What's Your Jungle Story? (Part 2)
LIGHT WITHIN THE DARKNESS
Q: What Is Your Jungle Story? (Part 2)
Remember Part 1?
A: She had turned in the wax and crossed her wings over her chest looking like a perfectly elegant sarcophagus. Remembering her at this moment sent chills down my spine. In certain cultures, animals are seen as having a particular medicine or gift associated with them. The moth represents metamorphosis, similar to the butterfly yet with a specific affinity towards finding light within darkness. Moths are shapeshifters, intuitive in nature, and can easily navigate within the shadow realms, however a further study into the shamanic perspective reveals they can also confuse their enemies as friends. Perhaps she was helping me to find my way through. “Dive into the fire Ciela, die and be reborn…”
As her light went out, I remember my stomach dropping towards the pit of the jungle, and immediately I had to relieve myself. Her death moved me profoundly, and physically. It didn’t help that my only toilet was a hole in the ground about 100 yards up a slippery, muddy slope and that it had started to pour a monsoon-style rain. I would just have to walk into the horizontal vegetation and deal.
Peeing in the middle of the night can be taken care of in a bucket. Number two is a different story. As I started to squat, hordes of fire ants made their way up my boots. “Oh God, ok, back to the tambo (thatched roof but no walls “hut”), bucket it will have to be.” As I lifted my foot to walk up the two steps leading to my dwelling space, my headlamp caught an extraordinary sight. Suddenly everything stood still and my panic of needing to relieve myself completely subsided.
Surprise Guests
A large serpent sat coiled in a perfect circle on my step. What made matters even more surreal was that sitting atop the coiled snake was a black spider the size of my fist with its legs fully spread in every direction as if mimicking the face of a clock. I did what anyone would do, right? I stepped over them and then fumbled for my disposable camera and snapped a photo.
The next morning the shaman made rounds to visit each of the 12 or so participants living in isolation within a mile radius of the camp who were fasting, praying, and healing in silence. The only conversation throughout the next two weeks would be with our shaman, an older and roundish Peruvian who had been practicing these healing arts since he was a child. When I shared with him what had happened to me, his eyes became very large as did his smile.
In Spanish, he said, “It is incredible, the animals are already speaking to you. It usually takes one several days if not weeks or months for the animals to begin to reveal themselves in this way. You must be serious about your time here. That spider is the most poisonous of all the spiders in this jungle. He represents the cancerous cells in your body. The serpent represents the healing medicine that is within you and the power of the Ayahuasca to source it. She is also the only predator of that particular spider. They are showing you that your intention of healing your cancer is possible and they are working with you to see that this becomes a reality.”
~~~
That was just the beginning. Many more jungle stories exist inside my beating heart. I am incredibly grateful for the reminder of the many lives I’ve lived to date as a reflection of the many more to come. If you enjoyed this, please let me know and I’ll see what other stories I can find for you.
For more musings like this, subscribe here
Join Ciela’s Patreon
We cannot change the world until we accept we are the world. This is the new conversation.
