Here I reported on my first time drinking full-blown ayahuasca (vine+chacruna) in the jungle setting, coincidentally on the night of the Solstice/Full Moon/Eclipse/DMT-Nexus SHE. At the place of Luis*, where I would end up staying a week and a half, we would drink every other night. This ended up being perfect, as drinking ayahuasca could be quite physically draining, both in terms of energy and in actual contents of the body. So two nights later, we drank a second time. This time a Chilean lad in his early 20's, Juan, showed up, also having found Luis through a combination of the internet and following the locals' advice. A place like that of Luis draws special people, people that are seeking something special, not your typical "ayahuasca tourists", I believe. During the days, I took the public transport car to the nearby city for fresh-squeezed juice and the internet - technically neither of which were appropriate for the dieta, but I received no indication from the ayahuasca that the jugo was incompatible with the ayahuasca's work, and the jugo gave me something to look forward to after the heavy purging I would undergo.
The second time we drank was the only time out of 5 times that don Luis also drank. This time, unlike the first time, we only took one 3-4 ounce cup of the medicine. We each drank; again don Luis blew mapacho smoke on each cup before sharing with us. After drinking, Luis blew the candle out and we lay there in silence. This time the ayahuasca hit me harder than before - the sweet taste was still there, but not as sweet as the previous time. The bitterness began to dominate...so I laid back, enjoying the silence and trying to silence my thoughts, watch my breath...watch...listen...
As the medicine began to kick in, Luis once again began to shake the fan-leaf rattles he always used at the beginning of the sessions, as if to call in the ayahuasca. He then began to sing a song, a sweet, soft song, very simple melody (which I tried to remember but couldn't), a song with an incredible effect. I felt like a small child, in the safety of a nursery, being sung a lullaby, but this was no ordinary lullaby. With each repetition of the simple melody, I felt part of me being transported, orthogonally, out of the side of the ceremony house, on a wave that stretched far off into the horizon. The icaro transported me, as if part of my consciousness or being was transformed into a sinusoidal wave, in the most soothing way imaginable. A smile began to grow on my face, as I felt more at ease than I'd felt in many years, since I was a small child. All the anxiety and worries melted into this smile spreading on my face, engaging muscles throughout - this smile literally went from the sides of my eyes, down to the mouth, and back up, engaging the majority of the muscles of my face, including ones I don't recall using before. Along with the smile came the thought or message, as if from Mama Aya: "you can now smile in a way you weren't able to smile before, and even if you don't feel the child-like bliss you now feel, you can still smile like this. If you keep smiling, eventually you will feel this way." Three weeks later I'm sitting here with the same smile on my face; I asked Luis if the song he sang was for a particular plant (since it is said that every plant has its own icaro or plant song, which seems to relate on a frequency-level to that plant's DNA), but he said "no", it's just a song that the ayahuasca taught him. This, again, is what attracted me to Luis in the first place and why I plan to return in the future; unlike many of the vegetalistas I read about online or in books, Luis says he learns directly from ayahuasca, not from other humans, and the first time he drank ayahuasca, the ayahuasca instructed him to learn directly from the ayahuasca, not from other people. So this was perhaps the most unexpected unfoldment of my week-and-a-half stay...through a song that the ayahuasca taught Luis, "I" was transported sideways on a wave through the side of the ceremony house and off to the horizon (somewhat like a carrier wave), and at the same time was firmly in place, laying down, covered up, in a place of deep bliss, with a smile on my face that I can still access three weeks later, a smile that the ayahuasca says I can use to help bring myself to the same place I was during the ceremony.
This was the primary "happening" of this session with the ayahuasca. I was unable to vomit on this occasion, and as a result the ayahuasca sat in my stomach, cleaning for many hours. The purge later came with diarrhea, which seems to be better anyways. I noticed that the times I was unable to vomit, the effects of the Caapi/Harmala alkaloids seemed to dominate, but when I was able to vomit, the effects of the Chacruna/DMT seemed to dominate. Ultimately, my goal in drinking was not to experience wild psychedelic effects - for this, DMT or changa can be applied - instead I wanted to clean out my body, have the ayahuasca wash through my system, and to meet ayahuasca in a full-on manner, in an appropriate setting. This intent would be fully rewarded, particularly with repeated applications of the ayahuasca. Fantastic medicine! I ended up staying up all night after this session - with the ayahuasca in my stomach, sleep was impossible, and I enjoyed wandering around, outside, in the warm jungle air, with dazzling stars above and jungle sounds and all sorts of plant forms around. I continued to try to vomit, to no avail. I noticed that on nights when Luis drank the ayahuasca, he would sleep with a radio on. Radio in Peru is fantastic, with a wide variety of classical, Latino, and occasionally American songs playing. I wondered why Luis played the radio while he slept after drinking ayahuasca, and came up with one possibility: after drinking the ayahuasca, he is more vulnerable to sorcery during sleep - or at the very least has the perception of being more vulnerable during sleep - and the music helps to frighten away such intruders. The only other possibility I could come up with is that after drinking ayahuasca, he's more frightened of the surrounding jungle sounds, but this idea didn't make sense; he's a grown man with no apparent fear of going into the jungle to search for the vine/chacruna and other goodies, so why would he fear the jungle on his own property, in the security of his house?
Sometimes I think too much. I'll continue recording what happened during my visit to the jungle...it was very enjoyable to finally be down there, after reading about people of the forests of South America (and Africa) through the works of ethnobotanists such as Terence McKenna, Jeremy Narby, Steve Beyer, and the like. As is probably obvious, the setting - the river, the plants, the people, the sun, the humidity, the heat, the heavy rains - all combined with the dieta and the ayahuasca for an incredibly synergistic and unique form of medicine for mind, body, nature. Fantastic!
"...I didn't know that Cheshire cats always grinned; in fact, I didn't know that cats could grin..." - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland