MM MECC ANICA

Well shit. I have come back to this for months and I’m just going to send it. I haven’t found a way to explain the interweaving of experiences that have happened or the tie from my last journey into this, but it’ll happen when it’s right.

It’s been 3 months since my first sittings and the plasticity of my mind still hasn’t settled enough to know where to start, end or compose words around it the experience days before entering my second. Maybe this plasticity is a new state? If so, awesome, I’m in it.

This experience has been a living, breathing, constantly evolving “spirit” that has woven together timelines and continues teaching even if the sludgy synaptic lubrication in my body has been long digested.

As with everything I’ve been up against, the story starts with fear.

Following, Ctrl + Alt + Delete (2ⁿ), I’ve stayed away from chemically kicking myself into the next levels of consciousness. Not because it hasn’t helped my path; in fact nothing has pushed me further and motivated me more to do the work outside of the chemicals than these journeys; but because I found my limit last time and that’s a tough wall to want to push up against again. I didn’t feel like I had the right tools last time and have spent the past 8 months fully engulfed in daily practices, reflection and meditation.

The experience of Ctrl + Alt + Delete (2ⁿ) woke me up while simultaneously scaring the shit out of me. While the space of fear and urgency is often where I do my best work, it was difficult to want to take on again at that level. Nothing can describe the vast scope of time I experienced on that journey as I cycled lifetimes and lessons in a violent and nauseating manner. Truth is, I’m still learning from that journey and it still has more to teach me. The lesson that came through the most was my inner voice hinting that I needed a more natural chemical to continue my work.

I didn’t know what it meant; I mentally masturbated over the variations, types, places, people and things that could offer me that path before I settled into… it’ll come to me when I’m ready.

And it did.

An introduction through my barber on a similar path connected me to a local healer that I’ve now learned channels something beyond local and far beyond my understanding of healing.

I flirted with the idea of trying something new, connected, did a few group video sessions, contemplated 3 weeks in a Peruvian jungle ending on just sitting on the idea.

Then a month or so later, while visiting a close friend and his small cactus farm a cactus across his yard called to me. I saw it, had to have it, and when I walked up to it and looked at the tag, the strain of cactus was labeled “Icaros”, which are energetic medicine songs sung or whistled by Shipibo shamans.

My message to sign up was there. I committed and settled into resolve.

A month away was close enough to not get scared again or over think it. I paid, signed up, there was no out anymore in my mind, then the ceremony was delayed by a month. It was too long, my thinking brain turned on and I started regretting my choice and became scared. I meditated on it and while my body felt onboard, my mind was grasping at the control and fighting against it. My mind knew what it was up against I suppose.

I rolled into the holidays working less and then rolled into the physical and spiritual dieta to prepare. I gave up all the things my Italian ancestors would roll over in their graves for giving up; sex, masturbation, salt, dairy, pork, fermented foods, processed meats, red meats and further disconnected from electronic devices, news etc. This was all to balance the body, reduce inflammation and prepare my being for accepting and receiving the medicine spiritually and chemically.

A week into the dieta and week out from the ceremony, I was agitated, itchy, kinda floaty. Partially due to nerves of the upcoming ceremony, partially due to the constant reminders of what I had been giving up. Every day I was wiping back the drool induced from primal instincts after seeing my wife get out of the shower, walking by the espresso machine, opening the fridge and seeing the hock of imported prosciutto next to the 2kg block of 24 month Parmesan in my fridge. Fuck! Just not actually.

As I finally settled into normalcy, the dieta brought light to attachments and the meanings behind them the integration call happened. It was the building blocks of what needed to be worked on.

I should start with saying that one of my trepidations of doing this type of ceremony was the vulnerability of being in a group setting. So far my journeys have been in a closed door scenario with only my internal tour guide there to usher me through the time, space, heaven and hell; and quite honestly, I’m not much of a sharer during journeys, so in my case he was really there to administer… recognize I was still too in my head, and administer again… to send me off and make sure I didn’t die as I processed in silence and hope all of his guidance and trainings before navigated me.

So, back to the group setting and the call. Nine women, one other male. I signed myself up to be in my most vulernable state in front of a group of women I did not know. My mind started poking holes into my identified masculinity, all of the structure and boxes of what men should be, and stacked onto the fear. How can I break down, be honest about my feelings, cry, complain, convey weakness in front of all of these strangers/women? Fuck, what did I sign up for? The integration flew by in a whirlwind of introductions and brief stories of why we were all there. I don’t remember what I said to the group when it was my turn, it felt like the moment Frank the Tank gave the blacked out counter argument in Old School.

The day after I had a 1:1 with the healer. After inviting me into the virtual space we were sharing and hearing out whatever story my thinking brain was trying to be heard about we entered a meditation. It put me straight into my body and heart space. I stood, stepped into my soul, and confronted darkness that I was going to process on the coming weekend. Then we went through an ancestor exercise where I felt the touch and presence of my guides, inviting them in to help me for the weekend. (NOTE: I’ve interacted with 2 guides so far and they are very different than each other) The closer one to me in generations was a maternal touch manifested by gentle hands on my shoulders, the far out generation guide lit up my back chest shoulders and arms into a strong and forceful stance of energy. It was clear to me that I had both sides of the angelic spectrum available to me as needed if I asked. I left the call feeling prepared, still a bit weary, but mostly excited for what was to come.

In a universal knowing, consciousness coordinated my healer’s earthly team and myself to be at the grocery store at the same time the night before. While I could see the look of focused preparation obligations on their faces, their calming presence lifted more anxiety from me. I was ready for tomorrow.

The next morning, my wife dropped me off at the ceremony but my excitement, anxiety and nervousness regrettably left her with an abrupt good bye.

Everyone arranged their areas in a great common room facing the center and we began casually interacting before being brought together by the healing team to start the ceremony. Intention setting, prayers and offerings were given and then we settled back into our pads, and mediated or found ourselves in silence for an hour before taking the sacrament.

One by one we went to our healer to take the offering of the medicinal compound. I was not expecting a sweet flavor landing somewhere between dried cherries and raisins with a straight 50 weight viscosity. It coated my mouth throat and stomach with its spirit and I returned to my space to sit in lotus position and wait for it to invite me to the other side.

During the long silence, long feelings, and my mind constant searching my body for indications I was intoxicated so that I could try and get ahead of what was to coming faded into a calm presence. I was welcomed into the warmth of her embrace and laid back. Seconds, minutes, hours faded into the pitch black room until a small rustle began as the healer started channeling the ancients and began the Icaros.

A powerful and beautiful voice of mixed pitch, tones and volumes begin penetrating the energies of the room. The words transitioned between Spanish, English and ichibo as it began its work on all of us. One by one the room moved from silence to deep sighs, gasps, and exhalations of every emotion, then one by one the song connected with each of us as we felt the need to purge.

As our healer began singing to each of us, she was reading, processing and clearing our energies and transposing our pains to herself to purge when she wasn’t healing us and inciting purging in us.

I was in the mindset that we were all on our own journeys, until she struck a vocal cord with one of the members of the group she was singing to and it sent me into violent purging. As I expelled I could hear the person being sung to gasp with relief. I chalked it up to coincidence and settled back into my mat further surrendering to the offering and its healing coursing through my veins.

Knots of pain began entering my lower pelvis and sacral area, a darkness and energy I’ve never felt before. My mind thought it was digestion from the substance, but as the healer moved elsewhere in the room, the mother quickly showed me I was taking on others’ energy. Then the same thing occurred, I began violently purging the pain and energy inside of me and someone else in the room sighed in relief.

I was utterly confused by what was happening and then became entranced as I was confronted by the healer at the foot of my mat. In a pitch black space, light barely tickling the edges of forms from a single candle in the room, I had not a human but a spirit confront me.

The outline of its dark human form energetically connected to me then proceeded to purge time after time after time. I felt dread, guilt, confusion about what I could’ve done to cause such a horrendous reaction from a healer. All of this darkness I’ve been confused that I’m carrying emotionally (and physically in the part of my back that I thought was caused by a compression fractured vertebrae 20 years ago) suddenly started unwrapping itself from my spine and released. As the spirit started signing to me, I could feel the vibrations poking at dark energies contained inside of me until I started purging violently myself. I could hear echos in the room of others purging as well. As the energies left me, I had a strange feeling, none of those dark energies were mine. I had no attachment, no visualizations nothing that connected that darkness to something that I did or that was done to me. It was old, it was ancestral, it was released. My erector muscles relaxed for the first time in decades and I slumped back onto my mat, still entranced by the spirit singing and the mother embracing me in her lessons.

As the Icaros continued for the rest of the group I was constantly in the middle of violent but relieving purging and the bliss of watching a healer spirit embodied as a giant feathered raptor with wings raised and folded above its head in a strong and comforting presence, belt out new variations of pitches, tones and volumes to help move other energies in the room.

As the songs wove the room together, her healing aides floated amongst the room like loving wraiths blessing with tobacco and helping us with grace in our processes of pain and recovery.

Like waves crashing the shore, my body, spirit and mind went through cycles of peace, tranquility, violence, destruction, release, settling and oscillating. Each set bringing new experiences, insights, confusion and confirmation.

I was completely entranced. Messages of the healer/spirit being my sister at some point, past knowing of others in the room, even though they were strangers in this life, and deep understanding flowed through my veins. I hunkered down and remained quiet enjoying the singing and comradery of the room singing alongside the healers mixed with some continued sighs, gasps and crying, as the medicine wore off and we were ushered back into this reality.

Singing out loud is something so strange to me so I attempted to mumble what few words I knew of the songs while enjoying being part of the music regardless of my inability to vocalize.

As sobriety took further hold, I dwelled on what happened earlier. Was I healing others, was I a healer? Utterly shattered by the concept that nothing that happened yesterday was done in isolation I cycled between the trapping identity (I’m a healer and I didn’t know) to confusion over and over again.I released energies that weren’t mine, I was carrying energies that weren’t mine, I was confused as fuck because nothing about the experience felt like mine.

The group started moving around, sharing tobacco and talking still inebriated with pain and ecstasy from the past few hours. We placed a Nukini Sananga in our eyes that was supposed to help us in the processing. It felt like mace, but it was nothing compared to the energies I could feel I was processing from others in the room the night before. The burning subsided as reality continued clawing back in, fresh fruit help settle our thirst and hunger from 12+ hours of fasting. Singing and music turned more casual and there was always an air of lightness in the music guiding our thoughts back to loving, forgiving and remembering who we all truly are.

I settled in for the morning, waking up a few hours later before anyone else, and took a shower to help reinvigorate the weight of the night before.

Beautiful and confusing thoughts still running through my mind.

I didn’t understand the amount of energy I had taken on in my life from family, friends, strangers, and how I could hold so much of that and have no idea how or why.

I was confused by the concept that I had purged pains for others the night before. The message would come to me, I just had to wait.

After everyone had awoken we mingled again in groups, some talking about the experiences, others clearly traumatized and nursing the pain. I felt more on the energized side of the spectrum with the weighted thought that I was a healer and the ego behind flowing through me.

I was so excited and confused I had to chat with the healer privately about it, but as I described what I experienced, I could see in her eyes the resistance of sharing her insight of further truths that I had to learn for myself. There was a sadness in her eyes and confused me. I wanted answers, knew it was not hers to give and became frustration because I just wanted clarity that I wasn’t capable of giving myself, and someone else could see it in me. A childish, adolescent, immature thought, pick your word, it’ll become a theme soon enough.

Our day progressed with more magic.

We all sat and shared what experiences we wanted to share with the loving embrace of everyone in the room supporting us. Unconditional love was flowing in a group of strangers. Beautiful.

We all took a few hours of time for ourselves however we saw fit. I spent time outside and on my mat catching up on sleep, unfortunately, my brain was starting to fear round two and I let that thought take hold. I went from a confident and egotistical high to scared shitless.

A group breath-work journey began as we laid flat and let circular breaths move our entire body to a cadence that eventually put us into similar states as the medicine did before. The muscles around where my compressed disk once pressured, felt tired, sore, painful. I learned that I could use my hands to help move its energy and provide a sort of relief, though amateur in execution.

One layer gone to be presented with another layer of physical healing necessary. Erectors, lats and all the supportive tissue between began aching as I took the deep mind changing breaths. My muscles and body wasn’t sure what to do with all the lightness and lack of pain in the disk. It didn’t have to protect that part anymore and it became a pain in itself, like it was stripped of its identity and was pained to lose it.

The meditation and breath work continued building into yelling, screams and releasing of what we were all still carrying. Slowly we settled in stillness and were each present with a mirror that we could hold up and directly look into ourselves. There was still sadness in my eyes, it was confusing considering how substantial the darkness I released the night before was. More fear set in. I didn’t want to take more medicine, I wanted out after being presented with the truth in myself.

More time to dwell, more time to think, we began the second ceremony. I said I was called to take less medicine but I’m fairly sure that was my scared, fear driven thinking brain talking. I took less than the night before, went back to my mat hoping I wasn’t going to go for another ride as beautiful as it was. My old thoughts were winning but it was all part of the plan the spirit in the medicine had for me.

As the same format of the night before transpired, I was sober, but the dizzying effects of the substance when not fully surrendered began taking hold, I wasn’t enjoying the beauty of the experience, I was trapped in my my thinking mind.

I tried calling to my guides as I had done the night before for help.

I tried asking the sprit of the medicine to go gentle on me.

Nothing had the power that my mind had that night for very good reason.

New Icaros darted through the room cutting energies and forcing them to expel themselves from us. Our healer confronted me, my prayers were heard and she began with a very gentle Icaros somehow knowing what I was asking for in my mind. The intensity of song grew, she sang in a very staccato cadence using English words because clearly that was the only way I’d get the message. Inviting laughter and telling me to let go of the judgements and fears, the message was a hard hitting and I was caught in the dizzying loop of overthinking it. At the end of the singing her spirt sat in front of me in silence then in a fast exhale moved energy that felt like a heavy arrow through the center of me. I couldn’t stop purging, having not purged yet, the spirit sent me where I needed to go, it just wasn’t where my mind wanted to go.

I settled back into my mat as she moved elsewhere in the room.

I had entered into the chaos of a part of my mind. I watched my reality continue folding in on itself with all of the people and things closest to me vanishing as figments of my imagination. They were all there for me, or symbolically they all had something to teach me. It was dizzying, scary, watching everything I love or rely on being shown to me as nothing but atoms and a reality that I am imagining. After that chaos settle, I saw a new layer that I wasn’t able to see before because of all of other other energies I was carrying. Without that burden, a chaotic scene of a child in a room with a cluster fuck of scattered legos, erector sets and toys took hold.

The sad child kept itself distracted by a engulfing the room in constant state of building, busyness, productivity and self inflicted obligation to protect me from the world around it and the energies it couldn’t couldn’t understand. In endless cycles, the scenarios played out. The medicine mother confronted me, asked if I understood, gave me a bit to process and invited me back in to see the lesson many more times. Unlike my last journey months ago, her guidance was gentle and loving albeit difficult.

She needed me to see that just like my muscles were unsure of what to do when the pain of an injury was taken away from the night before, I (the story mind) was similarly afflicted. It had spent a lifetime protecting me, trying to keep me safe, giving me things to do to distract from the pain, boxes to fit in and an overwhelming amount of projects to help me survive the world I was in. Now, much like my erector muscles, it sat bare, weak, not knowing what to do without the job it has known for decades.

While the tranquility of this message is clear now in writing this, it wasn’t the second night of the medicine. I was in the fetal position asking it to stop for hours, miserable and just wanting it to stop. Constant asking for embrace. The medicine kept pushing it because it knew it was what I needed to see. It sucked, it was miserable, it was pain, heartache, the rawest form a fear, but it was healing. I should’ve asked from help from the healers in the room, but I didn’t.

While I sang more with the group toward the end of the ceremony that night, I wasn’t as invigorated or engaged. It was like that weighted feeling of almost getting in a really bad car accident but just narrowly missed.

I was quiet the next morning, and I can’t remember what I shared with the group.

Then we did a golden heart lotus meditation. It was hands down the best meditation I’ve ever had. It resonated, my bodies energies were flowing top to bottom and I went so deep into my heart space that my ability to see peoples energies reappeared. It wasn’t overwhelming it was beautiful, then I went into my heart space further and the entire room went bright white with only colors and clarity on the healer and the colors emitting from her aura as she talked us through the experiences.

…to be continued…