DOSE:	100 g	oral	Banisteriopsis caapi	(tea)
	70 g	oral	Ayahuasca	(tea)

BODY WEIGHT:

163 lb

I had my third experience with ayahuasca yesterday, and it was a strange one that I am trying to wrap my mind around. A quick summary of the first two, both of which occurred two years ago: The first experience amounted to nothing more than some muscle twitches that seemed to crawl through my body, extreme nauseousness, and a feeling of panic and dread that lasted for many hours. I had a few quick glimpses of animated geometric forms with my eyes closed, which moved at an unimaginably fast speed, but these were just flashes that came and went. I eventually fell asleep and woke up the next day feeling shaky and afraid.

The second journey was the next day. In my research, I had read that a person must yield to the fears produced by ayahuasca in order to accept what it has to teach. I was very nervous about experiencing those same feelings as from my first experience, but I took a leap of faith. I drank the brew slowly and concentrated on accepting whatever would come; it took a couple of hours, but I began to feel nauseated again and eventually purged (not from the mouth), which left me shaky. And then I began to see quickly moving geometric forms with my eyes closed. I would open my eyes and everything would look normal, but with my eyes closed, the world was something different--just astounding. That was the 'pre show' of sorts, which slowly subsided and ended in what I can only call a conversation with another intelligent being that was within me. At some point, I heard myself asking questions and then being somehow prodded to answer them...there was no external voice, no sound, no visions that showed me anything--but the feeling of another presence that was *not* me guiding me toward answers was undeniable. I heard myself saying 'yes' and eventually 'thank you' for hours on end as the most deeply buried aspects of my life--memories, fears, worries--were revealed and explained. I cried and I even laughed. This thing, this non-human person who was with me, had a sense of humor. It was so very strange. I could go on forever about the specifics, but I won't. The point was, someone was with me, and it was a feeling of absolute compassion and love, and that was the lesson: nothing matters in the end but love, and everything comes and goes, but there is nothing to worry about in the world: all limitations are self-imposed.

I also had a sense--this was a sort of vision without an image, so hopefully it won't come across as more literal than it was--that I am exactly the same as a worm; this vision came from the sense of movement in the darkness that was my ayahuasca journey; I was navigating slowly, turning blindly in the dark, but had a sense of where I was going and there were senses that I cannot describe that helped me to find my way. And then I realized that the twisting and turning movement was like the way a vine grows, just in a speed too slow for us to recognize, and I sort of asked the presence with me if it was describing itself to me as a vine, and the answer was affirmative.

So in summary, my second ayahuasca experience was otherworldly and life-changing and life-affirming. That was two years ago and since then I have felt anxiety so much less acutely--probably a decrease by 80%--and when I look at plants, I literally see living intelligent creatures. My whole sense of the world has changed. I truly love everything.

I was naive to expect more of the same when I took ayahuasca yesterday, as if I was going to be visiting an old friend and the visit would be the same as the last. It was something like the last time, but very, very different. This time it was physical.

It began with nausea, but no purging this time--none at all. I waited, but it didn't happen. I lay down and felt the telltale muscle twitching and admit I was a little surprised again that I felt something (someone) was literally working its way through me. Much more quickly than had happened before, I began to see shapes--but this time was a huge, huge difference. Before, I had seen a kind of web of olive-greenish against black geometric forms that shifted and moved at least a thousand times more quickly than can even be seen; this time, it was a slow, pulsating movement, expanding and contracting something like a heart beat. And it was three-dimensional and I felt I was closer to the left wall of it, inside some sort of huge tunnel; it swelled slowly and eventually enveloped me. I felt I had been consumed by something--as if perhaps a snake had eaten me, and I even wondered about that and became afraid: was I being eaten? Was this the sensation of it? I remembered to accept things as they come.

Then I felt an intense pressure on top of my body pulling me down. It wasn't painful at all or even really uncomfortable--it reminded me of a centrifugal carnival ride I had been on as a child called the 'gravitron,' which spun around and in which I stuck to the wall feeling the pull of increasing gravity. I was extraordinarily heavy and felt myself being pulled down for quite a while. And then there was some light off to the left of my field of vision, and some lighter shapes--the web of connected shapes disconnected, and there were free-floating, freely and independently moving fragments of light, and it was absolutely wondrous; I smiled and heard myself saying 'yes' and 'thank you.' After some time, I felt a tear on my face and realized that I had lost all sense of my body for some time--no nauseousness and none of that feeling of weight at all; no sense of the body at all, and now I was feeling tears, but smiling, and my hips were wiggling, which seemed funny. I sort of focused on that (my hips moving) and pondered that shift from my body being so present to being totally absent from my experience, and again felt my hips wiggling and then from nowhere (this is where if someone were telling me this experience, I would think, OK, you were tripping, and I'd lose patience for the story--but it is what it is)--from nowhere, I heard 'I am a wavelength.' I think it was my voice, but it could have been a separate voice.

I am a wavelength? I asked. Yes.

My hips wiggled, and I moved on. Then I realized that my right leg was moving, and that is when this experience became physical. My body was literally possessed--it was beyond my control, although I could have controlled it if I had given over to the fear of losing control--and one body part at a time, the other intelligence inside of me moved me--my entire body: hips, right leg, right arm, shoulder, neck, face, neck, shoulders, left arm, left leg, for hours. I felt it move through me and was afraid and fascinated at the same time. The control--very, very significantly to me--was not restricted to my voluntary muscle systems. My sinuses filled up and drained on their own; snot ran down my face and I had to breathe through my mouth. That cleared up and I could breathe, and then tears poured down my cheeks. It felt like my body were simply a mechanical vehicle or a computer undergoing a diagnostic inspection, part by part. And it was painless and even comfortable, and I realized that there is something beautiful and dangerous at the same time about letting someone else have control, and as I thought that, I heard my own voice (out loud) say 'yes.' Before I could think, 'was whatever is controlling my body right now using my own voice to answer the question I was thinking?' I (my body/voice) laughed and said, a little louder, 'YES!'

After I became used to this physical...there's no better word than 'possession,' the lessons continued. I alternated between hesitation over letting my body be controlled by someone else to going back to 'I am a wavelength' mode, wiggling my hips as a kind of propelling tail, as if I were riding a wavelength or swimming or something, and the experience was mixed and confusing. The last experience with ayahuasca left me feeling that everything is love, that the body is just a temporary thing and in the end everything dissolves. This one gave me several specific, and mixed, messages that I am trying to make some sense of...it felt like I am being used, my whole being, by something else for its purposes. There was something dark about it, but also light. It didn't feel as eternal and ethereal as last time, but rather I felt like another specific entity had possessed me and revealed a lot to me, but perhaps with less compassion than last time. It wasn't 'evil' or cruel; it just was more matter-of-fact than nurturing.

So in the end, I'm just left a bit confused--but wow, what lessons. What experiences. Truly, ayahuasca makes known other dimensions of being that are just completely undeniable once experienced. This is gnosis--knowing. It's humbling. It's confusing. It's moving, literally, within and beyond the body.

Exp Year: 2014	ExpID: 104060
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 36
Published: Oct 1, 2018	Views: 4,340
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Ayahuasca (8), Banisteriopsis caapi (169), Psychotria viridis (170) : Entities / Beings (37), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), General (1), Unknown Context (20)