Who I met when I took Ayahuasca, pt. 5

If I look for myself, I don’t find myself anywhere. But it doesn’t matter. There is something to see. I’m the observer, quietly watching. But wait! I’m feeling too. There are tingles everywhere?

What is this that I’m hearing, seeing, feeling?

“You’re experiencing reality as frequency,” a quiet, inner voice explains. How is it quiet? How is it inner? Inner to what? I have no idea. I don’t exist anywhere at this stage, and yet I am acutely watching everything.

Watching the frequencies, I note (pun intended) the sounds bounce & dance. They aren’t pretty or ugly, or scary or anything special; they just are. They’re just there.

As I observe, the notes begin to get higher and higher. The visuals follow this demonstration in unison, pulsing light, squeezing, distorted, stretching as though time & matter bend with the change in sounds.

There was a time when I would have judged someone on a journey like mine, having an experience just like I was having now.

“There you are frying your brain like an idiot!”

“What a fool throwing your life away like that. How could you?”

I grew up a goodie-two-shoes. My dream? Leave home, have a family, own my own place & live a simple happy life. And I was on a mission to make it happen fast, happen perfectly & better than anyone else could.

Wasn’t it ironic that my attempt to build a family ended in heartbreak, struggle & tears? Before I knew it, I was selling off my wedding ring to pay the bills & trying to squeeze in a couple meals per week of instant noodles to juggle study, full-time work & raising a child on my own.

The fights got too much. We couldn’t make it work. It was all my fault, he said. I threw away everything for my pride. I destroyed our family by giving up on us. Really? But he didn’t respect me or see the pain he caused! And why do we have to blame someone? It didn’t work. End of story.

But every child visit arrangement, we get on the phone, the same fights, the same accusations. I can’t go on like this. I’m suffocating and we’re not even together anymore. You don’t get to torment me the way you used to. I’m free. I’m on my own.

I might struggle for a few years, but I’ll fight to make it better. And I will make it. You’ll see.

Finally, I have come through years of struggle & climbing. Study. Interviews. Perform. Work. New roles. And now I’m okay. I have my son & a good job. I made it. This is my dream, right?

But now is when I “stoop” to plant medicines? Why? Because something was broken. I was trying too hard. I made it but something wasn’t right.

Something was eating away at the fiber of my being from the very core & I couldn’t hack it. All my methods of being effective, a star performer & highly successful were cheap tricks without addressing the deeper psychology of self-worth, self-love.

So you tell yourself you love yourself & the problem goes away right?

Wrong. So wrong.