Ayahuasca Journey 2014

Ayahuasca Journey 2014

    October 9th, 2014 was the day I departed from my home town in central Washington State for a journey into the heart of the Amazon Jungle of Peru.  I was set on a journey of healing and growing as an individual with a plant teacher known as Ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is the orally active form of a compound called Dimethyltryptamine or DMT. DMT occurs naturally in our brains and almost all other animal and plant life. DMT is woven into the the web of life on Earth. There are certain moments in life when DMT is released in our brains, such as our time of coming into being during our gestation process in the womb, during times of heavy REM sleep, and at the moment of our death. Ayahuasca tricks the physical body into thinking that it has died, allowing the spirit to leave the body and venture into other realms of consciousness.  Ayahuasca translates as "The Vine of Souls". 

    October 10th, 2014 was the day I arrived in Peru.  My plane had landed in a fairly large city called Iquitos.  There are no roads or anything connecting to Iquitos, the only way to get there is by boat or by plane.  The moment I stepped out of the plane I was hit with jungle heat and humidity.  The first thought I had was, “Here I am, I have arrived and the journey has just begun." Excitement began to build more and more with each step I took.  As I entered the airport and proceeded through immigration, I turned the corner and saw Carlos Tanner, the director of the Ayahuasca Foundation and the camp where I would be staying in the jungle.  A huge smile rose upon my face as we made eye contact.  We simultaneously shot our hands into the air in a waving gesture. I walked anxiously towards him and he greeted me with a firm handshake and  a smile and said “Welcome to Iquitos!”  We stood and talked for about twenty minutes, waiting for another student named Kate to get off the plane.  We discussed life and how human history is a birthing process of our species, a process that takes our species into a higher state of being.  Once Kate and I got hold of our luggage, the three of us went out to the car to leave for the hotel we would be staying at until we departed for the jungle.  The hotel was named "La Casona."  We ended up staying for two nights, waiting for the other students to arrive.  There were a total of seven students plus the facilitators, Skye and Helm.  Skye and Helm would be staying with us and helping us while we were in the jungle.

      We left for the jungle on the morning of October 13.  Each student woke up fairly early, our bags packed from the night before.  After we had breakfast, we were ready to depart the noisy third world environment of the city Iquitos and make our way to the tranquility of the jungle.  In front of our hotel sat a black bus, waiting to take us out to the trail that leads to our camp.  The bus ride was about two hours long.  As we drove on the only road that lead out of the city, I looked outside and noticed that the farther we drove into the jungle, the fewer buildings and houses were visible, until we reached a point where it was nothing but tall trees and deep green jungle.  After driving for about two hours, we finally arrived at the trail that would lead us to our camp in the jungle.  Everyone began to stretch their bodies once they got off the bus from the long drive.  After making sure our bags had been taken by some helpers who would carry them to the camp for us, we began our trek to the camp.  I saw hundreds of butterflies, exotic insects, and the most amazing plant life anyone could imagine during the hike to the camp.  The weather was clear blue sky with very high jungle humidity.  During the walk, a lot of the thoughts in my head centered around what was in store for me that night.  That night was our group's first Ayahuasca ceremony together.  After we hiked for about an hour, we arrived at an opening and saw the beautiful and huge Maloka.  A Maloka is a sacred space where Ayahuasca ceremonies are held.  The students rooms where we would be staying were connected to the Maloka.  Once everyone got unpacked and settled in, we met up in the kitchen for lunch, which would be our last meal of the day because we didn’t have dinner on ceremony nights. 

    As the day passed, Ceremony drew closer.  The moment I had been waiting for was just on the horizon.  The whole group was scheduled to meet at 5:00PM, two hours before ceremony.  As I laid in my bed in my room staring at the wall through my mosquito net, cogitating about the experience that lay right before me, Skye knocked on my door to inform me it was time for the group meeting in the Maloka.  I anxiously walked out of my room towards the Maloka.  Once I arrived I saw that everyone had gotten there before I did.  I said hello to everyone and laid on my mattress and stared at the cross beams zig zagging across one another, which supported  the cone shaped ceiling of the Maloka.  Skye and Helm began to speak.  They went into great detail on Ayahuasca, ceremony, healing, and Icaros.  It was very inspiring to hear them speak.  I could hear and feel the love they had for us and this medicine.  The sun began to set and it grew dark at an accelerating pace.  The jungle began to grow louder with the exchange of information between biological life in a perfectly balanced harmony of plant, insect, and animal life creating up the interconnected network of the jungle.  I lay on my mattress and embraced the moment.

    We had about an hour alone after the meeting.  When the time of ceremony was nearing, I returned to my mattress in the Maloka.  The Maloka was lit with candle light.  The group all waited in silence for Don Enrique.  Don Enrique is the main shaman who would be guiding us through ceremony with his songs of healing called Icaros.  When he arrived, he laid out a tapestry with shipibo artwork woven onto it in the center of the Maloka.  He placed a plastic bottle filled with a dark brown liquid onto the center of the tapestry.  It was the Ayahuasca.  My heart began to beat faster with the mystery of what was in store for me that night.  Don Enrique blessed the space with Mapacho tobacco as Helm burned sage to rid the space of negative or bad spirits.  Once Don Enrique was finished preparing for ceremony, it was time for the students to go up and drink Ayahuasca one after the other.  First up to drink was Kate, who laid about seven feet to my right.  Once she drank and arrived back to her mattress, it was my turn.  As I stepped off my mattress and walked to the tapestry, every movement my body made felt as if it was slowed from its normal speed.  I sat in front of Don Enrique. The candle light was reflecting off his white robe with shipibo artwork woven into it with the bottle of Ayahuasca sitting right in front of him. Next to the bottle was a bowl shaped cup.  Don Enrique lifted the bottle and poured Ayahuasca into the cup until it was three quarters of the way full.  He blessed the cup of Ayahuasca and handed it to me.  I sat there for a few moments with the Ayahuasca being held by my fingertips.  Everything seemed to have grown quiet and all that existed was that moment.  I raised the cup to my lips and drank.  The taste was absolutely foul.  I could feel the thick liquid settle in my stomach while doing the best I could to keep it down.  I raised my prayer hands to my chest and I gave Don Enrique a bow in an act of thanks and sat the cup back on the ground.  I stood up and walked backed to my matress.

    Once everyone drank, the candles were extinguished and all was silent except the beautiful harmony of the jungle.  The sounds of the jungle began to feel more vibrant and alive more than ever before, forming themselves into one sound that merged with my being.  Out of the darkness, Don Enrique began to sing his Icaros.  The alien sensation of the Ayahuasca experience began to drape over my being, as indescribable niagara's of beauty began to flow into me from every direction.  I had begun to merge with the spirit world.  An other worldly feeling began to form into a ball of energy spinning and weaving in my in solar plexus.  It was as if Ayahuasca was cleaning my insides.  This ball of energy began to move up in my psyche, as well as  my physical body.  Without thinking, I reached over and grabbed my purge bucket.  The sensation grew closer to my throat as Don Enrique sang his icaros more and more intensely.  The sensation within me began to intensify more than I could ever describe and my body began to feel heavy.  The sensation escaped through my mouth.  I began to purge.  As I was purging, my body felt as if it morphed into a snake and I began to shed my skin as the shedding spiraled into the infinite abyss that was my purge bucket.  Each purge was more intense than the previous.  I don't know how long or how much I purged because of the feeling of being so detached from the realm of time.  My body felt as if it was being reborn and recreated.  I felt as if every cell within my body purged.  When the purge came to a stop, I wiped my nose and mouth with my toilet paper sitting next to my mattress.  I layed back and embraced the sensation I felt within my body as the shadows of spirits danced around my body and celebrated the existence of life itself. 

    After what seemed like an eternity, Don Enrique became quiet from singing his icaros.  It was silent other than the sounds of the jungle flying around the Maloka in a chaotic yet beautiful way.  Out of the silence, Don Enrique's brother began to sing.  His icaros were a lot calmer and Earthly than Don Enrique's.  Everything seemed to loosen up and I was thrown into a bliss state of merely being alive.  I sat up in my mat and turned my body to look out of the Maloka to the jungle.  The sound of the jungle merged with Don Enrique's brothers icaros and a sensation I never thought I would feel in my life began to drape over me.  It was so alien, yet so familiar.  I began to cry from the awestruck  beauty of it and began to smile and silently laugh.  I was so amazed with the body that I am manifested within.  I was so in tune with every movement, muscle, cell, and sensation within my body.  I thanked the Universe for the body I have been given.  I came to more of an understanding of how much is truly going on and what has happened in order for me to have a body.  It had taken billions upon  billions of cosmic years to have that moment exist that I was experiencing with the people I was with.  I began to think of how the people I was with, from all corners of the world are all on their own path in life and we all met up within this web of existence to experience Ayahuasca with one another.  It was as if it was a dream. 

    So much happened within that ceremony.  So much left me.  I was taken to the depths of my soul and of existence and was returned.  I felt so at peace with what had just happened.  I was in such a humble, awe-stricken, and astonished perception.  I felt reborn and healed.  I will never forget those moments with that ceremony.  It was the most intense spiritual experience I have ever encountered in this journey of life.  It is engraved within my memory and my psyche.  It will always be with me.