Alex Grey - Theologue
Entering the second session with the master-plant took an immense effort, just the getting ready for it. Never in my life had I been so out of control, powerless and afraid. To choose to enter that world again was one of the hardest things I've had to do, my breath was unsteady and heart trembling. It didn't help that much that the shaman was saying not to enter with fear, that if I entered afraid, I would only have more of the same, more of fear. How easy it is to understand yet how do you force yourself not to be afraid if your only experience with the plant is that of utter hell. So instead of thinking- don't fear, I was saying to myself- remember to open your heart and love. Positives do work much better.
This time as I gulped down the brown liquid, a quarter of a dose of the night before, I wasn't asking for a lot other than- treat me kindly.. :)
Regardless of such a small dose, the effects were once again immediate. Straight away I was in the same place, the nasty place of vomiting and life-less soulless fear circus and playground. Ugly horrible noises- I thought- I cant believe this- I'm here again, I couldn't believe WHYEVER people do this thing, why was I doing this, AGAIN!!!
But soon I realised that it was different this time. I was able to stand back, probably because of the lower dose. I wasn't overwhelmed or drowned in the other reality, I could open my eyes and come back to my mattress. So I relaxed, got over the wish to just keep purging, focused, let the circus be, let the fear be. The shaman had told me that the shapes I had seen had all been doors and she was right, it turned out that the same hell was like a gate-way. The horrific clown-demons were gate-keepers with a simple test- can you overcome fear and turn it into love? Only with an open heart can you cross over to the magic side of Ayahuasca!
A different universe started to emerge. The crude shapes turned finer and finer. All corners smoothing out. Where only one or two colours had prevailed, now all the colours of all the chakras started to come through and build a cosmos like no other. Somehow my body was cleansed deeper than ever before, somehow for the first time in my life all my energy centers were open, all of them involved in co-creation.
From time to time I was still seeing a face of a demon-clown here and there, but now somehow I felt no judgement or fear for them. I was beginning to feel the unified and I had a clear knowledge that the demonic and the soulless also had a place in this whole.
How can I describe the next 3 hours other than that it was being in pure, unconditional love and bliss. The whole indescribable universe which opened up was like an organic interconnected 3D web, painted and shining with the light-beams of all the colours of the rainbow. I kept flying through this miraculous place, in which every millimeter was so full of detail, so intricate, so ornate. It was constantly being born, new vistas, new details, every intricate millimeter of its fabric turning ever more intricate and then molding into something different once again. Flying over stunning landscapes of green hills, oceans, rivers between canyons with round bridges over it, volcanoes. Meeting nature itself, I saw countless animals and birds and fish, mainly those of the Amazonian jungle but also for example koalas and platypuses and elephants, leaving me in a soul-quenching state of connectedness with Mother Earth in all its glory. I saw the images of Buddhas everywhere, especially during the first minutes, this in particular was giving me a feeling of security and support at that time. I also kept sighting an Eye on every corner of the highway of heaven. The eye always seeing, always open- sometimes the eye of a cat, sometimes that of a puma, sometimes human, sometimes also a face with three eyes. The meaning of this is self-evident as the shaman said- the third eye feeds off the heart, with an open heart the center of intuition cannot remain closed.
There were pyramids and pharaohs- in general so much detail it was impossible to remember even a fraction of all I saw.
It was a journey and it felt complete, which made me realise I was witnessing something like the blue-print of the evolution of consciousness and of the Earth. It was flowing and glowing with such gentle pure love and such overwhelming beauty that I couldn't stop crying while I had the biggest smile on my face.
I saw my friend, who was with me in this retreat, and had struggled a lot with the first night as myself, dancing under a Sun bathed in a golden light, free and wild and liberated. And in her own vision at that time she was actually dancing, free of fear, liberated! In fact somehow as a group I found us in a connected web of minds, and the link accessible through Ayahuasca, truly amazing to see intuition at work.
Love was everywhere. I saw the Man and the Woman standing hand in hand in front of a sunset, and the Man and the Woman again making love while suspended in the universe in front of a huge burning Sun.
There was one instant I wished to see a loved one in my vision and tried to mold the creation that was. Yet suddenly the flying avenue of light burst in a short-cut and there was a breaking black gap in the flow. I saw what happened and I laughed at myself for not being happy with the absolute perfection I was already witnessing. This was perhaps one of the most meaningful of all the lessons from this experience. Even while in sync with the source, and having entered this state because of one thing and one thing only- by being a witness and thus letting the natural power of love and life that each of us possesses, move us into a higher state, we as humans can get so confident that we forget to be witnesses and try once more to use a limited tool of the personal mind to "improve" that which is naturally, to fulfil our little wishes of the ego, thus losing that which took us there, the act of letting go, equanimous observation, thus losing the connection.
I kept traveling until the vision started to slow down and everything came back to its point of origin. Not surprisingly all the roads made of light went back to a huge pumping heart, now filling my vision, all the energy of the world started and ended there and I think that is what the Ayahuasca is mainly a teacher of. Its not the mind that is so important, the mind is the tool for seeing, but the heart is the core, the beginning, without the heart no higher goals are possible, love is the key.
I went to sleep slowly because the happiness was too deep and I felt full of energy. Everything was shining, even though it was a dark night. The sky was full to the brim with stars and my dreams were full of a flight of a bird.
How different was the next morning from the one before. At the breakfast table, instead of the previous shattered tired frightened faces, disorientated, lost; were shining creatures who looked each other in the eyes with love, gratitude for sharing the journey, open helpfulness.
Our last ceremony was the ceremony to the mother Earth or Pachamama. We held hands in a circle and sent back to eachother and to mother Nature all that we had gained. The feeling of unconditional love can only grow from giving back. The hands were pulsating with energy. We each made a pledge to commit to trying in whatever way to return the love and the shaman burned a bundle of symbolic presents to Pachamama, consisting of all manner of things like coca and tea-leaves, sugar, strings of gold, salt, even wine, in a small fire, the ashes remaining on the soil and the good intentions flying up with the smoke to the skies. Afterwards everybody hugged eachother, such a feeling of love and humanity! It was so beautiful to be able to speak freely with love and gratitude, to not be hindered by any of the communication patterns and games we usually are enslaved to.
I felt my heart was completely opened by this absolutely incredible plant mixture for that time. But I know that this was just a lesson of the path. Being a free and happy human being has nothing to do with one, two, or even twenty-times of experiencing the light. It is about working every single day to come to that place again, for our habitual tracks are strong indeed. It is not enough to rest after witnessing the beauty of human potential, and its dangerous to feel an achievement of overcoming ones blocks after going through such a hard time because that time is past now and life is in the present- the shamanic lesson from Ayahuasca is about working every day to keep the heart open. My heart in particular is a feeble, changeable creature. It opens to close to open again. It is a difficult path but I am in awe and full of deepest gratitude for the push from Pachamama to keep on that hard path. In total awe of the miraculous wisdom of the plants of Ayahuasca.
Thank you Etnika's Shamanic Retreat, Cuzco, Peru!
Dear ayahuasca,
I had no idea how much power could be in a plant.The wisdom of mother Earth itself. Thank you for helping me, for putting me face to face with your beautiful teaching about fear and love, about the raging hell and the soaring absolute heaven present in all life, this planet and my own little soul.
DAY 1
HELL
First, before attempting to describe one of the most powerful experiences of my life, I would like to clarify something about the profound shamanic healing therapy that the use of the master-plant ayahuasca is. It is not to be taken on lightly, in fact it is one of the most powerful (read-difficult) ways of healing. The practise has to be entered first with courage and second with faith. Even if we do not have a faith system of our own, we do have to have faith that the shamans and the people involved during this process, know what they are doing. Never under any circumstances is it for people who simply want to see visions and just to have some entertainment, diversion or an experience. It is a time-honoured pure and natural gift from the deep jungles of South America, it is an ancient wisdom of the shamans for the purpose of healing and nothing less, and it has to be felt, respected and honoured. Before the actual intake of Ayahuasca the shamans were doing for us a ceremony of coca-leaves, asking permission from the plant itself and from Pachamama (Mother Earth), asking whether we had enough courage, enough heart, enough faith. It took some time for the favourable answer to come, but the ceremony did force us to unite as a group and get into the right spirit.
And even then- with respect and just barely enough courage to enter, one should be prepared to come face to face with the deepest darkness of oneself even though of course everyone hopes to see some light. It is in fact the darkness, that is intended to be released and that is the main purpose of this pracise for if we had no darkness we would not even be on this plane of earthly school of life. With this note I will try to share how truly astounding and helpful this therapy can be.
Fear.
After the first session of ayahuasca, I am truly shocked that I have survived and I am astounded that no matter how much I was convinced at that time that I was dying, I am still here. Fear is indeed a thought, just like the shaman said. But oh my god- did I have a lot of that.
It started with a little cubic swirling demon-clown peeking into my vision- peekaboo! There wasn't anything threatening about this figure, or from hindsight about any of the scenery and characters I encountered on my 3-4 hours long vision quest. Yet it's hard to describe how it makes one feel to suddenly be in an altogether different reality, to have everything one is accustomed to and depends on, taken away. So when all of a sudden I was in a universe I can best compare to surrealistic cubic art- with all kinds of shapes like triangles, squares, but more than that- grotesque, moving, living shapes- coming at me at full speed and frightening intimacy, I was not prepared. It was a full universe of not only picture but also sound, all the formations were making horrible loud clicking, grinding, ticking sounds (later the shaman explained that this is the way the ayahuasca plant wakes up in the nervous system, a sign that it has reacted with the brain). Also the sounds of people vomiting all around me did not help to ease me into it, rather made everything more hellish. The vision shapes were not just objects, yet they were not fully alive either, there was something cold about it all, empty of soul.. It was like a huge surreal circus, also akin to being inside a huge multi-coloured clock, every devilish cube and tube kept winding up and coming at me.
I tried to open my eyes but the vision was there even with open eyes. It was at this point when everything spiraled out of control for me. Suddenly I felt the nausea which is the main cleansing tool of the vine Ayahuasca. The mixture used actually consists of two plants. Ayahuasca, the vine, acts like a carrier for Chacruna, another plant, which is the component that carries the active ingredient of DMT- also known of late as the spirit molecule. The Ayahuasca helps the Chacruna carry the DMT to the brain, after which it exits the body via a purge. A stunningly beautiful and perfect process of nature.
The mixture had been swirling around my circulation for some time now, it was so easy to feel it from the first few minutes- a bit like a surge of electricity, a hot stream, bubbling at times like a hot spring of Mother Nature. It started by descending to the stomach, down my arms and legs, making a circle and moving up through the spine to the brain which is when the peekabooing started. Almost everybody vomits it, the shamans hold the vomiting the most important of the whole process, as a tool to get rid of the bad energy accumulated through the years. The more you vomit the better and if some poor souls go through 5-7 sessions of only purging and no visions, tired and disappointed at the "only negative", the shaman will smile and be happy of their progress. Some people have difficulty keeping the bitter brown liquid down for more than 5-10 minutes, I managed until about 15. And then things got really ugly.
The setting of the therapy looks a bit like an army hospital at night. Mattresses lined up against the wall of the "patients". Darkness because the eyes cannot handle light during this process. Next to each of the mattresses the essentials- a bucket for purging, tissues for cleaning up, a huge bottle of water. And of course the participants, all wrapped up in warm clothing and sleeping bags as one of the side-effects is also freezing.
So after 15 minutes the nausea was incredible, never-before experienced in my life. And the visions were all-encompassing, devouring me, drowning me. The vomit was the plant mixture come to life, engorged into a huge black-green vine-serpent. The bucket was a huge long black tunnel, where I was falling down along with the serpent next to me, circling me, which was at times turning into a demonic face which was making purging sounds and telling me- purge! I felt it was the vine itself speaking to me. So I purged, it was impossible not to. It was impossible to stop, the nausea just kept growing. Suddenly I could not move my head and I had to gasp for air. The collar of my jumper felt like it was choking me, killing me. I kept wanting to hide under the blanket to get away from it all but there was no getting away. I was concentrating with all my might to breathe, relax, change the vision, but nothing helped. I needed tissue and water but whenever I tried to feel around me for these, firstly the movements made me too sick and secondly I had no idea where I was or of orientation. Everything I managed to touch was soft and fuzzy and the wrong shape and texture. I felt I was losing control over the whole of my body, paralysed in fear. I kept trying to breathe as I held my head.
At some point I realised that the shaman was singing and that the helpers were making a fuss around me. I had heard them talking around me for some time but I was convinced it had nothing to do with me, so removed was I from reality. I couldn't make out any words, they seemed coming from a million miles away, also it seemed I had forgotten all English, none of the words made any sense. The fuss they were making made me feel two-fold. First- it was giving me a tiny bit of hope, just to vaguely know that there was somebody out there, far far away from the circus of animated cubism where I was, but there. At the same time it made me feel more nervous about my current state, I knew I was bad, but until then I had no idea that I was the only one having problems at that time. Why was everyone so quiet, why weren't they gasping for their lives like I was?!
I had forgotten that I am highly sensitive to stimulation such as this, over-sensitive compared to most people, had forgotten to tell the shamans to have a lesser dose. But it was too late of course. In hindsight I know that the dose was too much for me, but I also know that I was helped so much namely because of the extremity of the experience and that there is a deep wisdom in life which never gives us more than we can handle.
At this time, though I was far away from the voices next to me, I heard a clear and loud sentence from a young 15 year old shaman apprentice (a very talented girl, in real life seeming like an ordinary teenager, but during sessions proving herself highly powerful and intuitive)- OPEN YOUR HEART! I knew this was the truth and what I had to do. I felt my heart closed, over-powered with fear and blocks that had accumulated in me which I kept releasing but which kept growing back.
Because all this time I had been gasping over a bucket, there was a time when one of the helpers had removed it to empty it. At one horrifying moment I had no bucket, I was feeling like another purge, yet I could not open my mouth to ask for it, I could not move my hands to locate it, I was powerless, helpless, sick in torments of hell. After the helpers finally returned me to my tunnel of flying serpents, the bucket became the most important thing in my life, all that mattered. I kept feeling it. It disappeared you see. While it was under my hands, the whole molecular nature of the world was twisting constantly and sometimes becoming absent altogether. The bucket swirled, disappeared, I could never be sure if it was there, if it wasn't, the space around me was empty and not empty at the same time. Had I entered some kind of quantum reality of uncertainty?- it certainly felt like that.
The Universe gone cubist, soulless and clownish was still raving away at me. I was drowned in it, utterly lost, with no power at all. I honestly thought that there was no come-back from this reality for me, that I would stay lost in it forever, thus forgetting the exactly opposite point the shaman had made in the preparatory talk, where she asked us to remember, no matter how we felt, that nothing lasts forever, ayahuasca, like anything else has a life-span in our bodies, an energetic curve. In other words the teaching of anicca- things always rise to pass away.
How long passed I have no idea, it was a timeless hell. But there came a point when I heard and finally understood what one of the helpers was saying to me- relax, just relax.
So I tried again. At first I couldn't understand where was my bed, I still couldn't sense this reality. The longer I kept my eyes open and concentrated, the more I started to see however. I was on my bed still- yey! Only sitting diagonally over the bucket, that's why I hadn't been able to find anything. Slowly I lay down and after many more bouts with nausea and sitting up again to dry-purge, I could at last, with one hand on my life-line the bucket, just to make sure it was still there, rest for a while. There were still the physical feelings, of freezing and being on fire at the same time, but I was alive and back.
Other than facing terror I managed on that first night to also open my heart. While the helper was leading me down the stairs later to go to the bathroom, I felt my heart burst open in the sweet pain of over-whelming love for her. She was leading me a small step at a time, I was completely blind and I felt so much humility and gratitude, for the helpers this whole scene must have been so hard, so difficult to witness, and to try to help- when the people are as lost as that, on the border of staying lost. I hadn't felt that moved for a long time.
And coming back, resting and relaxed, still under the effects of Ayahuasca, I heard a thought- BEHOLD BIRTH. When I looked at my experience with this thought, I understood. I had asked from the plant to help remove the blocks for me in my path of self-realization. It's crystal clear to me now that the only obstacle I ever had was fear, from a young age. Fear of this insensitive world, fear of failing, fear of succeeding, fear of taking the first step, fear- first and foremost- of not being good enough. In order to remove that block- fear, there was nothing else to do other than to put me in the deepest fear possible. And what is the deepest fear? For some its death, I have met death and made peace with that. What is the next in line as to the fear-experiences though people tend not to remember this one? Birth. Looking at it, birth seemed exactly similar to my vision. A dark long tunnel and a completely alien world around me all of a sudden which makes no sense and because it is completely unknown and alien is utterly terrifying. Shapes we don't know coming at us, talking a language we do not understand, it's just sounds, shapes, colours. Us being completely helpless, we have no control over our bodily functions. We want to tuck away somewhere warm and dark, a comforting place that is our only experienced reality at that point. Oh the compassion I now feel for a baby being born! What a trauma!
The day after, like a new-born babe, I felt like crying all day. The whole day-time, spent alone and in noble silence, still mostly in fasting like in the day before, I was preparing myself with meditation on the heart. I knew the heart was the key, I knew that all that was necessary for this experience of rebirth was love. I was scared to death of the next session, but the shaman had promised me a small dose and I couldn't leave the process half-way, come what may.
