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What Is San Pedro, And What Is A San Pedro Ceremony?

Less known than its Amazonian counterpart, Ayahuasca, San Pedro (named after St. Peter, who is said to hold the keys to heaven) has been celebrated and ritualized for its medicinal and spiritual properties for over 3,000 years in the high Andes of Peru and Ecuador.

Now, with the blessings of San Pedro shamans Otorongo and Edwardo, who performed the all night ceremony, what a San Pedro ceremony is, how it is conducted, as well as an investigation into the truths and myths are presented.

As you will see in the short film (below), captions are used liberally to not only explain the context of what is happening, but to also summarize the scientific evidence, conventional myths, as well as anecdotal findings and claims about the psychotropic cactus, yet leaves the viewer to form their own conclusions, and short of that, to gain a new appreciation for compelling spiritual practices that fall outside conventional belief.

As an individual with a history of alcoholism, at least as it is understood in conventional and clinical terms, I was curious to see if "a cure" which the plant's advocates claim, has any merit. Bear in mind, however, this was not the primary concern I brought to the ceremony, for I never considered my "handicap" to define me. After all, I am yet to meet a diabetic, cancer survivor, heart attack victim, amputee, epileptic, arthritic, hemophiliac, or even a poor golfer, define themselves by what makes achieving success (or well being) more difficult. Recall that Michael Jordan was cut from his high-school basketball team, later to become the best basketball player in history. (I am certain MJ's life would have been an uncelebrated one if he went around saying he was "lousy at basketball). The same holds true for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. No doubt if he defined himself by his handicap - polio - becoming President of the United States what have clearly have been an impossibility.

In this context, we all have one handicap or another, something that doesn't preclude becoming the person we want to be, only making it more difficult.

I entered the ceremony in this spirit, to discover the "nocebos" — belief that I can't do this or that because of getting a "raw deal" –, remove their victimizing underpinnings, and enter a placebo consciousness, one based on intuitive truth, rather than wishful thinking.

Rather than a promotion of San Pedro per se, the film aspires to be an attestation to the placebo effect as put in the context of this writing, and the vital importance of building a community of trust through rituals designed to place no room for judgment and other divisions that promote "right versus wrong" ego-consciousness, culminating in the blossoming of heart consciousness, which indeed, holds the keys to our own personal utopia, and paradoxically obliterates the very notion of self interest.

I for one, have never met a paradox I didn't like, for it is the divine's way of exposing the heretofore mysteries of truth.