Ayahuasca: Climbing the Death Vine

It is through HER that I will enter the City of Light, three times during one ceremony. The shedding and acquiring of self through ritual death. Light from my very center will begin to break through the physical, mental and emotional layers. It will leave me barely standing, beautifully and irrevocably changed. I will not fear death.

Ayahuasca medicina, she is invoked through the gentle signing of the icaros. The feminine healer who will coil herself around the base of my spine nine times. Nine is my life path number. The humanitarian sent to help heal others by first learning to heal her Self. She is the threshold through which I must pass. She will neither protect nor attack. She will be merciless in her truth. I am one of her children, and she will demand my absolute bravery.

The visions are rapidly climbing my subconscious, urged on by the soothing singing of the husband and wife shamans who will guide and anchor me. I will need Erik and Nilda’s wisdom to aid me as I shift between worlds. This is my third ceremony, and I am allowing my heart and mind to be pried open. I am seeking, conscious, ritual death so that I may live life fully. I am allowing myself to be pulled across the expanse of time and space, as the visions begin to ascend in might. They take on relentlessly strong forms.

I am gliding on silvery waters aboard a Viking ship. In front of me, a fan of peacock feathers begins to draw itself back across the horizon. Each of the feather’s stunning eyes open and close as they regard me with deep interest. Behind the curtain of feathers and eyelashes, the City of Light becomes revealed. Everything is made entirely of light, and these pulsating prisms of inexplicable beauty reach as far as I could hope to see. Somehow, I know instantly that this world and everything in it is created telepathically. I am mesmerized by the intricate channels of light pulsing through me. This world and I are made of the same fabric.

Slowly, other sensations are coming into focus. There is a low level hum, a longing that makes me ache for this world. It is matched equally by how I feel it is also drawing me back into itself. There is a conscious gravitational pull from the whole, as it seeks to reunite with a part of it. It calls to me with absolute love. I know this feeling. I have been a part of it before. This is home. This is where I belong, but I also know that it is not my time yet. I have come back too soon, and I can’t stay.

I can barely breathe here. If I focus on my breath the gravity of its might threatens to consume me. Each inhale and exhale is an exquisite orgasm. Breathing is so pleasurable that I fear I may not be able to withstand it. The shock of the beauty of this sensation catapults me back into my physical body. I am sitting on a bare mattress, listening to the lullabies of the shamans, a puke bucket to my left, and a roll of toilet paper to my right.

Through the window, into the darkness of the night sky, I see Mars lit up like a star above the tallest mountain. On our walk here, I am told that there are two planets visibly charting their course. Venus and Mars. The goddess of love, and the god of war. Planetary lovers seeking each other out across the universe. So seldom will they occupy the same sky, but when they do, like all sparks of life, they will seek to reunite.

I close my eyes again, delving deep into the now familiar sensations of the City of Light. This world feels like home, and it is reaching with all of its power to hold its own star child near. It is ushering me back into itself. Flooded with longing for the reunion. There is a soft female voice that guides me. She asks if I want to see and experience more of this world. I can barely form the thoughts to answer her with, because the pull is mercilessly strong. I am already starting to fear I will not be able to withstand it. Every molecule of the City of Light seeks to merge with my own, and I am instantly drawn into its orgasmic symphony. Softly, my guide will whisper that this is my nature, and this is my home. Come home.

A steady hum, like the drumming of the word Om, pulses deep within me. I can’t help but respond to its call. I feel my physical body weakening. I can sense it release more and more of its ties with each moment spent inside the City of Light. Like in all dream worlds, time moves differently, or not at all here. The longer I remain, the more difficult I am finding it to summon my resolve to leave.

I will myself back into my body again. My otherwise gentle guide is now livid with me. It is the first time that I have felt anger arise from her. With my eyes wide open, I am watching the shamans sing the icaros with perfect tranquility. My guide is flooding my conscious mind with images of war, pain, and human cruelty. I bear them, just as I do in life. How can humans have so little respect for life? So little regard for their own lives, the lives of others, the lives of all living beings including this beautiful Earth. She is very much alive and dying because of humans. Her voice reverberates with accelerated disappointment as she asks: “Is this what you want? Is this what you choose?”

I am reminded of the fairytales that I was read to as a child. The longer you spend in an enchanted world, the harder it becomes for you to return to your own. You must not eat nor sleep there. You must not linger any longer than absolutely necessary. This world will lovingly ensnare you captive.

Inside the City of Light, I am suspended in peace. I find myself in a state of ecstatic grace. I am now pleading with my guide. I want her to understand that as much as I have missed my place among this universe, it is not my time to return. I can already feel the pain of my choice. There is so much left that I must do on Earth. My resolve grows weaker. There is a gravitational bond between this world of light and I. Like attracts like. I can feel it seeking to permanently unite me into its essence again. It is urging me home with the utmost and loving devotion.

With my eyes closed, and not a whisper of an audible word across my lips, I begin to beg the shamans to help me. I feel myself fading into the City of Life. I no longer seem to possess the willpower to extricate myself from it. It is absorbing me back into itself. Erik walks towards me, holds my head between his steady hands, and blows smoke on the top of it. He is helping me fight to find my way back. I thank him silently in a thousand different languages instantly. His guidance allows me to begin to pull myself away from within the realm of this beautiful world. I am pained and already deeply wounded by the separation I am initiating and coercing. This feeling of loss is reminiscent of birth. My guide allows me to see my true death, and it will not take place for a long time to come. There is so much I must do before we meet again, the City of Light and I.

 I must now learn to build the City of Light a home inside this human form. I have no fear of death, and some day, I will realize this makes me invincible. Life and death are choices we take on. We choose to be born. We can also choose to die consciously. I am choosing to create tears in the fabric of my existence. I am choosing to allow the full spectrum of my nature to shine through. I am an ancient light radiating in human form.