Forget everything you know about everything, sit down and tune in to the madness you’re about to be read from your digital screen. As you absorb these words I must ask you read them with an open mind and even then if you’re willing to entertain that idea and your mind is open as wide as the grand canyon times a million I regret to inform you that you’ll probably still only consciously get a small understanding of my experience and more than likely think me mad. However before I get to the experience of my ayahuasca ceremony held in a beautiful remote location in Canada I’ll give you a quick background of how and why I wanted to do this. Technically it’s illegal so the following story is a lie and furthermore it’s illegal because the government or rulers of the land do not want free, independent, strong, connected, loving, citizens but that’s an entire series of articles in itself. FYI alcohol kills more people ages 15-24 every year than all other drugs combined and it’s legal.

http://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/alcohol/international-statistics.html

If you know me then you are well aware I’ve been constantly striving to solve the riddle of the mind and have a deep curiosity and interest in people who can do the impossible. I’ve always been fascinated with Zen, enlightenment, higher consciousness and the capabilities of humans for as long as I can remember. This search has caused me to read countless books on the subjects as well as attempting to attain empirical knowledge from modern masters such as Buddhist monks, Shaolin Kung fu and Qi Gong masters, self-help gurus and more. Throughout my travels and studies I have come to the clear understanding and undeniable realization that there are certain people on this earth that are what most would perceive as super human and as an athlete and martial artist myself I can say with certainty that I have learned to tap into this awareness as well, although to a lesser degree than master Guo who can break slabs of marble with just two fingers or the iceman Wim Hof who defies science with his ability to withstand severely cold temperature both in and out of water. There are countless stories of people doing the impossible and I’ve always been aware that they are tapping into an unseen source of power and last weekend I was able to visit that place as if I were taking a trip to Hawaii for the weekend.

The ceremony was held in a serene and breathtaking landscape, which I had the pleasure of attending with my best friend who has had an experience before. The stories I have heard of Ayahausca had me hopelessly intrigued and extremely excited to try. The main reason for my enthusiasm stemmed from one profound personal experience I had in deep meditation years ago. I sat on the end of a pier in Santa Monica after I first left the comfort and security of home and began forging my own path. I had been meditating very frequently at the time and sat in pure silence atop a watchtower. I did not have a conscious thought enter my mind for around 30-40 minutes when out of nowhere in a flash my consciousness left my body and I instantly became one with all things. The experience is tough to describe because the conscious mind cannot grasp this concept completely, not even my own, you can only be open to it. In that moment I instantly realized the ultimate truth, the ultimate understanding Zen masters frequently write about. That truth is that we are all truly one with the universe there is no separation The universal consciousness or god presence does exist all around us and it’s as real as anything you can touch, taste, or see except you can’t, you can only feel or perceive it in this impossibly elusive state of mind. It was this experience, which lasted around 20 minutes of actual time (time, future, past do not exist in this realm) that has fueled my burning desire to experience Ayahuasca because from my research on the medicine and ceremony people were seemingly describing that place that had taken me years of practice and dedication to meditation to receive.

We all sat in a large circle in a beautifully decorated room as we watched a man walk in looking something like a South American Jesus with long hair, mustache, plain white long sleeve shirt and eyes that projected a certain contentment and self understanding. He was our Shaman and he had just come from the jungles of Peru where he had been conducting ceremonies nearly everyday. The Shaman had learned from many different Shamans before him and blends a few of their practices to make his ceremonies truly his own. I learned the following day that he travels the world doing ceremonies and in particular he works with families addicted to methamphetamine (meth) and is currently holding a 100% success rate in helping them get and stay clean as they follow up one, three, and six months later to see how they are doing. This Shaman was the real deal, which can be hard to believe for a westerner but for many other parts of the world a shaman is just as normal and essential as your neighborhood pharmacist. He sat quietly in his seat and began speaking so softly it took all of your concentration and audible power to hear his voice. He gave a few calm and wise words, spoke about some of his past experiences and then invited us up to take a drink of the sacred spiritual brew, which consists of several plants with the active ingredient being DMT or Dimethyltryptamine, which researchers are yet to discover the reason for it’s widespread presence in nearly all plants and animals. There are suggestions that DMT is the spirit molecule as suggested in Joe Rogan’s documentary “Ayahuasca: The Spirit Molecule”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyltryptamine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayahuasca

A word of caution before I continue, Ayahuasca is nothing at all like any other drug and for that reason as an open experimenter of hallucinogens I can firmly say this is in another category, it truly is a medicine and is not for thrill seekers. Any ingestion of DMT should be done in a safe environment with an experienced shaman on hand to help guide you through the journey. Furthermore the medicine will absolutely shatter your ego into a billion pieces and those who struggle with the experience are often people who have trouble facing the dark side of themselves, bury traumatic experiences and are delusional about themselves and the world at large. In this experience there is only truth and it forces you to face that truth no matter how dark it may be. However if your life is dark it may simply choose to put you into a state of pure bliss like you couldn’t even imagine for five hours and make everything ok, but who knows, it has been said the medicine caries with it it’s own intelligence and gives the individual exactly what they need for their highest healing. The medicine is to be respected and with all things in life experiment at your own risk!

I walked to the front and took the drink, which tasted like ground up tree bark and leaves and returned to my seat. To prevent this story from turning into a 20,000 word essay I will do my best to summarize an experience that words cannot even begin to describe. After about twenty minutes people began to puke (about 50%) and at first you may think this is gross as I did but shortly after it doesn’t seem to matter, I also believe it’s your body attempting to get into a higher vibrational frequency where the body and mind cannot go. Once I had thrown up what little food I had eaten as there is an extremely strict diet before the ceremony, which makes you cut out all sugar and salt. I sat down and proceeded to have my mind absolutely, unforgettable, completely, totally and utterly annihilated.

You can open your eyes and come to awareness at any point you like, however the feeling that you’re in another dimension still remains and as you allow that experience to wash over your being, you are taken to another realm, a 4th dimension, a higher consciousness, which has been described by Yogi’s and Zen masters as either the cosmic consciousness or god consciousness. This place where I now sat in total bliss and comfort was exactly what I had earned through meditation years ago and have had several glimpses of in my later years except it was magnified and I was able to bring more of my conscious mind with me. I was sitting and experiencing life and thought from an indescribable new dimension or thought process that your conscious mind continued to try and grasp to understand but could not. In a flash I totally understood enlightenment, Zen, and everything I had every read on the subject, it all became crystal clear and all the phrases and lessons such as enlightenment cannot be attained through thinking, enlightenment is nothing special, Zen cannot be experienced or explained through the conscious mind made perfect sense. Your best bet was to surrender and let the spirit of Ayahuasca take your consciousness on the adventure it needed to receive the most amount of healing. This place as other ceremony goers agreed had an unmistakable feeling of familiarity like you’d been there before and for me I feel like it was the place of thought, pre-birth, and after life, another realm that you always knew was there. As you go through the experience the Shaman sings beautiful songs without words just harmonies and melodies that seem to vibrate with the frequency that you are experiencing. I saw how easy it was to create in the physical world, how truly absolutely anything was possible, how we are all one connected force having individual experiences. I gained a new respect and closer relationship to god, not Jesus but a god force, a cosmic consciousness a new understanding that fills every cell in your body that’s absolutely unmistakable and irreversible. When my eyes were open or closed I could see a honeycomb type grid lightly over everything as it was letting me know that nothing is finite, it’s all malleable and more than just physical, there is an unseen force that’s around us at all times and from this thought realm anything can be brought back into the physical world. We are all vibrating at a higher frequency, as it is true that our bodies can and do emit and receive frequencies at every moment. The imagery was beautiful and profound as I could see my life before me and previous choices like hieroglyphs etched in 4d and I got comfort from ayahuasca that my search for self understanding was not in vein that the only noble pursuit is within, the temple of god is within you, and suddenly even the lessons of religion made perfect sense as they were all stripped away of their human taught fear and all that was left was the love and lessons of ascended masters attempting to help others with their human experience, which contains so much suffering. I had not only dipped into the stream of cosmic consciousness I was having a pool party diving in, splashing, laughing and experiencing the total bliss, comfort, protection of the universe or god or whatever insufficient word you’d like to use that describe the ultimate truth and understanding that there is with absolute certainty a higher power, a presence that protects and connects all living things on earth. In this realm there is no time as past and future disappear. Your mind races to try and understand as you get what seems like 4d visuals, shapes and patterns as the experience takes you throughout your life shining ultimate clarity new understanding on your problems and questions to where the answers all of a sudden seem so obvious. I witnessed the simplicity of creation and how I could easily accomplish anything with faith and hard work, I saw my future choices laid out before me and how each individual choice would have an effect on my future, it was almost as if I was having a hang out with god or spirit and he was comforting me and letting me know that everything would always be ok and he was here for me for every choice that I have ever had and will ever have. I saw the connectedness of all things, plants, people, animals, and the importance of our coexistence. I saw my body in a whole new way and fully understood it’s magic and mystery, the heart, liver, lungs, and how the food we eat is so important not only for our physical but more importantly are mental well being as almost all normal food and consumption contains many chemicals that have an effect on our brains and nervous systems. The experience was more about what I felt rather than what I saw, the Shaman at one point asked me to sit with him and he sang me a song and as he sang his notes reverberated throughout my entire being with every note he hit. He then blew smoke on the top of my head and into my hands, when he finished I could feel a healing go throughout my body and gain a whole new level of self understanding and confidence, he was helping me let go of my uncertainties and insecurities in a world where people are ignorant, afraid, and damaging toward one another because they don’t understand or know any better. It was a place that felt like home.

I’m sure if you’ve read this far your conscious mind is certainly saying things like “ya right” “you’re crazy” “what the fuck are you talking about” or any variation and that’s absolutely expected. I can remember vividly the blank look on my friends faces as I tried to explain my experience with meditation and it wasn’t like they didn’t want to understand they just couldn’t, it was hard for me to come to grips with at first because it was something I knew was profound and wanted them to experience but I could not pass on. Ayahuasca is that experience magnified and in truth I have a little bit of distain for the medicine since I’ve dedicated much of my life to the pursuit of enlightenment and that exact experience and anyone can have it by simply taking a drink. However from that perspective I did gain a new clarity on my search and it has been said that Ayahuasca calls for you when you’re ready and I’m so grateful it did.

The next morning everyone from the ceremony would sit around attempting to consciously grasp WTF had just happened as it was pretty much guaranteed your lid had just been blown clear off. We instantly became friends and connected for life since there are very few people who you could ever relate to on that level, very few people who have been to that place to which we all new existed as a certainty and continues to exist in the chaos of the daily human experience. I was fortunate to communicate with my incredible friend on the way home as we were both filled with joy about our experience, which was especially nice because of the two of us he’s the skeptical one always playing devils advocate to my out there, far fetched, universe connected type, lovey dovey, concepts of the world and he was right there with me, his skeptic was gone because it cannot remain with that experience it becomes a knowingness and he and I had bother surrendered to the ultimate truth, the one understanding, we had both taken a dip in the river of the cosmic consciousness and we are forever changed and there is no going back.