DOSE:

2 oz

oral

Ayahuasca

(tea)

BODY WEIGHT:

260 lb

We sit in a semicircle around the outer wall of the maloka. Maestro jorge and maestro nicholas are centered in front of us. Jorge is a shipibo shaman with decades of experience and an almost nightly diet of high-dose ayahuasca. Maestro nicholas is a high priest of his tribe’s incan religion. Maestro jorge blesses the room and we brave, shaky few bless ourselves. Peruvian soil mixed into mud in our palms wiped through our hair, forehead to nape and reversed, three passes each. We wipe our bodies with agua florida, sweetly cloying flower water. The brew is poured and blessed, we hold our cups of dense brown liquid in both hands, perhaps a bit too tightly. The master begins to pray. We pray. I pray hard.

Salud.

The master raises his glass and we drink in unison. The lights go off. A small fire flickers in the center of the open, circular hut. Slowly the fire dims, fades, and expires. We sit in the black, waiting. Soon a rustle of blankets followed by a deep, guttural roar of vomit devastates the silence. La purga. This rodeo is about to kick off.

In a soft, otherworldly tone the master begins to sing. An icaros to call in the plant spirits, to call in the grandmother. They come swiftly.

My mind is bent at strange angle, everything crackles and pops with immense energy. I try to hold onto to reality in a vacuum, it is no use. The electric neon buzzsaw DMT rips into my psyche with a viciousness I've never imagined possible. Somewhere inside my skull this buzzsaw is emitting a screeching, wailing, high-pitched whine. I am simultaneously dumbfounded, in awe, and terrified beyond description. I am powerless. I am decimated. All ideas and constructs of time and reality are forcibly wrenched from me as I struggle for a grasp on anything solid: useless. I am blasted through impossibly multicolored, geometric machine tunnels that fold in on themselves infinitely. There is a ghost train in the middle of my back propelling me into this screaming abyss and I am helpless to slow it down. This fractal inferno disintegrates and morphs at light speed, geometry dissecting itself forever; this is impossible. The tryptamine compound dominates me completely, in every conceivable aspect of intimidation. Resistance is futile. Fear will not stop this juggernaut. It grinds my ego into dust. I try to be afraid: laughable. The drug assaulting my central nervous system assures me that even the concept of fear is a useless gesture. Everything I ever thought was real is gone, meaningless, nothingness. My body ceases to exist.

I don’t know if I am breathing. I am no longer human. I am a disembodied observer ripping through corkscrewing tunnels of never ending luminescent sigils and hieroglyphs that morph themselves unintelligibly as I rocket past them. Language fails, words could never describe the immensity of this power. This is a force beyond comprehension. I don’t even try, I know it would cost me my sanity. Machinistic tentacles reach out and entangle my thoughts. Squeezing me. The pressure is enormous. I spend eons clawing my way out of this psychedelic inferno only to find myself back at the start of an infinite, cascading cubic hallway. I cannot believe this. I cannot take this. A voice says, ‘you must take it. You bought the ticket, time to ride.’ the entirety of my being is pixelated, fractured, and erased. I die for the first time tonight.

I am reborn.
Grandmother ayahuasca is there. Standing serene in my mind atop a golden incan pyramid. From her chest bubbles green effervescent luminosity, reaching out to me. From her forehead thick, purple peace slithers toward me, a massive anaconda that enters my forehead and coils around my pineal gland, constricting my third eye with the most unimaginable sense of peace I have ever felt. The eye shudders open. I bask in this lavender glow, thanking every god I've ever heard of that she is here.

I look to my left, my meme and papa stand beside me. Their hands, somehow one, rest on my shoulder. To my right my nana and gramps stand watch as well, beyond the veil of death. They are beaming pure love and pride directly into my heart. I look down at my chest, a bright golden tone pulsates inside me, my heart. They call it forward, it arises from beneath my ribcage, hovering outside my physical body. They each begin to touch the glowing orb of my heart gently, healing me. They tell me, ‘you are a good man. You make good decisions. People love you. Now. You must learn to allow yourself to be loved. You cannot earn this love. You cannot acquire it. You cannot take it. It is freely given to you and resides within you. This love was there before the inception of time and will be there eons beyond your death. It repeats eternally inside the hearts of every child of almighty god, the creator of the universe. This is what you deserve, though you cannot earn it, try though you may. This is your birthright.”

Tears stream down my face as my deceased family members fade and my golden heart reinserts itself in my chest. Grandmother ayahuasca tells me sternly, ‘dry your eyes, we have work to do.’ my body is dissected as I look on. Strange, disembodied alien hands use unearthly tools and lasers to scan and probe the core of my being. Cauterizing here, clipping and reattaching there. I ask them ‘what are you fixing?’ they tell me not to worry about that, just watch. I do as I'm told. I am told ‘you are not in control here, this lesson can only be learned the hard way.’ and I die again.

I am reborn.

Information pours into my frontal cortex as my reptilian, animalistic, hind-brain struggles for a handle. ‘you don’t get it. This lesson is hard to learn. Let’s try again.’ I die again.

I am reborn.
I die.
I am reborn.

‘do you see? Your need for control is laughable in the face of all this. What do you think you can do? Your only option is to let go. Don’t make me kill you again.’
‘go ahead and kill me,’ I say ‘I will be reborn.’
‘excellent.’ grandma ayahuasca replies, ‘now, lets move on. We will revisit this when you forget. It wont be long.’

She grants me momentary respite that seems to stretch into eternity. The energy inside the maloka has whipped into a howling fever pitch. I can see this happening, but I am immune to the chaos. I am enveloped in a purple cocoon of breathtaking serenity. I watch as energies are pulled from the other bodies and souls in the room and are melded into a fiery blue cyclone that rends time and space around us all. Within us all. Destroying minutes, days, years, millennia. I can travel time and distance as if they are simply ideas that I made up. I see my future wife give birth to my firstborn son, I watch him grow, I teach him, he teaches me. I reach back across the ages, gathering the strength and resolve of every male ancestor that proceeded me from the inception of humanity.

And yet I am here, in this moment, lying on the floor, bludgeoned by the cacophony of purging and intense breathwork of the initiates beside me. The shaman’s lilting, haunting songs cannot possibly be formed by a human voice. They lead me into undulating, cellular tunnels and I follow the torch of his voice into the flickering darkness. Insane alien jesters peek around backlit sacred geometry, smiling impossibly toothy grins. I will them away, grandma allows me to dispel them. The shaman’s language is alien to me, and yet I understand him clearly. The song visibly emanates from his mouth in the form of a wavering jellyfish suspended in front of him. I reach for it, drawing it toward me. It swims through the electrically charged air, dancing around my head. I watch the song until it slows and dies with the shaman’s groan. Dark shadow entities swirl the room, approaching me. I am afraid. El maestro exhales a razor sharp ‘sssssst!’ sound. His breath is a spear, it slices across the space between us and the entities recoil from me. He is actively protecting me from the blackness that has been purged from those around me.

I can see those near me. Even in the darkness my vision is supernaturally heightened. All of their traumas and pains pour from their mouths in inky, viscous ebon jets. I want to stand and help, to comfort them. Mother tells me, ‘this is their process. They must undergo this alone. Send them your love. We are working on you too, don’t forget.’ I gather the energy from my golden heart and that which I have collected from my male predecessors and push through the darkness toward them. Beaming all of the love and compassion I can muster to aid in their battles. The andean high priest stands and blows harshly over them, waving a long feather as they purge, physically banishing their released suffering.

Never-ending, cyclopean palaces spread out before me. Ancient, black, shining. Massive obelisks rise daunting above the impossible architecture below me. I stride between universes, serene. Multiple alien moons light the strange and dusty surfaces of planets light years away. I jump from world to world with the ease of a child playing hopscotch. These visions are certainly lovecraftian and inspired, but lovecraft would have renounced atheism had he seen this. I giggle involuntarily, and the warrior sitting to my right chuckles in unison. The connection between our minds has been strong all night, I am certain he knows.

I reach out across the globe for my brother. I wish he was here. He needs to see this, to know this power and beauty. I find him. I direct all my energy to him, aiming for his heart. I see it wrapped in chains. I push hard, his heart begins to glow golden. It builds in luminosity, vibrating intensely. The chains rattle and shatter. Blinding light explodes from the pure white orb inside his chest. I shield my eyes from the brilliance, it is too much to bear. The light refracts and reflects through the hearts of all men and women who have ever lived. I see them all connected to this essential grid emanating from my brother who stands in the center of all conceivable creation, teeming billions engaged in this infinite matrix of love and light. A joy unknown fills me and spills over, this ecstasy is unbearable. It is so beautiful that it hurts and I must look away or risk dying again. ‘your love is his love. It is the love of all god’s children.’ she tells me, matter of factly, as though it were the simplest truth of the universe. And it is.

My soul is sucked back into my body with a pop, the shaman has been singing his final icaros while I was away. The violence of the night is slowing, coming to a gentle, creaking halt. I am thankful for that. I am thankful for all. Surely god himself sits here with us, within us, breathing as we do, the mountains standing guard around us. Mama ayahuasca tells me that I am welcome to revisit, and I will soon. She solidifies several lessons for me as the magic of the moment dissipates:

Allow yourself to be loved, you don’t have to earn it, its given to you freely, give it freely to others.
Relinquish your need for control, it will not serve you.
The power you have encountered here tonight is within you and is accessible to you, utilize it at will.
The future will always be waiting for you, be here now.

Exp Year: 2019	ExpID: 113892
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 29
Published: Jan 21, 2020	Views: 1,105
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