Meeting Mother Ayahuasca — Duality within the singularity
I am I and you are you, but I am also you and you are I. There is duality within the singularity
My experience with Mother Ayahuasca created an enormous amount of insight into both my internal and external realities, in this post I’m simply going to share the experience of my second ceremony with the medicine…‘Duality within the singularity’.
It may seem to take a while to read, but remember time doesn’t exist, it’s a concept. The only moment that exists is right now, we live in an eternal present moment :).
On 1st December 2017 I attended my first plant medicine retreat in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest, where I began to form a working relationship with the plant spirit of mother Ayahuasca. My retreat was a 21 day retreat hosted by ‘Temple of the Way of Light’ where I would meet and drink the medicine over 7 ceremonies, journeying alongside 23 fellow ‘pasajeros’.
As I mentioned, it was my second ceremony. My first ceremony was extremely mild and although drinking two small introductory doses, I didn’t experience much of a connection to the medicine.
Ceremony two, I lay on my bed in the maloka (the large circular building in which ceremonies were held) waiting with apprehension for my turn to drink the sacred brew.
It’s my turn, I walk over to the centre to sit with the Maestros and my facilitator as I blow my intention into the medicine before drinking. Then back over to my bed where I smoke a mapacho (a cigarette filled with nicotiana rustica tobacco) with my intention for the ceremony, ensuring I inhale a small number of times to feed the medicine inside me with the intention infused smoke. I finish the mapacho, cleansing and preparing myself to meet the sacred, then lay down to meditate as I await my communion with mother Ayahuasca.
After a while of laying in meditation, I sensed the feeling of ‘dropping in’ …like a falling away or a desensitisation of the external, with my senses turning to an internal awareness. I then sat with this awareness as I started to feel the effect of the medicine slowly working within me, on both physical and energetic levels moving throughout my stomach, and on a mental level changing my perception and expanding my awareness — consciousness. At the same time, I hear the soft break of silence through the Maestro’s beautiful opening Ikaros (healing songs) starting with the mesmerising voice of my female Maestro.
It was as if the medicine took affect as the Ikaros were introduced, with the Ikaros controlling the medicine, like a snake charmer guiding his snake with the tones of his song. That’s exactly what was happening.
As I realised this I started to experience subtle visuals, soft colours playing with each other, like an etheric intertwining. Then my awareness expanded, I felt the colours, I felt the visuals, only then did I realise that this etheric intertwining dance I was experiencing was actually the auditory experience of the Ikaros, the voices of the Maestros. I was seeing sounds, seeing the Maestro’s voices, and feeling visions. I felt thoughts, I knew things with certainty from beyond the mind — it was a concrete knowing without explanation. I became aware that knowing is also a sense, our sixth. All senses were one, all senses are one!
The Maestros were singing these beautiful songs, but in doing so they were weaving a web of creation, they were actually singing this reality into being. The two songs of the Maestros weaved together to form a thread which they used to sew together a cosmic web within the maloka. An energetic neon web that lay on, among, and under our ordinary reality. I saw the truth of reality, I saw it, I felt it, I knew it.
Instantly I knew within my being that this reality is not all that exists, there are multiple realities all existing in this oneness, a multidimensional oneness where everything resides, right now, eternally. This energetic reality is among us right now, it is real, we are it. The Maestros reside in it and are masters of it. This is where they do their work, weaving and working with this energetic reality which is the foundation and the true nature of which our ordinary reality arises from.
Our ordinary reality is just a small aspect of true reality, just the face of it that we can see and live within. It’s like the skin of it, but the true nature and construct is beneath, and it’s energetic, it’s the skeleton that creates, moulds, shapes and IS the reality that the skin of our reality rests upon to give appearance.
I could see each tone they sang, creating and changing vibrations to weave their place of work. They created this place of healing, they literally sang into creation this environment where they do their healing work. Just like they weave these tapestries in ordinary realities to create their fabrics, in non-ordinary reality their song is their needle and thread, and the fabric is reality
Once the space was created they went to work healing. It was like a hospital, we were all low frequency beings with dis-ease. The healers were high frequency, high energetic, neon coloured beings healing us. They know us, they are us, they see into us and know of our condition and exactly how to heal us, and have true compassion for us.
They were floating above us around the room healing us with their songs as we lay and received the healing. They created the reality and transformed the energetics of the room and of each individual person through their ikaros. I heard it, I felt it, I saw it, and I knew it.
Like a tapestry with threads missing, broken and misplaced, they can see it and fix it. These threads are the disease we experience, and the Maestros re-weave these energetic threads which underly ourselves and our reality, that is how it heals us on other levels — energetic, mental, physical etc. Dis-ease is a problem with your energetic tapestry, which the maestros re-weave for you.
At one point I felt unbelievably sick/ill/uncomfortable… overwhelmed and fearful. I didn’t know what to do, I ran to the toilet but didn’t need it, I realised I was just trying to avoid, to escape.
knowing the only way out is through, I went back to my bed and sat with these sensations, I sat with them and befriended them, I accepted them as they are. As soon as I did so, I purged out these feelings and sensations and was left with pure blissful awareness. I was pure bliss, joy, presence, unconditional love and all knowing. I didn’t feel them, I was them. I experienced no-mind, I experienced oneness.
As I sat in this pure natural state of our being I knew it all, and this is what I was shown, what I knew for myself, what I experienced;
I realised that time doesn’t exist, it’s a human construct, existence is not linear. It is all existing and happening in the present, there is no past or future, only one eternal present moment.
I was shown that we are fully whole and complete beings. We just tell ourselves that we aren’t, these stories that we tell ourselves and the beliefs we hold of ourselves are moulds that we create for ourselves, we create them and they in turn create us. They create the way that we interact with others, ourselves, and reality. They are filters that we create for ourselves, developed and created by the stories we tell ourselves and experiences we’ve had which we then identify with rather than seeing them as a thing that has happened, a happening.
We create ourselves and our reality through the stories we believe about ourselves, about others, about the world, about reality. The beliefs we hold. The stories of our past, our past experiences, and the beliefs that we hold are not who we are, we are all the same — complete, whole, presence, a pure present moment awareness. Our natural state is of pure wholeness, joy, bliss and presence. Our true self, not our stories.
I experienced that the mind is only a small aspect of us, and we can exist without it. We are pure conscious awareness, identifying with the mind is what causes the majority of our problems. It is our mind that identifies with past and future, it does not exist in the present. Our being exists in the present and only the present, our mind exists in the past and future and never in the present.
This lesson was presented to me as I experienced ‘no mind’ or ‘enlightened mind’, it was pure being and knowing, with the heart, with the body, with my being, it was a knowing without thinking, everything just was. As my experience ended, I could feel my mind creeping back in, from above, fighting for attention, trying to grasp and to intellectually understand that state, that experience. But it never can. There is the ability to exist without the mind, but you cannot understand this with the mind… because this place cannot exist with the mind, and the mind cannot exist within this place. They are mutually exclusive, you experience it with your being. Pure conscious awareness, with no concepts. It can’t be grasped mentally or intellectually, only experientially, from a knowing, from being, from experience. You can’t think your way into it, thinking doesn’t exist here. We just know, we know from our heart we know from our gut, we know from our being. Our mind doesn’t know, our mind thinks. Trying to know with the mind will never happen, because it doesn’t know… it just thinks! We are heart centred beings, we remember, our heart remembers, our body remembers. Our mind has never known.
I experienced oneness, but also duality within this oneness. I knew everything is both oneness and dual, there is duality within the singularity. Everything is both one, the same, and two, different. I am I and you are you. But I am also you and you are also I. We are both one and we are both two. We are both the same and we are both different. The senses are also different and the same. They are all one, sound is sight, sight is thought, taste is touch, etc. thinking is a sense and all of these senses are rooted in a oneness… which is knowing.
When Maestra Lila sang to me, I knew that she knew me, she was me… and I was her. We were one, but we were also separate. The duality within the singularity.
She was inside of me, she was me, she expanded me, she expanded my consciousness and awareness, I was not limited to my body, I was expansive, I was everything, there was no boundary. She was me and we were expansion, she rewired me and put me back together again. My body started shaking and my knees and shoulders started hurting, I started to feel mass confusion and then I felt her bring up heavy energy from deep within me… up through my stomach, my chest and then into my shoulder, then my shoulder started to shake and pull towards her as she sang to it. It was like she was taming it, drawing it out. Again, she was like a snake charmer charming a snake. My shoulder had a mind of it’s own and was moving in ways I’d never experienced it before, until it was released. Then she closed her song and gave me her laugh, like we both knew exactly what had just happened, like it was a joke only us two knew.
Then I sat in my true nature, my true self, in the true nature of reality. I just knew everything, everything was complete, everything is as it should be, it just is. Everything is complete and whole, perfect, true and as it should be, everything always has been and always will be.
The truth! We are this perfect, whole, blissful presence. We aren’t our problems, these are stories we continue to live our lives through, you live backwards, continuing to filter your ‘future’ and your present with experiences of the ‘past’. They are just things that happened, they are not you. We are not these stories, we just are! We can change our beliefs, we can change everything, because we are just pure present moment loving conscious awareness.
Drop the past, drop your beliefs, drop your mould and drop your filter. Be this present moment awareness. The past is like a snake’s old skin, it sheds it and lives on. You don’t see a snake carrying it’s old skin around with it do you? there would be no point in shedding it.
You are the snake, but you’ve forgotten to leave your old skin behind, you’ve been carrying it around with you… it’s being weighing you down. Now drop it!
Concepts such as success, failure, wealth, good and bad etc are made up. They don’t actually exist in reality, in true nature, everything just is — the ‘is-ness’. These are just mental constructs, they are just man made concepts. Animals have no concept of these, an ant doesn’t succeed at being an ant, it has no concept of success or failure, it just is. They are man made, they hold no truth, they are rooted in misconception and mistruth. They don’t exist.
I’m going to write a post about this subject in the near future, but here are a few realisations that were presented to me :)…
Does money make you successful? how? what is success? you are a being that is experiencing life and then you die. accumulating things in your life doesn’t make your life successful. it’s collecting things that you can’t take with you. you’ll spend your whole life collecting to then leave them all when you pass on.
Like a squirrel spending all of summer stressed out and collecting nuts for winter, only to die before winter comes. Enjoy the summer! enjoy the experience of now!
Success for me is happiness and enjoyment of life, of being, of this experience! don’t waste it collecting for the future, and don’t waste it trying to prove you are somebody. you are just a being, collecting things are just things and they don’t reflect you. help others, enjoy this experience together.
We are whole infinite beings, we just BE, there is no such thing as success or failure. We don’t succeed or fail at anything, as we just be. And you can’t not be, you just BE!
My mind was then obsessively trying to understand and remember my experience so as not to forget it, as if it thought that if I couldn’t remember it then it didn’t happen. But that’s not so, I experienced it, i’d been through it. My body remembers it, it’s somatically ingrained, it’s embodied. you don’t have to remember with your mind, your heart remembers, your body remembers.
Now to integrate this experience… hahaha
Much love
JBH
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