Pain Poultice

DOSE:

	 4 oz
	 oral
	 Ayahuasca
	 (tea)
	


 
       BODY WEIGHT:
   180 lb
     

I first heard of ayahuasca from a friend who had traveled from Washington to Taos, New Mexico to partake. His tale was intriguing, and I had previously experimented with mushrooms and acid a few times at Grateful Dead shows in the late 1980�s and 1990�s, so I was aware of how powerful psychedelics can be in changing one�s perspective of reality. �Steve� was married, and prior to his trip to Taos he typically talked over his wife in what I considered to be inconsiderate. When I visited him at his home upon his return I was amazed to witness him sit quietly and watch his wife tell stories, all the while beaming his love at her.

I told Steve I was very interested in going along the next time the opportunity arose. A year later, it did, and I found myself flying to Taos to meet a Peruvian shaman and take the medicine over two nights. Steve told me that there might be a Vietnam veteran there, and that I should avoid sitting next to him. Apparently Steve had sat next to him during a previous ceremony and was overwhelmed with visions of pain and war. When I took the only spot left in the yurt that Friday evening, it was next to the vet. Steve was directly across the room and 13 other people including the shaman and his translator were also present, seated in a circle along the wall of the yurt. After sitting on my blanket on the hard floor for 20 minutes I realized I should have brought something more comfortable. It would be a long night for me.

My intention going in was to be open to the experience, and hopefully to engage with this other dimension I had read about, and perhaps to open up my spiritual self so as to better guide my life. The shaman began the ceremony by blessing the ayahuasca. He opened the liter bottle and blew over the opening several times in between chants. The shaman had rattles and feathers at his side and during the night he sang his icaros and shook the rattles rhythmically. It reminded me of scenes of Native Americans and medicine men from old movies and books. The shaman was very gentle in his movements and only looked at us directly when we went up to receive the medicine.

I squatted in front of the shaman who stared into my eyes, sizing me up before pouring the medicine. He was clearly a native Peruvian, small, with leathery brown skin, dark hair and eyes with an intense gaze. He seemed satisfied with me and his expression softened as he filled � of the ceramic cup, about 4 ounces I would guess. It was thick and pungent, but not wholly unpleasant, tasting and smelling of dark vegetation. I downed it and returned to my blanket space.

The transition from normal sense to ayahuasca sense was quite slow. I sat quietly with good thoughts and waited with eyes open in the darkened room. There were windows at the top of the circular wall, about 8 feet up, but it was quite dark in the desert. After 40 minutes the first unusual thing I noticed was that there was a presence in the room that seemed to move with like a shadow. It seemed to be a man with long legs made of semi-transparent shade that shifted easily, as though breeze-blown. I felt his presence as he moved between the people in the darkness. It was disquieting but did not seem threatening or malevolent, although there was a significant power there. I had never experienced anything like it before. I got the impression that the spirit was taking the measure of the people in the yurt.

I closed my eyes and began to get interesting visuals, mostly in outline form, whitish yellow lines on ink-black background. It was somewhat cartoonish. Eyes kept appearing in different places in my field of vision. They seemed to be looking at me. At one point there was the outline of a man-beast. It was a large man�s muscular body with a bull�s head, horns and all. It stared at me and did a kind of dance, raising its legs and arms alternately. It seemed like a statement of strength. I was born under Taurus in the Zodiac and I wondered if there was a connection. These visions were fairly two dimensional and tame compared to those I had previously experienced under the influence of LSD and mushrooms, and yet they were completely new.

There were some disquieting effects as well. I found myself feeling compelled to project my tongue out like a lizard. I felt like I was becoming a lizard, or perhaps reverting to my lizard origins. It felt creepy and prehistoric. I felt like I was meant to be a lizard in that moment. This aspect of ayahuasca is apparently not unusual as Chris later confirmed that he experienced to same thing.

At some point my inner field of vision became a wall of differently colored blocks that was being slowly built. The bricks would slowly march along to a monotonous, dead clicking sound and then place themselves on the wall as it slowly grew higher. It was pretty boring to watch and the mechanical nature of it bothered me. It seemed to me to be reflecting the artificial nature of reality, that it is merely a construct, perhaps a computer simulation. The emptiness of it from a spiritual perspective was disturbing to me, and I wanted to deny it as a possible reality because it seemed to imply that we are all just machines or perhaps the product of machines. This sense of the mechanical nature of our underlying reality would repeat itself the following night during my second ceremony.

Periodically I would open my eyes and look around the circular room. Occasionally light seemed to enter the room from the windows at the top of the wall. I wondered whether it was passing cars, but we were fairly isolated. My eyes had adjusted to the dark and I could just make out the shaman as he chanted and sang his icaros off to my left. By now there were various sounds from participants emanating from the dark from moans to brief bouts of laughter or giggling. One guy was having an animated conversation and saying things like �no waaaay!� in a very throaty, exaggerated manner like he just couldn�t believe whatever he was experiencing, but he was clearly happy about it. The shadow spirits were still moving about the room and I could feel them or a breeze they created as they shifted about. They definitely felt very alien but not necessarily threatening. The shaman�s voice would raise up fairly loud in those moments, as though he was trying to control or direct these spirits.

We had been given plastic buckets for the expected purging. I had read about this aspect of the ceremony and I kept my bucket close by. I began to hear folks retching in the dark. It sounded unpleasant, but I had no impulse to do it myself. The aya didn�t seem to bring anything up for me. From my research I had learned that the shaman believed that people were bringing up poisons from their spirit body that came out as physical matter. The retch could be the bile that contained the emotional illness from past abuse in this life or even from a trauma in a past life. This was how the medicine worked. The purge provided a physical and spiritual cleansing which healed that aspect of the individual. I didn�t purge on either night. But I had what one participant with 13 past ceremonies, including weeks in the Peruvian jungle, described as the biggest or second biggest experience she had ever witnessed. That was yet to come, and it would prove to be one of the most trying events of my life. But before that trial would begin, I began to have a wonderful experience which is quite difficult to remember in detail. It involved emotion more than vision, and it confirmed for me the existence of a higher universal consciousness, which many would call God.

My eyes were closed and the room disappeared as I entered a state of blissful knowing. It was confirmed to me that I was deeply loved and even cherished and that all was well with me and the world. It is extremely difficult now to remember details, if there were details. I can only relate that I felt I was in heaven for the next hour, accompanied by a loving and caring father. This was the confirmation of the reality of our eternal nature, our immortality, that I had been seeking all my life. But more than that, it was a confirmation of our essential goodness, of our own essential role in Godhead. We can never be lost and we are always home, even when we are despairing in life over loss of loved ones or other suffering. I cannot say why we chose to enter this experience of duality out of the oneness which is our home, but I can say that this experience is just that, an experience, not ultimate reality. As is stated at the beginning of A Course in Miracles, nothing real can be threatened, and nothing unreal exists � herein lies the peace of God.

But suffering is quite possible in this sub-reality, and I was to experience my share of it over the next several hours. This is what happened. As I began to come out of my reverie and became once again aware of my surroundings, I heard much suffering. The painful moaning seemed to come from more locations in the darkness and now there was weeping as well. The shaman had kept up his icaros, spiritually nursing the participants along their paths. I felt incredibly strong, safe and secure in my experience. I felt both my animal nature as a fit, vibrant human male as well as my spiritual strength. But the effects of the medicine were fading and I was losing my connection to Godhead. At this moment, the shaman offered, through the translator, to share more medicine with anyone who desired a second dose. I immediately moved over to him and knelt in front of him. the effects of the medicine were fading and I was losing my connection to Godhead. At this moment, the shaman offered, through the translator, to share more medicine with anyone who desired a second dose. I immediately moved over to him and knelt in front of him.