I first heard about ayahuasca a long time ago.... It had started to become popular amongst spiritual circles and whilst sounding interesting I didn't go searching for it, it found me.
I was living in Australia at the time and having completed a Qi flow massage course that stirred up anger that had been sitting in my body, I just didn't know how to move it out.
"Just go scream in the bush" - my teacher had told me, like it was that easy.
After a lifetime of shamed anger and so much bubbling up it was overwhelming me to say the least... I had tried screaming in pillows which made me physically sick then sent me spiralling into a depressive and stuck state.... then suddenly I had this realisation - I needed medicine.
I soon after returned to London and booked in with a sound healer friend for a private session in the hope of regaining some peace... I mentioned to her afterwards how I needed to sit with Ayahuasca and she told me "well actually I have been assisting my friend who trained in Peru and he was coming over in 10 minutes".... and so just like that - we planned a ceremony in her Dalston flat for me and 6 friends who had shown interest for the following weekend.
This friend had also had a magical experience which I won't go into but it all felt perfectly aligned from its roots, so I went in confident that this was happening all as it should with full trust.
After we drank I had a huge experience which shifted my anger and terror and emotions in such a huge way I think I maybe scared half the room to death... but it was massively healing for me, and so began my medicine journey.
[I want to add - I had been doing years of inner work prior - and I don't think ayahuasca is necessary for everyone... but perhaps those with big traumas... those having worked on themselves already, not going in fresh having done zero shadow work thats for sure.]
...A few ceremonies later found me in Costa Rica and this is the ceremony that stands out to me and is embedded in me as a reminder in hard times that don't make sense... in times such as these.
This ceremony was on the dirt floor of the jungle under a large wooden shelter with men on one side and women on the other... all facing a fire on the ground in the darkness. I was sitting on a small rug that I had travelled with, and as soon as we drank the brew... the messages began pouring in.
[ I think 8/9 bowls of yagé I got down me that night.... A big cleansing... Yagé differs a little to the shipibo style strong brew... instead following the sequoia tradition, you drink and be sick until you had enough then you hold the last bowl... seems I needed a lot that night.]
As I returned to my rug immediately the fire smoke began pouring in my face... I waited for it to pass and it didn't... after a while I gave in and moved to the next space I could find on the ground not realising it was the mens side. Soon as I sat down I was being told kind of telepathically about how manipulative women are... and shown how each and every male was aware I was in that space, I could feel them aware of me... it was intense and confusing so after sometime I stood up to go to the bathroom in the jungle...
As I walked into the darkness, the cold mud under my bare feet, suddenly I fell to the floor in an explosion of tears.... literally crying my eyes out suddenly with pictures like a movie across my eyes of all the destructions and wars of the world.... I remember seeing buildings blown up, the baby washed up on the beach in Syria... It was all the news I had consumed through my eyes and my soul... pouring out of me, all I had witnessed and absorbed.... I was wailing loudly and crying hysterically in pain.....
One American lady on her way to the bathroom appeared in the darkness and I just flung myself into her arms like a sobbing child... she cradled me and at some point the medicine man was wafting smoke from sage around me as I sobbed and sobbed...
Until slowly words started coming out of me... "we don't need to be sorry" ... on repeat, over and over, on in breaths, on out breaths, these words over and over like a crazy person. Channeling I guess or I don't know what, but I knew I was being taught - we don't need to be sorry. So many devastating things in the world but we don't need to be sorry, it's all a part of it... all a part of the process of this evolving world. No matter how it looks, no matter what is happening, we don't need to be sorry. Something I had really drowned myself in growing up... feeling sad for the pollution and the animals and the news blasting into our living rooms in our most vulnerable of states... deep into our psyche... We don't need to be sorry.
Then, somehow I was surrounded by 3 American women all holding space for this mess of a state I was in sobbing and repeating these words over and over like a madness... I don't know if anyone else got it - but I did. Even when I explained it at a sharing later on they didn't seem to grasp the message... but I guess it was for me. Many said I cried tears they couldn't... but the words changed as the light came up through the jungle canopy.
"Be thankful for everyone" ... I started repeating, over and over and over again... for god knows how long, time lost meaning.... until I was literally made to say "even Donald trump".... I felt silly saying it, I remember that, before heading right on back into crazy repetitive "be thankful for everyone" but those women needed to hear it. I don't even think he was president yet, or newly, but I didn't even know nothing about this guy.... but that was for them - I knew it.
And right there I learned... we needed everyone, and should be thankful for them, because even Donald trump was playing his own part to trigger the ones who were so offended by him to want something better.
The world needs contrast to grow, it needs destruction... it need chaos, and ever since that day I remind myself... we don't need to be sorry, its all a part of it, and be thankful for everyone, even Donald trump.
We are all playing our part... walking our paths perfectly... as we each walk each other home.
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