Mid Ceremony.
I’m lying on a mattress placed on the floor, eyes open and hands on my chest. My head is propped with a pillow and a polar fleece blanket is keeping me warm.
Surrounding me are people from all over the world, strangers from foreign countries lay scattered across mattresses on the floor of the maloca.
Several days prior I knew nothing of these people but tonight they feel like family. Perhaps it’s because we’ve already bonded during our two hour boat ride through the Amazon river, or maybe it’s due to the potent medicine stripping our inhibitions, egos, and the stories that led us here, leaving us vulnerable and connected.
It might just be the deep sense of acknowledgment and recognition for one another, an unspoken respect for choosing to walk this path.
Whatever it is, we are sharing some of the most enlightening, terrifying, mystical, painful, and utterly life-changing moments of our lives together here in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, 2 hours from the nearest city – Iquitos, Peru.
Tonight, as I lay still in the darkness of the enchanted tree-house magic is taking place. There are four Shamans to the right of me, each of them sitting cross legged in the dark and chanting their own unique icaro (healing song.)
In between the chanting I can barely recognize their faces behind the subtle glow of the mapacho tobacco they occasionally inhale.
These Shamans have connected with the spirit of Ayahuasca and opened a portal to another dimension, bridging the gap between the physical world and the world of spirits.
With my senses heightened I can feel the energy of plant spirits entering the room and filling the space with their presence. Deep, transformative healing will soon take place on the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels.
How it begins.
The night begins congruent to those prior with an hour of quiet time in the maloca followed by a tobacco cleansing performed by the Shamans. The lights are turned off, two candles lit and we are summoned one by one to receive our medicine.
Kneeling before Eligio, a 20 something-year-old Shipibo Shaman I reach for my cup of la medicina (the medicine.) This is my third night in ceremony and I have progressively chosen to increase my nightly dosage from .5 cup to .75 to 1 full cup.
I have no idea what is in store for me.
Eligio pours the brew and while holding it in one hand, his face flickering in the candlelight, uses his other hand to sweep over the top of the cup, then he points and makes a loud “shhoooohh” sound while flicking his fingers toward the roof.
I bow my head, close my eyes and mentally state my intention for the ceremony. “I want to go deep,” I say in my mind. “Show me what I need to see.”
In one smooth motion I drink the thick tea with such an intense focus I feel like I could probably bend a spoon with my mind or start levitating before it’s even touched the walls of my throat.
Out of respect to the medicine and the shamans I am mindful to avoid scrunching my face or curling my lip as the bitter aftertaste overwhelms my taste buds. I hand the cup back to Eligio and walk back to my mattress.
Once everyone in the room has received the medicine the candles are blown out, leaving us in an eery, yet somewhat comforting darkness.
The first 15 or so minutes are completely silent, minus the electrifying buzz of the jungle nightlife which echoes unfiltered through the open walls of the maloca, the only boundary being a tightly strewn mosquito net.
It is such an odd feeling, knowing I have just consumed one of the world’s most powerful psychedelics and the only way I am getting out is through.
My mind races for the last few moments as my ego tries to anticipate what will happen and conflicting thoughts of, “I’m ready for this,” battle simultaneously with, “why the fuck am I here again?”
Slowly, the quiet is interrupted by gentle mumbles and the odd cough which soon turns into deep belly retching and the curdling sound of vomit being violently projectiled into a plastic bucket (which everyone was given prior to ceremony.)
The Shamans.
I sit in the middle of this vomit interrupted silence until the Shamans connect to the medicine and, once connected the icaros follow. Maestro Eligio’s voice bellows into the room and is soon accompanied by the equally young and baby-faced Shaman, Maestro Herminio.
Loud and powerful these two are joined by the potent sound medicine of Maestra Justina, a 60 something-year-old woman.
During the day, this little old lady walked around with such a gentle, loving aura. Although you can sense her innate power, she has the kind of old school nurturing energy that emanates from a mother or grandmother. After dark, she is a whole other animal.
With over 40 years of experience as a healer she is bringing a wealth of knowledge and experience to this retreat and as such, is respected as the Master Shaman for whom has the power to control the direction of the ceremony.
Her powerful voice booms from her tiny body and engulfs the entire room with a strong, deep, and grounded undertone yet she elegantly fluctuates through different pitches and tones with ease and grace.
A little while later and the trio are joined by a man named Erdigo (I think) who appeared earlier in the day to be somewhere in his mid-40’s. After hearing from him in an introduction we learned that he too, has spent most of his life devoted to healing with plants.
His voice is quite different to the others and although he spoke with a deep tone earlier in the day, his icaros shriek across the room like a teenager going through puberty. Perhaps I’m just starting to hallucinate but it’s pleasant nonetheless and adds contrast to the room.
Icaros.
Icaros are the healing songs whose vibrations protect the maloca (round room) during the ceremony as well as cleanse and purify the patient.
Ayahuasca works by opening up the energetic field which, without filters allows the vibrational energy the icaros carry to enter the body, helping to remove blockages and stale energy.
To become a Shaman one must enter a period of solitude and isolation, usually in the jungle where all stimuli are removed. Here, an extremely basic dieta (Spanish word for diet) is consumed with the primary focus being to consume the same, specific plant daily.
Shamans teach us that everything living has a spirit, not just humans but also animals, plants, trees etc. With no external stimuli and the constant ingestion of the same plant, the Shaman creates a connection to the spirit of that plant.
Once the connection has been forged the plant spirit teaches the Shaman a healing song/s to be used in ceremony.
Each plant requires a period of solitude with each Shamans spending many months and even years accumulating the wisdom from a diverse range of plants. I was amazed to learn Maestra Justina had dieted over 50 plants and her first dieta lasted 2 years!
I am tuned in and I’m embracing all the magic being offered as I feel the purge come on. I grab my bucket and with my stomach twisting and turning like a street stage contortionist I begin heaving up parts of today’s lunch.
Purging.
Purging is quite common in an Ayahuasca ceremony. Before the medicine can work on the deeper levels of one’s being it must first clear any impurities in the physical body. It is for this reason a two-week Ayahuasca diet shall be taken quite seriously.
Although there are some variations in preparation before ceremony the general rule is to abstain from meat, salt, sugar, sex (even solo), caffeine, alcohol, drugs, fats and spices.
The restriction of heavy, dense foods and energies from entering the body prior to ceremony means less detoxification during ceremony.
In my personal experience as well as listening to that of others, it wasn’t until after purging through the physical body that the ‘threshold’ was crossed and the effects really came on. That is how it was for me on previous nights, however even after one full cup tonight I’m still very aware of my ‘self.’
After about an hour the Icaros stop, a candle is lit and we are offered more Ayahuasca to which I oblige. Once more I kneel on the cushion before Eligio, his baby face flickering in the candlelight. Again, he waves his hand over the cup, flicks it in the air and lets out a “shooooohh,” which pierces through the night silence.
It strikes me how much poise a man in his early 20’s can possess among a room full of people hallucinating and screaming and vomiting all over the place.
What he lacks in physical maturity he more than makes up for with his depth of spiritual awareness, this is not his first rodeo.
Round 2.
“I want to go deep,” I state before drinking the brew and returning to my mattress. It tastes even more bitter this time, but I knew that was coming. It doesn’t take long for the purge to come on again, however my stomach is already empty so the brew starts shredding its way down south!
I stumble off my mattress like a homeless drunk and begin making my way down the hall where three candles cast just enough light for me to see the floor of the walkway.
By the time I reach the toilet the brew has made its way through my entire digestive system and is waiting to give me a deep cleanse. I cling to the walls of the toilet and start violently shitting myself like a scene from American Pie.
I’m really struggling to keep my bearings and before I know it I’m in a deep trance, feeling extremely exhausted. As I stare blankly at the geometric pattern on the back of the toilet door I start moving and blinking so slow I’d make a sloth climbing a tree look like Peter Garret by comparison.
My eyes drift shut, I’m not quite sure how long because at this point time is irrelevant and barely comprehensible but by the time I open them I’m shocked when I look down to realize that the body beneath me is no longer ‘mine.’ It feels foreign to me, like I’m totally disconnected from it.
Confused, I lift my hands only to see they are no longer the physical hands I’d used to grab the toilet seat. Instead, they have become clusters of vibrating energy forming the shape of hands and although I’m in charge of moving them, I have a strong realization that my consciousness has dissociated from my body.
I am in essence, pure consciousness (no form) controlling a body (form.)
What happens next is difficult to explain, but I’ll try. I start to feel weaker and weaker so as my eyes drift shut I slouch, almost lifelessly against the toilet basin for support. With my eyes shut come an onslaught of visions.
It seems as though the experiences are separate from me, coming from outside and from all directions. Waves of experiences are crashing into my awareness like water onto the deck of a sinking vessel. They flick from one vision to the next in succession so quick it feels like someone is pressing the next chapter button on a movie in my mind.
I am utterly confused at this point and doing my best to latch onto anything that resembles the stationary physical world. So is this what it feels like to go deep?
There are several moments throughout this experience where I feel an intimate connection with my creator, source, God, whatever you want to call it. I can’t quite put it into words but it’s as though I have unlocked the secrets to the universe and everything in the world makes sense. I have a profound feeling of oneness with all that exists.
Integrating the experience.
In hindsight (and this took several days to integrate) I made some rather large connections and things started to fall in place. Bear with me while I try to explain an extremely complex phenomenon (one that I can barely grasp myself) in only a few paragraphs.
Scientists have proposed a new theory on how we perceive time in the universe. The block universe theory states that our universe may be looked at as a giant four-dimensional block of spacetime, containing all the events that will ever happen in the universe at once.
The events are relative to each other within the three spacial dimensions and one time dimension. Our sense of the present moment is just reflecting where in the block universe we are at that instance. The “past” is just a slice of the universe we have already perceived while the “future” is at a later location.
To better understand, imagine a room full of objects, let’s say your living room for example. The living room itself is the ‘block universe’ and every object in that room is an ‘event.’ Imagine that your couch is you starting a new job, the tv is the day you get married, the coffee table is you buying a new car and so on.
As you look at the couch, you are experiencing the couch and nothing else, even though there are other objects in your living room. As you focus on the TV you experience the TV and nothing else. Note that the room is still full of objects (events) but you can only perceive one at a time. Are any of these objects in the past or future if they all occur simultaneously?
On the plane ride home, I was hit with a surge of creativity (or remnants of DMT) and the whole experience started to make sense. Those flashing visions which had popped into my awareness were not memories of the past, they were separate events occurring simultaneously which I could perceive in that moment due to my physical senses being distorted (or non-existent.)
Bringing it all together.
My conclusion, after rapidly jotting ideas on paper and comparing them with notes in my phone, is that we are spiritual beings living a human existence.
The consciousness, the awareness that IS us will be here long after the vessel we inhabit ceases to exist. We exist in a field of pure potentiality where all things that could happen, have happened and will happen ARE happening, ALL the time.
The physical body we inhabit uses the 5 primary senses to navigate this realm of pure potentiality, and wherever our consciousness happens to be at any one moment is what we perceive as the ‘present’ moment.
We look at events that we have already perceived as the ‘past’ and events that we could perceive as the ‘future’ when in reality, there is no past, or future. Just the big NOW. We are merely (because of our limited senses) perceiving a singular moment in a whole spectrum of events that are occurring simultaneously.
If it were not for the limits of our physical 5 senses controlling how much information we receive we would be experiencing ‘everything all at once’ and our brain would overload, completely negating our existence here on Earth.
A message came through rather strong on the fourth night telling me to ‘enjoy the little things.’ The message stated there is no rush, no right or wrong, no place I should or should not be and that everything was in perfect order.
I received quite a lot of messages on that last night but the thing that resonated the deepest was rather quite simple. The purpose of life IS the experience.
It is not to be in any particular place at any given time (although we are exactly where we are meant to be anyway.) It is not necessarily to be anyone or anything specific. It is to experience this beautiful world of ours with our senses and to enjoy it. To laugh, to cry, to sing, to love.
The littlest things that I had been taking for granted are the very reason my soul has incarnated as a human being. To go for a ride!
My intention the previous night was to gain some insight into the direction I should be taking in my life. I felt like I was at a crossroads and I was really hoping I would be given some advice on what to do. And therein lay the problem, up until this moment I had been living my life as though it were some sort of linear process.
I went about my days as though the past and future were on the same straight and narrow line and I had to finish one chapter to get to the next, kind of a like video game.
I had been so focused on getting to the next place and doing the next thing, thinking there was a ‘right’ way I should be navigating my time here and it had me neglecting the only moment that actually matters, the present one.
They say that Ayahuasca doesn’t give you what you want, she gives you what you need and I would agree with that. I went into ceremony wanting to know what was in front of me, thinking I could only move in one straight line.
Instead she taught me to look around and showed me that I can move in any direction I choose.
I believe one of the greatest problems we face as a collective is our feeling of separateness to ourselves, each other, and the planet. Ayahuasca taught me what it feels like to be loved unconditionally, without exception and what it means to be truly connected to myself, to the planet and the existence of all things.
I left the retreat with a newfound sense of appreciation and gratitude for my life, an experiential afterglow emanated from my presence and I felt the most content I had in years.
These feelings did not last indefinitely though. Ayahuasca is the great teacher, the way-shower and torchbearer, she illuminates within us the parts of our higher self we’ve lost touch with. She cannot however, hold the torch forever.
This was explained to us clearly by the facilitators upon our arrival, that sitting with the medicine is only part of the process and we must be willing to put in the work after departing.
So here I am writing this post 9 months later, there have been times I’ve felt myself slipping back into old patterns, but now, having a reference point to which I can hold myself accountable and move toward makes shifting back into alignment a much simpler process.
Conclusion.
I would like to conclude by quoting a phrase from a mentor of mine who stated – “new level, new devil,” referencing that with each layer of karma we burn through and every trauma brought into the fire for healing and transmutation comes a new opportunity to go deeper and clean out more of the muck that prevents us from reaching our highest potential.
With that being said we must strive to adopt a level of humility and, rather than seeking to bypass the process on a quick-fix trip to enlightenment let us honour and acknowledge that each healing modality must be met by our own willingness and persistence to put in the work.
May you find solace in your realization that becoming A Better Man is an ongoing evolutionary process, embrace it!
