Ayahuasca Mind Part 4

Grabbin Seeds

 

 

Ceremony Four: The Grunting Labyrinth 

 

A serpent coiled tightly around a golden egg writhes with anticipation inside the flesh walls of my stomach. Like the discomfort of a newborn squirming through the confined space of its mother’s labyrinthine tubes, the thing birthing inside me had to lead somewhere...I just wasn’t expecting it to grunt in a low rumbling tone the anti-climactic demand “go to the bathroom!” In the jungle darkness mareado and barefoot I stumble down the maze of interlocking walkways into a sparse bathroom where I come face to face with a toilet that has become personified. 

“Have you been waiting here for me? did you know I would come?” A rare type of puzzlement and surprise perks up, one that emerges when you find yourself having dialogue with inanimate objects. 

 

La Purga Interlude 

 

“Purging” is an integral part of ayahuasca ceremonies, serving to expell any accumulated toxins that can affect the proper functioning of our being. These toxins attract themselves to us through a variety of means and inhibit our ability to “be whole” (the meaning of “health”), therefore they need to be released through vomiting, diarrhea, crying, or farting. The openness with which these natural bodily functions were discussed and accepted as fundamental to healing, compared to the fearful and suppressive attitudes I was more accustomed to, helped to shift my viewpoint toward an appreciation of how powerful these technologies of release can be.
 

Ceremony Four Continued  

I take a seat and gaze at the spherical domains brought into being by the choregraphed dance of my flashlight.  A slender rainbow, alive and pulsating, streams a few inches above my skin and deconstructs the illusion of continuous movement. Instead of smooth transitions, it moves by way of still snapshots that resemble the process of creating stop motion animation. I watch and ponder, waiting to make sure all that needs to come out, comes out (if you know what I mean). A powerful tide of The Strange wraps itself into my perceiving mind, so I concentrate it on examining this body I’ve been for all these years.
Grabbing my knees to make it more real, I think “What is this for? Why do I have a body?”

Adherents to Darwinian evolution tend to view the body as simply a vehicle for survival,  a machine built for the gratification of selfish desires. If it’s simply to survive and nothing else, then why so complicated? Why thousands of miles of internal tubing? Why more synaptic possibilities than observable stars? Couldn’t we survive perfectly well with a less complex body?

An inquisitive iris lured by the universal fascination with getting closer, pulls itself right next to the extended bone of my knee cap...but it can only go so far. With telescope’s we can peer into the world of cells, those socially conscious communities that carry out most of the body’s work by running off the energy of the local electromagnetic environment. The dynamism of this environment can acquire its unique signature through the energetic input of thought.  Therefore thought can influence the quality and type of work expressed through the body.
 
Past the domain of cells lies an information dense core, the nucleus. Within its walls reside DNA, a crystalline substance able to receive and transmit signals from both the local and nonlocal universe. Throughout human history a variety of carefully-taught methods have been practiced by people who understand this (by whatever metaphors they use) and want to extend their conscious awareness of DNA’s recieving capacities to connect and learn from different vibrational frequencies. It seems the fundamental function of our bodies, built from the genetic blueprint of DNA, is to recieve and transmit energy signals from “the environment” (within the skin-encapsulated ego as well as billions of miles away). From this understanding arises the ethic of broadening these capacities.
 
All done! (“how cute”)
 
I configure my legs, or my legs configure themselves, out of that awkward sitting position and into that idiosyncratic human stance (the bipedal two leg gig) to head on back to the maloca. On tippie-toes with the delicacy of a geisha, I traverse the darkness as unobtrusively as possible to sit lotus position on a mat. After a soft congratulation for not stepping on any toes, my head languidly droops back at a forty-five degree angle with my mouth, resembling a pyramid capstone, opens wide to await the inflow of cosmic signals.
 
“Ahhh......”
 
Breath transfigures into a luminous web that draws itself into the architecture of the maloca roof, providing midwife support for the birth pangs of a sound rainbow and its child, a spiraling troupe of o-so-sinuous green vines. My head puslates to the rhythm of ethereal butterfly’s that soon take flight, piercing through the net with a fluttering grace unseen in this world.
 
The sounds born from people collecting their voices into a unified pool of vibration penetrates through my body and orchestrates a serpentine dance. Movement just happens, I don’t consciously direct it -- the only injection of conscious will is the thought “I don’t want this to stop.” Unfortunately it does stop, halted by the tune of a rumbling stomach --- you know the deal. I don’t know why -- too many mapacho’s? too much insensitivity throughout my life? --- but this meat machine isn’t working as I’d like it to. “What’s your deal?” I remember thinking, providing the opening question to a dialogic process bound to take long yet long overdue. How can “we” work together? The answers to these questions cannot be found in dead phrases written down and forgotten, for the only way I’ll know if an answer is “correct” is through lived experience.
 
With this the ceremony ends. I tiredly scamper off to my bed and gaze at the gossamer rainbow patterns gliding centimeters above my skin before surrendering to the tides of sleep.