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Ayahuasca Visions, Part 1
Ceremony 1, December 5
The first ceremony occurred on the second day. Everyone was excited and talkative, filled with anticipation and perhaps a little fear of drinking Ayahuasca.
Each ceremony began with a ritual in which Hamilton and his apprentices cleansed themselves with various liquid concoctions and mapacho (tabacco). He then created a sacred container than closed off the space around us from dark energies. Then Hamilton spoke to the Ayahuasca, and for each person he poured into a cup an amount that he felt was appropriate, singing into each cup to fill it with intention and purpose. He ended the ritual with an invitation of spirits from the four directions.
We had been told to arm ourselves with an intention before beginning each ceremony. For me, I chose the intent of having acceptance and compassion towards anything that I might enounter.
When the lights went out, Hamilton and his apprentices began singing icaros non-stop for 3 hours. These icaros are simple songs, some handed down from previous maestros (masters, teachers), some taught to the singers by Ayahuasca. The icaros provide a vehicle for visions to arise and follow.
Almost everyone had a tough time that first night, as if learning to swim for the first time. Many of the participants had downright frightening and stressful experiences. When things did become overwhelming, participants could ask for help. Typically, Hamilton or his apprentices would suggest methods for shifting attention, relaxing, or surrendering to the experience. In extreme cases, water was poured over the heads of participants.
For me, this first night was very confusing and intense, although the intention of acceptance helped quite a bit. The evening was filled with vague colors and shapes, and few real visions. I had violent muscular contractions (at one point I kicked the bucket - the bucket provided for purging, a euphemism for puking one's guts out), intense yawns that took the top of my head off, and waves of sensations that threatened to overwhelm me. At the peak, I had a lot of difficulty telling my muscles to move. I was sweating profusely and tears were flowing out of my eyes.
I had the physical sensation of moving constantly downward. At each new level, I would feel a wave of nausea, but with the intention of acceptance, the nausea didn't feel aversive. When the nausea subsided, I would then proceed down another level.
After the long descent, I can remember only three clear visuals. In the first, I find myself deep underground. As I float back upward, I find the passage blocked by a rock dome. The space feels claustrophobic and frighteningly deep. In the second, I am looking at a simple gold ring against a light blue background. In the third, I am aware of (but cannot see) a little girl.
When the icaros ended and a single lamp was lit signifying the end of the ceremony, many people got up and went to bed. However, I was still in the thick of the experience, dizzy, nauseous, and unable to move. With the ending of the ceremony, the night became very grim for me. In retrospect, I think that I forgot the intention of acceptance. At that point, when a wave of nausea arose, I had no defense and felt awful. The Ayahuasca that had warmed me earlier in the evening now felt like a glob of molten metal.
I began to cough and to have painful dry heaves. Sitting up with my vomit bucket on my lap, I coughed and heaved for 15-20 minutes at a time, would lie down for a half hour to recover, and then repeat. The dry heaves were not at all polite - I sounded like a growling, howling, dying animal. Finally, after 6 or so cycles, I managed to puke. It took two more cycles to get everything up.
At around 0100 hours, I became increasingly aware of the coming of diarrhea. However, with the intense nausea, I was afraid to get up and go to the bathrooms. I kept holding back the diarrhea until 0300, when a voice in my head said that it was now or never - Getting to the bathroom was a trial that I had to perform to progress any further spiritually and I might not get another such a chance any time soon. The voice threatened me three times before I finally crawled to the bathroom on hands and knees. The nausea caused me to vomit in the toilet before I could get to my feet to sit down.
Incidentally, I also need to say that the 19 participants quickly got over any semblance of modesty or conventional notions of proper behavior. We all heard each other vomit, we all heard each other farting and shitting, we all heard each other moaning and at times crying. After that first ceremony, we all became rather matter of fact about the whole notion of physical embarassment. Potty humor ruled many subsequent conversations.
At dawn, I was still strongly under the influence and did not feel like moving. I called for help. Hamilton and Dan, one of the apprentices, came in and performed a small ritual called a ventiata. I was not entirely sure of the total intent of the ventiata, but it appeared to have the effect of calming and reducing the Ayahuasca experience. As they started the ventiata, I began to experience intense muscular contractions, like seizures, and screamed. When they were finished, I finally fell asleep for a while.
All the rest of the day I was in a fog due to nausea and a lack of sleep. I had no interest in eating and sleep would not come easily.
Laying in a hammock at around 1500 hours, still under the unfluence and feeling dreadful, a voice in my head began to speak, which identified herself as Deer Woman. She told me that the reason that I was at Blue Morpho was to save Ann's life. My reaction is something like - Hunh? Is Ann in danger? Deer Woman would not say any more.
Ceremony 2, December 6
Because I was feeling so rotten, I asked for and Hamilton served up a smaller dose. It tasted much worse than the dose from the previous night. As the Ayahuasca began to take effect, Deer Woman spoke again. I could almost, but not quite, see her. She told me that she needed my help. When Deer Woman was helping Ann survive leukemia, Ann was using visual imagery of wolfhounds to hunt down and devour the leukemia. Deer Woman said that for the visual imagery to work, the remaining leukemia cells had to be moved from Ann's body to somewhere else in the physical world.
Deer Woman said that she intended to create a physical link between Ann in 1994 and myself in 2006, and that every time a wolfhound hunted down a cancer cell, I would have to cough it up into my bucket. She warned me that for me to be safe, I had to spit out everything that entered my mouth. Then the coughing and dry heaves started. I coughed up around 30-40 hunks of phlegm, accompanied with dry heaves and intense nausea, over the next two hours. Finally, Deer Woman said that we were done. She let me purge the Ayahuasca. Almost immediately, Hamilton came over and administered a ventiata, reducing the intensity of the experience. When Hamilton was finished, Deer Woman said that I could relax.
Deer Woman then said that I must thank Hamilton for letting her crash his party and especially for severing my connection to Ann in 1994 by administering the ventiata. Deer Woman said that she would not have been able to sever the connection by herself.
I was left with intense feelings of peace and release. It was as if all the guilt and shame that I felt regarding Ann's illness in 1994 and our subsequent separation had been lifted. I was able to fall asleep almost immediately after the ceremony was over.
I spent the next day wondering what the hell had happened. I had (and still have) doubts about whether or not I really saved Ann's life in 1994. Among other things, the temporal paradoxes give me a headache. If Ann's survival over the last 13 years depended on my being in Blue Morpho in 2006, then Hamilton was destined to become a shaman and start Blue Morpho long before he even thought about shamanism. I was destined to begin my path of vision quests eight years ago in order to be open to the idea of taking Ayahuasca. All of the other participants who were present and helped supply the money to sustain Blue Morpho and supply the energy within the ceremony have somehow been linked to me for the past 13 years.
I have talked with Hamilton on this topic a couple of times, both at Blue Morpho and afterwards by email. He said that unlike linear time in the physical world, time in the spirit world is circular. He saw no problem, contradiction, or paradox. I replied that for the vision to be real (whatever that means), then free will must not exist and that our lives are totally pre-determined. His reply is that he believes that the experience of free will and choice is a product of one's level of consciousness, and that it is possible to experience alternative levels of consciousness where free will and choice are transcended.
We also discussed that the question "Why?" is irrevelant in a spiritual context. "Why?" is a meaningful question only in a world where cause and effect exist. The spirit world does not work through cause and effect.
Regardless of the philosophical issues, Hamilton accepted the story and acknowledged the thank yous requested by Deer Woman.
Ceremony 3, December 8
As Hamilton would say, I went big this time, taking a cup 3/4 full. At the beginning, Deer Woman told me that this would be quite a ride, and then left me on my own.
There were many unorganized colors and patterns, with few images. Mostly, the night was a nightmare of nausea. I think that I was afraid of the quantity of Ayahuasca I had taken and felt that I would have to purge it at some point. It was the nastiest thing that I had ever swallowed, leaving a poisonous mass in my stomach, spreading slowly into my intestines. I was sick as a dog, with coughing and dry heaves almost from the beginning, lasting off and on for about four hours.
Interestingly, despite the awful purging, I was overtaken at times by fits of laughter. Among other causes, a young woman across from me (who apparently has a similar sense of humor as I do) was having her own rough time. The previous night, she had requested help in getting to the bathroom, forgot that she was sitting on the toilet, and kept requesting help to get to the bathroom over and over again. Because she had not been able to purge that night, she had learned to create the sound "swhooosh" as an alternative release. However, I found it amusing and would chuckle, she would respond with a laugh, and we would feed each other energy until we were both laughing uproariously. By this time the laughter was contagious and others would join in. A few times she was amused by the misery of someone purging violently and I would find her amusement hilarious. In the middle of one of my more vigorous purgings, I gasped "YeeHaw", which set us both off. I know that it must sound hard-hearted to laugh at someone else's apparent misery, but we were all sharing in the misery, and all believing that the purges were releasing darkness from ourselves.
During a break in the wretched retching and fun-filled enjoyment of each other's miseries, I had a short vision. In the vision, I found myself surrounded by a group of entities, each seeking my attention and offering gifts. Hamilton had told us that while spirits may try to deceive and that some spirits can be harmful, spirits cannot lie in response to a direct question. Consequently, we should ask each spirit we encountered if it intended to serve our own higher selves.
The first entity that attracted my attention looked something like a lavendar sock puppet. As soon as I asked if it was present to help me, it said yes and blew a ball of light down onto my hands, which then bounced up into my mouth, filling my lungs with exquisitely cool, fresh, invigorating air.
The second entity I noticed was very sinister looking. It looked like a miniature grim reaper with glowing red eyes, trapped behind prison bars. However, when asked it also said that it was present to help me and promptly became a red dragon. It extended its neck, passing its head behind mine and resting its head on my left shoulder. Although it never said anything, it somehow communicated to me that it was offering to remove something from my back, provided that I would roll over onto my side. I rolled over, waited for a few seconds but did not feel anything. When I looked back, the dragon was gone.
I tried to attract a third entity, but I got lost and did not see any more of them.
One high point that evening was that Dave, another one of the apprentices, sang a wonderfully peaceful icaro. When I opened my eyes to see him, I saw him sitting about 15 feet in the air, on a chair in a small garden under a trellis, back lit from behind in a soft glow.
When I finally began to vomit, Hamilton came over to administer the ventiata, but the heaving and vomiting kept going well into the night, long after the ceremony ended.
The next day was the worst, filled with nausea and fatigue, no appetite and little sleep.
CONTINUE
Copyright (c) 2007 by Dick Delanoy
Pictures included with permission from Blue Morpho Tours
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