Ceremony #5: Master Teacher

I woke up this morning and again felt amazing. Not sure if it was the Ayahuasca from last night or the fact that I could again breathe through my nose without tasting Ayahuasca. Breakfast and lunch again blew me away and I decided to relax and hang out with my new friends until ceremony.

Down by the river is an old fishing boat that the lodge uses for multiple day fishing trips, it’s also for sale.


I went down to the ceremony room to spend some time in preparation for tonight.


View of the ceremony room as I approach from the elevated walkway.


Looking back from outside the ceremony room where I took the picture above.


As I returned to the lodge from the ceremony room my room is the furthest one on the left.


A few hours later and it was time for our final ceremony. We were not allowed any cameras or recording devices during ceremony, however tonight we were allowed to give our camera to one of the staff members who would take our picture as we were being served Ayahuasca.


Maestro Alberto whistling an icaros in to my dose as I’m trying to send out thoughts, please be gentle with me tonight. If you look next to his other hand you will see one of the 2 two liter bottles of Ayahuasca. On the far side is Malcolm serving from the other bottle.


With my medicine in hand I returned to my mat to wait for the others to be served and we would toast to our final journey.

Malcolm toasted wishing everyone a beautiful ceremony and I threw back the Ayahuasca doing my best to not let it touch any part of my mouth and go directly down my throat. I was largely successful and did not require any rinsing tonight. I remained sitting up with my bucket close at hand, but tonight I was going to try and energetically purge much the same way I observed the shaman do. I felt the Ayahuasca absorb in my stomach and begin to work its way through my veins gathering up all the mental toxins in my body. I opened my mouth and began to let out a sound like a long sounding Z, Zzzzzzzzzz. They began to come faster and faster and they resonated strong and more powerful.

I then started to feel the energy in my arms again, billions of connections to everything that ever was, everything that ever would be, but this time it was much stronger and incredibly intense. I was still very much in the ceremony room and could see my arms as they were but they were so full of energy that I thought they were going to explode. It quickly was more than I could handle. I never felt this before and was very afraid of what was about to happen. My arms were nothing but pure energy now and it started working its way in to the rest of my body. This was getting out of hand and I have not seen my lizard friend yet, in fact I have not experienced anything that I have come to know as Ayahuasca. This was physically happening and I could be in real trouble in this reality. I thought I was having a heart attack and was going to physically die as the energy had my heart racing. I need to stop this now or my physical body was going to die. I headed to the shower and Matt helped me along the way. I took off my shirt and started letting the water spirits run over my head but it was not helping. I was weak and collapsed to the ground. Hunched over in the shower with the water coming down on me I grabbed on to the only thing I had left, the only thing I knew, love. I shouted out “Oh, I forgot about love, how could I forget about love?” “It’s Looovveee....” With that the physical energy in me began to calm and I left the ceremony room. I was now in the inside river, actually in the water with my lizard friend coming over in his boat. Billions of eyes everywhere were watching me with the greatest curiosity as my lizard friend helped me in to the boat. This was thousands of times more intense than any previous journey. The energy was so intense it was pushing my consciousness beyond its limits. Back in the ceremony room Matt helped me back to my mat.

I was in a swamp with large bullfrogs all around me relaxing and belching. It was nice and warm and I felt safe, but nothing was happening and I got bored. Ok, enough of this, let’s move on, I don’t want to just sit in this swamp listening to frog burps. I tried to will the Ayahuasca for more, after all I was infinite possibilities, why was I wasting time here? But mother Ayahuasca was having none of it and it is impossible to control no matter how strong your intention is. I was frustrated and called out for help “Malcolm, I can’t get back”. Malcolm jumped in to my space and standing over me he replied “You are back”. With that I saw the ceremony room with Maestro Alberto singing and shaking a Chakapa, the leaf-like rattle. I thought ok good, I’m becoming grounded again. But then the singing and Chakapa took me back to the swamp with the belching frogs. Again I felt warm and safe here, just bored out of my mind. Again I waited and waited, even longer then the first time. Again I mentally fought with mother Ayahuasca, let me go, let me out, you are wasting my time with this. I knew Ayahuasca could take me so many places and give me so much knowledge but I could not get it to do any of those things. Angry and frustrated I called out again “Malcolm, I can’t get back” and again I heard “You are back”. And then I was back, there is Maestro Alberto. Ok this time I’m grounded, I can rest until the ceremony is over. But then a few minutes later I was thrown back in to the swamp.

I started keeping track and soon this cycle happened 10 times, then it was 100 times, 200 times. Each time I was spending more time in the swamp and more time in the ceremony room thinking it was finally over. I thought I screwed up my brain with Ayahuasca and was now stuck in some kind of infinite loop forever. With each iteration I tried to figure out what was going on, what was I supposed to do? Even love was not helping me out of this. I had already experienced so many dimensions of hell why was I going through it again. But the swamp was not hell, it was actually very pleasant. I don’t understand what it wants? I was not dealing with any personal issues? I really must have rewired my brain with Ayahuasca and somehow got stuck in this loop. As I approached iteration 400 I started losing hope. I was out of ideas and mentally could not take any more of this. I don’t care, I give up, fuck Ayahuasca, I’m tired of going through these kind of things. Beat me, torment me, kill me, I’m sick of doing this again and just don’t care anymore. With nothing else to do I stared helplessly mumbling “help”, “help”, “help”.

I experienced another 100 or so iterations when Terry, one of the Blue Morpho staff who was drinking with us asked what I needed help with. I was so relieved to hear her from outside, so happy that someone was answering my cry for help. I said “It keeps repeating, I can’t stop it”. She replied with “Don’t fight it, let it in, the medicine is teaching you”. “I don’t understand, it just keeps repeating” I said. I could not see her but heard her voice reply “The medicine is teaching you, be patient Chris”. I took comfort in that she used my name but was still confused and replied “I don’t understand, I need help, please, it’s starting over again”. I heard Terry’s voice again “Be patient Chris”. And that's when I lost my mind, as those words resonated deep from within my heart. The medicine is teaching me patience. It’s not telling me about patience or explaining it to me. It’s forcing me to live it over and over again, repeating it so many times that it actually changes the structure of my brain. It’s reprogramming me not only to understand patience but to become the very essence of patience. I was overcome with joy and thought Ayahuasca is awesome, everybody needs to do this. This is an amazing and wonderful gift.

My celebration was short lived and I was back in the swamp with the burping frogs again. I thought, ok, I guess I just have to wait this out again, be patient and it will end. I just relaxed and waited out 20 or so iterations being patient. Then I thought why don’t I just ask for help now. Last time I was stubbornly trying to figure it out on my own which brought me back to the point of madness. So I called out “Terry, help, it’s repeating again”. Terry came back over and sat down. For the first time tonight I was able to see her and the iterations instantly stopped. She said good work. I now understood all I had to do was ask for help. I was again feeling amazing, Ayahuasca is wonderful, it was teaching me exactly what I needed to learn. We have to tell the world about this amazing medicine. In fact we should make this mandatory for everyone.

But then I was again back in the swamp with the frogs and it started repeating again. I immediately tried to call out for help again, but could not move my mouth. So I thought, ok, I’ll just be patient and calmly wait. I can’t do anything about it anyway so why get frustrated, Ayahuasca is in control. It repeated 10 times, then 20, as it approached 100 times a pink energy appeared. It was not Terry but the pink energy from my first ceremony, it was mother Ayahuasca. She pointed to my heart as if to say goodbye and then disappeared as quickly as she appeared. I was logically trying to make sense of something that was not logical. My mind needed a vacation, I’ve let it guide me far too much. Just then I felt this huge energy explode from my heart with the brightest of light. It engulfed the swap, pealing it back to reveal the ceremony room. This time it was for real and not part of a seemingly endless loop. I finally understood, use your heart to control your environment instead of letting the environment control your mind. I giggled and laughed with tears rolling down my cheeks feeling so amazing, so blessed, it’s such hard work and the lessons are so long but boy is it worth it.

I looked over at my mat buddy and it was clear he had an amazing experience as well. I said “Wow, that was the most intense thing ever”. He agreed saying "Yeah, that was insane". Even though it was not as profound as my third ceremony the intensity blew the roof off the ceremony room as the shaman had raised the energy of the entire space to epic levels tonight. My mat buddy then said he heard me earlier shouting out love from the showers and we both broke out in laughter. I felt amazing and wonderful, not just for myself but for everyone in ceremony. It was so intense tonight that it took the shaman over an hour to lower the energy in the room as we landed. Just about everyone was on top of the world tonight and many of us stayed up for hours sitting outside under the stars, sipping on non-caffeinated tea and sharing our journey, we were so much more then just the best of friends at this point.

I returned to my room around 3am after a very, very long walk on the elevated walkway back to the lodge. Once in bed I looked at my travel clock, it was 3:14. The energy was still flowing through me and I could not fall asleep, my mind spent hours and hours reviewing tonight’s journey, I rolled over and looked at the clock thinking it was almost time for breakfast, it showed 3:16. I felt so wonderful, so warm, so whole, so complete, and giggled thinking mareado, mareado....