Hi y'all,
Wondering if any peeps here have any insight on this...I have recently returned from a trip to Peru, where among many other experiences, I had three ayahuasca experiences with a shaman I was already acquainted with. The brew was a strong fusion of cielo ayahuasca/Chaliponga/mapacho and seemed to produce spectacular results for the majority of people. I had three ceremonies within a week, and had a second serving in both the second and third ceremonies. I'm no spring chicken to ayahuasca, and have had around 25 ceremonies over the last 10 years or so, not including a few mostly botched homebrews and more successful pharma sessions. I had prepared for this experience, taking care of diet and life style for some weeks prior, and meditating daily.
All of my ayahuasca sessions seem to be a variation on the same theme...they are always personal experiences, always chaotic and always revolve around me and my experiences...I never connect with anything outside of myself as others report. I appreciate a lot of spiritual approaches emphasise the importance of looking within, that all the answers lie in there, so perhaps the desire to connect with something seemingly transpersonal is a moot point. At the retreat I was at, the shaman takes quite a Christian view of God and things that didn't really resonate with me, and he encouraged such views among the other people training with him. Some of the people there claimed experiences with God, Satan and angels, and to me this seemed like it was the ayahuasca projecting their beliefs, or what they had been nudged into believing, and I do believe this is a component of the ayahuasca experience, acting as a mirror in some respects. Others, including people close to me I know well, were connecting with spirits, entities, the spiritual essences of the plants, and seemingly visiting other dimensions of reality. I never get any of this. In comparison, my ayahuasca experiences are much more boring affairs. If I'm lucky, I well receive some kind of vague insight regarding life issues. If I'm not, there will not be any meaningful content to the experience I can perceive. Visually I only ever experience moving fractal geometric patterning, woven onto a tapestry of darkness, in various shades of light (I don't perceive much in the way of colours in comparison to other psychedelics). Even my third and final session, which was by far the strongest, was a roller-coaster and a chaos of these kind of visions, with no particular insight or lessons. I've been told by others that the feeling aspect to the experience is much more important, but I can't say I feel a great deal either, certainly nothing like the feelings invoked by ingesting psilocybe mushrooms. It seems like ayahuasca is just not very interested in interacting with me to any substantial degree.
I've heard some people say that ayahuasca only delivers when you are really in need of healing, which maybe I'm not?? That this is a plant that gives you what you need, not what you want is something I've heard echoed a fair few times and something I am totally open to. I'm not claiming by any stretch that I'm a flawless being, but I think I have a fairly good handle on my flaws, short comings and weak spots and don't need ayahuasca or any other plant to show me these.
I also observed some more negative aspects to ayahuasca while I was there, as did my sister who worked with this shaman for three months. Ayahuasca does seem to have the capacity, with some people at least, to fuel delusional thinking. It also seems to be a highly possessive plant for some, including the shaman who refuses to even acknowledge the value of another plants or fungi (in his view, ayahuasca is the product of God...was God wrong to create all these other plants and fungi?). For other people worthy or in need of healing, it fails to deliver. In others, including one of the people training there, ayahuasca can be overwhelmingly dark in nature, and consistently so. I did notice while out there it does seem to attract a few lost souls and a few crazy people. I'm not sure it greatly spiritually evolves shamans who work with it consistently either...for a plant that dissolves ego's, it seems it can build them up stronger over time, our shaman certainly had some big ego issues, viewing himself as some kind of Jesus like figure, and it seemed that shamans consistently bad mouth and are jealous of each other. The same thing seems to apply to iboga shamans as well. Just one person's perspective, but I know of a lovely lady who has a lot of experience with the plants, but also has a lot of Buddhist meditation experience in Buddhist temples in Thailand, and she described the Buddhist monks and abbots with a great deal of meditation experience as seeming on a whole different footing when it comes to spiritual advancement. Ayahuasca seems to definitely bestow spiritual gifts to some, but spiritual advancement is a very different thing. This isn’t to say I do not have a great deal of respect and reverence for ayahuasca. I believe it has done me good in the past, and I have seen it work near miraculous healings on people very close to me. I have also witnessed it do very little to people deserving of healing, become a crutch for others, and also possess, fuel delusions and interact with others in what I perceive as a negative way.
I know Dennis McKenna doesn't resonate with Alan Watt's statement "When you get the message, hang up the phone." But in this case, for me, I believe it applies. Maybe, being a scientist and having that kind of brain, blocks me in some way from experiencing ayahuasca in a certain way? This certainly didn't seem to block Dennis McKenna in any way. Although I'm well aware that Harvard Professor Richard E. Schultes, the founding father of Ethnobotany, only ever experienced colourful moving lines whenever he ingested ayahuasca, which resonates with my experiences.
I feel my time with ayahuasca is over, along with iboga, as I don't feel I can learn or assimilate anything from experiences that makes my ingesting these plants a worthwhile enterprise. I don't see this as a negative thing however and actually feel very satisfied I have experienced some kind of closure with ayahuasca out in Peru. However when I ingest psilocybe mushrooms I seem to connect with something much deeper, and consistently so, I seem to resonate with them much more, and I always have done, so I feel these will be a long term ally. Furthermore my interest in non substance means of consciousness exploration is growing, and I like the idea of being able to explore consciousness on my own terms without any crutches.
Wondering if anyone has any insight on any of this, or whether I'm a freak and outlier in this regard??
Wondering if any peeps here have any insight on this...I have recently returned from a trip to Peru, where among many other experiences, I had three ayahuasca experiences with a shaman I was already acquainted with. The brew was a strong fusion of cielo ayahuasca/Chaliponga/mapacho and seemed to produce spectacular results for the majority of people. I had three ceremonies within a week, and had a second serving in both the second and third ceremonies. I'm no spring chicken to ayahuasca, and have had around 25 ceremonies over the last 10 years or so, not including a few mostly botched homebrews and more successful pharma sessions. I had prepared for this experience, taking care of diet and life style for some weeks prior, and meditating daily.
All of my ayahuasca sessions seem to be a variation on the same theme...they are always personal experiences, always chaotic and always revolve around me and my experiences...I never connect with anything outside of myself as others report. I appreciate a lot of spiritual approaches emphasise the importance of looking within, that all the answers lie in there, so perhaps the desire to connect with something seemingly transpersonal is a moot point. At the retreat I was at, the shaman takes quite a Christian view of God and things that didn't really resonate with me, and he encouraged such views among the other people training with him. Some of the people there claimed experiences with God, Satan and angels, and to me this seemed like it was the ayahuasca projecting their beliefs, or what they had been nudged into believing, and I do believe this is a component of the ayahuasca experience, acting as a mirror in some respects. Others, including people close to me I know well, were connecting with spirits, entities, the spiritual essences of the plants, and seemingly visiting other dimensions of reality. I never get any of this. In comparison, my ayahuasca experiences are much more boring affairs. If I'm lucky, I well receive some kind of vague insight regarding life issues. If I'm not, there will not be any meaningful content to the experience I can perceive. Visually I only ever experience moving fractal geometric patterning, woven onto a tapestry of darkness, in various shades of light (I don't perceive much in the way of colours in comparison to other psychedelics). Even my third and final session, which was by far the strongest, was a roller-coaster and a chaos of these kind of visions, with no particular insight or lessons. I've been told by others that the feeling aspect to the experience is much more important, but I can't say I feel a great deal either, certainly nothing like the feelings invoked by ingesting psilocybe mushrooms. It seems like ayahuasca is just not very interested in interacting with me to any substantial degree.
I've heard some people say that ayahuasca only delivers when you are really in need of healing, which maybe I'm not?? That this is a plant that gives you what you need, not what you want is something I've heard echoed a fair few times and something I am totally open to. I'm not claiming by any stretch that I'm a flawless being, but I think I have a fairly good handle on my flaws, short comings and weak spots and don't need ayahuasca or any other plant to show me these.
I also observed some more negative aspects to ayahuasca while I was there, as did my sister who worked with this shaman for three months. Ayahuasca does seem to have the capacity, with some people at least, to fuel delusional thinking. It also seems to be a highly possessive plant for some, including the shaman who refuses to even acknowledge the value of another plants or fungi (in his view, ayahuasca is the product of God...was God wrong to create all these other plants and fungi?). For other people worthy or in need of healing, it fails to deliver. In others, including one of the people training there, ayahuasca can be overwhelmingly dark in nature, and consistently so. I did notice while out there it does seem to attract a few lost souls and a few crazy people. I'm not sure it greatly spiritually evolves shamans who work with it consistently either...for a plant that dissolves ego's, it seems it can build them up stronger over time, our shaman certainly had some big ego issues, viewing himself as some kind of Jesus like figure, and it seemed that shamans consistently bad mouth and are jealous of each other. The same thing seems to apply to iboga shamans as well. Just one person's perspective, but I know of a lovely lady who has a lot of experience with the plants, but also has a lot of Buddhist meditation experience in Buddhist temples in Thailand, and she described the Buddhist monks and abbots with a great deal of meditation experience as seeming on a whole different footing when it comes to spiritual advancement. Ayahuasca seems to definitely bestow spiritual gifts to some, but spiritual advancement is a very different thing. This isn’t to say I do not have a great deal of respect and reverence for ayahuasca. I believe it has done me good in the past, and I have seen it work near miraculous healings on people very close to me. I have also witnessed it do very little to people deserving of healing, become a crutch for others, and also possess, fuel delusions and interact with others in what I perceive as a negative way.
I know Dennis McKenna doesn't resonate with Alan Watt's statement "When you get the message, hang up the phone." But in this case, for me, I believe it applies. Maybe, being a scientist and having that kind of brain, blocks me in some way from experiencing ayahuasca in a certain way? This certainly didn't seem to block Dennis McKenna in any way. Although I'm well aware that Harvard Professor Richard E. Schultes, the founding father of Ethnobotany, only ever experienced colourful moving lines whenever he ingested ayahuasca, which resonates with my experiences.
I feel my time with ayahuasca is over, along with iboga, as I don't feel I can learn or assimilate anything from experiences that makes my ingesting these plants a worthwhile enterprise. I don't see this as a negative thing however and actually feel very satisfied I have experienced some kind of closure with ayahuasca out in Peru. However when I ingest psilocybe mushrooms I seem to connect with something much deeper, and consistently so, I seem to resonate with them much more, and I always have done, so I feel these will be a long term ally. Furthermore my interest in non substance means of consciousness exploration is growing, and I like the idea of being able to explore consciousness on my own terms without any crutches.
Wondering if anyone has any insight on any of this, or whether I'm a freak and outlier in this regard??
