Hi everyone! I realized I've been having such a good time here but still have no posts in the forums. Looks like this is where I get to start!

I'm very happy and excited to be here, my experiences with all the wonderful different plant spirit medicines over the years (mostly on my own and with friends, as well a few times with Peruvian shamans (curanderos) and Native American Church meetings and one Santo Daime night) seem to have led to an awakening/calling one day during a deep journey that I would love to learn how to correctly and respectfully transform some of the plants, vines, cacti, etc that are on this planet right from the Earth..into forms where I as a humble animal can more easily interact with these magical and healing spirits that dwell within these materials - I had attempted cooking of some special vines and leaves a few times a few years back with no effects from the brews, maybe an extremely subtle plant energy/vibration. Now that around 7 years have gone by since then (with maybe a few decently-successful mimosa-rue brews here and there..and well, 7 years more of life experiences) I feel a newfound more-confident and passionate calling to try some alchemy once again..for learning, growth, expansion, healing, visioning, helping others, (and fun too! )

So I'm very pleased to have entered a very active/interactive community that specializes in the discussion of these amazing and sacred materials and experiences and obviously so much more. I've tried placing an ad online to meet people to hopefully share in the discussion of these allies/tools/creations/blessings, but it felt a little odd way to go about it and this site is obviously the place to be for such things.

Very thankful to Be Here Now, and have already learned a whole lot in a few weeks and the doors just seem to be opening up left and right for me to easily learn and experience (and gain the tools to do so) almost anything I can dream of! Looking forward to getting to know all you kind and interesting and amazing and clever folks, learning lots more from ya; and I of course look forward to sharing whatever I can that I may be able to offer to this amazing group/family/creature/spaceship hehe

Much Love and BlesSings~

morninglight

Welcome


Fascinating, if you ever feel like sharing some of the details of these experiences I'm sure I wouldn't be the only person here that would love to read them. I've always been curious about the ceremonial uses of our favorite plants, but I've always feared feeling too much like an outsider to go and experience them for myself.

Thanks Yoho! My very first 'welcome.'

I'd be happy to share about those ceremonial experiences. I won't get into a lot of specifics of the actual ceremonies quite yet, but I can say a few things now.

It definitely changed everything to go from a typical explorer having done cactus, fungi, dmt, lsd, etc - to being in an organized ceremony with powerful Amazonian ayahuasca brews and well-experienced shamans/curanderos. Then one goes back to dmt and lsd and mushrooms and cannbis and its like they are all different now. I'm excited to make working drinkable brews; generally some dmt by itself doesn't seem to leave me feeling like I did a good ayahuasca session, though I have definitely come to see where the healing benefits are. I guess that's kinda what I'm saying here too - when first trying the spirit molecule I wasn't looking for 'healing', was merely a curious cosmonaut. Now I see the tryptamines, mushrooms and cacti much differently. I hardly ever take fungi anymore, not sure if I just did enough in the first decade or two of tripping, am scared of them, or just hold them in higher respect and prefer to really do them when I do them, but these days just have a small nibble before a concert or something. I do love the vibes of being gently immersed in psilocybin. I guess my friend's monkey ends up just eating little magic squares of paper due to their ease of ingestion..haha I read some interesting info recently; someone said they had 'more unpleasant side-effects at -lower- doses of lsd than higher ones'...that seemed curiously wise to me, and it turns out it is quite amazing to just move it up a notch from what you thought was a 'safe' zone.. in fact I read it was impolite to resist the molecule..or shall we say to remain 'in control.' I was like ohhh... right. We fear we will lose control so we just stay in tame little safe zones where it may as well just be a slightly-psychedelic coffee or yerba mate haha - and try to carry on with your weekday lol

Anyway, I'm looking forward to learning how to make changa and brews with caapi and such. Despite reading someone here last night say that they feel virtually no difference between caapi and rue, I feel a closer connection to the caapi having done brews with traditional Amazonian healers; pretty sure we had chacruna and caapi and perhaps even a wee bit of toe or other admixtures - sometimes the brews were kinda tame and mellow like a new age yoga circle.. other times it was like the feeling the shaman may have given you some from his own personal extra-strength make-you-a-man super batch (and you're crawling around like a baby with tears and snot hanging from you like strange threads, wishing you could do anything to show you still have a little control..haha)..like Alex Grey says in his ayahuasca interview - "Whoaaa!!" hehe

Another interesting tidbit I gleaned about ceremonies is reading someone's words where they said something along the lines of "I noticed that when I do this medicine in a group ceremony setting, there are almost always a few heavy duty 'healing crises' yet it seems when done on my own, its like this amazing ride just me and the plants and there seems to not be the crises, just dependable steady one-on-one communication/transmissions/learnings/journeyings." -- yes there are definitely some weeping and wailing and purging and delirious laughter in the room full of dmt/maoi cosmonauts.. heh - maybe people just feel comfortable to let go and get all messy cuz there's shamans there? Or maybe because that magic shamany brew is sometimes more powerful/charged (and with mystery admixtures I imagine; I didnt think about asking about the contents of the brew at the time..it was just that mysterious and wonderful brew from the curandero's jug..) than any home brew 'tek' the average person manages to create? Well I got inspired to learn proper extracting techniques to maybe be able to match or even improve on the effective healing / visionary brews I've been served in these ceremonial settings, and of course changa has since sprouted up (first tried the ayah ceremony in about 2004) and there's pharmauasca and all so it seems like there are just a vast amount of possibilities awaiting me now.

Blessings ~ I'm off to play with some mimosa bark and d-limonene after reading lots about it!

Thank you for sharing. Good luck with your extraction