(pre-ceremony)
I’ve been wondering what my intention would be fore my next ceremony, since after the last two ceremonies I feel that I have released a lot of dark stuff, the darkest stuff I’ve got. And just a bit ago, it came to me when I was talking with Carlos about moodiness. I instantly thought that I haven’t yet accepted my own true nature, or my personality. I have come into awareness and love of the best parts of me, but am still trying to change the parts that don't fit my ideal of what I want to be. And my lack of acceptance of my own nature leads to my refusal to accept and understand the natures of others, especially the prickly, annoying parts. So, it seems that my intention has now emerged!
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After I finished writing this morning, my whole day plummeted. Migraine for four hours, then the early symptoms of a cold - some sinus and chest congestion, and lack of energy. A totally exhausting day, but also a day of going slow. Tomorrow, San Pedro ceremony.
Now, I want very much to do this ceremony, but I don’t want a repeat of my last ayahuasca ceremony with Diego. So, even though Javier said this ceremony should be fine for me with the symptoms I told him, I give myself total permission to stay home if that seems more in alignment with my body’s needs. That said, though, I have been given so much good, natural medicine to boost my healing, I have faith that with a good night’s rest, I will be good to go in the morning.
My intention for my ceremony tomorrow is to accept myself exactly as I am. And that includes irritating colds. This little bout of respiratory stuff is a perfect example, a perfect opportunity to practice complete acceptance. Instead of struggling against this - or anything - I can just accept what comes. And this is not only true with my health, but with everything that happens in life. Other people and their ways and problems, things that occur in the world. And in my own life. Total surrender. Conscious surrender. Not merely giving up or giving in, but accepting all things as they come, and working to make my contribution.
I have been so attached to changing things: myself, my life, other people, the world. And releasing and helping are indeed very important. But control for my own sake need have no part. Only loving myself and others, and allowing that to bring transformation as it comes. But to completely accept myself and everyone exactly as we are in each moment? That would grown passion into compassion naturally. It all is rooted in deep love. So that is my intention for tomorrow’s ceremony: to learn total acceptance and total love.
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(reflections)
Wow, in yesterday’s ceremony, I’m pretty sure that I hit the mother lode of dark, poisonous stuff in my life. All the poison stored from self-loathing and hatred, all the poison that has come from a life of living without total acceptance and love. When I set my intentions, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, no idea how deep and dark this well of discovery would run. And it was so very deep and dark that I really didn’t know if I could survive it. Yesterday, beyond any doubt, was the hardest day, full of more misery and suffering than any other day in my life. Where is this “gentle medicine” that I have heard about, the one that gave me what I felt the be “the best day of my life?”
I awoke yesterday with a full-blown cold, with plenty of chest congestion. I felt okay enough, though, to go on to Tipon. We met up at 730am, and our three taxis set off. I rode with Javier and Daniel. On the way we chatted, and Javier asked about my intention. To learn to be content with everything exactly as it is, both with myself and with others, and the whole world. Also, at one point during the ride, Javier asked me if I could draw or paint, and I replied, not well. He said that it might be worth trying, to capture the image of my body being filled with so many beautiful things. Maybe I will try!
Our group was large - eleven. Our time came to drink the medicine, and Javier determined that I needed a little less...but when he doled out three well-sized teaspoons plus the dust of one jar, I hardly felt like I had less than last week. I drank it down, bitter and gritty.
Many of the others began to stretch out in the sun. Javier sang medicine songs, and I awaited the Huachuma. After a short while, Javier took me by the hand to the spot I had occupied last week, and encouraged me in my intentions, telling me to feel into my resistances. I nodded in agreement, and he left me. I sprawled out in the grass to take in the sun, and to watch other people, to wait for the Huachuma to come into me.
I felt little for a long time. Javier came to ask me if I had had enough medicine, and I told him I thought so. I began to let my mind wander into my intentions. I thought about contentment and my barriers to it. Behind me, the sound of machetes hacking back the wild vegetation began to seem very loud. It felt like every whack of the blade was slicing into me. I thought about change, and the ways that I have embraced it. Not embraced, necessarily, in the sense that I relax into the flow of it, but instead as a clever trick of the ego. If I bring on the change first, forcefully, deliberately, then perhaps I’m outsmarting the law of change itself. How very clever! I began to think exactly that, “how very clever you are!” The thought came with great darkness, anger, sarcasm. I began to see just how much this whole intention was rooted in the creation of an identity, one that served the “me” I wanted to be in an ideal world. And I thought of all this seeking, these spiritual journeys, they have all been a part of that forced change. To create the ideal version of myself, to defeat or destroy the parts of myself that don’t fit that ideal, and to build up the parts that do. My whole purpose was to create the ideal Angela. How very clever! Again the words filled my mind.
The hacking of the machetes grew louder. I began to realize that in this forced change, that I was doing the same to myself: hacking away at the parts of myself to discard them, making my whole self grow according to this violent self-pruning...and at that point, great sadness filled me. I realized that I’d been hacking myself to bits without having any idea what would grow there to start with...I had no idea what my natural state of being was, who I was, because I’d never let that emerge. From there, the descent into the depths of despair, misery, and madness began.
I sat up, and nausea overtook me. I began to puke, much the same as last time. But the nausea didn’t release after puking. It continued to mount, and I heaved until I was gagging out nothing but foam. I felt so awful and looked around for help. Javier was far below with Ashera, and Carolynne had wandered up into the mountains. I felt desperate, out of control. I psychically begged for help, for one of them to return. Eventually I saw Javier coming back. He came to me. His words were about how who I am is more powerful and more beautiful than all of this suffering. From here, the day spun ever and ever more down. My insights are based in reflection, for my ability to reflect in the moment crashed completely.
My body shook, and I felt that I was entering a state of crisis. Sounds were loud beyond any reasonable proportion, and the waves of intense nausea hurtled me into a state of panic. I have lost track of most of what was happening. I know that I have never felt more misery or wanted to die more than this. At one point, Javier had me move into the shade and tried to help - he sang medicine songs and had me inhale the Agua de Florida, as well as blowing tobacco smoke on me. He encouraged me to stay present, and I did the best I could. But then I leaned over and puked even more, heaving and moaning and crying out. He eventually moved me back into the sun, but I couldn’t make it very far before I collapsed onto the ground. The rest of the afternoon was spent there, sometimes alone and other times with the help of Carolynne and Javier. They were kind and caring and loving.
I felt alternatively mad and ill. When the nausea came, I puked my guts out. When the nausea would subside a bit, I’d feel insane. The thought came several times to just end it all, to jump over the edge of the terrace. I felt crazy, and I could tell that I had a crazy look in my eyes. I alternatively crashed out in the grass, and tore tufts of it up in my hysteria. I pretty much felt like I’d given up everything, my whole sense of self, my whole will to live. Total surrender, total loss of pride and control. I told Javier at one point that I wanted to die, kill me now, that he could push me over the edge and no one would ever know. And he held me and told me that a lot of people would miss me. He was so good, and strong, he held the space so well. For that, I’m eternally grateful...to imagine that last week I couldn’t trust him, this really put the whole trust issue into practice.
I would try to recline in the grass and rest, but the nausea would grow, and force me upright again; I would purge up what I could, then crawl a little further away to collapse again. I felt that my whole insides had turned to poison, and every breath tasted bitter. I felt that everything inside of me was begging to be purged out. My strength was giving out, yet I wept and moaned and puked. The temperature began to cool, yet there was no end in sight. I begged for the experience to end, and Javier told me that it was nearly over, but that I needed to be strong for awhile longer. Soon after that, Carolynne told me to talk to the medicine, to thank it, but ask it for no more. I managed to say that, and felt miserable for awhile longer. Everyone began to pack up to move locations to stay in the sun. I purged again, the water and tea that I had taken. I managed to put on my socks and shoes, trembling from the cold, as well as from my own inner turmoil. We began to walk, and Javier held my right arm while Carolynne held my left. Once, twice I felt my nausea grow, and stopped to bend over...nothing. The third time, near the large rock on the center of the terrace, I felt it come. I fell to the ground by the rock, heaving like no other heaving I’ve ever known before. Carolynne took my bag. On all fours, I puked until a strange color - a greenish-yellow, fluorescent - came out of me...I could barely even breathe for the purging. But when it was done, I knew it was done. Javier and Carolynne sat with me until I was stable, and then we all moved to the ceremonial area on the high hillside.
Javier led me up, by the hand, then told me to sit on the ground. It was there that the day’s misery began to pass. It was so cold and windy, and it was uncomfortable, but I felt still, truly still. When it got too cold, we all packed up and Javier closed the ceremony. We all made our way home, and spent the evening with soup and strudel by the fire at Javier’s. I was one of the last to leave, pinned down by the amazing, sweet cat, Bella.
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In most of my previous ceremonies, the insights were the gift of the experience itself. With this one, other than the early reflections on my lack of acceptance, I was too much in the throes of the purging to be able to receive insight. The job at hand during the ceremony was a big one, and as Javier suggested, it is likely not done yet.
What is at the heart of it? Self-destructiveness. Self hatred. Pema Chodron once wrote that only by exposing yourself over and over again to annihilation do you discover that within yourself which is indestructible. But now I realize that I’ve been hearing this all wrong...it is not by deliberately causing harm to myself that I find the transcendent. And yet, on some level, my whole spiritual search has been about that...across lifetimes, I suspect. Some of those dark, toxic feelings, they were deep and hot and all-consuming. The accumulation of lifetimes of not being free. Of trying to break myself, or of being forced into being broken by others, I have made my very nature to break my spirit to contain it. But why? Why all this hatred and loathing? Where does it come from? When did it begin?
I have a lot of blank spaces in my understanding of this. I’m still not sure what it’s all about, but I feel like I get momentary glimpses of insight. Maybe yesterday was about reliving all the suffering that has been stored in my body from a lifetime of self-abuse. And then purging it out. And maybe it is also a significant part of the process of undoing the image I have been so meticulously and violently been crafting for myself. What I am feeling is that never before had I been so shattered, so out of control, and most likely, never before had I been so utterly free of identity. Free of this self that I’ve been working so hard to create, an ideal version of myself, forged in violence and non-love.
And maybe I was embodying the part of me that has wanted this destruction, maybe I was allowing it to have its way, to bring on all the change it wanted. But the other part of me was in there, too, struggling against this dark force, alternatively crying out for help and begging for the job to just be completed: kill me now please.
The joyful, smiling face, though? I can’t believe that that’s not at least somewhat authentic. I know that I have experienced true goodness and joy and love. I know that my true nature is light. But, as Javier pointed out, I have used the light to escape the darkness. Fleeing from the darkness. And that doesn’t mean that the darkness fled, too...no, it was there all the time, awaiting a time when I was ready to face it. But what is the darkness? What is it that I was facing yesterday?
Even in the greatest miseries, in the darkest moments, I never lost faith that it would pass, that I would survive the experience. Javier told me that I had remained strongly anchored in the light, and that it would have been much messier if I had not. And I can feel what it is that he means, I know that I am indeed anchored in the light. But I don’t totally get it either.
I’m struggling to find a name for what it was that I was struggling with yesterday. I feel a blank space, and I’m not sure how to go on without more clarity.
Light and darkness. That’s what it’s about in essence. Love and hatred. Creation and destruction. Have I been wearing the face of light to mask the darkness that has in turn tried to suck out the light at the heart of me?
Javier said that these dark energies are very old and very deep, and that they are reluctant to go. That they have been fed so well for so long, that they weren’t going to go without a fight. And that was what yesterday was. a fight to begin purging them.
Now it is important that I gain more understanding about what it is that I’m working with...
Javier said to me last night that I have no idea how beautiful I was, that I was becoming the woman I was born to be...so touching. Several others also commented on my glow, and that I looked different. I felt like crap from being beaten down during the day, but accepted their kind words. I felt able to accept the kind words and touches of everyone, able to be vulnerable and open...and happy to be sharing their company. God bless them: Javier, Stephanie, Ashera, Nieve, Mary, Carolynne, Sailin, Billy, Marie Therese, and Daniel.
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There is a part of me that wants to die, and another part of me that loves being alive. And maybe somewhere along the way they came to the agreement that I could go on living, but with great suffering. The two sides shook hands and the struggle began. One part determined to be alive and radiant, and the other determined to puncture that radiance with every possible opportunity. And then, the other part of me, unaware of this battle, except in glimpses of insight, all fleeting. And yet the battle continued. The wounds of the dark side were deep and awful. And the light side chose to ascend higher and higher into the light to escape the deep pain of these wounds. The light side always appeared to be winning, but grew weaker with each subsequent attack. Then yesterday came, and the whole game began to fall apart.
The dark side wanted to destroy me, to end the whole game. The light side wanted to flee, also ending the whole game. Both sides of my duality were ready to escape with Huachuma working to cleanse me yesterday. Maybe the next question would be, with both these sides of me out of the picture, who was left to live through it all? The other part of me that is beyond these battles of duality, the eternal, transcendent Self.
I have so often wanted to just skip ahead and go into the transcendence without going through the muck. I’ve been aware of that for a long time. But what is the muck about? What is the suffering about? My mind is so set on transcendence that a part of me just can’t fathom the purpose of going through the muck. And now that I see that I, like so many others, have wanted the medicine to do the work for me, to fix me. Letting go can be easy, as they say, just let it go! But I also know that that’s not true. I know there will come a time when these things fall away, but only after working through them thoroughly. and the work doesn’t have to be about the mind or thought, it is about the heart. The games of the mind and ego are so strong, and this process only causes pain because those barriers must be penetrated.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Ceremony with Javier, July 18th
(pre-ceremony)
Another ceremony day. It has certainly been a day filled with other people’s drama, and tonight is the full moon in Cancer - an emotionally vulnerable (or even volatile) time. I’m feeling a little sick of other people’s moodiness, and am not feeling moody at all myself. I just put in some laundry, and it won’t be dry for another few hours...I hope in time for ceremony!
Stephanie is moody. Emma showed up here, sick, early this morning. And of course, Ewa isn’t here. So Stephanie took it on to take Emma into her room and let her sleep, but then was pissy about it. And she has decided to do ceremony tonight, too, which kind of surprised me. But it will be good for her, I think.
In my ceremony the other day, I released what feels to me like the deepest, darkest stuff that I’m aware I’ve been holding on to. And I feel like I’ve been delivered to a new place entirely, a true place of rebirth, free of so much fear and lack of trust. I feel ready to reinvent my life based in this clean place, this place of vulnerability and openness and trust. But I’ve already been finding that there are ideas and beliefs that I have about myself that may not serve me any longer. These old ideas about my identity must be discovered and released, and that is my purpose in ceremony tonight. To release any thoughts and ideas about who I am that are no longer true, that no longer serve me, that no longer fit this new way of life that I am in the process of creating.
I began thinking about doing ceremony tonight sometime yesterday, and what originally came to mind was my own tendency toward seriousness, and how that has often gotten in the way of my experiencing joy and humor. I began to talk to Daniel about this, and I didn’t get too far before he interrupted me, telling me that he couldn’t see what I was talking about, that my joy was radiant, and that he couldn’t believe that I was a person who was too serious in the time he had known me. He also suggested that it was possible that I was still concerned with something that had shifted, and that no longer applied to me.
His point was well taken, and I began to ask myself if this was true. And having had some time to sit with it, I’m sure it must be. I’ve been doing a lot of deep, personal work in the time I’ve been here. And things are surely shifting and rearranging themselves within me constantly. And just like an amputee who still feels his missing arm or leg, I am surely still feeling habitual responses to old ways of living. It’s time to take this process of rewriting my story to a deeper level. And that is at the heart of my intentions for tonight.
Tonight’s work is identity work. Now that these dark, poisonous parts of me have been purged and released, I want to shed the stories, ways of being, thoughts, all of what goes with that.
I am no longer a woman who has a bad relationship with her mother. I am a woman who is working to heal that relationship and build a deep, loving relationship with her mother.
I am no longer a suspicious, fearful victim of a terrible crime. I am merely a woman who was once robbed and who is now looking for ways to build trust in the world.
I am no longer a solitary loner, content in her distance, protecting herself from pain and hurt at the cost of companionship. I am a joyful woman seeking to build deep, loving connection with others in order to heal the world.
I am no longer a hurt, angry child, bitter and resentful of all the misdeeds of others. I am a healing, heart-centered woman, ready to help mend those in need.
I am no longer a woman who resists and holds back her feelings, fearful of what others will say in judgment. I am a woman who owns her entire self: her feelings, her thoughts, her ideas, her history, her ancestry, all of it, I own with joy, proud of who I am.
I am no longer a woman in hiding.
I am no longer a woman who doubts her divine right to be present and alive and growing in insight and wisdom.
I am no longer a woman who feels un-lovable, burdensome, inadequate.
I am no longer a woman who feels she must be something to others, for others, in order to be accepted.
I am no longer a woman in resistance of her own growth and healing.
I am no longer a woman who denies her strength and power in making a difference in the world.
I am a woman living joyously, openly, full of love, and certain that my role in this life is important in the healing of the world. I am a woman who chooses to live and communicate openly and honestly, living in integrity. I am a woman ready to live in full color, taking great pleasure in my life and in the world. I embrace my healing, and am happy to help facilitate the healing of others. I am ready to embrace my power, with love, to bring healing to the whole world. I am ready to release the old, limited ways of thinking and living, and to rewrite my story, manifesting a way of lie that is more in alignment with wholeness and love.
So, tonight in ceremony, this is my intention. To release old ideas about who I am and how I live in this world, all limited ways of being and thinking, so that I may fully enter this new way of life.
If Tuesday’s ceremony was an experience of rebirth, I ask that tonight be a cutting of the cord with my old life and patterns. I pray to be free of all the old stories that prohibit me from living freely, joyously, and full of love. I am willing to see anything Mother Ayahuasca is ready to show me tonight, and am courageous enough to endure any purging, mental, emotional, physical, or spiritual, that may be necessary to cut the cord. I trust that Mother Ayahuasca won’t give me more than I am truly ready to handle. But I also ask that this experience be strong and thorough. I feel like I am ready to enter a whole new phase of healing and learning, and it is my hope that tonight’s ceremony can usher me into this new level.
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(reflections)
This was my first ayahuasca ceremony with Javier, and it seemed that it was going to be big by his standards. At 530pm, I wandered with Stephanie over to his house, and everyone was moving into the temple already. Javier motioned for us to come around there with everyone else. Indeed, we were a mid-sized group. Carlos, Daniel, Marie Therese, Stephanie, Lissa (from New Zealand), Jane (who I’ve never met), Jolanda (who I only met in passing), myself, and Katie (from Australia), as well as Carolynne and Javier. Eleven in all. Javier arranged our placements according to some order of his own, and we pretty much got into starting the ceremony right away.
He came around to each of us, blowing tobacco smoke into the top of our heads and then into our hands, held in prayer pose. He then came around a second time and blew the smoke a second time, then putting his hands to each person's temples, then wrists, pulse points. He offered each person some insight into his or her dosage, as well as what he felt we’d be working with. He told me that my ceremony would be a continuation of what I’d been working with previously in the Huachuma ceremony, that the medicine was still with me. I too, felt this was true, and my intentions had been created around that premise. Finally the time came to drink the medicine.
The cup was short and round, and held a typical amount of medicine. I drank and was surprised by the syrupy thickness of the brew. But it was sweeter and less salty than Diego’s usually is. Almost like Nyquil. Strange. I’d heard everyone rinse out their mouths and spit into their buckets after drinking, and I quickly understood why. The thickness lingered in my mouth and a bitterness came...I, too, rinsed and spat. We all then sat, waiting for the medicine to come into us.
Javier began to sing icaros. At some point Stephanie began to purge. I felt love for her, but also a sense of gladness that her experience was strong. I stayed focused on my own breathing and bodily sensations. In this early part of the ceremony, the only thing that came to me was a sense of sitting very tall, and becoming very long and straight in my body. The sense was strange and wonderful, and a smile spread across my face.
Soon the icaros stopped, and Javier came to some of us who were not purging to ask if we had had enough medicine. The ceremony was only about 30 minutes underway, and I responded that I wasn’t yet sure. He said to wait another 30 minutes. While I felt some mild physical sensations, no greater response came, and in another 30 minutes, I knew a second cup ws needed. I drank and returned to my seat.
Javier’s temple was beautiful, different from the others I’d seen. Glass roof, six sided, and painted blue. Instead of seats on the floor, which I am fond of, there was a bench with cushions that wrapped the room. Several times I wished to be on the floor, but never made the move.
Time went by after my second dose, and I once more began to wonder if I’d had enough. Then the nausea began to build, and my purge came. I was surprised by the volume of liquid that came out of me, given the thickness of the medicine. The purge was strong, but not violent, and I felt sure that it was over then. I sat aside my blue bucket and waited.
The experience came in relatively soon after my purge, and the bodily sensations too. I first saw a path, a runway, but shaped like a sharp point, ^ , and i was asked to move along this fine edge. I realized that this was the strange roller coaster image that I have often seen in my ayahuasca ceremonies, the one with the slow, colorful balls of light moving along a track against a dark background. But this was the first time I was moving along the track, too, instead of watching. There were turnoff points and forks in the path, but I was led to one place and then the movement stopped. I felt as if I were being led by the hand to this stopping point, though I saw no guide in my vision. I looked ahead of me in the dim, colorful light. I saw a green park bench, and seated on it was a skeleton, Day of the Dead in Mexico style. It wore a grin, and there were things surrounding it on the bench, mostly pots of brightly colored flowers. I puzzled at the image, and then noted that this image was on a vehicle. It was a hearse, convertible, like the one in the film “Harold and Maude,” but painted in rich swirling colors, turquoise and an orangey-terra-cotta, mostly. The vehicle carried the park bench on top, and began to roll away to the right. As I followed the image, I realized that I was watching my own funeral! All of the old parts of myself that had been pulled up in my previous huachuma ceremony, and all the qualities of myself that had come up in my intentions, all these old parts of my story were being driven away. It was easy, where I had felt that it might be a struggle. I wasn’t even asked to re-identify these qualities and patterns in the ceremony. It was clear to me that in my writing them I had offered them up to be released, and they were rolling away to be buried. I smiled as I watched the scene.
Then, I became aware that I had been given a new body, a new form, fresh, empty, and to be created in a new way that serves the life I am now choosing to live. I saw the empty form begin to be filled through a trap door in my heart. In rushed stars and flowers, patterns and beautiful colors. These new parts of myself filled my form, and I began to feel so amazing! I wanted to see the process, to know what was filling me in a more intimate way, so my head became detached, like a periscope, and moved down to enter the fairy tale castle style trap door in my heart. I joyfully navigated my way around, from my feet to my head, swimming in this extraordinary beauty that was becoming my new body, my light body. Eventually my head emerged once more to its proper place, and I felt the hugeness and radiance of who I was, and it was incredible! Then, I watched as a waterfall opened up out of the wall near me, and this pure, crystalline water filled me. It seemed as if this water would activate the new splendor inside of me, allowing it to begin to grow and flourish. As I would breathe in, the water would saturate my being, and as I would exhale, it came out through every pore in my body, emerging to meet the world.
As this process finished, I began to smell the fragrance of burning sage. I opened my eyes to discover Javier moving around the room, smudging each of us. I drank in the fragrance hungrily, and when he came to me, I moved my hands around it. He asked me to stand, and the incredible power of this sage was moved around my whole body. I felt my new body drinking it in, and I knew that this was sealing my new body, finishing it. I sat down again, alive, pulsing with new life. Before the door to my heart was closed, I was asked for the new qualities that I wanted to carry, and I placed a few words within: love, joy, compassion, play, and others. Then I closed the magical heart-door and basked in this blissful state of being.
The radiance grew and grew, and after awhile, I didn’t know what to do with myself. My mind reeled. I hadn’t planned for the release process to be so quick and easy! Now, as the rest of the ceremony lay ahead of me, I puzzled with what to learn, to ask. Many questions emerged, and I asked the spirit of Mother Ayahuasca to appear to me and be my guide. She appeared in front of me as a giant, cartoonish chicken! I couldn’t believe this absurd image, and acknowledged that all things appear to us as we are ready to receive them, but this was clearly a cosmic joke! She transformed herself into an older woman and waited with me. I felt like the sky was the limit, that I was given total, free access to any answer to any question, and I had no idea where to begin. Who am I? What is my ultimate purpose in this life? What is the meaning of the universe? I was filled with cosmic questions. Then I thought of travelling to other realms, and was given access, but just as I was ready to fly away, I realized that that was merely a distraction, a fascination. I then thought to ask for information about my future - work, love, etc. I also quickly realized that that was mere fortune-telling, and a waste of this state of being. I then thought to ask to see people’s energies, and to be able to read their presence. I looked around the room and saw not colors, but patterns in each person’s energy. Rays and waves and spikes and swirls. Then I became aware of the others in the room, the guides and spirits. Javier was led by a very tall man wearing an eagle-type ceremonial costume. I looked to each person and became aware of a figure for each one, either watching, guiding, or holding them. To my right was an old man with slightly shaggy white hair, his back to me, watching over Jolanda. I felt a bit crowded by him until I realized his purpose. To my left, a young woman, tallish, light brown hair, pale skin, looking over Katie while holding a walking staff with colored bands near the top. Each person had a guide for the ceremony, but I couldn’t see mine! I could see my two Grandmothers of Remembering over my right shoulder, but not my guide to my left. I asked Mother Ayahuasca to show me my guide, and then Grandmother Rosemary appeared, joyful, to surprise me! I laughed and was filled with joy to see her there. It was clear to my understanding that these guides come to us for the heart of the ceremony, and can be different each time, but are not necessarily part of our personal inner council. And as the ceremony wound down, I saw the guides begin to leave through the door of the temple. I bade Grandmother Rosemary farewell.
Before the guides left, though, I felt a-swirl with all my questions. And I became aware that none of them would be answered then. My two Grandmothers of Remembering put a finger to their lips to silence me, and Grandmother Rosemary did the same. I was told that it was my calling to share these experiences, that that was essential. And I was also told to quiet my questioning mind, that through silence comes listening, and only that will open me to be able to receive the answers to all that I want to know. So I accepted that, sitting, receiving the bliss and radiance, knowing that it was all about being and receiving, not doing. Doing and action are about solving a problem, and give away the radiance, in a way, wasting the energy. I acknowledged my tendency to do this, and sat meditatively, receiving, growing fuller and ever more radiant, feeling large and round, mostly buoyant. Toward the end of the ceremony, I felt a heaviness descend, a hugeness, and I felt the weight of it in my teeth, lap, and hands. I have no clue what the heaviness was about, but I sat with it until the end of the ceremony.
At one point, I played my flute during the ceremony, and felt like I was listening to some unearthly melodies that I was asked to share. It was incredible!! The overall musical element of the ceremony was much less than with Diego, though, since Javier sings and rattles, no other instruments, and I found myself longing to sing more. Carlos played a few songs and that was a nice contribution, and Carolynne also sang some songs. But I longed for the musical element that Diego’s ceremonies provide.
I made it home by midnight and fell into bed, in a deep, wonderful sleep.
Another ceremony day. It has certainly been a day filled with other people’s drama, and tonight is the full moon in Cancer - an emotionally vulnerable (or even volatile) time. I’m feeling a little sick of other people’s moodiness, and am not feeling moody at all myself. I just put in some laundry, and it won’t be dry for another few hours...I hope in time for ceremony!
Stephanie is moody. Emma showed up here, sick, early this morning. And of course, Ewa isn’t here. So Stephanie took it on to take Emma into her room and let her sleep, but then was pissy about it. And she has decided to do ceremony tonight, too, which kind of surprised me. But it will be good for her, I think.
In my ceremony the other day, I released what feels to me like the deepest, darkest stuff that I’m aware I’ve been holding on to. And I feel like I’ve been delivered to a new place entirely, a true place of rebirth, free of so much fear and lack of trust. I feel ready to reinvent my life based in this clean place, this place of vulnerability and openness and trust. But I’ve already been finding that there are ideas and beliefs that I have about myself that may not serve me any longer. These old ideas about my identity must be discovered and released, and that is my purpose in ceremony tonight. To release any thoughts and ideas about who I am that are no longer true, that no longer serve me, that no longer fit this new way of life that I am in the process of creating.
I began thinking about doing ceremony tonight sometime yesterday, and what originally came to mind was my own tendency toward seriousness, and how that has often gotten in the way of my experiencing joy and humor. I began to talk to Daniel about this, and I didn’t get too far before he interrupted me, telling me that he couldn’t see what I was talking about, that my joy was radiant, and that he couldn’t believe that I was a person who was too serious in the time he had known me. He also suggested that it was possible that I was still concerned with something that had shifted, and that no longer applied to me.
His point was well taken, and I began to ask myself if this was true. And having had some time to sit with it, I’m sure it must be. I’ve been doing a lot of deep, personal work in the time I’ve been here. And things are surely shifting and rearranging themselves within me constantly. And just like an amputee who still feels his missing arm or leg, I am surely still feeling habitual responses to old ways of living. It’s time to take this process of rewriting my story to a deeper level. And that is at the heart of my intentions for tonight.
Tonight’s work is identity work. Now that these dark, poisonous parts of me have been purged and released, I want to shed the stories, ways of being, thoughts, all of what goes with that.
I am no longer a woman who has a bad relationship with her mother. I am a woman who is working to heal that relationship and build a deep, loving relationship with her mother.
I am no longer a suspicious, fearful victim of a terrible crime. I am merely a woman who was once robbed and who is now looking for ways to build trust in the world.
I am no longer a solitary loner, content in her distance, protecting herself from pain and hurt at the cost of companionship. I am a joyful woman seeking to build deep, loving connection with others in order to heal the world.
I am no longer a hurt, angry child, bitter and resentful of all the misdeeds of others. I am a healing, heart-centered woman, ready to help mend those in need.
I am no longer a woman who resists and holds back her feelings, fearful of what others will say in judgment. I am a woman who owns her entire self: her feelings, her thoughts, her ideas, her history, her ancestry, all of it, I own with joy, proud of who I am.
I am no longer a woman in hiding.
I am no longer a woman who doubts her divine right to be present and alive and growing in insight and wisdom.
I am no longer a woman who feels un-lovable, burdensome, inadequate.
I am no longer a woman who feels she must be something to others, for others, in order to be accepted.
I am no longer a woman in resistance of her own growth and healing.
I am no longer a woman who denies her strength and power in making a difference in the world.
I am a woman living joyously, openly, full of love, and certain that my role in this life is important in the healing of the world. I am a woman who chooses to live and communicate openly and honestly, living in integrity. I am a woman ready to live in full color, taking great pleasure in my life and in the world. I embrace my healing, and am happy to help facilitate the healing of others. I am ready to embrace my power, with love, to bring healing to the whole world. I am ready to release the old, limited ways of thinking and living, and to rewrite my story, manifesting a way of lie that is more in alignment with wholeness and love.
So, tonight in ceremony, this is my intention. To release old ideas about who I am and how I live in this world, all limited ways of being and thinking, so that I may fully enter this new way of life.
If Tuesday’s ceremony was an experience of rebirth, I ask that tonight be a cutting of the cord with my old life and patterns. I pray to be free of all the old stories that prohibit me from living freely, joyously, and full of love. I am willing to see anything Mother Ayahuasca is ready to show me tonight, and am courageous enough to endure any purging, mental, emotional, physical, or spiritual, that may be necessary to cut the cord. I trust that Mother Ayahuasca won’t give me more than I am truly ready to handle. But I also ask that this experience be strong and thorough. I feel like I am ready to enter a whole new phase of healing and learning, and it is my hope that tonight’s ceremony can usher me into this new level.
________________________________________________
(reflections)
This was my first ayahuasca ceremony with Javier, and it seemed that it was going to be big by his standards. At 530pm, I wandered with Stephanie over to his house, and everyone was moving into the temple already. Javier motioned for us to come around there with everyone else. Indeed, we were a mid-sized group. Carlos, Daniel, Marie Therese, Stephanie, Lissa (from New Zealand), Jane (who I’ve never met), Jolanda (who I only met in passing), myself, and Katie (from Australia), as well as Carolynne and Javier. Eleven in all. Javier arranged our placements according to some order of his own, and we pretty much got into starting the ceremony right away.
He came around to each of us, blowing tobacco smoke into the top of our heads and then into our hands, held in prayer pose. He then came around a second time and blew the smoke a second time, then putting his hands to each person's temples, then wrists, pulse points. He offered each person some insight into his or her dosage, as well as what he felt we’d be working with. He told me that my ceremony would be a continuation of what I’d been working with previously in the Huachuma ceremony, that the medicine was still with me. I too, felt this was true, and my intentions had been created around that premise. Finally the time came to drink the medicine.
The cup was short and round, and held a typical amount of medicine. I drank and was surprised by the syrupy thickness of the brew. But it was sweeter and less salty than Diego’s usually is. Almost like Nyquil. Strange. I’d heard everyone rinse out their mouths and spit into their buckets after drinking, and I quickly understood why. The thickness lingered in my mouth and a bitterness came...I, too, rinsed and spat. We all then sat, waiting for the medicine to come into us.
Javier began to sing icaros. At some point Stephanie began to purge. I felt love for her, but also a sense of gladness that her experience was strong. I stayed focused on my own breathing and bodily sensations. In this early part of the ceremony, the only thing that came to me was a sense of sitting very tall, and becoming very long and straight in my body. The sense was strange and wonderful, and a smile spread across my face.
Soon the icaros stopped, and Javier came to some of us who were not purging to ask if we had had enough medicine. The ceremony was only about 30 minutes underway, and I responded that I wasn’t yet sure. He said to wait another 30 minutes. While I felt some mild physical sensations, no greater response came, and in another 30 minutes, I knew a second cup ws needed. I drank and returned to my seat.
Javier’s temple was beautiful, different from the others I’d seen. Glass roof, six sided, and painted blue. Instead of seats on the floor, which I am fond of, there was a bench with cushions that wrapped the room. Several times I wished to be on the floor, but never made the move.
Time went by after my second dose, and I once more began to wonder if I’d had enough. Then the nausea began to build, and my purge came. I was surprised by the volume of liquid that came out of me, given the thickness of the medicine. The purge was strong, but not violent, and I felt sure that it was over then. I sat aside my blue bucket and waited.
The experience came in relatively soon after my purge, and the bodily sensations too. I first saw a path, a runway, but shaped like a sharp point, ^ , and i was asked to move along this fine edge. I realized that this was the strange roller coaster image that I have often seen in my ayahuasca ceremonies, the one with the slow, colorful balls of light moving along a track against a dark background. But this was the first time I was moving along the track, too, instead of watching. There were turnoff points and forks in the path, but I was led to one place and then the movement stopped. I felt as if I were being led by the hand to this stopping point, though I saw no guide in my vision. I looked ahead of me in the dim, colorful light. I saw a green park bench, and seated on it was a skeleton, Day of the Dead in Mexico style. It wore a grin, and there were things surrounding it on the bench, mostly pots of brightly colored flowers. I puzzled at the image, and then noted that this image was on a vehicle. It was a hearse, convertible, like the one in the film “Harold and Maude,” but painted in rich swirling colors, turquoise and an orangey-terra-cotta, mostly. The vehicle carried the park bench on top, and began to roll away to the right. As I followed the image, I realized that I was watching my own funeral! All of the old parts of myself that had been pulled up in my previous huachuma ceremony, and all the qualities of myself that had come up in my intentions, all these old parts of my story were being driven away. It was easy, where I had felt that it might be a struggle. I wasn’t even asked to re-identify these qualities and patterns in the ceremony. It was clear to me that in my writing them I had offered them up to be released, and they were rolling away to be buried. I smiled as I watched the scene.
Then, I became aware that I had been given a new body, a new form, fresh, empty, and to be created in a new way that serves the life I am now choosing to live. I saw the empty form begin to be filled through a trap door in my heart. In rushed stars and flowers, patterns and beautiful colors. These new parts of myself filled my form, and I began to feel so amazing! I wanted to see the process, to know what was filling me in a more intimate way, so my head became detached, like a periscope, and moved down to enter the fairy tale castle style trap door in my heart. I joyfully navigated my way around, from my feet to my head, swimming in this extraordinary beauty that was becoming my new body, my light body. Eventually my head emerged once more to its proper place, and I felt the hugeness and radiance of who I was, and it was incredible! Then, I watched as a waterfall opened up out of the wall near me, and this pure, crystalline water filled me. It seemed as if this water would activate the new splendor inside of me, allowing it to begin to grow and flourish. As I would breathe in, the water would saturate my being, and as I would exhale, it came out through every pore in my body, emerging to meet the world.
As this process finished, I began to smell the fragrance of burning sage. I opened my eyes to discover Javier moving around the room, smudging each of us. I drank in the fragrance hungrily, and when he came to me, I moved my hands around it. He asked me to stand, and the incredible power of this sage was moved around my whole body. I felt my new body drinking it in, and I knew that this was sealing my new body, finishing it. I sat down again, alive, pulsing with new life. Before the door to my heart was closed, I was asked for the new qualities that I wanted to carry, and I placed a few words within: love, joy, compassion, play, and others. Then I closed the magical heart-door and basked in this blissful state of being.
The radiance grew and grew, and after awhile, I didn’t know what to do with myself. My mind reeled. I hadn’t planned for the release process to be so quick and easy! Now, as the rest of the ceremony lay ahead of me, I puzzled with what to learn, to ask. Many questions emerged, and I asked the spirit of Mother Ayahuasca to appear to me and be my guide. She appeared in front of me as a giant, cartoonish chicken! I couldn’t believe this absurd image, and acknowledged that all things appear to us as we are ready to receive them, but this was clearly a cosmic joke! She transformed herself into an older woman and waited with me. I felt like the sky was the limit, that I was given total, free access to any answer to any question, and I had no idea where to begin. Who am I? What is my ultimate purpose in this life? What is the meaning of the universe? I was filled with cosmic questions. Then I thought of travelling to other realms, and was given access, but just as I was ready to fly away, I realized that that was merely a distraction, a fascination. I then thought to ask for information about my future - work, love, etc. I also quickly realized that that was mere fortune-telling, and a waste of this state of being. I then thought to ask to see people’s energies, and to be able to read their presence. I looked around the room and saw not colors, but patterns in each person’s energy. Rays and waves and spikes and swirls. Then I became aware of the others in the room, the guides and spirits. Javier was led by a very tall man wearing an eagle-type ceremonial costume. I looked to each person and became aware of a figure for each one, either watching, guiding, or holding them. To my right was an old man with slightly shaggy white hair, his back to me, watching over Jolanda. I felt a bit crowded by him until I realized his purpose. To my left, a young woman, tallish, light brown hair, pale skin, looking over Katie while holding a walking staff with colored bands near the top. Each person had a guide for the ceremony, but I couldn’t see mine! I could see my two Grandmothers of Remembering over my right shoulder, but not my guide to my left. I asked Mother Ayahuasca to show me my guide, and then Grandmother Rosemary appeared, joyful, to surprise me! I laughed and was filled with joy to see her there. It was clear to my understanding that these guides come to us for the heart of the ceremony, and can be different each time, but are not necessarily part of our personal inner council. And as the ceremony wound down, I saw the guides begin to leave through the door of the temple. I bade Grandmother Rosemary farewell.
Before the guides left, though, I felt a-swirl with all my questions. And I became aware that none of them would be answered then. My two Grandmothers of Remembering put a finger to their lips to silence me, and Grandmother Rosemary did the same. I was told that it was my calling to share these experiences, that that was essential. And I was also told to quiet my questioning mind, that through silence comes listening, and only that will open me to be able to receive the answers to all that I want to know. So I accepted that, sitting, receiving the bliss and radiance, knowing that it was all about being and receiving, not doing. Doing and action are about solving a problem, and give away the radiance, in a way, wasting the energy. I acknowledged my tendency to do this, and sat meditatively, receiving, growing fuller and ever more radiant, feeling large and round, mostly buoyant. Toward the end of the ceremony, I felt a heaviness descend, a hugeness, and I felt the weight of it in my teeth, lap, and hands. I have no clue what the heaviness was about, but I sat with it until the end of the ceremony.
At one point, I played my flute during the ceremony, and felt like I was listening to some unearthly melodies that I was asked to share. It was incredible!! The overall musical element of the ceremony was much less than with Diego, though, since Javier sings and rattles, no other instruments, and I found myself longing to sing more. Carlos played a few songs and that was a nice contribution, and Carolynne also sang some songs. But I longed for the musical element that Diego’s ceremonies provide.
I made it home by midnight and fell into bed, in a deep, wonderful sleep.
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