Kira Salak is one of the most adventurous, daring women I’ve ever read about. She’s an award-winning National Geographic explorer and journalist. I was emotionally shaken from reading her account of being healed of lifelong ills by shamans of Peru, after traveling into other realms of perception and ‘literally’ battling and purging demons and other-worldly entities, utilizing the ‘hallucinogenic’ medicinal brew known as ‘Ayahuasca’. Her account struck some deep chords within myself.
While it may be difficult for some to accept the interpretation of her experiences, relegating them to ‘just hallucinations’, or a superstitious worldview of a primitive people, I’d hesitate to be so quick to judge. The healing transformations that she and many others encounter, are admitedly very difficult to dismiss, and therefore need to be taken very seriously!
Salak’s experiences point out some major differences in thought between Western psychology, and the ancient practice of shamanism, when it comes to the source of disease and dysfunction. However, it certainly appears from quickly growing evidence, that their system, by getting to the root causes, actually works, while ours, which treats symptoms, doesn’t.
Diary of an Urban Mystic 