***FYI: Shit is about to get FAR OUT (man). Ayahuasca Diaries posts will be personal in nature. The parts about my actual ceremonies are basically transcribed from stream of consciousness journals I wrote the day after each ceremony, and therefore ramble. They will also contain a lot of woo-woo, airy-fairy, pseudo-science, hippie-bullshit type content. This will be difficult, and probably result in eye-rolling and disbelief, for those living in the Material Realism paradigm where if something cannot seen, touched, smelled, touched, heard, weighed, or otherwise measured, it does not exist and is not ‘real.’ I understand your skepticism, as that was me not too long ago. I hope it is enjoyable nonetheless.***
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Shamans
Wiler – Wiler (pronounced Wheeler), the one-eyed shaman, is a master Shipibo shaman (aka curandero, medicine man) who has been practicing with plant medicines for more than 20 years. Wiler doesn’t speak English, so interactions with him are translated, but you very quickly realize you’re in the midst of an extremely powerful person. He is quick to laugh and joke around, and often has a wide grin on his face. He has this presence about him that exudes a quiet confidence and ease, which I guess is only natural after all his time spent in the healing realms. He originally got into working with ayahuasca and other plant medicines after a fishing accident in his youth that cost him his right eye. His right eye now is a translucent, pale blue color, somewhat like a moonstone, that is a bit off putting at first as you want to stare at it, before you learn to look him in the left eye. In his early years working with the medicines, he and his teachers found that he had a very strong calling for this work and is now a very powerful healer. He is the lead shaman.
Angelita – Angela is another traditional Shipibo shaman. She is the least experienced of the trio of shamans, but her energy might be the most potent in ceremony. Like Wiler, she exudes a quiet confidence, and emanates a sweet radiance. She has been working with the medicine for some 8 years, and was declared a master shaman by her elder teachers this past year. Her higher pitched icaros provide a vital counterpoint to the deeper icaros sung by Wiler and Ernesto. As a female, she is able to help navigate the spaces of potentially troubling masculine and feminine energies that arise during ceremonies and provide an energetic balance.
Ernesto – Ernesto is Wiler’s teacher and trainer as a curandero. Like the other two, he has this quiet confidence about him. I guess having gone to the healing realm as much as necessary to be a master shaman gives you a stillness and ease that commands respect, as this was something that was thoroughly present in each of the three shamans. Every time I passed Ernesto around the lodge, I couldn’t help but smiling and offering a bow of reverence as I walked by. He is the newest addition to the shaman team at Pulse Adventure Tours, but is the most experienced of the trio having worked with the medicine for more than 40 years. His icaros tended to be very low pitched and sometimes almost like a growl, but they were tremendously powerful and induced a lot of purging for me (and others too I think).
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Prior to the first ayahuasca ceremony, each person gets to have a private meeting with the lead Shaman, Wiler, and the translator, Tamara, to discuss what brought you to the medicine and what you are seeking from it. After my first ayahuasca retreat, my life had improved immensely and I generally felt my life was going well, better than ever, in fact. I was there for a general purpose cleaning and purification of my being as the best possible way to start out my travels. However, I had wrote down, several things that I might like to work on in ceremonies under the categories of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Some things on my list included gastrointestinal problems (physical), negative self-talk (m), self-consciousness (m), trouble connecting deeply with women (e), blindness to mine and others’ divinity which results in feelings of separateness and isolation (s), and wanting to figure out what to do with my life.
When my meeting happened, Tamara informed me that they would mainly like to focus on emotional problems as these were the biggest, most important, and most painful blockages keeping people from attaining their highest selves. Interesting, because the things I had listed under the emotional category were the things I was least looking forward to confront and discuss. I began by telling them I have trouble connecting with women and most my romantic interactions with women have been very short-lived, many one night stands, for a long time now. I wondered aloud about a fear of opening up and being vulnerable and a related fear of being hurt, as I had been hurt in the past. There was some back and forth discussing all this between Wiler via Tamara and myself. It led to discussing my being very judgmental towards others, which blocks deep connection. They explained how my judgements are actually projections—putting how I feel about myself onto others. This led to discussing my occasional anxiety, self-consciousness, feelings of not being ‘enough,’ and negative self-talk, which results in me lacking self-confidence and manifests itself in my judgmental projections. It was a bit difficult discussing all this, but fuck it, I came here to face my problems and come away a better version of myself for having done so. Wiler thought a lot of this was a bit funny and replied something like, “There is no need to be afraid of women or of yourself.” He told me he thought it would be most important to clean my judgments, clean my anxiety, and clean my fears of opening up to women and of getting hurt by them. He said his icaros tonight would be for these purposes, and Tamara explained I was going to receive a very special, very beautiful icaro of love. I thanked them and went off to contemplate it all.
That was just before lunch at 12:30pm. The first ayahuasca ceremony of the retreat was to begin at 7:30pm.
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In the afternoon the group had a jungle expedition to ‘Monkey Island’. We took a short boat cruise south on the Amazon, then headed up a tributary east into the jungle. After about 20 minutes we arrived at an island where several species of monkeys like to hang out. We drifted up to the island and no monkeys were nearby. Our jungle guides started making whistling sounds to call the monkeys. The Brit, Jay, chimed in as well making ridiculous, piercing monkey sounds. Eventually a spider monkey came swinging through the trees and made his way down to the shore near our boat.
We threw some bananas and it devoured them. Eventually a howler monkey showed up as well. The howler monkey was aggressive, making deep, moaning barks and howls attempting (unsuccessfully) to scare off the spider monkey so it could have the bananas all to itself.
We went back to the jungle lodge, and had a floral bath, which consists of pouring a bucket full of water and various types of jungle flowers over yourself. The floral bath cocktail of water and flowers is prepared by the female shaman, Angela, and ladies who help out cleaning and cooking at the jungle lodge from the nearby village. Floral baths are intended to help purify our energy prior to the ayahuasca ceremonies, and also to call on the spirits of the flowers in the cocktail to provide protection from negative energy during the ceremonies. We all poured our buckets of water over ourselves as a group near the river in front of the jungle lodge. I spent the next couple hours before the ceremony considering my discussion with the shaman and forming my intentions for the ceremony.
Ceremony #1
My intention was for the medicine to help me be the person I want to be in my heart: confident, charismatic, compassionate, strong, great lover, great partner, great father, great friend, non-judgmental.
Wiler’s, and the other two shamans’, healing was intended to focus on removing judgmental tendencies, to remove anxiety, to remove my fears around women, and to open my heart—he would be singing me an icaro of love.
The ceremony was intense, as I expected based on my previous experiences with ayahuasca, for at least the first couple of hours, although it is tough to monitor the passage of time in ceremony.
For a time, I was experiencing something where it was like there were three tunnels, with imagery of emotions, fears, scenery of situations I have lived, people I know, and much more streaming by, going from one tunnel into the others, and imagery coming from another tunnel into the others and so on. Much of this was extremely uncomfortable, difficult, and frightening. While the imagery was flowing by mind would run through the gamut of emotions, reactions, feelings, etc. I would have towards the current imagery. This was mostly fear-based reactions. The fear, anxiety, negativity would quickly be shown to be senseless and obsolete, and as I would realize this, the images would be sucked away and released.
At another point, there was a landscape of something like a Taurus with a bright spectrum of vibrating colors. As the taurus-like scene was vibrating and lighting up, I was seeing more imagery whirl by, and I was somehow going through a process of releasing fears around women hurting me and releasing fears of inadequacy. I was seeing girls and situations from my past going all the way back to middle school that I had forgot about, releasing shit from all those experience that had stuck with me. There was this vibrating, effervescent light going through my body, scanning and releasing all the judgments, expectations, social conditioning, etc. that myself and other put on me regarding manliness and sexuality. It was almost as though it was telling me not to worry about or try suppress the part of me that is sensitive, telling me that that is the strongest, most substantial part of a person, and it was strengthening that part of me. There was a point where the intelligence was working on my fifth chakra area and my genitals. It was seeming to work on my virility and I had a desire to start making thrusting motions with my hips as though I was making love. It felt really good, although I wanted to respect others around me and not look like a weirdo, so restrained myself a bit on all the thrusting that it seemed like the intelligence wanted me to do. During this segment, there was a lot of healing and extraction of the doubts and confusion I’ve had about myself and who I am as a person. At some point in here, I had to run to the bathroom and have an epic shit, purging all this mental and emotional dead weight from my body.
Then I progressed into a stage where I was seeing strong imagery of an eagle. There was an indian figure (a nativo as they might say in the jungle) with headdress and paint on his face that intermittently showed up with the eagle. There were lots of flashing lights with the eagle and the flashing light was somehow purifying and strengthening my being. At points I was the eagle, with long beautiful wings, vibrating with colors. I realized I needed to lift my wings, open up and let the flashing lights get under my wings and into every part of me. Feathers would flash with light as it was somehow working on me, strengthening me. I then started seeing the eagle with my family and a family to be. It became a strong symbol of what I am, and need to be, to my family and family to be. I was then wrapping my powerful, glowing eagle wings around my family in loving embrace.
I started to feel the true being that I am inside, beneath my body and the material world, my light-being, strengthen as a leader, as a beacon for those lacking strength. I really started to feel strong and powerful as a being, experiencing the unencumbered, pure person I am meant to be.
I felt the need to step up and embrace and be that man: to be my highest self and not let extraneous energy compromise the light being that I have always known I am deep inside, though not always expressed; to stay true to my highest self that I now was experiencing, to let outside influences wash over me and not get in, not compromise or sway that self.
During the whole ceremony, especially during the difficult, uncomfortable parts, I was centering myself by feeling my inner light-being, breathing, and coming back to my intentions. I was constantly feeling incredible gratitude, thanking the medicine for helping me, thanking the shamans for their saint-like work, and thanking the negative energy, that had been trapped in me and that I was now releasing, for having made me who I am, for having got me to this point. I thanked that energy for its time with me, but said any energy or emotion that is not helping me to be my highest self is no longer welcomed within me, and asked it to go away. I was intensely thankful to SOURCE for giving me this opportunity in my currently life and for helping me to realize the light within me, my highest self, and for the opportunity to realize this in my everyday life.
As the ceremony winded down, and I had come down from the mind-blowing, intense parts, I felt this unbelievable lightness—no stress anywhere in my body. Feeling intense gratitude for everything, feeling everything is so perfect and great, and feeling like laughing about everything.
That was some of my experience during the ceremony. Most of it during the early parts was too fantastic and fast moving to capture. A lot of other notable things happened with others in the group during the ceremony, particularly Jay, the Brittish dude’s maniacal laughter that persisted through a good portion of the ceremony. He said later that he wanted to stop laughing, but couldn’t, and that the medicine was forcing this crazy laughter, that had been repressed during his life, out of him—a different sort of purge than the normal vomiting and shitting common in ayahuasca ceremonies.
After the ceremony closed, I went over to talk with others in the group and see how their experiences were. Many had been asking me what to expect, and I had mostly told them they just have to do it because there was no way I could possible begin to scratch the surface. We shared some good chuckles about how they now knew what I meant. Aside from personal difficulties in each person’s own healing process, and the shock of their first experience with the otherworldly powers of the medicine, I think most people had pretty good experiences.
After the ceremonies you can either sleep on your mat in the maloca or go to your room to sleep. Although I was feeling very light and blissful, I also felt physically and mentally exhausted. I went back to my room to sleep, hoping to avoid the sound of others stirring throughout the night in the maloca and get some much needed rest. Unfortunately, I still did not sleep well as my mind was trying to process all that had happened in ceremony which resulted in a lot of tossing and turning.
The next morning, I ambled into the unusually quiet mess hall for breakfast. I said something like, “What’s up party people?!” which received smiles (I particularly remember Miles smiling at me with wide eyes) and laughs from a few in the group, but murmurs or silence from the majority. Understandable. On ceremony days, you do not eat after lunch in order to fast in preparation for drinking the brew. As such, I was famished, so sat down and ate ravenously. There was a little small talk about peoples’ experiences of the night before, but most seemed content to save their discussion for group share.
Group share takes place at 10:30 each morning after an ayahuasca ceremony. Each person gives a five minute (which regularly takes more like 10 minutes) or so recap of their experiences in the previous night’s ceremony, highlighting the major events, visions, and/or takeaways. This is shared with everyone in the group, the facilitators, and translated for the three shamans by Tamara. The shamans, mainly Wiler, help interpret and give meaning to what was experienced. They also offer advice and guidance as to how each person should proceed in the next ceremony. Wiler also determines what the shamans need to ‘clean’ from each person in the next ceremony and what type of icaro(s) they will sing for that purpose.
Group shares can be difficult as people will often share some heavy shit that came up, but it can just as easily be filled with laughter and applause. There’s an ethos that there’s no shame in anything that comes up during an ayahuasca experience. There’s no shame because everyone in the group is here for the same purpose—healing. How the healing takes place is entirely individual and how the healing takes place is beside the point. Therefore, group share is an enormous bonding experience as people will openly discuss things that they may have never told their best friends. Our first group share took almost three hours.
After group share, we had lunch. Then there was time to rest in the afternoon, and another jungle adventure, if you were up for it. After that, a floral bath, then we were on for our second ceremony.
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For those of you wondering more about the visions and experiences I had, they are extremely hard to explain, but you can get an idea of the kind of scenery one might encounter whilst in the healing realms by viewing ayahuasca art.