The first time I took Ayahuasca....




The first time I took Ayahuasca was in France, with members of the Church of Santo Daime. (At that time, there was no legislation on this plant).


The Church of Santo Daime originated in the Amazon in the 19th century, when Portuguese missionaries were converted to the shamanic practice of drinking Ayuhuasca (the vine of the dead) They made up their own ritual. 




I met people belonging to this "church" and decided to experiment.  I didn't really know what to expect. Ayahuasca is a very, very, very bitter beverage.




I found myself dancing - two steps to the right, two steps to the left over and over again and again - among a group of French and Italian people. Imagine the sound of maracas, guitars, lyrics in Portuguese...



I felt very ridiculous and then I started to feel sick. It was the feeling you get after overindulging in food and drink, then your liver isn't happy at all, but you still hope you won't have to throw up. The room was a merry- go -round, the walls weren't as vertical as they should have been. I crouched in a corner..



Normally when this state comes from an excess of eating and drinking, at some point you vomit and it brings relief. But on that day, vomiting wasn't happening. The room felt shaky, the walls were moving, I felt really bad.




Two or three guys helped me lie down in a corner of the room. One of them leaned over me. He was talking some kind of nonsense: "Be open to the experience... accept something entirely new..." 

He had short grey hair, a short greyish beard. His presence was better than nothing, but not much more...





I felt as if my life - my "sense of being myself" - was being sucked out of me by the top of my head. I felt I was taken out of my body, strongly, violently. I was extremely scared. At the same time, I noticed that I couldn't feel my feet anymore, I couldn't feel my legs, my hips... I was losing control of my body, trying to hold on like a dying man to life.... I realized that within a few seconds, I wouldn't even be able to cry out for help...




I shouted to the ceiling, atthe top of my lungs. I may not have ever shouted so strongly in my entire life.... or maybe the day I was born....?



"God! God who made me, can I trust? Can I TRUST?"




After some moments of intense panic, something strange happened. I thought of my partner and her little boy - a 10 years old with whom I had a very loving relationship. 

I had a vision of them in front of my grave and I felt their pain. It made me feel very sad for them. Without knowing it, without knowing how it happened, I had forgotten myself in the middle of the most intense panic. My next words were for them: "I am here to love you..."




The panic had disappeared. I find myself feeling extremely good, even though I had no control of my body. The man with the greyish hair and beard was still leaning over me. Lying down, I could see his head upside down! He appeared to be as strange and familiar as a Dad might be to a new born who still doesn’t know his face.... The sound of the maracas and the female voices singing were like the presence of a mother a little bit further away... I didn't know how to move my arms and my legs. I was like a baby, feeling safe and cared for...





A little bit later, I felt cold. I asked for a blanket. A guy told me briskly: “You can dance now!" I stood up awkwardly, surprised to be able to...   Two steps to the right, two steps to the left...




The feeling of ecstasy lasted the entire night. Apart from a subtle but deep deep craving that wasn't healed though......







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The fish on the sink

Image
Dear unknown friend, Where were you? I was a little boy, maybe 8 years old. I had a great admiration for my uncle Raymond. He always arrived late for Sunday lunches when the family was gathering at my grandparents. Instead of wearing dull and stiff Sunday clothing, he turned up in sportswear, sweating and went for a shower. From the point of view of a little boy who would be sternly told off for being two minutes late this meant great freedom. Raymond was a fisherman. I was fascinated looking at the big fish he brought and left to die a slow and distressing death on the kitchen sink. They were barbels and so full of bones that my grandmother never prepared them. It takes hours for a fish to die. Paying close attention I could feel the exhaustion that squashed them and kept them quiet whilst the agony of being out of the water slowly built up enough strength for just another hopeless spasm… Flap! Flap flap! …. And they were quiet again, though I knew they weren’t dead and I somehow...
Read more

Bullies on the Bus

One day of  autumn, I was on a bus in London, on my way back from a gardening job. Two seats in front of me were three boys in their school uniforms. Two of them were sitting and one was standing in front of them, in the area near the bus doors. The two sitting ones were playing with him. The game was not friendly. He let them do, though. He didn't try to put some distance between himself and them. One grabbed him by the tie and pulled, throwing him out of balance... but they kept talking together, like school mates do. Then the other sitting boy grabbed his hands and twisted them, until the poor boy asked, in a low voice... "please...." Later, the first bully took the boy's hat. He tried to get it back but the bully didn't let him. He claimed he would throw the hat through the window at the next stop to see the boy getting off the bus, picking his hat and getting back on the bus before the doors closed...if he had time. The bully kept pretending he would do it....
Read more

Antivenom for the soul ()

Image
Dear  friend, Do you how antivenom is made? Venom is collected from snakes; horses are injected with it. The horses fight the venom. Then the human draw blood from the horses, the antivenom is in it. This is literally true, and this is also a metaphor. Dear friend, maybe you are a "horse" as well... It's our job to be poisoned and fight within our own souls. Whether we know it or not, we are useful. The suffering is more bearable when it makes sense though. We are making antivenom for ourselves and others... A famous verse of the Emerald Table goes like this: "That which is below is like that which is above & that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing" A way to understand what it means is to see anything that exists in the material world as a reflection of something that exists in the invisible planes, that is the psychological and spiritual planes... If some beings, in our case horses, do make antiveno...
Read more