Authors: Danny Hansen & Vicky Smith
Danny & Vicky won a free retreat in December 2016 as part of the Ayahuasca Awareness Program hosted by Spirit Vine, this article is an account of their ayahuasca retreat experience.
Victoria and I excitedly enter the ceremony hall. There’s 15 mattresses spread evenly around the walls of the octagonal space. Each person dressed completely in white, takes a mattress and gets under their blanket.
“You know it’s a wild night when everyone needs a granny blanket and a bucket.”
The whole crew has bonded by this point. It’s a very safe and comfortable environment.
There’s no glass windows in the large wooden hall, just shade cloth to block out the bugs.
The ceiling has 8 huge beams across holding the thatched roof.
I’m right by the entry door. Vic is 2 mattresses away from me so we don’t distract each other or interact.
Rohan lights some scented stick and walks the smoke around the room. Individually going over people’s shoulders. He’s been Silvia’s assistant here for the last 2 years. A young Indian man with impeccable posture, that tried ayahuasca here and realized his true purpose was to stay here and help guide people. He’s very good with computers and helps Silvia with the internet side of the things along with facilitating the retreats. We’ve been in correspondence with him for months.
As soon as he introduced himself I was like, ‘Oh we’ve been chatting to you for ages!’ He smiled a warm smile in his knowing way. He looks at the world differently than anyone else I’ve met.
He has this slow gentle way of speaking where he never uses too many words. Each sentence is a seed he’s plucked from the universe and plants in your mind subtly so that you figure out your own insights. Every time you speak with him you get the comfort of this other worldly masculine figure that’s here to help.
Silvia walks her tiny steps in her little slippers and asks us our experience with drugs, hallucinogens, and alcohol to get a gauge on how sensitive our mind and bodies are. She has an Argentinian background and carries that thick in her accent. Her background is in psychotherapy. Vic asked her at lunch whether she sees energies and she stated, ‘I don’t see things that way. Because of my background everything is very psychologically based.’ She states that her mind is very logical and rational and always has been.
We ask her why she doesn’t call herself a shaman like most other ayahuasca retreat owners. She says simply that to her, a shaman is a doctor, a person that works with many different medicines to heal people, and that the word shaman is from Siberia and has little to do with over here despite the term now being adopted in South America.
She approaches people like a gentle mother with her comfortable dressing gown, and brown hair flicked with silver.
Every question is received by her with the straight face of a poker champion. No question is silly or unnecessary, though she’s probably heard it a thousand times.
Compassionate care flows from her.
She gets one side of the room their ayahuasca ranging from 40 millilitres for sensitive people to 70 millilitres for less sensitive people.
When everyone has their glass Rohan brings slices of lime around to suck on after drinking your ayahuasca tea, and chunks of ginger to chew on if you get nauseous in your journey.
But first, we all walk to the center of the room and stand in a circle.
1 by 1 we tell the group our intentions – What we’re going to ask Mother Ayahuasca.
“I’m going to ask Mother Ayahuasca to show me what I need to see to evolve.” I say. Other people ask her to show them the source of their pain; the source of their anxiety; their childhood trauma; to help them release an attachment to someone that’s overpowering their mind.
Vic says, “I ask Ayahuasca to show me my purpose and my career.”
Silvia and Rohan ask for guidance to be good helpers, despite them not drinking any tea.
We take a few deep breaths together and envision the top of our heads opening up and letting the light from the universe shine in.
“You may now drink.” Silvia says like we’re having a casual wine at her birthday.
Back on our mattresses; climb under the granny blanket; lift the small glass; look around at everyone else; give a nod to some others and then down the brown syrup in one. There’s strained faces, excited faces, people licking the glass, everyone sucking on lime.
People are anxious. Silvia puts the music on. The whole night it sways between Indian instruments and chanting; African drum beats and singing; Australian didgeridoo and clap sticks; Asian style gongs and drums; traditional Hawaiian music. It takes you on a journey.
The lights go off during the first song and it’s pitch black for a moment. Your eyes begin to adjust and you can just see the outline of some peoples white clothes.
It can take hours for it to set in so I begin to meditate.
Within 15 minutes as I sit rigid, I had tingles all over my body. I didn’t know whether this effect was from the drink or the meditation so I just continued to scan my body and feel each part and each subtle sensation. I refused to open my eyes for a while.
Background to my thought process: We have 2 minds in our heads. Our ego is 1, the other is our deep self that’s connected to the universal truth.
Our egoic mind is the chatter, the words that constantly flow at you and distract you from the present. It makes you dwell on things from the past. It makes you project into the future. Past and future aren’t real because it’s all made in your imagination.
The ego wants you to think that it is your true mind. It wants you to think that you are your clothes, and your car, and your past, and your stories.
It’s what gives you compliments or puts you down, and we allow it to take over.
Our true self is the observer. The deep thoughts that witness feelings or thoughts.
The ego wants you to think that it is your main mind.
In meditation I get the most depth when I don’t move, don’t open my eyes, and I scan my body part by part. My ego knows that when I do this I get rid of past pain, so it tries to make me stop this practice by putting pain on me and getting me to move, making me curious to open my eyes, making me sexually turned on so I lose concentration, making me feel emotions or memories that lead to thinking about past or making up a future.
Before doing this retreat, Vic and I did a 10 day silent meditation course. A Vipassana. 10 days of no talking, no eye contact, 11 hours of meditation a day, on only 2 meals.
It’s something everyone in the world with past trauma should look into. Memories come up that you didn’t realise still had any effect on you. But they sit in the background and poke at you like a cheeky goblin.
It taught us that everything in the world is impermanent. To not give too much power to anything. Any feeling, any object, any person – because it won’t last.
So I stayed still and with my eyes closed to make myself go deeper. It worked. By the time I allowed myself to open my eyes, the shapes of people’s white clothes were changing into little critters; the room felt like we were under the canopy of a huge tree that eventually turned into a clock work carousel at a carnival.
There was purple fabric as a background and bronze cogs and bolts like the inside of a pocket-watch everywhere in all shapes of the room.
The drum beats played and the chanting, foreign words take me away.
Ever present is this feminine energy that seems to smile with control. There is someone with me in my mind that isn’t me. I can’t see her but she’s with me. But she’s not intruding. I welcome her. I’m as certain she’s a woman as I am that my own mind is masculine. She’s an entity that is made to do this. She exists to show you the depth of what is around you, what is in you. All you have to do is surrender to her.
“Show me what I need to see to evolve, Mother Ayahuasca.”
I see my old childhood school and start looking around. I played basketball and one of my coaches really didn’t like me. I often felt put down. I saw them for who they are. Appreciated them. Forgave them and let it go.
“Take me deeper.”
I’m on the tractor on the hobby farm I grew up on. I used to have a lot of time with my thoughts here. Constantly projecting into the future. A lot of the men I looked up to growing up in country Australia are discontent. They embrace putting others down for fun. They embrace violence to Earthlings.
That was never for me.
I’ve always wanted to properly embrace love and compassion, but have feared that this is a feminine quality. I had huge fear in my early teens that I would be gay. I knew I was attracted to girls, but I was frequently called gay for decisions I’d make that were considered not manly.
I suddenly see my future self as this glowing being of love and caring, yet is as masculine as a mountain gorilla. He seems to radiate from his shoulders, neck and chest with a white light. Glowing orange limbs fall away comfortably.
My future self is bigger than I am, but still slender in the limbs. He’s perfectly comfortable in his body. I’ve been skinny my entire life, a trait also not masculine that lead to feelings of inadequacy.
This being is exactly what I hoped to be capable of.
He has a distinctly jaguar vibe about him. Like he’s connected to the ancestors, to the spirits, to all people, and to the the jungle.
All of a sudden him and I are the one being and the voice in my head changes. It vibrates with a heaviness that seems capable of shaking the world. I am him.
We’re in an warm sandy dessert and he’s here to give me guidance.
We’re wearing clothes more flowing and free. I always have an issue with uncomfortable underwear. I take them off in my bed. Might never wear them again.
The only reason I do wear them is because I feel like others would be offended by a visible swinging package between my legs.
My deep voice tells me. “Stop giving others opinions power over you.”
My style is quite different. Very hippy and flowing. If I only had 2 words to describe it, it’d be ‘woodland pirate’ for some reason. Hah.
It feels right, it feels comfortable, and it feels like if anyone else really cares about what I wear then that’s for them to deal with in their head, not for me to change how I look to suit their world view.
He shows me how to communicate things I’m passionate about in a more calm manner. That the feeling of impatience I have trying to make people understand is counter productive.
To explain things calmly does a faster job than explaining in a rush.
We go on a journey through the desert. We see colours like never before. We experience landscapes of other worlds, but there’s no problems. We’re capable of dealing with any obstacles because we are connected to everything.
For hours he shows me the links of the world and how everything is connected.
It was enlightening and so wonderfully beautiful that no art could do it justice.
I drift off to sleep at some stage.
I wake to Vic climbing in with me at daylight and we go back to the bungalow for a nap before breakfast. I am quiet. Comfortably quiet.
Vic and I swap a knowing look where I tell her – without words – that it was more beautiful than I ever could have imagined, and I cannot believe that we were worried for even a second that it would be anything less than breath taking.
I knew all night that she was having a good time, and I know she could feel how happy I was.
She wants to talk. I can feel her buzzing to chat.
We shower and she erupts about the insights she was given.
We have breakfast at 9 and everyone hugs and gives knowing smiles. We do art until 1pm. We’re tired from lack of sleep and don’t feel it at the time but are occasionally still in trance like states.
We share what we felt and saw. I tell my whole story and express that I cannot believe I ever thought it was going to be anything but beautiful.
Vic smiles excitedly as it comes around to her. She has a shine in her eyes like a child that’s just connected all the dots perfectly.
“It was incredible!” She says. “I took 40 mills and meditated for 2 hours. Not a lot happened so I got a 25 mill booster and as soon as I took it I slid into a warm cocoon, as if I was being cuddled. It was so cozy. Then a second wave hit and I felt the need to move my body. I had so much love for my friends. I started seeing my best friend, Shan, and I in our true forms as these powerful witches with no faces, in this huge abyss, moving around this massive ball of energy. We fully understood our magical ability to manifest anything we want.
I saw the importance of our friend, Karina, coming into our lives.
I saw how we were all pouring into the same cauldron. The whole thing was ecstasy. I danced so much shimmying my shoulders and having these knowing smiles and eye contact with all the people I love.
I envisioned Danny and I at our property on a raised meditation platform above the trees. Somehow each direction I look at on the horizon shows a different part of our travels and the people we met at those times.
The scene changes and I’m giving birth to our first child.
This was so overwhelmingly loving and spiritual that I wished I could bottle it and share it with loved ones.
It skips forward. He’s an incredibly clever boy, science minded, and loves figuring out how things work.
I see our second child. A little girl. She’s sensitive and a healer.
The scene changes and I’m back at my own birth. I feel the youth of my parents. I watch my parents looking into each other’s eyes and understanding the magic of what they have created. I feel my dad holding my head and I cried so much appreciation for the space we hold in each other’s lives.
My witch self watching the situation formed Dad holding me as a baby into a seed with a blue dot in the middle so I can think of it and remember the pure magic and the intense energy.
I then envisioned Danny and I evolving so fast. We were light beams from the core of the universe and somehow we were trees, strong and wise, our love interweaving through all the beautiful stages of life, knowing that now we have each other there are no more struggles. We are forever content and happy.
We receive all the keys to the enchanted moments. Our femininity and masculinity increase with age. Danny writes 10 books. Shan and I both write 2.
Shan, living in England, holds up the Northern Hemisphere of the world while I hold the Southern Hemisphere.
It became so clear that Danny and I have been searching for someone exactly like each other since we were teenagers. Now that we have come together we are able to live out our full potential in the world. Our fusion and interaction together is a symphony. It’s perfect music that inspires and forces good energy.
We start flying together. We’re smashing through glass ceilings. Over and over! The ceilings representing things we’re told we can’t achieve but we do anyway.
I saw Danny playing guitar while we were hosting Christmas with all our friends and family at our future property.
I had these moments where my whole body was vibrating and I was downloading all this knowledge from the universe in a whoosh into my 3rd eye. Then I’d pulsate all that knowledge into my future children.
The whole experience was perfect, and sexual. I saw people’s sexuality as a story in their eyes, based in their childhood, and I understood it.
She made me aware that understanding sex on a profound level and holding social science experiments would be my calling along side raising a family and building a better community for the future.
I conga’d my through the whole thing. Dancing and shimmying, madly in love with Danny, my children and my life!”
Everyone smiled at Vic’s experience. A few people spoke up and said they saw her moving her arms and legs in the air all night and it was mesmerising and eye catching in a hypnotic way.
Vic and I got so much from this one ceremony that we were bewildered thinking about what we could possibly gain from more. This wasn’t the case for everybody.
I partly put this down to the Vipassana meditation retreat we did for 10 days before it. It was easier for us to get into a deep trance state.
Silvia says that often people are just getting a gauge of what they can handle in the 1st experience. But that Mother Ayahuasca is working to rid past traumas or connect you to the universe during the ceremony regardless of whether you go on a massive journey or not.
Danielito, who has done ayahuasca before had a great time. The jungle is calling to him. He has to get out of the city and back to his roots. Nature is home, he said. Cities are artificial. They’re alienating us and making us all forget where we came from, and thus who we are.
David expresses how he had a sharp stabbing pain in his throat for a long time in the first hours and couldn’t figure out why. He said it was like an arrow head was stuck in his throat.
I commented about how Victoria used to have the same pain when she felt like she wasn’t being heard in a past relationship.
I later talk to him about meditation and yoga and how we believe that these things keep our body and mind balanced.
Before the 1st ceremony yesterday, Silvia guided us through a childhood regression technique in the group meeting room so that when ayahuasca took us for a journey we’d be aware of how to release old traumas.
We got comfortable and began to meditate. Silvia makes us concentrate on our breath until a traumatic memory from our childhood comes up. It doesn’t have to start traumatic. It doesn’t even have to be that big of a deal. Children can develop trauma from dropping an ice cream.
1 of the girls had a cat run by her memories and she followed it, and it lead to a memory of her parents deciding to move countries and give up the cat, despite her objections. It resulted in her feeling hurt, unheard, and thus, convinced that her opinion didn’t matter.
She decided to involve herself in the situation as her current self and tell her younger self that it’s all going to work out in the next few years and she makes friends and it’s all okay.
She decided that she did have a voice that mattered, and she let the situation go.
(For more reading on this technique, there’s good books by John Bradshaw).
Day 3 rolls around. Ceremony 2 is at 10pm tonight. We have yoga and chill times. We go to the beach and the lake.
David approaches me. He tells me that he was trying to sleep and was thinking over what I said to him about healing the area of his throat. He said it annoyed him that I spoke up like I knew exactly what he was dealing with.
This makes sense. I do come across as a know it all quite frequently. I want to work on how I get my point across. I apologise for how I spoke to him. But he insists that the fault is on him, and that he’s always had trouble accepting help and that he can see that I was trying to help and he wants to talk to Silvia about things we spoke about.
I thank him for being so open about having angry thoughts towards me.
Part of the retreat requirements are that if you have trouble with anyone you make it known. David and I have a hug and leave it at that.
Silvia runs us through another guided meditation in the meeting room.
We get comfortable and scan our bodies for sensation. If there’s a pain in the body we concentrate on it. A memory, feeling or image will come with it the more you dwell on it.
Picture yourself taking the pain from your body with your hand. What colour is it? What texture is it? How did you feel in this moment you’re picturing and why are you carrying it with you?
Picture throwing the shape in your hand away into a beam of light that takes it to another dimension. In many people’s 1st ayahuasca journey they saw little flying people from another dimension. It’s a common image. Silvia calls them ‘doctorcitos.’ Literally ‘little doctors,’ in Spanish, and shows us pictures of them in books from some of the ayahuasca artists over the years.
Doctorcitos perform surgery on people and help heal wounds, whether physical, mental or both.
The place where we took a part of ourselves out is open and part of our soul is missing. We left part of our soul in that moment where we were bullied or scared or feeling helpless because of an event.
We retrieve that part of our soul back, cleanse the area, and picture healing the place with green and gold light, or letting the doctorcitos do it for us.
(Further reading: The Remarkable Healings by Modi, a psychologist and hypnotherapist).
We have a few hours down time but we’re all too excited to nap.
Our fear has dissipated and as everyone arrives to the ceremony hall, we’re excited and smiling.
Silvia and Rohan are the last to enter. They ask what dosage we’d like. We receive. We form a circle to say our intentions out loud to the group, to ourselves, and to Mother Ayahuasca.
“I ask Mother Ayahuasca to show me how to evolve my love.” I say. This is an expansion on what I was shown in my first journey. I want to know how to become that evolved higher self that emanated compassion, caring love.
We take them to our mattresses; I neck my 60 millilitres; the lights go out; the music takes over the room; I begin to meditate; I sit rigid with my back flat on the wall.
It’s almost as if she felt part of me doubt her because within 15 minutes a shiver washes over me accompanied by an intense lime green colour oozing down my eye lids.
This colour had a force so bright I had to open my eyes. As I do this I see a little pixie face smiling for just a moment.
She doesn’t talk to me in words but I get the feeling she’s proving to me that she’s a link to the deepest parts of our global connectedness; that she’s a portal to the infinite other planets, dimensions and sentient beings that I can’t understand.
The reason for my doubt. I’m a sceptic when it comes to spirituality. I don’t like talking about chakras, star signs, spirits or planetary motion having affect on emotion.
Part of me knows that ayahuasca is leaves from the chakruna tree that contains DMT (that cause hallucinations) and a vine with an inhibitor so your body doesn’t digest the DMT, so the DMT has time to make it into your blood stream and brain.
Ayahuasca isn’t a drug, they all say, it’s a medicine. The reason I take 60 millilitres again is because it had an effect on me. It’s not something you build a tolerance to, on the contrary, Silvia and Rohan have taken it so many times over the years that they are at a point where 20 millilitres will get them in touch with the connection.
This is different.
My body tingles and I acknowledge the power. “Show me how to evolve my love.”
I’m sucked into a memory of a punch up I got into at school with another boy. I realise that this person is someone that isn’t a bad person, a series of events just lead us to being on opposite sides. I begin to see the bloke for who he is and a wave of love washes over me.
I let the fight situation go and let it hold no weight over me anymore.
I think of a few mates that constantly lock horns with me on social media. Anything I post about veganism especially, but even things I’m not involved in for some reason they’ll crave dropping my name into the mix. I often get stressed at these mates and find my mind taken up with how to respond to hateful comments they make.
It’s gotten to a point now that I picture how these people will scoff at anything I have to say on social media.
I realise that this is a power being held over me, but not by them, by me.
I am the one that chooses to view these situations at negative. I begin picturing anyone I’ve ever considered even slightly an ‘enemy’ and I see who they are. I pick good traits about them and begin to love them. The moment I’d see 1 good trait about them it’s like the flood gates open and I get a rush of all these good traits they have.
I see that it’s these people that oppose me that are the ones who have strengthened my resolve. I’d be a lousy activist for doing no harm to innocent animals if I couldn’t debate my point with a strong backbone and clarity.
I see the strength they give me; I thank them individually; I see traits I appreciate in them; I see them in a new light; I love them; a weight lifts from my shoulders.
David shifts in his bed beside me and my mind goes to how he approached me to let me know he didn’t like what I said to him, but that he acknowledged that his own fear of change is why he so strongly opposed it. I saw the strength of character that it took for him to approach. I saw the strength of will that it took to face up against his ego and come to this retreat to try and release old traumas, and this opened a flood gate of love for David.
When I say love I don’t mean it in a romantic way, but I also don’t mean I loved him in a brotherly way. I loved him as I love myself. In a comfortable connected, ‘I know who you are and where your heart lies’ way. I understood each persons decisions as I understand my own.
So that even if someone did something bad, I felt love for them.
David is a stout little 25 year old with a warm smile, strong shoulders, and in my minds eye he had thick, black, hairy gorilla arms.
I thought about thanking him then and there for approaching me that day, but thought I didn’t want to interrupt his journey, so I thought about calling Rohan over to let David know next time he went to the bathroom that I loved him.
This seemed as ridiculous to me then as it does now writing it publicly and I pictured Rohan having a chuckle and calmly telling me that it can wait until morning, in the calm Rohan manner.
Then this opened a flood gate of love for Rohan! I pictured how every time I see him speak it’s like he’s edited it down to the perfect amount of words. Not like a script, but like he plucks a seed of knowledge from another dimension, plants it in your mind calmly, and within a short period you’ll figure the answer out for yourself. I’ve watched him do it to others. I’ve experienced him do it to me. And I loved the quality.
I could go on about these 2 but let’s move on.
I realised Mother Ayahuasca was hitting my question like a nail on the head, so I went around the room picking traits of each person and opening the flood gates of love to them. I started with some of the girls I’d connected with and that was easy to find traits and open up the love, but I wanted to know if I could even love people that I had hardly connected to.
I attempted, and achieved.
A white beam of light was shining down on the building from the stars, and under our magic-tree-carousel a white light of love slowly flaked down like snow on everyone because I’d found out how to connect to it.
It can always be there, you just have to choose to connect to it.
I feel it now as I look at strangers around me while I write this.
Ever while I’m going around the room there’s the fog of Victoria in 1 corner. I glaze over it at first like, ‘Of course I love Vic. I know I love Vic. That’s easy.’ But after a while I decide to delve into the fog. I concentrate on where Vic is and my enters the haze.
Suddenly I’m in the womb, floating as a tiny baby inside my mum.
I was a caesarean born because my bum was pointing towards Mum’s vagina. Here’s the thing. I consciously knew there was an opening there, and I chose to turn my back on it.
I now remember doing this.
I do this on a nightly basis too. I can’t face any light or where I know the light will wake me up in the morning. I’m very particular about how I fall asleep and I always have been.
At the 10 day silent meditation my deepest meditation was always between 4am and 6am when it was still pitch black. Everyone else said they hated this time and got little from it.
In the womb I float alone in my thoughts.
I feel so aquatic and content. I love the comfort of the fluid around me. It’s all I know.
I do this every time I’m in a pool or the ocean, and always have. I sink to the bottom and lay on the tiles or the sand, and stay as long as my lungs can handle it. I feel the fluid all around me like it’s where I belong and I resist the urge to go up for air.
I suddenly realise the reason I do this is because surrounded by fluid alone is the most comfortable I’ve ever been.
My baby self knew this comfort was going to end.
But I’m not ready for it to end.
I remember seeing such a bright light as Mum was cut open and distinctly thinking, ‘Why… Why is this happening?’ Not in words. But in feelings.
And this is hard to explain. As I was lifted free of my mother, I felt such love as I concentrated on the light. Such overwhelming love. And that light was Victoria.
Victoria wasn’t at my birth physically. But her presence in this world was blatant to me because the world was illuminated.
As sure as I am that these two hands I type with are connected to me, I am certain that Victoria and I are connected, and she is the reason I can see. The sun has meaning to me, but Victoria is the light that makes me capable of viewing the universe.
I would not see anything if it weren’t for Victoria illuminating the world.
I see flashes of Victoria as a shape so white hot that I can’t see her face. The reason I’m certain she’s the brightness in my world is that every night, I cannot cuddle her to sleep. I have to face away from her, and I haven’t been able to explain why until now.
She burns with such ferocious intensity that I can’t handle touching her for too long.
In my minds eye she’s a burning white hot being with her red hair flowing as fire around her. Her name is somehow flowing in the flames of her hair. Dancing and waving, and somehow, I’ve known this image since before I was born.
I was overwhelmed with love. Overwhelmed with understanding.
I think of Mother Ayahuasca and again think, ‘Why?’ The music is vibrating my body. Again it’s a symphony of instruments. ‘Why did you show me this?’
The music gets louder in my mind.
I yell in my mind, “Why am I here!? Why was I born?!’
I hear slow, careful words amongst the instruments. “Because…”
“Yes? Tell me!” I’m impatient.
“Because… I…”
“Tell me!”
“Because… I… want…” The voice is calm and certain.
“Alright, calm down.” I think at myself. “The answer will come.”
“Because…” It speaks infuriatingly calmly.
“I…” It reaches down and taps my forehead with every word.
“Want…” It lightly taps my head.
“To…” It smiles.
“Show…”
“You…”
“Love.”
A symphony of music blasts in my mind as she finishes saying the word love! The light is everywhere! A wash of clear energy spreads through my chest. I’m connected to it all and there’s no questions I need answered. I feel it. I feel it all.
Love beams from the stars to the roof of the hall, then rains from the ceiling.
It’s pitch black but I’ve never seen so clearly.
I’m smiling. I can feel my cheeks strained, letting me know they’ve been smiling for a while.
I begin to calm down.
The wave calms and I sit up and meditate.
I’m fully naked and decide to put my pants back on. I picture Rohan telling next months group about the bloke that walked fully naked across the room, went to the bathroom, walked back completely unaware of being nude. I was certain this would happen if I didn’t concentrate now.
I attempt to put my shorts on in the dark.
Bugger me, if it didn’t take 20 minutes of spinning them around and around to find the button on the front. I giggled quietly to myself about how ridiculous it was, no impatience, all the time in the world. I sent my love out to one of the girls being sick in their bucket.
The music was getting calmer at this stage and I drift off to sleep with a smile on my face.
I wake to the girls laughing and climbing in with me for a cuddle, Vic and Charley. I hug without opening my eyes.
We leave with the sun coming up.
Skin tingling with love.
I say these things with certainty now. I know the opposing thoughts of people reading this will be along the lines of, “No, hippy, your skin was tingling because you’d just been off your nutter on drugs for 12 hours.”
You can view it that way if you like, but I was experiencing it and I’m telling you that the reason my skin was tingling is because love was flowing from my pores.
I feel it now as I rewrite this. I can reignite all those overwhelming feelings by concentrating on my breath.
Breakfast at 9. Art. Lunch. Sharing time. As we go around the room and I tell my experience, I’m deliberately sitting across the room from Victoria. I explain to her that she was the light that made me capable of seeing anything in the world.
Vic was crying, a few of the other girls were crying. Everyone applauded when I was done which doesn’t usually happen. It was touching that people felt what I was trying to get across because it meant so much to me.
Everyone seemed to get more from this second ceremony. Everyone was telling Vic that her swaying movements of her arms and legs were hypnotic and witch like.
Vic and I cuddle on the floor as she begins to tell her story to the group.
“So,” she states, “I set my intention to see my career in more detail, as I got my purpose last time.
It was weird. The patterns would get stuck rather than constantly moving.
I felt my resistance and decided to relax. I then felt I was lying in this grey bed and had a feeling it was dull as I wasn’t seeing any of the psychedelic colours but I knew if I relaxed this would change.
I had a sudden urge to flip over and as I did, she came.
She was gold and carried the presence of Cleopatra.
She started giving me this vibration massage and putting gold into all of my cells.
She told me that if I wanted to see my career then I’d really have to concentrate this time and pay close attention.
She asked me if I was ready. I said, “Yes.”
She asked me again if I truly was ready. I said yes again.
She asked if I truly felt ready.
I said, “Yes! Come on. I’ve been waiting 25 years for these answers!”
Then we hurtled into the solar system. She showed me how I can call on each planet anytime I needed them. She showed me how to use my hands to do that and then how to know which one to use for each occasion.
I must’ve looked crazy stretching out to take planets from the solar system with my hands . At the time I didn’t care because to me it felt so cool to use my senses to draw in this magic.
I then learnt about time travel and astral grabbing. She took me to an archaeological dig in Egypt. We were there for ages digging and dusting, as I learnt how to retrieve knowledge from the Earth.
It was like she was reminding me that the Earth provides everything we need for us in this life.
That all answers for our health and wellbeing can be found in the jungle if we use our intuition.
I became a disease and went into a person’s body and understood that all diseases are wake up calls that can be cured by holistic health or pharmaceutical drugs or even placebos and their own minds if they are truly awoken by the call that the disease gave.
As a disease I physically felt the pull of getting lighter and being lifted from someone’s body by sheer will power for me to be gone.
With disease I started learning about rituals and how all therapy is a ritual and only works if the people performing it have the right intentions and fully believe in it, and the patient fully believes in it.
I then went to a new lesson on ideas. I learnt that ideas are like seeds. You have to plant them, but you also have to find the seeds. Your senses know where the seeds are.
I learnt that when you meet someone that you find attractive it’s because they please some of your senses. Because your ideas are inside of them.
Sexual frustration is when you have an idea that needs to surface but you’re unable to find someone that pleases enough of your senses to get it out properly.
Sometimes you meet someone who pleases all of your senses in just the right way and that’s when you fall in love and have a lot of inspiring ideas.
This is just 1 way to get your ideas out. There are many. Often the most potent ideas come out of sex or drugs but they are both equally dangerous. Choosing the wrong timing, drug, person, can cause the wrong ideas to come out disguised as good ones. You have to really tune into your senses to make sure it’s the right time.
I learnt the importance of rituals; how to move my body to birth my words; that I am Danny’s muse and he can touch my aura to tune into his senses and find his words.
I learnt how to shed bad ideas. It all boils down to channelling my inner witch.
For me, I’m Aries, and have always resonated with fire.
I have to burn things to get to my gold.
Danny is a water sign. I notice he has long showers. He needs this to wash away all the unneeded ideas until all that’s left is the gold.
I see the true nature of addiction. I see how people that break the addiction and stay clean are truly connected to their senses.
They visualise the pain of the other people addicted to the same substance they were hooked on. They see all the pain the drug has ever caused the world. Whether it’s cocaine being brought across boarders; whole families being torn apart by 1 persons alcoholism; people traumatised by sexual assault because of a persons need to escape through sex addiction.
All this is simple, yet we over complicate it.
All of this could be avoided if we were connected to our true nature and living at one with the universe.
People constantly talk about getting back to basics and escaping the capitalist rat race.
When you’re in a forest you’re surrounding yourself with the universe.
When you’re surrounded by concrete you’re surrounded by things we’ve made in the universe, not what the universe has made, and you forget why we’re here.
Our primal brains evolved to be here. We have deep connections here.
None of our ancestors developed in sky scrapers or machines, so our primal brains have no connection to them, and it disconnects us from who we are and our true purpose.
I learnt how men try to locate their ideas by going out drinking and opening up to a feminine energy they’re attracted to. Because they know the feminine is the reconnection to their love.
They’re looking for answers on how to reconnect.
All your best ideas are in the person you’re attracted to.
Sex is a powerful way of tuning into your senses.
I learnt that abundance and love can be found in any situation but to have it, you have to unlock your boldness and not follow the crowd.”
As Vic finishes, she has an air of certainty. She knows she discovered truth last night. She’s excited and hungry for more knowledge.
Fast forward to the next day. Workshop in the meeting room.
Silvia guides us through a life progression. We go to when we were a spirit. We experience our birth. This is a very traumatic moment in all babies lives.
Go to a traumatic moment in our childhood. What was it’s purpose?
Go to an adult trauma and find its purpose.
Finally, experience your death to see what happens after your death and if you need to come back to this world or whether you can move on.
I didn’t see death. I was trying so hard and I actually fell asleep. All I felt was this aversion to bright light.
I promised Silvia – and myself – that I’d meditate on it tonight.
Into the ceremony room. There’s a weird energy tonight. I’m in a strange mood.
I try to meditate after I take my dose but my limbs are getting these massive blood rushes making all my muscles tense. It’s almost painful.
Every time I felt a tiny bit I’d crave a trance, and it would disappear because I wanted it too much. It takes 2 hours for me to be calm enough to let Ayahuasca take over.
All of a sudden I’m in a trance.
There’s a brown hawk with 2 large, shimmering, blue-green feathers in the wings. It somehow represents me.
I see a flash of my birth and I’m suddenly about 8 years old. I have a migraine.
I’d forgotten how bad my migraines used to be before I started seeing a chiropractor and found that my neck was a mess.
When I’d get a migraine I’d end up with a huge aversion to light and my main remedy was to lie in the bath for hours with towels blocking every millimetre of light from the window.
The water cooled me and calmed me. I didn’t realise how this was connected to the womb.
“Take me deeper, Mother Ayahuasca.”
I’m on a stinking, wooden ship set out from England, bound for Australia. I’m cramped in with hundreds of other prisoners under the decks in the dark. The ship is swaying and I am sicker than I’ve ever felt. I am near death and I know it.
I fear them opening the hatch and seeing the poor state of me. But I know it’s inevitable.
The worst happens. The hatch opens. I have my back deliberately facing the bright opening.
They see me. I’m diseased and dying and they bring me up into the sun. The heat and brightness hit me like a thousand hornets. I collapse pitifully.
I think to myself that this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. That I’ll never be with Victoria in Australia this way. But my love is on another ship to Australia, and for all I know she could be dead.
I’m almost certain that she’s dead.
They drag me swiftly by my filthy shirt to the side of the ship.
I don’t fight.
I don’t claw for my life.
They fling me overboard.
Salt stings my eyes and nostrils but the water is calming to me and takes away most of the pain in my skin, bones, and aching guts.
I’m on my own in the dark ocean.
I drink some of the water. There’s no use being parched now.
My mind is foggy in my trance state.
I accept my situation calmly…
I sink under the cool water and my mind goes quiet…
I am far less fearful than I thought I’d be…
It feels like home…
My mind is a whisper as I accept death…
Death… slowly… wraps me…
Death is a comfortable cocoon.
I suck in breaths of salty water and the ocean accepts me.
I suck in breaths of fluid and again I’m in my mothers womb.
I am comfortable in my cocoon.
I turn my back on the opening to the womb.
Mum is being cut open and I’m thinking ‘Why?’
I’m pulled from my cocoon into the brightness and I have purpose.
Find the brightness.
Find my love.
I wake with the sun in the meditation hall. Vic and I leave more casually than the other days.
Share time. Vic speaks up.
“In my 2nd journey I learnt so much but knew I still had 3 lessons to learn. So I asked her to show me my last 3 lessons.
I meditated and used everything I’d learnt on the other trips to settle myself. I went under the blankets and that’s when doctorcitos came down and started performing surgery on my stomach. It didn’t hurt. A white light shone bright as they dropped 3 eggs of knowledge into me and sewed it up. Then they saged they area. It smelt so strong.
I later found out that Rohan went around the hall burning sage since the energy in the room was so tense.
The healers disappeared and the lessons started. This time Mother Ayahuasca wasn’t there holding my hand. I learnt about the importance of communication when it comes to helping friends and evolving the world.
I realise that birds are mine and Danny’s omens and that when we’re searching for a property, the birds will give us signals as to which is right for us.
I had a wave of confusion and Mother Ayahuasca told me I had to revise what I’d learnt.
I had to show I could deal with certain scenarios.
I was in a huge cloud with a massive book and had to get the key points out of it.
I knew that any books that come into my life will be there for a reason. Lighting the path of my journey.
She taught me skills of how anyone can work through any traumas, using the same techniques, but you have to change the language to suit them, to make them believe in the treatment and in themselves
We can call it what we want. Childhood regression, therapy, manifesting, magic, witchcraft, the universe, chasing happiness. It all stems to the same thing. The universal truth.
For the rest of my life I cannot doubt myself. I have to be bold. When I use my senses and my intuition, I’ll achieve my core purpose.
I’m on the right track.”
