This is a contribution to 
(Cover image copyright: Anderson Debernardi)
Get Into The Mood
Before we get started I highly suggest to listen to the following music while you read this post. It will bring you closer to the actual mood of my personal experience. It is a collection of shamanic Icaro's. I am listening to it myself while writing this post.
Before The Journey
Ten years ago, in late 2008, I was in a state of loneliness and sexual frustration. I got fired from an awesome job as an editor at Germany's biggest gaming magazine company - where I learned most of the skills that make me a good Steemian today. After reading 
Early in the game I met my first wife. I never had any other girlfriends during that time which you might assume after reading that. I planned to have an open relationship with her but she figured out what I was doing very quickly and confronted me about it. I admitted it and she was thrilled about it. Yes, she loved what I was doing. It made me much more attractive to her being adored by other girls. Not a good foundation for a relationship, at least not for us. Nevertheless I fell in love with her quickly and asked her to marry me after a year of being together. She agreed and we started our troublesome marriage.
In mid-2012 she left me and I sunk into a state of heavy depression which I couldn't escape for over a year in which I rarely left the house or even the bed. There was nothing in the world for me anymore. However, that was the time of my awakening as I started to read spiritual books, mythologies and conspiracy theories. I was 32 years old.
A First Glimpse Of The Devine
It was a friend of mine, 
My father is British and I stayed with him for a little bit. We collected magic mushrooms - Liberty Caps to be precise. I took them Christmas Eve alone, in a ceremonial bath I prepared for myself. Cleansing my entire body slowly pulled me deep and deeper into the trip. I had no clue what I was doing but it felt like the right thing to do. The SECOND I finished my ritual my head went back and a devine light hit me. Thousands of images channeled into my head where I saw my future, my wife, my children, the great mystery and beyond. It was so profound that I knew my life will never be the same again. The whole process just lasted for a few seconds but it felt like an eternity. Like doing a full circle of universal time. I took mushrooms many times before and after but - as lovely as it always is - it was never even close to that experience.
From that moment I knew I have to travel and allow myself to meet my destiny. I left the bath and started planning my great journey for 2014. The whole night was full of further magic which I will not go into here. I was broke, unemployed and without a clue what's going on - but I planned to travel the world despite these hurdles. The following months were tough and magic happened when I doubted myself the most. But this post is also not about that period either. Let me just say that devine intervention made me stick to my plans. I became a memory coach online to gather the money I needed for my trip.
Astrology and Costa Rica
There is so much to this story that I have to leave out most of it or else start writing a book here. One crucial part though was the fact that I started to study Astrology, months before my mushroom experience. I followed the weekly astrology reports from Tom "Kaypacha" Lescher, a US astrologer living in the mysterious country of Costa Rica. Lacking the money I contacted him to suggest a trade: memory training for a chart reading. He agreed but was booked out for months. His next open slot was at the beginning of my big journey. That gave me the idea to ask for a personal meeting instead as Costa Rica was kind of in the middle of where I wanted go. He agreed again and even organized me a place to stay at his friends.
The reason I was so curious about astrology and his reading were the magical four blood moons happening in 2014/15. A rare event, closely related to big moments in Jewish and Moslem history. But not just that: the first blood moon fell on my little sisters birthday (being exactly opposite my sun position) and the second fell on mine (being exactly opposite of her sun position). I thought the universe was speaking to me directly through the heavenly events and I wanted to understand.
So it came that I left for Costa Rica with just a one-way ticket that I was barely able to afford. My mother put some money in my hand which was all I got. I planned to continue to the US and to Peru afterwards and earn the money with my tiny online business on the way. On April 12th 2014 I arrived in San José - few days before the first blood moon. I was welcomed in the house of Kaypacha's friend - a mid-wife and moon dance elder. Two concepts I never heard about before. It was full of women who were either pregnant or moon dancers themselves - or both.
Soon after I met Kaypacha and had a great afternoon with him. On the evening of the same day I heard the door bell on the mid-wife's house and opened the door to a young woman. We spoke two sentences in English when she switched suddenly to German and asked me to continue in my mother tongue. I was stunned. Hearing someone speaking my language on the other side of the world was more than unexpected. It was meant to be. Little did I know that I was talking to my future wife and mother of our daughter. We spent the evening together and were immediately attracted to each other. Two days later, during the blood moon night of April 15th (!) we fell in love with each other and I extended my stay in Costa Rica for a little bit. I was able to make enough money to continue my journey. Then I took off to the United States. An entire chapter full of magic again which I am skipping here.
Call of The Jungle - Iquitos, Iquitos, Iquitos
Before I left Germany, during my esoteric research, I stumbled upon the name of a place in the middle of the Amazon jungle - over and over again. Iquitos in Peru, the largest city in the world not connected to the outside world by street but only by plane and river, reached out to me strongly! It is known for one thing mainly: AYAHUASCA. As my journey started with the little helpers magic mushrooms it was quickly clear to me that I was called by a much stronger medicine.
Ayahuasca is a shamanic brew mainly consistent of DMT rich plants like Chacruna and the monoamine oxidase inhibitor of the jungle vine called Ayahuasca. Only the combination of both substances makes the brew work as otherwise our stomach would decompose the DMT quickly.
DMT is probably the most potent psychotropic substance known on the planet. It is being produced by plants, animals and humans naturally. We experience its effect mostly during birth, dreams and death. It is being produced in the Pineal Gland, also called the Third Eye. There is much to say about the substance and the spiritual meaning of it throughout all religions in the world but that is something for a different post. Check out 
Quickly I felt the call and made Iquitos an essential part of my great journey. But I couldn't go there alone. I wanted to have my dad with me there. As he is an experienced friend of all kind of plant medicines, the esoterics and alchemy in particular I wanted to have him close at this exciting and scary part of my journey. We met in Lima, Peru visiting my 18 cousins there I had never heard of before that journey. Soon after, we left for Iquitos taking the plane over the jungle. We had not prepared anything there and all we got was the name of a tiny hostel, La Casa Chacruna, and its owner Freddy, a fellow countrymen of my father who was recommended to my father by a friend.
(Copyright: Anderson Debernardi)
A perfect match for us: We met Freddy shortly after arriving at the hostel and he took us to our first Ayahuasca ceremony the very same night. His friend, the native shaman Don Roman invited us to his house and led us through the first experience with this most magical and beautiful medicine. I am skipping this night and also the second ceremony we did. Both were amazing and powerful. But it is the third ceremony I was working towards to with this entire article.
We Are All One - We Are All Magical Beings
For our third ceremony we went deep into the jungle with about ten people, including Freddy and Don Roman. We stayed in a little wooden hut surrounded by nothing but one of the most ancient and beautiful forrests in the world. The wooden cup was passed around and we all sunk into the Ayahuasca trip. You have to understand that you usually sit or lie down during the entire ceremony. Ayahuasca is not really for walking around although possible. It is a journey within, so we were all resting on comfortable mats, going into our personal journeys.
Part of the Ayahuasca ceremony is the limpiaza, a spiritual cleansing, where the shaman comes to you and asks you for any physical or pschological problems you might want to cure. In our case that was Freddy, Don Roman and a third person being trained in shamanism. Three for one - a powerful combination. The first one receiving the limpiaza was my father. The shamans gathered around him and started their work with natural tobacco fume, tobacco fans and the traditional icaro songs you are hopefully still listening to yourself since the beginning of this post.
(Copyright: Anderson Debernardi)
On Ayahuasca you can feel energy very strongly. Your own as well as the you surrounding energy. Mostly plants but also animals in your close approximation. If you are lucky you can even feel the presence of greater spirits who are coming to join the ceremony. A concept which might sound alien to you but it is far from that actually. I did feel the energy during my fathers limpiaza rising and rising and rising. A strong sensation of importance arose within me. That we have all being summoned to be there at that moment in space and time by mother nature herself.
As the energy grew I switched from a horizontal position to sit cross-legged because I felt it more appropriate for the moment. I immediately started visualizing my father in front of me, rocking slowly backward and forward within the rhythm of the shamans icaros. Then it hit me: My life's purpose became clear in that moment. I was in this world to be a mediator for other people to meet each other, for ideas to spread, for finding balance and giving balance for bringing justice without the sword. A concept mirroring throughout my entire body with certain uncommon symmetry like the simian line I have in both hands, something only 0.5% of all people in the world have in both hands. Also many other indications like me having five planets in the sign of Libra - the scales - to just name a few.
In that moment of realization I was struck by an energy burst that flooded my body. The music grew louder and denser. It was so much energy that I realized it is not for me alone. It was to support the limpiaza of my father and my fellow Ayahuascero's in the hut. Just thinking about this now makes me rock my body again... I knew what to do: I spread my arms to the side and channeled the energy out of my hands to the two guys left and right to me who were both lying flat with closed eyes and having their trips of their own.
And then it happened: Both of them opend their eyes and rose to a cross-legged position at the same time like in a perfectly studied dance and joined me in rocking forth and back. The energy rose further and further, the icaro got louder and louder and people started to moan. Outside of the hut some birds begun to scream, seemingly joining the powerful moment. Everything started to blur and we all sunk into a trance. The energy felt so dense as if you could physically touch it. The shamans song reached a mighty and loud climax that felt like a crack in reality and then the song stopped and the energy left the room towards the ground quickly. Silence entered the room.
(Copyright: Anderson Debernardi)
After about 30 seconds we started to giggle and moan. Even the shamans seemed absolutely stunned. We were all totally overwhelmed by what just had happened. The two guys next to me turned to me and asked me what I just did. They described exactly what I have done: they felt the energy I had channeled to them, that they felt it was coming from me and that they intuitively knew what they had to do in that moment. Both assured me they had never felt anything like this in their entire life before. It really happened and was certainly no imagination. The shamans then explained that they had pulled out a powerful black snake spirit out of my father and that it was a very difficult procedure which eventually succeeded.
The ceremony continued but it did not reach the same energitic level again. I was the last one to receive the limpiaza. By then the effect of the Ayahuasca had already started to fade away. Nevertheless, Don Roman told me afterwards that he saw me conquering Boa Negra, a powerful snake animal spirit, and that I rode on its head to the stars. It was not the same spirit coming out of my father although it sounds similar. I did not see any of that but I liked the idea very much as I felt connected to the snake long before my journey. We ended the ceromony by sharing hugs and fruit and enjoying a moment of connectedness with each other and with the universe.
Final Thoughts
To me it became clear that all mysteries and religions, native traditions and spiritual visions are based on the same fundamental elements that create this universe. We are all infinite spiritual beings full of magic and mystery and people like the Buddha and Jesus have not just seen behind the veil of perceiption but they accessed the higher power within themselves. We live in the most dense part of reality and experience a limited physical journey.
We are being blinded and manipulated by dark forces and we all have the power to wake up and change the world. Every person is significant and every experience is important. We are now living in a moment of universal history where something magical is happening that has never happened before. A moment of exponential change through technology and spiritualism. But rest assured, pure love is the substance of it all.
I returned to Costa Rica after my trip to Iquitos and I am living there ever since. My life has changed and the darkness has made room for some light again - even though I am still struggeling. I am neither enlightened nor a special person. I am merely living through the mystery as we all do with its up's and down's. I am grateful for my family, my circumstances, my life and my journey. And there is plenty of magic ahead of us!