I've mentioned this in other places, but it's been a very shattering and pivotal point in my journeying: one night I took a natural barley grass capsule to get to sleep, and unexpectedly was launched into a terrifying trip that spanned three days. The theme of this spontaneous journey and the following integration was LONELINESS.
I know that I've had developmental problems in a number of ways because of how I was neglected as a child. I wasn't breastfed. I was never held. Growing up, my mom used to tell me, regretfully, that I should have been aborted. To name a few things. And, I definitely internalized all of those feelings directed at me--at the very point of conception--and, hey, it messed me up. I nearly starved myself to death at the tender age of eleven. I've made more direct attempts at my life later in age. The worst part of being in a place like this is the mind: always being pushed to the limits, unable to cope, completely overwhelmed, one foot in the grave because there is no other imaginable place to go.
Needless to say, I am quite reformed, and credit all goes to my work with Ayahuasca. I've uncovered so many repressed traumatic memories, I've relived earlier parts of my life (releasing them as trauma memories stored in cells, most likely). I've gone back to the womb. I've had many experiences in ceremony where I was reduced to an infant, exploring the basic impulse of desire for food, for touch, identifying with complete vulnerability, understanding the ways my environment had a profound effect upon me, even in utero. I've seen the dead ends in my mind that never opened because I wasn't touched. I've seen the way the absence of physical stimulation stunted my neural growth and wounded my spirit.
I thought I had a grip on it all...
My Ayahuasca experiences have always been filtered through the perception of consciousness in my body at the cellular level. Smoking DMT added an interesting dimension to this, because it seems to take me to a level of awareness more distanced from the body, a cosmic level, understanding from the place of pure consciousness (not consciousness enmeshed in a body). Both are equally valuable.
One subject often touched upon, through many experiences of mine as pure consciousness, is that one of the basic impulses of consciousness is TO CONNECT. Though consciousness takes many forms, atoms, bacteria, plants, animals, human--these are all different WAYS of experiencing the basic principle of CONNECTION. Plants may connect differently than humans; plants can connect with humans; atoms collide; but, everything explores these infinite variations of CONNECTION.
The fact that I have been starved of this connection in my human form--the fact that this connection my human form expected to make at these critically developmental periods was absent--I've suffered extreme damage.
Intellectually, I grasped all of this. I've come to interact with myself, others, and my world in an extremely healthy way--therefore, I assumed, I was through the bulk of this healing.
The barley hit me so hard--I can only describe this as--it exposed a nerve at the very root of my psyche. This nerve has been exposed ever since. I've been drinking straight Caapi without admixture. I can no longer ingest any stimulants because I panic. I've had a few unexpected hellrides from ingesting homeopathic amounts of Cacao. My panic disappears immediately in the presence of human contact. Straight Caapi does not trigger a panic, so I have been doing work with just that.
Finally, the stars lined up so some friends were able to sit for me. I warned them that I just might need to be held, because I am in the midst of releasing some serious shit. Finally, my turn came to smoke the changa...
I suppose I could compare smoking changa to like running scandisk on a damaged hard drive. When I come up, I feel uneasy and anxious--changa is scanning for bad sectors in my brain and repairing. There is usually a point, very quickly in, where this "completes," the carrier wave stabilizes into a coherent tone, and I am in visionary space.
Basically, the changa "scanned and repaired" for a straight ten minutes (vs. the usual 15-20 seconds). I was so overwhelmed, I thought I was going to die, explode, or go completely insane. I reached immediately for my friend, he sat with me, and basically just held me like a child. I was aware of my reaction, but I was also completely unable to stop what was happening inside me, happening through me, shooting out of my fingertips.
The times I have gone deepest into my psyche, into the realms of in utero programming, I see red. The darkest red. I see specific mandalas when I am processing harm. I was basically stuck in this red headspace with a giant, vibrating Celtic knot/mandala, while my friend held me and I experienced pure terror.
Had I been alone, I. would. have. been. FUCKED. I purposely postponed smoking until someone could be with me, because the depths of this panic were so primordially terrifying. I was literally so lost, until I felt simple human touch to ground me. I was only able to endure the things I experienced because there was living human contact beside me.
When the scanning finally stopped, I felt AMAZING.
I smoked a second time, and there was panic, but it was manageable. There was lots of bodily discomfort, but it was systematic; the medicine shifted my awareness first, to my stomach, then, to my chest, then, to my throat, each body part feeling a bit ill and squeezed while it was being worked upon. Again, I have felt brief recalibrations like this with other voyages, but I've never EVER undergone so much repair.
That initial experience with the barley gutted some very serious things and dragged them into the light of god for repair.
The visionary experience is only half of the value of the medicine, to me; the other half of that value is in the increased quality of life I experience in the days to follow after taking the medicine. This is why I commune so frequently. I am prone to depression. I am prone to becoming enervated and losing the ability to cope. As long as I can work with the medicine, I can lead a normal, FUNCTIONAL, creative, motivated, healthy, and wonderful life. I don't care how scary the experiences are, because the alternative absence of guiding light and descent into persistently negative brain chemistry is even worse.
This time, however, I had no choice but to be completely shredded by the changa. Shredded is the best word I have. I am EXTREMELY grateful for the experience. It feels like that "exposed nerve root of panic" has finally begun to heal.
I feel amazing. I feel confident that I could smoke on my own again.
I have never been so deep. I'm also quite fortunate that I managed to navigate waters this dark and deep and survive, but I could not have done it without a friend.
I guess it comes down to, "No man is an island." I reached the point in my hundreds of journeys where I could go alone no further. The message is basic. We need each other. We need to touch, we need to love, it's why we are here, it's what we were made to do at the most basic level. Why else would consciousness bother to construct a body? The purpose of the body is to make contact. Think about all the ways the fingers can grasp, curl, and dig. We learn by touching.
Thank you...
I know that I've had developmental problems in a number of ways because of how I was neglected as a child. I wasn't breastfed. I was never held. Growing up, my mom used to tell me, regretfully, that I should have been aborted. To name a few things. And, I definitely internalized all of those feelings directed at me--at the very point of conception--and, hey, it messed me up. I nearly starved myself to death at the tender age of eleven. I've made more direct attempts at my life later in age. The worst part of being in a place like this is the mind: always being pushed to the limits, unable to cope, completely overwhelmed, one foot in the grave because there is no other imaginable place to go.
Needless to say, I am quite reformed, and credit all goes to my work with Ayahuasca. I've uncovered so many repressed traumatic memories, I've relived earlier parts of my life (releasing them as trauma memories stored in cells, most likely). I've gone back to the womb. I've had many experiences in ceremony where I was reduced to an infant, exploring the basic impulse of desire for food, for touch, identifying with complete vulnerability, understanding the ways my environment had a profound effect upon me, even in utero. I've seen the dead ends in my mind that never opened because I wasn't touched. I've seen the way the absence of physical stimulation stunted my neural growth and wounded my spirit.
I thought I had a grip on it all...
My Ayahuasca experiences have always been filtered through the perception of consciousness in my body at the cellular level. Smoking DMT added an interesting dimension to this, because it seems to take me to a level of awareness more distanced from the body, a cosmic level, understanding from the place of pure consciousness (not consciousness enmeshed in a body). Both are equally valuable.
One subject often touched upon, through many experiences of mine as pure consciousness, is that one of the basic impulses of consciousness is TO CONNECT. Though consciousness takes many forms, atoms, bacteria, plants, animals, human--these are all different WAYS of experiencing the basic principle of CONNECTION. Plants may connect differently than humans; plants can connect with humans; atoms collide; but, everything explores these infinite variations of CONNECTION.
The fact that I have been starved of this connection in my human form--the fact that this connection my human form expected to make at these critically developmental periods was absent--I've suffered extreme damage.
Intellectually, I grasped all of this. I've come to interact with myself, others, and my world in an extremely healthy way--therefore, I assumed, I was through the bulk of this healing.
The barley hit me so hard--I can only describe this as--it exposed a nerve at the very root of my psyche. This nerve has been exposed ever since. I've been drinking straight Caapi without admixture. I can no longer ingest any stimulants because I panic. I've had a few unexpected hellrides from ingesting homeopathic amounts of Cacao. My panic disappears immediately in the presence of human contact. Straight Caapi does not trigger a panic, so I have been doing work with just that.
Finally, the stars lined up so some friends were able to sit for me. I warned them that I just might need to be held, because I am in the midst of releasing some serious shit. Finally, my turn came to smoke the changa...
I suppose I could compare smoking changa to like running scandisk on a damaged hard drive. When I come up, I feel uneasy and anxious--changa is scanning for bad sectors in my brain and repairing. There is usually a point, very quickly in, where this "completes," the carrier wave stabilizes into a coherent tone, and I am in visionary space.
Basically, the changa "scanned and repaired" for a straight ten minutes (vs. the usual 15-20 seconds). I was so overwhelmed, I thought I was going to die, explode, or go completely insane. I reached immediately for my friend, he sat with me, and basically just held me like a child. I was aware of my reaction, but I was also completely unable to stop what was happening inside me, happening through me, shooting out of my fingertips.
The times I have gone deepest into my psyche, into the realms of in utero programming, I see red. The darkest red. I see specific mandalas when I am processing harm. I was basically stuck in this red headspace with a giant, vibrating Celtic knot/mandala, while my friend held me and I experienced pure terror.
Had I been alone, I. would. have. been. FUCKED. I purposely postponed smoking until someone could be with me, because the depths of this panic were so primordially terrifying. I was literally so lost, until I felt simple human touch to ground me. I was only able to endure the things I experienced because there was living human contact beside me.
When the scanning finally stopped, I felt AMAZING.
I smoked a second time, and there was panic, but it was manageable. There was lots of bodily discomfort, but it was systematic; the medicine shifted my awareness first, to my stomach, then, to my chest, then, to my throat, each body part feeling a bit ill and squeezed while it was being worked upon. Again, I have felt brief recalibrations like this with other voyages, but I've never EVER undergone so much repair.
That initial experience with the barley gutted some very serious things and dragged them into the light of god for repair.
The visionary experience is only half of the value of the medicine, to me; the other half of that value is in the increased quality of life I experience in the days to follow after taking the medicine. This is why I commune so frequently. I am prone to depression. I am prone to becoming enervated and losing the ability to cope. As long as I can work with the medicine, I can lead a normal, FUNCTIONAL, creative, motivated, healthy, and wonderful life. I don't care how scary the experiences are, because the alternative absence of guiding light and descent into persistently negative brain chemistry is even worse.
This time, however, I had no choice but to be completely shredded by the changa. Shredded is the best word I have. I am EXTREMELY grateful for the experience. It feels like that "exposed nerve root of panic" has finally begun to heal.
I feel amazing. I feel confident that I could smoke on my own again.
I have never been so deep. I'm also quite fortunate that I managed to navigate waters this dark and deep and survive, but I could not have done it without a friend.
I guess it comes down to, "No man is an island." I reached the point in my hundreds of journeys where I could go alone no further. The message is basic. We need each other. We need to touch, we need to love, it's why we are here, it's what we were made to do at the most basic level. Why else would consciousness bother to construct a body? The purpose of the body is to make contact. Think about all the ways the fingers can grasp, curl, and dig. We learn by touching.
Thank you...
)
