The Peru Trip - Day Three - Part III
November 6th - Evening - The Ayahuasca Ritual
We are all sitting in a large circle along the railing of the meeting hut. The lantern light fills the room with a glow of anticipation and anxiety surrounding the experience yet to come. People are still moving about preparing their mats, blankets, water , and other things that they might need for the night. The shaman has yet to arrive. He has been preparing the Ayahuasca mixture since the afternoon. It is now around 10PM. I wonder what this experience will be like. I think back on past psychedelic experiences. I think about Carlos Casteneda and the movie "Altered States". What will it be like? I can't imagine what the people are thinking who have never done any kind of psychoactive substance before. A few people in our group had never even smoked a joint much less done psychedelics. For them it would be like visiting an undiscovered landscape with all its dangers and wonders untouched and unknown. It would be this way for me also but at least I had a core feeling that my inner being would still be intact. I don't know if I would be doing this if I had not engaged in similar activities in years past. Pretty bold of these others in the group to take such a leap of faith. I respect them for it.Shaman Mateo arrives in the room. Deborah and Boris are with him. He is holding what looks like a large black thermos-like container that one might keep their water in while camping. This must be the container of the ayahuasca mixture. He is handed a large glass pitcher, the kind one might serve lemonade in on a hot summer's day. The climate this night at our place in the Amazon seems to be perfect. I haven't felt any mosquitoes either! Clouds are obscuring the near full moon but the surrounding landscape is easily visible in the diffuse moonlight. Shaman Mateo pours what looks like a light olive green mixture from the black container into the pitcher. You can feel the tension in the room. My own feelings are more of excitement than anxiety but I am not looking forward to the nausea that the ayahuasca brings.
Shaman Mateo speaks about the ritual about to begin. I am drifting into my own thoughts. Too much to follow in what he is saying, especially through Boris's translation. I pick up that he is saying something about feeling the vibrations in the ayahuasca mixture as he takes the pitcher around to each one of us so that we can place are hands on it. Placing my hands on the glass brings a focus to my excitement. I can feel the magic in the mixture. It feels like velvet electricity. When the shaman is done passing the pitcher around he begins to burn some tobacco and chant in what he explains is a cleansing of the hut of negative vibrations. He talks about not leaving the area of the hut which is somehow protected by this cleansing. I think to myself that I wil l want to venture away from the hut despite what the Shaman says. I will at least want to do a meditation away from the hut and away from the rest of the group.
The shaman is handed another pitcher. This is smaller than the ayahuasca pitcher. He explains that this pitcher is flower water. This will also be part of the pre-ayahuasca cleansing. He goes around to each of once again and sprinkles us with the flower water and then pours some in our cupped hands. He instructs us through Boris to smell the flower water in our hands and then rub the water in our hands and on our face. The flower water has a perfumy smell that is like some fine bath soap. I thought back about how I had ingested Hawaiian Baby Wood Rose seeds in a younger day. This too was an organic psychedelic that brought on nausea as part of its experience. Back then it seemed that sniffing dishwashing liquid eased the nausea. I guess this was the middle America version of the amazon flower water.
Finally the time to partake of the Ayahuasca mixture arrives. Shaman Mateo begins to give people their first glass of the mixture. Jerry had told me earlier that the shaman allows each individual the option of taking as much as they like but only a glass a time with a fair amount of time between glasses. I was almost sure that I would be taking more than this first glass but I was attempting to not put any kind of expectation or structure on the experience yet to unfold.
Shaman Mateo comes to me and hands me the glass. I drink it all in one gulp. It is strongly acidic, like very concentrated grapefruit juice. It's taste is sickly sweet and at the same time earthy, like strong wheatgrass juice. Mateo says some words to me through Boris wishing me well. He walks to the next person. Now is the time for me to be calm and wait. I can see the taste of the mixture will remain with me for a while. I go in to a state of calm awareness. Let's see what happens!
After about 20 minutes I begin to feel some mild effects. A little lightheadedness, a few colors around the edges of things. I can tell that some of the others in the hut are feelings the effects to varying degrees. One of the people near me is talking about whether they should let people know about something going on the hut. They are looking up at the ceiling. They seem to be way too concerned about whatever the problem is. I had seen people drift into some strange perspectives when I had used psychedelics in the past. I find out that they are concerned about a bird that is in the hut. I still think they are way too concerned about it! Maybe I am losing my perspective too. I work on maintaining my own equilibrium and closing out the vibrations coming from other people in the hut. I look for the calm center. I find it temporarily.
About 40 minutes has passed. The effects are the same as before without increase in intensity. Ten minutes before Deborah has thrown up over the railing. I guess in her 6 years of use she has learned to flow with the messages of the ayahuasca. She sits quietly now in a space about 30 feet away from where I am sitting. The shaman has been talking to people and helping guide them in their ayahuasca journey. He has done this with a combination of massage, transference, chanting, and words. The transference involves his taking of other people's negativity into himself and cleansing it. This he does by either spitting it out or throwing it up. Occasionally I have heard sucking sounds along with the chanting in the darkness. This is from Mateo sucking the negative energies from whoever he is helping. He repeats one particular chant many, many times. It has a haunting melody. When he finishes the chant it still hangs in the air like some thick amazon vapor. I breath it in. It is becoming part of me.
Shaman Mateo begins to go around asking people if they wish to have a second glass of the mixture. In a few minutes he is done dispersing the mixture to people who want more. About half the group takes a second glass. I am one of them. While I continue to wait for the unknown effect I decide to do a meditation with a rose quartz crystal that I have brought with me on the trip. Just a few days ago I was meditating with this crystal in the crater of a dormant volcano on Maui. Now it is in the amazon rainforest in the middle of this ritual. The magical energy that has carried this crystal from what was its home ground in New England to this place is magical indeed!
My meditation is a quiet one. I am sitting cross-legged on the floor of the hut holding the crystal in my lap. I quiet my mind and open to the earth energy that is everywhere in abundance. Will I gain some insight into this energy while under the effects of ayahuasca? Will I tap into it's source? I clear my mind of these questions and expectations. I am striving to stay open to anything. The energy feels clearer than before. It has a kind of purity that is hard to describe. This purity seems embodied in the Amazon moonlight that begins to cover the jungle lodge landscape as the clouds break. I breath it in. It is becoming part of me. I don't have to reach for it. It is just there. The effect is magical but still less than the expectation that I seek to free myself from. I knew that I would have to have another glass.
I walk over to the large shadowy figure of Jerry standing along the wall of the hut. I ask him if I can have another glass. He nods and we begin to walk to the little table where the Ayahuasca mixture resides. It is hard to see in the dim light. Especially hard to see with the tinges of induced color mixed in with the darkness. As Jerry begins to pour I hear a crash and some liquid pouring on the floor. Jerry utters a synchronous "Oh shit!". My first reaction is panic as I think that Jerry has spilled the entire pitcher of Ayahuasca. It turns out that he has only spilled his bottle of coke. We both laugh a little. I drink the third glass and go back to my space in the hut.
I am sitting quietly in what seems like the calm center. Edith walks over to me. "So how are you doing?". I explain to her that I think the effects of the ayahuasca are like mushrooms, sort of a mellow, natural, pleasant feeling with little bits of colors appearing. I tell her that I thought it would be "stronger". She just looks at me and nods. I don't know whether this is a nod of acknowledgment or a nod of pacification. She has a look in her eyes as if she is a psychologist conversing with a mental patient.
It was a few minutes after speaking with Edith that I feel the rise. I don't really know any other way to describe it. It was a feeling I had felt before. The feeling of a strong psychoactive experience beginning, a feeling that I had only felt when taking large amounts of some hallucinogenic substance, a feeling which I can only liken to ones consciousness beginning to lift out of ones body. I am becoming aware that the ayahuasca takes effect in different ways than similar substances that I ingested before. I think that all three glasses are beginning to kick in at once...
The feeling of disconnection from my body begins to grow. I feel my nerves tingling but it is like they are outside me, touching me. It is like they are a not a part of me any more. I feel this tingle also in my stomach. I had felt this before too. It seems like there is something key about the way the stomach grounds one to the physical. I had some past experiences where the transition away from a more body oriented reality had been an unpleasant one. A couple of "bad trips" has been the result. Not having experienced this feeling in ten years I wonder how I will deal with this drug induced transition in an older body. I am filled with the confidence that it is not about body but about mind.
As I close my eyes my mind's eye is filled with a most brilliant pale blue light. White flowers begin to fill the light blue background like some time lapse photography of flowers blooming in the spring. The nausea is getting stronger. I raise my hands to my mouth and smell the flower water. Sweet smells had always helped this nausea in the past. It wasn't working as well this time. The white flowers look so beautiful against the blue light. I look out at the jungle grounds. They are filled with their own pale light which the moon has provided. The tiers of branches in a large tree near the hut seemed to be filled with huge orange flowers. I know that this particular tree contains no such flowers. The appearance of these flowers is very stylized and stark . Reminds me of a pattern I had seen on a Japanese kimono. Yes, that was it. A zen garden in the tree. Growing, lovely, yet still and grounding.
I am going to flow with the nausea and cleanse it. I lean over the railing to release this feeling from my stomach. The rain begins to fall a gentle jungle rain. At that moment I am struck with a thought that comes as if from outside me. A voice is telling me to lay down and let the nausea wash over me as the rain is washing over the jungle. I lay down on the mattress in my private space in the hut. I begin to experience the washing. It is such a profound experience. I am opening up and releasing at the same time. A wave of warmth washes over me. The nausea is gone. What remains feels like pure energy. There is no tension in it. The feelings and thoughts are becoming more indescribable. The frequency of thought, of feeling, is increasing. New worlds are unfolding. They flow through my consciousness as easy as breathing. They are impossible to hold onto as think about journaling them. As the flow continues I feel the need to go outside and do a meditation. I stand up and go out of the hut. It is difficult to walk but it feels wonderful to be outside. The negativity and fear inside the hut was definitely a strong feeling. I can notice it more now that I am free of it. Can still hear the Ayahuasca chant in my mind even as I stand under a tall palm tree too far away to hear it with my ears. I begin to do the Merkabah meditation. As I close my eyes I am bombarded with fractal visions of beauty and light. I am flowing through the Mandelbrot set and its infinite geometric complexity. This is not like some pictures in a book or even in a movie. The flow through the fractal geometry is a wind blowing through my consciousness. The patterns are not lines but formed with exquisite flowers. More and more flowers. The visions come faster and faster. The zoom rate is increasing. My consciousness cannot hold the visions long enough to grasp them. I blow out the 10th breath of the Merkabah. The white ball that is part of the Merkabah meditation is around me and through me. I am the white light that extends to my fingertips. I don't have to try to visualize anything. It is just there. I have become the meditation. Thought, action, and the physical world are one. I am in the space where all these worlds merge. I do the 14th breath of the Merkabah. The visualization of the center of the white ball rising from my stomach to my chest takes place as natural as a flower growing. I feel like lightning is about to strike as visions, energy, and feeling have reached a power and rate beyond comprehension. And then it all ends.....
There is nothing. Calm, dark. Someone once told me of a zen description of the bright shining void. This is it. Nothing yet everything. So empty yet so full. So very peaceful. No tension at all. No anxiety at all. Pure nothing. There is no feeling except that of nothing. No words can describe it. Something is approaching. It is like the washing I had experienced earlier except in reverse. The void begins to fill. As I sense this I am overwhelmed. A geyser of energy shoots up from the jungle ground. It goes through me and up into the sky. It is green. It is Love. The earth energy that I had sensed since entering Peru is manifesting itself into my reality. What was so vague before is now so clear. Pure Love is washing over me. The earth mother's Love is caressing my being, it is caressing my soul. I never realized it was so easy. To tap into this energy one only has to let it be. In all my meditations, visualizations, and spiritual exercises there was always a striving. One only has to let it be. The Love that is everywhere is always available and infinitely abundant. It feels like every kind of Love I have ever experienced and at the same time it feels like nothing I have ever experienced before. I think back upon a past romantic love. It is truly better to have loved and lost then to have never loved. Love is and end in itself. The experience of Love is an ascendance regardless of what leads up to it or follows it. Love is ascendance.
I return to the hut and lay down on the mattress in my space once again. As I cover myself with a cloth blanket I cover myself with a green blanket of Love. It feels like the whole jungle, the whole rain forest, the whole universe is my blanket. I begin to drift in and out of sleep. I notice that Shaman Mateo is still walking around, talking to people, and caring for them. He walks over to me and asks if I have had any visions. To make things simple for Boris's interpretation I tell him that I have had visions of blue light and white flowers. He gives me a brief response. "This is good but go slow". He has picked up on my desire to see God in one night. I thank him. He knows that I have only opened a doorway and then only a crack. It is a continual process of revelation.
I begin to drift in and out of sleep. A new day is dawning...
Sandy Craig Shaw
sandy@bodhisattvasoftware.comReturn to the Peru Journal Page