Ceremony with Eduardo, June 25th

(in the afternoon, before...)

No matter how intense things are tonight, I must remember to breathe, and know that all will pass! I practiced yoga and meditated this morning, and am feeling like the sacred time began in my dreams of ceremony last night. While I´m a little scared of the release, I know that I will only be given as much as I can handle. I trust and respect this sacred medicine, and know that it will guide me to live more freely, and with greater love.

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A few hours before ceremony. I´m feeling ready to meet this experience. I spent the morning getting strong, centered. I feel open and clear. Deeply still. Silent. Today I began to feel really right again. Reconnected to my purpose. Whatever comes, I know that I can serve it.

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My intentions for this journey:

In my last ceremony I learned to forgive myself. Now I want to learn to forgive those who have hurt me, to open my heart and enter into greater compassion and understanding.

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There could be no greater release than that of my issues with my mother, and the deeply buried anger that had burrowed its way into my flesh. And now I feel its absence, a pit, an emptiness remains where so much poison once held root. It was time.

I understand why this could not have been my first release...though I had feared it might be. No, I had to make way for it. And after two ceremonies and much time for healing, it was bound to appear...the deepest, darkest, most bitter part of me.

My first ceremony in January taught me how to open to connection, how to live in community, to allow others into my world, and the truth of the interconnection between all beings and the earth. I witnessed my own inner conflict and how that keeps me from feeling a part of the greater whole of existence.

Then, in my second ceremony, I faced that voice, that inner conflict, the pure soul vs. the voice of self judgement. I struggled to free myself from the grip of that self judgement, and wept in grief for having lived that way for so long. And I learned to forgive myself so that I could love myself. I could never forgive anyone or love anyone else until that healing had settled in.

And no greater learning could emerge until this deep, ill part of myself could be healed.

How can I forgive my mother?
Love her.
How can I love her?

I was removed from the question and the personal story of the question...
Sadness and pity for my mother, for her suffering...genuine, but still distant...

Small purging begins...

Images, heaviness and lightness, darkness, images like I´ve seen in aboriginal art, birds, reptiles, flowers, patterns...then the surety that I could not find the answer to my question without the major purge:

ANGER

Cellular images, turning from pink to hot pink to fiery red, then the big release. Shapes like aloe and agave, spiky, sharp, the color of formaldehyde...poison. Puking to the end of my guts.

At some point Eduardo found my hand and placed a stone in it for me to hold...at some point between the purgings. And at some time it hit me...how simple it is...to hold on to Mother Earth when things are really difficult. I held that stone so tightly for the rest of the ceremony.

There were moments when I was barely aware of a much, much bigger reality, of other realms, and at one time I was flying as a bird, and it was so amazing, but then I was too heavy with negative energy to stay there, too much anger needed to be purged.

After powerfully retching out foul, bitter, poisonous anger, the teaching began in its fullness. I became aware of Pachamama, and deeply understood that my body is the Earth. That stayed in my consciousness for a long time, and then I realized that we all, our bodies are the earth, and if we are one flesh, then that´s how I can love my mother. Because we are the same. Aha! And then I wrapped my loving arms around myself and loved the whole Earth, and knew that any feelings of lack of love or abandonment that I´ve felt regarding my mother no longer had any power. I don´t need love and acceptance from her, Mother Earth provides all that for me. And I can love my mother anyway.

Once this was finished, Mother Ayahuasca went on to show me the Serpent, and its inherent feminine quality. I began to sway and wriggle like a serpent, and felt the need to lean my head back, and my throat and esophagus began to twitch and pulse as the snake went down my throat, filling my whole torso. I felt it being absorbed into my body, and my motion became one with the serpent, writhing along Mother Earth. I felt that the serpent was showing me how to be a woman, to allow and embrace my own femininity more wholly, I am a woman, I am Mother Earthñ I now see that in some way I have always resisted the feminine in subtle and not-so-subtle ways because of my conflict with my mother. And in embracing the feminine, I became Mother Earth, swirling in the still, cool silence of space, and I was content.

My spirit went to my mother, then, and as she slept in her bed, I caressed her head...she awoke briefly, startled, but I coaxed her back to sleep. And I felt no resistance to loving her.

Many other interesting things, too, but they seem mostly unrelated to this central teaching. The first strange bodily sensation was of heat and cold, but mostly cold. I felt my body being covered with barnacle-like creatures, flat shelled and spiraling, golden and icy...they ate their way into my flesh, chilling me to the bone.

In this ceremony, more than others, I was fully taken into the experience, and though the loss of control wasn´t wild or manic, it was full and complete for a time. And yet I could still observe the experience, too.

I had the sensation that the small room we were in kept changing shape, the space expanded and shrank, and off in the dark, unused part of the room, I had the sense that there was a lot going on...beings, energy, etc. There were clearly others there, good and bad, and Eduardo did so much to maintain the space, to purify, to cleanse, to protect. And I trusted him, loved him for it.

In my three ceremonies, there has been a white light that appears to be coming from behind me, just over my right shoulder. When I turn to see it, it moves just out of sight, just a fine white light radiance. During this ceremony, it allowed me to lean back into it just briefly, and my head entered its space, it was bright rainbow light! So wonderful, so brilliant!

The rattling...at one point, each shake of the rattle became a sphere, a bead of light, and I opened my mouth toward the sky, accepting each bead of light-sound into my body, filling up the hollow left behind by the purged anger.

There were probably three moments of panic, when I wasn´t sure what would happen. I tried to keep my breathing deep and slow, to keep myself anchored, and it was a life-saver.

When the candle was lit for the offer of a second dose, the light was too much to bear. I covered my eyes, and Eduardo blocked the light with his drum. What a startling thing, to see the small room, but while having such a fluid sense of the shape of the space. The drumming, rattling, and singing gave such a rich shape to the flow of experience, too, and sometimes when the music would stop or change, my whole sense of flow would change.

One more important part that I left out earlier...
How do I love Mother?
Through song!

The way to love Mother Earth is to sing to her, to make music, the prayer of the Earth is song. It was such a profound knowing, that song and all music is the most holy sacrament I can offer to Pachamama! Mmm...I´ve been singing ever since.