Journey of Simon

For this retreat, we were to drink Ayahuasca seven times over twelve days:

Day 1: Arrive
Day 2: Ceremony One
Day 3: Ceremony Two
Day 4: Night off
Day 5: Trinity Ceremony One
Day 6: Trinity Ceremony Two
Day 7: Trinity Ceremony Three
Day 8: Night Off
Day 9: Penultimate Ceremony
Day 10: Final Ceremony – Arkana
Day 11: Night Off
Day 12: Leave

The ‘Trinity’ period of drinking three nights in a row is notoriously the most intense and the hardest work. The Arkana, the final ceremony, is essentially a ceremony where you drink a lesser amount and sit up to fully engage with the healers. They sing slightly different ikaros to energetically seal you before you re-enter normal life.

It’s around 8pm, and as I walk to the middle of the circle, I’m debating in my own mind how much of the brew I should take. I’m always conscious of how much I drink as, in my second ceremony at the previous retreat, I took a full large cup of Black Ayahuasca. I take responsibility for my own actions but I took it not knowing it was any different from standard Ayahuasca and, really, it should have never been served to me being so inexperienced with the medicine. I overdosed. This resulted in a trip for nearly 10 hours where I kept being knocked unconscious, convinced I was going to die (not an ego death, an actual bodily death) and I woke up the next day with some skin missing from my back.

I don’t remember a lot of the trip, so I can only assume I had some kind of physical convulsions and a small amount of skin was rubbed off where I was sat with my back against the maolka wall.

As I sat and talked to the facilitators, a new profound sense of bravery swept over me. I told Jason that I could no longer live in this Hell and the only way was through. He recommended that I drink a medium size cup and, if I needed more, to come back after the second ikaro.

And so I did. My second personal ikaro passed, and I wasn’t really feeling any effects so I shone my red torch on the wall of the maloka, which we were told to do if we needed any kind of assistance. Jason came over. I told him nothing was happening and I needed more. He seemed apprehensive to give me more Ayahuasca, but I said that I intuitively knew that I needed it. Some people were already purging hard by this point, deep in their own experiences. He brought me back to the centre of the circle, poured me half a small dose, blessed it with his mapacho smoke and led me back to my mat.

I find it really hard to describe the initial process of when the Ayahuasca starts to kick in. It takes me to a place I strangely remember and am so familiar with whilst I’m in the trip – like I’ve been there so many times before. Unfortunately, after a trip ends, I find it incredibly difficult to remember that place. The best description I can muster is that my consciousness feels like it’s being lifted from my body. It’s as if I’m two or three feet off the ground and I see a green/blue tinge to everything, there are fractals and geometric patterns everywhere. I feel an intense pressure on my forehead, in the spot of my third eye. I can feel a benevolent ‘aura’ moving around me in this phantasmagoric space. Unfortunately, at each attempt to decipher the visuals, the fear begins to arise in my body as I suddenly become acutely aware that I’m no longer in my ‘safe’ controlled day-to-day consciousness. I’ve pulled the following image from Google in an attempt to somewhat describe what that altered state looks like to me:

The ikaros of the Shamans become piercing to my brain. My breath becomes very heavy as if I can physically feel, see and am sensitive to the energetic particles coming in and out of my body. Like everything is alive. Oh and, as always, my ego thinks that I’m at risk, starts to panic and assumes that I’m being controlled by malevolent forces.

I am feeling so overwhelmed by the visuals, I decide to lie on my mat and continue to try and breathe through the experience. At this point, one of the healers comes over to me and starts to sing and I see a white beam of light shoot from the heavens into different parts of my body. First my left foot, where I had complained of Plantar Fasciitis, then my groin area (possibly aimed at my root chakra). Whilst it’s working on my groin area, I feel a lot of stimulation in my d*ck. It felt bizarre, and although it was stimulating it wasn’t sexual. The white light beam moves up to my stomach, chest and heart area for a short period before finally focusing on my head. It stayed there for quite some time and I felt it gripping my entire brain. It was as if I was on an operating table and there was a protective light surrounding my whole mat. Momentarily, I was no longer aware of others around me in the maloka. I looked up to the heavens and what looked like some kind of blue alien poked its head in to see how I was getting on. He was looking over the top and nodded as if he was happy with the work that was being carried out and then he left. It all felt benevolent but still very surreal.

Following the operating work, I was held in a blissful state free from anxiety. It was as if I was getting an energetic massage from Ayahuasca all over my body. It lasted about 30 minutes and it was absolutely wonderful, I felt held in so much bliss and peace.

For the first time in six months, my PTSD was gone.

I spent the next ten minutes feeling so much gratitude, thinking that I was done for the night.

And then, I STARTED TRIPPING BALLS.

Ayahuasca ceremonies for me at least, for the most part, seem to come in two waves. Initially, some operating work is done to raise my vibration and I’m held in light and a positive loving way by the medicine. It’s as if to prepare me before I go into the real hard work, down in the dark subconscious mind in an attempt to release my own real trauma and negative patterns and emotions.

The second wave is when I’m so deep in the experience that I totally forget where I am and I’m fully immersed in the visuals. Falling deeper into this waking dream state, I’m taken through this beautiful kingdom. As I witness this supernatural world of divine energy, it is so wonderful, with beauty so immense, I’m overwhelmed by it. With each visual, the energy is pulsating through my entire body. The energy feels feminine, it’s like a divine sexual energy but not in an arousing way. I can only think to describe it as more like the energy of all creation. After fifteen minutes of this, I am totally spent, seriously disoriented but I manage to open my eyes and realise that I’m back in the maloka. The energy consuming my entire body is unbearable and I’m struggling to breathe. It’s as if this meat vessel cannot hold such a powerful divine energy.

The ikaros have stopped and the announcement comes, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the ceremony is now over”. As the room starts to thank each individual Maestro and Maestra in unison, I am scared that everyone is finishing up and I’m still knee deep in my own experience. I’m really struggling as I feel myself making groaning noises and dropping in and out of consciousness. Jason, the facilitator, comes over to my mat to ask if I’m ok, and I managed to fathom some words about the energy being overwhelming and that I cannot cope. Without hesitation, and with some incredible intuition, he says to me:

Simon. The medicine is trying to enter your subconscious. Do not fight it, do not resist, just lie back – breathe and accept.

With no other option, I accept his advice. It provides some momentary relief before suddenly, I see visuals of huge oscillating snake like pillars and feel the medicine burst into my subconscious. My whole world turns black and frightening. I start crying hysterically for ten seconds and then abruptly stop. I get on all fours and pull my purge bucket to my mouth as all hell breaks loose in my mind.

The maloka is pretty much in silence as I become the loudest of the twenty-three. Apart from possibly one other, the rest appear to have all finished in their experiences. I am consumed by darkness, terror and serious nausea. As I hang my head in the purge bucket, a flip book of words plays out behind my eyelids of things I am beginning to purge from my psyche;  “gay shame”, “co-dependency”, “abandonment”, “fear”, “depression”, “addictions”, “GAY SHAME”, “GAY SHAME”, “GAY SHAME!”. With each word I am violently being sick, crying and moaning. I’m falling deeper and deeper into despair and torment. I’m forced to confront the fact my ex-girlfriend had an abortion around 8 years ago. It was a horrific, volatile relationship where we were both toxic to each other. She had a real issue with alcohol and regrettably, on very few occasions, we were violent towards each other. One time, it resulted in me getting arrested. She had a son from a previous relationship and we stayed together for four years as were both too codependent to leave each other – this is a primary example of when two fundamentally broken people, with lots of trauma, get together. It can get incredibly messy. At the time, I felt the abortion was the best thing for the child. Growing up in that environment is good for nobody.  Ayahuasca makes me beg for forgiveness, to really repent, to say that I’m sorry to God (Source, Oneness or however you choose to define God) and an almighty purge comes out of from the deepest darkest depths of my soul. I start thinking of the women in my life and my most recent ex-girlfriend. The sadness that I feel that we are no longer together and I start purging so hard I can barely breathe. I see a number of women that are close to me and how dependent I have been on them. I become consumed by more shame and more purging ensues – it is just relentless.

I then see a huge outline of a demon behind my eyelids and he is one huge scary mother f*cker. One thing I’ve always been terrified about with Ayahuasca is that people often see demons during visions. The reason this has been one of my greatest fears for a long time is due to the fact I knew it would play on my religious conditioning. My mind draws the conclusion that “if I see a demon then this must be satanic work”  – like they must be stealing my soul or something. Everything about the setting of working with Ayahuasca flares this wounding. Even the word ‘ritual’ scares me, spirits scare me, everything about the process of an out of body experience scares me.

I’m trying to do everything I can to purge this huge demon but I just can’t. I collapse back onto my mat and just cry.  The medicine moves my hand and places it on my heart. A voice talks to me in my head. I can tell it’s not me, maybe it’s Ayahuasca, my subconscious or even my soul, but it just keeps repeating what a brave and courageous boy that I am to be facing this Hell. I was talking to myself as if I was a little child, maybe I was talking to my inner child. Who knows.

I’m more than aware this whole process sounds incredibly melodramatic but it will always be a challenge to describe the emotional spectrum that is faced when under the influence of Ayahuasca. It is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. It can be so dark, so terrifying and horrifying that I often feel like I actually want to die in that moment. The torture, and I am begging for it to end.

The female facilitator, Zuzana, comes over to my mat to ask how I’m doing. Shaking, I ask her to just sit with me for five minutes and she agrees. Teary, I manage to sit up and just put my head in my hands. Zuzana was a wonderful, beautiful and caring person with an energy that would light up any room. Throughout the retreat, she loved to use stories and analogies. It was well known that her favourite was to draw the comparison between the journey of Frodo in Lord of the Rings and the ‘Hero’s Journey’ you undertake when working with plant medicines to do deep introspective work and face your shadow. I tell her that I can’t purge this huge demon and so sat next to me, in the pitch black of the maloka, she starts to tell me a story:

There once was a kingdom, where the king had travelled out of town.  When he returned, there was a huge ugly demon sitting on his throne. All the people of the kingdom were terrified and didn’t know what to do or how to chase this demon out of their land. The king greeted the demon with kind words and asked him “Did anyone offer you a cup or tea?”. The people of the kingdom looked shocked, “Bring our guest some tea!” the king said, and so, with puzzled faces his people did as asked. As the demon drank the tea, he began to get smaller. The king then said “Oh look, our guest has dirty feet and he must be tired after his long journey here. Please prepare him a nice bath for his feet, I say”. The king’s own people cannot believe their eyes but they do as their king says and the demon shrinks even more. The king finally says “Let us have some music to celebrate our guest’s arrival. Please call in our best musicians to play a song”. The musicians come and play from their hearts and treat the demon to the most beautiful melodies for his ears. The demon shrinks more and more with every sweet tone until suddenly he dissapears completely and the wise old king reclaims his rightful position on the throne.

Show love to your demons, Simon.

Zuzana lets me know that she is going to leave the maloka to go to bed but there are two door guys that will stay in the maloka all night and will call for help if it’s needed.

I feel like I need the toilet. I grab my red light, stand up but nearly pass out as my eyes totally black out. I experience momentary total blindness and fall to my knees. I manage to steady myself on the wall of the maloka, and slowly follow it all the way round to the maloka door. As I stand in the jungle toilets trying to pee, a loud demanding voice enters my head “GET BACK IN THE MALOKA”, “GET BACK IN THE MALOKA”, “GET BACK IN THE MALOKA, NOW!”. I leave the toilet and see Jamie (his actual name was Jason, but in an effort to not confuse him with the facilitator Jason, I’ll just refer to him as Jamie) walking down the steps from the maloka. I’ve bonded with Jamie at the retreat and he is located two mats down from me in ceremony.

Jamie came to Ayahuasca for his own PTSD from being in the military and seeing the atrocities in Afghanistan, as well as a mortar exploding right next to him. This is a guy that before working with Ayahuasca at a previous retreat in Costa Rica last year, held a gun in his mouth multiple times ready to kill himself to end the pain, trauma and suffering he was in. The only thing that stopped him killing himself was the fact he had two children and felt he couldn’t leave them without a father. He felt trapped. He couldn’t abandon his kids through suicide and so instead he went out looking for people and situations to try and get himself killed – this included multiple street fights and one of these left a lasting mark. A four-inch scar can be seen on his right cheek, from a fight with a guy twice his size in which a chunk of his face was bitten off. When he told me this story one day down by the river in the jungle, he seemed almost embarrassed to conclude the story by the fact that he had won the fight and the other guy ended up in the hospital missing most of his teeth. All of this was over 30¢. Jamie is a real testimony to medicine work. He has totally transformed. He is now a caring and compassionate human being and hates violence – but still emanates a strong masculine energy.

Jamie sees me stumbling trying to make my way back up the stairs into the maloka. Gripping my shoulder as I’m walking past he says “You, my friend, are a f*cking warrior.” Clearly, my hours of hell have been as extreme and audible to everyone else in the maloka as they have been in my own head.

I return to my mat in the pitch black and just lie there, my body still intensely vibrating and nauseous. I ask the medicine what next. “Go back to London and start a business with Ciaran.” Ciaran is forty-eight and has been a great mentor in my life in the business world and, in some ways, we’ve always been more friends than colleagues. He’s a talented businessman and he has always had an unmovable faith in me and what I could achieve – even when I didn’t actually believe it myself.

I’d like to fast-forward very quickly to show you a very interesting synchronicity. I contacted Ciaran when I returned from Peru:

His dream would have been about the same time as this ceremony… Madness.

After this, my trip gets back into full flow. Predictably, it’s dark and more confusing. I felt like I had more to purge but I couldn’t understand what I needed to purge. Then it hits me: Jehovah’s Witnesses and Religion. In the next moments, I went on to have a dialogue with something in my own head. Now, the jury is still out for me as to what I was actually speaking to – was it the medicine or my subconscious? It’s hard for me to remember the exact narrative of the conversation but it went something like:

Voice: “You are Gay”

Me (being facetious): Ok, well sounds like I’ll have to get used to hanging out in Soho then!

Voice: “NO. Soho = DEMONS”

Me: Ok…..

Voice: “You need to return to being a Jehovah’s Witness”

Me: Wait, What?

Voice: “It is the Truth.”

Me: How can that even be possible?

Voice: “You need to go to Bethnal Green, you need to lead them out, lead them to gay acceptance.”

Me: F*ck. What? This cannot be right. They believe that gay sex is a sin.

Voice: “It is.”

At this point, I feel the fear escalating again in my body. I’m so confused. I thought the majority of shame and fear I carried was due to being brought up in this fundamentalist religion and now I’m being told to return to it? It makes no sense. It’s everything I’ve rebelled against my entire life. I don’t even believe it now. My world has been opened up to so many other spiritual practices. Eastern Philosophy resonates with me far more than anything I was ever taught in the religion. Not only that, they wouldn’t approve of what I’m doing right now, the medicine work would be wrong and demonised in their eyes. As I feel the resistance in my body building, the trip starts to become a lot more difficult. Based on the advice I’d previously been given, I try to take an alternative approach. I just accept and agree to whatever is being told to me.

Me: Ok, I accept. I’ll do it. I’ll rejoin. Do I have to be celibate for the rest of my life?

Voice: “Yes.”

Me: Well this is just brilliant. First, you tell me I’m gay, and then I’m told I need to be celibate for the rest of my life. Will I ever be in love?

Voice: “Yes, but not yet.”

Me: I’m never doing this medicine again. It just f*cks me up and confuses me every time.

Voice: “You need to return to being a Jehovah’s Witness.”

Me: I need to discuss this in the group share tomorrow. This is so confusing.

Voice: “NO, don’t tell anyone – You talk too much.”

Me: Ok…..

{Note to self: Aware I’ve already ballsed this message up by posting it on the internet}

Voice: “You need to return to being a Jehovah’s Witness.”

Me: Yeah I got that. Do I need to introduce them to the plant medicine?

Voice: “Yes and No.”

Me: Brilliant. Now you choose to be non-specific. Seeing as being a Jehovahs Witness is the ‘Truth’ and they definitely would not approve of this. Do I ever need to drink plant medicines again or will this be my final ceremony?

Voice: “No. *Pause* – MORE, MORE, MORE, MORE, MORE, MORE, MORE, MORE.”

Me: Again, making no sense but OK, I need to drink more, many more times. Can you please give me more information?

Voice: “……….”

{At this point I begin to get angry, frustrated and begin clutching at straws as to why I’m getting these messages}

Me: “WHY IS THIS SO CRYPTIC? PLEASE HELP ME UNDERSTAND. WHY DO YOU NEED ME TO DO THIS? IS THIS SOME KIND OF KARMIC DEBT I NEED TO PAY OFF?”

Voice: “………”

I’m utterly confused and have no idea how to interpret these messages.  My mind is racing. Are these messages from Ayahuasca literal? Or is it showing me my greatest fears?

I briefly had a break and by this time it was around 3am. Jamie came over to sit with me by my mat as he was still awake. We smoked a mapacho together but I still had this constant running commentary in my head. It was like constant negative self-talk. I could feel the medicine was trying to call me back into the trip, that the work wasn’t done. Jamie left and I closed my eyes.

I rolled over on the mat and just laid there, exhausted but my mind still racing at 100mph. It felt as if the voice was mad at me and, as much as I tried, I just couldn’t intellectualise or comprehend the messages. Telling me that I’m gay (this had come up in my first ceremony, it was a shock then as well) but I’ve spent years with an addiction to the female form. I believe sexuality is on some kind of continuum – but why is the thought of having sex with a man making me feel sick with fear? Have I repressed the fact that I’m gay due to my religious upbringing? I’ve been trying to heal a lifetime of sexual shame and now I’m being told I need to be celibate and, if I am gay, that it is a sin. I look around at the many people in the group, and a number have openly stated that they are in polyamorous relationships. As far as was disclosed to me, not once did they have any messages about it being shameful or wrong from the medicine. How can these people be so fluid with their sexuality and yet mine is so fearful, confusing and feels like I’m being punished?

I could feel myself trying to decipher if this was the medicine talking to me or not At times, felt like there were three or four voices in my head. One of the voices at one point, telling me all of the most unthinkable things and telling me to “have sex with your sister”. Clearly, the message around my sister wasn’t a true message but, possibly my own subconscious or fear messing with me (maybe similar to the vision about my mum in the fifth ceremony). The question is, how do you decipher what is or is not true when working with the medicine?

I feel myself obsessing about the messages. I’m reminded of my previous retreat. Right in the middle of the 14 days, I received a text message from a Jehovah’s Witness and longtime family friend that I hadn’t heard from in about a year. If nothing is a coincidence, was this a message for me to rejoin? Every thought takes me deep into anxiety.

I begged the medicine to let me sleep. I literally could not take any more. I think I managed to sleep for about an hour and woke up at around 5am to the noise of cockerels and felt like a zombie. It felt like last night was an epic mission. I had received some healing during ceremony; my acute PTSD was gone, the physical pain in my heel was greatly reduced and I’d purged a lot of darkness. Unfortunately, due to the messages about religion and my sexuality, I still felt horrible, confused and fearful. I sat outside the maloka, smoked a mapacho and started crying. I felt like I was really losing my mind.

I don’t have a specific blog post for Ceremony Seven (Ceremony Four within this retreat), the midway point of the Trinity. Before each ceremony, we have one-hour Meditation/Yoga to prepare for the evening ahead. During this, I just couldn’t keep my eyes open. It was becoming a real struggle and I was concerned that I couldn’t engage with the medicine properly because I was exhausted. I’d had about 4 hours sleep in 36 hours. I spoke to the facilitators who translated to the healers. They agreed it was OK for me not to drink tonight, but said that I need to stay in the ceremony so they can still sing the healing ikaros to me. In some ways, it was worse for me to not drink as I could hear the purging from everybody else. Just retraumatising myself as I obsessively listen out for it. I was finally able to sleep, but something strange happened. Every single time a personal ikaro was sung to me, I would wake up and I could feel the Ayahuasca (still in my stomach from previous ceremonies) intensely vibrating. It’s like the medicine in my stomach was communicating with the Shaman that was singing their ikaro to me. I experienced no visions but something was still happening. The intensity of the buzzing in my stomach would change based on what frequency they were singing at. These healers were in perfect communion with the plant, even when it was inside my body.

On to the next ceremony – Night Three of the Trinity.