Infectedstyle wrote:I'm really curios how those Aya ceremonies go for you. If there is a upload of it I would like to read it. I'm glad you have found healing. I haven't started on a first Ayahuasca ceremony myself.
I'd like to be initiated into that. Comes to mind that it might be good to have a teacher with you who knows how it goes. Otherwise ime taking psychedelics without guidance is a lot like throwing your head into wild waters trying to catch a shark. Especially when it comes to synthetics. The natural ones such as mushrooms I find offer more in the sense of guidance and direction.. (Tuesday's gone, wonder if u have tried naturals)
Definitely. That's a pretty good analogy. These things are certainly integrated culturally wherever they are used widely and have been for generations or longer. Complete with their own mythology and significance. I think that offers a profound amount of safety and security over being a 20 something year old trying to find your inner buddah amidst this crazy and rapidly changing world. Context is everything. Even modern day gatherings such as burning man can bring a level of culturally reinforced context that can sometimes be hard to gather from the mind soup you get tripping in your house by yourself. But that's a very different thing from Ayahuasca of course.
As for my experiences... I think I had a report buried deep in the Shroomery of the first one but it was written pre-integration so I would be pretty embarrassed to share it. That first trip was a train wreck and it took me quite a while to figure out why. So much of that report was me lashing out. The ceremonies that I attend are typically done at a friends house. He is acquaintances with a Brazillian medicine man who spent 25 years with Ayahuasca. 9 of them were training under Santo Daime and as he was graduating into "priesthood" decided his calling was to bring it to America where he felt was needed and thus left the Santo Daime. So there's sort of a clear influence of Santo Daime in my ceremonies in terms of the group travel dynamics. Ie much of it revolves around group participation in music. Yet there's also been a heavy adaptation to western psychedelic culture. Things are much less strict than Santo Daime. We do not all wear the same white outfit. We are not forced to participate in song and dance. It's just much less rigid in general. The music rather than sticking with the judeo-christian roots branches out to include buddhism, hinduism, and other sort of "new-age"ish elements. In other words, it seeks to strip the dogma of religious practices to identify their common core. Allowing people from different backgrounds to commune and access the same truths. So all in all it's sort of like an "everybodies" church. Allowing you to come together with others, seek wisdom and celebrate life.
So the ceremony typically starts where he will measure out cups and give it to each person one by one. Then he will start song and that will go for most of the night. Somewhere around the middle there will be a break where we go outside, stretch legs and reflect before continuing. And at another point song will stop and a stick gets passed around. The stick is basically a right to conduct prayer, lead the group in song, simply to occupy a moment of silence or whatever self expression you feel the need to. So it's pretty straight forward. The energy really depends on the night, how large the doses are, how many people. I've had trips where everyone was singing joyfully, and i've had trips where everyone was laid out flat on their back unable to move.
I don't feel in the space to write a really detailed account of my personal experiences but I can try and touch on key experiences as long as it's understood they might not do justice. But my first trip was probably the single most transformative experience of my life and I don't state that lightly. At the time I was just one of those psychonaut kids who had to put every novel hallucinogen through his brain. So i showed up largely with the intent to just check ayahuasca off my bucket list. I was interested in the cultural context as well. And i had a sense of spirituality, but it was pretty superficial. Ie "i want to see pretty things that will bring me joy". I had no clue what I was getting into and immediately i think created some friction between me and some of the other participants. Anyways unbeknownst to me the guide had a strong brew and a weak brew. So i had drunk several cups of the weak brew and went back for another. He poured 1/3 of a cup and I was like "I just drank two of those and it wasn't enough, I at least want a full one". He gave me a funny look and filled it up. Ceremony broke for a moment right after i had taken it. So standing outside by the fire I immediately got nauseous and ran back to my place in the circle. All of a sudden i noticed that the faces of the few people around me had become elongated and animal like as they would appear on a totem pole and I knew I was in for something unexpected. As soon as I started vomiting these "roots" grew out of the bucket and wrapped around my face and pulled me in at warp speed. And as I was vomiting I was expelling every toxic energy inside me (I know that's vague woo woo, but that's all I got to describe it), and was flying through a field of fractals. And it kept building in complexity. Fractals became beings. Ancestors, beings from other dimensions and planets. And it kept building and building until would I would consider the breakthrough where I was face to "face" with the Creator. The source itself. A sea of infinite symbols and imagery from where all things sprung engaged in it's eternal act of creation and destruction. And, this is going to sound bizarre... But I could "feel" my "spiritual bank account" being filled with gold coins. Each one chiming as they fell in faster and faster and faster. And something told me this is "it". There is nothing more than this, take it in. The pure expression of love and all that is beautiful in the world. Undiluted. "I'm fixed, I'm fixed". That vision is burned into my brain and four years later will still draw a flow of tears if triggered.
Then people started shuffling back into the room and it startled me. I snapped out of the trance and suddenly realized my brain couldn't process a damned thing that was going on. All the visions dissapeared. I had tracers so long I didn't even know they were tracers. There were just 'copies' of things scattered all over the place. I became extremely agitated, thinking I had for sure broke my brain. In fact I blurted that out to the whole room and proceeded to spiral down into the single most terrifying experience of my life. To the point where I then experienced pure and undiluted fear. "I'm broken, I'm broken". Long story short begged people to kill me, was swearing left and right, just wanted to go to the hospital (LOL). They told me I was fighting demons, i didn't believe them. Finally i just curled up in a corner and accepted my fate. About that time I realized I had come down to what felt like a 10 strip of acid which was enough to convince me that I was indeed still tripping and not broken. What a relief.
Anyways the big thing that I've gotten out of that which has been an ongoing theme in my following trips and my biggest area of work and growth is this... Nothing changed. From heaven to hell the room stayed largely the same. The context was the same. Nothing "bad" happened. Yet i managed to manifest heaven and hell right out of my own head. What does that tell me about placing external blame? Perhaps I have far more power than I realize? Indeed every moment of every day the world is my creation. Not the events perse. A year later I got Lyme disease and while that was scary AF and out of my control I knew the whole time that it didn't have control over me. I'm still sick, but because of Ayahuasca I can find the light in every dark corner because I know it is within me and not some other place. And the music, it brings me right back to those intense moments still to this day
https://soundcloud.com/p...14-teacher-in-the-forestThe Teacher in the forest said
That we should purify
So we are able to receive
Our Angel wings and fly
The teacher in the forest said
That we should seek rebirth
So we can bridge between
Heaven and the Earth
Oh Daime, Daime Amor, Daime Minha querida
Daime, Daime Luz, estou con Vos, eterna vida
The teacher in the forest told
A secret from above
That all this world of confusion and pain
Is truly made of Love
The teacher in the forest told
A secret in the night
That all this world that seems so real
Is truly made of Light
Oh Daime, Daime Amor, Daime Minha querida
Daime, Daime Luz, estou con Vos, eterna vida
The teacher in the forest said
That we should learn to Love
So we can be brothers and sisters together
On Earth as in Heaven above
The teacher in the forest said
It's Love that is the glue
That holds together the atoms and Stars
As well as me and you
Oh Daime, Daime Amor, Daime Minha querida
Daime, Daime Luz, estou con Vos, eterna vida