I was chatting with a friend recently, one of my best friends and a man that i admire a lot.

He was feeling quite overwhelmed, confused, and a bit lost about some decisions that he has to make.

Where both alternatives come with rewards and with a lot of pain and sacrifices.

In conversation with him i realized that this is a very common experience for us human beings, the experience of confusion, feelings lost, not knowing where to go.

Quite often it happens in our work, maybe we like our career, but there’s a deeper dream that we have, yet we are not sure if we can live off it.

Maybe we feel too old, too inadequate to make it happen, but we just don’t know where to start.

It happens quite often in romantic relationships. My partner is just not so attractive anymore, suddenly, the plumber/secretary started looking a little more exciting, right?

Perhaps a lot of the intial attraction is gone and our trauma is coming up, our ugly sides. Now we’re dealing with the truth of the other person, that can be overwhelming.

We’re confronted with a “Should i stay or should i leave.”

Maybe there are kids, maybe there’s a long history, a lot of shared past experiences and we don’t know what to do.

Maybe they’re abusive or emotionally irresponsible, where do you draw the line? How much compassion should you have?

There’s always issues like this, maybe in the place that you live, maybe it’s with your family, we all experience some sort of confusion, some sort of chaos.

It’s stressful because, if we knew that we wanted to stay in this relationship then easy breezy, we do what is needed.

We also know that for sure this relationships is not good for us, we get out of there.

A lot of people come to drink Ayahuasca to get clear on that.

What’s my purpose? Should i stay with my partner, should i divorce them? What should i change in my life?

They feel something must change and they don’t know what is is, there’s confusion, they feel stuck, so they come, but more than that. If you’re not drinking Ayahuasca or not thinking to drink it.

Anyways, as soon as i was having this conversation with my friend, we went on a hike that i’d never gone to before.

It was through a forest and we’re chatting, we’re trying to find possible middle-grounds and solutions, everything seems like a bit of a dead end.

But we’re chatting and we were laughing, making humor out of a situation that was a little bit painful for him, we enjoyed it.

Suddenly, we had to come back home, but we didn’t know our way, the compass on our phone wasn’t showing the right direction.

So we got lost for like 2.5 hours, the sun was about to set so it was a hike in the middle of a forest without trails, light or phone signal, so it would have been very challenging to get out of there.

We finally made our way out, just in time before the sun settled and we were laughing about it, as we were laughing about it i looked at him and i understood the profound lesson that this conversation, this hike had for the two of us.

I looked at him and i said: “I understand that you feel lost, confused and stuck right now. I know it hasn’t been pleasant for you and i know there’s no solution in hindisght.

What i do know is that we just got lost, we got stuck in the forest, there was no road out of it, we didn’t know what way to take, we went in circles for quite a while, but we did so joyfully.“

If you’re feeling confused and lost, remember that you can be joyfully lost.

You can enjoy the detours, you don’t have to suffer them, you don’t have to stretch yourself over them, you can sit with curiosity and amusement like:

“Wow, i’m having a hard time making a decision about this,” “I really love my partner and i really lvoe somebody else,” “I really love my partner but i also find myself dreaming about being single,” “This job is allowing me to live well and there’s things i would like to do more that are different, i’m not sure what i want to do though.“

We can sit in that confusion with childlike wonder:

“Should i get vanilla or chocolate ice cream?“

Eventually you’ll have to make a choice, any choice is better than no choice, comitting to something is the essence of growth, of a life of meaning.

You must eventually choose, today though, i want to share with you that as you’re feeling lost – instead of judging yourself, cracking the whip and not accepting that, right now, it’s difficult for you to have clarity in this situation.

Even though this is the case, you can be joyfully lost, you can look at the trees, the grass, the different insects.

Everything that shows up as a surprise through the detours that life sometimes take us through.

That’s the invitation.

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