Toad of Light

I am on my way to the river to smoke toad venom. A shaman is visiting our community to share a ceremony from the highlands of Mexico, and when invited to participate, I said yes. How could I not? What kind of traveler rejects a chance to inhale the psychotropic chemicals produced by the glands of the Sonoran Desert Toad? I am a believer in embracing ego-annihilating experiences whenever offered, and while this habit of nodding to proposals many sane people shake their heads at has gotten me into awkward situations, it has also shaped my life in marvelous ways.

I am more discerning than I used to be, now that I am a mother responsible for the life of another human. The holy art of risk-taking, which once came so naturally, is now more of an intentional practice. All the more reason to hold firmly to my guiding mantras, lest I shrivel into a timid adult, an old decrepit shell of my former bold self. Or so I tell myself, as I walk to my date with the shaman. I have decades of experience with psychotropics but have never smoked toad medicine before, and I’ve heard unsettling stories. My instincts tell me this journey will take me further than I have ever been. I’m unusually nervous and I keep forgetting to breathe and my heart is a pinball, but I keep going, putting one foot in front of the other. I didn't get here by letting fear stop me at critical junctions and I won't start now.

The roar of cicadas throbs the air and a toucan creaks in the papaya tree. It is a vivid, exquisite morning in the jungle. I step down the rock stairs into the river gorge as fear squeezes my chest. My feet feel heavier with every step. I have never felt this rattled on my way to an adventure. I focus on beauty, which is easy here, where great boulders rise out of sparkling water like remnants of ancient submerged temples. Enormous cashew trees reach sinewy arms to the sky and dangle weaves of braided roots to soil. The canopy is a chandelier, sunlight flickering through glowing layers of green. I cross the river. Hand over hand up the wooden ladder. Almost there.

The Machuca river is a tangle of bright blue liquid ribbons, flashing turquoise jewels, bubbles of jade light. I fill my hands and splash my face, then step across wet rocks to the little rocky island where the medicine woman is waiting for me. Her dark brown eyes are kind and her round face is easy to trust. Her hand holds a glass pipe with crumbs of venom in its bowl. She instructs me in Spanish. Breathe out to the left, over your shoulder. Empty your lungs completely. I will give you the pipe. You will take one long inhalation and hold it in as I count backwards.

I nod and exhale. The pipe is in my mouth. I inhale. Smoke fills me. The shaman lights the pipe again with a command to inhale more. I have no room left but want to obey so I let some air out and inhale again. A third time she lights the pipe and urges, más, más! I suck up all I can and hold it in.

Diez, nueve, ocho...everything pulses. Siete, seis, cinco...the rocket launches. The filters on my senses dissolve and I am merging with all I perceive; spinning lights, dazzling trees, roaring sound. All is vibrating and intensifying. My mind wants to cry stop, hit pause, it’s too fast, this unraveling of the world. My body sinks back into pillows but I’m not that. I am inside a larger power, a spinning atom in a body made of lightning and tornados. The force amplifies and shoots me into waves of terrifying brilliance. I'm a drop in an ocean of unbearable radiance. It is beyond too much. I want it to stop but I'm strapped in and blasting further. Quatro, treis, dos, uno...and dialing up, and no way out.

No me no me no me. The motion of constellations blasting me from the dust of everything I’ve been or believed in. I am nothing and everything; I am the circuitry of the cosmic nervous system, and all the lines of space and time that once anchored me are bending and humming and dissolving in the volume of a divine song. I want to grab roots and rocks; I want to bury myself under moss; I want to be solid. But I can't hold anything, I am gone, dissolved in an infinity of lotuses within lotuses fractaling, spirals inside spirals catapulting me beyond any me I have ever been. I let go and soar in the kaleidoscope of spectral patterns. There is no way to hold on in this ocean of consciousness.

I hear a melody. I notice with surprise that I am alive. Above me, emerald leaves glow and a condor loops through an azure sky, eyeing the meat of me; that scavenger saw me fall. I stretch, amazed by the existence of my arms, awed by the feel of pebbles under my spine, the perfect comfort of dirt in my hands. The medicine woman plays her handpan, tapping melodic rhythms that blend with the drone of insects and bells of water. I am not sure where I end or begin. I am up there with the condor, circling in cerulean space. My heart ripples over river rocks. I am a carnival of leaves. The jungle holds me close.

I splash water on my face, feeling deep gratitude, which is what I always feel after a journey. This is one of the reasons I work with plant medicines. It’s not easy work and I don’t always feel like it. Most days it sounds much better to slump on the couch than dive into the ego-annihilating void. There are always reasons not to do it. The laundry, the dishes to wash, a hundred unfinished tasks. I remember a Rumi poem about how at first we have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the garden, but later we run there joyfully. I’ve been in committed relationships with psychotropics all my adult life and sometimes I still balk at ceremonies, but always—no matter what challenges the journey contains—in the afterglow, all I feel is gratitude, and the powerful clarity of the necessity of this work.

What a relief it is, to return to the animate and feel in our bodies the truth of nature’s intelligence. What peace to have the brilliance of life confirmed, and be shown the consciousness surrounding and penetrating and holding and guiding us. God made obvious. This power that never lets us go. What beauty, to open my eyes and find them cleaned of the musty cobwebs of assumptions. To perceive the miracle and cherish it. Some wait until their last breath for that encounter, but we devotees of plants die while we are alive, and let our bodies merge with the song of birth and death and renewal; this is the practice of transformation.

There’s a reason traditional cultures have ways of opening to mysteries; the egocentrism of our species requires regular dismantling by larger powers, lest we forget how small we are. I suspect the selfishness that defines our culture would be shed easily if all people met in rituals that connected us to the source, in ceremonies that showed us our place within the sentient web, and opened our hearts to the forces that conduct us across deaths and births. There are gifts waiting for us in the darkness that scares us the most, and our culture needs these gifts to survive the coming storms. The trick is in letting the mystery kill us completely, holding onto nothing—and then letting ourselves be reborn, absolutely new. The trick is in bringing the gift home.

If I forget to praise creation, send me to the river. If my eyes become clouded, if my mind becomes numb, if I become deaf to the wrens and finches singing hallelujah at sunrise, if I ever stop being amazed by nature, send me to the river. Let smoke and venom and water and light strip me of convictions. Send me to the ceremony whose altar is the earth—no matter how frightened I am; no matter how much I resist. I promise I will thank you.