Early the next morning I woke tired and alone in my room. Although it looked like a nice sunny day, I figured to shower and shave, say my goodbyes and thanks, and leave before noon. I went downstairs to breakfast, which had been laid out on the table, and sat outside pondering the night before and seeing what the people were already doing out on the lawn. A medicine called kambo, a South American frog toxin that induces purgative reactions, was being administered to several people who also drank copious amounts of water in order to have something to release. This did not look at all appealing to me especially after the night before. I admitted to myself that whatever cathartic purging may bring, I’m just not into it. L, a very thin and tanned raven-haired beauty with dark eyes and aquiline nose, sat on the lawn and was deeply into her purging. Her demonstrative body language – eyes wide open, back arched, and facial expressions alternating from agony to relief, was rather astonishing to behold and I turned back to the dining room for my own relief.
After a brief respite, I returned to the lawn and noticed that L was now acting in a rather peculiar fashion – as if she had just awoken into her body for the first time and was in what only can be described as an early human/childlike state. This sojourn into the child state of awakening – in both disbelief and in profound awareness – was very moving to all that witnessed this. She rolled her eyes in the disbelief of her awakening, twisted her adult body like being in it, using it, for the first time. She stared at the world all around in amazement – at the trees, the sky, and the people present. Alternatively, she sucked in or puckered her lips and followed the steady clap-clap of the hands of her facilitator, M, being transfixed by their sound. She followed his hands with her eyes, her head, and whole body. It was like a dance of awareness, not smooth and flowing like ballet, but rather jerky and unrehearsed. As we all started a slow quiet clap-clap in rhythm with that of M, she saw us in wide-eyed amazement. Slowly, she moved between the people arrayed on the lawn touching them and both their hair and bodies in astonishment. To me she came up to in joyful wild laughter and pressed her face so close to mine that we touched and then we both stared deeply into each other’s eyes and we could see other’s reflection in our pupils. For a moment I was in her eye and she was in mine. There was no barrier between us whatsoever. After she moved on I had the cliched thought of “I’ll have what she’s having!” But not to lessen the moment, it was truly one of the most moving and astonishing events I have ever witnessed. Many there were moved to real tears as the powerful nature of what was happening – the re-discovery of the self, of L (her name which, by the way, she could not even say, for she had lost the ability to speak words). If it was an act, which it did not appear to be by any stretch of the imagination, it was masterful beyond words and went on for another ten minutes or so beyond which she collapsed sobbing into the arms of her sister and boyfriend. She then rested on a blanket outdoors for the rest of the day, being carried inside to the bathroom when she needed.
Thou art that
Up to that point I had still thought of leaving, being tired from the purgandorum ignum of the night before, although I started to ask more about 5-MeO-DMT (Bufo alvarius toad toxin) that was being used. I was told that when I had arrived yesterday, the others (including the screaming woman) had partaken in smoking this medicine. Not having heard about it, I was intrigued. The facilitators, B, L, and H were very positive about the 5-MeO experience, each saying that it is an amazing experience, but of course everyone gets something different. While I rationalized that since I had come all this way and hoped for a deeper mind manifesting experience, perhaps this was to be it? Maybe this is the mind blowing experience that would reveal what I am searching for – unity, tranquility, nirvana – the complete dissolution of identity and melting into the cosmos. The facilitators knew that my ayahuasca experience was suboptimal (to say the least) and convinced me that while ayahuasca and mushrooms climb the ladders of awareness and manifestation, 5-MeO is the fast elevator to the top floor. So with a bit of trepidation I agreed and gave myself up to the experience. Sitting on the grass in the sunshine, I practiced breathing in slowly and deeply. H brought over a small glass pipe and told me to breathe deeply inwards and then force the air all out. Next, as he heated the pipe, he said to inhale all the vaporized smoky mixture slowly for ten seconds and to hold it in my lungs. As I did so, I took all the smoke in and counted to ten, holding it in and then – a massive inner explosion of light, color, and shape that defied (and continues to defy) all explanation. Faster than I could think, I felt myself, my identity – me, merge with the surrounding earth and sky until there were no borders and I was truly one with it all. This was no false feeling, no illusory sensation, this was non-duality pure and simple. I was the earth-sky and it was beautiful beyond words, ineffable. Although peace, serenity, and existence as the super conscious certainly come to mind its perhaps easier to say that the “I” was completely gone and had become a part of everything as in the beginning, before being born. I entered the state of nirvana. All knowledge of the self had melted away and my awareness became one with the beauty of nature and the sky all around, the love constitutes and creates all. I became God and knew the god within. I finally understood the meaning of thou art that.
This was the most powerful feeling I had ever experienced. Neither wanting nor able to rush back into the “I”, which had undergone complete dissolution, I was bodiless and yet experienced the inexorable feeling of eternity, the true realm of existence where the illusion of space-time is lost. I became pure awareness – lucid, conscious, awake! After what may have been only a few minutes, although time had ceased to exist, I slowly found myself be able to think again and realized that I was returning to my little ego-shaped identity, built up of all the barriers we use to keep ourselves locked up. These include barriers of language and culture (that I felt intimately in this foreign environment), the physical barriers of our bodies, and even the barrier of life’s expectations. The latter barrier is what I believe that others expect of me, whether they actually do or not. Without remembering, I realized that these expectations arose very early in life, so early that I had a memory flash of it all the way back to my first post-natal experiences in the crib, where I saw my parents looking down at me as darkened shadowy figures. I realized that they were expecting something from me even back then, from the very beginning. I also realized that in that early post-partum moment I was a fully conscious being/entity. Although unable to talk or communicate at all at that point in life, I realized that I was sentient – this alone being quite a kick-ass realization in itself.
I had come back to the reality of the waking mind. I saw the beauty of our existence, of our awareness, of the miracle that is life. I saw that the clouds in the sky form and melt together into oneness – and realized that that’s what I must do, be one with everyone and not be disconnected. Time has no meaning when you exist in everything and the expectations that I put on myself (or believe that others place on me) is just another barrier to keep me from making connections. I also came back with the realization of my aloneness. Here I was with people who did not know me and I didn’t have a human support group, like L. However, H and B and a few others were there to talk, hug, and smile at me. I felt that it would have been wonderful to come back (i.e. to be reborn) and have my family with me to share in the love and the experience. I wondered if maybe I could change that? Maybe to heal not only myself, but my family as well. We are born alone and inevitably die alone, but we don’t have to be alone in the physical universe – nor feel it, since we are in reality one, all one. And so I spent the rest of afternoon lying on the grass and relaxing in the warm sunshine of my new discoveries.
