Prior to my ayahuasca experience:
Quite a few years ago I heard of Ayahuasca ceremonies for the first time. In a therapeutically context and used for holistic healing. I was intrigued, but I did not feel the need to participate in an Ayahuasca ceremony. I did not need healing, because I wasn’t ill. This conclusion was based on very limited knowledge of the power of this plant medicine. A few years later I got into the practice of daily meditation. Not for spiritual purposes, but therapeutically to center myself and as an exercise for my mind. A couple of years ago, I got to talk to a good friend, who participated in many Ayahuasca ceremonies and he explained to me the healing power of this plant medicine. I got more intrigued and I realized you do not need to be ill to be healed. Then I met my significant other. She is Brazilian and lives in Brazil. Spiritual healing and Ayahuasca ceremonies are a big part of her life. Before visiting her in São Paulo, I decided I needed to open myself up to the experience of an Ayahuasca ceremony. Both to get a better understanding of my girlfriend, but also to give myself the healing power this plant medicine has to offer. I read a lot about this topic and watched different documentaries, from a South American Indigenous point of view and a Western point of view. I did my homework so to say.
During:
When visiting my girlfriend in São Paulo, we both attended a private Ayahuasca ceremony at a spiritual center. Present were the Shaman, my girlfriend and me. The ceremony is guided by the Shaman, meditation, music and prayers. During this ceremony I dove into a deeper consciousness and, as I described it later in my journal, “to a place deep inside myself I never visited before”. The feeling was love, gratitude and oneness. Not just oneness inside me, but in the whole universe. I realized everything in the universe is connected, every living creature, every grain of sand and every wave in the ocean. We are all one and we all come from the same source of light. We share our collective consciousness. This was a big eye-opener for me, as I travelled a lot on my own in my life and always felt like I had to be self-sufficient and not be reliant on others. But the main lesson of this experience, was our interconnection with everything in the universe. I never felt love like this before, I can only describe it as close as the love of a parent for his or her child. But this love wasn’t based on personal preference or being biased, this love was deeper than that. We are all beings of light and love and so is everything that surrounds us. My gratitude for this insight was, and still is, enormous. The love felt all-encompassing and the gratitude is beyond words. I could write an essay on it, and not even touch the all-encompassing feeling of love and gratitude this experience gave me.
After:
After the ceremony, experiences were shared between my girlfriend and the Shaman. We talked about the gratitude, but also about the implementation process of this experience. I felt like I gained knowledge and saw what has always been there, but I have never perceived before. Days after the ceremony, I was living on a cloud and slowly grounded. This is when the implementation process started. I felt like I had more questions than ever. My main question was “how?” How do I become a better person, since the desire to become the best version of myself was a result of this experience. And how could I serve Mother Earth as best as possible, since she is who we belong to and she is the one we should respect the most. Since then, this guides my every day in everything I do and everywhere I go. And I know it always will.
Author Unknown
