Ceremony with Diego, June 28th

(pre-ceremony)

I´ve spent much of the last hour contemplating and meditating about my journey. I held my crystal in my right hand and my ceremony stone from Eduardo in my left. The vibrations from both of them were strong and clear. And I feel much clearer about the intention I´d like to set for tonight. There are so many aspects of myself that I´d like to heal, and so many things I want to learn. But in my time of preparation, the following is what spoke to me with the greatest clarity:

I want to surrender the doubts of mind and make the great leap into the heart, so that I may own and embrace my deepest truth.

I´ve been feeling so caught up in thinking since I got here, with a few exceptions. Even in my ceremony with Eduardo, my mind never fully gave way. Thinking, thinking, thinking. Internal dialogue. And while I feel much more rooted in the heart, much more myself, much more alive since that ceremony, I still have felt that my love is small, that my heart is restrained. Releasing anger is not the same thing as being filled with love. They are opposites, and the ground between them is zero. I am at zero. And I know that I have the capacity to burst into a cosmic mandala of lovingness, of heart-centered-ness. And to enter the realm of the heart is my intention.

I realize that for this to happen, I will have to release all that is keeping me from loving. All barriers to love must be blasted, burned, melted, blown away. And I pray that Mother Ayahuasca will gently and fully take me to meet these barriers within myself. I am ready and willing to remove them.

No, my capacity to love is not small. It is infinite. I want to enter into that capacity with all of my humanness, all of my wholeness. Mother Ayahuasca, guide me tonight to know love, to heal myself and all of life by living the path of the heart.

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I´m in love with the whole of existence. I am grateful for my life!!!

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(following the ceremony)

I was nervous to go to Diego´s house, why I´m not sure. I ended up walking past, enjoying the rich darkness of the waning moon night. Then, I gathered up my courage and rang the bell. Milagros let me in, didn´t know I was coming or what to do with me, and went to ask Diego. The group was in the temple, and had been since 6pm. I arrived at about 715pm. The answer was that I was to wait, and could wait in the house or go and return. I decided to hang around, to be near the fire. I played for while with their son, the little squealy ball of joy he is! We played peek-a-boo and hide the pen. Awesome kid! Then another person arrived, I can´t recall his name, but he´s been in Pisac for awhile, a younger guy from Philadelphia. We chatted and chewed coca leaves. Eventually the time came to go out to the temple for ceremony.

It was a crowd, 18 in all, my biggest ceremony so far. At first I was concerned about it being crowded, but it settled down just fine, and I ended up sitting between Milagros and a guy named Paul, also there for just one ceremony, from San Francisco, a clarinet player and music teacher. He was very nice, and rather attractive, too! I talked with him just a little, and settled down. I ended up using a poncho for a blanket and took an orange bucket. The ceremony began a little after 9pm.

We went around and drank one by one...kausay pach...a woman named Alexandra drank first, then Diego, then Milagros, then me...it came up so quick! I was feeling a little queasy already, feeling nervous and a bit uncomfortable not being a part of this large group there for the retreat. But I trusted that I was there, Diego had invited me to join anyway, and I hoped my queasiness would allow me to keep the medicine down, or event o take it all to begin with. But I was fine. I welcomed the medicine and felt it within me right away. I was mildly concerned that I might purge before we made it all the way around the circle. But I didn´t. Everyone drank and the light was extinguished. Darkness. Not total, because some light from the night sky entered through the windows. But it was deep and enveloping. I sat back against the wall to wait for the medicine.

Diego left the room for a few minutes, and someone purged right away. It was totally silent. I yearned for him to return, to begin to play music. I knew my purge was going to come quickly.

Coldness came over me. The room, in my mind, should not have been cold: there was a heater, I was wearing more clothes than I had for the ceremony with Eduardo, and the space was of much better construction. But the cold came on anyway. I began to shiver, and vivid images came. The images were mostly just interesting, of the same variety of colors I have come to know: dark blue-black background with vivid pinks, purples, greens. Images of insects: flies, mosquitos, spiders. And curling, winding vine images, like ice crystals forming on a window, curling and freezing, and my shivering intensified. I became aware that it wasn´t a reaction to the cold, but a nervous system shivering, and as I would tighten to it, I would shiver more intensely, the curling iciness taking over my whole body. But when I would relax, the shivering would subside. I relaxed into the experience, holding my intention to make the leap from mind to heart, surrendering to the medicine.

I became aware of my mind´s chatter, old familiar stuff, and reconnected to my second journey´s teachings. I became aware of mind as a place of isolation, dark, silent, like space. And instead of relaxing into that dark silence, my mind wanted to spin its wheels...thinking about my journey, seeking answers, waiting like a hungry hawk for something to emerge for it to hold on to, then trying not to...but even in that action the mind was grasping.

Then the music began. One really great song, one of my favorites, but now I cannot remember which one. The purge began to mount...I knew it contained the rest of my anger from the previous ceremony. I asked the medicine to also take with it anything that was a barrier to my loving, anything blocking my heart. I awaited the purge with gladness, happy to be freeing myself of whatever was blocking my heart.

Then, Suddhosi Buddhosi, my favorite of all favorites of Diego´s ceremony songs. I wanted so badly to sing but couldn´t...the purge moutned. And as the english lyrics came around, the purge blew:

You are forever pure, you are forever true, and the dreams of this world can never touch you...so give up your attachments, give up your confusion, and live in the truth that´s beyond all illusion...

It was so beautiful to purge to those words, so dear to my heart, to hold my purest knowing and alongside that text, to release it all...it was prayer, it was holy surrender.

The purge was thorough and strong, probably just as strong as my purge at Eduardo´s...but I wasn´t afraid. I welcomed it all. And when it was done, it was done. While I kept the intention of purging at any moment that was necessary, praying to be freed of any poison living in my body, there was no more. For now anyway.

I sat back and yearned for music, for singing. The visions tapered off, and I wondered whether or not to drink a second cup. I wanted to blast the tightness from my heart, but something within me hesitated...a second? I didn´t take a second. My mind begged for more songs, and the gaps between them sometimes seemed interminable. And as they came, I felt each one enter me, wash over me. I sang in harmony with the ones I knew, and the ones I didn´t know, I received with an open heart. Diego sang beautifully. Milagros sang off-key. Others sang, I harmonized as my voice would allow and I grew to love even Milagros´out-of-tune sweet voice. The sweet heart behind it was all that mattered. A man named Carlos sang, too, and his voice trembled, and it was pure and human and beautiful.

My mind asked for my teaching, expecting it to come in words...feeling mild, distand frustration that the simple words of knowing didn´t come to me. A few images. A woman in a window holding a baby, at night, the light glowed from within. She stroked the child from its forehead to the bridge of his nose and down. Then a star twinkling in the sky. Then two young-ish women with long cloaks and head scarves, their features obscured...Arab maybe. My mind puzzled these images...what do they tell me of living in the heart? Then darkness, no more images. More wondering, should I have a second cup of medicine?

I didn´t. I st back, and sang, and was there holding space for those who were purging, and letting my heart go to each of the others, so glad to be sharing this time of release and healing. The music continued. I sang, less shy. The tight pressure over my heart snapped, and I sat upright, very tall, in a snap. And then I understood. There was no teaching that my mind could grasp, no words, no revelation. Only song, the pure and sweet offering of voice and harmony, the air in my body offered as a sacrifice. And I loved by song...I sought nothing more than to sing the world well. I stopped seeking a more dramatic, profound answer. The truth came clear of my previous ceremony´s knowing:

How do I love Mother?
In Song!

It became embodied. How do I love? Song! I was no longer at zero, the place between anger and loving. I was swept away in the joy of music, and feeling endlessly grateful that I am ALREADY living this path. I sat in bright joy for the rest of the ceremony.

It all came to an end sometime after 3am. People hugged, chatted. I didn´t want to move. Lights came on. Diego played music from his Ipod, Snatam Kaur, my favorite! I hugged Paul, my neighbor, and he was still struggling with his own stuff. He didn´t really seem to want to talk, but I tried to be there to comfort him. I let him hold my ceremony stone for awhile, to ground him. A few others came over to us, too, and I was glad to hug them, to love them, to receive them. But mostly, I sat on my own, allowing my heart to blossom more and more. I sang along with Snatam Kaur, and Diego was too, and he came over to sit with me, we hugged. He asked about my journey, and I told him how beautiful it was, and how beautiful was the music. Then I shared with him something that I´m really beginning to understand more now, that my first ceremony with ayahuasca had changed my whole relationship to music. That as a professional flutist, music had become purely intellectual for me for so long, but now that has shifted. We talked about making music together, and I am looking forward to that. He welcomed me, once again, to the tribe. And this time, I really felt it.

Before I walked home, I went to clean my purge bucket. It was full of liquid, and a lot of mucus, too. Some of it was so thick it was almost like cheese...disgusting. Not easy to clean up, I had to scrape it out with toilet tissue. Goodbye to more foul poison from my body.

I walked home in the starlight, the eucalyptus trees whispering in the wind, and the tall mountains looking over me. When I went to bed, it was after 4am.

I awoke at 930am the next morning, the sun coming in my window. I sat up and burst into tears, I was totally overcome by joy to be alive. And a brightness, a radiance is surrounding me like a fragrance. Gratitude to Mother Ayahuasca for opening my heart!