Ceremony 11

September 28, 2009

The Show is Over.



Responding to Jeff’s question earlier in the day as to how I was doing, I said that I was experiencing allot of hypocritical ‘visions’ of myself, contradictions, deep humbling portraits of opposite-being and feeling a little mixed up, wandering in a quiet wasteland of cerebral ‘bells and whistles.’ I went into the ceremony with a very positive attitude, concentrating on wishing to continue further with the ’mermaid travel-scene’ (If it was mermaids leading me underwater?) For the most part I did not have any aims other than those of being very open to the medicine’s will.

After drinking the Yage, I noticed that there was a piece of plastic bristle at the bottom of my cup; when I looked at it, turning my attention elsewhere within a second of drinking the tea, I observed that the change of attention to the bristle took the after taste away immediately… I’ll experiment tonight with reading a small verse right after downing the dose or looking at a picture… (I did not do this after all: I’ll experiment.) The tea went down much different than the other night, smoother… The ‘effects’ set in deep, wasting no time, the Sanango went to the terminations of my body and stayed there intensely: Sanango worked especially deep into my hands and wrists… There were points where it was nearly unbearable and I was broken down little by little to surrender to the ’hands’ of Yage & Sanango; the sense of surrendering my cellular, molecular, and electric albums to another intelligence is incredible!

I lay on my mat for awhile, not really knowing what was surfacing (I rarely do); it is like waiting in the dark of a stranger’s house for the lights to come back on, since we rarely know where or how to navigate the unconscious realms of emotions as they are uncovered by a consciousness bridged by a sentient being’s will to teach, love and transform…

I am writing this late in the day since I went to the river twice and then we traveled to the jungle by boat to hike a little in the morning: I asked Luco if he’d make me a Punga Negra tea and he agreed; we gathered the bark and I’ll try to have this during the first week of October.

As the Shipibo designs set in to matrix-weave themselves across my entire vision field, a voice came to me and said that I would be purging all the women that I have ever hurt in my life; I could feel the medicine ’brewing’ in my stomach, intestines and bowels; I could feel the density of the concentrations, as if the energies were being drawn there, accumulated/rounded up so to expel at an undisclosed time, a soul-septic-tank-scheduled-geyser.

An incredible event occurred in that, as my joy was stable for the most part, it went out once, and as dark energies/feelings crept in a little, a voice came to me and said, “Let me light that for you.” And Yage lit it again; it seemed a little humorous that while in the hands of Ayahuasca that such a strong aspect, that has been deeply with me lately, could be wisp out with the quick turn of her shawl.

The introduction tonight was light hearted, though once she began repeating that “The show is over.” and the medicine(s) was simultaneously digging deeper into revealing my hidden away, forgotten ’businesses’, the tempo changed drastically; I found myself on the precipice of seeing geometric Shipibo designs one moment and overlays of skulls the next.

Later into this process a sort of mini-tower-shrine of Malignant Force showed up in the middle of the ceremony room; I was in the midst of a sort of dual dimensional representation of opposing forces, the presence of sin and degradation, pain and selfishness, perversion and ill ways (and) healing… There were no ’wars’ taking place between the two, only extraordinary presence of meaning and objective impression via what these forces represented in me and how this temple had accumulated my ’worship’ and ’craftsmanship’ throughout my life.

A dark netting seemed to fall around me, although internally Ayahuasca was speaking calmly to me throughout the entire process, which lasted from about 10:30 AM to 2:00 AM… She would tell me when purges were coming, what, who they were and when I would be free to go, etc.

The intense dry heaving of air/gas from my stomach went on in stages: there were about 3-4 distinct moments where each session stood for an era of my life; one was for Laura (my second wife), another for my father, one for 3-4 people that I had hurt or used as a sounding board to advertise myself in some way, one for Vanessa (an old friend of mine from my graduate-teaching days at Tulane)… There was a very deep one (and possibly the last of this night) for Anne (my first love and who I spoke of earlier of having an abortion via our having been together in Louisiana.)

My mind/beingness was filled with shame, humiliation, deep grief, surprise, enlightenment, awe, and exhaustion, as the onslaught continued… Purging physically, psychically, emotionally and via a physical, visceral dance of squirming through the Sanango convulsions and tastes/sensations from the Yage stomach-gruel bubbling…

Ayahuasca would repeat throughout the night, 10-15 times, that ‘The show is over.’, transmitting to me the contents of this ’show’, i.e., arguing, righteousness, indignation, comparison, disbelief of others, inner criticism of their un-finished-nesses, unfaithfulness to lessons circulating within me (hypocrisies), retracting due to expectations of mine not being met by others, (setting up expectations that they’d never be able to prepare for in the first place), ridgedness, stubbornness, firmness, criticism, judgment, contradiction, preaching (advice set up to bring doubt-of-self upon another), and subconsciously reinforcing a trauma environment in me… (Acting through the celebration of pain. Being a ‘someone’ who is on the lookout for that which is wrong or doesn’t have enough of ’me’ in it… ‘Peeing‘, marking that which doesn’t fit the mold of ego; trauma mannequins, trauma ventriloquisms and a feeling of an insatiable need to get under people’s skin…)

As I was vigorously dry heaving, names would appear in my mind’s ’ear’, I would hear a name or series of names, and then dry heave the dark energies inherited from having hurt these people, regardless of their having consciously known of it. At one point I recall seeing a spider and other dark shapes come out of me in reference to Vanessa (I vaguely felt as though she’d cast ‘those’ in me or they simply ’were’ from her private relation to me at the time of our association (and) partially in pre-sent time too. (?))

Once the ’material’ was heaved out, ‘the story’ would be revealed to my consciousness and then hit my unsuspecting conscience-landscape next… Waves of shame and remorse would splash over me; there were times when I dry-cried and simply sat up with my head in my hands, watching the inner images appear and disappear…

For awhile I thought I’d descend into Hades again, though I was kept at a sort of doorway-point, purging on the entry way to hell…

There was a time when I distinctly ’felt’ the image of me face first on the bare ground and Ayahuasca’s walking stick being set down on the center of my back firmly (tough love squared), pinning me on the earth to further soak in the message that ’The show is over.’

During this time Ayahuasca came to my right ear and whispered, “I am not a whore or a bitch, I am all the feminine of the world.”

Visions of mainly skulls and the mood of a death-chamber or ‘bedroom of ill deeds done’ populated my conscious state while my joy integrated deeper into my presence amongst these forces: Something changed on this night, a deeper fusion occurred where the joy became ‘woven in’ rather than a living ornament/piece out in front of me… I cannot completely describe it now, only that I emerged as pure consciousness with the thread of joy faintly radiating in my ’skin’, i.e., my human-coat-ing.)

I had an experience of trying to manage the onslaught of purging sins and insults, where Ayahuasca said, “Do not try to control this.” I briefly spread a blanket of hearts over me and she wiped this away: I felt she was telling me that I could not protect myself from that which was not coming down into me, but rather ‘out of myself’. The sense of not being able to control the purge, timing, etc., was overwhelming; I surrendered as the Sanango cast my feet into ‘concrete shoes’, while my hands were two flopping fish on a shore…

One of the apprentices was stationed next to me and experiencing a death-journey: both of us seemed to be on the left and right sides of Yage standing in the middle.

At the end of one session of purges (late into the process), Yage told me that I was ‘free to go,’ meaning that ‘it’ was over and I could get up, pull myself together a little, etc. (i.e., that the healing was over, for now.)


Spirit shift


I sat up and experienced a sudden huge revelation that I am a soul, made of what the Universe is: nameless, placeless, a vast HERE. I envisioned myself as a stellar-dust-being who had inhabited the human-body-plant and who, in turn, had accumulated a certain ’kind of plant’ due to the soil I was planted in throughout my life.

I reintegrated into my body in such a way, that I can honestly say, that I will never be the same again: the merging was so delicate, so wisely orchestrated between cosmic-consciousness (a state of being a presence, a cell of the Universe), Remorse of Consceince and the will to be a better man-kind, that I am forever changed.

Today I have already verified that what worked for ’me’ two days ago in conversation and negotiations with people, does not and cannot work today, hands down, I am not who I was yesterday… I mean this ’not working’ in the most positive sense, that it is a regenerative aspect at work…

There was a time in the night where something came to me (an angel?) and communicated to me that I needed to open my heart; I recall seeing a glowing red chakra design/mandala innerly, though am not familiar with these enough to say which that it was (?)

The voice was speaking and emitting a message intuitively, that I was a cell in God’s heart… The incredible awe, shame in realizing how I had missed this for so many years, hit me hard, brutally… I recall having visions of crying tears of gemstones and geometric objects; my heart-field expanded and it seemed that my consciousness went outside the Earth’s atmosphere for awhile to gather some relative sense of this ’fact’ that I was a heart-cell of God’s…


Beauty too much


On and on, this process rolled… At some point I was sitting in my ceremony rocking chair (a rebar-framed chair, woven throughout with nylon webbing) when a mandala appeared in my lap, I looked down as that fully integrated cosmic-being and beheld it; I had to turn away, it was nearly too much…

I remember looking out of the Ceremony window, at a star, and seeing its electronic footprint/sky print, the waves emitting through the atmosphere/void surrounding it: Time stood completely still as I stood completely me; heart beating, blood flowing, heart weeping and my blood totally owned by sentient plant spirits. The star was a sort of jeweled spider at the center of its predator-less web…


The human plant


For the first time, I distinctly felt that these plant spirits were transforming my body back to some ’origin’, that, along with my will to change and regain consciousness over my innocence, that they were helping me exit History, so to simply be as I am; yet this doesn’t encapsulate the process, since it was the epitome of being very unknown, open ended and seemingly unstable… I cannot bring the ’right’ words to this now…

Also, the sensation that I myself or pure presence belonged or was somehow connected to these sentient beings as a sentient being myself, wearing a human plant, was utterly profound: It is difficult to describe how my/the shift of consciousness occurred, it was so utterly new, that I simply sat and became something else; more of a sameness, though void of intellectual content, non-informational…


Free to go to him


As I got up, (after Yage had told me previously that I was free to go, I believe, for a second time), I sat down again in the rocker and suddenly a voice came to me and an innate knowing: it felt, that buried beneath the collective pain that I’ve caused the feminine, there ‘rested’ a spirit-child; it was a ’he’ and I sensed that it was the son Anne and I had initially created: he said, “Keep me happy Daddy.” Something like that, a phrase akin to this…

The magnitude of this surprise literally brought me to my knees: I softly clutched my abdomen area and kept saying, “You’re in me, you’re in me.” The sensation was so sure, so purely there; no words were mentioned… The feeling that he had been growing up inside me was incredible, while the statement Meher Baba made when someone asked him if he had meet or how was his deceased brother/(uncle?), i.e., he answered “He lives in me.” came to me, merging with my actualized experience…

I found myself going to the floor, magnetically called, nearly commanded to kneel down and pay homage to the process of repenting, holy reconciliation and total conscious responsibility for my past actions… Ayahuasca would later tell me that I was not ready to meet the mermaids and did not answer my question concerning apprenticing as a willingness to become an administer of the medicine, though did tell me that she’d teach me some ’Arts’ in the next ceremony (?)

I got up and felt that I had to really take a shower and did so; while after the shower, drying off in the stall, I felt that something was trying to get inside me/my body; I spoke out loud, saying that it could not get in because I had ingested Ayahuasca, was in possession of my joy-state, etc. I suddenly felt the presence of my former ‘spiritual’ teacher of thirteen years, who I had decided could no longer serve as this role due to a corruption of his leadership, etc. As I slipped my feet into my loafers to go, I saw a film of red stars, diamond shapes and possibly white spheres, appear on them briefly; the sense of the fairy world passed me by for a moment…


More to come


I wanted to go back to the energy of the Ceremony House, so I made my way there; while sitting down, the medicine was still working deep and I suddenly realized that something dark was in the room, i.e., shade-residues that had been drawn out by the medicine. I could perceive that by rattling the leaf fan, Luco seemed to be brushing these energies apart and away (dissolving, releasing the tensions, etc.)

The apprentice next to me was having a very difficult journey: Luco’s incredible love and endurance was amazing. He performed nearly an hour long ventiata (a healing chant or series of chants) over her. Later I’d go to be with her in the ceremony house and walk to the river a second time for her final cleansing.

At some moment in the night, I thought that my/the totems would arrive from above the ceremony house, though nothing occurred; I conjured the dove and tiger; not a stir…
I did briefly see into a fantastic world where there was pictured what may have been the Headless Giant, i.e, one of the tree-spirits we used in the last brewing we did, we’re on our second batch.


A second visit


Through this second visit to the ceremony house, I began to purge again; I believe it was at this time that I purged my father’s dark energies ’invested’ in me… It was a big surprise that there was another chapter to this profound read!

Prior to this (after the shower), I had the very pressing inner order to get rid (put in the laundry right away) of all clothing and blankets that had been on my body throughout the night, so I gathered it all up in wash tubs: It felt as though I had shed an epidermis or ’thin atomic skin’ of some sort…

I recall being able to view the atoms in my hands, the molecular world within/of them, i.e., seeing through my hands to the other side…

Throughout this ceremony-teaching, I reconciled, somewhat subconsciously or serendipitously, the aversions I was feeling for certain members of our current group: Through this awesome shift, I have come to a place of understanding human expressions ’abstractly’, i.e., how they are subconsciously connected to the song and themes/plots/life-styles of traumas and stuck energies…

It was only by surviving my own that I’ve acquired the beginning/beginner-compassion to see another’s fear, pessimism, etc., as a kind of Song for Help, a song of armored vulnerability with truly no other war on their hands, but that which is holy within themselves…

There was a time in this journeying, while I was kneeling on the floor, that I felt wings begin to grow on my back and that they were eventually flapping… The environment (now the word/phrase ’Post-Apocalyptic’ comes to mind) around me seemed dusty, brown, somewhat neutral, while the sun was dimly lighting all…

Definite moments arose where Ayahuasca was giving me visions of choices and consequences, i.e., that I was to make firm commitments and promises to her in relation to the lessons being taught, revealed…

The subject of a new friendship that I’ve recently been involved with, came up: I promised the medicine that I would be a true healing, supportive friend and asked God and Ayahuasca to help guide me in the light of this healing opportunity.


Holy connections


With the ‘kind of’ purging of the damages done to the feminine, suddenly, I was able to make a distinct/direct connection between the existence of these energies/dark
residues (living malevolent echoes) and a semi-dark/gray, and at times confusing, self-sexual lifestyle… A sexual healing has also taken place throughout this night/morning. I believe that I made this connection while going to or returning from the river after ceremony…

Notes: Going to the river with Liam, David and Paul: taking the group photos, incredible fun, laughing, joy and helping/being with David on the walk back, giving openness and love. Seeing Shipibo designs underwater. Going and coming back from the river with Taylor; the trip on the river to the jungle-walk.

Towards the ‘closing’ of the healing processes/ceremony (not that they completely end), I intuitively knew that there was still material ’down there’ to come up/out: A voice told me that it would be coming out ‘the other end’ in a couple hours after getting back from the river; this occurred briefly… The day rose unfolding, unfolding, never old…