After the second ceremony we had a much needed day off. We had group share, followed by lunch, then I spent the next couple hours journaling the previous nights events.
I find it is difficult to form enduring memories of such fantastical and rapid moving events that take place in the midst of an ayahuasca journey. The imagery experienced in the ceremonies and how the teachings of the medicine are conveyed tend to fade from memory pretty quickly. Rather, it is the essence of the teachings that endures. Therefore, I need to write down what I can remember as soon as I am able. Even then, trying to capture what had happened in words and create a record of it before it slips away is challenging.
I spent the rest of the afternoon reading, meditating, and having a workout in the gym. We had dinner, which felt like a luxury after having went without the previous two nights, fasting prior to the ayahuasca ceremonies. After dinner, I declined to go on a night time expedition to hunt for caiman on the river. Instead, I sat in the dining room with James talking poker, women, and life until they shut off the generator and the lights went out. We moved to the maloca, continuing to shoot the shit about our life journeys, joined by others who were already in the maloca. The dialogue was substantial, deeper than typical conversations that might be had with even dear friends. I did a bit of yoga with Ian and Sylvia in the middle of the maloca, trying to teach them Firefly. Then the night winded down and I retired to my room for much needed, DMT-free, sleep.
The next day we were back on for another, our third, ceremony. During the day, the group went out for a hike in the jungle.
Trekking in the jungle is hard! The environment mercilessly wears on you. The terrain takes significant effort to traverse, while the humidity drains hydration. We got skunked and didn’t encounter much wildlife, but it was still cool to be under the canopy amidst the vast expanses of jungle.
We returned from the hike, had a floral bath, and prepared for the next ceremony.
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My intention for the ceremony was to continue to open my heart.
Wiler’s healing and icaro was intended to cleanse darkness and to clean any remaining trauma from Phil’s suicide.
Similar to the first ceremony, I was the last in the group to drink again this ceremony. I did ¾ of a shot of ayahuasca this time, a bit less than the prior two ceremonies. I was still somewhat perturbed by the last ceremony and hoped to take it down a notch this time.
The effects took much longer to set in this time. After 30 minutes or so, I was wondering if I needed to do more. Then the effects began slowly and gently. There were percolations in the atmosphere around me, lines and patterns started going through the darkness of the room.
At some point, three or four tubular entities showed up. It was like they had eyes on the end of them nearest to me. They were looking at me, scanning me, doing diagnostic procedures it seemed like. At points they would come in and do a super close ups. Looking and going inside me as well. They were concentrating on my head. I asked them if they would like to do any work on me and told them they could do whatever they needed to do. They seemed content to just scan me. I could feel the scanning, the diagnostics, but I was not sure if they were doing anything further.
A short time later another “helper-entity” showed up. It brought a beautiful, vibrant neon pink, orange, and purple palette of color and flashing light with it. This thing had a humanoid face, almost like some old mustached Austrian doctor, or Einstein, with a loupe on one of its eyes. This guy seemed to be concentrating on my heart and chest area. It was going back and forth doing something, I’m not sure what, maybe more diagnostic work. It was as though it had a tool box with it and would periodically go into the toolbox, grab a tool, and do different medical-style examinations on me. At one point it was as though it was shining a flashlight into my chest, looking around. He had a good look around, then after some time went away like the prior entities.
In between entities examining me, I was seeing other entities hovering about me, and some disembodied eyes looking at me. Some of the entities were dark, had claws, and were otherwise scary looking. Yet, they just hovered about me menacingly. I shrugged at them and said, “If you’re gonna do something, DO IT.” They just hovered and looked at me. There was also a swarm of dark, threatening creatures, kind of like snakes, but shorter and fatter. They originated somewhere near the center of the maloca, and slithered towards me ferociously, but they disappeared right when they were about to get to me and never engaged me.
Next, I was now sitting against the back wall of the maloca with my legs spread out in front of me. A new creature showed up. It looked like some sort of mix between a seal (bulbous body, shiny textured skin) and a slug (no head, tail, flippers, sort of like a short, fat worm). It was in between my legs and consuming me up until about my sternum. It was working on me. As with the prior entities, I had no idea what it was doing. I could feel it pulsating and tingling and percolations inside my abdomen. At one point I was wondering if it wanted to have sex with me and I started thrusting towards it.
Then an Icaro, or a part of an icaro already in progress, began that was low, dark, and slow. I think Ernesto was singing. This made several people in the room begin vomiting. My guts roared and I made my way to the bathroom. I had the most epic explosion on the toilet. I could feel it coming from deep inside of me, in my spine and brain stem. I was seeing imagery of a cross, spiral, vortex looking structure above me. It felt amazing. A lot came out.
Then started a sick game where I would think I was done, and after I had washed my hands and was about to leave the bathroom my guts would rumble and I’d have to let loose on the toilet again. That repeated several times. Once or twice, I made it out of the bathroom and was headed back towards the maloca only to have to turn around and go purge more. After the first two or three iterations of all this, I thought there was nothing left inside of me to purge. I felt something inside of me slithering, moving up, down, and all around. It was going around, squeezing my organs, forcing stuff out of them, and I would have an additional amount of water and matter to purge. Not to mention psychic excrement that I believe was also coming out of me during all this, manifested by the physical purging.
I finally made it back to my mat in the maloca. I felt drained, weak in the knees, sweating, exhausted. I sat on my mat pleading not to have to go back to the bathroom again. After it seemed like my purging was over, I felt the urge to lay down. I lay facing forward, head towards the center of the room, on my stomach. I was laying on some huge organism. Blue-green with translucent amphibian-like skin with roots like a tree. It seemed to glow with pleasure when I laid down on it. It wanted me to rest. I was almost falling asleep on my weird organism friend, but I remember Ian saying not to fall asleep during ceremony. I lifted myself up to a seated position and tried to stay awake and present with the ceremony. I saw some flashing, shifting lights and some double-helix-like strings pass before me, but it all soon went away.
Shortly thereafter I was mostly back to normal. After about 20-30 minutes, I was wondering if I should ask for a booster dose. The thought of drinking more ayahuasca made me gag and my body shivered in revulsion. I felt so tired that I decided to just chill out and not take any more. I had enough craziness for one night. I smoked mapachos and laid back watching and listening to the rest of the ceremony. I went up for my personal icaro and was sober, but was still trying to receive all I could from it. I echoed a mantra of “Darkness within me, get out. Any remaining darkness inside me is not welcome here.” And, “Phil, I understand, I forgive you, I love you.”
It wasn’t until the end of the ceremony that it finally dawned on me to drink some water. When I finally did, I drank my whole Nalgene bottle and felt replenished and somewhat better.
The ceremony ended, I ate some fruit, and promptly went to sleep in the maloca.