Lessons From An Ayahuasca Ceremony

As the medicine I have come to call Mother Ayahuasca takes me, I become instantly aware that I am not in the same space I was in a second ago. I am now 25 ceremonies into this advanced degree in shadow, depth, body, mind, and soul. Every lesson I can hold onto and integrate has profoundly shifted how I navigate my world. It has softened my eyes to be open to noticing different ways of seeing everything. When you change how you show up for things, the things you show up for change.

I came to medicine through a two-decade journey of healing. It led me to work with some of the best in the field. I spent 10 years working for and learning under Tony Robbins. He taught me to always work with the best, get as much time practicing my craft as possible, and immerse myself whenever possible. So I moved to Florida and have worked closely with Ayahuasca for the past five years. Each ceremony is an 8-hour crash course in unlearning, relearning, and realigning. Imagine having someone in your head that you couldn’t lie to. Someone who knew you better than you knew yourself. This person knew what you knew, how you felt, where you hid, and what you lied to yourself about. She always looks to help you understand whatever was leading you to suffer in life. She knew what you were willing to accept, what you weren’t ready to. Through this unraveling, she gives me the gift of insight. Each ceremony has built off the next. No two ceremonies are the same. This ceremony was no different. 

After I drink the vile-tasting tea, I begin a process I have developed over the years to start my descent. I consciously connect with all of my tribe, look them in my mind’s eye and hug them—my everyone. I give my youngest a hug, then next, then family, then outer tribe, unfriendlies, then strangers, then… By the time I am done, I have spiraled out to the Universe. Then the medicine starts to make my body tingle. I grab my bucket and purge. This is the only purge I can recall in this particular ceremony. Some black substance projectiles out. It sounds like I’m drowning but in reverse.  Those who held space for my journey reported I purged violently through the powerful ceremony for hours.

There was a full-on thunderstorm that night. I would look out the doors to the cabin we call Lotus, and the sky would light up a blinding white. I vaguely remember what looked like an outline of the pyramids. Then BOOM!! The ground would shake when the thunder rolled. Energy so thick I could feel myself moving through it. It feels as though we are all in the same boat, fighting a great battle that even Mother Earth is supporting with the raw energy of the storm. I started to see a pattern in the way things formed. Somehow being shown behind the curtain to creating itself…. Another flash, as if we had broken outside the very laws of reality…. Then my lessons begin.

The Lessons Begin

Mother teaches me that the mind is made up of algorithms, layers, and layers of algorithms. Everything you experience is just a best guess. “If this is true, that must be what is going on.” That guess is based on countless equations, all best guesses—layers of stories and best guesses one on top of the other. The older the story, the less I question its validity. Then I see as my mind keeps, alters, and changes the intensity of all kinds of puzzle pieces. All designed to give me an experience. All based on the blueprint of meaning I have inside of me. Now I see the uselessness of looking for confirmation outside of myself. Anything outside of myself isn’t confirmation; it’s creation. The only thing it will confirm is more of the same. No matter how hard you look, you will rarely, if ever, find the author’s name somewhere in the story. Looking for confirmation in creation is the same. 

Notice the algorithm in you that result in looking for the answer to show itself in creation. (Maybe this will make me good enough, happy, and feel loved) Notice how you yearn for that answer. You must permit yourself to see how you are using your relationships. To see the utility your mind is trying to make out of them.

· "Will this make me happy?" 

· "Will this make me stop hurting?" 

· "Is This Love?" 

· "Will this make me finally feel love?"

Now notice how not getting that answer makes you feel. The new relationship didn’t fix it. The new car didn’t solve it. Your bigger bank account feels excellent, but you still feel like an orphan, like you aren’t good enough, which may have been what you were trying to fix when hunting for the big bank account. Notice how when it doesn’t fix the feeling, it just reconfirms that you are broken/orphan/lost/sick. Whatever the label is. See the pattern. 

Over time, the stories we use to define our world become the prison we become trapped in. Then we become like vampires sucking the life out of everything and everyone around us. We become a living receptor for Wetiko. I could see how my programming had me looking for God in the external world's goods, actions, and results. Constantly feeling disappointed, unconsciously yearning, never satisfied. I see now how making more money made it worse. This is the great darkness that the world has found itself in. Unconsciously living out stories and patterns of suffering. “Looking for love in all the wrong places.”

Faith is the primary ingredient for creation.

Next came the lesson of faith. Until I trust something else is possible, I am trapped using suffering to navigate life. Until I become willing to believe it is there, I will forever be blind to it. I get to choose. That choice begins with the experiences I am cultivating. If I use my lowest vibration point to navigate, I can never get too far away from that suffering. Because unconsciously, I can only develop meaning that is in relation to that suffering. Because I can only build from what I already “know.” Like being trapped in front of a funhouse mirror, I only see the meaning I create. But when I don’t look past the material world, I can only make meaning out of what I see.  Mother shows me how I invert reality and project shadow on the world. She shows me if I open up my mind, I can take in new meaning. I see that creating belief feels like jumping across a deep and dangerous divide. I learn belief is like a marriage. It is a choice. Belief and love somehow seem related. They both create attraction, drawing everything to me to make the experience for me based on the meaning created. So I see that love is also a choice.

There is a space between what we can see and the blueprint of inspiration we receive when we create something new. That space is the skin of creation. That space where I tell myself something isn’t possible. That I’m too broken, too not good enough. JUST STOP; YOU WILL FAIL!!! Like a wall that we build to protect ourselves from the sting of rejection. The wall isn’t something you can see. It’s felt. Your throat clenches when it is time to speak your truth. You find yourself frozen when you know it is time to act. That, Dark night of the soul…. Shadow.

Because the mind is programmed to survive, and survival is tied to comfort. Comfort is tied to ease. My mind craves efficiency. One of its core attributes. It craves the easy answer. Less thought, quicker response. Then, a spark, an idea presents itself that inspires me enough to step past the invisible barrier of fear and doubt. Can you imagine an airplane afraid its wings wouldn’t catch air? Or a tree that was stressed out because it didn’t know if it would get enough Sun? Or that it wouldn’t know how to convert sunlight into energy? No, none of that ever happens. I become aware of a certainty that I can leap… I open my mind and suddenly feel a connection to my wife, my children, and my world that I didn’t know was possible. Like learning, there is a second floor to a house you have lived in your whole life. I become open to a higher level of knowledge and creation. It’s like coming home and being on vacation at the same time. I now understand that this is the impact of faith—the ability to plug into an invisible resource that is all around me.

It is this faith that makes me the hand of God. The ability to step outside my programming. The moment when it’s time to climb over the wall and jump into the void. I stretch….Faith, like fear, is also felt but at a higher vibration. It’s trusting the wind will grab your wings. Understanding that I have all the sunlight I need, I will know how to convert it when it comes. Without faith, I am frozen in the material. I’m forced to try and meet my needs in a world built around scarcity. I am forced to keep my feet on the ground. Now I see the reason for it all. In the grand scheme of things, requiring a jump is necessary. I now see that God put that there to keep me from falling. Like a baby gate or when our parents used to put things out of our reach. The space that I must jump in is the lock. My faith is the key.

Faith brings me the insight to understand that everything out there had to come from in here. There is nowhere else. That makes the space in our minds greater than anything in the material world. Isn’t it true that more can go wrong in your head than could ever actually go wrong? The Principle of Polarity then also says that there must be more things that can go right. I notice now how limited my perception is to what could go right… Test it yourself; the same issue?

Most of my experience in life has been closed off. And for much of my life, the areas I could barely see through were the most important. Freedom was something I struggled to get enough of in my life because I had a shadow of feeling trapped in the basement. This led to the echo of addiction. Yet another place where I stuck myself in the basement. So, I got good using what little I could access…. Closed off, shut down, programmed to guard against life’s most important questions.

Like a little boy watching a horror movie, I was forever covering my eyes to the freedom around me and could only experience where I felt confined. I have gotten masterful at using what little slipped through. But that meant my whole life had been weighed against the worst part of my life. My least wanted experience. Life then becomes forever weighed against survival. But living in a nightmare my whole life, being triggered my entire life meant that I had no idea what great meant. I would be unable even to experience it.

Superpowers come from those things that trauma has us shielding our eyes from. We peek through cracks between our fingers…. Searching for what we want, that sacred thing… but are most afraid to reach for. We learn to do amazing things with that limited resource… Driven by the sheer yearning for but resisting the terrorizing fear of not being worthy of it. A person who is rich in resources risks being wasteful of that resource. But someone lacking will often develop a level of creativity that only appears when necessity presents itself.

Consciousness is choranaptyxic. Choranaptyxic refers to the ability of a magical creature to change its size to fit the available space. Like the snake-like bird known as the Occamy in Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them. If there is a thimble, the creature takes on the size and shape to fit in a thimble. If there is a room, the beast can expand to take the size of the entire room. Your consciousness is like that bird. Consciousness, like water, will take the form of whatever container you put it in. Isn’t it true when you are angry at someone, and all you can think about is how angry they make you? If you focus on problems, that’s all your mind will see. Your consciousness becomes rooted in problem-focused thinking. “PROBLEMS, PROBLEMS EVERYWHERE AND NOT A SOLUTION WILL YOU SEE!”… You ever been stuck in problem-based thinking? Now add all the various scenarios the mind runs, all focused on the negative. Most of them are horror flicks. Because this is how the current version of you has been programmed. See the waste in the resource…. We must be wealthy in this resource.

The Sacred Father Mother

Then I noticed a sacred masculine and a sacred feminine below it all. Like the positive and negative current. Like the jack to electricity or maybe the beginning of the river of the Story of Steven. Not masculine and feminine, but Mother and Father. Yes, there was this refined version of the sacred Mother and Father… And mother was there to point me back to me. Mother unconsciously and consciously taught me where to find that holy thing I sought. I saw how my understanding of my mother was the beginning of my understanding of what was possible and where I go to get it. If her algorithm was off, I saw it would have me looking for that sacred thing outside. Like a split in the line or fray in the cable. She was the source of the energy that flowed through me. Father energy is the “get it done.” Father is the heel that bruises. He is the movement, impact, the big bang.

My father suffered from and never really recovered from PTSD while in Vietnam. He abandoned us for fear that he would do more harm than good. I saw how I did that same thing to my children. Specifically my oldest daughter. More sorrow. More pain all due to disconnection. I now know how that disconnection caused me to look to other men to plug me into this lost connection. I understand why I would sometimes lose my power around other powerful men.

Below are some of my integration that will be taken from this journey. Because awareness without integration is a waste of insight for me, some of this is daily work. Some of it is cultivation work. All of it will help wake me up. As I continue to review, I will continue to receive downloads. Grateful for the path that has been presented to me.

Integration so far. 

To consciously stretch my mind to see more of what could go right. The expected result is similar to other exercises used. One-year commitment should cultivate results. 

Watch for how the mother/father archetype shows up in my world.

Use the fear of not being good enough as a reference point to faith. See this is a sign that I am stretching—studying the space between known and unknown for signs of inspiration and intuition.

Drill farther down into my wants. Notice algorithms that point me out instead of in.