Ayahuasca Report

[Awani]

You are welcome, and if you got the right stuff it doesn't matter where you are... I just prefer the vibe of the rainforest, to be far away when I go far away... but the deep spiritual insights can happen wherever you are. Tell others. I am trying to convince my mother... I can't think of a greater gift...

Last time I enjoyed some sacred mushrooms they informed me we have to get out of the closet. It is the only way psychedelic substances will loose the "scary" quality it has in some countries collective moral. It is the guy getting naked running down the street that ruins it for us serious psychonauts.

[Awani]

Here is one of the Shamans singing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8ZmLaHdwdk

[Awani]

I appreciate the fact that you took yourself to the place where the tradition originated. It is interesting, the specific phenomenology of ayahuasca visions. People tend to see large jungle cats like the jaguar, but even those who have never seen such creatures, like certain Inuit Eskimo tribesmen, who were given ayahuasca.

Yes, this is an interesting aspect. I myself transformed into a wolf... although I can't be sure it was a wolf... it felt like it... could have been a jungle cat as well. But it was a four legged creature with fangs and paws... that is for sure. I both saw and felt this.

I figured I painted it a wolf because I am from northern Europe (wolf-ridden) and the fact I love wolves... but who knows? Science refuse to study this stuff in a dedicated manner, alas!

[Black Sclera]

i have not taken the drink but have vaporized the crystal, and i was the jaguar.

[Osain]

Televison of the Forest:
Ayhuasca, Yage or St. Daime is a mixture of tryptamines (mainly DMT – which gives red-orange-round visions) and 5-methoxy DMT (blue-green, square cold serious visions) and harmalines (MAO inhibitors which protect the tryptamines from degradation in the stomach). That is why it is important to fast. Vomiting is a way to cleanse your body before you begin your trip – think of it as something natural and good. Hindu´s in yoga do this purgation ritually.
Pure DMT can be smoked and the experience is very intense and lasts for 10-15 minutes. 5-MeO is a bit different and lasts longer. Repeated smoking causes tolerance very quickly. All of these compounds are in the serotonin-melatonin family and are strong agonists of 5-HT2a 5HT1a serotonin receptors. 2a causes hallucinations and 1a receptor is overexpressed in budist monks and the ones who meditate regularly.
All of them are potent neuohormones and antioxidants. Very useful in terminal cancer (or aids) treatment.
My research has led me to propose ayhuasca as a great remedy for alzheimer (and parkinson´s). Sure, FDA will approve it (never)
Salud!
PS: Jaguars and serpents will talk to you!

[Black Sclera]

close but....... not really

[solomon levi]

I could be off on this, but could there be connections between
Ayahuasca and "the true vine" of the Bible?
I was also noticing that Ayahuasca is not too dissimilar from IHVH.
So this could be references from the old and new testaments.

[Awani]

So I spent a few weeks in the Amazon with the Shipibo Shamans (or Maestros/Maestras as they call themselved depending if it is a male or female) where I partook in seven magical ceremonies with the medicine brew Ayahuasca (there was also other remedies on site, but these were not psychedelic). As always difficult to put into words, but there are some things I would like to document. Especially since I had a jaguar theme to mine...









The first night I spent in the rainforest I had one of those dreams where I wasn't aware I was dreaming as the dream took place in the very same place I was sleeping. I actually thought I had trouble falling asleep. I looked outside and up in a tree, in the moonlight, I saw a jaguar walking on a branch. It stopped and looked at me... kind of like this image (not my photo):



The first ceremony was mostly emotional, not a lot of visions. A necessary step in order to get rid of some baggage, so there was a lot of crying and vomiting... in fact I vomited in all seven ceremonies (two of which I vomited air). There was a painting at the site I was at that represent the general mood of the general visions one can have, although it is of course completely individual and impossible to fully document. But I post it below for those who have not had these kinds of experiences before:



The eyes are, for me, very common. Always appearing everywhere. As are beings. The Shamans call these the Plant Doctors... and they are there to heal you. But they can be pretty intense when they get to work.

In my second ceremony I broke through to what I call "the other side". I vomited heavily, even bile I think, and I felt an extreme nausea as I was passing over. All around me colors were buzzing and the vastness of the realm I was in felt utterly overpowering. Almost as if it was too big for my brain to handle. Earlier that day I had talked to a guy about fear claiming I had none... I think Mother Ayahuasca heard me because she gave me the greatest fear any can have that same night (as if to prove a point). She is funny that way.

I felt I was loosing my sanity. I was so deep into this other world I wasn't sure I would get back if I gave in to it (giving in to it is what one is supposed to do, resisting makes it worse). Easier said than done. I felt my heart, and I could not detect a heart-beat. My thoughts started to become looped and I began to experience what hell would be like; to be lost forever in ones own insanity. Beings surrounded me, they came closer. Alien-like creatures. They were there regardless if my eyes were open or closed.

The ceremonies work in such a way that the Shamans go around singing to all the participants one at a time, when they do this they can generate different physical or visual states... things necessary for the healing process, but they also help to ground the person being initiated/healed. At this point in my experience it was quite a long time till it was my turn, and I felt I could not take the wait... I would loose it for sure. Add to this the fact that I began to suspect I had not only crossed over to the other side, but I had in fact died. I was dead!

There are some sitters (there to help people go to the toilet etc.) and I called out for help. She came over. I asked her to reassure me that I was in fact still alive. As it happened I was. A couple more came over to assist me. They told me I have to give in to it. I could only reply: "It's too much!"

I told them to inform me when the Shaman was by my bed because I could not see "reality". At this time I was positioned in the opposite direction of where the Shaman would appear. I was told that Shaman was already waiting for me; it was Rosita (and I knew it was). I had already created some sort of bond with her from my previous visit. Rosita is a hard rock, a strong powerful Maestra! I slowly turned around and crawled (for ages it seemed) over to her, crashing down with my head into her lap. She placed her hand on my head and began to sing.


Rosita.

She rubbed some pussanga (a sort of scented elixir) on my hands telling me to smell it. The fear died. My brain became focused. I felt I was becoming a man (an adult). Anger, cannabis and other things negative became irrelevant to me. I was beyond it all. I saw myself as one of the Shipibo. As a native. I had to go live with them. Give up everything and become one of the indigenous! To serve and protect the wild. Just like Jake in Avatar, LOL!

The third ceremony was even more intense and it fell around the time of the full moon. Perhaps why the lunacy came back, this time even stronger than the night before. I knew that love is the only way forward in life. The only path worth walking. Neither hate nor anger does any good, still I could not find a way to do this. For me, having been angry at the insanity of the world my whole life, it is a difficult step. I am also an intellectual and I could not get my mind to stop buzzing.

I saw the never-ending cycles of death and re-birth, the soul forever lost within the mind, no peace, no release, no truth. I became deeply scared. Is this what is waiting for us when we die: insanity for all infinity. I stumbled outside. I needed to get away, from the Shamans, from the Icaros. I had to be alone. I felt I had ruined my life. The despair I had seen killed any optimism I had, and it put the fear of death in me yet again, because as soon as death comes I will re-enter the realm of intellectual limbo. My search for truth would never be fulfilled.

I sat on a wooden bench, in the moonlight. The rainforest was calm and beautiful. Suddenly someone came walking through it. The noise this person made somehow made me think it was an animal. I looked in its direction and for a moment I thought I saw a jaguar. A real one, and it frightened me. In the weak state I was in I would be eaten for sure. My heart took an extra beat, and then I calmed down when I realized it was just someone passing by.

I went back inside and lied down on my bed. I didn't think the Shamans would come and sing for me again, I thought they had finished with me or that I had missed them being outside. But suddenly one appeared by my bed. I sat up to face the Icaros and for the first time during the whole night I felt I could sync into the singing. For some reason I recalled my jaguar dream, and then I recalled the imagined jaguar encounter only moments before. Suddenly, in the flash of a moment, I had an epiphany. Love is the way, the Jaguar is the key!

I felt so strong and powerful. I was filled with life and confidence. Any sign of insanity vanished in a moment. There was nothing to fear, not even in death, if the path of love is travelled and the only way, for me, to walk this path is to invoke the jaguar within. "Thank you, thank you!" I kept repeating. Grateful that I had not ruined my life, my optimism... the answer had come at the very end of the night and I felt so relieved.

"Sacred Jaguar teach me...
To wear my power lightly,
To walk with impeccability,
To approach life with compassion,
And to live up to the integrity of
my human potential."

- from Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams & David Carson

Even though things felt like they were moving forward I was a bit apprehensive. The insanity I had experienced scared me, and I did not want to go through with it again regardless of the fact that I should invoke the jaguar within (which for me means integrity, a rarity these days).

I walked over to the male Shamans, the Maestros, house for a little consultation.


Elias.


Wilder (not sure about the spelling).

I told them about my journey and about my problems with insanity. Elias was at the time resting in his hammock and his reply, to my very long outline, was only one simple word: corazón (heart)!

[Awani]

The next ceremony was pretty uneventful and calm. I focused on thinking with my heart throughout the whole night and it worked. I was shown that I was going in the right direction.


Maria, Ida and Rosita about to perform a very nice floral bath that we had on an almost daily basis.

The fifth ceremony was very similar to the one before it, the main difference was that I fell asleep before the Ayahuasca took hold and I kind of woke up into it. A green fluid grid system within my mind populated by mischievous kid-like beings waving at me, jumping out here and there. Like the night before I was also seeing what I call "the mushroom world", a sort of Avatar-jungle, Super Mario Bros, Tolkien forest kind of place... very beautiful to see, but impossible to explain.


Ida.


Maria.

I no longer had Rosita as the Shaman I was most connected too, I had now grown out of the need for her. Like a child moving away from the mother. Instead it was Laura... the Love Shaman as I see her.


Laura.

The sixth ceremony was a Love Trip. Love for everything and everyone, even enemies. Pure love and compassion came now easily for me, and it was an immensely powerful state to be in. So powerful that it completely impressed me. I even saw something I did not expect... I saw my future child (and I had never really considered having one).


The Maestro Elias cutting some medicine of a tree.

The last, and seventh, ceremony came on strong. The effects of the ayahuasca came in sync with a heavy rainstorm. The Shamans were completing the work giving us all protective Arcanas (as they call them) to shield us from anything "bad" when we re-enter society. I vomited heavily and I could feel how I finally got out a parasite from my stomach that I have had since I went to Africa many years ago. I could feel the creature crawl out of me. I can still to this day feel the difference in my stomach.

There was also a brief moment when I left the person I am in reality, and I became my higher self and I was speaking to the physical me. A kind of schizophrenic episode showing the true self high above myself.

Earlier that day we got a piece of Ayahuasca wood as a charm that the Shamans had "blessed". I took it out during the ceremony and I held it in my hands in order to charge it further... mainly to see what would happen. When I did so a unicorn appeared spewing a rainbow river out of its mouth, through the little piece of Ayahuasca wood in my hand.


A perfect ending to my seven ceremonies!

That is all I have to say about my second trip to the wonderful Shipibo Shamans in the Amazon... and as always I write this more for myself than any other... and of course there is a lot more to tell, but I don't intend to get into deeply private matters here. Let's just say that I am not the same as I was before, even if the difference is not massive it is yet another step closer to complete Buddha-hood! LOL!

It is alchemy in its essence: transmutation and transformation!

[rogerc]

Thanks for sharing your experience once again.....sounds pretty intense.

I told them about my journey and about my problems with insanity. Elias was at the time resting in his hammock and his reply, to my very long outline, was only one simple word: corazón (heart)!

I focused on thinking with my heart throughout the whole night and it worked. I was shown that I was going in the right direction.

This reminds me of a debate we had a while back about the use of the heart versus the mind in the interpretation of alchemy.