In early March 2012 I traveled to Real de Catorce, a tourist mining town in Central Mexico, arriving with a group of my shamanic students to do some ceremonial work in this high desert region. I have been going to Real for the last twenty five years and this was our annual pilgrimage lasting for several days. The town lies close to Mount Quemado, most sacred pilgrimage destination of the Huichol people, in the news recently because of a huge protest over an effort to mine the mountain by a Canadian mining company. Fortunately the protest was successful and the Mexican government issued a stay to all operations on Quemado.

After performing our ceremonies and prayers we always visit the Church of Guadalupe, a church that lies just outside the village, built in sixteen hundred by the Franciscans with indigenous labor. Although there is a large Catholic Cathedral in the center of town, I like to visit the little church because it was built by and for the indigenous people and therefore has unique qualities. It is situated with a view of Mount Quemado and is surrounded by a colorful and quite beautiful cemetery. Rather than Jesus hanging on the cross over the altar characteristic of most churches in Mexico, this church has a big picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe over the altar instead. Clearly it is a church dedicated to the feminine face of spirit rather than the masculine.

People often confuse envy and jealousy. Envy is wanting what someone has and jealousy is wanting to possess someone all to yourself. With jealousy there is a feeling of ownership over the other person accompanied by a feeling or desire that they not show someone else attention, love, or affection. The jealous person feels that the object of their desire should show that attention, etc. only to them. If they think it is going elsewhere they feel enraged or overwhelmingly upset to the point where they feel they have to interfere or interrupt the activity. They may also accuse their love interest and try to punish them in a variety of ways, haranguing them, beating them, or giving them the cold silent treatment. In truly severe cases the jealous person may be imagining everything. In other cases their partner is in reality showing attention to others and may even be trying to make their partner jealous. Whatever the case, jealousy comes from a feeling of being deprived and a feeling of being overlooked or put down in favor of someone else. In other words jealousy indicates deep insecurity, lack of trust, and lowered self-esteem. Jealousy is a product of the dragon of self-deprecation, the fear of not being worthwhile.

In our last article we wrote at length about the collective dream that has enveloped the planet and how that dream in many ways has become a nightmare for people everywhere. We talked about how the collective dream functions like a forest fire sucking up everything in its path to feed itself and continue on its relentless path.

(Hint: For best results read all the way through even if you are not interested in plant diets.)

Two days ago I returned from two weeks with some Shipibos, an upper Amazon tribe in Peru who supervise plant diets. I was there to do another of many plant diets, seven days in a row of drinking the juice from one of a number of special plants Amazonian tribes take to make them strong, help them heal others, and offer them protection. These plants must be taken in a certain order, starting with tobacco, moving on to the rennequia, then bouasca, albaca, camalonga, and chiric- sanango. Others follow. On this trip, there was a small group of us each dieting with different plants but spending each day in a hammock receiving the teachings and assistance of the plants.

Some are sometimes surprised when they do not receive direct intellectual instructions or downloads from the plants but that is not the way they work. The truth is, the benefits come over a period of weeks and months and while taking them one might feel a variety of emotions, physical sensations, sleepiness, or exceptional clarity of mind. It is not unusual for some to sleep a good part of the day and then again at night so for some it may be very restful while for others it is stimulating and may be accompanied by intense reading, meditating, or listening to music.

“The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, an Australian television producer, has become a runaway best seller along with the DVD by the same name. You know something is making a splash when it manifests in a five-page article in Newsweek magazine.

A trip to visit our son Carlos brought my wife Lena and I to New York City in late November, 2011. He recently moved to Manhattan to work as the Creative Director of a computer design and animation company and we wanted to see where he worked and visit his apartment where we stayed for a few days. His apartment building on the West Side has a roof with a fabulous view of the entire city and we spent some time up there in the cold November wind getting to the know the city from that vantage point. Wall Street and the World Trade Center where Ground Zero is now being rebuilt and reshaped is a few subway stops away. Since he had to work all day for the first two days of our stay, we took the opportunity to ride trains and walk extensively throughout the city.

The last time I was in Bangkok, Thailand in 1976, there was a government coup. Later in the nineties as Lena and I arrived in Nepal, an insurrection was in full force leading us to hole up in our hotel under government curfew.

Sometimes, even after doing everything right, Essence throws curves at us just to see how we will manage them. This is the tale of such a test and perhaps an example of one way of managing it along with lessons learned. After an extraordinary trip to Huallay, the stone forest in the Andes of Central Peru, my daughter Anna and I stopped in Guatemala for a reconnaissance trip, to do the pre-planning before taking our two year program group there to work with Mayan shamans. In Peru our group had worked with the Q’eros, the powerful Andean Paqos or shamans who we have been learning from. After a series of wonderful ceremonies at fourteen to fifteen thousand feet, we felt strong and filled with light. Our hearts were open and our sense of connection to Spirit was strong. So Anna and I figured we would bring this good foundation with us on our research trip to Guatemala.

The current vampire craze is a most interesting phenomenon that is becoming a bigger and bigger theme, especially among young people. Let us look at a brief history of where vampires originated, some of the particulars of vampirism, and recent developments to understand how this craze mirrors deeper processes in the human psyche.

A brief history:

Concern over vampires has been reported in most cultures and continents on Earth since the dawn of time. Mostly the fears have been associated with the dead returning to life and creating havoc or coming back to people they knew and hurting or killing them. Therefore great care has been taken with burials, honoring the dead, and not provoking them. Burial sites are often avoided or placed in remote locations.