Slips & Falls: I’ll Take Your Call
March 1, 2021
The Source of Pain is Often Far from the Area of Perceived Pain
April 7, 2021My Experience with Plant Medicine
The culmination of a lifelong quest to know myself better, I was drawn to beautiful Costa Rica and a high-end resort that offered journeys with the plant medicine, Ayahuasca.
For those not familiar with this plant medicine, it’s a hallucinogen, but very different than LSD. First, it’s from Nature – as they say it’s a concentrated drop of Nature with the perfect design and unfolding of nature. Whereas man-made hallucinogens such as LSD are manufactured in labs and are chemicals.
It’s hard to describe the Journey that ensues once one ingests the thick syrupy liquid in a small cup. The Intention I was instructed to follow was “Show me who I have become.” And that’s exactly what ensues.
You are shown all the parts of yourself that you have kept hidden from yourself for decades. All the Shadow parts of yourself. All the ugly and negative parts that you have tried to hide from the world. That the world may have known, but you’ve denied it in yourself.
Even ancestral memories come through to aid in the healing. If you resist the medicine, you are in for a rough ride. But if you surrender, you come face to face with your Demons. Literally. And can move through them to the other side and the beauty that is truly you.
You are told that Ayahuasca is a purgative, meaning it’s meant to rid your body of anything that doesn’t belong there. Whether it’s a physical toxin or an emotional, mental or spiritual one. You purge it out or puke it out into a bucket. There is a lot of retching going on with the other surrounding participants in the room. Not all of the retching is vomiting. It could be in the form of yawning or laughter or crying or shivering.
Scary, grotesque faces may appear and if you go into the images and do not run away, your fears begin to recede. Only then what surfaces is your next negative emotion that you’ve been hiding from – in my case, my Hate. I mean the completely 100% embodied emotion of hatred that you’ve kept at bay your entire life.
When that leaves, more retching. But the retching is incomplete; won’t continue. Until I realize I must face my deep sadness, my misery, my emotional pain. From the time I was a scared lonely 8-year-old boy to the present. Then I start to feel all of the hurt visited upon me; but more importantly all of the hurt that I have caused others. And it’s unbearable.
Then what ensues is what seems like an interminable crying jag that won’t stop. It’s heard throughout the room. The Shamans and assistant
facilitators come over to help – fanning me, blowing smoke and sacred water all over my body; to try to move the energy and get the trapped stuck emotions and energy out of my body. But the crying continues on and on, until I finally lie down (I was sitting up through most of the above) and rest. Maybe I have at last forgiven myself.
When I try to get up to go to the bathroom, I am completely disoriented and need the help of an assistant to make it to the bathroom. Almost like an angel, she waits patiently outside to escort me back to my mattress.
At the end of the ceremony, the same assistant greets me and says “Happy Birthday”. It literally feels like the first day of my Life.
Through Mother Ayahuasca, my heart has been repaired, cleaned, and it feels like new.
I feel lighter. More myself than I can remember.
I have merged back into my soul.
I feel my complete Mind/body Wholeness.
