AYAHUASCA. MERCILESS COMPASSION

The mind can be a maze.  Memories, thoughts, senses, emotions and stories among an infinite other qualia all link and intertwine together with connections as vast as the universe.  A mind in the TMS state is one where the connections have some how led to pain or a many other uncomfortable symptoms.  The work of unlearning these connections and getting out of the pain maze can be challenging because it is hard to see the construct for what it is when you are inside.  We become unconscious how we ourselves have helped to create these painful connections in the first place, and feel victimized by our seemingly powerless situation.   Usually the symptom of chronic pain is coming from an unconscious part of ourselves.  Sometimes we develop such a strong mask or masks that we even deny the truth of our own emotions and essence and create a shadow place to hide our truth.  The shadows are the places to look if we want to bring awareness to where our nature and ego have divided.  The divide is where the shadow parts of our psyche reside.  We have a certain image or perception of ourself that is conscious (our ego) but then there are realms just below our normal consciousness that contain all kinds of fragmented or hidden sides of our nature.  To understand how our conscious mind may be inhibiting our health and well being it can be valuable to view ourselves from outside our normal ego construct and through a different perspective. Our perceptions of ourselves usually come with all kinds of untrue complexes of thoughts, emotions, prohibitions and illusions picked up a long the way.  Thus, when we see a perception from another view, we start to realize maybe how skewed our own self images can be.  We become conscious of ourself from a new perspective and this brings into awareness a different aspect of how we feel, who we are and what we may be carrying from the past.  Now not to say that another perspective is pure truth.  It is just another perspective, but in doing the work of understanding where our pain comes from, another perspective on the mindbody can be an incredible tool to help uncover the illusion of pain, and the illumination of things in the shadow that could be at the root of the problem.

This brings us to psychedelics.  In my experience I found Ayahuasca to be of an immense value in health, and understanding ourselves, our mindbody and our connection to all living things.  I do feel however, one must need to be already working in areas of the psyche with intention to really tap into the healing energy and power that lives in all of us.  Of course there are other reasons to take a journey with plant medicines, but what I am speaking of relates to understanding the reasons for TMS and symptoms that relate to repressed emotions.

I had been dealing with symptoms of TMS for the better part of two years.  Through some friends, an opportunity came up to be a part of an Ayahuasca ceremony near where I was living at the time.  I decided to take part, since I was feeling a bit desperate at that point, and had heard of some of the healing benefits of the amazonian plant medicine.  Also at that time I had just been introduced to the work of Dr. Sarno.  My attention began to be more focused on what I was feeling emotionally.  I started to realize how little attention I was paying to myself and how I was feeling and the enormous amount of worry I had towards the back pain, headaches and health in general.  Also I couldn’t deny how angry I was at my life situation with work and relationships at the time.  I was also exploring the past in my journaling and was beginning to see just how much emotional baggage I was carrying.  I went into the ceremony primed to look within myself for what may have been causing me pain. 

During the ceremony a lot went on, but I feel most of it is personal.  Perhaps some day, if it feels right I will share more details.  Right now I want to focus on a part of the experience that really led me to see how past traumas were involved in the TMS process I was living and how Ayahuasca showed me how I was really feeling.  Around the middle of the night I began to feel this shaking in my right leg.  It started off as a kind of twitch, but of the whole ankle and foot not just a single muscle.  The shake began to grow and grow until I found my whole leg shaking uncontrollably.  It gained momentum and my pelvis started to shake as well.  I felt like there was a part of me that could control it, and a part of me that was helpless to try and stop it.  I know this sounds strange but it is the only way I can relate it.  The shaking grew into full blown convulsing on the floor, I could feel this thing inside of me moving through my body, it was emotion.  It moved through my bodies nervous system from somewhere deep.  I could feel these emotions moving through my body, then witness the part of my brain that denied them as well.  The medicine had suppressed my brains decision maker that decides which emotions are ok and which need to be hidden.  My ego could try and deny what I was feeling, but my body and nervous system were free to express what had it been holding for far too long.  Nature will always move towards balance and harmony.  Emotions are a natural phenomena that we all feel, they guide us, invigorate us and help us to understand the the human experience.  But they need to be felt to be released.  Holding on to emotions creates stagnation and blockages in the body which leads to de regulation and moves away from harmony.  Ayahuasca can act at a catalyst to free the parts of our nature that have been suppressed by our own ego, identities and ignorance.  Eventually the resistance to feel all these things move inside of me, and my nervous system was shaking to release the them.  The shaking would then move its way up into my chest and I began from cry.  Deep, mournful and grieving cries.  Tears and mucus covered my pillow and clothes, it felt good.  This process kept happening a few times.  Something felt like it would be released physiologically, then the shaking would commence and move its way into an emotional release.  It was something reminiscent of when I was a little boy.  A time when I experienced some events that were intense and traumatic to go through.  

I didn’t realize most of this at the time, I just knew that I had experienced this wild body shaking and crying, but didn’t really understand the context or reason for it.  It was later on that I heard somewhere how this kind of shaking comes from trauma.  It’s a way for the body to bring the nervous system back into balance after energy has been de regulated due to trauma and the immobility response in the fight or flight system.  This revelation made me see that my body and mind were in a state of complex PTSD.  I started to realize even more how what I was experiencing through TMS had layers of trauma involved.  Once again, I hit the book store.  I found a copy of ‘Waking the Tiger,’ by Peter A. Levine.  It’s in these pages where I was exposed to the details of the nature of trauma, and how animals without such complex brains as ourselves seem to move through stages of nervous system de regulation easily and naturally.  Our own physiology seems to know how to bring itself into balance also, we just have other complexes in our brain and within our societal and communal structures that can inhibit the natural process.  This is where for me Ayahuasca was a powerful aid in healing.  The medicine seems to let the body and mind return to a state not governed by the limiting illusions of the masks I developed.  In the altered state of consciousness and under the positive intention of a ceremony the medicine just interacted with the parts of my mind and thus body that were out of harmony and mostly unconscious to me,

  Ayahuasca is not something like a pill.  You don’t just sit back and let the medicine fix you.  The medicine shows you where you may be out of harmony, out of touch with yourself and where presence, love and attention can be directed.  It’s up to the participant to see what is being shown, to heed the lessons and to have the will to heal and the bravery to look within the places of the unconscious and bring them to light.  Ayahuasca lets us view ourselves from a place not constructed my our own illusions.  We get the opportunity to experience ourselves and all the hidden parts more fully.  Yes, this can be scary, but it cal also be blissful.  In our attempts to hide parts of ourselves we also find dark places to put the joy that comes with knowing and expressing our authentic feelings and essence.  The work can seem hard, but really it is though our  unconconciousness that we have mixed up some of the best parts or ourselves as something to be afraid of or ashamed of. In my experience the process of the body coming back into health and regulation seems to directly correlate from the psyche releasing the tension of repressing emotions.  It’s as if there are rivers of energy flowing through the body that maintain health and vitality.  When we deny parts of ourselves the energy channels that correlate to those parts start to get blocked and lose their power to flow and regenerate.  With my experience, Ayahuasca showed my the nervous energy and tension I had stored in my physiology and then it was up to me to find out the sources of those emotions and traumas and work through them with presence to not keep perpetuating the cycle.  

Everyone experience will be different.  I hope this only serves as relation of experience that gives someone an amount of guidance if they resonate with what was written.  There are innumerable ways to tune into the peace and healing that exists within.  For me, I will always feel a great amount of gratitude for the guides and medicines that have helped and continue to help me look within and see truth and shine a light of awareness into the shadow.   

Video of a polar bear completing a trauma cycle. The nervous system discharges a large amount of energy that was mobilized during the flight response from running away from the helicopter. Humans have more complex brains then animals which can lead to inhibitions of completing trauma cycles. If the energy is not released it can become stuck in the body causing de regulation and a variety of symptoms, chronic pain being one.