Can Ayahuasca cause enlightenment, spiritual awakenings?

First, let’s look at what is a spiritual awakening, because a lot of people get this mixed up with enlightenment.

When we think of a spiritually evolved being, or spiritually awakened, we think of Jesus, Buddha…

Depending on your religion there may be somebody else, Shiva, Krishna, anyways.

These are beings that were enlightened beings, which is beings that were fully realized.

According to these stories, at least at the end, they discarded their body at will, or they merged back into God, right?

This is not what we’re referring to with spiritual awakening, it’s not enlightenment, and i’ll explain the difference.

What is to be awake?

When you’re awake, it’s because you know that you’re conscious, you’re no longer dreaming.

You realize there’s a difference between real life and your dreams, and when you’re awake you see things differently.

You see things more clearly, in your dreams its projections, very often unconscious.

For a lot of people, they’re just a big mess of everything.

But when you’re awake, you see reality for what it is, to a degree.

Spiritual awakening means that we have woken up from the dream of physical existence.

By physical existence I refer to the organs that feel and their perception.

Therefore, a spiritual awakening is when you have an experience, an undeniable direct experience (not thought or belief).

That goes beyond something that you saw with your eyes or heard with your ears, felt with your skin, smelled or tasted.

It means that you had an experience that you cannot comprehend or explain with the organs of physical perception.

What is this? This is an experience of something beyond the body, this is the essence of spirituality, to transcend the limitations of this physical boundary.

And to have a direct experience of something beyond our physicality.

Why? There’s nothing wrong with our body or with our five senses.

However, in life we will always live orienting ourselves towards that which is the highest we have experienced.

For example, in India, to a degree, still today there’s a cased division, social classes in some especially small regions that are divided by the very, very poor.

Then there’s the middle, and then the rich social class.

Basically, you cannot marry from a social class above or under that which you were born.

They have a whole story around this, they have their own beliefs, the people that are still ascribed to this, very outdated way of living.

Where they think that person who was born poor was because of their karma, like a punishment from God.

And so they deserve to be poor: “If they had been better in their past life then they would be rich like me”. right?

Which is quite an ugly way of seeing the world, but they misinterpreted some teachings that somebody said a long time ago, and they created this division.

Now, here’s the thing, one of my friends was sharing with me recently when he went to India that it was heartbreaking for him.

Because in the subway he came across people that were begging, and they were lacking an arm, both, were blind – all this broke his heart, because there were so many of them.

When he started inquiring into why this happened, he realized that many of these people were born as beggars because of their family.

And the family thought: “Oh, because of my social class I will never be more than a beggar, so I better be the best beggar I can be”.

Survival or thriving for that person means that they become the best beggar, it also means that if I want my children, which are born within the same social division, to thrive…

They better be the best beggars they can be.

Among beggars, they realize that it is the one that is missing an arm or that is blind, or the one that has a lot more limbs amputated, the more pity you are bound to “inspire” from people.

Which means the more money you will get, and the more likely you are to survive.

So, parents will burn with acid their children’s eyes as soon as they were born or quite often they amputate a limb or a few of them.

In order for them to have a better chance of being better beggars, better than the next neighbor’s children.

This is pretty sad, but it illustrates a point, which is: in this limited perception of reality, in which they see that their life cannot be more than being beggars…

They’re going to strive to be and to orient themselves towards the highest that they know, receiving money from other people, begging.

So they want to be the best beggars, and that means that the worse you are, the worst shape you are in phisically health-wise, the more likely you are to make money, in a way.

Although this is pretty cruel, all of us live in the same way, but for some people, the highest thing that they know is sex.

So, I don’t think most of our society is here, I definitely was in this place for many years, where the highest experience I had was that of a sexual intercourse.

A sexual experience with a woman that I found attractive and found me attractive.

Suddenly, all of my life was oriented towards sexuality, I wanted to work out and look a certain way so that women would like me.

I wanted to go only to those places where I knew there would be attractive women.

I wanted to become a certain type of man that I felt would be attractive to women, why?

Because I was seeking pleasure through sex, now, for some people, it’s food.

So they want to orient themselves, they want to cook specific food, they want to make time in their days or in the nights to go to different restaurants.

Food is the number one thing, so they want to try all the flavors, tastes, all the things.

For some others, maybe the highest experience they’ve had of life is they watch something in nature that really touched them, so now they go hiking, trailing, scuba diving, bird watching.

They just want to recreate that, it is a human condition.

It is human nature to chase and to pursue that which we have experienced at the highest.

For some, the highest is sex and food, for others, connections with nature, for others money.

And so a lot of people establish themselves:

“I want to have rich friends, I want to hang out and network with the top people in my industry only, to connect and have friends that may further my career growth.”

You get the point.

So, spiritual awakening is when the highest thing or experience that we orient ourselves towards is beyond the body.

Because no matter how good it is, no matter how much money you’re making or how tasty the food or how great the sex is, it is limited.

No matter how great of a beggar you are, it is a limited way of living.

It’s a tragedy that you’re born with so many capabilities, but then you put boundaries on your full expression.

So, to a degree, a lot of people live like beggars, like food is the greatest thing, sex, money, social status, fame, like the beggar that thinks that being a great beggar is the greatest thing.

No, it’s a handicap.

So, spiritual awakening means that you have had a direct experience, not a belief nor a though, because religion is a poor substitute for direct spiritual experience.

Religion is, as somebody once said, the finger that points to the sky, to the sun, and the people mistake it and start worshiping the finger instead of looking at what it is pointing towards.

Most religions and spiritual practices are trying to point and arrange people towards a transcendental experience.

The people get consumed in the shape of it and then they forget to seek that which is beyond the body, beyond the five senses.

In this way, Ayahuasca in many cases and for a lot of people (including myself) was the source of their spiritual awakening.

In other words, it was the first time in my life, and in others life, that a direct experience of something beyond the body was possible, it was made tangible.

An experience of God, of the essence of creation, perhaps of experience, of the deepest nature, of myself.

Maybe coming face to face with my soul, with glimpses of a deeper truth of life.

It’s not enlightenment because you come out of it.

The Yoga ceremony ends and there was something inside of you, a seed that wasn’t planted.

Now you’ve seen past the veil and that is impossible to undo, it is very hard also to continue chasing food, sex or money when you know that there’s something way deeper and way more fulfilling than all of that.

In fact, you may realize that money, sex, and all these things were poor substitutes that you were trying to use to feel an infinite sense of fulfillment and expansion that is only possible when you come in touch with your soul.

For a lot of people, their life changes so much because now there’s something higher.

They go from thinking that life is just this physical reality, this body, this mind.

To seeing that there’s so much more and how can we not pursue or come closer to that greater thing that we have found.

We no longer see ourselves as beggars knowing so much more is possible.

To keep begging becomes a silly thing to do, right?

Now, this is not enlightenment, because spiritual awakening means that suddenly, the lights are turned on.

Suddenly, you see things a bit more clearly, maybe you start with your home, you were just walking around like a blind person and one day the lights went on.

You realize how much trash there is, yet out the window there’s nature, beautiful and full of colors and shapes, then the lights come down.

You will never forget that and you will seek to see it again very clearly.

Enlightenment or a spiritual journey is when you raise your own energy in a certain way, so that instead of turning the light on for a few hours and turning them off (which is what psychedelic experiences and Ayahuasca do).

Instead of that you start making yourself into the source of the light, of that energy.

So, slowly, you start amping up the voltage and seeing more clearly, until one day, you become light itself.

Which is to be enlightened, to become light, this is the essence of a spiritual journey.

Can Ayahuasca cause spiritual awakening? Yes, it can awaken you.

To the degree that it can turn the lights on and show you so much more is possible than your physical reality.

It may allow you to cleanse and remove some of the trash that keep your energy blocked.

So, for a lot of people, it’s not that they come back into the old blindness that they had.

There’s a step that was taken, a purging that happened, a progress in their spiritual journey from drinking Ayahuasca.

They don’t stay there, where they were one with the universe, no.

They come down.

Because at the end of the day, we have to get to this place from our own effort.

However, if we’ve never had a direct experience of something more than the physical, if we have never had a mystic, transcendental, spiritual experience.

Then it’s very hard to be disciplined, to have faith.

Because we will have blind faith only, but we’re following a religion, praying every day, hoping that something happens, but nothing does.

Eventually, you’re gonna go back to your money, your food, your sex.

However, you come, you drink Ayahuasca and you touch something way deeper.

Now, you go back home and now you know, now life has to be managed in a different way.

Now there’s something greater that is pulling you, you don’t see yourself as a beggar anymore.

Begging is no longer the limit of your consciousness, you know that so much more is possible and that you’ve been begging for food, alcohol, money and sex from people, from life.

When in reality, there was the greatest thing available inside of you.

Direct faith, direct experience is when you had an undeniable touching of this deeper part of reality.

It is not a thought nor a philosophy, it’s not a belief, it’s not a teaching that somebody told you.

It has to be an undeniable direct experience, only then.

Before that, you were just crossing your fingers and hoping for the best, hoping that the story somebody else wrote in a piece of paper thousands of years ago is true.

Because you’re not willing to accept that you don’t really know or speak of a Jesus that you’ve not met, of energies and gods that are not in your direct experience.

I invite you to drop the nonsense, and I don’t mean to offend you if you’re a religious person, but the nonsense of believing what has not yet come into your field of experience…

And to open yourself up to actually doing the work or having an experience like Ayahuasca that can wake you up…

Because it’s not a scripture, it’s not a teaching, the Shaman doesn’t preach anything.

It is you in communion with the medicine that can come to the bottom of your heart, of life, if you’re ready.

And the day that you do, everything else will change.

It is your nature to re-orient yourself to the greatest thing that you know.

And i hope that if you decide to drink Ayahuasca, that you canc ome in touch with the greatest that life has to offer.

Which is the life inside yourself.

Thank you.

If you feel the calling to sit with Ayahuasca, in a container held by Colombian shamans at a sacred temple in the middle of the mountain forests, please check:

www.ayahuascacolombia.com/retreats