Ceremonies in January

When I returned from Peru in mid-January, I had just participated in two ceremonies within a few days of each other, and within my final week in Peru. The first was with Diego Palma, who I had been hoping to meet and experience ceremony with for a year or so, based on the experience of a dear friend of mine. The second was a total surprise, when I was intuitively guided to join some new friends in ceremony with another wonderful shaman, Alonso, who I'm told was Diego's teacher. Both were amazing. And both brought me to an unbelievable place of being left without any ability or desire to capture the experiences in words. A writer, wordless? It had never happened to me before, not even when I was a closeted writer. I was, and still am, pretty much unable to place these two experiences in the grasp of language.

What I did manage to do was capture the essence of each journey in a basic outline, both for my own desire to not forget things, as well as to keep them in order. I am grateful now, since some of the vividness of the images and feelings has faded, though the powerful teachings have not. I want to include these outlines here, in hope of keeping a thread of continuity through these and future ayahuasca journeys.

These outlines are basic, and I don't plan, at this point anyway, on fleshing them out any further than they were in my journal. My apologies if this is difficult to make any sense of. If you're compelled, ask me questions. It may actually be a good thing, leading me to deepen my own grasp on these experiences!

Here goes...
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Ayahuasca Journey #1: 1/17/08

*Purple and blue. Some images.
*Hot and cold - and vibration. Weeping.
*Dots and lines - fractures and interconnections.
*Suzanne begins to purge and wail. I'm distracted and also very concerned for her.
*I purge. Brief. Out of body. Watching myself. Fear.
*Hard to have my eyes open - very strange body sensations. Still a thread of control with my mind.
*Greater loss of connection to self, a sensation of being sped up, and approaching an abyss.
*The choice: fall into the abyss or breathe and stay in control. I chose the latter.
*Gagging and puking up nothing. Nausea continues.
*Breathing - to alleviate the nausea, and later for its own pleasure.
*Rolling my neck - both in attempt to stretch and for its own pleasure.
*Seeing and feeling interconnection - music and singing. Coming back into my body.
*Criticizing my experience - not enough purging, not enough loss of control.
*The two voice emerge: the critic and the other.
*The two are gradually stilled, and I emerged from the experience feeling happy, simple, and harmonized. But still a voice of doubt lingered.

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Why did I choose to participate in a second ceremony? Several reasons, mostly a strong feeling and the inability to stop thinking about it when the opportunity presented itself. The feeling that I wasn't fully able to surrender to the first experience. Partially because of Suzanne. Partially because my first experience had been externally focused. Doubt. The desire to go deeper. All these things led me to KNOW that I needed to go. Learning that I could go and still make my flight to Lima, since the ceremony began earlier, 6pm, as opposed to Diego's at 9pm, confirmed it totally for me.

Ayahuasca Journey #2: 1/20/08

Emotionally deep and felt very important.

*Twitching - uncomfortable in my own skin vs. stillness.
*The emergence of my dark side - the crow.
*The crow and I talk: self-consciousness and judging myself/criticism.
*The well of sorrow - contemplating its source.
*The crow must go - a standoff.
*Asking Grandmother Ayahuasca for guidance.
*Forgiveness is the answer. More weeping.
*I want my heart back: tears are melting my heart.
*What are the tears for? Are they forgotten?
*No, they are the petals of flowers and the leaves of trees. They are never forgotten.
*Knowing that the dark side won't ever leave. Only learning to see it for what it is.
*The teaching is finished - riding waves of nausea through breathing.
*Gray fled.
*Music and fire and returning to the world.
*Silence. I played the flute.
*The ceremony ends, around midnight. A long walk home.

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