Reflections on a Powerful, Challenging Ayahuasca Journey

Written September 5, 2010

A week ago, I had my most intense experience of consciousness yet in this lifetime. An ayahuasca ceremony brought me to a realm where time and space did not exist. I existed only as pure, single-pointed consciousness aware of all existence simultaneously.

Over the past week, as the intensity of it gradually fades, I've done a lot of contemplation of this experience. I had set an intention before going into this experience that I'd like to be able to remember as much as possible of the journey. I opened my eyes many times and reconnected with the 3D physical world in order to facilitate this, and to be able to integrate some of my experience back in normal reality. As in my previous journeys, the realms I explored felt much more real than this 3D reality. I know that these realms are a deeper or more expanded reality upon which this 3D reality is overlaid.

In all but my recent two 5-MEO journeys and this one with ayahuasca, there was always a sense of space that I could move through, even though it was quite different at times form the time/space matrix of this normal reality. On these three journeys, however, the concept of space no longer existed. I became simply a point of consciousness with nowhere to go. Time also ceased to exist. I had some fear that because of that, I might be stuck in this very strange reality and never return to my 3D life, which completely ceased to exist in this other reality, though I did have some faint memory of the 3D existence.

Describing what I experienced seems nearly impossible, but I'll give it a try.

After a rich and deeply connecting first two-thirds of this ayahuasca journey, I was able to think and remember the intentions I had set for the journey. My key intention was to open to feeling all of the challenging emotions which I seem to be good at avoiding in my regular life.

As I remembered this intention, I saw a large, discrete mass below and to my right. I know this contradicts my experience of no space, but these things don't always make rational sense. This mass seemed to represent a repressed, shadow side of existence. I wanted to invite integration of this mass into my being.

Yet as soon as I opened to this, I began to experience very intense and scary feelings. It was powerfully overwhelming, and I very quickly asked it to stop, which thankfully it did.

This encounter was very humbling and left me feeling in fear, though not nearly as intense as the incredibly overwhelming fear I felt when I first opened to integration. I realized that this was all much too fast. There was no way I could integrate all of these intense emotions at once. I saw that it would take a long time to integrate them. Suddenly I saw how useful the time and space realms can be to slow down this whole process and allow it to happen at a pace that I and everyone involved can handle.

I also saw how my sweetie Zora holds a significant chunk of these challenging emotions inside of her. I wanted to connect with her back in normal reality and invite her to open and share these feelings with me as much as she was willing. As she was deep in her own challenging space at that time, however, I knew it was best to leave her alone.

As I gradually came down, I was still feeling uncomfortable and really just wanted this part of the journey to be over, so I could leave this strange fear place and get to work on integrating back into normal reality. Yet I now have a deep new appreciation for the 3D world as a safe place to allow this integration to play out. I was very happy to have the effects of the ayahuasca eventually wear off. Still feeling the strong residue of these intense emotions, I doubted that I would ever do this medicine again.

One of the aspects of this experience when I was in the deepest state was that I felt my consciousness was merged with the consciousness of all existence. It was like my consciousness expanded to include all beings. And the scary part, which I also experienced in my two previous 5-MEO journeys, was that I was in charge of everything. This didn't feel right, as I felt anything I tried to do could or would impinge on the free will of other beings, even though I felt they were a part of my expanded consciousness.

The best way to describe this state is that I felt like a massive energetic starfish with huge numbers of fractalized aspects of my consciousness making up each arm. All of these consciousnesses were a part of my "body" for lack of a better term, but my consciousness was in charge, even though I didn't want it to be. Most bizarre, to say the least.

The next morning, I already realized that this was merely an introduction to a completely different way of being to which I felt like a complete novice. I realized that in fact I did want to explore this state more. I'm feeling that even more strongly now after a week of being able to integrate much of the experience into my consciousness in this reality. I would like to become familiar with this most bizarre, fascinating realm. At the same time, I'm in no hurry. I want a good amount of time to fully integrate the experience before diving in again.

Zora had an extremely challenging and fear-filled experience, even more than mine. She needed and asked for a lot of support during her journey. I was sad that as her childhood sexual abuse by her father was a key part of this, she was not open to my male energy support. One of the female facilitators thankfully sat with her several hours until dawn. Zora said her loving feminine presence made a huge difference and allowed her to move into healing spaces she could not access on her own.

Later in the morning, Zora gradually opened to my presence. When the time was right, I snuggled in and cuddled her in silence for over an hour before we slowly started to think about leaving. At that point, she was very appreciative of my presence. In our two-hour drive home, we had a very rich and inspiring conversation. What a deep, challenging, and powerful journey for us both!