Back in 2012, I took my younger brother on a trip to South America. While we were traveling, we went to Peru and Ecuador. While in Peru, we found ourselves in Iquitos and ended up exploring an Ayahuasca journey. This is that story.
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Smoker What did that shaman think As he blew tobacco smoke Across his earthen clay hut So many eons ago Was he concerned about his health Was he concerned for ours Was it all for ceremony - ritual Or was it just for show That red sun - twisting in the dark void As galaxies and nebulas birthed forth From one man’s lungs Deep, deep in a jungle hollow Where the trees know no machinery And leaves - thrice my size Where the unknown lurked so near And dreams of Earth’s reverberated so What did that shaman think As he exhaled roaring thunderstorms And billowing volcanic plumes From his core to the seekers below Could I If I were there again Be able to Grasp it?
THE ARRIVAL
After a six-hour excursion from the rainforest city of Iquitos by four wheel drive and canoe; we arrived at the shaman’s sanctuary.
A small wooden boat dock off of the Amazon River greeted our long canoes. Alex, and Rob in one with a guide, and my brother Tim and I in the other with our guide. The guides avoided the dock and instead chose to beach our canoes to the right of the wooden structure. We all departed and after some polite small talk, along with plenty of gawking at the primordial forest, we began the slow ascent toward the sanctuary.
When we crested the 60 foot incline, we found a beautifully raw and authentic living environment. A small cleared section of forest large enough for three structures: A kitchen house with a wooden log roof, a dormitory with a thatched roof, and a small earthen clay hut built like a cone sticking out of the ground.
Being away from the city of Iquitos I had expected it to be much quieter when we left the cars and tuk-tuks behind, but walking into the clearing it was clear how wrong I was.
This land was alive. Every bird with lungs was singing. Every tree was swaying in the warm thick breeze - branches yawning lowly as leaves danced and softly rustled. Howler monkeys in the distance would shriek. The river behind us was gurgling and bubbling, effervescence of life. The ground beneath our feet was so deep and resonant - acting as rhythmic bass notes in our bodies to this symphony.
The shade from the trees would move and pass the ground over in constant shifting patterns and incomprehensible shapes. The sunlight peeking through the hundred-foot canopy would ignite the ground colors. Verdant greens, blazing crimson berries, ochre earth. The leaves were dazzling emerald jewels.
We took this all in our small walk and placed our bags down in the dormitory - a windowless room with beds set out on all sides.
The guides told us that we would not meet the shaman until our ceremony began at 8pm the following day. That we should only eat what was available to us on the land - which was plentiful. And that in a few hours they would take us to explore the nearby land in search of “perezosos” - translated to “lazies” or better yet, sloths. Sloths liked to live in the banyan trees near the sanctuary. The guides also offered to show us how to fish for piranhas in the river. All of which we happily accepted and enjoyed!
THE CEREMONY
It was nearly 8pm the following evening. The sun was setting, and what was verdant and bright green in the forest was now golden, auburn, and apricot. The birds had shifted their songs to an evening rendition for the heart of the forest. Tarantulas were patrolling the ground and tree trunks for supper.
We walked from the dormitory across the bare earth into the cone shaped clay hut. The shaman’s assistant, a young man with a nearly-shaved head of shorter black hair, greeted us outside the hut. I would later find out he was a family member of the shaman, as the teachings are passed down through lineage. He didn’t speak any English, but was happy to ask us in Spanish about our eating habits for the past two days - to make sure we had eaten off the land. This was to ensure we could receive the benefits from the “medicine” without blockages from our bodies. As none of the three others (Alex, Rob, and Tim) spoke Spanish, I was honored to translate. After a few more questions concerning our general wellbeing, the assistant asked us if we were ready. Once confirming verbally, we were allowed access to the interior of the hut.
The hut was dark and immediately quiet apart from our footsteps. The temperature was noticeably cooler than it was outside and the humidity had gone away. A few candles lit the sides of the circular interior with mud and clay simply eating the light instead of refracting it. The only furniture in the room was a small wooden table about 2 feet high opposite the entrance at the back of the room with a gord and a small shot-glass-looking cup beside it.
The shaman was standing in the middle of the room facing us. He was a stout older man with deep cravases for wrinkles between his eyebrows and throughout his features as if his face was carved out of stone. He had long jet black hair, balding slightly and stood about 5’2’’.
We entered this deafeningly silent room and he gestured for us to sit down, fanned apart in a semicircle the circumference of the room. We obliged and he began.
He spoke a language that I had never heard before. A dialect of the ancients, with rumbling bass and gravely tenor. Luckily after every few sentences, he would stop and look at his assistant who would translate the archaic rules for us in Spanish, which left me to translate into English. The most important game of “telephone” I’ve ever played.
The shaman explained,
“Welcome. This land is a sacred place and this ceremony is a sacred ritual that my family has guided for thousands of years. You are here because the medicine has called to you. I am here to respectfully open the door for you and once the door is open, I will be following you inside. We will dream together.
Once we begin, I will bring the medicine to you. You are to drink it in one gulp. Then you sit and wait. I will also drink the medicine, this is for me to find you in your dreams.
There are three different types of dreams: hearing, feeling, and vision. I do not know which you will receive, but you will receive what is meant for you. When you become “stuck” I will come to you to help, but I will not assist. I cannot remove your burden, but I can “change the light.
Do not call out for help. Do not bring others into your dream. Try to stay quiet and allow each other to have their own experience. Again, I will come to you.
When it is time, you will vomit. This is to purge what you have processed. It will also signal the end of our dreaming together. Do not fight it.
We begin now.”
With that, the shaman began chanting a melodic prayer making the clay hut vibrate and turned from us and picked up the gord on the small table behind him along with the small clay cup. He poured a drink for himself, and only stopped his chant to ingest it.
I took this moment to position myself in a meditative seated position. Cross legged, back straight, arms on my thighs, relaxed. My years of studying buddhism and meditation allowing me to sink into the dirt floor.
Still chanting he walked first to Alex, who was seated on the far left of me. The shaman squatted down, poured from the gord, and offered the cup to Alex who smelled it, winced, looked back at the man, breathed in deep, exhaled loudly and threw back the beverage before coughing - audibly expressing his displeasure at the taste.
The shaman then took the cup and walked to Rob, who learned from Alex to not smell the beverage and instead hold his breath and consume the liquid without hesitation. A cough and gasp still escaped Rob once the cup was empty.
My brother, Tim, who was next made wide-eyed contact with me, clearly unnerved by the two and their experience of drinking this mysterious elixir. Before I could do anything to quell his nervousness the shaman was in front of him, chanting and offering the cup. With a second look towards me, Tim sighed and admirably threw back the drink. After, coughing and gasping like the two before him.
Finally, the shaman was upon me. Seated in a cross legged position with the presence of this stoically chanting face of archaic knowledge two hand spans away from my own was surreal. Pupils dilated, his black eyes glittering and spinning with the fire from the candles to my right. His chanting voice was making my entire body vibrate, my chest cavity felt hollow and rung with his timbre. His carved solid fingers looked like roots of a tree surrounding the small cup. His breath pungent. His missing teeth suddenly became apparent as his mouth opened wide for each new syllable of his mesmeric chant.
I offered my hands out to take the cup from him. Left palm up, right palm perpendicular. He placed the small asymmetrical receptacle on my palm. It was warm in my hand. The cup was ochre colored, and the liquid inside a sinuous curry orange. It smelled oddly sickening, a warm sweetish smell, but acrid, like fresh vomit and steaming wet earth. I looked back from the cup into the unblinking swirling nebulas of his wide eyes. With a breath and a single motion I put the cup to my lips, tilted my head back, closed my eyes, and drank it down.
It tasted like acid reflux. Like coaxing your own vomit back down into your body. Thick. Warm. Sinuous. A taste that makes you open your eyelids wide, and you breathe deep through your nose to chase the burning sensation down with a fresh stream of cooling air.
Before I had collected myself, the shaman was back in the middle of the room. Seated cross legged and facing us. Face stoic. Chant finished. The assistant went around and blew out all of the candles. The hut faded into pristine darkness while we sat and waited.
I didn’t really know what to expect. When Alex had found Tim and I in our hostel and asked us to partake in this ceremony, which we had never heard of, he tried to explain Ayahuasca to us.
“I’ve never done it, but I hear it's like dreaming but you’re awake.
There’s a chemical your brain produces naturally, DMT, and when you sleep it gets released into your brain which makes you dream.
Think of it like having an above ground pool full of water. when you sleep, those walls of the pool come down a little bit, some water gets out, and you dream. This also happens sometimes when you’re awake and it's called daydreaming.
Some people smoke DMT, or find other methods of ingesting it, but that's more like adding water to the above ground pool and causing it to overflow your natural barriers. With Ayahuasca” he explained “it’s not adding more water, but instead just bringing down your barriers so you can utilize the DMT your brain has already produced.
So we’ll be having a really intense daydream! It’ll be great!”
I sat there in the hut in my meditative seated position considering his words. I wonder what I will dream. Could I control it? Along with a few other questions before I caught myself and decided to just sit and relax.
I decided I didn’t want to direct this experience. I wanted to have it unadulterated with expectations. I would let it lead me where it would, and the best way to do that would be to clear the mind. So, I rested and breathed slowly.
My eyes were open as the room was completely black. One of those darknesses where you can’t see a single thing. I was aware of the people near me due to their breathing and shifting. With this black foreground I eventually relaxed into a restful state.
A flash of white light silently exploded and cascaded down in front of me. Like a white firework that had gone off eyelevel in the distance.
Weird, I thought. No one else flinched but me.
I watched the shimmering stars from it fade down and away, vanishing into nothingness before the foreground returned to pitch black again.
I resumed my peaceful meditative state and within seconds, two more silent white fireworks exploded in front of me - in quick succession one after the other.
The foreground went back to black.
Four more explosions. Rapidly. Consecutively. Shattering stars falling into blackness.
After that, someone must have lit all the remaining fireworks because it was the “grand finale.” At least ten seconds of tens of thousands of fireworks were exploding in my vision. My eyes were wide during this array as slowly from my periphery “black curtains” began to be drawn closed - shrinking my vision into a square of white fireworks, to an ever closing rectangle, then a singular vertical line of white light before all the light was gone.
The “black curtains” then began slowly opening from the center of my vision and beyond them was incredible. My eyes widened further, my jaw dropped slack - like water flowing down a drain I was pulled in.
This world was illuminated by its own light. There was no sun, reflecting its light off of objects and then being seen by my eyes. No. Everything was its own light. Everything’s own light was reflected off of all the rest of everything, causing an interconnectedness I’ve never seen before. Like glowing light bulbs reflecting other glowing light bulbs.
The world I was in was green and brown. It was verdant, twisting, turning, spinning, and kaleidoscopic. Geometric shapes pulsed and reverberated and formed massive independent structures and interconnected channels. Each independent structure breathed, like expanding and contracting lungs. Each infinitesimal and glowing geometric shape whirling independently and somehow in synchronicity with the greater structure it was a part of - like a school of fish or a hypnotic murmuration of starlings. Everything was independent and in perfect tandem with all of its surroundings.
This word was somehow two and three dimensional at the same time - like a well constructed painting with depth. I was able to traverse through it. Yet, I was unaware of having a form. I was aware without a self. I could move my gaze up and down, side to side, whichever direction I wanted to look. I was moving and exploring this world.
I was not thinking, just observing. True delight in everything seen. All of the colors were unbelievably blissful. Each shape entrancing. All the movement dancing in front of my awareness - mesmeric. A fully intrigued being, absolutely captivated and engaged with every glowing, twisting shape. Like a child who first mixed blue and yellow together to create green - fascination.
Above, without labeling it, was a canopy of endless greens through a spiraling field of celestial blues. Below, shifting earth-tones. Surrounding, without thinking, I was aware that I was in a kaleidoscopic jungle. Colors, vibrations, light, geometrical shapes, breathing trees, twisting leaves. Everything was alive. Everything was dancing. Everything was observed and by observing The Everything was fulfilled.
I lived here. Exploring. Observing. Delighted. Fascinated. Time was irrelevant. Infinite millenia passed in seconds, seconds in millenia.
At some point, in this endless realm, I looked at a crystalline rosy impossible structure of shapes. It was breathing, moving, twisting. I suddenly had a thought - the first of this journey.
…flower…
That thought suddenly changed something in this environment. The impossible structure of kaleidoscopic shapes suddenly became aware of… me. I had lived in this realm for eons without being “seen”. This gargantuan flower turned to face me. It opened its swirling petals wide and then wider still. I suddenly felt… terror. Like a cobra, this flower struck. It came straight down upon my observational “self”. All of the colors of this forest universe became rosy, then dimmed, then black into nothingness. I was being eaten. Terror went to fear, sadness, and then acceptance and peace.
Blackness. Endless nothingness. Forever.
Suddenly aware and in a cascade of living glowing colors again I was in endless kaleidoscopic blues. Twisting, spinning, swirling. Living.
Just as in the forest realm, I was captivated. Above, lighter blues - celestial hues. Below, darker colors, deep grays, little touches of red and other rainbow hues. Around, the unfathomable blues of glacier crevices intermingled with oceanic hues and glimmering geometric diamonds.
I was aware that I was traversing a river; stretching on endlessly. Forever. Captivating. Fascinating. Completely entranced, until-
“AAAAAAAHH!
I was still seated on the floor. My eyes, which were open, suddenly shifted from the stream blues and colors back to the earthen hut. Just like in a daydream, I was able to “snap out” of this dream and into reality.
My eyesight was incredible in the pitch black darkness. I could see forms and shapes, but they were so dull. Nothing was kaleidoscoping, nothing had its own light.
The shaman who was seated in the middle of the room was beginning to stand. Slowly, effortlessly he rose and lit a match.
A massive rush of color engulfed the room. Energy. Fire. Something that produced its own light. I was fixated. The shadow of this 5’2’’ man was gigantic against the curved walls. With this small flame, he lit a cigarette that he had somehow manifested. The flame went out and replacing it, there in the blackness, was a glowing red sun.
The shaman took a deep drag of the cigarette and the sun grew bright and vibrant. He exhaled a nebula of smoke and stepped toward Alex.
To the far left, Alex was screaming, holding himself, and writhing on the ground.
As the shaman drew near, he began to sing. In a language I could not understand, but I somehow knew he sang of calm and of peace. It resonated throughout the room, bouncing off the walls, traveling through the ground, and was vibrating my entire body. He reached Alex in four strides and while singing squatted down low to reposition him.
The shaman’s song had immediately quelled Alex’s shrieking. It worked like a lullaby. He was more interested in listening to this melody than outwardly expressing his displeasure. The shaman’s song, as he got Alex to a seated position, changed to higher registers until it was more of a songbird whistle. All of us had our heads turned to look in that direction. We all were transfixed on the melody.
Once Alex was seated, the singing shaman took a step backward and squatted right in front of him with his cigarette. In a style of prayer and ceremony, he created symbols in the darkness with the red sun. His songbird whistle transforming into a chant. Intermittently he would take another long inhale from the cosmic star he was intuitively twirling and blow nebulas around Alex’s head. He would blow smoke to Alex’s left, then right, then above his head.
This, I would later learn, is an offering to the god of the rainforest Chullachaqui.
As the outburst was finished and Alex had become pacified, the shaman returned to the center of the room - singing all the while. Once he seated himself back down the song stopped, the world dimmed and I was reabsorbed back into my dream.
I was back in the glowing kaleidoscopic stream. Without memory or awareness of Alex’s episode and the shaman’s intervening. I was again fascinated and exploring the depths, the surface, the colors, each shape and vibration. Just as before, this lasted millenia. Infinite time. Happily investigating each thing of interest forever, until a change was needed and my attention/observation shifted.
Just as before, at some point, I noticed a wiggling structure of colors and geometric shapes. Within my non-thinking state, I somehow stumbled upon a thought - the second of this journey.
…fish…
As before, this caused a change in this dream-realm. The infinite mass of patterns and glowing colors suddenly became aware of me. The swirling, glowing, vortex of a mouth turned toward me and opened wide. Terror and realization. I am going to die. The mouth surrounded me, colors fading, twirling slowing, glowing dimming. Acceptance. Peace. Darkness. Nothingness.
I continued to become aware in unique environments of earth, exploring endlessly before naming a living organism, calling its attention to me, and being eaten. I traveled to the arctic, to mountains, oceans, plains, and volcanos. I was able to explore infinitely, becoming fascinated, entranced. Between each location, was death, darkness, and nothingness. All of these experiences lasted infinitely and finished in no time at all.
Also during this experience, I would snap back into reality to see the shaman assisting the other dream-travelers. Each had a moment of panic which led the shaman to sing, smoke a cigarette, and quell the terror of the others.
Eventually, I found myself exploring kaleidoscopic deserts. I was moving upon glorious sand dunes. Exploring all of the infinite shapes that created each mound. Their ease of movement, similar yet different than water. At some point I was enjoying the sky and how the blues shifted and swayed in the heat. My awareness turned to the extremely bright, warm, and spherical mix of brilliant geometric shapes. A thought occurred.
…sun…
The floating orb of dazzling energy took notice of me. Like an eye that becomes trained on a target, it focused on me. I held its gaze… and it blinked.
I was shot through the sky and was hurled into the mouth-heart-eye of the sun.
Nothingness. Darkness. Infinite void.
This was not terrible. I had been here before - the place between worlds. It lasted forever and somehow was always over quickly. I was thinking. Remembering. Strange.
Thinking caused time. Remembering caused comparison. Time suddenly existed. Comparison suddenly existed.
I was trapped in infinite black nothingness. No colors. No glowing geometric energy shapes. Nothing to do in this world of no things.
I waited. Forever.
Suddenly, I was aware of skeletons. Everywhere.
With a background of black nothingness, these colorless shambling deaths had their awareness on me. It struck me as odd, strange, and then fearful to terror that none of these entities had any geometric/kaleidoscope shapes. Nothing in this realm had its own light. Nothing in this realm had color. Nothing in this realm moved or breathed. Yet, here I was aware staring at an infinite line of skeletons.
I was doing my best to remain calm. Remembering. My meditation experience helping maintain my composure. Thinking. My infinite lives and infinite deaths somehow had not prepared me for this. My awareness shifted to the right and there in front of me was a massive skull, mouth agape, eye-sockets trained on my fragile soul.
I suddenly felt… no, I suddenly knew cold. Intimately. I knew despair andI knew I was going to shatter. This would be the true end.
In the dark nothingness a whisper of a song came to my awareness. Then it was suddenly upon me. A bird’s questing melody.
My attention shifted from the colorless skull with its infinite skeletons in the sea of black and there in the nothing popped a glittering rainbow bird.
I was in both the dream state and the waking state at the same time. One, superimposed, upon the other. The shaman with his starry dilated eyes squatting in front of me twirling a cigarette and blowing smoke, the glorious rainbow bird inquisitively looking at me and then my dream surroundings.
His eyes grew even wider until those pupils were the enormity of his face. A large cloud of smoke enveloped me as the shaman began to sing/whistle/chirp a song.
Back in my dream world the rainbow bird was shimmering. Glowing. Without ceremony, everything changed.
The black nothingness became gold light. Brilliant. Shining. Warm. Calming. The skeletons suddenly began to shine. They took on hues of peach and rose-gold. Their bones reflecting light, shadows disappearing.
The shaman had done just what he said he would do. He assisted without helping me. He did not remove the skeletons, he did not take me elsewhere. He simply changed the lighting and allowed me to look with fresh eyes.
I was able to immediately grasp this world. All of these skeletons were my lineage. An endless line to the beginning and an endless line to the end. My line. I was positioned in the middle of them. They meant no harm, they just… were.
I turned my awareness back to the massive skull of the skeleton closest. It’s mouth still agape, eye-sockets still trained on my eternal soul. A thought came to me.
…mother…
As before, the naming somehow influenced the realm. Its mandible opened wider. I prepared myself and felt no fear.
…mother…
The mouth came down upon me and I shattered.
I came back into awareness. This time no longer on an earthen realm. Not in a “dead” in-between place. I became aware in space, as stars and galaxies. I glittered. I glowed. I had all of the energy of the universe within me and I shone. I was The Everything. My awareness was everywhere all at once.
I was the spaces of nothing between The Everything. I had shattered and became.
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
Somehow, while being The Everything, there were two entities that were apart from me yet a part of me. I was being asked a question. I was being given an honor. I was to respond.
…I want to know…everything…
A pause
YOU DO NOT WANT THAT
Another pause
… I do…
YOU CAN KNOW EVERYTHING, BUT IF YOU DO, YOU WILL BE UNABLE TO COMMUNICATE FURTHER. THE LANGUAGE THAT YOU USE IS INADEQUATE. NO LANGUAGE IS ADEQUATE TO COMMUNICATE THE EVERYTHING.
A coin came into my awareness as I understood.
All human languages combined created the circumference and area of the coin. What I was asking for would be relative to a size larger than the solar system. Even if I wanted to speak about something immediately adjacent to the coin, I would have to develop new words and meanings. Then I would have to relate them to other words to begin bridging the gap. A process that would take an eternity to speak about one thing of interest. Inadequately.
I realized I would be able to understand everything, to know everything. To truly understand a mountain. To truly understand the ocean. To have a full becoming. I also realized that this would leave me forever isolated from people. To only have the wind and its relatives as companions. Forever. I would be leaving everyone.
At that moment, I decided to come back to reality.
I was back in the clay hut. The shaman seated in the middle of the floor. My friends and younger brother to my left. I looked at Tim. I felt. I cried.
I knew that I would not leave my brother in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. That I would not leave my friends and family behind. Certainly not without saying goodbye and explaining myself. It was not time for this. I held a responsibility. Attachments.
I let my awareness fall back into the dream.
Again, becoming the galaxies, stars, and everything in-between.
…I can not…
YOU CAN NOT.
INSTEAD, YOU MAY HAVE COMMUNICATION. YOU MAY HAVE THE GIFT TO SEE.
WITH THESE TWO GIFTS, YOU WILL UNDERSTAND WHAT CAN BE COMMUNICATED. WITH COMMUNICATION YOU MAY HELP CHANGE THE LIGHT FOR OTHERS.
A knowing took my awareness. I had realized what the shaman had realized. I could assist without helping. I could change the light of their awareness.
A pause.
…now what?...
BE
With that, all of the previously traveled realms became available to me. As if to get here, I had to take the stairs now I had the use of an elevator. I could travel to the kaleidoscopic jungle, or the ocean. I could travel to the center of the sun or be as the galaxies in The Everything.
And I did.
No more needing to be devoured to change realms, I could bounce between verdant kaleidoscopic flower straight to mountainous ridge to deep sea explorations. I could visit my lineage or enjoy as The Everything.
This continued until the shaman rose, singing and smoking.
All of us were pulled out of our dreams and into the cone clay hut. The assistant began lighting the candles. Transforming the room into walls of dancing shadows. The shaman began to walk, his assistant following with a bucket.
The shaman stopped at Alex. All of our eyes were trained upon him. With a long drag from his cigarette he rhythmically boomed through exhaling smoke.
“It is now done.”
He clapped his hands like a thunderstrike.
Alex suddenly sat up rigidly straight and made a tight noise and vomited into the proffered bucket held by the assistant. After six retches the shaman moved on.
He came to Rob.
“It is now done.”
Another thunderclap.
Rob immediately retched into the bucket. Six times.
He came to Tim.
“It is now done.”
Thunderclap.
Vomit.
The shaman was upon me. Smoke billowing about his stocky frame. Candles backlighting his carved face. The red sun in his right hand twirling.
“It is now done.”
Thunder.
My spine went rigidly straight on its own. Like a rapidly unfurling whip. I felt my stomach contract and acid to billow into my throat. I pushed it back down. I looked back at the shaman’s stoic face as I spoke to him in his tongue.
“No. I am not done”
His dilated eyes narrowed as he caught me in the torrent of his gaze.
“It is now done.”
Thunderclap.
My back again convulsed straight and tight. Acid again in the throat and now to the mouth. I pushed it down again and spoke back to him.
“No.”
We locked eyes as a father would do to his disobedient son. There was a sharp disapproval in his look, but also compassion. A two-sided knowing. His wisdom and my stubbornness illuminated for all to see.
He looked to his assistant.
“Walk with him. Bring the bucket.”
He looked back at me, knowingly shook his head and returned to the center of the room.
As if in a trance, Alex, Rob, and Tim began slowly standing. As I realized that we would no longer be allowed in the hut, I began to do the same.
My legs were sore from sitting cross legged in lotus position for this ceremony. I carefully pulled my right leg off of my left thigh before doing the same for the left. I set them out straight in front of me, for a bit more circulation. After a moment I placed them under me and attempted to stand.
My vision began to replicate and superimpose itself upon itself. It was as if every second a transparent photograph would be taken from my eyes and stay in my vision. Every second a new photo superimposed upon the previous ones. By the time I got from being seated to standing I had accumulated six “pictures” of where I once was. Like frames of a film that got stuck on screen as more were arriving. I began walking to the door, accumulating more photos, while still seeing my vision of sitting, and of standing up. We left the candlelit hut and began walking across the starlit courtyard to the dormitories. More and more pictures superimposing themselves upon my vision. I was completely disoriented. I was confused. I was trying to keep it together. After a few more steps and a dozen more photos my stomach turned. My spine straightened like a cracked whip and I retched - right into the proffered bucked by the smiling assistant.
It is now done.
EPILOGUE
With shuffling feet, we returned to the dormitory like a funeral procession. So much had occurred and everyone was trying to process in their own silent way. We eventually got into our respective beds before the quietness of the rainforest descended upon us and our dreams began again.
It was so strange. If we were quiet and still, we would fall right back into the dream realm. This was something that I enjoyed as my dreams were still lucid, and I could control them.
My journeymen were not ready to fall back into their dreams, like little children fighting sleep. Exhausted. Delirious. So, scattered conversations started up to keep our consciousness awake.
We found out that Alex had a “hearing-journey”, Rob had a “feeling-journey” while Tim and I were given “seeing-journeys”. That all of us, at one point or another, required the shaman to move us through a part of our journey that we got stuck on. (Since the journeys were different, only Tim and I saw him as a representation in our dreams. Interestingly, we both described the glittering rainbow bird.)
At a certain point, they mentioned the moment the shaman and I were communicating directly. No one knew what was said, but my journeymen commented that I was speaking a foreign language that was not Spanish. Whether or not it was gibberish or the shaman’s tongue no one knew.
At the most profound moment of the night, someone had the question of what time it could be. After countless deaths and living for eons, this question was so disorienting. We all agreed that we had lived lifetimes worth of experiences in this evening. to know that it was still dark outside was confusing. As none of us had our phones for time nearby so we all guessed. The earliest guess being around 1am and the latest being 5am. When the phone finally appeared, after the length of the ceremony and all of our conversations, we were in utter disbelief. It was just past 9pm.
No one could comprehend this. It did not make any sense. How did we arrive at the shaman’s hut at 8pm, have that entire experience, then come back to the dormitory and speak about it, to find only an hour had passed? We were at a loss for words.
We checked every time device we had. They all displayed the same time. The resulting conversation about what that meant went on until about 11pm before we drifted to sleep.
AFTERWORD
I still think about the lessons of the ayahuasca journey often. I utilize them in my everyday life and in the way I show up for others. I’ve taken after the shaman’s philosophy to help without assisting. Allowing others to carry or discard their burdens without my interference, but instead to be able to “change the light” for them when they get stuck.
I also have embodied the main gifts from the two entities of eternity. The gifts of observation and communication for the purpose of connection. My life has become that of being able to see deeply into a subject, person, emotion, thought, or energy and then translate what it is I see in a new perspective for others.
I find deep honor and fulfillment in holding space for others. In allowing them to go through things at their own pace, but to be able to reframe concepts for them to cultivate peace and relaxation.
Even writing this, I feel a sense using my gifts and abilities to their upmost.
And with that, let me thank you for reading.
I apreciate you!
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