The Agonizing Enlightenment of Ayahuasca

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Everything about the setting and the people at the ceremony was reassuring. I had been resisting invitations for years, partly because I didn’t like the idea of taking a powerful psychoactive substance in a group setting. I was afraid that I might be lying next to some highly neurotic person whose energy would be spilling out into my space. But everyone there seemed to be a centered, grounded, humble spiritual warrior of some sort, there to be purified.

It was dusk, the sky an almost cobalt blue mottled with clouds. The grassy fields and mountains in the distance were still saturated with color though the sun was already below the horizon. There was a feeling of hushed waiting in the landscape, waiting for night to fall, just as we were waiting for dark to imbibe the powerful medicine.

As the effects of the ayahuasca came on, winds began to sweep across the surrounding fields. The wooden structure enclosing us had a canvas roof, and as gusts of wind blew against the rafters there was a sense of being in a Native American lodge or tepee. Throughout the night I felt the primeval bond of a tribe undergoing a collective dark night of the soul comforted by an intimate solidarity.

At first I felt the bitter medicine heating up my brain, then it traveled down into my core. I lay on my side at times, as we had been instructed, to keep the nausea down, and was able to retain the medicine without purging.

It started to create visuals—somewhat DMT-like, but none of them drew me in or seemed to have any particular content. They appeared to be fractalizing phosphines and more like test patterns being projected by a brain gone haywire than any sort of visionary content.

There were frightening moments where I felt the medicine physically pressing on me, pushing me inward and against the floor and this was extremely disturbing because it so closely resembled what people who have survived heart attacks have described, this feeling of a building on top of their chest. This fed into fears about my health and aging that were a charged context going into the experience.

My consciousness was being battered in a feverish vortex spinning me inward. I was being pressed and compressed into my core, like the eons of pressure on carbon needed to form a diamond. I found myself claustrophobically pinned into a core of suffering, my awareness overwhelmed by the pain of neurological chaos and an agonizing sense of the suffering of some of my most significant others.

Again and again I thought of what my mother experienced in the last days of her life after she had a massive left-hemisphere stroke and was still sentient but could no longer communicate with words. Was this what it was like to be isolated in a corner of a dying brain? I felt the agony of what it would be like to get beaten to death, to be in a place of physical agony while a damaged or dying brain didn’t give you any quiet corner within yourself to reflect on what was happening to you.

And yet, I was able to reflect. I was in a state of grace in that my consciousness wasn’t just being obliterated, wasn’t just a nucleus of uncomprehending suffering, but still had a spiritual and psychological understanding and empathy. I had no safe observational distance from anything, no more than someone bleeding out in a smoldering mass of sheet metal and broken glass by the side of the freeway, but my cognitive abilities were still present. But the death spiral feeling of neurological chaos brought me to the edge of where I could feel what it would be like to have to endure agony without such grace. I felt the panic and chaos my brother-in-law must have felt when he was struck with a fatal heart attack. That feeling of being an above-ground creature who has just had the bottom of the universe collapse beneath your feet and all that remains is a few moments of white-hot panic in a state of chaotic agony before you are enveloped by the abyss. The suffering of particular significant others seared into me—the unknown last days of a young friend who committed suicide while he gathered the will to take the fatal dose. There was a potent sense that those moments of agony they felt were eternal so that it was as if they were still caught in them, still caught in death agony and perhaps the compassion I felt for them could still reach out to them across time.

There were moments where the medicine flashed a kind of multi-dimensional glyph or pictogram that was audible as well as visual and animated. There was a word I heard, perhaps in a Spanish dialect, that I couldn’t retain, and with it an image of a knife slicing through a skull—-it was a representation of the death blow, and of the chaos of panic and agony that so many sentient beings have had to undergo and that might come to them in violent and humiliating circumstances, their dignity and consciousness ruptured by it. There was a sense that this multi-sensory glyph was a familiar motif of the medicine woven repetitively into its tapestry.

I saw the crucifixion as an appropriate metaphor for not just the human condition, but the condition of all sentient beings. There was  also what I recognized as Buddhist themes—all being as sorrow and the need for compassion for all sentient beings.

I felt some elements of grace that I was able to comprehend what was happening to me. I remembered the advice to surrender and not to fight the experience or try to stay in control, but that I could try sitting up if it got too intense.

I was still capable of reason and in control of my body and movements when I needed to be—while other more agonizing and less grace-filled medicines I have taken in the past obliterated those capabilities (see: Shred to Black—Salvia Blue Moon Apocalypse). On a couple of occasions, I was able to stand up and walk outside to seek out a bathroom.

As the screen door closed behind me, I found myself stepping out into Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Everything was primordial, potently alive and aglow with the swirling colors of the cosmos. The manmade things seemed as primal and beautiful as the natural. There was a feeling of brotherhood and comfort in seeing the staggering forms of a few others who had also walked out into the moonlit field. Even from their shadowy silhouettes I could see that they were as mesmerized and overwhelmed by what they were experiencing as I was.

Curled up in fetal positions on my sleeping mat I felt that my soul was being agonizingly reawakened to the primal, irreducible need for compassion in all circumstances. I saw that my life and the lives of my parents and significant others were based on compassion, but that I was often disassociated from empathy, just as they often were, even if many of the things we did were based on it. There were so many moments of suffering for myself and others where in the eclipsed, confusion of our pain we hurt ourselves and each other.

I felt the spiritual agony of people who had done terrible things, serial killers, the Columbine kids turning the guns on themselves, Hitler in his bunker biting into a cyanide capsule in case the gunshot to his head went awry. I felt directed to have compassion for beings who obliterated others and had to endure timeless bardos of agony, felt it was particularly important to have compassion for their suffering as well as for their victims. I felt universal brotherhood with all sentient beings that suffer, and that nothing could ever be more important than compassion for those who are suffering.

Note added 9/25/16 : Someone on Facebook just asked me if Donald Trump came to mind during the experience. I responded: Actually both he and Clinton were seen in a compassionate context. She seemed to be suffering physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually for the unrelenting tension of her role. He seemed to be joyfully confused and thought of himself as having good intentions and doing the right thing, the childish confidence of a boy who assumes without question that he is the universe’s favorite.

I felt a will in me to survive the rite and to be permanently changed by it. I wanted another chance to be able to relate to people with the empathy, the spiritual and emotional intelligence so often eclipsed in me. So much of my life was lived in a state of disassociation from compassion, pressed by my own desires, frustrations and irritations at the intrusion of the world and of other people’s pain and confusion. I wanted to be able to come back and have compassion for the pain of others that led them to do confused, messy things that created more pain for themselves and others.

Before I took the medicine I thought the sounds of other people purging and struggling would be distractions, and I brought two sets of noise-canceling headphones. But during the experience I never considered using them. The sounds of other people struggling were a backdrop of solidarity and even comfort as I realized I was part of a brotherhood of sentient entities who suffered and felt compassion for the suffering of others.

The songs and the energy of the helpers welcomed me into that primordial brotherhood of those who felt devoted to compassion for sentient beings. A grace of the experience was that unlike so many who suffered through agonies in a state of terrifying isolation, there was no boundary of  alienation for me because the whole group, and every part of the ceremony, was awakening me to the realization that my realizations were universal, that there was nothing unique or ego-inflating about what I was feeling, I was merely being welcomed to rejoin a timeless primordial brotherhood of those who allowed suffering to break open their hearts and feel compassion for all beings who suffer. . .

And then, of course, I came back to a subtly altered version of my baseline consciousness. The baseline from which I will be checking to see how many likes what I just wrote will get on Facebook. The baseline from which I will continue to work out of states of partial disassociation, some of them quite necessary, as an overpowering sense of the suffering of the world is a detriment to the performance of many tasks, and of proper conduct in my casual transactions with people. And that’s OK, because I must live in both the spiritual/archetypal domain and the mundane.

And as with all such potent medicine experiences, people vary in their ability to integrate them. Some were such seasoned psychonauts that they were coming back for another round the next day, while I need a break of years before I can summon the courage to look into the sort of abyss that Nietzsche said would hold your gaze and look back into you. The value in these experiences is not in their quantity, not about having more notches in your ayahuasca belt that someone else, but in how much you can integrate the confrontation with darkness and light.

A shaken person at the breakfast circle said the experience confronted him with how unenlightened he was. I told him that from my shadow-integration perspective, realizing that you are not enlightened is the most reliable form of enlightenment. The way to integrate enlightenment is to recognize that it is something that you may touch, but don’t own, and that it’s more important to treat others as if you were enlightened, a stance that you have to earn moment by moment.

Part of the strangeness and uncanny privilege of taking ayahuasca and certain other medicines is that you can be looking down the long barrel of a gun into the godhead of evil, darkness, agony and death and a few hours later be eating fruit salad and muffins in a sunny field, sitting in a circle of folding chairs, sharing notes with other people who have also just emerged from the inferno with scarcely a hair out of place. For a few hours you might have felt like a helpless infant tied to railroad tracks, your soft tissues pierced by broken glass and razor blades as you bled out beneath a merciless sun, but then you can have a very pleasant breakfast and realize that you actually got to experience agonizing enlightenment and devastating epiphany at a highly discounted price.

A friend of mine at the breakfast circle shared that he was told during the experience to say certain things to particular people that, now that he wasn’t stoned, he knew there was absolutely no way he was going to say. He was told, for example, to go up to someone who had profoundly wronged him and say, “If you ever feel hurt, come to me.” I pointed out to him that I was told such to say such things that I also wasn’t going to say in the mundane life. I did say them, but within the experience. They were things the other person wouldn’t be in a space to hear (unless perhaps they were also stoned on ayahuasca). I told him that such suggestions were probably meant to be more metaphorical than literal, that they were things meant to be said within, not without. The leader of the ceremony agreed that one needed to keep the grounding to recognize the difference between the reality of the medicine experience and what would work in the mundane world.

Everyone in the circle had something profound to say, but I found myself annoyed at people who kept referring to the medicine as “grandmother” or the “divine mother.” Now that I was a few hours from being humbled into near oblivion, my confrontational assertiveness couldn’t resist pushing back. I told the group that I thought it was probably a mistake to turn a cocktail of plant-derived chemicals into an omniscient deity. My hunch is that the guiding intelligence that sometimes appears in the experience is the result of human beings, over eons of use, building a morphogenetic field around the medicine so that it lived in the collective unconscious as an archetype. That may only seem like a semantic difference, but I don’t care for the sentimental inflation of the plants. The most healing experience I ever had with a medicine was a dose of big-pharma-made MDMA in the early 80s, when the substance had just come out and still had a clean morphic field. Later its field became corrupted and depotentiated by its abuse as a rave and party drug taken in awful settings and with superficial intentions. This is all speculative of course, but that’s my intuition. Plants are awesome and cosmic, but my gnostic perspective and Ockham’s Razor suggest that the guiding intelligence derives more from inner depths—the collective human consciousness, rather than a goddess posing as a tropical vine. I credit the wonderful people who created a transcendent ritual with primordial cultural roots more than the brew of organic compounds. But wherever it comes from, I’m grateful for the agonizing enlightenment and the fragile potential to integrate it into my life.

See also my interview with a friend who, unlike me, had the nerve to go for the second dose and had a much more spectacular experience: Andrew’s Ayahuasca Experience

See also my effort to push the language pedal to the metal to describe my most devastating and bizarre medicine experience: Shred to Black—Salvia Blue Moon Apocalypse

 

Psychedelic Resources

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María Sabina: The Mazatec Magic Mushroom Woman
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How to Store Shrooms: Best Practices
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Shroom Chocolate Recipes: How to Make Magic Mushroom Chocolates
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How-To Lemon Tek: Ultimate Guide and Recipe
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How to Intensify a Mushroom Trip
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How to Grow Magic Mushrooms: Step-by-Step
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How to Dry Magic Mushrooms: Best Practices
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Gold Cap Shrooms Guide: Spores, Effects, Identification
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Guide to Cooking with Magic Mushrooms
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2020 Election: The Decriminalize Psilocybin Movement
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Oregon’s Initiative to Legalize Mushrooms | Initiative Petition 34
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DMT Resources
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The Ultimate Guide to DMT Pricing
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The Ayahuasca Experience
Ayahuasca is both a medicine and a visionary aid. You can employ ayahuasca for physical, mental, emotional and spiritual repair, and you can engage with the power of ayahuasca for deeper insight and realization. If you consider attainment of knowledge in the broadest perspective, you can say that at all times, ayahuasca heals.

 

Trippy Talk: Meet Ayahuasca with Sitaramaya Sita and PlantTeachers
Sitaramaya Sita is a spiritual herbalist, pusangera, and plant wisdom practitioner formally trained in the Shipibo ayahuasca tradition.

 

The Therapeutic Value of Ayahuasca
My best description of the impact of ayahuasca is that it’s a rocket boost to psychospiritual growth and unfolding, my professional specialty during my thirty-five years of private practice.

 

Microdosing Ayahuasca: Common Dosage Explained
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Ayahuasca Makes Neuron Babies in Your Brain
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The Fatimiya Sufi Order and Ayahuasca
In this interview, the founder of the Fatimiya Sufi Order,  N. Wahid Azal, discusses the history and uses of plant medicines in Islamic and pre-Islamic mystery schools.

 

Consideration Ayahuasca for Treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Research indicates that ayahuasca mimics mechanisms of currently accepted treatments for PTSD. In order to understand the implications of ayahuasca treatment, we need to understand how PTSD develops.

 

Brainwaves on Ayahuasca: A Waking Dream State
In a study researchers shared discoveries showing ingredients found in Ayahuasca impact the brainwaves causing a “waking dream” state.

 

Cannabis and Ayahuasca: Mixing Entheogenic Plants
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Ayahuasca Retreat 101: Everything You Need to Know to Brave the Brew
Ayahuasca has been known to be a powerful medicinal substance for millennia. However, until recently, it was only found in the jungle. Word of its deeply healing and cleansing properties has begun to spread across the world as many modern, Western individuals are seeking spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical well-being. More ayahuasca retreat centers are emerging in the Amazon and worldwide to meet the demand.

 

Ayahuasca Helps with Grief
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Ayahuasca Benefits: Clinical Improvements for Six Months
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Ayahuasca Culture: Indigenous, Western, And The Future
Ayahuasca has been use for generations in the Amazon. With the rise of retreats and the brew leaving the rainforest how is ayahuasca culture changing?

 

Ayahuasca Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety
The Amazonian brew, Ayahuasca has a long history and wide use. Read our guide to learn all about the tea from its beginnings up to modern-day interest.

 

Ayahuasca and the Godhead: An Interview with Wahid Azal of the Fatimiya Sufi Order
Wahid Azal, a Sufi mystic of The Fatimiya Sufi Order and an Islamic scholar, talks about entheogens, Sufism, mythology, and metaphysics.

 

Ayahuasca and the Feminine: Women’s Roles, Healing, Retreats, and More
Ayahuasca is lovingly called “grandmother” or “mother” by many. Just how feminine is the brew? Read to learn all about women and ayahuasca.

What Is the Standard of Care for Ketamine Treatments?
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What Is Dissociation and How Does Ketamine Create It?
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Having Sex on Ketamine: Getting Physical on a Dissociative
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Special K: The Party Drug
Special K refers to Ketamine when used recreationally. Learn the trends as well as safety information around this substance.

Kitty Flipping: When Ketamine and Molly Meet
What is it, what does it feel like, and how long does it last? Read to explore the mechanics of kitty flipping.

Ketamine vs. Esketamine: 3 Important Differences Explained
Ketamine and esketamine are used to treat depression. But what’s the difference between them? Read to learn which one is right for you: ketamine vs. esketamine.

Guide to Ketamine Treatments: Understanding the New Approach
Ketamine is becoming more popular as more people are seeing its benefits. Is ketamine a fit? Read our guide for all you need to know about ketamine treatments.

Ketamine Treatment for Eating Disorders
Ketamine is becoming a promising treatment for various mental health conditions. Read to learn how individuals can use ketamine treatment for eating disorders.

Ketamine Resources, Studies, and Trusted Information
Curious to learn more about ketamine? This guide includes comprehensive ketamine resources containing books, studies and more.

Ketamine Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety
Our ultimate guide to ketamine has everything you need to know about this “dissociative anesthetic” and how it is being studied for depression treatment.

Ketamine for Depression: A Mental Health Breakthrough
While antidepressants work for some, many others find no relief. Read to learn about the therapeutic uses of ketamine for depression.

Ketamine for Addiction: Treatments Offering Hope
New treatments are offering hope to individuals suffering from addiction diseases. Read to learn how ketamine for addiction is providing breakthrough results.

Microdosing Ketamine & Common Dosages Explained
Microdosing, though imperceivable, is showing to have many health benefits–here is everything you want to know about microdosing ketamine.

How to Ease a Ketamine Comedown
Knowing what to expect when you come down from ketamine can help integrate the experience to gain as much value as possible.

How to Store Ketamine: Best Practices
Learn the best ways how to store ketamine, including the proper temperature and conditions to maximize how long ketamine lasts when stored.

How To Buy Ketamine: Is There Legal Ketamine Online?
Learn exactly where it’s legal to buy ketamine, and if it’s possible to purchase legal ketamine on the internet.

How Long Does Ketamine Stay in Your System?
How long does ketamine stay in your system? Are there lasting effects on your body? Read to discover the answers!

How Ketamine is Made: Everything You Need to Know
Ever wonder how to make Ketamine? Read our guide to learn everything you need to know about the procedures of how Ketamine is made.

Colorado on Ketamine: First Responders Waiver Programs
Fallout continues after Elijah McClain. Despite opposing recommendations from some city council, Colorado State Health panel recommends the continued use of ketamine by medics for those demonstrating “excited delirium” or “extreme agitation”.

Types of Ketamine: Learn the Differences & Uses for Each
Learn about the different types of ketamine and what they are used for—and what type might be right for you. Read now to find out!

Kitty Flipping: When Ketamine and Molly Meet
What is it, what does it feel like, and how long does it last? Read to explore the mechanics of kitty flipping.

MDMA & Ecstasy Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety
Our ultimate guide to MDMA has everything you want to know about Ecstasy from how it was developed in 1912 to why it’s being studied today.

How To Get the Most out of Taking MDMA as a Couple
Taking MDMA as a couple can lead to exciting experiences. Read here to learn how to get the most of of this love drug in your relationship.

Common MDMA Dosage & Microdosing Explained
Microdosing, though imperceivable, is showing to have many health benefits–here is everything you want to know about microdosing MDMA.

Having Sex on MDMA: What You Need to Know
MDMA is known as the love drug… Read our guide to learn all about sex on MDMA and why it is beginning to makes its way into couple’s therapy.

How MDMA is Made: Common Procedures Explained
Ever wonder how to make MDMA? Read our guide to learn everything you need to know about the procedures of how MDMA is made.

Hippie Flipping: When Shrooms and Molly Meet
What is it, what does it feel like, and how long does it last? Explore the mechanics of hippie flipping and how to safely experiment.

How Cocaine is Made: Common Procedures Explained
Ever wonder how to make cocaine? Read our guide to learn everything you need to know about the procedures of how cocaine is made.

A Christmas Sweater with Santa and Cocaine
This week, Walmart came under fire for a “Let it Snow” Christmas sweater depicting Santa with lines of cocaine. Columbia is not merry about it.

Ultimate Cocaine Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety
This guide covers what you need to know about Cocaine, including common effects and uses, legality, safety precautions and top trends today.

NEWS: An FDA-Approved Cocaine Nasal Spray
The FDA approved a cocaine nasal spray called Numbrino, which has raised suspicions that the pharmaceutical company, Lannett Company Inc., paid off the FDA..

The Ultimate Guide to Cannabis Bioavailability
What is bioavailability and how can it affect the overall efficacy of a psychedelic substance? Read to learn more.

Cannabis Research Explains Sociability Behaviors
New research by Dr. Giovanni Marsicano shows social behavioral changes occur as a result of less energy available to the neurons. Read here to learn more.

The Cannabis Shaman
If recreational and medical use of marijuana is becoming accepted, can the spiritual use as well? Experiential journalist Rak Razam interviews Hamilton Souther, founder of the 420 Cannabis Shamanism movement…

Cannabis Guide: Effects, Common Uses, Safety
Our ultimate guide to Cannabis has everything you want to know about this popular substances that has psychedelic properties.

Cannabis and Ayahuasca: Mixing Entheogenic Plants
Cannabis and Ayahuasca: most people believe they shouldn’t be mixed. Read this personal experience peppered with thoughts from a procannabis Peruvian Shaman.

CBD-Rich Cannabis Versus Single-Molecule CBD
A ground-breaking study has documented the superior therapeutic properties of whole plant Cannabis extract as compared to synthetic cannabidiol (CBD), challenging the medical-industrial complex’s notion that “crude” botanical preparations are less effective than single-molecule compounds.

Cannabis Has Always Been a Medicine
Modern science has already confirmed the efficacy of cannabis for most uses described in the ancient medical texts, but prohibitionists still claim that medical cannabis is “just a ruse.”

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