Ayahuasca Shamans Song

As I said earlier, the ayahuasca journey is guided by the music and in the second part of this video from Other Worlds documentary you can hear a beautiful piece of shamanic music.

Ayahuasca day-after and Psilocybin experience

After the ayahuasca session I was rather confused, I knew that something important had happened but I couldn’t quite grasp it. We said good bye to the nice folks from Santo Daime and being rather far away from the hotel and dizzy, we decided to sleep in the car in the sleeping bags. And after six hours of sleep I woke up at 7 am and I realized that from that morning on I won’t have the same perspective on life as before. I was full of energy, fresh even if the conditions were rather uncomfortable. Everything was perfect in the outside world, like the first day of the creation, the light had a different texture, the sounds had a different quality. Of course, this was just a reflection of the inside world. I had a clear intuition that somehow I passed on to another level in evolution but I couldn’t explain it coherently. It was the first day I could remember when I felt at home in this world, me, who for the entire life felt that I don’t belong anywhere, all of a sudden I belong everywhere. There was joy and peace and the inner voice was silent and content.

Having some psilocybin shrooms with me, I decided it would be a good day to try those as well. The best option available was to get in the tent we were carrying with us inside a camping, having no wilderness I had to be happy with a tamed version of the nature. After a while I started to feel the vibrations, which I had no idea what they were at the time, felt like my skull was cut open with a sharp diamond and felt a pressure where I was supposing my third eye was. My friend felt like going for a walk and I felt like staying in the sleeping bag and preparing to be launched on the orbit. I was close to it, and probably it would have been an outer body experience if it wouldn’t been the ego too eager to have the experience. And after it was sure that the launch failed, a tricky fight in the form of a dialog started between what I perceive to be the ego and the self.

The ego was carrying all this luggage of fears and anxieties and uncertainty and the self was just laughing in it’s face. And this process kept on going for hours with me rolling on the floor of the tent laughing and laughing and getting scared of the visuals and sounds and then laughing even harder than before because of the fear and laughing while being scared. In the end, my stomach was hurting because of too much laughter and the ego was somehow humbled and I don’t like the word ‘destroyed’, so I’ll just use ‘integrated’. I had the best laughing session of my life and it was all caused by me and my silly little thoughts.

Because this is what the psilocybin is doing, is curing you but in a different way. If ayahuasca was a nurturing mother, then psilocybin was a witty cousin making everything seem less important and serious: “So what, if you experienced God last night. You think you are the first? You think you’re experiencing him only when you add some ayahuasca in the system? You’re experiencing God all the time, just open your eyes and heart. You’re a funny fellow. Hahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahaha. You’re making me laugh. Tell me more. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha”

Alex Gray on Ayahuasca

Because we’re still on the ayahuasca subject, let’s hear what the visionary artist has to say about his humbling experience with this brew

Ayahuasca and Santo Daime Church – part III

What follows next is my very own and private experience. If you never tried ayahuasca, it’s most likely that your experience will be totally different. If you already experienced ayahuasca I expect that your trip was different. But there might be some common elements and if you have something to add to my story, I’d be happy to have a dialog on this subject.

Now, before the ritual to begin I had a chat with some of the fellows there and one of them mentioned something about angels and divine beings, and I tried to explain to him that it was probably just a psychological symbol, culturally generated and garnished that theory with other rational explanations that I had in my pocket ready to pull out at that time. And after probably one hour or so I was seeing something I identified as angels flying up and down through in the church, through a pillar of fire that was similar to Jacob’s Ladder. Of course my mind tried to convince me that is was an induced hallucination but that wouldn’t explain the energy I was feeling coming from them and from the center of the hall. My intuition was saying that the ritual I was part of was very beneficial to all the people involved and I totally seized control over the situation.

And then the vision changed.

I felt like a baby and all around me was a immense, protective, feminine entity that was nurturing me, healing me and communicating that there is nothing to fear. I had this feeling that the earth is a kinder garden and we’re here to learn and we’re being watched by our ‘parents’ so nothing really bad can happen. And this new sensation filled my entire body and I saw that all of us in that church were beings of light, made completely out of light and our brightness was magnificent and beautiful. And this light was nothing else then love and the songs we were singing there were songs of gratitude for being alive. And each one of us had a specific place in that choir, no two voices alike and each one of us were special and important. And I thought that the same is true for our positions in the world where we just have to ‘sing our song’ with our own voice, that being to be who we are and to do what only each one of us can do. And then I understood that not only by singing I can manifest my gratitude and I started to project love and compassion and the more love and compassion I was sending away, the more was coming back to me. And I felt the connection with all the people around me, a connection made out of energy wires.

And then the vision changed and it went to the shamanic stage.

I felt how my body was being remodeled, like I was a toy and the members and head were readjusted and also the same thing happened with the mind which was reshaped in a similar way we play with Rubik cubes. But everything happened in the same time very gentle without any pain or discomfort with reassurances before each stage from the entity that was The Godess, or The Mother or Gaia or whatever you want to call it. And with me totally letting go, the body started to put itself in different yoga asanas and the energy doing that was impossible to control or fight against. And I felt an even more powerful energy coming from the center of the hall and it was like a cold fire, warming me and cooling me in the same time. And I understood the importance of the group that had the role of focusing more energies into a single ray, like a laser that was penetrating beneath the veils of common reality.

And I felt complete.

Ayahuasca experience at Chimbre

This guy’s ayahuasca experience was one of the videos that convinced me that I need to do it as well because my soul wants it.

Ayahuasca and Santo Daime Church – part II

After a rather complicated trip I arrived at the day of the ceremony at the designated place. The first guy I met in the parking lot of the church was dressed in white, a thing I omitted to do, and beside that he was wearing a peaceful smile on his face. I got a good feeling from him and most of my initial anxieties went away. Together with a good friend of mine I entered the church, registered, finished the 5 minutes crash course on consuming ayahuasca which emphasized that I should not cross my arms or legs in order to keep the energy flowing and that I should do what everybody else is doing. And the last reminder of all: “Just let go and flow with the experience“.

Since I went all the way to there and I felt from the beginning that the experience was going to be beneficial, that was exactly what I planned to do. A guy who was responsible with the guests indicated on which seats we were supposed to sit and in short time everybody gathered in the church. In the center there was a small altar and around it some of the guys playing guitar and other instruments that looked like maracas to me. The women were on the other side of the wall and we on this other side. This separation was supposed to keep the feminine and masculine energies unmixed.

Then the singing started and most of the people knew the lyrics which were in Portuguese (Santo Daime has the point of origin in Brazil). After about 30 minutes of singing we aligned in a specific order next to the main altar where a member was serving small glasses with ayahuasca. I got mine, drank it all in one zip and had the first pleasant surprise of the taste not being so awful as I imagined it. Then I went back to my place and tried to empty my mind and concentrate on what I am experiencing. A while passed with me being in this state and nothing happened so I started to get the feeling that I won’t get affected by the substance for some reason. Then I closed my eyes.

Everything changed. And it’s in continuous change ever since. A green pathway appeared before my closed eyes inviting me to followed it, so I went on the green brick road deeper into my consciousness. What happened there was outside regular time and it has no epic line. It was like a lucid dream, from which I could get out every time I wanted by opening my eyes and which was continuing when I was closing them again. The story is not important here but the feelings and emotions I went through in those hours, the insights and the intuitions that downloaded/ emerged into my conscious mind.

I’ll try to encompass the experience briefly in the next episode.

Music for the soul: Karunesh – Returning to Now

Now. This sounds like the soul waking up and finding its way home. Karunesh – Returning to Now.

Ayahuasca and Santo Daime Church – part I

Now. My experience involve psychedelics but I am not a regular user. I’ve had less than 10 experiences with psychedelics which makes me feel like a newbie in the field. I do not wish to have them in my lifestyle and I can live comfortably with the idea that I might never try them again. Still, I’m interested in the works of Alan Watts, Terence McKenna and Stanislav Grof which are psychedelics related.

With these information in mind, let’s proceed to my ayahuasca experience.

One of my closest friends has a motto: “Never say no to drugs”. I am a little more selective here and I would only pick certain substances in certain sets and only in safe settings. But I have to agree with him, from my experiences so far, each trip facilitated by psychedelics had been an opportunity for my growth and I came back with more questions and interested in areas of knowledge that were totally out of my list of curiosities. If we are to listen to Terence McKenna, this is a good pointer that the experience was ‘right’.

My curiosity for ayahuasca started with my first LSD trip, when I watched some short videos on youtube about it, being still in the modified state of consciousness caused by LSD. From that day, I started to gather information and found out it has a lot of curative properties, mostly for issues of the psychic and emotional blockages. I would define my state at that time as ‘not feeling comfortable in my own skin’.  With that in mind I started to search for a place on earth where I could experience the substance in legal parameters. Of course there was the South American option, but that was too far away and too expensive. Then I found out about Santo Daime Church, did some more research and contacted them. From the few emails we exchanged I got a good feeling about them, so I planned a trip to join them in one of the ‘Cura’ sessions and followed their indications: for one week before I abstained from alcohol, sex, drugs and specific aliments. Why? The MAOI inhibitor in the ayahuasca (more details can be found on wiki) might react really bad with other substances we usually consume. Also, the abstinence from sex part keeps your energies together, thing I knew since adolescence but always ignored.

More to come in the next episode.

The return of the prodigal son

It’s been a while since the last time I wrote here. Mostly because I’ve been busy but also because I was not quite sure the experiences I am trying to describe here have any meaning to others, or if they are helping anybody to understand reality better. It’s just a story, a subjective one, happening inside my psyche, why should somebody else bother to read it? English is not my native language and style is mostly lacking. But I’ve read another story last night that inspired me to continue. Even if one being gets any benefit from this blog, than I can consider this part of the job being done. The more, the merrier. I’m not promising to write daily, or even weekly, but time permits, I will try to continue to put down in words the experiences that lead me to the present moment.

Hoffman’s Potion: LSD Documentary

If you don’t want to spend more hours to read  a book (or three) about LSD, then this documentary is the best way to find out the basics about LSD.