Saturday, April 29, 2017

[Machu Picchu]: Thoughts post Ayahuasca experience

Conversations with Mother Ayahuasca

Ayahuasca is basically a medicinal plant with purgative and hallucinogen properties. It refers to two plants - Ayahuasca and Chacruna. The Shaman uses stones to grind them and boil them for hours. It becomes a thick brown liquid.

What happens is it opens up your energies to a higher state of consciousness. A certain universal energy that gives you access to all knowledge. You essentially receive responses - not through a voice but as experience.

The Peruvians refer to the plant as Mother Ayahuasca - rightly so.

For example, I may ask you how it feels when the sun shines on your face. You may not be able to describe it. But you know through direct experience how it feels when the sun shines. You just simply know. Similarly, you receive responses with Mother Ayahuasca.

Shaman Ismael and Sophie assisted. Limis (a 58 year old singer from Latvia) was along with me. The Shaman also consumes Ayahuasca with you so that he can be connected.

This ancient Andean concoction triggers emotions, memories where disturbing experiences are stored. Blocks are removed. May be certain neural pathways get rewired. It makes you confront those fears that have been pushed away under the rug. Small and big. Then it purges those and makes you view everything differently. Therefore cleanses you.

The process is extremely difficult. Requires fasting for 24 hours and abstaining from alcohol, chocolate etc. for weeks. You will need commitment from the heart and trust to surrender to a higher consciousness.

*
It took more than an hour before I could feel anything. The Shaman began singing. These are ancient sounds that create many vibrations in the body and mind.


When I first heard that he would be singing, I found it odd wondering about the purpose. But the sounds are very powerful. Vibrating your organs, your body. It also helps in purging the toxins out. 

Taking it out.

There are two pathways where it comes out. By vomiting. By diarrheal excretions.

In the beginning, I felt nauseous and the urge to vomit but not much would come out. Then when it began, it just came out. Every time I puked, I could feel it taking out something. Some block. When a disturbing thought or memory surfaced, I would puke. It took out that block inside.

The physical, emotional, chemical, psychological phenomena became one. Why do we think it’s any different?

After the initial vomiting, I had a deeply psychedelic experience. Your heart and energies open up to a vast universal energy. It’s almost like there’s a connection that gets established to wide and open consciousness - the whole - the entire thing.

It gives you access to all knowledge. You receive answers to any question you have. From the smallest of the smallest to the largest of the largest. When you receive, you receive it experientially. Imagine you open a window from your room to an open field. You can see everything there is. You can choose to look at specific things - like say a certain flower or the entire thing. All questions and all answers exist in the open field.

During that period I asked many questions to Mother Ayahuasca.

I asked if there was life beyond earth. The answer I received was that life exists everywhere. And it’s all interconnected and woven intricately. That’s why everything is important. Every small thing (every memory, episode, interaction, person, plant, animal) has a place. What we do affects the whole. What happens in the whole affects us.

I asked about the purpose of life. The answer I received was to give comfort and take care of others. Make the lives of others’ easier. To not hesitate from speaking the larger truth. To share with others and to wake them up. To purify and purify, clean and clean society.

I asked about the company and its growth. The answer I received was...that it’s already growing and to allow it to grow. To keep doing. To not limit our doing to only certain areas but expand in all areas. To create things and means that comforts people (not conveniences but comfort like solace). The pointlessness of money. Whatever you take, the earth takes back anyways in form or the other. To use the company as a tool to take care of others.

I asked why we do what we do (the things that aren’t conducive). The answer I received was... because we forget. We forget our true nature. Who we are. How we are connected. With everything. Every small thing.

I also received experiential insight into how disease forms. I saw a yellowish bile (or felt it) in a dark tunnel. It might’ve been while vomiting out. When something held back comes out. The thing is we don't let things come out. Our emotions, our memories, our negative experiences, our guilt...we are unable to let them go. These accumulate over time. At all points of time, our body carries both good and bad. Toxins reside all the time. Not all is excreted. The body doesn’t differentiate between physical and psychological - it’s all the same for it. Both states are interchangeable. A bad thought is the same as bad food or drugs or the air we breath or something we drink - undistinguishable — either the body uses something, excretes what it doesn’t need or simply stores. So it stores. 
Whatever our mind holds back inside (including deep rooted memories) - it holds without letting it go. When these are harmful (something that causes a negative feeling versus a pleasant feeling), they sometimes manifest physically. Cancers or tumors. Pains. Could be any kind of physical discomfort. When the body ages or weakens in strength, the disease takes over.

This vision became so clear that I kept saying of course, of course and it’s obvious. The ancients lived in harmony with nature. Thousands and thousands of generations lived normally and quite simply. The body whether it’s a human or plant or animal lives its time and naturally gives away, becomes part of earth (Pachamama). Our remains are utilized for the growth of others via plants and animals. That’s the natural process. It’s how it’s always been.

When the chemical balance is altered (outside or within) that’s when the problems begin. It could be infectious diseases that come in close proximity to animals. Livestock has already been altered by farmers for hundreds of years. Therefore our food. In the present times, it’s chronic disease - that might very well be our body’s inability to deal with a changing chemical balance. Greater stress.

In medicine and our research, our focus is mainly outward-in. We are focusing on the outward. We focus on specializations. We obsess about information. But it’s pointless. The source is somewhere else. Deeper. That goes unaddressed. Inside-out. These thoughts came to me.

An old Inca or Quechua man kept coming in my vision. A man with dark brown skin, somewhat thin, old, with native features. His presence offered comfort through the process. That he just stayed or was there. I might have even wanted to be like him. To just be.

It also occurred to me that our notions of lion being the king of the jungle and such are flawed. The lion or any other animal doesn’t think of itself as a king or leader. It simply lives. Neither do other animals think of the lion as such. These are our stories that we extend beyond ourselves.

Sophie kept tapping my back with a large blackish feather of a condor. When she mentioned about it in the beginning before the process began, I didn’t think much of it.

During the process when she kept doing it, it offered comfort and help the passing of the vomit - it helped it come out.

I had the vision of a condor. With large black wings. I became the condor. That vision somehow gave me strength. A overarching theme of taking responsibility for all kept occurring. To take care of everyone.

I asked about meat. The response I received was that it’s important to know where food is coming from, how it comes.

At one point, the hallucinations seemed to have taken over. Just kept going somewhere. I realized I kept on rubbing my head and shoulders against the wall. At that point, I heard the Shaman say via Sophie to make me breathe three times. I did. It brought me back.

He said, “Pra-vin” (like the Peruvians call me - the v sounds like w sounds like b).

“Hmm...Hmmm,” he said. It’s a very typical Quechuan way of saying. I had first noticed Jois (our trek guide) saying it. It means many things. Like here we are now...or so that’s that or we both understand where we are or we’ve understood each other.

That you can only understand after you spend some time here. “Hmm...hmmm,” I repeated.
He laughed. I laughed.


“Viva Peru!” He said. Yes indeed. “Viva Peru!” I repeated.



He didn’t exactly say it but I could get it. That I had to come all the way here to cleanse. And how.
By then the process had become clear. I was purging via vomit or by going to toilet.

And everything that surfaced had to be purged. Taken out. Earlier Sophie had instructed us to be on all fours while vomiting into the bucket that was left next to us. Like a dog. It helps.

So there I was on all fours. The bucket looked like a dark abyss. I would vomit into it. I would even say, “Arre come out!” I also started speaking in Telugu.

I heard Sophie laughing softly.

In the toilet, I would thank what exited. For leaving me. I kept saying good, good, good.

After I was done with the toilet, Sophie would wait with a towel outside. Every single time I got scared of her. She looked like a ghost in the darkness. I could never see her features. I knew it was her but still was terrified of going closer. How the mind plays games.

Later during the process the Shaman said that there was great energy amongst Limis (the Latvian singer who was also there in the room with me) and me. It was actually a kind of 3-way energy. He said Limis was my brother.

Limis said, you look like me. Next morning we held hands while leaving. He was in bodily pain. So that was that. Hmm...hmmm. 

Resources: NCBI Study: The Therapeutic Potentials of Ayahuasca: Possible Effects against Various Diseases of CivilizationScientific American: Ayahuasca Psychedelic Tested for DepressionQuartz: The ayahuasca ceremony is going under the scientific-method microscopePeru Shamans (where I went).

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