Feeling Connected - Native American Peyote Ceremony Pt. 2

Later that night, inside the teepee, the Fire Man burns wood in the center of the dirt floor with cedar incense which is supposed to curb the feelings of nausea which can accompany ingesting peyote, the key ingredient being mescaline.
We sit in a wide circle around the fire. I was told to bring a few pillows and a blanket but I have forgotten. I use my sweatshirt to pad my seat. For now this suffices.
Rick, the Road Chief, starts off with a short prayer: “I am going into my place of worship. Be with us tonight, oh Creator.”
I end up being seated right next to Rick and his sister, Glenda, a heavy-set, simple woman who smiles a lot but doesn’t say much. She passes me this tea that tastes like clay and I take a sip and pass it. They begin chanting as the Drum Man beats the drum. The tea is passed again and I take another sip. This tea seems to have a relaxing effect as I can feel my pulse rate slow, the thrumming of the blood in my veins at my neck keeping beat with the steady thud of the drum. A warm, mellow feeling washes over my body, blanketing every fiber in a dull, milky contentedness.
At this point, alarming numbers of the congregation begin to vomit into the dirt in front of them. Randy has explained this is people upchucking their sins and impurities, a direct result of the peyote ingestion which forces everyone to face their own hidden demons. For now, I am okay with my sins, demons and whatnot just so long as I don’t have to hurl my guts out in front of complete strangers on the dirt floor of the teepee. This only proves to heighten my fear of consuming the drug.
The drum finally reaches me. Each person has a turn to pound on it and do their own personal chant. Everyone gets into the groove and knows the lingo, letting the Great Spirit guide their words and song.
When the drum comes to me I kinda look around for some guidance but no one offers any. The Chief’s sister motions to the drum as I sit in dumb silence holding it between my knees like my pecker. Finally I belt out the only Indian chant I know from childhood, “Hiawatha! Hiawatha! Hiawatha! Hiawatha!” while banging on the drum like a cretin. A few white people shoot me scornful looks like they think I’m not being serious. No one else seems to notice or care or are too embarrassed or stoned to look at me and make a scene. Some are busy vomiting, and for a moment, I think this is a direct result of my pathetic chant. I look at Randy to make sure he isn’t giving me the stink-eye, and fortunately, he is whacked out of his mind, swaying too and fro and humming something unintelligible.
I am not sure if it is the strange tea or the chanting or the drumming or the smoky ambiance of the cedar incense but there are rare moments when I am taken away and feel I am in touch with that deeper place I saw on Boney Mountain when I looked inside myself in deep meditation. I suddenly feel at one with this motley group of white people who want to be Indians.
Then I begin hallucinating.
The Fire Man spins an incredible flaming eagle on the floor that rises up like the Phoenix, out of the ashes and hovers in the center of the teepee. I look around to see if anyone else notices this apparition and everyone is off in dreamland, chanting and swaying.
Then I am suddenly lifted off the dirt floor!
I float up, a hundred feet off the ground.
I extend my arms and drift up to the zenith of the teepee with the smoke that is ebbing out into the night air, curling toward a coyote moon blazing orange and diaphanous like the devil’s iris.
I peer down at the little circle of celebrants beneath me who look like squatting ants around a cigarette spark. The flaming eagle flaps his wings in dreamy slo-mo. Whoosh. Whoosh. I feel my face wafted by the wind of his wings, cool, breezy, even though they are made of millions of tiny, cherry-red coal fragments. The eagle hovers close to my face and I look into his eye that transforms from flaming ember, into a real eagle eye, full of wisdom and deep knowledge, unblinking, eternal, the Great God of Light and Air, the Protector, Vanquisher of Darkness, Giver of Eternal Peace. He conveys to me, through subtle intuition, that I am at one with the natural world, this earth, this realm, created by God for our majestic quest for truth and to find ourselves which is really only finding God again.
My God it is so simple, so radiant.
For one brief shining moment I achieve absolute knowledge, the realization that I myself and the universe are one and God is everything.
Then the Great Spirit Eagle shows me atoms. And I see atoms in my bed while I sleep. I see the atoms of my bedspread, my pillow, my sheets, spinning, constantly turning and bouncing every which way. Then I am in a trawler off of Anacapa, my hook skimming the reefs for rockfish, bat ray, guitar fish, barracuda, sea scorpions, thresher sharks, and I see atoms too. Then I am running in a forest on Mt. Rainier, chasing mighty elk through dense thickets and there are atoms. Then I am riding the Banzai Rapids on the Kings River in a flimsy pool raft and there are atoms. Then I am at work, amid the boredom and monotony of my little desk, chair and computer, and I see atoms. Then I am chasing a ball on a playing field and people chase me with atoms. And I am floating in the blue waters of the cenote of Ik Kil, swimming amid the hundreds of tiny brown catfish and I see atoms everywhere. And then I am in a vast sea of cars on the 405 freeway moving along endlessly like the Amazon river, millions upon millions of cars, and I see atoms too. And I am walking amid the throngs of people at the fair in Ventura or a soccer match with a crowd of ninety thousand at the Coliseum who are atoms. Then I am sitting alone, at night, on my living room floor, in my silence and everything is atoms. Then I am a child lying in the snow of Olympia, Washington, waving my arms to make a snow angel and it is all atoms. Everything atoms always.
The flaming eagle drifts back, smaller and smaller, floating down to a distant mountain a thousand feet below, disappearing behind a snow-capped peak, at the bottom of the teepee.
Holy Shit! They slipped me something in the tea! I dodged the peyote and still my mind has conjured up multifarious visions. Sneaky Indians.
Eight hours into the ceremony, I am no longer at one with the burning eagle, the atoms or anything else. I’ve had it with the damn absolute knowledge. Screw the freakin’ eagle.
My knees ache. My ankles ache. My stomach aches. My back aches. I only want to get the hell out of the friggin’ teepee.
When Randy originally told me about the ritual, I thought, alright, maybe an hour or two, your standard ceremony length, get in, listen to the sermon, say some chants, dance around, we’re good. We went into the teepee around dusk on Saturday night. We didn’t get out until around eight a.m., the next morning. Let me repeat that: eight a.m. the next morning! No wonder you need the peyote -- you’re in a teepee, sitting on your laurels for twelve hours! TWELVE HOURS! Sitting!
Randy and June are disappointed with me when I complain to them in the refreshing sunlight.
“That was absolute torture. I had no idea it was going to be so long.”
“You didn’t take the peyote,” are the first words out of June’s mouth.
How did they know? Everyone was spaced out and it was semi-dark in there.
“I drank the tea.”
“It doesn’t matter. The peyote was very vital to the ritual, Jay. That’s why we call it ‘Father Peyote’”, says Randy, superciliously.
“I didn’t feel comfortable.”
“Then why did you come in the first place?”
“I really thought I could connect without the drug.”
“It’s not a drug. It grows in nature. It’s natural.”
“I still just didn’t feel comfortable.”
“You disappoint me, Jay.”
“I’m sorry, Randy.”
“Until you learn to have courage and face your inner struggles, you’re never going to get where you need to be.”
Bottom line, I was a bad Indian.
I tell them I am tired and need to leave. Everyone has brought food and this is the potluck/socializing time but I want to duck out, go home and sleep. That’s all I can think about.
I catch Rick, the Road Chief and his sister Glenda’s disappointed looks as I shuffle to my car. I try to strike up small talk with them but they give me the cold shoulder. I try to tell him about seeing the Great Spirit Eagle and being carried a hundred feet off the ground and seeing everything as atoms but I’m still a dick because I chucked the peyote in the weeds.
One other guy also suffers the humiliation and stigma of the outcast. This is the only guy who left the teepee early. He is a young white guy with glasses who looks like a carbon copy of myself. He also says he had the vision of being carried off the ground. Everyone seems to avoid this guy like a leper. He is worse off than me because he left the teepee prematurely and broke the sacred hoop.
I drive home, trying mightily to keep myself awake and almost dying about seven times from dozing off and drifting over the center line and getting in near head-on collisions with eighteen wheelers.
I never see Randy and his wife after that. I try to call but he avoids me. I want to apologize and tell him that maybe it was too much for me but he should have forewarned me about the twelve-hour-on-your-ass-in-a-teepee-Indian-ritual-thing. Would have been nice.