A Safe, Friendly Embrace by Big Brother Aya

This March I attended two Heart of the Initiate workshops in Brazil. I drank ayahuasca three times at each workshop. Eighteen people came to the first workshop, eleven to the second, six of whom were repeaters. It was an incredible adventure spending fourteen days sharing exotic experiences with twenty-three other people.

I want to describe two features of the workshops: 1) the protective environment, and 2) the effects of drinking ayahuasca.

Aya is a powerful drug concocted by brewing a vine and the leaves of a shrub for 10-14 days, with brewers constantly praying over it. Praying is a helpful practice. The Japanese scientist Moto’s research proves that positive voices and writings directed to the surface of a container holding liquid make the liquid’s molecules arrange themselves in an orderly pattern; nasty messages attached to a container ensure that the molecules within fracture into chaotic patterns. Friendliness helps liquids as well as humans.

Aya emits dimethyltryptamine (DMT) released by the pineal gland in very small amounts, and in large amounts in super-dramatic events such as birth or death. Aya thus is a natural substance and not a synthetic cocktail. Psychedelic substances such as nicotine, alcohol, marijuana, and ecstasy do not contain enzymes or molecules that correspond to those in our brains.

The environment must support Aya’s powerful influence. An unfriendly setting will likely doom a drinker to emotional trauma. We shouldn’t drink aya at some boozy birthday party. We require pleasurable activities and a congenial community to offset Aya’s restructuring of our mental machinery. To protect against any harsh outcomes, Heart of the Initiate builds in five shielding, upbeat features.

First, the environment was beautiful. After drinking Aya at 9 pm, we laid down with blankets and pillows next to the ocean, a fireplace blazing near us, bright stars and moon shining down. This eye-catching mileau nourishes one of Aya’s agendas, boosting our sensitivity to beauty and vibration.

Second, and perhaps most important, we were gifted with accommodating facilitators. Each participant had questions. Experienced staff members were available to listen to our doubts and confusions, including shaman Wanare, his assistant Sara, Ralph Miller, and Ralph’s three assistants: Peter, Chapman, Fiona.

If we wanted to speak with him, Shaman Wanare meet with us at his first convenient time. He gave healings. After an hour healing session, a long-term physical problem eased up for me. After we drank Aya and were processing its input, he provided complementary chanting and drumming.

The staff physically guarded us. For example, two times staff members held me up as I staggered to the restrooms, waited outside for me to finish my purge, and then assisted me back to my rest area.

Participants ate together and talked frequently about our Aya journeys. Every person I met was motivated to master his or her issues. We also heard lectures by shaman Wanare, Ralph, or Peter that prepared us for each upcoming drink, and we enjoyed a sharing circle the day after drinking.

At the end of the workshop, Chapman presented us with CDs of our words spoken at the sharing circles, a list of names and e-mails of everyone present, and lectures by Ralph, Wanare (a former mathematics professor at the University of Columbia in South America), and Peter. After the workshop was over, if we had any issues, we could consult with Ralph or Peter by phone or e-mail.

In sum, the staff offered us many communication vehicles, all of which accelerated our absorption of Big Brother Aya’s wisdom.

The third support was great food. Certain foods shouldn’t be eaten close to the drinking time. The posada staff delivered carefully prepared, scrumptious meals, with nutritious snacks all day.

A fourth shoring up of our relationship with Aya was relaxing activities, including a boat trip to a neighboring island. We ate dinner at a fine local restaurant. We were blessed by an hour-long massage by a superb massage therapist, Sandra.

The fifth advantage was the workbook coming with a cloth bag filled with ten colored pencils. It contained several useful essays, including a scientific description of Aya’s botany, a scientist’s analysis of how Aya renovates the pineal gland, a shaman’s description of its healing powers, and a pharmacist’s comparison of conventional medicinal treatments to Aya’s healings.

For me, the workbook proved critical, and I was especially careful to write my intention prior to drinking. Aya knows what’s in our minds and hearts, and for each of my six drinks, Aya manifested my written Intention, exceeding it in a fashion that I couldn’t begin to imagine. My point is that Aya pays attention to our intentions. It meets and surpasses our written objectives. And the post-drink exercise of drawing pictures and journaling integrates our insights so that they become clearer and thus our changes more permanent.

In sum, drinking Aya requires a supportive, creative, community-based setting. As a former English instructor who spent fifteen years as an Instructional Skills Workshop leader, I’m capable of identifying a friendly, protective setting. Heart of the Initiate crafted one for my two workshops.

I won’t describe the joy of my daily two mile walk into town, the remarkable friendliness of Brazilians, or the lushness of this country that’s green everywhere.

Our actual drinking experiences varied widely. Therefore, when I share my own, please don’t take them for the norm.

Many of us enjoyed the initial hallucinatory visions that lasted about 1½ hours for me. These all were gorgeous.

Many drinkers suffered brutal views of serpents, spiders, and other ferocious animals. What’s the pay-off here? The drinker’s encounter with these frightening animals often made unconscious beliefs conscious. These raving beasts can force us to see the original causes of fear of failure at work, or of a weak capitulation to a partner’s demands. Also, if a ferocious anaconda eats you, you might key into its particular energy.

Imagine walking around feeling the fluid movements of an anaconda? Or the 100% alertness of a jaguar? These types of expansions are achievable with reasonable pain for much gain.

A caution: everyone who drinks Aya reports a different reaction to it. Aya does generate different responses because each drinker possesses a distinct psychological predisposition. Yet the results are the same. One result is the lessening of the false self, ego, or conditioned thinking—that sneering voice inside our minds always ready to take over the driver’s seat in our life-car. A second result is an opening to greater energy, clarity, and love, and, for some, entry into exotic psychic dimensions. These two results are true to some extent for everyone–a laying aside of the [old] false self and an opening to the [new] true self. Despite our varied responses to Aya, we all achieved at least some lasting result. We all experienced some degree of Bye-bye false self and Hello true Self.

Folks, the end result of a week’s encounters with snarling carnivorous animals and dancing, elusive spirit-guides can equal years of psychotherapy. One friend spoke with a deceased parent who communicated with her in such a dignified way that lifelong anger vanished. Again, much gain for small pain.

I had only a few visions of tame anacondas and jaguars. My greatest profit was Aya demanding that I perform specific tasks for each drink. I’ll list them, as I’m certain that my pre-drink workbook exercises were partially responsible for my gains. If you sign up for a trip, you might consider paying attention to the pre and post-drink exercises in the workbook:

First drink: After 1½ hours of intensely colorful visions, Aya ordered me to classify each thought as 1) a meaningless, customary, trite thought (I’m hungry, damn it!), 2) a negative judgment against myself or someone else (I didn’t like that guy who sat across from me at dinner), and 3) a “control” thought, one that orders me to do something (I have to write my intention better). For two hours I performed this sorting task for every thought popping up. Absolutely no possibility existed of doing anything else. Aya became Big Brother mercilessly training me to examine my thinking.

Second drink: Now Aya instructed me to classify every thought as 1) a “lower-level” thought (the type classified as “trite,” “judgment,” or “controlling” in the first drinking session) or 2) a “higher-level” thought, one that helps us live better, such as I can afford to hire a gardener or My Sweetie’s birthday is coming up—I’ll get her a dozen roses tonight. For each thought that arose, I distinguished it as “lower” or “higher.” I discovered that 19 of 20 thoughts were “lower.” Ouch!!!! This single-minded focus went on for about 3 hours.

Third drink: After the usual 1½ hour exuberant visions went away, Aya demanded that I distinguish between high-order thoughts and pure experiences absent of any thought. Only high-level (not low level) thoughts came into mind, and only for a few seconds. When any thought switched off, I possessed a free, empty mind purely experiencing the surrounding trees, bushes, sounds, and scraping of my jeans against my leg. The world amply demonstrated its splendor. I really smelt the roses and drank the moon. Insights overwhelmed me: Low level thinking is all junk. High level thinking is practical and worthwhile, but it’s still an illusion. It’s just thinking. What I really am owns all “my” thoughts. This practice or training continued for 3½ hours.

Fourth drink: prior to the usual 1½ hours of hallucinatory visions, Aya directed me to see more of the beauty of the world. When I closed my eyes, I viewed even more lush hallucinogenic visions. When I opened them, the exquisiteness of the stars, moon, cool ocean breeze, swaying palms above me–everything–left me gasping. I’d never seen such surpassing beauty. Then I comprehended that In the third drink, my oneness with everything flowed from a quiet mind. Now Aya’s showing me that my true self is also this sensitivity to beauty. Aya wants to show me more than one aspect of my true nature. This teaching continued for four hours.

Fifth drink: now Aya tried to finish me off. This drink was in the afternoon, at 2 pm. After I vacationed for 1 1/2 hours with superlative visions, I laid my hands on the grass and filled up with gratitude for this grass, and for the earth birthing the grass. I thought, How could I walk without this earth holding me up? Thanks, Earth. I looked at the sky and appreciated it for containing the air that I breathed. How could I live without air? I walked around mumbling, “Thanks for this fence keeping us dizzy drinkers from falling three feet onto the sand below . . . thanks for the people who put up this fence . . . thanks for my eyes that see this fence, and my hands that can open this gate to the beach.” Then I realized that the attitude prompting all this gratitude was love. I am loving everything. I am love. Love is the connection to everything. Wow!

This 100% experiencing of connecting love lasted close to five hours, and hugely until three days after the workshop ended. It remains alive, though less constant and dramatic, two months after the workshops.

Sixth drink: I didn’t want to drink again, as I had been mildly nauseated during my first five drinks. Also, what else worthwhile could happen? I couldn’t imagine any further benefits. Yet my comrades were drinking, so I too should drink. After the initial exotic visions, I heard (inside my mind) myself talking to others, and recognized that my words were “bullshit,” i.e., banal and vapid. Yet the energy underlying my bullshit words was real, in fact delightful. I recalled other people’s bullshit words, and saw that the causal energy underneath these words was more interesting than their meanings. Yes! Beauty exists as vibratory sensation as well as aesthetic attraction. Beauty is innately love in both its aesthetic and magnetic vibration aspects. Aya was teaching me how to love my bullshit, and even the bullshit of others. Wow!

This investigation maintained itself for over five hours. I noted that Aya’s core training for each session lasted longer with each additional drink.

When I got home from Brazil, the world collapsed around me, as it probably does with most returnees from Aya workshops. How do we deal with this world that we now clearly observe as crazy? Well ... everyone has his or her own tools for handling mostly lower levels thoughts that dumb us down.

I will say that Aya’s gift of enhanced authenticity, confidence, connectedness through love, and sensitivity to beauty have hung around with me, as me, although sometimes weakening. When these realities seem to vanish, I conduct a meditation to re-experience myself as Presence. Thankfully, Aya is still inside me with its continuous charge of Bill, you are responsible for remaining present and connected with whatever is here-and-now. It’s your choice, man. Do the necessary work!

Can drinkers become addicted to Aya? Certainly No to any kind of chemical addiction. And Aya’s visions don’t appear to induce craving. The growling animals and purges, as well as the foul taste when drinking it, militate against any 1960’s LSD crowd attraction.

The Heart of the Initiate’s well-designed workshop exposes our illusory self and energetically reveals our true self. Everyone moves up to some degree, and some release into a thorough makeover. I congratulate the staff for devising a safe, pleasurable environment maximizing the potential benefits of Big Brother Aya.