the ongoing ceremony....

Exactly a year ago a friend sent me the necessary ingredients to make an ayahuasca blend.
I fretted and strained, boiled and hoped to gain, ventured into the mountains and drank the blend .....
nothing.  Not an increased pulse, not a wandering flame, not a subtle shift of consciousness.
And yet the outward changes were vast.

Last Saturday i sat again in ceremony.  A Brazilian shaman led the way.  Depth of music, light, presence of my fellow travellers,  all very beautiful and again nothing.  People purging, transforming, shaping, confronting and me just sitting there watching it all, breathing it all,  willing it all.  But again no shift of consciousness.

So there have been four ceremonies to date and there has been no tangible effect of the plant working on any level during these sacred spaces.  And in between all hell has broken loose.  All those areas where I am not being true to myself have risen like a fresh army to battle.  Reality has opened the doors to perception and I find myself flailing between falling and flying.

The very things I used to do so effortlessly, like buying toilet paper, electricity, ink cartridges become more and more difficult.  I find less and less holding me onto this paradigm.  It all seems so very pointless.  Have to force myself to give it relevance.

Yesterday I headed for the mountains alone.  Something needed to shift and I was powerless to enable this.
As I stepped onto the path a big fat lizard walked right in front of me and stopped.  We looked at each other for a long time.  And then it was down, down, down.  Walked until the sun became overwhelming and a young gorge called me with her ferns and sound of splashing water.  A frog greeted me as I stepped onto a rock.  Drank for an eternity the clean mountain water and lay down as if to die.  The flowing water shaping my breath,  urging me to that space where there is just nothingness.   A cape robin bravely came and perched very close to me and would then fly off to splash in the water and then return to me.  Almost like a guide ensuring my attention was in place.  I breathed and chanted and lay still for many, many hours.  A culmination of ceremonies.  Body getting heavier and sinking deeper into the earth. 

The clouds forming and dissolving in the mountain stillness.  No permanence.  No impermanence either.
Rubbing my palms together and holding them over my closed eyes I sank into the blackness of being.  The pure darkness, beautiful because of the absence of light.  The noumenon.  Pre-existence.  The source of all.
After several minutes in this space of pure being I removed my hands and with eyes closed the sun shone right into me, with a brililance and radiance and ecstasy that no plant can give.  In the presence of a vibrancy and frequency that left me in complete awe and gratitude.

All these teachers,  the plants, the earth, the sun, friends, family, animals.  The majesty that lies in the most ordinary aspects defies description and yet has me bowing at its feet.  Again and again and again.