Having had the opportunity to experience private ayahuasca ceremonies for myself, I thought I’d share a bit about my personal experience, starting with the last of the private ayahuasca ceremonies I participated in.
We’re in eclipse season. Not only that, but we celebrated the Spring Equniox recently. Here in Ecuador it’s known as Mushuk Nina, which means new fire. I had the opportunity to participate in a beautiful Equniox ritual to celebrate the new fire, to honor this portal where we can leave behind what no longer serves us and plant the seeds we wish to welcome in the new.
In addition to the beautiful ritual I participated in, I decided to have a private Ayahuasca ceremony for myself. These days, my private ayahuasca ceremonies look a little bit different because I now have permission to drink Ayahuasca on my own, and in the past few months I have guided myself through several ceremonies without the accompaniment of my teacher.
These have been opportunities for me to reflect on situations I was facing in my day-to-day life that were causing turbulence in my inner world. Ayahuasca is such a great ally for being able to observe objectively and to process feelings, and this is exactly what I felt she supported me in with the challenges I was facing in my day-to-day. In the first couple of private ayahuasca ceremonies, I was able to return to a feeling of harmony within myself after a process of feeling the emotions that were bottled up inside – a mixture of frustration and sadness. I could see how some of my frustration was the result of me not speaking up and expressing myself, a shadow of mine that I have been working on for some time. I could also see how some of the turbulence I was feeling internally was the result of fear – the fear that is evoked when I experience friction in a relationship that is meaningful to me, that brings up a fear of losing someone important to me. So these were opportunities to observe my shadows, my attachments, feel my emotions, and let go to return to a feeling of harmony within myself.
In addition to this processing, these private ayahuasca ceremonies were also opportunities for me to explore my creativity and to connect with my voice. I spent hours simply connecting to songs that touch my soul that I am in the process of learning. The beauty of private ayahuasca ceremonies is that the energy of the entire ceremony is directed at that which one wants to explore.
And then came the ceremony I facilitated for myself during the Equinox weekend. Before going into the experience of the ceremony, some context may be helpful.
If I’m being honest, I would say that last year, I fell in love. This awakened a feeling inside of me I had not felt in a long time – feeling in love with someone. With that came the other feelings that might typically accompany this process. Feeling excitement, hope. As a pisces, I probably let myself get too carried away by this. Where I’m at now I can look back and say, if I’m being honest, that I let myself get carried away with the fantasy and wasn’t seeing what was really in front of me. In any case, I knew at the time that my feelings weren’t reciprocated, and so that initiated me into a process I am so deeply grateful for, although it was painful at the time. Quite simply, it was the pain of having an attachment. Of wanting something to happen in a certain way. It was the sadness of realizing that this hope, this dream that I had wasn’t going to come true. And it’s these special moments, and I mean it when I say that they’re special, because they touch our deepest wounds. My deepest wound was touched as a result of this not getting the outcome that I wanted, and that gave me the opportunity to heal by seeing the part of myself that was still wounded, and by diving deep into that wound.
I consider myself to be a true alchemist of my emotions, and I like to use any opportunity in which I experience inner pain, and turn that into gold. So being the alchemist that I am, I spent the past year learning how to give myself that which I realized I was seeking from outside of me. It was not always easy, but it brought me deeper into connection with myself, and for that I am eternally grateful.
I learned a lot – specifically about the ways in which I was betraying myself that I just wasn’t aware of, and where I needed to put the fear aside in order to honor myself and my feelings and express myself. There was a lot that I’m not going to get into because I want to talk about the ceremony, which I felt was the culmination of the past year of inner alchemy I labored on, which I will share in part 2 of this post.