Two days from now, I will be falling back into the cosmic, healing embrace of Mother Ayahuasca. I am no stranger to shamanic journeys, to soirees with the helper plants, and yet, I’m back into the space of knowing next to nothing. There’s a clean slate glowing behind my mind’s eye, and it’s waiting for just a few dribbles of clarity. A sense of knowing sourced straight from my heart, not filling up the head that thinks she’s full, but is perpetually empty.
I can now say, unequivocally, that I’ve devoted my life to the ultimate ego-shed. 2 1/2 years ago, when Z and I met, I first learned what enlightenment met – the beginning of the unfolding. He was on the quest, clearly, and I found it so fascinating. I placed a pedestal beneath those who sought the same, and especially those who had already reached the pinnacle. And I thrust myself so far below, I didn’t even hold the possibility for myself.
It was the combination of Ayahuasca and Huachuma / San Pedro that gave me my most treasured awakening. I remember sitting on top of El Brujo – the life-giving, feminine powered pyramid – gazing out across the magnificent landscape. Inside my head, the dialogue between higher-self and ego ensued. The spirits had cornered me – asking why it is that I thought enlightenment was not possible for me. The questions unfolded with gentle intensity, and my arguments kept breaking down.
Then it came to me. Like a flash of blue light from a far away lighthouse. My ego had led me to believe it couldn’t happen to me, because, of course, it would mean the death of her. But as I came to realize that I am not my perceived identity – that I am, in fact, all aspects of God – there was no other logical conclusion. I, too, can self-realize.
In that same ceremony, I found myself tracing the footsteps of prisoners from 3,000 years before. They had walked within El Brujo’s life-taking pyramid, where I now traipsed – the last moments of their lives. I tried to reconcile how we humans take our own lives, again and again. It’s always suicide, no matter who kills who. And why? Why this deadly dance? Why haven’t we learned a bloody thing in all these thousands of years?
Because so many of us believe in the illusion. This became so clear to me. We believe in the identities built within our egos. That we are our nations, our families, the definitions we hold about who we are and what we do and why we do it. And what we BELIEVE in – our favorite attachments.
That’s all poppycock. We are none of those things. We are ALL of those things, yes, but they aren’t what defines us. What defines, really – if you had to boil us all down into one collective ingredient – it would be love. The great white light. The only real thing that lives inside us. And the very thing our egos work so immensely hard to keep us from.
Why? Because the ego can’t control love. When we own this divinity, all that perceived control just washes away.
Now that’s a dream I will never stop spinning inside this radiant reality.
This weekend, I’m blessed to be back inside the circle that feels most familiar to me – Ayahuasca. Shamanism. In my current home, with my friends and loved ones. Purging out the painful parts of ourselves, so that our love and light can surface, and become all that we know.
Last time, I let my ego run the show. I let her battle for supremacy, trying so hard to dictate what would and would not happen in these ceremonies. Where we would and would not go. What we would and would not feel. In the end, I faced the most painful, miserable, soul-ripping night of my life. Dark night of the soul indeed. All because I wanted it my way. And what a shitty way THAT is.
This time – THIS time. . .
I am raw and humbled, slack-jawed and limp. I am my heart. I will walk up to the alter on Saturday night to take my next dose, and I will do so without walls and agendas. With trust and faith that Ayahuasca and the higher realms will lead me right where I need to be. None of this bargaining crap I tried before. I will just be. And wherever I am taken, I will go with willingness and reverence. I will love my way through every presented experience. And if I’m able to drop any or all pieces of my ego, all the better. Whoever she thinks I am, I know I am not.
No more illusion. I’m ready to see – and be – nothing but light.
“Enlightenment is not imagining
figures of light but making
the darkness conscious.”
Carl Gustav Jung
