My first Ayahuasca experience
-Ceremony I (1/3)
After contemplating this for a long time, I’ve decided to share my three experiences with plant medicine, called Ayahuasca.
First time I heard of Ayahuasca was five years ago and I was really sceptic at first and I actually did an interview about it too. I didn’t feel ready however, until I felt a very strong pull last fall. I do believe Mother Ayahuasca is calling you and that this experience is not for everybody. However for me it felt like the next step to take on my own spiritual journey.
Caution about Ayahuasca plant medicine
As I stress many times in this 3 part video series, Ayahuasca is considered as a sacred plant medicine. It is extremely important that the ceremonies are done in proper way with a real shaman, (not a wanna be shaman).
Also: I believe anyone also with mental disorders and even schizophrenia should not do ayahuasca. You need to be grounded and having good mental health to do this plant medicine.
To me I needed to feel safe, so I went to the ceremony with people I knew and I also knew the teachers who were arranging it. And the shaman we had, had done thousands of ceremonies in his life and was a well renowned shaman. He was “the real deal” (full of love!!) and could “see”beyond the veil, which is important to be able to guide and support us during our experiences.
I was deeply disappointed
In my first experience, I was deeply disappointed. My expectations were so high and the fall was deep. I felt I learnt a lesson right there; to surrender and give my complete trust in the medicine (which to me is also a metaphor, to trust life more in general, not controlling so much). I also met my own old, negative and disempowering patterns of thinking from my depression 20 years ago, which was a very unpleasant and frustrating experience.
The help of the shaman
The shaman was of a huge support and told me that mother Ayahuasca was making me ready to receive a Divine connection and that I would experience that the light and the universe was inside of me. I trusted him, even though at that time I found it hard to believe I would have any experience on the retreat at all. But I surrendered completely and came to peace with it all. The next day however I had a Divine experience.
PS: From my perspective Ayahuasca is not the answer to everything. She is in many ways showing you what you need to continue working on. The work actually starts after the ceremonies. So old fashion inner work never goes out of date ;-).
