FIRST AYAHUASCA EXPERIENCE
It was around this time I had my first Ayahuasca experience. It was not as ‘enlightening’ as one might expect.. First of all the setting was an extremely large group of 40 + people gathered in a large circle. Secondly it was in a neighborhood surrounded by other houses. Thirdly, while I was on the plant medicine, the shaman was nowhere to be seen and I was several dimensions beyond this one in my consciousness – challenging fear, challenging death, challenging everyone around me that might be related to fear or death. I was running around the yard naked and singing .. eventually the police were called, not because I was being loud but because I was naked and apparently in Costa Rica it’s a bigger sin to be naked than to yell or sing at the top of your lungs.
I danced like a wild man, I was handling fire without getting burned, talking in poems, feeling like I was in a movie, thinking I was going to be assassinated at any moment, challenging every fear that came up, to the point I was going to eat bugs and drink dirty water.. I was even afraid of the sun – thinking it to be fake. I was ready to die under a lime tree until Mark Zuckerberg and Stephen Spielberg or someone else met me to discuss how to change the world.
From what I’ve heard, my experience was unique. I felt a little embarrassed after my first day’s ceremony and was ready to leave. They invited me to stay for another one, where I went a little deeper into myself instead of being so externally expressed. It was much milder .. and although the whole ceremony was meant to be 3 days, I didn’t stay for the entire 3 days because if nothing else, I realized I didn’t need the plant medicine for my ascension anymore.
FIRST BURNING MAN
I experienced my first burning man festival and fell in love with a girl named Phallon. I was expecting Burning Man to be a total liberation of our culture and something from another planet. I was excited by the possibility of that, but shortly into my first day I could see that it was just a modification of our culture, not as radical as I was expecting. People still followed the rules, BLM police still patrolled to make sure nobody was doing anything bad. And people still spoke in English and acted like their personalities from the outside, just wearing different outfits.
I discovered Phallon at Pink Heart after a small heartbreak that same day with another girl I had connected with. Our romance lasted a couple of months but my heart was all in! So the break up was quite difficult and reminded me of why I really wanted to create a healing center that nurtures the heart of people who have lost someone or something they deeply love.