching — without much urgency, to tell the truth — for a life partner with whom I could fulfill my dream of building a home not only for myself but also for my daughter Ana María. The problem, it seemed, was that my dreams and my instincts were heading down different paths: the women I attracted into my life reflected my tastes and my longing for fun, but not a genuine interest in building a life project.
On the other hand, I was clear that before thinking about having more children and being in a “serious” relationship like the one I admired in my parents, I wanted to travel, have fun, and grow professionally — but I definitely did not want to keep doing it amid trivial relationships that, rather than nourishing my life, usually left me with a void in my chest and another in my pocket.
Only a few days had passed since my transformative experience with yagé and I was settling back into my work routine when I saw Paula for the first time. She was typing busily at a workstation on the same floor where I worked, about a hundred meters from my desk. Noticing her was not hard, since her age was clearly far below the average of those of us working in the department; besides, she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen at that company.
Her porcelain skin, green eyes, small lips, and blonde hair were etched into my mind from that moment, and I clearly remember thinking, “I hope she is the woman the yagé told me it had in store for me!” That did not mean I was willing to wait for the divine to deliver her into my arms. On the other hand, a pretty face is not always a sign of a good heart, but she was so lovely that I thought it was worth trying to get to know her.
I had decided to try to approach her, and although I always considered myself ineffective when it came to approaching a woman, I thought something would come to me, so I looked for her again the next day — but at the desk where I had seen her before, someone else was in her place. I was a bit disappointed and annoyed at myself for not having approached her the day I first saw her, although in retrospect I think it would not have been appropriate at all, given that it was a work environment and not a bar.
Two more days passed in which I circled the place where I had seen her, her image burned into my memory, but I did not find her again. Surely she worked for some contractor and had only been on assignment for a few days. It was obvious that her youthful, alternative style did not fit the formality of the women who worked at Telefónica in those days.
I was already resigning myself to never finding out who that beautiful young woman with the serious gaze and hair lightly tinted green was, when one afternoon the girl burst into the section of offices where my desk was and made her way to the workstation of Claudia, one of the employees in my group and a good friend of mine.
Having a known acquaintance in common greatly increased the chances of approaching the mysterious girl, so as soon as she left the office, I went over to Claudia to ask her about our new young colleague.
I know I had no success hiding my interest, because Claudia immediately smiled and asked me, “Do you like Paulita?” Claudia knew some of the tangles of my love life and had even met one of my ex-girlfriends, whom I still saw from time to time. Claudia also knew that I was trying to start a relationship with someone in Medellín, but that the long overland trips and the distance had discouraged me from that relationship.
– “Paulis would be perfect for you: she is sensible, intelligent, hardworking, and really pretty. Do you want me to introduce you?” Claudia continued, to my astonishment. – “No, I am too shy! I am rather clumsy at making those connections in person. Could you get me her Messenger address?” I tried, hoping my enthusiasm did not show... too much.
Claudia agreed enthusiastically, and a few hours later she left a small note with Paula's email address beside the keyboard of my computer. Those were the years before WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, when the king of instant messaging was Microsoft Live Messenger, with its friendly pings and musical statuses.
For me, making initial contact through Messenger served to reduce the enormous anxiety that invaded me every time I first approached a woman who attracted me. And so Paula and I exchanged our first lines, from which came a first invitation to have coffee, brief visits to her desk in the mornings, and within days an invitation to have lunch near our work at her favorite restaurant: Crepes & Waffles.
The more I got to know Paula, the more my attraction to her beauty, her professionalism at work, and her effort to get ahead despite difficulties grew. She also appreciated my interest in getting to know her as a person and seemed curious about the strange topics of shamanic spirituality I had touched on lightly in some of our conversations.
That first lunch date — taking advantage of a long lunch break at work — served me to delve into her personal story. Paula was born in Medellín, Antioquia, in April 1989, making her a bit less than ten years younger than me. Although her physical features were clearly from Antioquia, I was surprised to learn that Paula had been born in Medellín, since her accent did not carry the unmistakable imprint of the “paisa” spoken in that department. She explained that she had never liked that heavily marked accent, and that not even her mother's was the “typical” paisa accent.
Paula had spent the first 18 years of her life in Medellín, in a working-class neighborhood in the north of the city called Pedregal. Curiously, it was the same neighborhood I had gone to a few times to visit the girlfriend with whom I had ended a short relationship a couple of months earlier. Besides her slight paisa accent, another atypical thing for a woman from Antioquia was having a small family. Her household was made up of just her grandparents, her mother, and herself, and she had only one uncle and one cousin. In Antioquia, families with many aunts and uncles and dozens of cousins are common.
The economic difficulties of her household had made it impossible for her to devote herself exclusively to pursuing her higher education at the University of Antioquia, and with few job options for a young woman of her age and without experience, Paula decided to accept the proposal of her boyfriend at the time to embark on the adventure of moving to Bogotá and living life as a couple, in an unknown city and without the closeness of her beloved mother, uncle, and grandparents.
The two years that passed from that decision until the day she and I met were not easy for Paula. She had to change housing several times and explore different jobs, including preparing deliveries at a prestigious grocery chain, until she found something she was passionate about and for which she had great talent: customer service at the same telecommunications company I worked for, and where in the end our paths crossed: Telefónica.
Paula worked for this company through several contractors and managed to stand out for her discipline, deep knowledge of technical matters, and special skill at dealing with difficult customers, for whom she always tried to find a solution to their problems. In fact, for her outstanding performance, Paula was chosen among hundreds of customer service agents to run user tests on an important application the company was working to launch into production in the following months.
While she strove to excel at her work and perhaps one day become a telecommunications engineer, as some of her supervisors were already predicting, Paula knew she had to earn a professional degree, and so she enrolled at university. Thus, at only 19 years old, Paula studied, worked, supported an incipient home, and helped her mother from a distance.
With all those responsibilities on her shoulders, it was no surprise that her financial situation was precarious. She had had to suspend her studies, had accumulated some debts, and for a while now had to sacrifice many of the diversions that young people her age, with more privileges, could enjoy. On the other hand, and also unsurprisingly, her love life was not at its best. The honeymoon of the romance had passed, their true characters had been revealed, and the inexperience of both parties had caused its damage; something I knew all too well.
With all these circumstances against her, Paula had decided to give up trying to force a life in Bogotá, which, despite being a city that had captivated her, did not offer her the security and family warmth that awaited her in Medellín.
I cannot deny that when I heard about this decision I felt the urge to try to convince her to stay. Maybe I could help her in some way, offer her support so she could become independent and get ahead. After all, it was clear that she was a responsible and intelligent woman who would find a way to survive without having to endure a toxic relationship. Or well, maybe having a better relationship... with me!
Maybe I started to say something, but then a consciousness came over me that I would not have had two weeks before, when I had not yet had my liberation thanks to yagé: I realized that once again I was thinking selfishly, about my own gratification above that of others. The truth was that for Paula things would be much easier with the support of her family than alone in a city of eight million inhabitants.
So I bit my tongue and, instead of giving her hopes based on having her at my disposal, I tried to listen to what her dreams were, what would make her happy. I realized her family was a decisive factor in her decision, as was her fear of facing life alone for the first time. But at the same time, Paula felt more at ease living in Bogotá than in Medellín, and above all she loved her job at Telefónica.
So I risked telling her about yagé. I told her my experience — without going into details that might scare her too much — and I told her about Mara. I suggested she talk to Mara before buying her tickets back to Medellín, and that surely she would help her feel better about whatever decision she made.
With that proposal and the promise that she would think about it, our first date came to an end. On the way back we talked no more about her problems but about our opposite or shared tastes. I interpreted a couple of Paula's gestures and questions as a sign of a slight interest in me, which kept me motivated, but what made me happy was feeling that my change in yagé, although recent, was real: my priorities were different, I was seeing a beautiful woman as a person before anything else, and I had put her interests ahead of my whims. It was a good start!
Paula agreed to go with me to Mara's house the next day, after we finished our workday. She was a bit nervous and believed there was nothing that could change her decision to leave for Medellín, but still she was intrigued to know what the mysterious Amazonian plant she had already heard about on several occasions could show her.
Mara was as sweet and assertive as she had been with me, listening to Paula's story and asking important questions. She also used her pendulums in the same way she had with me and, similarly, recommended that Paula take yagé as soon as possible. If she did, she could clarify her emotions and thoughts and be sure she would make the best decision for her life.
Coincidentally, that very Sunday there would be a new yagé ceremony in La Mesa, just two weeks after my first session, and Mara would be there supporting two patients who had hired her to accompany them on their journey. Paula, who felt an immediate connection with Mara, perhaps because of their shared experience of having left very young and alone to seek a better fate in the big city, agreed to postpone her decision until after returning from the yagé session that weekend.
I, for my part, had already talked so much about yagé with family and friends that a cousin and his wife had become interested in experiencing it and signed up to attend that same ceremony, with the added advantage that we could all go in my cousin's car and even spend the previous night in the town of Cachipay, which is near La Mesa.
So for the second time I set out on a journey into the unknown in the company of another man and two women. This time, my companion would not be my sister but the beautiful young blonde with light eyes who, without knowing it, had captivated me from a desk at Telefónica. The atmosphere was conducive to friendship and small talk, but not to flirting, so I parked my romantic intentions and limited myself to being a good friend and guide for an experience that could be potentially traumatic.
That night, at the country house of my cousin's family, we were able to keep talking about our lives, and I could feel how important it had been for her to meet people who showed her genuine affection and concern, something refreshing amid the situation she was living through.
That Sunday, November 15, 2009, I found myself once again standing among a circle of people coming to the medicine of yagé, before taita Fernando and his helpers, who consecrated the ayahuasca with their songs and the wind of the wayra.
At my side was Paula, who kept her hands together and her head bowed toward the floor. She had already told me that spirituality was not her strong suit and that in general she did not believe in gods or religions. Besides, behind her delicate appearance and slender figure hid a rebel and death metal fanatic who did not hesitate to show her strong character at the slightest threat. I had seen no more than a couple of smiles on her face, but I had the intuition that after that day, a great joy would bloom over that gray facade.
Being a man, I went up to receive the sacred brew before Paula, as the Siona tradition indicated, and according to the taita's rules, after taking the yagé I had to withdraw from the ceremony site and find my own space to live the experience, away from the other participants and, above all, away from the people I had come with, to avoid any mutual distraction.
I walked away with my back covered with a thin sheet. This was a recommendation Mara had given us to avoid mosquito bites and sunburns, which in that part of the continent can be suffered during all 12 months of the year. I felt calm despite knowing in advance the terrifying visions and sensations that could appear, because I felt I had already left behind those demons that had caused me such a traumatic experience.
What continued to be just as difficult for me was trying to hold back the urge to vomit too soon and keep the yagé in my system for at least the 20 minutes Mara had advised me. Just like the previous time, I wandered slowly along the north side of the farm breathing deeply until I managed to control the nausea. Then I sat in lotus position and began to meditate.
Unlike my incipient previous attempts at meditation, this time my mind surrendered itself fully to it. I closed my eyes and simply let myself feel the warm wind on my skin, the fruity and incense aromas, and the sounds of the birds fluttering above my head. It was not difficult at all to keep my mind blank, and little by little I sank into a state of silence and stillness in which sounds and other sensations combined into a single murmur that swirled around my body as if it were a force field.
Suddenly I felt as if something pushed me backward and my back and head moved toward the floor while my legs stretched out gently. But this movement was slow and effortless on my part, as if an invisible backrest were reclining behind my back. I opened my eyes as I descended and, to my astonishment, beautiful yellow flowers began to bloom all around me. Then four gardens appeared with flowers of other colors, but mostly purple, at four equidistant points around me.
My eyes began to fill with tears as I beheld all this beauty, when I saw that from the four gardens rose four marble columns that lifted a few meters toward the sky, carrying green vines with them. Then, a few meters in front of me, appeared the image of a four-armed Hindu god, seated in lotus position, just as I had been a little while before. Some days later, searching for images of the Hindu pantheon, I discovered that it was Shiva, lord of the transformation of the Universe.
With this vision I felt an inner voice asking me to close my eyes. I did so and, to my surprise, the four gardens were still there, but everything else had disappeared. Now it seemed like an inner garden inside some kind of chamber, or more precisely, a sphere, since the floor had also vanished and I was lying on a stone stretcher floating in the middle of an orb of dark tones.
I began to hear other voices behind me, and shortly after, a group of invisible beings — perhaps the same ones I had heard two weeks before — began to perform some kind of healing or energetic massage on my body. I felt as if many invisible hands were moving, cleaning, or rearranging the entire surface of my skin and also my internal organs.
I asked what was happening to me and the voices answered that they were preparing me for my journey, that I should enjoy the moment. And so I did, and I can say that I still remember it as one of the most overwhelming and pleasant experiences of my life. In later sessions I was able to feel part of this experience. In fact, I realized that whenever I was about to have a stronger cleansing with yagé, the mysterious invisible beings would appear to give me that mystical preparation.
Sometimes the preparation lasted only a couple of minutes and other times probably a couple of dozen. Sometimes I could perceive other preparation chambers of different kinds, always spherical and with a floating table in the center, but I have never again found myself in that beautiful garden of Shiva that I knew the first time I took yagé with Paula. In retrospect, I think this is the reason why I never cut the yellow dandelion flowers that bloom in my garden every spring.
Despite the beautiful experience I had just had, yagé had not only led me to be fascinated by its magic. The temple of Shiva gradually dissolved and soon I found myself in the darkness. This time there were no demons or eerie voices, but my mind began to travel with great lucidity to moments of my life that I did not consciously remember, especially my childhood.
I found myself again in the body of a 3-year-old boy crying with rage for having been punished and thinking the worst things about myself; then I traveled to pleasant moments of play with my sisters at my grandparents' farm, but with even more clarity I wandered through corners of houses and rooms that I do not even remember ever having known in my life. Places full of pain and sadness, miserable rooms where I was with brothers and sisters I do not know, fearing the arrival of a cruel and abusive father.
I found myself, now as an adult, with a group of people performing dark rituals, perhaps black magic, in which I was a kind of receptacle to be possessed by a sinister demon they were invoking.
All these strange scenes that I felt as part of my own life began to generate in me a genuine desperation. I opened my eyes trying to recover the sanity I felt was slipping away, but the images pursued me, and every time I let myself be carried by the yagé, I traveled to a new twisted episode of human suffering.
I looked for help around me, but did not find it, so I mustered courage and tried to regain control by breathing deeply. My legs trembled spasmodically and my guts began to knot up. In the distance I heard several people vomiting and asking for help; someone was crying, and I could make out the voices of Mara, Fernando, and his helpers chanting or trying to calm the yagenauts.
The macabre scenes gave way to grotesque figures of demons, upside-down crosses, and inverted five-pointed stars. Then I clearly heard Paula vomiting very violently. I do not know how I knew it was her, but I was sure, and later I was able to confirm that it was, because Mara was with her and was helping her get through that distressing trance in the best possible way.
For my part, I felt desperate, abandoned by God, and once again afraid of dying. Then I felt the urge to scream for help again, but I did not want Mara to leave Paula alone, so I asked for help inwardly — “My God, help me, I do not want this, I do not want any more suffering!”
After a while, a voice within me said — “You are not alone, I am with you, but you have to be strong and let go of the chains you carry.” I began to search within myself and little by little I found those chains. I realized I harbored a strong resentment toward my father, not recent but from childhood, for his stern attitude toward me and his sometimes harsh way of reprimanding me. I thought about other things like my ease at lying, at manipulating people, and other “areas for improvement.”
In this case, just like the previous time, only when I identified the ill that was causing me suffering did something open in my belly and a stream of brown vomit shot out of my mouth. Then came another and another, and as I vomited, I could only think of Paula and of that voice that had spoken to me. I knew my main task would be with my lies and with my father, but I wanted Paula to be well, to release from her chest all that sadness I had felt in her ever since I met her.
I vomited until a knot formed in my stomach and I could not bring anything else up, and then I fell unconscious onto my side. My mind returned to silence, and I do not know how long I spent in deep rest when it happened: I felt all the force of the sun on my face and the caress of the grasses on my skin. I opened my eyes and above me, in the blue sky, a grid of purple and magenta lines was drawn connecting everything on Earth. I heard the songs of the birds and felt I could understand what they were saying.
I touched the grasses around me with my fingertips and felt I was stroking my own hair. I began to laugh with tears in my eyes because I had remembered: it is not me, it has never been me, I am the Earth itself, the jungle, the sky, and the sea. I have eternally been playing at creating and destroying Universes, worlds, and humanities. I asked myself about Paula and I myself answered: — “Your wife is fine, your son is fine.” Then I said, “Your son? Is it you who has been speaking to me, son?” — “Yes,” answered the same voice that had told me moments before that I was not alone. — “I am the fruit of your love with Paula. Soon I will be with you.”
Then I opened my eyes, barely understanding everything that had just happened. It had undoubtedly been the most sacred mystical experience I had had up to that moment, and what it had just revealed to me was something too important. But then my human mind was already reconnecting, so I thought there was no way I could confide such a prophecy to a woman I had barely met two weeks earlier. Surely she would think I was crazy.
In the middle of my musings, Mara's silhouette appeared standing beside me, asking — “How are you, Manu?” — “Fine, Marita, that was very intense.” She did not give me time to ask about Paula when she told me: — “Your girlfriend is fine; she did vomit up everything, but she really wants to see you.”
Mara helped me to my feet and took me to a yellow hammock hanging between two mango trees. — “Wait for her here, I will bring her to you.” My mind began to race at a thousand revolutions when I saw Paula smiling as she approached me, walking slowly with Mara's help. I made room for her in the hammock so she could sit beside me, and we hugged each other tightly.
Paula thanked me for having brought her and told me that it had been a very hard experience for her, especially the vomiting part. She felt she was dying and saw horrible things. She told me she understood that she had to stop listening to the heavy music she used to listen to every night before sleeping, and that she had also seen very beautiful things.
At that moment I wondered whether it was possible that she had seen the things I saw about our future; in any case, it would not be anything related to having a child with me. We both probed the ground to find out whether we could reveal our secrets calmly, so when it welled up from my heart I looked into her beautiful green eyes and told her, “I saw that you and I are spiritual partners, that we are going to be husband and wife and... live many beautiful things together.” She took my hands and said — “I also saw all those things, and others even crazier...” — “I also saw something even bigger...” I told her, and imagine my surprise when she answered — “So you also saw our little angel?” — “That is right,” and we kissed like two souls reuniting after a long journey.
Today, almost 11 years after that wonderful day, I still transport myself from time to time to that hammock to relive the most mystical, romantic, and magical moment of my life, which every November 15 we remember and celebrate as our D-day.
There was a small detail we still had to resolve: Paula still lived with her boyfriend — or well, now ex-boyfriend — and had nothing in Bogotá but a love that had just been born and a spiritual family that had just adopted her. I thought to myself, “Well, if God already got us into this, He has to give us a hand.” I had been living with my parents since I returned from Santa Marta three years before, and I had no intention of sending my future wife and the mother of my children to live alone in a hotel, so I made a new leap into the void: I picked up my phone and called my mom, who upon hearing my voice felt relieved, since she knew how hard my previous experience had been.
When she asked me how it had gone, I only told her: — “Well, Mom, it turns out Paula is my spiritual partner, we have a bright future together and we even got to see the son we are going to have together, so I want to ask for your support so that Paula can live with us while we find a place for her.” My mom was silent for a few seconds and then told me with conviction: — “Son, if that is what you want, you know you have my support.”
Sometimes, only sometimes, the Universe seems to align and bring all the pieces together so that a moment is perfect and becomes inscribed in eternity.