I want to share briefly about one of the roughest but also most important ceremonies that I’ve had.
It was when I proposed to my now wife, we got engaged in the medicine temple, where the Shaman that we work with hosts the plant medicine ceremonies.
I proposed to her there because we literally helped build it up with our own hands, we carried stones and steered concrete, we built black holes for the foundations.
It was there that a lot of our relationship nonsense came to the light and we dealt with a lot of it, we fell deep in love with each other.
It was Ayahuasca what allowed us to really see beyond our nonsense and forgive each other in difficult moments.
But also to understand the role that we play in the conflict that we’re having in relationships.
We believe that if it wasn’t for the plant medicine, we probably wouldn’t be together.
The medicine allowed us to heal the ways in which we were closed to love and romance, so it felt suitable to propose in that place.
Now, after the whole engagement situation, I walked up to the altar (we were in a private family ceremony) and I drank very little, about a spoonful.
I thought of asking him for some more but I figured: “You know what, maybe today is just a day to relax, to enjoy and celebrate that I’m engaged.”
Anyways, I drank the medicine and I set my intention, I thought:
“You know what, I have just proposed, I would love for you, Ayahuasca, to show me and teach me what it means to be a good husband, a good partner.”
In my mind, I imagine it’s gonna show me like: “This is what love feels like, what compassion feels like, this is what being nice and kind is all about.”
So, I was expecting sunshine and rainbows, so I drank the medicine, sat down, and thought this is gonna be a light journey.
It was really intense and overwhelming.
I started feeling very nauseous and very sick, then I heard and felt the energy of the medicine within me, she said:
“All right, you want to be a good husband, then the #1 thing you need to understand is integrity”
And I asked: “What do you mean by integrity, what’s integrity?”
She said: “Integrity means that everything is whole, that your energy is yours, not a mix of a lot of different things or different people…
Integrity means that things work the way they’re supposed to, nothing is broken.
If you’re a car, integrity means that you’re in a good condition and it can move at fast speeds without too much friction or breaking apart.”
I thought: “All right, I think I’m in integrity.”
Then she said: “Not really…”
And it showed me one by one each moment in my relationship where I had lied, down to tiny little lies like when we were leaving at 11 am to this place, but it was 11:05 and i wasn’t ready – very subtle things.
Also other big ones, like it was confronting me with all my nonsense and saying:
“If you want to have a beautiful marriage, you cannot lie, you have to be honest first with yourself and her.”
I was vomiting in all these moments where I had been dishonest.
When I finished when I felt I was clean from it, it said:
“All right, there’s also a lot of leftovers from your past lovers in you, you still have energy from a lot of the women that you were physically intimate with.”
And so I started seeing more or less every single girlfriend or woman that I had sex with since I was 14 years old.
It showed me (and it showed me in a very subtle way) how there was in my system the memory of that person.
In the Yogic tradition, we call this runanubandha, which is the exchange of memory that happens when you hold hands, even when you hug.
Especially when you have sex, when somebody cooks for you.
You will pick up a lot of energy, or a lot of memory from the spaces and people around us.
I got to see this person and see where it was in my body, then, I spent the next probably 1-2 hours vomiting quite literally every single one of my previous lovers.
It was like I was becoming a virgin again, in a way.
But I was letting that go, because the medicine said as long as you have a lot of women within your system, quite literally your mind is going to waver, and you’re going to be thinking about your ex, or this other girl.
There’s not going to be integrity, commitment and stability of your attention, love and devotion for your wife.
Now, once that was done, I thought:
“Okay, that’s it, I’m a free man.”
And he said: “…not so much!”
And it started getting more and more intense, I sat down and I’m placing my hands on the earth.
I start to feel like I’m gonna lose it, like I’m about to die and I feel sick, nauseous.
Like my energies are leaving my body.
I was sure that I was gonna die, so I started to feel really anxious because my family is in the temple, I just proposed, my loved ones are there.
I’m thinking: “Oh my god, no, what am I gonna do?”
At one point, I took a deep breath and said:
“You know what, so be it, if I die today, I die in peace, because the last 2-3 years of my life I’ve lived with integrity…
I did my best to make up for all the nonsense that I created before, but also to be an agent of change, of healing and of harmony, of the world, I fell in love and learned to love in a better way than before…
I was able to gather my family and invite them to come and drink Ayahuasca with me.” we were celebrating in that moment, and I thought:
“If i die today, well, it sucks, because things were getting quite beautiful, but I am ready, I can go in peace.”
Then, mentally, I was seeing this like ocean of energy, which felt like death or like returning to oneness, and I threw myself into it.
“All right, that’s it, I’m ready to die.“
As soon as I jumped into the abyss, it dissapeared, then I felt the energy of Ayahuasca saying:
“All right, you’re ready to be a husband, because only when you are welcoming death in every moment, it means that you are at peace with what you’ve done…
You don’t feel that you could have done more, you have shown up with all your heart, with all your love…
Only when you can live your life in a way that, anyday, no matter when you die, you will do it joyfully and willingly, only then you will be the kind of person, of man that will create and support a beautiful marriage.”
So I understood that to be a good partner means that I must live with the utmost intensity, love, commitment, devotion, every single day.
Show up in this way and not think that I have the whole life to make things up with her, if we’re arguing or that being a good husband can wait or that I can just dismiss her because I’ve work to do, no.
Always thinking:
“All right, is this the highest action that I can do, is this in the highest integrity, am I at peace if I die today with how I showed up?”
If the answer is no, then you it means: “I need to change something.“
So, this was my experience, Ayahuasca has helped me so much in my relationship, I would not be married, let alone with such a beautiful woman in every way, if it wasn’t because of plant medicine.
It allowed me to really go off the walls and fears that I had around intimacy, and also learned what love was.
First of all, because it was not what I thought, I thought it was pleasure, but it happens to be much more than that.
If you’re in a relationship or you want to be in one and things have not worked out in the past, so you’re considering doing plant medicine.
I highly recommend it, in a safe setting, and if you’re not, you’re anyways invited.
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:
First of all, I didn’t know I was an alcoholic, I thought that my drinking was merely social, for fun and under control.
Even though towards the end of it, it was about one bottle of wine per day.
I could not work or paint (I was predominantly an artist at the time), or hang out with anyone if there was not at least a glass of wine involved, usually a whole bottle, and on the weekends a lot more.
Until I would black out and wake up next morning, not remembering what had happened, so I thought it was all under control, even though it clearly wasn’t.
There was a ceremony when I asked the medicine like:
“Please, allow me to cleanse my body, I want to live closer to my truth.”
It was during the day and I remember that I started feeling nauseous when the medicine started kicking in.
Then suddenly, I hear a subtle voice inside my head, asking:
“Do you remember why you started drinking?”
And I thought like: “Not really… but i don’t care, just get this out of me, I don’t want to keep on drinking, it’s destroying my body, it’s unhealthy, but I don’t knowhow to quit.”
Then the medicine said:
“Well, why do you have so many judgements around alcohol?”
I thought: “Well, i mean, it has destroyed my relationships, damaged my health, the worst in me comes up when I drink, of course I don’t like it.”
Finally, the medicine said:
“Alright, let’s explore this.”
It took me back to when I was about 13 or 14 years old, when I was extremely shy and really, really self-conscious.
If a woman, especially a woman or a girl that I liked or found attractive came and said something to me I would literally shake and stutter and stare at the floor out of this shame.
I was very, very introverted.
And what happened was that there was this one party where, because of some medication for acne I was taking I couldn’t drink, but everybody else was drinking, dancing and having fun.
I didn’t know how to dance nor how to do anything, I felt so ostracized, like the strange, rejected one, feeling like an outcast.
However, soon after that I met a cousin that was the party guy, very popular and fun, the women really liked him, all the girls fell in love with him because he was funny.
And I started drinking with him, in the moment i started drinking I saw that my mind relaxed and now I was also cracking jokes.
I was moving a little bit, I could have a conversation, so I thought “wow…“
And out of that relaxation I was able to connect with the first women (or girl) that eventually became my girlfriend.
I was able to be more social, to feel more included, so the medicine showed me and said:
“You started to drink alcohol because you felt your life was limited, you couldn’t express yourself, you couldn’t connect with people and you wanted to live a fuller life…
Alcohol provided, freed you just enough from your mind, inhibitions and shyness, so that you could be social, have friends, have a girlfriend…
So alcohol is not a problem, it started as a solution.”
And i thought: “Wow, that’s interesting.”
He said: “However, how is it right now?”
And as I started to see visions, I saw time after time for the last few years when I lived in Europe and in Montreal, Toronto…
How I was partying every weekened, 2-3 times, sometimes up to 5 days a week.
Drinking so much that I would black out, I would not remember what had happened.
Sometimes, the next morning I would wake up and my friends would tell me: “Oh Nico, last night was so much fun, wow, thanks for coming… and that girl you were kissing, she was so hot.”
I didn’t remember anything, nor have the girls number, I don’t remember who she was, so I woke up to a lot of fun things I had done, without any recollection of them.
In some other occasions, I would wake up to really, really ugly messages from friends or women that I was dating, whose night I had ruined because of that compulsive and drunken state.
So the medicine showed me that what started as a tool to live a fuller life was actually doing the opposite right now.
Now, it’s impairing you, now it’s reducing quite literally your experience of life, because you’re quite literally shutting down for a few hours of your life a few nights per week (blacking out).
It showed me that in the beginning it was like the training wheels that you put on your bicycle, so that you can find your balance.
But imagine you put training wheels on a motorcycle, they’re bound to cause an accident, because they don’t suit you anymore.
So, I realized that alcohol for me, it started as the crotch that I relied on, but I saw that I no longer needed it, now I was doing something opposite to what he had intended.
And I felt this from a deep place of awareness, not judgement.
So the medicine allowed me not to judge this part of me, this habit, but to understand it in a deep way, once I understood it, then it started showing me:
“All right, let’s go through the damage that you have put through your body.”
Then it took me to every time that I got wasted, every time I got drunk, every time that I made a fool of myself and blacked out since I was 14 years old until I think my 20’s, when I had this experience.
And it started showing me, one by one, every time that I was drunk, out of my mind quite literally, and I would feel that and vomit it out.
The funny thing was that I saw the cyclical pattern of it all, the same process when I was in one city, almost the same locations, venues, hanging out with the same people, drinking the same cocktails.
It was taking me one by one through every time that I got drunk, until I thought like:
“I’m tired of this, this is boring.”
Then the medicine said:
“That’s right, isn’t it? But that’s what you’ve been spending all your 20’s and teenage years doing.”
I thought this was boring, like I already know what’s going to happen, I kept seeing myself drinking, getting drunk, drinking and getting drunk.
And I was vomiting and vomiting, until the medicine said:
“All right, let’s clear the last part.”
And I will save you a disgusting image, but the last part came in the toilet of the medicine house, it was something not very pleasant.
But it was like a darkness, a dark black ball inside of me that had accumulated from all the alcohol I had put through my system.
It finally came out, the moment it did, I felt like life was on HD, right after, I could see the colors in a more vibrant way.
I heard sounds more clearly, it’s like I had released a layer of numbness that alcohol had slowly created around my body and my system.
I felt so alive and so connected to life, I thought: “Wow, this is it.“
Then I started going through a very rough trip, seeing evil spirits, demons, monsters and children being abused and tortured, people killing each other, violence.
And I thought: “Oh my god, why did I drink this, I’m going crazy, I’m seeing some really horrific stuff…”
I felt quite tormented and I was trying to hide from it, praying…
“Please, please I don’t want to see this, please god, Jesus, somebody save me” nothing was happening.
And I thought: “Okay, maybe I should invite this in, maybe I should look at them.”
So I stopped hiding in a fearful state and I opened up to what I was seeing (with my eyes closed).
Then I saw all the visions I was having were fueled by the spirit of alcohol, or the energy of alcohol.
I saw how alcohol is the leading cause of a lot of violence, rape, abuse, car accidents, broken families.
I saw the ugliness of that, and the medicine said:
“Every time that you’re drinking, you’re contributing your energy to all of this, you think you’re one but you’re connected and this is not demons nor monsters, this is inside you…
This is where you can go into the future if you continue drinking the way that you’re drinking so far.”
And I knew it was right, because when I had been drunk in the past, sometimes I was violent, got into fights, not very caring for the women that I was with.
Sometimes I was full of lies and deceit, I could see that it was a gradual degradation of my mind, emotions and heart that started since i was 14 years old.
I could see how those people that wake up and kill somebody, destroy their family, beat up their wives or abuse somebody else, it’s not overnight.
It’s a gradual process of degeneration into that place, I saw that I was heading straight towards that, nothing changed.
I started crying and asking for forgiveness, from the bottom of my heart I said:
“Please, I really don’t want to be this way.”
In that moment, the experience changed, and the medicine said:
“All right, let me show you what is possible.”
Spoiler alert, it was one of the most beautiful sights or experiences of my life, because I saw what it’s like to live a life of sacredness, of respect for my body and mind, of soberness.
And before, I thought being sober was boring, now I felt being sober as being fully alive, sensitive and connected.
In that place I was seeing mandalas of a million colors, rainbows and hummingbirds, also the most beautiful creatures.
I felt that it was like I was being showered with gifts and frequencies of harmony, joy and bliss.
In essence, the medicine was showing me that when I stop destroying my body, when I stop unconsciously putting substances that disconnect me from life…
When I stop doing this, there’s no other choice but to reconnect with life, and being in connection with life is an experience of bliss, of beauty.
It’s like when you look at a sunset and you’re touched to the point of tears.
I realized that this openness of our heart is possible in every moment, if we don’t tamper or play in an unconscious way with our system.
After that day, I’m not gonna lie and tell you I never touched alcohol again.
No, I never thought about it, I could count probably with one hand, maybe two, the amount of drinks or glasses of wine that I’ve had in the last several years.
Quite often maybe just one per year, maybe on New Year’s, because I want to make a toast with my family.
But it has become a very conscious process where I don’t need it anymore, I don’t think about it nor thinking about how i’ve gone “10 years, 4 months, 3 days“, no.
I’m not obsessed about it nor rejecting it, it’s just something that dropped the moment that I saw it clearly.
Imagine that you’re holding a stick that has thorns in it, and you’re thinking:
“Oh my god, something hurts!”
You’re looking around and you don’t realize that you’re clamping it, the moment that you can see clearly how you’re clenching your fist on something that has thorns.
Nobody needs to coach you or force you, nor make you do a 30-day no boost challenge to drop it, no.
You just see the silliness of it, and that’s what happened.
Ayahuasca showed me first that I cannot let go of something that I am judging, and I was juding my alcohol habits.
Secondly, it showed me how it was what I needed at one point, how it was a tool that allowed me to get something that I didn’t know how to get otherwise.
Then he showed me that he was no longer serving any purpose, and he was doing quite the opposite, then it cleansed my body from all of it.
Allowing me to make a conscious choice:
“What do you want? Do you want to live this ugly way of alcoholism and disconnection that’s bound to end up in violence and chaos?
Or do you want to live a life of integrity, beauty, respect and health?”
Now, here I am.
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:
This series is an open and transparent way of sharing some of my personal experiences with the plant medicine.
I understand that I share a lot of tips, tricks, do’s and dont’s, some philosophical reflections.
But some people still wonder: “How does it work, how does a plant, a liquid brew, after going through my body, help me heal trauma?”
“What is the experience like, what do you see, do you hallucinate, do you just think about it, maybe just your mind, is it another spirit?”
My intention is that you get an insight or a glimpse into how Ayahuasca works.
Today, I’m going to share about the very first time that I felt the medicine, and it was a very subtle ceremony, it wasn’t the strongest but it paved the road to many more to come.
What had happened – and you may already know this, was that my journey started after a very difficult breakup.
I was dating this girl, it spiraled out of control into toxicity, there were lies from both ends, there were abuses of trust, betrayal.
At the end of the day, we tried to stay together in something that was a little too… past its expired date.
What happens when you try to force a relationship like that is that it bleeds out a long death.
Instead of having an honorable ending where there’s a friendship that can be kept.
There was apathy, resentment, hatred, and a lot of judgement, that was the case for me.
So, in simple words, after that breakup I was left really questioning who I was, what’s the point of life? Am I a bad person?
I was working at the time as a dating and relationship coach, and I thought that I knew what relationships were all about.
So I thought my relationship was perfect at one point, and when it crashed like this i was confronted with the fact that I don’t really understand women. I don’t really understand myself.
I thought I was doing the right thing but I realized that, actually, maybe I wasn’t.
However, the breakup was so painful that my first go-to reaction was drugs, alcohol, parties, other women.
It was a very unconscious way of trying to cope with the pain that I felt, I didn’t really have any guidance or healthy role models that held my hand and said:
“Hey, this is an alternative, this is how you can transform that pain.”
So, as I started to spiral out of control, into drug abuse and too much partying, living a life that was full of chaos.
One day I woke up and I realized this couldn’t continue like it had.
So I grabbed a ticket and flew back to Colombia (I was in Toronto at the time), and I thought, in Colombia with my family, my grandma’s going to cook for me.
I can watch movies with them, cry on their lap, I’ve my sisters, my dad.
I was a mess, I just wanted to heal, I knew that drugs, parties and women were not the answer and I felt shame and guilt for everything that I was doing.
So I felt like I needed to get myself straight.
When i was in Colombia, a friend of a friend had invited me to an Ayahuasca ceremony, and I thought:
“Oh, I’ve heard about this, now would be a good moment.”
So I went to the ceremony with the main intention of wanting to release whatever I may be holding on to from my relationship that just ended.
In my mind I thought:
“It’s okay, she left, I’m better without her, my life is better, I’m on my own.”
I was very close enough to the pain and I felt that I don’t want her in my life, but I’m fine.
Deep inside I knew that if I was fine I wouldn’t be trying to cope with life in the way that I was.
So I felt like maybe there’s something there.
The most important thing for me was that I really wanted to fall in love again, I knew that whatever I didn’t process about this previous relationship would show up in my next one.
Whatever grudges I kept against my ex or against women in general will show up, I won’t prevent me from having a beautiful love story with a new person, and I really wanna fall in love again.
I knew it was a little too soon but I thought:
“I want to do the work, so that the next partner I invite is someone with whom a beautiful sacred relationship is created, hopefully not with someone with whom I repeat this cycle of toxicity.
It’s a long context story but bear with me.
I arrived to the ceremony, and it was with one of the elder Colombian taitas, Hipolito Michavisoy.
So I was sitting there, when it was time, I drank my first cup, nothing happened.
I looked next to me and there’s women foaming, shaking, people screaming.
The whole thing looks like it’s out of a horror movie, some people being exorcised and the whole thing was like a psychiatric hospital.
Just want to let you know this isn’t a normal Ayahuasca ceremony, this specific Shaman, who has now passed away recently…
His medicine was known to be really rough, he was known to be like a warrior, an indigenous spiritual teacher, and his approach was like “No-BS” approach.
Like, I’m gonna give you a cup and you’re gonna poop your pants and vomit, but tomorrow you’re gonna be a different person, and we’re gonna get the demons out of you.
That was his way of dealing with the healing of people and his way of coming out of the jungle was really strong and powerful.
But he had to dilute it a little bit and tame it down because a lot of people would come drink medicine once and never come back.
The process was so intense that they thought: “This was really healthy, I’m a different person, but I never want to have a night like this in my whole life.
I didn’t know about this at the time.
I went to him – there’s people screaming everywhere, and I’m here, just sitting, looking at the clock, thinking:
“Okay, maybe I should get another one” so I stood up, drank another cup, nothing,
I just felt nauseous, I’m vomiting sometimes, then again, another cup.
At this moment, I started feeling something, I felt a little nauseous, and as I started feeling a little dizzy, I started sensing and seeing with my eyes closed the spirit of Ayahuasca.
And there was this young woman, and this older women, like a grandma.
She was like an ancient indigenous grandma, they came and started pouring water on top of my head.
I take this as a symbolism of starting to clean my energies, and as soon as this started, I started to feel a lot of pain in my throat, in my stomach, like a burning sensation.
I got scared and thought:
“Oh my god, what’s happening, I’m really, really sick.”
And as I start feeling that, I get flashes from the last big fight that I had with my ex, I saw how in the past she had been physically violent.
But this one time we got into an argument, and she was about to rush away from home, and there was a point…
Where just the way that she was standing right in front of me, the way she was grabbing me, I was afraid.
I felt like she was about to hit me once again, I felt scared but also powerless.
Because I wanted to just tell her to “eff” off and to never see her again.
But I felt that I was so attached and codependent that I didn’t know how to have boundaries, and I felt shame, resentment and anger at that situation.
Because – and I will share in future videos, it was a deep reflection of my relationship with my mother, of powerlessness, of violence, of a lot of unhealthy things, and this image started coming up.
I started feeling all the resentment, hate and anger I had towards her and for what she did, and the lies that she exercised or created towards the end of our relationship.
I felt this desire for revenge, to punish back, I saw how in a very unconscious way a lot of what I was doing in Toronto was a subtle desire to get back at her.
Even though she was already out of my life.
Then I started feeling that anger, and the medicine showed me…
I heard this voice saying:
“Look what you’re carrying.”
“-Yes, but it wasn’t right what she did to me, it wasn’t good it was painful”
And the medicine said, “Yes, but you gotta let it go.”
“-No, if I forgive her then it’ll mean that what she did was right.”
“It was not about whether she did something that was right or wrong, just look at it, look at what you’re doing to yourself” I was really attached to my pain, to my righteousness, to my hatred of her, I thought:
“-No, no, i’m not gonna let it go because it wasn’t right, it broke my heart.” The more that I resisted the more that the sickness built up in my body.
The medicine showed me, it made me more conscious.
I felt like I wanted to vomit but I couldn’t, it was stuck there.
I felt anger and hatred, like wanting to punch something.
And I kept saying: “-No, no, it wasn’t okay, I’m not gonna let it go.”
Then at one point, the medicine said:
“She punished you, or you feel like she punished you and hurt you once in that moment, but look at what you have been doing to yourself ever since.”
“You have been doing the exact same thing that you feel so angry at her for, you’re angry at the pain that she caused you…
And because of that, you have been causing so much pain to yourself through the drugs, through the parties, to the women that you’ve been dating…
Because your heart is not involved, and directing pain to your body because of how that resentment has been consuming”
In that moment I understood that to forgive her, to accept what had happened, was a gift for myself, not for her.
Although it also liberated her from that bitterness that I carried, I realized:
“I’m okay with having suffered once, I don’t want to be the one that perpetuates my own suffering, I don’t wanna carry this with me.”
So I reached in the bottom of my heart, and I forgave her, I said it’s okay, it is what it is, this is what it was.
The moment that I did that, like half a bucket of vomit started coming out of my system.
I vomited more and more, and as I vomited I could feel like a big weight was lifted off my back.
In that moment, when I thought of her, I also started noticing the sweetness, the love, the care that she had for me.
Which was a lot bigger and a lot more consistent than the isolated, ugly moments that we had.
I also started feeling and noticing what I had done and how I thought that I had been a good guy.
The medicine showed me:
“Hey, look, in this moment you took advantage of her trust, in this moment you objectified her for your own pleasure, in this moment you lied to her, in this moment you caused pain…
And you knew it in this moment, you broke her heart and you ignored it.”
I was in tears, because I went from resentment to awareness and compassion.
Now, I could understand exactly why she had done what she did, exactly why the relationship had turned so ugly.
Most importantly, and the most difficult part, I knew the role that I played in it.
I saw that I was not a victim of what she did, but I co-created what happened.
We both played a role in how the relationship turned out and I saw that I was not an angel, I was not right and she was wrong, we both put seeds and nourished them.
They were seeds of something ugly, that’s what we eventually collected.
I could see that everything unfolded in a perfect way, doesn’t mean that what she did was right, but it was the inevitable consequence of everything that went into that relationship.
And that was liberating.
Because I was not a victim of anybody, I wasn’t powerless, because if I created such ugliness in my previous relationship, it was also up to me to create beauty in my next, current one, the women that i married.
There have been so many more insights that I have had.
I ended up eventually gathering the courage to send an apology to my previous partner for things that I did and all the pain that I inflicted.
More than whatever response I received from her apologies and forgiveness, it’s a gift that we give to ourselves.
The gift of accepting what happened and learning to see the perfection in it.
I know this may be or sound very difficult, if you’ve gone through abuse, if the abuse came from your parents or someone who was meant to protect you.
In our center, we have worked with many women, especially that have been sexually abused by relatives, one woman by her father.
And in those cases it’s very difficult to understand the perfection or to accept what happened.
Because it’s so inhumane and ugly that it’s very bad to conceive that if there’s a god he would allow such things to happen.
This is the experience of all these people that have healed, learning to accept what is doesn’t mean that you condone the wrongdoings of somebody else.
It doesn’t mean that you cheer for the ugliness of the pain that someone inflicted on you, no.
It just means that you love yourself enough to not keep punishing yourself for the punishment that somebody else inflicted upon you.
Life is already challenging and difficult, there’s a lot of beauty, ugliness, chaos, order and harmony for us to be using our mind, our body, our memory, to punish ourselves.
So, forgiveness is the gift that frees you from that, and it is the choice of ultimate love.
Because you love yourself enough to not torture yourself.
It’s okay you went through the torture once, it was ugly enough that you suffered what you had to suffer.
There’s no need to make your life revolve around that pain and repeat it, drag yourself throughout it back and forth.
Ayahuasca in this way allowed me to forgive my ex-girlfriend, but more than that, to come home to myself.
To open my heart, to take responsibility for the role that I played in my specific situation and to let go of all that was holding me from living a beautiful and healthy relationship.
More than that, as I was sharing future videos, it allowed me to understand how the roots of what I lived were far deeper than that relationship.
There were childhood traumas with my mother and for her very deep roots into an absent codependency, to create an unhealthy way of relating.
Ayahuasca allowed me to feel that I was not a victim of life nor of god nor of her.
The pain that I carried was only hurting me, the resentment was only destroying my own life and my own heart.
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:
I want to share with you about an experience that I had about a year ago.
In which I got to understand, heal and face something that had taken me a lot of years to acknowledge and understand, which is sexual energy.
A bit of context, before going into this ceremony I felt that my mind was clear, I live happy, I am committed, I love the work that I do, I’m in a beautiful relationship.
But I felt that my “achilles heel“, the point where I felt the weakest, and maybe the only point where I felt I could still be tempted into the old life that I used to live, was lust with sexual energy.
I still felt a bit compulsive, if I’m being honest with you, maybe I would scroll through social media and one of my friends happened to post an enticing picture in a bikini.
And I would look at it and feel like my whole body has this orientation towards wanting to like “drink” that in.
Wanting to just admire and rejoice in the pleasure, and I guess the hormones that I would wake up within me.
And I felt desire.
But it also came with a lot of judgement, because I am engaged now.
So, why am I feeling this way?
Does it mean that I want to be with other women rather than my wife?
Doesn’t mean that I haven’t healed, am I still addicted to women, sex or have a sexual compulsion?
Why have I not gotten over this, if I’ve drunk medicine so much and I’ve done so much work?
So, it was always riddled with a mix of things, part of me had desire, admiration and excitement from it.
Another part had a lot of self-judgement, a lot of stories, a lot of fears and a lot of concerns too.
Is this my shadow? Am I going to end up cheating down the road just because I couldn’t figure out why I felt so compulsive towards women’s bodies, over-sexualized to a degree?
You can imagine, it was overwhelming, and i know that you cannot repress something forever.
I have tried this in the past where I repressed my thoughts: “I’m not gonna look at any woman, I’m not gonna think about anything”
And I managed maybe for a few weeks, a couple of months.
Then one day, it exploded, and it was ugly, everything that you repressed.
Imagine if you’re in a relationship, or if you have been in one, when you repress telling the truth…
Maybe your partner did something and you just swallowed it, you didn’t like something but you kept it in.
“Okay, I’m not gonna say anything,”
It’s not that you’re not gonna say anything, it’s that you’re not gonna say anything right now.
But the day that you say or said something, it wasn’t just one thing, it was all of it, and it was ugly, explosive, right?
Because so much energy has been building in that when it comes out, it exits in an ugly way.
So, I was aware of this, therefore, I thought: “I cannot repress my sexual energy, because then for sure I will end up doing something that I regret, but I don’t want to just loosen up the leash, per se.”
Because then, the same thing is going to happen, i need to integrate this, to understand it, to befriend it and know how to work with it.
So that was my intention for this ceremony.
“Please medicine, allow me to develop a more conscious relationship with my sexual energy and heal whatever may not be healed from my compulsive relationship with it.”
As the medicine started, I was noticing that I started to feel more and more turned on, started to feel quite horny.
A wave of guilt, shame and judgement came, thinking:
“Oh my god, I am in the middle of a ceremony, in a sacred space, what if the Shaman notices that i’m feeling so much lust in my system… is this wrong?” you know, all the shame from feeling this way started coming from within me.
And I was rejecting the experience, I felt like: “Oh my god, no, maybe it’s my mind controlling the ceremony.”
Then at one point I realized:
“You know what, how can I heal, face and understand something that I’m not willing to look at, something that I’m not willing to feel…”
So i gave myself permission to like tap into that really, really “juicy” sense of pleasure, almost like an ongoing orgasm.
Allowing myself to feel all of it without judgement, without shame.
And the moment that I allowed myself to feel all of it…
I was sitting in a garden, and there was a plant right in front of me, I had the sense that this plant was a feminine plant because of the geometry, because of a few things.
And I started to feel so much passion and desire, like as if I was looking at the hottest women in front of me, and I started looking at the plant and I thought:
“Oh my god, what is this, why am i feeling turned on towards a plant?”
Then I took a deep breath, looked at the sky, the clouds, air, it felt yummy.
And I thought: “What is happening?“
Then I looked at the earth and then there were ants walking and I was thinking about how good this was, and then I started laughing.
Because I realized that everything was making me horny, that I felt turned on towards everything.
I turned around and I saw everybody that was in ceremony and I saw them with so much intensity.
In the moment I realized that, that intensity, that passion, that aliveness is not in the boobs or in the ass of a woman that looks a specific way.
But that aliveness is within me, and I understand that, that aliveness, that sexual energy is no different from the life force.
Its the energy that moves through everything, through a plant, through an ant, through the skies, into our blood.
The only issue was that it was not that I was feeling a lot of desire towards a woman, but that I was only feeling desire towards a small group of women.
Because this exclusion of everything else meant that I was fixated and obsessed, maybe attached and wanting to have or thinking that I wanted to have the hot woman next to me, why?
Because I felt that she was the key for me to feel so much pleasure, but then the medicine showed me, and said:
“You’re using her as the key, but in reality, all of life is like the Yin and Yang, a cosmic intertwining of masculine, femenine, light and dark…
It’s a constant receiving and penetrating of energies, at every moment.”
The air is penetrating our skin, we are inhaling something that the atmosphere is pushing inside of us, we are exhaling and penetrating the moment with our breath, our attention, our energy.
Life itself is a sexual dance, which means a dance of polar energies.
I understood that my job was not to surpress this energy but to let it touch every single part of my life, the way that I breathe, the way that I sit, the way that I walk.
And it doesn’t mean that I have sexual desire towards somebody or that I want to have sexual intimacy with them.
Or with a plant nor with an ant, no.
But it means that I allow that charge, and that pleasant sensation, to be present in what I do.
I understood the medicine showed me that this energy is at the core of life and it’s not something to cut or restrict, but instead, to let it flow, but not limited to just a small group of women, no.
If you wanna feel life’s force and aliveness flowing through you, let it flow every single moment.
Because that will liberate you.
If you’re open and loving with all of creation, you will be free.
But if you’re only in love with your husband, your girlfriend, or that one person that treats you nicely, then you’re gonna get very entangled and attached.
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:
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:
Imagine that drinking Ayahuasca is like riding a Formula 1 car.
First of all, what do you do?
You ensure that the car is in good condition, if it’s missing one tire, are you gonna drive fast? No.
Your vehicle is your body, ensure that you do the best you can do to prepare it, to eat the foods that your center recommended you.
To take care of your mind, emotions, and also physical aspects so that it is solid, ground.
Can you race a car that is broken? You could.
But the risks and the anxiety as you’re driving at fast speeds is gonna be a lot higher.
If you don’t know how to prepare properly, check the links below (video).
Secondly, you wanna ensure that the race track is in good conditions, because the car can be in pristine settings.
The engine can be great – you took care of your body, you wait properly, but then…
If the race track has holes and bumps in it, then no matter how good of a driver you are, you’re bound to crash yourself.
An accident is likely to occur.
What I mean by this is: you want to check the container where this is being held – the race track is the place where you’re gonna drink Ayahuasca.
Is it a temple that has been consecrated for the use of plant medicine or is it your friend’s basement, some couple’s rented Airbnb or cottage? They’re VERY different.
Make sure the car is in good condition, but also make sure that the race track is also in good condition, supportive of going fast.
Because that’s what you’re after, right?
Thirdly, you can have a good car, the racetrack can be in good conditions, yet accidents can still occur, right?
The problem is not that an accident might happen, but that there’s no emergency team on site.
Nobody to pick you up, turn the fire off if your car catches flames, then take you to the hospital and provide assistance to you.
This means: ensure that there is a team of facilitators to take care of you, experienced ones.
This team starts with the Shaman, someone that is reliable, that has experience of at least 10 years (very little by most Shaman standards).
At least 10 years of experience working with people, and other 10 years of apprenticeship.
If someone wants to give you medicine and they’ve less than 10 years working/assisting another elder Shaman with.
Then you’re not in safe hands, definitely not in experienced hands.
You also want to make sure that the team is people that you feel you can trust.
You can know this because they take care and support you in the preparation and integration process.
So, if your medicine house does not offer this, they’re not that interested in you having a good takeoff and safe landing.
Fourthly, if you have a solid car, a good race track, a team to guide and support you in case of an emergency.
Then the only thing that is missing is that you as a driver do everything that it takes within your capacity to be in the best condition.
That means that you do not leave anything to luck.
You prepare properly, with integrity.
You take things seriously, you understand the risks, it’s your life that is at stake, your mental, emotional health that is at stake.
If you’re thinking of drinking Ayahuasca and you feel a deep calling.
Maybe you feel pain and other forms of therapy/inner work have not really helped you with what you wanted.
Or perhaps you feel a spiritual longing, where nothing seems to satisfy.
You have to take yourself seriously, and you have to stop pretending that it’s okay.
No, this is not a way to move through life, you have to take life seriously.
It doesn’t mean that you have to be grumpy, no.
Take it seriously, as in with respect, attention, involvement.
You can do it joyfully, but do not sacrifice a potentially life-changing experience just because you were too lazy to do things with integrity.
To prepare as well as you could now.
If you take care of these four things:
Your car.
The racetrack.
The emergency team.
And the pilot.
Then you’re guaranteed to have the most profound, transformational and safe experience with Ayahuasca.
Thank you, check out my links on Youtube for a safe course I’ve created to help prepare and integrate properly.
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:
Here’s an important distinction that a lot of people miss/get confused about.
Most of the people that i’ve worked with, most of my students too, get frustrated when they don’t feel happy.
100% of the time they say:
“Oh, this is not working“
“I’ve done so much inner work, taken so many workshops. yet i feel sad/bad today. Why can i not be happy 100% of the time?“
So i remind them that the goal of the spiritual journey is NOT to be happy, it is to be free.
To be whole aswell.
Happiness and freedom are two different things, because a person that must feel happy all the time is not very free.
They’re ensalved to everything working out in their favor so that they can feel fulfilled.
They’re no different than the person who is committed to their depression and anxiety, they’re ensalved to it, they do not see their life moving forward in a different way.
So, what’s the point then of all the spiritual growth, self-practices and self-development?
Let’s say, an immature sense of self-development (which is what you see around online) is aiming for you to be happy all the time, to be joyful.
It’s nonsense, because now that you cannot feel happiness – if you “maintain” this, in a certain way, it is possible, so that it becomes a constant.
But more than seeking happiness, can you make peace with, embrace and welcome the difficult emotions?
At the end of the all that exists is: comfortable and uncomfortable mental and physical situations, that’s all it is.
There are comfortable emotions and uncomfortable ones.
Running away from one and towards the other is going to have you going “zig-zag“, back and forth.
However, when you accept the whole spectrum, you become free.
And bliss is only available through this freedom, I believe that it can be present in the moment of deepest pain.
But also in that moment of deepest love, deepest joy.
The purpose of a spiritual journey is not to be happy, it is to be FREE.
Free from the attachment of having to be happy all the time.
Freedom means that you can navigate both the serene waters of life with the same joy, involvement and openness as you navigate the darkest storms.
Freedom means that you are willing and open to receive all of life, and all of life has light and darkness, comfort and discomfort, positive and negative experiences.
That’s the beauty of it.
Please, I invite you to stop chasing a juvenile expression and form of spirituality, thinking that you have to be happy the whole time.
I’m not saying you should be miserable, by no means.
It’s worth mentioning that this is my personal experience.
The less you chase happiness, the more you become okay with the current moment of sadness, frustration, anger.
The moment that you befriended these emotions, these parts of you, it becomes like someone that has a message to give you.
They come and knock in your door, yet you keep ignoring them, they’re gonna have to knock louder and louder and louder, also for longer.
Because they really have a message, and you must listen to it.
However, if the first time they knock, you open the door, sit down and chat with them, then they’ll be gone.
Maybe they’ll have a message another time, which you listen to, and finally they’ll walk out.
A day comes when they have shared everything they have to share with you, so they no longer come knocking at your door.
Emotions are like this, life’s situations are like this.
The moment that you’re at peace with the discomfort that may be present is the moment you become free.
And when you are free, bliss is inevitable, happiness tends to be very dependent on our external situations.
For most people, happiness is a flaky elusive sensation.
Freedom, however, is a very solid foundation upon which you can build your life, because you know that whether it is sunny, dark or cloudy.
Whether people are kind to me or they’re uneasy and difficult, then it is in my hands to surf, to navigate life however I choose to.
There is no situation I reject nor cling to, there is no emotion that I despise, judge nor crave.
In this freedom, we can actually become fully equipped and able to experience life as it is, not as we would like it to be.
And this is the greatest joy that a human being can experience, the peace that comes from no longer being afraid nor attached to something.
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:
Can this tool help me navigate through a break-up, a difficult marriage, relationship or the absence thereof?
The short answer is yes.
But you’re probably not reading this blog to get a short answer, but to get a deeper understanding of what is at stake, how it can help and most importantly, whether it’s a tool that you could benefit from.
Let’s look at the root of these things.
A heartbreak or a break-up, a difficult relationship or the absence of one of these, the roots for these things tends to be a misunderstanding of ourselves, of the other person, of love itself, or relationships where we misunderstand ourselves.
Number one, we don’t know what we want, we don’t know the kind of person that we actually are compatible with so we choose poorly, maybe we choose because we think that this woman is going to be like my parents.
Maybe this man, has a good job and is going to provide stability, security, right?
We explore or choose or partners based on a lot of societal conditioning without actually looking at how compatible our lives are, our energies, our visions, our ways of being, showing up in the world.
Now, number two, misunderstanding the other person.
I remember a joke, i believe it was Ram Dass who shared it: “When a pickpocket meets a saint, all he sees is his pockets.“
When you’re hungry and you go through town, all you see are restaurants. When you want to pee all you see are gas stations and bathrooms, right?
So what we see in the world is largely determined by what we want, by our desires and our aversions, what we want to come towards and what we want to run away from.
In relationships, we see our partner with our idea, our ideal of that person, so we’re constantly disappointed because we project them and expect them to be someone they aren’t.
We imagine that they’re going to be the solution to a lot of our questions, our inadequacies maybe, we feel bored with life and we expect for them to provide adventure.
I feel unsafe and want them to make me feel stable, we become a little bit arrogant and narcissistic without knowing it so, because we start using the other person to play and fulfill a function in our life.
Failure to see the other person is going to leave them feeling incomplete, it’s very difficult to be in a relationship where the other person is not seeing you but seeing what they want from you.
Let’s say i were a very, very rich man, and i met a woman that saw only my money, i could feel it, know that she doesn’t see my history, my dreams, my pain, my challenges.
She’s not interested in what makes me think, laugh, she’s interested in how i can be a bridge towards her safety, towards her financial stability.
Let’s say she’s very attractive, a supermodel, and all i saw were her curves, her body shape, the approval that i get when i enter a room holding her hand.
All i see is her outer layer, she may feel appreciated for that, but her dreams, the little girl inside of her, the mature woman that is more than just a body or a sexual object will feel disollusioned quite often.
We do our versions of this, we’ll have different needs that we’re trying to saitsfy with another person, that’s okay, as long as we can see past those needs and actually see the other person, but we rarely do.
We usually stay in a relationship with ourselves, using somebody else as the puppet for the game that we’re playing.
This causes trouble and it leads to eventual chaos, eventually to the breaking apart of this relationship.
It is impossible to love someone that you don’t see and it’s impossible to feel loved when you aren’t feeling seen.
Now, misunderstandings of love.
A lot of people think that love is something that they do, a lot of people confuse love for desire, lust, romantic interest.
We love someone but the moment that they behave in a way that we don’t like, spending more time with their friends, maybe from the opposite sex.
Then we’d get insecure, worried, we withdraw our love and we’re now afraid, our love tends to be very conditional because it’s not love, it’s desire, comfort, an agreement where i will give you but you need to give back.
Misunderstanding love means that we place a lot of expectations and pressures on the other person, on the relationship itself, we misunderstand that love isn’t actually something that we do.
Something that isn’t unique to one person alone, if it were, it wouldn’t be love.
It’s a place we can stand, inhabit, so that we act lovingly when we’re in love, acting from a place that is very sweet, inclusive of everything.
Anything and everything that crosses my path we extend our open arms towards with love.
Love is not to want or desire. The the moment my hormones start going down suddenly i don’t have any interest for you anymore, that’s not love, maybe passion, sexual desire, biological chemistry.
Nothing wrong with these things, but if we misunderstand bodily functions, romantic agreements, for love.
Then we’re bound to trip over these misunderstanding and we’re bound to elude love, because we think that we’re loving when in reality we’re just in a constant exchange.
Maybe we think that we’re in love but maybe it’s just lust that we’re feeling, this is very common.
Learning to understand what love is and how it is an inner job, not something that we do, something we become.
It’s a place that we inhabit, it’s something that we must reach from our heart by ourselves.
Me being lovingly does not depend on my wife, if it did, then the moment that she tells me something i don’t like or treats me with some closure, acts in a sarcastic or angry way, being difficult, then i withdraw my love.
However, if my love depends on me, it can be a choice.
It can be a choice that i extend to everyone, in fact, i can love every man and woman, bird and flower. I can welcome them in my heart as a choice, this choice does not require sexual action, this is very different.
We usually get that mixed up. If i love my friends that means i want something with them, it’s not true.
Love is not something that you hold only for one person, because then it becomes attachment.
A lot of our relational problems come from misunderstanding love itself, we don’t know what it is, most people have never felt it, most people confuse it for lust, infatuation.
Relationships have this immense pressure on what we assume or have been told they should be, we see movies, we imagine that our partner must be our confident, the person we can bring our deepest and darkest truths to.
They must be our friend of adventures, who we can travel and explore our life with, our spiritually aligned counterpart, someone with whom we’re going to eventually merge into God (Or source of creation) with.
With whom we are destined by the cosmos and universe to be in a relationship with, a sacred relationship.
The erotic incarnation of all of our passions, desires and fantasies. They have to be mother, father, sometimes house cleaner, worker.
There’s so many things that we have placed, so many weights that we carry and unconsciously poured on our relationships.
When you place a lot of weight on something, it is bound to crack, the reason that a lot of relationships crack in this world is because there’s a lot of weight being placed on them.
This happens because we do not pay attention, relationships are an agreement between two people, a romantic relationship, one with friends, colleagues, partners of your spiritual journey.
All of these are also relationships, we are human beings that were born in the context of community back in the day, we thrive in the context of community.
Right now, we’re expecting for one person to fulfill the role that 10-30 people had in the past, it is unsustainable. The expectations will break them, they will break the relationship and they will break the love that we have for them.
I want you to understand that, it doesn’t matter how romantic the ideals you have been sold are, it doesn’t matter your genuine positive hopes for this one person to be everything you always wanted and needed for it.
It’s not true, you will need friends, spiritual teachers, people with whom you have certain kinds of openness, it can be your therapist, someone that you trust.
There will be a lot of different people that play different roles, that’s okay, that actually takes the pressure off the relationship to be everything at once.
And of your partner from having to juggle a lot of different ways of being romantic, relationships have certain agreements, quite usually, sexual exclusivity, mutual support around creating a home, mutual collaboration in sustaining a family.
Hopefully, and i think ideally, the mutual celebration of each other’s way of showing up in the world, each other’s dreams.
Everything else we can get from friends, teachers, co-workers, other people.
Do not misunderstand the role that your relationship is meant to play in your life because if you place too much weight on it, it is bound to crack, break.
You will live life failed relationship after failed relationship, wondering what’s wrong with everybody else, or maybe what’s wrong with you, without realizing that what was wrong was the way you were building things.
Take a deep breath, slow down, figure out what is this actually serving?What is this relationship good for, what are the actual expectations that will help this relationship thrive, that will help my partner and myself become bigger people?
Not smaller from the amount of pressure that we experience.
Misunderstanding yourself or the other person, misunderstading love and misunderstanding relationships are the base causes of most heartbreaks, pain, anxiety, stress and overwhelm in our life.
Awareness, conscious attention, work on these areas, letting go of all that is false, false misconceptions, trying to understand who i am, who this person in front of me is, what love is, what is bringing us together?
Answering these questions will ensure you have a beautiful relationship, so before you jump into conclusions, make sure that you’re not acting or relating from a place that is inherently broken by design.
You may be wondering what’s the role that Ayahuasca plays in this, Ayahuasca helps us get to the bottom of these questions with clear awareness.
Sometimes it’s very easy to confuse if things are in my mind, intuition, is it my body heart telling me what is right for me, to move away from this relationship?
Or is it my fear and my trauma?
A lot of people cannot differentiate, so they make themselves a mess. Should i stay or should i go? They make a a Pros and Cons list.
They entangle themselves deeper and deeper in a lot of stress, anxiety.
Ayahuasca allows you to remove, thread by thread, and show you the truth of who you are.
So you know who you are and what you want, what is good for you, the truth of your partner…
Sometimes this means that you see they’ve been unfaithful or you see that they’re amazing people and that you’re the one that is about to destroy a very beautiful relationship.
They will show you the truth of love, this is the most profound experience of all, it’s at the core of every spiritual journey, if you understand the essence of love, your relationships will forever be transformed.
The truth of your relationship allows you to see that we are humans, we have needs and agreements, we can consciously choose vows.
We can make so that things work consciously and not because we inherited all these expectations, assumptions, ideas and preconceptions about what we imagined relationships should be.
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:
You’re probably concerned or curious and you think: “Hey what’s gonna happen in 1-10 years, am i gonna end up a little bit “cuckoo?” Am i gonna end up addicted to it? Moving to a jungle? I’m gonna quit my life and go a little bit crazy…“
Some people may think that it’s like a cold or something really dangerous like a drug.
First, there was research done in which they used a population from Brazil, where the religion is called Santo Daime, it’s a religion similar to church, imagine christian or chatolic church, but they serve Ayahuasca and they teach about different things.
They did research in people who have been part of this religion for 10-15 years, which meant that they were drinking Ayahuasca at least 2-5 times per week.
Because if you want to measure if something is good/bad, the fastest way is to measure what happens if somebody uses it consistently for a long time.
You have a glass of wine today and we check your health stats in 5-10 years, nothing’s gonna happen, however, if you have a glass of wine every day for the next 15 years, your liver is gonna show, your skin, maybe even your life, your work situation, your relationship, many things are going to be a lot worse because of it.
So researchers wanted to test: “Is doing Ayahuasca actually good? What about people who do it too often? Are they addicted? Are they depressed? Are they having Schizophrenia? Are they having mental health issues?“
They survey them over a period of several years, they also surveyed a “control group“, which were just people from the same area, same population who were not partaking in Ayahuasca ceremonies.
What they found out was that the group that was actively drinking the plant medicine had almost non-existant depression, anxiety and mental health problems, the indicators were very low.
If anything, the problems that they had, the people who were suffering from this at the beginning of the survey, over time were reversed , they had better health.
The most important thing was that when asked about the level fo fulfillment/happiness/joy they were drastically different in a positive direction than the control group.
What they discovered was that although not everybody had changed their life externally nor became an entrepreneur, famous artist, created a big business out of the realization, became a guru or a healer, no.
Most people kept living their lifes in the same way, attending the job they attended.
Even though their external life didn’t change for everybody, their internal perspective, the sense of appreciation, gratitude, fulfillement from the same circumstances improved.
But they realized that the people that had drunk plant medicine were a lot more connected to a sense of purpose, a sense of spirituality, something higher which gave them everything they needed to be appeased mentally, phyisically, emotionally.
So, long-term side effects of drinking Ayahuasca, this is what has been researched;
It’s good for your body.
It’s good for your mental health.
It’s good for your emotional health.
Whether your external circumstances change or not, that depends on a lot of different factors.
Your capacity to be happy, to enjoy, to appreciate and be nurtured by everything that is already in your life is vastly increased.
I want to share from my own experience and that of some of my students and family members what I consider medium-term side effects.
A medium-term, because i started drinking Ayahuasca 5-6 years ago, but only the last 2 years in a consistent way plus i’ve had family members who’ve had drunk it here, so this is where we’re at right now.
What i have seen is that these people close to me (and myself) have experienced was first improvement of our health, because Ayahuasca connects you deeper to who you are and what is not very supportive.
Whether that is a relationship, a job, a food, a habit, an addiction or some friend – because it allows you to connect deeper to your essence.
You make choices that are good for you, you make choices in areas of your life that bring you peace, bring you joy, that are coherent and aligned, free from fear, from attachment to external things.
Ayahuasca allows you and has allowed me to understand better what I want, which in my case turned out to becoming independent.
My own business, launching a few other projects making more money than I had done before in ways that were more meaningful to me, helping way more people during covid times and times of need.
At the same time i stopped drinking, taking substances, eating in a way that was very destructive for my body.
I lost around 30-35 pounds of weight without trying, i started sleeping a lot less but resting a lot more, overall just having better relationships with my family, with the people around me, with my partners, students.
My family members have also reported similar things, people that have come here to the retreats shared how the experience that they lived here was the catalyst to some changes that created a very different future.
They were doing things and then they realized that it was not in that direction, they had some habits, compulsions, traumas that were released from that place.
They made different choices, for some it meant more commitment with their partners and a happier home life, for some others it meant breaking up, divorcing, realizing that the person they were with was not who they aligned with.
The long-term effects of drinking Ayahuasca, from what i’ve noticed.
If Ayahuasca is served in hands of experienced people and you’re supported in the process, the preparation, facilitation. Then your physical health will improve, reduce your stress, anxiety, depression, improved mental health, clarity, focus, creativity, passion, fearlessness, improved energy.
Because your system is very clean, you’re not stressed and you’re not usually eating all the same nonsense that you used to, you have more energy to the things that are important to you, improved relationships.
We can only give from what we have, if we don’t have it we cannot give it.
And when we think that we don’t have a lot of people that love us, or we don’t have many loving aligned relationships it’s because within us, we cannot attract or connect with these people or have a relationship of that caliber if inside, my bucket is empty, my cup is void of anything.
Ayahuasca connects to that part within ourselves that is already fulfilled, that stream, that fountain that never stops flowing, from this place it’s very, very easy, simple and magical to find people that you resonate with to co-create with, to have a relationship with.
You learn to accept those people around you in a better way, because Ayahuasca takes you through your trauma and allows you to heal your nonsense, to take responsability for it and understand that it was you who was hurting the whole time.
Your pain and stress about others was nothing but a slit was inside of you.
This allows you to have compassion for others, because you understand when you see somebody suffering, you can see (if you pay enough attention), you may understand where their suffering is coming from, what they lacked, when they were growing up, what they crave right through their dysfunction.
You can understand what this person is missing in their life, and instead of judging or feeling repulsed you can look at them with love because you understand that underneath was a person who is ugly in the way they connect to you yet there is someone who is hurting or was hurt in a very bad way.
It allows you to do all of this long-term.
Eventually, i’ll make a video/blog when it’s been 10-15 years of this journey, so far, for me, it’s been a day and night the kind of experience that i’ve had.
I’ve had these kind of results that i’ve seen in students, family, myself.
The downside is that not too many of you do it in a place where it’s safe, the upside is very big, so i hope you consider it.
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, check out www.ayahuascacolombia.com/retreats
The masculine is connected to money because in our society the traits and the qualities that are most likely to provide a stable and prosperous financial foundation for a person are masculine, for example.
Focus, if you look around most people who say i’m a writer, artist, healer, tarot reader, investment banker, cook, chef, somebody tells you a million things.
The first thing that comes to mind is, this person has a lot of hobbies and probably very little money.
However, it is the brain, the left hemisphere, brain surgeon, the one that makes a lot a lot of money, it is the cardiologist, it’s the (in my previous profession) watercolour tattoo artist the person that knows how to focus, the one that usually excels, develops a proficient ability in something.
A person that has a challenging time with their own masculine, a woman that has a hard time with her own masculine is going to have a hard time usually focusing, following through.
Consistency, discipline is a masculine trait, it is the act of committing to something out of a choice and not out of an emotion.
A lot of women are very sensitive and it’s a beautiful gift, unless they are at the mercy of it, which is the case for most of the women that I know.
You can have a huge heart, but if your heart dictates whether or not you work all the time then you’re gonna have a very rocky financial life.
It should be our awareness, our consciousness dictating what our mind, body and heart does, not our consciousness at the mercy of our mind, our body or our heart.
Women who have problems with money usually tend to have problems with structure, the masculine is a very nourishing energy, In the Shamanic tradition we say, mother earth. “Madre Tierra” and father sun, “Padre Sol.”
The sun is the father, the light. The earth is the mother, the light penetrates the earth – its waters and then it breeds life, the sun nourishes everything abundantly and equally, it does not discriminate.
A woman who had a hard time receiving from her father because he was absent, he was abusive or he was weak, is gonna hurt, she’s gonna have a hard time receiving from life itself, however.
If you’re aware of this, you can remember that your father only facilitated a body for you, your previous partners were only your previous partners, you are connected to a source, an energy of life that is very sacred, then the sacred masculine keeps you here.
The light of the sun shines on you every day and its roots feed you, keep you alive, if you can connect to the ways in which the masculine is already providing for you, you can start to slowly open yourself up to receiving from this energy that is abundant in nature.
Therefore open yourself up to having more structure, being more focused, being more disciplined, more consistent and being able to be penetrated in a nourishing way by life itself.
For your feminine energy to be fertile you need the masculine energy to be in dance with it, just the masculine or just the feminine are not fertile.
