Freedom

After drinking the second serving of the Daime tea, I walked back into the yurt and took my place. I was sitting on the floor propped up against a back jack with my grandfather’s old World War I Army blanket folded into a pillow under my legs.

The second part of the service was devoted to healing. As I understand it, many people come to Santo Daime for help with addiction, chronic depression, and other serious conditions. We sang a hymn to Mãe Oxum (Mother Oshun), the divine spirit of love.

Oh take me home
Oh take me home
Oh Mãe Oxum
I ask you for my healing

The words of the hymn—Oh take me home… I’m here to love… I want to live—rose and fell within me like waves.

Jonathan Goldman—the Padrinho or spiritual leader of the group—spoke about healing and freedom. He said that real freedom comes through forgiveness and the acceptance of the love of God. He said, “If you run away, you’re just making it worse.”

That’s when the system crashed.

It looked like a hammer smashing a plate glass window. It happened again right away, this time as the claws of a huge animal ripping through a thick barrier. Then a cloud of black smoke dissolving in the wind.

My inner monologue stopped. The barrage of words that had been chattering out of my brain on and on for sixty years came to a dead halt.

I looked down at the wreckage of my world, the remains of a towering wall I’d built to keep myself separate and alone. I saw the fragments of fear, anger, delusion, and every one of those endless words. It was all a trick and I was the trickster, the devil lying to myself.

Jonathan said, “The Daime creates a space, an empty, neutral space where things can happen.”

So it does. I prayed to God to fill the space with divine love. So it is.