by Nicolas Canon
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:
www.ayahuascacolombia.com/retreats
by Nicolas Canon
How Ayahuasca helped me heal alcoholism.
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 know how 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:
www.ayahuascacolombia.com/retreats
by Nicolas Canon
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:
https://ayahuascacolombia.com/retreats
by Nicolas Canon
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:
www.ayahuascacolombia.com/retreats
by Nicolas Canon
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
