Setting the stage

After 36 Ayahuasca ceremonies worth of experience now under my belt, this much is clear: the first rule of encountering Ayahuasca is to drop any and all expectations of what that encounter will include. That is to say, you are not (and never were, or will be) in control. That you think you’re in control is just an illusion created by the ego to help cement its importance. And the more you buy into the ego’s hype, the more painful it is when the veil is finally drawn back to reveal the truth.

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Many go into an Ayahuasca ceremony with specific intent. Some with a full-blown agenda; an itemized punch-list of needed repairs and upgrades. That tact, however, has never worked for me.

Instead, I go into ceremony in with what might be called (and to steal a riff from Zen Buddhism) a “beginner's mind” for what it is I need. I might think I know what I need to work on, but I’ve found that Ayahuasca has always demonstrated more insight on that front than I ever could. No, instead I go into ceremony asking of Mother Ayahuasca that she clean what needs to be cleaned, heal what needs to be healed, and teach what needs to be taught. I remain an open vessel, and leave how that manifests completely up to her wisdom.

As to the aftermath of the encounter: one of the more difficult things to do is to put an Ayahuasca experience into words. The good, bad, and the ugly. The stunning and the blissful. Much of it is well beyond the ability of even seasoned verbiage to capture. It’s times like this when I wish I were a talented artist.

Though I’ve cleaned it up a bit, this journey report (and those that will follow) are transcribed directly from handwritten notes that I jotted the morning following ceremony. Sometimes having slept before hand, sometimes not. Any many times yet "muy mareado" (under the influence). To prevent losing the subtleties of the experience, I try to write as soon following the ceremony as I can form a meaningful sentence. Then, as part of my integration process, I go back every couple of days, reread, and try to add color and commentary with any added remembrances or realizations. It’s amazing how new realizations will bubble up days and even weeks following a ceremony. Completely out of the blue, and when you least expect them. I try to keep my journal always within arm’s reach.

Strap in tight ladies and gentlemen; we’re on the highway to hell...

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Ceremony #36. Saturday, 12/17/16 (approx. 7:30 pm - 3:30 am)

The medicine came on much more slowly and smoothly than the previous 2 ceremonies in Wimberley. An easy, stair-step transition from reality into the psychedelic oblivion. The kaleidoscope light show then quickly morphed into an emotional equivalent of going 10 rounds with Mike Tyson in his prime: negativity; self-doubt, self-loathing, unworthiness. You’re a charlatan! A fraud! A tool! Absorbed in the feeling of abandonment. Darkness that I couldn’t shake. As if I *were* the very darkness itself.

All light and purity, snuffed. Trust strangled. No hope; no salvation.

I realize that the greatest fear of all is not facing some outside force / energy / entity that can do you harm, but facing the negativity within that you have no control over.

Being batshit crazy and knowing full well you’re batshit crazy, for instance. An endless loop of facing your worst fears, with no possibility of parole, no chance for redemption. Of bad intent oozing from your pores. Forever tainted; unsalvageable.

But then I realize that there is something within me that recognizes this darkness for what it is, as an outside observer. Who is this “myself” that is apart from the all-consuming negative energy? That recognizes insanity, fear and loathing? That “something” must be my true essence. My spirit / soul /consciousness. That part of me that cannot be corrupted. And with that, the ashen (smells and feels like sulfur!) negativity slowly begins to transmute and the horrible fog of fear and doubt begins to clear.

Note: I’ve become much more adept at “holding space” at times like this. Better at “sitting with Mara”, as it were, versus mentally and emotionally losing my shit.

I haven’t always been (as people are apt to comment now) a rock of Gibraltar in ceremony. Seated upright and strong throughout the hours in my unique, semi-lotus style. No, I’ve been “that guy”; the wallowing the in-the-dirt, quivering, crying, fetal-positioned mass of broken humanity. I’ve run scared-shitless from the ceremonial circle, and had to be tracked down. I had to be “there” to eventually get “here”.

The philosopher Ken Wilber has written much that I lean on while in the iron grip of rough trips like this. Anything that has a beginning in time, he says, also has an end in time. And is, therefore, not real; not the real essence, not the real IT. Any phenomena with a beginning and end is simply an illusion. Illusion being the unifying nature of all phenomenal objects. These phenomena come, they cause you to suffer, and they expire. Thus, they are not real. If it’s painful, it tortures you now. If you love it, it tortures you when it leaves. The only thing free of that quality is pure consciousness; the witness. The God, the essential I AMness that resides within us all.

This, of course, is easier opined about than implemented in the heat of ceremonial battle. Everyone has a plan... until they get punched in the mouth. Especially so in the throes of a hellish trip. But with practice, it can be done. I refer to Archilochus’ “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training” with my fitness and entrepreneurial coaching clients, but it’s more than appropo in this setting as well. It takes practice to sit, physically and emotionally unmoved, in the midst of your greatest fears. But one’s pure essence, one’s I AMness, can more than weather the storm. And in successfully weathering these storms, we become evermore spiritually antifragile.

That sounds utterly horrible. Why, exactly, do you do this work?

As you might imagine, I get that question a lot. A major reason I go back, time and time again, to ceremony is this: I need the practice. I’ll write in future installments of how I see my Ayahuasca encounters being preparatory work for my eventual transitioning into the next realm. That is to say, for death itself. And this is not nearly as dismal or maccabe as it may sound. Far from it. I take these ceremonies to be the “physical” practice behind my more mental / spiritual study of Buddhism. It has become a kind of practical application of sorts to my study of Buddhism in general, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, specifically.

Then, too, it’s not always a horrible, dark experience. Sometimes, it’s just a series of sudden realizations that come out of the blue, but that are both staggeringly clear and impossible to see any way other than “true”.
For instance, after surviving this particular ceremony’s opening shit-show of misery, I transitioned into such a period of meditative realization. The accompanying psychedelic light show for me is always playing to some degree (in fact, I equate my trips to playing 9-level chess; something different -- visually, audibly, vibrationally, etc. -- going on at each stata).

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Continuing from my journey notes:

I’ve settled deep into a meditative state, the psychedelic geometric light show having momentarily abated. I’m overrun with the feeling of deep fatigue. A spiritual, physical, emotional and mental fatigue that permeates into my bones, the very marrow thereof. I think to myself that I must be remembering a time from my military life. Of coming home from a grinding, 9 month deployment, expecting a long stretch of stateside recovery. Only to receive orders 2 weeks later to redeploy.

But then I realize this is not a remembrance of my military life. It reaches further back than that. I realize, in fact, that I’m remembering my pre-birth. I’m reluctant to reincarnate. Distressed over the prospect of having to “jump back into the swim.” I feel that I need (deserve?) more time on the other side. I need more time to recoup, recharge. The “call to service” though cannot be denied, and I'm drawn into a current of energy. As if that energy were a fast-flowing river.

That I have serious work to do in this incarnation is a daunting prospect. Though I’ve been a workhorse (so to speak; not literally… or maybe literally?) in the past, I don’t feel up to what I know will be required of me again in this realm. Though I don’t know the specifics, I can feel the weight of what is going to be required of me. And I feel needed. Undoubtedly so. Both personally (to transmute past karma) and as a constituent of “team human”.

I see an image of my consciousness, my pure essence, my I AMness being paired with a physical body that is strong and able, but also the subconscious repository of some heavy karmic debt. In the cosmic sense, this is going to be both a serious and long drawn-out “deployment”.

The Singing Bowls

Singing Bowls are a special new addition to the traditional Peruvian ceremony. Part of the natural evolution that shaman Zach Poitra, via Iglesia Del Despertar, is ushering in. It seems to me a natural extension of the infusion of Buddhist thought into the realm of traditional Peruvian plant medicine work that Zach has already ushered in. The singing of mantras (in addition to the traditional use of icaros) during ceremony is another example of this ongoing evolution.

https://youtu.be/_T2fJpB6EKs
Shaman Scott Latham sings a mantra during ceremony

Generally the bowls are brought in near the end of ceremony and are used as another tool, in addition to icaros and mantras, to facilitate the work of the medine.

Once the pure frequency of the particular bowl is found and maintained, the effects are an otherworldly experience.
https://youtu.be/56zsluSFjBM?t=4m

Journey notes, continued:

The singing bowls brought on an a seeming split or discontinuity in the “normal” space-time continuum. As if reality were dissolving… or as if the internet connection were slow, and the movie of this reality were skipping and stalling. I seemed to linger a bit in that in-between. A kind of purgatory, or bardo. It began to get a bit nauseating… a seasick-like feeling.

I was then pulled slowly from this “in-between”, then completely out and apart from this realm. I was not in the least bit upset about leaving; no discongruence. In fact, I felt as if I were riding a bike on my own for the first time. No more training wheels. Uniquely and completely under my own power, balance and guidance. Thrill and amazement for the moment temporarily overriding any fear of falling or failure.

I found myself then suddenly in a beautiful, lush garden that was alive with the most depth and vibrant colors. Such sharp definition! I was amazed not only by the visual aesthetics, but also the sense of complete and utter serenity, and the scent of effervescent purity. Stunning!

Behind me, I could hear the most delicate fall of water, as if the flow of it were so perfect and thin, and hit at whatever was below (rocks?) at such a precise angle at to nearly completely buffer the sound. Turning, then, I could see, through the thin, shimmering veil of this water, the ceremony circle from which I’d just been removed. Clearly the “observer” now, I could still see “myself”, real-time, as it were, and there with the others. I thought that odd for a moment, but I didn’t question the validity of such a circumstance. As if my logical or “editor’s mind” were asleep, or unconcerned with questioning it.

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From what I could see through the rippled, crystalline distortion, all was as I’d left it. Zach was still carefully playing the bowls, though I don’t remember hearing them as being apart from the gentle sound of the water surrounding me now. Maybe the sound of the bowls had become that of the water?

I noticed then that there were multitudes of this scene scattered about in all directions, all slightly obscured by the same manner of thin, rippling water veil, and all as if they were gossamer sheets hung from some invisible line. As if they simply appeared out of my thinking them so. I could also “think them away” if I wished. And now I could see that, though each of the scenes were “the same”, each held slight discrepancies between any one another. Somewhat like the old Sunday paper comics game of finding the five differences between two seemingly identical depictions. Only the scenes were “live” and the options endless. Assembled in a kind of virtual library, or museum exhibit that I could walk through, if I so chose.

I somehow intuited that the scenes differed due to subtleties caused by seemingly insignificant life events of the past. A speech cadence slowed by one’s parents having moved to the south versus staying put in Michigan. A different hairstyle, a different variant of the same tattoo. All topical differences, but enough to make one feel out of place if “the wrong” reality where chosen to re enter.

And re enter is what I somehow “knew” I needed to do now. I wasn’t being rushed or pushed, but somehow drawn by some magnetic-like attraction to return. A kind of gravitational pull. But of all the choices, which was “the” correct one?

I knew logic wouldn’t serve me; this had to be a decision of the gut, of intuition alone. Closing my eyes, I began mediating through my sacral chakra (the best I can put this action in words).

Note: if there is any recurring theme to my experiences, it’s the repeated “instruction” of learning to trust my “sacral instinct” versus what my mind/logic conjures. Mind/logic keeps you alive moment to moment, but intuition serves for broader decision. Pair the right tool for the current need, so to speak. That, and the teaching of trusting sound, vibration and scent over eyesight. Interesting...

This meditation lasted for what seemed like 20 minutes or so, during which I was “told” (via the voice of Mother Aya) to “dream the existence” back into reality. When I reopened my eyes, one of the “waterfall scenes” was directly in front of me. As if drawn by that gravitational pull, I stepped into the scene (not getting wet?). This was akin to stepping for a rock in a clear, knee-deep stream, the reckoning of the target being just a bit off, just a bit unsure, due to the refraction and ripple of the water.

In the next instant I was seated back in the circle, semi-lotus, just as I’d left. The room was absolutely quiet, and dark. I had no way of knowing if I’d chosen the “right” reality or not, and I kept looking for clues one way or the other. Touching the ground. Handling the objects I’d brought (a flashlight, rape’ and kuripe, my puke bucket) for clues of familiarity.

Steven (who infrequently sings icaros), picked up his guitar and began to strum. The cadence and rhythm I recognized as an icaro. But as he began to sing, I wondered: “what was that language?” I didn’t at all recognize it.

Fuck. I’ve picked a reality in which I don’t know the native language. Well, this is going to be an interesting adjustment…

Zach joined in harmony. Then Jess.

Ahhhh, right… that’s *Spanish*. Reassuring, but still patterns and cadences seemed just a bit off. And wasn’t Jess’ hair longer before? The feeling was as if I’d just suddenly come to in a foreign country. Familiarity with the larger world, yes. But not of the cultural specifics.

Waves of a deja vu- like feeling ensued for the last hour or so of the ceremony. Paying close attention to EVERYTHING. Every movement, sniffle and verbalization. Even after the official close of the ceremony, after the candles were lit, and the 10 of us snacked, chatted, and generally found our bearings. It seemed as if I were still not fully back. Even as I write this (the following morning, Sunday, 12/18/16), I still feel a bit out-of-sync with this reality.

This disconnection isn’t necessarily a disconcerting thing. It’s actually a bit nice in that I have moments of extreme focus on even the smallest of things and/or happenings. As if I might be experiencing some subtle difference in this reality for the first time. Observing the world with true “beginner’s mind”.

As I write this now...

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It’s been a week since this particular ceremony, and the integration process has gone exceedingly well. Aided, too, by the very fact that I’ve written this piece. Another opportunity for me to add color and commentary to my handwritten, post-ceremony notes. Another opportunity for new insight and realizations.

So much comes together, or gets freshly illuminated in the integration process. As I wrote in The Journey Essentials, this is where the real work is done. After the shock and awe of the experience itself, one needs to sit back, contemplate, and try to make sense of it all. As well, I spend lots of time chatting with fellow journeyers within our tight-knit community. Insight from others can really help define points one might not otherwise see. This is a fluid process that can take days, weeks… months or years. I have had things that came up in my very first ceremony, 2 years ago, that only now make sense to me.

Until the next installment!

Heal thyself, harden thyself, change the world ~
Keith

I'd love to hear you comments, or field any questions you may have!

If you found this of interest, you might also like:

The Ayahuasca Chronicles, #2 -- Journey Essentials

The Ayahuasca Chronicles, #1 - Ayahuasca 101; the Shaman's Perspective