January Between Workshops: Ceremony 8

Background:
January 29, the day after Ceremony 6, we were sharing our experiences. John and I had been discussing problems we have had with our fathers (mainly in high school for me, but those emotions were still very present when thinking of high school). Then I told this lady Andrea about my experience.

Andrea is a German woman who currently lives in France. She works with Iboga, a hallucinogenic root bark used by indigenous people in Gabon, Africa. She did a week long initiation where all she could drink is water, while she was on a wooden floor (not floor boards, but cylindrical pieces of wood) and did Iboga. Iboga ceremonies can last up to 24 hours and has been described as "10 years of therapy in one night" and "breaking open the head". She has worked with Ayahuasca as well and describes how Iboga is much more grounded and connected with the Earth, where Ayahuasca can take you up into these celestial realms. In accordance, Ayahuasca is a vine that creeps up a tree, while Iboga is the root of a tree. I've come to learn this is not ironic, this is the intricacy in which nature works.

While telling Andrea of my experience from the night before, she suddenly asks "Do you have problems with your father?" I was so surprised, John and I had talked a couple times just briefly mentioning we both had, but not going into much detail and nothing about my experience was about my father..I told her I had and she asked if he was controlling and such and I said that was pretty much exactly what the problems were. I was so intrigued because she was being so intuitive and accessing information that was not given verbally..or physically. I asked her how she knew and she said "It just comes to me sometimes.." haha.

So I talked briefly with her on January 29. Then on January 30 and 31 I continued talking and asking questions. The picture that began to emerge was how this control my father not only put upon me, but also himself and that this was most likely a family issue he inherited from his father, which, knowing my father and grandfather, seems to be the case. I began to see how I inherited this control and, though I did not think of myself as controlling in any sense, slowly began to see the very subtle ways I use my thought and speech to control myself and my situations and how I can become very judgmental of others when I believe I know a better way for them to act. I began to understand that I must be accepting of every situation and of others actions, regardless of circumstance. This is because the external world is only a reflection of the mind and each moment of one's experience is specifically manifesting as an opportunity for their own advancement and growth. Also, accepting the actions of others is necessary because each person is on their own path and forcing information upon them without their request for advice is almost always not beneficial for that person. This was difficult for me because in many situations I felt I understood what was wrong with someone's actions and I would get frustrated they were acting a certain way, but I have learned to begin to accept their actions and use these situations as challenges imposed upon me by the universe to see if I can remain peaceful and centered and begin to accept the other's actions as perfect for their path, as well as my own.

Intention:
Surrender to the medicine.
Clear anything blocking my growth and my vision (referring, most likely, to the control/judgment issue discussed above)

Experience:
The effects of the medicine came on strong. The first 45 minutes of the ceremony, before the maestras begin singing, seemed like hours and hours. After what could have only been about 10 minutes, everything began to melt away (not in a good way) and I opened my eyes and looked around the Maloka and just cold comprehend any of it, I began to feel very alone and very scared. Finally, practically whimpering, I spoke "Brian?..Brian?..Please help...please help" I was so sad and felt so alone.
Tracie came over to me and told me Brian had gone to sleep and that Angus and she would be facilitating the ceremony. I had her stay by me for a good while and I was just grabbing on to her. She and her touch were the only things grounding me and keeping me the slightest been sane and in reality. After a while I asked her what was happening with the icaros and she said they had not began to sing yet, this is when I realized how altered my consciousness was. I then asked her what was happening, as in happening to me. She said that my body was going through a lot of changes and a lot of intense and deep healing. This reassured me soooo very much.
After this she had to talk with the maestras, though I didn't want her to leave. I thought I would go back into my loneliness. Instead, I remembered what Tracie had told me about the healing happening to my body and I thought of Shane and how the previous night he had watched beavers digging through his DNA getting all of the death and decay out. These two thoughts were very reassuring and gave me the strength to work with the medicine and I began to actively heal myself.

I began "cleaning out my brain" as it seemed to me. The entire Maloka seemed to become completely equivalent to my brain, perhaps it could be described as an exact representation though on a high fractal scale? I was lying down inside the Maloka/inside my brain and there was a lot more shaking and twisting and turning and circles and circles of the same thoughts. I then began digging my fingers into my eyes and nose and ears. This was an incredible cleansing process and did not hurt, I was intuitively doing what was necessary and it was almost like the medicine was controlling my movements and I was not objecting. This digging into my eyes/nose/ears was extremely physical and I reached quite far into these holes, much further than I could currently do.
Explanations: Brian told me he once had a vision of a personified Ayahuasca spirit and its limbs could stretch far and could seep into people like roots, breaking into many limbs and becoming very fine and thin. This seems to be what happened to my fingers, they were somehow able to dig deep into these parts of my body though it seems physically impossible.
A more scientific explanation: Atoms are made of 99.99% empty space, the amount of space this is, is analogous to the space between our solar system and other stars. That is an incredible amount of space. Therefore, in this DMT state of consciousness (which throughout the ceremony continued to make matter seem incredibly less concrete and more malleable or permeable) my atoms were manipulated to allow for the insertion of my fingers into these parts of my body.
During this experience there was a reptilian-alien archetype going on, I felt I was like part reptile, though still intelligent. I kept doing this curling type motion with my tongue that added to this greatly. I also felt very alien, I believe this is because we are coming to know who we really are, which includes this reptilian aspect of consciousness. And we feel "alien" because we feel less human..and we feel less human because our concept of a human (which we are) had a very rigid and defined structure to it, that obviously did not include this reptilian consciousness.
John had had this reptilian experience for three ceremonies now, and he kept saying he was turning into a reptile-alien type creature.
The following day I showed John the Introduction of the book Symbols and the Symbolic by R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz. The Introduction discussed three different aspects of our brain, relating to different evolutionary epochs and relating to different types of consciousness. The hind brain was the earliest part of the brain developed during the reptilian phase of consciousness and the Egyptians would use symbols to evoke different aspects of our consciousness--it seems to me that these symbols were almost certainly used in congruence with some psychoactive sacrament, most likely containing DMT.

For a while I could not understand the concept of time and I was struggling greatly with trying to imagine how the sun would rise tomorrow. I thought I had finally broken free of the binds of the illusion of everyday existence (the illusion referred to by Buddha), but I thought that returning to everyday existence in the morning would be going back into the illusion, so I thought I had no choice but to stay in eternity, though I was not in the blissful eternity of enlightenment.

I felt I was finally joining everyone at the Temple in this eternity and I thought that they had just been illusions of my mind throughout my time at the Temple.. These thoughts/feelings are very difficult to explain and do not make much sense (obviously) I was having a very rough time understanding what was going on still.
I then was trying to think of the Earth and how we are going around the Sun and how the Sun would rise in the morning and how I was in South America and my friends were above me in North America..I could not get a grasp on any of this and this did not help my current state. haha.

There was also a vibe going on that I was rejoining an ancient ancestral brotherhood. I was now finally somehow open to these beings and I was kind of reawakening into this ancestral brotherhood to which I belonged, and had belonged for eons. This was perhaps some kind of light warriors brotherhood. With this I felt a very strong Matrix motif: like I was being taken out of the matrix and shown who I really am. Being out of the Matrix would be analogous with the altered state of consciousness induced by the medicine, then during the day we would "go back into the matrix" in the name of Light and Love to save others and rid the world of evil. Verbalizing this puts a very megalomaniac-type twist on it, but that was not present in the experience, it was simply "what was going on" for me and my reality. The next morning John and Petra were discussing the same "Ancient ancestral brotherhood" motif going on and the Matrix motif.
..we just kept saying "wild.. just wild.."

Still going through the intense processes described above, John came over to me--I was lying down on my mattress--and said hello. He was ecstatic and full of love (his description) and he told me I was doing great (he had known for some time that I was having a rough night getting a lot of shit out..he was on the mat next to me, and had seen all of my intense movements and flailing about). He said he loved me and I told him the same. I touched the top of his head (he has a completely shaved head), it felt awesome, the same as how touch can feel awesome on mushrooms. This interaction was perfect, so necessary and very  helpful.
John had this Egyptian demi-god archetype going on. He had a shaved head and was shirtless. His laugh was deeper than normal and bellowed. Then to top it all off, I was seeing him in my own altered DMT-state which made his entire aura that much more mystical and less material.

Horacio came to sing to me and, though it was intense, I felt very safe with him. Sitting cross-legged, facing one another, I hugged him for most of his icaros and put my head against his. This felt amazing and I felt so safe and loved. 

Finally, I was able to stand and I walked out to the front of the Maloka to pee. Standing and walking brought me fully back into my body and the fresh air outside felt amazing. After peeing I saw a woman figure, but couldn't quite make her out, so I was wondering how "real" this figure actually was. As she approached though, I noticed it was Andrea. She looked amazing! Wearing a white dress/gown that was linen and wrinkled, she presented this very specific Mother Nature/grandmother/goddess motif. We hugged for a good long time and for the next 45 minutes or so she helped me greatly understand what was now going to happen to me, in light of the intense healing I had just received.

Andrea explained to me that I now needed to control my sexual energy. As she said this pinkish geometrical patterns came into my vision and down by my 2nd chakra (the sex center below the navel) I saw a lotus flower symbol of the same color and immediately recognized it as the symbol of the 2nd chakra (I knew each chakra had a color and lotus flower associated with it, though I did not know specifically how the 2nd chakra's flower looked--its color is orange
Around this time it became clear to me that the medicine had lifted what had been blocking me and I was now able to see the energy around me that everyone had previously been describing to me. Andrea must have known this is what happened and she then said "You now must use this energy [referring to the energy I was seeing, which was energy that was coming into me from the vacuum, or the cosmic source, or reality] for service for God" Just as she said this I saw this energy in and around her body, it was all clear light, some colored, that did not obscure the images of the "material world"--rather it seemed a veil had been lifted and I was seeing a new reality that allowed me to see this energy as is passes through the now not-so-material world.
We then sat on a bench outside the Maloka and took everything in. She told me it was my birthday and that I would no longer be limited by the control I had in myself and that I had to forgive my father. She said I could now become who I really am and begin to learn who I really am.

The time outside with Andrea was so meaningful and brought me into the love and light after a night spent in the dark.
This was a very humbling experience and I woke up feeling renewed and new-born.