Ayahuasca – A discussion

[MichaelD]

I went back and read some of the previous posts, and thought i could share a little more about ayahuasca and plant medicines in general. 

First theres the concept of laboratry creations (LSD, ecstasy, etc.) vs whole, natural plants. The difference is real, and i can elaborate. With LSD, the trip is more of an enhancing of seemingly latent abilities. Whatever you choose to focus on, you see more deeply into it. Your mental faculties are functioning much, much faster. You will see optical phenomena, but not deep hallucinations or visions. 
With ayahuasca, there is something extra to it. There is a very obvious other presence there, the sense that 'something' wants to show you something. What you focus on is not so much what you choose, but what the plant wants you to see. You have deep, profound hallucinations, as if transported to a completely new universe at times. Your sense of self, however, is left largly in tact. 
Now these are general differences true for most people. Some people DO have deep hallucinations on LSD, but they are difficult to interpret and contain less meaning. However, the presence of another 'something' is the key difference. I believe this to be due to 2 things: how close to the natural source the plant is, and the traditions behind it. 
Yage has thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years of history being used as a healing modality. The ingenious treated it with immense respect. This history of the medicine is present with it and enhances the experience. Now, LSD has only been around for a hundred years or so, and doesnt have any historic auric energy associated with it yet. 
Also, i believe the extraction of the LSD from ergot affects its energy. Perhaps if a shaman made LSD with a very pure intention, then it may have a stronger healing component. However, LSD is usually made by some college kid or professor in california for the sole purpose of making money. 

As regards the money for ayahuasca retreats, its important to understand why they cost money. There are many reasons, and here are some. Firstly, the shaman has to eat and pay rent, pay for travel costs, contribute to his helpers, etc. There are many expenses when doing ceremonies. Second, many shamans are a part of larger communities in desperate need of money for foodstuffs, land costs, etc. My shaman sends a substantial sum of money each month to his teacher, his grandfather, because the grandfather helps organize meetings to help his people stop the corrupt government and coorporations from taking their land and resources from their ancestral lands and hunting grounds in the amazon. 
Third, the money is a sign of commitment. If ceremonies were free, anyone would come, including those not serious in theyre seeking. This is unfortunate, because if you dont bring a strong intention into the ceremony, then you wont get much out of it, as well as having taking a spot from someone who might truly be seeking healing. However, if you pay $100 for a ceremony, it is more likely you are serious in your seeking. That said, my shaman will never turn someone away for lack of money if we have space in the ceremony.
Having said all that, of course there are many 'shamans' only in it for the money. Intuition and personal reccomendations are the only tool to find a true shaman. 

Then there is the idea that you can reach these states on your own without yage, through meditation. This misses the point. Perhaps a select few can, Jesus, the Buddha, Prem Baba. For the rest of us though, we will never reach the states you experience in a yage ceremony, without drinking the medicine. And it isnt just about the states, its about the whole ceremony. Its an experience, a celebration, a celestial party that we are all invited to. Its not the states thats important, its what happens during the ceremony. Sure, you could reach ego death during some insanely deep meditation, but i dont drink yage for ego death. I drink it to go on a journey through space and time. The things ive seen during ceremony boggle the mind and inspire the soul. Yage is not a 'quick fix', it is a tool for transformation. It is not a 'lazy path' either. How many yogis walk into the ashram with their knees shaking because they know what they are about to partake in? In almost all indigenious cultures who use ayahuasca, it is immensely important to have a personal growth practice (meditation, exercise, etx), as well as go on rigorous dietas. It isnt all about the yage. 

What makes some people think 'doing it alone' is a path of more integrity? Medicine is food and food is medicine. Can you 'do it alone' without food? Can you reach enlightenment without air or shelter or water? Humans were not made to do things alone. We are part of communities. Human communities, animal communities, plant communities, and the earth community. People say its better to 'do it alone', but then drive their car or take a bus to the ashram. Who made the vehicle? Who brought the lettuce to the store for you? Who generates the power for your house electricity? Who keeps the internet maintained for us to have these deep conversations. So why is it ok to depend on all these unknown people for things as mundane as surfing the internet, but somehow its not ok to depend on a shaman you know personally, who serves medicine for your soul with the utmost integrity based on thousand year old traditions? Its not a matter of a good path/bad path, or long road/short road. Its about what serves you and your highest good. 

The world is a mysterious place. All we can do is try things out and see if they serve us. Experiment. Life is too short to keep doing the same things over and over. Look around at your life and ask yourself, "is this all that life has to offer?" If the answer does not satisfy you, then maybe its time to try something new. Maybe it isnt plant medicine, but find what it is. 

[YinYang]

There is a very obvious other presence there, the sense that 'something' wants to show you something.

This presence is what most people refer to as "mother Ayahuasca". In Spanish the feminine always end with the letter "a" - just a little linguistics not related to the topic, but everyone always says it's a female presence.

The world is a mysterious place.

That it is... I'm looking forward to my experience!

[native]

Yes the idea of ayahuasca as an actual being is a central aspect of the experience. When you ingest aya you're taking in the the spirit itself, allowing it to be able to communicate with you, and then you journey to another realm together inhabited by other spirits. So perhaps it's best said that you're not on ayahuasca, but with ayahuasca.

Referring to two experienced shamans.."What they showed me over and over and over again is that even they do not know what ayahuasca is. Because you're never experiencing ayahuasca. You're always experiencing ayahuasca plus you, and that combination is not ayahuasca. That combination is you and ayahuasca. And that means ayahuasca then is undefinable, we don't know what it is, which then always allows us to continue to explore the unknown. And it becomes an unlimited journey for us to be able to continue to go further and further in our understanding."  He's referring to the idea that imagination and pushing boundaries within the experience itself is central to the journey, always going into unknown territory.

[YinYang]

Yes the idea of ayahuasca as an actual being is a central aspect of the experience. When you ingest aya you're taking in the the spirit itself, allowing it to be able to communicate with you, and then you journey to another realm together inhabited by other spirits. So perhaps it's best said that you're not on ayahuasca, but with ayahuasca.

Referring to two experienced shamans.."What they showed me over and over and over again is that even they do not know what ayahuasca is. Because you're never experiencing ayahuasca. You're always experiencing ayahuasca plus you, and that combination is not ayahuasca. That combination is you and ayahuasca. And that means ayahuasca then is undefinable, we don't know what it is, which then always allows us to continue to explore the unknown. And it becomes an unlimited journey for us to be able to continue to go further and further in our understanding."  He's referring to the idea that imagination and pushing boundaries within the experience itself is central to the journey, always going into unknown territory.

While I know it's such a fantastic universe we live in, I am still sometimes amazed at people's journeys. It truly is a realm where the possibilities are endless. It reminds me of this:

Ra: You may consider any possibility/probability complex as having an existence.

So your own imagination very much shapes your experience... I must be in for quite a ride then, because this imagination of mine...

[native]

Hehe, good luck! In that podcast we were discussing, the shaman talks about interacting with the patterns, asking them questions, going into them..rather than just being passive.

[Agua del Cielo]

Great comversation, thank you all!
I would like to add a few things:

I think its pretty impossible to tell where one will end up using any kind of medicine like ayahuasca, peyote, lsd and the likes.
It is entirely dependant on your stage of spiritual evolution, degree and depths of healing, intention, setting and so on.

I think one should absolutely and most importantly be aware what these substances CAN do.

These substances can completely wreck your "inner control". This means they loosen or suspend your control which keeps you from experiencing either higher states of consciousness which might overwhelm you or leave you unfunctional on a human level if you re not prepared.
They can also lead you to the core of trauma, making you re-experience this old and still unprocessed pain.
I cannot stress this last point enough!!

The ones among you which re-experienced trauma in a therapeutic setting probably know what im speaking of.
The ones who dont should seriously consider this.

When you are willing and able to go very deep in extremely painful experiences, than these substances might be for your.
I would advise on NEVER doing it alone, unless you are extremely advanced spiritually as well as on your healing path (which in a way is the same).
Justimagine for example you end up in a state where you re-experience being raped as a baby.
You will probably not be able to bear this alone, even more considering the fact where have been left alone in these experiences.
Re-experiencing trauma alone will mostprobably result in re-traumatizing, causing psychosis, schizophrenia and the likes (worst case szenario).
Because of that you would want someone who is experienced, absolutely trustworthy and willing and capable of really "staying there" in case you end up in a painful experience.
Take into account that a person usually cannot allow another to experience deep pain that he himself/herself has notyet healed (because of resonance).

If done in the rightsorrounding, withthe right people and good set, setting, intention ithas the potential of enormous healing which otherwise might take decades until you re ready to access this depth.

You could as well end up in more pleasant experiences, but its impossible to tell.

I experienced ayahuasca on several ceremonial occassions. The experience wasnt really that good, because the "holding" in that group wasnt good at all, meaning, they would just leave you alone in your whatever you end up.
Fortunately my girlfriend was with me and she is solid as a rock, her love being so strong that she would accompany me in whatever depth.

Taking ayahuasca or the likes in a ceremonial setting with a REAL SHAMAN or with an experienced therapist can be ofgreat value, one should however do some research on the people offering it.

One more word on ayahuasca:
I would say, its a lotdifferent from other substances. A friend of mine (who i value very much as an incredible advanced being) brought me to this and i found it to be true:
Ayahuasca does not only loosen your control and open up inner doors, it also helps in a very special way. If the state you experience cannot be consciously processed (which sometimes is the case with extremely early trauma) it "transfers" the energy to a physical level, meaning it will be somatized in the body and one might "vomit out" (literally) the energy.
Your onservations on this would be highly appreciated!

A question to the mods:
Since many users seem to ingest plant medicine and other drugs anyway, i feel the need for a "if you do it then how to do it safest" guide or thread.
Please letme know what you think about this.

[sjel]

YinYang, how did your ceremony go? I am feeling spiritually sick and drawn to this medicine.

[YinYang]

Hey Shel, I logged in to get the link to the podcast Icaro shared in this thread, and saw your post. Apologies for the late response, I have been..... sailing the seven seas... :-)

I'm finally going for my first ayahuasca ceremony on the 26th of May, and it's a weekend retreat which will include 2 Ayahuasca ceremonies, and then those who wish to take San Pedro as well, can do so. I'll be sticking to Ayahuasca only, maybe at a later stage I'll give San Pedro a go. Ayahuasca is a feminine teacher plant, and San Pedro is a masculine teacher plant, so they've called the weekend retreat "Father Sun, Mother Moon", combining the two. This group mainly uses Ayahuasca, San Pedro and Iboga.

I will report back afterwards. I have no apprehension or fear, I feel ready and excited.

If you feel drawn to the medicine, go for it. I've heard many people say that Mother Ayahuasca calls you :-) Just choose a shaman you feel comfortable with, and research him/her well.

[Henosis]

I bought a bunch of ayahuasca as well as admixtures years ago... I even made some that's been sitting in my freezer for over a year.

I haven't taken it and have been "naturally" accumulating wisdom and understanding. I'm sure the knowledge and revelations it will bring are truly mind blowing.... but for me personally I can't even keep up with my own every day revelations about reality. I know the experience will be comforting, blissful, and there is nothing to fear... yet my intuition LOVES me for using it as is without requesting additional resources or direct guidance from on high.

That said....I intend on taking it in the very near future, but I am very content that I've let my intuition guide me up to this point.

[smc]

Though I'm no longer interacting with B4th these days; I happened across this article yesterday and got a 'message' to share it here.
I've just seen this thread is currently active and directly relevant. So here I am, and I offer it with love and caring, without judgement on anyone's choices and with appreciation for the comprehensiveness of the authors experiences and commentary of the pros and cons. I feel it may be useful for people on B4th.
To make it easy I'll post the text here - but include the link as well as there are several interesting videos if you go to the article itself.

Ayahuasca, Psychedelics and Marijuana: A Critical Look at the Psychedelic Movement

By Bernhard Guenther

Guest Writer For Wake Up World https://wakeup-world.com/2015/06/20/ayah...-movement/

Reflections on Ayahuasca.

In December of 2013 I visited the Peruvian jungle with two of my best friends. Spending time away from modern civilization, deep in the rainforest, was a healing and beautiful experience on one hand, but also an eye-opening and disturbing one on the other hand. It’s the fourth time I’ve been to Peru. The previous visit was in 2007. The ponerization of society has reached even the most remote corners of the planet, where the virus of “modern progress” has infected the everyday lives of indigenous cultures.

Many people have this romantic view of exotic places like the Amazon and the natives who live there. The issue is not only the pathology of the modern world with its globalization, greed, and capitalism, but that many natives themselves actually seek out that lifestyle in so many ways. It’s a bit ironic — some of us are trying to escape the modern world, and the people living in what we see as “paradise” yearn for what we are trying to get away from… but it’s a clash, and it doesn’t fit.

It’s not a black and white issue, and there is much we can learn from these cultures and their traditions. I’ve certainly learned a lot, and the insights I’ve gained from working with ayahuasca, the “grandmother”, have been revealing and healing in many ways, but we need to get over this romanticizing that surrounds the culture itself. I see this occurring a lot in the yoga community as well, with people drawn to Eastern practices and philosophies which have become very distorted over time, romanticizing India and that whole guru culture. Many people don’t question any of the underlying programs associated with these traditions.

Luckily, we were prepared for our journey, travelling with the right intentions and lots of self-work under our belt already, working with an experienced curandero (shaman) who lives deep in the jungle with his family. We travelled for 8 hours on a banana boat south of Pucallpa on the Rio Ucayali to get to the village. Thanks to my long-time Peruvian friend who came with us — and who is very discerning and careful who to work with, based on his own experiences — this trip was very well planned. However, the fact that ayahuasca has become so popular over the years, with thousands of people travelling to Peru to have “the experience”, has taken a toll on the culture and the people living there. We saw that as well. Ayahuasca tourism has risen exponentially, and along with it, many pseudo shamans who have become greedy for the almighty dollar.

There are even more disturbing things happening there, some of it relating to sorcery and “wars” between curanderos who are greedy and envious of each another. All of this is well-known in the jungle, and ayahuasca has been used in black magic rituals for a long time. Our curandero told us how ayahuasca is being used by some shamans for mind control in order to have power over others by making them ill and psychotic.

During our stay in the jungle we witnessed that he was under a psychic attack from a curandero of a neighboring village (about 20 miles away) who was envious of him because of his success as a shamanic healer, with many people seeking him out. He was able to fight it off with the help of another shaman during one of the ceremonies. It’s like hyperdimensional warfare. Luckily, we weren’t subjected to these attacks, and he held a safe space for us during the sessions.

Ayahuasca is mostly being seen as this beautiful spiritual magic drink that — other than some purging and emotional/physical discomfort — has supposedly only positive effects. This is not entirely true. In the modern world, there have been cases of sexual abuse (link) during ceremonies, and people have died during ceremonies as well (link). Last year, a British tourist, 19, was found dead on a remote Colombian road after an ayahuasca ceremony gone wrong (link).

While its “home” is in Peru, here on the west coast of the USA “aya” has become a lucrative “business”. I know of some “shamans” who charge $250 per person, with 50–70 people in a ceremony… (you do the math)… without ever having gone through the long and tedious training and initiation to become an ayahuascero. Ayahuasca is becoming more and more popular — nowadays you can even order it on Amazon (virtual “Amazon”). 12 years ago I remember hardly anyone knew about it, now I get invitations to participate in ceremonies on a regular basis where I live, but something doesn’t feel right about many of these ceremonies, with too many red flags attached to the groups involved.

Unfortunately, there are many people who desperately want to try this brew because of the hype, so their critical thinking goes out the window, along with their intuition. The projections and expectations kick in, and the curanderos are looked at like gurus, being put on a pedestal — with all the transference issues that come along with that. Some shamans take advantage of this naiveté, similar to the Indian Guru pathology and the abuses based on that program… same story, different culture.

Jolane Abrams provides a powerful presentation of the shadow side of ayahuasca tourism: (video link)

I’ve managed to free myself from the romanticism blinders which I carried when I first travelled to Peru eight years ago. Much of what Jolane has said I can see in Peru now as well, and it’s not a pretty picture – in fact, it’s gotten worse over the years. However, I don’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water. There is much beauty down there, with amazing healers who live in the jungle or the Andes who possess incredible knowledge.

Our group experienced an amazing time, with healing and insightful ceremonies in a small intimate setting. But it’s not easy work by any means, and certainly not for everyone. It’s also not a magic drink, as Jolane said, and the work never stops — with or without ayahuasca. It’s just another tool, and like any tool it can be used for good or to harm… and most harm happens out of ignorance and wishful thinking.

Dark Shamanism is a topic that is virtually unacknowledged in the neo-shamanism revival movement within Western culture. Many spiritual teachings have been corrupted and watered-down into sellable, easy-to-swallow pop-spirituality these days. Shamanism has also become greatly distorted, omitting many issues most people are not even aware of.

Prof. Neil Whitehead, who was the victim of a Kanaima, or dark shaman attack in Guyana, South America, addresses the dark side of Shamanism in this interview: (video link)

The topic of shamanism and “plant medicine” inevitably leads into a discussion of other hallucinogens. My personal experience with psychedelics, in general, is two-fold (I have worked with ayahuasca, san pedro, psilocybin mushrooms, and DMT): on one hand, they have provided incredible insight into myself and reality, and helped me in my personal healing process; but on the other hand, it has also been very confusing and disturbing at times. My introduction to psychedelics happened with psilocybin mushrooms in 1996, which I used for a number of years while on the path of self-exploration and healing.

These experiences have also led me to bodywork, yoga, and Qi Gong, which I’ve been practising ever since. However, many young kids use these drugs at parties, without any proper preparation or intentions. That’s how I got introduced to them as well, but I stopped taking these substances recreationally after a couple of disturbing experiences, and after that point only worked with them on my own (or with close friends in nature) with the intention of confronting and healing issues within me, not just to “trip out” and enjoy some visual fireworks.

These were also emotional heavy times for me which involved confronting the shadow, with periods of depression, shame, despair, and anger as my shadow was coming to light. Most of this dark side consisted of suppressed emotional states from past experiences, primarily during childhood. However, looking back, I also didn’t have the context and knowledge to integrate these experiences, especially from a psychological perspective. Too much came up for me to handle. I stopped doing any psychedelics for many years, and focused more on integrating what had come up through deeper “sober” self-work, learning about psychology, integrating psychotherapy and using bodywork, yoga, dance, breath-work and Qi Gong to get in touch with my emotional body through these body-mind modalities.

Ayahuasca and other medicine plants can help many people (especially with regards to addiction and trauma) but it is important to combine it with psychotherapeutic work.

Dr. Gabor Maté, author of “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction“, talks about his view of the healing potential of ayahuasca: (video link)

At the same time, these substances can open up doors in the psyche, bringing suppressed trauma to consciousness, which can make things even worse, and it can be too much for the individual to handle. It is a potential ‘healing support mechanism’ that can paradoxically be detrimental for some people. That’s why psycho-spiritual therapy should be part of it, in my opinion. Many times, that alone is often enough for creating deep and lasting transformation, without having to take any substance, if one is sincere and sticks to the psycho-spiritual healing process.

Healing trauma, addiction, and childhood wounds, which we all have and are all dealing with to varying degrees, takes its own time, and trying to speed it up with psychedelic substances can sometimes make things worse than better. It’s also a symptom of our fast-food and instant gratification culture, wanting to be fixed as quickly as possible with the least amount of effort and work, and for many people this is what attracts them to psychedelics and ayahuasca.

Often times, using these substances becomes another buffer and avoidance strategy. Looking back at my experiences, I had to acknowledge that I was over-estimating myself and lying to myself about my healing process on some level. Just like many other people, I got hooked on the “peak experience” and avoided deeper psychotherapeutic and sincere self-work without the use of these substances. This also ties into the phenomenon of “spiritual bypassing” as I wrote about in “Spiritual Bypassing, Relationships and the Shadow”.

Marijuana

One of the revealing things the curandero told me after the second ayahuasca ceremony is that I had an energy block/cyst in the area of my solar plexus due to residue of long-time marijuana use. He mentioned that it’s related to something a long time ago that is still stuck. In my twenties, I certainly had smoked a lot, and it’s interesting that he saw this blockage, because in the past few years I hardly smoked, even staying off of it completely for over a year, but I also have smoked it here and then again as well. He said he worked on it during one of the ceremonies and helped release it, and I did feel a shift in me.

I had to admit that I was lying to myself about my cannabis use, telling myself that I used it “responsibly” for “medicinal” purposes. For example, I’d smoke a little before doing yoga or getting bodywork, since it helped me to get into my body more, but I also felt that something wasn’t right about it, and that in fact I used it more as a crutch. Also, when I felt depressed or just “off”, I’d smoke to elevate my mood. At times, it helped me to work through what came up; however, truth be told, I had more emotional breakthroughs when I stayed with an emotional discomfort instead of buffering it with the use of marijuana.

What the curandero said certainly didn’t come as a surprise, but was a much needed reminder of what I have been thinking about for a while: how marijuana can be abused, and has negative consequences, especially to the energy body. With all the focus on the positive aspects of this plant and its healing properties, the other side of how it can be abused (and be damaging) is hardly addressed. Most research also relates to the physical benefits, indicating that there are no physical dangers (as opposed to alcohol, for example). Based on that, there is a big focus on legalizing marijuana, with all the “pharmacies” popping up, where you just have to pay a little amount to get a “medical marijuana” card and you can buy and smoke all the pot you want “legally”.

But how many of us really use cannabis only medicinally for serious conditions in a conscious manner? How do we lie to ourselves about it? Are we actually addicted to it? I think the addictive aspect of cannabis is also ignored in many ways, in particular the psychological addiction, and how much harm it does to the energy body. Of course, “energetic effects” are hard to prove through conventional science.

Reflections on Ayahuasca, Psychedelics and Marijuana - When does medicine become abuse

When does medicine become abuse?

To be clear, I’m all for decriminalization and legalizing marijuana. It’s about personal freedom and choice, but this whole idea of “medicinal use” seems a bit convoluted. Most doctors with a marijuana license basically prescribe cannabis to anyone who wants it. But considering it is supposedly a “prescription” medicine, no one really tells you how much to use, and when to use it. You just get a card, which is basically a free ticket to the candy store. Help yourself; smoke or eat as much you want, whenever you want it. It seems a bit irresponsible to me.

However, I’m also not throwing out the baby with the bath water with this issue. I think the positive aspects of marijuana are well established and proven, and we all can cite many instances where this is the case, in our own lives and the lives of others. The baby is well secure and won’t be thrown out. My intention, however, is to take a critical look at the other side, which seems to be so ignored and denied, relating to how we tend to lie to ourselves about marijuana use.

Observing the appearance and behavior of some of my friends who are daily pot smokers for years (and even decades) have also shown some red flags, especially energetically. Marijuana is more potent than ever before, which actually has made me smoke it less — I simply couldn’t handle the intensity. I remember 15 years ago, I’d smoke a whole joint, get high, and was basically sober again after two hours. Nowadays, you take two puffs from some Frankenstein OG and it stays with you for hours and hours, basically the whole day (even waking up with a pot hangover); to the point of feeling uncomfortable, at least for me, since I’ve become very sensitive to it.

Some people smoke a lot of it since they have built up a tolerance and are more high than sober on a daily basis, not being able to function without it. Extreme pot heads seem to have this energetic bubble that is hard to get through, and many of them seem “emotionally retarded”, meaning that their ability to express emotional intelligence, depth and regulation in a healthy way seems to be missing.

I know of some people who have been diagnosed with PTSD and use pot to cope with their illness, claiming that it helps them to function. While it certainly can aid individuals with that condition under certain circumstances, some of them literally smoke it all day, every day, and it shows up (in their behavior) that it is not helping them, but is in fact numbing them in an unhealthy way, keeping them from healing the Trauma on a foundational level.

Another interesting thing the curandero said was in regards to medicinal plants in general. He’s a botanist, and works with many different plants in the jungle, not only psychoactive ones. Every plant has a positive and negative side, and it’s all about context and application. He mentioned that it is important to truly honor the spirit of each plant and their intelligence, using them responsibly, so you are still the “master”, and you use it instead of the plant becoming the master and it is “using you”.

He said that there is a “reversal” in the modern world regarding marijuana, and that this plant has negative effects on many people, resulting in all kinds of entity attachments and energy blockages. What he had seen in me is what he also saw in many other “gringos” who came to work with him. He said that medicine is not food, and should never be used recreationally, which makes sense and should be common sense, but somehow we have forgotten this, especially with regards to marijuana.

There are many articles about the benefits of marijuana, and it’s important to look at that and bring it to awareness, but I have seen virtually nothing from marijuana proponents who looks at the shadow side of this plant in a more objective manner (and I’m not talking about government-sponsored fear propaganda). This also relates to other medicine plants and psychedelics in general, where there is so much focus on the positive sides and how they have helped people (which is important to point out), but there are cases where these drugs have done great harm.

There seems to be a lot of context-free romanticizing going on about these plants. It’s somewhat understandable, because many of them are illegal in most countries for reasons that are ridiculous, so everyone is focused on the positive aspects to help the decriminalization process. But that can also create a tunnel vision of wishful thinking and distortion regarding some other issues.

Hyperdimensional Attacks and Entity Attachments

The tricky thing is that the harm associated with hyperdimensional attacks and entity attachments is (for the most part) not a physical symptom, but an energetic one. One can damage the energy body with psychedelics, taking on all kinds of spirit attachments that can leach on to anybody who forces open their consciousness to the higher realms. The same goes for smoking pot. It opens up the energy body like an antenna, which can result in ruptures within one’s auric field and acting like a beacon to unhelpful frequencies that can be detrimental in the long run.

Dr. William J. Baldwin wrote about “spirit attachments” in his seminal work “Spirit Releasement Therapy: A Technique Manual“:

   “The condition of spirit possession, (that is, full or partial takeover of a living human by a discarnate being) has been recognized or at least theorized in every era and every culture. In 90% of societies worldwide there are records of possession-like phenomena…

   Severe stress may cause susceptibility to the influence of an intrusive spirit. Altering the consciousness with alcohol or drugs, especially the hallucinogens, loosens one’s external ego boundaries and opens the subconscious mind to infestation by discarnate beings…

   Spirit attachment does not require the permission of the host. This seems to be a violation of free will. It also appears to refute the popular notion that each person is totally responsible for creating his or her reality and that there are no victims. The apparent conflict here stems from the definitions of permission and free will choice. Ignorance and denial of the possibility of spirit interference is no defense against spirit attachment. Belief or lack of belief regarding the existence of intrusive entities has no bearing on the reality of these beings and their behavior.

   In denial and ignorance, most people do not refuse permission to these non-physical intruders. Individual sovereign beings have the right to deny any violation or intrusion by another being. With limited, if any, knowledge and distorted perceptions of the nature of the spirit world, the nonphysical reality, many people leave themselves open and create their own vulnerability as part of creating their own reality…

   The host is usually unaware of the presence of attached spirits. The thoughts, desires and behaviors of an attached entity are experienced as the person’s own thoughts, desires and behaviors. The thoughts, feelings, habits and desires do not seem foreign if they have been present for a long time, even from childhood. This is a major factor in the widespread denial of the concept and lack of acceptance of the phenomena of discarnate interference and spirit attachment, obsession or possession. The symptoms of spirit attachment can be very subtle. An attached spirit may be present without producing any noticeable symptoms…

   A living person can have dozens, even hundreds of attached spirits, as they occupy no physical space. They can attach to the aura or float within the aura outside the body. If any part of the body of the host has a physical weakness the earthbound can attach to that area because of a corresponding weakness or injury to the physical body of the spirit prior to death. A spirit can lodge in any of the chakras of the host, drawn by the particular energy of the chakra or by the physical structures of that level of the body. Many areas of a person’s life can be influenced by one or more attached entities. In short, spirit attachment can interfere with any aspect of the life of the unsuspecting host.”

The curanderos and shamans who work responsibly with these plants know all about this process. They are also aware of the hyperdimensional aspect of reality, with all kinds of non-physical entities and “critters” that just “look” for an opening to attach and feed off of us. There are many dangers – energetically, psychically, and esoterically – when forcing oneself to enter a higher state of consciousness through these drugs.

The trap is that many people look for “peak experiences” without doing the proper grounded work to prepare the body-mind for it (through spiritual practices and sincere self-work). If you take these drugs and have not done the necessary deeper self-work to raise your being/frequency without any substances, it’s like shooting 1000 volts through a cable that can only take 10 volts. You’re going to damage it, and may take on very unhelpful spirit attachments.

Jonathan Zap wrote about the danger of using mind expanding drugs in party settings in his article “Alex Grey and the Mind Parasites“:

   “Socially dense environments of strangers and substances mixing together are likely to default to lowest-common-denominator factors of social parasitism/sexual predation/chaotic acting out of fragmented personalities — what I sometimes call a carnival of lost souls. Everything depends on who are the particular people in a group that is having a boundary-dissolving experience or ritual. Naïve people frequently forget this. Such people think the ritual is what matters and take all comers, but this can be a disaster! Generally, I think it unwise to have boundary-dissolving experiences (such as sex and/or hallucinogenic trips) with people you don’t know and wouldn’t trust with your life, because you are trusting your life with them…

   I caution people about doing things such as going to a rave with a sketchy vibe redolent of prowling sexual agendas (in other words, almost any rave) and opening themselves to the toxic energy by taking a boundary-dissolving substance. Unless you want to internalize a carnival of lost souls it is probably unwise to blow yourself wide open in an setting of trance-inducing music/lighting and stoned people, many of them on the prowl for parasitic sexual encounters.”

It reminds me what William Chittick, translator of the works of the great Sufi Shaykh, Ibn al-’Arabi, wrote:

  “Nowadays most people interested in the spirituality of the East desire the “experience,” though they may call what they are after intimate communion with God. Those familiar with the standards and norms of spiritual experience set down by disciplined paths like Sufism are usually appalled at the way Westerners seize upon any apparition from the domain outside of normal consciousness as a manifestation of the “spiritual.” In fact, there are innumerable realms in the unseen world, some of them far more dangerous than the worst jungles of the visible world. Al-Arabi himself said: So preserve yourselves, my brothers, from the calamities of this place, for distinguishing it is extremely difficult! Souls find it sweet, and then within it they are duped, since they become completely enamored of it.”

Visionary artist Alex Grey also hinted at the “topic of all topics” and hyperdimensional control system based on some experiences he had on LSD:

  “At one point I did feel that this entire thing has been orchestrated by these beings, that our coming together was not an accident… When we feel influenced to do certain things, or intuitively guided to do certain things — many times we may seek guidance from a higher realm — In the same way one can be vulnerable to the influence from beings from a lower realm.

   I remember one time being on one of the most harrowing LSD adventures I ever had. I felt like I was a flapper in the wheel of fortune and every realm of being and dimension was one of these slots that the little flapper was open to. And in one such dimension that was flying by I saw this really strange insect-like creature lunge out at me. After I came back from this trip, and for days afterward, I was really feeling out of sorts and very energetically drained. And I realized that this thing had jumped out and was probably still embedded in my aura. So I did a whole cleansing to draw all the energy back into the heart and then expand it out from the heart to banish this being.”

As I mentioned before, my intention with this article is not to throw out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to medicine plants, but to address their shadow side which is not much acknowledged these days. There is a “spiritual war” on a nonphysical level, and this war is being fought through us, hence understanding the hyperdimensional aspect of reality is key, not only related to psychedelics and medicine plants. The work required to “wake up” is not an easy path at times. There are many traps, distractions and temptations steering us away from ourselves.

There are tests and lessons everywhere. But as long as we align ourselves with truth, and are sincere in our work — even if we fail, screw up and take a step backwards at times — we are also being supported by the “universe”, which is always guiding us to new opportunities and lessons, connecting us with others from whom we can learn, as they, too, can learn from us as we help each other in making this world a better place. However, as we all know, truth is a tricky thing, and “aligning ourselves with truth” also entails facing the lies we are telling ourselves at times, all along justifying our own blindness.

  “There is no coming to consciousness without pain… People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.” ~ Carl G. Jung

This article was excerpted for Wake Up World from Bernhard Guenther’s essay “Reflections on Ayahuasca, Psychedelics, Marijuana and a critical look at the Psychedelic Movement”.

I hope this article is useful for this thread and for members.

Like the author, I advocate for journeying with psychological and spiritual safety - protection through DISCERNMENT; and appropriate use/non use, as our Higher Selves advise, and our brave 3D selves require  

In the recent past I've expressed my anger at pharmaceutical medicines being vilified/criticised in a community of seekers/wanderers where many advocate recreational and/or metaphysical drug usage; and again suggest members reconsider their generalised criticism of mental health/psych drugs - yet happily advocate for other drugs and alcohol. Substances which also have just as much power to heal or harm depending on type, setting, dose and way of use.

I'm alive to write this post ONLY because 4 years ago ( anniversary today ) I didn't kill myself - I left the ER on unsteady feet, with tears in my eyes and none to love or support me - went back to an empty house and I got completely sober (alcohol).

As I said on another thread - I was drinking a LITRE of 40% whisky A DAY (for Americans that is 1 liter/33.8 fluid ounces) (ie: 30-35 "standard drinks").

EVERY DAY.

I stayed on my antidepressant (sertraline) and took up drinking coffee and eating dark chocolate (in moderation); I also began exercising, taking fish oil, B vitamins, getting regular sleep, meditating, continuing giving Reiki to myself; and made a 24/7 energetic connection with 15 Archangels.

This is my journey. And the specifics are only relevant for me  - but 4 years later I am still alive and given where I was - this is a miracle.

Alcohol and opioids (and past rec drug use) was killing my mind, my spirit, and my health.
Sertraline and sobriety has saved my life.

I'm not saying this is necessarily relevant for all others.

I AM saying that when a member of B4 h says I've had a drug lobotomy (like Mahakali did on another thread), or other members say that 'big pharma' sucks and never has any benefit... you're generalising and insulting me; you're being ignorant and arrogant.

When I shared here that I had such severe family abuse that I wanted to smash my skull and face into the windows at my parents house right in front of them and no one replies no one says a single thing in reply or consolation - people show selfish, self focused immaturity which only adds to my frustration at having to read posts where some members think they're so right about everything...

Life is far too complex and nuanced for these kinds of generalisations... there are good doctors and curanderos and drug dealers and bottle-shop owners; and greedy, selfish, negative, avaricious ones...

and please reflect upon increasing your respect for older wanderers and for female wanderers... we have more knowledge and different experiences than younger (and male) ones (usually)....

I hope this article helps

over and out

[Aion]

I drank a mickey of whiskey nearly every day for about a year or so (nevermind the days I drank much more), that is a hell I'll never want to go back to that's for sure. Any time you are messing with your mind you should be as cautious as ever. Best to leave it be in most cases.

My fiance is on anti-anxiety medication and it has helped her to handle some of her worst symptoms, where she wasn't even able to leave the house before without panicking.

[smc]

I drank a mickey of whiskey nearly every day for about a year or so (nevermind the days I drank much more), that is a hell I'll never want to go back to that's for sure. Any time you are messing with your mind you should be as cautious as ever. Best to leave it be in most cases.

My fiance is on anti-anxiety medication and it has helped her to handle some of her worst symptoms, where she wasn't even able to leave the house before without panicking.

have never heard of that term so googled it... it's 375 ml or around 13 shots? ... I was having almost 3 times that - a day- for months and months on end... 36 shots a day....

I love the feeling of not doing that anymore

I've had anxiety/panic disorder since a nervous breakdown at 19... where I thought I was actually going 'insane'... but am lucky that the sertraline has helped that.... though I 'soldiered on' for more than 10 years after that without any medical help - progressively getting sadder and sadder and more and more quietly suicidal ... I medicated myself with alcohol on and off.... till it became that heavy a usage ...

I have some mild sedatives in a draw next to my bed and find in comfort in knowing they are there but rarely take one... no judgement of those who do...

Happy 4 years today for me ! best wishes to your fiancé (and to you )

[smc]

one other aspect I should clarify - I have no side effects from Sertraline and I'm aware I am very blessed with that. Also, it was exactly the right treatment for my brain chemistry, and it's the most basic, simple action anti depressant available - it's method of action is very simple and balances neurotransmitters we already have in our brains.. it restores the levels - so it's like a diabetic taking insulin for their blood sugar... would you dismiss them and tell them they can use their minds to balance it themselves?

I've had no weight gain, no strange thoughts, I simply had a few headaches and then I began to feel less suicidal slowly over about 6 months. I increased the dose (with my GP) and have stayed on the highest dose recommended for the last 16 of the 20 years I've taken it.

I know without any doubt I would not be alive without it.

I still feel sad, happy, etc all the normal healthy degrees of emotion - I've just lifted the crushing hopelessness that was confining me to bed staring at a wall, motionless and crying... but it didn't magically take away all my issues - they were (are) still there... and as I've described I still developed an alcohol habit that nearly killed me... (extra problem with that - alcohol is a depressant...)

what I'm saying is yes not all psych drugs are necessarily positive - but many are life savers - for example a friend of mine holds down a great job and home life because of lithium for her bipolar - without it she's in a jail or psych ward... and I had a friend who could not get anything done because of her voices from schizophrenia - who was enormously helped by anti-psychotics (nb: Gemini Wolf... you stick to what helps keep you safe and independent.... never feel you need to defend your choice to help yourself stay out of hospital... )

but if a person doesn't feel it's right for them fine - but don't critique me or others who conventional medication helps...

and please give some serious thought to the FACT that some people actually acquire mental health illnesses FROM recreational drugs - so if you're worried about psych drugs why aren't you also cautious /worried about recreational drugs/alcohol??
at least there are strict controls as to what's in the prescription drugs!
peace  

[AnthroHeart]

A friend of mine did ayahuasca with me once, and he really loved it, saying it felt like it was giving his brain a chemical that it was missing, and made him feel better than normal.

I did DMT and ayahuasca like over 5 years ago. But when I get spiritual and meditating, I can feel like a soft DMT buzz going on. And then I see reality start to become fluid, and this is without any outside drugs.

[YinYang]

I finally got around to reading your post, SMC. Ayahuasca to me is a lifting of the veil, that is my speculation after all the literature about it that I have consumed. Given that I haven’t taken it yet, I cannot say if this is a partial lifting of sorts, or even if it is lifted more for some than others.

The duality is our reality, so naturally it is ‘that way’ when ayahuasca is consumed as well, possibly even intensified. Sometimes I even toy with the idea of whether it’s 4th density that is penetrated. People often say that they simply cannot convey in words what they’ve seen or experienced, and the colours are unlike any they’ve seen on earth. And the message of Oneness is a constant one, leaving some with unspeakable joy.

I am a proponent of entheogens being legalised, (marijuana has just been legalised here in Cape Town) and letting the chips fall where they may. I don’t smoke marijuana, but I’m happy that those who wish to, have the freedom to do so. It is their free will and their right if they wish to do so, the earth belongs to us all. No-one has the right to control the use of these substances. My interests just lie specifically in DMT.

As always, just choose your “shaman” well. They naturally also come in the STO/STS variety. The baddies in the Amazon are called brujos, which are sorcerers and black magic practitioners. Fortunately there are also many goodies as well, you just gotta find them, and it’s easy. People posting about their ayahuasca experiences also give the where and whens. Google is your friend, the world is online, and it’s a bit late to try and close the stable doors after the horse has bolted. :-) Exciting times!

This is just a new frontier for Westerners, after an unfortunate era of those trying to control the use of these substances. The more widespread it becomes, the better, which is where I disagree with the author of the article you posted. I love that you don’t necessarily have to fly to Peru and go on a jungle excursion to partake in a ceremony. Many don't have the financial means to do so.

The positive testimonials with ayahuasca outweighs the negative astronomically. The negatives are just a blip on the radar. I love what is happening, the world needs it. I’m busy reading Alan Watts’ Joyous Cosmology, about his experimentation with DMT and the insights he gained. It’s a great read! Like all things in this duality we find ourselves in, this tool has fallen in good hands and bad hands. Find the good ones, they are in abundance and outnumber the bad ones by a sizeable margin.

Here's the book:



A classic account of the psychedelic experience

The Joyous Cosmology is Alan Watts’s exploration of the insight that the consciousness-changing drugs LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin can facilitate “when accompanied with sustained philosophical reflection by a person who is in search, not of kicks, but of understanding.” More than an artifact, it is both a riveting memoir of Watts’s personal experiments and a profound meditation on our perennial questions about the nature of existence and the existence of the sacred.

Includes Watts’s article “Psychedelics and Religious Experience”

[smc]

I wish you well for your experience and look forward to hearing about it.

For me the veil is already so 'thin' that I would not survive such an experience (even a highly positive one) because I would go to a place I intuitively know I wouldn't/couldn't return from. And I'm not prepared to spend my life in an institution.
I don't say this as a deterrent for anyone, nor as a criticism of hallucinogens/entheogens.

I am very interested in the latter and love reading about peoples experiences. I wish I could experience it but I just know it is too risky with my mental health and already having enough difficulty staying incarnate and trying to be a normal human as it is !

I do feel the article has quite a bit of merit - but what you say does as well. You probably could (imo) give him a bit more credit as you are a complete novice... but you make valid points... it's clearly meant for you to do.

I really agree with decriminalisation of drugs...

I don't much resonate with Watts as he became severely dependent on alcohol and I need to be detached from someone who devolved to an alcoholic energy (just because of my own journey) - so he's not for me... but it's good your enjoying his information/ideas. I've read a lot of him and Leary and many others.

I'd prefer to not fly to Peru myself were I ever to do it - also I'm interested in dmt experiences... I think the energy aspect is relevant, I'm aware of the power of a gifted cuanderos but too much trust is asked for my liking - again just my situation... so in a sense a scientific and controlled setting is more my style - I'd probably have an 'experience' just from being around the situation and the shaman... this is the extremity of my intuition/clairsentience/empath-ness....

I hope I'm making sense in what i'm saying...it's late here

only other thing I'd say is that the death's/injurys aren't "a blip on the radar".. did you go to the link and then click on the individual links to the deaths/bad experiences?

Though - actually - perhaps don't - as a positive attitude is what you need to have - and I feel you're being careful and again - wish you joy and learning and will be excited to hear your journey with it all

[YinYang]

Hey SMC, it's all good, and I appreciate your input. Let me go visit a few universes and report back on what I've seen

[AnthroHeart]

I woke up today with a nice soft DMT type buzz, and I haven't had any in years. It's like the 2nd time this week. It feels really nice, the whole body.
It happens when I open up spiritually and am on the right path.

[Agua del Cielo]

I would like to add something to this discussion:

I believe there are many misconceptions and prejudices around that!

Ayahuasca is not the sum of two chemical ingredients (DMT and MAO inhibitor), but much more.
First of all, there is a number of other chemicals involved, which seem to be overlooked completely ( for example different variations of DMT).
But the most important thing is, and i guess this can be said and understood on a spiritual forum, ayahuasca is an energetic entity, that is devoted to healing and guiding our evolution.
This is why they call it "plant teacher".
With chemicals analogues, you dont connect with the teacher plant!

You dont believe this? You think DMT is DMT?

well, did you know, thatthere are ayahuasca recipes that dont incorporate DMT?
Only the single plant (banisteriopsis caapi).
I tried it.
No DMT involved.

The difference to teas containing also DMT is, there is a lot of healing happening, but its harder to get this into your conscious awareness or understanding, but the effect is amazing.

This clearly shows that its NOT aboutthe DMT butthe entity involved.

on the benefits of a real ceremony:
a real ceremony is a magical ritual.
if done "correctly" by someone who has "real" access to the "spirit world" , powerful energies are being invoked and present that protect, help and guide the experience.

on the benefits of having a shaman with you:
obviously this is important for the "ritual" aspect as mentioned above
second, it is very beneficial to have someone present who can help you through difficult parts of the experience.
third and most important is the therapeutical aspect. Some issues CANNOT be healed alone, by design, most likely they wont even arise. For quite some experiences and/ or issues its crucial to have a human counterpart for healing (this has been covered elsewhere on the forum sufficiently i guess).

There is a lot more to say about this sacred plant teacher, i felt the aspects mentioned are most important for this discussion here!

edit:
Please bear in mimd, not everybody who calls itself a shaman is a real shaman, but i guess thats clear!
Aanother thing, the diet is an important part of the experience and it greatly enhances the experience, if you follow the diet!
Mostly 1-3 weeks of strict diet are recommended!

[YinYang]

A satirical tale of my first "ayahuasca" weekend retreat

Where oh where do I start, we’ve been had! And it cost us a small fortune! My overarching desire to pour this brown sludge down my throat has dimmed my critical thinking abilities a little, I should have known you can’t drink ayahuasca in South Africa.

Sooo, I’ll try and make this not too long. Have any of you seen the movie Wanderlust with Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd? Okay, that’s basically what we walked into, luckily with the exception of my car ending up in the lake!

So I found this ayahuasca pouring “shaman” online yonks ago, as I’ve written about in the beginning of this thread. Now, I’m a cautious person, so I checked him out for quite some time before committing to a ceremony with him. We were supposed to do it in May, and then I developed an ear infection for which I had to take antibiotics, and antibiotics in your system is a big no-no in the preparation instructions they send you beforehand, so we cancelled our May slot and finally booked our slots for this past weekend.

Luckily, my cult antennae is pretty well honed, as are my bullshit detectors, and we have just spent a whole weekend amongst a bunch of bohemian hippies who had seemingly drank a little too much Koolaid.  

As we arrived, I saw the “shaman” in the…uhm…”temple”, as they call the drinking hut. He hugged and welcomed us,  we chatted for a little bit, and I told him I have been reading about ayahuasca for ten years now, and finally I’m here. Rather late than never, “I’m just cautious like that”, I said. So he turned around, stared at me and said “what do you mean by cautious?” What I had said was pretty self-explanatory, so that was the first red flag. Less than half an hour after arriving we’re all in the hut on our mattresses and cushions, with our vomiting buckets. The “shaman” speaks for a little while, telling us what to expect, and then explains how the proceedings will go. Then he says “at a certain point after the first cup, I will announce that the altar is open and anyone who wants to have a second cup can come to me and I will ask ‘are you open?’, as in ‘have your visions started?’.  Red flag number two, that’s not how ayahuasca works. He doesn’t have to ask “are you open?”, in that realm he journeys with you, and he can see what you see. But I relax, and just go along with it all.

The ceremony begins pretty much as I’d expected it, from all of my reading – we were all ‘cleansed’ with smoke and the “shaman” blew smoke into the bottle of Ayahuasca. We all have cup number one, and I wait. There are five people in the middle of the room (it’s a large round hut), and they are all facilitating. They play musical instruments and sing and make sounds and it’s all quite amazing… except for the fact that I don’t feel anything. So for round two I go again, and then again for round three, and then I just laid there and looked at the ceiling. The ceiling was changing shape slightly as I stared at it, but that was it, nothing profound. I knew they had given us “something”, but it wasn’t ayahuasca. Whatever they gave us wasn’t even a hallucinogen. So eventually I go for round four, and just lie there and wait for the ceremony to end. We all made a circle afterwards, and they passed a crystal around which acted as a “talking stick”, and once each person was done talking, everyone in the group said “hush-hush”. We were seemingly the only ones unfamiliar with this protocol! No wait! There was one guy in the circle from Barcelona, and he asked “what does hush-hush mean?”, and the “shaman” said “so be it”. I thought to myself, “or we might all just say ‘so be it’, why this weird lingo?” When it was this one guy’s turn to speak, he said to the “shaman”, “I love you soooo very much” and then he started sobbing. I looked at my friend who came along with me for the weekend, and she just had this look of absolute peace over her face, and said to me she had never experienced such love in her entire life. By this point I’m wondering if I’m now the only one who didn’t experience anything… I walk out to the fire (the “sacred fire” mind you, where someone was  berated for throwing his cigarette butt!) with a bunch of them sitting around and everyone is discussing their “journeys”. So I think to myself maybe tomorrow night I’ll experience something. Then I suddenly felt extreme nausea coming over me and ran into the woods and vomited it all out, whatever they had given us to drink.

The next morning things just got weirder. We all started with an 8 am yoga session, and it was a miracle that I didn’t injure myself, as the “shaman’s” girlfriend forced us into some compromising positions. Once again my friend and I were the only ones unfamiliar with the sequence; everyone else looked like they were well familiar with it and were equipped with their own mats.

Following this, the “shaman” announced it was sweat lodge time! We all hiked into the mountains for about half an hour and arrived at the sweat lodge. A clearing in the middle of the woods with a shack and a small dome on the ground, covered in loose pieces of fabric. There is a guy waiting for us who looks like he hadn’t bathed in three decades who introduces his wife and “medicine woman” to us… can I just say he looked 60 and she looked 16, so I’m thinking “okaaaaaay…….”. He also introduced his “son” and helper to us, and since his son is coloured I assumed he must have been adopted… or maybe kidnapped! Then all the guys strip down to their underwear and we all crawl into the sweat lodge. The son stands outside with a spade and puts the rocks inside, and every time he does so, he announces “grandmother coming in”, and everyone on the inside says “welcome grandmother”. Okay, this is about the point where I decided something is a little off with these people… Why are we calling each rock “grandmother”?  Halfway through, another son crawled in, aged around 15, also in his underwear. At this point I was seriously considering calling Child Services! If only I’d had phone reception wherever it was that we were! At the end of the sweat lodge session this 60-something mountain dweller also starts sobbing, telling us how incredibly powerful the experience was. Everyone is just elated and emotional, yet I was just really dirty and sweaty, and thinking “I need to get us the hell out of here!”. Now, true to the Wanderlust movie, my friend had started drinking the Koolaid, she would be Jennifer Aniston, and I would be Paul Rudd. There are just red flags all over the show for me, everyone has seemingly gone cuckoo. I can’t connect with anyone, they’re just…. weird… brainwashed…. something… and everyone is so damn serious and sad. The only conversation I managed to have was with a sad and emaciated young man with a long beard and a ponytail who proudly announced that he’d been living in the woods for 6 months and had thrown all his possessions into the fire. The poor guy looked like he weighed about 40 kilos and had feasted on only pine cone seeds for the duration of this 6 months. We haven’t eaten anything for two days at this point, since we had to fast for the “ayahuasca”, and I am just ravenous. All I can think off is driving out of there and stopping at the first restaurant I can find…

Early in the afternoon there was a “Changa session”, which was smoking DMT, which I graciously declined, because I came for ayahuasca ceremonies, not drug binging. At this point I’m not a happy camper, it’s all very cultish, everyone is acting like a bunch of brainwashed zombies, and now I’m thinking they’re all just a bunch of drug addicts. The shaman announces that there will be a “fire ceremony” at 4 o’clock, and we must all be there. All I can think of is food, I will eat anything! We all gathered around the fire, and the weirdness continued. The emaciated dude announced that he had a calling 10 years ago that he had to be a….. “fire keeper”. I started losing my courteousness at this point and just rolled my eyes… He made a fire, and threw incense, tobacco, grass and all kinds of things into it, telling us how sacred fire is, and that he will keep the ashes of this ceremony. Then he took out a little bottle out of his bag from a previous fire ceremony, telling how much “metaphysics” is in the bottle. He sprinkled some of this ash over the fire as well. Then the “shaman” started speaking, giving us a lecture about integrity, talking the biggest load of crap. And by now I have decided that he’s a scam artist, and I’m an open book, so I just sat there and listened to him, trying to not show my thoughts. Whenever he looked at me, which was eerily frequently,  there was something in his eyes that I just didn’t like. His eyes were not friendly, they were dark… He spoke of love but did not emanate it at all. He spoke some nonsense about the words coming out of your mouth, and that your words are your contract with the world, and they should always be kind, and I’m thinking “HYPOCRITE!”, you just called someone an a****** on national radio the other day! Okay maybe I should add this little bit as well… about two months ago this “shaman” was interviewed on national radio, and we listened to the show. Everything was going well, until they opened up the lines for callers. The first caller asked “can you please tell us about the lady who died during one of your ceremonies?”… and he said “I don’t know who you’re talking about”, and the guy said “you know very well who I’m talking about” (he later admitted the person was some kind of family friend). Then they started fighting on air and he said to the caller “you’re just an a******!”…. so yeah… there’s that… By now you must be wondering why I still went ahead with it after listening to the radio show, and all I can say is that I just wanted to have this experience so badly that I brushed all those things aside.

The rest of the fire ceremony was just madness, people taking turns “offering” things to the “sacred fire”, throwing things into it and bawling their eyes out, telling the “shaman” how much they loved him. But now, as someone who has studied cult psychology quite intensely, I’m thinking to myself “just enjoy the show”… and “as soon as the sun is up, we’re in the car making a huge dust cloud on that dirt road!” At this point I’m still holding out hope that my second ayahuasca ceremony might be… sigh… what I read about…

We went straight into the hut and there was no ceremony about it this time, we just started drinking. There was something odd about it, like the “shaman” just wanted it over with. He even left the room for about 15 minutes after we’d all drank the first time. I went for all the servings, again four. When I went for the third serving, I said to the “shaman”, “I’m not open”, and he laughed and said “we’re always open”… huh? I went back to my mattress, counted the people in the room, which was 15, thought of how much it cost us, did my math and thought “my dear shaman boy, you’ve got a very profitable business model here, and you don’t even have to feed us!”

And then I just lay there waiting for the madness to end. When they formed the circle afterwards I just walked out, and then I was overcome with nausea again and ran into the woods and vomited out whatever I was given. My friend came out as well, and I said “this wasn’t ayahuasca! Come with me, this madness ends now!” I started spilling all my misgivings about the weekend, and said “this is a fucking cult!”. Thankfully she snapped out of it. She’d been quite heavily effected by whatever it was and had a pretty bad trip this time, but agreed the effect was nothing like the countless articles we’d read about.  We lay in bed for quite some time laughing about it all, about all the insanity, calling rocks grandmothers, the freakish veneration of the “shaman”, how unhappy they all looked, I’m keeping this short. We basically laid there in the dark and I was piecing it all together. It felt like a catharsis! I said to her “two words: DUST CLOUD!”. “When the first rooster crows, we are starting the car!” Then she said “uhm… there’s a closing ceremony at 9”…and I’m thinking “dear lord… I just can’t”. So we went to the closing ceremony, which lasted forever, it felt like a church service, where the “shaman” was talking endlessly, although there was nothing he said that was profound or even made sense in some cases.  As the “talking” rock was passed around, people cried and professed their love for him. When it came to me, I told them what a wonderful universe we live in, how great life is, and “apologies for not sharing in your grief”. As soon as it was over, we forfeited the hugging and crying goodbyes, ran for the car and got the hell out of there!

One day I’ll make my way to the Amazon jungle, and drink the brew with a REAL shaman… sigh... I left lots of the insanity out… it was a loooong weekend and I’m exhausted!

[native]

Sorry to hear that. There's really not much to say other than I'm sure you'll have an authentic experience one day    It's probably not a good idea to be mixing in a sweat-lodge ceremony in between. Since they didn't explain it, the rocks are traditionally called grandmothers and grandfathers because to the Native Americans they're the oldest things on earth.

[777]

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[YinYang]

Sorry to hear that. There's really not much to say other than I'm sure you'll have an authentic experience one day maybe   It's probably not a good idea to be mixing in a sweat-lodge ceremony in between. Since they didn't explain it, the rocks are traditionally called grandmothers and grandfathers because to the Native Americans they're the oldest things on earth.

Thanks Icaro! :-) I'm just over the whole ayahuasca thing for now, one day maybe... Spring is in the air, Summer's on the way, and I think it's time to try out some kitesurfing, I really don't need these things anyway. As I sit here, I can't count how many of them there are in the sea, more than a hundred and it looks like so much fun! Everyone who does ayahuasca always have some or other psychological dragon to slay, and I just don't. I'm happy! Mayby I have slayed my dragons in this realm...

I've found study of the Law of One and other authentic texts to be more fulfilling, ultimately.

Yeah that's pretty much my conclusion also. As a good friend of mine always says "as long as you have a good story to tell!" :-) Hope you enjoyed this crazy tale!

[JayCee]

YinYang it seems like you had some positive out of the Ayahuasca ceremony which otherwise did not go as expected. And kitesurfing sounds like a lot of fun!
I am old-fashioned, I think psychedelics are not necessary and plus can be really dangerous.
That article SMC posted, I don't agree with all Mr Guenther says, but he definitely has a point re the holes in the aura, which can open up to entity attachments.
Even with "only" weed this can happen. And I realize weed has been touted as being harmless, much more harmless than alcohol plus it makes people so peaceful, blablabla.
All the regular weed users I have met have one thing in common - they are delusional.
The fact alone that the USG has decided to legalize it more or less should tell us all that it is not harmless good stuff - because when has the USG ever had the best of its citizens in mind
Sorry I digress, I realize it was not really about weed but ayahuasca.


Edited to add:
I think why many seekers like to try psychedelics is also to have the ultimate spiritual experience, to get a kick out of it which imo misses the point. Spirituality is not about wonderful extraordinary experiences but about becoming more of who you really are. Being your Self.

[YinYang]

Hey JayCee, I have obviously been thinking about this a lot since we came back, and read a couple of things online about charlatans who are profiting from the popularity of ayahuasca. I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, but I 'do' think authentic ayahuasqueros are pretty rare. I remember reading somewhere that an ayahuasquero trains for 30+ years in the Amazon, before being allowed to run their own ceremonies. I think it was Peter Gorman's book where I read it, which I mentioned earlier in this thread. I should perhaps also mention that despite my fascination with entheogens, I don't use any entheogens. My fascination ends with reading, for now. As for weed, also not my cup of tea. I tried it a few times, and didn't like the effect... I like my mind alert, and weed felt to me like a dimming of the senses.

I agree with Alan Watts' approach of these substances, he lived in the 60s in San Francisco, the epicentre of the psychedelic explosion, and he also noticed that everyone is practically binging on LSD, which he didn't agree with. He writes about it in Joyous Cosmology, and that is where him and Timothy Leary disagreed. Timothy Leary pushed strongly for the excessive use of these substances.

This is from Alan Watts' biography about that time in the 60s when LSD became popular, which by the way, was an exceptional read. This biographer was very gifted, leaving no stone unturned. I wanted to experience this weekend what Alan Watts described in Joyous Cosmology...

In 1958 Watts, who, unlike the beats, had always been wary of drugs, was invited to take part in an experiment by Keith Ditman, the psychiatrist in charge of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) research in the Department of Neuropsychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. One of the things that encouraged him to do so was the way he thought that the mescalin experience had made the ascetic Aldous Huxley warmer, more human. So he went along to Ditman’s office and took one hundred micrograms of LSD. Perception was changed in a fascinating way: time was slowed down, plants and grass and a church across the road were all great marvels, and a book of sumi-e paintings was a revelation; yet he was faintly disappointed. It seemed to him that he had had a wonderful aesthetic experience, but one that did not approach the mystical unity that Huxley had described. Later he was to believe that the clinical/ laboratory atmosphere of a formal test in a hospital had itself imposed certain limitations on his response, though it is also true that the dose is a small one.

He let a year go by and then tried a series of five experiments with the drug, varying the dosage from seventy-five to one hundred micrograms. These trips were extraordinarily rewarding. Perhaps the most remarkable effect had to do with time, what Watts called "a profound relaxation combined with an abandonment of purposes and goals. ... I have felt, in other words, I endowed with all the time in the world, free to look about me as if I were living in eternity without a single problem to be solved.” Within this freedom was another astonishing freedom: "I was no longer a detached observer, a little man inside my own head, having sensations. I was the sensations. ... It is like, not watching, but being, a coiling arabesque of smoke patterns in the air, or of ink dropped in water.” An irresistible feeling of beauty and wonder, absent from his first experiment with the drug, took over.

Watts writes of one experiment conducted late at night at his house in Millbrook:

Some five or six hours from its start the doctor had to go home, and I was left alone in the garden. For me, this stage of the experiment is always the most rewarding in terms of insight, after some of the more unusual and bizarre sensory effects have worn off. The garden was a lawn surrounded by shrubs and high trees — pine and eucalyptus — and floodlit from the house which enclosed it on one side. As I stood on the lawn I noticed that the rough patches where the grass was thin or mottled with weeds no longer seemed to be blemishes. Scattered at random as they were, they appeared to constitute an ordered design, giving the whole area the texture of velvet damask, the rough patches being the parts where the pile of the velvet is cut. In sheer delight I began to dance on this enchanted carpet, and through the thin soles of my moccasins I could feel the ground becoming alive under my feet, connecting me with the earth and the trees and the sky in such a way that I seemed to become one body with my whole surroundings.

Looking up, I saw that the stars were colored with the same reds, greens and blues that one sees in iridescent glass, and passing across them was the single light of a jet plane taking forever to streak over the sky. At the same time, the trees, shrubs, and flowers seemed to be living jewelry, inwardly luminous like intricate structures of jade, alabaster, or coral, and yet breathing and flowering with the same life that was in me. Every plant became a kind of musical utterance, a play of variations on a theme repeated from the main branches, through the stalks and twigs, to the leaves, the veins in the leaves, and to the fine capillary network between the veins. Each new bursting of growth from a center repeated or amplified the basic design with increasing complexity and delight, finally exulting in a flower.

The beauty of the experience reminded Watts insistently of something, and he realized that the garden had the kind of exotic beauty of the pictures in the Arabian Nights, of scenes in Persian miniatures or in Chinese and Japanese paintings. Those artists too had seen the world like this. Was that because they too were drugged and seeing therefore a strangely heightened and beautified version of the world, or was it that the effect of LSD was "to remove certain habitual and normal inhibitions of the mind and senses, enabling us to see things as they would appear to us if we were not so chronically repressed?” What the Oriental artists saw in their health and wisdom, Watts is saying, he could see with the help of LSD.

Inevitably Watts wondered about the possibilities of a drug so potent. Writing in 1960 he says that "the record of catastrophes from the use of LSD is extremely low, and there is no evidence at all that it is either habit-forming or physically deleterious. ... I find that I have no inclination to use LSD in the same way as tobacco or wines and liquors. On the contrary, the experience is always so fruitful that I feel I must digest it for some months before entering into it again.” It was a drug, he goes on to say, to be approached with the care and dedication with which one might approach a sacrament.

He continued to experiment with it throughout the next couple of years and achieved, in an experience with his friends at Druid Heights, a piercing sense of how very lonely he had felt all his life, "a bag of skin,” chronically and hopelessly cut off from all other "bags of skin” — "the quaking vortex of defended defensiveness which is my conventional self.” Sitting up on the ridgepole of the barn with Roger and his friends, laughing helplessly with them at the sight of a broken car standing in Elsa’s garden, sitting round a table on the terrace, sharing homemade bread and wine, he had the most extraordinary intimation of peace, of having "returned to the home behind home".

This sense of being loved and cared for, of a place of deep trust, made it possible for him to know what he called the "helpless crying of the baby.” The confident talker and performer and entertainer suddenly knew himself as an infinitely needy and sensitive self, "a blithering, terrified idiot, who managed temporarily to put on an act of being self-possessed. I began to see my whole life as an act of duplicity — the confused, helpless, hungry and hideously sensitive little embryo at the root of me having learned, step by step, to comply, placate, bully, wheedle, flatter, bluff and cheat my way into being taken for a person of competence and reliability.”

It was both a wonderful and an agonizing discovery, one that raised even more interesting questions as to what this amazing drug could achieve. Writing The Joyous Cosmology in 1962 Watts had come to see drugs like LSD and mescalin as a kind of medicine for sick modern men that would give them the experience of being "temporarily integrated.” Like medicine, transforming drugs were not, in his view, a way of life. You took them if you needed them, you deepened the experience "by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful."

In 1961 LSD was only just beginning to become available outside the medical world. Watts shared Huxley’s feeling that it might be shared by minds already developed by aesthetic, philosophical, and religious ideas and practices. Unlike Huxley he guessed at the danger of a widespread availability of LSD, fearing that it would produce the chemical equivalent of bathtub gin. One of the reasons for writing The Joyous Cosmology, Watts claimed, was to inform people about the drug while there was still time, to encourage them to approach it with a kind of reverence, rather than with a desire simply for "kicks.”

In this he was entirely opposed by Timothy Leary. Leary came relatively late to LSD, not actually trying it until 1962. But for several years before that he and Richard Alpert (a psychologist, who later became Ram Dass) had experimented extensively with psilocybin and had tried unsuccessfully to persuade the psychology faculty at Harvard to set up a series of systematic drug experiments there. So instead Leary and Alpert worked with university staff members and volunteer students and their families. There were a lot of volunteers.

Partly because of a series of experiments involving the use of psilocybin by prisoners in the Massachusetts prison system, in which he found that he could make prisoners less depressed and hostile and more responsible and cooperative, Leary began to feel that psychedelic drugs might have something to offer everyone, and he developed a kind of evangelical zeal to share his discoveries. He gave out mushroom pills freely, particularly to writers; Robert Lowell, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, Arthur Koestler, and Allen Ginsberg all "took the mushroom” with Leary.

He was following a tradition that the British philosopher Gerald Heard and the psychologist Oscar Janiger had begun in the 1950s of deliberately initiating people into LSD, believing that it was God’s way of giving the twentieth century the gift of consciousness and saving it from Armageddon. "When you made contact, it was like two people looking at each other across the room, and with a sort of nod of the head that acknowledged that you 'too!’ ” wrote Leary. Janiger had turned on a number of Hollywood film stars and directors, Cary Grant, Jack Nicholson, and Stanley Kubrick among them. He had also run tests with people from many walks of life, a number of whom had felt illuminated and changed by the LSD experience, and he had had some encouraging results working with depressed patients.

The rumors of the effects of psychedelic drugs began to cause a kind of excitement that boded ill for the sort of controlled initiation Huxley or Watts or Janiger favored. At Harvard Leary was continually being approached by students who wanted to try LSD. When he obeyed college rules and refused to oblige them, they got supplies in Boston or New York. The chemistry students synthesized their own. Leary described it this way: "In this the third year of our research the Yard was seething with drug consciousness.” Dozens of Harvard students had visions. Some dropped out and went to the East. "Not necessarily a bad development from our point of view,” Leary wrote with his usual insouciance, "but understandably upsetting to parents, who did not send their kids to Harvard to become Buddhas.” Worse still, "dozens of bright youths phoned home to announce that they’d found God and discovered the secret of the universe.”

In California, LSD, not yet illegal, was being widely distributed, much of it synthesized by an entrepreneur named Stanley Owsley. Leary’s Psychedelic Review disseminated information about methods of taking it. Braver or wilder souls, like Ken Kesey, author of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, held rock-and-roll dances in which the place of honor in the middle of the floor was given to a baby’s bathtub full of punch spiked with lysergic acid.

The words hipster and hippie were coming into the language and were applied to the new "far-out” crowd by the beats. By the end of 1965, in the words of a harassed police captain, "the word is out that San Francisco is the place for the far-out crowd,” and within San Francisco the old student neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury had become the most far-out, both because of its cheapness and because of the attractiveness of its Edwardian houses. As if to fit in with the landscape many of the hippies started wearing Edwardian and Victorian clothes — they were cheap and good to look at during LSD trips or when stoned on marijuana.

Golden Gate Park became a sort of extension of the neighborhood, together with a handful of favorite stores and coffee houses that stayed open all night. A professor opened an experimental college in the Haight in which students could decide what they wanted to study, outline a course, get a faculty sponsor, and hire a teacher. There was a preponderance of people wanting to study art, psychology, and occult religion.

Street theatre became a common sight, and it mostly reflected antiwar or antiracist sentiments. The new rock-and-roll, which, to begin with, was not interested in much besides "love,” was gradually adopting anti-establishment ideas. Already by 1965 many folkies were turning to the electric guitar and were singing songs, like Dylan’s "Subterranean Homesick Blues,” that caught the new mood. The hippies listened to the new bands, like the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and the Byrds, and to new singers, like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. They admired the Beatles, but began by thinking them a bit "cozy.” The bands played against and within light shows in which their audience danced in the light of strobes, ultraviolet light, and overhead projectors. Charles Perry describes a message displayed by projector at one light show that went: "Anybody who knows he is God go up onstage!”

The Haight was beginning to get into the drug market. By the early sixties marijuana (once enjoyed mostly by Latins and working-class blacks) had become popular on campuses, and by 1963 people were smuggling it from Mexico. Most of the selling was done by hippies who found it a way of making a living. Ounces ("lids”) sold for eight to ten dollars, a kilogram at around sixty dollars. The hippies broke up the kilos and sold smaller amounts at a good profit.

LSD was still legal (until October 1966) , and the extraordinary perceptions and fantasies, images and colors associated with it began to influence pop art, clothes, and songs. The Beatles’ new album Revolver gave broad hints that the Beatles themselves were "turning on,” while a new paper, the Oracle, with an amazing use of colored inks, exploded in a vast rainbow that included all hippie preoccupations in one great Whitmanesque blaze of light and camaraderie. American Indians, Shiva, Kali, the Buddha, tarot, astrology, Saint Francis, Zen, and tantra all rubbed shoulders in one edition, one that sold fifty thousand copies on the streets. When the Oracle printed the Heart Sutra , it devoted a double spread to the Zen Center version, complete with Chinese characters.

[YinYang]

That article SMC posted, I don't agree with all Mr Guenther says, but he definitely has a point re the holes in the aura, which can open up to entity attachments.

Oh yes JayCee, while we're on the topic of cults, I have no interest in anything Bernhard Guenther has to say (whoever he is), because I recognised immediately from his writing and the words he uses, that he's affiliated with this cult, so no thanks! As soon as I saw the word "ponerization", I stopped reading what he had to say. Only members of this cult uses the word "ponerization", it's from this book, one of their "bibles" -  they own the publishing rights to it.

So I Googled this chap and yup! ...my suspicion was confirmed. Sott.net is one of their websites...

I sincerely hope your strong anti-American sentiment and Putin adoration isn't as a result of reading sott.net... this is one of their "lovely creations"...

[sunnysideup]

Sorry to hear that your long-awaited Ayahuasca experience was one of quackery, YingYang. That's fudged up. Hopefully they didn't slip you anything dodgy. I'm glad though your intuition pulled you through and nothing life-threathening happened to you or your friend. On a separate note, and perhaps your head is not it at the moment, but have you considered exposing these charlatans?

[JayCee]

I was referring to the Cassiopeians and Laura Jadczyk-Knight, that is what I don't agree with, YinYang (I guess that is the cult you might be referring to).
I don't know sott.net - my anti-USG sentiment is based on facts, not on shady websites, haha

Edit: I don't think it is fair to dismiss everything from someone even if he is member of a cult - that is exactly what the "other side" is doing as well (like for example if you mention to some mainstream person Daniele Ganser, a historian who has doubts about 9/11 - official version, the answer you will get "well he is a conspiracy theorist" and they automatically dismiss everything he has to say. He has done excellent research about operation Gladio for example, but no, it all has to be wrong because "duh, conspiracy theorist" )
Guenther might still be right on some accounts, even if he is part of that cult. The thing about entity attachments following aura holes that were caused by entheogens is correct, that can indeed happen.
We still have discernment to figure out what is right and what is wrong and as I like to say, no one has the whole picture anyways.

[YinYang]

Sorry to hear that your long-awaited Ayahuasca experience was one of quackery, YingYang. That's fudged up. Hopefully they didn't slip you anything dodgy. I'm glad though your intuition pulled you through and nothing life-threathening happened to you or your friend. On a separate note, and perhaps your head is not it at the moment, but have you considered exposing these charlatans?

Thanks sunnysideup! :-) No, I won't expose them, which is why I mentioned no names in my story. I have decided recently that I'm kind of done with my truth crusades and exposing bad guys, because a fool must persist in his folly until he becomes wise. If you are deceived, it's because you should be deceived, that's your lesson. One day you will wake up to the deception, and that is a precious life lesson which enables tremendous spiritual growth and evolution... and that priceless little thing called wisdom.

Questioner: Then prior to the forgetting process, there was no concept of anything but service-to-others polarization. What sort of societies and experiences in third density were created and evolved in this condition?

Ra: I am Ra. It is our perception that such conditions created the situation of a most pallid experiential nexus in which lessons were garnered with the relative speed of the turtle to the cheetah.

[YinYang]

I was referring to the Cassiopeians and Laura Jadczyk-Knight, that is what I don't agree with, YinYang (I guess that is the cult you might be referring to).

Yup! I hope you steer well clear of these guys...

I don't know sott.net - my anti-USG sentiment is based on facts, not on shady websites, haha

I'm relieved! :-)

And you're right, no-one has the whole picture. American atrocities around the world are well known, just be careful of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" reasoning. America = evil doesn't automatically translate into Russia = good... I just don't know, time will tell I guess.