The Courage To Go Alone

ALL MEN’S MISERIES DERIVE FROM NOT BEING ABLE TO SIT QUIET IN A ROOM ALONE. -Blaise Pascal

If you want to go your individual way it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other. If you always do the next thing that needs to be done, you will go most safely and surefootedly along the path prescribed by your unconscious.~ C.G.Jung

The dieta is an ascetic shamanic practice whereby an initiate goes into the forest for an extended period of time (six months, a year, two years) vowing abstinence from earthly delights such as salt, sugar, oil, fats, bloody meats, alcohol, sex; any and all sensual stimulation is forsaken for meager portions of bland food in order to ‘hollow out the vessel’ of the neophyte. Shipibo onanya refer to a time when the shamanic practices of the bancomuralla, now-extinct exalted masters, would consist of spending up to ten years in the forest in isolation observing a dieta….In this state of emptiness and heightened sensitivity, the dietero consumes modest quantities of teas made from what are commonly referred to as master or teacher plants. Plants, from the common Shipibo perspective, are sentient beings animated by a spirit imbued with agency and will. Each possesses its own energetic signature — what Segundo calls a…