Wednesday, October 5, 2016

09.28.16 DAY 5

Last night before the ceremony Jason and I got our hands on some Agua de Florida.  Unfortunately neither of us realized how freely it poured and we both ended up with way too much.  Turns out it smells and burns like cheap aftershave.  This was not what I smelled last night.

The ceremony began and I drank my ayahuasca and laid down and waited.  After 20 minutes or so I felt energy fill me then focus at my lower dantien (AKA the navel chakra).  It was very intense and it was like the energy center had a core to it that was hotter and brighter than the rest of it.  After that I had visions of traveling through space as imagined by early 80s sci-fi artists.  I saw spaceships, stars, planets… I saw a mining colony on the moon of a distant planet.  I saw a penal colony working off their terms harvesting minerals in an asteroid belt.

Then I saw a hi-tech armor that was like the scales of a reptile, but thicker and geometric and made of a space-age polymer.  It adhered directly to the skin and spread out covering the outside of ones body starting at the hand.  If you looked at its profile on your arm just right you could see the stylized face of an alligator.

Many of the visions were technology themed.  Whirring clockworks, gears, mechanisms… eventually I found myself a part of a HR Giger style bio-mechanical machine, neatly and efficiently compartmentalized within the pulsing tubes and viscera.  It felt comforting.  

Unfortunately there were no life altering realizations to be had.  The closest I came was I saw an abstract wooden object that represented Rachel.  It didn’t look like her, or any human.  It was an assemblage of found old wood bits, rusty wire and bits of photos.  My chest cavity was an old, tarnished brass cage.  The Rachel object was contained within the cage, that didn’t appear to have a door of any sort.  The vision looked like it was right out of a Brothers Quay film.  I’m sure this speaks to my difficulty moving past my divorce.  There was no resolution offered, however.  I also had a message that was like a slap in the face.  quick and jarring: don’t be a misogynist!  and it disappeared as quickly as it appeared.  I never thought of myself as a misogynist, but I’ll have to take a closer look at this.  

I realized at one point that I had a fair amount of control over the state I was in.  I started feeling cold, so I just decided I wasn’t going to feel cold anymore.  I started having a disturbing vision that I was trapped in the crawlspace, or like a secret dug-out under a house and I started to feel panicky.  I realized that I could just turn it off, so I did.  I also figured out the nausea I was feeling was tied to the vertigo that the ayahuasca caused, and if I rooted part of myself it was no longer an issue.  I think that because of my controlling the experience so much, it was stymied.  Unfortunately when I tried to force myself to stop controlling it, I was still imposing my will on the experience, which also caused it to fall apart.  So I think next time I will get a larger dose in hopes I can overwhelm my conscious mind and lose myself to the experience.

Arthur was in rare form last night.  The way he kept fucking around with his flashlight, it was like a Laser-Floyd show happening next to me.  And every time it happened, it pulled me out of my experience.  The final straw was when his cell phone went off.  Why the hell did he even have it in the maloka?!  Instead of turning it off and putting it away immediately, he started farting around on it.  I couldn’t take it anymore so I barked, “HEY! Turn your phone off!”  He apologized and eventually put his phone away.  I’m going to ask Markus if he can move my space so I’m not next to him anymore.

This morning I feel surprisingly good.  I also no longer have any fear of the ayahuasca process.  I really want to go all in.  I want the medicine to take me to my hell.  To tear me down and rebuild me from the ground up.  It really seems like the people who have the hardest time reap the greatest rewards.

Today has been very lazy.  We had our morning meeting about last night’s ceremony.  I skipped breakfast, as Maestro Ricardo said that it would improve the effects of the plant medicine.  Right after the meeting I took a shower to get the Agua de Florida (translation: Aqua Velva) off of me, as well as the grime I’d accumulated over the past couple of days.  

I ate a pretty large lunch, and inadvertently sat across from Arthur, which I immediately regretted.  Also there was a rubbery worm-like thing in my fish that really put me off.  I’ve never run across veins or tendons in fish before, so I don’t even want to think about what it was.
In the rafters of the mess hall

Lunch left my stomach feeling less than ideal, so I loaded myself into a hammock for a nap, which lasted a couple of hours.  The rest of the day was spent writing in my journal, dinner and a little socializing.  I hung out with Joel and Jason and talked about stand up comedians.  For a while Jason tried his hand at the pro stand-up game.  He says it was a tough life and all comedians are miserable and addicts.

We got another Phoenician yesterday.  A guy named Chris.  He expressed disappointment at how “plugged in” people here were and that he came here to unplug (for his big 5 day stint).  Jason also expressed a similar sentiment about unplugging, and wondered why everyone else wasn’t doing what he was.  Some of these people have been here for months and they need to check their email.  If you want to unplug, fine.  Don’t get preachy about it, though.

After thinking about it for a while I came to the conclusion that I spend a lot of my life looking at screens.  Maybe it wouldn’t kill me to go without for a few days.  Perhaps Jason and Chris were right.  Although I really want to chat with Toni and play Metroid.

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