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Back
\n when the Dowbrigade was a rambunctious young refugee from Ivy academics
\n we served an extended apprenticeship
\n with a middle aged San Pedro shaman in a tiny seafront town in the middle
\n of the Atacames desert on the Pacific coast of South America.<\/p>\n
Eduardo Calderon was the name of the Shaman, but he
\n went by the Nom de Mago of "El Tuno". He was an accomplished master of
\n an amazing gamut of traditional knowledge of plants, marine biology,
\n substances
\n and states of consciousness. Like most accomplished masters he
\n was highly secretive and jealously possessive of his arcane lore, loved
\n to play tricks and jokes on supplicants, patients and patrons alike,
\n and believed that acolytes must suffer years of demeaning mindless physical
\n toil before proving themselves worthy of enlightenment.<\/p>\n
As you can probably imagine, the Dowbrigade made a lousy
\n disciple. Despite an undeniable natural inclination towards the
\n mystical arts and a demented sense of humor that El Tuno seemed to enjoy,
\n we were an utter failure at things like mental discipline, unwavering
\n focus and the aforementioned demeaning physical work. But we wanted
\n very much to learn the secrets behind the Shaman’s undeniable power,
\n and so we hung around, and hung on to El Tuno’s every utterance searching
\n for scraps of wisdom.<\/p>\n
One of the difficulties was that it was hard to tell
\n when the Master was being profound, and when he was joking around or
\n being intentionally misleading, or simply mundane. But one thing
\n he said repeatedly stuck in our mind, and over the years we came to see
\n it as the key to enter a whole world of metaphysical truth.<\/p>\n
"Never forget, my son, that the most dangerous part
\n of cleansing yourself is the second soul." <\/p>\n
What, we wondered, is the "second soul"? Why is cleaning
\n it so important? Try as we would, we could not remember any mention of
\n a "second soul" in the canonized teaching the mage had been doling out,
\n bit by bit, over the months. Nor could we remember a mention in
\n the seemingly random, trance-induced ramblings which escaped his lips
\n when he drank the cactus juice or the flower powder, or the vine extract
\n he used in his magic. Of course, this only convinced us that the second
\n soul was a master-level concept, understanding of which would elevate
\n us from our lowly accolytehood to a more exalted and advanced station.<\/p>\n
However, as the months ran on it became clear that mastering
\n the mystical arts and gaining enlightenment was going to take longer
\n than Anthro 348, (Shamanistic Practices in the Americas), the year-long
\n survey course that had led us to El Tuno in the first place, a. Eventually,
\n our resolution weakened by Coca-Cola deprivation and some scented letters
\n from old girlfriends
\n back in Boston, we bid a heartfelt farewell to our teacher and abandoned
\n the pursuit of esoteric knowledge for a while.<\/p>\n
We never forgot about the second soul, however. It haunted
\n our dreams, our meditations and out prayers. Every epiphany, every
\n breakthrough, every life crisis we went through, we tried to relate it
\n to the second soul. We literally spend years, cumulatively, trying
\n to crack the nut El Tuno had left us with.<\/p>\n
Finally, about five years ago, we returned to Peru to
\n speak at a conference and look up old friends, we took a chance and headed
\n out to the desert again to look for out old mentor. To our surprise,
\n we found him exactly where we had left him, in a decaying blue cement
\n structure at the foot of a cliff, hard up against the rolling waves of
\n the Pacific. It was a low, one-story frame, painted a faded blue, with
\n no doors in the doorframes or glass in the windows, euphemistically
\n painted with the legend Restarante California. Incredibly, he remembered
\n us.<\/p>\n
After an hour of reminiscing and a fantastic sea snail
\n cebiche prepared by his latest student, a young woman named "Sirena",
\n we got down to business. "Tuno," we began, trying not to whine,
\n we have spent the last 15 years thinking about one of the things you
\n told us all those years ago, and we finally think we understand the meaning
\n of the second soul."<\/p>\n
"It must mean that after the seeker for truth overcomes
\n all of his past indiscretion, all of his pride, conceit, base instincts
\n and wrong thinking, and truly opens and cleans out his soul, he is still
\n not ready for enlightenment. For within the soul of man there is
\n a secret, second soul, invisible to the outside world, and even to himself. Only
\n by complete surrender to the ultimate power can that power do what no
\n individual human being can do on his own – clean the second soul. Absolute
\n faith and submission are necessary for this, and absent them the soul
\n can be destroyed in the process – hence the danger."<\/p>\n
We looked at our old teacher hopefully, wanting, after
\n all these years his approval and blessing. He looked back at us
\n with a mixture of wonder and pity.<\/p>\n
"Once again, my son, you have completely missed the
\n point. If you will remember, I only passed on this advice when
\n you were overdue for a shower, damp and dirty from the heat and the tasks
\n you were performing. I was referring to the task of bathing yourself.
\n In the shower a man first washes his face and his hands, then his arms
\n and his torso, then his genitals and finally his legs."<\/p>\n
Only then does he get around to the essential task of
\n cleansing the feet, which requires him to stand on one foot at a time.
\n First he lifts up one foot, and carefully soaps and washes it over and
\n under. Here is the danger. If the first foot is not completely
\n rinsed off, putting it down to raise the other foot for washing can appreciate
\n a tragedy, For if that foot is soapy an slippery, you will surely fall
\n and hurt yourself while "cleansing the second sole."<\/p>\n
No wonder we didn’t make it as a Shaman…..<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Back when the Dowbrigade was a rambunctious young refugee from Ivy academics we served an extended apprenticeship with a middle aged San Pedro shaman in a tiny seafront town in the middle of the Atacames desert on the Pacific coast … Continue reading