Iquitos, Peru

Hot. Tropical weather again, but this time it's not the breezy beach life of Koh Phangan in Thailand, i'm in the Amazon, in the outskirts of the Peruvian city of Iquitos, apparently the largest city in the world which doesn't have a road connecting it with the rest of the country, only a river and an airport.

I began my journey into the unknown yesterday, boarding a plane to Peru, knowing only that i'm going to see Don Juan Tangoa Paime, a Shaman healer, in my last chance for a miracle in healing the cancer in my body, which has metastasized and progressed in the lungs, and growing pretty fast. The discomfort in my body is growing by the day, heaviness of breath, coughing, pain in the chest and back. I've come to terms with these sensations, realizing on a deep level it really doesn't help to lament on them and grasp to the fear associated to the thoughts about what is going to happen to this body. Whatever is happening is happening, and all it is is mild pain happening right now. I don't know what it is exactly, and it doesn't matter because it's not as if i'm going to rush to a hospital to take care of it. The medical system has given up on me, as it does in almost all cancer cases. I don't consider the chemo-for-the-rest-of-your-life approach to prolong this body for a little bit more a form of legitimate healing. I see it as a last resort to try and sell the patient a false sense of control over his body. It's a materialistic view, which is held by most of us in the modern world, that sees the body as life, as who we are. The longer we can prolong its existence, the better life will be, because there is supposedly nothing after, no existence beyond it.

I know this not to be truth. I know I am not this body, which has cancer and is challenging this life in the past two years. What I am is far more wide and vast than a pile of flesh and bones and internal organs, working systematically to harbor consciousness in a physical form. It is a structure, no more and no less. A structure which allows this higher self to act and live in the world, as a means to discover itself and cultivate its connection to the divine via the lower realms. I know that after this body can't take it any more, it will stop functioning, but my soul will carry on. It will carry on according to the level of consciousness it has been able to cultivate throughout this life. This is why it is my most important goal right now to elevate this level to the highest possible, to prepare for death as the moment of dissolution into the vast divine reality.

I am in acceptance that my fate may be to terminate life in the body at the age of 33 (like Jesus!). However I am making every conscious and naturally harmonious effort to heal this body while I still can, because I know there is so much more I can do in this life, especially after going through such a trying episode with cancer.

Ever since I received the latest news of the cancer growing all over my lungs and towards the aoerta, there has been a shift in my consciousness. I feel more detachment from everything, life, occupations, people, lovers. Not a disassociation, but a loving detachment, seeing nothing is really important, just a beautiful interaction of things, of minds and beings coming and going into my life, creating specific reactions and making imprints. I choose not to hold on to these imprints and just move on to the one thing that is really important in this life, and that is realizing the self, realizing God. Everything else seems to be so small and insignificant compared to that. The stillness and silence in being, just being. Being without body, or form of any kind, without restricting mind, without the dramas of life. I felt the need to cut off any romantic involvement in my life and proceed on this journey with no strings attached. No one to report back to, no obligation to come back. I am grateful for the huge amounts of love poured on to me by my friends every time I come back to Israel and embark once again on a healing journey. The love is boundless. And it is precisely because this love is so wide and unconditional, that it allows me, or rather these wonderful beings which have come into my life are allowing me to fly free onto my journey without making me feel like i'm leaving them. They are whole heartedly with me on this journey and I deeply love them. Same with my family which is standing behind my quite unconventional excursion to the Amazon even though they can't fully understand what it is i'm doing and how Ayahuasca can possibly cure cancer.

I'm not sure either, but I believe, and my faith is the key to my healing. I feel it has been cultivated beautifully for quite a while now, and this journey with Ayahuasca and Juan is the big leap of faith i'm putting all my cards onto. Free falling into the unknown on a journey into the darkest places of the mind and psyche, to reveal the healing light within me and connect to healing spirits in higher realms of reality.

So my first day in Juan's house has been a bit strange, trying to figure out what it is i'm actually doing here, and what i'm going to do with myself during the days throughout this time, which may be a good few months. Talking to Juan isn't so easy, his English isn't so good and my Spanish sucks, but we manage to communicate on a basic level, which is good enough for now. Ultimately, he just needs to feel me energetically in a ceremony and then assess how to treat me. He said curing my cancer is not a problem and that I just need to stay here for maybe 2 months. I was thinking even more than 2 months, so i'm prepared for anything.

Juan's house is a standard South American simple house with kids running in the yard, chickens, geese, dogs, rabbits, cats and 4 TV sets. Not your ideal retreat in the jungle. The house is so simple, you would never imagine this guy is a Shaman, working with spirits and healing people. But that's the beauty of it I guess. All i'm saying now is speculation, as I haven't had the chance to really get to know Juan and experience the work he does. I like the fact that my typical hippie fantasies of coming to Peru, to the Amazon Jungle and spending months in nature doing Ayahuasca ceremonies and connecting with the Indian culture of the Earth mother spirit, have been shattered and faced with the fact that even in the rainbow spiritual culture I identify with in some way in my life, we put on a lot of picturesque mumbo jumbo to soothe our imagination and satisfy our minds, when in reality, Juan is a Shaman in the amazon, living with his extended family in a house by the airport in Iquitos, wearing jeans and a red baseball cap, and for some reason that I am probably going to find out, is considered one of the best healers around. I have nothing to do but surrender and accept the irony of it all, the over-simplicity of it and give up my attachment to a romantic jungle-medicine experience.

Fact is, I have no idea what is going to happen over the next months, what kind of healing will occur, what I will see and what kind of transformations will take place in my being. I'm trying to come clean, with no expectations and simply surrender to Juan and his healing methods.

Seeing the Andes mountains ranges from the window of the plane this morning reminded where I am, after a night in a crappy hotel near the airport in Lima, I realized i'm in South America, a land rich with deep wisdom of the earth and the elements, plants and medicines. Something higher has brought me here, a calling deep in my soul which manifested through this wild journey with cancer and the introduction to the healing powers of Ayahuasca. I have nothing to lose here, this is the journey of my soul.