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.