Topic: Ayahuasca Visions
Hi all,
I introduced myself last night (see introductions) and just taken Tom's advice of reading other posts about Ayahuasca, seeing as though it's something I'm really interested in.
After reading about JTs experience, and subsequent postings in that thread I get a feeling that quite a few people here have quite a negative view towards it so I want to balance that with my own feelings and experiences which are the complete opposite.
Now I'm not going to say there are no down sides to Ayahuasca and that everybody here should be taking it at every available opportunity!! Obviously from time to time people do have incredibly negative experiences that severely impacts their day to day life. However, from my knowledge and experience I think this is extremely rare. It's not something I would worry about in all honesty.
It's true that ayahuasca journeys are usually incredibly powerful experiences, and yes they do change your life more often than not. After leaving the aya temple it's pretty much a given that your entire world view will be changed. But for most people this is a very positive thing.
I've been to Brazil with Heart of the Initiate twice in the last 18 months. Each time I've been in a group of around 20 people and we've all drank ayahuasca between 3 and 4 times in the week. Next day we usually sit in a circle and share our experiences. The vast majority of people usually describe incredibly positive, beautiful & life enhancing experiences. Of the few experiences that could be described as negative, they've always been embraced as 'necessary'. Because even the darker, negative experiences ALWAYS contain powerful lessons. Mother Aya can occassionaly be a harsh teacher, but she's always fair!
My own personal experiences have been a mixture of positive and negative. Well perhaps negative is the wrong word, I prefer to say 'uncomfortable'. Aya's given my ego a severe bruising on a couple of occassions, but as uncomfortable as it was at the time, it was wholly necessary!
There is one particular positive experience I would like to attempt to share, although I know that any words I use will completely fail to do it justice.
It was my second journey, the 1st time I was in Brazil about 18 months ago. Now the first journey had been one of the uncomfortable ones. I'd had a lot of trouble letting go the first night, mainly due to fear. In fact I made the decision to sit out the second night, but in the end I was talked into by another person.
So the second night my intention was just to let go (It's always important to have an intention when you drink aya). I also drank a smaller dose but after a couple of hours very little was happening so I asked for a booster, and thats when I took off!
How do I describe it? It was like my consciousness somehow merged with the realm of the creator force. Or God Force as Stuart Wilde calls it.
Suddenley I felt this OVERWHELMING feeling of pure love pouring into my entire body from every angle. And this intense feeling stayed with me for about 4 hours I would guess. Try to imagine the best orgasm you've ever experienced, multiply that feeling by a million, and you still probably wouldn't come close to what I was experiencing for about 4 hours!
I don't know where this feeling came from exactly but what I know for sure is that it wasn't a chemical reaction happening in my body. I've tried a lot of different drugs particularly ecstasy, and although that feels great, you know it isn't real, you know it's just a chemical reaction taking place in your body that causes you to feel so good.
This ayahuasca experience was nothing like that. If felt like for the first time in my life I had a direct connection to God. Now I'm not a massive fan of David Icke but when he came out with "Infinite love is the only truth. Everything else is illusion" I had to agree with him after my aya experience. I know that infinite love is real because somehow aya let me tap into it for a few hours. No words can adequately describe just how beautiful and completely overwhelming it was.
And so I will be forever grateful to Aya for giving that experience to me. It was way beyond what I could ever have expected from her. I intend to visit her temple as much as I possibly can in the future because I know she has so much more to teach me. And I don't think I've spoken to anyone on a Heart of the Initiate workshop that has not wanted to return, such are the number of positive aya experiences people are having there.
If anybody here is interested in going to Brazil or whereever, I would say don't hesitate and go for it. But if it doesn't sound appealing then leave it, I would never try to talk someone into doing it.