Ayahuasca diary part 1
They say: “it’s the plant that comes to you, not you to her”. Or “If you are ready, she’ll call you”. My first experience with Ayahuasca confirms it.
The plant might call at any time. Honestly, with me, it went too far. It's like waiting for a long time to be called on the phone, but then when it rings, it makes you scream to death.
The plant not only came in an unexpected way, but it turned my whole travel plan in South America upside down. Nevertheless, the experience was one of the greater revelations in my life. I got insights to some metaphysical and existential problems, some visual hints to understand quantum physics, it soothed some of the existential paradoxes that haunted me since I was little, it showed me the matrix reality in which we live in and how to penetrate the veil of Maya.
Those are the kinds of stuff I’ll try to share in this series of articles.
The place of healing souls
I have been in Mexico for a month to expand on my personal research in ritual healing practices. I started to expand into this topic in Berlin through the medium of art both in my work and by organizing festivals, events, exhibitions and talks. Likewise, I always believed that art is something more than an aesthetic exercise or conceptual thoughts down to visuals.
The emotional power of art to reach the public is equal to its power to heal the deep wounds of humanity and eventually provide answers where other fields in the scientific structure of our society fail.
Now more than ever, in a time of pandemics, lockdowns, censorship of free speech, totalitarian governments, wars and soulless regulations we need to ground ourselves, feel the heart, get back to nature and express our creative souls. I’ve personally found all those components of healing in one place, it’s called Mexico.
The awakening era calls for a cleansing of mind and body
The last two year of pandemic just thinner the layer that was separating us from the truth. Now it’s our task to complete the work and break through that veil of corrupted structures and limiting beliefs that kept us slave of ourselves.
This is the time for "healing" because we are going to accelerate at an unprecedented evolution rate in the next few years (leaving no space for human unresolved trauma) eventually leading to a global awakening.
In the previous article I laid out some of the most powerful tools (I called conscious weapons) for the coming awakening era which are: embracing full responsibility of your reality perception and everlasting freedom of choice. Now we need healing because without a clear mind and intoxicated body we can’t make right choices at all and the new world requires us to be 100% vigilant.
Awakening will never be a trend, but a reality
These two years have been the most light years of my life. Eventually I got two extremely hard and at the same time blissful spiritual awakening. Not many people would say the same when the dark side of our society was advancing on all fronts of our structures, medical, political, military and mass media showing an intricate web of corruption. I saw the brightest light, coming and casting even more than ever the shadows inside us. The opposite stands out to the eye when the light creates contrast. After having lost trust in our systems, eventually you understand how important it is to take care of yourself, contribute to your community and connect with the people.
The speed in which people are moving back to nature, joining and creating community is equal to the speed in which alternative medicine and holistic approach in physical and mental health are advancing in the mainstream.
I don’t even see the risk of those alternative practices becoming a trend, like it was for yoga and spirituality. We are clearly transforming and whether it takes to speed up our transition would make sense for me to embrace it instead of criticizing it as a “just trend”.
A basket of solutions for human problems
I’m in Mexico to do a short, self produced documentary about ancient healing practices in the Mesoamerica region, that included rituals, ceremonies and magics. Of course, I had a list of things I wanted to experience other than get to know lots of interesting people. Nonetheless, a month still seems too short for what I’m asking for. And it became even shorter when I encountered Ayahuasca. Even if she always has been on the back of my mind, for this trip she wasn’t included. I thought I had to go to Amazon for that and probably dedicate an entire documentary just for that experience. In Mexico, I want to get in touch with everything that belongs to this geographic area and the tradition that embodies.
The plan is to start from the south in Yucatán and cross most of the regions till the north to the desert harvesting peyote and look for a guide. The plan includes experiencing the sacred plant Wuachuma, the Mexican Hungos, get to know shamans, have a purification ceremony with Temazcal and speak with people that keep the sacred knowledge.
Until now, I was successfully following the plan, collecting interviews here and there, making friends and moving things around. But just in the middle of the journey, the grandmother plant came to visit me. I’m not sure if my itinerary got messed up or blessed up by her calling, but of one thing I’m sure, I had one of the greater revelations in my life thanks to her.
I got the answer to my questions and I prayed for the plant to not forget after my journey. So here we are, with a basket of solutions for the human problems in the attempt to lay out properly in words.
Listen to your heart when faced with the polarity of choice and you'll always make the right decision
My companion, who I started this journey with, has just found an Ayahuasca ceremony in Puerto Vallarta at the price of 2,000 pesos. While I’m in San Cristóbal, the idea seems to be far in all senses. Exactly 1.762 km far, 23 hours by bus and 2,200 meters high. Nevertheless, we are also sick of the low temperature and the high altitude’s continuous headache. After all, I'm in Mexico also to get a good tan, high dose of vitamin D and heat that you would never find in Berlin. What the hell! Puerto Vallarta seems pricey, but a good reason to escape the altitude.
Surrendering to my first journey with ayahuasca would mean putting in a second position the main purpose of the documentary project and the risk of not having enough time to go harvest peyote in the desert. Everything started to be problematic in my head and all kinds of resistances popped up. This appears to be how the plant's calling works, I was told later. The polarization of choices between two different paths started to be stronger and stronger till I decided to shout the thoughts off and follow my heart.
The art of imparting the medicine
We flew to Puerto Vallarta the day after and as soon as we arrived the warmth of the sun and the saline air made me feel proud of that choice. The ceremony is held in a beautiful ranch surrounded by palm trees and dogs. We are the first people to arrive yet the last ones that left the next morning after the ceremony. We found no one but the guardian of the ranch. Due to the strict diet and lack of sleep, I feel pretty slow, so I lie down next to an empty swimming pool under the shadow of a palm. My stomach has been empty for a couple of days, and I'm just trying to focus on my mental state and do some internal work before people start showing up, and I have to communicate with them.
Greeting us warmly is a small guy with long dark hair and a bright smile. Victor is an expert in many forms of healing, from Chinese medicine to hypnotherapy, and he has been leading ayahuasca ceremonies since he got initiated by his master.
I have the opportunity to constatate his professionalism and devotion to keep the tradition and work with plant medicine, firsthand and by speaking with other people that are coming from all around the world for this occasion. Most of them have already participated more than three times to Victor’s ceremony and are happy to have had such a good and profound experience with him. You know there are a lot of professed shamans around the world leading ayahuasca ceremonies, also in Berlin of course, but I have not heard much of transformative experiences, either good. Since this plant medicine got to the mainstream, for many people it has become a good opportunity to make money out of it without respect for traditions and having good preparation. That’s also why I’ve been so hesitant to jump on one of the numerous Berlin healing ceremonies. The grandmother plant medicine is a sacred and potent plant used for millennia and has to be treated with profound respect.
The preparation of the sacred battlefield
I instantly felt like helping Victor organize the space, funny that that’s also what he needed. I bring in the pieces of wood for the fire in the center, I place the mats in a circle, clean up the pillows, give it to each of the participants together with a basket for the purge.
Every element of the ceremony has to follow specific rules. The fire at a certain distance from the altar, and the exit of the circle at a certain place. Each one of us has to walk in and out following a specific direction before exiting the circle to not break the energy flow.
If we are cold during the night we can stand close to the fire but not too close because we have to allow others to walk in front of us, no one has to walk behind and no one has to leave the circle of energy during the ceremony. An important rule is given to the man taking care of the fire. He is next to the exit and he also can take the medicine. A long line of candles is leading to the bathroom.
The solution to any resistances
Is soon starting to get dark and we are protected by huge trees and the dogs. The altar is a beautiful installation of flowers, carpets, candles, and native music instruments. I soon realize Victor’s art of imparting medicine. Isn’t only about giving the medicine but about creating minutiously the whole set up and interrelating with the energy field of the participants. Sitting at the altar next to Victor are two ladies. We start with an introduction then the ceremony of rape to open the heart and facilitate the connection with the medicine.
Everyone in the circle takes the medicine. Each of the doses is proportionate specifically for the person, Victor has two different concentrations of medicine, strong and less strong. At each dose victor seeks advice to the ladies.
We have thirty minutes of silence then Victor and the ladies start playing the icarus. For some the connection with the wisdom of the plant starts with the first shot, for others may need more than one and in some cases where the individual has too much resistance Victor and the ladies seem to have the solution to any problem.
The secret of life in two words
I have not expectations but curiosity, lots of love in my heart and so much gratitude to how far I’ve been going during this lifetime. I soon realized how to communicate with the wisdom of the plant and to every question I had, the medicine had an answer ready for me.
Each answer unfolded right in front of my eyes bringing up all my sensory input and beyond. The connection starts.
I have all kinds of psychedelic visionary experiences described in the DMT stories trip but I knew that my purpose was to go more into the depths. I have the courage to ask what’s the purpose of life. Suddenly everything slows down like 180 frame per second camera footage and I’m observing the man taking care of the fire. His movements are like a dance and the Zapotec decoration of his poncho transformed into a moving pattern showing me an infinite creation of beauty. The secret of life. I can zoom in and penetrate into the colourful infinite fractal or zoom out and appreciate magnificent man dancing for the fire. His care of the fire and for us was a propagator for me to understand the care that the whole universe has for us. I felt the cosmic maternal warmth. The plant message filled my heart at that moment.
The answer came instantly in the form of two words: love and art. Love is the unit that keeps everything together in the universe from the atomic particles to planetary systems. Can be expressed also as a magnetic field or gravity. Art is the creative expression of existence wanting to know itself. Can be expressed as a unit that moves and transforms everything or simply energy. I thanked the plant for the answer and I kept moving forward in my mind.
The dance of reality
Now I’m wondering how each individual can have their own interpretation of reality and yet interrelate with each other.
I’m looking at the people all around in the circle of the fire, and the plant is showing me how they actually are existing as they would be inside of flexible and transparents tubes extending up to the sky and down to the ground infinitely, living their own reality, their own different path, but at the same time interconnected with each other.
Those tubes were moving and bumping gently to each other like a dance creating little changes of trajectory as they touched. This made me understand one of the mechanisms of reality. Each of us have a different path in life, a specific trajectory yet constantly modified by the dance of others. Each of us is living their own life and have different interpretations of reality, but at the same we are interconnected with the rest of humanity and each movement influences the whole. In this dance of reality we have a relative freedom to move our focus and choose our interpretation of reality which I describe as free will. Greater the free will of individuals that have greater levels of awareness.
The key to the unknown
After my second dose of medicine, my experience was very pleasant, and I could choose where to be by just closing and opening my eyes. Closing the eyes implied entering the Ayahuasca world, and opening implied being in the physical world. I start to feel a little tired, but I don't give in to the temptation to lie down for fear of falling asleep and losing contact. After the big collective purge, there's crying and moaning. Around me, almost everyone is lying down and seems to be sleeping. So I went to Victor for consultation. I said about my pleasant experience, yet I emphasized that my will is to go deeper. The ladies are smiling. That was the moment in which Victor pulled out a little box from the back of his poncho, opened it and gave me one of the little balls made out of concentrated medicine.
As I took it and went back to sit in my place, the whole game changed instantly, and I went deeper than I ever expected, slowing down time and space yet speeding up my experiences and understanding. The speed at which my mind paradoxes were resolved was unprecedented, yet calm prevails within me…
(soon in the next part)