I returned from a two week Ayahuasca journey at a healing retreat 18 kilometers South of Iquitos, Peru. My 19 year old son and I had determined together that we should undertake this journey together, our first trips both individually and collectively into the alternate worlds of sacred plant entheogens. I chose this particular retreat because it was owned and operated by a Shaman with more than 40 years of experience working with Ayahuasca and coming from many successive generations of shamans.
The retreat was almost 4 kilometers into the jungle from the highway on a narrow footpath where it seemed extremely isolated. Our individual open tambos (huts) where we spent our days and slept at night were also isolated from each other. This privacy allowing me to bath in a spring fed stream running just a few feet away from my tambo. The food was strictly bland having no added salt, sugar, oil, fruit, spices or meat. Mostly we ate rice, plantains or potatoes, with a few cooked veggies but in general no legumes with the occasional exception of some dried peas that seemed to have been deliberately under-cooked. Our daily routines were just as bland as our menus. We went to sleep when the sun went down and got up with the dawn. Meals were delivered to our tambos at 9:00 AM and 3:00 PM and needless to say I welcomed the loss 10 pounds (almost 5 kilos) over our two weeks.
Every morning at 8:00 AM and afternoons at 4:00 PM we consumed a small glass of ahosacha (wood garlic) which was the inner bark of a small but tall tree soaked in water overnight. Our shaman explained that the ahosacha would help improve our dreams and visions and as a side-effect it would eliminate our human scent (body order). He was absolutely correct. We were discouraged from washing our bodies or hair with soap or shampoo for those two weeks, or using deodorant, and despite my doubtfulness, indeed, our body odors were almost non-existent. The shaman further explained that ahosacha was traditionally used by the indigenous hunters to mask their human scents so they could more closely approach their prey without detection. It definitely worked.
We attended two Ayahuasca ceremonies per week on Tuesday and Friday nights beginning at 7:45 PM. I was hoping for more Ayahuasca but this was a very traditional setting and we were doing our best to pretend to be apprentice shamans for the two weeks and four ceremonies while we were there. The number of other passengers (guests) attending the retreat varied from day to day but in general there was a high of 8 and a low of 3 passengers with the low coinciding with the ceremony that occurred the day after Christmas, 2014.
My first ceremony was almost a non-event because the shaman's practice was to go very light on the newcomers that had never experienced Ayahuasca before and metered out for me just 1/4 of a cup. This shaman had a reputation for a very strong brew so I was optimistic that this would be enough. Unfortunately, I was wrong. The 1/4 cup of Ayahuasca gave me almost no sense that I had ingested a psychedelic substance other than the fact that I felt a little discomfort in my stomach. My son and the 6 other passengers imbibing in the brew, on the other had, were mostly blown away the the intensity and ferocity of the experience. By about an hour after ingesting the brew there was what seemed like a symphony of barfing, farting, moaning and screams going on all around me... and yet for the most part I felt, saw and heard nothing from the inner.
Realizing that this night with Ayahuasca would largely be a dud I thought that I'd do a meditation and see if I could induce any of the usual visuals that often accompany one of my good meditative sessions. I found that indeed, yes, with effort I could coax out a few visuals and with an Amazonian motif. The colors were slightly more vivid than usually accompany my meditations but overall the experience was not that dissimilar.
The following morning at 10:00 AM we all met to talk about our experiences with the Ayahuasca. There was G who talked about his experiences and impressions at morphing into a powerful jaguar and romping around the jungle. Of course T sitting next to G pipped in to say that he had seen a jaguar sitting where G had previously been sitting and mentioned also that the growls and guttural sounds he heard from the jaguar seemed absolutely impossible to come out of a human being so he merely assumed that he was having a vision and hearing a real spiritual manifestation of a jaguar. But G was also taking Toé which he described as driving him absolutely crazy and seeing angles and various entities at odd times of the day, night and in his dreams.
My son W had some wonderful experiences on his first 1/4 cup and perhaps I can talk him into posting his impressions here for your edification as well. I believe he filled up almost two 8.5 x 11 notebooks completely about his experiences and to hear him tell his stories was both inspirational and amazing for me. My son made me proud.
Our second night on Ayahuasca was interesting because I was given 3/4 cup and despite the larger dose felt less influence of the medicine than I had previously with the 1/4 cup. My son W, of course, got blasted through ego death and into a multitude of interdimensional realms all the while I felt nothing. In fact, a new guy had arrived, P, who was a good 120 kilos compared to my meager 80 kilos. P receiving 1/4 cup totally wigged out while being absolutely blasted into the realms beyond. In fact, it became quite scary when P freaked out and tried to go walk-about in the jungle in the pitch darkness. Luckily the shaman and apprentice were quick to capture him and haul him back to his seat (on more than one occasion) while doing their best to calm him and get him settled down. How strange. A 120kg guy freaks out and is blown away by 1/4 cup and I experience nothing.
The next morning at our 10:00 AM debriefing I mentioned to the shaman my concerns about not receiving enough and he basically said that I shouldn't worry and that he'd take care of me at the next Tuesday ceremony. So on Tuesday night the shaman gives me one whole cup and I believe I was the only person of six passengers that night that received a full cup. I vomited the one cup little early at about 1/2 hour so after another hour at 9:30 PM the shaman offered me another full cup which I eagerly accepted and consumed.
So after consuming two full cups of Ayahuasca that should have launched a horse into orbit I again felt nothing, zip, nada. I was able to hold down the second cup for almost a hour so you'd think that in combination with the other full cup I took it should have had some effect. I remembered the shaman saying at the introduction at the beginning of our stay that, basically, Ayahuasca wasn't for everyone. Could this statement now be applying to me? Could Ayahuasca basically not be meant for me? I expressed these concerns to the shaman at 10:00 AM the following morning and he said that I should worry, and that again he'd take care of me at my last and final Friday ceremony. He said that he'd have me sit right next to him and that he'd do something he'd not done in a very long time, he'd give me two full cups at once to lead off the ceremony.
The Friday ceremony came and true to his word he gave me two full cups of Ayahuasca which I quickly consumed and then sat down. The copiousness of this amount of Ayahuasca seemed to both me, and my stomach, to be massive and unsettling. Despite the discomfort I managed to hold the Ayahuasca down for 40 minutes before yielding to the overwhelming urge to purge...
My intentions for my first ceremony were quite simple. Ayahuasca, please:
1. Humble me.
2. Heal me.
3. Give me visions of the future.
But by my fourth and final ceremony my intentions had distilled to only one. Ayahuasca, please:
1. Humble me.
I had almost two weeks in isolation to think long and hard about what this simple and reduced intention meant and why Ayahuasca seemed so right for everyone at the retreat but me. My simplified intention merely meant that I wanted Ayahuasca to give me the gift of ego death. All I wanted going into my fourth ceremony was death (of the ego). For whatever reason, Ayahuasca did not grant my wish.
After my purge I could tell that things were somewhat different than my previous three ceremonies. I definitely felt something. At about 50 minutes into the ceremony I found that in my minds eye I was located in what seemed to me to be a very familiar space. It seemed that I'd been there hundreds, thousands or millions of times before. The I in which I found myself was black and yet there seemed to be both ambient light and colors of lights floating about. But the floating lights didn't seemed to be entities or intelligent although I suspected that they might be. There didn't seem to be any patterns to the lights and they didn't seem all that remarkable but it was the space and the shape of the space that seemed very familiar. The word "parasol" seemed top pop into my mind. I knew that a parasol was a type of umbrella but for shielding one from the rays of the sun, not the rain. But then I realized that it was raining at the time in our maloca (temple) and storming heavily. So was it significant that I thought of a parasol versus an umbrella? Of course there was no handle or shave in the center so the shape of the space was essentially a dome. This experience of being in the dome lasted for about 5 minutes and then I quickly returned to baseline consciousness with the exception of a tremendous feeling of love and gratitude for my shamans, apprentice, family and the world.
Of course, I thought, was this the famous DMT dome of Terrence McKenna? Why was this space so familiar to me when I've never done DMT or any other plant entheogen previously? But why did Ayahuasca seem to have so little or no effect on me when it could totally blow away all the other passengers at these ceremonies? Was I somehow immune to either the Ayahuasca (betaharmines) or the Chacruna (DMT)?
At the 10:00 AM debriefing the following morning the shaman had no explanation as to why Ayahuasca had not been more assertive with me, why she didn't reveal herself to me and humble or heal me. He said that when he looked at me during the ceremony he saw that I was a baby being cradled and rocked in Madré Ayahuasca's loving arms. He said that for all four of the ceremonies she was gently loving and holding me in her arms; that she was protecting me.
Are there people that have been established to be immune to the effects of DMT? I've heard of an Ayahuasca retreat in Mexico that will give passengers both Ayahuasca and then after a half hour or so a hit of vaped DMT. Might there be something I should do to prepare better or to improve my chances or standing with Ayahuasca? What do you think about my experiences and what would you recommend that I do or try next?
Advice, please, anyone?