Ceremony 16

October 9, 2009

Stirring the oceans of me.



I am recording this late, hoping that the delay has not taken too much from my memory of an extraordinary deepening in the spiritual path of ayahuasca that’s merging with this human and cosmic consciousness within me.

I dedicated this night’s ceremony towards ‘being for’ my mother’s birthday present; I wished to be a receptacle of her ‘dark material’, i.e., to be the transformer of its stagnations, to heal her of past traumas, hurt, confusion, etc.

I wished to have whatever amount could be given to me, to transform it away and relieve her of any amount of hurt I could. Yage would later tell me that I had received “Buckets of filth.” (I also sensed that this ‘material’ was part and parcel belonging to each soul who is participating in a human incarnation, no matter what the external appears to be; even diamonds cast shadows...)

The night started with a little humor, in that I had the earliest bathroom visit to date; it seems that my body responded to the medicine right away, before I even drank, i.e., simply watching it being poured and drank… This was the last ceremony before the new batch was to be brewed on Saturday; we plan to have Ceremony 17 (my 17th) on the Rio Ucayali river, in the boat…

When drinking my dose, I had the clear intent to go into this with my mother exclusively in heart, soul and mind.

Tonight was incredible in so many ways: One was that Luco did ventiatas (holy healing chants, accompanied by the leaf-fan) for everyone, including Bill and Mausha (the two visitors). Mausha did not drink, though this could not impede Luco’s availability… The icaros were beautiful, particularly a new one that included allot of whistling.

Yage reminded me of how I’ve changed via my personal joy; how I am available and that the consequences of my day to day actions are more pure since I have been trying to follow her precepts, suggestions, etc.

Later Ayahuasca would (very soberly) compliment me about my retrieval of the ego-material concerning the time I had stated to a friend my ‘experience-qualifications’ for understanding life (my trying to reinforce a stance in a discussion); she also reminded me about the ‘borrowed nails and a couple tools’ (Of which I replaced today and handed to a builder.)

Yage said that there would be more work on this night, continuing the chakra adjustments from the previous ceremonies…


Green dancer


While sitting on my mat; the incredible dancing taking place with her (Ayahuasca) in me: Feeling her body (manifesting as a naked, female human). I recall hearing her say, “I am no whore, I am the bringer of life to this Earth.” (My body as ‘Earth’?)

I was told that ‘the material’ of my mother’s was being gathered and that I would process it in degrees throughout the night.

When dancing, something in me (a bit lioness-like) was noticing the rising moon; its light shinning directly on me and the feeling that this light somehow was helping to open up my chest chakra or heart (?)

My dancing with her bare body somewhat superimposed on me or molecularly/electronically ‘grafted/woven’ to me…

Again, feeling the moonlight entering my chest, breathing deep and sensing a process had begun between myself and the moon’s light, its ‘personal power’…

Looking into the moon, like an animal of some kind; pure primal-ish presence, pure awe and quiet excitement about what the moment may bring… (Neutral, no thoughts, pure frisky energy and a calm thrill.)

Looking at my hands and arms, seeing their bejeweled surfaces.

Several moments occurred with dry-heave purging; allot of gastro-purging, yawning and waiting… Seeing the usual Shipibo designs, though they did not last as long into this night.


Waving to oceans


Prior to this ventiata, Luco performed one for Paul, who was also experiencing his purge during about the same time-frame as myself: Being so close in proximity to him, I shared in his ventiata and felt Yage’s joy within me at the operating going on between the shaman and Paul…

When Luco got to me and did a ventiata over/in front of me, I felt that the shaking of the leaf fan and his dynamic was stirring ancient (even prehistoric) oceans up inside me, churning and merging them into one another; I also sensed afterwards that the ventiata had cleared out the remaining ‘received-material’ of my mother’s.

It was during this ventiata that I experienced, with a different sort of sacred clarity and reign on my inner emotions, a deep humbleness, surrender and innocence…

The aura of sacredness was immense! Luco’s quiet, deeply rooted love was inseparable from all the other qualities merging together to bring about a total surrender to the medicine’s will, its ruling kingdom of knowing me, showing, and offering. Luco’s commitment and consistency in ceremony, while under all sorts of changing daytime circumstances, is truly inspiring!

To let go: With my head bowed down as far as my neck would allow, within this ventiata, I felt that I had finally arrived at total surrender to Yage.

The sounds from the leaf fan are incredible ‘deliverers’; I cannot rightly explain this feeling today, though I can say that it carries to the person some sort of real ‘vibrational operation’, i.e., a change in inner patterns, possibly the central nervous system, brain routes and general psychic make-up, if there is such an outline/pattern to the psyche (?)


A curious icon


There was a moment when an unusual theme came into my consciousness, introducing itself as a voice having a personal connection to me, stating that, “I am a solid gold toilet who is always pure and clean because I can flush and hold nothing in: I am not broken.”

A subtle experience: This becoming a solid gold vessel for containing ‘buckets of filth’ and ‘holding it’, flushing it, etc. All that this ‘holding’ implies… Incredible! Within the yage-dimension, I find it amazing that such icons form, images that in ordinary reality we’d dismiss as silly or too bizarre to relate to, yet, tonight, this image was as much of a holy supreme icon as the Ark of the Covenant or Holy Grail.


Being a mother to my mother


Much of this ceremony-time was spent laying down and being with my mother’s material: it seems that Yage kept it ‘impersonal’, so far as the literal translation of the material I was receiving a general mood from, translating it to me as energy, emotional mass, volume and mood; not many visuals…

There was one moment when I looked down and found myself involuntarily holding out my two hands, with palms up, as if to support a child in my lap… A slight visual materialized depicting a long, decayed vertebrae, though no head (?) The totality of the image may have been faded at its terminations (?) The main image that I now feel was being communicated was the ‘backbone of a situation.’

To this image, I applied love, patience, openness of heart, healing intent, etc. My right hand started making serpentine gestures, traveling up and down (through) the image, as if to disperse its solid-ness, to achieve transparency; eventually it dissolved, transforming into a long piece of thread-like material that I took in my two forefingers and thumbs, lifted it up, making a smiling-face-gesture of it, and then softly let it go into the air, like blowing on a dandelion… A very mystical and subtle ‘operation’, a sort that I do not recall ever participating this deeply with, i.e., using so many parts of myself to be with and to bring change to…

Later Yage would add that some of this ‘material’ was being accumulated inside me and that I’d purge further on into the ceremony while going to the bathroom… I recall feeling the sensation of earthy-saturation, like having ‘grounds’ inside me (my belly) where ‘things’ were seeping into me there, collecting, waiting, like a septic tank (without the drama of what we’d usually associate with this underground ‘place’, since it wasn’t gross, dark or spooky.)

Beholding my maintained state of deep joy-consciousness as I moved through this song/dance-intent to process my mother’s material; telling her and my father (plus my step-mother Penny and my step-brother Chris, including all those who have ever hurt me, that I loved them, forgave them, etc.)

The moment of wishing my mother Happy Birthday.

Note: I feel that the ‘decaying vertebrae’ may have belonged to Michael Anthony Cornett (my half-brother and my mother‘s first born son, who lived to be fifteen minutes old.


Blue rayed eyesight


I experienced an awakening within myself to a higher ‘opening vision’, a sort of inner vista as myself, a being of myself (literally illuminated from within.) While being inside/with this light, a phosphorescent aspect of my being, I was reminded and taken back to the time of my earliest out of body experiences, specifically when I found myself completely outside looking around my room (at my father’s home in Winchester, VA, at the age of about 11 or 12) with blue radiant eyesight, as if I had two mini flashlights imbedded in my eyes…

A sort of ‘coming complete circle’ seemed vaguely the case here, though I am not sure… I also sensed that I had a different shape of physical body while with this vision/seeing/being, though cannot say exactly what it was, more aquatic though, similar to an upright hammerhead shark or manta ray-ish (?)


Jacob is not alone.


The sense that Ayahuasca is a/the sort of angel that Jacob wrestled with.

When thinking about Rumi’s story of Mohammad changing the King’s soiled bed sheets, (He (the King) had a dream of soiling himself and awoke to having actually done this: It is curious that this also happens within Yage ceremonies too.) Yage would later tell me that, “I was him too.” (Meaning the Mohammed of Rumi‘s fable.)

I felt the sacredness of processing the buckets of filth and that we each have this faculty within us to offer one another… (Possibly even the holy love-duty to achieve the mastering of this craft in one of our life-times, i.e., in our own By-deed-way.)


Ceremony; when a rising sun is
our setting sun, the ceasing of a night’s ‘day’.


Notes: The beautiful journey into town prior to ceremony. An anonymous little girl running to me, open arms, wishing a hug and embracing, smiling. (Later, in ceremony, this would bring a profound inner illumination to me, i.e., concerning the attraction of the feminine, a living sign of a subtle shift and an inner-feminine healing process occurring/ongoing alive.)

The ceremony ended at about 1:30 AM/3.5 hours. Bill, a visitor, commented that it was the best ceremony he’d attended so far on his journeys here in Peru.

A ‘picture’ came to me about a design change for the cottage I am building here (the roof).

As the ceremony was winding down, Paul and I went back into the Ceremony House to be with David, since he was still going through his journey-process; we try not to leave anyone alone in the CH while they‘re still deeply ‘in the teaching-zone.’ Further into the morning I would lay down on my mat and massage my lower back/coccyx with the obsidian stone; I also placed it over my throat, heart, mid-chest, sternum, sex and head chakras: I experienced falling asleep in the CH by myself for the first time…

Early morning: Taking a cold shower (Actually that’s all there is here.) and soaping up/rinsing, feeling that I am being prepared by small degrees to be the keeper of Ayahuasca’s residence in me: sensing that my body is now being shared, that I am hosting a room where one of God’s angels resides from time to time. (How to describe this ’No Vacancy’ sign? Yet, there is ‘room’ within the room, i.e., while following the lessons.)


While on the way to Ceremony 17


I wrote these additional notes to Ceremony 16, sitting in the boat, traveling up the Rio Ucayaci river ~

Seeing a Shipibo-like matrix of daisy designs (From the inner Little Boy within me, i.e., that realm of action/being?) It was while I was briefly standing up in ceremony (quietly collecting my inner-stance) that I noticed this.

Careful-love-space.

Envisioning my mother as a little girl.

The smiling, blossoming baby.

Feeling protected by Sanango.

A sense that finding (rediscovering) my personal joy was actually the biggest event so far (and not the ‘Prostitute of Poetry’ revelations.) This joy-state remains as my lighthouse and love-transformer throughout ceremonies.

Reconfirming Yage-agreements about standards of living/being.

Again, making the antennae hand-signs towards the sky and lotus shapes near my belly and sex, while feeling a sort of energetic investment occurring from above.

Going over to David after the main part of the ceremony purge was over; intuitions to move back to a place of simple company, being, sensing that Yage was between us, in him and that there was something still occurring in the zone between malevolent energies (I could smell) and the medicine’s will.

Feeling the deep gratefulness to have Yage in me, integrated, dancing and helping me change my life.

Sensing wholly for the first time that Ayahuasca is a true spiritual discipline (comparable to Tibetan Buddhism). This ‘sense’ was more profound and stated in my heart than ever before as a reality being lived.

The vast feeling that I am a sentient soul, i.e., a light-being, not of this world-origin, in it, though waking to what I was prior to this incarnation, pre-human characteristics of my being…

Investing yellow flowers and surrounding my mother (her as a child) with jewels/flowers: saying to her and my father that, “I give you all the flowers I have. I do not want her to have this material, this pain.” Sending duplicate wishes towards my father: Quietly lounging in the mist of suffering-residue.

Sensing that I was purging her material into starry space, via my looking into the dark purge-bowl (and how the container’s void changed at this moment to my perceiving.)

Helping Dolly (one of the house/ceremony assistants, who does not drink the tea with us) with Paul’s purge-bowl; the sense of love and togetherness, soft and quiet work.

Ayahuasca telling me to heal with my hands and that it would teach me. (I briefly envisioned the later role that I may be heading towards, i.e., that of helping others by this yet to be taught craft.)

Sending healing energies to Paul during his ventiata with Luco…

Drinking the triple chamomile tea after ceremony-time: sensing that Yage was happy with this flower in my belly and that it was what she had wished for my body.

Using the shower water to wash… (A kind of purge?) The rinsing water has become an integral ‘tool’ for/during many of my ceremonies (Especially going to completely submerge in the nearby river.) Also the shedding of my clothes afterwards into the laundry basket, even if they are ‘perfectly’ clean, i.e., not wearing them twice.

My joy is my found, my residence, my home and my secure.

Feeling that there has been a definite shift so far as honoring people’s boundaries.

The epiphany that the world approaches me as I approach it; that I have much more positive power within than caution. Refinement. Love is progressive, while control is circular.