I drunk at 6PM and lay back on my mat. When Javier came to offer the 2nd cup an hour later, I knew I didn’t need any more. The visions were strong and the medicine was definitely flowing.
My muscles felt tense and my body was convulsing, but I lay flat and allowed it to happen without resistance. After some time, the feelings hadn’t passed, and Javier came over to sing to me. I intuitively rolled over onto my stomach which was an odd position to have moved into during a ceremony. Javier was working on my back energetically, and the shaking was becoming more intense. He went to his mesa to get a clear bottle. He said he was going to put some water on my back. As soon as the water touched me I jumped a good few inches off the ground on my stomach, and then the convulsions passed.
The next part of the ceremony was spent with light visions, particularly of owls. I got up to go outside as I had in the last Ayahuasca ceremony. Some people are particularly vocal during Ayahuasca ceremonies and I wanted some fresh air. I spent a while outside just lying flat and gazing at the stars, without a single thought in my mind, before a thought arose, “wow, I haven’t had a thought for ages.”
I realized that time itself is not objective, it’s a mental construct. We keep our internal clocks functioning by gauging them against the ticking over of mental chatter. When my mind stepped out the way, I expanded into a timeless and eternal place. How long I spent outside, I don’t know, it could have been somewhere between fifteen minutes and an hour or more.
After the ceremony, Javier told me that he had energetically removed something from my back. He didn’t go into more detail, and surprisingly, I didn’t feel the need to know.
As I reflected on the ceremony, I realized that my previous character would have found it to be horribly unpleasant, and I would have once resisted the whole way through. Here I was though, lying outside and feeling empty, relaxed and empowered.
