April 19th
Rather than write a description of last night’s ceremony, I’m going to try to be as honest as I can about what I’ve been experiencing since drinking the medicine.
I went to sleep toward the end of the ceremony for a very brief time before waking up around 4AM. Someone had returned from the bathroom and accidentally knocked my vomit bucket onto my mattress. The putrid, ice cold liquid rolled up my arm as I was laying there, and began to dampen my shirt that I was using as a pillow. So I decided to move. I brushed the vomit off of the mattress as best I could and schlepped my things and my mat, slowly, back into my room.
There was a heat in my body. I located it, for the sake of simplicity, in my stomach, but that’s not entirely accurate. I was experiencing a lot of pain. I slept, mercifully, but awakened again around 7 when breakfast was served. I was still too sick for food, so I stayed in my room on my vomit-soaked mat (that’s a bit of an exaggeration…when I flipped it over, it was fine). I slept again, maybe for a few hours, and was awakened by one of the other dieteros telling me that lunch was served. That still sounded awful, so I kept to the room.
Since the final ceremony at Tierra Vida, I’ve been experiencing toward the end of each session intense negativity, anger and hopelessness. I don’t know why exactly. I’ve been inadvertently dwelling on thoughts that continually tell me that I’ll never be fixed, never change, and that I may as well give up and die alone. It leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.
I spoke to Papa Miky about it later in the day, and he told me that it’s part of the work, part of my energetic process. Those thoughts were from me, he said, and not new. Ayahuasca was showing them to me. Though I wasn’t as certain about the latter, the former statement about the origin of the feelings was, without a doubt, true. He also suggested that when the anger comes, I drink 3 glasses of water in quick succession, as anger is associated with an excess of heat, and the water would help to extinguish the fire.
Anyway, as I was lying on my mat, and before speaking with Miky, I began to be violently consumed with frustration, rage, the desire to flee, desperation and gloom. I was taken by it. I’d only felt this way once before, after experimenting with a tincture of Morning Glory seeds back in New York. It was a wall, a wave, and unstoppable. My body began to convulse, to quiver, and almost started to behave as it does in ceremony. I was under the spell of a seemingly limitless reservoir of hatred, antipathy, and there was nothing I could do to shake it.
This continued for the better part of an hour. Then a fellow dietero named Robert walked in. Robert is 40, from Ohio originally, and he and I were sharing the room. He started to talk with me, which was about the last thing I wanted in the moment. I think word had gotten around that I was feeling ill, and he seemed to be trying to engage with me a bit, get a feel for how I was doing. We quickly moved past the physical effects I was experiencing, and started discussing cause. He shared a bit of what he’d experienced in ceremony (which I will not post here), and I told him about the recurring darkness. He mentioned something that Papa Miky had said to a few of them, and that was that we are all beings of light. That didn’t do much for me at the time.
I told him that in some sense, I felt like none of this fucking mattered. That we’d all end up spit out on a great plateau, and that the workers of light and the workers of darkness were all just conned into thinking that they made a difference. He considered this, and I felt as though he may have been a bit taken aback by the onslaught of negativity, so I made an effort to tone it down. We talked about his religious background, and mine, and there were numerous points of similarity. He’s a writer, as well, and he’s published short stories and some poetry. As he expressed it, he felt that the work with Ayahuasca had the potential to allow us as human beings to become who we truly are.
It also came out that he’d been involved in some off-Broadway theater performances. I shared with him that in my youth I’d done some acting as well. I’d left all that behind, finally, because I realized that it just encourages you to wear more masks. I’ve already got a trunk full of them and I’m trying to thin them out. He agreed, and told me that was part of his reason for giving it up as well.
As we talked, the anger lessened, and began to loosen its grip on me. One of the other dieteros suggested going to the river for a quick swim. I still didn’t feel like doing much of anything, but Robert suggested we get on board with it, so I reluctantly agreed. He was right. It was good to get out, feel the sun on my face, clear my head a bit. The others swam, while a took a few photos of the village, the river and the people. By the time we returned to the hut, I felt a bit renewed, ready to think, ready to write. I tend to resist social interaction, as it often feels forced, tired and predictable. But sometimes it’s necessary, and I’ve got to learn to recognize that.
So, as to the ceremony itself, here are a few excerpts from the experience:
The overwhelming, underlying message of the ceremony was that I have to learn to not be dependent upon others for my self worth. I need to remember my own strength, but keep my ego in check. A simple message, one we all know, but like so many things in life, easier said than done.
I saw incredibly vivid lines of neon, glowing color, interwoven throughout the various people sitting around the room. Running down my arms, criss-crossing my vision, running through the cloth of the giant mosquito net that surrounded us and kept the bugs at bay.
One scene that’s stuck with me came when my thoughts went to our environment. We were sitting, of course, in the middle of a vast jungle, untamed, wild. And it was being slowly eroded by the advance of Western civilization. The land was teeming with life, and we in the States (in particular) are currently dedicated to eradicating all traces of it from this part of the globe. It felt like a cold indifference. And then, suddenly there was a hand in front of me, lying on the ground. And it was colored like the earth. Blue, green, brown…our planet. And then an invisible force picked up a nail and drove it through the hand. The message was clear. We are crucifying the planet, literally murdering it, in an excruciatingly painful way. The scene lingered there for a little while, and the hand writhed, and then it vanished.
As Gilberto opened our dieta and we all gathered in close, I remember turning my head and looking at Papa Miky. For some reason, He was draped in bright orange beads radiating with intensity against the darkness inside the mosquito netting. I was surprised. I’d never seen anything quite like that. I did a double take, but they were still there.
Toward the end of the ceremony, my thoughts turned to becoming Miky’s student. He had discussed some of what that might entail with Robert and myself earlier in the day. I didn’t (and still don’t) know if I could do it. I have serious doubts about my ability to help other people. As I began to think about it, numerous pictures flashed through my head, before my eyes. I was shown the things, the people, the comforts, the wants that I would have to give up were I to choose to walk that path. I won’t get into specifics, but each thing shown was then thrown into a rushing, wide river full of sticks and logs and dragged beneath the water as it was carried downstream. At the end of this, the voice that I’ve come to know as Ayahuasca asked me to choose. I chose Ayahuasca.
That’s it for today.
stranger 
Good choice, Ian.