What I Learned During my First Ayahuasca Ceremony.

 I opened my eyes and took a long look around the teepee.

There were about 25 of us arranged in a circle around a bonfire. The shaman was sitting quietly with his eyes closed, hands in his lap. He appeared to be meditating. Everyone else seemed to be sleeping, lying or sitting in various postures.

No one spoke. The only audible sound was that of the crackling bonfire.

Apart from me, the rest of the participants were either colorfully clothed in Mesoamerican-Indian dress or in music festival clothing. I felt “square” in the sweatpants and sweater I was wearing. Everyone else had brought their own personal lambskins with them to cover their seats. My seat was the only lambskin-less one, and its naked chairness suited my relative squareness.

We had all taken a drink of ayahuasca, the DMT-containing tea that has been used for millennia amongst traditional societies in the Amazon region. It is a powerful hallucinogen used in the type of shamanic ritual I was participating in now.

The others seemed to be thoroughly lost in their internal worlds, battling whatever inner demons they had come to fight. They looked so comfortable in their lambskins.

I, on the other hand, merely felt sleepy. I had come in search of direction and clarity in my life. My expat job, once a source of pleasure and energy had become a meaningless grind and I did not believe in what the company was doing. I had lost my purpose.

I had had high hopes that ayahuasca would show me something.

But I didn’t have any visions, wasn’t battling any demons.

I went up for a second dose of the tea.

Still nothing. All I felt was uncomfortable in my lambskin-less chair.

The ceremony seemed to be drawing to a close. I saw the faint greying of the outside world through the teepee flaps, indicating that the sun had nearly finished resting. We had been awake all night.

What the hell was I even doing here? I wondered. What was the hype about this ayahuasca stuff? It was a dud. Did I just have a weak dose? Am I more resistant to it than others? Was it even really ayahuasca?

The others began to stir out of their dreamlike states.

Then the shaman began to speak. This being Switzerland, his words were translated from Spanish into both German and French by his assistants.

As he spoke, I began to notice a change in my awareness. It came on subtly and incrementally. I noticed suddenly that I was in a state of fully focused awareness, my heart and my consciousness were completely open and absorbed in the present moment.

In the shaman’s words – and in the words of others who spoke in turn – I saw different facets of my own issues, as if the person speaking was a prism that split light into an unique array of different colors. But all the light came from the same source and was originally the same color.

A type of mass telepathy was taking place; all of our issues somehow melded and merged with each other and the words spoken were for meant for all of us, both collectively and individually.

We saw our own strengths and powers and fears and worries reflected in the hearts and minds of one other. We looked at each other with joy, understanding and empathy, knowing that our individual journeys are critical not only to us but to the whole of humanity, as we individually added to the collective human consciousness in an energetic causal web of infinite complexity.

This was the great mystery about which all spiritual leaders have tried to understand and teach others. That love and connection with all your brothers and sisters were what made a strong community and a happy life. Our own individual evolution seemed crucially important to the evolution of the collective.

We were forbidden from drinking any water until the end of the ceremony. After 6+ hours of ayahuasca, tobacco, and wood smoke, the small sips of water I was served were the most precious thing I could have asked for in that moment, more valuable to me than my own weight in gold.

I took the cup gratefully, and the assistant smiled broadly at me, wishing me good morning. He was as happy to serve me as I was in accepting. I drank carefully and slowly, savoring each cool refreshing sip.

Appreciation. That was another master lesson. Happiness is found in the abundance of treasures we already have, not in chasing something outside of us that we imagine to be lacking.

We live better now than a king might have lived just 200 years ago. Each day we have thousands of servants waiting on us – providing us energy, running our transportation networks, delivering a cornucopia of the world’s food straight to our doorstep, giving us fresh water to drink and bathe in on command, and making the near totality of human knowledge available at the movement of a finger.

But… it is easy to forget. So easy to forget.

Temazcal

The ceremony had come to a close. Or so I thought.

Before going outside we were all offered a glass of huachuma, a mescaline-containing cactus. I drank half of a glass.

We followed the shaman outside to a handmade sweat lodge called a temazcal. It was a dome-shaped structure made of flexible wooden beams and blankets less than 2 meters high. The entrance was low to the ground, requiring us to crawl inside – there was no room to stand. In the center there was a square pit dug into the ground, about 50cm deep.

Outside of the temazcal was a bonfire that had been lit sometime during the night.

In the Ecuadorian tradition, the temazcal represents the sacred womb of Mother Earth.

We all crawled back into the womb in reverse age order – from oldest to youngest. We sat in a semicircle around the pit in double rows, sitting almost close enough together to be touching. We waited for the shaman to join us.

A helper then went to fetch rocks that had been baking in the fire. He brought them into the temazcal one at a time, placing them into the pit, and the shaman blessed each one with some herbs which crackled and gave off an invigorating aroma as they burned.

Seven large stones were brought in. The heat already began to radiate.

Then the temazcal flap was closed and we were shut in near total darkness, the only visible light coming from the red hot stones, enclosed with the heat.

After some words and blessing, the drums began. The songs accompanying the drums took on a different tone than the songs from inside the teepee – they were louder and more defiant.

Water was thrown onto the stones after each song, ratcheting up the heat. I had no idea how much time was passing – I could only measure time in terms of the number of songs we sang.

As the heat rose higher everyone joined in the singing. The songs were our way to fight against the fears encroaching upon us. As the heat rose and steam filled the tent we were all filled with the same fears – of dehydration, suffocation and death.

Cuando el fuego te acerca, dale un beso…

As the heat continued to rise, we sang and chanted and screamed and battled against the heat and our fears. Some participants became terrified and wanted to leave the temazcal but the shaman would not allow it. He spoke encouraging words to them and they lie down on their stomachs, closer to the cool earth.

One girl was unable to do this, and urgently needed to leave the tent. The shaman let her pass.

The shaman then said some somber words for her, as if she had been lost. She had been re-born prematurely back into the world.

After about the 6^th song, just about when I could take it no longer and felt I would suffocate and die, the singing ended and a motion was made to open the tent flap.

Yes! I had made it through!

The cool air rushed in from outside and we breathed in deeply. We sat there for some time.

Why isn’t anyone leaving? I thought.

Then I saw the assistant go back toward the bonfire with the shovel.

Oh, no…..

“Are we doing another round?” I asked someone.

“Yes. There are four rounds in total.”

“Four???”

The thought filled me with absolute dread. I felt nauseated, like I needed to vomit. I didn’t feel I could make another round. I told the shaman I urgently needed to leave the tent.

I crawled outside, onto some grass, and vomited. I felt immediate relief.

Once you leave the temazcal, you are not allowed back in. The girl who had left previously was still lying down outside, her head buried in the grass. She seemed to still be reliving a traumatic moment from her past.

I was feeling good now. I sat up, enjoying the wonderful garden and green surroundings. It was a beautiful morning. I was so grateful to be out of the inferno. A small butterfly landed on my finger. It was electric blue. It seemed to be an extension of my finger and not a separate entity.

I reflected on what had just happened.

Pride had caused my premature re-birth.

People generally need to vomit during the ayahuasca ceremony – this is called the purge. For most people it is a necessary step – the purge is a way to leave your old issues and fears behind, and relief always follows.

I also needed to vomit at some point during the ceremony but I had held it back. I had felt ashamed to vomit in front of others and I pretended I was strong, so I pushed down the urge.

In the temazcal however, it came back. There was no escaping it once it came.

And now I had been born premature, still an infant in this new world, my journey into wisdom incomplete.

Pride is a barrier to connection and truth.

Pride prevents us from showing vulnerability, which makes it difficult to connect on a human level with others. Vulnerability itself is connecting and humanizing.

A prideful person will avoid situations that may make him or her look foolish. It could prevent you from reaching out to someone or asking someone on a date. What if they say no? What if they don’t like me? Don’t put yourself out there or risk judgement from others – it’s better to do nothing and keep your pride intact.

This was the main lesson I learned in my first ceremony.

These lessons stayed with me in the weeks and months that followed, and were somehow reinforced in my interactions and conversations with others.

I reflected deeply on Swiss culture, and my Swiss roots. This country boasts some of the happiest people in the world, yet curiously also has one of the highest suicide rates.

What did happiness mean for me? Did it mean comfort, convenience and quality? Or did it involve connecting in a significant way with others?

In the latter definition I see a deficit in Swiss culture. Sometimes there does not seem to be much warmth, love and connection on more than a superficial level.

But that cannot be true. All humans have the same needs for love and connection.

Perhaps the issue is that it is not expressed often enough. Or it is expressed in a way that by its very nature is distancing.

It could be that pride is the culprit here – the desire to save face, do things “correctly” and appear respectable and precise. Foolishness and mistakes risk the judgement of others.

But that’s just, like, my opinion, man.

Since then, I have participated in other sessions in Switzerland and elsewhere and accompanied first-timers.

As someone who has held a lifelong commitment to continuous self-improvement, I have found no better nor faster method for overcoming my own fears and enabling profound self-reflection than an ayahuasca and temazcal ceremony.

To be sure, this may not sound appealing to everyone. It is an intense and terrifying experience. But if you can get through it – if you can fight and conquer your fear of death in the flames – you will feel that there is almost nothing that you cannot do.

As another shaman has put it to me: “La gente aqui esta endormida”.

It is no coincidence that such cultural traditions from the Amazon have arrived here to help wake up the collective consciousness to one of love and connection, and remind us of the things that matter.

And that it’s really not a problem if the train is 3 minutes late.