Howdy Kumquats.
If you missed the Prologue, be sure to start there….which can be found HERE.
Let’s jump back in.
What Ayahuasca Showed Me
Part 1: THE WHAT
Because of all the reasons mentioned in the Prologue, I hadn’t made much effort to seek out ayahuasca before. I believed it was intricately tied to the Amazon forest and figured it would be best to have the experience there, which felt very far away in time and distance. I just wasn’t in a rush. I have seen, and continue to see, many visions, which are similar to dreams— and we are meant to TAKE ACTION on them. Not just file it away as a “weird” thing that happened and forget about it. The Spirit world wants to know that you are paying attention, or they will stop talking to you. Following up with action on all the stuff that I download keeps me pretty busy. Some of it has come from psychedelics.
I gobbled up a lot of acid when I was in high school, until one Grateful Dead concert at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC around 1990-91. I was standing high on balcony looking out over thousands of people gathered in the bowl of the stadium and I could see that every single person there was filled with a deep longing to go HOME. To have the kind of home that welcomed, loved and celebrated them unconditionally. It filled me with a heart breaking sadness. I saw that I would be better off going home myself and turning my life into the loving technicolor extravaganza that I saw on psychedelics rather than relying on psychedelics to do it for me. I knew I could take that one idea and try to fulfill it for the rest of my entire life and never be done.
I didn’t touch acid again for over 20 years. When you get the download, it’s enough. Time to get to work. So, I wasn’t chasing an ayahuasca experience. But the magic that lead me there last weekend was undeniable.
Let me back up again.
After I gave up studying magic from millennials, I took a great class with an older man who was an American shaman, initiated in the 1960s by the Yoruba people in Africa, while he was an archaeologist. His name was Hank Wesselman. He said that we are all tasked with RE-ENCHANTING the world in this lifetime.
This made so much sense to me! Magic is working with unseen forces to shape the world around us. To restore humanity and the planet to health, it would definitely require magic. Most of us experienced animals, plants and objects talking to us and having distinct personalities when we were children. We were conditioned out of this by the over-culture, but it’s entirely possible to get that vision back. These are what I call muscles of perception. There like eyes behind our eyes.
A RE-ENCHANTMENT of the world would restore magic and magical ways of being, but also it would bring about a re-birth or RENAISSANCE for the culture— a golden age of enlightenment birthed through the arts. As an artist, this was exactly the kind of world I wanted to be part of!
My mission became crystal clear— all I had to do was help re-enchant the entire world with magic in order to birth a renaissance so we can have a new golden age of enlightenment in this lifetime.
No big deal. LOL.
I spent 9 months (because that’s how long gestation for humans takes) praying to the planets and associated gods DAILY— wringing my hands and heart, begging them for a re-enchantment and renaissance. I maybe missed 2 or 3 days, but extended it another month just to be sure. My Virgo moon does not let me skip a beat.
About a year later, the plandemic hit. It was not lost on me that the Italian Renaissance was also preceded by a plague. I figured this was what was required to bring about the re-enchantment and renaissance. So, I tried to be patient. But the past few years were excruciating—I moved to a remot mountain town and did not choose to be vaccinated, which made it more difficult to find work. I also lost my father after a long illness and then after 3 years I was evicted from my studio, The Nest. All of this crushed me.
So much grief and sadness. I’ve experienced so much poverty and isolation trying to establish a life by myself in the wealthy state of California. I’ve been drifting and lost.
Going into this ceremony, I was really open to whatever Spirit wanted to show me, but I did want to know why I’ve struggled so hard for the past 7-8 years. I also wanted confirmation or clarification of my life purpose. Was I doing it? Can I do it better?
Thursday night we sat with Haru and just talked. He spoke through a translator who was also participating in the ceremony. She had a Brazilian mother and spent some of her childhood there, so she spoke Portuguese, which was one of the 3-4 languages that Haru speaks. There was a call and response kind of rhythm to the conversation, as he would say one idea at a time and she would express it to us in English. Having that little delay seemed to help me absorb more deeply.
He explained why he had traveled so far with his wife and 2 young children, all the way from the Amazon. He said that the Amazon is the lungs of the planet and that the damage is worse than we know because the media does not show us these things. He said that the Chinese were starting to build rail road tracks through the jungle. Obviously they would be taking and extracting from the jungle. And if we know anything about the Chinese, we know they are really good at whatever they decide to do. He said the jungle is stressed and over burdened. It’s too much.
Haru said that he was white, black and indigenous in his ancestry. He felt a kinship to all of them and that it is time for us all to come together. He talked about the power of saying NO. Just like children are often told no when learning how to be a human, we have to be able to say no to what is wrong and what is making us sick.
He explained that he knows ayahuasca well, that he first took the medicine at age 7. He told us what to expect, what to bring. We had already been fasting from salt, sugar, oil and refined food, and we should not eat past 2pm. We would drink the medicine for two nights.
The next day before the ceremony, he painted our faces one at a time with jenipapo, a fruit-based paint that stays on for about a week or two. Each pattern was unique. He told me it was for protection and connection, to open up.
Friday night we set up our little nests of blankets and padding in a barn / garage with a concrete floor. It had a big loud propane heater that was too loud to turn on. The weather had turned rainy and cold. We sat in a circle with a rug in the center. The only light was provided by 4 tea light candles in the middle of the circle.
We were each given our own bucket to throw up in and told to take it out of the room immediately after the ceremony. We were warned that the bathroom was a vortex, not to get lost in it. Come right back to the circle. We were all responsible for holding the energy of the circle the entire time.
We were told to sit up, with our face turned upwards and not to lie down. We had to lift the energy up. Yawning was a common side effect of the medicine, but we were warned to cover our mouths because it is a low vibration and that unwanted spirits can enter through the mouth. Cover our mouth and use the breath to push the yawn away. We were told that everyone has their own reaction and experience and to look inward if a judgement of another arises. If someone was struggling, we needed to stay in our experience and send them love.
In this way, I felt that we were holding a vigil for the light. That we were each a beacon or lighthouse on our own shore. I knew that my heart had been conditioned for this work. The heart is the only chakra strong enough to transmute the dark into light. It’s not that the dark is bad, it’s a natural part of life here on Earth, but it must be tempered and trained or else it runs amok and takes an ugly form. Thoughts become things.
The heart is the gateway to the above, to the celestial chakras and to the below, the earth-based chakras. The heart is where Father Sky and Mother Earth meet. Our hands do the work of the heart— they are literal extensions of our heart chakra. In my understanding, Love is better thought of as an element than an emotion because it is truly fundamental and foundational to all life.
As we each went up to receive our cup of medicine from Haru, I braced myself. I put my awareness in my heart chakra and reminded myself that Love heals all. I have a lot of training. But that very idea scared me because I know that Spirit meets you where you are. Being at some “higher” level in my development did not feel like a blessing. But I also know that we are not given what we cannot handle.
Whew.
I can do this.
The medicine was very bitter. Part of my work with herbs has been to train my palette to endure the bitter. Not gagging is step one. Enjoying it comes much later. Most medicine takes like shit and we’re always trying to have things that are sweet. That’s actually a childish habit. Train yourself for the bitter and you will find even more sweetness. But the ayahuasca medicine was not terrible, just very complex and new for my taste. Other, more seasoned folks I was with, had mentioned that Haru’s medicine is better than most.
We sat in silence for a long time and I felt the medicine moving down my guts like a cartoon thermometer dropping temperature, ending at my feet. Haru had told us not to resist the force of it. To let it move through us. It came on suddenly and I was glad he used the word “FORCE” because it was powerful when its presence arrived in the cells of my body.
As it arrived Haru sang a song. A frog made its presence known in the room as it hesitantly began to sing along with Haru, until it was a full on duet. The magic was on!
One song.
They took the frog outside.
Then more silence.
I saw the rug start to move with smoke. The abstract pattern of the rug became 5 pillars laying horizontally across a cavernous black void that billowed smoke in the negative space. The pillars felt Peruvian— part symbol, part image, but not recognizable to me.
Then I heard a growl directly behind my back. Like a big jungle cat. I pulled up my blanket-— Fuck. Here we go.
The onset was the same both nights, and very similar to things I’ve seen on acid— densely packed, geometric animals and plants. They vibrated and pulsed like a cartoon. The colors were super bright and technicolor. There wasn’t skin or fur on anything, like in the waking world. It was more like the underlying pattern was visible, with distinct colors and geometric shapes making larger forms with all these colored lines.
Where one creature ended, another began. Every thing I saw had a face and they kind of turned upwards, reaching towards the sun. It was just this dense, vibrating, technicolor cacophony of creatures— bobbing along to their own rhythm— exactly like a cartoon.
It was very richly textured and kind of overwhelming in its complexity and density. So much LIFE, everywhere, all at the same time. As I saw all this, I could still focus in the room by watching the smoke moving through the Peruvian pillars on the rug.
After the moment passed, I saw a path of low fire that went off into a distant horizon. A version of me stood at the end of the flaming path, with the flames flickering under my feet. I felt so small curled up in my blanket— like I was little-girl-me watching the grown-up-now-me off in the distance, looking up to her.
That other me was standing on this horizon and I turned back to look over my shoulder, with my hair wild and whipping all around me. (God knows I love some hair work!) I was beautiful and strong— equally tender and powerful. It was intimidating. I was the embodiment of creation and destruction— equal parts— with the knowledge of how to use both with care.
I understood this was the answer to my question—
Why have things been so hard?
The answer—
Because when I was a little girl, I wanted to be the kind of woman that was written about in books.
I wanted to be a bad ass. Plain and simple.
I was shown that the price of this is not being liked or understood.
This blew through me like the wind of Truth itself. I felt like this alone was worth the price of admission and wanted to savor it, but there was no resting for long.
After that, I began to sense the energy of the “grandmother” spirit that is always talked about with ayahuasca. She was not some dainty tea-sipping old lady here to serve cookies. This felt like an aspect of Kali herself, also equal parts creator and destroyer, who does not suffer fools. She was an elderly/ancient trickster who felt like God’s gatekeeper of the jungle and this was definitely a challenge. She did not take me attempting to cross the threshold to the Spirit World lightly. I knew she could show me my weaknesses and self-deceptions and flip me like a pancake, inside and out. I asked her to be gentle.
I sensed that she had “tossed me a bone” with this question being answered so early and that she had more important things to show me than to dry my tears about how hard life has been. Boo fucking hoo.
I felt tired by it all though. I felt worn down. She seemed to answer— You think YOU’RE tired?? How do you think all of Creation feels? My struggles felt so small and insignificant with the enormity of this thought. I gathered my energy back into my heart and lifted my chin. Back to being a light house.
Lift up! Lift up!
Creation was not really a word I used like this before. But I understood then that everything we see here on Earth has been lovingly created by a Creator— Source, God, the One, Most High, Divine— many names. But it is also a co-creation because it is has been tended, sculpted and shaped by us for ages upon ages. It was set in motion by Creator, but it has been maintained by our participation. We have let it fall into ruin, but not because we are bad— but because of the larger deception. The veil that has hidden our true nature. We have been lied to about basically everything and we lost our tap root to Source, via nature.
We are actually hard-wired to the Earth by design.
As above, so below.
Sure, our souls could tap out and decide Earth sucks and it’s just too much for us. But the entire Universe would feel the loss. We get to come here to experience rediscovering ourselves and fall in love with Source’s Creation all over again.
Fast forward a little bit.
It’s getting very cold. The concrete feels oppressive. I long for fire. I lament that fire has been criminalized in California when it’s a sacred element we are not meant to be separated from. Haru asks to turn the heater on. It’s a big propane heater on the ceiling, with a fan powered by electricity.
I’m looking at the smoke moving through the Peruvian pillars on the rug. As soon as the heater goes on, the image glitches on the side where the heater is. It’s like when you watch an old film or VHS tape and the film is burnt or damaged on one side of the screen. It became digitized, disjointed and static-filled. It started to make the pillars and smoke disappear. It was angry, angular and horrible. Like a cartoon ball of harsh wires and angles electrocuting themselves.
I wanted to hold onto the smoke. I focused intently on the rug to find the forms again and tried to block out the mess. It was too aggressive though. I couldn’t find the coherence any more. I tried not to panic, but to focus. Use your imagination, dammit. But I can’t find the organic shapes. It hurts me to feel this. I look away.
Grandmother reminds me of a quote I repeat often by the Japanese filmmaker, Akira Kurasowa—
“The artist’s job is to not look away.”
That’s my version of the quote— I just looked it up again and it’s actually—
“To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes.”
I turn back because I am here for this. I choose to look and listen.
I am shown a barefoot mushroom journey I took on July 4, 2022 in the very forest where we sat that night. On that journey, the trees told me something related to what I saw with the electricity glitching the organic forms. They expressed pain about their need for stillness and dark. They said lights at night not only disrupt the darkness, but that the endless pulsing of electricity strains them. It siphons off their ability to rest, heal and recover. They were basically thread bare. They also made fun of our electrical / telephone poles— which are like scare crows imitating trees. They said— those poles have nothing to do with real power. And that all rest and recovery happens in stillness and dark.
I remembered how I felt then. I felt so much weight and responsibility. I didn’t know how to help the trees. I felt powerless. It made me turn away. I stopped using mushrooms. I did continue to develop my relationship with the trees, so that I could hear better, but I just felt like a crazy person talking about this stuff with people. So I kept it mostly to myself.
Sitting there, I felt as if I hadn’t done enough with what was shown to me.
Grandmother was like— “The artist’s job is to not look away.”
I understood that I was being shown THE PROBLEM.
This is the What…this is what is wrong.
We are using artificial technology at the expense of the beautiful, brilliant technology of nature. Every creature is thread bare. Human beings were made to be the voice of Nature and to be a real friend and guardian to all that is most precious.
I repeated a recent nugget to myself— what is precious must be protected.
We learn to do this first within ourselves. Our hearts are precious. They must be protected. And it’s not through avoidance of difficulty. It is loving our selves through the difficulty, which is what we are here to experience— that allows our soul to level up. There will always be hard times, but how we love ourselves through them is what changes.
I told myself — I love you.
In that moment, I was invited to sit and hear the anger of Nature. It rattled me. I wanted to escape it, but I stood at my post, like a lighthouse.
Sobbing took over my body and I tried not to resist. I let the sadness, guilt, anguish of it all wash over me. It was like my heart shattered into a million pieces and I just held the pieces and grieved and grieved and grieved.
This was a righteous anger that I understood must be expressed and listened to.
Nature has anger too. We can’t avoid this step. We may not always know how to “fix” it— we must listen first. It may be reckless to rush to “fix” things because we often only use our mind— and that is really the dullest knife in the drawer compared to emotion, intuition and passion.
But for those who are awake and have eyes to see, it is 1000% our duty to witness and withstand the weight of this righteous anger. And there is always pain and suffering greater than our own. I saw this burden on Haru and understood why he had to travel this great distance. I felt how much strength of character is required to embody the SACRED NO he spoke about.
The Sacred No says— no more, not here, not this time, not this place, no longer, no, no, no— no thank you, the end.
The power of no and of turning away is that it causes a reaction in Creation, which needs our focus to continue. When we remove our focus, Creation withers and dies like a neglected plant. It is this neglect, more than the abuse by the powers that were, that has made Nature ill.
This is how we use the power of destruction wisely— we are fully capable of cutting off the life force of what we don’t want by withdrawing our attention and energy. This is why I stopped watching the news.
We can choose to let things wither and die.
This greed cannot come with us in a new golden age.
By contrast, the turning TOWARD, keeps the blood of life pumping through the cells. It furthers Creation, which can always heal because it always being born anew.
This is why I was shown not to turn away any longer from what needs us most.
The problem has to be expressed in order to be transformed. We don’t get to decide when it is time to transform. There is Divine timing and a rhythm to nature. No more forcing.
I sat feeling the weight of the WHAT for a long time.
Whew.
Ok. That’s good for today.
I’ll be back soon with the HOW part of the story.
Until then,
Trixie
Thanks so much. The tale of your journey resonated with something I’ve been thinking about — that one thing required of a fully functional human entity is the ability to hold the beautifully interwoven wonder of it all AND the tragedy and madness of modern human behavior AT THE SAME TIME and not end up utterly mad in the process.
A tall order. But turn away from either, and…
Currently reading as I type this but I just want to say a few things:
1. So glad you're back! You've been missed
2. I feel like you're my fairy godmother connecting the dots in my head. Reading your experience is so fascinating because it reminds me of where I'm at and where I'm heading in so many ways! Light bulbs and tingles are going off, letting me know things are aligned and to listen to your message
3. Thank you so much for sharing this!