Who I met when I took Ayahuasca, pt. 3

“Mother Ayahuasca will visit sooner tonight. It won’t take as long as it did last night.”

“Why is that?”

“Because you have met her before.”

“Oh,” I replied, not sure why that would be.

I tried to be calm & mellow, but, to be honest, I felt more than just a little anticipation. “I’ll meet her quicker?? Oh boy! Yes, please. Can she tell me the meaning of life, my life’s purpose & where in life I should focus to get the best returns? Can she tell me how to get enlightened, how to find peace & enlightenment?”

Why would someone like me even expect such things? Aren’t these unscientific expectations?

Let’s just say, I’d previously had a few things happen to me in the past that opened my mind. Generally, I would considered someone who operates solely from the intellect. What even was intuition? If that’s something women have, I must be a man. But on more than one occasion in my life, things that were hard to explain happened. They left me wanting answers, and not the type that comes from trusting the explanation of someone who trusted someone else’s explanation. I wanted to know personally.

When I was 16, I saw an “evil spirit”. I had been hanging out with a peer who was a “witch” of sorts. Did I really see that? Or is she making me go crazy? In the end, I chalked it up to her voodoo creepiness & moved on. I didn’t try to explain it or ruminate on it, but if I went over what happened in my head, I knew what I saw & that there was more out there we couldn’t explain.

There was a time period in my early 20s, when I had just come out of a bad break-up, my first real brush with the feeling of letting go of someone or something you didn’t expect to loose so suddenly, the kind that crushes to you to the core, the puppy love you thought would last forever. Next minute, you’re heaving over suffocating; it feels like your very heart has been torn out of your chest.

Maybe in your 40s or 50s you’re so acquainted with the drill that you forget what it felt like. I know I got a lot better at break-ups as the years went by. And then there were teenage dramas before that.

I don’t think a lot of teenage break-ups really even hit the same as the break-ups of the 20s. When you’re a teenager everyone is so confused & experimental that you can hardly even tell if you’re still attached to that person & ready to sulk in your room for a week after calling it quits or you’re excited about what’s next on the horizon.

The first big relationship of your 20s was maybe the one you thought would last forever. A few years later, the turbulence, the dreams & hopes of lost potential whip you rudely in the face until you feel like you’re bleeding dry.

What do you do? You don’t want to feel it, so you harden up. You look for something to distract yourself. You tell the world you’re okay, secretly dry your eyes & look for a way to deal with it. You find your way. I stumbled across the esoteric arts.

Fascinatingly, I discovered a now lost instructional document in how to practice astral travel. The course guaranteed results in 8 weeks. There were mind exercises & some very strange key phrases to “unlock” the door to the other realm.

Desperate to see something that would keep my mind occupied, I faithfully followed all the instructions in the astral travel course. It wasn’t even 8 weeks through the course when the experiences began.

in the first few weeks of the practice, I felt my supposed “astral body” leaving the physical body on numerous occasions when practicing according to the instructions. Unfortunately, I was too chicken to carry through & always stopped the experience from continuing by ending the practice mid-session.

Suddenly it happened! I popped right out of body into another realm. The instructions sure worked a charm, but I wasn’t happy with who I met out there. In the astral plane I had entered, an evil woman in purple came to greet me. I hadn’t learned any kind of defense mechanisms for this realm. I was unprepared & vulnerable. So scared out of my mind was I that I immediately exited the realm I had entered & swore never to return or practice this crazy astral travel business again…

Still, what the “frick” was out there? Who designed the game & what was it about? Every Tom, Dick & Harry has planted themselves on the corner of every block, claiming their version of events to be the leading gamechanger. Sounds like healthy competition. Sounds like Capitalism. Sounds like a shoppers market.

And of course, people often identify closely with the belief system familiar to their culture, the same way a traveler overseas might crave a home-cooked meal. If I was going to find answers, Mother Ayahuasca was as rightful a contender in the market as any.

Hola Mama.