Account of an Ayahuasca Ceremony

Recently I attended a workshop in London led by a Shaman named Juan who is from Peru. He currently lives in the central hills of Mexico and frequently travels around the globe teaching about the Shamanic traditions and the way in which they honor and worship mother earth and the ‘father’ which is the personification of the spirit world. We were to be given a psychoactive medicine previously reserved only for the priests and high practitioners of the Shamanic traditions. In a small room, eight of us sat wide-eyed and apprehensive listening to him talk.

After a few hours of teachings from Juan we were given a dose of Ayahuaska; a powerful root that grows wild in central and South America, which is concentrated into an infusion liquid form so that it can be drunk as a medicine. The Ayahuaska is said to have properties that allow the user to enter into the spirit realm, thereby leaving behind the material world of the senses, the body and the mind.

We took the medicine at 2.50 PM and after an hour of patient quiet we took another dose. As I lay back once again and waited for the effect of the drug to take hold of me I breathed deeply and tried to clear my mind of any expectations or pre-conceived ideas of what the forthcoming experience might entail. Having heard and read a number of accounts over the years it was difficult to enter the experience without expectation, which can so often lead to disappointment or disillusionment.

About twenty minutes later the effect of the Ayahuaska took hold of me in such an explosion of sensation that it was like stepping off a cliff when one expects to find solid ground. It was truly exhilarating and my whole body rushed intensely with the psychedelic effect of the drug, enhanced and guided by the fantastically sonorous music that pulsated through my being. My eyes were closed lightly as the kaleidoscope of technicoloured patterns and images danced and swirled in my visual cortex: a psychedelic disco of vibrant, morphing images. My face and body felt as if they were being pushed and twisted into new dimensions. Then I was flipping and flipping backwards through the ether whilst vivid mandalas evolved and transformed before my eyes. I lay back and enjoyed the experience, observing, surrendering and not resisting in the least, the experience was euphoric and I walked a fine line between exhilaration and an overwhelming onslaught of sensations.

As the initial rush of the drug peaked and leveled off, the psychedelic quality wore off slightly and I was able to think more lucidly of the teachings we had had that morning with Juan. He had told us to seek the heart of the heart, the spirit, that which transcends the ego. So I breathed deeply into my heart and affirmed my focus clearly on the heart. My memory of this part of the experience is blurry and I do not remember how long or to what extent I achieved that intention but I do remember being in a blissful state for some time.

I then remember becoming more aware of my body’s sensations and functions. I could feel that my body was part of me where before I had felt as if completely running free in either the spirit world or in my mind – I am not practiced enough to know which. I could feel that my feet were cold, although my mind reminded me that I was in a well heated room that I had in fact thought may have been too warm just before lying down to start the work. The blanket covering me felt thin and I couldn’t even be sure that it was even on me and had to check by moving my fingers slightly. I was sure I was cold and even if I wasn’t, I wanted to be in my sleeping bag, cocooned and unexposed.

I opened my eyes for the first time since starting the work and as I did so I felt a rush of anxiety. That I was in any way concerned with the external world felt to me at that time as some kind of failure but damn it, I was cold I told myself. As I opened my eyes to the Victorian cornice above me, it twisted and churned in a blurry haze and my eyes hurt, offended that they we forced to look outward into this material world of ceilings and sleeping bags. I sat up, unsure of myself, suddenly feeling very self-conscious, my head swimming and my body swaying as if it contained an active and powerful ocean. With some effort I craned my head to the left to see my sleeping bag stretched out alongside my mat on the floor. Any other time I would have easily and automatically unzipped it and climbed in without effort or concentration but that day, in that state, I looked at the shiny green length of material beside me and my heart sank as I realized there was no way on God’s fine earth that I would manage to navigate myself into the comfort of it. I saw my hoody next to me and in despair I threw it over my feet in one movement, covering my feet and my shins creating a body length covering that stretched from my yak wool blanket that covered my upper torso down to my shins. I noticed the water bottle beside me and felt the dry sticky interior of my mouth. I drank in huge gulps unaware and insensitive to the huge amount of water I was taking in. I had drunk about a pint and I lay back down in the hope of regaining the bliss state that I had experienced previously. But everything had changed, the seed of fear had been planted and now the battle was to commence on driving that seed from my mind, even as it sprouted, began to shoot, and the roots grew deeper and deeper, holding fast...

It was soon after this that it became clear to me that an Ayahuaska ceremony is a lot like daily life. We are constantly accosted by the ego; through our relationships, our emotions, our senses, our expectations and our fears. The difference with life and an Ayahuaska ceremony is that the later is an unnerving compression of the former. During the trip I found myself confronted with utter bliss and joy, followed very soon after by abject terror or intense sadness. We all fight these demons in our own ways in daily life, but in fact we usually avoid confronting them, instead reliving the experiences that they draw forth again and again.

During this part of my experience at the ceremony I knew there was no way to avoid these demons of ego. They had truly taken hold and with bitter vehemence were attempting to block me from re-entering the blissful realm of spirit that I had previously luxuriated in, instead pulling me back down to the realm of the mind and of the darkness it threw at me. The music had changed and the deep and throbbing auming and toning that filled the room and my psyche now felt menacing and deeply sinister. The visuals were as intense as before except now they were weird and unbeautiful. There were still patterns and mandalas but they were now made up of pink hunks of flesh or the twisted faces of unimaginably ugly monsters that I intuitively knew were unnamed aspects of my negative ego. Monsters so dark and destructive that they ruthlessly morphed and renewed themselves in a constant deluge that they should never be discovered, analysed or destroyed. This lasted a long time, though time was a truly inapplicable concept whilst in that state, minutes might have passed or hours, it mattered not.

The images that appeared to me, whilst shocking, did not frightening me and I understood that my ego was simply throwing all it had at me in a barrage of illusion. I was not buying into it and inside I was laughing to myself as the dark patterns, ghouls and monsters attempted to torment me. Once I returned to my body I realized that there were tears running from the corners of my eyes over my temples and I became sad. In fact I have never felt so alone and disconnected from the outer world. I was sad that there were so many demons within me, and that they persisted so vehemently. Again my ego was trying to hold onto the self-image that it held. It felt disappointed that I had so much work to do, so much further to go. After a long period of this torment I felt like giving up, I felt angry that I had been given the drug. The guy who handed me the medicine had said ‘have a good trip.’ I felt that I had failed, that I was having a ‘bad trip’ and I blamed myself.

Looking back, I felt sadness because I felt as if my heart had been broken. I had been shown love and had experienced the elation of it and then it was gone. Like a door had been shut and was now guarded by the most foul and hateful parts of my ego.

As I lay there, I realized there was no escape. Opening my eyes was painful, nauseating and all round unrewarding. The idea of leaving the room was not an option, not least because of the lack of mobility and the paranoia that gripped me when I interacted with the outer world. Also, I didn’t want to give up on the experience, the stubborn idealistic ego in me would stick it out to the grim death and try to regain that feeling of love I now knew was accessible. I thought to myself only I can heal myself, nothing external and certainly nobody else can do this for me. There was no way to ‘take my mind off it’ as it were. I wasn’t even sure if my mind had anything to do with the experience, was I in my mind or out of it? I am still not sure.

Thinking came in waves of clarity then complete confusion and it took all my concentration to complete a lucid thought. I realized that I still had this sense of duality, of good and bad and I desired so much to return to the sense of unity. I thought tactically, I thought of my other teaching, of what weapons I had to defeat this beast within me. I remembered the phrase we were advised to heed ‘let go, let go, let go.’ And almost as soon as I visualized these words the torment began to cease, the winds of my psyche changed and I was on the path to freedom. I breathed deeply into my lower dandien then into my heart. I placed my hands on my heart and allowed reiki to flow into it, painstakingly visualizing the symbols that usually came to me so naturally. I used all the tools I could muster to fight back the relentless onslaught and I remember the words of my friend and teacher ‘find a balance between effort and surrender.’ Was I resisting as were warned not to do? Or was I letting go as we were advised to do? I really didn’t know. I surrendered completely; I let go and the dark invasion ceased. Before long I was once again weeping, this time with joy, laughing at myself and my unstable mind.

I felt that the shadow had lifted and maybe that the effect of the drug may be wearing off. I listened to the music and it guided me to a place of absolute surrender and devotion. The energy of the bhanjans rang through my very being with exquisite clarity and awakened a well of love and compassion within my heart. The feeling of metta, of unconditional love, reconnected me with the hearts of the others in the room and I no longer felt isolated or self-conscious in fact I had images of such exquisite beauty that I felt my heart swelling and bursting forth with enough love to embrace the entire universe. I was singing and dancing within and part of me wanted to express it externally but there was no need as the inner world was far more real and for me at that time. I felt somehow disconnected from my body, my senses, and the people around me and yet at the same time I felt intrinsically connected to all things in the universe. I had images of my family and had a profound experience with my father as an infant. I knew that these were more than imaginings and that I had met with these souls in another realm, another level of existence. I felt such exquisite love for them. The level of love that I experienced once I had transcended the demons and terror of the ego was so profound and so empowering that I know I am changed forever. That feeling stayed with me a long while until the effects of the vine wore off and I came round.

Once lucid again I knew, I had been shown to the heart of the heart, the heart of love, the heart of truth, of god and I am now able to love my life and all things truly and completely. Once the illusions and the demons had been transcended, the space in which I was left to dwell was one of purity, of euphoria and though I know intuitively that I have been there many times before, I know I will always hold that joy in my heart for eternity.

We shared our experiences in the group and I observed that many of the others had had similar journeys to my own. We bid Juan and his helpers goodnight and we chatted and laughed together for a long time before leaving the space where we had shared such a profound experience.

with pranams.