TierraMitica Gate

The history of TierraMitica starts with the history of the Mythic Voyage since TierraMitica was created to serve as its permanent home. The idea for the very first Mythic Voyage was very different from its subsequent development leading to its evolution as the Choice OS Mythic Voyage, the most intensive heavy duty transformational workshop in the world and the only one offering guaranteed results to be judged by the participants.

It starts in 2007, in the city of Cuzco in Peru, where Mikis found himself after a week of Ayahuasca ceremonies near Puerto Maldonado with a couple of friends. Having finished Alberto Villoldo's Light Body School for neoshamanism mid 2006, Mikis, entranced by this new world that had become his path, was travelling constantly seeking further knowledge and new teachers to explore further this magical universe that he had discovered almost two years before. He was seeking teachers both among the best the western world had to offer and among the indigenous and traditional sages and healers everywhere he could find them, thirsty to explore the possibilities that had opened his eyes and heart to a whole universe that he was unaware of before. One of these teachers was Don Manuel Portugal Aponty, a master shaman and sage that he studied closely with until 2012, the year TierraMitica was founded.

Don Manuel Portugal Aponty

Visiting Cuzco to meet and spend time with Don Manuel after the Ayahuasca sessions, Mikis expressed that these were the last Ayahuasca ceremonies at least for some time, being in awe of the amazing insights and perceptions as well as the heart and mind openings that the sacred medicine was gifting him but at the same time needing time to explore and apply the insights rather than keep taking the medicine again and again. He felt that the true benefit was in respecting the grandmother Ayahuasca by actually changing his life and himself according to her teachings rather than keep asking for more. Walking with friends and Don Manuel along Plaza Regocijo, the plaza of joy towards dinner, Mikis was feeling that he should stop asking for more and more insights from the plant medicine ceremonies and use the insights already received to good effect before looking for more. Knowledge for its own sake could be sterile, he said, and felt that he was hitting the law of diminishing returns. Don Manuel stopped on his tracks and said: "Aaah, but have you had a ceremony with the Shipibo women, explaining that Ayahuasca was representing the feminine energy, the energy of mother earth, and that the Shipibo, possibly the earliest adopters of the brew since thousands of years had women guide the ceremonies, working in groups rather than with a singular ayahuasquero, with one man to provide balance and many women singing their Ikaros, their ceremonial chants creating a unique and magical experience. He then talked about some special Shipibo ayahuasqueras that he knew, and Mikis was hooked immediately on the idea (especially after some relevant magical events occured that very moment) to make this experience happen: Ayahuasca ceremonies in the jungle of the Ucayali river, arguably the birthplace of the practice thousands of years ago, with Shipibo women, the purest purveyors of the tradition guiding them! The idea quickly developed to organize for next year a boat trip in the purset parts of the Amazon river where we would have ceremonies in the deep jungle, travelling along tributaries and experiencing the movie of the life of the jungle, having ceremonies every night in a different location, doing yoga and holding philosophical discussions all together with Don Manuel. A Mythic Voyage indeed!

Everybody was enthusiastic, and Mikis volunteered to take care of the organization, arrange the shamanas, the rental of the boat etc. He also on a whim put himself forward to translate Don Manuel's book "El Poder de los Andes" into English, edit the whole book in both versions and publish it, even though his Spanish was rudimentary at the time. All the side stories are in Mikis's first book, "A Mythic Voyage" available on amazon.com and thebookpatch.com, so we will make a long story short and say that by the time the first Mythic Voyage actually happened, all the original participants, a bunch of friends sharing expenses to make this amazing adventure happen had bowed out, for different reasons each one, including Don Manuel who was supposed to lead and guide the whole thing (for serious medical issues in his case).

Rio Amazonas

Two choices were possible: drop it (at least for the moment with a high probability that the momentum would be gone and it would never happen) or make it happen regardless. With every single voice, from within and from without telling Mikis to just let it go, the universe didn't want it to happen, it was against the flow, it was dangerous and much more, he had fallen too much in love with the idea to not make it happen. He created a simple website, emailed all his contacts from years of spiritual workshops, retreats and events and opened it up initially to anyone who was inspired and was willing to share expenses and later to anyone, even for free. In June 2009, the Rio Amazonas, an historical monument from 1895, the biggest passenger boat on the Peruvian amazon sailed with 15 participants, 18 crew and six Shipibo masters of ceremony, five women and one man for a week's cruise upriver, holding ceremonies every night in a different location and moving further up every day. During the Voyage, Mikis found himself into the unexpected position of the guide due to lack of anybody else and it was such a mythic, life changing experience for all, that everybody, including Don Manuel who had not come, implored him to organize one more five months later. And so a second one happened, with 21 participants, mythic argonauts of the Mythic Voyage and 9 shamans, and then the pressure to make a third, everybody wanting their close ones to experience it, and then a fourth, and a fifth and finally a sixth during November 2011.

With the Shipibo Maestras on the boat

It wasn't planned; every time Mikis would declare that he would stop if it was not better than the previous one, but every time it proved to be an even deeper, more mythic adventure into the heart and the mind, an even more mythic adventure in every possible aspect. The experience gathered from these Voyages and Mikis's continuing thirst for knowledge and wisdom from every possible source formed the early stages of the work that has led to the current Choice OS Mythic Voyages, another two books, "Humanity: Genius or Crazy?", a treatise on universal human belief systems and the paradoxes lying within, and "Choice OS- The path to homo delectus", a step by step manual to happiness, and the huge body of research and experimentation on self programming and the human psyche that produces such spectacular life changing results nowadays.

By the sixth Mythic Voyage, this work had become a consuming passion for Mikis and a group of people who were amazed by it and passionate to support it and pursue it further and it was obvious to Mikis that the river cruises were not financially sustainable and not frequent enough to fully push this research forward. A deeper understanding, not only of the Ayahuasca and its intricacies but also for her value for humanity and the functioning of a human being had developed, and the Mythic Voyage needed a permanent home, where a community of passionate human beings would collaborate not only to develop and evolve the work further but also to experiment on new paradigms of human interaction and coexistence.

6th and last Mythic Voyage on the boat

So, we dared. TierraMitica was founded in January 2012 and through many adventures the first Mythic Voyage took place on June 30^th 2012, with our first building, Okopua still half built in the new format of group work that had been gradually taking form. The research became intensive and continuous, and almost five years later had reached a depth, a maturity and extensive tested practices to dare the first Mythic Voyage without the use of the Ayahuasca brew in Revelstoke BC, in Canada, September of 2016, transmitting the vibration of the grandmother directly. By that time, already for a few years a never failing guarantee was being given to participants. Science is when you repeat an experiment again and again and get always the same results; the Mythic Voyage had evolved from a group of practices to invariably repeatable science. During this time, TierraMitica herself had grown to a sprawling paradise with over 20 buildings, full of murals, sculptures and other art, hundreds of argonauts and a solid, dedicated community of many permanent TierraMiticans, a true family, united with the whole human family and the ever growing worldwide community of mythic beings living mythic lives, all on the path to homo delectus, the choosing man, humans capable of controlling not only their actions but also their thoughts, emotions, physical and energetic bodies and automatic reactions. And we are just getting started!