The Frog

by Andrew Gumm (United States of America)

Making a local connection USA

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The biggest bullfrog I have ever seen was blocking the mud path back to my Tambo in Peru. It sat, defiant, in the beam of my headlamp at two am. It seemed much more solid than the other animal spirits I had seen in my ayahuasca-fueled visions that night, but I was still in the grip of the vine enough to wonder at its personal significance. What did it mean? A giant bullfrog in the middle of my path. I had read that the frog spirit symbolizes transformation, as well as physical and emotional healing, which made sense given the amount of weeping and vomiting I had been doing over the last two weeks. The frog prince in mythology teaches that in order to transform we must learn to accept and even love the parts of ourselves that we find ugly and unacceptable; a process which had led to much of the aforementioned weeping. So, as I squatted in the mud with the jungle shimmering and warping around me, I sent love and acceptance to this giant frog, and also to myself. The western rational part of me knows that bullfrogs like this are indigenous to the region and that my proximity to a pond provided a much more mundane explanation for this chance connection. However, when in the ayahuasca trance, the mind becomes amphibious. Reality and metaphor become mingled. The spiritual significance is printed on every breath and thought. Since leaving, “Dreamglade”, an ayahuasca healing center and apparent frog habitat located an hour outside of Iquitos, I have returned to my more rational existence; teaching high school students how to use editing software and watching the Great British Baking Show. But even now, in quiet moments, I think about my own life, starting as an aquatic tadpole in the maternal pond, growing lungs, learning to walk and hop, only to continue transforming over a lifetime, from toddler to teen and student to teacher. I had gone on the journey seeking a mystical transformation and perhaps some divine insight. I got both from an early morning connection with a local frog. The insight was that all life is transformation. Every frog, seed, and high school teacher becomes and becomes until they are unrecognizable as what they were and then more comes from what they became. Heady stuff, looking at a frog. Imagine what could have happened if I licked it.