I've looked at Zig Zag Zen, and another book called Altered States: Buddhism and Psychedelic Spirituality. It's been a long time, but if I remember correctly there actually was not much in either book about this practice, except I think one section in the Altered States book about a person who used peyote in meditation, which sounded kind of similar to what I've done, which surprised me. There really doesn't seem to be much out there, whether in Altered States, Zig Zag Zen, or from Vince Horn, who does an entire podcast entitled "Meditating on Psychedelics", which from what I've listened to seems to be a huge misnomer. Even Stan Grof's "holotropic breathwork" isn't really "anapanasati", it's a practice of controlled hyperventilation, which Grof actually recommends one not do on psychedelics, only while sober to replicate psychedelic states.
If there are any resources detailing this kind of work I'd love to hear about it! I've definitely searched for it, but I've basically had to discover everything alone. That little bit about "firmness" in the silent "concentrations" that the Santo Daime talk about is the most information I've gotten, and I don't think what they're doing is quite the same.
As for a report, I'll give a bit of one, more of an overview than a report.
When I started doing this practice, I was lucky that I stuck with it. It took a couple hours before something "changed". It happened because when I was thinking "why don't I just give up and enjoy the trip by listening to music, perhaps with a blindfold...", blah blah blah, I instead thought, "or, you can sit here and keep trying until the ayahuasca wears off". I stared directly at that impulse to give up trying, that sense of "boredom" which is really just the intensity of aversion disguising itself as something more innocuous than it is. The discomfort from experiencing that impulse grew, it burned, it felt like I was burning my mind or carving it like wood. I smiled at it, at the intensity it had grown to in being mindfully resisted, knowing this meant I had stumbled on an insight, that it was revealing itself for what it was, and as I looked at it, this fierce impulse to avoid and be apathetic, I waited for it to die... and it withered away. And then everything changed.
This has been my experience almost every time I do this, but now I know what to look for. When I do this, maintaining concentration on the breath becomes much easier and very pleasurable, and I start to have visions. It is different every time. Jewelled palaces, cathedrals with stained glass windows made out of light. Sometimes I spontaneously burst into speaking in tongues when the visionary light reaches a peak. Other times I plumb the depths of my psyche and purify the darkness by simply breathing, aware. Sometimes I see "rips" inside the geometric light patterns in my mind. I once entered a tiny little rip, and I shrunk and entered it, or it grew and engulfed me, and what was small before was my entire environment, and I worked inside it and repaired the damage, merely by continuing my awareness of it, not by actively grabbing at it. Sustained awareness is enough, it all does everything else by itself.
On one particularly memorable occasion, it was the night before the Spring equinox, the last night of winter (though I did not know this until the next day). I began passing through "darkness", it had the kind of vibe that a leafless branch blowing in an October night wind has. Spooky. But it was not at all scary. I trusted my practice completely, and only found it intriguing. I remained with my practice of following the breath, and suddenly there was only darkness... and slowly, "fading in" to the black abyss, a door appeared, with a raven or a crow sitting on it... and then it vanished, and the trip was abruptly over. "Cool", I thought, and stood up to exit my bedroom. My room mate was coming up the stairs. He was a rationalist neuroscience major and a linebacker football player who never did psychs. He asked me how my trip had went, I started describing the part about the door and the raven... and he interrupted and said he had to sit down, that he was about to black out. He of course ascribed it to coincidence because anything that smacks of the supernatural is odious to his sensibilities, but in my opinion he basically got blasted with the energy of what that was, without any preparation. I don't know what the vision meant. Maybe something to do with confronting death.
Every time I do this, afterward I feel like the opposite of how the aftermath of an MDMA experience feels. Like if MDMA is sabotaging my neurochemistry, this practice is nourishing and strengthening my nervous system. Meditation in general does this, but doing it on ayahuasca in particular feels ah-may-zing. As in, amazingly healthy. I feel stronger, more confident, more mature, happier, with wiser emotional depth, with the power of... love, I guess. I've struggled with depression before, and I believe this has not only cured but in many ways immunized me to it. And it greatly inspired me to meditate more and more while sober, because my sober meditation is definitely deeper and more focused as well.
If you take up this practice, I hope this has helped, and I would love to hear how your experience with it plays out.
