(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.