The Power of Attraction Secrets of the Amazon – La Pusanga
My experience working with shamans in the preparation of Pusangas (which is normally prepared away from their clients, so it was a privilege to be invited to participate in the preparation) showed me that far from interfering with other people’s freedom or putting a ‘number ‘ in them, we were altering something within ourselves, which was brought to light by the ingredients, the magic of the plants. Whatever it was, it felt healthy and good. It’s what’s in oneself… one’s own magic. Ask Javier Arévalo (the shaman) what does the Pusanga really do, is it inside or outside of us? His response was: “When you pour it on your skin, it begins to soak into your spirit, and the spirit is what gives you the strength to pull people. The spirit is what pulls.”
The anthropological term ‘sympathetic magic’ does not do this justice, to illustrate this, the water used in the preparation of an authentic pusanga (which has been made specifically for you) has been collected from a walk deep in the rainforest, sometimes 40 or 50 miles, where there are no people and where clay pools accumulate and thousands of parrots and macaws of the most beautiful colors gather to drink from them for the mineral content. Now the great leap of imagination required is to bring within yourself the knowledge, the feeling, the sensation that the water in Pusanga has drawn or attracted thousands of the most brilliantly colored creatures on the planet. If you do this, it can bring about a change of consciousness in you.
You can try this for yourself, just find a quiet time and space, close your eyes, and using the power of your imagination as your launching pad, draw the lush, abundant forest full of life, color, and sound. Feel the rich vitality of the rainforest as a single rhythmic breathing whole of life force. When you have this image, expand it to include the humid heat, the smell of the earth, the aroma of the plants, listen to the sound of the insects and the song of the birds, allow all your senses to experience this. Then, with a conscious decision, draw this sensory experience into your being. When you’re ready, open your eyes and see how you feel.
The masters do not invent the diets, they are given by the spirits of the plants themselves, but there is more to it than simply abstaining from certain foods and activities. It implies a state of purification, withdrawal, commitment and respect for our connection to everything around us, especially the rainforest. When we listen to our dreams, they become more real and equally important as everyday life.
morality and power
This is an issue worth considering, as we in the West, and particularly those who are committed to following a perceived spiritual path to which there is an implicit or explicit ethical component, find the use of a pusanga (or equivalent) to attract a specific person an action that takes away and subverts that person’s free will. This is criticized as an immoral and harmful action that occurs within a tradition or system with no perceived, let alone understood, moral values.
This moral vision is not shared in other societies and traditions, and there is a deep difficulty experienced by Westerners to assimilate this concept of values that surround power.
The cause of this difficulty is the lack of congruence between the moral code of the observer, generally a member of the religions emanating from the Levant, typically Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and including the various ‘new age’ spiritual paths ( they have absorbed much of the external hierarchical concepts of these religions). All of these religions possess the central and dominant feature of projecting the concept of ultimate ‘goodness’ onto an external supernatural being operating both outside of his creation and outside of the laws of the universe, who decides for himself what laws will be implemented; “let this and that happen!”, and at the same time this supernatural being who possesses the mantle of a ‘personal god’ who has delivered a revelation that is described in a book, which people must read and accept with reverence, is not criticize, but accept and obey unquestioningly.
Now, in all this, those who reject or do not know these sacred and inviolable scriptures are judged as endangering their eternal soul and, in effect, are alienated from their creator, typically the native and indigenous peoples (who have not yet been saved). by missionaries). Therefore, based on this cultural issue, there is a tendency to judge other cultural imperatives as inferior or despicable.
For example, the Amazonian tradition (among others) portrays a spectrum of existential states, with the highest or most desirable being that of the powerful person, and the lowest or least desirable being that of the powerless person. Power is defined as the ability to do what one wishes, gain wealth, cause others to do desired actions (even against their will), or harm others without being punished or harmed in return. The test of power is the individual’s material wealth, or his social and political status, and his ability to offer patronage. These are not received as immoral acts, and I remember with my colleague Peter Cloudsley trying to convey the Western vision to Javier Arévalo without any success. The conversation went as follows;
Howard and Peter: “Something we make a big deal about in the West is that a shaman can be a magician to one person and a sorcerer to another. Asking the pusanga to attract a specific person takes away that person’s choice. We You see it as a bad thing, how do you see it?
Javier: “Take the case of a woman who refuses when you offer her a Coca Cola because she thinks you’re low class and that she’s better than you. Maybe she wants others to think she’s better than you. That makes you feel like trash so you go to a shaman and tell him the girl’s name. He prepares the pusanga. Three days go by without seeing her and she starts thinking about you, dreaming about you and she starts looking for you “
Howard & Peter: “Yes, we understand, but in our culture we think it’s wrong to go against someone’s will.”
Javier: “But it’s only so that she loves you for the moment, so that she sleeps with you and then she can leave.”
Howard and Peter: “(laughing) But if it happened to me, and let’s say I originally found her unpleasant and she did it to marry me, I’d be outraged! It would be terrible if I only found out after I had kids and made a home with her! And will I ever know?
Javier: “You’d be madly in love with her, you’d never know. That’s why it’s a secret.”
Howard and Peter: “Can a jealous third party break up a couple or break up a happy marriage?”
Javier: “Yes, they can ruin a happy home. They come to say hello to the couple and after a while the couple is arguing and hating each other and the third is secretly having sex with one of them.”
Howard & Peter: “Is that why the people of Lima are afraid of the girls from Iquitos?”
Javier: “Yes, it happens, they think they are dangerous and they are going to destroy their houses.”
Howard and Peter: “Does anyone have freedom if everyone wears pusanga?”
Javier: “it’s normal that you get used to it”.
Howard and Peter. “We like to think that we are free, this suggests that we are constantly subject to other people’s pusanga.”
Javier: “between laughs, but all of you want women, and all women want men!”
Eventually we realized that there was no way we could communicate this Western ‘moral’ point of view. Javier did not see that there was a problem. It was a huge cultural divide that we couldn’t cross. His people feel free as they are and can have extramarital sex using magical means of attraction and without attributing our Western guilt to it.
Looking at this guilt-free, down-to-earth point of view, on a previous occasion, when Javier asked the group I led what they really wanted deep down in their lives, many people gave answers. that sound cosmic, transpersonal and spiritual and they were quite speechless when he talked about Pusanga. After a while, the participants opened up to their feelings, and many admitted that they wanted love, apparently behind their desire to fix the world, solve planetary problems, and talk to flowers. It was like it wasn’t acceptable to want love. Javier commented: “These thoughts entangle their lives. Love solves problems.”
As an observation, if we (and all of us) had more love in our lives, we might not be as concerned about the state of the world, and be less critical, destructive, and just willing to help. others and alleviate suffering. Because people do not have enough of this precious and nurturing commodity, we live our lives increasingly bombarded by aggression, with new definitions, ‘road rage’, ‘air rage’, ‘safety rage’ , ‘anger in words’, ‘whatever’. ‘you want rage’ We would also need fewer material goods and titles, all of which reinforce the boundaries of the ego mind and separate us from each other and from the natural world.