Sapphire Song or Ayahuasca in the Amazon (part 2)

And the lights go out for a second time. I’ve drunk a full cup of Ayahuasca tonight, I’m told the taste gets worse the more times you throw it up and it does seem more acrid tonight. I heard it described as the whole jungle blended up and mixed with bile and this seems a very fitting description. The consistency is similar to that of whole milk and the three liter bottle it resides in was a glowing orange. Already, fears of the full cup being too much are filling my head. The night before was about three quarters full, and while the spirits where very kind to me with that dosage I’m wondering if a twenty-five percent increase is going to blow the doors open on this ride, but I was soon to find out this dose was nothing compared to what I was in for in subsequent ceremonies.
I raise my hands on my own waiting for the spirits to say hello in the same way. I feel the Ayahuasca sloshing around in my belly, saturating it. The nausea has already set in, throw it up, throw it up! a voice says. Who is this that’s so eager to have the medicine out? Somebody wanted it out and it wasn’t me. I’m waiting for the ghost hands again, but they don’t come, a vengeful poltergeist takes hold instead. The visions come, fast and pulsating. I’m in and there is no dragon kissing my fingertips tonight. Only time and space swirling around me as I stay anchored down. Hamilton has said that you never move, time and space move around you. You are not your body. I can feel the world spinning around me, my eyes are wide open and a great cavernous space opens. Diffused light scrapes the ceiling of the cavern, all else is darkness. A ledge reaches up before me, outlined with glowing veins.
I notice the pressure everywhere, my head, my heart, in my soul. The cavern is pressing down, getting smaller. The cavern is changing appearance as it shrinks. The medicine veins lining the walls pulse purple, pink, green. I’m deep within myself, or deep within the spirit of the vine and it’s all I can do to control my breathing. I feel it want to slip away, to gasp for breath to call out for help, for water on my head to ease the visions and fear. But I focus on my breath, my survival line, the ambillical cord to the life I’ve always known. And I realize for the first time that that world isn’t the only one, that this world is waiting for me. There’s my world and this world and who knows what others. None more real than another. I realize that my life as Hagen is but one of them, and there’s no getting out of this. Ever. You just pass from one to the next when the time comes. Fear sets in, accompanied by icy loneliness I’ve known for only fleeting moments in life, and had hoped never to feel again.
I’m huddled in on myself, there is only breathing. I go through the breathing techniques I’ve been taught by Mimi, count to four on the inhale, hold, count to four on the exhale. It’s all I can do. My mind reaches for panic if I let up for even a moment. It’s dark and lonely and cold. I don’t know if this is the medicine teaching me respect for it, telling me a full cup is too much, or if it’s the fear winning, being stirred from peaceful little homes it has set up through out the corridors of my life. Wake us up will you? Well, we’ll teach you. And they were, the nausea was permeating my whole body. It ached to be out. I roll over to my bucket at the end of my mat, the ceremony room reappears and spins around. All I see is the black hole of my puke bucket in front of my eyes as I empty my stomach into it. The smell of the Ayahuasca fills my nostrils, as each retch starts before the last one finishes. The Icaros drift back in. The Icaros! Are they what have brought out my purge? I’ve been so consumed with my survival that I haven’t even heard them, which has certainly been part of my problem. “Follow the Icaros”, Hamilton warns us, “let them come in and do the work.” I feel like Bilbo Baggins having disobeyed Gandalf’s warning not to leave the trail in Mirkwood.
I lay beside my purge bucket, somewhere I see little feet come with a bright light, take it away and replace it with another. The medicine is still so strong I can hardly make it out, and I certainly don’t care. The Icaros come and go, Don Alberto’s beautiful, foreign and frightening voice comes in loud and clear, clearing a new path. I lay down on my back. The nausea starts to pass, the perfection of energy flowing through me starts. I’ve read of Peter speaking of the doctor spirits and I feel them coming to see me now. A light opens on my chest, darkness outside its parameters. I wonder where their tools are. My right hand raises up in the light and it dawns on me, why would they need to bring tools to work on me when they have the huge beautiful tool of my hand to do their work with. They take my hand and move it over my body, gently pressing into my ribs and abdomen, moving up around the outside of my chest, checking lymph nodes as any good doctor would do. My hand softly pats my chest and they’re gone, apparently satisfied with the examination.
The Ayahuasca’s grip is loosening early tonight, and I find myself back in me while the lights are still out. “Everyone take a deep breath and remind yourself you have a body.” Hamilton offers. “It’s just a little Ayahuasca.” he says. Groans from the group follow. “just be happy it’s not a little more.” he finishes. A little more I think. There is still plenty of ceremony left, I could go in for more if I wanted. Hamilton wouldn’t turn me down if I did. “Relax” the spirits tell me, “you’ve learned enough tonight.” I agree, readily I must admit. “You haven’t learned enough!” the voices start. “You threw up too early, you’re weak, you’re afraid!” I begin to believe them when some of the wisest words I’ve ever heard start to drift back in over the voices like snowflakes. Words that Hamilton had given to us earlier in the day.
“The only time insecurity demons show up is when the opposite of what their saying is true. It’s what attracts them, it’s what they feed on, it’s why they live. You have to take the idea of your ability and turn it into knowledge. Knowledge is fact. When those demons come and say you can’t, you won’t, you’re a failure, you’re shit, it’s because the opposite of that is the truth. Hold on to the knowledge of your ability, it’s steel. Your insecurities actually support your abilities, to the man who’s eyes are open to it.”
I laid on my back, occasionally rolling over to my stomach. Taking in the ceremony as I started to sober up. I have to admit that sobering up during a ceremony is not a particularly good time. The jokes aren’t funny, the nagging sense of not having done enough, the jealousy of seeing others still in their dreams. “Relax” the spirits tell me again. All right, I decide. But it feels like something’s coming and it was. “We’re channeling Don Julio now.” Hamilton announces as the Shaman start into a new Icaro. “Oh no! I knew it!” the words race through my head as I sit up. “Why now, when I’m not in my dream anymore?!” Don Julio Ilerena Puenedia is my personal hero, although I never got to met him before he passed I have read many stories of his strength and bravery through Peter Gorman’s writings. Being able to honor him and maybe, just maybe meet him in ceremony were some of my greatest hopes for the trip.
Well I was going to try my best to do it. I crept up to Hamilton in the dark, “is there still time to take some more?” I asked. “No, we’re almost done.” Hamilton replied. “Rats!” I sulked back to my new spot at the end of the mats, some friends, a couple, wanted to be next to each other during ceremony so I’d given up my original spot for one on the end in front of Mimi. I stewed in my head thinking of how I’d been told that Ayahuasca would give you what you need and not what you want. And then a light bulb turned on in my mind. I already know Julio! I know him every time I make art, every time I touch the divine. I didn’t have to be in my Ayahuasca dream to meet him, I already knew him very well. And it’s very telling of Ayahuasca to teach me that in a way I would have never expected. And I wonder now if maybe it wasn’t Julio telling me to relax the whole time.
As I lay for the last few minutes of ceremony darkness, I listened to Hamilton give words of wisdom that seemed beyond his thirty-one years. “Start loving your body, because it’s the only one your ever going to have.” I thought about that, the only one you’re ever going to have. Not the only that may ever be or have been, but the only one you, the ego consciousness listening to this will ever have. Hagen Gilbert, or you reading this, will never have another body, so love it. “Everything that has ever happened to you has been a gift” he continued. “They have taught you all you know, praise them when they have challenged you, love them when you think they have defeated you”. Because they have not, they are giving you a chance to be born again, in-forming with unknown strength. “Want what you have, and you’ll always have what you want. Want the love you have, want the money you have. The amount of love or money you have may change, but your want will always be right along side it, fulfilling you with everything you need. The Universe has been providing for you since the moment you were born, even before. And it will continue to provide for you everything needed to be you, as that is the only thing you ever are. Trust it.”
And the lights came back on.